Latest / Crime and Horror / Top 5 Bingeable SCARY STORIES • STRANGEST of the Strange Edition Vol. 2 - MrBallen
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Today, we have a special bonus video for you, guys.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's a collection of five strange but true stories that
- 0:06Speaker 1: all basically sound like they were pulled out of a
- 0:08Speaker 1: fiction novel, but they really happened now. Even if you
- 0:12Speaker 1: have heard or seen some of these stories before, don't worry.
- 0:15Speaker 1: They have all been completely re edited so it will
- 0:18Speaker 1: feel like a brand new viewing experience. And if you
- 0:21Speaker 1: didn't know, this is actually part two of this particular
- 0:24Speaker 1: video series. You can find the link to Part one
- 0:27Speaker 1: in the description below or at the end of today's video.
- 0:30Speaker 2: But before we get.
- 0:31Speaker 1: Into today's five stories, if you're a fan of the strange,
- 0:34Speaker 1: dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come
- 0:37Speaker 1: to the right place, because.
- 0:38Speaker 2: That's all we do, and we upload once a week.
- 0:41Speaker 1: So if that's of interest to you, the next time,
- 0:44Speaker 1: the like button very politely asks you to hand them.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Their reading glasses.
- 0:48Speaker 1: Oblige them, but be sure you first fully submerged their
- 0:52Speaker 1: glasses in fried chicken grease. Also, please subscribe to our
- 0:56Speaker 1: channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss
- 0:59Speaker 1: any of our weekly upload.
- 1:00Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into today's stories.
- 1:18Speaker 1: On February seventeenth, two thousand and four, shoppers inside of
- 1:21Speaker 1: a massive Japanese superstore called Jusco in Wakachi City were
- 1:25Speaker 1: suddenly aware of a loud commotion. When they went to investigate,
- 1:28Speaker 1: they found a thin young woman with a young baby
- 1:31Speaker 1: strapped to her chest grappling with an older man. Initially,
- 1:34Speaker 1: onlookers didn't know what to do. They stood there shocked
- 1:37Speaker 1: at what they were seeing. Then the woman yelled out fief.
- 1:40Speaker 1: The man she was fighting with was in his late sixties,
- 1:42Speaker 1: and he had pinned the woman and her baby up
- 1:44Speaker 1: against this bank of ATMs, and his fists were clenched
- 1:47Speaker 1: like he was holding whatever it was he took from her.
- 1:49Speaker 1: Three men from the crowd immediately jumped into action and
- 1:52Speaker 1: wrestled the man off of the woman and pinned him
- 1:54Speaker 1: to the ground and began trying to pull his hands
- 1:57Speaker 1: open to take out whatever he had stolen from this woman,
- 2:00Speaker 1: But the man would not unclench his fists, and so
- 2:02Speaker 1: these three men yelled out to the police that happened
- 2:04Speaker 1: to be nearby. They ran over and jumped on top
- 2:07Speaker 1: of the skuy and handcuffed him, and the man, as
- 2:09Speaker 1: he's laying on the ground, is yelling out that he
- 2:11Speaker 1: did nothing wrong, and then onlookers would say he began
- 2:14Speaker 1: moaning very strangely before he began violently vomiting.
- 2:17Speaker 2: Before falling unconscious.
- 2:19Speaker 1: While the police waited for emergency services to show up
- 2:22Speaker 1: and take this man to the hospital, they were able
- 2:24Speaker 1: to open up his fists and discover the only thing
- 2:26Speaker 1: he was clutching was his own bank card that was
- 2:28Speaker 1: now bent in three places. The wallet he had on
- 2:31Speaker 1: him belonged to him, and the bags that were lying
- 2:34Speaker 1: on the ground all around him only contained some pet
- 2:36Speaker 1: supplies that he had recently purchased. It did not appear
- 2:39Speaker 1: he had actually taken anything from this woman.
- 2:41Speaker 2: And speaking of this woman, the.
- 2:42Speaker 1: Police were so caught up in the chaos of the
- 2:44Speaker 1: moment that they hadn't even thought to look around for.
- 2:47Speaker 2: The victim to see if she was okay.
- 2:49Speaker 1: So they poked their heads up and start looking around
- 2:51Speaker 1: the crowd for this woman. But she's nowhere to be seen,
- 2:53Speaker 1: and so they asked the crowd, you know, do we
- 2:55Speaker 1: know who.
- 2:55Speaker 2: She is or where she went? And nobody knew.
- 2:57Speaker 1: The police did think it was odd that this woman
- 2:59Speaker 1: had walked off without talking to them first, but they
- 3:02Speaker 1: figured if she walked away, then everything must be fine,
- 3:04Speaker 1: and so they labeled the incident and attempted robbery, and
- 3:07Speaker 1: they closed the case. The following day, the older man,
- 3:10Speaker 1: who became known as Mister A by police, died at
- 3:13Speaker 1: the hospital as a result of heart failure caused by
- 3:16Speaker 1: extreme stress. When the police found out about this, they
- 3:19Speaker 1: simply went into the case file, updated it to show
- 3:21Speaker 1: the suspect had died, and did not investigate further. But
- 3:25Speaker 1: mister A's family refused to believe he had just attacked
- 3:28Speaker 1: a young woman and her baby.
- 3:30Speaker 2: It was completely out of character.
- 3:31Speaker 1: He was a gentle retiree who had spent forty years
- 3:34Speaker 1: working for a chemical manufacturer and now was collecting a
- 3:37Speaker 1: pension and working part time as a security guard. He
- 3:40Speaker 1: lived with his wife, his children, and his grandchildren, and
- 3:42Speaker 1: he lived about a kilometer away from the Jusco where
- 3:45Speaker 1: he had gone that day to get some hamster food
- 3:47Speaker 1: for his grandson's hamster. His family pleaded with police to
- 3:50Speaker 1: reopen the case and investigate this woman because she must
- 3:54Speaker 1: have done something to start this altercation. The police initially resisted,
- 3:57Speaker 1: but ultimately conceded and said, okay, we'll check the CCTV
- 4:01Speaker 1: camera footage at the Gisco to make sure we didn't miss.
- 4:03Speaker 2: Anything, and what they discovered terrified them.
- 4:06Speaker 1: A camera overlooking the ATM bank where this whole scuffle
- 4:09Speaker 1: went down picked up this woman about five minutes before
- 4:12Speaker 1: mister A walked into frame. She was standing in a
- 4:15Speaker 1: corner just off the side of the ATMs, and she
- 4:18Speaker 1: did appear to have a two year old or one
- 4:19Speaker 1: year old strap to her chest, and she was just
- 4:21Speaker 1: standing there motionless with her bap to the corner, looking down.
- 4:25Speaker 1: And then when mister A came into frame, he appeared
- 4:27Speaker 1: to pull some money out of the atm. He had
- 4:28Speaker 1: bags all over his arms. He turned around after getting
- 4:31Speaker 1: his cash and started walking away, and as soon as
- 4:33Speaker 1: he does, the woman in the corner suddenly becomes animated.
- 4:36Speaker 2: She lifts her head up and walks.
- 4:38Speaker 1: Straight past him, skimming his chest with her hand as
- 4:41Speaker 1: she passed. And right after she did that, it was
- 4:44Speaker 1: like mister A had a reaction to being touched by her,
- 4:46Speaker 1: and he instinctively grabbed her arm and that's when the
- 4:49Speaker 1: struggle ensued, and that's when the woman yelled out thief,
- 4:52Speaker 1: although it's clear from the footage that she is the aggressor,
- 4:55Speaker 1: not mister A, and then at some point the three
- 4:57Speaker 1: men jumped out of the crowd. They pull him to
- 4:59Speaker 1: the ground, the police show up, and then at some
- 5:00Speaker 1: point during this chaotic melee, the woman just stands up
- 5:04Speaker 1: and meanders her way into the crowd and disappears. Although
- 5:07Speaker 1: the police searched every piece of footage in and around
- 5:10Speaker 1: this atm all around the time of the incident, they
- 5:13Speaker 1: never found any footage of this woman entering or.
- 5:16Speaker 2: Exiting the gisco.
- 5:18Speaker 1: It was like she just appeared in that corner in
- 5:20Speaker 1: order to go after mister A and then vanished as
- 5:23Speaker 1: soon as it was done.
- 5:24Speaker 2: And none of.
- 5:24Speaker 1: The dozens of witnesses that watched the scuffle take place
- 5:28Speaker 1: right in front of them in broad daylight, were able
- 5:30Speaker 1: to provide any sort of meaningful description of this woman.
- 5:33Speaker 2: It was like nobody got a really good look at her.
- 5:35Speaker 2: But after reviewing.
- 5:36Speaker 1: Hours and hours of the CCTV footage, the police did
- 5:39Speaker 1: find one instance where this woman for one second looked
- 5:44Speaker 1: up at a camera, exposing her face, and her face
- 5:46Speaker 1: was so unsettling to police that they actually decided not
- 5:50Speaker 1: to share the image with the public for an entire year.
- 5:53Speaker 1: They were scared that if people saw this image it
- 5:55Speaker 1: would scare them from ever going back to Gisco. This
- 5:58Speaker 1: is the image of the woman. You can see her
- 6:00Speaker 1: face is totally emotionless. Her eyes are blank and downcast.
- 6:04Speaker 1: Some have compared her face to a death mask, which
- 6:07Speaker 1: is a plaster cast of a dead person's face. Other
- 6:10Speaker 1: people have said she doesn't even look human. After seeing
- 6:13Speaker 1: the CCTV footage, mister A's relatives sued the police for
- 6:16Speaker 1: detaining him and pinning him to the ground despite his
- 6:19Speaker 1: obvious medical distress as a result of whatever this woman
- 6:22Speaker 1: did to him. Eventually they did reach a settlement, but
- 6:25Speaker 1: what they really wanted was an explanation for who this
- 6:27Speaker 1: woman was. But even after the police released this strange
- 6:31Speaker 1: photo to the public, nobody ever came forward, so she
- 6:34Speaker 1: was never identified, and it's unlikely she'll ever be identified
- 6:37Speaker 1: because the statute of limitations for this case expired in
- 6:40Speaker 1: twenty eleven.
- 6:41Speaker 2: The case, which is now.
- 6:42Speaker 1: Referred to as the Justco Phantom, is still very famous
- 6:45Speaker 1: in Japan, and it remains a popular topic on long
- 6:48Speaker 1: internet chatroom threads, where people exchange this eerie photograph and
- 6:52Speaker 1: speculate about who or what killed mister A. In two
- 7:09Speaker 1: thousand and seven, thirty five year old, Ava Vishnirska was
- 7:12Speaker 1: a member of the German national paragliding team. Over the
- 7:15Speaker 1: previous two years, Ava had competed in ten of the
- 7:18Speaker 1: world's biggest paragliding competitions and she had won six of them,
- 7:22Speaker 1: making her the top female paraglider in the world. So
- 7:25Speaker 1: coming into that year, Ava was very motivated to work
- 7:28Speaker 1: extra hard to make sure she retained that title as
- 7:31Speaker 1: world champion. On February twenty fourth of that year, Ava
- 7:34Speaker 1: was preparing her gear alongside two hundred other paragliders on
- 7:38Speaker 1: Mount Borra in New South Wales, Australia. This was Ava's
- 7:41Speaker 1: last training opportunity before her first major competition of that year,
- 7:45Speaker 1: which was scheduled for the next week. As they were
- 7:47Speaker 1: getting ready to launch, one of the coaches walked in
- 7:50Speaker 1: front of the group and made an announcement. He said,
- 7:52Speaker 1: storm clouds have been spotted to the north, but the forecast.
- 7:55Speaker 2: Was a little bit ambiguous.
- 7:56Speaker 1: It wasn't clear if the storm was going to move
- 7:58Speaker 1: over their training area or so. It was up to
- 8:01Speaker 1: each of the paragliders that they still wanted to launch
- 8:03Speaker 1: that day and risk the bad weather. Ava, who was
- 8:06Speaker 1: really eager to get this training flight in, looked at
- 8:08Speaker 1: the sky and saw that it was pretty gray, but
- 8:10Speaker 1: decided that she was going to do it. Worst case scenario,
- 8:13Speaker 1: she would have to cut it short. The rest of
- 8:15Speaker 1: the German national team they didn't want to take the risk,
- 8:17Speaker 1: and so they stayed grounded that day.
- 8:19Speaker 2: Ava took a.
- 8:20Speaker 1: Little bit longer preparing her gear, so by the time
- 8:22Speaker 1: she was lining up on the cliff, she was only
- 8:24Speaker 1: one of a handful of people that remained, and so
- 8:26Speaker 1: strapped into her glider. She took a good run forward
- 8:28Speaker 1: and launched herself up into the air. On the ground,
- 8:31Speaker 1: The rest of the German national team followed in a
- 8:33Speaker 1: van to track her progress and checked in with her
- 8:36Speaker 1: from time to time with their radio. The first part
- 8:38Speaker 1: of Ava's journey was incredibly calm. She followed the ridge
- 8:41Speaker 1: line from Mount Borra for twelve miles until it ended.
- 8:44Speaker 1: At that point, she entered into the skies over the
- 8:46Speaker 1: vast savannah. As her GPS and tracking log ticked tracking
- 8:50Speaker 1: her progress, two large thunderstorm clouds appeared in front of her,
- 8:54Speaker 1: one larger than the other. The vast majority of the
- 8:56Speaker 1: other paragliders that had launched that day had launched ahead
- 8:59Speaker 1: of a and so when these clouds appeared, they had
- 9:02Speaker 1: already passed that section, and so they didn't.
- 9:04Speaker 2: Need to contend with the storm.
- 9:06Speaker 1: As for Ava and the other two people she was with,
- 9:08Speaker 1: which was an Austrian team member and a Chinese team member,
- 9:11Speaker 1: they had a decision to make. They could either immediately
- 9:14Speaker 1: ground their flight to avoid the storm, or they could
- 9:17Speaker 1: attempt to dodge it.
- 9:18Speaker 2: They chose the latter.
- 9:19Speaker 1: They knew it was too dangerous to try to fly
- 9:21Speaker 1: underneath these clouds because of something called updraft.
- 9:24Speaker 2: At the beginning of storms, warm air is.
- 9:26Speaker 1: Sucked up from the ground up into these clouds, and
- 9:29Speaker 1: a paraglider, if they get caught in that can get
- 9:31Speaker 1: sucked up with the air into the storm. And so
- 9:33Speaker 1: Ava and the other two paragliders began aggressively flying around
- 9:37Speaker 1: the outside of these clouds, when all.
- 9:39Speaker 2: Of a sudden, the storm completely changed.
- 9:42Speaker 1: The big cloud overtook the small cloud, creating this twelve
- 9:45Speaker 1: mile wide cumulo nimbus cloud that now all three paragliders
- 9:48Speaker 1: were stuck inside of. Any updraft is dangerous to a paraglider,
- 9:52Speaker 1: but the updraft of a cumulo nimbus cloud is famously
- 9:55Speaker 1: dangerous because it's extremely powerful and it lasts for over
- 9:59Speaker 1: an hour.
- 10:00Speaker 2: The Austrian man.
- 10:00Speaker 1: Was able to pull down on one toggle point to
- 10:02Speaker 1: feet and began spiraling all the way out of the
- 10:05Speaker 1: grasp of this updraft, and he said he turned to
- 10:07Speaker 1: look at the other two and he didn't see the
- 10:09Speaker 1: Chinese man, but he did see Ava, and she was
- 10:12Speaker 1: desperately trying to do what he was doing and spiral down,
- 10:15Speaker 1: but she was clearly caught in the updraft, and he
- 10:17Speaker 1: watched her get pulled up into the black cloud out
- 10:19Speaker 1: of view. By the time the Austrian man hit the ground,
- 10:22Speaker 1: he would say it had become the worst thunderstorm he
- 10:25Speaker 1: had ever seen, with huge hailballs hitting the ground all
- 10:27Speaker 1: around him. He took one more look up and he
- 10:30Speaker 1: didn't see the Chinese man.
- 10:31Speaker 2: He didn't see Ava.
- 10:32Speaker 1: Anywhere, and he took off running for a barn to
- 10:34Speaker 1: seek shelter. And when he was there, he pulled out
- 10:36Speaker 1: his radio and he alerted the other teams of this emergency.
- 10:39Speaker 1: Inside the cloud, Ava was hurtling up like a rocket.
- 10:42Speaker 1: The storm was lifting her at a rate of sixty
- 10:45Speaker 1: feet per second. There was nothing she could do to
- 10:47Speaker 1: get out of this wind time, Ava knew she was
- 10:50Speaker 1: getting pulled towards the storm's eye, in its vicious center
- 10:53Speaker 1: because of the immense claps of thunder that just kept
- 10:55Speaker 1: getting louder and louder, and it also kept getting.
- 10:58Speaker 2: Darker and darker all around her.
- 11:00Speaker 1: In fact, it was pitch black except for the occasional
- 11:02Speaker 1: flash of lightning that came very close to electrocuting her.
- 11:05Speaker 2: As she desperately tried to keep her glider stable.
- 11:08Speaker 1: She was able to place a radio call down to
- 11:10Speaker 1: her team on the ground, but all she could say was.
- 11:13Speaker 2: I can't see anything before it cut out.
- 11:15Speaker 1: And at some point Ava reached the eye of the storm,
- 11:17Speaker 1: where it's pitch black and the temperatures are freezing in
- 11:20Speaker 1: hailballs the size of oranges or pelting her left and right,
- 11:24Speaker 1: and the updraft kept pulling her higher and higher and
- 11:27Speaker 1: higher until she.
- 11:28Speaker 2: Passed out from a lack of oxygen.
- 11:30Speaker 1: And at some point this updraft actually shot her up
- 11:32Speaker 1: and out of the cloud.
- 11:34Speaker 2: And while this meant she was out of the storm,
- 11:36Speaker 2: she was now.
- 11:37Speaker 1: In air that was fifty degrees below zero, which meant
- 11:40Speaker 1: everything her face, her gloves, her clothes, the wings of
- 11:43Speaker 1: her glider, everything completely froze, and to make matters worse,
- 11:47Speaker 1: at the altitude she was at there was almost no
- 11:50Speaker 1: oxygen and she did.
- 11:51Speaker 2: Not have a breathing apparatus.
- 11:53Speaker 1: So by all accounts, Ava should be dead, but somehow
- 11:57Speaker 1: she didn't die. She just kept floating around above the
- 12:00Speaker 1: storm cloud for forty five.
- 12:02Speaker 2: Minutes, and then something happened.
- 12:04Speaker 1: The ice on one side of the glider broke off,
- 12:07Speaker 1: causing it to collapse, throwing her into a deadly freefall,
- 12:10Speaker 1: and she's not in control. She's still unconscious, and she
- 12:13Speaker 1: starts barreling back towards the ground like gravity has been
- 12:16Speaker 1: turned back.
- 12:17Speaker 2: On again, going straight through the storm all over again.
- 12:20Speaker 1: And so through the storm, going at ninety feet per second,
- 12:23Speaker 1: she clears the storm, and then right after getting out
- 12:26Speaker 1: underneath it, her glider miraculously just opens back up again,
- 12:30Speaker 1: and the jerking motion of her suddenly stopping her freefall
- 12:33Speaker 1: jolted her awake, and so she's looking around totally confused
- 12:36Speaker 1: as she's gradually regaining consciousness, and she's taking stock of
- 12:40Speaker 1: where she is, and she's still in the storm cloud,
- 12:42Speaker 1: but right at the bottom of it. But luckily the
- 12:45Speaker 1: updraft had stopped, and so she was steady, and she
- 12:48Speaker 1: was able to reach up and grab her toggles, and
- 12:50Speaker 1: she was able to fly herself down to the ground
- 12:52Speaker 1: and crash land and then she curled into a ball,
- 12:54Speaker 1: grabbed her radio, and she called her team. When they
- 12:57Speaker 1: heard her voice, they could not believe she was alive
- 12:59Speaker 1: because the other paraglider that got sucked up by the updraft,
- 13:03Speaker 1: the guy from the Chinese national team, He unfortunately was
- 13:06Speaker 1: struck by lightning and was killed, and so they were
- 13:08Speaker 1: anticipating finding out that Ava had been struck by lightning
- 13:11Speaker 1: as well.
- 13:11Speaker 2: But Ava had not just survived.
- 13:13Speaker 1: When they brought her to the hospital, they discovered that
- 13:16Speaker 1: virtually nothing was wrong with her. She had some pretty
- 13:18Speaker 1: bad bruises and cuts from the hail, and she had
- 13:20Speaker 1: a little bit of frostbite on her face, but it
- 13:22Speaker 1: was treatable, and so the same day she was brought in.
- 13:25Speaker 2: They discharged her.
- 13:26Speaker 1: After leaving the hospital, she and her teammates went back
- 13:28Speaker 1: to the launch site so she could collect her gear,
- 13:31Speaker 1: and when they got there, she looked at her GPS,
- 13:33Speaker 1: and the GPS had been tracking her entire flight, the
- 13:36Speaker 1: entire time she was up in that cloud, and she
- 13:38Speaker 1: showed her teammates what it said, and they literally couldn't
- 13:41Speaker 1: believe it. The screen showed she had reached an altitude
- 13:44Speaker 1: of thirty two thousand, six hundred and thirty four feet, which,
- 13:48Speaker 1: to put this in perspective, is the same altitude you
- 13:50Speaker 1: fly at inside of a commercial jet. So imagine being
- 13:53Speaker 1: outside of your plane in the middle of a flight,
- 13:56Speaker 1: and that's how high she was. Another reference point is
- 13:58Speaker 1: she was approximately four one thousand feet higher than the
- 14:02Speaker 1: summit of Mount Everest. No human being had ever been
- 14:05Speaker 1: that high unprotected and lived to tell the tale until Ava.
- 14:22Speaker 2: In the early morning hours.
- 14:23Speaker 1: Of June tenth, nineteen ninety four, Deborah Hoyt suddenly woke
- 14:27Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night. She and her
- 14:28Speaker 1: husband were staying with relatives in Sacramento, California, and they
- 14:32Speaker 1: were supposed to be there for.
- 14:33Speaker 2: The next couple of days.
- 14:34Speaker 1: But as she was sitting there, she had this overwhelming
- 14:37Speaker 1: urge to want to leave right then and there and
- 14:39Speaker 1: head back to their home in Lake Tahoe. Because she
- 14:42Speaker 1: didn't really know what to make of this overwhelming feeling,
- 14:44Speaker 1: she shook her husband a wake and told him about it.
- 14:47Speaker 2: She thought that maybe something.
- 14:48Speaker 1: Was wrong, and he said, you know what, you probably
- 14:50Speaker 1: just had a bad dream and you're kind of waking
- 14:52Speaker 1: up still half in your dream. It's not a big deal.
- 14:54Speaker 1: Just go back to bed. I'm sure everything is totally fine.
- 14:57Speaker 1: And in the morning, if you still want to, I'd
- 14:59Speaker 1: be happy to leave. And so Deborah said, yeah, you're right,
- 15:01Speaker 1: I'm totally overreacting. I'm sure it was just a dream,
- 15:04Speaker 1: and she laid back down to try to go back
- 15:06Speaker 1: to sleep. But as she laid there, that sense of
- 15:08Speaker 1: dread that something was wrong and that she had to
- 15:11Speaker 1: leave right now. It was just growing and growing and growing,
- 15:15Speaker 1: until she just jumped out of the bed. She's just
- 15:16Speaker 1: standing in the room and she says to her husband, Honey,
- 15:19Speaker 1: we gotta go right now. I don't know what's wrong,
- 15:21Speaker 1: but we gotta go right now. And her husband did
- 15:24Speaker 1: not want to go, and he said, come on, Deborah,
- 15:26Speaker 1: get back in bed.
- 15:27Speaker 2: It's not a big deal. But she was adamant. She said,
- 15:29Speaker 2: get out of bed.
- 15:30Speaker 1: We're leaving right now, and so begrudgingly her husband said, okay,
- 15:33Speaker 1: we'll leave right now, and so the two of them
- 15:35Speaker 1: hastily packed up and then went downstairs and left a
- 15:38Speaker 1: note for their relatives explaining their absence, and then they
- 15:41Speaker 1: got in.
- 15:41Speaker 2: Their car and they drove off.
- 15:43Speaker 1: After a little while, the couple reached a very dangerous
- 15:45Speaker 1: section of their journey back home. It was called Bullion Bend,
- 15:49Speaker 1: and it was a very windy road up in the mountains,
- 15:51Speaker 1: where one wrong turn and you're going flying down the
- 15:54Speaker 1: side of a mountain. After driving through this area for
- 15:56Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes, they rounded a particularly sharp turn, and
- 16:00Speaker 1: as soon as they made the turn and could look
- 16:02Speaker 1: down the road, Debrah, who was in the passenger seat,
- 16:05Speaker 1: she saw up ahead on the right, off the side
- 16:07Speaker 1: of the road several feet something that was just lying
- 16:10Speaker 1: there on the side of the road.
- 16:11Speaker 2: She didn't know what it was.
- 16:12Speaker 1: She thought it was maybe a bag or some trash,
- 16:15Speaker 1: or maybe a dead animal, and at first she was
- 16:17Speaker 1: just gonna dismiss it, but as her husband drove closer
- 16:19Speaker 1: and closer to it, the light began to illuminate it,
- 16:22Speaker 1: and she looked at it and couldn't really discern what
- 16:24Speaker 1: it was until they were right next to it, and
- 16:26Speaker 1: she looked at her window and she noticed it was
- 16:28Speaker 1: a woman's body, a woman who had no clothes on,
- 16:31Speaker 1: who was just lying there totally motionless and Deborrah immediately
- 16:34Speaker 1: turns to her husband and says, honey, I just saw
- 16:36Speaker 1: a dead woman on the side of the road, and
- 16:38Speaker 1: her husband immediately is kind of panicked and doesn't slow down.
- 16:41Speaker 1: He just keeps driving and says, hey, you know, should
- 16:43Speaker 1: we stop, should we turn around? I mean, maybe she's
- 16:45Speaker 1: not dead, maybe we can help her. But Deborah at
- 16:47Speaker 1: this point is now terrified and she's saying, no, keep going,
- 16:49Speaker 1: don't go back.
- 16:50Speaker 2: I bet it's a trap.
- 16:51Speaker 1: Someone probably put her there, and they're gonna lure us in,
- 16:53Speaker 1: and they're gonna attack us if we try to stop
- 16:55Speaker 1: and help her. And so, in this kind of chaotic,
- 16:57Speaker 1: frenzied reaction that Debra and her husband are, they decide
- 17:01Speaker 1: that their best course of action is just to drive
- 17:03Speaker 1: on and find the next payphone and call the police.
- 17:06Speaker 1: And it just so happened that less than a quarter
- 17:08Speaker 1: of a mile away was a ranger station with a phone,
- 17:11Speaker 1: and so they pull into the parking lot and Deborah
- 17:13Speaker 1: calls the police.
- 17:13Speaker 2: The police tell her to wait.
- 17:15Speaker 1: Inside of her car and they'll be out in a
- 17:17Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and they're gonna need her to bring
- 17:19Speaker 1: them up to where she saw this body.
- 17:20Speaker 2: So a couple of minutes goes by.
- 17:22Speaker 1: The police show up and they tell them to drive
- 17:24Speaker 1: back up the road, but stop about two hundred yards
- 17:27Speaker 1: short of where you believe this woman's body is. And
- 17:29Speaker 1: so Deborah and her husband they get back in the car.
- 17:32Speaker 1: They drive back up the road where they came from,
- 17:34Speaker 1: and right at this point where the road turned very
- 17:36Speaker 1: sharply is where Deborah knew on the other side of
- 17:39Speaker 1: this turn would be this body. And so they pulled
- 17:41Speaker 1: over on the side of the road. The police came
- 17:43Speaker 1: up on their side and they said, yep, right around
- 17:45Speaker 1: the corner, you're gonna find her lying on the ground
- 17:47Speaker 1: on the left side. And so Deborah and her husband
- 17:49Speaker 1: are just sitting in the car watching as the police
- 17:52Speaker 1: go up. They make that turn and they kind of
- 17:53Speaker 1: disappear out of sight, and then they see their spotlight
- 17:56Speaker 1: moving around on the other side of this turn, and
- 17:59Speaker 1: so they figure, okay, they're looking for the body. But
- 18:01Speaker 1: after several minutes, the police came back down the road
- 18:04Speaker 1: and they stopped next to Deborah's car and they said,
- 18:06Speaker 1: you know what, guys, we didn't see anything up there.
- 18:08Speaker 1: There wasn't a body, There wasn't anything out of the ordinary,
- 18:11Speaker 1: and Deborah would say to police, I'm not lying.
- 18:13Speaker 2: I know what I saw. It was a woman's body
- 18:15Speaker 2: right there in front of me. I know it. It's
- 18:17Speaker 2: right over there. And they would tell her.
- 18:19Speaker 1: That we believe you, but we can't do anything because
- 18:22Speaker 1: there's nothing up there. And so they told Debra and
- 18:24Speaker 1: her husband to just head home, and they did. After
- 18:27Speaker 1: Debrah and her husband took off and were gone, the
- 18:29Speaker 1: two responding officers drove back to their police station and
- 18:33Speaker 1: once they were inside, they began speculating about what Deborah
- 18:36Speaker 1: might have seen. And as they were talking, another officer
- 18:39Speaker 1: came into the station, a guy by the name of
- 18:41Speaker 1: Rich Strasser, and he overhears them and he goes over.
- 18:44Speaker 2: He's intrigued and he asked them, you know what happened?
- 18:46Speaker 2: What did you see?
- 18:47Speaker 1: And they explained to him that this woman, Deborah, had
- 18:49Speaker 1: spotted a supposed dead.
- 18:51Speaker 2: Woman's body up on Bullian Bend.
- 18:53Speaker 1: And as soon as he heard Bullyan Bend, Rich remembered
- 18:56Speaker 1: that just a couple of days ago, they had received
- 18:58Speaker 1: a missing person report of a young woman named Christine
- 19:01Speaker 1: Scuobish and her young son named Nick, who had gone missing,
- 19:04Speaker 1: and the last place they had been seen was up
- 19:07Speaker 1: on Bullyan Bend, and so Rich wondered if maybe there
- 19:10Speaker 1: was a body up there, and maybe it was Christine's.
- 19:13Speaker 2: And so the next morning Rich got.
- 19:14Speaker 1: Up early and he headed out to Bullyan Bend, and
- 19:17Speaker 1: when he reached the exact spot where Deborah had claimed
- 19:20Speaker 1: to have seen this dead woman's body, he found a
- 19:23Speaker 1: children's shoe, and so he stopped his car, he got out,
- 19:25Speaker 1: he picked the shoe up, and he's looking around and
- 19:27Speaker 1: he's looking for anything else that's out of the ordinary.
- 19:30Speaker 2: But there's nothing on the road.
- 19:31Speaker 1: There's no skid marks, there's no other debristh there's no
- 19:33Speaker 1: other clothes, there's nothing. And so he walks over to
- 19:36Speaker 1: the guardrail that overlooks this very steep embankment and he
- 19:39Speaker 1: looks down the other side, and at first all he
- 19:41Speaker 1: sees is just trees everywhere, But as he's looking, he
- 19:44Speaker 1: thinks he sees more clothing farther down the mountain, and
- 19:47Speaker 1: so he climbs over the guardrail and he very carefully
- 19:49Speaker 1: maneuvers his way down and after only a couple of
- 19:51Speaker 1: seconds he reaches a clearing in the branches in the
- 19:54Speaker 1: trees and he can see down to where the train
- 19:56Speaker 1: kind of levels off, and right down.
- 19:58Speaker 2: There is a smashed up red four sedan.
- 20:01Speaker 1: It was the same type of car that Christine Scubash
- 20:03Speaker 1: had been driving when she went missing, and so Rich
- 20:05Speaker 1: ran down the mountain, following Debreeze all the way to
- 20:08Speaker 1: this wrecked car. He goes around to the driver's side
- 20:11Speaker 1: and he looks inside, and there in the driver's seat
- 20:13Speaker 1: is Christine Scubash, and unfortunately she was deceased. And then
- 20:17Speaker 1: on the passenger seat is her son, Nicki, and he
- 20:20Speaker 1: is alive, but barely. He had gone five days without
- 20:23Speaker 1: food or water, and doctors would say when Rich found
- 20:26Speaker 1: him he probably only had about one maybe two hours
- 20:29Speaker 1: before he would have.
- 20:30Speaker 2: Died as well.
- 20:31Speaker 1: Authorities believe Christine fell asleep at the wheel and she
- 20:34Speaker 1: drove off that embankment. Initially, Rich believed Deborah must have
- 20:37Speaker 1: seen Christine when she was driving through the mountains and
- 20:40Speaker 1: saw that woman on the side of the road. After
- 20:43Speaker 1: her accident, Christine must have gotten out of her car
- 20:45Speaker 1: and then climbed up that embankment and then laid on
- 20:48Speaker 1: the road hoping someone would see her. And then when
- 20:50Speaker 1: no one stopped for her, she went back down.
- 20:52Speaker 2: To her car where she ultimately died.
- 20:54Speaker 1: But according to the corner that would have been impossible
- 20:58Speaker 1: because when Christine crashed off the road, she died on impact,
- 21:02Speaker 1: five days before Debra saw that woman on the side
- 21:06Speaker 1: of the road, so it could not have been Christine.
- 21:09Speaker 1: To this day, no one knows for sure who or
- 21:12Speaker 1: what Deborah saw on the side of the road, but
- 21:14Speaker 1: it is objectively true that rich only investigated Bully and
- 21:19Speaker 1: Bend and found Nicki alive because of Debra's police report
- 21:23Speaker 1: about this dead woman on the side of the road.
- 21:26Speaker 2: And Deborah was only on that road because she had.
- 21:29Speaker 1: Had this totally weird, middle of the night urge to
- 21:32Speaker 1: suddenly leave a relative's house and drive.
- 21:34Speaker 2: Up into the mountains, something she had never felt before
- 21:37Speaker 2: and didn't really know how to explain.
- 21:39Speaker 1: So either this is an extremely strange set of circumstances
- 21:43Speaker 1: or Nicki had a guardian angel. As many of you
- 21:54Speaker 1: may know, aside from telling stories on this YouTube channel,
- 21:57Speaker 1: I also tell stories on my podcast, the Mister Ballin
- 22:01Speaker 1: Podcast Strange, dark and Mysterious Stories.
- 22:03Speaker 2: But that's not all.
- 22:05Speaker 1: In addition to that podcast, under the Balin Studio's umbrella,
- 22:08Speaker 1: there is a whole host of other podcasts that you
- 22:11Speaker 1: can binge right now and their content. All of them
- 22:14Speaker 1: fall into the strange, dark, and mysterious category. For example,
- 22:18Speaker 1: if you're into baffling and horrifying medical mysteries, well you
- 22:22Speaker 1: should go check out my other podcast called mister Balin's
- 22:25Speaker 1: Medical Mysteries. Or maybe you want to hear from some
- 22:28Speaker 1: other voices within our studio, like Luke Lamana. Luke Lamana
- 22:32Speaker 1: is a military veteran. He has a super iconic, really
- 22:35Speaker 1: deep radio voice, and he has two shows. One is
- 22:38Speaker 1: called Wartime Stories, where he basically looks at strange, dark
- 22:41Speaker 1: and mysterious wartime stories, and his other show is called Redacted,
- 22:45Speaker 1: where he looks at information that used to be classified
- 22:48Speaker 1: and he dives into it with his military expertise and experience,
- 22:52Speaker 1: and he basically shows you the lies and secrets and
- 22:55Speaker 1: half truths that the most powerful institutions in the world.
- 22:58Speaker 2: Have been keeping from us.
- 23:00Speaker 1: We also have shows that are just playing creepy and unsettling,
- 23:03Speaker 1: like Bedtime Stories hosted by Richard will where he dives
- 23:07Speaker 1: into the supernatural and cryptids and mysterious deaths. I mean
- 23:10Speaker 1: basically his whole kind of niche is things that keep
- 23:13Speaker 1: you up at night. And then two other shows that
- 23:15Speaker 1: fall into that sort of unsettling, creepy vibe are Late
- 23:18Speaker 1: Nights with Nextpo hosted by the famous YouTuber Nextpo, where
- 23:22Speaker 1: he dives into true, crazy, scary stories. And then we
- 23:25Speaker 1: also have another show called Runful hosted by Rodney Barnes,
- 23:28Speaker 1: and Rodney is like an icon in the horror genre
- 23:31Speaker 1: at large, and on his show, he just dives into
- 23:34Speaker 1: this wild, chilling lore, like horror lore.
- 23:37Speaker 2: People love that show.
- 23:39Speaker 1: Or if you're a history buff, you need to check
- 23:41Speaker 1: out our new hit show called a Twist of History.
- 23:44Speaker 1: It's hosted by Joel who also has an amazing YouTube channel.
- 23:47Speaker 1: It's called Let's Read, and on a Twist of History,
- 23:51Speaker 1: he dives into epic stories that have shaped the world
- 23:54Speaker 1: that we live in now. So if you're a fan
- 23:56Speaker 1: of the strange, dark and mysterious, go check out these shows.
- 23:59Speaker 1: You can look for them either by name or simply
- 24:01Speaker 1: by looking for Ballin Studios on any podcast platform.
- 24:04Speaker 2: They are available right now. Enjoy.
- 24:17Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty, Bobby Schaffran was on his way up
- 24:19Speaker 1: to Sullivan County Community College, which is two hours outside
- 24:22Speaker 1: of New York City, to begin his freshman year. Even
- 24:25Speaker 1: though he was from the area, he didn't know anybody
- 24:28Speaker 1: that was going to.
- 24:28Speaker 2: This particular school, and so he was pretty nervous about it.
- 24:31Speaker 1: Plus, he wasn't that popular in high school and he
- 24:33Speaker 1: had a hard time making friends. When he pulled into
- 24:35Speaker 1: a parking spot at the school, he saw a sea
- 24:38Speaker 1: of people getting out of their parents' cars and carrying
- 24:40Speaker 1: boxes up to their dorm rooms, and so he took
- 24:42Speaker 1: a deep breath, hopped out of his car, grabbed his backpack,
- 24:45Speaker 1: and began walking across.
- 24:46Speaker 2: The lawn towards the dorm building.
- 24:47Speaker 1: On his walk over, Bobby was surprised when he felt
- 24:50Speaker 1: like all these random strangers on the lawn were looking
- 24:53Speaker 1: at him like they knew him, and a couple people
- 24:55Speaker 1: yelled out to him and said, hey, it's good to
- 24:57Speaker 1: have you back here, and one girl actually ran up
- 24:59Speaker 1: to him, kissed him on the cheek and said, oh
- 25:01Speaker 1: my gosh, I'm so happy you're back. And Bobby said,
- 25:04Speaker 1: I think he got the wrong person. I don't know you,
- 25:06Speaker 1: and she laughed and she just ran away. And so
- 25:08Speaker 1: Bobby's totally bewildered by this because he doesn't know anybody,
- 25:12Speaker 1: but everybody seems to know him, and so he walks
- 25:14Speaker 1: up the steps and he goes inside the dorm building
- 25:16Speaker 1: and as he's walking down the.
- 25:17Speaker 2: Hall, people are high fiving him and patting him on
- 25:19Speaker 2: the back.
- 25:20Speaker 1: And then right as he's about to turn the corner
- 25:21Speaker 1: towards his actual dorm room, someone down the hall behind
- 25:24Speaker 1: him yells out, hey, Eddie, what's going on?
- 25:26Speaker 2: Man?
- 25:27Speaker 1: And Bobby knew whoever it was was yelling at him
- 25:29Speaker 1: because this whole situation had been so weird. He felt
- 25:32Speaker 1: like this had to be a case of mistaken identity.
- 25:34Speaker 1: And so Bobby turned around and he saw at the
- 25:36Speaker 1: other end of the hall another student who he didn't know,
- 25:39Speaker 1: clearly waving at him and yelling out, hey, Eddie, come here,
- 25:41Speaker 1: what's going on man? And so Bobby walks up to
- 25:44Speaker 1: him and says, hey, I'm not Eddie. I don't know
- 25:45Speaker 1: what's going on, but everybody thinks I'm somebody.
- 25:47Speaker 2: That I'm not. But I'm not Eddie. Who's Eddie?
- 25:50Speaker 1: And the guy said, yeah, okay, Eddie, it's good to
- 25:52Speaker 1: have you back here, man, and then walked off, And.
- 25:54Speaker 2: So Bobby's like, what is going on here?
- 25:56Speaker 1: And so Bobby turns and he goes back up to
- 25:58Speaker 1: his dorm room, and he goes inside the door, and
- 26:00Speaker 1: he's thinking, I'm just gonna be left alone for a second,
- 26:02Speaker 1: because this is just this is not right. This is
- 26:05Speaker 1: not how a freshman who doesn't know anyone gets welcomed
- 26:08Speaker 1: at any school or any place in the world.
- 26:10Speaker 2: This is totally unusual.
- 26:11Speaker 1: And just a couple of minutes after being inside of
- 26:13Speaker 1: his dorm room, he hears a knock on the door.
- 26:15Speaker 2: And Bobby's like, oh great, who is it now? Who
- 26:17Speaker 2: is it that thinks I'm someone I'm not. So he
- 26:19Speaker 2: opens the door and there's another student who he doesn't
- 26:21Speaker 2: know who's standing there.
- 26:22Speaker 1: And this guy his face just drains of color and
- 26:25Speaker 1: he starts shaking when he sees Bobby, and they're both
- 26:27Speaker 1: looking at each other like what's going on here? And
- 26:29Speaker 1: the student says to Bobby, where you adopted? And Bobby
- 26:33Speaker 1: said yeah. And then the student said is your birthday
- 26:36Speaker 1: July twelfth? And Bobby said yeah. And so the student goes, Okay,
- 26:41Speaker 1: my name is Michael, and I am best friends with
- 26:44Speaker 1: the guy named Eddie Gallant, and you are his clone.
- 26:48Speaker 1: You have got to be his identical twin. At this point,
- 26:51Speaker 1: to Bobby, this almost made sense, but it was so
- 26:53Speaker 1: crazy to imagine having some identical twin he didn't know about.
- 26:57Speaker 1: And so Bobby asked Michael if he could go meet
- 26:59Speaker 1: Eddie because he's to be a student here, and Michael said, well, actually,
- 27:02Speaker 1: Eddie decided not to come back to school this year,
- 27:04Speaker 1: which is probably why everyone you talked to was so
- 27:07Speaker 1: excited to see you, because they love Eddie and they
- 27:10Speaker 1: thought you were him, and so they're psyched to have
- 27:11Speaker 1: you back. After talking for a couple of minutes, Michael
- 27:14Speaker 1: tells Bobby that they have to go call Eddie and
- 27:16Speaker 1: they have to set up a meeting so that Bobby
- 27:18Speaker 1: can meet Eddie and vice versa. And so Michael and
- 27:20Speaker 1: Bobby run outside to a pay phone booth. They hop inside,
- 27:23Speaker 1: they're crammed in there, and they dial up Eddie, and
- 27:26Speaker 1: as soon as Eddie answers, Bobby grabs the phone and.
- 27:28Speaker 2: Just says, hey, Eddie, my name's Bobby, and.
- 27:30Speaker 1: Everybody thinks I'm you, and then Eddie says, yeah, I've
- 27:33Speaker 1: been getting a lot of calls about that too, And
- 27:35Speaker 1: Bobby would later say that when he first heard Eddie's voice,
- 27:38Speaker 1: he said it sounded like his own voice coming through
- 27:41Speaker 1: the phone, and so ultimately Eddie invited Bobby and Michael
- 27:44Speaker 1: to come to his house so that Eddie and Bobby
- 27:46Speaker 1: could see if it really.
- 27:47Speaker 2: Was true that they were twins.
- 27:49Speaker 1: And so Michael and Bobby hopped in Bobby's car and
- 27:51Speaker 1: they spent two hours to Eddie's house. And when they
- 27:53Speaker 1: got there, it was the middle of the night, and
- 27:55Speaker 1: Eddie's house is the only house in this quiet suburb
- 27:57Speaker 1: that has all the lights on. And so Michael and
- 27:59Speaker 1: Bobby walk up the path towards the front door of
- 28:01Speaker 1: Eddie's house, and right as Bobby is about to knock
- 28:04Speaker 1: on the door, it flies open, and standing in front
- 28:07Speaker 1: of Bobby is his exact clone.
- 28:09Speaker 2: It's Eddie, and Eddie's looking back at Bobby and he
- 28:12Speaker 2: can't believe what he's looking at.
- 28:13Speaker 1: They are definitely identical twins, and they both immediately saw that.
- 28:17Speaker 1: Michael would say, after Bobby and Eddie just stared at
- 28:20Speaker 1: each other for about a minute, they just started laughing.
- 28:22Speaker 1: It was like they were total strangers, but at the
- 28:24Speaker 1: same time they had this connection. Immediately they knew they
- 28:27Speaker 1: were related, and they were laughing, and they hugged, and
- 28:30Speaker 1: they just stared at each other and Michael said, anytime
- 28:32Speaker 1: Bobby would tilt his head, Eddie would mimick it, and
- 28:34Speaker 1: vice versa.
- 28:35Speaker 2: It was like they were looking into a mirror.
- 28:37Speaker 1: Shortly after, this story of these two long lost brothers
- 28:40Speaker 1: reconnecting found its way to Newsday, which was a prominent
- 28:43Speaker 1: local newspaper in New York, and they decided they would
- 28:46Speaker 1: look into it to see if it was really true
- 28:47Speaker 1: or not. And so one of the editors had a
- 28:49Speaker 1: junior reporter fly out and actually see Bobby and Eddie
- 28:53Speaker 1: face to face and see if it was really true
- 28:55Speaker 1: that they were in fact identical twins.
- 28:57Speaker 2: And as soon as the.
- 28:58Speaker 1: Reporter saw them, they knew immediately that yep, they're related.
- 29:01Speaker 1: And so Newsday printed this totally heartwarming fairy tale story
- 29:05Speaker 1: about these two long lost brothers reconnected after all these
- 29:08Speaker 1: years just because of a chance encounter in college, and
- 29:11Speaker 1: everybody loved it. But this is where the story went
- 29:13Speaker 1: from amazing to truly unbelievable. Friends of another young man
- 29:18Speaker 1: living in the New York area named David Kellman began
- 29:21Speaker 1: telling David that he had to check out this news
- 29:24Speaker 1: Day article about these long lost twins because these two
- 29:27Speaker 1: twins look exactly like David specifically, they said, you got to.
- 29:31Speaker 2: Look at these guys' hands. They are just like yours, David.
- 29:34Speaker 1: David was known for having these enormous hands, and a
- 29:37Speaker 1: lot of the pictures of Bobby and Eddie in the
- 29:39Speaker 1: news showed their hands, and they too were enormous. And
- 29:42Speaker 1: so David finally picked up a newspaper and looked at
- 29:44Speaker 1: a picture of Bobby and Eddie, and sure enough, he
- 29:47Speaker 1: was shocked they looked exactly like him. And then when
- 29:50Speaker 1: he read the article, it showed their birthday was July twelfth,
- 29:53Speaker 1: the same as his, and they were born at the
- 29:55Speaker 1: same hospital he was born at. And so he's thinking,
- 29:58Speaker 1: these are too many coincidences. They have to be my brothers.
- 30:00Speaker 1: And so David called Eddie's home phone number, and Eddie's
- 30:03Speaker 1: mother picked up, and she asked who was calling, and
- 30:05Speaker 1: David said, Hi, my name is David Kellman. I was
- 30:08Speaker 1: born July twelfth, nineteen sixty one, and I'm looking at
- 30:11Speaker 1: a newspaper article of two identical twins that looked just
- 30:14Speaker 1: like me, and one of them is your son. I
- 30:16Speaker 1: think I'm the missing third twin. After hearing this, Eddie's
- 30:19Speaker 1: mom apparently dropped the phone and yelled out, they're coming
- 30:22Speaker 1: out of the woodwork. So Eddie and Bobby went to
- 30:24Speaker 1: David's house, and as soon as they walked in and
- 30:27Speaker 1: saw David, they knew right away he was one of them.
- 30:29Speaker 1: He was the third twin, And apparently within minutes of
- 30:32Speaker 1: meeting each other, they were wrestling and laughing hysterically on
- 30:35Speaker 1: the ground. It was like even though they were strangers,
- 30:38Speaker 1: they somehow already knew each.
- 30:39Speaker 2: Other and had an instant connection.
- 30:41Speaker 1: David's family members that witnessed this first interaction said it
- 30:44Speaker 1: was the most incredible thing they had ever seen, that
- 30:46Speaker 1: it was just so wonderful to see these long lost
- 30:49Speaker 1: siblings finally reconnected.
- 30:51Speaker 2: After all these years.
- 30:52Speaker 1: Shortly after David realized he was the third missing twin,
- 30:55Speaker 1: Newsday did another story talking about how there was actually
- 30:59Speaker 1: three missing twins that had all been reconnected, and once again,
- 31:02Speaker 1: it was just this incredible Cinderella story.
- 31:05Speaker 2: And now this story went all over the world.
- 31:07Speaker 1: They were on the cover of every magazine, every newspaper,
- 31:10Speaker 1: they were on every talk show, and everybody had the
- 31:13Speaker 1: same question, what similarities did they discover And they would say, well,
- 31:17Speaker 1: we all wrestled in junior high school and high school.
- 31:19Speaker 1: We all smoked the same cigarettes, we like the same food,
- 31:22Speaker 1: we have the same taste in women. And on talk
- 31:24Speaker 1: shows when they would answer these questions, it was immediately
- 31:26Speaker 1: clear that they all shared the same mannerisms, and on
- 31:30Speaker 1: the show they would routinely interrupt each other and finish
- 31:32Speaker 1: each other's sentences. It really was like they were the
- 31:35Speaker 1: exact same person, despite having been raised completely separate from
- 31:38Speaker 1: one another. The boys loved the attention they were getting.
- 31:41Speaker 1: They had become international rock stars overnight, and all three
- 31:45Speaker 1: of them were immediately so close.
- 31:47Speaker 2: They were best friends right away.
- 31:48Speaker 1: They moved into an apartment together, they went out partying,
- 31:50Speaker 1: they met Madonna. It was just this incredible time in
- 31:53Speaker 1: their lives, and so they weren't asking questions about why
- 31:56Speaker 1: they had been separated in the first place.
- 31:58Speaker 2: But their parents were asking a lot, a lot of questions.
- 32:00Speaker 1: Because they had not been told by the adoption agency
- 32:03Speaker 1: that the boy they were adopting actually had two identical siblings,
- 32:07Speaker 1: they had no idea. So the boys adoptive parents reached
- 32:10Speaker 1: out to the adoption agency, which was Louise Wy's Services.
- 32:13Speaker 1: It's based in New York, very prestigious, basically the most
- 32:16Speaker 1: powerful and wealthy people in New York use this adoption
- 32:19Speaker 1: agency if they're going to adopt, And so the parents
- 32:22Speaker 1: reached out to them and asked for a meeting so
- 32:24Speaker 1: they could get some answers as to why their kids
- 32:26Speaker 1: had been separated.
- 32:27Speaker 2: And so the parents go to New York.
- 32:28Speaker 1: They go into this meeting room with the top brass
- 32:31Speaker 1: of Louise Wise Services and they say, you know, did
- 32:33Speaker 1: you separate our sons at birth on purpose? And one
- 32:36Speaker 1: of the executives said, yes, we did, because it's really
- 32:39Speaker 1: hard to place three children into one home, at which
- 32:42Speaker 1: point David's adoptive father lashed out and said, that's absolute bs.
- 32:46Speaker 1: If you had told me he had two identical siblings,
- 32:49Speaker 1: I would have taken all three. But the agency stood
- 32:51Speaker 1: by their decision and said that's the only reason it happened,
- 32:54Speaker 1: and so sorry, that's all we can tell you. And
- 32:56Speaker 1: so the parents were very frustrated and felt like there
- 32:58Speaker 1: was much more to the story, and in fact, they
- 33:00Speaker 1: felt like the agency was actually lying to them about
- 33:03Speaker 1: why they had separated their sons in the first place,
- 33:05Speaker 1: but they couldn't get any more information, so they left
- 33:07Speaker 1: the agency and right when they got outside, Bobby's father
- 33:10Speaker 1: realized he had left his umbrella inside of the meeting room,
- 33:13Speaker 1: and so he turned around, went back inside, walked down
- 33:16Speaker 1: the hall quietly, so we didn't want to disturb anyone.
- 33:18Speaker 1: Then he opened the door to the meeting room and
- 33:19Speaker 1: he reached in to get his umbrella, and he looked
- 33:22Speaker 1: inside and he saw the people he had just met
- 33:24Speaker 1: with from Louise Wi's Services had just opened a bottle
- 33:27Speaker 1: of champagne, and they were laughing and smiling, and they
- 33:29Speaker 1: were clearly toasting each other on a.
- 33:31Speaker 2: Job well done.
- 33:32Speaker 1: And even though Bobby's father did not go in there
- 33:35Speaker 1: and confront them about what they were celebrating, he got
- 33:37Speaker 1: the sense that they were celebrating having dodged a bullet
- 33:40Speaker 1: that they clearly had just lied to the families of
- 33:43Speaker 1: these three triplets and they'd gotten away with it. And
- 33:45Speaker 1: so between the parents' general sense that the agency was
- 33:48Speaker 1: clearly hiding something and then Bobby discovering this champagne toast
- 33:52Speaker 1: as soon as they left, the parents decided they needed
- 33:54Speaker 1: to get in touch with some lawyers to help them
- 33:56Speaker 1: get to the bottom of why their sons had been separated,
- 33:59Speaker 1: and so initially a number of really prestigious law firms
- 34:02Speaker 1: in New York were excited to take this case, but
- 34:05Speaker 1: shortly after they all contacted the families to say, well,
- 34:08Speaker 1: actually there's a conflict and.
- 34:10Speaker 2: We can't do it anymore.
- 34:11Speaker 1: And the parents believe this was because the adoption agency,
- 34:14Speaker 1: Luise Wise Services, and some of their more prominent and
- 34:17Speaker 1: powerful clients were pressuring the lawyers not to dig into
- 34:21Speaker 1: this that clearly there was some secret that they did
- 34:24Speaker 1: not want uncovered, and so unfortunately the parents hit a
- 34:27Speaker 1: dead end and didn't nowhere else to turn to try
- 34:29Speaker 1: to get more information, and so over time they kind
- 34:32Speaker 1: of just accepted that this is just the way it is,
- 34:34Speaker 1: and as for their sons, they didn't really care that
- 34:36Speaker 1: much because the way they looked.
- 34:37Speaker 2: At it, at least they had each other now.
- 34:39Speaker 1: And so over the years the boys continued to stay
- 34:41Speaker 1: really close, They started families of their own, and had
- 34:44Speaker 1: lots of family get togethers.
- 34:45Speaker 2: It was just a really happy time in all of
- 34:47Speaker 2: their lives. And at some.
- 34:48Speaker 1: Point the boys actually went into business together and opened
- 34:51Speaker 1: their own restaurant in New York called Triplets, and the
- 34:54Speaker 1: first year it was extremely successful, did over a million
- 34:57Speaker 1: dollars in revenue, but in the second year the brothers
- 35:00Speaker 1: to fight with each other about how to run the restaurant,
- 35:02Speaker 1: and in many ways, this was their first major conflict.
- 35:05Speaker 1: They hadn't grown up together, they had never really fought,
- 35:08Speaker 1: and so now they're fighting over money and how to
- 35:09Speaker 1: run the business. And it got really bad, really quick,
- 35:12Speaker 1: and they just could not come to any sort of compromise,
- 35:14Speaker 1: and so at some point Bobby left the business. He said,
- 35:17Speaker 1: I don't want to do this with you guys anymore,
- 35:18Speaker 1: and apparently his departure just completely ruined the dynamic of
- 35:22Speaker 1: the three brothers. Eddie was the most affected by this
- 35:25Speaker 1: fracture in their relationships. All he wanted was for his
- 35:28Speaker 1: brothers to be really close and for their families to
- 35:30Speaker 1: spend time together, and now all of that was in jeopardy,
- 35:33Speaker 1: and so Eddie started showing signs of severe depression and
- 35:36Speaker 1: was ultimately hospitalized for three weeks, and then shortly after
- 35:39Speaker 1: getting out of the hospital, he took his own life.
- 35:41Speaker 1: This was beyond devastating for the two brothers and the
- 35:44Speaker 1: rest of their family. Around this time, a journalist named
- 35:46Speaker 1: Lawrence Wright, who had always had a fascination with identical twins,
- 35:50Speaker 1: found an obscure scientific article called psychoanalytics study of the child.
- 35:54Speaker 1: It detailed a New York based study about identical twins
- 35:57Speaker 1: that were intentionally separated at birth and then given to
- 36:00Speaker 1: different adoptive families to be studied, although it wasn't clear
- 36:03Speaker 1: what they were actually studying or why.
- 36:05Speaker 2: They needed identical twins to do this research.
- 36:07Speaker 1: In this article, Lawrence discovered all the babies that had
- 36:10Speaker 1: been used in the study came from the same adoption agency,
- 36:14Speaker 1: the same one the triplets had come from, the Luise
- 36:16Speaker 1: Wise Services in New York, and so Lawrence called Bobby
- 36:19Speaker 1: and told him that, based on this article, it seems
- 36:22Speaker 1: like he and his brothers were used in a scientific study.
- 36:25Speaker 1: Bobby and David were totally furious. They felt like they
- 36:27Speaker 1: had been treated like lab rats. They also wondered if
- 36:30Speaker 1: their being separated at birth had a negative impact on
- 36:33Speaker 1: their mental health, and that that might have contributed to
- 36:35Speaker 1: Eddie's depression and untimely death. Lawrence wound up writing an
- 36:39Speaker 1: article about this twin study he had discovered, and after
- 36:42Speaker 1: he published it, another set of twins found out they
- 36:45Speaker 1: had been a part of the study and discovered themselves.
- 36:48Speaker 1: These two women were also struggling with depression furthering the
- 36:51Speaker 1: idea that the study could have led to irreparable harm
- 36:54Speaker 1: to their subject's mental well being. At this point, David
- 36:57Speaker 1: and Robbie did not expect anybody to be held accountable
- 37:00Speaker 1: or the study. Instead, they just hoped to find out
- 37:02Speaker 1: why it was done and what they were testing for
- 37:05Speaker 1: and what the results were, and so they began working
- 37:08Speaker 1: with Lawrence to try to get those answers. They contacted
- 37:10Speaker 1: Louis wi Services, who did admit that yes, actually this
- 37:13Speaker 1: was part of a study, but they didn't get any
- 37:15Speaker 1: information about what the results were or why they did it.
- 37:18Speaker 1: And so they did some digging and they discovered the
- 37:20Speaker 1: guy in charge of the actual scientific study was this
- 37:23Speaker 1: doctor named Peter Nubauer, who was this very well.
- 37:26Speaker 2: Known psychologist in New York.
- 37:28Speaker 1: And so Lawrence managed to get an interview with this doctor,
- 37:31Speaker 1: but the doctor basically said, I won't answer any of
- 37:33Speaker 1: your questions and I won't give you any information about
- 37:36Speaker 1: this study, and he never published his findings. Right before
- 37:39Speaker 1: the doctor died in two thousand and eight, he made
- 37:41Speaker 1: sure the entire study was put under seal inside of
- 37:44Speaker 1: the Yale University Archives so no one could access it
- 37:48Speaker 1: until twenty sixty six, which has led many people to
- 37:51Speaker 1: believe that the reason he said it so far out
- 37:54Speaker 1: was to guarantee all of these subjects in this study
- 37:57Speaker 1: would have died by the time it was made publicly available,
- 38:00Speaker 1: protecting his own legacy and the people that were involved
- 38:03Speaker 1: in this study. In the recent documentary called Three Identical Strangers,
- 38:07Speaker 1: Dr Nubauer's personal assistant a woman by the name of
- 38:10Speaker 1: Natasha Jossepphawitz.
- 38:12Speaker 2: She was interviewed and they asked.
- 38:13Speaker 1: Her, you know, can you shed any light on why
- 38:15Speaker 1: this study was done, what they were testing for, and
- 38:17Speaker 1: what the results were. And she would say that she
- 38:20Speaker 1: was not actually part of the study. She was born
- 38:22Speaker 1: on the periphery, but she was privy to what they
- 38:24Speaker 1: were doing. And she said the point of the study
- 38:26Speaker 1: was to finally put to bed whether it was nature
- 38:29Speaker 1: or nurture that made the person who they ultimately become. Basically,
- 38:33Speaker 1: are your surroundings the thing that ultimately makes you who
- 38:36Speaker 1: you become or is it just your genetic makeup that
- 38:38Speaker 1: you're predestined to become a particular person independent of how
- 38:42Speaker 1: you were raised. And she said the results were incredible
- 38:45Speaker 1: that basically it has nothing to do with nurture. It's
- 38:48Speaker 1: all about your genetic makeup that we unconsciously trend towards
- 38:51Speaker 1: specific behaviors and decisions.
- 38:54Speaker 2: But we believe it's free will.
- 38:55Speaker 1: We believe we're choosing to do certain things, but in reality,
- 38:59Speaker 1: it's basically determined. And specifically in the triplets case, Bobby
- 39:03Speaker 1: was intentionally placed into a more affluent household where his
- 39:06Speaker 1: father was a doctor and his mother was a lawyer,
- 39:08Speaker 1: and so they were very well educated and that was
- 39:11Speaker 1: his upbringing.
- 39:11Speaker 2: Eddie was placed into a more.
- 39:12Speaker 1: Middle class family with his father being a teacher and
- 39:15Speaker 1: his mom being a stay at home mother. And David
- 39:17Speaker 1: was put into a low income household where they were
- 39:20Speaker 1: all immigrants. English was a second language and they just
- 39:22Speaker 1: had this very small shop that they owned. And Natasha said,
- 39:25Speaker 1: this study demonstrated that despite these boys being put into
- 39:28Speaker 1: different socioeconomic levels, it had almost no impact on who
- 39:32Speaker 1: they ultimately became. She said she doesn't know why the
- 39:34Speaker 1: study wasn't published, but she hoped someday it will be.
- 39:37Speaker 1: Also in this documentary, a doctor named Lawrence Pearlman, who
- 39:41Speaker 1: was actually one of the researchers in the study that
- 39:43Speaker 1: would actually make house visits to each of the boys'
- 39:46Speaker 1: houses as they were growing up, under the false pretext
- 39:49Speaker 1: that they were there as part of routine follow up.
- 39:51Speaker 2: For the adoption agency.
- 39:52Speaker 1: And he went on record and said that the study
- 39:54Speaker 1: was not just about the effects of socioeconomic class, It
- 39:58Speaker 1: was really about the effects of da different styles of parenting.
- 40:01Speaker 1: He said, in the triplets case, each of the boys
- 40:03Speaker 1: have been placed into their respective households after that household
- 40:08Speaker 1: had already adopted another child, and that first child they
- 40:11Speaker 1: adopted effectively became the guinea pig for this study, where
- 40:15Speaker 1: scientists would come in and they would study this child
- 40:17Speaker 1: under the false pretext that they were there just following
- 40:20Speaker 1: up for the adoption agency, but really they were creating
- 40:22Speaker 1: a baseline of how do these parents parent? And then
- 40:25Speaker 1: once that baseline was established, then the triplets were sent
- 40:28Speaker 1: into their respective homes with the researchers knowing full well
- 40:32Speaker 1: how they were each going to be brought up, with
- 40:34Speaker 1: the adoptive father being the X factor. Bobby's father, who
- 40:37Speaker 1: was a doctor, was rarely around, but he was devoted
- 40:40Speaker 1: and loving to his son. David's father, who was the
- 40:42Speaker 1: shop owner, was around all the time and adored his
- 40:45Speaker 1: son and loved him unconditionally. Eddie's father was a teacher
- 40:48Speaker 1: who was around a pharamount, but when he was he
- 40:51Speaker 1: was very strict and rough with Eddie and quick to
- 40:53Speaker 1: discipline him, and rarely showed any affection for him. And
- 40:56Speaker 1: while doctor Pearlman does not come out and say that
- 40:59Speaker 1: Eddie's were relationship with his father probably had an effect
- 41:02Speaker 1: on him becoming depressed and ultimately taking his life, there
- 41:06Speaker 1: are many other people close to this case that believe
- 41:09Speaker 1: that's exactly what it was. That David and Bobby had
- 41:11Speaker 1: a stable, healthy upbringing and Eddie did not, and so
- 41:14Speaker 1: when he was faced with the crisis of the brothers separating,
- 41:17Speaker 1: Eddie couldn't handle it. These same people refute what Natasha
- 41:20Speaker 1: said about the findings of the study that were all
- 41:23Speaker 1: genetically predisposed to become.
- 41:25Speaker 2: A particular person.
- 41:26Speaker 1: They say, if that was the case, then why haven't
- 41:28Speaker 1: David and Bobby taken their lives? But ultimately, because the
- 41:31Speaker 1: study was never published, we won't know for sure why
- 41:34Speaker 1: it was done, what they studied, and what the conclusions were.
- 41:37Speaker 1: All we have is speculation and second and third hand information.
- 41:41Speaker 1: But what we do know for sure is the surviving
- 41:43Speaker 1: triplets and their families are furious that this study was done.
- 41:47Speaker 2: They feel like it ruined their lives. Following the release.
- 41:50Speaker 1: Of the documentary, three identical strangers, Bobby and David were
- 41:53Speaker 1: actually granted early access to the study that was sealed
- 41:56Speaker 1: inside of Yale University, and when they looked at it,
- 41:59Speaker 1: they were expect to be blown away with the results.
- 42:01Speaker 1: But it turned out it was over ten thousand pages
- 42:04Speaker 1: of very technical information and much of it was heavily redacted,
- 42:08Speaker 1: so they couldn't even read most of it. They were
- 42:10Speaker 1: not able to deduce what the purpose of the study
- 42:12Speaker 1: was in the first place, or what it accomplished. It
- 42:15Speaker 1: was just all very ambiguous. This study was ultimately shut
- 42:18Speaker 1: down permanently in nineteen eighty, the same year the triplets
- 42:21Speaker 1: discovered themselves. As for the adoption agency, Luise Wise Services,
- 42:25Speaker 1: and all the scientists and researchers involved in the study,
- 42:28Speaker 1: none of them were held accountable for their role in
- 42:30Speaker 1: this totally unethical study, and so basically everything was swept
- 42:34Speaker 1: under the rug, and so Bobby, David and all of
- 42:36Speaker 1: the family members of the triplets were just left with
- 42:39Speaker 1: a whole bunch of questions and not a lot of
- 42:40Speaker 1: answers on December eighteenth, nineteen fifty six, a brand new
- 43:04Speaker 1: game show called to Tell the Truth aired on a
- 43:07Speaker 1: major American television network. The premise of the show was
- 43:11Speaker 1: relatively simple. Four celebrity judges would be presented with three
- 43:15Speaker 1: people called contestants, who all claimed to.
- 43:18Speaker 2: Be the same person.
- 43:19Speaker 1: And this person, who they claimed to be, was always
- 43:22Speaker 1: remarkable in some way. They had some incredible talent or
- 43:25Speaker 1: some crazy job, or they had accomplished something extraordinary. One
- 43:29Speaker 1: of these three contestants was the real person they were
- 43:32Speaker 1: claiming to be. The other two people were doing their
- 43:35Speaker 1: best to pretend to be that person, and it was
- 43:37Speaker 1: the job of the celebrity judges to try to figure
- 43:40Speaker 1: out who was telling the truth.
- 43:42Speaker 2: So for a set.
- 43:42Speaker 1: Amount of time on the show, the celebrity judges would
- 43:46Speaker 1: ask the contestants questions about their background and try to
- 43:49Speaker 1: figure out who was who, and then at the end
- 43:52Speaker 1: of the time, the celebrities would cast a vote about
- 43:54Speaker 1: who they thought was the real remarkable person. After the
- 43:57Speaker 1: votes were tallied up, the host would have the real
- 44:00Speaker 1: remarkable persons stand up to reveal themselves and the entire
- 44:04Speaker 1: audience would go crazy, and that was the show, and
- 44:07Speaker 1: the show became quite popular, so popular in fact, that today, nearly.
- 44:11Speaker 2: Seventy years later, it's still on the air. And over
- 44:14Speaker 2: this show's.
- 44:15Speaker 1: Very long history, virtually all the episodes are pretty similar.
- 44:19Speaker 2: It's a pretty redundant.
- 44:20Speaker 1: Show, but there is one episode that will forever go
- 44:25Speaker 1: down as the most unique. In October of nineteen seventy two,
- 44:29Speaker 1: three contestants walked out onto the stage in front of
- 44:32Speaker 1: the four celebrity judges and they all introduced themselves as
- 44:36Speaker 1: Ed Edwards. Then the host of the show read aloud
- 44:40Speaker 1: the biography of the real Ed Edwards, and he would
- 44:43Speaker 1: say that Ed at one point was on the FBI's
- 44:46Speaker 1: list of the top ten most wanted criminals in America
- 44:50Speaker 1: for crimes like armed robbery and impersonating a federal officer.
- 44:54Speaker 1: And then after he was finally caught by law enforcement
- 44:56Speaker 1: and went to prison, a prison guard helped him turn
- 44:59Speaker 1: his life around, and then upon release from prison fourteen
- 45:02Speaker 1: years later, Ed remained this reformed criminal and became a
- 45:06Speaker 1: successful author and motivational speaker who specialized in telling people
- 45:10Speaker 1: how to identify con men and criminals and how to
- 45:13Speaker 1: protect themselves from these people. After the real Ed Edwards
- 45:16Speaker 1: biography was read aloud. The three contestants sat down and
- 45:20Speaker 1: the celebrity judges began asking them questions about their past,
- 45:24Speaker 1: and then after the time was up, the celebrities cast
- 45:26Speaker 1: their votes, and then the real Ed Edwards was revealed.
- 45:30Speaker 2: Well, the real Ed Edwards please stand up.
- 45:34Speaker 1: In it. And even though two of the four celebrity
- 45:42Speaker 1: judges had correctly identified the right Ed Edwards, the crowd
- 45:47Speaker 1: was totally astonished at who this guy actually was because
- 45:51Speaker 1: he did not look like this ex convict. He looked
- 45:54Speaker 1: like this kind of all American middle aged father who
- 45:56Speaker 1: was totally harmless and wouldn't hurt a fly. But either way,
- 46:00Speaker 1: the show ended and then the world forgot about Ed
- 46:02Speaker 1: Edwards until two thousand and nine. That year, Ed's a
- 46:06Speaker 1: strange daughter, forty year old April Bolacio, finally decided to
- 46:10Speaker 1: investigate something that had plagued her for her whole childhood.
- 46:13Speaker 1: Despite her father's claims that he was this reformed criminal
- 46:16Speaker 1: and this stand up law abiding guy, she didn't believe it.
- 46:19Speaker 2: She never believed it.
- 46:21Speaker 1: She thought he had never been reformed and just was
- 46:23Speaker 1: a criminal and always had been. Behind closed doors, Ed
- 46:27Speaker 1: was violent and abusive, and he was a compulsive liar.
- 46:30Speaker 1: She remembered in the nineteen seventies and eighties, when she
- 46:32Speaker 1: was a young kid, ed would make their family pack
- 46:35Speaker 1: up and move, sometimes in the middle of the night,
- 46:37Speaker 1: and April always assumed it was because her dad was.
- 46:40Speaker 2: Wrapped up in something criminal.
- 46:41Speaker 1: But every time she asked him, he would say, oh, well,
- 46:43Speaker 1: you know, I was an informant when I was in jail,
- 46:46Speaker 1: and I snitched on some people, and some of those
- 46:48Speaker 1: people have figured out where we live, and so we
- 46:50Speaker 1: got to move. April knew he was lying, but there
- 46:53Speaker 1: was nothing she could do, and so they just kept
- 46:54Speaker 1: on moving around. But she always thought something else was
- 46:57Speaker 1: going on. So in two thousand and nine, when April
- 47:00Speaker 1: is now this forty year old woman, she's laying in
- 47:03Speaker 1: bed one night and finally says, you know what, I'm
- 47:05Speaker 1: just going to.
- 47:05Speaker 2: Start googling some stuff. So she hops in her laptop.
- 47:08Speaker 1: And she starts typing in the different names of towns
- 47:11Speaker 1: that she and her family lived in as a kid,
- 47:13Speaker 1: and then after she'd write the name of the town,
- 47:15Speaker 1: she'd write unsolved mystery or unsolved crime, and she would
- 47:18Speaker 1: see if anything popped up. And so as she began looking,
- 47:21Speaker 1: she found one in nineteen eighty it was an unsolved
- 47:24Speaker 1: murder in a town called Watertown, Wisconsin that happened right
- 47:28Speaker 1: around the time that her family very briefly.
- 47:31Speaker 2: Lived in this town.
- 47:32Speaker 1: There was this young teenage couple that had left this
- 47:34Speaker 1: wedding and they had driven down this dead end road
- 47:37Speaker 1: and they were just kind of enjoying each other's company
- 47:39Speaker 1: when an unknown assailant who matched the description of Ed
- 47:42Speaker 1: Edwards walked up to their car, broke in, shot them
- 47:45Speaker 1: both to death, and then disappeared. And so on a hunch,
- 47:48Speaker 1: April called the Watertown police department the following day and
- 47:52Speaker 1: told them that I think my father might have been
- 47:54Speaker 1: responsible for this double homicide. It's just a hunch, but
- 47:57Speaker 1: he matches the description. We were there in this small
- 48:00Speaker 1: window of time when it happened, and so the police said, okay,
- 48:03Speaker 1: we'll go have a look. And so the Watertown police
- 48:05Speaker 1: they tracked down ed Edwards, who was living in Kentucky
- 48:08Speaker 1: at the time, and they got him to give them
- 48:10Speaker 1: a DNA sample, and when they tested the DNA sample,
- 48:13Speaker 1: it matched these samples that were taken at the crime
- 48:16Speaker 1: scene in nineteen eighty and so Ed Edwards he was
- 48:19Speaker 1: arrested and brought back to Wisconsin, and as soon as
- 48:21Speaker 1: he was in custody, he confessed to the murder, and
- 48:24Speaker 1: then he requested the death penalty, but he was told
- 48:27Speaker 1: the maximum punishment for this crime was life in prison.
- 48:30Speaker 1: Ed didn't like this, and so he confessed to another
- 48:33Speaker 1: double homicide from nineteen seventy seven in Ohio, where he
- 48:36Speaker 1: killed another teenage couple, thinking that would give him the
- 48:40Speaker 1: death penalty, but through a loophole, they said, well, actually
- 48:43Speaker 1: that still won't catch you the death penalty. You're still
- 48:45Speaker 1: facing life in prison. And so, frustrated, ed revealed a
- 48:48Speaker 1: third murder he had perpetrated in nineteen ninety six. He
- 48:52Speaker 1: had killed his own foster son for the insurance money,
- 48:55Speaker 1: and so for this crime he was eligible for capital punishment,
- 48:58Speaker 1: and so he was sentenced to death, but he would
- 49:00Speaker 1: die of natural causes two years later in twenty eleven.
- 49:04Speaker 2: Before the state could execute him.
- 49:06Speaker 1: Since his death, cold case investigators and members of his
- 49:09Speaker 1: own family have theorized that ed Edwards is almost certainly
- 49:13Speaker 1: responsible for more killings beyond just the five he happened
- 49:17Speaker 1: to confess to.
- 49:18Speaker 2: In fact, many people believe ed Edwards could.
- 49:21Speaker 1: Actually be the infamous Zodiac killer who's one of the
- 49:25Speaker 1: nation's most notorious uncaught serial killers that killed thirty seven
- 49:29Speaker 1: people in northern California in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.
- 49:33Speaker 1: If this is true, then Ed Edwards did not become
- 49:37Speaker 1: a killer after he was on that game show in
- 49:39Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Now, when he showed up that game
- 49:43Speaker 1: show and stood in front of the audience and smiled
- 49:45Speaker 1: and answered questions to the celebrity panelists at that time,
- 49:48Speaker 1: as you're watching him on TV, he would have already
- 49:51Speaker 1: been a seasoned serial killer with dozens and dozens of victims.
- 49:56Speaker 1: But Ed stopped confessing to murders after that third confession
- 50:00Speaker 1: because he was just kind of using those murders as
- 50:02Speaker 1: bargaining chips to get what he wanted, the death penalty,
- 50:05Speaker 1: and once he got it, he went silent. And now
- 50:07Speaker 1: that he's dead, we're never going to get another confession
- 50:10Speaker 1: out of him, and there's no proof connecting him to
- 50:12Speaker 1: any unsolved murder cases, and so unfortunately it's unlikely we'll
- 50:17Speaker 1: ever know the full extent of Ed's reign of terror.
- 50:26Speaker 1: Thank you so much for watching. Let me know what
- 50:28Speaker 1: you thought of today's episode in the comments. And remember
- 50:31Speaker 1: we have hundreds of videos for.
- 50:33Speaker 2: You to binge right now.
- 50:35Speaker 1: But if you're looking for a recommendation for me of
- 50:37Speaker 1: that one video that's worth your time, well it's this
- 50:41Speaker 1: one right here, So give it a watch, all right,
- 50:43Speaker 1: Until next time, see y