Latest / Chuck Douglas / Marrying your cousin is legal in Florida

Transcript

Marrying your cousin is legal in Florida · Chuck Douglas

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  Speaker 1: I was looking at pictures here of the Adobe Theater
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  Speaker 1: where they had the Oscars the other night. Did you
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  Speaker 1: see that the Time magazine posted pictures of the theater
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  Speaker 1: after all the glamorous Hollywood people left. Yeah, they trashed it.
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  Speaker 1: If you're familiar with the old dollar theaters that we
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  Speaker 1: had in the eighties, where you go see a movie
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  Speaker 1: and stick to the floor as you walked in, miss, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's what this place looks like. I mean, absolute trashed
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  Speaker 1: all of this, this glamorous theater, this big, glamorous event,
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  Speaker 1: and these Hollywood types just left all kinds of garbage
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  Speaker 1: laying around. How oh my gosh, that's I mean, you know,
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  Speaker 1: no matter how pretty you are, you know, at least
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  Speaker 1: one of them burped out loud in front of people
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  Speaker 1: that night. Yeah, it's one of those things. Now, I
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  Speaker 1: told you a disgusting story is coming up, and this
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  Speaker 1: is this is a this is just a freaky story
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  Speaker 1: that is also disgusting. You ready, I'm ready. I sent
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  Speaker 1: a link to the Did you already read this? Okay? Okay?
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  Speaker 1: Richard made Edge, I believe it is fifty three, father
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  Speaker 1: of three adult children and grandfather of three, disappeared on
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  Speaker 1: April twenty six, twenty twenty two. Earlier that afternoon, he
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  Speaker 1: called Jennifer, his wife nearly of two decades, to say
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  Speaker 1: that he was leaving work early and heading home. When
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer returned that day to the house in Troy, Illinois,
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  Speaker 1: she found Richard's car in the driveway, but there was
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  Speaker 1: no sign of him inside the home. After trying to
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  Speaker 1: reach him and checking with family members, Jennifer contacted the
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  Speaker 1: Troy Police Department the following day and reported him missing.
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  Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe he took a walk, maybe he
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  Speaker 1: was stressed out, she told People Magazine. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 1: not something that he would normally do, but then again,
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  Speaker 1: you never know what people will do. Police launched the
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  Speaker 1: search almost immediately began walking through the home, described by
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  Speaker 1: Chief Deputy Corner Kelly Rodgers as a hoarder home. Hoarder
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  Speaker 1: is a strong word. He was more I would consider
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  Speaker 1: more of a pack rat, Jennifer said, explaining her handyman husband.
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  Speaker 1: He worked with an agency that provided care for individuals
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  Speaker 1: with disabilities and didn't want to get rid of anything.
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  Speaker 1: The initial search, complicated by the condition of the residents,
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  Speaker 1: turned up nothing. Officers did notice something unusual inside the house,
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  Speaker 1: of strong odor, investigators described as sewer like. Police cannot
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  Speaker 1: determine where the smell was coming from. As the week's passed,
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  Speaker 1: you know where this is going, don't you. As the
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  Speaker 1: weeks passed and the search produced no answers, the unexplained
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  Speaker 1: odor inside the home remained. When Troy police returned for
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  Speaker 1: a second search, officers again noticed that odor, but couldn't
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  Speaker 1: find its source. Jennifer later explained several factors made it
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  Speaker 1: difficult to pinpoint where the smell was coming from. I
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  Speaker 1: have four dogs and a cat roaming around, so you
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  Speaker 1: get many different smells they're roaming. Isn't what causes the smells,
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  Speaker 1: Jenny just say you know? Then? Also, my sinuses were
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  Speaker 1: bothering me at the time too, So you're trying to
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  Speaker 1: figure things out and you're getting confused at where it's
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  Speaker 1: coming from, she told people. Hoping to solve the problem,
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  Speaker 1: the family called a plumber to inspect the house. According
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  Speaker 1: to Rogers, the plumber identified the odor as sewer gas,
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  Speaker 1: capped one of the pipes in the basement, which appeared
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  Speaker 1: to eliminate the smell. While Jennifer waited for answers, Richard's sister,
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  Speaker 1: Marilyn Tolliver worked to keep attention on her brother's disappearance
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  Speaker 1: from a home in Georgia. She turned to social media,
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  Speaker 1: posting updates even missing person flyers on Facebook almost daily
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  Speaker 1: in hopes that someone might recognize Richard and come forward
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  Speaker 1: with information. By late November, as the holidays approached, the
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  Speaker 1: emotional toll of the search weighed heavily on the family.
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  Speaker 1: In a November thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Facebook post, she wrote,
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  Speaker 1: day two hundred and eighteen, I thought you should know
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  Speaker 1: how the holidays will have a little less shine and
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  Speaker 1: a lot less magic. I thought you should know that
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying my best. I thought you should know that
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  Speaker 1: I talk to you often in hopes that you can
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  Speaker 1: hear me. We search for you each day. I thought
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  Speaker 1: you should know your loved wherever you are. I just
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  Speaker 1: thought you should know. Days later, December eleventh, twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer began preparing the house for Christmas, hoping that the
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  Speaker 1: decorating might bring some comfort after months of uncertainty. I
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  Speaker 1: know it may sound odd, she told People magazine. I
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  Speaker 1: was just trying to figure out the best way to
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  Speaker 1: celebrate the holidays without knowing the whereabouts of my husband.
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  Speaker 1: You know where this is going. Right. While searching for
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  Speaker 1: Christmas decorations, Jennifer pulled aside hanging clothes and reached into
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  Speaker 1: a storage space beneath the staircase, Sweeping a flashlight through
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  Speaker 1: the dark. The beam reveal what investigators had missed. That's
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  Speaker 1: when I discovered him. She said. Richard had struggled with
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  Speaker 1: mental health issues in the past. He'd always gone for
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  Speaker 1: help when he felt himself reaching a breaking place. This
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  Speaker 1: man had gone to the basement of his home and
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  Speaker 1: taken his life. Police had searched the house twice the
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  Speaker 1: families living in the house it was so packed full
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  Speaker 1: of stuff, four dogs, and a cat that they couldn't
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  Speaker 1: figure out the decaying body was causing the smell. After
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  Speaker 1: the discovery authorities examined Richard's remains, Quarter said his remains
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  Speaker 1: reached a mummified state, the process it occurs when fluids evaporate.
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  Speaker 1: Bodies in this condition often produce little odor, which helps
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  Speaker 1: explain why the smell inside the home proved so difficult
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  Speaker 1: to find during the searches. December seventeen, twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: his sister posted a final message about her brother on Facebook.
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  Speaker 1: She said my little brother, Richard, I always thought I
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  Speaker 1: would see you again, and posted a picture of him
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  Speaker 1: as a little boy. She thanked everybody for any help
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  Speaker 1: that they had tried to give and added, it was
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  Speaker 1: the hardest two hundred twenty nine days of our life.
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  Speaker 1: We want to hug all of you. Clean your house.
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  Speaker 1: I mean this is an extreme case, but I you know,
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  Speaker 1: I've seen some stuff and some things, man, And I
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  Speaker 1: know of one house that the couple lived there for
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  Speaker 1: decades and the wife passed away and they began the
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  Speaker 1: clean out process of the house. I believe that's been
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  Speaker 1: going on for about five years now. And these folks
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  Speaker 1: were not you know, they were like crazy people that
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  Speaker 1: you would see on the street, go oh man, something's
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  Speaker 1: wrong with them. Both educated people, both productive people. But
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  Speaker 1: they had a house that was absolutely jammed packed with stuff,
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  Speaker 1: had a couple of vehicles in their driveway that didn't
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  Speaker 1: run but were used as storage units. Had a shed
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  Speaker 1: that was used as a storage unit, a garage used
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  Speaker 1: as a storage unit, and believe it or not, it
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  Speaker 1: had several storage units. Just never got rid of anything.
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  Speaker 1: I was joking with Mark earlier about being a little
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  Speaker 1: OCD place for everything, and everything in its place. And
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  Speaker 1: that's not like that in my world. But my world
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  Speaker 1: is shared with a whole bunch of different people in
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  Speaker 1: the house. So but I will put things on the
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  Speaker 1: Like you go to the grocery store and you bring
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  Speaker 1: in the Canda goods, they're on the I've got them
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  Speaker 1: on the shelves with the labels facing out, so I
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  Speaker 1: can look right at the shelf and know what that.
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  Speaker 2: Is, right, that's the point of label.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I've got like and I separate. I separate,
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  Speaker 1: like corn can go next to peas, but green beans
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  Speaker 1: can't come next because they are also green. I don't
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  Speaker 1: want the green next to the piece because you might
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  Speaker 1: grab a green bean thinking it's a pee. So I'll
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  Speaker 1: do the corn, and then the carrots and then the
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  Speaker 1: green beef. You have a whole system. I just yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I like them organized. I like them organized. In my
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  Speaker 1: perfect world, everything would be like that. But it's not,
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  Speaker 1: and I just have to deal with it. But I'm
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  Speaker 1: one of those people. You know, some people go, you
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  Speaker 1: have to load the dishwasher from the front, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you have to load it from the back. You get
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  Speaker 1: into your groove, and if your groove works for you,
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  Speaker 1: that's fine, but your groove has to be sensible. This
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  Speaker 1: man was dead in the house for two hundred twenty
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  Speaker 1: nine days and the house was so packed full of stuff,
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  Speaker 1: two police searches and a family living there could not
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  Speaker 1: find him.
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  Speaker 2: I just I've always heard the smell is just the
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  Speaker 2: worst thing ever. But I guess if it smells so
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  Speaker 2: bad in your house anyway, I blend z well.
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  Speaker 1: I have to wonder if if you had all that
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  Speaker 1: crap in your house, you probably had crap in your
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  Speaker 1: house because you got four dogs and a cat, and
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  Speaker 1: I'm guessing there there might have been evidence all over
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  Speaker 1: the carpets. I'm just saying, if you're if you're living
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  Speaker 1: in that kind of situation where you can't find a
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  Speaker 1: dead person, you probably have a pretty disastrous house. And
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  Speaker 1: that's just Unfortunately, it's just not unusual anymore. I I've
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  Speaker 1: I've been in some houses. I've shown some houses to people,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm like, how does anybody live here? How do
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  Speaker 1: you do it? And? Uh, this story was just it
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  Speaker 1: was sad, sad and foul. Finally, and my what was
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  Speaker 1: that little slugut I sent you? West Virginia migrates to Florida.
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  Speaker 1: Oh that should be from l d f LA down
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  Speaker 1: in Florida. The Florida Bill to bad why why is this?
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the Florida Bill to ban marrying a
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  Speaker 1: first cousin. See, I can't believe we need a bill
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  Speaker 1: to say, don't do that, to ban marrying a first cousin.
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  Speaker 1: It gets worse. To ban marrying a first cousin failed
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  Speaker 1: to pass in the Florida Senate. We're doomed at we
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  Speaker 1: are so doomed House Bill seven point thirty three, which
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  Speaker 1: stated that after June first, twenty twenty six, incestuous marriage
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  Speaker 1: would not be recognized for any purposes in the state
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  Speaker 1: of Florida. The bill stated that a man may not
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  Speaker 1: marry any woman to whom he is related by.
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  Speaker 2: I don't even I'm looking at.
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  Speaker 1: It by lineal. I don't even know what that means.
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  Speaker 2: Congenuity, Yeah, okay, or his or his sister.
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  Speaker 1: Don't marry your sister, boy, or his aunt or his niece.
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  Speaker 1: A woman could not marry a man with whom she
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  Speaker 1: is related to any any lineal whatever, her brother, her uncle,
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  Speaker 1: or her nephew. I mean, we talked about gay marriage.
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  Speaker 1: We can't pass a bill that says don't marry your sister.
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  Speaker 2: It is literally like the worst that genetically that you
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  Speaker 2: could do.
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  Speaker 1: Florida is one of about sixteen states we're marrying your
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  Speaker 1: first cousin is legal, but most of the United States
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  Speaker 1: has banned such marriages. Here's the deal. We don't even
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  Speaker 1: do blood tests anymore. We used to do blood test
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  Speaker 1: where you got a marriage license, and I think that
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  Speaker 1: ended in the mid sixties, if I'm not mistaken in Ohio.
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  Speaker 1: But that was to make sure that you know, you
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  Speaker 1: didn't have any issues, I guess. And now we're we
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  Speaker 1: can't even pass a law that says don't marry your
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  Speaker 1: sister in the state of Florida. Oh my gosh, ned
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  Speaker 1: Baby was a tremendous actor.
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  Speaker 2: That was a rough scene. I bet the film.
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  Speaker 1: That, Yeah, I would think. So, uh, this is sad.
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  Speaker 1: We keep hearing about how Florida is this bastion of
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  Speaker 1: conservatism and strong Republican voters, and and the Florida Senate
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  Speaker 1: has failed to pass a bill that says boys, don't
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  Speaker 1: marry your sister, girls don't marry your brother. We we
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  Speaker 1: think it's just is the right thing to do, and
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  Speaker 1: we can't pass the bill. This is sad, So if
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  Speaker 1: you're particularly fond of your brother or your sister. You know,
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  Speaker 1: spring brief coming up saying.
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  Speaker 2: I want to know, I want to know the reasoning
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  Speaker 2: behind why somebody voted geinst it. Was there some provision
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  Speaker 2: in there that.
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  Speaker 1: They probably because half of them are married to their
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  Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. Do it. I'll do it.