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He Stalked Her for 13 Years — Then Investigators Found the Human Skulls · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to imagine setting just the absolute
0:04
Speaker 1: ultimate boundary. You know, you go on like a handful
0:07
Speaker 1: of dates with someone. Right.
0:08
Speaker 2: Just a few dates. Nothing serious yet.
0:10
Speaker 1: Exactly. Just a few. But you realize very quickly that they're...
0:15
Speaker 1: Their psychological framework is just completely incompatible with a safe reality.
0:19
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Like immediate danger signals.
0:21
Speaker 1: Right. And so you do everything society tells you to
0:24
Speaker 1: do in that situation. You break it off. You block
0:27
Speaker 1: their numbers.
0:28
Speaker 2: Which is usually where the advice ends, you know.
0:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But in this case, you don't stop there.
0:33
Speaker 1: You pack up your entire life. You move to a
0:36
Speaker 1: completely different country. Wow.
0:38
Speaker 2: Literally crossing borders to get away right.
0:40
Speaker 1: You leave no forwarding address and you just completely vanish
0:44
Speaker 1: you build this entirely new career a new family a
0:47
Speaker 1: completely new existence.
0:48
Speaker 2: Talk about a clean break i mean that is the
0:50
Speaker 2: definition of doing everything you.
0:52
Speaker 1: Possibly can it really is and if you are listening
0:55
Speaker 1: to this right now you are probably thinking well yeah
0:58
Speaker 1: that's how you escape you're safe now you would.
1:00
Speaker 2: Think so right yeah geography feels like a shield.
1:03
Speaker 1: But what happens when the person you are running from
1:05
Speaker 1: doesn't actually need to know where you are? Like they
1:09
Speaker 1: don't need your location to completely consume your life.
1:11
Speaker 2: And that is just a terrifying thought. The idea that
1:14
Speaker 2: distance means absolutely nothing to them. It is.
1:17
Speaker 1: What happens when you realize 13 years later that your
1:20
Speaker 1: physical disappearance did absolutely nothing? Like it did nothing to
1:24
Speaker 1: dismantle this psychological obsession that has just been metastasizing in
1:30
Speaker 1: a basement a thousand miles away.
1:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really challenges everything we think we know about safety.
1:36
Speaker 2: We operate under this assumption that if we put enough
1:39
Speaker 2: miles between ourselves and a threat, the threat just degrades
1:42
Speaker 2: over time.
1:42
Speaker 1: Right, like out of sight, out of mind.
1:44
Speaker 2: Exactly. But obsession, particularly the kind of really entrenched, systematized
1:49
Speaker 2: delusion we are going to look at today, it just
1:52
Speaker 2: does not obey the laws of physics, or geography for
1:55
Speaker 2: that matter.
1:55
Speaker 1: It really doesn't.
1:56
Speaker 2: No, it actually feeds on the void. When you remove
1:59
Speaker 2: the actual physical human being from the equation... You sometimes,
2:04
Speaker 2: you inadvertently give the obsessive mind a blank canvas.
2:08
Speaker 1: A blank canvas to do what, exactly?
2:10
Speaker 2: To construct this terrifying, idealized proxy of you. Something that
2:14
Speaker 2: they can control completely without any pushback from the real you. Oh, wow.
2:19
Speaker 1: And that psychological architecture, that's really the core of our
2:21
Speaker 1: deep dive today.
2:22
Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
2:23
Speaker 1: We are pulling from this incredibly detailed, frankly chilling, true
2:27
Speaker 1: crime report published on August 31st, 2026. It's by Elise
2:31
Speaker 1: Soule for Oxygen True Crime.
2:33
Speaker 2: It's a phenomenal piece of reporting, really.
2:35
Speaker 1: It really is. And it details this 13-year ordeal endured
2:40
Speaker 1: by an unnamed Wisconsin woman. She was a professional therapist, actually,
2:44
Speaker 1: who found herself targeted by a man named Benjamin C. Larson.
2:47
Speaker 2: But you aren't just going to read you the timeline
2:49
Speaker 2: of a news article today.
2:51
Speaker 1: No, not at all. The mission here is to dissect
2:53
Speaker 1: the anatomy of this fixation. We need to really look
2:57
Speaker 1: at how a seemingly minor interaction, just a few dates,
3:01
Speaker 1: escalates into a lethal framework.
3:03
Speaker 2: And crucially, we have to examine the jarring, honestly enraging
3:07
Speaker 2: disconnect between the reality of psychological terror and our legal system.
3:11
Speaker 1: Yes, the legal system aspect of this is going to
3:13
Speaker 1: make you so angry.
3:14
Speaker 2: That legal disconnect is perhaps the most crucial takeaway for
3:17
Speaker 2: anyone trying to understand modern stalking. Our justice system is, well,
3:22
Speaker 2: it's inherently reactive.
3:24
Speaker 1: Right. It waits for something bad to happen first.
3:26
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's built to prosecute the swung machete or the
3:30
Speaker 2: fired bullet or, you know, the administered poison.
3:32
Speaker 1: But not the planning of it.
3:34
Speaker 2: Right. What we're going to see today is how the
3:37
Speaker 2: law completely short circuits when it's confronted with the preparation
3:41
Speaker 2: of violence, the psychological warfare.
3:43
Speaker 1: And the bureaucratic sabotage, too, which we'll get into. It's wild.
3:47
Speaker 2: It is. We are going to map out Larsa's behavior
3:50
Speaker 2: using some established psychological frameworks. We'll look at how a
3:54
Speaker 2: perpetrator transitions through different typologies of stalking, moving from an
3:57
Speaker 2: intimacy seeker all the way to a full-blown predator.
4:00
Speaker 1: So let's ground this in where it all began, because
4:03
Speaker 1: the origin point is so critical.
4:05
Speaker 2: It always is. The beginning sets the stage for the
4:07
Speaker 2: entire delusion.
4:08
Speaker 1: Right. So the timeline starts in 2013 in Wisconsin. The victim,
4:13
Speaker 1: who again is a working therapist, goes on just a
4:15
Speaker 1: handful of dates with Benjamin C. Larson.
4:18
Speaker 2: Just a normal, everyday start to a relationship, seemingly.
4:20
Speaker 1: Seemingly, yeah. Now- In the landscape of modern dating, the
4:23
Speaker 1: first few encounters are basically a highly curated audition, right?
4:28
Speaker 2: Completely. Everyone is on their best behavior. Exactly.
4:31
Speaker 1: Everyone puts forward their most sanitized, socially acceptable avatar. But Larson,
4:38
Speaker 1: he bypasses the standard small talk entirely.
4:40
Speaker 2: It just skips right over it.
4:42
Speaker 1: Right out of the gate on these early dates, he
4:44
Speaker 1: introduces his deep personal obsession with the notorious serial killer
4:49
Speaker 1: Ed Gein.
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Speaker 2: Which is, I mean... That is a choice.
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Speaker 1: A huge choice. And he brings up this heavy, pervasive
4:55
Speaker 1: fixation on death and gore just right there over drinks
4:59
Speaker 1: or whatever.
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Speaker 2: You know, introducing Ed Gein into a nascent romantic conversation
5:03
Speaker 2: is a highly calculated diagnostic tool.
5:05
Speaker 1: A diagnostic tool? How do you mean?
5:07
Speaker 2: Well, whether Larson consciously realized it or not, predators rarely
5:11
Speaker 2: start with an overt act of violence. They start with
5:13
Speaker 2: an ideological or conversational trespass.
5:18
Speaker 1: Ah, so they test the waters.
5:19
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's about boundary testing. And Ed Gein is not
5:22
Speaker 2: just a standard true crime reference, you know.
5:25
Speaker 1: No, definitely not. He's on the extreme end. Right.
5:28
Speaker 2: He is an avatar for the absolute desecration of the
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Speaker 2: female body. This is a man who literally exhumed corpses
5:36
Speaker 2: to fashion domestic items out of their skin and bones.
5:39
Speaker 1: Ugh, just horrifying.
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Speaker 2: Very. So by injecting this highly specific, grotesque imagery into
5:46
Speaker 2: a space that is supposed to be about romantic connection...
5:49
Speaker 2: Larson is actively filtering for compliance.
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Speaker 1: He wants to see if she'll stick around even after
5:54
Speaker 1: he says something that unhinged.
5:56
Speaker 2: Exactly. He is testing her threshold for psychological discomfort.
6:00
Speaker 1: You know, I was reading up on how predators weaponize empathy,
6:03
Speaker 1: and it strikes me that bringing up a topic this
6:05
Speaker 1: dark with a therapist specifically.
6:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:08
Speaker 1: It's almost like an autoimmune disease.
6:10
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting way to put it.
6:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, like attacking a body's natural defenses, you know, because
6:14
Speaker 1: a therapist is professionally trained to hold space for dark,
6:17
Speaker 1: uncomfortable truth.
6:18
Speaker 2: Right. They are literally trained not to slinch.
6:20
Speaker 1: Exactly. So Larson throws out this Ed Gein obsession, maybe
6:24
Speaker 1: banking on her professional instinct to analyze him or to
6:27
Speaker 1: understand him rather than her personal instinct to just flee.
6:31
Speaker 2: He's trying to use her own empathy as a Trojan horse.
6:34
Speaker 1: Yes, a Trojan horse. It's like he knew exactly what
6:39
Speaker 1: buttons to push because of her profession.
6:41
Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to conceptualize it, really. The
6:44
Speaker 2: autoimmune analogy perfectly captures the dynamic of coercive control.
6:48
Speaker 1: Because he's bypassing her normal boundaries.
6:51
Speaker 2: Right. He is attempting to bypass her personal boundary defenses
6:55
Speaker 2: by appealing to her professional identity. But what is critical
6:59
Speaker 2: here is that her personal survival instinct actually overrode that
7:03
Speaker 2: professional conditioning.
7:05
Speaker 1: Thank goodness it did.
7:06
Speaker 2: Exactly. She recognized that this wasn't a cry for psychological help.
7:12
Speaker 2: It was an aggressive assertion of dominance. She saw the
7:15
Speaker 2: trespass and she initiated the break.
7:17
Speaker 1: She saw the red flags. I always think of dating
7:19
Speaker 1: red flags as being like, you know, a check engine
7:22
Speaker 1: light on your dashboard.
7:23
Speaker 2: Right. Something you should probably look into.
7:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. But bringing up Ed Gein and Gore on a
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Speaker 1: first or second date, that's not a check engine light.
7:29
Speaker 1: That is a blaring air raid siren.
7:32
Speaker 2: It really is. It's a get out of the vehicle
7:34
Speaker 2: immediately type of warning.
7:35
Speaker 1: Exactly. And that is exactly when the dynamic violently shifts gears.
7:40
Speaker 1: When she tries to call off this brief, barely there relationship,
7:45
Speaker 1: Larson doesn't just send an angry text.
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Speaker 2: No. He escalates immediately.
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Speaker 1: He calls her. tells her he is actively suicidal and
7:53
Speaker 1: claims he currently has a gun to his head.
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Speaker 2: Which is just terrifying for anyone to hear on the
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Speaker 2: other end of the line.
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Speaker 1: Right. Now, the common colloquialism is to call this a
8:01
Speaker 1: manipulation tactic. But to me, that feels way, way too
8:05
Speaker 1: small a phrase for what this actually is.
8:07
Speaker 2: It doesn't capture the severity of it at all.
8:09
Speaker 1: Not at all. If someone is faking a life or
8:12
Speaker 1: death crisis to prevent a breakup after three dates... That
8:15
Speaker 1: isn't just manipulation. That is psychological hostage-taking.
8:19
Speaker 2: The clinical framework for this is actually a manifestation of
8:22
Speaker 2: extreme coercive control. You see it a lot in the
8:25
Speaker 2: escalation phase of an intimacy-seeking stalker.
8:28
Speaker 1: So when his first plan doesn't work, he pivots.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. When the primary strategy, establishing this dominant shared reality
8:35
Speaker 2: based on his morbid fixations, when that fails, he instantly
8:39
Speaker 2: pivots to traumatic bonding.
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Speaker 1: By putting her in a situation where she feels responsible
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Speaker 1: for his life.
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Speaker 2: Yes. By threatening his own life and placing this hypothetical
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Speaker 2: weapon in his hand, he is forcibly making her the
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Speaker 2: arbiter of his existence. He is demanding that she abandon
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Speaker 2: her own autonomy.
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Speaker 1: Because if you hang up the phone and he actually
9:00
Speaker 1: does it, you carry that ghost for the rest of
9:02
Speaker 1: your life.
9:03
Speaker 2: Exactly.
9:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:04
Speaker 2: It is an act of supreme psychological violence, and it's
9:07
Speaker 2: designed to induce a state of acute panic that supersedes
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Speaker 2: her logical decision to leave.
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Speaker 1: He is basically leveraging basic human decency as a weapon
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Speaker 1: against her, which, if you think about it, tells us
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Speaker 1: something fundamental about his baseline understanding of consent.
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Speaker 2: It tells us he doesn't have one.
9:24
Speaker 1: Right. He doesn't view her as a sovereign individual who
9:26
Speaker 1: just has the right to exit an interaction. He views
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Speaker 1: her as like a component of his own psychological ecosystem.
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Speaker 2: And her attempting to leave is treated as an existential threat,
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Speaker 2: one that justifies any level of deceit to neutralize.
9:39
Speaker 1: It's just so twisted.
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Speaker 2: It is. And that lack of sovereignty is really the
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Speaker 2: cornerstone of what forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen would describe in
9:48
Speaker 2: his typologies of stalking.
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Speaker 1: Mullen's typologies, right. Where does Larson fit in?
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Speaker 2: Well, Larson is exhibiting traits of the rejected stalker combined
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Speaker 2: with the intimacy seeker, though. I mean, the rejection here
9:59
Speaker 2: is is. entirely disproportionate to the depth of the actual relationship.
10:03
Speaker 1: Because they only went on a handful of dates. There
10:05
Speaker 1: was barely a relationship to reject.
10:07
Speaker 2: Exactly. The fundamental cognitive distortion is that his internal narrative,
10:12
Speaker 2: this absolute need to possess this woman, Completely overrides shared
10:17
Speaker 2: objective reality.
10:18
Speaker 1: In his mind, they are already deeply intertwined. Right.
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Speaker 2: Her consent is not just irrelevant to him. It is
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Speaker 2: an obstacle that he feels inherently justified in destroying.
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Speaker 1: Which makes her next move so incredibly rational, yet ultimately,
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Speaker 1: in hindsight, so heartbreaking in its futility.
10:35
Speaker 2: She really did do everything right.
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Speaker 1: She did. She doesn't negotiate with the hostage taker. She
10:40
Speaker 1: creates the ultimate physical barrier. She packs up and moves
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Speaker 1: to Canada.
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Speaker 2: A massive geographical boundary.
10:46
Speaker 1: Huge. And she deliberately ensures her new address is completely
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Speaker 1: scrubbed from any public record that he could ever access.
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Speaker 2: She executed the exact playbook that every self-defense expert would
10:56
Speaker 2: hand you. Right.
10:58
Speaker 1: But this brings us back to that terrifying paradox we
11:00
Speaker 1: opened with. The physical distance didn't solve the problem.
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Speaker 2: No, it didn't.
11:04
Speaker 1: Because the obsession wasn't actually anchored to her physical proximity.
11:07
Speaker 2: Precisely. Geographic boundaries rely on the logic that physical access
11:12
Speaker 2: is the goal.
11:12
Speaker 1: Right, like if they can't get to you, they'll give up.
11:15
Speaker 2: But for a highly entrenched obsessive like Larson, the physical
11:19
Speaker 2: woman is almost secondary. She's secondary to the psychological construct
11:24
Speaker 2: of the woman that exists in his mind.
11:26
Speaker 1: That is so creepy to think about.
11:28
Speaker 2: It borders on erotomania or de Clermont's syndrome. where the
11:32
Speaker 2: delusion of this impenetrable bond is completely self-sustaining.
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Speaker 1: So he doesn't even need her to be there to
11:37
Speaker 1: keep the delusion alive.
11:39
Speaker 2: Exactly. The distance, ironically, can sometimes act as an incubator
11:43
Speaker 2: for the delusion.
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Speaker 1: Wait, really? It makes it worse?
11:46
Speaker 2: Often, yes. Without the daily reality of her actual, flawed,
11:51
Speaker 2: independent human existence there to contradict his fantasy, he's totally
11:54
Speaker 2: free to build a perfect, completely subjugated mental proxy of her.
11:59
Speaker 1: Wow. Let's trace how that incubator effect played out, because
12:02
Speaker 1: it didn't just stay in his head. The internal fantasy
12:05
Speaker 1: eventually needed an external tether.
12:07
Speaker 2: It always bleeds into the real world eventually.
12:09
Speaker 1: So she is in Canada, entirely off the grid, right?
12:12
Speaker 1: But Larson finds a bureaucratic loophole. He starts sending letters
12:15
Speaker 1: and gifts through her mother's address.
12:18
Speaker 2: Which is such a calculated violation.
12:19
Speaker 1: It really is. It's forcing her family to act as
12:22
Speaker 1: the unwilling conduit for his harassment. It's a way of
12:25
Speaker 1: him saying, you know, you can hide your body, but
12:27
Speaker 1: you cannot sever my access to your lineage.
12:30
Speaker 2: He's making sure she knows he can still touch her world,
12:32
Speaker 2: even indirectly.
12:33
Speaker 1: Exactly. And this just symbols for two years, until August 2015,
12:39
Speaker 1: when he sends a document that is truly chilling.
12:42
Speaker 2: A 15-page email.
12:42
Speaker 1: Yes, a 15-page email. And the language he uses, it
12:46
Speaker 1: just completely abandons any pretense of normal courtship.
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Speaker 2: We really need to analyze the specific syntax of that
12:52
Speaker 2: 2015 email. Because it represents a major psychological Rubicon for him.
12:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Let me read the quote from the report he wrote.
13:00
Speaker 1: Even if you do decide to leave my life and
13:02
Speaker 1: never look back on me again for the rest of
13:04
Speaker 1: your days, you will still be with me. As much
13:07
Speaker 1: a part of me as my own flesh and bones now.
13:09
Speaker 1: It simply is. There is nothing that will or could
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Speaker 1: change this.
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Speaker 2: It's terrifying.
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Speaker 1: It's the absolute absence of conditionality that makes it so
13:18
Speaker 1: terrifying to me. It simply is. He isn't asking for
13:21
Speaker 1: her love anymore.
13:22
Speaker 2: No, he isn't even demanding her compliance at this point. Right.
13:25
Speaker 1: He is informing her of a biological reality that he
13:28
Speaker 1: has constructed in his mind. Like the phrase, my own
13:31
Speaker 1: flesh and bones is not poetry here. It is a
13:34
Speaker 1: declaration of complete consumption.
13:36
Speaker 2: That is exactly the distinction we need to make. This
13:39
Speaker 2: is the language of predatory incorporation.
13:41
Speaker 1: Predatory incorporation. That sounds so dark.
13:44
Speaker 2: It is. He has transitioned from wanting to be with
13:47
Speaker 2: her to believing he has literally absorbed her essence.
13:51
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
13:51
Speaker 2: In forensic psychology, when a stalker begins using language that
13:55
Speaker 2: equates the victim to their own biological matter, the risk
13:58
Speaker 2: profile escalates exponentially.
14:01
Speaker 1: Because they don't see the victim as a separate entity anymore.
14:04
Speaker 2: Exactly. It indicates that the boundaries of his own ego
14:07
Speaker 2: have collapsed. He literally cannot differentiate where his identity ends
14:12
Speaker 2: and hers begins.
14:13
Speaker 1: That is chilling.
14:14
Speaker 2: Any action she takes independently in Canada is perceived by
14:18
Speaker 2: him not just as a rejection but Almost like a
14:20
Speaker 2: phantom limb?
14:21
Speaker 1: Like a part of his own body rebelling against him.
14:24
Speaker 2: Precisely. And he feels justified in correcting that rebellion.
14:27
Speaker 1: And he creates physical anchors for this delusion, too. In
14:30
Speaker 1: that same 15-page email, he meticulously catalogs these highly specific
14:35
Speaker 1: mementos he has kept from their handful of dates two
14:38
Speaker 1: years prior.
14:39
Speaker 2: Mementos are so revealing.
14:41
Speaker 1: They really are. Now, if you just look at a
14:42
Speaker 1: superficial list, oppressed, blue flower, a 1984 coin, a saved voicemail,
14:48
Speaker 1: it sounds exactly like... That tragic, misunderstood romantic trope we
14:52
Speaker 1: are fed in pop culture.
14:54
Speaker 2: The brooding romantic. Right.
14:55
Speaker 1: Media has spent decades romanticizing the idea of the brooding
14:59
Speaker 1: man who just can't let go of the single blue flower,
15:02
Speaker 1: you know?
15:02
Speaker 2: Pop culture has done a massive disservice to our collective
15:05
Speaker 2: understanding of stalking, honestly, by framing persistence as romance.
15:09
Speaker 1: Completely agree.
15:10
Speaker 2: The grand gesture or the pining lover narrative, it provides
15:15
Speaker 2: this socially acceptable camouflage for coercive control.
15:20
Speaker 1: But here is where it gets really interesting. When we
15:23
Speaker 1: look closer at the actual inventory of Larson's mementos, that
15:28
Speaker 1: camouflage burns away immediately.
15:30
Speaker 2: It burns away instantly because of the earring.
15:32
Speaker 1: Exactly. You get to the earring. He explicitly writes that
15:35
Speaker 1: he kept an earring of hers, but not because of
15:37
Speaker 1: the jewelry itself.
15:38
Speaker 2: No, the jewelry was irrelevant.
15:40
Speaker 1: He kept it because it was, quote, entangled with strands
15:43
Speaker 1: of her hair.
15:44
Speaker 2: That changes everything.
15:45
Speaker 1: It destroys the romance trope entirely. Keeping an earring specifically
15:49
Speaker 1: because it has her hair in it is about biology.
15:51
Speaker 2: It is.
15:52
Speaker 1: When we connect this back to his fixation on Ed Gein,
15:55
Speaker 1: a man who fashioned lampshades from human skin, the keeping
15:58
Speaker 1: of her hair is a visceral, predatory act.
16:01
Speaker 2: It's him securing actual genetic material of the woman he
16:04
Speaker 2: claims is part of his flesh and bones.
16:06
Speaker 1: It is a forensic fetish.
16:07
Speaker 2: That's a perfect term for it. The hair serves as tangible,
16:11
Speaker 2: irrefutable proof of his delusion.
16:13
Speaker 1: Right, like an anchor.
16:14
Speaker 2: Exactly. When the delusion wavers or when the geographical distance
16:17
Speaker 2: frustrates him, he has this biological artifact to ground his reality.
16:22
Speaker 1: But he didn't just stop at external artifacts, did he?
16:25
Speaker 2: No, he didn't. The most permanent manifestation of this incorporation
16:29
Speaker 2: was his decision to get a tattoo of her initials.
16:32
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
16:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. He wrote that the tattoo made her, quote, a
16:36
Speaker 2: part of my living body.
16:37
Speaker 1: I mean, getting a tattoo of a stranger's initials after
16:40
Speaker 1: a few dates isn't just impulsive. It feels like an
16:42
Speaker 1: act of non-consensual biological branding.
16:45
Speaker 2: It really does.
16:46
Speaker 1: She is living her life, raising a family completely detached
16:49
Speaker 1: from him. And he is undergoing this irreversible, painful physical
16:54
Speaker 1: procedure just to permanently scar his own skin in service
16:58
Speaker 1: of possessing her.
16:59
Speaker 2: He is forcing a physical bond on a cellular level
17:02
Speaker 2: without her consent.
17:03
Speaker 1: The psychology of self-mutilation in the context of erudomania is just,
17:08
Speaker 1: it's fascinating and deeply disturbing.
17:09
Speaker 2: The tattoo is essentially a ritualistic act. He is inflicting
17:13
Speaker 2: pain on himself to create a permanent monument to his obsession.
17:16
Speaker 1: It makes it real for him.
17:18
Speaker 2: Right. It's a way of manifesting the internal fantasy into
17:21
Speaker 2: undeniable physical reality. Every time he looks at his own skin,
17:25
Speaker 2: he sees her.
17:26
Speaker 1: He has literally made her a part of his living body.
17:29
Speaker 1: which reinforces his crazy belief that she cannot ever truly
17:33
Speaker 1: leave him.
17:34
Speaker 2: And this sustained him for a long time, for nearly
17:36
Speaker 2: a decade after this email. From roughly 2015 to 2025,
17:40
Speaker 2: he lived primarily inside this self-contained, heavily anchored delusion.
17:44
Speaker 1: A whole decade just living in that delusion. But delusions
17:48
Speaker 1: have a half-life, right?
17:49
Speaker 2: They do. They can't survive in a vacuum forever.
17:51
Speaker 1: Eventually, the internal fantasy starves because it lacks the friction
17:55
Speaker 1: of the real world. By 2025, which is a full
17:58
Speaker 1: 12 years after their initial dates, the dam breaks.
18:02
Speaker 2: The obsession stops being a self-contained ecosystem.
18:05
Speaker 1: Right. It violently ruptures into the real world. And he
18:07
Speaker 1: does it with this highly methodical escalation that directly attacks
18:11
Speaker 1: her sense of safety and her professional standing.
18:13
Speaker 2: When a stalker shifts from internal fantasy to external sabotage,
18:18
Speaker 2: it almost always signifies that they feel a loss of control.
18:21
Speaker 1: Or they're just not getting what they need from the
18:22
Speaker 1: fantasy anymore. Exactly.
18:24
Speaker 2: Exactly. The passive fantasy is no longer providing sufficient psychological gratification.
18:30
Speaker 2: They need to provoke a reaction to prove to themselves
18:33
Speaker 2: that the connection still exists.
18:35
Speaker 1: Even if she reacts with fear or anger?
18:37
Speaker 2: Any reaction will do. Even legal retaliation is still a reaction.
18:41
Speaker 2: It proves he has power over her reality.
18:43
Speaker 1: So in November 2025, he sends a card that simply says,
18:46
Speaker 1: I am not one who gives up easily.
18:48
Speaker 2: A very thinly veiled threat.
18:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, a direct, ominous threat veiled as a statement of
18:53
Speaker 1: personal perseverance. But the real psychological warfare lands a month
18:57
Speaker 1: later in December 2025.
18:59
Speaker 2: A holiday card.
19:00
Speaker 1: He sends a holiday card styled after The Nightmare Before Christmas.
19:04
Speaker 1: And the text inside reads, seasons creeping.
19:07
Speaker 2: Seasons creeping. Unbelievable.
19:09
Speaker 1: And he casually mentions that he has been wandering around
19:11
Speaker 1: her hometown in Wisconsin hoping for a, quote, memorable encounter
19:15
Speaker 1: and adds, I'll keep my eyes open.
19:17
Speaker 2: That completely shatters the illusion that he's just a misguided romantic.
19:21
Speaker 1: Oh, completely. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows
19:23
Speaker 1: he is a predator.
19:24
Speaker 2: The phrase, seasons creeping, is just an extraordinary admission of
19:28
Speaker 2: his own self-awareness. He is actively leaning into the identity
19:32
Speaker 2: of the monster.
19:33
Speaker 1: He is weaponizing the horror aesthetic.
19:35
Speaker 2: Exactly. Not just as a personal interest anymore, but as
19:37
Speaker 2: an active threat against her. By stating he is wandering
19:41
Speaker 2: her hometown, he is deliberately dismantling the geographical safety net
19:46
Speaker 2: she spent a decade building.
19:48
Speaker 1: He wants her to feel like she's never safe.
19:50
Speaker 2: He is inducing a state of hypervigilance. The goal is
19:53
Speaker 2: to make her feel that every time she goes to
19:55
Speaker 2: the grocery store, every time she looks out her window,
19:57
Speaker 2: he might be there.
19:58
Speaker 1: It is the deliberate infliction of chronic psychological trauma.
20:02
Speaker 2: Yes.
20:03
Speaker 1: And the gravity of that trauma is underscored by one
20:06
Speaker 1: of the most remarkable chilling details in the entire oxygen report.
20:09
Speaker 2: The detail about his therapist.
20:11
Speaker 1: Yes. Around this time, the situation had escalated to such
20:14
Speaker 1: a catastrophic degree in Larson's own mind that his own
20:18
Speaker 1: female trauma therapist tracked down the victim and left her
20:21
Speaker 1: a voicemail.
20:21
Speaker 2: Which is just a massive red flag.
20:23
Speaker 1: His own therapist said, and I quote, This is.
20:28
Speaker 2: A monumental point of analysis. And we really need to
20:31
Speaker 2: dig into the legal and ethical framework of what just
20:33
Speaker 2: happened there.
20:33
Speaker 1: Please do, because I know confidentiality is a huge deal.
20:36
Speaker 2: It is. In the psychiatric and therapeutic community, there is
20:40
Speaker 2: a bedrock principle of confidentiality. A therapist cannot simply call
20:45
Speaker 2: people in their client's life to chat about their progress.
20:49
Speaker 1: Right. You can't just call up a client's ex.
20:51
Speaker 2: But there is a very specific legal exception stemming from
20:55
Speaker 2: a landmark 1974 California Supreme Court case called Tarasov v.
21:01
Speaker 2: Regents of the University of California.
21:03
Speaker 1: Oh, the Tarasov case. That established the duty to warn.
21:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The duty to warn.
21:08
Speaker 1: So if a patient poses a serious danger of violence
21:10
Speaker 1: to others, the therapist actually has an obligation to breach
21:13
Speaker 1: continentality to protect the foreseeable victim.
21:16
Speaker 2: Yes. But the threshold for breaking that firewall of confidentiality
21:20
Speaker 2: is incredibly high.
21:22
Speaker 1: It's not just for, like, vague threats.
21:25
Speaker 2: No, it is not triggered by vague expressions of anger
21:28
Speaker 2: or generalized dark thoughts. For Larson's trauma therapist to take
21:32
Speaker 2: the massive professional and legal risk of breaching confidentiality, she
21:37
Speaker 2: must have believed there was a clear, imminent, and highly
21:41
Speaker 2: credible threat of severe harm or death directed specifically at
21:44
Speaker 2: this woman.
21:45
Speaker 1: Just think about what Larson must have been saying in
21:47
Speaker 1: those therapy sessions.
21:48
Speaker 2: Exactly. He must have been articulating plans so graphic, so
21:52
Speaker 2: deeply rooted in reality. That a trained trauma specialist, someone
21:56
Speaker 2: whose entire career is listening to the darkest aspects of
22:00
Speaker 2: the human experience, was terrified into action.
22:03
Speaker 1: She essentially threw the ultimate red flag.
22:05
Speaker 2: She did. She risked her license to warn this woman.
22:07
Speaker 1: Which proves that the victim wasn't overreacting at all. The
22:11
Speaker 1: professional saw the exact same lethal capacity she saw 12
22:14
Speaker 1: years prior.
22:15
Speaker 2: It's total validation of her fear.
22:17
Speaker 1: And when Larson realizes that his... Season's creeping tactics and
22:21
Speaker 1: his physical lurking aren't achieving the total submission he desires.
22:24
Speaker 1: He completely changes tactics.
22:26
Speaker 2: He finds a new way to hurt her. Right.
22:28
Speaker 1: He pivots to bureaucratic weaponization. He files a formal official
22:33
Speaker 1: complaint against the victim with the Wisconsin Department of Safety
22:36
Speaker 1: and Professional Services, accusing her of lying about her tenure
22:39
Speaker 1: as a therapist.
22:40
Speaker 2: It's so vindictive.
22:41
Speaker 1: And he later admits to police he filed similar complaints
22:44
Speaker 1: with professional licensing boards in multiple states.
22:47
Speaker 2: This is a highly sophisticated, deeply vindictive evolution in stalking behavior.
22:53
Speaker 1: When interpersonal terror fails, he uses the system.
22:57
Speaker 2: Exactly. The stalker realizes they can use the machinery of
23:00
Speaker 2: the state as a proxy harasser. By attacking her professional license,
23:06
Speaker 2: he is attacking the very foundation of her independence.
23:09
Speaker 1: He's going after her livelihood.
23:10
Speaker 2: He is targeting her source of income, her reputation in
23:13
Speaker 2: the community, and her ability to provide for her child.
23:16
Speaker 1: If you've ever dealt with administrative law or licensing boards,
23:19
Speaker 1: you know exactly what a nightmare this is.
23:20
Speaker 2: It's incredibly stressful.
23:22
Speaker 1: Unlike criminal court, where you are innocent until proven guilty,
23:25
Speaker 1: an anonymous or bad faith complaint to a licensing board
23:29
Speaker 1: immediately triggers a mandatory bureaucratic loop.
23:32
Speaker 2: The board has to investigate every complaint.
23:35
Speaker 1: Right. The board has to investigate everything. The burden of
23:39
Speaker 1: proof suddenly shifts to the victim to prove she didn't
23:42
Speaker 1: do anything wrong.
23:43
Speaker 2: She has to defend her entire career.
23:45
Speaker 1: She has to hire lawyers, compile documents, and endure months
23:50
Speaker 1: of stress, all while knowing that her stalker is sitting
23:54
Speaker 1: at home grinning because he forced her into this administrative
23:58
Speaker 1: hell with just a few clicks on a keyboard.
24:00
Speaker 2: He essentially turned the state of Wisconsin into his own
24:02
Speaker 2: personal attack dog.
24:04
Speaker 1: It is professional terrorism.
24:06
Speaker 2: It really makes the victim feel utterly powerless because she
24:09
Speaker 2: isn't just fighting Benjamin Larson anymore. She is fighting a
24:13
Speaker 2: faceless Kafkaesque bureaucracy that is unwittingly acting on his behalf.
24:17
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate exercise of remote control.
24:20
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
24:21
Speaker 1: And when law enforcement finally catches up to him regarding
24:23
Speaker 1: these escalating behaviors, his defense is, well, it's a masterclass
24:27
Speaker 1: in cognitive dissonance.
24:28
Speaker 2: It's hard to even wrap your head around his logic.
24:30
Speaker 1: He confirms to the police that he sent the December card.
24:33
Speaker 1: But he describes a card that literally says, seasons creeping,
24:37
Speaker 1: and threatens to wander her hometown as, quote, very civil.
24:41
Speaker 2: Very civil.
24:41
Speaker 1: He also claims that after receiving a formal stalking warning
24:45
Speaker 1: letter from the Madison Police Department, he just wanted to
24:48
Speaker 1: clarify things and didn't want to cause trouble.
24:51
Speaker 2: So let's analyze this response.
24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, please. If we assume he isn't just playing a
24:56
Speaker 1: completely calculated game of chess with the cops, what does
24:59
Speaker 1: it mean that he views his behavior as civil?
25:03
Speaker 2: It speaks to the absolute calcification of his delusion.
25:06
Speaker 1: Calcification, yeah, like it's hardened into his reality.
25:08
Speaker 2: Exactly. After 13 years of meticulously building this internal narrative
25:13
Speaker 2: where they are cosmically bound flesh and bone, his baseline
25:16
Speaker 2: for reality is entirely corrupted.
25:18
Speaker 1: So he thinks he's being the good guy.
25:20
Speaker 2: In his distorted framework, he likely believes that because he
25:24
Speaker 2: has the capacity for extreme violence, which he knows he possesses,
25:27
Speaker 2: the fact that he only sent a threatening holiday card
25:30
Speaker 2: and only tried to destroy her career is a demonstration
25:33
Speaker 2: of profound restraint.
25:34
Speaker 1: Oh my God. So in his mind, he's being a
25:36
Speaker 1: gentleman by not killing her.
25:38
Speaker 2: Yes. He views his veiled threats as a polite negotiation,
25:42
Speaker 2: completely oblivious to the objective reality that he's engaging in
25:46
Speaker 2: psychological torture.
25:47
Speaker 1: That is so twisted. But the victim wasn't living in
25:51
Speaker 1: his warped reality. She saw the trajectory perfectly.
25:55
Speaker 2: She knew exactly where this was heading.
25:57
Speaker 1: She tearfully told authorities that she feared for her life
26:00
Speaker 1: and for her child's safety, stating she, quote, just wanted
26:05
Speaker 1: to disappear.
26:06
Speaker 2: Which is heartbreaking, considering she already tried to disappear once.
26:09
Speaker 1: That raw, undeniable terror, combined with the therapist's Tarasov warning
26:14
Speaker 1: and the escalating bureaucratic harassment, finally forces the hand of
26:18
Speaker 1: the legal system.
26:19
Speaker 2: Finally.
26:20
Speaker 1: Law enforcement secures a search warrant for his home in
26:23
Speaker 1: Fond du Lac, Wisconsin on on August 14th, 2026.
26:27
Speaker 2: And that search warrant changes everything.
26:29
Speaker 1: It really does, because the moment they execute that warrant
26:32
Speaker 1: and walk into his basement, the entire complexion of this
26:34
Speaker 1: case transforms from a severe stalking investigation into the discovery
26:38
Speaker 1: of a fully realized macabre nightmare.
26:41
Speaker 2: The execution of that warrant is the moment the internal
26:44
Speaker 2: abstract psychological threat materializes into physical, undeniable evidence.
26:48
Speaker 1: It wasn't just in his head anymore.
26:49
Speaker 2: What the police uncovered was not just a collection of oddities.
26:53
Speaker 2: It was the physical architecture of his homicidal ideation. It
26:57
Speaker 2: was a space designed and curated over 13 years to
27:01
Speaker 2: normalize and prepare for the act of murder.
27:04
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Let's walk through the inventory of
27:07
Speaker 1: this basement, because it reads like a ledger from the darkest,
27:11
Speaker 1: most depraved corners of the dark web.
27:13
Speaker 2: It really does.
27:15
Speaker 1: Investigators find shelves lined with bottles explicitly labeled arsenic poison
27:20
Speaker 1: and cyanide.
27:21
Speaker 2: We have to stop right there.
27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's huge.
27:23
Speaker 2: The presence of lethal chemical poisons fundamentally alters the threat assessment.
27:28
Speaker 2: Arsenic and cyanide are not crimes of passion.
27:30
Speaker 1: They aren't something you just grab in the heat of
27:32
Speaker 1: the moment.
27:33
Speaker 2: No, they are not weapons of impulse. You do not
27:35
Speaker 2: accidentally acquire these substances.
27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:37
Speaker 2: They require research, procurement, and extreme premeditation.
27:40
Speaker 1: They are tools of stealth.
27:42
Speaker 2: Stealth, control, and absolute finality.
27:45
Speaker 1: And the premeditation connects directly back to that very first
27:48
Speaker 1: red flag in 2013.
27:48
Speaker 2: The Ed Gein fixation.
27:51
Speaker 1: Yes. The police find 10 massive binders labeled Edward Gein Book.
27:56
Speaker 1: And these binders don't just contain newspaper clippings.
27:59
Speaker 2: No, it goes way beyond clippings.
28:01
Speaker 1: They contain items purported to be taken directly from Ed
28:03
Speaker 1: Gein's grave and his former property. He spent a decade
28:07
Speaker 1: treating a necrophiliac serial killer like a patron saint.
28:10
Speaker 2: Systematically collecting physical relics to commune with that energy.
28:14
Speaker 1: Exactly.
28:15
Speaker 2: The materialization of the fantasy is staggering here. In 2013,
28:19
Speaker 2: Ed Gein was a conversational boundary cast. In 2026, Ed
28:23
Speaker 2: Gein is a 10-volume syllabus for depravity.
28:26
Speaker 1: A syllabus for depravity. That's exactly what it is.
28:29
Speaker 2: He has immersed himself so deeply in the methodology of
28:32
Speaker 2: a man who butchered women that he feels compelled to
28:34
Speaker 2: physically possess the dirt from his grave.
28:36
Speaker 1: It's like he's trying to absorb it.
28:38
Speaker 2: It is a form of sympathetic magic. He believes that
28:41
Speaker 2: by possessing the artifacts, he absorbs the power and the
28:44
Speaker 2: permission to act out those same compulsions.
28:46
Speaker 1: It requires a massive infrastructure to even acquire these things.
28:50
Speaker 2: Hmm.
28:50
Speaker 1: The police also found. 22 caliber cartridges with signage suggesting
28:55
Speaker 1: they were the exact type used by the Zodiac Killer.
28:58
Speaker 2: More serial killer memorabilia.
29:00
Speaker 1: And, astoundingly, a jar claiming to hold a piece of
29:03
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy's brain, plus a mummy, human skulls, and
29:08
Speaker 1: skeletal remains, including a human jawbone.
29:11
Speaker 2: Real human remains.
29:12
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the logistics of this for a second.
29:15
Speaker 1: How does a person even go about acquiring what they
29:17
Speaker 1: think is John Wayne Gacy's brain or real, verifiable human skulls?
29:22
Speaker 2: Get the dark world out there.
29:24
Speaker 1: You can't just put that in your Amazon cart. This
29:26
Speaker 1: implies he is deeply embedded in a true crime black market,
29:29
Speaker 1: doesn't it?
29:30
Speaker 2: The macabre economy, unfortunately, is very real and highly active.
29:33
Speaker 1: Is it really?
29:34
Speaker 2: Yes. The trafficking of human remains and murderabilia items directly
29:39
Speaker 2: associated with violent crimes or killers, it operates in a
29:41
Speaker 2: gray area of the internet.
29:43
Speaker 1: Like the dark web.
29:44
Speaker 2: Often on encrypted forums or specialized unregulated auction sites. The
29:48
Speaker 2: ethical blurring in these spaces is profound. They literally commodify
29:52
Speaker 2: human suffering.
29:52
Speaker 1: That is just sickening.
29:54
Speaker 2: But psychologically, the fact that Larson is spending his time
29:57
Speaker 2: and resources in Navigating these black markets shows how heavily
30:01
Speaker 2: he has insulated himself in an echo chamber of normalized violence.
30:04
Speaker 1: And he mixes this highly illegal, verifiable reality with completely
30:09
Speaker 1: fictional pop culture horror.
30:12
Speaker 2: The Jason mannequin.
30:13
Speaker 1: Yes. The police report details a sectioned off area of
30:16
Speaker 1: the basement, complete with theater curtains, displaying a life-size mannequin
30:20
Speaker 1: of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th.
30:22
Speaker 2: It's bizarre.
30:23
Speaker 1: He has a Hollywood slasher prop standing right next to
30:26
Speaker 1: actual human bones and cyanide.
30:28
Speaker 2: That juxtaposition is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of his psychology.
30:31
Speaker 1: Why is that?
30:32
Speaker 2: It demonstrates the total collapse of the firewall between fantasy
30:35
Speaker 2: and reality. To Benjamin Larson, Jason Voorhees, John Wayne Gacy,
30:41
Speaker 2: Ed Gein, and his own life, they all exist on
30:43
Speaker 2: the exact same plane of existence.
30:46
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. So there's no difference to him.
30:48
Speaker 2: Exactly. The fictional slasher and the real-world serial killer are
30:51
Speaker 2: equal sources of inspiration. He has built a sanctuary that
30:54
Speaker 2: completely devalues human life. reducing real victims to the exact
30:58
Speaker 2: same status as a movie prop.
31:00
Speaker 1: That is terrifying. But the absolute epicenter of this basement,
31:04
Speaker 1: the most horrifying discovery of all, was behind a padlock.
31:08
Speaker 1: Investigators find a locked room. They cut the padlock, they
31:11
Speaker 1: go inside, and they find a literal shrine.
31:14
Speaker 2: It's so disturbing.
31:15
Speaker 1: In the center of this room is a lifelike silicone doll.
31:20
Speaker 1: The doll is wearing a spiked choker necklace. It is
31:23
Speaker 1: completely surrounded by papers bearing the victim's name, And nearby
31:26
Speaker 1: is a nude painting of a woman that investigators noted
31:29
Speaker 1: strongly resembled the victim.
31:32
Speaker 2: If we look at this through the lens of coercive
31:34
Speaker 2: control and proxy violence, this padlocked room is the ultimate
31:39
Speaker 2: terrifying synthesis of his 13-year delusion.
31:42
Speaker 1: It all comes together in this room.
31:43
Speaker 2: Remember the 2015 email? As much a part of me
31:47
Speaker 2: as my own flesh and bones, Larson couldn't possess the
31:50
Speaker 2: actual woman.
31:51
Speaker 1: Because she was in Canada.
31:52
Speaker 2: Right. She had erected insurmountable boundaries, so insurmountable. His psychological
31:55
Speaker 2: response was to construct a physical silicone surrogate that he
31:59
Speaker 2: could completely dominate.
32:00
Speaker 1: Putting a spiked choker on a lifelike doll of a
32:03
Speaker 1: woman you are obsessed with isn't a fetish. It's a
32:05
Speaker 1: simulation of subjugation.
32:06
Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
32:07
Speaker 1: He locks this proxy in a room. He surrounds it
32:10
Speaker 1: with her name to conceptually bind her identity to the
32:14
Speaker 1: silicone object. It feels like he's performing a ritual to
32:18
Speaker 1: strip away her humanity and reduce her to an object
32:21
Speaker 1: he owns.
32:21
Speaker 2: It is the absolute pinnacle of depersonalization.
32:25
Speaker 1: To think about her living her life, going to work,
32:28
Speaker 1: entirely unaware that a life-size proxy of her was being
32:32
Speaker 1: kept in a locked shrine surrounded by poisons and human skulls.
32:36
Speaker 1: It is a psychological violation that defies language.
32:39
Speaker 2: It is a profound, indelible violation. And yet, from a
32:43
Speaker 2: strictly legal evidentiary standpoint... The skulls, the poisons, and the
32:48
Speaker 2: silicone doll are ultimately just the set dressing. Wait, really?
32:51
Speaker 1: Set dressing?
32:52
Speaker 2: Legally speaking, yes. The most legally damning actionable piece of
32:55
Speaker 2: evidence discovered in that entire basement was not an object.
32:58
Speaker 2: It was a window directly into his intent.
33:00
Speaker 1: His own writing.
33:01
Speaker 2: It was his own written words.
33:02
Speaker 1: Well, right. Alongside the artifacts, the police discover a 25-page
33:05
Speaker 1: document written entirely by Larson.
33:08
Speaker 2: The Manifesto.
33:09
Speaker 1: If we viewed the 15-page email from 2015 as a
33:12
Speaker 1: twisted declaration of ownership... This 25-page document from 2026 is
33:18
Speaker 1: a full-blown, undeniable manifesto of premeditated violence.
33:22
Speaker 2: It's a massive escalation.
33:24
Speaker 1: In this document, the delusion of romantic bond has completely shattered.
33:28
Speaker 1: He writes about being absolutely furious that the victim is
33:32
Speaker 1: in a relationship with another man.
33:33
Speaker 2: He can't handle that she has a life without him.
33:35
Speaker 1: He fixates on this other man getting to experience, quote,
33:38
Speaker 1: her wonderfully erotic mind. while Larson is forced to sit
33:42
Speaker 1: in my basement corner and rot and seethe.
33:45
Speaker 2: This represents the final transition in the typology of stalking.
33:48
Speaker 2: He is moved entirely from the intimacy seeker to the predator.
33:52
Speaker 1: So the illusion of romance is dead.
33:53
Speaker 2: Completely dead. The 2015 delusion of we are one flesh
33:57
Speaker 2: allowed him to endure the distance because he believed the
33:59
Speaker 2: bond was cosmic and unbreakable.
34:01
Speaker 1: But the 2026 manifesto is the violent collision with reality.
34:05
Speaker 2: Yes, he is forced to acknowledge that she is autonomous,
34:08
Speaker 2: that she desires someone else, And that he is fundamentally isolated.
34:11
Speaker 1: And his reaction is just pure rage.
34:13
Speaker 2: His psychological response to this narcissistic injury isn't grief or acceptance.
34:18
Speaker 2: It is an active, consuming, homicidal rage.
34:22
Speaker 1: He spells out that rage in black and white. He writes,
34:25
Speaker 1: and I quote, Just think about the context of that sentence.
34:31
Speaker 1: This is a man sitting in a basement, literally surrounded
34:34
Speaker 1: by real human skulls, explicitly writing that he aches to
34:38
Speaker 1: take the skull of the woman he claims to love
34:41
Speaker 1: and the skull of her partner.
34:43
Speaker 2: Taking their skulls is the ultimate act of predatory possession.
34:46
Speaker 2: It completely aligns with his Ed Gein fixation.
34:49
Speaker 1: Because Gunn took trophies.
34:50
Speaker 2: Exactly. He isn't just fantasizing about killing them to end
34:53
Speaker 2: his pain, he is fantasizing about harvesting their bodies to
34:57
Speaker 2: add to his collection. Ugh, so gross. It is the
35:00
Speaker 2: absolute reduction of human beings to trophies.
35:02
Speaker 1: And the most terrifying part of this 25-page document is
35:05
Speaker 1: that he admits it was no longer just a fantasy.
35:08
Speaker 1: He was actively running the logistics.
35:10
Speaker 2: He was putting the plan into motion.
35:11
Speaker 1: He writes about actively hunting the victim. He admits to
35:15
Speaker 1: driving to her home with a machete in his car.
35:17
Speaker 2: A machete? He was armed and at her home.
35:20
Speaker 1: And... He describes his mindset during this hunt with a
35:24
Speaker 1: phrase that I just haven't been able to stop thinking about.
35:26
Speaker 1: He wrote, I felt like a shark investigating his unknown prey.
35:30
Speaker 2: The choice of the shark metaphor is deeply revealing of
35:33
Speaker 2: his internal state.
35:34
Speaker 1: It's so cold-blooded.
35:36
Speaker 2: A shark is an apex predator. It is driven entirely
35:39
Speaker 2: by biological imperative, devoid of empathy, silently circling beneath the
35:43
Speaker 2: surface before striking with lethal force.
35:45
Speaker 1: Just mindless killing.
35:47
Speaker 2: By identifying as a shark investigating prey... Larson is completely
35:51
Speaker 2: stripping the victim of the wonderfully erotic mind he praised
35:54
Speaker 2: sentences earlier. She is no longer a person.
35:57
Speaker 1: She is just meat to him.
35:59
Speaker 2: The psychological leap from seething in a basement shrine to
36:02
Speaker 2: physically mobilizing a vehicle, arming himself with a machete and
36:06
Speaker 2: driving to her location, that is the definitive, undeniable escalation
36:11
Speaker 2: from ideation to premeditated lethal intent.
36:15
Speaker 1: So let's look at the totality of the facts here.
36:17
Speaker 1: Let's just summarize what we know.
36:18
Speaker 2: It's a lot.
36:19
Speaker 1: We have a man who has waged a 13-year campaign
36:22
Speaker 1: of terror. He has kept her biological material. He built
36:25
Speaker 1: a shrine to a life-size doll of her. His own
36:28
Speaker 1: therapist broke confidentiality to warn the victim of his lethal capacity.
36:33
Speaker 1: He stockpiled cyanide, arsenic, and human remains.
36:37
Speaker 2: All verifiable facts.
36:38
Speaker 1: He attempted to destroy her career. And he wrote a
36:42
Speaker 1: 25-page manifesto explicitly detailing his desire to take her skull
36:47
Speaker 1: and admitting to actively hunting her with a machete.
36:50
Speaker 2: A staggering amount of evidence.
36:51
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? If you are listening
36:53
Speaker 1: to this, logic dictates that this man would immediately be
36:56
Speaker 1: locked away in a maximum security facility without the possibility
36:59
Speaker 1: of seeing daylight, right?
37:01
Speaker 2: Logic, psychological profiling, and basic human self-preservation all scream that
37:07
Speaker 2: this man represents an imminent catastrophic threat to public safety.
37:11
Speaker 1: But then we collide with the legal reality. Because here
37:13
Speaker 1: is the punchline to this entire 13-year nightmare.
37:16
Speaker 2: Prepare yourself because it's infuriating.
37:18
Speaker 1: After finding the skulls, the manifesto, the poisons, and the shrine,
37:22
Speaker 1: Benjamin C. Larson was arrested and charged with one count
37:25
Speaker 1: of stalking.
37:25
Speaker 2: Just one count.
37:26
Speaker 1: And he was released on a $ 15, 000 bond. $ 15, 000. $ 15, 000.
37:27
Speaker 1: His arraignment is scheduled for September 11, 2026. And if
37:29
Speaker 1: he is convicted of this stalking charge... The maximum penalty
37:40
Speaker 1: he faces under the current statute is three and a
37:42
Speaker 1: half years in prison and.
37:44
Speaker 2: A $ 10, 000 fine. The dissonance between the documented threat and
37:48
Speaker 2: the legal response is not just staggering. It is a
37:51
Speaker 2: systemic failure of profound proportions.
37:54
Speaker 1: It makes no sense.
37:55
Speaker 2: The legal architecture we currently rely on is simply not
37:58
Speaker 2: designed to comprehend or prosecute the architecture of psychological terror.
38:03
Speaker 1: How does that even happen? How does a judge or
38:05
Speaker 1: a magistrate look at a man who admits to hunting
38:08
Speaker 1: a woman with a machete and decide that $ 15, 000 is
38:11
Speaker 1: a sufficient guarantee of safety?
38:13
Speaker 2: It's a flaw in how we assess risk.
38:15
Speaker 1: I was reading about bail reform and algorithmic risk assessments,
38:18
Speaker 1: and it seems like the system is completely blind to nuance.
38:21
Speaker 2: It is entirely blind to this specific type of nuance.
38:24
Speaker 2: The justice system is predicated on the concept of actus reus,
38:27
Speaker 2: the guilty act.
38:28
Speaker 1: Meaning they have to actually do the crime first.
38:30
Speaker 2: The law is built to punish a crime that has
38:32
Speaker 2: already occurred. Stalking laws, which really only came into existence
38:37
Speaker 2: in the early 1990s after the tragic murder of actress
38:40
Speaker 2: Rebecca Schaefer, were a rudimentary attempt to criminalize the prelude
38:44
Speaker 2: to violence.
38:45
Speaker 1: But they don't go far enough.
38:47
Speaker 2: But they are frequently treated as low-level harassment charges. When
38:50
Speaker 2: a judge sets bail, they often use risk assessment algorithms
38:54
Speaker 2: that heavily weight prior violent convictions and failure to appear
38:57
Speaker 2: in court.
38:58
Speaker 1: Right, so if Larson doesn't have a rap sheet of
39:00
Speaker 1: prior felony assaults, the algorithm views him as a low risk.
39:04
Speaker 2: Exactly. It completely ignores the fact that he has spent
39:07
Speaker 2: 13 years meticulously preparing for a single, catastrophic act of violence.
39:12
Speaker 1: Because the algorithm cannot quantify the danger of a 25-page
39:15
Speaker 1: manifesto or a basement torture shrine.
39:18
Speaker 2: Because no one has bled yet. Furthermore, defense attorneys frequently
39:22
Speaker 2: leverage the First Amendment to minimize manifestos, arguing that written fantasies,
39:27
Speaker 2: however grotesque, are protected expression.
39:29
Speaker 1: Protected expression. He was hunting her with a machete.
39:32
Speaker 2: They'll argue it's protected, unless they meet the incredibly strict
39:36
Speaker 2: legal definition of a true threat that is immediate and unconditional.
39:40
Speaker 1: So the system demands that the victim essentially wait at
39:43
Speaker 1: the edge of the knife.
39:44
Speaker 2: It forces law enforcement to play a game of legal chicken,
39:47
Speaker 2: hoping they can intervene in the millisecond between the swinging
39:51
Speaker 2: of the machete and the severing of the artery.
39:53
Speaker 1: It makes you want to tear your hair out. If
39:56
Speaker 1: the maximum penalty for a 13-year obsession that culminated in
39:59
Speaker 1: a machete hunting trip is just three and a half years,
40:03
Speaker 1: is the law fundamentally unequipped to handle crimes of psychological
40:07
Speaker 1: terror and obsession?
40:08
Speaker 2: The law isn't just unequipped. It is actively complicit in
40:12
Speaker 2: endangering victims.
40:14
Speaker 1: It feels like the entire judicial system is waiting for
40:16
Speaker 1: this woman to be murdered, Before it acknowledges the severity
40:20
Speaker 1: of the threat.
40:20
Speaker 2: It means that the entire burden of survival falls squarely
40:23
Speaker 2: back onto the shoulders of the victim. She has to
40:26
Speaker 2: remain hypervigilant for the rest of her life.
40:28
Speaker 1: And that is the heaviest, most unjust toll of all.
40:32
Speaker 1: The system essentially mandates her perpetual trauma. She did everything right.
40:35
Speaker 2: She really did. She set the boundaries. She moved. She
40:39
Speaker 2: involved the authorities.
40:40
Speaker 1: And the system responded by putting a $ 15, 000 price tag
40:44
Speaker 1: on her safety.
40:44
Speaker 2: It's a complete betrayal of the victim.
40:46
Speaker 1: We have covered incredibly dark, heavy terrain today, but we
40:50
Speaker 1: want to bring this directly back to you, the listener.
40:52
Speaker 2: Yes, because there's a reason we talk about this.
40:55
Speaker 1: Why does a deep dive like this matter? Why spend
40:58
Speaker 1: an hour unpacking the darkest corners of a stalker's mind?
41:03
Speaker 2: It matters because this is not just a shocking story
41:06
Speaker 2: meant to give you a true crime thrill.
41:08
Speaker 1: Not at all. This is a masterclass in recognizing how
41:11
Speaker 1: coercive control operates. It shows how it camouflages itself And
41:15
Speaker 1: how it escalates.
41:16
Speaker 2: It is absolute proof that ignoring red flags does not
41:19
Speaker 2: make them disappear.
41:20
Speaker 1: When someone brings up Ed Gein on a first date,
41:23
Speaker 1: when they threaten suicide on a third date, those are
41:25
Speaker 1: not quirks.
41:26
Speaker 2: They are not cries for help that you are equipped
41:28
Speaker 2: to fix.
41:28
Speaker 1: They are aggressive boundary tests. And this story proves that
41:31
Speaker 1: sometimes trusting your gut like the victim did when she
41:34
Speaker 1: packed up her entire life and fled to Canada is
41:37
Speaker 1: the absolute only thing that keeps you alive.
41:39
Speaker 2: She saved her own life by refusing to ignore those sirens.
41:42
Speaker 1: She really did.
41:44
Speaker 2: We often take a false sense of comfort in the
41:46
Speaker 2: narrative arc of true crime media. We like the neat
41:49
Speaker 2: resolution where the police execute the warrant, they catch the
41:52
Speaker 2: bad guy, the music swells, and we believe the system
41:55
Speaker 2: worked and the story is over.
41:57
Speaker 1: But life isn't a TV show.
41:59
Speaker 2: But we have to confront the deeply uncomfortable reality of
42:03
Speaker 2: the present moment. Benjamin C. Larson is currently out on
42:07
Speaker 2: a $ 15, 000 bond.
42:09
Speaker 1: He is walking around right now.
42:10
Speaker 2: The threat is not neutralized, it is merely delayed. So
42:14
Speaker 2: I want to leave you with a chilling, provocative question
42:16
Speaker 2: to mull over as we conclude.
42:17
Speaker 1: What's the question?
42:18
Speaker 2: When the justice system treats a 13-year machete-wielding poison stockpile
42:22
Speaker 2: and obsession as a crime worth only $ 15, 000 in bail,
42:27
Speaker 2: at what point do we have to admit that our
42:28
Speaker 2: legal system is not actually designed to prevent tragedies, but
42:31
Speaker 2: only to catalog them after they happen?
42:34
Speaker 1: A deeply unsettling question, but one we all need to
42:36
Speaker 1: be asking. Thank you for joining us on this deep
42:39
Speaker 1: dive into the source material. Stay safe out there and always,
42:42
Speaker 1: always trust your instincts.