January 6, 2025 • 35 mins
I sat down with one of my absolute favorites in true crime, Ashleigh Banfield! We discuss her new podcast which is dropping on January 23rd - go subscribe! Link - https://www.dropdeadserious.com/
We also talk old and new cases - JonBenet Ramsey, OJ, Menendez Brothers, Casey Anthony, and newer ones like Lori Vallow & Luigi Mangione!
I am so grateful for her coming on and sharing her new venture and her take on cases we've all followed over the years!
All links: https://linktr.ee/prettyliesandalibis
Merch: prettyliesandalibis.myshopify.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PrettyLiesAndAlibis
Donate:
PayPal - prettyliesandalibis@gmail.com
Venmo - @prettyliesalibis
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Cash App- Prettyliesandalibis
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis--4447192/support.
We also talk old and new cases - JonBenet Ramsey, OJ, Menendez Brothers, Casey Anthony, and newer ones like Lori Vallow & Luigi Mangione!
I am so grateful for her coming on and sharing her new venture and her take on cases we've all followed over the years!
All links: https://linktr.ee/prettyliesandalibis
Merch: prettyliesandalibis.myshopify.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PrettyLiesAndAlibis
Donate:
PayPal - prettyliesandalibis@gmail.com
Venmo - @prettyliesalibis
Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/prettyliesr
Cash App- Prettyliesandalibis
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis--4447192/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you know, Alibiers.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Welcome to a very special episode of Pretty Lies and Alibis.
I'm Gigi, and today we have the Ashley Banfield on
the show. We're going to talk about her new podcast,
Drop Dead Sirius, which launches on January twenty third. I'm
going to put that link in the description, so run
and subscribe right now so you don't miss a minute.
(00:23):
We also talk about cases old and new from John Boney,
Ramsey and OJ to Luigi MANGIONI hope.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You guys enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I had a blast talking to one of my favorite
people in true crime, and we will see you soon.
Ashley Banfield, one of my favorites in true crime, right
here on Pretty Lies and Alibis.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is so good to have you here. I appreciate
you coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm so excited you are starting your own podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I am, but I'm not going to talk about that
before I talk about you, because I'm like a fangirl.
I remember, you know, leading up to the Lori Bello case,
listen to all of your podcasts and it was I
was in a trance because A you're such a good journalist.
B you're such a good storyteller and see I love
your accent so much, and it's like I could just
(01:13):
like I'd prefer to listen to you the music. So
I'm super excited to be to be on your podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well that means a lot. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sometimes I get really going and I say, I speak banjo,
especially if I get to go on on something, so
I try to tone it down, but it comes out
a lot. And speaking a podcasts, I mean, you're starting one.
I saw this at Crime Con actually the big banner
for it, and I was wondering what was going on,
And you're about ready to launch.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Tell us all about this podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, So I'm I'm launching on January twenty third. It's
been a year in the making. It's going to be
a weekly podcast every Thursday talking about true crime and
all the work that I'm doing on my show, and
you know, we're literally in the sausage making of criminal
procedure as it you know, goes and into its resolution.
But I'm kicking it off with a five part series
(02:05):
that I've worked on for a year, and the podcast
is called drop Dead Serious. That's what you're going to
be tuning into every Thursday. But the series that I'm
dropping first is called Uncle Peter, and it's about I believe,
the worst sex predator ever to roam maybe the earth.
He's a billionaire, a clothing magnate who used his company
(02:27):
and his prestige and his money and his power to
rate potentially thousands of women. If you took Epstein and
Weinstein and Cosby and Diddy and you put them all
on a pal Peter niguard, his numbers would be bigger.
He would dwarf them combined, combined. And so the reason
that I'm doing the story about him, because a lot
(02:48):
of Americans don't know about him, is that I grew
up with him. I called him Uncle Peter. He was
my best friend's uncle, and so I spent a lot
of time with Uncle Peter. And at the time, back
in the seventies and eighties, he was like a Hugh Hefner, right,
very flamboyant, had women on every arm at all times.
He'd show up for Christmas dinner with three scantily clad women.
(03:11):
I mean, this was just kind of the guy he was.
And I remember thinking back then it was like skibee,
but it was Hugh Hefnery, which wasn't criminal. It was
just the way it is bad boys. You know, certain
men behaved that way and they're considered studs, ladies, man, whatever.
It was. Looking back with the prism now and knowing
(03:31):
about all these complainants and accusers and then those who
are truly victims because he's been convicted, the red flags
are everywhere. I just wish that back then we knew
what red flags were, and we knew what sex predators were,
because I'd never even heard the term sex predator back
in those days.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, it is scary because those weren't conversations we were
having back in the seventies, eighties, even into the early nineties.
It was just sort of something that was pushed under
the rug if it was known. And and you know,
it's terrifying the numbers that we don't know of people
who have been victims throughout, you know, decades of just
having to hide it because there's almost been a stigma
(04:11):
attached to being a victim, which is I'm glad that
narrative is changing now, but it was just not something
we talked about back then.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh absolutely. And by the way, it was considered a
badge of honor. I mean, I remember Peter, there was
there was no shame in showing up for your family's
Christmas dinner with three women. There was no shame in
showing up to job sites where he'd maybe be building
a new store with six women. I mean, that's that
was his brand. And it wasn't just for show. He
(04:39):
literally had a he had a sex you know, defect
in him and needed so much sex that he would
take it whenever he wanted it, and he felt narcissistically
like he had the power to get it no matter what.
I think a lot of women wanted to hang on,
wanted to be the next Missus Niguard, wanted to be
(05:00):
in that on that private jet and in that wealthy world,
and then boom, it would just come out of nowhere.
He would attack. And he was not a He was
not the kind of date rapist that would come upon
you slowly. It was violent. These assaults were violent and vicious,
and as he went through his life they became even
(05:23):
more sinister because he would start targeting kids, and he
would target poor kids. Because he had this massive layer
in the Bahamas. It was like a Robinson Crusoe treehouse
that was five acres big, five acres of house. You know,
that was like all these thatched you know, ben is
all intermingled and connected together with waterfalls and underground pools.
(05:44):
And it was seventy million dollars. And so he was
able to lure a lot of the young girls from
the poorer part of the Bahamas who would get an
invitation to come to a party at the richest place
in town and life for key of course, they would
want to come to these parties and that, and then
they would be drugged at the parties and they would
be raped, and many times viciously and violently. And he also,
(06:06):
gosh gg he had such a sick kink. He had
a fascination with feces. And so many of his victims
said the same thing happened to them that it was
much of his sex kink was based on a feces fascination.
And so, you know, they went through a lot of hell,
a lot of these women. And I've got a lot
(06:28):
of the inside trove of evidence and photos and videos
and letters and phone calls and all sorts of stuff
that'll be coming out in the series.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, you know, And that's the one thing I love
about podcasting is you're not bound by a certain time limit.
You can tell the whole story. And that's what true
crime listeners crave today. They don't want just the five
minutes we can give them, they want episodes on it
and think, I can't wait to listen to this now
(06:58):
aside from this case, are you gonna do more current
cases in the future? Are you gonna you're gonna follow
work in the news?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, So basically the drop dead Serious brand, which is
launching Thursday, the twenty third of January, that will be
my podcast. But I'm going to start with these episodes
and then when that when that's done, every single Thursday,
we'll be talking about the case of the moment like this,
you know, like this kid uh Luigi Maggioni. That would
(07:29):
be one of the top you know, topics that we
would that we would book and wrestle with on a
weekly podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, and I mean that case right now is everywhere.
And because he's just such an unassuming defendant, you know,
you know, the money was there, should he need money
to pay for care?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you have to wonder what went wrong?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And no, that's every generation online TikTok obsessed, your middle
aged housewives obsessed. My ninety year old grandmother obsessed with
this case, I think because it does kind of go
out of the norm. There's not a cookie cutter mold
for a murderer alleged murderer. But with this this is
a young man, good looking, he had tons of money,
(08:13):
very smart. You know, you almost think why didn't you
fight it? With what he had here up in his
head and the ability in his status with his family.
Very intriguing, And you know, you picked a really good
time to launch this podcast because we have some major
cases going to trial.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh do we ever? I mean, you know Idaho that's
going to go to trial. I mean, I hope. I'm
not sure to go to trial on the date planned
in August right now. But my suspicion is with you know,
four murders and four death penalties, there may be some
delays on that one, but I don't think by much.
And you know, this case in particular, I can't see
(08:52):
this being a trial. I'm you know, Luigi Maggioni is
gonna I think that his best course of action now
would be a plea deal in throwing self with the
mercy of the judge. Because Gigi, the cases that you
and I cover. I mean, we see convictions based on
one strong piece of evidence, right, like, oh, your fingerprints
are on the bottle discarded at the scene on video,
(09:13):
you're guilty. This guy has over fifteen I think smoking guns,
including an actual smoking gun. But there's the ID that
was found on and that was used to book into
the hostel in New York on his person well arrested.
There's a manifesto saying why he does this kind of thing.
There's a spiral notebook with the notes of where Brian
Thompson was going to be at every minute that morning
(09:35):
and which entrance and which meeting room he was going
to be in. That is a smoking gun. There is
the jacket and the actual scarf mask that he was
wearing when he was arrested on video in the cab
making his flight out of New York. There's the bullet
casings matching the gun that was found on him, that
smoking gun. I could go on and on, but one
(09:58):
of these pieces of evidence could be enough for a conviction.
All of them together, forget it. It's game over.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, it's huge, But yet you have a certain part
of the population that say, oh, he was set up,
he's a Patsy. It always blows my mind to read
these comments and people. You know, it's interesting to me
to read everybody's take. But it's like, this is not
necessarily the case where you want to say he was
set up.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, and even if you're set up, you still did it. Listen,
he is presumed innocent. But even if somebody wants to
suggest a conspiracy that he was set up, okay, then
let's find the others. But in the meantime we'll deal
with a hitman.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
You know, what always stands out to me is everybody
who is saying it's not him is people who don't
know him. We haven't heard one family member, one friend
say yeah, that doesn't look like him.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
In those photos. That's very telling.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But then moving on, we have Lori Valo representing herself
starting March thirty first, in the conspiracy to commit murder
for Charles Valo.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Can you even I mean, in my line of work,
that's mana from heaven. First of all, the fact that
we're going to be able to see her, hear her,
get inside her head for the first time, and she
tries to defend herself in court, in and in a
jurisdiction that allows cameras. Thank you, so yay. On the
other side of the coin, my legal mind says, oh, Laurie,
(11:21):
you know, a man who has himself for a lawyer
has a fool for a client. It's the worst possible
thing you could do. But then again, could it really
get that much worse?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Now we've seen a lot of the documents out of Chandler,
and I know Kay Woodcock is excited that she's going
to do that because she has to sit there and
look at Kay and talk to her.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And also Kay finally gets to show the world who
this woman really is because you know, she's been very
protected by the legal system. Idaho kept her under wraps.
We weren't allowed love cameras in the courtroom that could
really watch what was happening. And so I think Kay
is thrilled to finally be able to put this woman
out on display, to say she's a kill she's a
cold blooded murderer. And that's I'm not even jumping ahead
(12:05):
of a case. She's already convicted of it thrice over.
So yeah, So I think, you know, I think good
for Kay to be able to stomach it and then
be able to share, you know, what she's been going
through with the rest.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of the world exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And I look, I said, if I had to walk
from Greenville, South Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona, I will pack
my bag and start the road. I will be there
to watch that in person. It's going to be the
hot Mess Express.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
You know, that's Express, That's Express.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
She is the captain of the hot Mess Express. And
then we have the sheriff Mickey Steins that killed the
judge in chambers on video. That's one to watch. I
think there is so much that's going to come out
later this so much.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I mean so. Alison Weiner is a producer who works
for News Nation. That girl could dig. She is such
a good journalist. She's discovered a piece of audio tape
that was recorded during one of the depositions in the case.
Let's go back before the execution in the chambers. That
(13:15):
chambers was used for sex for favors, and some of
the women who were being given favors in female inmates
were being given either ankle monitors or being let out
of jail if they had sex with a sheriff's deputy
in that judge's chambers. So some of the women were deposed,
and Elson Weiner got one of the tapes and the
(13:38):
inmate says, yeah, I saw that happen. Actually a lot.
Wasn't just the deputy who was convicted of it in
a serving time, it was also the judge. And the
question was what do you mean, like the judge was
there watching, And it was that the judge was there
having sex as well with inmates. So it sure does
open up a whole new can of work as to
(14:00):
why Mickey Steins might have wanted the judge not to
talk in his upcoming deposition. Right, maybe maybe Judge Mullins
wasn't the only one having sex with the inmates and
the other convicted Sheriff's deputy. Maybe there's something to Sheriff
Stein's as well.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, and now think I heard on that audio essentially
he was running that those chambers like a brathel.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, and I hate to speak ill of the victimized dead,
but if that's really what was happening, Dear Christ, you know,
who knows what's to come in the in the trial.
And maybe maybe Mickey Stein's will plead and therefore this
will stay fairly quiet. But then again, I don't sense
(14:45):
that it can stay quiet for long.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I don't think so, and I feel so bad for
his poor wife, you know, just probably learning all of
this with us has to be devastating. And so is
there one case that is stuck with you over the years.
You've been doing true crime for very long time? What
two thousand and five issue started true crime full time?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Let's see, I would say, yeah, two thousand and five. Yes,
because I started working at Court TV in early two
thousand and five, and then I had my first child.
And it was funny because I had my first baby
almost my first week of working there and had to
go on maternity, you know, but I had been I
(15:25):
had been filling in and doing freelance work for them
for about eight months beforehand. So yeah, two thousand How
did you know that I had to think it through?
How did you know that I.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Did a little research?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
But I also remember I had my first child in
two thousand and five, and so I was a stay
at home mom watching court TV. And that's that's really
when I started following you in the true crime world,
you know, before the very famous nine to eleven picture
of you where you were there as the towers collapsed,
and I'd followed you before that. But really, when you
(15:56):
hit Court TV is when I was like, wow, I
love I love her style. So I had a little
baby at home and so that that's.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Really when we both have nineteen year olds.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yes, my daughter just moved to New Orleans. I'm not
doing well. I'm not struggling.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
So that's so funny you should say that because my
son moved to Syracuse for college and I'm good.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, you know, it's like eleven o'clock at night. I
look on three sixties, she's not home. I'm like, are
you safe? And she's like, Mom, I'm having coffee.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You gotta get this must be.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
The difference between having boys and girls or I'm just
a lousy mom. But I feel like he's you know,
maybe a lot of it is that I went away
to college at age seventeen and he's nineteen, and so
I kind of feel like, dude, you got two years
on me, you're and you got your six feet And
I was like, you know, so I feel like he's
he's got this, you know, and it's so weird. I
(16:50):
thought I was going to need to talk to him
every single day, and I'm come, okay, if a day
or two goes by. I mean I text and I
don't get the response. I'm like, okay, right, and if
it's two or three days, then I say that's it. Call.
I need to know everything's okay. He's also got to
a roommate too, so I know that there's another set
of eyes on him.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah, her as well. But yeah, so my son's graduating
this year. I have went back to back and too,
he's like, I'm just going to stay home until I
get married. So I got I have a thirteen year
old this going into high school next year, So I
got a ways to go in the mom rearing years.
But yeah, so I feel you on that. But is
there one case that has really stuck with you over
(17:28):
the years that you've covered.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
It's going to sound trat there's two OJ because I
truly could not believe that a jury would do that,
and I have come to learn, based on my partner
at Court TV, Jack Ford, who had interviewed all the
OJ jurors, that they truly a did not understand DNA
(17:50):
evidence because it was crystal clear to Jack when he
asked them they didn't understand it. They didn't understand what
had happened. Over the nine months. I mean, they just
threw so much spaghetti at them they were drowning in it.
So that upset me because had had Marsha Clark and
team just been kept this kiss principle right, keep it simple, stupid,
(18:14):
then we might have had a conviction there. And I
will go to my death saying, oh, j Simpson's guilty murder.
I don't care what the jury said. I really don't.
And consequently, since then, since the interview where Jack discovered
they just didn't understand much of the evidence. They have
even gone so far as to say that it was payback.
They admitted it, some of them. So that's devastating. That
(18:38):
sticks with me. The other one is Casey Anthony because
I was in the courtroom every single day and when
I see people say they got it wrong, the jury
did not get it wrong. The jury didn't get it wrong.
The prosecutors got it wrong. The prosecutors went ape shit,
and they should have prosecuted the case they had and
(19:02):
they would have had a conviction against Casey Anthony. But
because they went so far and beyond trying to make
her out to be Jeffrey Dahmer and looking for the
death penalty. They lost it. They shot from the moon.
They didn't even end up in the stars, and so
that sits with me for that reason, but not because
of the jury. They were asked to do something that
(19:23):
was really unfair. They were asked to jump over this
chasm of missing evidence from good mom. I mean, she
was a young mom and a partier, but she wasn't
a bad mom. She never raised a hand on that girl.
There was no evidence ever her doing anything abusive to
that child. Right, you want them to jump over the
(19:44):
chasm to her pasting the tape down over her mouth
and nose and holding it till she's suffocated, looking her
right in the eye. That's a bit of a leap.
Give me something else, Give me some other theory that
could have got me to Casey did something to this
child and caused her to die, and she needs to
pay for what she's done. But they didn't do that.
(20:04):
They went they went all out, and they thought that
they could pull the wool over the juror's eyes and
just ask them to leap blindly over that big chasm.
And they couldn't. And I understood why.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, that makes sense, you know, And what's interesting to
me is we're starting to see this resurgence of cases
from the nineties, like the Menindez brothers, John Benny Ramsay,
those are making their way back into the news, and
it's just it's like deja vu all over again, seeing
the TV full of the U a.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Different lens, right, We're looking at it with a different lens. Right,
So we're looking at Menendez through the lens of social
justice and the fact that we do understand that some
parents do sexually abuse their kids. We didn't believe that
in the eighties, no matter how much they cried BOLONEI
must be a lie, must be a fake, and they
(20:54):
were made fun of on us and l oh, yeah,
this really happened today, right, So we're seeing that and
then in John Benever see something else. We're seeing how
police truly can get so tunnel visioned that they'll actually
commit malice. Right, they will leak lies to the press
(21:16):
in their tunnel vision, and the press, believing their government
and believing that this is what police say, will report
it went with it and we had, you know, the
beginnings of cable news, which just you know, this proliferated
this story and it victimized the Ramsey family over and
over and over again.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I tell you, I watched that documentary on Netflix
with my daughter the last time she was home, and
she was so angry by the end. She just you know,
I had actually met John Ramsey waiting to do your
show at Crome Con and what a sweetheart. Yes, just
a great guy. I've never thought the family did it.
I do believe the intruder theory.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Me too, because Elizabeth Smart was taken by a boogeyman
and Jessica Lunsford was taken by a boogieyman, and I
could go on and on. You know, Amber Hagerman, she's
the genesis of the amberl are taken by a boogeyman.
So some of these cases you just have to understand.
It may not look plausible, but we know it is.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
We know it is.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We know these people go into occupied homes in the
middle of the night and take children from their beds.
And Olie Klass taken from a home during a sleepover.
It happens, right, And I think that there's just a
pitchfork mentality sometimes in the nation wants blood, and a
lot of times that gets out of hand and people
(22:42):
forget that these are real people. They're not just images
on TV. They're real people with real feelings and real
families that get destroyed. And I will second you on
John Ramsey. I've known him for twenty years and he
is a kind good man. He really is. He's so
kind and he's so wholesome, and no one ever, you know,
(23:02):
was made to believe he was.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and you know, and back in those days, we
didn't have the Internet, so you really couldn't go find
the information for yourself to draw your own conclusions. With
Menendez and John Bennet, there was a very slanted media
angle they were using in these cases and people. It's
interesting because if I talk to somebody my age, I'm
forty seven, so middle aged housewives think no, they should
(23:25):
never get out. But you talked to the younger generation,
like you talked about earlier, a new set of eyes
where the younger people it's not a shame to be
a victim of molestation to where we just didn't talk
about it. It's nice to see some new life breathed
into these cases, and.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
To it makes sense. Yeah, I'll only coach that in
I love the new life, and I love the new perspective,
and I love the bigger aperture on human behavior and
human dynamics. I do love that. Yeah, Well, they don't
love is when somebody grabs a headline off social media
and runs with it, like free the Menendez brothers without
going through the facts. I'm not necessarily fully on board
(24:06):
with freeing the Menendez brothers in a way, I am
because I feel bad for them, Okay, but that's not
That's not how we operate in criminal justice. When we
feel bad for someone, we can't just nullify. We're not
supposed to just nullify on the jury, right, We're supposed
to adjudicate the case and the facts at hand, and
(24:27):
the case in the facts at hand with the Menendez
brothers had nothing to do with them being abused. It
really didn't. What it had to do with was in
the moment when you raised the gun and shot your parents.
Were you an imminent threat of life ending danger? Was
there an imminent threat in front of you, because then
you can self defend, right, That was not the scenario.
(24:50):
They were eating ice cream behind closed doors, watching TV,
and the boys were planning and methodically, you know, exacting
a revenge plan or whatever it was, and they loaded
their guns and they secretly, secretly got the guns, and
they brought them in and they opened those doors, and
(25:12):
these unsuspecting two parents, as heinous as they may have been,
were shot dead. So as heinous as they may have been,
America has a justice system to take care of that.
We don't have the Gilante justice. We're not allowed to
just go and do what we want to avenge what
doesn't work well with our lives, right. It doesn't work
(25:34):
that way. If they were children, then I could understand this.
They weren't children. They had other ways of escaping. They
had one of them didn't even live at home. They
had other means by which they could go about getting
justice right. And I get it. I'm not heartless. I
(25:55):
believe that they were molested. I believe that Jose Menendez
was a terrible, terrible man. But we live in a
society of laws. We just do. When you're a child,
you might not understand that, but when you're an adult,
even twenty one or nineteen, you have to abide by it.
You can't just go killing, and you know who else
can't just go killing. Luigi Mangioni. He can't just go
(26:17):
killing because something isn't working out well for him.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, it's very interesting with that separation from his friends
and family, you know, during the summer of this year,
just tells me something went off the rails with him.
Whether it be you know, some kind of chronic pain issue,
it can drive you crazy. I've dealt with chronic pain.
But there's so much to unpack there and so much
to learn. Did he maybe have a mental break? Did
(26:42):
he have some kind of an adult onset mental illness
which we know it seems he may have been dabbling
with psychedelics to help with the pain. And I'm just
very interested to watch this one go through the court system,
and you're going to have your podcast to tell us
the whole story.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, tell you one thing about this business, Luigi going
off the rails. I fully understand he may have had
a psychotic break over something. Whether it was pain based,
I'm not so sure. Because the Luigi Mangioni that I
witnessed in the last week is someone who allegedly was
able to run from an execution, ride from an execution,
(27:20):
make his way in a cab to a bus, and
travel for five days, and then fight like hell with
escorting guards taking him into a courthouse. That's not somebody
with the kind of debilitating pain that goes over the edge.
Not judged by me, judged by the orthopedic spine surgeon
(27:43):
that I asked to watch all of the video that
we have all Luigi Maggione say, is this the kind
of person who's dealing with this kind of pain that
might make him crazy? And he said, no, I have
patients who truly can't get out of the case, or
if they get out of the cab, they've got to
adjust for a bit and they've got to try to
(28:04):
stand up straight. But this guy is nimble and quick,
and that doesn't suggest the kind of pain that again
would speak to a mitigation of charges or sentence, or
diminished capacity or temporary insanity, whatever it is you want
to call it. I'm not so sure this guy has
that as a defense.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, And that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
And you know, one friend did speak out and say,
you know, his theory was maybe he just got radicalized
reading things online about health insurance companies.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
It's going to be interesting to watch.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Social justice warrior. Yeah, could be right, could because I'll
tell you something else. That didn't drive them over the edge,
they might drive the rest of us over the edge.
I got a forty two hundred dollars denial last week
from my health care insurance company, forty two hundred dollars
on the same week that that happened. I was livid.
Right now. I could pay it. I have a good job,
(28:55):
and I can pay it. But I know that that
could destroy some people. I know that could mean they
might not be able to eat, or they might have
to take their kids out a hockey or whatever it is.
I know people who have lost loved ones because they
couldn't afford the medicine. I know people who could bankrupt
it and lost their homes because of their illness. That's
not Luigimangioi. Luigimangioni. Whatever happened with his family, they might
(29:18):
not buy him a Tesla if they're mad at them,
but they're not going to cut him off from health care.
That kid didn't suffer the kind of ills that would
send the rest of us over the edge into a
diminished capacity. I think there's something else at foot here,
and maybe there's a mental illness, but he can't hook
it on the health care industry.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, I think
everybody's had a denial. I mean, there's an injection I
should be taking every month, But guess what is a
house payment?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yes, not possible, that's right.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And you know, one time you get sick and they
don't give you the coverage that you pay for, that
could be generational debt. I mean. So yeah, he's worlds
away from the average American as far as the ability
to pay for even denied coverage.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
With well and from getting and from getting that angry.
Like you and I and others who have had these
things happen, we can get angry, but I just can't
see somebody who comes from such a wealthy family, who's
had everything given to him, including private school and University
of Pennsylvania. I can't see the angst that would lead
(30:22):
you to have a mental breakdown or a detachment in
some way or go over the edge.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, now I agree, it's going to be an interesting
one to watch unfold. So just finishing up here, what
do you do to just decompress from everything that we eat, sleep,
and breathe on a regular basis due to what we do,
which is true crime.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
It's kind of crazy. So I work really late. My
show's on at ten till eleven at night, I'm not
cleared out of the studio and files done and emails
answered until one or two in the morning, and then
I watched TV until about four or five in the morning.
It's weird, and watch the comedies. I watched the Late
night Comedians. I've taped them all and so I watched
(31:04):
them one after the other because I just love watching
their monologues. And when that runs out, then I like
watching below Deck.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Low Deck. You sound like me.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I'll watch the most random stuff on YouTube. So one
night I may watch some person in Japan doing a
sushi conveyor belt. I mean, the next night I might
be watching them make cheese and the Swiss Alps.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
It's just too set.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
But that's that's kind of my escape, because it does
get heavy and marked.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Is long, you know, producing an hour long television show
is a lot, and then throwing the podcast on top
of that, it's you know, it's from wake up to
go to sleep is I feel like that's the work day.
And so after the live deadline's over at eleven at night,
that's when I finally feel like, oh, yeah, I don't
have that thing that's coming, you know. I caught that
(31:53):
train and so being able to watch a little mind
numbing television is is kind of nice. And then apart
from that, in the winter, I ski, and I don't
just ski. I really ski like I'm crazy. I go
very very fast and nice. It's my thing. I was
a ski racer once upon a time, and.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I grew up in Canada, so yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I and I grew up for for a while there.
I was living in the mountains too, in Whistler and
in Lake Louis, so I was on a couple of
ski teams and stuff. So I absolutely love it, and
I love that Sometimes the weather is really awful and
you'll see everybody going into the lodge and warming up
or getting dry, and I'm out there and I.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Don't love to ski.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
The last time though, I had to get strapped on
the board of shame and brought halfway down the mountain
and I'm like, I'm done. That's it, and I was
looking at me and I'm.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Like, I hope you wrotekay, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
So the last question I have for you, if you
were not a journalist, what would be your dream job?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Mmmm? Safari pilot, you know, because man, did they see
some things? I mean, gosh, I went to Kenya two
years ago and I was up in those planes with
those Safari pilots, thinking I should just chuck it all
into this. This is so miraculous. I'm sure they have
(33:19):
their hard days too, and there's quite a bit of
risk that goes with that as well. But yeah, that
might be it. But I'm really lucky for thirty six
years I've been doing this and I found my calling early.
Thank you Jesus for that, because not everybody finds what
they love right away, and so I've been You know,
I've been lucky in that respect. And there are days
(33:40):
when I'm so exhausted and I just want to chuck it,
but generally speaking, I really do love what I do.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, you're lucky you found it early. It took me
till forty four. Wow, I was forty three when I
started this podcast. So but you know, I've made a
home here and I'll love it.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
But good at it, girl, you are, and.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You've been so kind to me and I'm super grateful
for anytime you ask me on and I totally respect you.
You are one of my heroes in this industry. So again,
when does this podcast debut.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Or credit where it's due first, and then podcast debuts
on the twenty third of January. You can get you
get it wherever you find your podcast. It's also YouTube compatible,
so the series is all visual as well. It's like Dateline.
It's I mean, I spent a year building it and
producing it. So the five part series that's what starts
the podcast weekly and then there'll be this weekly podcast
(34:34):
continuing after that. So drop dead serious on January twenty third,
Get it wherever you find them.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Can't wait, cannot wait. It's going to be amazing. And
I appreciate you coming on here so much. It means
a lot, and hope to see you soon back on
your playground.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yeah you know it, girl, open invitation. Thank you for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
This is so sweetish, I really tell you it actually
so much.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
All right, see you see you on the tube soon.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's it. Thanks,
What you know, Alibiers.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Welcome to a very special episode of Pretty Lies and Alibis.
I'm Gigi, and today we have the Ashley Banfield on
the show. We're going to talk about her new podcast,
Drop Dead Sirius, which launches on January twenty third. I'm
going to put that link in the description, so run
and subscribe right now so you don't miss a minute.
(00:23):
We also talk about cases old and new from John Boney,
Ramsey and OJ to Luigi MANGIONI hope.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You guys enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I had a blast talking to one of my favorite
people in true crime, and we will see you soon.
Ashley Banfield, one of my favorites in true crime, right
here on Pretty Lies and Alibis.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is so good to have you here. I appreciate
you coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm so excited you are starting your own podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I am, but I'm not going to talk about that
before I talk about you, because I'm like a fangirl.
I remember, you know, leading up to the Lori Bello case,
listen to all of your podcasts and it was I
was in a trance because A you're such a good journalist.
B you're such a good storyteller and see I love
your accent so much, and it's like I could just
(01:13):
like I'd prefer to listen to you the music. So
I'm super excited to be to be on your podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well that means a lot. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sometimes I get really going and I say, I speak banjo,
especially if I get to go on on something, so
I try to tone it down, but it comes out
a lot. And speaking a podcasts, I mean, you're starting one.
I saw this at Crime Con actually the big banner
for it, and I was wondering what was going on,
And you're about ready to launch.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Tell us all about this podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, So I'm I'm launching on January twenty third. It's
been a year in the making. It's going to be
a weekly podcast every Thursday talking about true crime and
all the work that I'm doing on my show, and
you know, we're literally in the sausage making of criminal
procedure as it you know, goes and into its resolution.
But I'm kicking it off with a five part series
(02:05):
that I've worked on for a year, and the podcast
is called drop Dead Serious. That's what you're going to
be tuning into every Thursday. But the series that I'm
dropping first is called Uncle Peter, and it's about I believe,
the worst sex predator ever to roam maybe the earth.
He's a billionaire, a clothing magnate who used his company
(02:27):
and his prestige and his money and his power to
rate potentially thousands of women. If you took Epstein and
Weinstein and Cosby and Diddy and you put them all
on a pal Peter niguard, his numbers would be bigger.
He would dwarf them combined, combined. And so the reason
that I'm doing the story about him, because a lot
(02:48):
of Americans don't know about him, is that I grew
up with him. I called him Uncle Peter. He was
my best friend's uncle, and so I spent a lot
of time with Uncle Peter. And at the time, back
in the seventies and eighties, he was like a Hugh Hefner, right,
very flamboyant, had women on every arm at all times.
He'd show up for Christmas dinner with three scantily clad women.
(03:11):
I mean, this was just kind of the guy he was.
And I remember thinking back then it was like skibee,
but it was Hugh Hefnery, which wasn't criminal. It was
just the way it is bad boys. You know, certain
men behaved that way and they're considered studs, ladies, man, whatever.
It was. Looking back with the prism now and knowing
(03:31):
about all these complainants and accusers and then those who
are truly victims because he's been convicted, the red flags
are everywhere. I just wish that back then we knew
what red flags were, and we knew what sex predators were,
because I'd never even heard the term sex predator back
in those days.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, it is scary because those weren't conversations we were
having back in the seventies, eighties, even into the early nineties.
It was just sort of something that was pushed under
the rug if it was known. And and you know,
it's terrifying the numbers that we don't know of people
who have been victims throughout, you know, decades of just
having to hide it because there's almost been a stigma
(04:11):
attached to being a victim, which is I'm glad that
narrative is changing now, but it was just not something
we talked about back then.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh absolutely. And by the way, it was considered a
badge of honor. I mean, I remember Peter, there was
there was no shame in showing up for your family's
Christmas dinner with three women. There was no shame in
showing up to job sites where he'd maybe be building
a new store with six women. I mean, that's that
was his brand. And it wasn't just for show. He
(04:39):
literally had a he had a sex you know, defect
in him and needed so much sex that he would
take it whenever he wanted it, and he felt narcissistically
like he had the power to get it no matter what.
I think a lot of women wanted to hang on,
wanted to be the next Missus Niguard, wanted to be
(05:00):
in that on that private jet and in that wealthy world,
and then boom, it would just come out of nowhere.
He would attack. And he was not a He was
not the kind of date rapist that would come upon
you slowly. It was violent. These assaults were violent and vicious,
and as he went through his life they became even
(05:23):
more sinister because he would start targeting kids, and he
would target poor kids. Because he had this massive layer
in the Bahamas. It was like a Robinson Crusoe treehouse
that was five acres big, five acres of house. You know,
that was like all these thatched you know, ben is
all intermingled and connected together with waterfalls and underground pools.
(05:44):
And it was seventy million dollars. And so he was
able to lure a lot of the young girls from
the poorer part of the Bahamas who would get an
invitation to come to a party at the richest place
in town and life for key of course, they would
want to come to these parties and that, and then
they would be drugged at the parties and they would
be raped, and many times viciously and violently. And he also,
(06:06):
gosh gg he had such a sick kink. He had
a fascination with feces. And so many of his victims
said the same thing happened to them that it was
much of his sex kink was based on a feces fascination.
And so, you know, they went through a lot of hell,
a lot of these women. And I've got a lot
(06:28):
of the inside trove of evidence and photos and videos
and letters and phone calls and all sorts of stuff
that'll be coming out in the series.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, you know, And that's the one thing I love
about podcasting is you're not bound by a certain time limit.
You can tell the whole story. And that's what true
crime listeners crave today. They don't want just the five
minutes we can give them, they want episodes on it
and think, I can't wait to listen to this now
(06:58):
aside from this case, are you gonna do more current
cases in the future? Are you gonna you're gonna follow
work in the news?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, So basically the drop dead Serious brand, which is
launching Thursday, the twenty third of January, that will be
my podcast. But I'm going to start with these episodes
and then when that when that's done, every single Thursday,
we'll be talking about the case of the moment like this,
you know, like this kid uh Luigi Maggioni. That would
(07:29):
be one of the top you know, topics that we
would that we would book and wrestle with on a
weekly podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, and I mean that case right now is everywhere.
And because he's just such an unassuming defendant, you know,
you know, the money was there, should he need money
to pay for care?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you have to wonder what went wrong?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And no, that's every generation online TikTok obsessed, your middle
aged housewives obsessed. My ninety year old grandmother obsessed with
this case, I think because it does kind of go
out of the norm. There's not a cookie cutter mold
for a murderer alleged murderer. But with this this is
a young man, good looking, he had tons of money,
(08:13):
very smart. You know, you almost think why didn't you
fight it? With what he had here up in his
head and the ability in his status with his family.
Very intriguing, And you know, you picked a really good
time to launch this podcast because we have some major
cases going to trial.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh do we ever? I mean, you know Idaho that's
going to go to trial. I mean, I hope. I'm
not sure to go to trial on the date planned
in August right now. But my suspicion is with you know,
four murders and four death penalties, there may be some
delays on that one, but I don't think by much.
And you know, this case in particular, I can't see
(08:52):
this being a trial. I'm you know, Luigi Maggioni is
gonna I think that his best course of action now
would be a plea deal in throwing self with the
mercy of the judge. Because Gigi, the cases that you
and I cover. I mean, we see convictions based on
one strong piece of evidence, right, like, oh, your fingerprints
are on the bottle discarded at the scene on video,
(09:13):
you're guilty. This guy has over fifteen I think smoking guns,
including an actual smoking gun. But there's the ID that
was found on and that was used to book into
the hostel in New York on his person well arrested.
There's a manifesto saying why he does this kind of thing.
There's a spiral notebook with the notes of where Brian
Thompson was going to be at every minute that morning
(09:35):
and which entrance and which meeting room he was going
to be in. That is a smoking gun. There is
the jacket and the actual scarf mask that he was
wearing when he was arrested on video in the cab
making his flight out of New York. There's the bullet
casings matching the gun that was found on him, that
smoking gun. I could go on and on, but one
(09:58):
of these pieces of evidence could be enough for a conviction.
All of them together, forget it. It's game over.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, it's huge, But yet you have a certain part
of the population that say, oh, he was set up,
he's a Patsy. It always blows my mind to read
these comments and people. You know, it's interesting to me
to read everybody's take. But it's like, this is not
necessarily the case where you want to say he was
set up.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, and even if you're set up, you still did it. Listen,
he is presumed innocent. But even if somebody wants to
suggest a conspiracy that he was set up, okay, then
let's find the others. But in the meantime we'll deal
with a hitman.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
You know, what always stands out to me is everybody
who is saying it's not him is people who don't
know him. We haven't heard one family member, one friend
say yeah, that doesn't look like him.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
In those photos. That's very telling.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But then moving on, we have Lori Valo representing herself
starting March thirty first, in the conspiracy to commit murder
for Charles Valo.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Can you even I mean, in my line of work,
that's mana from heaven. First of all, the fact that
we're going to be able to see her, hear her,
get inside her head for the first time, and she
tries to defend herself in court, in and in a
jurisdiction that allows cameras. Thank you, so yay. On the
other side of the coin, my legal mind says, oh, Laurie,
(11:21):
you know, a man who has himself for a lawyer
has a fool for a client. It's the worst possible
thing you could do. But then again, could it really
get that much worse?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Now we've seen a lot of the documents out of Chandler,
and I know Kay Woodcock is excited that she's going
to do that because she has to sit there and
look at Kay and talk to her.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And also Kay finally gets to show the world who
this woman really is because you know, she's been very
protected by the legal system. Idaho kept her under wraps.
We weren't allowed love cameras in the courtroom that could
really watch what was happening. And so I think Kay
is thrilled to finally be able to put this woman
out on display, to say she's a kill she's a
cold blooded murderer. And that's I'm not even jumping ahead
(12:05):
of a case. She's already convicted of it thrice over.
So yeah, So I think, you know, I think good
for Kay to be able to stomach it and then
be able to share, you know, what she's been going
through with the rest.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of the world exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And I look, I said, if I had to walk
from Greenville, South Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona, I will pack
my bag and start the road. I will be there
to watch that in person. It's going to be the
hot Mess Express.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
You know, that's Express, That's Express.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
She is the captain of the hot Mess Express. And
then we have the sheriff Mickey Steins that killed the
judge in chambers on video. That's one to watch. I
think there is so much that's going to come out
later this so much.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I mean so. Alison Weiner is a producer who works
for News Nation. That girl could dig. She is such
a good journalist. She's discovered a piece of audio tape
that was recorded during one of the depositions in the case.
Let's go back before the execution in the chambers. That
(13:15):
chambers was used for sex for favors, and some of
the women who were being given favors in female inmates
were being given either ankle monitors or being let out
of jail if they had sex with a sheriff's deputy
in that judge's chambers. So some of the women were deposed,
and Elson Weiner got one of the tapes and the
(13:38):
inmate says, yeah, I saw that happen. Actually a lot.
Wasn't just the deputy who was convicted of it in
a serving time, it was also the judge. And the
question was what do you mean, like the judge was
there watching, And it was that the judge was there
having sex as well with inmates. So it sure does
open up a whole new can of work as to
(14:00):
why Mickey Steins might have wanted the judge not to
talk in his upcoming deposition. Right, maybe maybe Judge Mullins
wasn't the only one having sex with the inmates and
the other convicted Sheriff's deputy. Maybe there's something to Sheriff
Stein's as well.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, and now think I heard on that audio essentially
he was running that those chambers like a brathel.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, and I hate to speak ill of the victimized dead,
but if that's really what was happening, Dear Christ, you know,
who knows what's to come in the in the trial.
And maybe maybe Mickey Stein's will plead and therefore this
will stay fairly quiet. But then again, I don't sense
(14:45):
that it can stay quiet for long.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I don't think so, and I feel so bad for
his poor wife, you know, just probably learning all of
this with us has to be devastating. And so is
there one case that is stuck with you over the years.
You've been doing true crime for very long time? What
two thousand and five issue started true crime full time?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Let's see, I would say, yeah, two thousand and five. Yes,
because I started working at Court TV in early two
thousand and five, and then I had my first child.
And it was funny because I had my first baby
almost my first week of working there and had to
go on maternity, you know, but I had been I
(15:25):
had been filling in and doing freelance work for them
for about eight months beforehand. So yeah, two thousand How
did you know that I had to think it through?
How did you know that I.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Did a little research?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
But I also remember I had my first child in
two thousand and five, and so I was a stay
at home mom watching court TV. And that's that's really
when I started following you in the true crime world,
you know, before the very famous nine to eleven picture
of you where you were there as the towers collapsed,
and I'd followed you before that. But really, when you
(15:56):
hit Court TV is when I was like, wow, I
love I love her style. So I had a little
baby at home and so that that's.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Really when we both have nineteen year olds.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yes, my daughter just moved to New Orleans. I'm not
doing well. I'm not struggling.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
So that's so funny you should say that because my
son moved to Syracuse for college and I'm good.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, you know, it's like eleven o'clock at night. I
look on three sixties, she's not home. I'm like, are
you safe? And she's like, Mom, I'm having coffee.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You gotta get this must be.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
The difference between having boys and girls or I'm just
a lousy mom. But I feel like he's you know,
maybe a lot of it is that I went away
to college at age seventeen and he's nineteen, and so
I kind of feel like, dude, you got two years
on me, you're and you got your six feet And
I was like, you know, so I feel like he's
he's got this, you know, and it's so weird. I
(16:50):
thought I was going to need to talk to him
every single day, and I'm come, okay, if a day
or two goes by. I mean I text and I
don't get the response. I'm like, okay, right, and if
it's two or three days, then I say that's it. Call.
I need to know everything's okay. He's also got to
a roommate too, so I know that there's another set
of eyes on him.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah, her as well. But yeah, so my son's graduating
this year. I have went back to back and too,
he's like, I'm just going to stay home until I
get married. So I got I have a thirteen year
old this going into high school next year, So I
got a ways to go in the mom rearing years.
But yeah, so I feel you on that. But is
there one case that has really stuck with you over
(17:28):
the years that you've covered.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
It's going to sound trat there's two OJ because I
truly could not believe that a jury would do that,
and I have come to learn, based on my partner
at Court TV, Jack Ford, who had interviewed all the
OJ jurors, that they truly a did not understand DNA
(17:50):
evidence because it was crystal clear to Jack when he
asked them they didn't understand it. They didn't understand what
had happened. Over the nine months. I mean, they just
threw so much spaghetti at them they were drowning in it.
So that upset me because had had Marsha Clark and
team just been kept this kiss principle right, keep it simple, stupid,
(18:14):
then we might have had a conviction there. And I
will go to my death saying, oh, j Simpson's guilty murder.
I don't care what the jury said. I really don't.
And consequently, since then, since the interview where Jack discovered
they just didn't understand much of the evidence. They have
even gone so far as to say that it was payback.
They admitted it, some of them. So that's devastating. That
(18:38):
sticks with me. The other one is Casey Anthony because
I was in the courtroom every single day and when
I see people say they got it wrong, the jury
did not get it wrong. The jury didn't get it wrong.
The prosecutors got it wrong. The prosecutors went ape shit,
and they should have prosecuted the case they had and
(19:02):
they would have had a conviction against Casey Anthony. But
because they went so far and beyond trying to make
her out to be Jeffrey Dahmer and looking for the
death penalty. They lost it. They shot from the moon.
They didn't even end up in the stars, and so
that sits with me for that reason, but not because
of the jury. They were asked to do something that
(19:23):
was really unfair. They were asked to jump over this
chasm of missing evidence from good mom. I mean, she
was a young mom and a partier, but she wasn't
a bad mom. She never raised a hand on that girl.
There was no evidence ever her doing anything abusive to
that child. Right, you want them to jump over the
(19:44):
chasm to her pasting the tape down over her mouth
and nose and holding it till she's suffocated, looking her
right in the eye. That's a bit of a leap.
Give me something else, Give me some other theory that
could have got me to Casey did something to this
child and caused her to die, and she needs to
pay for what she's done. But they didn't do that.
(20:04):
They went they went all out, and they thought that
they could pull the wool over the juror's eyes and
just ask them to leap blindly over that big chasm.
And they couldn't. And I understood why.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, that makes sense, you know, And what's interesting to
me is we're starting to see this resurgence of cases
from the nineties, like the Menindez brothers, John Benny Ramsay,
those are making their way back into the news, and
it's just it's like deja vu all over again, seeing
the TV full of the U a.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Different lens, right, We're looking at it with a different lens. Right,
So we're looking at Menendez through the lens of social
justice and the fact that we do understand that some
parents do sexually abuse their kids. We didn't believe that
in the eighties, no matter how much they cried BOLONEI
must be a lie, must be a fake, and they
(20:54):
were made fun of on us and l oh, yeah,
this really happened today, right, So we're seeing that and
then in John Benever see something else. We're seeing how
police truly can get so tunnel visioned that they'll actually
commit malice. Right, they will leak lies to the press
(21:16):
in their tunnel vision, and the press, believing their government
and believing that this is what police say, will report
it went with it and we had, you know, the
beginnings of cable news, which just you know, this proliferated
this story and it victimized the Ramsey family over and
over and over again.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I tell you, I watched that documentary on Netflix
with my daughter the last time she was home, and
she was so angry by the end. She just you know,
I had actually met John Ramsey waiting to do your
show at Crome Con and what a sweetheart. Yes, just
a great guy. I've never thought the family did it.
I do believe the intruder theory.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Me too, because Elizabeth Smart was taken by a boogeyman
and Jessica Lunsford was taken by a boogieyman, and I
could go on and on. You know, Amber Hagerman, she's
the genesis of the amberl are taken by a boogeyman.
So some of these cases you just have to understand.
It may not look plausible, but we know it is.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
We know it is.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We know these people go into occupied homes in the
middle of the night and take children from their beds.
And Olie Klass taken from a home during a sleepover.
It happens, right, And I think that there's just a
pitchfork mentality sometimes in the nation wants blood, and a
lot of times that gets out of hand and people
(22:42):
forget that these are real people. They're not just images
on TV. They're real people with real feelings and real
families that get destroyed. And I will second you on
John Ramsey. I've known him for twenty years and he
is a kind good man. He really is. He's so
kind and he's so wholesome, and no one ever, you know,
(23:02):
was made to believe he was.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and you know, and back in those days, we
didn't have the Internet, so you really couldn't go find
the information for yourself to draw your own conclusions. With
Menendez and John Bennet, there was a very slanted media
angle they were using in these cases and people. It's
interesting because if I talk to somebody my age, I'm
forty seven, so middle aged housewives think no, they should
(23:25):
never get out. But you talked to the younger generation,
like you talked about earlier, a new set of eyes
where the younger people it's not a shame to be
a victim of molestation to where we just didn't talk
about it. It's nice to see some new life breathed
into these cases, and.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
To it makes sense. Yeah, I'll only coach that in
I love the new life, and I love the new perspective,
and I love the bigger aperture on human behavior and
human dynamics. I do love that. Yeah, Well, they don't
love is when somebody grabs a headline off social media
and runs with it, like free the Menendez brothers without
going through the facts. I'm not necessarily fully on board
(24:06):
with freeing the Menendez brothers in a way, I am
because I feel bad for them, Okay, but that's not
That's not how we operate in criminal justice. When we
feel bad for someone, we can't just nullify. We're not
supposed to just nullify on the jury, right, We're supposed
to adjudicate the case and the facts at hand, and
(24:27):
the case in the facts at hand with the Menendez
brothers had nothing to do with them being abused. It
really didn't. What it had to do with was in
the moment when you raised the gun and shot your parents.
Were you an imminent threat of life ending danger? Was
there an imminent threat in front of you, because then
you can self defend, right, That was not the scenario.
(24:50):
They were eating ice cream behind closed doors, watching TV,
and the boys were planning and methodically, you know, exacting
a revenge plan or whatever it was, and they loaded
their guns and they secretly, secretly got the guns, and
they brought them in and they opened those doors, and
(25:12):
these unsuspecting two parents, as heinous as they may have been,
were shot dead. So as heinous as they may have been,
America has a justice system to take care of that.
We don't have the Gilante justice. We're not allowed to
just go and do what we want to avenge what
doesn't work well with our lives, right. It doesn't work
(25:34):
that way. If they were children, then I could understand this.
They weren't children. They had other ways of escaping. They
had one of them didn't even live at home. They
had other means by which they could go about getting
justice right. And I get it. I'm not heartless. I
(25:55):
believe that they were molested. I believe that Jose Menendez
was a terrible, terrible man. But we live in a
society of laws. We just do. When you're a child,
you might not understand that, but when you're an adult,
even twenty one or nineteen, you have to abide by it.
You can't just go killing, and you know who else
can't just go killing. Luigi Mangioni. He can't just go
(26:17):
killing because something isn't working out well for him.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, it's very interesting with that separation from his friends
and family, you know, during the summer of this year,
just tells me something went off the rails with him.
Whether it be you know, some kind of chronic pain issue,
it can drive you crazy. I've dealt with chronic pain.
But there's so much to unpack there and so much
to learn. Did he maybe have a mental break? Did
(26:42):
he have some kind of an adult onset mental illness
which we know it seems he may have been dabbling
with psychedelics to help with the pain. And I'm just
very interested to watch this one go through the court system,
and you're going to have your podcast to tell us
the whole story.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, tell you one thing about this business, Luigi going
off the rails. I fully understand he may have had
a psychotic break over something. Whether it was pain based,
I'm not so sure. Because the Luigi Mangioni that I
witnessed in the last week is someone who allegedly was
able to run from an execution, ride from an execution,
(27:20):
make his way in a cab to a bus, and
travel for five days, and then fight like hell with
escorting guards taking him into a courthouse. That's not somebody
with the kind of debilitating pain that goes over the edge.
Not judged by me, judged by the orthopedic spine surgeon
(27:43):
that I asked to watch all of the video that
we have all Luigi Maggione say, is this the kind
of person who's dealing with this kind of pain that
might make him crazy? And he said, no, I have
patients who truly can't get out of the case, or
if they get out of the cab, they've got to
adjust for a bit and they've got to try to
(28:04):
stand up straight. But this guy is nimble and quick,
and that doesn't suggest the kind of pain that again
would speak to a mitigation of charges or sentence, or
diminished capacity or temporary insanity, whatever it is you want
to call it. I'm not so sure this guy has
that as a defense.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, And that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
And you know, one friend did speak out and say,
you know, his theory was maybe he just got radicalized
reading things online about health insurance companies.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
It's going to be interesting to watch.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Social justice warrior. Yeah, could be right, could because I'll
tell you something else. That didn't drive them over the edge,
they might drive the rest of us over the edge.
I got a forty two hundred dollars denial last week
from my health care insurance company, forty two hundred dollars
on the same week that that happened. I was livid.
Right now. I could pay it. I have a good job,
(28:55):
and I can pay it. But I know that that
could destroy some people. I know that could mean they
might not be able to eat, or they might have
to take their kids out a hockey or whatever it is.
I know people who have lost loved ones because they
couldn't afford the medicine. I know people who could bankrupt
it and lost their homes because of their illness. That's
not Luigimangioi. Luigimangioni. Whatever happened with his family, they might
(29:18):
not buy him a Tesla if they're mad at them,
but they're not going to cut him off from health care.
That kid didn't suffer the kind of ills that would
send the rest of us over the edge into a
diminished capacity. I think there's something else at foot here,
and maybe there's a mental illness, but he can't hook
it on the health care industry.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, I think
everybody's had a denial. I mean, there's an injection I
should be taking every month, But guess what is a
house payment?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yes, not possible, that's right.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And you know, one time you get sick and they
don't give you the coverage that you pay for, that
could be generational debt. I mean. So yeah, he's worlds
away from the average American as far as the ability
to pay for even denied coverage.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
With well and from getting and from getting that angry.
Like you and I and others who have had these
things happen, we can get angry, but I just can't
see somebody who comes from such a wealthy family, who's
had everything given to him, including private school and University
of Pennsylvania. I can't see the angst that would lead
(30:22):
you to have a mental breakdown or a detachment in
some way or go over the edge.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, now I agree, it's going to be an interesting
one to watch unfold. So just finishing up here, what
do you do to just decompress from everything that we eat, sleep,
and breathe on a regular basis due to what we do,
which is true crime.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
It's kind of crazy. So I work really late. My
show's on at ten till eleven at night, I'm not
cleared out of the studio and files done and emails
answered until one or two in the morning, and then
I watched TV until about four or five in the morning.
It's weird, and watch the comedies. I watched the Late
night Comedians. I've taped them all and so I watched
(31:04):
them one after the other because I just love watching
their monologues. And when that runs out, then I like
watching below Deck.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Low Deck. You sound like me.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I'll watch the most random stuff on YouTube. So one
night I may watch some person in Japan doing a
sushi conveyor belt. I mean, the next night I might
be watching them make cheese and the Swiss Alps.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
It's just too set.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
But that's that's kind of my escape, because it does
get heavy and marked.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Is long, you know, producing an hour long television show
is a lot, and then throwing the podcast on top
of that, it's you know, it's from wake up to
go to sleep is I feel like that's the work day.
And so after the live deadline's over at eleven at night,
that's when I finally feel like, oh, yeah, I don't
have that thing that's coming, you know. I caught that
(31:53):
train and so being able to watch a little mind
numbing television is is kind of nice. And then apart
from that, in the winter, I ski, and I don't
just ski. I really ski like I'm crazy. I go
very very fast and nice. It's my thing. I was
a ski racer once upon a time, and.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I grew up in Canada, so yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I and I grew up for for a while there.
I was living in the mountains too, in Whistler and
in Lake Louis, so I was on a couple of
ski teams and stuff. So I absolutely love it, and
I love that Sometimes the weather is really awful and
you'll see everybody going into the lodge and warming up
or getting dry, and I'm out there and I.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Don't love to ski.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
The last time though, I had to get strapped on
the board of shame and brought halfway down the mountain
and I'm like, I'm done. That's it, and I was
looking at me and I'm.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Like, I hope you wrotekay, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
So the last question I have for you, if you
were not a journalist, what would be your dream job?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Mmmm? Safari pilot, you know, because man, did they see
some things? I mean, gosh, I went to Kenya two
years ago and I was up in those planes with
those Safari pilots, thinking I should just chuck it all
into this. This is so miraculous. I'm sure they have
(33:19):
their hard days too, and there's quite a bit of
risk that goes with that as well. But yeah, that
might be it. But I'm really lucky for thirty six
years I've been doing this and I found my calling early.
Thank you Jesus for that, because not everybody finds what
they love right away, and so I've been You know,
I've been lucky in that respect. And there are days
(33:40):
when I'm so exhausted and I just want to chuck it,
but generally speaking, I really do love what I do.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, you're lucky you found it early. It took me
till forty four. Wow, I was forty three when I
started this podcast. So but you know, I've made a
home here and I'll love it.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
But good at it, girl, you are, and.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You've been so kind to me and I'm super grateful
for anytime you ask me on and I totally respect you.
You are one of my heroes in this industry. So again,
when does this podcast debut.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Or credit where it's due first, and then podcast debuts
on the twenty third of January. You can get you
get it wherever you find your podcast. It's also YouTube compatible,
so the series is all visual as well. It's like Dateline.
It's I mean, I spent a year building it and
producing it. So the five part series that's what starts
the podcast weekly and then there'll be this weekly podcast
(34:34):
continuing after that. So drop dead serious on January twenty third,
Get it wherever you find them.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Can't wait, cannot wait. It's going to be amazing. And
I appreciate you coming on here so much. It means
a lot, and hope to see you soon back on
your playground.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yeah you know it, girl, open invitation. Thank you for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
This is so sweetish, I really tell you it actually
so much.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
All right, see you see you on the tube soon.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's it. Thanks,
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