August 21, 2019 • 43 mins
Born Nur Maznah Binti Ismail in Kangar, Perlis, the musician Mona Fandey achieved national success with her song Ku Nyanyikan Lagu Ini in 1987 -- yet her career seemed destined to slowly fade away, with Mona and her husband living out their lives in comfortable obscurity. Until, that is, in 1993, when Mona Fandey became the prime suspect in a gruesome murder that led many people to believe she'd secretly been an evil bomoh, practicing the art of dark sorcery for decades before finally being brought to justice. So what's the truth? Was Fandey mentally ill? Was she framed? Or was there something more sinister and sorcerous afoot?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel is
not here today, but will be returning in the future.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. So we're traveling abroad today, Matt,
(00:47):
through the power of imagination podcast in the mind. Really
it's the only traveling outside of the United States that
I've gotten to do in a long time. Oh yeah, yeah,
Now you have been to other countries. I have, but
not in a very very long time. So through the
magic of research and podcasting, we're going to take a
(01:08):
trip today. Yes, a very strange trip, as we are
wont to do on this show. Let's check in real
quick with Mission Control. How are we doing? Man thumbs up,
thumbs down, Pretty good thumb that was like, that was
a solid thumb. It's a solid thumb. We are taking
a trip together the three of us. That is a
weird thing. Maybe we'll reveal more about that in the future.
(01:32):
Right by the time this podcast comes out, we may
have completed our trip. I'm almost certain. Yeah, I'm almost
certain we'll be arriving back here from New York. Wow,
time is getting weird. What is the presents the moment
for those of us listening to this for the first
time anyway, time space, it's it's a whole bag of
(01:54):
badgers and in a messy a messy colander of spaghetti.
But today we're not dealing with time and space. We
have been covering quite a few tech, science or social
related topics and conspiracies in recent episodes, so this time
we're planning to explore something a little different bit grizzly,
(02:18):
magic Mania, murder. And want to apologize in advance for
any mispronunciations because Matt, neither you nor I speak the
languages that will occur in today's show. Very very true,
the languages that are spoken as we travel to Malaysia. Now,
(02:50):
it is true that some of our fellow listeners actually
live in Malaysia or have spent time there. We found
that out when we did an earlier episode on the
uh the oily Man that we had several people right
in with specifics, specific anecdotes of similar events, also some
helpful handy pronunciation guides. So if you are listening, feel
(03:14):
free to to help us out. We always prefer a
bit of illumination to the darkness that surrounds us in
this chaotic universe. If you are familiar with Malaysian pop music,
if you have a deep, deep knowledge of it, then
you may notice the song that we played is Malaysian
in origin. If you were a very ardent, knowledgeable fan
(03:37):
of Malayan music, you might have said, hey, that's Mona
Fandi also known as or born as Nermasna binti Ismail
And she was born in Kendgar per List or per
Lee p r l i s. As a child, she
(03:57):
was she was engaged in regular extracurricular events, you know,
school dances. She was a water ballet performer, and she
became a mildly successful singer under the stage name Mona
Fandi with an album called Diana One. It was released
in ninete. And it should be noted that that was
(04:18):
a self produced album and it was also distributed by
herself and her husband. That's right, right, her husband who
during courtship actually met her because he said he was
her biggest fan, which is beautiful, and he said, I
want to help you attain the fame that you deserve.
(04:39):
They had some limited success. Mona Fandi was for a
long time best known for the song could Nan Kan
la Guini and that that's that's what we played a
snippet of earlier, and it feels very late eighties. It
feels very in the moment, right. She continued working towards
that dream of fame. She had a few TV appearances,
(05:02):
but her career wasn't taking off. And this is this
is something that happens to many many people, right Hollywood
and the music industry, entertainment in general is paved with
broken dreams. Yeah, she clearly had the drive and you know,
quite a bit of talent there as you as you
(05:23):
heard in that song. But there's so much luck that
comes into a lot of the performance based careers, just
with who you end up meeting, who ends up hearing
your thing or seeing your thing, who talks about you
at what party? And no small amount of corruption. I
just when I see this very cynical and sad, but
when I see people become big stars quote unquote out
(05:48):
of nowhere. I just assumed that they are the product
of music industry campaign and that's not a ding on
their talent. That's just how this broken system functions. So
it's through no fault of her own, really, that Mona
Fandi does not become an international Malaysian superstar in the
world of pop music. It just didn't work out, and
(06:10):
she found a different calling. She and her husband switched careers.
They pivoted their focus. They began studying traditional medicinal practice,
you know, healing through herbs, meditation, seasonal rituals, that sort
of stuff. And she seemed set to gently and quietly
(06:31):
fade from the public consciousness and live out the remainder
of her life quietly with her husband always should mention
his name mode of Fondi Abdul Rahman. But all of
this changed when this relatively unknown, obscure former pop star
was implicated in something much much more serious. See the
(06:53):
whole time she'd been claiming to, uh, you know, practice
traditional medicine with her husband, she was actually engaging in
more sinister and dangerous form of magic. That's correct, Matt,
Mona Fandy. She was a bomo a sorcerer, and she
had just committed murder. We'll be back after a word
(07:14):
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. For a time.
Fandy and her husband had a fairly successful traditional, let's
call it magical consulting business. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, you know,
(07:35):
this kind of profession, it really makes you have to
search for, you know, clients. I mean, in any profession,
you're looking for someone else to use your service or
buy your goods or anything like that. But in this case,
because it is a little more I don't know what
you call it, of a boutique kind of thing, or
that's not the right word. It could, Yeah, it could
(07:57):
be high end, especially if you're paying for services of
a bomo um a sorcerer to you know, give you
either fame or fortune or power or something like that.
That's generally the reason that people seek out these types
of sorcerers. And they were always looking for clients, you know,
(08:19):
who are in the upper echelons of things short v
I p s. And they found a few, at least
according to the two of them, they found several high
end clients within the government and a few other places.
Who wish to remain anonymous, that was a big thing
with their service to people weren't openly identified as as clients.
(08:42):
Because you know, magic has always been a divisive thing
in the modern day. Some people very much believe in
traditional shamanistic practices. Other people shoe it entirely and prefer
to live a more secular life. So, especially in the
world of politics, depending upon your constituents, see, it might
be really cool that you, uh, you engage in these practices,
(09:06):
or it may make you seem less credible to some voters.
But either way, if you're using them for a darker purpose, um,
you probably want to keep that hidden, right and Fandy
and co found a big fish in the form of
a state assemblyman from Batu Talam named Data Maslin. Idris
(09:27):
Maslin was educated in the US and he was thirsty.
He was an ambitious politician from the ruling party Unite
in Malay's National Organization or U m in Oh. He
wanted the BOMO to provide services that would boost his
political career. He wanted to be the chief Minister and thought,
(09:47):
you know, if we keep this quiet through the use
of magic, we can you know, we can make my
career more auspicious. We can tilt the scales a bit,
the scales of luck and corrupt s that are so
common in the entertainment industry. Added the world of politics,
just a little finger, h finger on a scale, just
(10:08):
swing the needle a bit, just enough. So Mona Fandy
did not work alone. Her husband, of course, we have
mentioned a FONDI worked with her and they had an
assistant named Jerami Hassan. So there are three people involved,
and the assistant was a little bit younger than them. Yes,
very important. Some you'll hear some reports that he was
(10:30):
thirty one, You'll hear some reports that he was in
his late twenties. And you'll also hear reports that he
was maybe I don't know the correct term, but a
little learning disabled or something to that effect, right, that
he had lower intelligence. That's a very important point too
for this story. So Mona and her husband promised to
(10:50):
help this politician Maslan by giving him a talisman consisting
of a cane and spot me head gear. The head gear,
they said, was closely owned once upon a time by
former Indonesian President Sukarno, who is tremendously important in the
history of Indonesia. Is involved with the struggle for independence,
(11:11):
and he was the actual first president of Indonesia as
an independent country, so a very powerful person, kind of
a George Washington figure. Yeah, And and they're saying that
these talismans were owned by this powerful person, and if
we give them to you, it's also going to imbue
you with some powers exactly. So they convinced him. He said,
(11:35):
not only will you be a more powerful and favored politician,
you will be invincible when you physically hold this object,
invincible and you know, to get that kind of power,
if you truly believe it, um could be incredible. And
in return for this power, they demanded that Moslin pay
(11:59):
them to two point five million ring itt to ur
r M. That's just the the currency there in Malaysia
at the time, and that is equal to at least
in two thousand one dollars, because that's the last time
we saw it actually switched over, it was around six
hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars, So that might vary
(12:19):
a little bit because this is back in the early nineties,
but that's a good ballpark, right, So more than half
a million dollars US. He paid them five hundred thousand
ring as a deposit and then he wanted to give
them a guarantee so that they knew he wouldn't just vanish. Well,
they probably demanded it, so he gave them ten land
(12:40):
titles to hold on to and that would cover the
remaining two million. That's an incredible amount of money and
land to give to something that may or may not
be true. You have to believe that this politician believed
so deeply in this that he was willing to give
(13:02):
up all of that. And here's what happened next. They
made an appointment for these cleansing rituals to be performed
at the Fansy household. Maslin visited the couple's house in
uludung Rob for what was called a mandy Bunga ceremony,
a ritual flower bath. Maslin was told to lie on
the ground face up. Mona placed flowers around him and
(13:25):
on him. Ritualistically, she told Maslan to close his eyes
and wait for the money to fall from the sky.
He did close his eyes, but flowers, uh, weren't the
only thing that fell down upon him. Let's yeah, let's
stay in this moment for a second. What do you
think he's expecting to happen? Um, He's given them riches,
(13:49):
he's given them a land. All he's asking for in
return is this ritual and this talisman. And you know
he will be invincible. He he'll be ready to go.
But that's not what happens. Instead, an ax falls down
upon his neck and he has killed. He is decapitated,
(14:14):
and decapitation is a gruesome, strange way to die. Studies
show that the brain and the attached sensory organs are
still functioning for some time, So decapitation is one of
those few one of those few forms of death where
(14:35):
you can be physically removed from the rest of your
body and see your headless corpse on your way out. Yeah,
but of course you'll you'll probably be in such shock
and so panicked that you won't really calmly observe that
the assistant is the one draw me. Hassan is the
one who is believed to have played the headsman and
separated Moslim from his body. At least that's according to
(14:58):
reports we've read and um it came out in part
of the trial that or will learn about here in
a moment. They didn't stop there, though, did they met No.
They then proceeded to dismember Maslin. Fully they cut him
up into eighteen different parts. They also skinned part of
Maslin's body, and later on they discovered those eighteen parts
(15:25):
buried in a store room underneath the ground near Mona's
house in Penang. It was it was underneath this concrete slab, essentially.
And another big thing here is that they didn't find
all of him. There were parts of him missing, and
no one knows what happened to those parts. But the rumors,
(15:46):
of course you could imagine, are that those parts were
consumed by the three people, or at the very least
used in ritual. It's a bit strange for the neighborhood
hippie to engage in se behavior. But you see Mona Fandi,
her husband and their assistant or not your friendly neighborhood herbalist.
(16:10):
They were a different kind of bomo. We'll examine this.
After a word from our sponsor, we return bomo. B
o m o h. This term often gets mistranslated in
(16:30):
the West. It's something that you and I have run
into before, and people will say, oh, bomo means you know,
medicine man or the more offensive which doctor right. However,
at its heart, the term bomo describes a shaman. Indonesian
speakers often described this profession with the term ducan d
(16:52):
u k u n. Bomo are mainly herbalist and healers,
but the practice of magic is inseparable from these medicinal pursuits. Thus,
a bomo is also a geomancer or at times a sorcerer.
In Malaysian culture, most bomo are what we would call
bomo putti p u t i h white bomo. This
(17:16):
is the equivalent of the right hand path in Western
magic systems, someone who helps other people while also obeying
the dictates of shamanic tradition and at the same time
straddling the tenets of Islam, because this is a heavily
Muslim population. But that is not the path that Uh
(17:37):
will continue to call her mona fandi just for the
ease of pronunciation on our end. Now, it's not the
path that she chose as well as her husband Um
and the assistant Um. She was instead a bomo hitam
or hitam or black Bomo. Now that's a different, different
(17:58):
path here, the other path, the forbidden path, right, Um,
who are going to be working with things like spirits
that are not necessarily supposed to be interacted with. They
will look at the the laws that are put forth
and whatever whatever religion is current or um popular wherever
this magic is being done, in this case Islam, and
(18:22):
they will see those laws as something that are not
meant to be followed or are meant to be uh flouted, right.
The idea being that working around these laws, these moral
and magical and social laws, will allow you influence and
power that would ordinarily be out of your reach. Bomo
(18:44):
hitam and that's h I t a m are supposed
to be the sorts of monsters you would see in
horror movies, you know what I mean? Not in real life.
To call someone bomo hitam would be very, very offensive
because it's essentially the same thing as calling a doctor
(19:05):
or a life saving surgeon, a butcher or a serial killer.
It's the opposite of what boma are supposed to be doing. However,
that's what the Mona Fandi group appeared to be, at
least in the media. When this story hit, it hit big.
So they did this ritualistically, killed, dismembered, probably used some
(19:29):
degree the body of Maslin and other rituals, and they
might have got away with it. Muslim was not reported
missing until July two, after withdrawing three hundred thousand ring
it from a bank and directly after the murder, Mona
Fandy was reported to have gone on a shopping spree.
(19:50):
She didn't just buy, you know, colorful clothing or jewelry
or so she went big. She bought a Mercedes Benz.
She bought a facelift. I didn't know you could just
do that, you could just buy a acelift. Yeah. Yeah.
It's very strange and one of the most odd things
here is the timeline, because it is reported that he
went missing on July two, and it was immediately after
(20:11):
he withdrew a large amount of money. He did not
withdraw five hundred thousand ring it right like it was
originally reported early on, or at least that was the deal.
I guess, so he at least could withdraw three hundred thousand,
assuming it was him that withdrew it on that day
before he went missing, um, and then paid them. So
(20:32):
he paid them money, sure, yeah, just not all of it.
Not long after Maslan's murder, the assistant Jerramy Hassan was
picked up for a drug offense. He was under the
influence of these drugs and this this country with harsh
drug laws while he was under the influence of these
(20:53):
drugs and speaking with the police, he confessed to them
that he had been involved in the murder of a
politician and up and coming politician. Now that you know,
that's one of those things where you're dealing with somebody
who may not be you know, of the highest intelligence,
who was also perhaps high on a substance, who was
being pressed, you know, by by an interrogators. Then he
(21:17):
admits to you know, these police officers that he had
something to do with it, and it may not have
held much sand if he hadn't had led them. He
is the person that actually led the police to where
the body was buried under that concrete slab. Not long after,
the couple was arrested fanding her husband because Hassan, you know,
(21:40):
it was on her property. And then also Hassan openly
said that they did this, they committed this murder together,
and then the circus began. It was in a way,
it was it was reminiscent of how American culture treats
the infamous murderers and the depraved right they get a
(22:04):
lot of attention. There are celebrities. For a time, Mona
Fandi as a murder suspect, gained far more fame and
celebrity and public recognition than she ever did as a
pop singer. And if all she wanted to do was
to be famous, this strikes me as one of those
one of those infernal deals you hear about in folklore
(22:29):
right where the wording is very important. Make a sacrifice
to me, says some powerful entity or spirit, and I
shall give you that which you desire. And then they said,
we will make these sacrifices, will obey the rules of
this ritual, make me famous, make me famous. Carry it,
They carry it out, and they sure as heck do
(22:50):
you get famous. It's strange. It's interesting when you think
about it. Right now, we don't have we don't have
any primary source for that kind of conversation, just like
we don't have any source for what happened to the
rest of Malslan's body parts, nor do we have a
source for what Mona and her husband and their assistant
(23:11):
talked about her personally believed. And we also don't know
exactly the circumstances, at least Moslin's side of giving them
all of this money for these things, as well as
giving them the land titles because there well we'll talk
about it towards the end there. But it may have
been something else going on entirely that didn't even occur
in the trial, and that would this it would just
(23:33):
be me speculating. But I think I have I have
a hypothesis. I would love to hear this. I'm very curious.
Let's let's explore the trial. So in a way, in
a very dark way, Mona Fandy finally gets her wish,
and she seems to be enjoying this new social position, uh,
(23:55):
somewhere between fascinating and shunned and vilified rightly. So, throughout
the trial, Mona Fandi exhibits strange, incongruous behaviors. She is
always cheerful. She's constantly smiling, mugging for the camera, posing
for the press. She's dressing extravagantly with bright, colorful designs. Uh.
(24:16):
And she's got a new, a new banging outfit every day.
Why then, did did they murder this politician? We have
a we have one guess from a another Bomo, a
self styled king of the Bomo, Ibraham matt Zin, and
he said that Fandy and her associates used their shamanistic
(24:39):
knowledge for evil, because Fandy was consumed by the idea
of gaining, of getting vengeance, because Fandy was consumed by
the idea of revenge that the politician Moslan had made
and broken multiple promises, and she said, we will, we
will have vengeance. We should also point out that ibraheim
met In is not the most ironclad source. He gained
(25:05):
the most notoriety in his home country and in the
Western news for a series of rituals he conducted in
an effort to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines plane
MG three seventy, which we had talked about before. It
was not successful with this, but later he recanted on
(25:29):
what he was saying because he he apologized. He said,
I'm no longer king of the Bomo. These rituals I
was doing. I was just doing what they told me
to do. And he and he said that some of
the things he had he had done, like using bamboo
binoculars in a fish trap hook to help locate the aircraft, said,
you know, I was peering through these band and really
(25:51):
see anything. Jeez. So he may not be the best source,
but he was also a Bomo and he so he
being one of the most famous uh you know, he
remarked on this trial. So here's what they found. It's
very strange. The dates are confusing. The court found that
(26:12):
the murder occurred sometime between ten pm and midnight on
July n That's weird, yeah, because they you know, he
was reported missing on the second of that month, so
what happened sixteen days later? They think that's when he
was killed. Now, I'm just gonna go ahead and bring
(26:33):
it up. This is where my hypothesis comes in. I
think if he truly was missing from at least the second,
we can maybe assume even the first or the last
of the previous month, because it, you know, generally takes
that long to declare someone missing. And he took money
out on the second, I think he must have been
(26:54):
held captive there because in my mind, you don't, you know,
have someone missing the day that they pay you three
hundred ring it, then hang around your house for several days,
let's say sixteen days in this case, then do a
ritual way it was a multi day ritual, maybe sixteen
(27:20):
days though, and if it's a multi day ritual, and
then the way it's described in every report that I've seen,
of this, It's that it was a very fast thing
he was having the flower pedal ritual occurred and then
he got his head chopped off. To me, this seems
like they were they were holding him captive. I see.
(27:43):
They were tried in court by a seven person jury,
this was before trial by jury was abolished in the country,
and the High Court found all three of them guilty,
sentenced them to death by hanging, and the legal representatives
for Hassan the assistant, argued that he couldn't essentially be
(28:05):
tried as an adult due to his limited mental capacity
and that our source for these ideas about his cognitive
difficulties do all come from that lawyer. So the trial
goes on until at which point the High Court finds
all three defendants guilty and sentences them to death. The
(28:26):
method of death is hanging, hanging by the neck until dead. Yeah,
and it's feels old school like it's a British knot
tied to basically a poll that's running above the floor
that drops down. And Mona Fandi as well as her
(28:47):
husband and their assistant seemed to take the news in stride.
This was bizarre. Should not stop smiling, should brave public? Face.
She thanked the court and the Malaysian people immediately after
the guilty verdicts. Yep, that is true, and we know
that they did exercise some emotion in the intervening time
(29:09):
because they filed appeals. There was an appeal system here,
so the sentence was not actually carried out for a
number of years. Oh yeah, for quite a while. They
continued through all of the possible appeals processes. Rich of
course you would do if your life was literally on
the line. In the court dismissed all their appeals, upheld
(29:30):
the previous death sentence, and so it came to pass
that November two thousand one, all three were hanged. A
prison officials said the three people expressed zero remorse at
the execution that took place in the early hours of
the day. Yeah, it says. You know, you'll see reports
that say they met up with their families. They were
(29:52):
allowed eight hours or so to meet up with their
families prior to being killed. They will also find it
reported that they ate KFC as a last meal. And
then simultaneously you'll see it reported that they chose not
to eat a last meal. Right, and part of this
part of the divergent reporting here comes about from muckraking journalism,
(30:13):
you know, or sensationalism, I guess well. And there's also
the problem of translation, and it occurring so long ago,
right before the Internet was so available, you know, with
so many sources. This leads us to one thing that
has been reported in multiple sources and is chilling. So
Mona Fandy seems calm. Perhaps she has resigned herself to
(30:39):
this grizzly end, or perhaps she knows something. I think
she knows something that other people do not. During her execution,
while she was calm and smiling under her hood, she
uttered her final words aku to kan Mati in England.
(31:00):
Is that means I will never die? Spooky stuff, certainly?
And uh, in a way, she's right. We played you
that music of her voice. It's still around. She didn't
fully die. Her corporeal body is gone, but she lives on.
(31:22):
Let's play another clip from that song and see if
your experience of this music changes. Knowing what you know now, well,
(32:02):
there's one thing for certain. As we mentioned before, parts
of this politician Moslin's body were never found. We will
never know exactly what was done with those because the
only people who do know are now in their graves. True,
this case also led for national calls to outlaw witchcraft.
(32:26):
That's difficult thing to enforce. What is how do we
define witchcraft? Right? How do we separate that from traditional
religious beliefs? It was Yeah, I mean that's a that's
a strange thing. It's always going to be a strange thing.
I think, very blurry line. We also know that this
was one of the last jury trials in Malaysia who
(32:48):
because they stopped using jury trials by jury yep also
led to a controversial film loosely based on these events,
film called Ducan A schedule recall is the earlier sided
Indonesian were described to Bomo. The film was completed I
think around two thousand six, and it was banned from
(33:10):
release for eleven years because of the controversy surrounding it.
And then Facebook leaked it. Somebody on Facebook leaked the
entire movie. That's how I got out. And then after
it got out, after the demons were out of Pandora's jar,
the film went on to be quite successful. Yeah. Yeah,
(33:32):
they decided, well, I guess we can release this and
you know it is base it's you said, loosely based
like so loosely based, but it is about a boma
hit tom of sorts doing some pretty intense things, including,
you know, a murder, but this time it's spoiler alert
with a sword, right. Ducan is probably best described as
(33:54):
a legal thriller slash horror. Right, Oh yeah, sure, very
The trailer looks cool. The trailer does look cool. So
at this point we run into a couple of a
couple of questions, and these are questions that we would
like to give to you. We want to hear your
(34:15):
take on this. First, what what do you think about
the practice? This goes back to the idea of the
serial killer merchandise people. What do you think about the
practice of making films based on these events and profiting
from them? Is it ethical? Is it? Is it a
big deal? Not a big deal? And what do you
think about this this strange, sordid grizzly tail. Was their
(34:40):
actual magic involved or was this all just window dressing?
So much ornamentation for a human all too real, all
too mundane con job and murder? And also why why
do you think, even after they got paid, that they
(35:01):
decided to kill this person? That is perplexing to me.
It seems to me that if what they are saying
is true and their story checks out, they could have
builked him for so much more money if he was
willing to pay that much to them. And what if
it was a case of accident. What if Hassan was
meant to, like ritualistically to send the acts and then
(35:24):
in some way avoid harming the guy so that he
believes he's invulnerable. I mean, that's what you would do
in a con job, right, Oh? Or yeah, dude, you're
so right, And maybe he just actually did it, or
what if they all really believed it, or what if
they all really believed it? WHOA? So what do you think?
(35:46):
One of one of the fascinating things about this sort
of story is that there are multiple stories or in
recent years, concerning this sort of interaction between magic and
true crime. You know, we've heard of um, I don't
know if we ever did a full episode onder this.
Who heard of the practice in some countries of abduction
(36:08):
and dismembering people suffering from albatism, Right, So we want
to hear your stories. Is there anything like this that's
occurred in your country or your part of the world.
The US is not immune to this, By the way,
True Detective Season one. The HBO series is based on
a very real, very real satanic conspiracy that occurred in
(36:32):
a church in the South. It's a true story, and
Nick Pisolato did base a lot of True Detective on it,
no matter what he said at the beginning. And you know,
except for that whole whole part with the I don't know,
multidimensional monster guy like whatever he was, who knows about that?
The King and Yellow that dude, I still want him
(36:55):
to explain to me. The shot in the last episode
of season one, Well, maybe I'll just talk to him
about don't want to spoil it for anybody who may
have not seen the entire thing. Spoiler warning after this
moment there are spoilers three to one. So the the
shot where they're trying to follow him down this maze,
(37:16):
do you remember at the very end the climax, Essentially
they're following the Yellow King through his essentially portal into
this other world that he's created, his underworld, to the
old the Old what seemed to sensibly be a pirate
fort or something. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. And then
I believe one of one or both of the detectives
(37:38):
look up at the ceiling. I'm just gonna looking at
policy if he remembers this and it becomes a shot
of basically the universe or the galaxies or something or
familiar night sky. Yeah, but they're inside, you know, a
location somewhere, and they're looking up and seeing this, and
it gives you this feeling of maybe this is is
(38:00):
a multidimensional situation. Maybe they went through some kind of
portal to get somewhere else. I don't understand what's happening.
And then they fight with this guy who seems to
have superhuman powers, and then it's over. Uh, this is okay,
this is interesting. This is maybe a bit of a tangent.
But it is established during the show that rust Cole,
(38:20):
the one who sees glimpses this other universe, uh, suffers from,
or leverages at least hallucinations visions. Right, so he's already
prone to doing that kind of thing. I read a
very interesting theory that I do not completely agree with,
which is that the Yellow King is the King and
(38:41):
Yellow is some sort of non corporeal entity, and that
by killing the scarred man, the spaghetti face guy, Rust
Cole when he sees this multidimensional thing just before he opens,
he essentially becomes possessed by this entity. And that's why
at the very end, when Woody Harrelson's character is talking
(39:01):
to him and wants to tell him more about you know,
what's going to happen and you know, new leads they
can follow. Uh, that's why Cole immediately dismisses it and
is calm and serene as they get wheeled out. I
don't think that's true. I think it is really cool
and I love a dose of cosmic horror me too.
(39:23):
I was so excited when it happened, and I thought
we were gonna get a little or a little more something,
or at least an extra piece of it, like confirming,
well confirming at least that it was mystical in some way.
But then it was just like, well, all, all's good,
see see you later. Let's get out of this hospital,
right right. And I have I have sort of my
(39:46):
own origin story about the cult that I would love
to talk talk with you guys with maybe over a
beer or something. We can have an episode of Beers
where it gets crazy. Yeah, Beer's where it gets crazy.
And can we write a prequel? Why not where it's
it's you and me and Paula Nol and everybody else listening.
We're all just trying to find out who the Orange
(40:08):
Duke is. Let's give it a shot. Let's give it
a shot, and we can just send it to Nick
Bislano as a as a fan piece. Let's do it
all right, So let us know if you have some
ideas for our True Detective prequel, or if you have
a role you would like to play as always were
on the lookout for bad guys. And let's know, of course,
(40:30):
what do you think about the intersection between magic and
true crime. You can tell us about this on Instagram.
You can tell us about this on Facebook. Shout out
to our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Are
excellent moderators, are top notch memes uh and a place
where you can hang out with your fellow listeners. You
can also call us directly if you would prefer to
(40:50):
stay off the digital grid. Yes, our number is one
h three three st d w y t K and everyone.
I'm here to report that there are officially three hundred
plus unheard messages right now because there are so many
coming through. Do you hear me? Three hundred plus and
(41:12):
they're ranging between a minute and three minutes right now
as a lot of tape. Uh, and but we're gonna
get through it. Keep sending them to us. Um, We're
just we're just gonna keep trucking. It's a lot. I
was thinking about this upfair. We should we should make
a thing of it. We should like make a day
Let's let's go grab uh some popcorn or some snacks
(41:35):
or something, and then we'll just play through them. What
do you think, Yeah, that'd be great, or we should
just do it. We should make an episode, seriously, an
episode where it's just us in a room playing the
messages and reacting in real time to them, never hearing
them before. Do you think people would listen to that?
I think so because there's that element of oh, I
(41:57):
don't know what's coming next, and we won't know either.
I'm like, be on the show, say some of our listeners, right,
all right, let's give it a shot. I'm sold. In
the meantime, speaking of episode ideas, you can always let
us know what you think your fellow listeners will enjoy.
You are the most important part of this show. We
want to be easy to reach, we want to be
(42:17):
easy to talk to. And if you hate social media. You,
like me, are terrified of the idea of having to
be on the phone or touch one. You can email
us directly. We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot
com stuff they don't want you to know. As a
(42:50):
production of i heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel is
not here today, but will be returning in the future.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. So we're traveling abroad today, Matt,
(00:47):
through the power of imagination podcast in the mind. Really
it's the only traveling outside of the United States that
I've gotten to do in a long time. Oh yeah, yeah,
Now you have been to other countries. I have, but
not in a very very long time. So through the
magic of research and podcasting, we're going to take a
(01:08):
trip today. Yes, a very strange trip, as we are
wont to do on this show. Let's check in real
quick with Mission Control. How are we doing? Man thumbs up,
thumbs down, Pretty good thumb that was like, that was
a solid thumb. It's a solid thumb. We are taking
a trip together the three of us. That is a
weird thing. Maybe we'll reveal more about that in the future.
(01:32):
Right by the time this podcast comes out, we may
have completed our trip. I'm almost certain. Yeah, I'm almost
certain we'll be arriving back here from New York. Wow,
time is getting weird. What is the presents the moment
for those of us listening to this for the first
time anyway, time space, it's it's a whole bag of
(01:54):
badgers and in a messy a messy colander of spaghetti.
But today we're not dealing with time and space. We
have been covering quite a few tech, science or social
related topics and conspiracies in recent episodes, so this time
we're planning to explore something a little different bit grizzly,
(02:18):
magic Mania, murder. And want to apologize in advance for
any mispronunciations because Matt, neither you nor I speak the
languages that will occur in today's show. Very very true,
the languages that are spoken as we travel to Malaysia. Now,
(02:50):
it is true that some of our fellow listeners actually
live in Malaysia or have spent time there. We found
that out when we did an earlier episode on the
uh the oily Man that we had several people right
in with specifics, specific anecdotes of similar events, also some
helpful handy pronunciation guides. So if you are listening, feel
(03:14):
free to to help us out. We always prefer a
bit of illumination to the darkness that surrounds us in
this chaotic universe. If you are familiar with Malaysian pop music,
if you have a deep, deep knowledge of it, then
you may notice the song that we played is Malaysian
in origin. If you were a very ardent, knowledgeable fan
(03:37):
of Malayan music, you might have said, hey, that's Mona
Fandi also known as or born as Nermasna binti Ismail
And she was born in Kendgar per List or per
Lee p r l i s. As a child, she
(03:57):
was she was engaged in regular extracurricular events, you know,
school dances. She was a water ballet performer, and she
became a mildly successful singer under the stage name Mona
Fandi with an album called Diana One. It was released
in ninete. And it should be noted that that was
(04:18):
a self produced album and it was also distributed by
herself and her husband. That's right, right, her husband who
during courtship actually met her because he said he was
her biggest fan, which is beautiful, and he said, I
want to help you attain the fame that you deserve.
(04:39):
They had some limited success. Mona Fandi was for a
long time best known for the song could Nan Kan
la Guini and that that's that's what we played a
snippet of earlier, and it feels very late eighties. It
feels very in the moment, right. She continued working towards
that dream of fame. She had a few TV appearances,
(05:02):
but her career wasn't taking off. And this is this
is something that happens to many many people, right Hollywood
and the music industry, entertainment in general is paved with
broken dreams. Yeah, she clearly had the drive and you know,
quite a bit of talent there as you as you
(05:23):
heard in that song. But there's so much luck that
comes into a lot of the performance based careers, just
with who you end up meeting, who ends up hearing
your thing or seeing your thing, who talks about you
at what party? And no small amount of corruption. I
just when I see this very cynical and sad, but
when I see people become big stars quote unquote out
(05:48):
of nowhere. I just assumed that they are the product
of music industry campaign and that's not a ding on
their talent. That's just how this broken system functions. So
it's through no fault of her own, really, that Mona
Fandi does not become an international Malaysian superstar in the
world of pop music. It just didn't work out, and
(06:10):
she found a different calling. She and her husband switched careers.
They pivoted their focus. They began studying traditional medicinal practice,
you know, healing through herbs, meditation, seasonal rituals, that sort
of stuff. And she seemed set to gently and quietly
(06:31):
fade from the public consciousness and live out the remainder
of her life quietly with her husband always should mention
his name mode of Fondi Abdul Rahman. But all of
this changed when this relatively unknown, obscure former pop star
was implicated in something much much more serious. See the
(06:53):
whole time she'd been claiming to, uh, you know, practice
traditional medicine with her husband, she was actually engaging in
more sinister and dangerous form of magic. That's correct, Matt,
Mona Fandy. She was a bomo a sorcerer, and she
had just committed murder. We'll be back after a word
(07:14):
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. For a time.
Fandy and her husband had a fairly successful traditional, let's
call it magical consulting business. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, you know,
(07:35):
this kind of profession, it really makes you have to
search for, you know, clients. I mean, in any profession,
you're looking for someone else to use your service or
buy your goods or anything like that. But in this case,
because it is a little more I don't know what
you call it, of a boutique kind of thing, or
that's not the right word. It could, Yeah, it could
(07:57):
be high end, especially if you're paying for services of
a bomo um a sorcerer to you know, give you
either fame or fortune or power or something like that.
That's generally the reason that people seek out these types
of sorcerers. And they were always looking for clients, you know,
(08:19):
who are in the upper echelons of things short v
I p s. And they found a few, at least
according to the two of them, they found several high
end clients within the government and a few other places.
Who wish to remain anonymous, that was a big thing
with their service to people weren't openly identified as as clients.
(08:42):
Because you know, magic has always been a divisive thing
in the modern day. Some people very much believe in
traditional shamanistic practices. Other people shoe it entirely and prefer
to live a more secular life. So, especially in the
world of politics, depending upon your constituents, see, it might
be really cool that you, uh, you engage in these practices,
(09:06):
or it may make you seem less credible to some voters.
But either way, if you're using them for a darker purpose, um,
you probably want to keep that hidden, right and Fandy
and co found a big fish in the form of
a state assemblyman from Batu Talam named Data Maslin. Idris
(09:27):
Maslin was educated in the US and he was thirsty.
He was an ambitious politician from the ruling party Unite
in Malay's National Organization or U m in Oh. He
wanted the BOMO to provide services that would boost his
political career. He wanted to be the chief Minister and thought,
(09:47):
you know, if we keep this quiet through the use
of magic, we can you know, we can make my
career more auspicious. We can tilt the scales a bit,
the scales of luck and corrupt s that are so
common in the entertainment industry. Added the world of politics,
just a little finger, h finger on a scale, just
(10:08):
swing the needle a bit, just enough. So Mona Fandy
did not work alone. Her husband, of course, we have
mentioned a FONDI worked with her and they had an
assistant named Jerami Hassan. So there are three people involved,
and the assistant was a little bit younger than them. Yes,
very important. Some you'll hear some reports that he was
(10:30):
thirty one, You'll hear some reports that he was in
his late twenties. And you'll also hear reports that he
was maybe I don't know the correct term, but a
little learning disabled or something to that effect, right, that
he had lower intelligence. That's a very important point too
for this story. So Mona and her husband promised to
(10:50):
help this politician Maslan by giving him a talisman consisting
of a cane and spot me head gear. The head gear,
they said, was closely owned once upon a time by
former Indonesian President Sukarno, who is tremendously important in the
history of Indonesia. Is involved with the struggle for independence,
(11:11):
and he was the actual first president of Indonesia as
an independent country, so a very powerful person, kind of
a George Washington figure. Yeah, And and they're saying that
these talismans were owned by this powerful person, and if
we give them to you, it's also going to imbue
you with some powers exactly. So they convinced him. He said,
(11:35):
not only will you be a more powerful and favored politician,
you will be invincible when you physically hold this object,
invincible and you know, to get that kind of power,
if you truly believe it, um could be incredible. And
in return for this power, they demanded that Moslin pay
(11:59):
them to two point five million ring itt to ur
r M. That's just the the currency there in Malaysia
at the time, and that is equal to at least
in two thousand one dollars, because that's the last time
we saw it actually switched over, it was around six
hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars, So that might vary
(12:19):
a little bit because this is back in the early nineties,
but that's a good ballpark, right, So more than half
a million dollars US. He paid them five hundred thousand
ring as a deposit and then he wanted to give
them a guarantee so that they knew he wouldn't just vanish. Well,
they probably demanded it, so he gave them ten land
(12:40):
titles to hold on to and that would cover the
remaining two million. That's an incredible amount of money and
land to give to something that may or may not
be true. You have to believe that this politician believed
so deeply in this that he was willing to give
(13:02):
up all of that. And here's what happened next. They
made an appointment for these cleansing rituals to be performed
at the Fansy household. Maslin visited the couple's house in
uludung Rob for what was called a mandy Bunga ceremony,
a ritual flower bath. Maslin was told to lie on
the ground face up. Mona placed flowers around him and
(13:25):
on him. Ritualistically, she told Maslan to close his eyes
and wait for the money to fall from the sky.
He did close his eyes, but flowers, uh, weren't the
only thing that fell down upon him. Let's yeah, let's
stay in this moment for a second. What do you
think he's expecting to happen? Um, He's given them riches,
(13:49):
he's given them a land. All he's asking for in
return is this ritual and this talisman. And you know
he will be invincible. He he'll be ready to go.
But that's not what happens. Instead, an ax falls down
upon his neck and he has killed. He is decapitated,
(14:14):
and decapitation is a gruesome, strange way to die. Studies
show that the brain and the attached sensory organs are
still functioning for some time, So decapitation is one of
those few one of those few forms of death where
(14:35):
you can be physically removed from the rest of your
body and see your headless corpse on your way out. Yeah,
but of course you'll you'll probably be in such shock
and so panicked that you won't really calmly observe that
the assistant is the one draw me. Hassan is the
one who is believed to have played the headsman and
separated Moslim from his body. At least that's according to
(14:58):
reports we've read and um it came out in part
of the trial that or will learn about here in
a moment. They didn't stop there, though, did they met No.
They then proceeded to dismember Maslin. Fully they cut him
up into eighteen different parts. They also skinned part of
Maslin's body, and later on they discovered those eighteen parts
(15:25):
buried in a store room underneath the ground near Mona's
house in Penang. It was it was underneath this concrete slab, essentially.
And another big thing here is that they didn't find
all of him. There were parts of him missing, and
no one knows what happened to those parts. But the rumors,
(15:46):
of course you could imagine, are that those parts were
consumed by the three people, or at the very least
used in ritual. It's a bit strange for the neighborhood
hippie to engage in se behavior. But you see Mona Fandi,
her husband and their assistant or not your friendly neighborhood herbalist.
(16:10):
They were a different kind of bomo. We'll examine this.
After a word from our sponsor, we return bomo. B
o m o h. This term often gets mistranslated in
(16:30):
the West. It's something that you and I have run
into before, and people will say, oh, bomo means you know,
medicine man or the more offensive which doctor right. However,
at its heart, the term bomo describes a shaman. Indonesian
speakers often described this profession with the term ducan d
(16:52):
u k u n. Bomo are mainly herbalist and healers,
but the practice of magic is inseparable from these medicinal pursuits. Thus,
a bomo is also a geomancer or at times a sorcerer.
In Malaysian culture, most bomo are what we would call
bomo putti p u t i h white bomo. This
(17:16):
is the equivalent of the right hand path in Western
magic systems, someone who helps other people while also obeying
the dictates of shamanic tradition and at the same time
straddling the tenets of Islam, because this is a heavily
Muslim population. But that is not the path that Uh
(17:37):
will continue to call her mona fandi just for the
ease of pronunciation on our end. Now, it's not the
path that she chose as well as her husband Um
and the assistant Um. She was instead a bomo hitam
or hitam or black Bomo. Now that's a different, different
(17:58):
path here, the other path, the forbidden path, right, Um,
who are going to be working with things like spirits
that are not necessarily supposed to be interacted with. They
will look at the the laws that are put forth
and whatever whatever religion is current or um popular wherever
this magic is being done, in this case Islam, and
(18:22):
they will see those laws as something that are not
meant to be followed or are meant to be uh flouted, right.
The idea being that working around these laws, these moral
and magical and social laws, will allow you influence and
power that would ordinarily be out of your reach. Bomo
(18:44):
hitam and that's h I t a m are supposed
to be the sorts of monsters you would see in
horror movies, you know what I mean? Not in real life.
To call someone bomo hitam would be very, very offensive
because it's essentially the same thing as calling a doctor
(19:05):
or a life saving surgeon, a butcher or a serial killer.
It's the opposite of what boma are supposed to be doing. However,
that's what the Mona Fandi group appeared to be, at
least in the media. When this story hit, it hit big.
So they did this ritualistically, killed, dismembered, probably used some
(19:29):
degree the body of Maslin and other rituals, and they
might have got away with it. Muslim was not reported
missing until July two, after withdrawing three hundred thousand ring
it from a bank and directly after the murder, Mona
Fandy was reported to have gone on a shopping spree.
(19:50):
She didn't just buy, you know, colorful clothing or jewelry
or so she went big. She bought a Mercedes Benz.
She bought a facelift. I didn't know you could just
do that, you could just buy a acelift. Yeah. Yeah.
It's very strange and one of the most odd things
here is the timeline, because it is reported that he
went missing on July two, and it was immediately after
(20:11):
he withdrew a large amount of money. He did not
withdraw five hundred thousand ring it right like it was
originally reported early on, or at least that was the deal.
I guess, so he at least could withdraw three hundred thousand,
assuming it was him that withdrew it on that day
before he went missing, um, and then paid them. So
(20:32):
he paid them money, sure, yeah, just not all of it.
Not long after Maslan's murder, the assistant Jerramy Hassan was
picked up for a drug offense. He was under the
influence of these drugs and this this country with harsh
drug laws while he was under the influence of these
(20:53):
drugs and speaking with the police, he confessed to them
that he had been involved in the murder of a
politician and up and coming politician. Now that you know,
that's one of those things where you're dealing with somebody
who may not be you know, of the highest intelligence,
who was also perhaps high on a substance, who was
being pressed, you know, by by an interrogators. Then he
(21:17):
admits to you know, these police officers that he had
something to do with it, and it may not have
held much sand if he hadn't had led them. He
is the person that actually led the police to where
the body was buried under that concrete slab. Not long after,
the couple was arrested fanding her husband because Hassan, you know,
(21:40):
it was on her property. And then also Hassan openly
said that they did this, they committed this murder together,
and then the circus began. It was in a way,
it was it was reminiscent of how American culture treats
the infamous murderers and the depraved right they get a
(22:04):
lot of attention. There are celebrities. For a time, Mona
Fandi as a murder suspect, gained far more fame and
celebrity and public recognition than she ever did as a
pop singer. And if all she wanted to do was
to be famous, this strikes me as one of those
one of those infernal deals you hear about in folklore
(22:29):
right where the wording is very important. Make a sacrifice
to me, says some powerful entity or spirit, and I
shall give you that which you desire. And then they said,
we will make these sacrifices, will obey the rules of
this ritual, make me famous, make me famous. Carry it,
They carry it out, and they sure as heck do
(22:50):
you get famous. It's strange. It's interesting when you think
about it. Right now, we don't have we don't have
any primary source for that kind of conversation, just like
we don't have any source for what happened to the
rest of Malslan's body parts, nor do we have a
source for what Mona and her husband and their assistant
(23:11):
talked about her personally believed. And we also don't know
exactly the circumstances, at least Moslin's side of giving them
all of this money for these things, as well as
giving them the land titles because there well we'll talk
about it towards the end there. But it may have
been something else going on entirely that didn't even occur
in the trial, and that would this it would just
(23:33):
be me speculating. But I think I have I have
a hypothesis. I would love to hear this. I'm very curious.
Let's let's explore the trial. So in a way, in
a very dark way, Mona Fandy finally gets her wish,
and she seems to be enjoying this new social position, uh,
(23:55):
somewhere between fascinating and shunned and vilified rightly. So, throughout
the trial, Mona Fandi exhibits strange, incongruous behaviors. She is
always cheerful. She's constantly smiling, mugging for the camera, posing
for the press. She's dressing extravagantly with bright, colorful designs. Uh.
(24:16):
And she's got a new, a new banging outfit every day.
Why then, did did they murder this politician? We have
a we have one guess from a another Bomo, a
self styled king of the Bomo, Ibraham matt Zin, and
he said that Fandy and her associates used their shamanistic
(24:39):
knowledge for evil, because Fandy was consumed by the idea
of gaining, of getting vengeance, because Fandy was consumed by
the idea of revenge that the politician Moslan had made
and broken multiple promises, and she said, we will, we
will have vengeance. We should also point out that ibraheim
met In is not the most ironclad source. He gained
(25:05):
the most notoriety in his home country and in the
Western news for a series of rituals he conducted in
an effort to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines plane
MG three seventy, which we had talked about before. It
was not successful with this, but later he recanted on
(25:29):
what he was saying because he he apologized. He said,
I'm no longer king of the Bomo. These rituals I
was doing. I was just doing what they told me
to do. And he and he said that some of
the things he had he had done, like using bamboo
binoculars in a fish trap hook to help locate the aircraft, said,
you know, I was peering through these band and really
(25:51):
see anything. Jeez. So he may not be the best source,
but he was also a Bomo and he so he
being one of the most famous uh you know, he
remarked on this trial. So here's what they found. It's
very strange. The dates are confusing. The court found that
(26:12):
the murder occurred sometime between ten pm and midnight on
July n That's weird, yeah, because they you know, he
was reported missing on the second of that month, so
what happened sixteen days later? They think that's when he
was killed. Now, I'm just gonna go ahead and bring
(26:33):
it up. This is where my hypothesis comes in. I
think if he truly was missing from at least the second,
we can maybe assume even the first or the last
of the previous month, because it, you know, generally takes
that long to declare someone missing. And he took money
out on the second, I think he must have been
(26:54):
held captive there because in my mind, you don't, you know,
have someone missing the day that they pay you three
hundred ring it, then hang around your house for several days,
let's say sixteen days in this case, then do a
ritual way it was a multi day ritual, maybe sixteen
(27:20):
days though, and if it's a multi day ritual, and
then the way it's described in every report that I've seen,
of this, It's that it was a very fast thing
he was having the flower pedal ritual occurred and then
he got his head chopped off. To me, this seems
like they were they were holding him captive. I see.
(27:43):
They were tried in court by a seven person jury,
this was before trial by jury was abolished in the country,
and the High Court found all three of them guilty,
sentenced them to death by hanging, and the legal representatives
for Hassan the assistant, argued that he couldn't essentially be
(28:05):
tried as an adult due to his limited mental capacity
and that our source for these ideas about his cognitive
difficulties do all come from that lawyer. So the trial
goes on until at which point the High Court finds
all three defendants guilty and sentences them to death. The
(28:26):
method of death is hanging, hanging by the neck until dead. Yeah,
and it's feels old school like it's a British knot
tied to basically a poll that's running above the floor
that drops down. And Mona Fandi as well as her
(28:47):
husband and their assistant seemed to take the news in stride.
This was bizarre. Should not stop smiling, should brave public? Face.
She thanked the court and the Malaysian people immediately after
the guilty verdicts. Yep, that is true, and we know
that they did exercise some emotion in the intervening time
(29:09):
because they filed appeals. There was an appeal system here,
so the sentence was not actually carried out for a
number of years. Oh yeah, for quite a while. They
continued through all of the possible appeals processes. Rich of
course you would do if your life was literally on
the line. In the court dismissed all their appeals, upheld
(29:30):
the previous death sentence, and so it came to pass
that November two thousand one, all three were hanged. A
prison officials said the three people expressed zero remorse at
the execution that took place in the early hours of
the day. Yeah, it says. You know, you'll see reports
that say they met up with their families. They were
(29:52):
allowed eight hours or so to meet up with their
families prior to being killed. They will also find it
reported that they ate KFC as a last meal. And
then simultaneously you'll see it reported that they chose not
to eat a last meal. Right, and part of this
part of the divergent reporting here comes about from muckraking journalism,
(30:13):
you know, or sensationalism, I guess well. And there's also
the problem of translation, and it occurring so long ago,
right before the Internet was so available, you know, with
so many sources. This leads us to one thing that
has been reported in multiple sources and is chilling. So
Mona Fandy seems calm. Perhaps she has resigned herself to
(30:39):
this grizzly end, or perhaps she knows something. I think
she knows something that other people do not. During her execution,
while she was calm and smiling under her hood, she
uttered her final words aku to kan Mati in England.
(31:00):
Is that means I will never die? Spooky stuff, certainly?
And uh, in a way, she's right. We played you
that music of her voice. It's still around. She didn't
fully die. Her corporeal body is gone, but she lives on.
(31:22):
Let's play another clip from that song and see if
your experience of this music changes. Knowing what you know now, well,
(32:02):
there's one thing for certain. As we mentioned before, parts
of this politician Moslin's body were never found. We will
never know exactly what was done with those because the
only people who do know are now in their graves. True,
this case also led for national calls to outlaw witchcraft.
(32:26):
That's difficult thing to enforce. What is how do we
define witchcraft? Right? How do we separate that from traditional
religious beliefs? It was Yeah, I mean that's a that's
a strange thing. It's always going to be a strange thing.
I think, very blurry line. We also know that this
was one of the last jury trials in Malaysia who
(32:48):
because they stopped using jury trials by jury yep also
led to a controversial film loosely based on these events,
film called Ducan A schedule recall is the earlier sided
Indonesian were described to Bomo. The film was completed I
think around two thousand six, and it was banned from
(33:10):
release for eleven years because of the controversy surrounding it.
And then Facebook leaked it. Somebody on Facebook leaked the
entire movie. That's how I got out. And then after
it got out, after the demons were out of Pandora's jar,
the film went on to be quite successful. Yeah. Yeah,
(33:32):
they decided, well, I guess we can release this and
you know it is base it's you said, loosely based
like so loosely based, but it is about a boma
hit tom of sorts doing some pretty intense things, including,
you know, a murder, but this time it's spoiler alert
with a sword, right. Ducan is probably best described as
(33:54):
a legal thriller slash horror. Right, Oh yeah, sure, very
The trailer looks cool. The trailer does look cool. So
at this point we run into a couple of a
couple of questions, and these are questions that we would
like to give to you. We want to hear your
(34:15):
take on this. First, what what do you think about
the practice? This goes back to the idea of the
serial killer merchandise people. What do you think about the
practice of making films based on these events and profiting
from them? Is it ethical? Is it? Is it a
big deal? Not a big deal? And what do you
think about this this strange, sordid grizzly tail. Was their
(34:40):
actual magic involved or was this all just window dressing?
So much ornamentation for a human all too real, all
too mundane con job and murder? And also why why
do you think, even after they got paid, that they
(35:01):
decided to kill this person? That is perplexing to me.
It seems to me that if what they are saying
is true and their story checks out, they could have
builked him for so much more money if he was
willing to pay that much to them. And what if
it was a case of accident. What if Hassan was
meant to, like ritualistically to send the acts and then
(35:24):
in some way avoid harming the guy so that he
believes he's invulnerable. I mean, that's what you would do
in a con job, right, Oh? Or yeah, dude, you're
so right, And maybe he just actually did it, or
what if they all really believed it, or what if
they all really believed it? WHOA? So what do you think?
(35:46):
One of one of the fascinating things about this sort
of story is that there are multiple stories or in
recent years, concerning this sort of interaction between magic and
true crime. You know, we've heard of um, I don't
know if we ever did a full episode onder this.
Who heard of the practice in some countries of abduction
(36:08):
and dismembering people suffering from albatism, Right, So we want
to hear your stories. Is there anything like this that's
occurred in your country or your part of the world.
The US is not immune to this, By the way,
True Detective Season one. The HBO series is based on
a very real, very real satanic conspiracy that occurred in
(36:32):
a church in the South. It's a true story, and
Nick Pisolato did base a lot of True Detective on it,
no matter what he said at the beginning. And you know,
except for that whole whole part with the I don't know,
multidimensional monster guy like whatever he was, who knows about that?
The King and Yellow that dude, I still want him
(36:55):
to explain to me. The shot in the last episode
of season one, Well, maybe I'll just talk to him
about don't want to spoil it for anybody who may
have not seen the entire thing. Spoiler warning after this
moment there are spoilers three to one. So the the
shot where they're trying to follow him down this maze,
(37:16):
do you remember at the very end the climax, Essentially
they're following the Yellow King through his essentially portal into
this other world that he's created, his underworld, to the
old the Old what seemed to sensibly be a pirate
fort or something. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. And then
I believe one of one or both of the detectives
(37:38):
look up at the ceiling. I'm just gonna looking at
policy if he remembers this and it becomes a shot
of basically the universe or the galaxies or something or
familiar night sky. Yeah, but they're inside, you know, a
location somewhere, and they're looking up and seeing this, and
it gives you this feeling of maybe this is is
(38:00):
a multidimensional situation. Maybe they went through some kind of
portal to get somewhere else. I don't understand what's happening.
And then they fight with this guy who seems to
have superhuman powers, and then it's over. Uh, this is okay,
this is interesting. This is maybe a bit of a tangent.
But it is established during the show that rust Cole,
(38:20):
the one who sees glimpses this other universe, uh, suffers from,
or leverages at least hallucinations visions. Right, so he's already
prone to doing that kind of thing. I read a
very interesting theory that I do not completely agree with,
which is that the Yellow King is the King and
(38:41):
Yellow is some sort of non corporeal entity, and that
by killing the scarred man, the spaghetti face guy, Rust
Cole when he sees this multidimensional thing just before he opens,
he essentially becomes possessed by this entity. And that's why
at the very end, when Woody Harrelson's character is talking
(39:01):
to him and wants to tell him more about you know,
what's going to happen and you know, new leads they
can follow. Uh, that's why Cole immediately dismisses it and
is calm and serene as they get wheeled out. I
don't think that's true. I think it is really cool
and I love a dose of cosmic horror me too.
(39:23):
I was so excited when it happened, and I thought
we were gonna get a little or a little more something,
or at least an extra piece of it, like confirming,
well confirming at least that it was mystical in some way.
But then it was just like, well, all, all's good,
see see you later. Let's get out of this hospital,
right right. And I have I have sort of my
(39:46):
own origin story about the cult that I would love
to talk talk with you guys with maybe over a
beer or something. We can have an episode of Beers
where it gets crazy. Yeah, Beer's where it gets crazy.
And can we write a prequel? Why not where it's
it's you and me and Paula Nol and everybody else listening.
We're all just trying to find out who the Orange
(40:08):
Duke is. Let's give it a shot. Let's give it
a shot, and we can just send it to Nick
Bislano as a as a fan piece. Let's do it
all right, So let us know if you have some
ideas for our True Detective prequel, or if you have
a role you would like to play as always were
on the lookout for bad guys. And let's know, of course,
(40:30):
what do you think about the intersection between magic and
true crime. You can tell us about this on Instagram.
You can tell us about this on Facebook. Shout out
to our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Are
excellent moderators, are top notch memes uh and a place
where you can hang out with your fellow listeners. You
can also call us directly if you would prefer to
(40:50):
stay off the digital grid. Yes, our number is one
h three three st d w y t K and everyone.
I'm here to report that there are officially three hundred
plus unheard messages right now because there are so many
coming through. Do you hear me? Three hundred plus and
(41:12):
they're ranging between a minute and three minutes right now
as a lot of tape. Uh, and but we're gonna
get through it. Keep sending them to us. Um, We're
just we're just gonna keep trucking. It's a lot. I
was thinking about this upfair. We should we should make
a thing of it. We should like make a day
Let's let's go grab uh some popcorn or some snacks
(41:35):
or something, and then we'll just play through them. What
do you think, Yeah, that'd be great, or we should
just do it. We should make an episode, seriously, an
episode where it's just us in a room playing the
messages and reacting in real time to them, never hearing
them before. Do you think people would listen to that?
I think so because there's that element of oh, I
(41:57):
don't know what's coming next, and we won't know either.
I'm like, be on the show, say some of our listeners, right,
all right, let's give it a shot. I'm sold. In
the meantime, speaking of episode ideas, you can always let
us know what you think your fellow listeners will enjoy.
You are the most important part of this show. We
want to be easy to reach, we want to be
(42:17):
easy to talk to. And if you hate social media. You,
like me, are terrified of the idea of having to
be on the phone or touch one. You can email
us directly. We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot
com stuff they don't want you to know. As a
(42:50):
production of i heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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