Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 76: My Own Sinkhole - My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
N and welcome to rewind with Karen and Georgia.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's right. Every Wednesday, we're here recapping our old shows
with all new commentary and insights and updates.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Today we're recapping episode seventy six, which we named My
Own Sinkhole.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh. This episode came out on July sixth, twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
All right, let's listen to the intro of episode seventy six.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Happy fourth of July. Hello, wait, let's start over. It's
not fourth of July anymore, so, oh, happy fifth of July.
It's not the fifth, it's the sixth. Hello, and welcome
to my favorite murder.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hi, welcome, thanks for coming. That's Karen kill Garret. What
do we always started? It's like it's super uncomfortable. We've
gone over this a million times. We're staring at each other.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I mean many start of us. We just stare at
each other to see who's going to go first, and
then the fakest voices that we have to offer come
out of our heads. And then we asked to start over.
But we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
And we never plan anything. I mean, what are you
going to plan? What are you gonna plan?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I mean we have an ending? What more do you want?
Who cares? Anyway? Of all the things? Have you seen
that picture? The newest pictures that have come back from
the Hubble telescope that show the galaxies, they're purple. They
did it basically, it's like black background they did. Purple
were the galaxies in the picture, and orange was the

(01:47):
gas the different things of gas that make stars. And
it like there's a countless number of galaxies in this photo.
We're giving me an anxiety attech. I'm just saying, who cares?
What we how we start this podcast? Do get? We're
start ust? Dude? Did or made a start? We? Really?
I can't even start to think about it. Wait, that
is it? The the vastness of space gives you anxiety?

(02:10):
The vastness of space, the reality of life? What is it?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
What are we are? We're aliens? Clearly, I mean everyone is.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm not. I'm not.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
I'm actually irish, which is worse and harder. There's you
know that podcast We love Mysteries abound, yet we go
to sleep too. The liking the last episode is like
are are humans actually aliens?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
And it's like I got so into that episode that
when I landed, when I went to Pedloma for Father's Day.
When I landed and Lauren Adrian came and picked me up,
I got into the car and was like, so the
thing is that there's a really good chance we're all aliens.
So that's evinced too. He was, and I explained it
very poorly. She was like, I don't know. Yeah, And

(02:57):
then then I turned to him and went night.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
When Elvis was sitting on me and I said, do
you think cats are alien?

Speaker 2 (03:04):
He was just like, no, I am.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Now I am the weird one in the relationship.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
He is the like, uh, what's it called. He's the
voice of reason? Yes, that, oh, speaking of which, there's
a reason we can never think of the word trophy.
And I would like to say I would like to
take responsibility for it because I think every time it's happened,
it's been in my story where we feel like a
serial killer takes trophies. Yeah, they take a thing, they

(03:30):
keep it so they can look at it and remember
the bad thing they did. That's called a trophy.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
It's all the word memento, which is what we use.
This is the fucking same word.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, But I guess, I guess the most often used
term and the ones that people tweet to us in
all caps with seventeen exclamation points after his trophy. Yeah,
so maybe here in the podcasting loft which we finally
moved into and everyone, are you gonna ever tweet picture

(03:59):
or put pictures on Instagram?

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah? I just like didn't feel like it was done yet,
but I should just posted.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's so good you guys, all of the awesome art
you sent us and dolls you've made us, and pictures
and everything Georgia has arranged in her loft obsessively, and
it looks so cool. It's super fun to write it
on social media.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
But there's like things I want to frame still and
things I need to put up here and there, but.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I'll post it for now.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
And there's also a drawing of a let's sit crooked
and talk straight, yes drawing, And I thought it was
so funny when I hung it crooked.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yes, well, I saw it immediately and it made me laugh.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
It's driving me crazy, like as a fucking OCD person,
But it's got a point.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
There's a reason it's that way, the reason.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
I don't need to download the app that is a
measure leveler. Ooh they have that I can have that dude. Dude,
you can have an app for anything.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
I know.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Man, when the grid goes down, we're gonna we're screwed. Believe,
nothing will be straightened. No frames will be straight.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
And you won't know even if there are like landlines,
if they can get a hard line in some way.
Could you do you know even your own phone number anymore? Yeah?
Do you know mine? No? I Vince and I purposely.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Memorized each other. So I'm gonna give it out right now.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Okay, great, please call us day or night. Do you
know what I like?

Speaker 1 (05:23):
I'm super prepared, trying to prepare for earthquakes, you know,
and so I got like extra.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
This is boring. This is so boring. Nobody cares. Where
does I take a huge step of die code thinking
you're going to cover for at least thirty seconds? Now,
preparing for earthquakes is necessary and a reality in California.
But would you do buy some flashlights?

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Come on, jud it up a little bit, have a flashlight.
I have external batteries in my car and and my.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Hand crank kind no, no, no, they're.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
For their phone, like like that have a charge on them.
Oh oh right, listen, everyone be prepared Yeah, that's it's
very important.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, I have a like a and I have an
earthquake kit in my front closet. I do, but all
I think of is what if that's the part of
the house that goes down.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Dude, I have one in the loft, and I'm like,
clearly the loft is going to collapse.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
What is it doing here? I stick flashlights under everything
in my whole house. Smart and I've actually when I
bought my house, I had to sign a piece of
paper declaring that I understood that my house is on
land that if there's a strong enough earthquake it turns
to liquid and sinks into the earth. What I will
get my own sinkhole, which is, as many people know,

(06:34):
one of my great passions of life is sinkholes.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Well, I have a question. What kind of liquid liquid
are we talking about? Because it's something fun like kool aid.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Then I'm like, great, yes, I have there's a kooloid
spring underneath my OUs. No, it's because I'm near the
quote unquote La River. Uh, they're the one that's feet
from my door. Yes, well that goes right up kind
of near my house if you go north, and that
creates the water table is right, I guess close to

(07:05):
under my house. So basically, if the ground shakes, the
kind of silt or whatever ground is under my house,
we'll just mix with the water, become like sand quicksandbye
and goodbye and goodbye and good night.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
So just things to skippers, come back, skippers.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
This is what you need to know the most.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Skippers in places where there isn't and won't be earthquakes ever. Hi,
you never know though. Do you think there's a geologist
who listens? Is that an earthquake doctor? Yes, definitely, Okay,
he's going email. So you are completely incorrect about all
of this information. I signed paperwork listen, speaking of I'm
not oh experts, that's right. I have a letter, an

(07:53):
email from a girl who so, I did the Mainline murders,
the fucking insane Mainline murders last week, and the girl
whose dad was involved in the case emailed us. WHOA, Okay,
I'm so excited when you covered the Mainline murders in
your last episode, as my dad was very closely involved
in the case. He prosecuted Karen Reinhart's lover, William Bradford

(08:14):
Patches Patches, the professor. Yeah for stealing from her estate,
so the one thing he got. In the beginning, he
described Bradfield as a master manipulator and a truly evil man,
despite being a prosecutor for over thirty years and putting
hundreds of murderers behind bars, including billionaire murderer John DuPont
Ooh wait, wait, is that the Fox Catcher guy?

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Hell?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yes, my dad says, no case has ever affected him
quite like this one. He's a father of four daughters,
and he still tears up when he talks about the kids,
the innocent children, and the discovery of Karen's art museum
pin on the.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Floor of the car.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
And by the way, I accidentally called her Carol at
the very end of it.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
And let's just you were off the page though you
were just trying to talk. Yes, that's always a mistake.
It's the mistake that we're dedicated to making.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yes, never apologize for like I just apologize. So Patches
and Principal Smith were co conspirators, he thinks, and that
Patches had agreed.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I'm just calling them this.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
I agree to split Karen's life insurance money with Principal
in exchange for killing Karen and her children. To this day,
he's still heartbroken over the police mishandling the evidence that
led to j Smith's conviction and being thrown out. Thank
you guys so much, et cetera, et cetera. John Man
a JFK. Thanks again today Sex you don't get murdered,
Brianna ps and Steven said he can.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
I read this? Steven? Oh no, you're gonna be embarrassed.
Steven said, fine, I don't want to embarrass you. Say
it and then we'll decide after Okay, we can cut
it out. Stephen ps is, Stephen Stingle, nop.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Is, Stephen Stinky, Stephen Single.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Sorry, Steven, I'm gonna take this one. Can we say that?
Then you can cut this out. Obviously you're in charge
of this whole show.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
You get everything out. I have so many, so many
listeners like this. Yeah, inquiring minds. He's a cat guy,
which lots of girls like. But don't mistake that for.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Innocence or or any kind of uh, don't mistake his
kindness for gentleness. What is the saying, don't mistake my
weakness for kindness. I like that. I saw that one
time on Tumblr. I dig it, right, Stephen, this is.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Going to be a dating profile that whole big clip
of this podcast. Where are you going? Are you going
to tender what? Everyone know?

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I haven't decided yet. Okay, I think you should take
it over to what's it called too Many Fish the
Christian dating site. Too many fish? That is, plenty of fish,
plenty of fish. There are too many fish. I don't
like fish, so I feel like there's too many true. Yes, Stephen, religion,
that's really important to you.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean I am a Satanist, So so bring that
act over to too Many Fish.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
And then for a change of pay speaking of traveling,
but can I just say one thing really quick please?
At the end of that email, did she start calling
the woman Karen because Karen was the daughter? Yeah, now
I know, only because my name.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
No, no, no, she said the discovery of Karen's art museum
pan at the floor of the car, So the kid's
the kid. But then later on, yeah, you're right. She
may know you're right she did fuck yeah, not just me, right,
I just want to make sure so I know I
feel thoughtful.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
The mother's no, this isn't right. Okay. Anyways, here we go, well,
just so just so they know we didn't do it. Yeah,
should we start. That was just a run through. I'm
going to say this, the Cleveland murdering knows how to
meet up. They sent us pictures, they sent us a video.

(11:53):
There's a bunch of them. They're a good looking group.
They were all in a bar, enthusiastic, and a lot
of people were tweeting just saying what a great group
it was, how happy it made them to be a
part of it. Other people were writing saying, hey, I
didn't know, I wish I was there. And they ended
up collecting five hundred dollars for end back Law, which

(12:15):
is so cool. So thank you guys so much, and
congratulations and way to go, because that really makes a difference.
That's lovely. Yeah, that's nice.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Des Moine, Sorry, des Moines, sorry guys.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Sorry we're talking shit.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
I actually have no idea what it's like there, but
apparently it's lovely.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah. I think I was like a great place.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
And I think there was an iom meetup too where
they went and saw Despicable Meat together and so as
a photo and I'm like, what, that's cool. You don't
have to make a bunch of cocktails with a like
funny name. Do you just go watch a movie that's
so good.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
There was a somebody sent I can't tell if he
it was the person that sent it was wearing the
sweatshirt because he kind of looked like a model, or
if it was just showing the picture of a sweatshirt.
But you can get a sweatshirt that says des moin
d u h like it's basically spelled phonetically but also
dumb oin win made me laugh really hard. Yeah, well,

(13:09):
so we're you know, yes, we're going to do We're
on each other's radar.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, can I say one more thing about Murderina? So
on Instagram they're having I guess the thing called the
lettering Challenge, which I didn't know is a thing. It's
all these people who are like written to calligraphy and
like write in like lettering r.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
This is a thing.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
And so they're having my favorite murder lettering challenge. I
guess there's like a whole it's a whole community. They
have challenges for like the month and so there it's
hashtag letter MFM. And I think I found the girl
who was going to design my tattoo, my my favorite
murder tattoo.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oh that's great. So do you want to get one
with me? Or should I surprise you? That is so
fucking weird. I had a dream the other night that
everyone in my family was getting a tattoo together, and
I was in the dream. I was like, really, Aunt Mary,
like in your mid seventies, Like I was just looking
on at my family, like, and you know what, we

(14:00):
were getting a tattoo of some toes. What does that mean?
I don't know. I'll look it up, but yes, I'll
get a tattoo with you going together? Yes, okay? Can
I want to get mine all across my one haunch,
just my whole lip front to back.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
I think I'm going to get mine, like what's this
called undernap armpit side of my body?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Ribs? I love it?

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then I'm going to get an SSDGM and this
chick it is clearfy really well, who I'll shout out
when I get the tattoo I'm going to have.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
I'm having her design something. Maybe I'll get it on
my neck? Are you serious? No? My I used to
know a guy that used to call neck tattoos job stoppers. Yeah,
hand tattoos, But I don't think that's true anymore because
how many chefs do you see with neck tattoos or
like podcasters. I mean people who are tatted up are like, yeah,

(14:55):
fuck you. I run my entire company. I have a
face tattoo. Do you give it? Get it? And I
make more money than you and your dad? Come my
own boss. Too bad, your dad?

Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's okay. Do you know my dad is driving lyft now?
And he said, I keep wondering if all these young
girls are get in my car are murderinos. That sounded
like he was going to kill them at person. Yeah,
he has to be careful with how he brings that up.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
So if you see Marty picking up on left, Marty,
I think that's.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
All it's all for you. Let me say step I
was going to say, yeah, here's a little parner. There's
a little fun thing for for us, based on last
week's story. On your story, Karen, I know it's July
right now, but I think it's never too early for Okay,
all right, what is it? The Andy Williams Christmas Special?
Holy shit, Claudine Lange's first and this was the one

(15:48):
that like was it was it?

Speaker 1 (15:50):
That?

Speaker 2 (15:50):
It was? This is the highest ranking television show before
you got knocked out by some Super Bowls yeah, this
is the classics. This is and we spend a weekend
watching this. That is amazing. Do we save it for Christmas?
Just to go? Okay, July Christmas special event? Thank you

(16:12):
so much. Wait someone sent it to us or did
you get it? Steven?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Really good gift giving. You're now invited to watch it
with us. Okay, it's me this week? Right, Yeah, yes,
I knew. Now you know Steve's not paying attention.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
I definitely went first.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, because now we're all back, We're all like, we're
all on it again. What's a bummer though?

Speaker 1 (16:36):
And I think that we have this often is that
mine is a real bummer at the end. And I
hate closing with a real bummer. Yeah, but then we
have something.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's why they have a positive That's why we turn
it hard, we take a hard left into positive land. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
People don't like when murder podcasts are a real bummer.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
They don't know they do. Yeah, that's the whole point.
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I want to go ahead and say right at the
top that because of this podcast and the murdering knows
who listen, I was able to help my dad retire.
He doesn't drive lyft anymore. He has a nice apartment
and a van that he loves. So I just wanted
to let everyone know that and thank them for listening.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, that's right. Every moment that you spend with us
has affected our lives and in ways that are so crazy. Yeah,
so crazy. And I mean like, it was a really
exciting time back then when you got new that split
level apartment, that high class, high ceiling split level apartment,

(17:43):
just so funny. And now I own a home that
is built on granite. I'm no longer in a liquefaction zone.
I got to move on up.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, we're doing a location update. My dad is not
driving lyft and lives in an great apartment. Karen's house
is and not a potential sinkhole.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
There's no secret rivers under me anymore. It's great, so grateful.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
I can't believe that the big one hasn't happened though
since then. I'm sorry, that's so stupid to me to say,
but like I've been waiting for it, yeah, this whole time.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
For a little while on social media or online or whatever,
the thing was that the calldera in Yellowstone was going
to blow and they were like any second. Yeah, but
I think it's the kind of thing of a little
perspective of the thing we get told what to worry about, yeah,
and we don't realize it. So suddenly I here comes COVID. Yes,
COVID's on the way. But I'm literally all eyes on

(18:38):
Yellowstone every day of like how's the call dera? Is
it bubbling or not? It's like, how crazy is it.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
That we just had no clue what was going to
hit us in a couple of years, Like of COVID,
we have no clue.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Unprecedented in our lifetime, yes, yeah, or sorry, yes, in
our lifetime. So I was like, wait, the Spanish flu,
but we weren't there.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
For that in the twenty first century. Unprecedented, Yes, yes, definitely.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yes, That's what I remember when COVID first started and
they were kind of like talking about quarantine, where I
was like, how are we going to do this? We've
never done it before, And the answer is we're going
to wipe down our cereal boxes and freak the fuck out.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Speaking of MFM tattoos, I still haven't gotten one, will
I ever, But I did recently have a great idea
for Vince and I what if we got each other's
MFM animated characters tattooed on ourselves. How cute would that
be if I got the little MFM animated Vince and

(19:38):
he got the Little MFM animated.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
No, I let me explain this to you. I was
just thinking of, like, would it would Vince go.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Even No, I already said that it's not excited, and
then he reacted like you reacted.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Let's rephrase it. You're going to get a tattoo of
we watch wrestling, the logo of we watch wrestling across
your back, and he's gonna get MFAM. But I mean,
I love those characters. I love the way those characters look.
It would be cute.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
If we had to get a couple's tattoo. That would
be like the fucking cutest thing, don't you think?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
How big would it would be? Georgia as the mothman
on the back of Vince's calf, Oh my god, that'd
be even cooler.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
If I was the mom double bird's whole leg.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
That would be so cute.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Now he already does enough by wearing our merch, which
is above and beyond.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
The fucking funniest. It is the funniest. He's number one.
What I really love is when in the live shows
just forgetting this part and Vince walking on to tell everybody,
here's the mic, and then I'm gonna stand over here.
The way that audience loves Vince is the cutest thing
in the light. It's so sweet. I love it they
start screaming for him. He loves it. Also. I just
love that we're really laying down the groundwork the cannon

(20:49):
of sinkhole where it's like it's if anybody thought I
was a fake lover of sinkholes, if I was some
sort of bandwagonyer of sinkholes, you can just go right
back to this fucking episode. Karen goes way back. She
was into sinkholes before they were cool. I liked them first.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
All right, let's get into Karen's story about Mark Hoffman.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Okay, Mine is it's hard sometimes, as we've talked about,
to get for me to get my homework done. Yeah,
and especially when I will work on something for a
while and then if I have a friend who goes,
I've ever heard of this one? I will switch immediately
and go do my friends I switch? I switch.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
You know you're halfway done. It's not like you're just
reading about it. No, I switch all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, and so many of these stories because you know,
you guys are just as into true crime, if not
more than either of us. So oftentimes you feel like
I'm only telling a third of this story. I know
there's so much more. I should have read an entire
book about this whatever. That's what other people do. So
sometimes I'll bail just because I know a story has

(22:03):
much more to it and I should invest more.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
T you're not going to give to a justice right exactly,
someone else already has.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
But this one was so juicy and I loved it
so much. My friend Bridger is the one who told
me about it. He's hilarious. Uh he's he's very famous
on Twitter and he's a great writer and he grew
up in Utah. So he was like, have you ever
heard of this one? And I had never heard anything

(22:29):
about it. Turns out there's a forensic files, there's lots
of stuff, there's an amazing book. But anyway, I'll just
give you. I'll give you what I know. So we're
we're in Salt Lake City. Okay, what's this? Is there
a call? Is it called anything? I'm not going to
call it anything because I usually do that and then
I end up giving it anyway, I totally understand. Okay,

(22:51):
So we're in Salt Lake City the morning of October fifteenth,
nineteen eighty five, and a man named Steve Christensen, who
is a businessman, a husband, a father of four, and
a bishop of the Mormon Church. He arrives at his
office on the sixth floor of the Judge Building in
downtown Salt Lake City. One time I did a story
and it was that horrible one about the woman throwing

(23:12):
her kids off the top of the hotel in Utah,
in Salt Lake City even and in that I threw
out the random idea that it was a very because
you know, all of Utah, I assume is very Mormon,
that Salt Lake City would be a conservative town. Well,
I couldn't have been more wrong about that. Would like

(23:33):
to say now I now know, because of making that
mistake that actually Salt Lake City is the like liberal
part of Utah, and it's a college town and it's
the hip place, and it's probably best case scenario. And
if you're looking for, I don't know, a great shirt
or really cool flats, I don't know. So see if

(23:57):
Christensen gets to his office. He sees a brown wrapped
box shaped package in front of his office door and
his name's written on top of it. He picks it
up and it immediately immediately explodes.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Oh fuck here, I thought it was something else and
this is fucking let's do that.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, so it was a pipe bomb. Steve is killed
the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fight. Yeah, it's it
was a pipe bomb that was made with concrete nails
or inside. And concrete nails are the nails you use
to pound in. They're not made of concrete. They're the

(24:32):
really strong, industrial sized nails that you pound into concrete.
So the person that made this pipe bomb wanted the
person who picked it up to be killed. Yeah, So
the ATFUH officers arrive. They begin to piece the bomb
back together to figure out that it's a pipe bomb

(24:54):
and that was activated by a mercury switch that would
go off when the package was picked up untilted one
way or the other. So the minute the mercury like
shifts exactly, it's in a little glass circuit, and if
it is laying on one side of this little glass thing,
and then when you pick it up, if you put
it in chip it one way or the other, the

(25:15):
circuit connects and that's when the bomb explodes. So they
know from a bomb like that that the person that
the bomber dropped that box off, because they would have
to make sure it stays exactly the way it is.
They couldn't mail it, Yeah, you can't just give it
to somebody else. So also inside the bomb were Tandy

(25:38):
brand batteries, which is, as many RC enthusiasts snow, Tandy
is the radio shack brand of batteries. Really, so they
start going around to the local radio shacks trying to
find out who has bought batteries there, you know, the
past week or whatever. They also so find out that

(26:02):
Steve Christensen had recently worked at a financial company called CFS, which,
after doing huge business in the seventies and the early eighties,
had started losing money and wasn't serious trouble. So this
is the part that I actually found really interesting, because
so the eighties were like a time of big money.
That's when everybody pretended to be rich and preppies and

(26:23):
you know, it was like very Izod coke time. Yeah,
And apparently Salt Lake City in that time was a
hotbed for financial fraud. Really. Yeah, So what people would
do conmen would go to Salt Lake City and they
would kind of like get get into the Mormon Church.
They would either pretend they were Mormons or they would

(26:44):
be friend higher ups in the Mormon Church. And then
when they would do business, they would like say they
were in securities or whatever.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Stocks box they like, I got a ground floor fucking
thing to get in.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
On, exactly. And then the elders or whoever in the
church would be like, oh, this guy is trustworthy. And
so then all the prishners or Mormons, I'm not sure
what you call the general word for, but all the
people in that church would then trust that person and
buy into whatever thing that that person was bringing to

(27:17):
the table, whether it was high finance or also very
popular pyramid scheme. Vitamin sales got to be very popular.
What the fuck back then? Yeah, so it was kind
of an ant. There was lots of Amway, low grade
Amway kind of bullshit going on.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
They get the vitamins? Did they ever get the vitamins?
They ever get the vitamins they needed? I don't know,
but it was it was a kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
They call it affinity fraud and It happens in lots
of different different kinds of religions.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Just is wind my money is under my bed, right.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
And trust no one. It's the same. It's the assumption
that quote unquote one of your own is going to
look out for your interest as opposed to an outsider.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Trust anyone, do you No, I'm scared of my cousin,
is any financial whatever the fuck?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
And I like scared? Sorry, Well, because it's it's so
anyone can tell you anything, and if you don't know
exactly what's going on you it's one hundred percent pure
trust yea.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
And people are that in the money, like they're in
the money and they want it, yeah, exactly, Okay.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Well, so it's the same thing Bernie Madoff did to
uh he got twenty billion dollars. As you well know
watching that documentary from Wealthy Jewish People. A guy named
Alan Stanford did it to Southern Baptists. He had a
seven million, seven billion dollar empire that fell. There was
even a con man named Monroe L. Beachi who became

(28:49):
trusted within the Amish community, and he went to prison
for orchestrating a scheme that defrauded twenty seven hundred investors,
many of them his friends and neighbors. What a dick.
So it's just a very common practice of like this
idea that your religion would would stand for your good
morals and that that therefore the business is trustworthy. It's

(29:12):
almost worse.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Con than just you know, clients, because yeah, these people
are trusting because they because if you're in their religion,
it's because you believe the same things they do, you
have the same morals.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
They're they're they're going right on the inside. You know,
they're not just standing out and like rolling the dice
and maybe you'll believe them and maybe not. They're they're
asking you. They're playing on your ultimate faith, which is
very ugly. And in the Mormon religion, it was the
kind of thing where there I believe that a lot

(29:45):
I know lots of Mormons. I've grown up, I grew
up with Mormons. One of my good friends that I
used to work with, Betsy, is a Mormon. And you know,
it's it's a very moralistic they the life they live
is really the whole idea of it is that you
live this life based on your faith. So it's like

(30:06):
my friend just said it the other day, he's like
Mormons really walk the walk. So it's not just and
I maybe I'm only saying this because to all those
like design websites that you see these days, and when
you trace them back, it's like a young Mormon family.
But it's like the most beautiful you know, table setting, Yeah,
and the cutest design and it's like, here's a great

(30:27):
thing for your baby.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
I've heard so many bloggers, like famous bloggers or like
the big ones that have beautful websites for Mormon for
some reason.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, because it's kind of like it's the the whole
idea of like home building, Yeah, and like putting the
best into your home.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right and being ambitious and always having something anyways.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, yeah, I mean these are insane generalizations. Obviously we're
not speaking for every single person that's in the religion,
but there is just there's something to them. There's something
to that. Where there's it, there is a there seems
to be an innocence that in the set and eighties
con men were like, oh, we can exploit this community,

(31:04):
this sense of community that they have. Okay, two hours
after Steve Christensen's attack, there's another bombing at the home
of Gary and Kathy's Sheets. Gary Sheets was Steve Christensen's
boss at CFS and his wife Kathy was the one
who picked up the package. It exploded in her hands

(31:24):
and she was killed. Oh my god, how I never
heard of this I know. So now the police are
thinking that these bombings are related to the failed CFS
business dealings, and so it could be a retaliation from
an old employee or even the mafia. Police talk to
the Sheets thirteen year old next door neighbor who saw

(31:46):
a tan mini van pull into the Sheets driveway the
night before around midnight and thought it was suspicious, but
all he saw was the car. He didn't see anybody
anybody get in or out. But then they also talked
to a jeweler who worked on the fifth floor of
the Judge building, one floor below Steve Christensen's office. His
name is Bruce Passy, and he tells the police that

(32:09):
the morning the morning of the bombing, he got into
the elevator with his father and there was a man
standing in the elevator wearing a letterman jacket but with
no letter on it, and he was holding a brown
like paper wrapped box that said to Steve Christensen on
the top of it. And so he Bruce Passey describes

(32:31):
this man to the police, saying he's a white male
five foot eight, medium brown hair. The next day there's
a third bombing. This time it's inside a car and
the victim is seriously injured, but he's not killed. It's
thirty year old Mark Hoffman. He is rushed to the

(32:51):
hospital where he's in critical condition, but he ends up
being able to tell the police that he had opened
his car door and the package was sitting on the
driver's seat. With the action of opening the door, it
fell off and exploded.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Oh good, So he didn't get the full impact right, but.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
He had a fingertip blown off. He had a huge
wound in his knee where parts of the explosives went
into his knee cat like his knee area. So he
was pretty badly injured. But immediately the police are suspicious
because if he had his fingers blown off, that doesn't

(33:28):
that means that the box was in his hands, not
on the seat, and then tumbling to the ground. Also
with the direction. The guy in forensic files explains it
really well, but it's basically the way they know bombs
explode in the directions they go. If the thing was
in his knee. Then he could not have been standing

(33:48):
outside of the car. He must have been inside of
the car, leaning over, And so they basically reconstruct it.
I want to watch that. I'm like trying to picture
up my head. And basically they with the trajectory of
the stuff that flew out of the bomb which hit him,
they realized he must have been leaning over the center
console holding the box, and basically inside the car. So

(34:12):
his story, why would you lie about that? Why wouldn't
you just tell him exactly?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
I love when cops figure that out, like this person
killed themselves and it's like, no, the trajectory like yours
last week. The trajectory shows yes, that that person couldn't
have killed themselves.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
And that's the relatively new forensic part. That's like what
forensic files is all celebrating because it's like, we you
would never have known that until forensics comes in and
is like hold up. So the police search Mark Hoffman's
house and they find a Letterman jacket just like the
one that Bruce Passy said the guy in the elevator

(34:47):
was wearing, and they also find they also see that
he has a Tan minivan. Oh shit, and there's gunpowder
that they find traces of around his house that match
the brand used in all three bombings. There you go.
So Mark Hoffman maintains his innocence, says he's the victim,
and he demands to take a lie detector test, and

(35:09):
he does. They give him a lie detector test and
he passes with flying colors. Shit. Yeah, so the police
start looking into who this guy really is. So Mark
Coffin was born in Salt Lake City on December seventh,
nineteen fifty four. Raised in a strict Mormon household, He
was a mediocre student, but later he was tested to
have an IQ of one hundred and sixty nine. Wow,

(35:31):
which is insanely high. That's one point over mind. I
feel like in stories I've read, people who are like
mad geniuses are usually in like the mid one thirties
to one forties.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
I was going to say that, like, I feel like,
very very, very fucking smart is like one thirty I
think so, But like then genius is like one sixty something.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
And maybe I like us trying to guess what genius
IQ of the dumbest way, Well.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
I know when my brother was a kid with fucking
attention issues, they tested him and he had like one
very high up there because it's like.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Well, he's just fucking bored. Yes, that's why.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
So yeah, and I never I was not that smart
and I was never bored. No, I was always you're like,
I was so fascinating bored, not smart and bored.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Okay. So he collected coins as a teenager and when
he was when he was young. Uh, that's a weird
cut and paste. He collected coins teenager and at some
point he forged a rare mint mark on a dime
that was verified by an organization of coin collectors to

(36:46):
be genuine.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
And when he was a kid, he tricked the shit
out of fucking professional coin people exactly.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
He got he got the taste early of like, you know,
it's impressive.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I think so too. This don't kill people next.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
I mean so in some In nineteen seventy three, he
volunteered to spend two years as an LDS missionary. When
he came back from his mission, which was in England,
he enrolled as a pre med major at Utah State University.
He married Dora ley Old in nineteen seventy nine. They
eventually have four children together, and she filed for divorce

(37:22):
in nineteen eighty seven. So in nineteen eighty Hoffman claims
to have found a seventeenth century King James Bible with
a document inside that he claimed to be the transcript
the Joseph Smiths, who was the founder of the Latter
Day Saints church. He had ascribed named Martin Harris, and

(37:46):
was supposed to be a transcript that Martin Harris brought
to a Columbia classics professor in eighteen twenty eight that
was originally copied by Joseph Smith from the golden plates
from which he translated the Book of Mormon. So I'm
going to say this probably incorrectly, but the general idea

(38:08):
of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ the
Latter day Saints is Joseph Smith found golden tablets that
he dug up, and from those tablets he wrote down
the tenants of the religion, and an angel appeared to
him as he dug up those tablets to help him.

(38:29):
So basically, he presents this document, they freak out because
they're like they'd never it's a historical document from their
church they'd never seen before, and the church ends up
buying it from Hoffmann for twenty thousand dollars. Fuck. So
this not only sets him financially, but it also sets

(38:51):
his reputation as a historical documents dealer. So I wonder
where he said he found it. Oh, inside a King
Dame's Bible, so he okay, So he was already trying
to become like a historical book okay, dealer. So one
of the books, okay, that makes sense. It was a
really old It was a seventeenth century King James Bible,

(39:14):
so then it was like inside that it. So basically
he then starts for the next several years selling forged
quote unquote lost LDS documents to the church, the most
notorious notorious of which was the Salamander Letter in nineteen

(39:35):
eighty four. So he basically starts forging piece as a
historical text and bringing them to the church, and as
a church member himself, going I found this. I found this.
Now the church is part of it is like a
little bit like, oh, yeah, we need to we need
to be owning these papers. And sometimes he would donate

(39:57):
them and sometimes they would buy them from him, but
essentially it was it was text that they that was
relevant to them knowing about their own religion and the
and the founder of their own religion. So the one
that is the most infamous is the Salamander letter, which
basically said that when Joseph Smith dug up those tablets,

(40:21):
it wasn't an angel that appeared to him, but a
white salamander that uh uh so, So that was such a.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Change of the historical record, and they had never heard
that before.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
They'd never heard it before, super freaky, and it was
kind of like they didn't know if they should announce it.
It put them in a really weird position because suddenly
it's it's it's a very non religious sounding and almost
like a magical, witchy sounding version of the story of
how their church is founded.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
That's a sound salamander was kind of like not as
cool as a snake is a snake?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
No, uh well, but snake's in like Christian religion are evil,
So there's there's just something weird about It's an albino salamander,
like as opposed to an angel.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Man, I think he could have done better, well, a bear,
albino bear, a.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Blue bear, a blue Well, it turned out he was
actually forging all of these documents and he had lost
his faith in when he was a teenager, like he
went on his mission. Basically, he felt a lot of
pressure from his family because he was raised in such
a strict Mormon household. But he he was trying to

(41:37):
embarrass the church. So he was writing these documents and
changing these stories and basically adding in little inconsistencies and
mistakes so that the church would kind of be scrambling
and not knowing what their official approach should be. And

(41:57):
he and he was like a mass ster forger because
he had already sold Let's see this, here's the list
he'd forged. Unpublished poems by Emily Dickinson, signatures of Mark Twain,
a full handwritten letter supposedly written by Betsy Ross. No,

(42:19):
he tricked the Library of Congress. He tricked Sotheby's. He
sold signatures by George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams,
Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson, Nathan Hale, John Hancocks,
Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton. Wow, this guy
is so lucky. He just finds all this shit, yeah,

(42:39):
and makes a ship ton of money off of it.
There was somebody named Button Gwynett. No, the signature was
the rarest and therefore the most valuable of any signer
of the Declaration of Independence. A guy named Button signed
the Declaration of this poor girl. Oh sure, no way,
Button Gwyne got up there. He also said he claimed

(43:05):
to have discovered a famous document called the Oath of
the Freeman, which is believed to be or you know,
some say the precursor to the Declaration of Independence. It's
from the sixteen hundreds and it was worth over a
million dollars.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Oh but this they never knew it existed until he came.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
They knew it existed, but they didn't There were no
copies of it in America. Okay, so he had claimed
he found one and he was trying to sell that,
but it was the sale of that was kind of
held up because they were questioning its authenticity.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Finally, yeah, I was like, you know what we should do.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Well in this. It's funny because I think in the
forensic files they start talking about how they because it's
within the church and the way he did it. He
was a master manipulator. She was super smart, so he
knew how to do it where they would not. They
didn't question the documents because of who he was and
what he had already sold. So it was like, well,

(44:06):
if he sold something to the Library of Congress and
Southby's and all these places, we're going to question him. Yeah,
this guy's an expert and he's a Mormon, so get
him all the way in on the inside. But he
also would buy really expensive things, so he was always broke.
Even though he would make big money on selling these forgeries,
he would then buy like rare books, and he was

(44:27):
buying things so that he could then forge other things later.
I mean, it's very complicated. And there's a book called
The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrel and that
tells the story of Mark Hoffman, but specifically from the
view of him pretending to have discovered poems by Emily Dickinson,

(44:52):
and the public library in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is where
she was from, collects money to buy these heretofore unpublished
lost Emily Dickinson poems that were fake. Yeah, so he's
he is like a he he was like one of
the greatest forgers or the you know, most infamous forgers

(45:15):
anyone had ever seen work. Uh, he's doing it. So
essentially what happened was he was trying to sell some
new set of documents to the church. Steve Christensen knew
a little bit about antiquities and old documents, and so
he was questioning. He was like, I heard this guy

(45:37):
is being questioned about the Oath of the Freemen. They're
they're not even sure, Like he's under investigation. We need
to look closer at these papers calling them out. Yeah,
So what he did was he plants a bomb at
Steve Christensen's office to kill him. Then he planted the
other one at Gary Sheet's house to make it look
like it had something to do with CFS instead of
anything to do with him.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Shit, that's fucking tricky. Yeah, I mean this guy is
you know, yeah, tricky. He is a trickster.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
He was eventually arrested in January of nineteen eighty six,
charged with a total of twenty seven counts, including murder, forgery,
possession of an unregistered machine gun, and Jesus Christ. Yeah
that's a literally Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Uh a salamander. So he albino, Salomon bino. You can't
forget the albino.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
I mean that all of their beliefs for hundreds of
years are one thing, and then he gives them paper
that's like it turns out an albinos salamander how to say.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
They're like, you know, an angel sounds cooler, So we're
just gonna stick with that.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
They're like, we now we need to have a really
big meeting, and.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
What if we have to start sucking praying to an
albino's salamander?

Speaker 2 (46:46):
I mean, would that ever even have been a choice?
So they say, also, so he had like six hundred
forgeries that got sold and are in the market where
they're still finding them. Yeah, I was gonna a yeah,
so there apparently, and he wrote a letter from jail
explaining which things that he did were forgeries because some
things obviously when he started out he kind of there

(47:09):
were valid ones. So but they're saying that they're like
there's some Daniel Boone uh uh signatures out there that
are fake that like, there's there's because there were hardly
any in the first place. But then Mark Coffin comes
along and suddenly there's four that are in the marketplace,
which brings the value down right, And it turns out,

(47:33):
you know, three of them aren't real.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Do you think that his forgeries are now worth money?
A lot of money?

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Some murderino types, yeah, or like is there a Forgers museum?
I'd go to that. I would to. I mean, I
think overall the historical signatures are gonna be worth the most,
of course, because they're like the you know, but I
feel like.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
There's got to be like Smithsonian or some kind of
thing that's just.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Like, you know, it's a history. Look at this rap
bastard in that department. Look what happened. Yeah, I just
think it's funny that he did it so much. And
when you see the paper, like he would bake the
paper in the.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Oven, I was gonna ask, yeah, exactly like an old
Western all that they found all this, you know, they
found inc that he specifically mixed to match.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
But then the when the the guy who finally started
investigating it forensically, he was like the new ones all
glow blue underneath a microscope because they're new, and so
he was just really easily able to once they knew,
start investigating all of them and just be like, none
of this is real. I'm sorry, this letter from Betsy Ross,

(48:46):
that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I bet he'd be good at the lettering challenge. He
might bewriting.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
He would add in. He'd be like, I believe that
this is a real I know going but anyhow. He
initially maintained his innocence, but at a preliminary hearing, the
prosecutors showed so much evidence of his forgeries and his

(49:13):
debts and all of the evidence linking him to the bombs,
that instead of risking the death penalty, he pled guilty
to two counts of second degree murder, account of theft
by deception for the Salamander Letter, an account of fraud
for the sale of the McClellan collection, which was that
last collection he was trying to sell when Steve Christianensen

(49:34):
stepped in. He confessed all of his forgeries in open court.
He was in January nineteen eighty eight. He was sentenced
to five years to life in prison. He's spending life
in prison. Five year.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Wow, and he's still there when we can still there?

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Wow. Yep, that's smart coffin everybody.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
At first, I thought you were going towards a Ted
Kaczynski route when I heard about a bomb. But that's
fucking crazy. I've never heard about that. Oh, to be
killed by a mom. Do you ever open envelopes and
you're like, I don't know what this is going to be?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yes, Well, that's my moth's thing. I never think it's
a mom though, a bomb though, Well, I'm a mom,
just a mom coming to tell me to sweep up
the kitchen. Money, do those dishes? Oh what is that fear?
They're just sitting there. You let him soak for too long.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Yeah, you can't just let things soak in cold water, Karen.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
It's true. But also this was the eighties when like
this was back when you could walk into an office
building with a plane package. I feel like, you know,
as worrisome as it all sounds, we don't live in
that world anymore. It's like that was definitely a very
pre nine to eleven era. Yeah except that, Yeah, yeah,
but maybe not. You know what I mean. Well, I'm scared.

(50:52):
I know, I know you can be. Well, that's fucked up.
Good job, Thank you, thanks and thank you. I don't know,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Okay, Okay, we're back, Karen.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Do you have any updates? I have a couple. Mark
Hoffman is still in prison. He's never given an interview
to the press. He's only corresponded with his family from prison.
Netflix had a three part docuentries that covered this case
called Murder among the Mormons. And victim. Kathy Sheet's daughter,
Gretchen Sheets Nicknees, grew up to actually be a detective

(51:29):
with the Salt Lake City Police Department because she wants
to ensure that Hoffman is remembered for what he is,
which is a cold blooded murderer. And she told the
Deseret Times, I think they've kind of idolized him and
given him a unique status I don't think he deserves. Yes,
he did those forgeries, but he also killed two people
and didn't care who he killed.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
That's so important when we cover these cases that were
not idolizing these people and thinking, like, especially when we
do live shows, and really, okay, what if the victim's
cousin or brother or sister were in the audience.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Right, how would they feel if we were.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Saying this thing and making them seem like a hero
when they're not, Yes, right, or like you know, some
kind of anti hero. Like we don't want to do that.
We tried really hard.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Not to do that, right, But it's the kind of
awareness that we definitely had to develop over time. Yeah,
And it is the kind of thing. It's like hearing
from people and knowing and basically thinking that it made
their job a little bit harder because it was that
thing of like what if someone is there, and then
it's like, then if someone is there, right to that, yeah,
like represent them right while you're putting everything else together

(52:39):
and don't be cheap about it, which is what we
thought when we started this podcast. We were in this
like third person away commentator kind of thing, but no
one is that in true crime.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Right totally, and knowing that, like, you know, history is
written by the victors, like, don't take the reporting and
the you know, what's been written and documented about it
as face value because there's so many sides to the story,
you know, and.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Weirdly the victim side. It's new for the victim side
to be considered first, to have that part of it,
or like I think even just in the beginning, when
we would just call serial killers pieces of shit, yeah,
felt very revolutionary because it's like, oh my god, can
you believe they're saying that, and it's like it's a
serial killer. I remember I remember getting into an argument

(53:28):
with a guy who was really mad about toxic masculinity
ruins the party again, and he was like all pissy
about it because he was a men's rights activist. Essentially
and I remember saying to him, I was like, you
do know I'm talking about John Wayne Gacy's father, right, Like,
there's a context to this conversation, and it's about serial

(53:48):
killers and how that comes to.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
Be totally Like, that's what you're defending.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
You're defending us being mean to serial killer? Why right?
What do you mean?

Speaker 1 (53:58):
And you were saying specifically toxic masculinity, So he's defending
toxic masculinity, not masculinity, yes, toxic right, Okay, dude.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Yeah, the game is you're not allowed to talk about us,
and what we were saying without realizing it is we
can talk about whatever the fuck we want to talk about, right, absolutely, Yeah, Okay,
so let's get into Georgia story now. And ma'am, what
a timely fucking story it is too. It's the story
of the Central Park five.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I'm glad we were talking about the eighties and you
explained kind of like the money stuff, because mine takes
place in the eighties two and has a lot to
do with class wars and all this stuff. Maybe should
I not tell you the name of it? Whatever you think,
because I think you'll know immediately about it. Okay, all right,
I'm gonna yeah, I'm not gonna tell you, Okay, all right,
So New York late eighties, it's insane. Jim Dwyer of

(54:58):
The New York Times calls it completely it's ahrenic. You
got one side where there's just insane wealth from Wall Street.
Everyone's getting fucking rich and doing coke and having eyes
odds and such. Like we've said, the financial interest industry
is booming after a long period of stagnation, and it
got so bad like in the seventies and I think
early eighties that the City of New York was going

(55:21):
to file for bankruptcy.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Do you remember that. I didn't know that about New
York City the city was going to file for bankruptcy.
But I mean, it really was so bad in the
seventies and like the late seventies and yeah, the Carter
administration where it was just like a recession, huge recession.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Like we've talked about before, gas lines, you couldn't get
gas on certain days. I mean, the whole the whole
country was going through this, but New York City, because
they had so much violence and that sort of thing,
I feel like it was a lot worse. And in fact,
so during the financial Crisis of the seventies, a ton
of neighbor hoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The homeowners

(56:03):
and the landlords were lighting the apartment buildings on fire
and burning under the ground just to collect insurance money.
So all these people had nowhere to live and then
and they left them like that. So there are these,
you know, looks like how you see how you saw
Detroit for a little while, just.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
You know, it's it's insane. There's sorry, there's a movie now,
I can't remember what it's called. An Albert Finney is
in it, and they have it's basically like it's basically
a kind of a were wolf in the in New
York City movie. But there's parts of it where I
think it's the Bronx where it's just people maybe like
kids whatever, playing in like their vacant laws filled with

(56:42):
just burned out debris. Wolf exactly right. It's kind of
a kooky. It's supposed to be scary, goofy movie. But
you can see all that where it's like, now New
York City is pristine and amazing, and of course, like
the real estate is like.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Once Giuliani took over and made it fucking Disneyland. But
there's also photo not that didn't think that it's better
when it was dangerous, but there's photographs you can go.
There's a couple great photo one of the slide shows
of New York in the seventies and eighties. And I
mean just the subways alone are terrifying. Yeah and yeah,
and they had kids playing on like mattresses and vacant
burned out. It's just it's crazying crazy, And especially I

(57:20):
think younger people who never saw that should go and
look those photos because you'd be you're be very surprised.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah, that's where that punk rock came from.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, so it was mostly in black and Latino neighborhoods
at this burning down was doing. Let's see, so both
unemployment rates and crime rates were at an all time high,
and because of the bankruptcy coming up, police and firefighters
had been laid off. Municipal services were cut, including sanitation,
and after school programs were totally cut.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
So these kids who.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Had working parents had nowhere to go after school, so
they were, you know, on their own in this insane city.
And during this time, Son of Sam was on the loose, Yes,
so people were fucking terrified to that as well. And
then there was the Blackout of seventy nine, and there's
a fucking great American experience called the Blackout, and I

(58:11):
fucking everyone should watch it. It's so good and it shows
what it was like at that time. And after that
there were these crazy fires and looting and it never
really got cleaned up.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
So you have abandoned buildings, you have all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
So then in the early eighties, Wall Street suddenly boomed,
created crazy wealth for people. I mean the wealth they
had compared to what normal people had even was insane.
And then the other side of the city is experiencing
crazy poverty. The crack epidemic starts, crazy violence that's fed
by and understaffed a lot of times racist and correct

(58:45):
police department that is, you know, horrible, and there's class
tensions and racial unrest. In about eighty four, crack came
to New York and that just increased the crime. The
crack wars came, so also giving really young kids access
to a lot of money and weapons. So you just
have these young kids and teenagers, you know, with yeah,

(59:08):
all hell rigs last.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
That's that was like the way to get a job
and to get out of the hood totally. Basically it was,
and for some of them it was the only way. Yeah,
I always there's an amazing movie called Fresh. It's one
of my favorite movies of all time. It's really good.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
It's a fat with this other movie with the Andy
Williams Christmas Special.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
It's such It's about a black kid who's trying to
figure out a way to get out of the bad
neighborhood and the bad situation he's in. And it is
so brilliantly written and brilliantly shot, and it's it's one
of my favorite movies.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I definitely want to watch that. Yeah, we need a
fucking we I need, And I'm sure other people want
just a lineup of.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Movies you suggest, because it's never me. I think.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
I suggest documentaries like ken Burns and you're like, here's
this movie that'll change your life. And I'm so, we're
going to need someone to make a list of those movies.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
We're going to need someone with a mustache to write
that down.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Only we had of shit, I owe you money byo
you okay, check, I forgot I didn't forget, Oh Steven,
I'm sorry. So crack came Hell breaks loose, all right.
On a typical day in nineteen eighty nine, which is
where the story takes place, New Yorkers reported not one
day nine rapes, five murders, two hundred and fifty five robberies,

(01:00:29):
and one hundred and ninety five ninety four aggravated assault.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Shit. And that's later in the eighties eighty nine. God yeah, okay,
So da da da da da da da da da.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
So the people who are experiencing this, of course, are
the poor working class families. They're falling through the cracks
La da da Brown and Latino Black and Latino communities
in mostly Bedford sty in Brooklyn, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York.
These neighborhoods are experiencing all of this. And then you
have the Upper East Side of fucking Richish shit people,

(01:01:01):
all right, for example, And then I'll get onto the story.
In nineteen eighty four, Bernard gets he was a thirty
seven year old Queen's Native white dude, nerdy white dude.
He's on the subway and he starts getting accosted by
four young black men. They tried to mug him, and
he takes out a gun and shoots.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
All four of them, They all survived, but.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
He became known as a fucking subway vigilante. People celebrated him,
and he was ultimately found not guilty on all charges
except for possession of an illegal firearm and sentenced to
one year in prison for shooting four people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yes, all right, so that's also sorry, But that's also
the time that they started doing guardian angels. Where they
were it was almost like people didn't believe anyone was
going to help them with crime, and like the Bernard
Gets thing was such a racially kind of motivated situation,

(01:02:00):
but also is just the these everybody it's the irony
of like what you just said was the people that
were in the worst neighborhoods, which were demographically minorities and
people of color, were actually getting the worst of this crime.
But then it's like the white vigilanti that starts shooting everybody, right,
oh you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Know, not like yeah, you don't go to these neighborhoods
and ever, you know, there's work. These are working class people.
I mean, they were working their asses off and they're
not going to be able to move into other neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
There's so much racism.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
There's kind of this race war between white people and
people of color. But it's you know, it's not everyone
who's they're being affected more so right by this. So okay,
so we'll get into this. Let's get into the Central
Park five and the east side. Right. Oh shit, dude, yeah,
all right, I'm going there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Sound all right like you're not. No, I mean, this
is just one of the heaviest. The thing that I
remember most about this case is how go you know,
go tell me no, no, No, It's just it was
such a big deal. And this was like when I
was in high school.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Yeah, I remember, I was maybe ten, so I didn't
My mom kept that away from me. So you'll have
to jump in at any time. Yeah, tell me stuff. Yeah,
all right. The night of Wednesday, April nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
around nine pm, approximately thirty thirty god emburbing sorry, thirty
teenagers who lived in East Harlem went into the northmost

(01:03:25):
part of Central Park and they proceeded to commit several attacks, assaults,
and robberies. Can you imagine thirty teenagers. I don't care
what what fucking nationality or color they are, I would run.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
No. Teenagers are bad. Teenagers are bad people. Teenagers are horrible. Also,
two teenagers are fine. Yeah, thirty teenagers thirty volume alone. Yeah,
I don't care if they're women. Girls, I fucking run.
I think girls are worse. Yeah. Here's the thing, though,
were the do we know for a fact that they
were committing those crimes or was that that was that

(01:03:59):
like a fact?

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Well I can yeah, I have a list of great,
great crimes they were actually committing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
So I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Yeah, it's hard because you want to see everyone is innocent,
but they you know, and it was thirty so who
knows how many.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Of them are actually doing it?

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Right, So they attacked several bicyclists, threw rocks at a
cab and attacked a man who was who they assaulted,
robbed and left unconscious. A school teacher out for a
run was severely beaten. They attacked another jogger, hitting him
in the back of the head with a pipe and
a stick. And they beat two men unconscious, hitting them
with a metal pipe, stones and punches and kicking them
in the head.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Wow. So there was a group of these thirty kids
and they were basically kind of wilding throughout the park.
Well that's the word that was created later.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Okay, Yes, so a chase ensued by the police, and
about ten fifteen a handful of the kids are taken
into custody, including Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana. And they're
both fourteen years old, so these you're young kids, and
they're charged with quote mischief. So cut to one thirty
in the morning, passerbys discover the unconscious body of Tricia

(01:04:58):
Miley in a shallow ravine in a wooded area of
the park, wearing only her bra. Tricia had gone for
a run on her usual path in Central Park before
nine am, I mean sorry nine pm that evening her
and then when her almost lifeless body was found about
four hours later, she had been knocked down, dragged or

(01:05:18):
chased three hundred feet and violently assaulted. She was stabbed
five times, raped, sodomized, and beaten almost to death. The
first policeman who saw her said she was beaten as
badly as anybody I've ever seen. Meanwhile, back at the
police station, the kids were about to be released from
custody when a police offer officer was told about Tricia

(01:05:42):
being found, and then what followed was hours of intense
interrogation using tactics to get them to wear them down,
as now we know that's how you get a confession,
whether it's legitimate or not. Exhaust them. They get no food,
no drink, no sleep for almost two days it takes,

(01:06:02):
and they're repeatedly told that they could go home once
they confessed. And then eventually, after like two days, the
boys turn against each other. They tell them they admit
just to you know, go home. And these are fourteen,
fifteen year old children that aren't bad kids. They So
there's this documentary by Ken Burns and his daughter and

(01:06:25):
it's this incredible documentary that I definitely think everyone should
watch called These Central Park five and they talk about
the kids' backgrounds and they're all good kids from good homes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
None of them had.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Ever ever been arrested or taken in before. You know,
they were Little League baseball players. These were not bad children.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Yeah. So they also when there's a group of thirty, yeah,
how do they know who through what? Rock? Who through
like what? Basically it's the slowest kids get arrested. Well, yeah,
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
The thing is later, none of the people who had
been attacked that night, aside from Tricia, were able to
identify any of the boys who got who were brought
in for this attack, so they probably didn't have anything
to do with it, otherwise they would have been identified. Yeah,
so they implicate each other and the assault.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
The boys begin to confess after two days.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
I already said that, So in their written statements and
videotape confessions, each confessed to being an accomplice to the rape,
although not participating in the rape itself. And they start
telling details of what happened and how, and then they
implicate three other boys in the attack, and they're picked
up for question and Anton McCrae who's fifteen, Yusuf Salam

(01:07:41):
who's fifteen, and Corey Wise who's sixteen, and they ultimately
all confess except for Yusuf Salaam, along with and then
along with the other two boys, the five of them
are arrested and charged with the attack.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
The media fucking loses its shit.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Which is such a big part of the story, right,
And probably how you heard about all of this is
it was huge news and the story kind of confirmed,
you know, the white New Yorker's image of what's wrong
with the city and confirms their racial prejudices.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
The boys when.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
They confessed were calling it that they were wilding, which
is a phrase that became huge and everyone used it,
and it was kind of this reference to them all
being these untamed you know, children running amook. They formed
quote a wolf pack, which is also was what they
made up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
So sorry, those were the boy's words. Yeah, like that's
what they were telling the police wilding.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Oh, yes, they called it wilding, which they made up.
And then the underage suspects names were printed. Despite the
fact that the names of criminal criminal suspects under the
age of sixteen are supposed to be held from the
media and the public, they also print the names.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
So they have been.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Names, photos, and addresses, no fucking way of the juvenile
suspect before any of them had been formally arranged or indicted.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Wow, yeah, who did it? What was it that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
I just think that at that point it was so
many of them.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
But it's basically the tabloid. Yeah, the tabloid. Yeah, seeds
seeds Seed.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
None of them are arrested, and they retracted their statement
within weeks, claiming that they had been intimidated, lied to,
and coerced into making false confessions, and the confessions themselves
were videotaped after they had been interrogated and confessed and
written statements. That part wasn't taped at all, so they
had no way to show that they were being fed

(01:09:40):
information and coerced.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
So they only taped the part where they said I
did it or someone else did it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
They only taped the part after all this, when they
had their stories down okay, and they knew the details
they were supposed to be talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
It didn't tape any of the part where they make
them tell the story five hundred times.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Right, or you know you've seen these things that they say,
is that what happened, That's not what happened. Tell me
the truth, and they kind of feed it in this
really creepy way.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
They lead them into the correct.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Story, right, And who knows if they even do it.
Do the cops do it on purpose? Do you think detectives?
I just don't think they even know. I mean, most part, it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Seems like for a long time it was just the
way things were done until people, lawyers and whoever writes
activists came back and were just like, you can't tell
them how it went. And then when they repeat that
back to you because they want a sip of water
or they want to go home and use it against them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Well it's the whole thing too, of like that shouldn't
be a missive. The confession videotape should not be admissible
in court because there's no background, right still, Okay, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Like apropos of nothing essentially.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yeah, Okay. So meanwhile, Trisha's injuries are so bad that
she's given last rites, like they think she's going to die.
But after being comatosed for twelve days, she survives and
was eventually able to talk, read, and walk. But she
had no memory of the night of the salts whatsoever.
So now the trial, so usually the homicide detective usually

(01:11:08):
they look in okay, instead of the homicide unit getting
put on the case because they thought she was going
to die, Linda Ferstein of the sex head of the
sex crimes unit and her prosecutor, Elizabeth Letterer were put
on the case and for some fucking reason, they're part
of the police investigation from day one. So they're helping
investigate this case thinking that these five kids did it

(01:11:32):
and building the case around that. So they get to
analyze the crime scene, they get to do all of
these things that clearly are going to lead the case
for the prosecutors.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
You know, but they were supposed to be the defense.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
No, they're the prosecutors, right, They're the sex Crimes Unit
and their prosecutors, and they are investigating case from the minute.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
It happened, okay, And that's not normal, no, because.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
This way they can skew the results in the direction
they want, which is immediately for these five boys.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Okay, So they're you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Know, usually the prosecutors and the defense team and the
attorneys wouldn't get the information un till after the whole
investigation has been completed by the detectives or the sex
crimes unit, which is this woman who allowed her prosecutor
to be in on Oh oh I see.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Okay, got it? That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Yes, okay, So the boys are brought to trial. Sixteen
year old Corey Wise is being tried as an adult
for some reason because he's sixteen, And the newspapers are going,
that's the case of a white woman being attacked by
a rowdy group of black teens, stirring up the racism
in the city, which kind of was this underlying thing
that no one was talking about. But finally they had

(01:12:42):
something to point at and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Yeah, like this is it was the equal opposite of
the Bernie Getz situation. Yeah, it was. It was basically, yeah,
that's kind of retribution, right, the idea of retribution. Yeah,
and piling it all very conveniently on yeah, these five boys. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
So, for example, the night of the Central Park rape,
a woman in Bedford sty was raped and thrown off
a building, never fucking talked about in the media, and
that same week that this happened, twenty eight rapes were reported,
but those were not being reported by the media. But
the black community even turned against the boys as well

(01:13:22):
because some of them because they were having their own
run ins with the black youths who had saulted and
intimidated those people in their own neighborhood, and they felt
that they were giving the whole community a reputation as
you know, drug dealers and felons. So even the you know,
the black community was fucking pissed about them. Oh and
good old Trump puts out a full page ad in

(01:13:43):
four newspapers calling for the death penalty to be a
reinstated in New York even though the death penalty wasn't
even on the table for this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
He just and at the time he was he was
a slum.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Lord, a very wealthy one, a very wealthy slum lord,
a very wealthy businessman.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Yeah, who made money off of basically being a slowmarn Yeah.
Oh and casinos, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
And then the City Sun newspaper and the Amsterdam New
Amsterdam News used a victim's name in their paper, despite
the media policy of not publicly identifying victims of sex crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Yeah, so they gave out her name even though I'm
supposed to.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
And they said it's because, well, if the other people
are willing to put out the boys' names, then she
should have her name out too, which is like, so
fucked up.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Well that doesn't know. That's not a one to one
at all, it's not. But it sounds like this was
the wild West essentially. Yeah, this sounds like the worst
eight nine, maybe eighties. It's just just like, yeah, wild West.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
So, the analysis was done on the DNA that was
collected at the crime scene, and it didn't match a
single one of the suspects. They also didn't have any hair,
any any evidence, and the crime scene looked like it
didn't look like five people could have been attacking someone.
It looked like a single person was attacking someone. There
was like this small little path that was walked up

(01:15:08):
and taken uh Tricia away from the main road.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
But there wasn't you know, beat up dirt or anything
like that. So it's like she was down in a
ravine and there was like one track down to her
body and back up. Yes, not like five.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
People walk down, right, And when the boys got in there,
they didn't have any mud or dirt on them. And
the other thing is if she were fighting back, which
they said the cops said that she put up a
hell of a fight, they would all have scratches and crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Things on there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
One kid had one of them had a scratch on
his eye. But that's it, right, So the DNA collected
and so when the DNA was collected and didn't match,
the prosecutors just said that they must have been there
must have been a sixth one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
Then that the DNA matches, and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Still brought them to trial with a case that was
almost entirely based on a confession circumstantial.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
So okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
So the four boys, Kevin, Yusuf, Anton, and Raymond are
convicted of rape, assault, robbery, and riot and the attacks
they were fifteen years old and fourteen, so they got
maximum sentence for juveniles, which is five to ten. But
Corey Wise is sixteen and Trieden was adult, so he

(01:16:22):
gets five to fifteen in fucking Rikers, which is like
a hardcore prison, and going in as a rapist, especially
against a white woman where there's a lot of arian
people in the prison, right, is ugly?

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Well, the summer that the attack on Trisha occurred, there's
a serial rapist terrorizing the Upper east Side called the
east Side Rapists.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
Okay, I just got a weird chill. Did you remember
I have no I've never heard of this before. Yeah,
so you know that story, but you don't. I know
that story very well. All I know was that the
mentality at the time was they caught some This was
the mentality. They caught some of them, and they're going
to jail like good and everyone Yeah, everyone rejoiced. Everyone

(01:17:09):
was absolutely and I feel like in general unquestionably swallowing
the story that was being fed everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
I mean, they wanted it to be solved, and it
was a perfect backdrop and proof of what was going
on and what they'd been saying was going on, and
what they were mad about and something to say. This
is why I feel this way about you know, this
is why my racism is justified.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
Exactly right, And and to say as if this is
the only these are the only people that are breaking
the law in New York City. Yeah, that this and
that to me is the That's the thing I feel
like all the way up to and obviously passed until
very recently, but like around the oj trial, where it's

(01:17:55):
this idea of you don't just get to say who
is who is innocent and who's guilty, but like you
don't just get to pull people through the legal system
and just be like they're the problem is solved, because
if you have if it's a setup, which many of
them have been, you still have somebody that's guilty out
there doing it totally and who knows what color that

(01:18:16):
person is. But you've now not solved the problem, ruined
people's lives, supported racial stereotypes, not told an accurate story.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
So but this is how the story ended. In two
thousand and two. Okay, so the summer that the attack happened,
a serial rapist named the East Side Rapist is sucking
terrorizing everyone. August fifth, nineteen eighty nine, seventeen year old
Mattias Reis is caught after raping another victim. He's the
east Side rapist, east up, the east Side rapist. He

(01:18:52):
so the woman who was raped noted to detectives that
she saw fresh stitches on his chin, and it was
right after the attack on Trish. So he ultimately confessed
to one murder, five rapes, two attempted rapes, and the
rape and murder. The murder was Lord Lords Gonzales, and

(01:19:13):
she was pregnant and her three children heard through the bedroom.
So August fifth, you've got this guy getting caught for rape,
and it's saying that he murdered people. And then on April,
and in April, a couple of months before that, this

(01:19:34):
rape of Tricia happened.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
This attack, let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
So after being in prison, he's in prison for more
than a decade for the murder. In two thousand and two,
he finds God. Rayes finds God, comes forward and says
that he is the attacker of Tricia.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
He did it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
So he then goes on to detail how he followed
raped brutally her with and then details that the five
that the Central Park five never got right. They never
even had similar stories of what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
They were all different.

Speaker 1 (01:20:08):
And he just tells exactly how it really went from
where he threw the socks to where he threw the
keys and why because he was mad that she wouldn't
give him her address so he could break into her house,
so he threw the keys. And they had always wondered
what the deal with the keys were, exactly what she
was wearing, that she had a walkman that was stolen,
and they never they weren't sure if there was a

(01:20:29):
walkman involved. All her friends said she always ran with
a walkman and he said it too, Yeah, which it
wasn't even at the scene. So the fact that thing
he knew about it meant, you know, he was there.
He definitely fucking did it. Yeah, And the DNA is
then tested.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
And uh, it's his DMA oh man.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Yeah, So let's see the detective who who gave him,
who gave the statement, who he took the statement said,
Mitrays is one of the top five lunatics he's interviewed
in more than twenty years investigating homicides. The five boys
had already been released from prison. They're adults now, but

(01:21:11):
they were struggling because they were now sex offenders on
the Sex Offender Registry and Raymond Santana was still in
jail because he had a drug charge. He took to
selling drugs because he couldn't get a job with a
sex offender on as a sex offender. Yeah, but his
sentencing because of that drug charge, because of his prior conviction,

(01:21:32):
was longer, So he was still in prison based on
his prior conviction.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
So he's released.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
And then in two thousand and two, Manhattan District Attorney
Robert Morgenthau threw out the convictions in the Central Park
jogger case.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
The five are dexonerated.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
In twenty fourteen, New York City paid them forty one
million dollars a settlement. Really, yeah, are you crying? Yeah,
forty one million. That's like, we fucked up so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:22:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
So the prosecutors, the woman who is the prosecutor, the
sex offender unit head, refuses to admit that they were wrong.
She's now a teacher at some big college and they're
like starting up a petition to get her kicked out
because she uses this case as one of the highlights

(01:22:23):
of her career. Oh no, yeah, so she can't say
it's true. She says, maybe there were six of them.
Still sticks to that story.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
And doesn't acknowledge the hard evidence of the lunatic no rapists, no,
who admitted he did it? Why would you admit you
did something and did it alone? And then no, and
then actually have the hard evidence and know the details.
I mean, that's very difficult to deny.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Right, Yes. And then so the police detectives a lot
of them won't admit that they were wrong, and of
course Trump refuses to admit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
He says, look at the confession.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
So he's still stuck on this confession, which, as we
know now, so many confessions are coerced easily, especially out
of children. Totally as for the victim, So, Tricia had
five months of rehabilitation, she returned, and then she returned

(01:23:24):
to running in Central Park. In ninety five she ran
the New York City Marathon, and in two thousand and three,
so she had been anonymous up until then. In in two
thousand and three she comes out and with a published
publishes a memoir called I Am the Central Park Jogger.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
I remember that? Yeah? Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
I want to know what she thinks about, well, you know,
thinking that these five boys were her attackers for so long,
and then having to switch your brain completely. It's just
so scary and it feels so much for her just
based on that and now then she began a career
as an inspirational speaker. She works with victims of sexual
assault and brain injury in the Mount Sini Sexual Assault

(01:24:08):
and Violence Intervention Group. So that's the Central Park five
and the East Side rapist.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Wow, huge, I know that's such a huge story. Did
I tackle that? Okay? Did I give it justice? Yeah? Okay, yeah, okay.
I mean this is I feel like, especially in this
day and age, it's so difficult to talk. The first
thing I thought of while we were talking about this

(01:24:35):
is I remember one time, a long time ago, we
were talking about something and the way we intimated it,
it made it sound like what we were saying is
all people of color live in the ghetto, right, And
we got a lot of people who wanted to talk
to us about that, where that is in no way
what me meant, but it was like the wording of
how it sounded, And so I would just point that

(01:24:55):
out that, you know, like, this isn't the assumption that
because you of color you live in the worst part
of the bronx, And it doesn't mean that because you're
of color, you go wilding, like none of what we're
talking about is to say every single person was living
only this one way in New York in that time.
I'm sure there was tons of you know, upwardly mobile

(01:25:18):
black people and people Hispanic people and people of color
that lived on the Upper West Side. So it's not
it's not that, but I think that the lines were
absolutely drawn because back then the white like it was basically,
white men ran most media, and white men were the
cops usually for the majority, I would say, And so

(01:25:40):
that was the story that we were always given, and
that's that was the story people were reacting to, and
that's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Well, it's just so hard because for this with this podcast,
like you know, I don't want to do the thing
that so many people talk about is that like blonde
white women, that's all the stories we cover, which I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
Think we do.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
But you know, I want to give I want to
tell them the stories because I want to represent as
many people as we can and as many victims as
we can, which I totally think these boys are victims
in this story. But you know, it's hard as a
white woman. I try to empathize, but I'll never I know,

(01:26:20):
I'll never understand completely what's going on. So, you know,
like the my Terce Richardson case, I just really wanted
to to Yeah, I just want to make sure that
we're covering them, but I know it's never going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Perfect, definitely, So it's a bit of a risk to
even talk about them because everything is very loaded these days,
and I think people it makes people feel better if
you make if you misspeak about something. It makes people
feel better to tell you how wrong you are. It
makes it makes it feel like that's that's making a difference,

(01:26:53):
which it definitely is. Yeah, I mean in some ways,
but I guess our hesitation is when you put stuff
like that out there, it's easy to say something incorrectly,
or sound insensitive, or make it sound like you're making
a generalization. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
I don't want to do that. I tried very hard
not to, but please email us. We're always open to
you know, hear your story or have your corrections, and.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
They know that, I know, I mean Jesus, that's the
one thing we do.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Yeah, I think, But I think what's better than not
covering it because it's too loaded, is just not talking
about it at all, and so I think that's important.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
As well to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Yes, Yes, especially for people who have a podcast, you know,
who are talking it specifically about murder and podcasts. In
a podcast, it's like, we can't just cover the easy
ones well.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
And also the ones that have been covered, because you're
exactly right, that's the thing of it's the blonde cheerleader.
When the blonde cheerleader goes missing, everybody freaks out because
the society that's built up around us is basically said, well,
that's what makes the money, that's what sells the newspapers.
There's a lot of like very convenient rationale that goes

(01:28:09):
into why we talk about some murders and crimes and
why we don't talk about others. I think that example
of like a woman who was raped and then thrown
off a building on the very same night and no
one has heard of that stuff, that's I think that's
very kind of symbolic. And I think it's that thing
of like it's just good, it's good to start trying
to open your eyes. I think it's a hard thing

(01:28:30):
for some people to do. There's some people that will
never be able to do it. But if you can try,
I think it's important. I think it is going to help.
Our society needs this kind of help very badly, definitely,
to come together and to be like, I get it,
nobody's nobody's you know, horror is worse than another person's horror.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
And then for you and I to to kind of
to kind of open the conversation up because we're two
white women, and then it's not you know that we're
trying to understand what's going on in.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
Other people's worlds. And I'll take that out. It's sad. No,
I had it and then it was gone, Okay, we're back.
Are there any updates on this case, Georgia? Yes there are.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
So here's where the exonerated five are today. Yusuf Salaam
became a board member of the Innocence Project and has
advocated for criminal justice reform, particularly for juveniles. In twenty sixteen,
he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from Barack Obama. He
won the Democratic nomination and seat for New York City
Council's ninth district in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
Incredible Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Raymond Santana started a clothing company called Parc Madison NYC
and donates a portion of its proceeds to the Innocence Project.

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):
I didn't know that Park Madison, NYC. People should know
so they can buy that stuff just to support him absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
Corey Wise remained in New York, where he works with
the Innocence Project to advocate for the rights of the
wrongly convicted, as well as criminal justice reform. Antron McCrae
is married with six children and lives in Georgia. Kevin
Richardson served as an advocate with Santana and Salam to
reform New York State's criminal justice practice's, advocating methods to
prevent false confessions and eyewitness misidentifications. In twenty nineteen, Netflix

(01:30:29):
released a four part mini series on the Case Which
Is So Incredible, called When They See Us. The series
was highly praised and won a Peabody Award in recognition
of its powerful storytelling around racial justice and state violence,
and in December twenty twenty two, a Central Park entrance
was renamed Gate of the Exonerated to honor the Five
Men Wow. On October twenty first, twenty twenty four, the

(01:30:53):
Exonerated five sued Trump for defamation in federal court in
Philadelphia after Trump once again claimed they were guilty during
a twenty twenty four presidential debate, which is, oh wow, facts,
let's not just yea, let's not even pay attention to them.
Trump tried to have the case thrown out, but Judge
Wendy Beetlestone rejected Trump's motion to dismiss the case, and

(01:31:14):
the case is still going through the courts.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
All right, So let's head back now to wrap this
show up.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Okay, all right, so it's something positive. Yeah, that's how
we end this so everyone doesn't get bummed. Do you
want to go first?

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
No, you go first. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
The good thing that happened to me, you know, I said,
I went last week to a new psychiatrist. The fucking
change in medications already working. Oh really, I am. It
just makes me so hopeful when I wake up in
the morning, I'm not exhausted all day, you know, and
I'm sleeping at night without any pills.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
It's just like makes me really hopeful.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Oh good, And really, you know, I had two days
of not exhaustion and I was just so happy about it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
That's great. Yeah, what's yours? My friend? I have a friend,
my friend Kevin Farzod has a band called Shore Shore
and they have no music coming out. They're truly one
of my favorite bands. It's like the kind of music
you can put on, like I just feel so stressed
out lately, and I think a lot of people have been.

(01:32:20):
It's the kind of music that's like super catchy and great,
but it's not like invasive. I can't explain it. It's
just very good. I totally recommend it. I think they're
coming out with a new album soon, but I will
be retweeting their music. I'm just a big believer in
shore Shore the band, and so I think everyone should
listen to them.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
That's a good one. Yeah, music is such an important
part of you know, the human existence, human experience in
life and happiness.

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
Okay, we are back. So this episode was originally titled
My Own Sinkhole.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
If we were naming it today, maybe we would call it,
Oh my God, I love this one so much.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Too many Fish, which never sounded wrong to me, is
still to this day doesn't sound wrong to me. I'm like,
as I read plenty of Fish, I'm like, oh, got it.
That makes I think that is so like, that is
such a what's it called slip Fridian slip. Yeah, too
many fish. I guess that's just something about you can't

(01:33:24):
get involved with those fish. There's too many other and
there aren't plenty. There's no fucking way there's plenty. No, no, no, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
The other one could be called really Aunt Mary.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Where we talk about tattoos, we all make our whole
family get tattoos. That's also some toes is one of
the weirder. Yeah, like, that's the tattoo I want everyone
to get. Also one point over mine, which is George's
amazing joke about Reku baby. Forgot about that? Great. Well,

(01:33:55):
that's the episode. That's this week's episode of rewind.

Speaker 1 (01:33:58):
Let's let Elvis say goodbye from twenty seventeen. Thank you
guys for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:34:01):
Thank you all right, stay suxy and don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Bye Elvis, Elvis, LOI wife Muki, Elvis. One cookie come here,
he's coming, Elvis. One cookie, come here.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
Therey comes. Gosh, the video of that one cookie. Wow,

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Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 76: My Own Sinkhole

Episode Transcript

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Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

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