February 18, 2025 • 29 mins
Gary brings you the latest trending stories during What’s Happening. Gary also brings you #TrueCrimeTuesday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to kf
I AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on
demand on the iHeartRadio app. The teenage carjacking gangs that
are trying to live out a real life grand theft
auto that will be part of our True Crime Tuesday.
And then a teenager, a high schooler, was murdered and
her image was used to create an AI chatbot that
(00:22):
was eventually found by her father. We'll talk about that
strange case coming up as part of True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I love it. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I love when we do these wellness stories and people
call in and go absolutely yes.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Gary used to work as a personal trainer starting about
twenty fourteen for a elderly community. The people that dance
always did a lot better than everyone else. And these
are people that have just been dancing on and off
their entire life and not professionally, just moving and shaking.
Had better balance, better mental clarity, better strength, better endurance. Yeah,
(01:00):
just even look younger.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So keeping Yeah, absolutely, that's very very cool. And then
in terms of eating.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Late bake, Gary, No, Shannon, my diet is a deadly diet.
I don't have breakfast. I just have a monster in
the morning, maybe a banana. At lunch around one, I
usually have like four tacos.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
And then at night whatever my wife cooks, and then
well my wife goes to sleep. I have munchies between
nine and midnight.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, diety, None of that is approved by your doctor.
I can assure you, all right, What else is going on?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Time for what's happening?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The weather that caused so many problems in Kentucky over
the weekend is getting worse. Governor Andy Basher said the
two additional people, an adult man an adult woman, appear
to have been homeless, have died for hypothermia. That's on
top of the twelve others who died as a result
of flooding in the state, including a mother and her
seven year old whose car was swept away in Hart County, Kentucky, Kentucky.
(02:11):
They are applying for individual assistance from FEMA. The governor
of Kentucky did say that President Trump has declared an
emergency disaster area for the state of Kentucky, and on
top of that, snow and now freezing conditions. A total
of about two to six inches of snow possible throughout
western and central Kentucky tonight until tomorrow. The storm is
(02:33):
expected to create hazardous travel conditions because of slick roads,
poor visibility, and of course, disrupt the recovery efforts from
the floods. Still a few thousand people without power in
the state of Kentucky, but it is much better than
it was yesterday at this time. International news today is
that Hamas has confirmed it will release ten hostages, six
(02:56):
of them alive, this week. They said they'll at least
the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages, including the two
youngest held by the group, a nine month old and
a four year old and her there mother, among others.
The group also said they'll release six living hostages instead
(03:17):
of the three that had been expected. Israeli Prime Minister's
office confirmed that an agreement had been reached for four
slain hostages to be handed over on Thursday, six living
hostages to be released on Saturday. The bodies, like I said,
included the Beepst children, just nine months and four years old,
(03:37):
respectively when they were kidnapped back on October seventh, twenty
twenty three. Hamas claims that they were killed in an
Israeli air strike. Also today, historic in the LA Unified
School District. Cell phone ban is now in effect. That
includes smart watches and smart glasses. Because you're anyway, you
don't need them, and despite what everybody's been saying, the
(03:59):
chance insais of there being a safety issue are minuscule.
Starting today as well, many writers need to tap their
transit cards in order to get off the La Union
station or get out of I should say. In the
latest effort by La Metro to curb crime crack down
on the fair evaders, writers need to tap their cards
at a turnstile when they exit the subway and head
(04:20):
upstairs to the main concourse. Those who paid ahead of
time will be able to exit seamlessly. If you didn't,
you could be stopped at the gates and face the
possibility of receiving a warning recitation or even you get
kicked out of the subway completely. If you didn't pay initially,
but you do have a valid tap card when you exit,
the fare would be deducted when you leave. Metro officials
(04:43):
said it's still a violation of the code of conduct.
Writers of Metrolink can already scan their ticket to enable
the free transfers on La Metro, but you also need
to scan again when you exit any station again that
requires the exit. Jury deliberations are set to begin. Asap Rocky,
his real name is rakeem Myers accused of fire in
(05:04):
a couple of shots at his former friend Terrell Efron
asap Rally, everybody knows that. And their question between the
two attorneys is was the gun real or was it
a prop? Prosecutor said it was a real gun. The
defense claims it was a prop gun that shot out
blanks that sounded like a real gun. Asap Rally says
(05:28):
his knuckles were grazed by one of the shots, but
he wasn't seriously hurt. Rocky's attorney said that he picked
up the prop for security on a music video shoot.
And good news is remember that great concert that took
place at the Kia Forum and the into a dome
Stevie wonder they're playing with Sting late in that concert.
(05:50):
They raised about one hundred million dollars through the fire
Aid benefit concert concert.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I should say, well, the first.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Monies have been donated community based organizations. The selected organizations,
according to fire Aid, have received one hundred thousand dollars
or more in the first grants to go out they're
going to displace a support displaced residents, workers, small business owners,
the first responders, and services like food assistants, childcare support,
(06:18):
critical healthcare sources, housing support, all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
They said.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
The first phase of funds will be sent out by
the end of February.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Phase two is going.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
To focus more on the long term relief, remediation, rebuilding,
and environmental issues that come up. Fire eight has been established.
A program of issuance of smaller grants also available to
some smaller community based organizations.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Those will go out as well.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
All right, we've told you about the Turpin case, right,
the Turpin family where the kids were all basically living
in Squalor. Mom and dad kept them there for so long.
There's been another story in this case in Pontiac, Michigan.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
My name is Matt. I live in Thailand. I'm from LA.
How about little shout out or a wink or something.
I love KFI keep up the good work, pillows and gals.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah and gals, Thank you. John.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
A couple stories that we are following today. Russia and
the United States have agreed to start working toward ending
the war in Ukraine but also improving diplomatic and economic ties.
This came after talks between the top diplomats from Russia
and the United States, Sergei Lavrov for Russia Marco Rubio
for the US. They said they want to create a
high level team to support Ukraine peace talks to explore
(07:33):
closer relations and economic cooperation. Rubio stress that the talks
mark the beginning of the conversation. President Trump is signing
some new executive orders, while his first joint television interview
with Elon Musk will air tonight in prime time. Trump
is down at mar A Lago in Florida, setting for
an awards program tonight, apparently by a program, an awards program,
(07:57):
I should say by a group led by Mike Flynn,
who was at one time National Security Advisor. The White
House hasn't commented on these new executive orders that he's
going to sign, but he's used previous executive orders for
about seven thousand different topics. Delta Airlines jet came down fast,
It landed hard, it lost its right wing, burst into
flames in a runway in Toronto, and then flipped over,
(08:19):
flipped over, and amazingly in the news conference this morning,
they said all eighty people on board that flight from
Minneapolis to Toronto survived the crash. The airport's CEO said,
all but twenty. I'm sorry. All but two of the
twenty one people injured on the flight have been released
from the hospital. The case of the Turpins out in
(08:43):
the ie was hard to look at group of kids,
a lot of kids raised by a family with severe
mental illness, in that the kids were never allowed to
go outside rarely, that they were not fed properly, they
(09:03):
were not instructed on how to live life properly. And
every time we see a story like this, we think
to ourselves, how many of these kind of situations exist today,
like right now? And unfortunately we found another one in
this case. A woman in Pontiac, Michigan, arrested Friday. She
(09:24):
abandoned her young children in their home for several years,
according to police. The Oakland County Sheriff's Office said, thirty
four year old woman her identity is not released to
protect the identity of her kids, left her kids in
that home to live in absolute squalor. They were surviving
on weekly drop offs of prepared food.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You had three kids.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You had a fifteen year old boy and thirteen and
twelve year old girls. They all were taken to the hospital,
placed in the custody of a relative by CPS, and
the sheriff, Michael Bouchard, said in a press release that
the conditions in which the kids were forced to survive
(10:09):
were unconscionable and as we've seen in cases like this,
when law enforcement officer takes to the podium to describe
what goes on, they say something like this. Throughout my
extensive career in this field, I have never encountered a
scenario as dire and prolonged as this one, involving abandonment, neglect,
(10:31):
and abuse of the highest order. And he said the
situation would be deemed deplorable and intolerable for animals, let
alone children. They've been deprived of any interaction with their mother,
they have not received an education, and the far reaching
consequences of this abuse.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Must be acknowledged.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
And as we've seen in the case of the Turpen kids,
this could potentially be a lifelong problem.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I don't know how it's not.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
The sheriff said that the kids were found in soiled clothing,
their hair was matted, their toenails were several inches long,
which made it very hard for them to walk. The
children did not know how to use personal hygiene items
and did not know how to flush a toilet. They
were called by the landlord. The Sheriff's department was called
(11:23):
by the landlord of the home to perform a welfare
check because he said he hadn't heard from the mom
since December, ren hadn't been paid since October, and he
was concerned about the well being. They searched the home,
they found the three kids. The girls had locked their
themselves in the bathroom but opened the door when they
were asked, and the pictures of the inside of this
(11:44):
home are unbelievable. Piles of debris. Police said the scene
was indeplorable shape. Garbage piled as high as four feet
in some rooms. Mold, human waste found throughout the house.
I mentioned, I mentioned they didn't know how to use
the toilet. They didn't know how to flush it. I
should say so the toilet was overflowing. Feces was found
(12:08):
in the bathtub. The fifteen year old brother said he
and his sisters have been living alone in the home
since probably twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They survived
on the prepared food that their mother or a stranger
would leave on the front porch each week, so there
was someone besides the mom who knew the condition of
(12:30):
these kids. Mom never left any personal hygiene items, never
left any toilet paper. While she maintained contact with the boy,
it appears that she had not seen the girls in years.
To give you an idea of how disgusting it was,
the crews that went in and cleaned up all had
(12:51):
to wear hazmat suits. Neighbors told deputies they didn't even
know that there were kids inside.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This is exactly like the Turpins.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
The neighbors said they never saw the kids outside, and
they said they saw the mother drop things off at
home each month, but didn't know why. Emma Gross lives
a couple streets away. She said she scrambled to learn more.
When she learned about the kids found unattended, she said,
I'm told that the facilities the toilet wasn't working in
(13:22):
the home. They had to use an alternative solution in
a home where you're living at using the tub. That's
pretty heartbreaking and the kids had to live under those conditions.
An HOA board member, Nosey said she received text messages
from neighbors when the news broke. Some of the people
tend to keep to themselves in that neighborhood, They said,
(13:45):
only to interact with neighbors through post on the association's
Facebook page. Children have not attended school in the time
since twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They passed time
watching television or playing games. It appears the girls had
not physically left the home in several years. The boy
slept on a mattress on the floor. The girls the
(14:06):
girls slept on pizza boxes. I'm going to repeat that
the boy slept on a mattress on the floor, the
girls slept on pizza boxes. Mom was found at a
different location obviously has been arrested. She said Dad doesn't
have a doesn't have any connection to the kids. The
(14:32):
sheriff has given a few more details today about all
of this. Said dad had been in jail at the
time that their mom abandoned them. After he got out,
he got approval from a court to visit the kids,
but mom never allowed access. The sheriff also blamed some
gaps in the school enrollment enrollment process that allowed the
(14:53):
kids to slip through the cracks, adding that the pandemic
probably played a role. Since they were probably living alone
since this bring or summer of twenty twenty, when nobody
was in school. The department, they said, was overwhelmed by
the support from the community and said they didn't need
any more donations. They want to find a law firm,
set up a trust fund for the kids to pay
(15:13):
for their health and education bills.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Which will be humongous.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And they said food deliveries to the home were made
by companies like Instacart and door Dash, and that nobody
actually ever went inside. But still no reason as to
why she abandoned the kids in the first place. It's
and again we'll ask this one's been discovered, but how
many more exist out there?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Right now, it's time for True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
The story is true, sounds true?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
No, it sounds made up. I don't know. Garry and
Shannon present True Crime, all right. I've had my car stolen.
I know a lot of people have had their car.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
In fact, I've had two cars stolen in the course
of my career. I suppose there is a whole new
world of car thievery that is going on, and it
is concentrated along the West Coast and more specifically right
in Washington, DC. Think think of the violent carjackings that
(16:19):
we've heard of in DC in just the last couple
of years.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
For example, the attempted robbery of a vehicle used to
transport oh, I don't know, the President's granddaughter, Joe Biden's
granddaughter Naomi. Secret Service agents had to shoot a guy.
Another Washington shootout involved US marshalls who are working security
for Justice Sonya Sotomayor. There was an FBI agent who
(16:45):
was carjacked by a seventeen year old Congressman Henry Quaar
of Texas had a gun stuck in his face and
his car was stolen. A guy who was arrested after
crashing in a stolen vehicle e aded police custody at
the hospital, then stole an ambulance to escape. He was
seen in surveillance footage driving away while wearing an hospital
gown with the IV needle still in his arm. The
(17:10):
thriving used car market of West Africa, it's what's driving
the stolen car market on the East coast of the
United States. There have been I think it's about what
is it a million, roughly a million cars. In twenty
twenty three, car theft had been falling steadily since nineteen
(17:31):
ninety one, and then we saw at least most of
that I should say most of it, not at least
most of that was because of simple security systems that
became very very popular in cars and then became installed.
They came installed on cars that you would buy. But
early twenty twenty auto thefts have increased by about thirty percent.
(17:51):
And the statistics for last year are incomplete, but right
now they already suggest that we could see a record
number of car thefts and violent car thefts like carjackings
in the year twenty twenty four. About ten percent of
those cars that are stolen in the United States today
are smuggled overseas. And what's amazing is those used car
(18:13):
brokers in West Africa. They are very specific about what
kind of cars they want. You saw this in Gone
in sixty seconds. There's a market out there for high
end cars, and all it takes is a buyer to
say something like I want a twenty twenty four Mercedes
SL three fifty with leather interior, and you go get
(18:34):
your henchmen to go out and find that car. The
majority of times, the most common way to steal a
vehicle is the most basic find one with the engine
still running and the keys inside. That is a crime
of opportunity, and according to law enforcement, that's about forty
percent of car thefts are again just the most basic.
(18:58):
You left your car running and your left your keys inside.
Think about times of extreme heat or cold, when it's
one hundred and fifteen in the valley you leave your
car on to keep the air conditioning running. Or extreme
cold that's probably even more likely where you don't want
the car to freeze up. So at fifteen below, I'm
looking at you, Minnesota. You leave the car running, you
(19:21):
leave the ignition fob and the center console, maybe not
the key with the ignition anymore. You are trying to
carry a bag of groceries into the house and they
slip in while you're in the house and take your
car and they're gone. If you figure that each I'm
gonna say punk kid, because I'm gonna make a generalization,
(19:41):
gets about five hundred to one thousand, maybe fifteen hundred
dollars a car, especially for the higher end ones. Then
the next guy is going to get about two thousand
and four it, and the next guy's going to get
twenty five or three thousand for it and the price
goes up, so that, for example, in West Africa, the
most sought after vehicle is probably a Range drover or
(20:02):
a Toyota pickup or a BMW Sedan. And if you
get a BMW seven series to your pickup point, you're
gonna get fifteen hundred bucks for it. But as it
goes along the supply chain, you've got the fence, you've
got the shipping company, you've got the customs broker.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Everybody has to get paid.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And even after expenses, there's plenty of profit because you
could sell that same BMW seven series for about fifty
thousand dollars in the capital of Ghana. And like I said, Washington,
DC was sort of the ground zero for a lot
of this. In one specific place, there was a parking
garage on Florida Avenue in Washington, DC that was an
(20:43):
ideal place to stash the Mercedes or the BMW or
the Dodge Challenger. The stolen car business was so robust
in Washington in twenty twenty three that that parking garage
became a de facto showroom for these stolen cars. The
buyers and the sellers would meet there every night. They
(21:04):
would inspect the cars, the deal was sealed. Cars not
sold within hours were listed on Instagram. They were shown
by appointment, and it was dependable. It was a business.
It was a marketplace that opened up text messages that
were intercepted by law enforcement captured the buyers that were
placing orders for very specific cars, very specific makes and models.
(21:27):
One eighteen year old delivering stolen vehicles had six carjackings
in a week. There was a twelve year old who
made headlines throughout all of twenty twenty two and into
last year after he stole a BMW, a Jaguar, an Audi,
a Tesla, a cargo van, and at one point he
hit a half a dozen dealerships in Maryland in less
than a month. He had been arrested twenty two times
(21:50):
by the middle of last year, but because the Maryland
judicial reform stipulated that kids under the age of thirteen
couldn't be charged with property crimes, turned back to the
property to the custody of his parents. Kids like that
being manipulated by older gang members come in as pseudo
father figures and the kids, a lot of them. Teenagers
(22:14):
brag about their recent heightsts. They text each other. Gtarl
Grand theft auto real life. You can train on social media.
You could see the Kiya challenge on how to pick
up a key or a Hyundai using a screwdriver in
a USB cable. But the GPS tracker that you have
(22:38):
in your car, that's not gonna help. They know where
those are, they'll just pull them out. And most of them,
like I said, some of the high end cars end
up in West Africa for the burgeoning stolen used car
market there for those high end the Mercedes, the Range
Rovers and things like that. About some of those weird
(22:58):
and unbelievable store in the world of crime. And this
is a kind of a combination of crime and artificial intelligence,
and this is a this is something that should be
a crime. Drew Crecente a couple of months ago got
a Google alert that flagged what appeared to be a
(23:19):
new profile of his daughter online, the daughter that had
been murdered eighteen years earlier. It had Jennifer's full name,
It had an old high school yearbook photo of her.
It had a biography of Jennifer. It said she was
a video game journalist. It said she was an expert
(23:42):
in technology, pop culture, and journalism. The website where this
new profile popped up was character dot Ai, and Jennifer's
image and likeness were used to create a chatbot that
(24:05):
people could talk to.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Now. The company.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Is a website that allows you to converse with digital
personalities using the generative artificial intelligence. Think you're having a
conversation with a computer like chat GPT or grock on Twitter,
but it's interacting with you as if it's a person.
These chatbots engage in conversation. They can be programmed to
(24:35):
adopt specific personalities, biographical details of specific characters, whether they're
real characters or imagine you know, you can program it
to be Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Or Darth Vader.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And these companies that put up these chatbots have found
a growing audience online because people want friends or mentors,
or they want romantic partners. But this controversial technology also
comes with incredible drawbacks. A guy in Belgium died by
suicide a couple of years ago. He was encouraged to
do so in a conversation with a chatbot. We saw
(25:11):
that also with a kid, a twelve year old kid
who was having conversations with these chatbots and eventually ended
his life. So character Ai again needless to say, Dad,
Drew Crecente, who's seeing his murdered daughter's face on this website.
(25:34):
He said, my pulse was racing. I was just looking
for a big flashing red stop button that I could
slap and just make it stop. It takes it quite
a bit for me to be shocked, he said, because
I really have been through quite a lot, but this
was a new low.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And give you an idea what he's been through.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
His daughter, Jennifer, was killed by her ex boyfriend during
her senior year in high school. Character AI says that
the company will remove any chatbot that violates as terms
of service. They're constantly evolving and they're refining their safety
practices to prioritize community safety. When they were notified about
(26:15):
Jennifer's Character, they said they reviewed the content and the
account and took action based on their policies because the
terms of service prevent anybody from impersonating any person or entity. Now,
because of the nonprofit that Drew Corescente put up after
(26:36):
his daughter was murdered, they spend time preventing teen dating violence.
He was appalled that Character had allowed somebody to create
this facsimile of a murdered high schooler without her family's permission,
and because of his work. Like I said in that nonprofit,
he keeps the Google alert that tracks mentions of his
(26:59):
daughters on name online. Every once in a while it
shows up on a spam website, maybe a news report
that repeats old information. But that October alert led him
to his daughter's name and picture on character dot ai,
and he couldn't figure out it first. He said, the
more he looked into it, the more uneasy he felt.
In addition to using her name and her picture, the
(27:22):
chatbot's page described her in very lively language, as if
she were alive, like the tech journalist who geeks out
on video games, always up to date on the latest
entertainment news. He said the description didn't appear to be
based on her personality or any specific interests about what
her real life was, and he said the factual inaccuracies
(27:45):
were beside the point. The idea of character hosting and
then potentially making money from a chatbot using his murdered
daughter's name was distressing enough he did not start at
a conversation with it. He did not investigate the user
that created the bot, but he immediately emailed the character
(28:05):
company to have it removed. Asked about other chatbots on
their site that impersonate public figures, a spokesperson said the
reports of impersonation are investigated immediately by the trust and
safety team. The character is removed if it's found to
have violated. There is a privacy researcher at Mozilla Foundation.
(28:27):
They said that this approach to moderation is way too
passive because it plainly violates its own term of service.
In the case of Jennifer Crescente, he says, if they're
going to say we don't allow this on the platform,
then they allow it on their platform until it's brought
to their attention. That's not right. All the while they're
making millions of dollars potentially. I mean, it was disturbing
(28:50):
enough to push this guy to ponder up taking a
new cause, and now he's considering legal options and advocating
for more active safety measures to prevent AI companies from
harming or re traumatizing anybody else that may have been
the victim.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Of a crime, in this case, the murder of his
own daughter. So that's awful.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you
can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine
am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to kf
I AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on
demand on the iHeartRadio app. The teenage carjacking gangs that
are trying to live out a real life grand theft
auto that will be part of our True Crime Tuesday.
And then a teenager, a high schooler, was murdered and
her image was used to create an AI chatbot that
(00:22):
was eventually found by her father. We'll talk about that
strange case coming up as part of True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I love it. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I love when we do these wellness stories and people
call in and go absolutely yes.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Gary used to work as a personal trainer starting about
twenty fourteen for a elderly community. The people that dance
always did a lot better than everyone else. And these
are people that have just been dancing on and off
their entire life and not professionally, just moving and shaking.
Had better balance, better mental clarity, better strength, better endurance. Yeah,
(01:00):
just even look younger.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So keeping Yeah, absolutely, that's very very cool. And then
in terms of eating.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Late bake, Gary, No, Shannon, my diet is a deadly diet.
I don't have breakfast. I just have a monster in
the morning, maybe a banana. At lunch around one, I
usually have like four tacos.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
And then at night whatever my wife cooks, and then
well my wife goes to sleep. I have munchies between
nine and midnight.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, diety, None of that is approved by your doctor.
I can assure you, all right, What else is going on?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Time for what's happening?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The weather that caused so many problems in Kentucky over
the weekend is getting worse. Governor Andy Basher said the
two additional people, an adult man an adult woman, appear
to have been homeless, have died for hypothermia. That's on
top of the twelve others who died as a result
of flooding in the state, including a mother and her
seven year old whose car was swept away in Hart County, Kentucky, Kentucky.
(02:11):
They are applying for individual assistance from FEMA. The governor
of Kentucky did say that President Trump has declared an
emergency disaster area for the state of Kentucky, and on
top of that, snow and now freezing conditions. A total
of about two to six inches of snow possible throughout
western and central Kentucky tonight until tomorrow. The storm is
(02:33):
expected to create hazardous travel conditions because of slick roads,
poor visibility, and of course, disrupt the recovery efforts from
the floods. Still a few thousand people without power in
the state of Kentucky, but it is much better than
it was yesterday at this time. International news today is
that Hamas has confirmed it will release ten hostages, six
(02:56):
of them alive, this week. They said they'll at least
the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages, including the two
youngest held by the group, a nine month old and
a four year old and her there mother, among others.
The group also said they'll release six living hostages instead
(03:17):
of the three that had been expected. Israeli Prime Minister's
office confirmed that an agreement had been reached for four
slain hostages to be handed over on Thursday, six living
hostages to be released on Saturday. The bodies, like I said,
included the Beepst children, just nine months and four years old,
(03:37):
respectively when they were kidnapped back on October seventh, twenty
twenty three. Hamas claims that they were killed in an
Israeli air strike. Also today, historic in the LA Unified
School District. Cell phone ban is now in effect. That
includes smart watches and smart glasses. Because you're anyway, you
don't need them, and despite what everybody's been saying, the
(03:59):
chance insais of there being a safety issue are minuscule.
Starting today as well, many writers need to tap their
transit cards in order to get off the La Union
station or get out of I should say. In the
latest effort by La Metro to curb crime crack down
on the fair evaders, writers need to tap their cards
at a turnstile when they exit the subway and head
(04:20):
upstairs to the main concourse. Those who paid ahead of
time will be able to exit seamlessly. If you didn't,
you could be stopped at the gates and face the
possibility of receiving a warning recitation or even you get
kicked out of the subway completely. If you didn't pay initially,
but you do have a valid tap card when you exit,
the fare would be deducted when you leave. Metro officials
(04:43):
said it's still a violation of the code of conduct.
Writers of Metrolink can already scan their ticket to enable
the free transfers on La Metro, but you also need
to scan again when you exit any station again that
requires the exit. Jury deliberations are set to begin. Asap Rocky,
his real name is rakeem Myers accused of fire in
(05:04):
a couple of shots at his former friend Terrell Efron
asap Rally, everybody knows that. And their question between the
two attorneys is was the gun real or was it
a prop? Prosecutor said it was a real gun. The
defense claims it was a prop gun that shot out
blanks that sounded like a real gun. Asap Rally says
(05:28):
his knuckles were grazed by one of the shots, but
he wasn't seriously hurt. Rocky's attorney said that he picked
up the prop for security on a music video shoot.
And good news is remember that great concert that took
place at the Kia Forum and the into a dome
Stevie wonder they're playing with Sting late in that concert.
(05:50):
They raised about one hundred million dollars through the fire
Aid benefit concert concert.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I should say, well, the first.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Monies have been donated community based organizations. The selected organizations,
according to fire Aid, have received one hundred thousand dollars
or more in the first grants to go out they're
going to displace a support displaced residents, workers, small business owners,
the first responders, and services like food assistants, childcare support,
(06:18):
critical healthcare sources, housing support, all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
They said.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
The first phase of funds will be sent out by
the end of February.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Phase two is going.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
To focus more on the long term relief, remediation, rebuilding,
and environmental issues that come up. Fire eight has been established.
A program of issuance of smaller grants also available to
some smaller community based organizations.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Those will go out as well.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
All right, we've told you about the Turpin case, right,
the Turpin family where the kids were all basically living
in Squalor. Mom and dad kept them there for so long.
There's been another story in this case in Pontiac, Michigan.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
My name is Matt. I live in Thailand. I'm from LA.
How about little shout out or a wink or something.
I love KFI keep up the good work, pillows and gals.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah and gals, Thank you. John.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
A couple stories that we are following today. Russia and
the United States have agreed to start working toward ending
the war in Ukraine but also improving diplomatic and economic ties.
This came after talks between the top diplomats from Russia
and the United States, Sergei Lavrov for Russia Marco Rubio
for the US. They said they want to create a
high level team to support Ukraine peace talks to explore
(07:33):
closer relations and economic cooperation. Rubio stress that the talks
mark the beginning of the conversation. President Trump is signing
some new executive orders, while his first joint television interview
with Elon Musk will air tonight in prime time. Trump
is down at mar A Lago in Florida, setting for
an awards program tonight, apparently by a program, an awards program,
(07:57):
I should say by a group led by Mike Flynn,
who was at one time National Security Advisor. The White
House hasn't commented on these new executive orders that he's
going to sign, but he's used previous executive orders for
about seven thousand different topics. Delta Airlines jet came down fast,
It landed hard, it lost its right wing, burst into
flames in a runway in Toronto, and then flipped over,
(08:19):
flipped over, and amazingly in the news conference this morning,
they said all eighty people on board that flight from
Minneapolis to Toronto survived the crash. The airport's CEO said,
all but twenty. I'm sorry. All but two of the
twenty one people injured on the flight have been released
from the hospital. The case of the Turpins out in
(08:43):
the ie was hard to look at group of kids,
a lot of kids raised by a family with severe
mental illness, in that the kids were never allowed to
go outside rarely, that they were not fed properly, they
(09:03):
were not instructed on how to live life properly. And
every time we see a story like this, we think
to ourselves, how many of these kind of situations exist today,
like right now? And unfortunately we found another one in
this case. A woman in Pontiac, Michigan, arrested Friday. She
(09:24):
abandoned her young children in their home for several years,
according to police. The Oakland County Sheriff's Office said, thirty
four year old woman her identity is not released to
protect the identity of her kids, left her kids in
that home to live in absolute squalor. They were surviving
on weekly drop offs of prepared food.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You had three kids.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You had a fifteen year old boy and thirteen and
twelve year old girls. They all were taken to the hospital,
placed in the custody of a relative by CPS, and
the sheriff, Michael Bouchard, said in a press release that
the conditions in which the kids were forced to survive
(10:09):
were unconscionable and as we've seen in cases like this,
when law enforcement officer takes to the podium to describe
what goes on, they say something like this. Throughout my
extensive career in this field, I have never encountered a
scenario as dire and prolonged as this one, involving abandonment, neglect,
(10:31):
and abuse of the highest order. And he said the
situation would be deemed deplorable and intolerable for animals, let
alone children. They've been deprived of any interaction with their mother,
they have not received an education, and the far reaching
consequences of this abuse.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Must be acknowledged.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
And as we've seen in the case of the Turpen kids,
this could potentially be a lifelong problem.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I don't know how it's not.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
The sheriff said that the kids were found in soiled clothing,
their hair was matted, their toenails were several inches long,
which made it very hard for them to walk. The
children did not know how to use personal hygiene items
and did not know how to flush a toilet. They
were called by the landlord. The Sheriff's department was called
(11:23):
by the landlord of the home to perform a welfare
check because he said he hadn't heard from the mom
since December, ren hadn't been paid since October, and he
was concerned about the well being. They searched the home,
they found the three kids. The girls had locked their
themselves in the bathroom but opened the door when they
were asked, and the pictures of the inside of this
(11:44):
home are unbelievable. Piles of debris. Police said the scene
was indeplorable shape. Garbage piled as high as four feet
in some rooms. Mold, human waste found throughout the house.
I mentioned, I mentioned they didn't know how to use
the toilet. They didn't know how to flush it. I
should say so the toilet was overflowing. Feces was found
(12:08):
in the bathtub. The fifteen year old brother said he
and his sisters have been living alone in the home
since probably twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They survived
on the prepared food that their mother or a stranger
would leave on the front porch each week, so there
was someone besides the mom who knew the condition of
(12:30):
these kids. Mom never left any personal hygiene items, never
left any toilet paper. While she maintained contact with the boy,
it appears that she had not seen the girls in years.
To give you an idea of how disgusting it was,
the crews that went in and cleaned up all had
(12:51):
to wear hazmat suits. Neighbors told deputies they didn't even
know that there were kids inside.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This is exactly like the Turpins.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
The neighbors said they never saw the kids outside, and
they said they saw the mother drop things off at
home each month, but didn't know why. Emma Gross lives
a couple streets away. She said she scrambled to learn more.
When she learned about the kids found unattended, she said,
I'm told that the facilities the toilet wasn't working in
(13:22):
the home. They had to use an alternative solution in
a home where you're living at using the tub. That's
pretty heartbreaking and the kids had to live under those conditions.
An HOA board member, Nosey said she received text messages
from neighbors when the news broke. Some of the people
tend to keep to themselves in that neighborhood, They said,
(13:45):
only to interact with neighbors through post on the association's
Facebook page. Children have not attended school in the time
since twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They passed time
watching television or playing games. It appears the girls had
not physically left the home in several years. The boy
slept on a mattress on the floor. The girls the
(14:06):
girls slept on pizza boxes. I'm going to repeat that
the boy slept on a mattress on the floor, the
girls slept on pizza boxes. Mom was found at a
different location obviously has been arrested. She said Dad doesn't
have a doesn't have any connection to the kids. The
(14:32):
sheriff has given a few more details today about all
of this. Said dad had been in jail at the
time that their mom abandoned them. After he got out,
he got approval from a court to visit the kids,
but mom never allowed access. The sheriff also blamed some
gaps in the school enrollment enrollment process that allowed the
(14:53):
kids to slip through the cracks, adding that the pandemic
probably played a role. Since they were probably living alone
since this bring or summer of twenty twenty, when nobody
was in school. The department, they said, was overwhelmed by
the support from the community and said they didn't need
any more donations. They want to find a law firm,
set up a trust fund for the kids to pay
(15:13):
for their health and education bills.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Which will be humongous.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And they said food deliveries to the home were made
by companies like Instacart and door Dash, and that nobody
actually ever went inside. But still no reason as to
why she abandoned the kids in the first place. It's
and again we'll ask this one's been discovered, but how
many more exist out there?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Right now, it's time for True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
The story is true, sounds true?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
No, it sounds made up. I don't know. Garry and
Shannon present True Crime, all right. I've had my car stolen.
I know a lot of people have had their car.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
In fact, I've had two cars stolen in the course
of my career. I suppose there is a whole new
world of car thievery that is going on, and it
is concentrated along the West Coast and more specifically right
in Washington, DC. Think think of the violent carjackings that
(16:19):
we've heard of in DC in just the last couple
of years.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
For example, the attempted robbery of a vehicle used to
transport oh, I don't know, the President's granddaughter, Joe Biden's
granddaughter Naomi. Secret Service agents had to shoot a guy.
Another Washington shootout involved US marshalls who are working security
for Justice Sonya Sotomayor. There was an FBI agent who
(16:45):
was carjacked by a seventeen year old Congressman Henry Quaar
of Texas had a gun stuck in his face and
his car was stolen. A guy who was arrested after
crashing in a stolen vehicle e aded police custody at
the hospital, then stole an ambulance to escape. He was
seen in surveillance footage driving away while wearing an hospital
gown with the IV needle still in his arm. The
(17:10):
thriving used car market of West Africa, it's what's driving
the stolen car market on the East coast of the
United States. There have been I think it's about what
is it a million, roughly a million cars. In twenty
twenty three, car theft had been falling steadily since nineteen
(17:31):
ninety one, and then we saw at least most of
that I should say most of it, not at least
most of that was because of simple security systems that
became very very popular in cars and then became installed.
They came installed on cars that you would buy. But
early twenty twenty auto thefts have increased by about thirty percent.
(17:51):
And the statistics for last year are incomplete, but right
now they already suggest that we could see a record
number of car thefts and violent car thefts like carjackings
in the year twenty twenty four. About ten percent of
those cars that are stolen in the United States today
are smuggled overseas. And what's amazing is those used car
(18:13):
brokers in West Africa. They are very specific about what
kind of cars they want. You saw this in Gone
in sixty seconds. There's a market out there for high
end cars, and all it takes is a buyer to
say something like I want a twenty twenty four Mercedes
SL three fifty with leather interior, and you go get
(18:34):
your henchmen to go out and find that car. The
majority of times, the most common way to steal a
vehicle is the most basic find one with the engine
still running and the keys inside. That is a crime
of opportunity, and according to law enforcement, that's about forty
percent of car thefts are again just the most basic.
(18:58):
You left your car running and your left your keys inside.
Think about times of extreme heat or cold, when it's
one hundred and fifteen in the valley you leave your
car on to keep the air conditioning running. Or extreme
cold that's probably even more likely where you don't want
the car to freeze up. So at fifteen below, I'm
looking at you, Minnesota. You leave the car running, you
(19:21):
leave the ignition fob and the center console, maybe not
the key with the ignition anymore. You are trying to
carry a bag of groceries into the house and they
slip in while you're in the house and take your
car and they're gone. If you figure that each I'm
gonna say punk kid, because I'm gonna make a generalization,
(19:41):
gets about five hundred to one thousand, maybe fifteen hundred
dollars a car, especially for the higher end ones. Then
the next guy is going to get about two thousand
and four it, and the next guy's going to get
twenty five or three thousand for it and the price
goes up, so that, for example, in West Africa, the
most sought after vehicle is probably a Range drover or
(20:02):
a Toyota pickup or a BMW Sedan. And if you
get a BMW seven series to your pickup point, you're
gonna get fifteen hundred bucks for it. But as it
goes along the supply chain, you've got the fence, you've
got the shipping company, you've got the customs broker.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Everybody has to get paid.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And even after expenses, there's plenty of profit because you
could sell that same BMW seven series for about fifty
thousand dollars in the capital of Ghana. And like I said, Washington,
DC was sort of the ground zero for a lot
of this. In one specific place, there was a parking
garage on Florida Avenue in Washington, DC that was an
(20:43):
ideal place to stash the Mercedes or the BMW or
the Dodge Challenger. The stolen car business was so robust
in Washington in twenty twenty three that that parking garage
became a de facto showroom for these stolen cars. The
buyers and the sellers would meet there every night. They
(21:04):
would inspect the cars, the deal was sealed. Cars not
sold within hours were listed on Instagram. They were shown
by appointment, and it was dependable. It was a business.
It was a marketplace that opened up text messages that
were intercepted by law enforcement captured the buyers that were
placing orders for very specific cars, very specific makes and models.
(21:27):
One eighteen year old delivering stolen vehicles had six carjackings
in a week. There was a twelve year old who
made headlines throughout all of twenty twenty two and into
last year after he stole a BMW, a Jaguar, an Audi,
a Tesla, a cargo van, and at one point he
hit a half a dozen dealerships in Maryland in less
than a month. He had been arrested twenty two times
(21:50):
by the middle of last year, but because the Maryland
judicial reform stipulated that kids under the age of thirteen
couldn't be charged with property crimes, turned back to the
property to the custody of his parents. Kids like that
being manipulated by older gang members come in as pseudo
father figures and the kids, a lot of them. Teenagers
(22:14):
brag about their recent heightsts. They text each other. Gtarl
Grand theft auto real life. You can train on social media.
You could see the Kiya challenge on how to pick
up a key or a Hyundai using a screwdriver in
a USB cable. But the GPS tracker that you have
(22:38):
in your car, that's not gonna help. They know where
those are, they'll just pull them out. And most of them,
like I said, some of the high end cars end
up in West Africa for the burgeoning stolen used car
market there for those high end the Mercedes, the Range
Rovers and things like that. About some of those weird
(22:58):
and unbelievable store in the world of crime. And this
is a kind of a combination of crime and artificial intelligence,
and this is a this is something that should be
a crime. Drew Crecente a couple of months ago got
a Google alert that flagged what appeared to be a
(23:19):
new profile of his daughter online, the daughter that had
been murdered eighteen years earlier. It had Jennifer's full name,
It had an old high school yearbook photo of her.
It had a biography of Jennifer. It said she was
a video game journalist. It said she was an expert
(23:42):
in technology, pop culture, and journalism. The website where this
new profile popped up was character dot Ai, and Jennifer's
image and likeness were used to create a chatbot that
(24:05):
people could talk to.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Now. The company.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Is a website that allows you to converse with digital
personalities using the generative artificial intelligence. Think you're having a
conversation with a computer like chat GPT or grock on Twitter,
but it's interacting with you as if it's a person.
These chatbots engage in conversation. They can be programmed to
(24:35):
adopt specific personalities, biographical details of specific characters, whether they're
real characters or imagine you know, you can program it
to be Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Or Darth Vader.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And these companies that put up these chatbots have found
a growing audience online because people want friends or mentors,
or they want romantic partners. But this controversial technology also
comes with incredible drawbacks. A guy in Belgium died by
suicide a couple of years ago. He was encouraged to
do so in a conversation with a chatbot. We saw
(25:11):
that also with a kid, a twelve year old kid
who was having conversations with these chatbots and eventually ended
his life. So character Ai again needless to say, Dad,
Drew Crecente, who's seeing his murdered daughter's face on this website.
(25:34):
He said, my pulse was racing. I was just looking
for a big flashing red stop button that I could
slap and just make it stop. It takes it quite
a bit for me to be shocked, he said, because
I really have been through quite a lot, but this
was a new low.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And give you an idea what he's been through.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
His daughter, Jennifer, was killed by her ex boyfriend during
her senior year in high school. Character AI says that
the company will remove any chatbot that violates as terms
of service. They're constantly evolving and they're refining their safety
practices to prioritize community safety. When they were notified about
(26:15):
Jennifer's Character, they said they reviewed the content and the
account and took action based on their policies because the
terms of service prevent anybody from impersonating any person or entity. Now,
because of the nonprofit that Drew Corescente put up after
(26:36):
his daughter was murdered, they spend time preventing teen dating violence.
He was appalled that Character had allowed somebody to create
this facsimile of a murdered high schooler without her family's permission,
and because of his work. Like I said in that nonprofit,
he keeps the Google alert that tracks mentions of his
(26:59):
daughters on name online. Every once in a while it
shows up on a spam website, maybe a news report
that repeats old information. But that October alert led him
to his daughter's name and picture on character dot ai,
and he couldn't figure out it first. He said, the
more he looked into it, the more uneasy he felt.
In addition to using her name and her picture, the
(27:22):
chatbot's page described her in very lively language, as if
she were alive, like the tech journalist who geeks out
on video games, always up to date on the latest
entertainment news. He said the description didn't appear to be
based on her personality or any specific interests about what
her real life was, and he said the factual inaccuracies
(27:45):
were beside the point. The idea of character hosting and
then potentially making money from a chatbot using his murdered
daughter's name was distressing enough he did not start at
a conversation with it. He did not investigate the user
that created the bot, but he immediately emailed the character
(28:05):
company to have it removed. Asked about other chatbots on
their site that impersonate public figures, a spokesperson said the
reports of impersonation are investigated immediately by the trust and
safety team. The character is removed if it's found to
have violated. There is a privacy researcher at Mozilla Foundation.
(28:27):
They said that this approach to moderation is way too
passive because it plainly violates its own term of service.
In the case of Jennifer Crescente, he says, if they're
going to say we don't allow this on the platform,
then they allow it on their platform until it's brought
to their attention. That's not right. All the while they're
making millions of dollars potentially. I mean, it was disturbing
(28:50):
enough to push this guy to ponder up taking a
new cause, and now he's considering legal options and advocating
for more active safety measures to prevent AI companies from
harming or re traumatizing anybody else that may have been
the victim.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Of a crime, in this case, the murder of his
own daughter. So that's awful.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you
can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine
am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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