Latest / True Crime California / TCC #8: The Barbecue Murders

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TCC #8: The Barbecue Murders · True Crime California

0:04
Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
0:07
indie podcasts.
0:13
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
0:19
and I'm glad you're here.
0:30
Speaker 1: Heay, guys, welcome back.
0:33
Speaker 2: This is another episode of True Crime California and we
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got another California murder for you guys today. Before I
0:41
get into that, I just want to say that this week, Socks,
0:45
my city is on fire. I live in Los Angeles
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and I know a lot of people who have lost
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their homes. A ton of people are now out of work.
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Shit sucks right now. It's really really rough. You know,
0:58
where I am, the air quality is okay, but a
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lot of people I know that's not the case. We're able.
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I'm in the valley, I'm in Burbank. So when the
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fires were just starting, we were literally like in the
1:08
middle of the triangle of like crazy fires and they
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were able to put one out pretty quickly. And then
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now it's just these two, the Palisades Fire and the
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Eaten Fire have just literally decimated the areas and we
1:24
still don't have even fifty percent containment on either fire.
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It's just it's been a rough week. So tomorrow will
1:33
be one week from the day that the fires broke out.
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I was actually on the beach in Santa Monica. I
1:39
mentioned this in the last podcast. I was on the
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beach when we saw the fire kind of taking off
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in the Palisades, and we saw you know, police and
1:49
fire racing towards the location. And obviously it didn't really
1:54
they didn't get there in time or they weren't able
1:56
to stop it. Because we're at like almost twenty four
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thousand acres in the powers, thousands of structures just completely gone,
2:03
historical structures.
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Speaker 1: It's it's really awful.
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Speaker 2: And in Altadina, which is like largely a black populated
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area and an area populated with artists and people who
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don't have a lot of money, there's over seven thousand
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structures gone. Something like eleven people died. I mean it's
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I think they're up to sixteen now.
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Speaker 1: I heard.
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Speaker 2: It's absolutely awful. So I just wanted to know what's
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going on. I went and volunteered last weekend. I donated
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some stuff. I'm going to keep trying to volunteer. It's
2:31
really just like clearing brush, clearing debris, helping rebuild and
2:36
hopefully staving off these evil developers that want to buy
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up the land, just like they did in Hawaii. I mean,
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it's not an accident that they just in Los Angeles
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announced they want to build a smart city, and now
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we have two areas that are completely leveled. I know
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that's like bordering on conspiracy theory, but at this point,
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like I don't think the rich are above anything. So anyway,
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it's been.
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Speaker 1: A rough week.
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Speaker 2: But let's lick our wounds and make ourselves feel better
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with a little true crime, shall we. This week, I'm
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going to cover a pretty well known case. This case
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is known as the Barbecue murders, and we're going back
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to the seventies for this case. As a pretty gnarly story.
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It takes place not just in California, but the murder
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is in California, so it counts this. Actually the murder
3:26
takes place in Tara Linda, which is back in the
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Bay Area near San Francisco, but a little bit more northern.
3:33
It's actually a district in the city of San Rafel,
3:36
which is in Marin County. And yes, that is how
3:39
you say it. It's spelled San Raphael, but it said
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it's pronounced San Rafel. I had a friend who worked
3:45
for the mayor there, so I happen to know. It's
3:48
a pretty cool spy. It's close to the ocean on
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both sides. It's not I don't know if you'd called
3:53
a peninsula. I don't know what we call it, but
3:55
it's really nice. It's surrounded by water, you know, especially
3:58
recently with gentriv and everything, it's really become like a
4:02
very beautiful area with a lot of rich homes. And
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as a note, it's about twenty miles from Petaluma, which
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is where Polyclass lived at the time of her abduction.
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She was two episodes ago, so if you want to
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hear about her from my perspective, feel free.
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Speaker 1: To tune into that one.
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Speaker 2: This case is interesting because it doesn't necessarily begin in Ecuador,
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but it takes place in part in Ecuador. And I'm
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going to start this case by talking about the victims first.
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Speaker 1: So we have.
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Speaker 2: James Jim Olive, who was an army recruit when he
4:33
met and married Naomi Wagner in nineteen forty four. Now, Naomi,
4:38
I believe, was only about nineteen at the time and
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Jim was twenty eight. Naomi had grown up in a
4:46
pretty unstable household with her mother being sent to mental
4:48
hospitals starting when Naomi was about two years old and
4:52
having suffered from what today I believe would be called schizophrenia.
4:56
Speaker 1: They may have changed that again, but they were.
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Speaker 2: Calling it like schizoid personality disorder or something back then,
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or maybe that's what they call it now. I have
5:03
difficulty My mom suffers from it, but I have a
5:06
difficult time keeping up with the names. So this obviously
5:10
deeply affected Naomi, as we'll see, and you can imagine
5:15
how difficult this was for her, considering it was sort
5:17
of like her way of life, like she grew up
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from the age of two seeing her mother in and
5:23
out of these hospitals. And this continued until Naomi was
5:27
eleven years old, which is when her mother died.
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Speaker 1: And I'm sure that's very traumatic.
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Speaker 2: And I do not have details on how her mother died,
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but I cannot imagine that it was of natural causes.
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Speaker 1: She was only in her thirties.
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Speaker 2: I don't have Naomi's exact date of birth, but she
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was born sometime in nineteen twenty five, so again, in
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nineteen forty four, she's around nineteen years old. Jim is
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twenty eight, and they get married From there, they moved
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around a bit, mostly because of Jim's work in both
5:55
real estate and oil. Jim came from a wealthy family
6:00
and his father was a bit older when he was born,
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so by the time Jim Naomi got married, his father
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was already in his seventies, and in fact, he died
6:08
the same year that these two got married, and Jim's
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mother died only five years later. Now she wasn't quite
6:16
as old, but she was in her sixties, so I
6:19
believe that in both instances it was natural causes. Now,
6:23
because the family was rich and because both of his
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parents died, this meant that before thirty years old, Jim
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had a pretty sizable inheritance which he used to attempt.
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Speaker 1: To strike it rich in real estate.
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Speaker 2: Now unfortunately, this didn't pan out, and he ended up
6:38
working in oil and moved to both Panama and Ecuador.
6:42
And I believe that he had spent some time in
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those areas when he was younger, as he was fluent
6:47
in Spanish. So Jim really enjoyed this time abroad, whereas
6:51
Naomi was.
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Speaker 1: Not so happy there.
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Speaker 2: She refused to learn the language. She didn't so she
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didn't speak Spanish and she thought that the women in
6:59
the market and on the street were making fun of her,
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which to me sounds like the beginnings of some paranoia issues.
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Naomi became increasingly unhappy even as the couple moved back
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to the United States and decided the way to fix
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this was to have a baby. Unfortunately, try as they might,
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the couple was unable to conceive. Fortunately, rich people also
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have good connections, and Jim had connections to wealthy and
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powerful families, including one in Virginia, where the couple was living.
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When the teenage daughter of one of these local wealthy
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families became pregnant, of course, the family did not want
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people to find out about the pregnancy because it would
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bring shame to them, so they allowed Jim and Naomi
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to adopt the baby girl, who they named Marlene, the
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day after she was born on January sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine.
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That's the adoption day. She was born on the fifteenth.
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Naomi unfortunately did not find peace or happiness with baby Marlene,
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and in fact, Marlene's presence seemed to bring out some
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underlying issues within Naomi, dealing with mental health. Mostly for
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the first six months of Marlene's life, nobody was allowed
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to be near her without wearing a gauze mask over
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their face, and this included both Naomi and Jim.
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Speaker 1: Now, obviously this.
8:19
Speaker 2: Is very weird, but it's also super detrimental to babies
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to not be able to see the faces of the
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adults that they're interacting with, because babies use facial expressions
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and facial recognition to bond with people. The importance of
8:33
this cannot be overstated, and not having this probably really
8:37
stunted Marlene's emotional growth right off the bat. So she's
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already being traumatized and borderline abused. And obviously this isn't
8:46
intended as abuse at this point, but it ends up
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kind of being that. Naomi was also a super clean freak,
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obsessively wiping down the house not just daily, but like hourly.
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She was a stay at home mom, so had all
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the time in the world to obsess over cleanliness, and
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Jim worked long hours in the oil industry, so she
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had nobody to help her or sort of keep her
9:07
grounded or really even notice what was going.
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Speaker 1: On with her.
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Speaker 2: When Marlene was very young, as I mentioned previously, the
9:17
family moved to Ecuador. They lived there for the first
9:21
ten years of Marlene's life, so pretty much right after
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she was born, they moved and so Marlene was raised bilingual.
9:28
Now again, Naomi had refused to learn Spanish, and so
9:31
she wasn't able to communicate with Marlene this way, which
9:34
put up a barrier between them. So it's kind of
9:36
like another barrier already, and in fact, as Marlene got older,
9:41
whenever she was angry with her mother, which we'll see
9:44
was often, she would talk to her father about it
9:47
in Spanish, so that Naomi couldn't understand her, which obviously,
9:51
you know that's not gonna fly. That's going to be
9:54
a big, a big fucking problem beyond the language barrier,
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which I mean, you know, they could communicate in English,
10:00
but I feel like the barrier is a great example
10:02
of their relationship in general. Naomi's overbearing, obsessive behavior didn't
10:07
really stop as Marlene grew up, and it definitely put
10:09
a strain on their relationship. Marlene was wilful even at
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a young age, and Naomi generally unhappy with her life
10:16
and the living situation and likely battling fairly severe mental illness.
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Took too heavy drinking to manage her stress. Naomi refused
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to go to the doctor for her mental health because
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she was so traumatized by her mother's experience and so
10:32
terrified of ending up like her, which I mean, it
10:36
kind of sounds like she's headed that way, but I
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guess her answer was to just ignore it and drink heavily,
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which she did daily from about the time Marlene was
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ten years old. So we just have trauma on trauma
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on trauma, like generational trauma. Marlene kind of doesn't stand
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a chance. I mean, basically from the day she's born,
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she's dealing with this. And speaking of Marlene at age ten,
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this was the age at which she found her adoption paperwork,
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which was in her father's office. One day while she
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was playing, she was like going through stuff and she
11:09
just finds this paperwork. When she asked Jim what it meant,
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he did his best to explain, but Marlene was crushed.
11:17
She felt, you know that her not getting along with
11:20
Naomi was because Naomi didn't love her, and how could
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she when she wasn't even her own blood. Now, Jim
11:26
tried to say, you know, we do love you, we
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chose you. It's a sign of how much we love you,
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but it just it didn't really work, and I have
11:34
to say, maybe that would have made sense to her
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if the situation wasn't sort of the way that it was,
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where it was already very contentious, and just at age ten,
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she's already not getting along with her mom on a
11:47
regular basis.
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Speaker 1: Jim and Marlene always.
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Speaker 2: Got along really well, so you know, this was a
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big blow to Marlene. Obviously it affected her deeply, but
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their relationship mostly remained intact, at least at that time.
12:01
The family moved back to America briefly, then back to
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Ecuador as Jim kept getting fired from his marketing jobs,
12:07
but also like brokering high dollar deals between the companies.
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So I don't know if that's like shady.
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Speaker 1: I don't really know.
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Speaker 2: There's not a ton of information about Jim specifically, but
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I don't get a good vibe from him. I feel
12:19
like he's not like a great dude. So I don't know.
12:23
But the family had to move a lot as a
12:25
result of whatever the hell's going on, and this includes
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their last move to Tara Linda in San Rafel, California. Now,
12:32
as mentioned, this is in the Bay Area, and the
12:34
family ended up at three P fifty three Hibiscus Way,
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which is a very cute street name, and if anybody
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wants to look it up, that's where they were. Naomi
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was elated to be back in the States, but Marlene,
12:46
who was fourteen when they moved, definitely was not because
12:49
it for her, it wasn't really being back in the States.
12:52
It was being fourteen years old and being shoved into
12:55
a whole new culture against your will, and the only
12:58
people that you have to talk to are your adoptive parents,
13:00
one of whom you really don't get along with. She
13:03
also wasn't used to speaking English. She had different ideas
13:06
about what was cool, what was in fashion, how to
13:09
conduct herself. It was basically just like a horrible case
13:12
of culture shock for her, and at such a vulnerable
13:15
time in her life anyway, because the teen years are tough,
13:18
like no matter what, if you come from a good
13:20
family and you never move homes in your life, being
13:23
a teenager sucks. So for her it's just like trauma
13:26
on trauma on trauma. It's pretty innarly. Part of me
13:31
thinks that this would have happened anyway, But I think
13:34
also as a result of the move, Naomi and Marlene
13:37
start getting into worse fights louder, fights way more, you know, yelling,
13:43
borderline getting violent. Marlene wasn't shy about her disdain for Naomi,
13:48
even telling her sixth grade teacher, which was before they moved,
13:52
that she hated her mom, like straight up told her teacher,
13:55
I hate my mom now. Pretty shortly after they arrived
13:58
in Tara Linda, Marlene's started high school. She was definitely
14:02
an outsider, and if I had to describe her using
14:04
terms for the people that I grew up with, I
14:06
would say that she was like a goth, like before
14:09
goths really existed. She would walk around telling people she
14:12
was a witch and made up really fantastical stories about
14:16
her life before coming to Terre Linda, including saying she
14:19
was once engaged to someone far older than herself. But
14:23
you know, she was really focused on being a witch
14:25
and this was really her thing. She told people she
14:28
had magic, she could cast spells, so a very kind
14:31
of like weird, immature way of sort of presenting herself.
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It feels like she's a little lost, doesn't really know
14:39
how to behave. And I'm not saying that people aren't
14:40
really witches. I'm not saying that, Like, please don't be
14:43
offended by that. I'm just saying that, like for her,
14:46
this seemed to be sort of a coping mechanism, something
14:48
where she was just making things up about herself because
14:51
she didn't know how to fit in. So there are
14:53
two separate things. I just want to clear that up.
14:56
Her other thing beyond claiming she was a witch, was
14:59
pop pills, which she had been a given prescribed by
15:03
a doctor. I forget exactly what it was for she
15:05
either have like stomach pain or there's something else going on,
15:08
but they were essentially like narcotics, and this started a
15:12
long love affair with pills for her. She sort of
15:16
started to fall in with the druggy crowd at school,
15:19
kids who would hang out but weren't really her friends.
15:21
You know, she did have a few friends, but it
15:23
was really more just about like getting high together. Marlene
15:27
of course went from pills to weed, which is a
15:29
lateral or backwards move, but you know, she went from
15:32
prescribed drugs to illegal drugs, and then from there she
15:37
started taking LSD and in fact, the first time she
15:40
ever took acid, which was at school. Of course, this
15:44
changed the course of her life forever. This is because
15:50
on this day she met a young man four years
15:54
older than she was named Chuck Riley. Marlene was fifteen
15:59
at the time and nineteen year old Chuck was a
16:01
local drug dealer, but not really a bad guy by
16:04
any means. And I know that sounds weird, but it's
16:07
like selling weed is definitely not like you're a bad person,
16:12
you know, like people that age, especially back then, everybody
16:15
was doing shit like that.
16:16
Speaker 1: You could be a.
16:17
Speaker 2: Bad person, but you could also be a totally normal,
16:19
nice person. So I just want to call that out.
16:22
They met when Chuck found Marlene being made fun of
16:24
by some of the boys she was quote unquote friends
16:27
with who were fucking with her and giving her a
16:29
bad acid trip for her very first time, which is
16:32
super fucked up.
16:32
Speaker 1: You shouldn't do that.
16:34
Speaker 2: My friend Lisa kind of fucked with me the first
16:35
time I ever took acid. She told me about it
16:38
before I took it, and she's like, I won't do
16:39
that to you, and then she did. It was so mean,
16:41
but we're still friends and it's fine. She then took
16:43
care of me and she knew when to stop. Anyway,
16:46
these kids were not being nice and it was a problem,
16:49
so Chuck came up and he protected her from them,
16:52
and from that moment on he was head over heels
16:55
in love with her. A few days after this interaction,
16:58
he brought her some weed to school, then asked her
17:00
to the movies. Marlene went, but made it a double
17:04
date and went home with her friend after because she
17:07
really wasn't into Chuck, but everybody likes free weed, so
17:12
she was down to at least hang out. Now, let's
17:15
talk about Charles Chuck Riley a little bit. Like I said,
17:20
he was four years older than Marlene, born in nineteen
17:22
fifty five in Marin County, which is where this takes place,
17:25
and had a really rather normal childhood. His parents never divorced,
17:29
They never hit him, they never really did anything to him.
17:33
That being said, Chuck wasn't without his issues, including a
17:36
pretty severe weight issue that he had starting at age five. Now,
17:41
by the time he was in high school, he was
17:42
over three hundred pounds. In addition to this this sounds
17:45
really mean, but he wasn't very smart. He wasn't like
17:48
naturally gifted in school, He wasn't a good athlete, and
17:51
he was very shy and sort of a scared type
17:54
of person, like definitely a follower. When he was pretty young.
17:59
Because of his weight, a doctor prescribed him dexa dream
18:02
and he started using it as speed. He then got
18:05
into weed and other drugs and started selling them as well.
18:09
As I have noted, he dropped out of the high
18:11
school where he met Marlene, but clearly still came around
18:14
to see his.
18:14
Speaker 1: Friends and saw them drugs.
18:16
Speaker 2: And I'm sure, like, again, the way I'm describing him
18:19
makes him sound like a shitty dude, but I really
18:21
think he was just sort of lost, didn't have any
18:23
real ambition, and his weight and the insecurity he felt
18:27
surrounding that really affected him and his ability to thrive
18:31
as a person. His father was also pretty hard on him,
18:34
not like mean, but always worried he'd end up in
18:36
prison because he was so aimless. And it's interesting that
18:40
that was his fear. And obviously we'll get there, but
18:42
I'm not talking about Chuck for no reason. After dropping
18:47
out of high school, Chuck worked a bunch of part
18:49
time jobs, mostly delivering pizza or papers. He also worked
18:54
as a bartender for a while and in a factory,
18:56
but always was dealing drugs on the side. He's met
19:00
Marlene and the two of them hang out a lot,
19:02
because again, he's not working full time, he's just kind
19:04
of spending his time doing whatever, and she's not into
19:08
him as a boyfriend at all. Chuck knows this, and
19:12
in fact, the first night they went to the movies,
19:14
she threw herself at his friend, and his friend told him,
19:16
but he was not discouraged from pursuing her. He was like,
19:20
it's fine, I can wait her out whatever. It also
19:24
like sort of seemed like the meaner she was, the
19:26
more he liked her, and the more he wanted her,
19:28
which is very telling, very sad, and a lignes really
19:33
well with who she is and who he is and
19:35
kind of where the story goes. He began to believe
19:38
her stories, which she was in fact a witch, that
19:40
she had cast a spell on him, because he was like,
19:42
why am I so in love with her? You know,
19:45
like he couldn't understand what it was about her, so
19:47
he assumed she had cast a spell. He was like
19:50
a lost puppy, just following her around, doing whatever she
19:53
wanted him to do. Meanwhile, things at home from Marlene
19:57
were getting worse and worse. Naomi took to mocking Marlene's
20:03
birth mother, calling her a whore, and during one drunken night,
20:06
Naomi even paraded around naked in front of Marlene, saying,
20:10
this is what your birth mother looks like, which I
20:13
want to call out as being super ironic as Naomi
20:16
is the drunk, naked, abusive person here. But I'm sure
20:22
this is very upsetting to Marlene. She's a child. This
20:24
is supposed to be her mother, even though as somebody
20:27
looking in from the outside can be like this woman's insane,
20:31
She's ridiculous for Marlene, I'm sure it was extremely hurtful
20:36
that being said, Marlene gave as good as she got
20:39
and could definitely dish out.
20:41
Speaker 1: Some abusive language. Now. At first, Jim was Switzerland. He
20:46
wouldn't get.
20:46
Speaker 2: Involved, and he sometimes would even take Marlene's side. After
20:50
a while, though, he started to shun Marlene in an
20:53
attempt to keep Naomi happy, as her mental health was
20:56
deteriorating rapidly by this point. This was obviously super harmful
21:01
for Marlene, as Jim was sort of participating in like
21:05
an emotional incest with Marlene, treating her almost like the
21:08
other woman, like he had to choose Naomi over her,
21:11
which is super abusive in its own way, so much
21:16
more damage being done to Marlene, who's already very lost,
21:20
very angry, needs connection, needs love, needs a parent, and
21:25
just does not have one now. Because of the lack
21:28
of love at home, the lack of direction, the lack
21:30
of parental oversight, Marlene started acting out by sleeping with boys,
21:36
lots of them, but never Chuck. Naomi found out about
21:41
this and started calling her a street walker, accuser of
21:44
being easy, being a whore, and Naomi wasn't quiet about this,
21:49
with her drunken antics being known around town to the
21:52
point where Marlene's friends weren't even allowed at her house anymore,
21:55
which only further alienated Marlene. So she's really just she's
22:00
got nobody. Marlene would start self harming during their fights,
22:05
which were happening daily at this point. She would like
22:07
bite herself, she would hit herself, and it was just
22:11
really really bad at home, and she and Chuck were
22:15
getting closer and closer, and he was doing more and
22:18
more of her bidding. Now. Around this time, Marlene started
22:21
openly telling her friends that she wanted to kill her mother,
22:24
and also decided, for whatever reason, to finally give Chuck
22:28
a shot at being her boyfriend. One night, they were
22:32
driving around after doing drugs and hanging out, and she
22:35
started fondling Chuck while he was driving his car. The
22:39
next night they had sex for the first time, and
22:41
after that it was kind of on. They were together constantly.
22:44
They were having sex at least once a day, usually more,
22:48
and their sex was super sadistic, with Marlene making Chuck
22:51
live out really messed up fantasies. I'm not going to
22:54
get into them, but they were not good. She would
22:56
have him tie her up and hurt her, and she
22:59
was really into it. So she's really kind of letting
23:02
out all of her frustration and her sadness, and she's
23:05
using Chuck to do that. Chuck was a virgin when
23:08
they met, so he did whatever she told him to do.
23:10
And that's not to say that he couldn't have said no.
23:13
I'm just saying that the dynamic of their relationship considering that,
23:17
it's not surprising at all that this is what's going on.
23:21
Marlene used the control that she had over Chuck not
23:24
only in the bedroom but also in their everyday lives.
23:27
She would threaten to break up with Chuck almost daily
23:30
anytime he didn't do something she wanted him to do.
23:33
She was very controlling, very emotional, very angry. At one point,
23:38
she got Chuck a bracelet and said she had bewitched
23:40
it so anytime she wanted him he would feel it
23:42
tingling on his wrist. Now Chuck bought into this entirely,
23:47
and he said he could feel it tingling on his
23:49
wrist all the time, which worked out because she always
23:53
wanted him around to boss him around and make him.
23:55
Speaker 1: Do her bidding.
23:58
Speaker 2: So, just to sort of recap, we have this really
24:00
horrible home life for Marlene, a mentally ill, alcoholic adoptive mother,
24:07
this sort of emotional incest situation with her adoptive father,
24:11
and then we have this really one sided, controlling relationship
24:15
with this older boy who is absolutely obsessed with her.
24:19
This is just a recipe for disaster, and things, of
24:24
course get worse and worse. Beyond their weird sex life,
24:28
these two got really into stealing. In one month, in fact,
24:32
they stole upwards of six thousand dollars, and that's in
24:35
nineteen seventy five money, and the way they did it
24:38
was super indicative of the power dynamics of their relationship
24:41
as well. Marlene would go into a store, pick out
24:45
the stuff she wanted and then send Chuck in to
24:48
go steal it for her. Now, Marlene would steal some
24:51
stuff too, but she basically made Chuck do the majority
24:53
of it, and it was sort of a way for
24:54
him to prove his love for her and also obviously
24:57
to keep him under control, which is really what it was.
25:01
Speaker 1: Now.
25:01
Speaker 2: This went on for months and months, the two of
25:03
them having this crazy sex life. Every single day. They're
25:07
together all hours of the day and night. They're only
25:09
a part when Chuck has to work or Marlene's in school,
25:12
and they go on these crazy, you know, stealing spreees.
25:16
Speaker 1: It's just nuts.
25:18
Speaker 2: Finally, one day they got caught stealing after going back
25:22
to the same store twice in one day, which is
25:25
super stupid, but of course they did that because they're
25:28
kids and they're stupid. They were both arrested, with Chuck
25:31
going to real jail because he was like nineteen or
25:34
twenty at that point, while sixteen year old Marlene only
25:37
went to juvie until her parents could pick her up.
25:40
She did have to go to court for this, and
25:41
when she went to court, she had what seemed like
25:44
a change of heart. She was weeping in the courtroom,
25:46
apologizing to Naomi, saying that she wanted to have a
25:50
good relationship with her and for them to have a
25:52
normal family. Naomi took this opportunity to be as big
25:56
of an asshole as she ever had been, saying she
25:58
was ashamed of Marlene and couldn't trust her now. The
26:01
police officer who had actually arrested Marlene had suggested that
26:05
she stay in Juvie until her court date. After meeting
26:08
Naomi and realizing how fucked up Marlene's home life was,
26:13
she actually thought she'd have been better off staying in Juvie,
26:16
and Jim was like, sure, you can stay there. But
26:19
then Marlene called and was like, I want to come home,
26:22
and he picked her up because he was an enabler
26:24
above all else. So you know, at this point, Jim
26:28
is just fed up with Marlene, and while he had
26:30
originally really liked Chuck and thought that Chuck was a
26:32
good influence, this situation completely destroyed that facade, and he
26:37
forbade Marlene from seeing Chuck ever again. Chuck was of
26:41
course extremely distraught over this and came to the house
26:45
to try to talk to Jim, and Jim told him
26:47
if he ever came back to the house he would
26:50
kill him, which is so stupid to me, Like these
26:54
people are all so out of control, Like these are
26:57
two adults, and this is the way that they're It's
27:00
insane to me. And of course, Marlene and Chuck found
27:04
ways to talk, as all teens forbidden from seeing each
27:06
other will do, and they stayed together, and they spent
27:09
pretty much time as much time together as they ever had,
27:12
because of course they did. It didn't really help that
27:16
Jim and Naomi pretty much ignored Marlene unless they were
27:19
like screaming at her. They didn't really pay any attention
27:22
to her, so she could just do whatever the fuck
27:23
she wanted. And also I think that they felt like
27:25
she was out of control, so they just threw their
27:27
hands up in the air and were.
27:28
Speaker 1: Like, we don't know what to do. They're just like
27:29
victims right now.
27:31
Speaker 2: Finally sick of everything and not being able to control Marlene.
27:35
Near the summer of nineteen seventy five, they informed her
27:38
that the following year they would be sending her to
27:40
boarding school, which is like, why why tell her that,
27:45
like that is a threat to be cruel, to cause problems,
27:48
Like most parents I know who do this kind of thing,
27:50
and I knew a lot of kids that were subjected
27:52
to this at a younger age would sort of spring
27:55
it on the kids because otherwise it just creates more problems.
27:58
Why are you going to tell your kid who is
28:00
completely out of control, who hates you, three months ahead
28:03
of time, that you're sending them away, Like all that's
28:05
going to do is give them the opportunity to run.
28:07
Speaker 1: Away to cause more problems.
28:09
Speaker 2: But like they seem to like having problems this family
28:11
like pretty clearly like these people did not know how
28:14
to behave now. Of course, Marlene was extremely upset about
28:17
this and continued to tell anybody who would listen that
28:21
she wanted to kill her parents, or sometimes she would
28:24
just say she wanted to kill her mother or Naomi.
28:27
She obviously said this to Chuck all the time, but
28:30
it wasn't until he realized that Marlene was going to
28:33
be sent away to boarding school and therefore removed from
28:35
his life that he really started to sort of take
28:38
her seriously and even consider being a part of the
28:41
murder of her mother or parents. So Marlene and her
28:47
mother had yet another fight, this time on June twenty first,
28:51
nineteen seventy five, and it was a really really bad fight.
28:56
Naomi came downstairs already wasted at like you know, ten
29:00
in the morning or something, and they got in a
29:02
huge fight that lasted hours. And after this, Marlene called
29:07
Chuck at his friend's house where he was staying and
29:10
said to him, quote, we have to kill the bitch today. Chuck,
29:15
not expecting this call exactly, had just taken acid, which
29:19
is so fucking insane that that is a part of
29:22
this story that is like agreed upon by everyone.
29:25
Speaker 1: He was on acid when this took place.
29:28
Speaker 2: Now, Chuck owned a twenty two caliber pistol, and Marlene
29:31
told him to bring it to her house or she
29:32
would never speak to him again. Now, again, Chuck knew
29:37
Marlene was gonna be sent away either way, so if
29:40
he didn't do what she wanted, he was going to
29:42
lose her.
29:42
Speaker 1: Even if she was.
29:43
Speaker 2: Bluffing about never talking to him again, because obviously she
29:46
always said to him, do what I want, or I'm
29:48
breaking up with you. Do what I want, or I'll
29:49
never talk to you again. But the added threat of
29:52
her parents actually sending her somewhere made him really think,
29:56
I've got to act now. His friends, who overheard the
29:59
phone call conversation he had said that he seemed really
30:02
uncomfortable but also upset, and they heard him say, you
30:06
just have to hit her as hard as you can,
30:08
harder than you've ever hit anybody before. Now, apparently, he
30:12
and Marlene were discussing the various ways to kill Naomi
30:14
while on the phone, including poisoning her or bludgeoning her
30:18
with a hammer. Finally, it was decided that Chuck would
30:22
come over and wait in the bushes while Marlene got
30:24
Jim out of the house somehow. Once they were gone,
30:27
Chuck would go in and kill Naomi with said hammer,
30:31
but he would also bring his gun just in case. Chuck,
30:35
high on drugs and deeply in love, agreed and left
30:40
his friend's house around one thirty PM and arrived to
30:43
Marlene's not long after. Naomi had gone to take a
30:46
nap after the fight, likely because you know, she was
30:49
wasted and needed to sleep it off. I mean, she
30:51
definitely was wasted, so the nap was probably to sleep
30:54
it off. So when Chuck finally entered the home, which
30:57
took him a very long time for obviouslys I mean
31:01
beyond just being afraid.
31:03
Speaker 1: You know, he's on drugs, it's gonna be difficult.
31:06
Speaker 2: But when he did enter the home, she was sound
31:07
asleep in bed. He hesitated outside, like I said, but
31:11
when he went in and found her, he basically was like,
31:14
there she is. Took a hammer and hit her on
31:17
the head with it just above her left eye. This
31:21
created a huge hole right above her browbone, and this
31:26
also woke Naomi up. Now maybe not ever really fully,
31:29
because Chuck said that she basically just started gasping for
31:32
air and flailing around. He then hit her again, this
31:37
time with the sharp side of the hammer, which got
31:40
stuck in her head. When Chuck talked about this later,
31:43
he admitted that he had trouble pulling it out, and
31:47
that during this time, his gun slipped out of his pants,
31:50
hit the floor, and went off, almost shooting him in
31:54
the foot. Naomi was now laid out in bed, gurgling,
31:59
but still live. Chuck said he then tried to smother
32:03
Naomi to put her out of her misery, but while
32:06
he was doing this, Jim and Marlene arrived back home
32:10
because he took way too much time to go kill Naomi.
32:14
Had he gone in right after they left, he would
32:16
have been long gone before they came home. But obviously
32:19
he's terrified and again on drugs. So this took a
32:22
really long time. While outside, and just before going in
32:26
the house, Marlene stopped Jim in some moment of you know,
32:31
clarity or remorse and said, quote, if you go inside,
32:36
you'll die. Jim apparently laughed at this, which is super
32:41
fucking weird, especially given the situation. I mean, you've got
32:44
this angry daughter who you told you're sending away, who's
32:47
not allowed to see her boyfriend who does drugs, and
32:50
I mean, it's just like, why would you laugh at that?
32:52
Speaker 1: Fucking weird?
32:54
Speaker 2: He then went right inside as if she hadn't said
32:56
anything to him, and of course when he did, he
32:59
found both Naiomi, moments from death in bed and Chuck
33:04
standing over her with a hammer and a pillow. Jim, furious,
33:09
grabbed a kitchen knife and advanced towards Chuck, who, in
33:13
what he later called self defense, pulled out his gun
33:17
and shot Jim in the chest four times. Jim fell
33:21
to the ground dead. Now get this, Marlene and Chuck
33:29
then had sex in the fucking house. And I can't
33:33
even tell you how often this happens when teens kill.
33:36
Speaker 1: Their parents, like it's such a thing.
33:38
Speaker 2: They kill their parents with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever,
33:41
and then they stay in the house and like have sex.
33:43
It's so it's so crazy to me that this is
33:46
a thing. Anyway, So after this fucked up scene, they
33:49
left the house. They went to Marlene's friend's house, where
33:51
Marlene was notably affectionate with Chuck, which wasn't really normal
33:54
for her, Like normally she wasn't into like PDAs, but
33:58
she was super affectionate that day, I guess because she
34:01
was rewarding him for doing her bidding, which is pretty
34:04
fucking twisted. Now, when they got back to the house,
34:06
which they went home later, and they realized, you know,
34:10
we have to figure out what to do with these bodies,
34:12
if for no other reason than they were starting to smell,
34:15
they decided to take them to a nearby campground called
34:18
China Camp.
34:20
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know.
34:20
Speaker 2: Who knows this, but San Francisco and that area was
34:24
during like the building of the railroads and kind of
34:26
the Gold Rush. It was an area where a lot
34:28
of Chinese immigrants lived and worked. And in fact, Chinese
34:32
immigrants built our railroads, not always by choice, in fact,
34:37
not often by choice. And that's yet another smudge on
34:41
the history of California and the United States. But in
34:44
any case, so the Chinese lived in this area and
34:48
one of the ways that they would sustain themselves and
34:50
feed their families was to go fishing. And one of
34:52
the areas they did where they went fishing was this
34:56
now campground that they called China camp.
35:00
Speaker 1: Now.
35:00
Speaker 2: By the time Marlene and Chuck came to know the area,
35:03
it was a lover's lane for horny teenagers, so well
35:06
known by a lot of the people of their age
35:08
and their type. Definitely not like a family like you
35:11
know grounds anymore, but somewhere that they could go and
35:15
pretty easily hide a body. So they take the bodies
35:18
there and they throw them in a barbecue pit.
35:21
Speaker 1: That's at the campground. They then light them on fire.
35:26
Speaker 2: They pour gasoline and put a bunch of you know,
35:28
leaves and shit in there, and before the fire goes out,
35:31
they leave. So they don't even know if the bodies
35:34
are fully burned or what, but they're like, fuck it,
35:36
let's get out of here. They then go to a
35:38
friend's house and as teens always do, tell the friends,
35:42
they told them what they did, like it's so stupid.
35:45
It's so interesting to me that like they're doing something
35:48
so life altering and permanently fucking crazy as murdering two people.
35:54
But then they're like, I don't feel like waiting to
35:56
like burn the bodies. Let's go hang out with our
35:57
friends and let's go tell them what we did. It's like,
36:00
it's this weird level of like supreme immaturity. And this
36:04
is another thing that you see in these cases where
36:06
teenagers kill people. They always tell on themselves, like one
36:11
hundred percent of the time. It's such a weird phenomenon,
36:16
but it helps them get caught, I guess, so whatever.
36:20
So the friend that Naomi told, like the very first friend,
36:22
she actually asked if they could provide an alibi for
36:25
her should the cops ever come knocking, and this friend agreed.
36:30
Chuck also told friends, saying they quote had to do
36:33
it because otherwise they wouldn't be able to see each other,
36:36
so this obviously wasn't going to stay a secret. After
36:40
telling everybody they ever met, essentially, they ended up going
36:43
back to the camp to further burn the bodies. They
36:46
brought more gasoline, more wood, and they found that her
36:49
parents' heads hadn't fully burned, so they had to finish
36:51
the job now, between the time they left and the
36:55
time they came back, a fireman actually found the burning
36:58
bodies but thought that they were a deer carcass and
37:02
so left them. So this information only really came to
37:04
light after the fact. Had this never been discovered, he
37:07
probably would have gone on with his life, but the
37:10
fact that obviously the two of them get caught. He
37:13
then was brought to testify and talk about what he saw.
37:17
Speaker 1: Beyond that.
37:18
Speaker 2: Beyond the firefighter and all of the secrets being told,
37:22
there were other challenges to staying under the radar, including
37:25
Jim's boss or I think business partner, calling to check
37:29
up on him after he didn't show up to work.
37:32
They were supposed to move offices, so it was pretty
37:34
much immediately noticed when Jim didn't show up to do this,
37:38
and after not hearing from Jim for about a week,
37:40
his partner called the cops, who went to the house
37:43
to do a welfare check. When they arrived, Marlene was
37:46
there alone and answered the door. I think Chuck was
37:49
probably at work or something, and she let the cops
37:52
come inside and they saw that her house.
37:54
Speaker 1: Was an insane mess.
37:56
Speaker 2: The police asked her, you know, where are your parents
37:58
and she said, Oh, they gone, They're gone out of town.
38:01
I'm not sure when they're coming back. I'm expecting them
38:03
any day now. And the cops were like, that is
38:05
a load of horseshit because.
38:07
Speaker 1: They've been gone a week. You don't know where they are.
38:09
Speaker 2: You're not worried about them, you haven't called. And they're like, also, like,
38:12
there's no way that the house would look like this
38:15
if you thought your parents were coming home. You would
38:17
not let your parents see the house like this. Like,
38:19
no adult is gonna come into this house and not
38:22
freak the fuck out. So the cops were basically like,
38:26
this is bullshit. And because of Jim's partner calling, cops
38:31
had a pretty good idea of when Jim and potentially
38:33
also Naomi disappeared, so they asked her, you know where
38:36
were you on this day? And Marlene gladly gave them
38:39
her friend's information for that alibi she'd asked for. Police
38:43
kept pushing Marlene, who kept changing her story just a
38:47
little bit and like just enough for them to know
38:49
they were on the right track. And meanwhile, they also
38:52
went and talked to her friend, who at first covered
38:54
for her and apparently had also helped clean up the
38:58
murder scene in the house, but pretty quickly realized this
39:02
was not going to be worth the trouble and spilled
39:04
the beans. Cops then went and picked up Marlene and
39:07
took her to the station, where she first told them, oh,
39:10
my parents were killed by Hell's angels and then said, oh, well,
39:13
one of them killed the.
39:14
Speaker 1: Other one and then disappeared.
39:17
Speaker 2: Now it's unclear if they finally got Marlene to crack
39:19
or if they used the friend's confession, but either way,
39:22
they went to the barbecue pit and found the bodies
39:24
or you know, the charred, fragmented remains of the bodies,
39:28
because at this point there were only bone chips left
39:31
of Jim and Naomi, which is horrifying. However, they were
39:36
able to use this to arrest both Marlene and Chuck.
39:40
They also found multiple letters in Marlene's room talking about
39:43
killing her parents, and these letters were addressed to both
39:46
Chuck and a previous boyfriend, which lent credence to the
39:51
theory that she had been planning this for a very
39:53
long time. One of the letters seemed to have been
39:56
written after the murder and expressed her complete lack of
39:59
remor over the killings, which is just lovely and also
40:03
again totally something a teenager is gonna do. They're gonna
40:07
fucking chronicle this shit in writing for the police to
40:10
just like stumble upon and open and shutcase, which is fine,
40:14
because she's awful now. Pretty much immediately after his arrest,
40:17
Chuck made a full confession, taking all of the blame
40:20
for the murders and of course saying he didn't remember
40:23
it all that well, which is a classic murderer move.
40:26
But also in this instance, he was on acid, so
40:29
I feel like this was a little bit more earnest
40:31
than other confessions of a similar type. Anyway, both were charged,
40:36
and before the trial started, they of course broke up. Marlene,
40:40
I think, was upset with Chuck for killing her dad,
40:43
even though she had walked Jim into his own death.
40:47
I really think that she had been torn about it,
40:49
which is why she took him out of the house
40:51
and ultimately did not want him to die. But I
40:55
think she felt that there was nothing she could do
40:57
in that moment because she knew he was gonna walk
40:59
into the house and she only cared about getting away
41:02
from her parents. And the other thing was she and
41:04
Chuck had been spending all of her parents' money since
41:07
they died and were expecting to somehow get away with
41:11
her parents disappearing and having her inherit their insurance money, and.
41:16
Speaker 1: Then they were going to move to Ecuador. So I
41:18
don't think that.
41:19
Speaker 2: I mean, I think she told Chuck that she wanted
41:22
her dad to die, but I really think that she
41:25
was like not, actually, she didn't really mean it, like
41:29
she wanted Naomi to die. She did not want Jim
41:31
to die, but she was so angry, and I feel
41:34
like she didn't feel like she could be honest about it,
41:37
you know, so instead she tells Chuck one thing, lets
41:40
it go down the way it did, and then blames
41:42
him for that. So, in any case, after a short while,
41:47
Marlene stopped writing Chuck back.
41:49
Speaker 1: She no longer wrote him letters.
41:50
Speaker 2: The two of them writing constantly after their arrests, but
41:53
her letters started getting shorter and shorter, and then they
41:55
just stopped coming. At first, Chuck was super distraught, but
41:59
I think as he's or sort of started to get
42:01
out from under her spell quote unquote, he started to
42:04
realize what was really going on, and he actually became
42:08
really happy that he was no longer with Marlene, and
42:12
in fact, this is so weird. At one point, he
42:14
asked a guard to please let him wear the bracelet
42:17
she gave him to see if he could still feel.
42:19
Speaker 1: His arm tingling.
42:20
Speaker 2: He said when he put it on, he didn't feel anything,
42:23
so he knew that her spell was broken.
42:26
Speaker 1: These people are insane.
42:28
Speaker 2: From here, his confession changed. He said that he in
42:30
fact had come to the house but had found Marlene
42:34
had already mortally wounded Naomi using the hammer, and he
42:38
simply attempted to smother her to help end her misery.
42:42
He said Jim came in and found the two of
42:45
them in the room, and he shot Jim in self
42:47
defense once Jim caught him in the act, and that
42:50
Marlene was in fact the real aggressor in all of this.
42:54
So he said, you know, I didn't actually kill Naomi.
42:58
Marlene did. I was there, but she had already done it,
43:01
and then I had to shoot Jim because he was
43:02
coming out with me with a knife. And I don't
43:05
necessarily think that's true, but it.
43:07
Speaker 1: Also could be true.
43:08
Speaker 2: I mean, she was on the phone with him asking
43:11
about killing her mother and then told him to come over.
43:13
It's very possible that she got impatient and attacked Naomi,
43:18
you know, before Chuck ever got there, so I don't know.
43:21
He supposedly made this confession while under hypnosis, but a
43:25
judge later ruled that he was faking it. And the
43:28
way the judge said he knew he was faking it
43:30
was that Chuck was speaking in the past tense, and
43:33
apparently when you're under hypnosis you speak in the present
43:36
tense only, which is a wild detail to know, Like,
43:40
I didn't know that. So if somebody is being hypnotized
43:43
and they aren't using present tents, you know that they're
43:45
full of shit. So keep that in your back pocket, guys. Anyway,
43:50
like I said, the judge did not buy it, and
43:53
Chuck was found guilty of both murders, so two counts
43:57
of murder in the first degree and it only twenty
44:00
years old. He was given the death penalty, which is
44:04
pretty fucking steep. The only other thing he had on
44:08
his record was that theft that theft charge that he
44:11
got from Marlene or with Marlene, like six months earlier,
44:14
So that's pretty pretty gnarly. I mean, the murders were crazy,
44:19
but all things considered, it feels pretty harsh. Marlene being
44:25
only sixteen years old was given five years, as according
44:29
to state law at the time, she could only be
44:31
held until her twenty first birthday. Despite everyone agreeing she
44:35
was absolutely the mastermind behind the murders, I have to
44:39
say I do agree with not locking up children for
44:42
the rest of their lives. I think that like our
44:45
sort of like prison to slavery pipeline in America and
44:49
especially California, is pretty fucking disgusting. So while I understand
44:53
that like Marlene was awful, when I look back at
44:57
her life to that point and I think about the
44:59
fact that she was only sixteen years old, do.
45:01
Speaker 1: I think she should be locked away forever? Absolutely not.
45:04
And if you think that, I think you should really do.
45:07
Speaker 2: Some soul searching, because children are children for a reason. Biologically,
45:11
your brain doesn't even stop developing until you're into your twenties,
45:15
So somebody who does something like this at this age
45:17
can absolutely become a different person as they get older.
45:22
Speaker 1: But we'll get there.
45:23
Speaker 2: This is not the case to sort of prove that point. Unfortunately,
45:27
now for Chuck, they actually rolled back the death penalty
45:31
for him. There was some sort of change in the
45:33
law that basically was like, hey, that's way too fucking
45:35
harsh for a twenty year old, and I agree with
45:37
that as well. And instead they gave him two life
45:40
sentences with the possibility for parole after I believe only
45:44
seven years. Not being said, even though he started applying
45:48
for parole, like as soon as he was able, he
45:52
was denied all the way up until twenty fifteen when
45:55
he was finally released. Now the parole board had actually
45:59
granted him parole in twenty eleven, and bitch asked Governor
46:04
Jerry fucking Brown overruled it because he was like, the
46:09
crime was so brutal. And then the Supreme Court or
46:11
whoever decides, overruled Jerry Brown, and they were like, you
46:14
have no right to do what you're doing. This guy
46:16
has been rehabilitated. He's not a threat. He hasn't been
46:19
a threat for years. The only infractions he has in
46:22
prison are super minor, Like, just the guy deserves to
46:26
be let out. He's paid his time, he's done his time,
46:29
he's paid his dues. He's not a threat. They basically said, like,
46:32
he's a weak minded little bitch who's learned his lesson.
46:35
He's gone to college while in prison. He's been pretty
46:38
much an exemplary prisoner, it's time to let him out.
46:41
And so in twenty fifteen he was released and has
46:44
just sort of disappeared. He has not caused any other problems.
46:47
He's just living his life. Marlene all live. On the
46:51
other hand, not so much so. Marlene gets you know well.
46:56
Speaker 1: First of all, before she.
46:58
Speaker 2: Was released in this first in juvie, she escaped and
47:02
she waited until like two months before she was going
47:04
to be released anyway, and chose to escape because she
47:07
just cannot make good decisions. She disappeared into I Forget
47:11
where she went like north, and she became a sex.
47:14
Speaker 1: Worker to support herself.
47:16
Speaker 2: After a few months, she was caught and sent back
47:18
to prison, where she was made to finish out her sentence.
47:22
But again they didn't add any time. They just let
47:25
her go. Now since then, she has changed her name
47:28
multiple times, and she has been arrested for insane shit
47:32
like check forgery. Like there's an article about her in
47:35
the La Times like fifteen years after her initial arrest.
47:40
So she's like in her thirties and they said that
47:42
she had the most sophisticated forgery operation that the police
47:47
had ever seen. She had also changed her name a
47:51
bunch of times she engaged in sex work, theft, robbery, Like,
47:55
she's just led a really horrible life of crime. Now
48:00
at this point, she's in her mid to late sixties
48:04
and nobody really knows where she is. But every single
48:07
point at which her location has been found or she's
48:11
been reported on, it's been because she's getting arrested. It's
48:14
been because she's doing something illegal. So her life definitely
48:18
did not turn out in a good way whatsoever. I
48:23
do hope though, that Chuck. I mean, I know what
48:27
he did was absolutely horrifying, and I don't feel like,
48:31
you know, he's a good guy here, But I do
48:34
feel like the courts or the parole board got it
48:38
right when they basically said he was a follower. He
48:41
was totally wrapped up in this person, and he's not
48:45
a threat, and he deserves another chance. Forty years in
48:48
prison is a very long time, and I feel like,
48:53
I'm just hopeful that he is able to get a
48:55
shit together and live the rest of his days in
48:58
a positive way. And I think it's a good thing
49:02
that he was let out. And I think honestly that
49:04
these you know, jail times could have been reversed, and
49:08
it would have been a little more effective. But again,
49:11
Marlene was a child. Unfortunately, she ended up going down
49:15
the route that I think everybody kind of expected she would,
49:18
and Charles, you know, kind of went the way people
49:21
expected he would. And I feel it was really unfortunate
49:23
that he did so much time when he clearly learned
49:28
from his mistakes and was no longer a threat. So
49:31
I know everybody has different feelings about prison, but I
49:34
borderline believe we should abolish it. I feel that there's rehabilitation,
49:38
there's other options. So for something like this, forty years
49:42
is a very, very long time.
49:44
Speaker 1: But he's out now.
49:45
Speaker 2: I hope he's doing well. And uh yeah, that's that's
49:48
the story. This is a fucking crazy one. Always love
49:52
a good story of a teenager killing her parents. I mean,
49:56
we'll never run out of those. I'll probably do quite
49:58
a few more in cal There's probably quite a few,
50:02
so before my time on this podcast is done, we'll
50:05
have more and we can compare notes between them. But anyway,
50:07
this is a really sad story. I feel from Arlene
50:09
as well. I don't feel like she ever stood a chance.
50:11
Like literally from the day after she was born, she
50:14
was being abused and traumatized, and she didn't do anything
50:17
to deserve that. She just was a victim of circumstance.
50:21
And it's understandable in a way, not killing your parents,
50:25
but being this angry. And I really do feel for
50:29
the child, you know, for her as a child, her
50:32
as an adult. She sounds wild. My expectation is she's
50:35
an Ecuador at this point, probably gonna die there. I
50:38
think she was much happier there, but it's interesting to
50:40
think about. So if you guys want to look her up,
50:43
there's definitely some more stories out there about some of
50:45
the crazy shit she got into after getting out of
50:47
prison or getting out of juvie whatever.
50:49
Speaker 1: Anyway, thanks so much you guys for listening.
50:52
Speaker 2: I'll be back again next week with a little bit more,
50:54
some more crazy, fun terrible stories. Who knows, things are
51:00
a little wild right now with the fires and people
51:03
being displaced and work being crazy. So you know, going
51:07
to keep doing this to keep myself distracted, keep myself
51:09
on track. If you guys have the ability to donate
51:13
to people who have lost their homes, please consider doing so.
51:16
I'll see about if I can post some links on
51:18
my Instagram where people can donate and how they can help.
51:22
Direct donations are going to be the way to go.
51:24
Finding people's go fundme is verifying that they're you know, real,
51:28
and donating there I think at this point is going
51:30
to be what helps the most. So I'll try to
51:32
find some links at least to the people that I know,
51:34
which there are quite a few, very unfortunately. So thanks
51:37
everybody for listening. Please like Raake review, share with your
51:40
friends and family, and come back next week for another
51:43
Crazy Tale. Until then, stay safe.