The Torso Murders & A Mother Accused

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, I'm Sierra.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
And I'm Ben.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to another episode of the UNSLF Couple, where
every week been and I recapt one of your original
gateway drugs into true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Unsolved Mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
We're back. Ben is on a group chat. He'll join
us shortly after he's done chitty chatting with his friends.
You guys, Ben is not a cell phone guy, not
really a tech guy. I'm here, notes are on a
piece of paper and a pencil. But he has recently
joined a group chat.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
No, this one I've been in for a long time.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Mmmm, He's recently decided to start engaging in a group chat.
Rick and Rafino. If you guys are listening to this
right now, you're really starting to butt into husband and wifetime.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm making fun of one of my friends because the
bills are playing right now. So giving him a hard
time about it?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
You asked, No, I sat here waiting patiently. Ben still
reading and now he has watch you guys. That tells
him when he gets text messages. And it's funny because
he's so quick to respond to these burrows that he
works with every day, but when his wife texts him,
I don't hear back for hours.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
I text you back instantly.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
A bull shiz. I have got time stamps. I've got
receipts to prove it.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Instantly.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, Ben, a few weeks ago, try to pull the
thumbs up.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Oh, I just discovered that you could just thumbs up
people ext messages.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I inediately called him and it was like, where do
you get off?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, here's the thing about text messages is people say things,
and sometimes I want to be done with the conversation, not.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Always you guys, his wife is hearing this information for
the first time. So let's see how this plays out
well for Bed, Okay, continue or tell us how you
want to be done.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Or I don't really know what to say back. So
this like thumbs up or the haha. A big fan
of the ha because my friends say some funny things
and instead of just type I used to just type
ha ha ha. Now I can just go haha, and
that's how I tell him, and it's great. Thumbs up.

(02:35):
I liked that.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
See how that communication was boring because all I did
was look at you and give you a thumbs up. Listen,
I am not a big marriage is give and take. Ben,
I don't know if you know this, you're the person
that takes with the most uh no, new new.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
M Though, I did have text you the other day
if you knew where my wallet.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Was, and I texted you back instantly that time, and
I knew both of the things that you were asking me.
One you asked me if I had left the gate open,
and I did because me and the kids were playing
kick the cany the other day. And two you asked
me where your wallet was, and I knew it, well,
where that one was. Here has like five wallets that

(03:24):
she lives around the house, and I knew where one
of them was.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, because I went to a store and realized I
didn't have to thank Goodness for apple pank.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Why'd you even you all have everything on your phone?

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well, some people places Walmart doesn't take payment.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
That way, Well, they don't do the tap.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
You can't, That's what I mean. You can't tap it.
I'm sorry. Did you know the text message? Would you
like us to wait for you to respond? I'm listening, Rick,
that's enough. Cut it out. You're going to lose your privileges.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Get out of here.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay. We are recapping season three, episode nineteen. We're still
in season three. I think see forever, there's only a
couple episodes left. H so over Have you ever not
been over it?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
No?

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Has there ever been a time that you're like, actually,
I love this so much, Joe?

Speaker 2 (04:17):
That really hasn't ever?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
We have fun but no, if I wrote your notes
for you. Or there is a couple that does a
podcast Benywards actually just asking about it. Hey, guys from
Crime and Coffee. Great podcast. The wife is the one
who like tells the story and the husband only reacts. Okay,

(04:42):
so he doesn't have to come like prepared, he's been
told a story, do anything. But he runs all of
their social and does all of the editing and tech work.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, that would be a disaster exist.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
So you pick which one do you want to do?
Do you want that kind of format where I just
tell you about the episode of mysteries?

Speaker 2 (05:03):
If I have to run the audio and the social media, Well,
first off, the I can't run social media. I would
have no clue how to do that.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, no, you wouldn't. You'd be useless. So this is
the role that you are given in this and I'm
here and you are here, all right, So yeah, this
episode was good. Interesting. I they took a weird twist
on the first story I'm going to cover.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
But I didn't understand the first story.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
I didn't understand it either, because to me, they were
two completely different things.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well at the angle they took, I didn't understand it.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah, and it was actually supposed to I was originally
like a special that they did. Oh yeah yeah. So okay,
what story do you want to end on today? On mine?
This my second story. I don't care, so you want
me to go first?

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay, all right, everyone, before we dive in, don't forget
to follow a show wherever you're listening, and if you
enjoy we're doing, please take a moment to put your
phone down and ignore the text messages from your friends
in the group chat, and head on over to Apple.
I believe it's Apple is the place you can leave
us the five star review of everywhere else you can just

(06:23):
give us five star ratings. It helps more people find
the podcast and keeps us bringing more of the mysterious cases.
You know, a little bit of other news in the
world of Unsolved Couple. We are working on and by
we I mean I Sierra and working on a small

(06:45):
merch launch, and I've been working really hard to source
acid washed black shirts so that it looks like the
background of unsolved mysteries when the logo comes up. They
are not easy to find, and they're not always the
easiest to work with. And also find a high quality printer,
because if I'm going to put something out there that

(07:07):
I've designed, it's going to be comfy and cozy and
stylish and fun. I want it to look like a
shirt that someone found at like a vintage thrift store.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Found in their attic.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, that would be cool.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Okay, would be cool.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
All right, So I'm going to tell you a story
about a man name Elliott Ness Chicago, nineteen twenty nine.
What's happening in Chicago in nineteen twenty nine?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Ben Well? The Great Depression started in nineteen twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Rough times.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Also, you got prohibition, so you got gangsters.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Gangsters. Yeah, see what I'm talking about here, gangsters. Let
me tell you what, Tommy like that? You're going to
be sleeping with the fish like that? Sure, thank you.
Prohibition is taking over the country. And what happens anytime
the government decides to restrict something or ban something that

(08:15):
people have enjoyed for a long time. You're gonna get
underground railroads. No, that's well, that's a different underground railroad.
I mean kind of right. You get bootleg speakeasies. You
got people making pooch moonshine and they're sneaking and around.

(08:36):
Why did they call it bootleg? Did they actually fill
up their bootlegs? Does it strap their boots? I don't know.
That's a different day, Google.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
That's a story for another day.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
So, and Chicago was one of the cities where cops
and politicians are available for purchase. So I'm so glad
we got on top of that. And that's changed so
much today nationwide, politicians you definitely cannot be purchased. So
grateful we got on top of that guy's good job.

(09:09):
Us and I and one young treasure agent gets hired
to bust through the riots. His name is Elliott ness
And if this name sounds familiar for any legit Robert Stack,

(09:31):
Robert Stacks fans, this name should sound familiar because thirty
years later, Nessa's story would be turned into the TV
show The Untouchables, starring none other than Robert Stack himself. Yes,

(09:52):
are Robert Stack, My Robert was in this show. Long
before the trench Coat and the Fog Machine and the
back alley Ways of Unsolved Mysteries. Stack was out here
playing Ness on television and was nailing the role. And yes,

(10:12):
I did watch a handful of episodes. He is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Remember, Stack was a true gem. He was.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
The show is over the top. It was, I mean,
it's everything.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
It came out in the late fifties. I looked at
I looked at it. Yeah, I didn't watch any of it.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
It's in black and white, so it's very moody. They're
waving guns around left, right, and center. They I saw
a shooting scene where there's nothing's actually fired. You almost
just like hear the click of the gun and then
an off sound bang somewhere else, and then people acting
as if they died. It's that they get hit. Oh
it's classic. Okay, But today we're not actually talking about

(10:55):
bootleggers or Capone or any of the other things that
we think about during this error. We're talking about the
case that followed Ness. Long after his untouchable see what
I did there, fame failed him and that case became
his obsession, the one that he was never able to

(11:19):
solve and it's the story of the Butcher of Kingsbury
Run or is what I knew it as the Torso Killer. Dun, dun, dun.
Had you ever heard of the Torso Killer.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
No, I've never heard of this.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, Ben, we were watching it was in the living room.
Ben turns me, do you know what he's like? Before
they'd even said anything about the name, I was like, oh,
this is about the Torso Killer. I was like, ten
points gryffindor so Cleveland, Ohio. This is okay. Side note, guys,

(12:01):
I understand them trying to like Robert Stack, who he
played bring it in. He never could solve this case. YadA, YadA, YadA.
But that whole first part of the story doesn't really
have anything to do with what we're going over next.
So because we were in Chicago and now we're going
to Cleveland, Ohio, and we're in September of nineteen thirties.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
But they set it up that he was a law
enforcement guy. He did a lot.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
He wasn't even a law enforcement guy. Originally he was
a Treasury agent.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, but he got into law enforcement. He helped try
to clean up Chicago. He helped.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
But being in the treasury cleaning up Chicago. What kind
of crime was he working?

Speaker 2 (12:48):
But they got al capone.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
With money laundring, tax evasion, different than murder, true, had
a very different set of skills. What movie is that
from taken? I have a very different set of skills.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Don't think says different.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Set of skills, but unique. I have a very unique
set of skills. Thanksgiving me the look like, get on
with your story, lady, I got a text thread to
get back to, all right. So two mutilated bodies are
found in Kingsbury Run, a rough stretch of slums filled

(13:28):
with and I quote, hoboes, working poor and sex workers people.
The city didn't exactly rush to protect, and at first
police treated this like a routine double murder. They were

(13:48):
uncommon necessarily in this part of town. But then more
bodies turned up. By the summer of nineteen thirty six,
five victims, then six, and according to our author, because
we always have to have an author on hand, Steve Nickel,

(14:09):
the sixth victim set the city on fire. He said,
when number six turned up, it was like a bombshell.
The press and the public now had no doubt that
there was a serial killer out there, and by the
time the murder stopped, the body count would rise to twelve,

(14:31):
with only two victims ever identified, a man named Edward
he was a small time criminal, and Miss Florence, who
was a forty one year old sex worker. Every single
one of the victims had been decapitated, some of them

(14:53):
while still alive. Ooh, that's rough. The tabloids called the
unknown murderer, or quote, the butcher of Kingsbury Run. And
for Ness, this was not the kind of criminal he
knew how to hunt. Nevertheless, Ness dives in headfirst. He

(15:16):
studies the bodies, the cuts, the way they were dismembered.
Oscar Our, author later described Ness's early profile as followed.
Someone with medical knowledge. Someone had to be strong enough
to carry dead weight of bodies is a lot and

(15:37):
these were being moved all over the city. Yeah, yeah,
so they'd be strong. Someone who knew how to use
a scalpel. Could this be a doctor, a surgeon, butcher?
Those kinds of careers. So Ness decided that he was
going to search every shack and every building and Kingsbury Run.

(15:59):
But the snag in that was he didn't technically have
a ground grounds for a warrant, so a move by Ness,
he gets creative. His team decides to hook up with
the fire officials and launch a citywide quote safety inspection.

(16:23):
They spend a full week going through nearly every dwelling
in the district. They honestly expected to walk in and
find some laboratory of horrors, blood limbs, trophies, I mean,
a whole dexter scene going on, anything. But this search
turns up nothing, and this only drives Nests to become

(16:46):
more obsessed. Nexts Nest targets every single doctor, nurse, surgeon,
hospital worker in Cleveland with medical training. Hundreds of people
are questioned, detained, and put under surveillance. Nothing. Then victim
eleven and twelve turn up, one of them placed just

(17:10):
two hundred yards from Ness's own office window.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Sounds like it was taught them.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Oh yeah, that there was no way that was coincidence.
So now we've got a cat and mouse game going on.
The pressure on Ness explodes when the city is demanding results.
They want to be able to put a name to
a villain and stop the killings. So Ness reports to

(17:40):
the only tactic he a resort to, the only tactic
he knows will make an immediate impact. He raids on
the quote hobo jungles of Kingsbury run and more than
sixty transients are rounded up. So I looked up there
is some pictures of this thing. When they say this

(18:03):
jungle or this area this they called it a shanty town.
It literally when I first was watching, I just thought
it was just the poor part of town, right, people
living in brownstones and it's very meager. No, this was
like legitimately an open piece of land that had like
an alleyway sort of thing, and they had built like

(18:23):
tarps and cardboard and wooden shacks to live in, and
they were like all connected. So it was like this
weird sort of internal city within a city. And it
you know, there was a lot of homelessness and drug
use and things going on, mental health crisis, all of

(18:44):
those things happening, and it was just kind of ignored
and left to itself. And so he comes in, rounds
up sixty different people and then the raids unfortunately do nothing.
No one from that is able to be tied to anything,

(19:06):
which I just find it's interesting that they rated that.
But yet he also thought that this was someone that
might be like a doctor or you had to have
some education I can't imagine a doctor or someone in
that than living in a shanty towns.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You're moving on.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, so even more desperate, he goes one step further
and orders the entire shantytown to be burned to the ground.
So what happens after nothing? The killer is still nowhere

(19:45):
in sight. This did nothing, but there were no more murders. Yeah.
Finally NAS focuses in on one man and we get
a little bit of background, a man who in nineteen
thirty eight voluntarily checked himself into a mental institution. And

(20:06):
I don't know this, but I wonder if someone has
been admitted to a mental institution, either by choice or
by being core ordered or whatever. I don't know if
you can then go in and arrest that person. That
was just a thought I had, like, was this a
calculated move? Potentially? I don't know if any of those

(20:27):
are true. That's Sierra speculation. But according to our author
Ness believes that this is the guy, because after this
man is institutionalized, the killings abruptly came to an end.
Ness privately told people he fits the profile, and I

(20:48):
am certain this is the man. But the problem is
is that this suspect suspect came from a socially predominant family.
I went on to go and find out who this
guy was. I believe he had cousins and a couple
uncles who were like high up in state and federal
leadership in the in the government. If Nest accused him

(21:10):
publicly without any solid, effident evidence, he could be sued
for libel. His career, already shaky at this point, would
officially be over. So he stayed silent, but the suspect didn't.
After his commitment, Nest started to receive postcards taunting strange

(21:31):
a cryptic wording and signed by a patient in the hospital.
And there was a couple of the postcards. Event said
that they referenced the murders directly. So was it the killer?

(21:53):
Was it someone just messing with this guy? To be honest,
we don't know. Elliott ness would later tell a reporter quote,
the case has been solved, but no charges whoever filed,
no confession ever surfaced, and Nessa's political career never recovered.
He ran for mayor and tragically lost by a landslide.

(22:17):
At that point, he decides to pack up and leave
Cleveland and never come back, and just kind of slipped
into the quiet side of society, and that's where unsolved
mystery leaves us.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
All right, is there an update?

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well, kind of, it's unsolved. Yeah, it's still unsolved. Nearly
ninety years later, the Torso murders remained one of America's
most haunting cold cases. To date, only three victims have
actually ever been named. Because these people lived in the
conditions and in the shantytown, they didn't have they weren't

(22:57):
known to people, and it didn't seem like their family
were looking for them. So in twenty twenty four, Cleveland
medical examiner doctor Thomas Gilson announced plans to exhume several
unidentified victims in this case to an attempt a DNA
identification through genetic genealogy in partnership with the DNA Doe project.

(23:21):
That was announced in twenty twenty four. There's not been
any updates on it, but that that is a plan.
Some investigators believe that the real victim count could be
far higher, closer to twenty or even forty if you
spanned Cleveland, Youngtown and Pittsburgh. It seemed like there was
also a handful of murders with decapitations that went on

(23:43):
through that time. The lead suspect assumed as of today
and we can't be sued for Liabel because he's no
longer with us, is a man named doctor Francis Sweeney,
which is crazy because of what Ben Sweeney Todd.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Sweeney Todd.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yes, the butcher who it's an amazing musical ten out
of ten would recommend everyone going seeing it. The Butcher
of Fleet Street, it was his name, which I don't
know if those are connected at all. Anyways, a physician
who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and was actually interrogated

(24:26):
at one point in nineteen thirty eight. And yes, he
was the same man who signed those postcards, who checked
himself into a mental institution and passed away in nineteen
sixty four. But here's the truth. Even if he was
the killer, there's very little hard evidence that ties him

(24:46):
to the crime, so officially it's still unsolved.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Officially.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Okay, whoa mike check. All right, everyone get comfortable. Ben's
getting his notes out.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Notes out. Are you ready? Yeah, we're ready to move
on to the next lie.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
I mean, you don't know anything about these cases. To me,
it's just very much along the lines of lore and
the fact like it reminds me of Jack Ripper and
kind of stuff like that. So yeah, I mean I
didn't include some my notes. The bodies were like drained
of blood, Like it was crazy what was happening. And

(25:32):
it seemed like doctor Sweeney had a colleague who worked
in the mortuary who testified or at least under interrogation
at one point that Sweeney liked to come over and
like mess with cadavers for quote unquote medical research or something.
So there is a belief that maybe that's where they

(25:55):
were being kept, because you would have had the tools
to dismember and drain them of blood. Ben does not like,
Ben does not like talking about well yeah, yeah, and
I as time Ben in this. The newspapers back then
were wildly different and printed pictures, and I was reading

(26:17):
through several news articles, old ones and stuff like that,
and one of them had pictures of severed heads and
I just wasn't expecting that because you would not see
that today. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot. So I
think at the end of the day, we'll probably never
saw it. But it would be great if they could
put a name to some of these people, because it's

(26:37):
really sad to think that someone died in a horrifically
tragic and terrifying manner, and even in death, no one
knows who they are. That makes me sad.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, So okay, Ben, Okay, you're right.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Ben's got an interesting one for us.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
And I went on a roller coaster with this one.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
You sure did.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
I did. I got up. I stood up and walked
around the living room one time because I was angry.
All right, Okay.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
July ninth, nineteen eighty nine, We're gonna get told the
story of Patricia Stallings and her family. She rushes her
three month old son Ryan to the hospital. She goes
and her son is having trouble breathing, is very sick.
She goes in. The child is admitted into the ICU,

(27:29):
and they say that he'd been having gastric distress pretty
much since he was born, so.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Which a lot of babies do.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, yeah, so, but this had gotten really bad. They
go on the hospital he's admitted, so the parents are there.
They said they rented a room there.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
I guess, yeah, that must have been a thing. Yeah,
I don't think that's the case anymore.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
You sleeping Listen. We're going to try to take care
of do whatever. We can just sit and wait. They do.
Three days go by where they're continuing at the hospital.
Their son is continuing there and being cared for, and
doctors come in and like, all right, son's going to
be okay, it's going to live. But we did find

(28:18):
out what was going on. They say that he had
been poisoned and they tested ethanol, glicole, which is in
a freeze, and acetone, which is nail polish. Supposedly that's
what they get in their test. Yeah, so they asked like,

(28:38):
do you guys have that stuff at the house, and
even the parents, like they're interviewing both her and they were.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Young, and I think they were just thinking if they
answered these questions, well, they say yeah, yeah, I mean yeah,
we have.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Have ana freeze, like I've worked on the vehicle my house.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah okay.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
So they end up staying there for a little bit longer,
and they even say, like, now, it's kind of weird
because they can't they're never in the room alone. There's
always a couple of nurses or a doctor. But the
next day they're interviewed by the police, and police come
in and they question them independently, and due to that,

(29:22):
they take the child and put the child in foster care.
So finally, when he is obviously out of the hospital,
now the parents are not allowed to see their son.
They say they're only allowed to see him once a
week on Thursdays.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Like one hour an hour.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, and they say like this was obviously this was
hard for them, but that was their you know, like
I don't know, they talked, Look, that's was the best
day of the week, the best hour of the week.
That's all they look forward to was that hour. This
goes on for five weeks. Then August thirty first, during

(30:02):
the sixth visit, Patricia is left alone briefly with Ryan.
So they get there. During their visitation, something happens. Everyone's
out of the room, she's with the child for a
short period of time, and three days later, Ryan becomes

(30:24):
violently ill again and has rushed to the hospital. He's
not in his parents' care. He's now at the foster home.
They take him to the hospital and they diagnose him
again with poisoning same things and a freeze and ACIDTNE. So,
of course Patricia is now arrested right.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Away, Yeah, I mean fair, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
She's arrested. She's charged with At that time, she was
just charged with assault and poisoning our child. She's in prison.
Her son takes a turn for the worse. This was
September seventh. He's placed on life support and doesn't and
that doctors come in and tell the father listen because

(31:15):
he is able to go to.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, they're allowing the dad to go visit him at
the hospital.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
David is the father's name, and it is the dad
tells the story of holding his child. They pretty much
say he's not going to make it, so he just
goes in.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
And holds He shares this on the interview and yeah,
it's gut wrenching to watch.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
It is terrible. He holds his son for three hours
and then he finally passes away. So that is uh, yeah,
it was. It was terrible. It was not a fun
story listening to it now. So obviously he tells his
wife he's sitting in jail. He even says like they

(32:03):
would he wouldn't even let her out to go to
the funeral, obviously because they think that she just killed him.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yeah. I mean, she's in prison for inflicting this upon
her child.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
So now they upgraded her charges to first degree murder. Yeah,
now she is facing life in prison, so well, not
too long after she's in jail. Ye, she's being health Yeah,
she's being charged. She hasn't gone to trial yet. Yeah,
she finds out she's pregnant. So February twenty seventh, nineteen

(32:38):
ninety so we're going to be a few months, four
or five months after she's been arrested and her son,
her first son, has died. She gives birth to DJ
Stallings Junior. So unfortunately, they don't even let the dad
have custody of this boy. The state takes custody right

(33:01):
away and places him in foster care. But as Robert
Steck tells us, this might have been a blessing. I'm
surprised because two weeks after DJ was born, he shows
symptoms almost identical to Ryan's. He's taken to the hospital
and he's tested, and now the hospital kind of looks

(33:25):
at it a little different way, and they diagnose him
with a rare genetic disorder called m m A. I'm
gonna I would try.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
I would love to hear it.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
So malic acidemia.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
I bet that's pretty close. So it's probably not very good,
but way better than how I would have read it.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
So it's something where it prevents proper metabolism of proteins
and it can produce compound that resemble ethanine glacose in
lab tests. So because it doesn't do something I don't know.
I'm not a doctor, you're not. No, I'm not. And

(34:13):
so somehow it can say that it can produce those
types of tests in lab tests that shows that he
was poisoned, but they were able to diagnose them with that.
So unsolved mysteries actually brings in a doctor.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Who like specializes in this, right, or he's just they
just say a third party, he's not involved in the case,
or he hasn't he's not connected today, he.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Has some he does have some expertise supposedly in this,
and he pretty much he talks and says like, yeah,
like this is very rare, especially as doctors. A lot
of doctors have never seen it before.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
And it presents it just like poisoning. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
He even says a lot of first because it is
a genetic to sort of it's saying, and it's passed
on from the parents. He even says a lot of
times first cases are missed.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, and it does.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
It's not till the second case in a family that
it's it's been able to be identified. According to him,
this is uh, doctor Stephen Seberbomb.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
What a great last name, cedar Bomb.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
So and he but he does it can be misdiagnosed
as poisoning because it could show like she.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Is wildly crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, So obviously, as this happens, they do release Patricia
to reevaluate the case and they look at it. This
is the this is wild. So they still don't let
her see her son. We of that, but they're looking
at it. They interview the district attorney and he says, yeah, listen,

(36:08):
we know that this boy was diagnosed with this and
that can happen, but we don't believe that is relevant.
So they go to the judge and bring they they
bring forth six what they say, expert witnesses, doctors, medical
people to say no, it's not that it was poisoning.

(36:31):
Her attorney doesn't bring forth any medical.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
So I'm going to guess he was a court appointed attorney.
And I love you so much that you think that
it is crazy that a DA can become so blind
to facts, because unfortunately, to date, this still this kind

(36:55):
of behavior happens ultimoere you've got scientific evidence that, hey,
maybe we got something wrong. Let's double check before we
put a human being behind bars for life. And they
cannot absorb that information because it comes down to unfortunately,

(37:16):
typically lawyers are very competitive. They like their numbers and
having like a high track record, and this doesn't look
good to make a mistake. And so when we were
watching this, I wasn't surprised actually at all to hear that.
A DA was like, yeah, facts don't care about your feelings.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
So they go to the judge because they don't want
this being fourth and I thought it was interesting. He says,
we didn't want this being brought up because we didn't
want the jury to be swayed and put on a
wild goose chase.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
That's your defense.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
But I was like, yeah, but also, isn't the whole
point of a trial to bring forth all the facts
and let the jury decide. But so the judge sides
with the prosecution and no mention of DJ the younger
brother now or his diagnosis of MMA are allowed in trial.

(38:14):
So with that being said, they have a pretty open
and shut case. So they go to trial in January
of nineteen ninety one and all this stuff is brought forth.
That prosecutor says, listen, she was left alone for three
to eight minutes. The husband then comes on and says,
absolutely not. She was only alone for forty five minutes.

(38:34):
And she wasn't even the one that fed him. I
grabbed the bottle out of the bag.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, he says. All he did was walk his parents
out of the door, like yeah, down the hallway, amen,
and the baby was being fussy.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
See, so he grabbed a bottle that had been prepared
by the foster parents out of the bag and the
child was fed. But prosecution doesn't believe that believes that
she was left alone with the child that's when she
poisoned the child. And they say that they tested all
the bottles and one of the bottles had traces of

(39:10):
anti freeze or whatever the medical term for it is.
So that was their defense. So guess what happens. She
is found guilty and sentenced to life in present. So
she was sentenced on March fourth, nineteen ninety one. So anyways,

(39:34):
that is that. So they they're coming on in some
mysteries to present this to them because they don't believe,
well they believe that son whatever.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
They said that this was her final appeal, which didn't
seem like timeline. Yeah, I was going to.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Say, they're appealing to the things, but she had she
had just been.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Sent That's what I was. They said that this was
her final appeal in un mysteries Like man, that timeline
doesn't really add up. But yeah, so me, it's I
really struggled this because you guys, I will be honest.
When I was first watching this, I was like, Yeah,
if there's Anna freeze in the bottle, she's left alone

(40:17):
with him, it doesn't take long to mix something into
a bottle for poisoning. And you're telling me this kid
was great for five weeks and then she spends forty
five seconds with him and then he's sick immediately after,
which it ended up being three days.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Well, and that was it. They brought that up that
they said, listen and even that the the other doctor
that that also mischress poisons wouldn't have taken three days. Yeah,
but the prosecutor even addressed it. He goes, listen, we
just think that the foster parents didn't recognize the symptoms
and it took them that long to take them in.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Okay, but I was fired up, like this woman deserves
to be behind bars. If she did these things, you
were a terrible human being.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
I al did think it was funny that the prosecutor said,
we don't want to hear. We don't want the people
to hear about the diagnosis of MMA, because they might
go He literally says, they might go on a wild
goose chase. But you go on a wild goose chase.
Of saying, well, yeah, it might have been.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Three days, a huge assumption.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
You're making assumptions to prove your point, but you won't
let any other I liked. I mean, so, yeah, all right,
you're ready for your update. Yes, well, and some mysteries
kind of updated us on this, Yeah, but I had
do you have some more updates? But this is solved,
solved in the way of Robert said, comes on and

(41:37):
says like within minutes they get calls from physicians, doctors
who are experts in MMA. It's like, yeah, yeah, we
think this.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
And it's a genetic disorder.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, take disorder so literally, with only a few months
July of nineteen ninety one, so a doctor come forth.
They had blood frozen from this child, right, and it
was tested by him and there was also a doctor

(42:10):
at Yale okay, lice this and they tested it and
said yeah, he had MMA.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Wait so if they had this blood frozen this whole
time and they wanted to rule out the MMA theory,
why didn't they get the blood tested for that before
a trial?

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Because they had doctors that said no, because they had
doctors that said that they had tested it and they'd
found this, Yeah that in it. Okay, So but he
tested another person testsed, so she and they petitioned for
her to have a new trial because they said that
she wasn't represented properly.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yes, she wasn't allowed to actually get her defense.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
So in July of I want to say, nineteen ninety one,
she was granted a new trial. So she's released from prison.
By September, all of this is in motion. These doctors,
all these people are getting involved. These experts test the
blood and say, yeah, it actually wasn't They said they

(43:18):
found propenic acid. I don't know I could say that
not not anafreeze in his blood that led them to MMA.
So he was diagnosed with it. So by September of
that year, the DA comes out and says we're dropping
all charges yep.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
And I'll give him for it is.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, I will apologize this to her publicly right there
and says you are sorry.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
I cannot think of the last time I've seen a
prosecutor do that.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
That was and then right then and there they say,
you have custody of your something. Now this boy is
a year.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
And a half old, which, in all honesty, this woman,
this is a miracle that getting locked up in prison
is one thing, but trying to prove your innocence post conviction,
even with mountains of evidence, can take years, years and

(44:13):
years and years to get through. We've had people locked
up for thirty plus years to find out that they
were innocent, and they've been fighting for that from day
one with evidence it ended up actually being later allowed.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
My next story is going to be that.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah. So the fact that this woman, by some sort
of miracle, and maybe it was the press, maybe it
wasn't of this was able to be arrested, convicted or charged,
convicted and locked up for life and then out of
prison within like what two years?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Is she did a year and a half?

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Wild?

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, she was in prison for a year and a half. Yeah,
And yeah, I guess yet almost two years? Yeah, So
and that that was tough and at that time I
had to bury a child.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, a child that she didn't even get to say
goodbye to. They took that away from her. And here's
the thing, I thought she was guilty when she's interviewed.
You guys, her behavior in her interview. Did you notice
that the dad is emotional. The dad is the emotional
and he is crying, he's upset.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
When they talked to her about when her child that
she gets really upset and cries.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
To me, she just seemed very that seemed almost I
don't know, I thought with just the very little evidence,
obviously the unsolved mystery gave us, I could see how
a jury, since they were not allowed to learn the
full thing, convicted her.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, I mean obviously if yeah, allowing that and.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
So I can support and see where if this person
murdered their child, you you don't get to say goodbye
and you don't get to attend their funeral. It's got
wrenching to think how this got this wrong and took
that away from this woman.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
So I mean they did.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Sue, Yeah, I mean rightfully so.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
And supposedly won several million dollars.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Good for them.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
So unfortunately I looked them up. It appears they were
divorced at some point. It's a lot to go through
and more tragedy. DJ the son passed away on September seventeenth,
twenty thirteen.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
He lives longer than I would have expected. With that.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
I tried to find how what I couldn't. Oh, okay,
So I don't.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Know, because they did say something in Unsolved Mysteries that
they weren't sure what his life expectancy with MMA was
going to be.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
I will say this. There was a picture at least
of him. He looked like a healthy individual. But I
don't know. I have no idea, So I can't make
any assumptions. I have no idea. Let's not say how.
And unfortunately the father passed away April thirtieth, twenty nineteen.
All it says is from a lengthy illness.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Okay, so that was said.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah. I tried to find Patricia to see what she
was up to. She doesn't have a big footprint out there.
Her case is very well documented because obviously it was extreme.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Yeah, this is the case that Crime and Coffee covered.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah. Well yeah, there's also been studies in different like
other universities have used this case is like massive injustice, absolutely,
you know, obviously, but so but her her case is
only documented on what happened, what has happened to her
since clearly she has gone through some tragedy has now,

(47:52):
you know, So my heart goes out to all of them.
She's now had to bury two sons and spent years
in present. So well, that is a that's got to
be well.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
I hope whatever she's doing, she's found some comfort and
happiness in her life.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah, I hope, Yeah, I hope things got.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Better for him. Yeah, And my heart breaks for the
tragedy and the loss of bearing a child's not easy.
I mean, it's unnatural. We're not supposed to his parents.
And then adding having to do that twice while you
still are here on the earth, I can't imagine.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
No, so tough.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
But that's a story that is a very but solved.
It is solved, and it was interesting. So actually, as
I was watching it, I thought a lot about the
Susan Powell case, because Susan Powell is missing out of
the Utah area and was married and had two sons

(48:52):
and she went missing and the prime suspect was the
husband and he was actually allowed very limited. He lost
the ability to be around his kids without supervised visits,
and that I mean, there's multiple podcasts on this. That
is a very complex issue. But the grandparents had a

(49:17):
hot fight, really hard. That there is a man, the
prime suspect has been named as a person of interest
of murdering or having something to do with the disappearance
of his wife. How safe are the children with this
person now? If it turns out he had nothing to
do with it. That's a really hard thing to have

(49:39):
removed a child from a biological loving parent, But what's
the alternative that you know? And that case ended tragically,
you know, he took the children's life and his own
life before anything could be solved. And to this day,
we still have no idea where Susan Pal's body is.

(50:00):
And so that's what I was thinking when I was
watching this, when they were so strict about it, I
thought it was very interesting at least these people at
the beginning when they suspected and they they didn't know
about mma at first, So all signs pointed to that
this baby was being harmed by one of the parental

(50:21):
units in this family to remove the child. And it's
just a very complicated issue on how do we keep
people safe and at what cost does that? I don't know.
Those were just my thoughts and I was watching this
and well, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
But the law enforcement is doing what the medical world
is telling medically. Absolutely, this child is being poisoned. Yeah,
so if a child is being poisoned, that means a
crime is committed, which means that is where law enforcement
has to step in when a child is killed.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I'm not saying that law enforcement did. I don't the
miscarriage of justice was the DA.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, I'm just saying, like, that's how like all of this,
you have multiple entities involved, and.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
No, I appreciated seeing that they were quick to go.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Into that unfortunately. I mean, if you want my espinion,
I just think it was the medical world was just
trying to do with it. They were trying to treat
this child, find out what happened. The test that they
ran told them this thing, so they were following that.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
It was just really bad luck.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, with tragedy attached to it. And if that woman
had never gotten pregnant exactly, we'd still be behind bars
today and we'd be having a completely different conversation talking
about this. We'd be talking about the woman who poisoned
her infinite child. She would be famous for that.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yeah. So I mean it's just it was just bad
luck all the way around, and everyone was trying to
do what was right.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Yeah, And like I said, I think unfortunately the only
misstep in this was the da for some reason, burying
his head in the sand at what would have been
her only defense.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah. I mean, obviously, I think everyone probably has a problem,
especially looking back now, Like once they found out about
the second son, that should have at least opened up
another investigation, and they should have dug in deeper and
brought in different people and retested everything.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
And that's probably one of the elements of this that
is studied to this day, reminding us in the world
of justice and stuff, you have to you have to
be aware of that.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
They learned from that. It's like, oh, listen, like once
new evidence comes forth, we definitely need to see where
it fits deeper and again like take us take.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Find although the evidence instead of forcing me things to
fit where you want them to exactly. All right, Well,
I've got a missing person case for you, guys. A
man named Odin Gordon Odin was born in nineteen sixty eight.
When he was eight years old, he was diagnosed with

(53:18):
a minor learning disability, nothing extreme at the time, just
enough that he needed a little extra help and support.
But at age twelve a shift happened. Odin began to
withdraw into himself. He started pulling away from friends, from activities,
and completely disconnecting from human interaction altogether. By eighteen, he

(53:43):
was almost entirely isolated and afraid. It saysn't here he
was afraid to communicate. Now, this was what he was
born in sixty eight, so we're looking at seventy or
early eighties. It seemed to me as if maybe he
had transitioned into nonverbal, which with autism can happen at

(54:09):
a variety of ages. We have a dear friend whose
son started to become nonverbal I think around age three,
and I've known of other cases through that friend that
sometimes nonverbal happens after puberty in different things. So it's

(54:30):
hard because it says he isolated, was afraid to communicate. Again,
we don't know, but my guess might be something along
those lines, which goes into the next part. A year later,
doctors confirmed that a diagnosis of autism, which was really

(54:51):
new term or new understanding for doctors at the time.
His mother, though, was very devoted and loved her son
very much. I mean she was likely his full time
caregiver for most of his life and was very close
with them, and she wanted him somewhere safe, somewhere structured,

(55:12):
and somewhere that could help him open up and get
to explore things instead of just shutting him down. I
also read he was hugely bullied in school, like to
the point of just horrific levels.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
It breaks my heart.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
I know it breaks my heart too, and I think
this mom wanted to just give him some sense of
community where he could feel safe and have a connection
with other people that might be like minded unto him.
So she enrolls him in a facility in Greenfield, New Hampshire,

(55:50):
a therapeutic farm where young adults with diagnoses of mental
and emotional and cognitive disabilities are able to work, socialize
and receive full time care, including counseling, and for a
while it seemed to work. According to the staff, he

(56:12):
adjusted well. He even began communicating or at least repeating
words and having some sort of some level of talking
with some of It seems like that some of the
employees were able to have some sort of conversation with him,
and this was really rewarding for his mom to hear.

(56:37):
She was excited. But then May twelfth, nineteen eighty nine happens.
Six weeks after arriving at the farm. Odin was outside
working with a group of other residents. This was routine,
nothing unusual. He at some point wandered away. In my

(57:03):
side research, I did find out that he was really
bothered by flies. He didn't like them landing on him.
He didn't like him touching. It was one of his
ticks or his obsession, like that was his thing, and
I get it. I can't stand him either. And wherever

(57:24):
they were working, it was a warm day and there
were flies around because they were probably sweating and working
in the farms, right, and so he had either express
to somebody, But I don't think an employee that he
was going to go sit in the car and wait
because he was done with the flies. And so his

(57:46):
exit wasn't dramatic. There was no fight, there was no struggle.
He didn't storm off in any sort of way. He
mentioned that he was gonna go walk to the car
and sit down, and then the staff starts to realize
at some point that he's not with the group and

(58:08):
calling the police, and they bring in bloodhounds, and the
bloodhounds are actually able to track his scent for three
miles and then it ends at Highway thirty one. Authorities,
because of this, believed that maybe he had been picked
up by a passing motorist, and that theory gained traction

(58:30):
when a man later came forward saying that he had
actually picked up a hitchhiker matching this young man's description
at Roots two and twelve in Finchburg, Massachusetts, on the
same night that he had disappeared. He said that he
dropped him off at a Finchburg donut shop and he

(58:53):
positively idd this kid from a photo. There was a
handful of other reported sighting, some more promising than others.
The most recent tip that had come in was around
January nineteen ninety, but then after that nothing so unsolved.

(59:14):
Mysteries kind of gives us a little bit of like,
because they're looking for this man, this is a missing person,
so they give us a little bit of background on this.
It's originally from New York, and investigators believe that he
may have been trying to travel back, searching for something familiar,
maybe looking for his old home. His autism does and

(59:35):
did make things very difficult for him to communicate. He
often spoke in whispers and would more mutter to himself
than actually communicate, and the conversations were in short burst
with broken sentences and long stretch of silence, and with
very limited vocabulary. His posture was noticeably hunched. He actually

(01:00:01):
had been born with scoliosis. He had black hair, brown eyes,
and at the time he had a mustache and a
sparse beard, And anyone who meet him would have known
right away or very quickly that he was someone with
some sort of special needs. And everyone just wants to

(01:00:24):
know if he's okay. He's got his mother and his
grandmother who are looking for him, and they're just concerned
at this point that they're on unsolved mysteries that he's
potentially spent decades wandering around as a missing person with Really,
they said at one point, and I forgot to write
it down what his actual emotional intelligence was. And like,

(01:00:45):
if you think about let's say an eight year old,
you know, or a six year old excuse me about
my mic trying to like place them in a world
and say hey, get back home.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yeah, And so that's kind of where NSUL Mystery leaves us.
They give us a few photos. None of the photos
are great. We didn't have iPhones back then and taking
a million pictures. There's I think there's three or four
pictures of him, and asking if anyone has seen him too,
please call in. All right, update, Okay, As of today,

(01:01:24):
he would be fifty seven years old and he is
still considered missing and the case is still open.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
That's too bad.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah, so I actually found his information. There has not
been a confirmed sighting of him since nineteen ninety, no
traceable leads, but the family is still hoping. France ers.
Here is what we do know. He was confirmed from
the man at the donut shop who did identify him
through a photo. And it wasn't like it had been

(01:01:53):
months or weeks since he'd seen It was very recently
picked up a man hitchhiking or a man on the
side of the road. I'm off at a donut shop
in Finchburg, Massachusetts. It's possible, like I said, he was
trying to get to New York and that he has
very noticeable displays of autism. Speech and pattern behavior of

(01:02:15):
soft voices, long pauses, as well as a you know,
a very noticeable hunch from his scoliosis. And this is
why we do share these stories because someone out there
might remember having some encounter with him, someone might have
seen him or hold a piece of information that could
finally bring him home. His page is still very active

(01:02:36):
on the DOE Network, which is a huge nonprofit for
missing people. And if you have any information about the
disappearance of this young man, you are asked to contact
New Hampshire State Police Troopy Attention Detective Mark and the

(01:02:57):
phone number for that is six three six to eight
eight four seven seven. You can also email missing Persons
at d OS dot nh dot gov and the case
number is B eighty nine dash zero zero one sorry

(01:03:20):
zero zero Sorry, I'm gonna start that all over again
because my dyslexia just caught up with me. Case number
is B eighty nine zero zero two one zero and
I will post his photos as well on our social
media sad.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah, let's too bad.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, I mean, what do you do in this incident?
If there was a man saying you have to go
on that that he dropped him off at a donut shop.
You have to hope that he's out there somewhere. He
wouldn't be quite that old yet, but I don't know.
Breaks my heart. Yeah, Yeah, So all right, Ben has

(01:04:10):
a crazy story for us, but crazy an interesting one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
I love stories about potential corruption and inside druma.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
All right, I'm going to tell you a story of
Michael Frankie be introduced. He becomes a pretty well known
figure because of a New Mexico prison riot where thirty
three inmates were killed in nineteen.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Eighty Had you ever heard of that before?

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Yeah, But he's brought in to help like reform the
prison system in New Mexico, and supposedly he does a
really good job. So that's kind of where he comes
into the scene as a pretty well known figure. So
in nineteen eighty seven, the oreg governor recruits him to
come and kind of do the same to reform and

(01:05:05):
clean up the prison and corrections problem whatever they thought
was the problem at that time. So he comes in
and he starts investigating the prison systems here in Oregon,
and he starts investigating what I guess he says, he's

(01:05:28):
coming into what drug trafficking, corruption, theft, They interview one guard,
and he pretty much says like, yeah, I mean they
were interviewed, they were bringing Supposedly, guards were bringing in
drugs in their lunchboxes, and he goes and if it
wasn't nailed down, it was getting stolen.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Supposedly, it's not good guys.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
He said, like his superiors told him, hey, keep quiet
and you know, or you're going to find another job.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Can you imagine?

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
That's what he says.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
I know, but still, like we've all been in maybe
not this big of a situation where you're just like
told to look the other way and you're like, I
don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know that's this specific.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I also would suck at stuff like this because I can't.
I just can't. I can't. I'm not, I can't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
So Frankie starts investigating this stuff and in late nineteen
eighty eight, he supposedly is making a breakthrough. According they
interview his brothers and his sister in law and they
think he has he's creating this big case on They

(01:06:54):
had conversation with him and he's telling them, hey, listen,
I got this case. It's going to blow open and
heads are going to roll in this corruption. All this
stuff goes really high.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
It was way high up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
They don't tell him. He doesn't tell him how or where,
but it leads high up in supposedly the Oregon government.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
So organ government.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
The sister in law comes in and says like she
had a conversation with him on January thirteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
and he says he's about to bring this forth this
month and heads are going to roll. It's going to
be big. So January sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, around six
point fifty pm, they have a staff meeting. That's really

(01:07:44):
late for a staff meeting.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Well, when you want stuff done off the book, sometimes
you do it after hours.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
So they i or they're done with the staff meeting.
He speaks with an employee and that's pretty much at
the end of his day. Seven twenty two correction employees
come out and they see his car, doors open, lights
on in the car, but nothing crazy. They're like, what's

(01:08:14):
going on? What is this? They look, they don't see him.
They go back inside and tell some people, hey, like
this doesn't look right. Something's not right, And they look
for Frankie and can't find them. So they contact a
couple other people, they're superiors, and they come in and
start searching the place. Supposedly, they get there at eight
thirty and they search the building tell nine thirty and

(01:08:40):
don't find him.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Nothing to be found.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Twelve forty five am, a security guard finds Frankie's body.
He has been stabbed and he's on a side porch
of the building and a plain glass window on the
side door has been shattered, and nothing else around, no briefcase,

(01:09:04):
no nothing. So obviously police come in. They start doing
an investigation and they start interviewing witnesses, and witnesses a
bunch of witnesses say they saw it happen. Okay, this
I found really weird.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Yeah okay.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
They supposedly interview homeless people and known drug addicts in
the area, and one of them says they saw it.
They saw a guy with the name of Frank Gables
breaking into his car, into Frankie's car. Frankie comes up

(01:09:46):
and it's like, what are you doing. They get into
a fight and Gables stabs them.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
And then rips his briefcase away and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Takes his briefcase and runs away, and they think that
Frankie climbed onto the side porch, broke a plane last
window to try to get into the building, and died
there on the porch. And this supposedly all happened at
like seven o'clock.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
In the evening, Yeah, because.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
They slowly got done with the staff, meaning at six
fifty and at seventy goes to leave and this all happens.
So they arrest Gable and they charge him with murder. Murder.
The family doesn't think so this.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Kid is charged with murder based on a drug person and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
On multiple witnesses at.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
A handful of five to seven five to seven homeless
people also known the drug dealers in the area that
we're hanging out together right outside of the federal buildings.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
I don't know who all these people are. They don't
They don't idently understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
But doesn't that seem like a crazy thing to go
off of to convict people on or to charge people.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Are not that and they seem to be credible.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
So who were these stable people hanging out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
With It's outside of a government building. Yeah, so I
don't know. You don't find out a lot about that.
They but they they get him in charge him.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
You guys are going to find out and if you
haven't already in this podcast of ours, who is a
conspiracy theorist and who is not.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
I'm not saying I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just
I'm stating the fact that where if we can't assume
that all of them are, I have more information about
these people and it's going to come in my update.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Okay, they are just sit and wait.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
I'm just saying I don't know who if all of them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Are that, Okay, I will patiently wait.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
But that was what they they said originally that the
first person to finger him was that finery. So okay.
The family doesn't think that it went this way of
how the police are saying, and they're getting upset because

(01:12:14):
they don't feel that the police are doing a good investigation.
Because Frankie had made multiple statements that he was doing
this investigation. It was big and it went high up.
They think there's a conspiracy and they find some inconsistencies
and supposedly what the police are saying happened. Yeah, when

(01:12:34):
they say he had a car alarm, why was the
car why didn't the car line go off? If he
broke into his car and he comes out and sees
he's broken into his car. Why was the alarms?

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
This fair question?

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Also, there was no blood within a hundred feet of
his car. If he was stabbed right there, why was
there no blood. Also, if people search the building between
eight thirty and nine thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
And he was on the front porch and he broke.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
A window and he was on the front porch, why
was that? Why was he not seen?

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Great questions.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Supposedly, other witnesses said that they saw people running from
the building at like ten something. The family thinks that
Frankie went out to his car as he pulls up
to his car because tuesdays, it was a Tuesday, that
was a staff being. That was the only time he'd

(01:13:33):
left consistently, So they think they know when he was
going to leave. As he goes to leave, they abducts
him for some reason, and then they bring him back
to the building late at night, maybe to get the
evidence and all the stuff that for his investigation, and

(01:13:56):
a scuffle ensues and they stab him and kill him there,
and that's why he wasn't found at nine thirty. That
they think that happened around ten, between ten and midnight
at some point, and that's what happened. So that's the
family's theory. Yeah, and they even interview like a journalist

(01:14:17):
who's looking at this it's like, yeah, there's a lot
of this stuff that's suspects.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
That's not adding.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Says he even has reports from people that shortly after
this guy's murder, like bags and bags of stuff was shredded, redded.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Yeah, that's out of the crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
So all right, that's pretty much where on Sultan. Yeah,
leaves us.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
The man that they convict a guy right of his.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
So yeah, yeah, they that Gables guy was convicted and
he was convicted forrest murder and sentenced to life in prison.
So I'm trying to pull up my notes on what
happened because this kind of does he.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Get complicated a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Okay, so he's convicted trying to find June of nineteen
ninety one, but he says I was innocent. Twenty nineteen,
his conviction is overturned.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
WHOA.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
All of the witnesses have recanted. They all recanted and
said no. I read an article that supposedly a man
trying to find his name, but a man had confessed

(01:15:52):
to the murder and had said like yeah, but the
police didn't follow through with that. I don't know why,
but either way, all the witnesses recanted the they the
state appealed that in twenty nineteen, it went through, went

(01:16:13):
all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme
Court decided not to hear the case, so went back
to the appellate courts, and in twenty twenty two it
was upheld and he was all of the charges were
thrown out with prejudice.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
So he oh, he can't ever be convicted or it
cannot be ever brought up again.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Judge said, his everything is to be expunged, Like, Nope,
absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Why smell a government cover up?

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
You guys supposedly that was what I was saying. There
was one guy that supposedly had confessed and had told
the police, had told family members, and that a lot
of stuff and I think what happens, A lot of
stuff was held from the defense.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Yeah, that's a Grady violation. You can't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
So to the point where they now they can't retry
this guy. He sued just this year thirty five, he
was awarded two million dollars. That's it from the state,
or at least that was what I read. I found
two different conflicting he was awarded that or the state

(01:17:24):
offered that. Okay, I don't know if he accepted it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
That's a very low amount.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
I will say. Even Frankie's brothers believed this Gable guy
was innocent. They were even pushing for his They didn't
think it was so twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
April, literally a few months ago, April.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
Of this year, the state has petitioned for the FBI
to get him. I don't know if the state, but
they have actually a petitioned for the FBI to open
an investigation. In investigated themselves, so that is in the works.
They sent I've.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Met those people at organ that are high up are
one bullets.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Yeah, that's supposedly in the work. So this is technically still.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
His murder's unsolved because.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Now it's unsolved. So now yeah, to be reinvestigated and
they're now I guess sorry it was legislative leaders from
the state are petitioning the FBI open investigation and to
look into this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
But as of right now, the conspiracy on supposedly higher ups,
nothing more has come out about that. We don't know
anything more. It's not like anything is leaked or anything's
kind of come forth or any more theories or evidence
of that has come forth. So yeah, don't know, it's
clearly still a possibility. It clearly looks like that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
I mean, if he was telling is why would you
tell that to your family in a safe, casual conversation
if it wasn't somewhat of it wasn't true, if there
wasn't something there, I.

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Agree I have personally in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Okay, I owe you an apology. I thought for sure
You're not usually going to jump on the conspiracy, and
I'm not always either, because a conspiracy you need a
lot of people to all decide, hey, we're not going
to say anything.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Yeah, and that's what's I don't know. There is very
little evidence of the original investigation into that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Yeah, it doesn't look good, especially if it was just
the witnesses.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
If if there was no evidence, was convicted on evidence
witness testimony, and now literally every single person is recanted.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
Well, and my thing is if it was potentially people
that were living on the streets and drug dealers or
drug users, that gives cops who might be influenced to
do so to pressure these people that if you say
you saw something. This charge is gonna go away. I'm

(01:20:09):
not saying that is what happened, but for all of
them to recant, this makes me feel like at some
point they were encouraged to tell this story.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Yeah, the article said they all recanted and said they
felt pressured and pushed by law enforcement too.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
And why would law enforcement do that if it wasn't
someone higher up telling them, you've got to shut this
down because it's going to look bad. And it Yeah,
it was gonna look bad on the high ups, but
it was also going to probably look bad for a
handful of people in law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
So I don't know. It doesn't look good, No, it doesn't.
It clearly doesn't look like it was investigated properly.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
So that makes me sad for that man's family, especially
if he saw something. I'm very big in supporting law enforcement, obviously,
especially in the world of studying true crime. To the
caveat to that is, I also hold men and women

(01:21:12):
at a much higher standard and level of accountability if
they are in a position of authority, and that includes
people even in our government and in law enforcement. I
expect them to be morally good people, to take honor
in what they do and so for a man who

(01:21:36):
saw things potentially supposedly that were corrupt or in moral
or unhonorable or not of integrity and wanted to stand
up and do the right thing. I think there's a
code of silence in some organizations, not all that you

(01:21:57):
don't say anything. It's a brotherhood, or it's this, that
or the other. Like he was even potentially being told, oh, yeah,
we know about these things, but you don't say anything.
You don't do anything about it. And it just breaks
my heart. If this man was trying to get rid
of the people in these position of powers who give

(01:22:18):
law enforcement and people in political positions bad reputations, and
he was trying to remove those people from that so
that the good guys could do their jobs correctly, and
it cost him his life. That's a real tragedy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
Yeah, I agree, And unfortunately it's still unsolved, and hopefully
that it does. Hopefully the FBI does pick it up
and they do an investigation like they've been asked.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
Yeah that I mean, but.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Now unfortunately, I mean, you're talking and that's what I
was saying earlier because you said something on my last one,
like this guy had. This guy ended up spending thirty
over thirty years in prison. Yeah, for clearly something that
he didn't commit. Yeah, even the victims or the family
member of the victim didn't believe he committed. So I'm

(01:23:12):
amazed it took that long. Yeah, I mean, I guess
I'm saying it took that long to get to the courts,
like what was going on for twenty something years? Right,
Usually people are appealing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
Still, I love you so much that you remind me
of someone who has faith in how the court systems
are supposed to work. They are supposed to be. They
shouldn't take thirty years to get here.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
What I'm saying is, usually people appeal and you run
out of your appeals eventually within like ten years ago.
You know, So where were the appeals in the nineties
and the early two thousands. But anyways, hopefully, hopefully.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
It's more than two million dollars. Thirty years is a
lot of lifelong.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
I said, I couldn't find I said, I don't. I've
found one thing that said that was offered. But anyways,
but now again, even if they do invesigat it, you're
still you're thirty years behind.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
And most of those people that probably were fault with it.
Probably are.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
They're definitely not in government now.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Well, I don't know, we've yeah, baby, that's true. I
was like, what is the medium age of people in
Congress right now? It's like over eighty exactly exactly. Okay, Well, guys,
that is season three, episode nineteen. Poor Ben has been

(01:24:46):
dragged along and we're still in season three and we
still have a couple more episodes to go, and we're
just getting I think there's twelve seasons, been a.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
Couple of episodes till we take a Christmas break.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
We shall not be taking a Christmas break.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Christmas break four weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
Taking a whole month off. Hey, guys, the podcast is
really just starting to kind of pick up some direction.
Know what we're going to do. We're going to peace
out for a month. We'll do the best of Oh
everybody hates the best of episodes. To me, I'd rather
you just not put one out, okay. So yeah, for

(01:25:25):
the people that are not into the chitty chatter or
the banter and you're just here for the true crime
of it all, you may exit stage right because now
is the time. Then I ask Ben, so the question, Ben,
if you could pick any animal in the world, the

(01:25:46):
best describes or fits the personality of your wife. What
would it be and why? I thought of this today
while I was at the zoo.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
At the zoo and you saw an animal, all of
the animals would be you. Sierra loves all animals and
wants to play with all.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Of them, play with all them. But I don't think
I embody the motion of the personality or the essence
of the essence is the best way to describe it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
Well, I would say a cat, because one, you love cats.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
I do love cats.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
And cats are independent and you're very independent, I am.
They also love to sleep. You love to sleep. Sleep.
And this is the thing about Sierra. She loves attention
and loves on her schedule when she wants it, when
she's ready, and then when she's done, she goes, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Done, And cats can leave the situation.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Yeah, they want they will rub on you, they will
want love, and then they decide I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Done and I'm out, and no one's allowed to be
offended by it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
No, And they just leave. And then they want you
to be ready for when they're ready for it again. Yes,
whenever they choose to be someone.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Told, just like rub me down and massage me multiple
times to day and be like telling me how pretty
I am even though I'm fluffy and overweight would be
the best.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Yeah. Yeah, that's why I think a cat.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Okay, but you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
I think a lot of us because you love cats
so much. Yeah you know, I just associate you with
cats because you and cats are.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
You are one.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
You and the earth, You and cats in the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):
Are one are one. Yeah. So okay, are you ready
for yours?

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
All right, Okay, it's going to get first. Do you
think I did I hit that?

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
Is there another animal that you think you embody more?

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
I mean I don't know. An otter maybe, which is
like the water of cats? They just like, are some
around the baby otters? Or I don't think they were
babies because there wasn't a parent, but they were younglings. Ah,

(01:28:20):
they were durable, but they're just like they just want
to have fun and play. That's all they want to do.
And sometimes I'm in that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
Mood sometimes so were cats.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
So are cats? They want to be done? Yeah, and
then I want to take a nap afterwards. Okay, so
today we're walking through the zoo and just don't freak
out at first when I tell you what animal made
me think of you?

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
If you say like a hippopotamus, I'm gonna say the fool.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
But it's not far off the rhinoceros. Wow, this is
why the rhinoceros has this hugh mongous area of the zoo. Right,
and rhinoceroses are so mellow and chill, but they're also

(01:29:22):
very aggressive and territorial. But like you don't know. So
this is what I love about Ben. Most people that
meet Ben outside of his social circle, and frankly his wife,
Ben is very quiet and also has a resting This

(01:29:43):
is a clean podcast, jerk face. How many times people
compt to you after they've gotten to be like man?
When I first saw you or met you, I thought
you hated everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
I usually do you.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
So the right nowoceros. Also, though, the thing that I
love about the rhinoceros in the zoo here is that
there is this so little tiny deer like did Dede,
with these little skinny legs that this rhinoceros could abliterate
in a second. And it's the only thing that he

(01:30:20):
tolerates in his space. He doesn't care what the deer's doing.
The deer can be crawling on him, the deer can
be running around like a crazy person. The deer can
be eating his food. He doesn't care that deer is
allowed to do. It's not a deer, it's probably an antelope. Whatever.
It's allowed to do, whatever it wants. And he seems

(01:30:41):
to have some sort of fondness for this one solitary creature,
of which in my imagination, he would fight to the
death for this thing if anything tried to come anywhere
near it. And he's just looks like he could be

(01:31:02):
Rhino's look like you could go up and just like
right to their faces and just you know, but you
can't unless you're that deer because to everybody else he
has a humongo horn. He is like very large in
stature and like tough as nails, doesn't really ever seem

(01:31:25):
to have much of emotion, just is present. Most of
the time he's just laying there. He was up moving
around today, really yeah, And I just thought it was
adorable because he's like over there and the deer is
like really close to him, like in his food area,
where you would think this is the moment that this
guy's going to decide I'm done with this little tiny

(01:31:46):
thing and fling him off because he could, and he
just sat there and waited patiently till the deer was done,
and then mosied on and I was like, that's my
husband right there. Once you've once been the rhino has
decided that you are allowed to be in his space, You're.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
You'll be okay, yeah, but most people are not.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
But to get into that space, it takes a lot
to break the rhinos outer shell. Even though stature wise
you are not the size of a rhinocerous. Hope, they're
humongous are So it wasn't embodiment. It was the essence

(01:32:31):
of the rhino, not the physical characteristic. No, there's not
a lot of animals that I look at and think, well,
that looks a lot like Ben, which is probably.

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
A good thing. Yeah, all right, I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Okay, all right, guys, That is our episode. Please make
sure to follow us on social leave us a review,
get ready for some merchandise, and join us again next
week when Ben and I recap another episode of by

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Mm hmm.

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