Eerie News with M.P. Pellicer | Stories: A Hunger for Mayhem and more! - Eerie News

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. This is Marlene with your news. And here
we are once more. We're ready to jump right into
the eerie pool. And let's go to one of my
I'll tell you what I'm going to go to one
of my articles on substack. This is an older article,

(00:22):
but still it's intriguing because what it's about is it's
still out there. It still how's this. It's still unexplained
up to a certain point. And you'll see what I mean.
Here we go, all right. This is titled Silhouette the Sky.
On April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six, the number four

(00:43):
reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear power Plant in northern Ukraine
experienced a lethal nuclear accident. Several explosions culminated in an
open air reactor, releasing radioactive contamination for nine days. The aftermath,
stories circulated of a flying humanoid figure with glowing red
eyes seen days before the incident. The creature became known

(01:05):
as the Blackbird of Chernobyl. It's described in some instances
as being humanoid, other times as a headless torso with
giant wings that measure approximately twenty feet across. Workers in
the control room and power plant made it known to
their superiors they had seen it weeks before the meltdown.
In hindsight, many believers many believe that its appearance was

(01:28):
important of the coming disaster. Those who laid eyes upon
it described having horrific nightmares and receiving strange phone calls
with only static on the other end. In nineteen ninety seven,
Andrei Karasukov, a nuclear physicist from the University of Buffalo,
visited Chernobyl to research a leak appearing to come from

(01:49):
the containment chamber. He experienced an alarming incident that he
described his way quote. I got to the Chernobyl power
plant early in the morning. I immediately went to the
down reactor sir Coffagus reactor for to assess the radiation
levels and look for any potential leaks. I immediately overheard
someone yelling for help and saying that there was a

(02:09):
fire inside while I was taking radiation and rhodogen readings
by the entrance. I hurried upstairs to alert security or
locate an official, but they stated there was no way
anybody else could have been in the reactor control room,
as I was the first person to open that door
in three years at least living the alarm would have

(02:31):
gone off automatically if someone had broken into the reactor,
and they would have been quickly let out. I heard
what I heard, even though the door had several authenticating
security measures in place and hadn't been opened in years.
Later that night, as we were dining close to the factory,
the floodlights unexpectedly turned on. The only method to turn

(02:51):
it on could be by physical switch manipulation, but the
entire team was out to supper. We initially assumed it
might have been a power search, but just as we
considered that, the electricity returned. It seemed as though someone
was paying attention to us and was responding appropriately. Shernobyl
is home to something, and I don't think it's beneficial

(03:13):
for anything. End quote. Pripriacht, The nearby abandoned Chernobyl worker
town is believed to be haunted. People have had the
feeling of being watched when walking past the city hospital.
Apparitions and shadows are often seen. Some have even reported
being touched. Before the disaster, fifty thousand persons lived there

(03:36):
and within twenty four hours they were evacuated, but who
knows if anywhere left behind. The Prepiacht amusement park was
scheduled to open on May first, but since nineteen eighty
six it has stood frozen in time. The ferris wheel,
the mumper cars, a boat swing were all left to disintegrate.
It's been almost forty years since the disaster, and wildlife

(03:58):
in Florida appeared to be However, there are still clues
that this area was radiated. A study that was begun
in nineteen ninety one found that organisms responsible for decomposition
showed signs of contamination. Of these. Of these is what's
been named the Bloody Red Forest, where all the pine
trees turned bright red after the meltdown and then died

(04:22):
but did not decay. Chernobyl had about fourteen thousand residents
before its evacuation. However, as the exclusion zone widened, more
people were evacuated, including those from the nearby city of Pripia.
In total, sixty eight thousand were resettled elsewhere. Many of
these and first responders died due to radiation poisoning after

(04:46):
more than thirty five years. First ten witnesses are hard
to find, especially those who claim they saw it flying
among the black plumes of smoke coming from the plant
after the explosion. In the aftermath, of the meltdown, there
was more more than a two hundred percent increase in
birth defects and deformities in children of the two hundred
and forty thousand personnel who came to deal with the

(05:07):
after effects of the disaster between nineteen eighty six to
nineteen eighty seven, and they were darbed. They were dubbed
the Chernobyl Liquidators. One hundred and sixty five thousand were
left disabled and sixty thousand died. There are three reactors that,
although no longer operational, still need to be monitored since
they contained nuclear fuel. About three thousand workers come to

(05:31):
the zone of alienation on a limited number of ships
per week, and the site is to be cleared by
twenty sixty five. The question, though still lingered as to
what exactly was seen in those hours before the disaster.
Some theorized the figure seen was a black stork. It's
a rare bird and with a wingspan of about six
feet and a body type easily identified as avian, it

(05:54):
would be difficult to confuse it with anything but what
it is mothman, some like in the story of the
Blackbird of Chernobyl. To the reports of Mothman, most famously
linked to the disaster Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when the
silver bridge collapsed on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven. The
Point Pleasant incident is not the only one tied to

(06:17):
weird sightings of a large winged creature. A September tenth,
nineteen seventy eight, in Freiburg, Germany, there was a collapse
in the Black Forest mine early that morning. When the
first workers arrived, they found a man standing at the
entrance to the mine. He appeared to be wrapped in
a long black trench coat. Several of them approached the figure,
only to be horrified on what they thought was a

(06:40):
coat turned out to be a pair of large wings
that unfurled back from its back. Then he shrieked several times,
setting the men running back to their companions who stood
observing it. The figure then tucked its wings back in
and continued to stand at the entrance. Despite the surreal experience,
the miners started to prepare them cells for the day's work,

(07:01):
keeping a wary eye on the creature. At eight a m.
The grounds shook beneath their feet and an explosion rocked
the mine. They ran to the entrance, where smoke and
fire poured forth. The creature, who was later dubbed the
Freiburg Shrieker, had disappeared. An investigation into the incident concluded
that if not for the delay of the siding, thirty
six miners would have been killed. Several months later, reports

(07:25):
filtered out that less than thirty percent of the workers
continued working at the mine, and others went on to
suffer from mental afflictions, possibly connected to their encounter with
the Freiburg Shrieker. Many were unable to return to work,
dying young and in poverty, a similar face shared by
some who saw Mothman. There have been reports of a

(07:47):
similar creature in Chicago since twenty eleven. There was a
resurgence in twenty seventeen. It's been seen along the coast
of Lake Michigan in over O'Hare Airport as well. The
descriptions are consistent with a winged, bat like or insectlike
creature with a humanoid appearance. The eyes are ruby red, yellow,
or reflective. Are these creatures like the banshee portents of doom?

(08:12):
Are they perhaps there to serve as a warning which
goes unrecognized, or perhaps they are drawn to the violent
energy that assumed to explode in a moment at a
certain place in time. Perhaps they are only watchers and
now at Chernobyl, something is flaring up from an inaccessible
basement room. Ukrainian scientists fear that a fission reaction has

(08:34):
started reoccurring. Cause for the fission reaction is rain, water leakage,
humidity and radiation. This does not mean a second Chernobyl
disaster could occur, but it could bring the sheltered self down.
Since it is over thirty years old, there is no
doubt that something still flickers in the buried uranium fuel

(08:55):
masses while the blackbird of Chernobyl return. So yes, I
know that they have done different. In other words, they've
been tracking what's happening to everything. I mean obviously besides
the people, but the environment and everything, just to track

(09:18):
what happens. And like a lot of it is what
they expected. That recovery from a nuclear meltdown is a
very very slow paced outcome, or the way it evolves, okay,

(09:42):
is very In other words, we have we haven't gotten
to the end of the observing how long does it
take for the effects of that meltdown to be complete,
if it ever, If there is anything for that area
to go back to what it was prior to the meltdown.

(10:03):
I think that's that's a big question mark still, so
something to think about. All right, Let's go over to
Stranger than Fiction stories, and this is titled cold Cases
Salved and I like true crime, but I like cold cases.
And again I've spoken before about, thankfully with DNA, some

(10:24):
of these are cold, cold, cold cases, cases that people
thought were never gonna get resolved, and they have been.
So anyway, here we go. In January nineteen eighty, Helene Prazinski,
twenty one, a young news intern, was found dead in
a field in ranch Lands off Daniels Park Road in Inglewood, Colorado.

(10:44):
Her murder, we're going solved for close to four decades.
Helen Prasinski was a senior at Wheaton College and I
started working at the radio station KHOW a little over
two weeks before her death. The corner determined she died
of multiple stab wounds to the back and she was
sexually assaulted several times. Her hands were bound behind her back,

(11:06):
and she was naked from the waist down. Helene would
normally take a bus to her home in Inglewood and
from their walk to her uncle and aunt's home where
she was staying. Police suspected this is where the killer
abducted her. Investigators believed there was a link between Prazinski's
murder and two other slangs in the Denver metropolitan area,

(11:27):
but it would be many years before they could connect
the dots as to who the perpetrator was. The police
said the crime resembled one in nineteen sixty eight and
the other in nineteen seventy three. Weeks before Helen's murder,
a woman was raped in the same area. Another woman
reported that a man attempted to grab her as she
was getting off the bus. In May nineteen ninety four,

(11:50):
authorities were looking at Kenyan Battles Tollerton as a suspect.
Police believed he was responsible for the death of Cissy Foster, fourteen,
whose partially clad body was found in September nineteen ninety
three in a remote area of Denver. Like brazils Skich
had been stabbed various times and raped. In nineteen seventy six,

(12:11):
Tollerton tried to abduct Janelle Shephard from a mall's parking
lot by hiding in the back seat of her car.
By the way I got interjected, I think that it's
every woman's worst nightmare, is that somebody in the back
seat thing. But let's continue. Only an intervention by a
good Samaritan saved Shepherd and he was arrested. It was

(12:32):
believed she was his only victim to survive for this time.
For this crime, he was placed on probation. It was
a suspect in the murder of Holly and Drew sixteen.
I'm sorry. He was a suspect in the murder of Hollyandrew, sixteen,
who disappeared on December twenty sixth, nineteen seventy six, after
leaving her mother's home in Lyttleton. Her body was found

(12:54):
the next day in Bakersfield, Colorado. He was suspected in
other stabbing deaths of teenage girls in Colorado. In nineteen eighty,
Donna Wogg's half clad body was found in a field
in Arapahoe County. It was already decomposing. She lived in
an apartment across an alley from where Tollerton lived. He
became a suspect and was charged with first degree murder

(13:17):
for the rape and strangulation of the twenty two year
old waitress. He pled guilty to secondary murder in nineteen
eighty one. The prosecutors were seeking the death penalty if
it was taken to trial. He served a ten year
sentence for this crime. Prior to this, Tollerton had been
sentenced to ten years and eleven federal prison for a

(13:38):
federal conviction unto gun possession charges. The DA sought the
maximum twenty four year sentence, saying that based on Tolerton's
criminal history, he was dangerous. Judge Kent Stuart said there
was no absolute proof of Tollerton's guilt and sentenced him
only with ten years. He was paroled in nineteen ninety one.

(14:00):
Within two years, he killed Cissy Foster. Police arrested him
when they found a link between DNA taken from Foster's
body and a blood sample taken from Tollerton when he
was serving a sentence in prison in nineteen eighty nineteen
ninety four, was sentenced to life plus forty eight years
for the murder of Cissy Foster. By nineteen ninety nine,

(14:21):
authorities once more tried to match sparse DNA taken from
Perzinski's murder scene. So far, tests had been inconclusive, but
there was hope that with new advances and an an
expanded DNA database there would be a match to her attacker.
It wasn't until two thousand nineteen that a match was

(14:43):
made between seamen taken from the crime scene to James
Curtis Clanton, formerly known as Curtis Allan White of Lake Butler, Florida.
He was convicted in nineteen seventy five of raping a
woman a knife point inside her Arkansas home. He forced
a woman to drive him to a bus stop in
Little Rock and then released her. She went to the

(15:05):
police and he was arrested within the hour. His sentence
to thirty years in prison with ten years suspended sentence,
and was released on parole after just four years to
live in the suburban Denver home to a former counselor
who offered to help him. It was then he killed
Helen Prazinski. Yeah, at the time of his arrest, he

(15:26):
worked as a truck driver, and after being surveiled for
a week. In other words, at the time of his
last arrest is when he's much older. The time of
his arrest, he worked as a truck driver. After being
survilled for a week, he was arrested and extra diighted
to Colorado. The match to Clanton was made via genetic
links to family members who submitted DNA. Then the police
were tasked with getting a DNA sample from Clanton and

(15:49):
finally obtained it from a beer bug he was seen
using at a bar. Only Janet Johnson, Helene's sister, was
left alive from the immediate family to welcome the news
of the arrest. In twenty twenty, Clinton sixty three pled
guilty to a first degree murder charge, with a plea
resulting in the dismissal of three other counts of murder

(16:09):
and a kidnapping charge. Who was sentenced to life from prison,
and he would be eligible for parole after serving twenty years.
He told investigators that after meeting with his parole officer,
he decided to take a woman to have sex with.
He said he saw Prazinski get off the bus, abducted, raped,
and killed her. He was twenty two at the time

(16:29):
and had moved to Colorado only a year before the murder.
He worked as a landscaper and lived only blocks from
the bus stop. From the bus stop Prasinski would use
to get home, Clanton looked very similar to a sketch
produced in nineteen eighty from a hypnotized witness's description to
a booking photo of Clanton in nineteen ninety eight. And
for those of you watching the video version of this,

(16:51):
if you look at that picture, this actual photograph and
the sketch, the sketch made from the hypnoti ties witness,
they're very very close. But he looked he had a
very average look. There was I want to say, if
not thousands of millions of guys in their twenties that

(17:14):
look very similar to that big mustache, you know, the
shaggy kind of a little bit hair And I would say,
which I'm surprised he doesn't do it, which he might
have done. It is all he would have had to
do is go get a haircut and shave off his
mustache and he would have looked completely different. But he
had houses. He had a very typical look. It looked

(17:36):
like him. Don't get me wrong, It looked like him.
But god very average looking, good looking, but average looking guy.
So as far as getting somebody look, well, better than nothing,
I guess. Anyway, Clanton was not charged with sexual assaults
since the statute of limitations had expired. However, there are
suspicions that he was behind a series of reported attacks

(17:59):
in the area around that time. A family friend of
Clanton said he knew him well and that Clanton was
guarded about his past and lied as to the reason
why he had gone to prison in Arkansas. The story
he told was that he got into a fistfight over
a girl, kicked him out in the chest and unintentionally
killed him. The same friend said that Clanton lived a
quiet life and was not known to be violent. In

(18:22):
nineteen ninety eight and two thousand and one, Clanton was
arrested on domestic violence charges. There was a delay in
actually arresting Clanton, since the initial possible match through a
genealogy website exposed a convoluted family tree. Police had to
wag through three thousand family members in order to narrow
their focus. His mother used six different last names over

(18:44):
her lifetime and had five children with two different men.
Early in his life, Clanton used the name Curtis to
Allan White and lived with his father as an infant,
but was raised by an aunt and uncle until he
was thirteen years old. He was a chronic runaway and
ended up a foster care. He would tell authorities he
didn't know who his mother was and said his uncle

(19:05):
was his father. He started using the name James Curtis
Clanton in nineteen eighty two. Clanton's brother had a lengthy
criminal history, and at some point police had to make
sure he was not the one they were looking for.
As per prison records, Clanton remains incarcerated at Bent County
Correctional Facility un los Animous, Colorado. He will be eligible

(19:26):
for parole in January twenty forty. So much heartbreak could
have been avoided if Clanton and Tollerton would have been
sentenced appropriately and served their entire term behind bars. One
wonders if whoever decided to parole either of these men
ever slept soundly after this terrible decision. DNA gives answers,
but on occasion leads more questions than before. In June

(19:48):
twenty twenty one, a cold case dating back to nineteen
fifty six was salved, but left lingering doubts if there
were other victims that have never been found. The place
is Sunray, Montana. Nineteen fifty six. Three boys were hiking
on a cold January day when they came across the
body of a young man faced down with his hands

(20:11):
tied behind his back, with his white sweat belt. He
had been shot in the temple. The body was next
to a car which was in gear with the emergency
breake ignition and lights on and radio on. Money and
a camera were not taken, so police ruled out robbery
as a motive. The next day, a county road worker
found the body of a young woman at the bottom

(20:31):
of a twenty foot embankment along Vineyard Road north of
Great Falls. This was seven miles from where the young
man's body was found. She had also been shot in
the head, besodomized and raped as well. They were Lloyd
Dwayne Bogel, eighteen and Patricia Joyce Kolitski, sixteen, who had
been dating for several months. Bogel was an airman stationed

(20:53):
at Molntston Air Force Base, originally from Texas, and Kolitsky
was a junior at Great Falls High School. They were
killed at a known lover's lane. There was no struggle
around the bodies, leading police to believe they might have
known the person who attacked them. Initially, they considered the
crime was the handiwork of a jealous suitor. They were

(21:13):
killed with a forty five calibre gun and neither shells
or bullets were found at the scene of the bodies.
Investigators not only from the local police department, but with
Malstrom Air Force Base, followed many leads, but the case
eventually went cold. The police could find no motive for
the crime. Not even a false confession was made. Unsolved,

(21:36):
Murder's magazine offered a ten thousand dollar reward in addition
to an existing fifty five hundred dollars local reward for
any information. The crime would go on to be re
enacted on hard copy in nineteen eighty nine. Throughout the years,
the Cascade County Sheriff's Office continued to work on solving
the crime. Luckily, during Patricia Kolitski's autops in nineteen fifty six,

(22:01):
vaginal swab was taken and preserved on a microscopic slide.
In two thousand and one, the swab was sent for
testing and found of sperm that did not belong to Bogel.
In twenty twelve, Detective Sergeant John Cadner was assigned to
the cold case, and he turned to forensic testing. In
twenty nineteen, Cadner hoped a clue could be found through

(22:23):
a genealogical match. The DNA recovered from Patricia Kolitsky's body
led to a man named Kenneth Gould, who had lived
with his wife and children in the Great Falls area
around the time of the murder. In nineteen sixty seven,
he moved to Missouri with his family. Gould died in
two thousand seven, and his body was cremated. His family

(22:44):
provided DNA that confirmed he was the murderer of the
young couple. In turn, the families of Bogel and Kolinsky
were told the outcome. Told of the outcome to a
sixty year old mystery. Kenneth Fraser Gould, at the time
of the murder lived only a mile from Kolitzky, and
he worked with horses only blocks from where she lived
in Great Falls. He was known to ride his horse

(23:05):
extensively in the area. Only a month after the murder,
Gould sold his property and moved to Tracy, a small
town southeast of Great Falls. Then in July he moved
again to the tiny town of Geraldine and lived there
from nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty seven. The family
left to Hamilton and then to Alton, Missouri, in nineteen

(23:26):
sixty seven. They never returned to Montana. Gould had no
known criminal history before or after the murders. When approached
by law enforcement with the DNA evidence, none of his
family admitted to knowing of any criminal behavior on his part.
Kenneth Gould was born in nineteen twenty seven to Royal
Gould and Ruby Cartwright. His father died unexpectedly in January

(23:49):
nineteen twenty nine. His mother was pregnant with his brother, Glenn.
His mother was briefly married to Joseph Dashel, and in
nineteen thirty three she married Gail Tucker. In nineteen thirty
he ate His brother Glen, who was nine, died in
a fire that destroyed the ranch house near belt Park
where he was vacationing. Oil exploded in the stove and
burnt him, burnt him over the majority of his body.

(24:12):
When Gould was fifteen years old, he was staying with
his maternal grandparents, Frasier and Blanche Cartwright. One day he
just disappeared after leaving to bring cows to a nearby pasture.
The family searched for him, but neither him or his
black and white Pinto pony could be found. There were
no tracks left either. His grandmother grew so desperate she

(24:32):
published and added the local newspaper trying to find him.
Ten days later, he was located happily working for George
Cesarek on the Arrow Creek ranch, which was sixty miles away.
He had ridden his pony there and he didn't return
to his grandparents ranch for six months. As Kenneth Gould aged,
he was arrested a couple of times for reckless driving

(24:53):
and minor accents, but nothing significant. On May twenty fourth,
nineteen fifty two, he married Lulu Belle Brown. He would
live with his wife and children on different ranches in
the area, depending on who hired him. In April nineteen
fifty six, only three months after Bogel and Keolitski were killed,
he moved to his family to the ranch run by
Chris Molen. In January nineteen sixty, his daughter, Janet Marie

(25:18):
h four died from an illness. She was one of
five siblings, Roy, King, Catherine and Crystal. This was almost
four years to the date the young couple were killed.
During this time, the case was being investigated by the
local police department, but Gould had not found had not
fallen under suspicion or even questioned about the crime. In
nineteen seventy, his younger half brother, Russell Tucker, died in

(25:40):
a motorcycle accident at the age of thirty four. By then,
Kenneth Gould had moved with his family to Missouri. Kenneth
Gould lived and died in obscurity. He passed when he
was seventy nine years old, without any record of a
barrant behavior. He only had a great aunt, Eva mc nutt,
who died in nineteen thirty two after being committed to
an a Satan asylum for several years. Was the murder

(26:03):
of the couple in impulsive crime? Or had he somehow
become obsessed with Patricia Kolitsky and Stalktor. The question begs
to be asked, were they his only victims? And by
the way, that's a very good question. It's true this
guy was How's this. I'm gonna play the devil's advocate

(26:27):
on this. If he ever did anything, he was never caught.
How's that? And part of me thinks that it's very
difficult to think that someone that's a norm me when
I say noor me like you know, goes one day
and kills two young thir teenagers eighteen and sixteen kills them,

(26:50):
shoots him in the head, and does to me, the
feeling I get is that this guy did maybe other things,
whether it was murder or not, and was just never caught.
And the truth was Montana's sparsely populated in some areas.
He grew up there, he knew all the places to
go not to go, you know, you know, and there's

(27:14):
never any mention, which, by the way, that's another thing,
the match of the DNA and the crime. So in
other words, was there any other cases now that they've
ever looked. They don't mention. Hey, we're going to go

(27:34):
and look back around those years, are any cold cases
and see if this was maybe this is why it
was cold. They didn't make any mention as if the
local police department would do something along those lines that
you would think, okay, just because this guy had never
come under suspicion, was never questioned. In other words, everybody

(27:59):
was way out there and left field on this. Like
I said, I find that so hard to believe that
you when day wake up and you go and kill
two people like the way he did. So, but it's
that's the thing. He's he passed away and everybody's gone,

(28:19):
so let's stay on the true crime thing. And sometimes
it's not a lack of it's not a lack of suspects,
it's sometimes you have too many. Anyway, this is titled
without apparent reason. It was a week before Halloween nineteen
sixty six when our family was found tied up, gagged,

(28:40):
and slain in their home in the suburbs of Tallahassee.
More than five decades have passed in that case remains unsolved.
Date October twenty second, nineteen sixty six, where Tallahassee, Florida.
Robert W. Simms, forty two was an official for the
Florida Department of Education. On a Saturday night. Like most Americans,

(29:01):
he was at home with his wife, Helen, and his
twelve year old daughter, joy Lynne. He had just returned
the day before from a trip to Washington, d C.
An older daughter, Nora aka Nora Jeanette but named nicknamed Jenny,
arrived home after babysitting job just before midnight to a
house that was quiet, too quiet. Like her sisters, they

(29:22):
usually came through the carport to enter the house. She
found that was unlocked, which was out of the norm.
Only the television was on. She called out for her
family and finally made her way to the master bedroom,
where she found all three of them dead or dying.
Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were blindfolded.
Robert was on the bed, gagged and shot once in

(29:42):
the head. He died before reaching the hospital. Helen was
on the floor, also gagged and shot twice in the
head and once in the leg. She would die nine
days later from her injuries. Joy was shot once in
the head had seven stab wounds in the chest and abdomen.
She was the only one that was not gagged or blindfolded.
The severity of her wounds was unusual, since of all

(30:05):
three victims she would be the least problematic. She had
been painting at the dining room table earlier that night.
Sims was dressed in pants and undershirt, his wife was
fully clothed, and Joy was in her nightgown. They were
all barefoot. The attacker was believed to have used a
thirty eight caliber pistol. Women's stockings, neckties, and part of
a woman's slip were used to bind the victims and

(30:27):
socks to gag them. Around ten forty five pm, a
neighbor heard high pitched screams, but they thought it was children.
No one else in the area heard anything. Early on,
a straight crime expert at Yardborough theorized that a sex
pervert had committed the crime. In his opinion, this was
quote the work of a sexually deranged person, a sex maniac.

(30:51):
There are many types of perverts. They do not have
to be there do not have to be signs of
sexual molestation end quote. Sheriff Joys, with a local police department, disagreed,
since neither Helen Simms or her daughter had been sexually assaulted.
He told newspapers, we have questions that everyone who would
give us the slightest information. We have eliminated several possible suspects.

(31:14):
We don't have enough to arrest anyone, but we are
talking to everyone, from disgruntled employees to known perverts. Initially,
the detectives denied any sexual element against other, against other
either female okay, I'm sorry. Initially the detectives denied any

(31:39):
sexual element against either female. Later, however, certain off the
record comments suggested otherwise were pertained to Joy. Her panties
were pulled down, her shirt was pulled up, and she
had bloody handprints and bruises between her legs. She'd been beaten.
It was obvious at that point to investigators the girl
was the target of the break in. Some would argue
that stabbing of Joy had a sexual component, and she

(32:02):
had a bruise on a right cheek made by a ring.
The sailant was left handed. The police could not find
a motive for the murder. Mister Simms had been working
at his job as a director of data processing for
close to ten years. He was a U. S. Army veteran,

(32:23):
and he was highly respected by his coworkers and neighbors.
Helen Simms was a part time secretary to the associate
minister of the Baptist church they attended. She had resigned
a few days before. It seemed the main pastor, doctor Roberts,
had a reputation as a womanizer. Whether this had anything
to do with missus Simms resigning her post is unknown. However,

(32:44):
the pastor had a good alibi for the time the
murder was committed. Helen Sims died on Halloween, and the
populace in Tallahassee, which numbered about eighty thousand, were so
scared that no children went trigger tree that year. In
the days that followed, Tallahassee hardware stores reported that in

(33:05):
a few hours they had run out of nearly one
hundred locks and chains. The Sims brick wranch house at
six forty one Murial Court sat on a cul de sac.
Behind it was a wooded area. It was a neighborhood
populated by high echelon state and university career people. There
was no sign of horse entry, and afterward it remained

(33:26):
sealed and only open to detectives who were searching for clues.
This would lead detectives to believe the family need the assailant,
but perhaps it was just a knock of the door,
which Sims answered, never imagining he had just allowed his
murderer to enter freely into his home. This cut also
explained how a six foot four inch athletic man in
the prime of life could be subdued. Perhaps he faced

(33:49):
an assailant that pointed a gun to his face once
he opened the door, or perhaps it was someone he
didn't feel threatened by, like a woman. For instance, the
family kept a shotgun in al which was never used.
There was no evidence of anything being robbed after the murder.
The sims other two daughters, Jenny sixteen and Judith Ann
fifteen were sent to the care of their grandparents. Judy,

(34:12):
who had also been babysitting with spirit the horror of
what her sister found it inside their home. After Jenny
found her family in the bedroom, she stumbled to the
kitchen to use the phone. This is when she noticed
the front door was open. She could remember seeing it
this way when she arrived later. This was to figure
in the theory that whoever attacked the family had still

(34:33):
been inside the home when she arrived. Authorities found that
intricate knots and bindings had been used on the family.
This did not appear to be a haphazard attack, but
something planned and thought out. Gags had been stuck deep
into the mouth of the victim, which probably were suffocating
them slowly. The methodology was reminiscent of the nineteen forty

(34:54):
six film The Killers, based on a story by Ernest Hemingway,
where the murderers used household items. Truman Capoti's true crime
story in Cold Blood had been recently published. A detailed
the nineteen fifty nine murder of the Clutter family, which
had similarities to this crime. As the investigation progressed, it
was found that all the items used to tie up

(35:16):
the family had been taken directly from where they were at,
as if the person knew ahead of time where to look.
There had been no riffling of drawers or closets. Was
almost eerie how undisturbed the house was. Around ten forty
five p m. A girl baby sitting in a house
situated behind the Sims property heard what she thought was screaming.

(35:36):
She checked on the child she was caring for, but
found everything was okay. Later she heard screaming again, shots
and bursts of light caused by gunfire. Another neighbor behind
the Sims heard five gun shots and all went quiet.
Two blocks away on Gibbs's Drive, a scream was heard.
Later investigators learned that a young man from the neighborhood,
described as slender, tall, about twenty one years old, with glasses,

(35:59):
was seen in walking away from Murial Court around eleven
fifteen p m. He gave conflicting information as to where
he was before and after the time the murders were
committed and what he was doing. Another witness said they
heard someone running through the woods that came up behind
the yacht of the house a Murial Court. An account

(36:20):
described a white car by the Junior High which a
neighbor thought was suspicious when it sped away towards Gibb Drive.
There was a ravine that started at the Sims property,
where beyond it someone could have left, some have left
some type of transportation. There was also a trail that
led to the Styles pond. The white car would later

(36:40):
be tied to suspects of the crime. Certain areas behind
the Sims house showed where someone had cut back foliage
and order of a better view of the house. The
position was hidden but would give a direct line of
sight of the Sims house. Over thousand fingerprints were processed,
and sadly, most of them belonged to law enforcement. It
appeared the police had not kept the scene secure. The

(37:03):
day after the murder, cars and gawkers came to the house.
Tallahassee had not experienced a murder of this type before.
The police run successful when recovering the firearm or knife
used in the murder. They dragged a nearby Styles pond
in hopes of finding either one, but nothing came of
the effort. The family was buried at Hebron Baptist Church
Cemetery in Mississippi, and the two surviving daughters were adopted

(37:26):
by their maternal aunt, Joe Carr. The houses on the
street remained impossible to sell for years after the murder,
and until this date, the case remains unsolved. In a
twenty seventeen podcast interview, former state prosecutor Jeremy Mutz described
pertinent facts about the case, including suspects. The young couple
who were questioned by police was Vernon Britton Fox Junior

(37:50):
twenty one and his fiancee, married Charles le Joie nineteen.
His father was doctor Vernon Britton Fox, who chaired the
criminology department at Floria State University. He had been a
deputy warden of Michigan State Prison at Jackson from nineteen
forty nine to nineteen fifty two and negotiated the nineteen
fifty two inmate strike of what was then the nation's

(38:12):
largest prison. The couple were inseparable and were often seen
together in the neighborhood. They had known each other since
elementary school. People saw them at night walking the neighborhood
and hiding behind trees. The parents of each of them
did not approve of the relationship. Fox had joined the
Air Force and was kicked out four months later due

(38:32):
to mental health issues. Strangely, prior to his departure, there
had been an uptick of calls to the police about prowlers.
They died away and resumed when he returned home in
nineteen sixty six. Was there any connection When the police
spoke to them about their whereabouts and activity the knights
of the murders, They each provided the other's alibi, which

(38:53):
at time became contradictory or changed from interview to interview.
Le Jois le Joi miss classes the Monday after the murders.
Once Mary the Joy admitted to investigate it. She had
gone to the front door of the Sims home on
the night of the murder. However, she never said she
had gone inside. She went on to a diagram of
the interior of the house, which some would think would

(39:15):
be impossible for someone unless they had been inside. The
layout could not be guessed by someone standing on the outside.
Lejoy also appeared to have a troubled psyching. She was
nicknamed Mortitia. She was fascinated with funeral homes and was
caught going into some of them to see bodies. She
says equally attracted to autopsies due to her strangeness, she

(39:37):
could not find any girl wanted to share a dorm
room with her. In nineteen sixty seven, she wrote a
paper about this case titled the Sims Murder Theory, and
presented it to her English class. The motive she gave
for the crime were one sex, two revenge, three anger.
She wrote that she felt sex was the motive and

(39:57):
the little girl being the target. She wanted to describe
to her teacher that she wanted to have sex with
the blood of fresh bodies, and that she carried a
small knife, about a three or four inch blade. She
was born left handed, but was made to use her
right hand, making her ambidexterous. In April nineteen sixty Fox
gave the Joy an engagement ring, which might have caused

(40:19):
the wound on Joy's cheek. Later was a certain she
had learned how to be tie specialized knots and binding
via time spent as a girl's scout. Also, her father
was a rigor and electrician for the F. S. U. Circus.
There she learned to tie different knots used in circus tents.
The day after the murder, La Joy rode her bike

(40:40):
to the murder house and approached the police outside, she asked,
how is missus Simms getting along? She went to the
sheriff's on more than one occasion asked do you think
I could have done this and not remembered. It seems
she was concerned Missus Simms would recover from her injuries
and be able to identify who killed her husband and daughter.

(41:00):
According to Muttz, it seemed doctor Fox, who was well connected,
made phone calls and his message was clear, either arrest
my son or stop questioning him. The Joy and Fox
went on to marry and then divorce. At various times
he spoke to law enforcement or posted content on the
Internet to tease about the possibility they were the culprits.
After nineteen eighty seven, La Joy spoke one last time

(41:23):
to law enforcement and faded from commenting any further on
the crime. Wernion Fox Junior was interviewed by a documentary
correct Fis due in twenty sixteen, and also made statements
on the internet. He claimed that he still loved the Joy,
but fear for his life because of her tendency towards
mental illness and physical violence. He paused that because she
had failed to get alimony payments extended, she had suddenly

(41:46):
gone to the police to try to implicate him in
the murders. Some of his online posts have been removed.
During the time of the Simmons murder, there were rumors
that Fox was suspected of mutilating ponies in a farm
north of town. There was also with the couples did
things to animals during the time they would skulk in
the woods. Now these are the other suspects. The first

(42:09):
notice of the murders came at one am in October eighteenth,
when an anonymous man who remained unidentified fifty six years
later called the Tallahassee Police Department and reported that he
had seen two bodies at Blue Sink. This was almost
a year to the date the sims had been killed.
The mutilated bodies of Florida K. Ranger Granger and Elizabeth

(42:32):
Ann Wood, both seventeen, were found in a lonely lover's lane.
Both had been shot, stabbed in bludgoned near Blue Sink,
a few miles south of Tallahassee. Robert Scott Sanders, twenty one,
was arrested and charged. He was treed separately for each
murder and found to be insane. Even though it was
found he had killed Wood because she was a witness.

(42:53):
He shot her, which only resulted in a flesh wound.
After this, he stabbed her over sixty times and beat
her with a tire iron. Sanders was a California native
who had gone a wall from Fort Betting, Georgia, and
drifted down to Tallahassee. As of October nineteenth, nineteen sixty six,
days before the Simms murder, he was living at Helm's

(43:14):
rooming house, located at one two three North Adams Street.
He stayed there until January nineteen sixty seven. He worked
at Mannheimer's service station on West Tennessee Street and coincidentally
received his paycheck on October twenty second, nineteen sixty six.
Five months later, he was returned to the army as
a deserter after being stopped for speeding. Two days after

(43:36):
arriving at the base, he escaped twenty volunteered to give blood.
He returned to Tallahassee. Despite efforts to connect him with
the Simms murder, there was not enough evidence. He was
acquitted of the girl's murders on the grounds of insanity,
and he was committed to the state hospital at Chattahoochee.
The indictment on the Simms case was left pending based
on a disagreement on the motive in the murder. Every

(43:58):
six months Sanders case was reviewed, since he was being
kept at the hospital, based on the diagnosis of psychosis.
In July nineteen seventy three, state psychiatrists testified that Sanders
was sane, but they could be dangerous if provoked. Such
a condition apparently was not treatable, and under the state's
new Bill of Rights for Mental Patients, inmates which cannot

(44:21):
be treated or entitled to be released subject to action
by the hearing examiner. After being kept at the State
hospital for seven years, the attending the psychiatrist who was
the director of the hospital, Albert E. Fulton, they said
that Sanders was mentally stable enough to be released under
what was defined as convalescent release. Sanders was released to

(44:42):
Halfway House, where he participated in a work release program
in Pensacola. One has to wonder if part of the
reason he was released only years after murdering two teenage
girls was the controversy occurring at the State Mental Hospital.
Around nineteen seventy there were six thousand patients, and in
nineteen seventy two forty three hundred with only twenty five

(45:06):
hundred employees to attend them. They were underpaid and overworked,
with the average pay for the employees being about three
hundred and seventy two dollars per month. It was argued
that attendants caring for the criminally insane were in danger
of bodily harm because they were often left alone with
groups of patients. Country editor will Ramsey proposed what was
known as the Mosquito Creek Code, which was a rule

(45:27):
which gave the attendant a right to get him back
quote unquote get him back even though a notice was
filed with the Leon Circuit Court Clerk dated June seventeenth,
nineteen seventy four, to ensure that the judge handling the
Sanders case would be notified if he returned to Florida.
He never was. Sanders was found working as an armed

(45:50):
security guard at a motel in a high crime rate
district and carrying a pistol borrowed from his girlfriend. State
Attorney Harry Morrison sent Sanders back to mental asylum. On
the heels of returning Sanders to the hospital, doctor Peter
b Ivory and doctor Albert Fulton were indicted by a
grand jury on conspiracy charges that they pressured doctor Harold W. Conran,

(46:13):
a staff member, not to testify on the sanity of
Robert Scott Sanders. Doctor Conran was asked to determine if
Sanders was still dangerous after his return to the hospital
and a deposition. Conrad said that his supervisors called him
an adversary and feared he would make the institution a
laughing stock by finding that Sanders was a danger to

(46:36):
the public. In August nineteen seventy five, charges were dismissed
against both doctors. Two years later, in April nineteen seventy six,
Sanders was released and given a plane ticket to Alaska,
where his mother lived in Ketchikan. After this, he disappeared
from history and Florida. Doctor Fulton died in nineteen eighty
nine after serving as director at the hospital for four years.

(46:59):
Florida State prosecutors had been critical of premature release of
the so called criminally insane, such as the case of
Cherry and Cooley Nissolek, who killed one daughter, Pamela, aged seven,
and attempted to murder a second daughter, Patricia, nine, by
giving them massive doses of anti depress and its soft drinks.
She also tried to kill herself. She and her older

(47:20):
daughter were discovered in time to have their stomachs pumped
and their life saved. Like Sanders Chery, Anne and Zolik
was found not guilty due to insanity. In December nineteen
seventy two, doctor Fulton declared she was competent and no
longer danger to herself or society, and was ready for release.

(47:40):
This was only ninety days after she had been committed.
What became of Sherri Cooley as unknown. Her daughter, Patricia
and Azolic, died in nineteen ninety eight at the age
of fifty three. She had been released to the care
of her maternal grandmother after her mother tried to kill her.
Now back to the Sims case and one of the

(48:01):
other suspects in the case was pastor Cecil Albert Roberts,
who was involved in an affair with a twenty five
year old divorcee. He was known to have young women
coming and going into his office. However, a womanizer does
not a murderer make. He was the chaplain for the
football team and was seen on film that night during

(48:22):
the f SU versus Mississippi U, giving him a solid
Alibia's whereabouts. The night of the murder, there were rumors
that Reverend Roberts and Simms had words, and that Simms
threatened the minister the afternoon of the slaves. The probing
into his life prompted him to step down his pastor
within months of the murders. It led to two heart attacks,
and he shortly left town and ended up in Texas.

(48:44):
Roberts was killed years later in a traffic accident. Other suspect,
Thomas Arthur Fullgum, grew up in Tallahassee and lived close
to the Simms family on Merribeth Avenue. He was fifteen
years old and had just started ninth grade. In nineteen
seventy nine, the Tallahassee Police apartment into readom due to

(49:05):
a crime he committed many years after the murder. On
murial court in October nineteen seventy nine, he was found
guilty of malice murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He
killed Dale Purnie, a woman he had known for a
short time. He was found standing outside the apartment complex
where she lived, holding a court yard covered in blood.

(49:25):
Inside the jar was one of Pierne's internal organs. He
asked for an ambulance and said something bad happened. He
had also severed a finger from his left hand. Police
followed a trail of blood to an apartment with a
broken sliding glass door. Pierne was in the bedroom. All
her organs from her windpipe to her genital area had
been removed. A twelve inch butcher knife had staked her

(49:47):
to the floor through her naked upper torso. Other internal
organs were found in the bathtub and the others on
the floor of the living room and kitchen. A plate
of food was left less than a foot from Pierne's head.
Two days later, Fulgum's finger was found. An autopsy found
that she had received forty four separate stab wounds, which
caused her death. Dale Pearney had moved into an apartment

(50:09):
E two o seven at the Ski Lodge apartment at
fifty five forty Roswell Road, Northwest four days before. She
had separated from her husband and moved from Tennessee. Piernee
and Fugum had met a few days before at a
group's session of former narcotics users trying to kick their
drug habits. According to the Fulton Police Department, Piernee did

(50:31):
not drink, but attended AA meetings. She did not take drugs,
her father said, but she attended narcotics anonymous meetings, and
she had a lot of religious literature lying around. Fulgum
had recently spent fourteen months at a Florida asylum and
just walked away. His parents confirmed he had a history
of institutionalization and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

(50:53):
Prior to Peerne's murder, he had been hospitalized three times
due to psychotic episodes. He was a navy veteran of
the Vietnam More As a younger man, Fullgum returned home
from a religious meeting and choked a close relative by
the throat, saying he wanted to shake the devil out
of him. According to his court appointed attorney, Fugum had
attempted suicide four times out of reasons of religiosity. The

(51:18):
last time he jumped out of a speeding car. Later,
Fogum told the doctor that Pierne's face had turned into
Satan and that she was possessed by him a less
certain organs and her body will removed Satan would return
to Earth. His left hand was also evile, and God
told him to cut off his finger in order to
scar himself as proof of his battle with Satan. The
jar he carried was a trophy. Fulgum was diagnosed as

(51:40):
a chronic paranoid schizophrenic who suffered delusional compulsions triggered by
religious stimuli. His disease was incurable. His family and other
friends testified he had been normal until nineteen seventy five,
when he became obsessed with religion. Despite the gruesomeness of
Fulgum's crime, there was no torture or anger aspect to it,

(52:02):
unlike what happened to Joyce Simms. Neither of the Sims
daughters reported ever seeing Tommy Fogum watching them. After he
was honorably discharged from the Navy, his girlfriend traveled across
country with him, and he never mentioned anything about the
Sims family. Fulgum died December nineteen ninety six. In early
twenty sixteen, a task force was assembled between different Florida

(52:27):
law enforcements agencies to share information and theories in order
to solve the cold case. For some unknown reason, within
a few months, it was dissolved. Makes you wonder, right,
one has to wonder if there was not some occult
connection to the murder. It occurred one week before Halloween,

(52:50):
sam Haynes, regarded as the Witch's Sabbath, equivalent of their
New Year's Eve. Some theorized that crime was committed on
that Saturday night because of the distraction offered by the
football game, but perhaps there were other reasons for the timing.
The following weekend, on the twenty ninth, there would have
been a full moon, and if you're planning a murder
at night, the last thing you need is illumination after

(53:10):
dark in order to be seen better. If timing was
not important, why not wait until another day when doctor
Simms would not have been at the home. A physically
fit man would have been a significant impediment, unless waiting
would spoil the intent of what could be interpreted as
the sacrifice of a virgin. Perhaps there was a cult
symbology left at the crime scene that the police force

(53:32):
did not know how to recognize for what it was.
There is always hope that Simms family will get justice.
Like the case of Irene Gaza was murdered in nineteen sixty,
a case remained unsolved until twenty sixteen, when an ex
priest was convicted of her murder. So what do you think,
nice area, nice people. Obviously the main target was this girl,

(54:00):
and that you know that thing about the timing, I
would say, eh before Halloween. But one something that did
make sense was doctor Simms. He was a six foot
four guy. This is a big man. In other words,
if you're planning to get in there and do something,
you would wait, I don't want I don't want to

(54:21):
have to fight this guy. You know, even if you
have a gun, even if the person had a firearm,
I don't want to deal with this guy. And apparently
he had just come back from a trip, so somebody
could awaited he's not here. I mean, if the target
was the girl, believe me, there would have been better
options not to encounter her father. And that to me
speaks of that there. It had to be around that time,

(54:44):
the timing did there was something important to the timing.
And then of course around that you have all these
crazy people that like full gum that he was fifteen
and lived in the neighborhood. But again they don't think
he had anything to do with it, because in other words,
he was really really crazy. These two these uh, the

(55:05):
joy and the other ones. Mm hmm, there's something there
I think I don't feeling that. And basically this doctor Fox,
he told the police lead my son alone, but I
think he just didn't want to deal with uh that,
you know. In other words, his dad had sounded like

(55:25):
neither family. But I think his dad didn't want him
to hang out with with married Charles l. Joy. That
they were married eventually, but then even after they got divorced,
he's saying how he's kind of scared of her. So
and there was a theory. I believe that that La
Joy for some reason, she was almost jealous in a

(55:49):
way of of this young girl Sims. I don't know,
some weird stuff, but yeah, that that whole thing. That
and it's surprising that after so many years it still
remains a cold case. Incredible but true. Now next story

(56:09):
is I mean, if we're gonna go to dark true crime,
let's stay with dark true crime, shall we? This is
pretty dark out there. I mean, this is titled out
of Stranger than fiction stories. It's titled a Hunger from Mayhem.
In October nineteen thirty one, a strange discovery was made

(56:31):
about two miles east of Pasco County, near the Snake
River Bridge. It was of it was the torso of
a woman nailed to a telegraph pole. This is Washington State.
The body appeared to have been staked to the post
in the sagebrush at least a couple of weeks before.
The spot was at the confluence of the Columbia and

(56:53):
Snake Rivers, which were dragged for any clues. The gruesome
human remnants were found by H. R. Olsen and A. R.
Welch and his wife. The local authorities were stumped since
there were no reports of a missing woman in the area.
Based on the remnants of flesh still left, doctor O'Brien
from Pascal County said the woman had a fair complexion
with auburn hair, and she was between thirty to forty

(57:16):
years of age. The deputies from Franklin County searched the
area for the rest of the body, but nothing was found.
They asked for help from a Seattle criminologist, Luke May,
who has sent pieces of the flesh. Three days later,
the mystery appeared to be solved. A caretaker at the
cemetery reported that a particular grave had been disturbed. The
body of Promelia Canoos seventy six had been exhumed from

(57:39):
the Cemetery. She was buried on September twenty fifth, nineteen
thirty one. The casket had been split open. Fingerprint experts
from Walla Walla Penitentiary worked on the case. An elderly man,
Isaac Brooks also aka Isaac Samuel, aged eighty one, with
a prison record, was picked up for questioning. Missus Canoes

(58:02):
had kept house for him for several years. He had
lived in Pascoe County for about ten years after serving
a stretch and Walla Walla prison. Isaac Brooks had a
story all his own, and with good reason. He was
a suspect. In nineteen thirteen, he was arrested in connection
to the murder of John Murphy, a camp cook. The
man's fiendishly mutilated body was found in a shed in

(58:25):
the stockyard in North Yakima. Bloodhounds owned by former jailer
j o'hon twice followed a trail from where the body
was found to the back door of Brooks Shack in
the southwest part of the city. This was two blocks
from where Murphy died. Murphy was sixty five years old
and worked as a camp cook about the valley for
several years. Due to his wounds, he had bled to death.

(58:46):
Also arrested was a man named Jimmy Burns, Thomas Corbin,
and J. H. Tim, all of them laborers. A few
months before Murphy's Murdy murder, James Burns was assaulted in
the same manner in the same part of town, and
led the residence to the town to believe there was
an insane person at large whose mania drove them to

(59:07):
this form of mutilation. On December nineteenth, James Fitzgerald alias
Jimmy Burns, was found working in an industrial camp near
Pasco and brought back by Sheriff Joe Metzger. His testimony
was said to have completed the chain of evidence against
Isaac Brooks due to his confession authorities when searching for L. K. Fullerton,

(59:28):
a county prisoner who in November said that Brooks made
a similar attack on him. His story and the fact
that a bloody mattress was found in the Brooks house
led credence to his words. In March nineteen fourteen, Isaac
Brooks was found guilty of maiming workman James Fitzgerald. The
prosecutors decided to charge him with the attack against Fitzgerald,

(59:49):
who was described as a boy and not the murder
of Murphy, in which they had only circumstantial evidence, even
though they were the same of the same quote unquote
fiendish character. He was charged with mayhem, which was a
specific and serious charge. It sprang from the word maime. However,
the charge could only be applied when a victim lost

(01:00:10):
a limb, the loss of a sense, was left disfigured,
or had life altering changes to the body. Mayhem is
usually the deliberate and intentional infliction of grave and severe
bodily harm. What save Fitzgerald was that he was found
before he bled to death. However, Murphy had crawled into
a shanty and died there. Fitzgerald positively identified Brooks as

(01:00:33):
his assailant. The defense team tried to describe a Fitzgerald
by saying he had once been a glass seater with
a circus. Brooks, who was an older man, had lived
in the area for many years, while the two victims
were laborers who had been in the city but a
few days when the inhuman crimes were committed. Though never
clearly stated, it was inferred that Brooks mutilated the Mitch

(01:00:55):
mutilated them by cutting after genitals. James Burns, like the
other men seemed to live the life of a transient.
In May nineteen thirteen, he along with Thomas Hardy, had
just arrived in Bellingham, Washington, when they were arrested for
stealing about one hundred pounds of copper wire and fittings
from a building. Men with no family or homes were

(01:01:17):
the ones targeted by Isaac Brooks. In May nineteen fourteen, Brooks,
who was fifty eight years old, was sentenced for an
unusual crime and was ordered to spend two to ten
years at Walla Walla. It seemed a compulsion that had
driven Brooks to attack at least two men was not
extinguished during his prison term, and as to why he
decided to punish Permelia Canuss's corpse remains a mystery. Isaac

(01:01:41):
Brooks was released for insufficient evidence after being arrested for
mutilating Permelia Canus's corpse. He died in nineteen forty three
at the age of ninety three. So, in other words,
since it was a corpse, I guess it was pretty horrific.
But and in one has to think this lady kept
house for him for ten years. I wonder how many

(01:02:04):
times he came close to doing something to her, and
maybe she up and died on him before he got
a chance. And he was like, I'm gonna have the
last one. I'm going to pick up her body and
stake her her torso. He dismembered her and stake her
torso to a telegraph poll. That's a very very disturbed individual,

(01:02:24):
all right. Next story is out of ap and its
title The long Lost Ancient Roman Artifact reappears in a
New Orleans backyard. A New Orleans family cleaning up their
overgrown backyard made an extremely unusual find. Under the weeds
was a mysterious marble tablet with Latin characters that included
the phrase spirits of the dead. The fact that it

(01:02:47):
was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right,
said DANIELA Santro, a Tulane University anthropologist. I mean, you
see something like that and you say, okay, this is
not an ordinary thing. And slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out
to a classical archaeologist, colleague, Susan Lusnia, who quickly realized

(01:03:07):
that the slab was the nineteen hundred year old grave
marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Rareus when
I first saw the image that Daniel sent me, it
really did send a ship up my spine, because I
was just floored, Lusnia said. Further sleuthing by Lusnia revealed
the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.

(01:03:28):
Sextus Congenius Verus had died at age forty two of
unknown causes after serving for more than two decades in
the Imperial Navy on a ship named for the Greeco
Roman god of medicine, a Selpius. The gravestone calls the
sailor well deserving and was commissioned by two people described
as his heirs, who were likely shipmates, since Roman military

(01:03:51):
could not be married at the time. Lucnia said the
tablet had been in an ancient cemetery of around twenty
graves of military personnel found the eighteen sixty and Civiteveccia,
a seaside in northwest Italy, about thirty miles from Rome.
Its texts had been recorded in nineteen ten, included in

(01:04:12):
a catalog of Latin inscriptions, which noted the tablet's whereabouts
were unknown. The tablet was later documented at the National
Archaeological Museum and Civeteccia prior to World War Two, but
the museum had been pretty much destroyed during Allied bombing
and took several decades to rebuild, Lusnia said. Museum's staff
confirmed to Lusnia the tablet had been missing for decades.

(01:04:36):
Its recorded measurements one square foot and one inch thick
match the size of the tablet found in Centaurro's backyard.
You can't have better DNA than that, Lusnia said. She
said the FBIS and talks with Italian authorities to repatriate
the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not
respond to requests for comment during the government's shutdown. A

(01:04:58):
final twist to the story suggests how the tablet made
its way to New Orleans. As media reports of the
find began circulating this week, Aaron Scott O'Brien says her
ex husband called her and told her to watch the news.
She immediately recognized the hunk of marble, which she had
always seen as a cool ass piece of art. They
had used as a garden decoration and then forgot about

(01:05:18):
it before selling the home to Santoro in twenty eighteen.
None of us knew what it was. O'Brien said, we
were watching the video just like in Shock. O'Brien said
she received a tablet from her grandparents, an Italian woman
and a New Orleans native who was stationed in the
country during World War II. Perhaps no one would be
more thrilled by the tablet's rediscovery than Sextus himself. Grave

(01:05:42):
markers were important in Roman culture to uphold legacies, even
if even of everyday citizens. Lusnia said, Now Sextus congenious
versus or verus is being talked about so much. Lusnia said,
if there's an after life and he's in it and
he knows, he's very happy because this is what a

(01:06:04):
Roman wants to be remembered forever. Interesting, huh. I'm telling
you some of these lost artifacts, museum pieces, things like
that hand up in the weirdest places, like what I mean,
we are like unusual, like one of those Okay, next
story out of Stars and Stripes Europe and this is

(01:06:26):
titled The Ghost Liberated by the US Army USAG Bavarian
installations and graph and War and vil Sek have a
ghostly neighbor who hunts the dark rural roads and abandoned
mines around the village of Fryhung called the Wise Frau.
I don't know if it's Weise or weiss Frau, the
Weiss Foul or the White Lady. This ghostly operation joins

(01:06:51):
a cohort of white ladies that are popular in German
supernatural tales, like the White Lady of Fryhung fry Ung,
I don't have to pronounce that age. Most Manic white
lady figures are not considered dangerous, and they are scary,
appearing out of nowhere to wander the world of the living.
Some sources believe that wis Frau stories across German speaking

(01:07:11):
regions are a cultural relic from former pagan beliefs and
elvent spirits or ancestral guardians. Many of the white lady
legends have overtime taken on specific histories, often evolving to
represent the unrestful spirit of noble women from the Middle
Ages who met tragic ends, such as the case at Fryhung.
In the twelfth century, lead deposits were found in the

(01:07:34):
region and mining operations began, eventually digging a network of
shafts and tunnels used until nineteen forty five. During the
Middle Ages, a noble family oversaw the peasants who toiled
all day in mines, and Fryhung grew as a prosperous
mining village around their manor house. Legends say that the
white Lady who hants Fryong is a noble woman from

(01:07:55):
that manner. In the past, she would appear in the
dark tunnels, beckoning miners to follow her and get lost
in the underground blackness. Her appearance became a harbinger of danger,
perhaps a warning, perhaps a phantom guide, leading people to
their death. Some of the tunnels she haunted were directly
below the village. Many were still used into modern times,

(01:08:16):
like those underneath the Alt Post Inn. The insits in
the center Frion at the same location of the former
medieval manor house where the White Lady presumably lived and
perhaps died. Eventually, the modern owners of the ingrew tired
of being spooked by the White Lady and wanted both
her and the haunted tunnels gone. Supposedly, in the nineteen seventies,

(01:08:38):
a demolition team from the nearby USA g Bavaria Graphen
War Trainings area was called in to safely destroy the tunnels.
It's unclear why American soldiers were chosen for the job
instead of local German authorities. Some have speculated that it
made for an interesting, if not bizarre, training opportunity for
the army. The hope was to rid the town and
the inn of its ghostly resident, but it did not work. Nowadays,

(01:09:02):
the wispy figure where white ladies still spotted around fry On. However,
she's no longer limited to tempting people who venture underground.
She's often seen wandering down dark nighttime roads, shocking drivers
who think they spot her in the rear view mirror,
only to glance again and see nothing. Other cars have
swerved around what appears to be a woman in the
road who cannot be found afterward. Sometimes people hear a

(01:09:24):
disembodied female voice outside the village at night, or feel
an icy touch while walking along trails beyond their houses
in the evening. Is it possible that the army helped
to release the wise Frau of fry Hung from her
confinement in the old mind tunnels. Perhaps instead she's wandering
in the night air looking for the soldiers to destroy

(01:09:45):
her underground refuge. Who knows, right, that's a pretty neat story. Yes,
that white lady thing that's like you know, that's very
common like sighting, especially of these like castles and things
like that. But anyway, I will be back with you

(01:10:06):
soon because I've got plenty of weird and unusual stories
to entertain you with. Until next time,

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