August 14, 2025 • 62 mins
The National Parks are Untamed and Jackie and Christy are UNLEASHED! We talk all things Yosemite after watching Netflix’s Untamed and we went live during recording so you get to hear what a minimally edited show sounds like.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome back to Killer Phone, where we explore the intersection
of crime and entertainment every other week. I'm Christy and
I'm Jackie, and we're so glad that you're with us today.
Today we are talking about untamed.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yes, which is why we're live. That's untamed today.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That's right. Yes, So I just said uh, and I
often say like, and I often cut both of those
things out. And so if you're listening to this and
not watching it live the way we're recording this and
the day we're recording this, because life be life, and uh,
(00:46):
there's going to be a lot of ums and likes
and aws and pauses and things, they're just going to
be there. So it's fine, it's a little unfiltered.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's untamed today.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
This is right.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is the whole point.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
This is the whole point. That's right because wherever people go,
there's a potential for crime potential. Yeah. So we're talking
about season one, episode one, a celestial Event. It has
been renewed for season two.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I saw that and I was very happy. Oh okay,
I was very happy.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, yeah, yeah, my husband won't watch it with me.
Can we watch two episodes? And he did not like it.
I share some of his concerns. What okay, I get,
I'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Okay, okay, because because did we both watch the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
No, I only we've seen the two episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
This is what happens. I know every single time, every
single time, either she's watched the whole thing or I've
watched the whole thing. So that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, okay, yeah, No, I've fallen down a rabbit hole
of other true crime documentaries of different things, most recently
Ruby Franky okay, abusive mommy blogger, man, oh my gosh man. Okay,
(02:06):
but that doesn't have anything to do with the tame
so that was something I normally cut out and sticking
a bonus.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
See today they get to hear how these things come
to life, right, all our little rabbit holes, all the fun.
But we'll try to keep it on focus.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Let's be clear. I'm going to try to keep it
on focus.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Okay, cast a cast, it's great, it's a really good cast.
So Eric Banna is Kyle Turner, the Investigative Services Branch
agent of the National Parks Service. We know him from
covering Dirty John on this show.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So that's probably the thing we know him from. But
he's been in Troy.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And that's what I love me some Troy love.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dirty John is where we almost
hit it big.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh my god, that's the episode.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
That was the episode, the where we almost hit it big.
It was February of twenty twenty and somebody featured us
on and it's hand picked on Apple Podcasts. Somebody put
us on the featured portion of New and Noteworthy podcasts
(03:31):
on Apple Podcasts, and it was glorious, and I thought,
this is it. It's going to happen. And then the
world shut down and it was politics and coronavirus.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yes, and a lot of professional media people flooding the space.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yes, And then a lot of professional media people and
a lot of non professional media people. We were non
professional but also had been at it for a while.
And then everybody was like, I'm home anyway, I should
make a podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Right, which I don't know which one I'm more angry about,
like the people who did it because they were bored
so it flooded it. But also that's kind of what
podcasting is for, like small circles of influence for most
of the people, right, But Also it's the high end
production that was that really took over and made it
so that like it leveled up not well leveled up
(04:20):
the production value, but I'm but it just also made
it a deeper, broader, you know, landscape of knowledge and
so all of a sudden, all the niche stuff kind
of got pushed.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Anyway, anyway, we digress, see we digressed.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Sorry, Okay, let me try and keep this on track.
You're good, I already that was me.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's okay, we can we can do tell us and
that we can do this, right, we can just.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, we can be fun. All right. So Lily
Santiago is Naya Vasquez, a new park Ranger. She was
in in NBC's Librea. Rosemary DeWitt is Jill Bowden, Kyle's
ex wife. My favorite thing that she's been in was
(05:12):
the United States of Tara, which was so good. It
was about dissociative identity disorder and one of those that
like experts said it was portrayed really well. It's very
very interesting. And we have seen her before and something
we've covered on the show The Staircase HBO.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
She's been a lot. I love her.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and that's all I'm gonna talk about today. Really, Okay,
what what? Who else did you want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sam Neil Neil, Oh, my gosh, he's my skip.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I skipped right over him. I had him highlighted a
right light.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He's just a favorite of mine.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So I have to I have to name Paul Soda
Jurassic Park that too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yes, and some very old horror flakes like in the
Mouth of Madness O fun.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah. So he's the chief park ranger Insemite. I'm sorry,
You're right. I totally skipped over.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Him for so good. I got it all right, recap, yeah,
do it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So, after seeing some stunning views of Yosemite National Park,
we join a couple of climbers as they near the
top of El Capitan, a rock face of over three
thousand feet. Without warning, a woman falls from the top,
hits the rope, and nearly causes all three to make
(06:34):
a very rapid descent. Investigative Services Branch special Agent Kyle Turner,
disliked by most of his colleagues, but an excellent investigator
arrives on the scene. While the rangers who initially responded
suspect self harm or an accident related to drug use,
(06:55):
Agent Turner decides to look a bit harder, and it's
a good thing he does. I have thoughts.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Okay, we can't get there. I'm so interested.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So first of all, we're looking at these beautiful like vistas,
and I'm like, I'm so glad they have drones to
take this footage now, because if you see vistas like
that from movies from like the seventies and eighties or before,
you can tell it was done with a helicopter and
it looks different. This is so much like cleaner, Like
(07:29):
it's almost like if you were on a like a
glider looking at this stuff rather than in a helicopter,
because even if you know they have a steady cam
or whatever, there's something about the way the helicopter blades
interfere with the light. Yeah, and this is so much better.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. So the woman falls off the cliff, like it
had to be right there, vast expanse of l cappy
ten Yeah, and they he had she had to fall
in those twelve feet Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Okay, I had that thought too, I did, and then
I realized, but that's the climber's place, so like that's
a common place to go at the sure, sure, and
that's where all the things are. So I was like, Okay,
that's a heavily traverse section, so I guess it like
increases the chances for that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Twelve feet I mean, sure, But also see, I don't
want to I don't want to spoil. But if somebody
pushed her off, why would they go there? Why would
they push her off there? Why wouldn't they push her
off to the side a little bit where it's not
heavily traversed, where she's unlikely to be found for a while. Yeah, exactly,
(08:50):
there we go.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
All right, I've seen the whole thing, uh huh.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and you're trying not to spoil it for me,
and I really appreciate it. So Turner gets snippy with
Ranger Milch because they disturbed his scene. I'm like, I
get it, But I had three thoughts about that. One,
there isn't immediate knowledge that it's a crime scene.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
No, that's why you investigated, right.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Two saving the climbers is their priority, absolutely. But three Also,
the rangers didn't look very hard. So all of those
things are true. He's right to be mad, but he's
also like expecting too much. I don't know, like I
see both sides of it. I empathize with Milch and
(09:37):
I feel Turner's frustration.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Right, right, But Turner could just not be that prickly
about it, right, And if he wasn't that prickly about it,
maybe they'd be more willing to preserve his crime scenes
in the future, perhaps, right, or the scene of a
situation to be able to determine.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Also, Milch wants to leave the scene and investigate after
the weather clears, because there's bad weather rolling in. But
Turner's right, there are things that would have been changed
by the elements. Yeah, so he's right to stay and
look and at least look around a little bit, take
a couple of pictures. Come on, people, all right. Captain
(10:21):
Sotter suggests that Turner drinks bourbon on duty. I'm like, dude,
why did you let him drive? If you're drinking bourbon
on the job, maybe don't let that guy drive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
They all have their little flasks, they do. They all
have their little flasks, you know, their little sip a
sip of flasks. And I don't know, I don't know
how much does that change. I don't know. I've never
done the whole sit from a flask much. But we
do have a Stanley flask. I mean it's not new,
it's like from way back in the camping days us
to do that. Yeah, and my husband still would take
(10:57):
it out. That's what we would fill up to go
and because it's a little one, but still it's just
a nip.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So turn this is where we really lost my husband. Okay,
because Turner goes at night to the base of El
capy Tan. I guess because he couldn't sleep.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It wasn't night.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
He rides out to the horse and he's got a flashlight.
It's night when he's at the bottom of El capy
Tan and he those there were beads on a bracelet
on the victim and it breaks as he's looking at
her and it falls and I'm like there was weather
(11:44):
coming in. And he just goes like straight to the
base underneath where she was and he finds these speads.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I'm like, come on, yeah, this is where I definitely,
you know, like to suspend your disbelief. Okay, but also
I did feel like there was a technique they were
using that will lose a lot of yours. Okay, they're
showing passage. Joseph of time, but it's very subtle, okay.
And so that's one of the things I realized early on,
(12:10):
was like, oh, this has been a lot longer. I
feel like this is the next scene and it's not
like it's the next day.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And it came, it became more clear, and so I
think in that scene that's why I'm surprised, because I
think that he went out there and did stuff, and
then it feels like the time passed a lot because
the sun was kind of coming up, uh huh over
where he found the beads, right, So he must have
been out there all night, right right, Like Okay, well,
if he was out there all night and he's an
(12:38):
excellent I maybe it's better.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
But they're all like right there at the base. I
was like, what he's talking about the beads. They are
all like right there at the base. I'm like, yeah,
was weather blowing in? They would? Those are things. He
dropped it. He didn't drop it, It fell off, it broke.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I see, this is so interesting. I remember him going
to try to get it off of her hand and
then he flicked it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay, he didn't flick it. He went to go like
he turned her body and looked at it, and then
it fell off and he reached to grab it. He
like to catch it because he tried to catch it,
but he missed it, Okay, and it fell and broke.
I mean it broke. Like he hadn't touched it yet
(13:27):
at all. He like moved her body, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, I remember him moving the body and reaching for
the bracelet and trying to just hook it.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
He did. I don't think he touched it at all.
I think he saw it and took a picture of it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, he did that, and then.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
He put his phone back and as he went to
look it broke and fell off and he tried to
catch it.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
See, I don't remember it breaking. I remember it slipping
off her wrist.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
No, it broke.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Okay, I'm just gonna have to trust you.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It's fine. I mean, you're welcome to go back and
look at it.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, because I know I'm just so interesting to see
this is what we do. But you've watched it twice,
and that's why I defer. Okay, I defer to you
because you've watched it twice. Actually I watched it twice also,
but not in the same way that you do. Because
my husband started watching it, so we ended up watching
it together. Yeah, but yeah, I didn't I distinct, so
(14:20):
I guess maybe that would change how I view that
scene though.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, but it like fell, like there's weather blowing in
it fell, not thousand feet my goodness, it's not all
going to be right there. But whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, that's where we love.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
That's where I lost my husband.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Clearly, I think that's where we lost you.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I mean maybe a little bit. Well, no, because it wasn't.
There was something in the second episode, which I can't
even remember now because we watched the first two episodes,
and there was something that happened in the second episode
that I looked at my husband and I went, oh,
come on, I don't even remember it was.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's so funny. It was something like that's just couldn't
suspend us bellye for it?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Man, Yeah, that is. Should Turner be talking to his
ex wife about this case? I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how the investigative services bridge, how close
they are with their stuff, Like how secretive do they
(15:22):
need to be?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean clearly he's always done
that though.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I made a prediction about Turner's son early on
and you were right. I was completely right, very proud
of myself unreasonably. So all right, resources, Okay, so we
don't really have a lot of resources because I mean, anyway,
(15:48):
this is stuff I would cut out. I'm not going
to cut this out. So if you're gonna go climb
a wall in Yosemite, you do need to get Wilderness
climbing permit. It's three It doesn't cost you anything. It
basically there's no quotas, there's no limits, there's no restrictions
(16:11):
on it other than like follow the rules of the
park and let us know where you're going to be.
So if you're going to go climb, you definitely should
get one of those, maybe at the very least that
they have an idea of where you are for sure. Yeah,
(16:38):
there are about one hundred climbing accidents in Yosemite each year.
Fifteen to twenty five of those require some sort of rescue.
But rescue is not a certainty, no certain and so
you need to have the right gear, the right attitude.
They want you to be careful. This made me laugh. Okay,
(17:00):
because most people don't have a satellite phone and cell
coverage is low within the park, kind of body. Uh huh,
as it should be if you're injured, If you are
injured or stranded while on a climb and cannot self rescue,
yell for help to obtain assistance.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Okay, like.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I mean there are best advice.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Is yell help. I mean you hope that they haven't
gone somewhere like really out there, right, and then maybe
they're in a fairly often traverse climbing area, so there's patrols, right,
echoes can actually help, right, So there might be. And
I don't know, do they have like sound dishes set
(17:50):
up to be able to monitor sounds in the park.
That'd be interesting to know if like that's why, you know,
if they do have like sound kind of things where
they're like, oh yeah in these.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Areas parabolic things. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't
know either.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
That clime looks so fun though I love climbing. Okay,
it's been a hot minute, but.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
It's one of those things that I'm watching it and
they're going up this like straight and I'm thinking it's
very very far and you have to sleep at some point,
which there's like I know, there's like rigs and things
that you set up and you're like basically sleep in
a sling.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, you sleep a little hammock.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I don't like heights, so don't you like any fun
to me? What? So? Like, I literally I saw somebody
falling and I literally like felt it in my toes,
Like I had this like bad feeling.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yike.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But I'm glad other people appreciate it. They looked at
data from a twenty year period in Yosemite, and about
forty one climbers died from traumatic injuries during that twenty
(19:03):
year period, and many about a dozen more had to
be if they had not gotten immediate assistance, would have died.
There are serious but survivable injuries which are many more
than that, including like broken legs, yes, and then many
more than that are you know, twisted ankle and scraped
(19:27):
and bruises and things like that that are to be expected.
The National Park Service doesn't keep statistics on how many
climbers are climbing in the park. They don't They don't
like keep it and release that information. But a fair estimate,
depending on the year and depending on the weather, would
be anywhere from twenty five thousand to fifty thousand climber
(19:50):
days annually. Nice, So it's a lot of people. Yeah,
So the actual resource is the Mountaineering School and Guide
service has been operational since nineteen sixty nine. So if
you're going to go do a climb and you've not
climbed before, or it's been a while since you've climbed,
(20:13):
or you're not confident in your climbing skills, these people
can help you. They will teach you, they will guide you.
They're the only authorized climbing guides in the park.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Super cool.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, go do that, Yeah, go do that, do that? Yes,
and don't die. Yeah, nope.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Those climbers were good, though. They were good because they
had their rig right, and you can expect some slippage
on certain things, but they had it right so much
stuff that they even caught the girl. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And they didn't all fall to their death. Oh no.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Their ballet lines were corrept so, and that's how it's
supposed to work. If you fall off, you should not
fall all the way you should. It should stop.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Three men, three murders, one killer who simply vanished. Thirty
years later, Crime Adjacent host Chase Patrick returns to Ridgewood
to uncover how the nation's most prolific serial killer went
undiscovered and why he started killing again in twenty twenty three.
(21:21):
Crime Adjacent is the never ending true crime story told weekly.
Listen to Crime Adjacent wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So here's how it works. Christy wrecks her search history.
Hey an essay. We promise it's nothing more nefarious than
a podcast to find out what's true, some of the
psychological motivations behind the character's actions, and real life applications
that relate to our topic. I have no idea what
Christy decided to look up could be the same thing
that captured my curiosity or something I never thought of.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Is it true? I mean no, No, it's so Yosemite's
real national park. Yes, people really do climb, people really
do die there. There are lots of things that are
worth looking into. So is El Capitan really that tall?
(22:19):
I think yeah, I think it's actually a taller. But
then but yes, it is over three thousand feet. It's enormous.
Let's see Yosemite dot com. It's two and a half
times as tall as the Empire State Building and more
than three times as tall as the Eiffel Tower for
(22:41):
some perspective. Yeah wow, So yeah, all right, So what
kind of climbing. Were the pair at the very beginning
doing ooh like the name, yeah, do you know?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, shoot, I mean that's just regular climbing.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Like I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I mean they're not bouldering, because that would be without
all the gear. They're not repelling, although they might later.
But they were on ballet and they were doing this
the the thing where you move it up like so
it's like, I don't know, okay, clime kind of thing.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's called free climbing.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Oh geez, okay, that's it, just the free just free climbing, right,
like the regular climbing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Right. Yes, it is rock climbing's most mistaken term.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, free climbing does not mean the same thing. Bouldering
is what people are thinking of climb.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, so they think it means solo climbing or which
means that you do it without a partner, and uh,
free soloing you may do with a partner, but it
means that you do it without any equipment.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that's the bouldering common that when you go and
you just and you would only go up like ten
ft and you would go across sea.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, okay, so that's what people tend to understand it
to mean. It is actually where you can only use
the rock to lift yourself up, but you have protective equipment.
You're not just climbing without equipment, and you're not climbing alone.
(24:28):
That's not what free climbing is. Free climbing means that
you're using your own power to rise up and like
no mechanical aid whatsoever. So even if you put a
(24:49):
rope in place, right, you don't use that rope then
to pull yourself right, No, you're only using that's only
a protective measure. So yeah, good job.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just do it with a partner.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I mean, for real, don't do it. Oh God,
read this whole article about a guy free soloing. Yeah,
and like he was unbothered and reading the article, I was,
I had like second hand fear of heights. So when
(25:24):
we first meet Turner, he's investigating poaching. Is this big
problem in the parks?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I'm gonna go with moderate to yes.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Okay, so there aren't statistics released. Oh okay, so national parks,
including Yosemite, do consider it a serious problem. But because
it's so secretive in nature and it's difficult to detect,
(25:57):
report prosecute all of those things. Accurate statistics are hard
to determine, okay, but it is a problem, and they
fine as such. So it's a thousand dollars fine for
a misdemeanor violation, two thousand dollars for a felony violation.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
And that's.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
For like general things like I'm not even exactly sure
what those are. But if you're taking a trophy dear
as a penalty, it's a twenty thousand dollars fine. Yeah,
taking of deer parts. So if you go in for
only certain things and leave the rest behind, forty thousand dollars,
(26:48):
taking an abalony, which is endangered species and they're small,
sixty thousand dollars fine. Poaching for profit is a forty
thousand dollars fine, and you can, like, I mean, they're felonies.
You can lose your your ability to vote or purchase
firearm like, so don't do it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, leave no trace people, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
So the animal that had been poach was also an
animal that agent Turner and Ranger Vosquez run into later,
a bear. Are there many bear incidents in yes, many.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I'm gonna say there's enough that is a problem.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So it's less of a problem than it used to be.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We know how to protect our stuff better, Like we're
not you know what I mean? So did we lose
people or are that? Are we still going? Let's see,
we're looking at a screen that's like the you know,
lock screen right now, so we don't know. Good, good, good, Okay, Yay,
I don't know okay, but there we go. Okay, we're
(28:00):
still live.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, all right, So in twenty twenty five, Hi, that's good.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
That's okay, here we go.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
So far in twenty twenty five, as of the end
of July, which was the most recent update, okay, there
have been thirty BAAR incidents, and a bare incident is
anything that causes a monetary loss like property damage or
(28:33):
food to a person or injury to the person themselves,
which is uncommon. There have been thirty so far in
twenty twenty five. In twenty twenty four there were thirty
four total. So it's gone up a little bit. They're
up forty three percent compared to twenty twenty four. They're
(28:56):
up one hundred and fifty percent compared to nineteen, which
was the year with the fewest incidents. But they're down
ninety two percent since the year with the most incidents,
which was nineteen ninety eight. Ooh, not as far back
as I thought it would be. Wow. But they do
(29:16):
mitigating efforts. So park work groups and volunteers will come
in and there's historic apple trees in the park, some
of them are near parking lots. They will go and
pick up all the apples on the ground and harvest
the apples from the trees because that helps reduce bear
(29:38):
incidents within the park. So the less contact humans have
with bears the better. Yes, they do want to know
if you're in a national park, they want to know
if you see a bear, no matter what it's doing.
So they just want to be able to keep track.
Speed limits are really important thing because sixteen bears so
(30:00):
far this year in twenty twenty five have been hit
by cars. Yeah, it's a shame. But bear management is
important and mostly that has to do with locking up
your food. Yes, don't leave it in your car. It
seems like it should be safe in your car, but
(30:21):
they will literally rip the doors off of your car.
That's fun. And the species by its nature can easily
be corrupted. In other words, they're very motivated by people food. Yeah,
like dude, same, yeah, yeah, exactly. I am also more
(30:42):
motivated by cookies.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Than thought of a bear going because there's an apple tree.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I know, so cute. Right. The park didn't always do
such a good job because they used to actually put
food out for the bears so that they would come
and entertain the visitors. Oh oh, and then they realized
that was a bad idea because you know, easily corruptible.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yes, yes, I understand the instinct.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Uh huh. Right, and so then they made bear pits, right,
and now they're like, no, no, don't feed them any
human food.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. Yeah, Oh, bears are so cute.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I know, they are cute. They're just adorable. They're very,
very cute. So Ranger Milch suggested that victims may have
been high. Do people routinely use drugs in the.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
National I'm going to go with yes.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yes. I found this article. It's a little old from
twenty thirteen, but it had some interesting It's harder to
find anything new as far as this goes, But between
twenty ten and twenty twelve in Yosemite, almost twenty four
hundred people were arrested for drug possession and troublemaking, which
(32:05):
is about twenty arrests per one hundred thousand visitors. Okay,
so not a few, but not a lot.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
No, not better than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Honestly, it's ten times the drug citation rate of Joshua
Tree National Park, which is known for people going to
use LSD.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Right, but they have such a crackdown yes on that there,
you know.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
So, yeah, it's primarily marijuana, ullucinogenic mushrooms and ecstasy. They
get used and it's a misdemeanor with a fine. But
in twenty twenty four, there's an article on gear Junkie about, uh,
(32:50):
don't take your marijuana, your cannabis of any kind into
a national park because despite what the laws made, Yeah,
in that particular state where one of the whatever of
the four hundred national parks you're in, marijuana possession and
use is prohibited on federal land. So and that's what
(33:14):
they're gonna follow. And even if it's edibles, don't do it.
It's a heavy fine. It's a problem. Yeah, don't, don't,
just don't. Just don't. Over seventeen hundred, Jane does seemed
like many, Yeah, yeah, does Mariposa County where somebody is
(33:38):
located have the most in California.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't know. I mean, I could see that being true,
but California is big. There's a lot going on there.
But I'm gonna I'm gonna go with a tentative. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Ish. It seems like Orange County, which is near Los Angeles,
and Sacramento County have a high highest number of unidentified.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I see, I could have seen that, and so that's
why I was like, I don't know, but the park
is so big and there's so many people who come
through there that it's like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
For reference, the entire state of Michigan in twenty twenty
two only had three hundred and twenty six open John
Doe Jane Doe cases. So a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That's a lot, yeah, I say, a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, But it's hard to get statistics on that as well.
A lot of this stuff there's hard to get statistics on.
I think park rangers are not very interested in keeping
Excel spreadsheets.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
No, I don't think so, And I think that that's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I think they became park rangers because they didn't want
to sit in front of a computer and look at
statistics exactly. Yeah, gold tattoos are they possible.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Okay, no, but no, I don't think so. I feel
like your body would just reject it. Okay, that is
a stute good jobs.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
So it would be nice to have, you know, a
gold tattoo, you know, something that's like shimmery enough, like,
but real gold doesn't mix well with tattoo ink. There
are inks that say gold, but they're not really they're
yellow color. It's not shimmery in that way because gold
(35:29):
isn't reactive, but it's not stable in tattoo ink either.
It can cause some skin reactions and even if you
could mix it in, it wouldn't look shiny. I mean,
I mean it's not that's not how that works. And
it would be prohibitively expensive. So enough gold to make
(35:52):
just an ounce of tattoo ink, which is a small model,
would cost around two thousand dollars. Wow, and that doesn't
even factor in like the expenses tied to researching whether
it's safe to use and how effective it is. It's
just cost prohibitive.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
However, you can get gold ink tattoos that are temporary tattoos. Okay,
they're like but they're nice. It's not like the ones
should get from the dollar store for the kids, you know,
with like iron Man or whatever on it. Right, these
are nicer ones, and they do they sit on the skin.
(36:34):
You can remove them. They are very shiny and pretty.
They are absolutely safe and be like gold jewelry, right,
except it's going to flake off a little bit. The
good ones start in the neighborhood of about sixty dollars.
Okay for a small one.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
How long does it stay?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Two to three weeks? Oh yeah, so it stays. The
nicer ones when you're paying sixty dollars, they're gonna last
a little longer an entire vacation.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Right, Like I was thinking special occasions, right right.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, so for a wedding or you know, a vacation
on the beach or something like that, probably it's gonna last.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It's gonna last longer. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean
things last longer on me, I think than others, Like
my skin. Like I've had a you know, the hennah.
My friend got married and so we did her her
family's traditional parties, and like we did the hennah and
so and this is the real hennah, Like this is
the stuff that you you know, it's it's still on
(37:40):
my skin though, lasted like a year. Wow, a year
later you could still see the general large outlines. All
the little intricate like little ones had mostly disappeared by then,
but like literally a year later you could still see
some of the outline. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I know. I'm shocked because I've had a Hannah, real
Hannah done where I went got and I didn't love it,
so it was fine, but I mean it lasts less
time on me.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah oh wow, really yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, so it's like that sexy.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
So how long did you did you have to hit?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
They that probably I probably sat there for like thirty
forty minutes after they finished, and then they were like,
don't knock it off, like let it fall off on
its own.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah yeah, okay, that might be the difference too.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I know, were you there for it took forever? First
of all, right, oh, because it's beautiful. It's a paint.
Mine wasn't huge, okay, small.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, mine went all the way my entire hand all
the way up.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
And so like it's so intricate, and then it's itchy
and like the bride like my friend had hers like
the feet, the hands, and then she was sitting in
the traditional bride swing that they had this party because
the bride is stuck. Yeah, they can't move. So I
was sitting with her the whole time, and so we
were there. I don't know. I don't think we I
(39:09):
don't think she came back around to knock off the
stuff and do like the final uh huh lotions and
I don't know what for like another like an hour
and a half. Oh okay, yeah it was a long time.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Okay, sure, I probably didn't make a difference, so it
probably was just gonna stay yeah for you.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
So I don't know why. Like my skin so dry,
mine's the opposite from uhuh, it's fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Do the gate stations at Yosemite have surveillance cameras? I'm
gonna go with Yeah, that's what I thought, but evidently
not so. In twenty twenty four, they introduced a license
plate reader pilot program okay, where they had the license
(39:57):
plate readers that took the license plate, the make, model,
color of the car, and the date, time, and location
and direction that they were traveling. But it's not connected
to law enforcement or a DMV database of any kind,
(40:18):
and they don't collect information about people. Interesting. It's more
to just like find out when people enter and exit,
how long they're using or staying in a specific area.
It's not about like identifying people. So I was like,
I looked, looked and looked to try and find to surely, surely,
(40:40):
I mean there's cameras everywhere.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
That's interesting. Evidently not okay, yeah, not even a ring doorbell?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
All right, Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I was like, that's interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Captain Sotter says a hot do people go missing in
the park every year? Is this accurate?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I don't know. I can't tell whether it's wildly low
or wildly high, Okay, And I just I feel.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Like I just have no idea. Okay, well I have answers, yes,
thank you. I don't know it's wildly high, okay his assertion. Okay,
So the travel dot Com has an article seven national
parks with the highest number of missing people, and this
is from twenty twenty four. Okay, and not all of
that information was super recent at the time, because again
(41:30):
they're not like sitting around with exceled databases letting us
know their stuff. So the third park with the most
missing people is Yosemite. Okay, it's number three. The overall
number of missing people as of twenty seventeen, okay was
(41:53):
thirty three. Oh okay, so far less far less than
one hundred. They do like do search and rescue missions. Yeah,
so maybe he's maybe he's counting that. Oh yeah, so maybe.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
One it's a missing or whatever because they have to go.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Rescue, right or the Yeah, they have to go find
the person they didn't check out that was supposed to
check out, right, we have to find them, right, or
somebody said we got separated and I don't know where
this person is. We should find them.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Okay, I can see that. So maybe, but it's not like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Thirty three in the whole park history. That's yes, not bad.
The next one is Mount Rainier National Park has had
four hundred missing people since nineteen eighty nine. Oh okay,
so again far fewer. And the one the national park
with the largest number of missing people Big Ben No
(42:49):
Grand Canyon. It's the largest park. Yeah, and it has
had over eleven hundred people go missing since twenty eighteen.
So it's just it's so big, yeah, so treacherous.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See, and that's why I thought maybe Big Ben because
there is it is also gigantic, right, But also there's
a lot of really.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yes, but I would say probably more people go to
Grand Canyon.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
So Turner calls his X in the middle of the
night to tell her of a meteor shower with up
to seventy falling stars per minute. Is there such an event?
I feel like, yes, I don't know, that's too many. Okay,
it seems like a lot. It seems it seemed like
(43:42):
a lot that I like, I stopped. I'm like, seventy
a minute.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But isn't it all falling stars? Like the whole meteors?
Every meteor you see is technically a falling star.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Right, Yes, but that's that's many. So the typically the
most meteor showers is actually an annual event, the largest
number of meteors that you're gonna see. It would be
extremely rare to have anything that was far more than
this by that much. And it's the per said meteor shower,
(44:16):
which is actually happening right now, Like isn't that now?
Like literally the peak is right.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Now tonight tonight.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Oh that's so funny, tonight August thirteenth, twenty twenty five. Like, okay,
peak has been this week and you can see it
all over the world. You have the best views away
from city lights between twelve and one am okay, and
you might see up to fifty to seventy per hour okay,
(44:46):
not per minute, okay, per hour, per per minute would
be like almost like troubling. Okay, right, I don't know,
like so many I don't know. Yeah, that's super cool
(45:06):
that that's happening like tonight, Yes, and it's tonight is
the peak, but it's still good enough in the days
to come that you can book a camping trip to
go into Yosemite to get away from the city lights. Yeah,
and watch the persed media Shower. They're actually doing it
on Friday, August fifteenth into Saturday the sixteenth. Yeah. So
(45:31):
it's a beautiful and they take you out and you
camp and you watch it and then you hike back.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
And it's fun awesome, so pretty.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah. All of the sources that we use to inform
our discussion here on Killer Fun Podcast can be found
on our social media. Join us on Facebook at Killer
Fun Podcast, exploring the intersection of crime and entertainment. You
can find us on Twitter at killer fund or you
can send us an email at Killerphonepodcast at gmail dot
(46:04):
com and I'd be happy to share a link to
whatever information you're looking for. We love to hear from you.
You might learn a little something too. Psychology.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Brain, Yeah, let's do it all right.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
So Milch seemed to have some control aversion.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of ways
to describe what milchad.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
He He had a bad attitude, bad attitude, but he
also had a little control aversion where he may not
have a lot of control over other aspects of his life,
so he has an urge to rebel against authority that
he deems inappropriate. Yes, he doesn't like having the answer
(46:56):
to Turner in any way. It does typically tend to
manifest in more extreme situations. So we saw a lot
of control a version during the lockdown. Yeah, oh, for yeah,
for the pandemic, the COVID nineteen pandemic. People did not
(47:20):
want to stay home. No, they didn't want to be told,
they didn't want to be told that they had to
stay home, and they didn't care if Gramma died. So yeah,
what we actually see more often than control a version
is authority bias.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Which I wonder how this will hold up over the
next If we look back in this decade, like a
decade from now, right, if we'll say.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
No control versions more common than we thought. Yeah. So
there was the Milgram experiments in the nineteen sixties, one
of those experiments that was we wouldn't do now because
it's super un don't do it. But we learned a
(48:11):
lot from it. And typically what you see is that
people tend to obey more quickly when somebody has an
authority over them. They have an unquestioning obedience, implicit trust,
reduced critical evaluation. Who are these authorities? They could be
(48:34):
field experts, leaders, managers, educators, celebrities, influencers. This was the
like the Nuremberg trials, when you know, after World War Two,
a lot of people were like eyes just fallen orders.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean, yeah, you're right, a
lot of good came out of it. Now we can
still study these things in more ethical ways. You know,
we can still use a degree of pain, but we
also have bigger like restrictions on how far that can go,
you know. And then there's things like that, you know,
(49:11):
like the Stanford prison experiment showed well just how we
can devolve so quickly. We just don't repeat that, but
we can still study the concept right, we just don't
do them in the same ways.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Right, we don't do it in ways that are harm
people or animals or animals. Yes, it develops through early conditioning,
social and cultural factors. Median information sources can all contribute
(49:45):
to that. So on the one, I mean, we do
we have a social contract that says like, if it's
an emergency situation and first responders of some type show up,
you follow their orders because you understand them to be trained. Yes,
and so we tend to have this authority. And sometimes
that's really really helpful. It is very helpful, and sometimes,
(50:09):
like in war, it can be not helpful. Yeah, you
need to listen to your own ethical compass.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Right, yeah, yep, I mean that's why in the military,
I mean, you can object to unlawful or unethical orders
people do people have you know a lot of people don't.
It's like, you know, you trust and you try to
go and that and that's really hard. But also you know,
you don't have to join the military in our country, so.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Right, exactly, there's no conscripted service, right, so you get to.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Decide whether that's something you want to juggle with or not, right, Right,
So we have an all volunteer military, which means we
have a lot of people who are volunteering to go
in and that they lean into learning how to balance that.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
You know, yes, so, but yeah, but they also might
be more prone to the authority bias because they have
opted in.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
At least after basic training.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Uh yeah, yeah, real life. Okay, all right, So Turner
on the top of l Cappy Tan wasn't wrong about
securing the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, he does need to secure in this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yeah. So, policemag dot com has ten tips for securing
a crime scene. I'm not going to talk about all
of them, but they did have a special agent, Elena
Honah from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who did stress that, like,
(51:46):
you have to have officer safety first, and then other
people on the scenes safety, and then you work to
preserve the evidence. Those are the top priorities. So I'm like, okay, good, Yeah,
you want to make sure that the officers are safe
because they can't help anybody if they're injured. Then the people,
(52:10):
and then it's the evidence you want to clear and
make sure that nobody's hiding because they might move stuff
or disrupt things. You want to document the movements of
other people in the scene.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
So it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Uh huh. You want to touch and manipulate as little
as possible because that's going to change the way things look.
This one was note transient evidence and document it. So
transient evidence is like the bloody handprint and footprints that
(52:47):
Turner saw on the scene, and they specifically mention if
it's blood outside and it's raining or abound ter rain,
you want to document that right away.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Get pictures.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah exactly, Yes, and don't introduce anything to the scene unnecessarily.
So maybe there was too much walking around, maybe there
were too many park rangers on the top of that summit. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
I made assumptions, right, they made assumptions. I mean, you know,
had it been a man that fell off that cliff,
do you think they had made it saying assumptions. I
don't know. I'm just saying, but they made this assumption,
and so they didn't secure the scene.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
But I appreciated Turner. He decided, you know, you know,
we have to get to the body, we have to
retrieve this, we have to whatever, and they are telling
him no, and instead of like really pulling rank and
forcing them, he did it.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Himself. Yeah. I was like, Okay, he wanted to do
it himself anyway he wanted. He didn't trust anybody else
to take the pictures or look at the stuff the
way he would.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yep, which is fair.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
All right. So let's talk about the Investigative Services Branch
a little bit. So what does the ISB do. Yeah,
they are specialized and highly trained. They are stationed at
national parks, but they don't work for the park directly.
(54:18):
They work for the headquarters of the National Park Service.
All right. So when Turner said I don't work for
you to the administrator of Yosemite, he was right, he was.
He doesn't work for him. He works for the headquarters,
so he's he works with them, but only alongside them,
(54:40):
not for them. They investigate crimes, violence, major property crimes, fraud, embezzlement,
major resource violations, drug cultivation, and other incidents. And they
I appreciated this there is they're particularly trained in helping
(55:03):
a victim of a crime, okay, which I'm like, Oh,
that's interesting that they they understand that victims and witnesses
need to be treated with dignity and respect and they're
going to have some unique needs. Yeah. So they're trained
to handle that in a different way than the regular rangers.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Right, the park rangers aren't law enforcement in the same way.
It's adjacent. Yes, it's adjacent, right, you know, Yeah, that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
They do routinely investigate animal poaching, homicides, missing persons, but
they do it with a tiny workforce and a fraction
of the budget of like the normal three letter agencies
that you would think of, you know, FBI, CIA, those
(55:59):
kinds of things. They do it with a much smaller crew,
and they tend to be loaners. They each one. There's
not one for every park. They'll cover several parks and
may need to travel to a different park, or may
be asked to come help at a different park if
(56:20):
they need additional assistance. When a serious crime happens on
federal parkland, the ISB typically has jurisdiction, but it depends
on where that's located. They'll have as much jurisdiction as
the local authorities, at least, so they can't be steamrolled
(56:47):
by local authorities.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah. I could see them being like, oh, FBI, you
want to take that sure thing other things to do.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yes, the is B does not have a forensic department.
They rely on federal labs.
Speaker 2 (57:02):
Oh see, there you go.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
Just so they they may hand it off or they
may like request, we need this stuff done. But the
agents for the ISB tend to not just hand off
the perpetrators to the prosecutors. They tend to see it
(57:29):
all the way through. So they're more involved in the
legal process after they've been arrested than your typical law
enforcement might.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
Okay, that makes sense. So interesting.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah, m hm. They're called the FBI of the National
Parks Service. There's I'm just gonna briefly touch on this,
but there is a very interesting case if you're interested
in the uh, you know, true crime, like we are.
(58:04):
Harold hen Torn and his wife Tony went into a
Rocky Mountain National Park and uh she had an accident
and perished, and the ISB investigated and it was very
(58:25):
interesting because uh Old, Harold not a good guy. You
might imagine since I'm talking about we talking about Yeah,
but it's there's a very interesting article upon on our
social media. But the is B, according to this article
(58:45):
from the outside Online, they have solved homicides, track cereal
rapists hiding in the back country, averted kidnappings, and interdicted
thousands of pounds of drugs, busted a reality TV show
host who poached a grizzly bear, and infiltrated theft rings
(59:07):
trafficking in louted Native American artifacts, but the ISB remains
relatively unknown to the general republic and even to fellow
law enforcement. Local cops and FBI agents are sometimes baffled
when Yosemite based isp ISB Special agent Christy McGee presents
her badge the course of an investigation, like they're just
(59:29):
so like heads down doing their things, riding their horses
through the national parks. You know. I love it that,
Like they're they're just they're not in it for the
for the notoriety.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
But how how nice did that look?
Speaker 1 (59:46):
You got his horse out? So nice?
Speaker 2 (59:49):
So pretty?
Speaker 1 (59:50):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
One day. I have not ever made it to Yosemite,
so one.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Day I've only seen like a day through that we
did camp in a.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
RV park.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
It was the most beautiful place that we ever stopped.
And we stopped at some really beautiful places, but I
mean there was like we backed up to a little
stream that was like a foot deep and it was
crystal clear and ice cold. Yeah, and it was it
was literally one of the most beautiful places I've ever
(01:00:22):
been in my entire life. On a lighter note, if
you want to go watch uh not the entering an
exiting of Yosemite, but if you want to see live cams,
they do have live webcams that are available for Yosemite Falls,
(01:00:47):
Half Dome, El Cappy Tan, Yosemite High Sierra. There's all
these beautiful places that you can go, and I mean
there's not a lot of activity. I watched them for
a little while, just like there's not much going on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
You're just waiting for that bird to get to the
camera and be cute, right or just.
Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
Like fly by. It would be nice to see you
bear elk you know something. I didn't see anything, and
it's too far away from El Cappy tangacin any climbers.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Oh but still beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, all right, So we're gonna take a
little bit of a break, yeah, because you're an educator
and it's school back to school time and we both
have kids going back to school and uh yeah, so yeah,
just a couple episodes, but we will have new content
for you because we always do that because clearly, yeah,
(01:01:43):
because all the stuff I would have cut out of this,
that's gonna be left in fun. Fun. Yeah, but when
we come back, it's gonna be episode two hundred, two hundred,
two hundred times. I know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I don't even have words for this. It's wild, it's
a hundred yeah. Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Well, thank you so much for listening. We know you
make a choice when you listen to us. We don't
just come on the radio, rate and review wherever you
get podcasts and tell a friend this is more fun,
and you can listen with a friend and then until
next time, be safe, be kind, and wash your hands.
Welcome back to Killer Phone, where we explore the intersection
of crime and entertainment every other week. I'm Christy and
I'm Jackie, and we're so glad that you're with us today.
Today we are talking about untamed.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yes, which is why we're live. That's untamed today.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That's right. Yes, So I just said uh, and I
often say like, and I often cut both of those
things out. And so if you're listening to this and
not watching it live the way we're recording this and
the day we're recording this, because life be life, and uh,
(00:46):
there's going to be a lot of ums and likes
and aws and pauses and things, they're just going to
be there. So it's fine, it's a little unfiltered.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's untamed today.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
This is right.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is the whole point.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
This is the whole point. That's right because wherever people go,
there's a potential for crime potential. Yeah. So we're talking
about season one, episode one, a celestial Event. It has
been renewed for season two.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I saw that and I was very happy. Oh okay,
I was very happy.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, yeah, yeah, my husband won't watch it with me.
Can we watch two episodes? And he did not like it.
I share some of his concerns. What okay, I get,
I'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Okay, okay, because because did we both watch the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
No, I only we've seen the two episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
This is what happens. I know every single time, every
single time, either she's watched the whole thing or I've
watched the whole thing. So that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, okay, yeah, No, I've fallen down a rabbit hole
of other true crime documentaries of different things, most recently
Ruby Franky okay, abusive mommy blogger, man, oh my gosh man. Okay,
(02:06):
but that doesn't have anything to do with the tame
so that was something I normally cut out and sticking
a bonus.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
See today they get to hear how these things come
to life, right, all our little rabbit holes, all the fun.
But we'll try to keep it on focus.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Let's be clear. I'm going to try to keep it
on focus.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Okay, cast a cast, it's great, it's a really good cast.
So Eric Banna is Kyle Turner, the Investigative Services Branch
agent of the National Parks Service. We know him from
covering Dirty John on this show.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So that's probably the thing we know him from. But
he's been in Troy.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And that's what I love me some Troy love.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dirty John is where we almost
hit it big.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh my god, that's the episode.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
That was the episode, the where we almost hit it big.
It was February of twenty twenty and somebody featured us
on and it's hand picked on Apple Podcasts. Somebody put
us on the featured portion of New and Noteworthy podcasts
(03:31):
on Apple Podcasts, and it was glorious, and I thought,
this is it. It's going to happen. And then the
world shut down and it was politics and coronavirus.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yes, and a lot of professional media people flooding the space.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yes, And then a lot of professional media people and
a lot of non professional media people. We were non
professional but also had been at it for a while.
And then everybody was like, I'm home anyway, I should
make a podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Right, which I don't know which one I'm more angry about,
like the people who did it because they were bored
so it flooded it. But also that's kind of what
podcasting is for, like small circles of influence for most
of the people, right, But Also it's the high end
production that was that really took over and made it
so that like it leveled up not well leveled up
(04:20):
the production value, but I'm but it just also made
it a deeper, broader, you know, landscape of knowledge and
so all of a sudden, all the niche stuff kind
of got pushed.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Anyway, anyway, we digress, see we digressed.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Sorry, Okay, let me try and keep this on track.
You're good, I already that was me.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's okay, we can we can do tell us and
that we can do this, right, we can just.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, we can be fun. All right. So Lily
Santiago is Naya Vasquez, a new park Ranger. She was
in in NBC's Librea. Rosemary DeWitt is Jill Bowden, Kyle's
ex wife. My favorite thing that she's been in was
(05:12):
the United States of Tara, which was so good. It
was about dissociative identity disorder and one of those that
like experts said it was portrayed really well. It's very
very interesting. And we have seen her before and something
we've covered on the show The Staircase HBO.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
She's been a lot. I love her.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and that's all I'm gonna talk about today. Really, Okay,
what what? Who else did you want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sam Neil Neil, Oh, my gosh, he's my skip.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I skipped right over him. I had him highlighted a
right light.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He's just a favorite of mine.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So I have to I have to name Paul Soda
Jurassic Park that too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yes, and some very old horror flakes like in the
Mouth of Madness O fun.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah. So he's the chief park ranger Insemite. I'm sorry,
You're right. I totally skipped over.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Him for so good. I got it all right, recap, yeah,
do it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
So, after seeing some stunning views of Yosemite National Park,
we join a couple of climbers as they near the
top of El Capitan, a rock face of over three
thousand feet. Without warning, a woman falls from the top,
hits the rope, and nearly causes all three to make
(06:34):
a very rapid descent. Investigative Services Branch special Agent Kyle Turner,
disliked by most of his colleagues, but an excellent investigator
arrives on the scene. While the rangers who initially responded
suspect self harm or an accident related to drug use,
(06:55):
Agent Turner decides to look a bit harder, and it's
a good thing he does. I have thoughts.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Okay, we can't get there. I'm so interested.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So first of all, we're looking at these beautiful like vistas,
and I'm like, I'm so glad they have drones to
take this footage now, because if you see vistas like
that from movies from like the seventies and eighties or before,
you can tell it was done with a helicopter and
it looks different. This is so much like cleaner, Like
(07:29):
it's almost like if you were on a like a
glider looking at this stuff rather than in a helicopter,
because even if you know they have a steady cam
or whatever, there's something about the way the helicopter blades
interfere with the light. Yeah, and this is so much better.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. So the woman falls off the cliff, like it
had to be right there, vast expanse of l cappy
ten Yeah, and they he had she had to fall
in those twelve feet Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Okay, I had that thought too, I did, and then
I realized, but that's the climber's place, so like that's
a common place to go at the sure, sure, and
that's where all the things are. So I was like, Okay,
that's a heavily traverse section, so I guess it like
increases the chances for that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Twelve feet I mean, sure, But also see, I don't
want to I don't want to spoil. But if somebody
pushed her off, why would they go there? Why would
they push her off there? Why wouldn't they push her
off to the side a little bit where it's not
heavily traversed, where she's unlikely to be found for a while. Yeah, exactly,
(08:50):
there we go.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
All right, I've seen the whole thing, uh huh.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and you're trying not to spoil it for me,
and I really appreciate it. So Turner gets snippy with
Ranger Milch because they disturbed his scene. I'm like, I
get it, But I had three thoughts about that. One,
there isn't immediate knowledge that it's a crime scene.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
No, that's why you investigated, right.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Two saving the climbers is their priority, absolutely. But three Also,
the rangers didn't look very hard. So all of those
things are true. He's right to be mad, but he's
also like expecting too much. I don't know, like I
see both sides of it. I empathize with Milch and
(09:37):
I feel Turner's frustration.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Right, right, But Turner could just not be that prickly
about it, right, And if he wasn't that prickly about it,
maybe they'd be more willing to preserve his crime scenes
in the future, perhaps, right, or the scene of a
situation to be able to determine.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Also, Milch wants to leave the scene and investigate after
the weather clears, because there's bad weather rolling in. But
Turner's right, there are things that would have been changed
by the elements. Yeah, so he's right to stay and
look and at least look around a little bit, take
a couple of pictures. Come on, people, all right. Captain
(10:21):
Sotter suggests that Turner drinks bourbon on duty. I'm like, dude,
why did you let him drive? If you're drinking bourbon
on the job, maybe don't let that guy drive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
They all have their little flasks, they do. They all
have their little flasks, you know, their little sip a
sip of flasks. And I don't know, I don't know
how much does that change. I don't know. I've never
done the whole sit from a flask much. But we
do have a Stanley flask. I mean it's not new,
it's like from way back in the camping days us
to do that. Yeah, and my husband still would take
(10:57):
it out. That's what we would fill up to go
and because it's a little one, but still it's just
a nip.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So turn this is where we really lost my husband. Okay,
because Turner goes at night to the base of El
capy Tan. I guess because he couldn't sleep.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It wasn't night.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
He rides out to the horse and he's got a flashlight.
It's night when he's at the bottom of El capy
Tan and he those there were beads on a bracelet
on the victim and it breaks as he's looking at
her and it falls and I'm like there was weather
(11:44):
coming in. And he just goes like straight to the
base underneath where she was and he finds these speads.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I'm like, come on, yeah, this is where I definitely,
you know, like to suspend your disbelief. Okay, but also
I did feel like there was a technique they were
using that will lose a lot of yours. Okay, they're
showing passage. Joseph of time, but it's very subtle, okay.
And so that's one of the things I realized early on,
(12:10):
was like, oh, this has been a lot longer. I
feel like this is the next scene and it's not
like it's the next day.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And it came, it became more clear, and so I
think in that scene that's why I'm surprised, because I
think that he went out there and did stuff, and
then it feels like the time passed a lot because
the sun was kind of coming up, uh huh over
where he found the beads, right, So he must have
been out there all night, right right, Like Okay, well,
if he was out there all night and he's an
(12:38):
excellent I maybe it's better.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
But they're all like right there at the base. I
was like, what he's talking about the beads. They are
all like right there at the base. I'm like, yeah,
was weather blowing in? They would? Those are things. He
dropped it. He didn't drop it, It fell off, it broke.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I see, this is so interesting. I remember him going
to try to get it off of her hand and
then he flicked it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay, he didn't flick it. He went to go like
he turned her body and looked at it, and then
it fell off and he reached to grab it. He
like to catch it because he tried to catch it,
but he missed it, Okay, and it fell and broke.
I mean it broke. Like he hadn't touched it yet
(13:27):
at all. He like moved her body, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, I remember him moving the body and reaching for
the bracelet and trying to just hook it.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
He did. I don't think he touched it at all.
I think he saw it and took a picture of it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, he did that, and then.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
He put his phone back and as he went to
look it broke and fell off and he tried to
catch it.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
See, I don't remember it breaking. I remember it slipping
off her wrist.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
No, it broke.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Okay, I'm just gonna have to trust you.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It's fine. I mean, you're welcome to go back and
look at it.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, because I know I'm just so interesting to see
this is what we do. But you've watched it twice,
and that's why I defer. Okay, I defer to you
because you've watched it twice. Actually I watched it twice also,
but not in the same way that you do. Because
my husband started watching it, so we ended up watching
it together. Yeah, but yeah, I didn't I distinct, so
(14:20):
I guess maybe that would change how I view that
scene though.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, but it like fell, like there's weather blowing in
it fell, not thousand feet my goodness, it's not all
going to be right there. But whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, that's where we love.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
That's where I lost my husband.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Clearly, I think that's where we lost you.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I mean maybe a little bit. Well, no, because it wasn't.
There was something in the second episode, which I can't
even remember now because we watched the first two episodes,
and there was something that happened in the second episode
that I looked at my husband and I went, oh,
come on, I don't even remember it was.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's so funny. It was something like that's just couldn't
suspend us bellye for it?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Man, Yeah, that is. Should Turner be talking to his
ex wife about this case? I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how the investigative services bridge, how close
they are with their stuff, Like how secretive do they
(15:22):
need to be?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean clearly he's always done
that though.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I made a prediction about Turner's son early on
and you were right. I was completely right, very proud
of myself unreasonably. So all right, resources, Okay, so we
don't really have a lot of resources because I mean, anyway,
(15:48):
this is stuff I would cut out. I'm not going
to cut this out. So if you're gonna go climb
a wall in Yosemite, you do need to get Wilderness
climbing permit. It's three It doesn't cost you anything. It
basically there's no quotas, there's no limits, there's no restrictions
(16:11):
on it other than like follow the rules of the
park and let us know where you're going to be.
So if you're going to go climb, you definitely should
get one of those, maybe at the very least that
they have an idea of where you are for sure. Yeah,
(16:38):
there are about one hundred climbing accidents in Yosemite each year.
Fifteen to twenty five of those require some sort of rescue.
But rescue is not a certainty, no certain and so
you need to have the right gear, the right attitude.
They want you to be careful. This made me laugh. Okay,
(17:00):
because most people don't have a satellite phone and cell
coverage is low within the park, kind of body. Uh huh,
as it should be if you're injured, If you are
injured or stranded while on a climb and cannot self rescue,
yell for help to obtain assistance.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Okay, like.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I mean there are best advice.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Is yell help. I mean you hope that they haven't
gone somewhere like really out there, right, and then maybe
they're in a fairly often traverse climbing area, so there's patrols, right,
echoes can actually help, right, So there might be. And
I don't know, do they have like sound dishes set
(17:50):
up to be able to monitor sounds in the park.
That'd be interesting to know if like that's why, you know,
if they do have like sound kind of things where
they're like, oh yeah in these.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Areas parabolic things. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't
know either.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
That clime looks so fun though I love climbing. Okay,
it's been a hot minute, but.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
It's one of those things that I'm watching it and
they're going up this like straight and I'm thinking it's
very very far and you have to sleep at some point,
which there's like I know, there's like rigs and things
that you set up and you're like basically sleep in
a sling.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, you sleep a little hammock.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I don't like heights, so don't you like any fun
to me? What? So? Like, I literally I saw somebody
falling and I literally like felt it in my toes,
Like I had this like bad feeling.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yike.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But I'm glad other people appreciate it. They looked at
data from a twenty year period in Yosemite, and about
forty one climbers died from traumatic injuries during that twenty
(19:03):
year period, and many about a dozen more had to
be if they had not gotten immediate assistance, would have died.
There are serious but survivable injuries which are many more
than that, including like broken legs, yes, and then many
more than that are you know, twisted ankle and scraped
(19:27):
and bruises and things like that that are to be expected.
The National Park Service doesn't keep statistics on how many
climbers are climbing in the park. They don't They don't
like keep it and release that information. But a fair estimate,
depending on the year and depending on the weather, would
be anywhere from twenty five thousand to fifty thousand climber
(19:50):
days annually. Nice, So it's a lot of people. Yeah,
So the actual resource is the Mountaineering School and Guide
service has been operational since nineteen sixty nine. So if
you're going to go do a climb and you've not
climbed before, or it's been a while since you've climbed,
(20:13):
or you're not confident in your climbing skills, these people
can help you. They will teach you, they will guide you.
They're the only authorized climbing guides in the park.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Super cool.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, go do that, Yeah, go do that, do that? Yes,
and don't die. Yeah, nope.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Those climbers were good, though. They were good because they
had their rig right, and you can expect some slippage
on certain things, but they had it right so much
stuff that they even caught the girl. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And they didn't all fall to their death. Oh no.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Their ballet lines were corrept so, and that's how it's
supposed to work. If you fall off, you should not
fall all the way you should. It should stop.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Three men, three murders, one killer who simply vanished. Thirty
years later, Crime Adjacent host Chase Patrick returns to Ridgewood
to uncover how the nation's most prolific serial killer went
undiscovered and why he started killing again in twenty twenty three.
(21:21):
Crime Adjacent is the never ending true crime story told weekly.
Listen to Crime Adjacent wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So here's how it works. Christy wrecks her search history.
Hey an essay. We promise it's nothing more nefarious than
a podcast to find out what's true, some of the
psychological motivations behind the character's actions, and real life applications
that relate to our topic. I have no idea what
Christy decided to look up could be the same thing
that captured my curiosity or something I never thought of.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Is it true? I mean no, No, it's so Yosemite's
real national park. Yes, people really do climb, people really
do die there. There are lots of things that are
worth looking into. So is El Capitan really that tall?
(22:19):
I think yeah, I think it's actually a taller. But
then but yes, it is over three thousand feet. It's enormous.
Let's see Yosemite dot com. It's two and a half
times as tall as the Empire State Building and more
than three times as tall as the Eiffel Tower for
(22:41):
some perspective. Yeah wow, So yeah, all right, So what
kind of climbing. Were the pair at the very beginning
doing ooh like the name, yeah, do you know?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, shoot, I mean that's just regular climbing.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Like I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I mean they're not bouldering, because that would be without
all the gear. They're not repelling, although they might later.
But they were on ballet and they were doing this
the the thing where you move it up like so
it's like, I don't know, okay, clime kind of thing.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's called free climbing.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Oh geez, okay, that's it, just the free just free climbing, right,
like the regular climbing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Right. Yes, it is rock climbing's most mistaken term.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, free climbing does not mean the same thing. Bouldering
is what people are thinking of climb.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, so they think it means solo climbing or which
means that you do it without a partner, and uh,
free soloing you may do with a partner, but it
means that you do it without any equipment.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that's the bouldering common that when you go and
you just and you would only go up like ten
ft and you would go across sea.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, okay, so that's what people tend to understand it
to mean. It is actually where you can only use
the rock to lift yourself up, but you have protective equipment.
You're not just climbing without equipment, and you're not climbing alone.
(24:28):
That's not what free climbing is. Free climbing means that
you're using your own power to rise up and like
no mechanical aid whatsoever. So even if you put a
(24:49):
rope in place, right, you don't use that rope then
to pull yourself right, No, you're only using that's only
a protective measure. So yeah, good job.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just do it with a partner.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I mean, for real, don't do it. Oh God,
read this whole article about a guy free soloing. Yeah,
and like he was unbothered and reading the article, I was,
I had like second hand fear of heights. So when
(25:24):
we first meet Turner, he's investigating poaching. Is this big
problem in the parks?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I'm gonna go with moderate to yes.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Okay, so there aren't statistics released. Oh okay, so national parks,
including Yosemite, do consider it a serious problem. But because
it's so secretive in nature and it's difficult to detect,
(25:57):
report prosecute all of those things. Accurate statistics are hard
to determine, okay, but it is a problem, and they
fine as such. So it's a thousand dollars fine for
a misdemeanor violation, two thousand dollars for a felony violation.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
And that's.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
For like general things like I'm not even exactly sure
what those are. But if you're taking a trophy dear
as a penalty, it's a twenty thousand dollars fine. Yeah,
taking of deer parts. So if you go in for
only certain things and leave the rest behind, forty thousand dollars,
(26:48):
taking an abalony, which is endangered species and they're small,
sixty thousand dollars fine. Poaching for profit is a forty
thousand dollars fine, and you can, like, I mean, they're felonies.
You can lose your your ability to vote or purchase
firearm like, so don't do it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, leave no trace people, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
So the animal that had been poach was also an
animal that agent Turner and Ranger Vosquez run into later,
a bear. Are there many bear incidents in yes, many.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I'm gonna say there's enough that is a problem.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So it's less of a problem than it used to be.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We know how to protect our stuff better, Like we're
not you know what I mean? So did we lose
people or are that? Are we still going? Let's see,
we're looking at a screen that's like the you know,
lock screen right now, so we don't know. Good, good, good, Okay, Yay,
I don't know okay, but there we go. Okay, we're
(28:00):
still live.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, all right, So in twenty twenty five, Hi, that's good.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
That's okay, here we go.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
So far in twenty twenty five, as of the end
of July, which was the most recent update, okay, there
have been thirty BAAR incidents, and a bare incident is
anything that causes a monetary loss like property damage or
(28:33):
food to a person or injury to the person themselves,
which is uncommon. There have been thirty so far in
twenty twenty five. In twenty twenty four there were thirty
four total. So it's gone up a little bit. They're
up forty three percent compared to twenty twenty four. They're
(28:56):
up one hundred and fifty percent compared to nineteen, which
was the year with the fewest incidents. But they're down
ninety two percent since the year with the most incidents,
which was nineteen ninety eight. Ooh, not as far back
as I thought it would be. Wow. But they do
(29:16):
mitigating efforts. So park work groups and volunteers will come
in and there's historic apple trees in the park, some
of them are near parking lots. They will go and
pick up all the apples on the ground and harvest
the apples from the trees because that helps reduce bear
(29:38):
incidents within the park. So the less contact humans have
with bears the better. Yes, they do want to know
if you're in a national park, they want to know
if you see a bear, no matter what it's doing.
So they just want to be able to keep track.
Speed limits are really important thing because sixteen bears so
(30:00):
far this year in twenty twenty five have been hit
by cars. Yeah, it's a shame. But bear management is
important and mostly that has to do with locking up
your food. Yes, don't leave it in your car. It
seems like it should be safe in your car, but
(30:21):
they will literally rip the doors off of your car.
That's fun. And the species by its nature can easily
be corrupted. In other words, they're very motivated by people food. Yeah,
like dude, same, yeah, yeah, exactly. I am also more
(30:42):
motivated by cookies.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Than thought of a bear going because there's an apple tree.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I know, so cute. Right. The park didn't always do
such a good job because they used to actually put
food out for the bears so that they would come
and entertain the visitors. Oh oh, and then they realized
that was a bad idea because you know, easily corruptible.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yes, yes, I understand the instinct.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Uh huh. Right, and so then they made bear pits, right,
and now they're like, no, no, don't feed them any
human food.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. Yeah, Oh, bears are so cute.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I know, they are cute. They're just adorable. They're very,
very cute. So Ranger Milch suggested that victims may have
been high. Do people routinely use drugs in the.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
National I'm going to go with yes.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yes. I found this article. It's a little old from
twenty thirteen, but it had some interesting It's harder to
find anything new as far as this goes, But between
twenty ten and twenty twelve in Yosemite, almost twenty four
hundred people were arrested for drug possession and troublemaking, which
(32:05):
is about twenty arrests per one hundred thousand visitors. Okay,
so not a few, but not a lot.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
No, not better than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Honestly, it's ten times the drug citation rate of Joshua
Tree National Park, which is known for people going to
use LSD.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Right, but they have such a crackdown yes on that there,
you know.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
So, yeah, it's primarily marijuana, ullucinogenic mushrooms and ecstasy. They
get used and it's a misdemeanor with a fine. But
in twenty twenty four, there's an article on gear Junkie about, uh,
(32:50):
don't take your marijuana, your cannabis of any kind into
a national park because despite what the laws made, Yeah,
in that particular state where one of the whatever of
the four hundred national parks you're in, marijuana possession and
use is prohibited on federal land. So and that's what
(33:14):
they're gonna follow. And even if it's edibles, don't do it.
It's a heavy fine. It's a problem. Yeah, don't, don't,
just don't. Just don't. Over seventeen hundred, Jane does seemed
like many, Yeah, yeah, does Mariposa County where somebody is
(33:38):
located have the most in California.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't know. I mean, I could see that being true,
but California is big. There's a lot going on there.
But I'm gonna I'm gonna go with a tentative. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Ish. It seems like Orange County, which is near Los Angeles,
and Sacramento County have a high highest number of unidentified.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I see, I could have seen that, and so that's
why I was like, I don't know, but the park
is so big and there's so many people who come
through there that it's like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
For reference, the entire state of Michigan in twenty twenty
two only had three hundred and twenty six open John
Doe Jane Doe cases. So a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That's a lot, yeah, I say, a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, But it's hard to get statistics on that as well.
A lot of this stuff there's hard to get statistics on.
I think park rangers are not very interested in keeping
Excel spreadsheets.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
No, I don't think so, And I think that that's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I think they became park rangers because they didn't want
to sit in front of a computer and look at
statistics exactly. Yeah, gold tattoos are they possible.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Okay, no, but no, I don't think so. I feel
like your body would just reject it. Okay, that is
a stute good jobs.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
So it would be nice to have, you know, a
gold tattoo, you know, something that's like shimmery enough, like,
but real gold doesn't mix well with tattoo ink. There
are inks that say gold, but they're not really they're
yellow color. It's not shimmery in that way because gold
(35:29):
isn't reactive, but it's not stable in tattoo ink either.
It can cause some skin reactions and even if you
could mix it in, it wouldn't look shiny. I mean,
I mean it's not that's not how that works. And
it would be prohibitively expensive. So enough gold to make
(35:52):
just an ounce of tattoo ink, which is a small model,
would cost around two thousand dollars. Wow, and that doesn't
even factor in like the expenses tied to researching whether
it's safe to use and how effective it is. It's
just cost prohibitive.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
However, you can get gold ink tattoos that are temporary tattoos. Okay,
they're like but they're nice. It's not like the ones
should get from the dollar store for the kids, you know,
with like iron Man or whatever on it. Right, these
are nicer ones, and they do they sit on the skin.
(36:34):
You can remove them. They are very shiny and pretty.
They are absolutely safe and be like gold jewelry, right,
except it's going to flake off a little bit. The
good ones start in the neighborhood of about sixty dollars.
Okay for a small one.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
How long does it stay?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Two to three weeks? Oh yeah, so it stays. The
nicer ones when you're paying sixty dollars, they're gonna last
a little longer an entire vacation.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Right, Like I was thinking special occasions, right right.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, so for a wedding or you know, a vacation
on the beach or something like that, probably it's gonna last.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
It's gonna last longer. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean
things last longer on me, I think than others, Like
my skin. Like I've had a you know, the hennah.
My friend got married and so we did her her
family's traditional parties, and like we did the hennah and
so and this is the real hennah, Like this is
the stuff that you you know, it's it's still on
(37:40):
my skin though, lasted like a year. Wow, a year
later you could still see the general large outlines. All
the little intricate like little ones had mostly disappeared by then,
but like literally a year later you could still see
some of the outline. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I know. I'm shocked because I've had a Hannah, real
Hannah done where I went got and I didn't love it,
so it was fine, but I mean it lasts less
time on me.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah oh wow, really yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, so it's like that sexy.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
So how long did you did you have to hit?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
They that probably I probably sat there for like thirty
forty minutes after they finished, and then they were like,
don't knock it off, like let it fall off on
its own.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah yeah, okay, that might be the difference too.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I know, were you there for it took forever? First
of all, right, oh, because it's beautiful. It's a paint.
Mine wasn't huge, okay, small.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, mine went all the way my entire hand all
the way up.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
And so like it's so intricate, and then it's itchy
and like the bride like my friend had hers like
the feet, the hands, and then she was sitting in
the traditional bride swing that they had this party because
the bride is stuck. Yeah, they can't move. So I
was sitting with her the whole time, and so we
were there. I don't know. I don't think we I
(39:09):
don't think she came back around to knock off the
stuff and do like the final uh huh lotions and
I don't know what for like another like an hour
and a half. Oh okay, yeah it was a long time.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Okay, sure, I probably didn't make a difference, so it
probably was just gonna stay yeah for you.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
So I don't know why. Like my skin so dry,
mine's the opposite from uhuh, it's fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Do the gate stations at Yosemite have surveillance cameras? I'm
gonna go with Yeah, that's what I thought, but evidently
not so. In twenty twenty four, they introduced a license
plate reader pilot program okay, where they had the license
(39:57):
plate readers that took the license plate, the make, model,
color of the car, and the date, time, and location
and direction that they were traveling. But it's not connected
to law enforcement or a DMV database of any kind,
(40:18):
and they don't collect information about people. Interesting. It's more
to just like find out when people enter and exit,
how long they're using or staying in a specific area.
It's not about like identifying people. So I was like,
I looked, looked and looked to try and find to surely, surely,
(40:40):
I mean there's cameras everywhere.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
That's interesting. Evidently not okay, yeah, not even a ring doorbell?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
All right, Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I was like, that's interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Captain Sotter says a hot do people go missing in
the park every year? Is this accurate?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I don't know. I can't tell whether it's wildly low
or wildly high, Okay, And I just I feel.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Like I just have no idea. Okay, well I have answers, yes,
thank you. I don't know it's wildly high, okay his assertion. Okay,
So the travel dot Com has an article seven national
parks with the highest number of missing people, and this
is from twenty twenty four. Okay, and not all of
that information was super recent at the time, because again
(41:30):
they're not like sitting around with exceled databases letting us
know their stuff. So the third park with the most
missing people is Yosemite. Okay, it's number three. The overall
number of missing people as of twenty seventeen, okay was
(41:53):
thirty three. Oh okay, so far less far less than
one hundred. They do like do search and rescue missions. Yeah,
so maybe he's maybe he's counting that. Oh yeah, so maybe.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
One it's a missing or whatever because they have to go.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Rescue, right or the Yeah, they have to go find
the person they didn't check out that was supposed to
check out, right, we have to find them, right, or
somebody said we got separated and I don't know where
this person is. We should find them.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Okay, I can see that. So maybe, but it's not like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Thirty three in the whole park history. That's yes, not bad.
The next one is Mount Rainier National Park has had
four hundred missing people since nineteen eighty nine. Oh okay,
so again far fewer. And the one the national park
with the largest number of missing people Big Ben No
(42:49):
Grand Canyon. It's the largest park. Yeah, and it has
had over eleven hundred people go missing since twenty eighteen.
So it's just it's so big, yeah, so treacherous.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See, and that's why I thought maybe Big Ben because
there is it is also gigantic, right, But also there's
a lot of really.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yes, but I would say probably more people go to
Grand Canyon.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
So Turner calls his X in the middle of the
night to tell her of a meteor shower with up
to seventy falling stars per minute. Is there such an event?
I feel like, yes, I don't know, that's too many. Okay,
it seems like a lot. It seems it seemed like
(43:42):
a lot that I like, I stopped. I'm like, seventy
a minute.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But isn't it all falling stars? Like the whole meteors?
Every meteor you see is technically a falling star.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Right, Yes, but that's that's many. So the typically the
most meteor showers is actually an annual event, the largest
number of meteors that you're gonna see. It would be
extremely rare to have anything that was far more than
this by that much. And it's the per said meteor shower,
(44:16):
which is actually happening right now, Like isn't that now?
Like literally the peak is right.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Now tonight tonight.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Oh that's so funny, tonight August thirteenth, twenty twenty five. Like, okay,
peak has been this week and you can see it
all over the world. You have the best views away
from city lights between twelve and one am okay, and
you might see up to fifty to seventy per hour okay,
(44:46):
not per minute, okay, per hour, per per minute would
be like almost like troubling. Okay, right, I don't know,
like so many I don't know. Yeah, that's super cool
(45:06):
that that's happening like tonight, Yes, and it's tonight is
the peak, but it's still good enough in the days
to come that you can book a camping trip to
go into Yosemite to get away from the city lights. Yeah,
and watch the persed media Shower. They're actually doing it
on Friday, August fifteenth into Saturday the sixteenth. Yeah. So
(45:31):
it's a beautiful and they take you out and you
camp and you watch it and then you hike back.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
And it's fun awesome, so pretty.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah. All of the sources that we use to inform
our discussion here on Killer Fun Podcast can be found
on our social media. Join us on Facebook at Killer
Fun Podcast, exploring the intersection of crime and entertainment. You
can find us on Twitter at killer fund or you
can send us an email at Killerphonepodcast at gmail dot
(46:04):
com and I'd be happy to share a link to
whatever information you're looking for. We love to hear from you.
You might learn a little something too. Psychology.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Brain, Yeah, let's do it all right.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
So Milch seemed to have some control aversion.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of ways
to describe what milchad.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
He He had a bad attitude, bad attitude, but he
also had a little control aversion where he may not
have a lot of control over other aspects of his life,
so he has an urge to rebel against authority that
he deems inappropriate. Yes, he doesn't like having the answer
(46:56):
to Turner in any way. It does typically tend to
manifest in more extreme situations. So we saw a lot
of control a version during the lockdown. Yeah, oh, for yeah,
for the pandemic, the COVID nineteen pandemic. People did not
(47:20):
want to stay home. No, they didn't want to be told,
they didn't want to be told that they had to
stay home, and they didn't care if Gramma died. So yeah,
what we actually see more often than control a version
is authority bias.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Which I wonder how this will hold up over the
next If we look back in this decade, like a
decade from now, right, if we'll say.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
No control versions more common than we thought. Yeah. So
there was the Milgram experiments in the nineteen sixties, one
of those experiments that was we wouldn't do now because
it's super un don't do it. But we learned a
(48:11):
lot from it. And typically what you see is that
people tend to obey more quickly when somebody has an
authority over them. They have an unquestioning obedience, implicit trust,
reduced critical evaluation. Who are these authorities? They could be
(48:34):
field experts, leaders, managers, educators, celebrities, influencers. This was the
like the Nuremberg trials, when you know, after World War Two,
a lot of people were like eyes just fallen orders.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean, yeah, you're right, a
lot of good came out of it. Now we can
still study these things in more ethical ways. You know,
we can still use a degree of pain, but we
also have bigger like restrictions on how far that can go,
you know. And then there's things like that, you know,
(49:11):
like the Stanford prison experiment showed well just how we
can devolve so quickly. We just don't repeat that, but
we can still study the concept right, we just don't
do them in the same ways.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Right, we don't do it in ways that are harm
people or animals or animals. Yes, it develops through early conditioning,
social and cultural factors. Median information sources can all contribute
(49:45):
to that. So on the one, I mean, we do
we have a social contract that says like, if it's
an emergency situation and first responders of some type show up,
you follow their orders because you understand them to be trained. Yes,
and so we tend to have this authority. And sometimes
that's really really helpful. It is very helpful, and sometimes,
(50:09):
like in war, it can be not helpful. Yeah, you
need to listen to your own ethical compass.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Right, yeah, yep, I mean that's why in the military,
I mean, you can object to unlawful or unethical orders
people do people have you know a lot of people don't.
It's like, you know, you trust and you try to
go and that and that's really hard. But also you know,
you don't have to join the military in our country, so.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Right, exactly, there's no conscripted service, right, so you get to.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Decide whether that's something you want to juggle with or not, right, Right,
So we have an all volunteer military, which means we
have a lot of people who are volunteering to go
in and that they lean into learning how to balance that.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
You know, yes, so, but yeah, but they also might
be more prone to the authority bias because they have
opted in.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
At least after basic training.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Uh yeah, yeah, real life. Okay, all right, So Turner
on the top of l Cappy Tan wasn't wrong about
securing the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, he does need to secure in this crime scene.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yeah. So, policemag dot com has ten tips for securing
a crime scene. I'm not going to talk about all
of them, but they did have a special agent, Elena
Honah from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who did stress that, like,
(51:46):
you have to have officer safety first, and then other
people on the scenes safety, and then you work to
preserve the evidence. Those are the top priorities. So I'm like, okay, good, Yeah,
you want to make sure that the officers are safe
because they can't help anybody if they're injured. Then the people,
(52:10):
and then it's the evidence you want to clear and
make sure that nobody's hiding because they might move stuff
or disrupt things. You want to document the movements of
other people in the scene.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
So it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Uh huh. You want to touch and manipulate as little
as possible because that's going to change the way things look.
This one was note transient evidence and document it. So
transient evidence is like the bloody handprint and footprints that
(52:47):
Turner saw on the scene, and they specifically mention if
it's blood outside and it's raining or abound ter rain,
you want to document that right away.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Get pictures.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah exactly, Yes, and don't introduce anything to the scene unnecessarily.
So maybe there was too much walking around, maybe there
were too many park rangers on the top of that summit. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
I made assumptions, right, they made assumptions. I mean, you know,
had it been a man that fell off that cliff,
do you think they had made it saying assumptions. I
don't know. I'm just saying, but they made this assumption,
and so they didn't secure the scene.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
But I appreciated Turner. He decided, you know, you know,
we have to get to the body, we have to
retrieve this, we have to whatever, and they are telling
him no, and instead of like really pulling rank and
forcing them, he did it.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Himself. Yeah. I was like, Okay, he wanted to do
it himself anyway he wanted. He didn't trust anybody else
to take the pictures or look at the stuff the
way he would.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yep, which is fair.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
All right. So let's talk about the Investigative Services Branch
a little bit. So what does the ISB do. Yeah,
they are specialized and highly trained. They are stationed at
national parks, but they don't work for the park directly.
(54:18):
They work for the headquarters of the National Park Service.
All right. So when Turner said I don't work for
you to the administrator of Yosemite, he was right, he was.
He doesn't work for him. He works for the headquarters,
so he's he works with them, but only alongside them,
(54:40):
not for them. They investigate crimes, violence, major property crimes, fraud, embezzlement,
major resource violations, drug cultivation, and other incidents. And they
I appreciated this there is they're particularly trained in helping
(55:03):
a victim of a crime, okay, which I'm like, Oh,
that's interesting that they they understand that victims and witnesses
need to be treated with dignity and respect and they're
going to have some unique needs. Yeah. So they're trained
to handle that in a different way than the regular rangers.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Right, the park rangers aren't law enforcement in the same way.
It's adjacent. Yes, it's adjacent, right, you know, Yeah, that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
They do routinely investigate animal poaching, homicides, missing persons, but
they do it with a tiny workforce and a fraction
of the budget of like the normal three letter agencies
that you would think of, you know, FBI, CIA, those
(55:59):
kinds of things. They do it with a much smaller crew,
and they tend to be loaners. They each one. There's
not one for every park. They'll cover several parks and
may need to travel to a different park, or may
be asked to come help at a different park if
(56:20):
they need additional assistance. When a serious crime happens on
federal parkland, the ISB typically has jurisdiction, but it depends
on where that's located. They'll have as much jurisdiction as
the local authorities, at least, so they can't be steamrolled
(56:47):
by local authorities.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah. I could see them being like, oh, FBI, you
want to take that sure thing other things to do.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yes, the is B does not have a forensic department.
They rely on federal labs.
Speaker 2 (57:02):
Oh see, there you go.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
Just so they they may hand it off or they
may like request, we need this stuff done. But the
agents for the ISB tend to not just hand off
the perpetrators to the prosecutors. They tend to see it
(57:29):
all the way through. So they're more involved in the
legal process after they've been arrested than your typical law
enforcement might.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
Okay, that makes sense. So interesting.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah, m hm. They're called the FBI of the National
Parks Service. There's I'm just gonna briefly touch on this,
but there is a very interesting case if you're interested
in the uh, you know, true crime, like we are.
(58:04):
Harold hen Torn and his wife Tony went into a
Rocky Mountain National Park and uh she had an accident
and perished, and the ISB investigated and it was very
(58:25):
interesting because uh Old, Harold not a good guy. You
might imagine since I'm talking about we talking about Yeah,
but it's there's a very interesting article upon on our
social media. But the is B, according to this article
(58:45):
from the outside Online, they have solved homicides, track cereal
rapists hiding in the back country, averted kidnappings, and interdicted
thousands of pounds of drugs, busted a reality TV show
host who poached a grizzly bear, and infiltrated theft rings
(59:07):
trafficking in louted Native American artifacts, but the ISB remains
relatively unknown to the general republic and even to fellow
law enforcement. Local cops and FBI agents are sometimes baffled
when Yosemite based isp ISB Special agent Christy McGee presents
her badge the course of an investigation, like they're just
(59:29):
so like heads down doing their things, riding their horses
through the national parks. You know. I love it that,
Like they're they're just they're not in it for the
for the notoriety.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
But how how nice did that look?
Speaker 1 (59:46):
You got his horse out? So nice?
Speaker 2 (59:49):
So pretty?
Speaker 1 (59:50):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
One day. I have not ever made it to Yosemite,
so one.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Day I've only seen like a day through that we
did camp in a.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
RV park.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
It was the most beautiful place that we ever stopped.
And we stopped at some really beautiful places, but I
mean there was like we backed up to a little
stream that was like a foot deep and it was
crystal clear and ice cold. Yeah, and it was it
was literally one of the most beautiful places I've ever
(01:00:22):
been in my entire life. On a lighter note, if
you want to go watch uh not the entering an
exiting of Yosemite, but if you want to see live cams,
they do have live webcams that are available for Yosemite Falls,
(01:00:47):
Half Dome, El Cappy Tan, Yosemite High Sierra. There's all
these beautiful places that you can go, and I mean
there's not a lot of activity. I watched them for
a little while, just like there's not much going on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
You're just waiting for that bird to get to the
camera and be cute, right or just.
Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
Like fly by. It would be nice to see you
bear elk you know something. I didn't see anything, and
it's too far away from El Cappy tangacin any climbers.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Oh but still beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, all right, So we're gonna take a
little bit of a break, yeah, because you're an educator
and it's school back to school time and we both
have kids going back to school and uh yeah, so yeah,
just a couple episodes, but we will have new content
for you because we always do that because clearly, yeah,
(01:01:43):
because all the stuff I would have cut out of this,
that's gonna be left in fun. Fun. Yeah, but when
we come back, it's gonna be episode two hundred, two hundred,
two hundred times. I know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I don't even have words for this. It's wild, it's
a hundred yeah. Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Well, thank you so much for listening. We know you
make a choice when you listen to us. We don't
just come on the radio, rate and review wherever you
get podcasts and tell a friend this is more fun,
and you can listen with a friend and then until
next time, be safe, be kind, and wash your hands.
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