Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 29: Twenty-Nein - My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello, and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
You see, every Wednesday we transport you to a simpler time,
back when the iPhone seven was cutting edge and Suicide
Squad dominated the box office.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
That's right, So join us as we take you back
to August eleventh, twenty sixteen, because now you can basically
all be Day one listeners.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
And today we're recapping episode twenty nine, which at the
time we named twenty nine. With the German spelling of
the word nine.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Twenty nine is how you pronounce it.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Seems problematic to me in the light of twenty twenty
five and the light.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Of everything, everything is problematic. Yeah, that's very true. So
let's listen to the intro to episode twenty nine. Welcome
to my Favorite murder. That's Karen Kilgareth. That is Georgia Hart. Start.
You know, no one can tell her voices apart still,
you know, it's pretty weird. So one's time to say,

(01:15):
I love when the truth the hometown murders are people
sending in like I know secret information about the case
you already covered, Yes, because I know people from the
whatever the fuck we love that And someone was like
last week sent us one and was like, Karen, I'm
sorry to disappoint you, but it was my case, yeah,
And I was like, I'm sorry, no, we're sorry to

(01:37):
disappoint you.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
That happens a lot when people talk about I love
when I think they say like Karen says, oh my
fucking God, during when George is telling you whatever it was,
it was like the reverse and I knew it was
for sure because it was like one of your phrases.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, Jesus fucking Christ. But yeah, I mean, I just
think it's precious. It's so weird. I feel like, I mean,
we're such different people. There was a fucking thing on
Facebook that was like are you a Karen or a Georgia?
Did you say that? And it made me sad, Oh
why because I was like, no, one has to be me.
Were they both bad? No, everyone loves you and I'm not.

(02:14):
I was just everyone's like, I'm a Karen, but my
best friend is a Georgia, so that's fine. I met Karen.
How do we? And then people were like, it's funny
how people will explain to other people how you can
tell the difference between us, and it's that you sing everything.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yes, that's me and I also have a scratchy voice
because sometimes sometimes late at night, I smoke cigarettes.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
You do not, Yeah? I do, do you, Karen? Yeah? Sometimes?
And you can tell. You can actually you can tell
how many I've been smoking, because like right now, I've
been smoking. I don't know why. I'm scandalized by this
because you never told me, and I feel like I
thought we knew. I thought I knew you. No. I
also because it's such a special thing that you do alone,

(02:59):
and I think it's one that you have that time
to yourself.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well sometimes at my house, like I'm home at the
end of the night.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
You have a great backyard. What else are you gonna
use it? Just sit in that backyard. Sometimes I just
stick my feet right and the life I want to
live it's pretty. I don't mind it.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
But it's also like I'm tired and I don't get
to drink anymore, and I don't get to do anything anymore.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So I'll just smoke a little kind of hand rolled
bally shag Sia. Do you used to hand the roll
of yourself? Yeah, Karen, this is why everyone wanted to
be you, because I'm so fucking European. They were saying,
like Karen's a badass, and I want to be. I
think it's because I'm scared of everything and talk about therapy.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
It is is you are honest about your anxieties, and
I'm always like, just try to kill me, which is
the most insane thing. Every once in while, a little
hit me where I'm like, oh, I've actually said that
out loud. In permanently, these recordings are permanent. There's nothing
we can do about it. And I've actually been like, oh,
don't Carenande's kind.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
There's gonna be no record of this, so it doesn't
matter when what happened. The end days come oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
this is all gonna be wiped off.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
But well, the grid's gonna go down and they it
won't matter what's recorded because we won't be able to access.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Delta is the first, fucking is the first airplane line
that'll go down. No, it just went down like yesterday,
Delta they had like a blackout and they at their
main hub and everything was grounded and it's like across
the country. Yeah, They're like there was just a glitch,
and you're like, bullshit, bullshit. Whenever I hear those things,
and it was like someone there was just a glitch.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
No way, uh uh, don't even no, there was. That
was the lizard men that are underneath the Denver Airport.
They are they're down there and they're fucking with the mainframe.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Man, don't even how much did you love? As soon
as I heard this on Stranger Things that they had
a fucking mk ultra line like, wait, line, did you
watch it all? No? I I think I I have
like two left or three left? Have you been to

(05:03):
the possible eleven's mom's house yet? No? Yes, they mentioned
mk Ultra and that's why she's like that. Yeah, because
she was one of the people they were experimenting on.
Has anyone listened to this, I don't want to. I
don't want to spoil any Yeah, yeah, iad spoilers. Uh Okay,
I missed that detail. I just thought they say mk

(05:26):
ultra in it. Holy shit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Oh that makes me like it one thousand times more. Yeah, okay,
I have to go back and get through. I have
to be honest. When I binge watch shows, especially on Netflix,
and you just can like it, hit enter on the
blue box and you just keep going. There'll be times
while I just fall asleep and I don't even know
which one I'm on. I just wake up and keep
watching whatever's on.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
I have the kind of insomnia that you can't fall
asleep in front of television. I've never fallen asleep in
front of maybe wrestling. That's Vince's fault.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wow, we couldn't be more different. That's how I fall
asleep every night. It's very bad for you to sleep
in front of team.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Well, now I wonder how bad it is. I can't
fall asleep now without listening to the Sleep with Me podcast,
Like I can't. You're his slave. I'm his slave. So
I wonder if someday they're going to be like, it's
worse than falling asleep to TV because he's infiltrating my dream.
That's right. Well, if he is from Mencheltra, you're screwed.

(06:24):
Oh yeah. If he is okay with it, do you
think he's so great? You're fine with it? I'm fine
with it whatever his agenda might be. Like same with Elvis.
Whenever one and no one is like, oh they you know,
you get a virus from cats and it takes over
your brain and makes you a zombie, and I'm like,
I don't care. He's so cute. He's so nice, he's
so sweet. If he thinks I need it to be
a zombie, then i'll you know, he knows what's best

(06:45):
for me. Sure, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
And also, you know you're gonna go, whether you're a
zombie for a cat or you get hit by a bus,
you are going to leave this earthly plane.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
So just accept it. Yeah. His head smells like a
library book. The girl who was in love with her cat?
All right, Uh, do you have housekeeping?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
I have a housekeeping That makes me very happy because
it's twofold housekeeping. It was a tweet that my hero
Nico Case. Singer songwriter Nico Case tweeted, you've.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Got a tiny little happy clap from Steven just now. Yay,
we love her, Love Nico Case.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Don't tell me that the connection was lost and there
was a loading hair on her phone. No, well, basically
she retweeted this story. I'm pretty sure it was from
the CBC about how their government, the Canadian government is
now opening an investigation on all the missing Indigenous women
in Canada. So that's like all the women. So you know,

(07:46):
like Robert Pickton, I'm going to eventually do one on him.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
If you don't beat me to it. He's the pig
farmer in Canada that was just murdering women and they
I think it was in the hundreds. Did he feed Yeah, yeah,
it's a bad one. It's so I wouldn't that it's yours, okay,
because it's too dark, it's too it's too something for me,

(08:11):
even I don't know why. Yeah, too many pigs, too
many pigs. No, it's just yeah, I don't know. Well,
so there's it's making a murderer, Oh okay, in a
lot of different ways. Go ahead, Well, there's just a
there's been a bunch of and this is very in America.
I think our version of it is women of color,

(08:31):
black women that get murdered. And it's just as if
no one talks about it, isn't you You see all
the little blonde girls are always on the news if
they are go missing or are murdered, but it doesn't
happen with black women. And so the.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Canadian version I think is indigenous women. Indian women is
the incorrect term for it. But so the there's the
Highway of tears where we're we're disappearing on it.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Robert Picton. They named another guy that I didn't recognize
the name. How Pickton is the right less? And you
know what, I want to do a mass murderers because
I feel like I won't give enough time to each
of the women. I'd rather do this is what the
victim was, who the victim was, their story? Right, then
here's who the murderer was. And it's like and there's
nineteen women, right yeah, no, then that's okay, this is bad,

(09:16):
that's but anyway, it's it's like hundreds of Indigenous women
have gone missing, and the last say, if I could
open this article, I would God, I would be accurate
with thers. But no, that's okay, I have I can
give you my WiFi connection. I know every time you
get upset that let's pause it.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, no, no, no, no, it's fine because the general idea
is just what Nico Case was trying to get the
word out about, and I retweeted it on our Twitter
feed as well as just the government is trying to
do something about it. They're trying to find the women,
they're trying to investigate the murders. They're trying to actually
put a focus and say these women are important, just
as important as anybody else. And we're going to do

(09:57):
something about this, which is human. Did that a country
like on the whole would just admit that they haven't
up until this point, and now they're going to It's incredible,
It's really great.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
It's very hopeful to me about like this. It feels
like a new era in crime.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
The name of the article is just how an unflinching
gaze on missing and murdered indigenous women might move Canada forward. Incredible,
very cool and I was right as the SABC News.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I'll take it.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
If it's even that small, I will take an accuracy moment.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
I will not take it away from you. Thank you.
I appreciate it. That's I mean, that's really the whole story.
That's I'm still trying to think of a way that
we can donate part of the proceeds or like help
some way with the untested rape kit situation. Marshka Marishka,
mrisca architect, thank you. I want to give her all
my money and like, do it help. Georgia was in

(10:59):
a Man episode and Karen she gave a multi millionaire
all her money and Karen totally was like do it
so so George Karen, I think that's a really it
all ends in a lawsuit between you and I. Oh,
I didn't see that coming because of my undiagnosed manic. No,
I don't we call it the Big Giveaway Georgia. Really

(11:21):
just no, no, no. I think that's a really good idea.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
I would loved the proceeds of something that we earn
money for because this podcast goes to those untestamers.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
We have live shows, like were you guys were in
the fucking process of like having live shows be a
part of our lives. Yeah, and a part of your lives. Texas,
we're gonna invite people Texas. What we got some numbers back.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
That was a brag, but we got some numbers back,
and hey, Texas, turns out you like it.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
I was so surprised by that. We both started laughing
so hard. But it makes sense. Yeah, that's Texas. Texas
has some good murders. Texas knows what they're talking about
in terms of murder. Can I just say that once
we got all this, we got all this information about
our numbers, and then we were driving home and we
almost had to pull over to start crying with how
happy we both were. But how well this is how like?

(12:12):
How what a great? It's pretty nice. It's pretty great.
It's pretty nice that we're we're getting popular because we
talk about death. Yeah. I think that's lovely. I love
you guys, Thanks for listening. Okay. I also want to
say really quickly that in therapy, uh and therapy, one
of the things I talked about was that how crazy
I am and how much anxiety I am. I have

(12:32):
because when I go to the back of my building
to do laundry, I lock my front door and how
crazy is that that I think someone's going to break in?
And then I read an article there's a fucking Echo
Park rapist and one of the ways he got into
her house was when she was doing fucking laundry in
the back of her apartment and she left her door
unlock and went in there.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Is it's it's not anxiety when you're just being careful.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
I texted my therapist and the article and said, in
your face, pitch no, because she was like, you know, yeah,
now she doesn't want to see me anymore. I know,
she said find someone else. So she was because she
was like, you know, we're allowed to take certain precautions
and that's okay, and you can do that. But when
you start, you know, blah blah blah. Then it's so
she supported it, and I was like, I feel so justified.

(13:15):
Uh well, also that's good. I mean Jesus Christ to know, right. Yes, hey,
here's there's no shame in locking things. Double I lock.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
People will walk by in the crosswalk and they're part
of my brain goes, they might be able to hear
it if you lock the door.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Whatever. It's like, I don't give a shit, it doesn't
matter much.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Louder voids that says sorry to offend you, but you
don't get to in case you had the idea, right,
maybe you're on some white drugs.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
So like you're sitting at a stop sign and someone
goes to walk by and you go click to lock
your car door. Yeah yeah, you're like, well, they're gonna
get mad at me, fuck you, Well, because you creepy.
That's a good way to let someone know they like creepy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I get the idea, because you're giving me the eye.
So yeah, don't we've said this a million times. Fuck politeness.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Politeness. Yeah, there could be new listeners who don't yet
know to fuck politeness.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Oh yeah, fuck politeness and oh you'll learn.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
There's a ton of stuff. There's a lot of experiences
in your life that'll make you make you question.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
How about if you're going between the laundry room and
your house, lock your goddamn don't lock your fucking door.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Lock you. If you live in a major city or
not at your parent's house, lock your door. It feels
really good because literally that that was a worry. Every
single time I walk out back is, I come in
the door and I check for the cats because if
the cats were still out where they were, that meant
no one was in there, because but if they were hiding,
that would mean someone came in the house. Right, that's crazy. No,

(14:44):
that's a good theory. That's a theory based on observation. Yeah,
and we're back.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Hey, if you're still listening from Texas, thank you.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah. Thanks. Incredible. What a miracle Texas was there in
the beginning. They were there hard for us. They do that,
they do everything a little hard, like.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
They're yeah, they're like they rep and they're there. That
made me think of wasn't it in Texas? I believe Dallas.
When the women got into our van to go to
the theater and then the driver it was just like, yeah, no,
they just thought it was like one of the ubers
or something. And the driver was just like, Okay, guess
these are the podcast girls.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah that was they were like. And then we met
them as they were returned to the hotel and returned
to the y like being yeah, and they were very funny.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah that's Texas to me, that's Texas in my heart.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
That was beautiful night. It's so funny that that was
the beginning of Are You a Karen? Are You a Georgia?

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I know that was like the BuzzFeed days crazy. Oh yeah,
one thousand years ago.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
That was a BuzzFeed quick so exciting, Like this is
when everything was just like off in a really unexpected,
insane way, like we just didn't know what the hell
is happening. We really didn't. We thought it was kind
of funny, and as I've said a thousand times, I
thought it was going to wrap up in three to

(16:15):
five weeks. And you never covered Robert Picton, which I
think is a good thing. Right, I do too.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I was gonna remember that show we did the first
time we did a show in Vancouver. I was going
to cover him at that Vancouver show.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Remember we were in that high rise hotel.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
There was like we had like we were on the
eighteenth floor something. We had these amazing views.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
It wasn't I sick, and so I was an hour
late because I was napping and just like didn't put
the time correct because I was like because I was
like literally had a cold on stage. Yep. Yes, there
was also one also in Vancouver where I went downstairs
and couldn't find where Vince was meeting us. So you
were on one side of the hotel and I was
on the other and I could not figure out where

(16:56):
you were. Yeah, do you remember that one where was
like everything was like weird delay or just kind of
like what's going on? That's what touring is. It's just
a delay to get to a place to wait, yeah,
and to do homework right and not look at anything
about the city and then have three thousand people cheer
for you. So yeah, did you see this update that

(17:20):
Robert Picton was murdered in prison just this past June? Right?

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, wow, I mean not a surprise. He's one of
the worst serial killers of all time. He is one
of the worst predators of women and marginalized women, and
like that story and that all of that corruption around
that story is so fucking dark that when I went
to do it in Vancouver, like oh, this is your
guys hometown, it's like there's nobody wants to nobody wants

(17:47):
to recount. Basically this kind of like internal corruption that
allows women with no voice to just be brutalized over
and over and over.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
There's a few of these murders that I feel like
we'll never do, and we've talked about it. This is
one of them. The Speedbox, Toy box Killer, the Speedy Killers,
and then Charles ng I feel like we'll never do
just because, like you read it and it's just there's
just it's just an empty pit of fucking horribleness.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
I think too, It's like that's how you kind of
learn the shape of when you're.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Doing a podcast.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
It's like we very early on understood that we were
going to do this podcast our way, you know, for example,
talking for forty five minutes at the beginning about everything
but true crime, et cetera, et cetera. But like, just
because to follow the pattern of standardized true crime is
like is very difficult. Those shows that do it that

(18:50):
are actually journalists led and thoroughly researched and.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Are like invaluable passion. Yeah, yes, but it's like just
to retell these stories, is it's just the darkness? Is Yeah,
you need something more than that for sure, especially in
a quarantine for example, right right, which we were in
for quite a while, if I remember correctly, we were

(19:16):
in for quite a while. Real quick, before we get
into your story, we did mention Mursa Hargita's nonprofit. It's
still going on. It's called the Joyful Heart Foundation, and
since two thousand and four, Joyful Heart has been a
leading national organization with a mission to transform society's response
to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors, healing,
and end this violence forever.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yes, you can donate or learn more about the Joyful
Heart Foundation by going to Joyful Heartfoundation dot org. I mean,
I think Murska Hargitay is like it's a legend now
for having played Olivia Benson on SVU for years and
years and then basically turning all of that work into
this activism that's really been very effective, and like it's

(20:03):
just the coolest.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
She's the coolest. Yeah, And hey, while we're here, Let's
donate ten grand to the Joyful Heart Foundation. Love it great? Idea? Cool?
How do you get these ideas? It's just they just
come into my mind. I don't even know how. Speaking
of ideas coming from nowhere, Let's listen to your epic story.
This is like a classic Karen telling the story of

(20:28):
John List.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
So I've known about this one for a long time
because it was made famous by that great American television show,
America's Most Wanted. Hell yeah, do you remember the America's
Most Wanted about John List, the man who killed his
entire family and then disappeared for nineteen years. Yes, yes
you do, Yes, Well that's my favorite murder for this week.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Let me hear it. I'm going to tell you about it,
all right.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
So John List was a successful businessman. He was a
devout lifelong Lutheran. He was a Sunday school teacher. He
was a boy Scout leader, a husband, a father of three.
His family lived with his mother, so their grandmother, in
a sprawling nineteen room mansion called Breeze Knowles in Westfield,

(21:23):
New Jersey. But behind closed doors things were not going well.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Shocking. This is me kind of trying to write like
a you know, twenty twenty version of this. This is,
this is a narrative, this is I'm really trying to
put something into this and it might not really work
out that well because it feels a bit sweaty right now.
I feel like I'm trying. Well, it's hot in it
also is very often it's summer in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
So John lifts lists wife Helen, which they didn't. None
of this you knew from America's most.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Well, Oh I love this stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Tell me his wife Helen was an alcoholic who was
verbally abusive and unstable.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
She sounds fun.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
When you see the picture of the Liszt family, her
eyes are going in two different directions.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Was she dressed well though.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yes, it was the picture I think was from like
the mid sixties, so they look like any family.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Oh my god, I just picture her at like a
party and she's just drunk and like, but she looks amazing. Yes,
I love it. Like she's got like a Jackie O
outfit on. But her face is like is just like
kooky eyes and like bubbles above her head, like talking
loudly about their bedroom secrets. Oh yeah, girl, you just
nailed it. Shut up. Okay ready, Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
So uh she demanded that John buy her that colonial
mansion in Westfield, which is a very ritzy apparently town
in New Jersey, or was in the sixties and seventies
when John landed his high status position as bank vice
president and comptroller, which is one of my favorite words

(22:57):
in the English language. So good comptroller. I don't know
what it means. I love to say I'm running for
comptroller this this year.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
God. Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
So what no one knew is that John had recently
been fired from being.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
The bank president and comptroller stress and he, even though
he was an ambitious career man, could never hold a
job for more than a couple of years because of
his personality problems personality issues quote unquote oh my god,
uh huh. But he couldn't let his family know that
he had gotten fired.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
So every day he got up and he put on
his suit, and he grabbed his briefcase, and he went
to the train station like he was going to work.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
And he was people terrifying me.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes, it's such deep denial, it's insane denial of like
everything's fine and then there's crazy things boiling.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Underneath those people. Man, Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
He would sit at the train station and read newspapers
all day until it was time to quote unquote come
home from Holy shit right. And meanwhile he was skimming
money off of his mother's bank account so he could
pay his crazy mortgage on his colonial nineteen room mansion,
and all the other bills are piling up. So in short,

(24:14):
John list was Lutheran fuck up under pressure.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
That's what I wrote. That's good. So here's his plan.
He on the morning of November ninth, nineteen seventy one,
after his children had left for school, John walked into
the kitchen where his wife was drinking her morning coffee
at the kitchen table, and he walked up and he

(24:38):
shot her in the back of the head with a
nine millimeter handgun. Wow. Then he went upstairs to the
third floor of their mansion, where his mother had her
own like what are the it's sweet, Yes, her own
little apartment wing wing, yeah, a wing of the mansion,
and he shot her in the head, right over her
left eye, which to me sounds like he shot a

(25:00):
face to face.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Oh yeah, which is pretty intense. Then he drove to
the bank and he closed his account and his mother's
accounts and he cashed in his mother's savings bonds.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
He came home, he went to his study.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
He collected some old photos and documents concerning the mansion's history,
and he put them in a neat pile on his desk,
and he composed a letter, a thank you letter to
John Witkey, who was a descendant of the original owner
of the house.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Shit, you know, the important stuffy, and then he also
wrote four other letters. He called Barbara Bader, who was
the woman who carpooled his sons John and Fred to
Roosevelt Junior High School, and she had done that for
the last time that morning. He made an excuse that
the whole family was leaving to go to North Carolina
the next morning because Helen's mother was extremely ill, and

(25:49):
he promised that he would let her know when they
were coming back. Then he canceled the newspaper milk delivery,
and he asked the post office to hold the mail
until further vote. Was there going to be further notice?
Absolutely not, Nope.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
So now it's lunchtime, so he made himself a lunch.
No sat down at the table where he had just
shot his wife, and then cleaned up the blood off
the table.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Baloneyat or cold meat low.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
I would guess blooney because he's just like, he's all business.
He just wants to get proteins and calories.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Baloney on white with mustard, with mustard only, and so
do they have potato chips? Back then? I would don't
think John Lilyss would eat potato chokes.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
I think he would eat two sandwiches instead of having
a delicious size.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Karen, that was the best. That was what I was
looking for because I love food details. That's my opinion
of John List's. No, that was that was beautiful. Yeah,
that's the kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
I can't understand that, Like, that's such a dude move
where I'm like, you could have chips the only thing
you want with a sandwich.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, or dickle down pickle slices. Pickles are nice, yeah,
but I always you know me and the starch. Oh right,
well sure, everyone start, but you just don't keep them
in your house. I don't eat them all, that's right,
I mean, not you one one. So then he went
around and cut himself out of every family photo in

(27:15):
the entire house. Why is that the craziest part? That
is to me?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
I did it as a standalone, because it's the creepiest
fact to me in.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
This whole case, it's so fucking creepy. That is so creepy.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Then come now, it's early afternoon, so he's waiting for
his children to come home from school.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Patricia, who was sixteen.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
A drama nerd, and it was the it was nineteen
seventy one, so she had been caught smoking pot.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh, she was the coolest. She was cool, and she
came home.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
He shot her in the back of the head, honey.
Then his son, Frederick, the youngest, who is thirteen, came home.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
He shot him in the back of the house, babe.
So they didn't even know that their father.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
No, he and he actually in the court later revealed
that that he did it his wife and his kids
back of the head, so that they didn't know what happened.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Mom is a different story. His mother was a different story,
which is very telling me. Let's get to tell me more.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
But then also John Junior is a different story, the
fifteen year old who was named after him and supposedly
his favorite. There was a couple different versions of this.
Some said he just came straight home from school. But
the one I like the best, which is the one
I will tell is that he had a soccer game
that day. So John Liss drove to the school, watched

(28:35):
his son's soccer game, drove him home, tried to shoot him,
but he maybe saw the gun and freaked out, so
he ended up shooting him in the face and chest
over ten times. Wow, so overkill, crazy, fucking overkill.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
And knew what was happening as it went once in
the chest and once in the face. I get something
and went worse than wrong that or he hated him
more like something went especially wrong for ten times.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yes, because this was a man that was doing it
like neatly and cleanly and pretending systematically. He was like
checking off a list. But when it came this guy
wasn't it John Junior didn't play ball and made it
hard for him. And I think that's like the rage came.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Oh yeah, like how dare you? You're making this too
hard for me? Not even like you're showing me how
what horrible I am? No, No, you're ruining my plan,
You're ruining my good time. Oh my god, it's hideous.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
So then he dragged he got sleeping bags from down
from the basement and he put all the bodies on
the sleeping bags, then dragged them into the back of
the house to what room The ballroom? Yes, yeah, they
had a ballroom in this mansion that wasn't even decorated
or furnished in any way.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's how big this how house was.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
And so he pulled his wife and three children's dead
bodies on sleeping.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Bags back into the ballroom. He put a piece of
cloth over each of their faces and he left them there,
turned it into basically like a makeshift morgue. Then he
fed the children's pet fish in the twenty gallon tank
in the dining room, went upstairs and went to sleep.

(30:27):
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah, so he's are the fish? Okay, that's the kind
of thought this man is having.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Are the fish? Okay? Is this I mean, as much
as because I need to put a name on things.
Is this sociopath? Oh, we'll talk.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
About the name later, but he probably, I mean, I
don't know enough anytime.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
It's like, clearly you have no feelings. Yeah, that's what
I want to label it as. But he is the
real term for this guy is a family and ihilator. Yeah.
And it's like a thing that happens and there's a
couple of different kinds and they'll never kill anyone else again.
Kind of a thing. Yes, right, it's a situational thing
for them. Yeah, tell me more. Okay. So the next morning,

(31:08):
he gets up, he gets dressed, he goes downstairs, he
turns the thermostat all the way down, he turns on
every light in the house, and then he leaves the
house and.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
He leaves Westfield forever. Now, the weird thing is no
one noticed. Of course, no one in the neighborhood noticed
that this family was not there. And that's because they
this family did not socialize, which is kind of common
if you have a crazy drunk loom like they stayed in.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
They didn't talk to anybody.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
The neighbor's knew John List is the guy who mowed
his lawn in a suit and tie.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Jesus. I think the most suspicious part would be that
all the lights are on, That's right, you know what
I mean?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, Like, nobody, especially in a nineteen room mansion. Yeah,
you're like, sorry, nobody is in the greenhouse.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Nobody's in the brightest house on the block. It's they're
not having a party.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
So because of all this careful planning and because they
were basically anti social and reclusive.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
It took a full month for anybody to actually discover
these bodies. A month, a full month.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
So the neighbors noticed that these lights were on day
and night, and that they were always on, and that
they started burning out, and that's when they started getting suspicious.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Well that's creepy. Can you imagineeing one room is out
and then the next room is out.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, and never comes back on, and no one's coming
in or out of the house. So something super creepy
is happening up there. But also you don't want to
think about.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
It because what could it be that would be that weird?
But who does this is the most cinematic, I think
of all the stories, because Patty's drama teacher is the
one who's like, I don't like the smell of this.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
His name was Edwin Ill, and he thought it was
weird that the entire family was gone that long. And
also he had a terrible feeling because Patty once told
him if his family goes on vacation, my dad has
killed us.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
I knew she talked to him about something. Yeah, she
said that.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
She said it to him, So after you know, twenty
eight days. Oh, and he'd also met him once and
thought he was super weird.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
So after twenty eight days, Edwin Eleano convinces his associate,
Barber Sharedan, to go to the house with him to
check on Patty. And they drive up there. They try
to look into some windows and they're being there. Makes
the neighbors call the cops because they see people finally.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
On the property.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, and when the cops show up, Edwin explains to
them it's oh. The neighbors William and Shirley Kunnock are
their names. They're the ones that call the police, and
patrol officers George ze Hellsnik and Charles Heller were the
first to arrive. So Ileano explains what's going on, and
the officers decide they're going to force open a window

(34:06):
and go inside. And when they open that window, they're
hit with the.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Smell of dath thanky. So I forgot this might be
my creepiest detail. Oh good.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
When they go into the house, the first thing they
notice is that there's organ music playing loudly over the house.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Intercom. I'm gonna cry. I'm gonna cry because there's an
intercom in this house. Mm hmmy because there's organ music.
So you're jealous of the intercom. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah,
and organ music is the creepiest.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Thing John List set up. They kept calling it a
recorder and all these articles that I read. When you
do research, you realize everyone rips everybody off. It's hilarious, insane.
So calling something a recorder makes no sense. It sounds
like it's the instrument children play in grammar school. Yeah,
which would be even creepier. Just a child playing the
recorder really loud.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
It's like, oh god, no, okay, it's gonna go deep.
Go on.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
He had set up a thing that just played this
music on a loop until you physically turned it off
and then set it to play over the intercom.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
What was like an old machine or something, I guess.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
So I mean they call a recorder maybe a recording
device or like a reel to reel place.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, that sounds right because it was seventy one. Let's
go with that. Uh so.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Uh oh, I said two things. Organ music is good
for ice skating and mass murdering. See I'm trying too hard. Now,
you need to keep a cat conversational. So upstairs in
the study, they find a five page letter that List
had written to his pastor, Eugene Wrenwinkle.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Sorry, I don't know, it's it's like bad writing, Like
what should we name the old pastor of the Lutheran
Church Eugene Renwinkle. Oh my god, I love it.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
So in that letter, he said he felt the seventies
were a sinful time and that his family was beginning
to succumb to temptation, especially his daughter because of her
interest in acting, which is an occupation that Liszt viewed
as being particularly corrupt and linked to Satan, which is true.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Fucking slayed them all, Yes, so the holy religious thing
to do is kill everybody. John, So it's like he
thought it was like a mercy killing. That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Uh, he saw too much evil in the world. He
had killed his family to save their soul.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
It's very nice of you, fucking dick, and also how giving.
Now he said he didn't kill himself because yeah, well,
let's hear it.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
He didn't kill himself because suicide is a mortal sin
that would definitely bar him from heaven, as opposed to
murdering five people where you're still in a gray area.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
That can be negotiated. What are you talking about, narcissism,
extreme narcissism, sociopathy. I definitely narcissism.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I don't think the sociopath thing might not apply, only because.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
This is the one off people get mad at, people
get it's a it's a five off. Sorry, that's a
five off. Okay. We're not saying all narcissists or murderers, right,
but however, this is an extreme case of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
It's a it's an element in this personality disorder.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, I'm a narcissist.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
I've never killed anybody except for in comedy.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Boom, okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Later, a reporter who covered the trial described hearing this
letter when it was read aloud in court, and he said, quote,
I'll never forget the audible sigh of shock from the
jury and spectators when the last line of lists read
letter was read.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
PS. Mother is in the hallway in the attic, third floor.
She was too heavy to move. Oh my god, dang,
that's your mom. Yeah, it's like I'm moving like a
moving box that you just like couldn't. Yeah, someone take
care of that upstairs, like it's your leather. Do you
think you I'd have had a slight problem with her. Okay,

(38:03):
so a nationwide manhunt is launched, but he's got a
month lead time. He's way ahead.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Police investigated hundreds of leads without success. All reliable photographs
of List had been destroyed. So it wasn't I was
creeped out. It turns out it was kind of like
super smart.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah. Oh, I didn't get I didn't catch on to that.
I did not either.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
The family car was found at Kennedy Airport, but there
was no evidence he had boarded a flight.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
He was gone and would remain gone for eighteen years. Then,
on May twenty first, nineteen eighty nine, forward forward into
the eighties. Yay, the murders were recounted on America's Most Wanted,
which at the time had been on the air less
than a year. Oh my god. And it featured an
age progressed age progressed, sorry, age progressed clay bust sculpted

(38:57):
by the forensic artist Frank Bender, and it turned out
to bear an almost exact resemblance to List's appearance. Maybe
I'm making this up, but I fucking remember seeing that. No,
you remember, because I'm about to hold up a picture
to you, all right, Oh, my god, Oh my god.
I was nine, so I was like old enough to
remember this, Yes, and this was I remember it. I

(39:20):
was nineteen Oh gramma baby yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Bender consulted a forensic psychologist and created a psychological profile
of List. He looked at photographs of List's parents and
predicted what he would look like as he ate.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
He gave him a receding hairline and sagging jaws. Bender
was particularly lauded for one final touch he added to
his completed artwork.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
It was a pair of glasses.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Bender believed List would not be vain enough to wear
contact lenses. However, he said List would have worn a
pair of glasses different from those he wore before the murders.
He said they would be a pair with thick, dark frames.
He and the psychologist theorized that List would do this
to hide in a sense, he would want to disguise
the fact that he was a failure and appear more

(40:03):
important than he really was.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Ohly shit, so he put these big old glasses. Remember that, dude,
I remember this is real John List. Oh this is
that sculpture? We fuck, it's fucking like exact. Oh my god,
you guys look this up right, Stephen, isn't that crazy.
We'll put it, We'll put it on social media. I'll

(40:26):
put this on our instat.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
But this Frank Bender nailed it so literally. Less than
two weeks later, they got a ton of calls. But
less than two weeks later they find him in Virginia,
and the hilarious part is in the court.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
John List reveals he was watching the show that night
with his new wife, and he was quoted as saying,
I was perspiring like anything. But his wife didn't recognize him.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
No way. She had a fucking she had a veil
of I can't over her fucking eyes. And I bet
a little vin Rose, a little rose, a little bottle
of rose. She had all kinds of different veils. Yeah
the vail, Yeah, okay. So they go to trial.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
He explained that he had lost his job. He explained
he was dealing with his wife's alcoholism, and trial reveal
her untreated tertiary syphilis that she had contracted from her
first husband, an army lieutenant who was killed in combat
in Korea and concealed for eighteen years.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
So his crazy.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Wife that used to verbally abuse him and publicly, Uh oh,
maybe I skipped that part.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
But there's oh no, it's in this part.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
He says in court that she used to publicly insult
him about.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Uh wait, did I guess that completely? Yes, you absolutely
guessed it out of the blue. Yeah. Well, syphilis makes
you go fucking bernanas he List said.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
By by then, the disease and her excessive alcohol consumption had,
according to testimony, transfer transformed her from an attractive young
woman to an unkempt, paranoid recluse who frequently and often
publicly disparaged List, comparing his sexual skills unfavorably to those
of her first husband, the one who gave her syphilis.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
And syphilis Jesus, that scared the shit out of me.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
So here's me playing the prosecuting attorney. Mister List, can
you explain how your wife often disparages your sexual skills
in public? If she's a recluse, No more questions your
honor and I turn around, slam my blazer down.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Onto the chair. All right.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
So basically, John List makes all these excuses in court,
He's like, I have PTSD from being in the army.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
I uh, what's what else do you say? I? Oh
wait a smoker?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
He oh, it was my wife, my kids were going crazy.
I was abused as a child. My father always told
me that you had to provide for your family and
that you had to do this, and you had to
do that. And I wasn't doing anything any of those
things because I.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Lost my job. Blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So a court appointed psychiatrist testified List suffered from obsessive
compulsive personality disorder and he only saw two solutions to
a situation except welfare or kill his family and send
them to heaven. And welfare was unacceptable because it would
expose him in his family to ridicule and violate his

(43:44):
authoritarian father's teachings.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
So this is a common thing with family annihilators. They
say that there are two types, and one is a
livid coercive killer, and those are the ones that are
usually abusive, and they kill the family when the family
tries to run away from that. So it's years of abuse,
years of abuse, the family tries to escape, and then

(44:07):
it's like.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Let me see those all the time. I'll teach you all. Yes.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
But the other kind is the civil, reputable killer, and
they're motivated by a perverse form of altruism. So it's
his way of rescuing the family from shame and hardship.
And in his obsessive, compulsive narcissism, John List didn't choose
to fix his own problems, but instead he fixated on
the family problems and the problems of society. Eighty one

(44:35):
percent of family and iihilators kill themselves after killing their family.
So that's when, in my opinion, John lists argument of
this I was doing the best for the family breaks
down because he went on to live a happy life
for nineteen.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Years in Colorado.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
And what sorry, the part that I was skipping over
is he basically told everybody what happened was the day
after the murders, he took the train from New Jersey
to Michigan, and then from Michigan to Colorado.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
He settled in Denver. He took an accounting job as
Robert Peter Bob Clark. And that's subtle, yeah, kind of plain,
but then also exciting, yeah, exciting, pick one of those names.
He was the controller at a paper box manufacturer Control Denver.
He was They said controller, I want to say comptroller.

(45:29):
You know what, it's our fucking story to tell, that's right,
And then what he do. He joined the Lutheran congregation,
ran a carpool for shut in church members, and met
an army PX clerk named Lauris Miller and married her
in nineteen eight It's almost like he's trying to prove
to himself that he's actually a good person. It was
just circumstantial.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
It was them, his wife, his alcoholic, syphilitic wife, his
hippie daughter, his rebellious children.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
They ruined it for him. I feel like in the
fifties that might have worked better than in the seventies
and eighties that excuse or like especially the eighties, but
that came to an end. It seems like.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Right because well that was also like the oldest version
of like there's only a father that's the breadwinner, it's
never the mother, and no one gets divorced, and this
is the American dream. You have to have a house
and two kids. All that bullshit. Everyone got sold that.
Everyone kind of had to swallow hole. Basically. Also, John

(46:33):
List was abused as a child, which is a very
common thing in family and annihilators because they get they
feel powerless. They felt powerless as children, so when they
have families, they're exerting power over the family to give
them that power that they're in charge exactly, and then

(46:53):
when that doesn't work, they don't know how to deal
with it.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Oh man, when the seventies come and the daughter's like,
I'm gonna go crazy. Yeah, when there's a fucking cultural
revolution in the country and your daughter's like, I think
I might want to act instead of being a devout
Lutheran Yeah, uh yeah. So they they're trying to create
the life they never had that they fantasize of as
abused children, right, and then when that goes to shit,

(47:19):
they're just like, well we're starting over. Yeah essentially, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
I guess this has a great twist ending. So that
he was He was convicted of five counts of murder
of uh and the judge said, John John emmil List
is without remorse and without honor. After eighteen years, five

(47:45):
months and twenty two days, it's now time for the
voices of Helen Alma Patrick, Patricia Frederick and John F.
List to rise.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
From the Grave's beautiful and he imposed a sentence of
five terms of life imprisonment be served consecutively. It was
the maximum penalty, and List died of pneumonia in prison
on March twenty first, two thousand and eight. Wow, his
body was not claimed, because who's gonna fucking claim it?
He like for a long time, he really did.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
The second wife didn't return the call, and the war
was like, oh we have your she's hello hello.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
But eventually someone took him back and he was buried
next to his mother in Michigan. Ow, she's like, fuck
this guy, Yeah, get out of here. He showed me
the fucking face and then wouldn't even carry me to
the ballroom. But are you ready for this twist ending
that oh that's not it? Yeah, this is it.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
So somebody burnt down Breeze Knoll, the Great, the Great
Mansion some no one's ever even looked into who might
have done it?

Speaker 1 (48:47):
So the ghost did it? Could have been a ghost
good have been a ghost fire.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
There's a New Jersey ghost fire. But destroyed along with
the home was the ballroom stained glass skylight, which was
a signed Tiffany original worth at least one hundred thousand
dollars at the time, which would.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Have covered his expenses.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
It was right there the whole time, in that room.
You didn't go in because you couldn't deal with it.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Oh, oh my god, that's gonna be someone's new Ringtown.
By the way, that's John that's John List, everybody. Oh.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Also, because he disappeared in seventy one in dB.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Cooper dB Cooper, they thought he was DBO for a
while because it kind of looks like that sketch. Yeah,
mister Vegg and he dB Cooper sold two hundred thousand dollars,
which was kind of around. They figured around how much
John List owed. Okay, sure it wasn't him. John List
vehemently denied it from jail. That's how fucking boring this

(49:57):
guy is. No, I'm no, I insist I'm not dB Cooper. Well,
it could have been cool if you were. Yeah, but
maybe he doesn't. I bet it was him. No, he was.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
I don't think this guy would have jumped out of
a plane. He was too scared to tell his wife
he got fired.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Okay, you know, okay, maybe he thought, I don't know,
just did Lutherans like Jesus. Maybe he thought Jesus would
help out. Yeah, Jesus did help out.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
He gave him a beautiful skylight, a Tiffany skylight.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
The Lord said it was right there all along. You nobody.
Whoever burnt that house down was fucking bum They didn't
know that too. Yeah, there was some rest agent that
ran up at the at the last What do you know,
at least get the thing you ghosts and your arson. Okay,
we're back. Remember when Conan O'Brien guested on our show

(50:46):
and told us this story like we had never heard
it before. Yeah, but also I mean, what why would
he you know, have ever listened to this podcast? But
also that he was in the courtroom when when John lists,
he's just he's a super gigantic murderingo. But he also
was like the assumption was we didn't know what he

(51:07):
was speaking about. It's just like a little like you've
maybe never heard of this one, and it's like trying
either that or just I'm fucking telling this story and
it's like, oh, I have some details took No, you're
you're right. One of which, god damn, I think about
it literally once a week, is that John lyss did
all of that because he was broke. And meanwhile, in

(51:30):
that mansion that he felt pressured to buy. Yeah, there
was a tiffany flash ceiling. It was the glass like
a skylight. Yeah, or was it a light fixture. I
can't remember, but either way, it was worth over one
hundred thousand dollars enough to get him out of debt.
Let me throw this in there, Okay, do you think aka?

(51:52):
I bet he still would have found something later to
kill them all for he would have sold that skylight
or light thing used the hundred grand, he still would
have fucking killed on something else.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
I feel like a family annihilator. The problem isn't actually debt.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
It's not You're right, Yes, it's not getting out of
debt and everything's fine and everyone's happy. It's he wanted
to and he found a way to do it.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yeah, there wasn't a magic magic key that was going
to solve it. And also just that the whole topic
of family annihilators, it's so intense.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
It's so way out there. It's just and it's crazy
because now those stories are coming up more and more. Yeah,
and he specifically, this story is just so cold and calculated,
the whole cutting the face out of his face, out
of the pictures, and just I mean, it's just so sick.
Are there any updates? I know he's dead, but anything

(52:46):
he is here. This is what's important. I've learned what
a comptroller is. Webster's Dictionary defines a comptroller as a
management level professional who oversees financial reporting and accounting. Also,
while he was on the run, John took a job
as a controller, which we also didn't understand or care
about in the original story. Turns out controllers work for

(53:08):
private companies doing the exact same thing. Comptrollers work for
governments and nonprofits doing that job. So it turns out
a man whose financial irresponsibility led him to murder his
entire family actually worked in accounting that was supposed to
be his specialty. Yeah, you can't do anything right.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
The irony, the irony is everywhere with this John List story. Also,
the John List story is the America's most wanted element
that makes it such a legendary true crime story.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Really, and that his fucking new wife was sitting next
to him and didn't recognize him or just you know,
maybe something in her head did. But it's like, can
you imagine, Jesus, can you imagine? This is why Conan
loved the story so much. Okay, it's time for Georgia's
story that she does on this episode about the death
of Warina Wright. All right, all right, what's yours. So

(54:07):
I have one that I learned about recently because it
happened recently, and we're gonna, Karen, We're gonna do a
little play. Okay, this whole this theme? What is this theme?
Drama Drama Teachers? All right? You mean for this episode? Yeah, yeah,
the Drama Teachers episode. All right. So Wreena right w

(54:30):
A r r i e n a Wareena Right was
twenty six from New Zealand and she went to Queensland,
Australia on July twenty ninth, twenty fourteen, just hellibird friend's wedding.
Checks into a motel on August sixth, and then on
the following day is like, let's see who's on tender?

(54:50):
Do you know this one? No? Okay, So she fucking Tinders.
Beautiful girl checks like a little bit a little gothy,
but not you know, she's hot. So she finds Gable
toastees Tinder that he's this like hot ladies man. They
meet up outside of a bar on the sixth. I

(55:16):
just want to say, by the next morning, Marena will
be dead after falling from his Gable's fourteenth floor balcony.
That's how this goes. That's not good. Back to that night.
By nine pm, they're in his apartment on the fourteenth
floor this beautiful building. So somehow Gable, which is a

(55:40):
great name, isn't it. It's his first name, the first
name I don't know, kind of like it. For some reason,
he starts recording what's going on inside with a voice recorder.
Police somehow extracted it from like mobile phones that were
found I think it was. They tried to delete. He
tried to delete it. It didn't happen. They were able to

(56:00):
get it. So so there's there's a whole uh, there's
a whole conversation that's recorded. So yeah, so I'm going
to read but yeah, okay, I'm going to read. I
highlighted your parts. Oh your your warrena, I'm Gable, but
let me read it to you also, okay. So at

(56:22):
one am, the sound recorder started and uh, it's later ceased,
but the recording starts. Music's heard, and twenty seconds into
the recording, the man states fuck me. At one o
two am, the man asks the female to chill and
have a drink, and she says she is I'm a

(56:44):
psycho drunk and do not test me. Then, at between
one five and one to eight, the pair talk about death.
The male says, throw me off the balcony and that's it.
This is it. Boom. Then at one sixteen am there's
laughing sound ones are heard and sounds of hitting are

(57:04):
heard as well, but the music continues to play in
the background. And that was scary, and there are soft
sounds of groaning. Okay. At one twenty nine am, the
male says, I don't like getting beaten up. At one
thirty six am, the argument begins when the female says
she's leaving and can't find her iPhone.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
She says, are you going to fucking untimey because I
will fucking destroy your jaw?

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Oh my god, and then Vince unlocked the door and
scared of the ever loving.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
She when you're talking about cannibals, hi baby, oh man, Elvis.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Ands ab okay, you're gonna tie me blah blah blah.
So at one thirty eighth the man says, I should
have no I've were giving you so much to drink.
I thought we were going to have fun, and then
he asks her to calm down. At one am, the
man asks the female to stay but says, you're just
a bit violent. He offers to cook some food, and

(58:13):
the conversation calms down. At one fifty three am, drinks
are more, drinks are poored. Stop drinking, you guys. Yeah
what you already decided the drinking's bad. Yeah. At two am,
the occupant of the apartment below is woken up by
the noise. At two ten am the audio recording. In
the audio recording, the male tells the female to relax

(58:34):
and threatens to kick her hourse ass. At two eleven am,
there's sounds of a struggle. A minute later, the sounds
of rocks possibly being thrown in the apartment is heard.
At two fourteen the man says that's enough, you've worn out.
You're welcome, you have to leave. The female, out of breath,
says okay. At two fifteen am, the man says, I

(58:55):
thought you were kidding and I have taken enough. This
is fucking bullshit. You're lucky I haven't checked you off
my balcony, you goddamn psycho, little bitch. At two sixteen am,
the female, who is breathing heavily, accuses him of being
the sexiest and then says lay off, to which the
male replies, seriously. What. At two seventeen am, The man says,
you're a goddamn psycho. I'm going to let you go.

(59:16):
I'm going to walk you out of this apartment just
the way you are. You are not going to collect
any of your belongings. You are just going to walk out,
and I'm going to slam the door on you. Do
you understand if you try and pull anything, I'll knock
you out. Do you understand the female? The female says,
I'm so sorry, I don't care. Okay, so the fall.
At two seventeen am, sounds of struggling and heavy breathing

(59:37):
are heard. The man says, let go of it, let go,
let go, let go. At two eighteen the first choking
sounds are heard. Breathing slows male, let it go. Sounds
of a metallic object dropping is heard. At two twenty am,
the door a door unlocks and the female states no.
The sound of glass of a glass door possibly being

(59:58):
hit twenty The man says, who the fuck do you
think you are? Hey? The female says no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no no. The male says, you tried to kill me? Ha, Well,
why did you try and hit me with that? Shut
your filthy mouth. The female. I'm not gonna scream, screams now,
but she's screaming no, no, no, no, no no. The
man says, it's all on recording, you know, it's all

(01:00:19):
being recorded. The female want more nos. Just let me
go home. The male says, I would, but you've been
a bad girl, and then the sounds are heard of
a door slamming shut. At police at this point alleged
that he left her out on the balcony, missed right
on the balcony. The female says, just let me go home,
Just let me go home. At two twenty one am,

(01:00:40):
a female's final words are heard, just let me go home.
Faint screaming is heard. You're looking at me like I'm
gonna it's horrible. Okay, so put that down. Okright, So
the occupant in the apartment below his here's a female
repeatedly shouting no, and then sees two legs dangling down.

(01:01:03):
So what's going on right now is either she's crazy
and drunk and jumping, or she's terrified of this person
and trying to get to the balcony below. Yeah, so
the witness has in a matter of seconds, I saw
the person fall from the balcony above mine. At two
twenty one, a call is placed from Gables fell into

(01:01:25):
his lawyer. The call doesn't connect. At two twenty three,
a triple O which I'm guessing is nine one one
call is placed by the woman in the apartment below.
Police arrive of the scene and at the same time
the fob key to his apartment is activated. Close caption
cameras capture a male believed to be Gable, approaching the

(01:01:47):
front entrance of the apartment and he walks back to
the elevator and rides it to the basement. At two
twenty nine, sounds of walking or herd in the audio recording,
which is still going from earlier in the night. So
he has the phone or whatever where he's using to
record what's going on with him or in the apartment
with him, with him, he's like in the in the
so sorry, he's recording this entire evening. She was recording

(01:02:09):
the whole thing. And people said he might have done
it because he was like a creepy pervert and like
to record these things. Or he took home a lot
of women and this is a way to like assure
that nothing, oh, you know, just to have it if
they get crazy or if yeah, either way, it's sketchy. Yeah.
At three ten am, he orders a pizza. Yeah, he says,

(01:02:33):
a pizza of pizza supreme. Please. He orders a fucking
slice of pizza. At three twenty three am, A calls
place to his father. He says, hello, Dad, I might
have gotten a bit of a situation. I met a
girl for a date. She started getting aggressive. We kept
drinking and I think she thought it was like a

(01:02:55):
joke and she kept like beating me up because she
was really drunk. And I forced her out on the
balcony and I think she might have jumped off. And
the dad says, oh, no, are you okay? Yeah, so
there's a million cops booking walking around. I'm fucked up.
I don't have to do that. He says, I don't know.

(01:03:19):
I like I tackled her on my floor inside the building,
and I never forced her over the edge. So the
dad picks him up and eventually he's arrested. And so, yeah,
so he's claiming he's innocent. She jumped He has something

(01:03:40):
to do with it. He didn't push her over the edge.
It's not murder. He's He's set for trial on August.
On October thirteenth, twenty sixteen. But he's free right now,
he's out on bond, and he can't stop talking. He's
posting shit on like bodybuilders dot com. Oh no, he's
just he doesn't understand and why people are blamed. He

(01:04:02):
has to be somewhat narcissistic. Yeah, Oh, you mean like
he needs to say his what his side of it is. Yeah,
but he's also saying things about how many women he's
been with and he's never hurt them. So he's like
bragging about that, how nice this apartment was, how well
he does saying it's a witch hunt. But they prosecutors

(01:04:24):
think he could be convicted for murder because she was
reportedly in fear of her life and was trying to
flee him to be apartment in those neighbors. The prosecutors
say that, Oh okay, And I'm really interested, I really like,
not like, but I'm really interested in murder by suicide.
I think it's really interesting. Like there's that one case
of there was the road rage incidents on a bridge

(01:04:48):
in Detroit, and this man was coming at the woman
who had rereended him, and she jumped off the bridge
to get away from him. Yeah, that's that was actually
a very famous, like one of the earliest law and orders.
Really yes, oh wow, yeah, Well, and he was convicted
of murder or maybe manslaughter because she just didn't know
where else to go. It was just like trying to

(01:05:09):
get away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
But also the idea of recording an entire evening just
to be sure in and of itself is suspicious to me.
Maybe what do you need to be sure of that
you have been in a position where this has been
a problem for you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Or maybe she just already was being a little crazy.
Oh so he started the recording. Yeah, not I'm not
victim blaming. They were clearly very drunk. Well maybe he
liked to record his sex sex. But yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
I mean, like she the things that she's doing don't
make a lot of sense. It's not like it's doesn't
seem like she's the only victim at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Yeah, it's not from what he's saying. But here's the thing,
he's the only one who knows what's being recorded. So
what he's saying about her attacking him, yeah, is very specific.
And someone on like a reddit said, or maybe on
the Facebook page said, when my boyfriend was beating me up,
he'd say, he'd yell, stop it, what are you doing
to me? Why are you doing this to like get

(01:06:15):
the neighbors to think that she was doing something to him,
you know, just to fuck with her in her mind.
So it could be that it could just be and
what it sounds like happened from when I read the transcript,
which I fucking stayed up all night reading it, it
was like, it's so crazy. Is you know they were

(01:06:36):
having rough sex. Maybe she wasn't completely coherent. She comes
to and is freaked out by it and is trying
to get out but doesn't know how. And he's telling
her to calm down. Because he tells her to calm
down a couple of times. I think at one point
she realized what was happening and picked something up to
throw at him, and he gets so angry at that
because you can hear him say, like, you've been a

(01:06:57):
bad girl. She's trying to defend herself. He's like, I'm
gonna have to lock you out on the balcony to
like to protect myself. But she the whole time, she's
been the victim and she's freaking the fuck out. Oh,
and she's drunk and fucked up, and so she thinks
the best option is to go over the side of
the edge and get to the balcony below, which, yeah,

(01:07:19):
that's like something from a movie. It's like, yeah, it
only works when stunt men do it. Yeah, anyone in
the right mind would never try that. And so she
clearly wasn't in her right mind.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
And is there proof that we know that she if
she drank, Like yeah, I know people who have are
almost like allergic to alcohol, where they have one drink
and they're just like legless and out of their minds.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
No, I don't know, it's not like that. I don't
know what her blood alcohol lever was. I don't know
if they test her for drugs. Maybe they're keeping all
of that for the trial.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Yeah, it sounds like that's the story he's trying to push.
Yeah with this recording, Yeah, is like you've gone crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
But he's feeding her alcohol too. Yeah. So even if
it's like, well, look how drunk she was, I mean,
his own recording is going it's going to be the
thing that convicts him. I feel like, well, it's super
weird too. I can't imagine if something terrible happened at

(01:08:14):
my house, like horrifying, like a person committed suicide. I
wouldn't be ordering pizza an hour later. No, I mean
I wonder if he was so fucked up and didn't
know what's going on, it would almost be like he
would go lay down or something or go hide or
you know, like I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
But also if you I mean this also, it just
immediately makes me think of the Night Of, because The
Night Of presents you the story where you completely.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
I haven't watched that, I have only watched the first episode.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Okay, but I mean just in general, you empathize with
the person that they put in front of you because
that's the story you're getting, right, which is what happens
a lot of the time is whoever gets a hold
of that narrative, then you go oh yeah, yeah, no,
he would never do that, he's so nice or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Story yeah, and what people present you and then and
then the shit that they talk about the other person. Yeah,
So in a way not to defend him, I know, well,
I have no idea what's going on in this one.
This is crazy, But it makes sense then that if
he's kind of out on his own, he's trying to
control the narrative. By tweeting things and posting shit on

(01:09:24):
bodybuilders dot com or whatever you said. I mean, like
then he's that's a person that's just scrambling and making mistakes. Yeah.
I feel like the harder you try to defend yourself
on social media, the worse you see them more people
can pick it apart, Yes, for sure, because I mean,
you know, web sleuths have gotten a hold of this,
the website, webuics have gotten a hold of this and

(01:09:45):
are like picking it apart, and they think there's been
some comments by fake accounts he's made. I just know
too much about the details. The details. Oh shit. Yeah,
it's like he's his own worst fucking enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Well and also he's he's paying a lot of attention
to this, the process of this, right, which is very strange.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Yeah, it's going to be a hard one. I feel
like it's going to be a hard one. So sorry,
this just happened days ago, twenty fourteen. Oh oh okay,
But he's being you know, it's Australias. I don't honest,
I feel like he's being indicted or there's going to
be a trial to indict him on this on in October.
Oh okay, wow from what I can tell from Australian

(01:10:30):
legal keys. It's not fucked up. Yeah, it's poor the
poor girl, but this whole situation. Guys don't meet strangers
on tender not Oh man, I'm going to get in
trouble for slutshaming. It's not slut shaming. But it's so
crazy that people just like that's just dating though.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
Yeah, but I mean, like, how about the girl, that
girl in Santa Monica that knew the guy for a
year roofeed or drank.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
I mean, bad things happen to people. It just happened.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
Yeah, you're right, but this seems weird because you're the
idea that a person is recording an entire evening and
their fore knowledge of that recording and not telling the
other person. That's there's a manipulation on the surface of that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
That's suspicious for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
And to me, it's suspicious to say I record this
because just in case something happens and I need to
defend myself. Where it's like, but that's not an accurate
defense because we can't see what's actually happening.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
It's just your playlet. It's also weird at the very
end when he's like, I've been recording that, like he
uses it to throw it in her face somehow, almost
like you can't prove anything, Yeah, you can't prove anything,
or like why would he use that against her if
he you know, if nothing had happened that he could
call the cops for or press charges for well, and

(01:11:53):
also he never called the cops right now, and he
didn't let her go either, Like at one point she
was like getting my shit and I'm leading, where's my
and he like stopped her from leaving. Yeah, so she
was freaked out and wanted to leave too, both of them.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
You know, if you had a person this just will
throw this out there. If you were a person in
your house, you met on a tender day, so you
don't know them. You guys are drinking, they get a
little crazy, You're you're the guy, so they it's a
girl that tries to beat you up. So it's like painful, irritating,
not life threatening when they want to go. What would
be the why why would you keep them there?

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Like this crazy if you're keeping a crazy person in
your apartment, yeah, quote unquote so crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
That you know you're making more problems. Like if they
you just go, Yeah, get out, what are you trying
to get out of the situation? If you want to
keep the person who's crazy and abusive towards you. Yeah,
around there you're getting something out of it, or it's
not as it seems right. Well, there's a third option
that I mean abuses people. You know, it's the gas

(01:13:01):
lighting technique where abusive people are like, why are you
being so crazy? Like this isn't that big of a deal, right,
And the people who that works on it works very
well well.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
And also you would get violent if you were like say,
tied up against your will or woke up whatever this
scenario was, where you would try your best to like
what are the rocks that got thrown indoors?

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
And what's that sar? I wonder if I mean, I
wonder if she was just almost incapacity, almost incoherent, you
know what I mean, where it's like you're not yet
you're just like you're aware that you're in a situation
that's not good because she's not forming complete sentences most
of the time. Yeah, she's just saying she's reacting, right,

(01:13:45):
that's right. M that's crazy, I know. And then you
have to assume she was naked on the balcony too.
Oh really, I think so she's definitely bare foot. I
don't I'm not sure if she's naked. Oh, I got
to check that out. I didn't die, did in the
facts and things? Well, yeah, that's fucked up, right. Yeah.

(01:14:09):
I've been thinking about that one for a lot for
a long time. Are you okay? I mean no, no, no,
Just those ones just make me keep on thinking about it.
I know. The idea of recording an evening is super
insane to me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
And also just like this weird day and age that
we live in, where like you could be recorded at
any time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
Yeah, like right now. Oh shit, I'm like, wait, what
are these microphones doing in our faces? Okay, we're back. Yeah,
this one is so rough. Are there any case updates
on this? You have a couple of case updates. After
a week long trial in October of twenty sixteen, a

(01:14:52):
Supreme Court jury in Brisbane acquitted Gable Tatsi of both
murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Marena Wright.
So I had done this story before it had even
gone to trial, and he was acquitted. And since then,
Tatsi has been going by a different name, and his

(01:15:13):
name is popped up in the news a few times since,
usually tied to stories about his dating life or drinking
habits and just like fuel his notoriety. And there's just
some you know, he gets into trouble. It seems like
it's just I want to know what really happened. I
don't know if we ever will that night, you know,
and so it's hard to be like he got acquitted,
So you want to be like, you don't want to

(01:15:35):
talk shit on this person because what if he's Yeah, this.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Whole thing, was this terrible happenstance that was I mean,
all of it is just so baffling.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
Yeah, and it's just like such a sad, tragic, unnecessary
death of this young woman. And that's really what it
comes down to. Yeah, that's right, that's right. So let's
talk about the new title, because incredible we titled this
twenty nine German spelling of nine, but I then I
made that up. I don't remember, but I don't think

(01:16:08):
that would to be something you suggested.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
I really don't think I would have. But who's to say,
you know, I mean, it's who's to say, literally, But
also it's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Just kind of like we're just trying to get this
stuff done. I can't wonder how much longer it is
until we stop fucking naming things after numbers. It's got
to be pretty close. If we're twenty nine, is the
fucking is all we got. I think we just were like,
we needed different a gimmick here, please, all right. So
if we were naming the episode today based on things
we said in the episode, we could call it happy Clap,

(01:16:41):
which I love because that's what Stephen does when Garen
talks about Nico case, which is the cutest I see
Stephen sitting across legged on the floor doing hiss his
quiet sound guy happy clap. Also, all the cookies, which
is what Georgia says Elvis is with Vince because Vince
gives them all the cookies. Yeah, that's when we had
to make Vince and the cats go in a different room,

(01:17:04):
go in the one bedroom of my one bedroom apartment
when we were recording, and he like, couldn't make a
noise or come out or do anything. Yeah, he was like.
And also we were out there for an hour and
forty five minutes most of the time, really were. And
once in a while I'd screamed, Vince, what was the
name of that movie, Oh Vice, And prayers up to

(01:17:26):
Vince Abril once again for being there from day one,
still doing it, still putting in his hours. It really is.
Thank you guys for listening to this episode of Rewind
and for sticking with us and still being here. Yes,
we rewind every Wednesday, so come back and we'll be
doing episode thirty next week. It's right, and until then,
stay sexy and don't get murdered. Good gay Elvis, do

(01:17:51):
you want a cookie

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Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 29: Twenty-Nein

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Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

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