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19 Shocking True Crime Connection Stories From Real People · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture your typical setup. It's a
• 0:02
  Tuesday night, or you know, maybe a Thursday. You are
• 0:05
  curled up on your couch wearing your most comfortable worn
• 0:08
  in sweatpants.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right, You've got the ultimate cozy setup going exactly.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: The only light in the living room is that cold,
• 0:15
  flickering blue glow of the television screen, and you are
• 0:20
  like three hours deep into a binge watch of the
• 0:23
  latest darkest true crime documentary to hit streaming.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Probably with your phone out too, right, yeah, mindlessly scrolling.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Oh one, you're scrolling through Reddit threads, analyzing crime scene photos,
• 0:35
  maybe debating suspect motives with complete strangers. And the weird
• 0:38
  thing is you're feeling this very strange, very specific kind
• 0:42
  of cozy security.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It is a weird paradox, isn't it. You're consuming absolute horror,
• 0:47
  but you feel completely relaxed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, you are actively consuming nightmares, but you are doing
• 0:53
  it from inside a fortress. It feels safe, It feels
• 0:56
  entirely contained.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Well because subconsciously we all tell ours so it's the
• 1:00
  exact same comforting lie to just get through the day.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Right, that these kinds of nightmares only happen to other people, Right,
• 1:07
  like they happen in faraway places or sketchy neighborhoods we
• 1:10
  just don't visit, or.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: They happened decades ago, you know, captured only in those
• 1:15
  grainy black and white photographs. It is a deeply necessary
• 1:19
  psychological shield.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: A shield. What do you mean by that?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Well, if we didn't compartmentalize that darkness, if we didn't
• 1:27
  firmly put it in a mental box labeled things that
• 1:29
  happened to strangers and other zip codes, the world would
• 1:33
  just feel entirely unnavigable.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Because we'd be terrified of everyone.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Our brains literally demand that distance so we can
• 1:40
  wake up, go to work, and function in society without
• 1:44
  being completely paralyzed by paranoia.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense. We basically consume true crime like
• 1:49
  we're at the zoo.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: The zoo, Okay, I like that analogy.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, think about it. We're looking at a terrifying predator,
• 1:54
  but it's safely behind thick, reinforced glass. You know, you
• 1:59
  can admire the sharp teeth, you can study its behavior,
• 2:01
  but you know the glass is going to hold.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: And you can just walk away and buy a pretzel
• 2:06
  when you're done.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But the mission of today's deep dive is to
• 2:10
  basically shatter that glass. We are talking about what happens
• 2:14
  when you turn around, drop your popcorn, and realize the
• 2:17
  predator was never actually at the zoo, It was.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Sitting in your living room the whole time.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Right. We are exploring the shockingly terrifyingly thin line between
• 2:26
  a totally normal, mundane life and an absolute waking nightmare, and.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: We have an incredibly unique set of source material to
• 2:34
  guide us through this. Today we're looking at a twenty
• 2:37
  twenty six community collection that was curated by BuzzFeed.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: And this isn't just like creepy campfire stories, right, No.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Not at all. It's an aggregation of nineteen verified, deeply
• 2:47
  eerie personal accounts from everyday people. These are individuals who
• 2:52
  completely unknowingly brush right up against some of history's most
• 2:55
  infamous monsters, victims.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And crimes, which is just wild to think it really is.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And I want to emphasize right from the jump, these
• 3:03
  are not urban legends. This isn't the hook hand on
• 3:05
  the car door or some internet creepyposter, right. They brought
• 3:08
  receipts exactly. These are verified accounts back by court records,
• 3:12
  news artives, and rigorous official investigations. They reveal how completely
• 3:17
  ordinary routines can just violently intersect with true evil.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Ordinary routines like what going to the grocery store, going on.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: A double date, walking down the middle school allway, or
• 3:27
  even just taking a field trip.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because I want you, the person
• 3:31
  listening right now, to think about your own life. Think
• 3:34
  about your casual acquaintances.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: The people you just sort of wave to in the morning.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the person who lives three doors down from you,
• 3:41
  or the coworker who always makes the coffee in the breakroom,
• 3:45
  or even the guy you chat with at the dog
• 3:46
  park every Saturday. Think about how well you actually know them.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Because if there's one overarching thesis to the sources we're
• 3:53
  looking at today, it's that the most shocking connection to
• 3:56
  true darkness is always the one you never ever saw coming.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Right. So to really understand how that happens, we have
• 4:03
  to start by looking at the concept of camouflage, Like,
• 4:06
  how do prolific predators actually manage to operate for years
• 4:10
  or sometimes decades without being caught.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Well, they don't do it by hiding in dark alleys
• 4:14
  or lurking in the shadows, wearing a trench coat. That's
• 4:16
  a movie trope. They do it by hiding in plain sight.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: They just blend in.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They actively exploit the inherent trust built into our
• 4:23
  small social networks and local communities.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a submission from a thirty two
• 4:28
  year old in Seattle. This one centers on a name
• 4:31
  that absolutely still terrifies the Pacific Northwest. I mean, we're
• 4:35
  talking about Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. Yeah. Now,
• 4:39
  if you follow true crime, you know the basics. He's
• 4:42
  statistically one of America's most prolific serial murderers. He was
• 4:46
  finally caught in two thousand and one via DNA.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Right to provide just a brief context for those who
• 4:51
  might not know. Between nineteen eighty two and nineteen ninety eight,
• 4:54
  Ridgeway confessed to seventy one murders.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Though investigators strongly suspect the actual numbers is significantly higher.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, he targeted young women, runaways and sex workers. His
• 5:06
  modus operandi was to lure vulnerable women with offers of
• 5:09
  money or rides, and then.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Strangle them, usually from behind I read to avoid defensive wounds, yes, exactly, and.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Then he dumped their bodies in remote wooded areas or
• 5:18
  near the Green River, hence they name. He was essentially
• 5:21
  a ghost haunting the Seattle Tacoma area for nearly two decades.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: But what I really want to focus on isn't his
• 5:27
  crime spree itself. It's the submission from this thirty two
• 5:31
  year old whose father had this incredibly casual, just horrifying
• 5:35
  brush with Ridgeway's orbit.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Right. The personal connection here is what makes it so chilling.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: It makes my blood run cool. Yeah, So, the anonymous
• 5:41
  submitter's father was friends with a man whose sister was
• 5:44
  Constance Naon. She went by Connie.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Connie was a twenty year old woman who vanished on
• 5:49
  June eighth, nineteen eighty.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Three, right, and her remains were found four months later
• 5:54
  in a vacant lot near SeaTac Airport, which was one
• 5:56
  of Ridgeway's preferred dumping grounds. But before where she vanished,
• 6:00
  the submitter's father went on a double date.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: The double date just a completely normal Friday night activity exactly.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: It was his girlfriend, his friend, and Connie Naon.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: It's the sheer statistical improbability of that social overlap that
• 6:14
  is just so striking to me. I mean, in the
• 6:16
  early nineteen eighties, the Seattle area was gripped by absolute panic.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Oh totally. The Green River Killer was dominating the headlines
• 6:24
  every single night.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Women were terrified. The police task force was completely desperate.
• 6:29
  And here you have this submitter's family completely unknowingly setting
• 6:34
  one single degree of separation away from the apex predator
• 6:38
  causing all that fear.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: The father shared a casual night out, a double date
• 6:42
  with drinks, dinner, small talk. He shared that with a
• 6:45
  woman who would soon be hunted and killed by Ridgeway.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Just imagine being that father, you know, looking back at
• 6:50
  your calendar years later, remembering that double date.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: You'd remember like laughing over appetizers or complaining about the weather,
• 6:58
  totally oblivious.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And then you realize the horrifying fate that awaited the
• 7:01
  woman is sitting right across the table from you. It
• 7:04
  leaves this lifelong shadow.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: It really does, because you realize that Gary Ridgeway wasn't
• 7:09
  a movie monster living in a gothic castle. He was
• 7:12
  a truck painter.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: He was a married man, he had a son, he.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Went to church. I mean, he blended seamlessly into his community.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And that duality isn't just a quirk, you know, it
• 7:22
  is the fundamental survival mechanism of these individuals. Ridgeway was
• 7:27
  deliberately presenting a facade of profound mundanity.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: He used his normalcy as a shield exactly.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: And this isn't an isolated phenomenon in the source material.
• 7:37
  We see corroborating cases that echo this exact terrifying reality.
• 7:42
  Take Timothy McVeigh for instance.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Right, the perpetrator of the nineteen ninety five Oklahoma City bombing.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, the sources have a submission from someone whose cousin
• 7:50
  actually graduated high school with McVay, and their.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Aunt worked school events alongside mcvay's mother.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Right, they did, And how did they describe him? Not
• 7:58
  as a budding demanick terrorists, not as a radicalized threat.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: They described him as a normal, polite kid from farm.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Country, a plighted kid. And we see it again with
• 8:07
  a more recent case from the text involving Stuart Weldon
• 8:10
  in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, the twenty eighteen case. Yeah, Weldon was discovered to
• 8:14
  have tortured and killed three women, burying their bodies on
• 8:17
  his property.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: But the submitter in the piece was his next door neighbor.
• 8:21
  This submitter had shared Thanksgiving dinners with Weldon.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Wow, they were literally passing the mashed potatoes to a
• 8:27
  man who had bodies buried in his yard.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly dark.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting, though. We have
• 8:34
  this pervasive Hollywood trope, right, the creepy loaner.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Right, the guy who lives in the dilapidated house at
• 8:41
  the end of the streets.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the one with overgrown weeds, who glares at kids
• 8:45
  and mutters to himself. We are so conditioned by movies
• 8:49
  and television to look for the obvious villain.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: But these individuals, the Ridgeways, the mcveigh's, the Weldons, they
• 8:57
  aren't hiding in the shadows at all.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: They are wearing normalcy, like a Gilli suit. They are
• 9:01
  perfectly camouflaged against the background of a suburban neighborhood or
• 9:05
  a church pew. So I have to ask you how
• 9:08
  much of our vulnerability as a society is due to
• 9:11
  our desperate, almost pathetic desire to believe that polite automatically
• 9:15
  equals safe.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: That is the core psychological question here. Yeah, from an
• 9:19
  evolutionary and psychological standpoint, our brains are what we call
• 9:23
  cognitive misers.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, let's pause right there, cognitive misers, explain
• 9:26
  that to me, like I'm five, What exactly is a
• 9:29
  heuristic and how does it make me vulnerable to the
• 9:31
  guy passing me the mashed potatoes?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, so, think of a heuristic as a mental shortcut.
• 9:37
  Your brain is processing millions of pieces of sensory and
• 9:40
  social data every single second.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Right, sites, sound, social cues.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly, if you had to consciously evaluate every single person
• 9:48
  you met for every possible threat, your brain would fry.
• 9:52
  You would never be able to leave your house.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: You'd just be exhausted all the time.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: You would so to save energy, to be a miser
• 9:58
  with your cognitive low your brain creates shortcuts.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, So how does the polite neighbor fit into that shortcut?
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Well, if someone adheres to expected social norms, if they smile,
• 10:09
  if they say please and thank you, if they mow
• 10:11
  their lawn on Sundays, your brain's threat detection system basically
• 10:15
  powers down.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: It just categorizes them as a safe tribe member.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Precisely, we instinctively equate social compliance with moral goodness. Prolific
• 10:23
  predators understand this cognitive shortcut, whether consciously or instinctively, and
• 10:28
  they exploit it ruthlessly.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: So Basically, we are neurologically lazy, and they know it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: It's less about laziness and more about efficiency, but yes,
• 10:37
  it's a very dangerous efficiency. They learn the choreography of normalcy.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: The choreography of normalcy. I love that phrasing, but it's
• 10:44
  also deeply unsettling.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: It is they know exactly which steps to take to
• 10:49
  make your alarm bells stay silent.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Because it leads to a really terrifying scenario if predators
• 10:55
  use this polite camouflage. What happens when an innocent person
• 10:59
  interacts directly with.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: That mass, right when they are totally oblivious to the
• 11:03
  horrors hiding just beneath the surface.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then suddenly the mask slips or the context
• 11:09
  changes and you realize you were just having a pleasant
• 11:11
  chat with a monster.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: When that happens, it induces a profound psychological whiplash, and
• 11:17
  the source material provides perhaps the most visceral stomach training
• 11:21
  example of this I have ever encountered.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I think I know which one you're talking about.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: It involves one of the most notorious figures in American
• 11:26
  true crime history, John.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Wayne Gacy, the killer Clown. Just hearing the name makes
• 11:31
  people physically shudder.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It does. And most people know the broad strokes, thirty
• 11:37
  three young men and boys murdered in the suburbs of
• 11:39
  Chicago in the nineteen seventies, the.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Crawl space, the river, all of that, right, But.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: What they don't know is how incredibly ingrained he was
• 11:48
  in the community before he was caught. He was a
• 11:51
  successful building contractor.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: He was a Democratic precinct captain. He literally had his
• 11:57
  photo taken with the first Lady of the United States.
• 12:00
  He was throwing neighborhood parties.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: He is the ultimate pillar of the community, which gave
• 12:03
  him access to his victims. Many of them were employees
• 12:07
  of his contracting business or vulnerable teenagers in the area.
• 12:10
  It's so sick.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And when he was finally caught, the horror of what
• 12:14
  was discovered in that crawl space completely shattered the Chicago area.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: His nineteen eighty trial was an absolute media circus. It
• 12:21
  was the definition of a sensationalized, high stakes legal proceeding.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And this is where our submitter's story drops us right
• 12:27
  into the middle of that circus. So the submitter is
• 12:30
  a twenty six year old from Chicago talking about their mother.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Right back in nineteen eighty, the mother was a pre
• 12:35
  law student in college.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and because she knew someone with connections at the courthouse,
• 12:40
  she was invited to sit in on the trial to
• 12:42
  gain some academic, real world legal insight.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: But the connection went way beyond just sitting quietly in
• 12:49
  the gallery.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Way beyond. She was asked if she wanted to actually
• 12:52
  meet the man on trial.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Put yourself in her shoes. You are a young pre
• 12:57
  law student expecting to observe legal maneuvering and courtroom procedure.
• 13:02
  Suddenly you are led out of the public areas and
• 13:05
  into a secure holding area.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Right, She described walking into a large room with a
• 13:10
  massive cage like box right in the center, and.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Sitting inside that cage is John Wayne Gacy, and.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: She talks to him. She actually has a conversation with
• 13:18
  him through the bars of this holding cage.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: And her takeaway from that conversation is what's so chilling.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing that burned into her memory and that
• 13:25
  she passed down to her child decades later, was that
• 13:28
  if he hadn't been sitting in a cage, if you
• 13:30
  just met him on the street, you never ever would
• 13:32
  have suspected him of anything.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: He was incredibly polite, He was pleasant, he was entirely disarming.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: The term is the weapon. It's what allowed him to
• 13:41
  lure thirty three people to their deaths exactly.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: But the story doesn't end in that holding cage. This
• 13:47
  is where the psychological whiplash really occurs.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Oh man, this part is awful.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: After meeting him, the mother leaves the holding area and
• 13:55
  takes her seat in the packed courtroom gallery to observe
• 13:58
  the trial. When Gaycy is led into the courtroom by
• 14:01
  the bailiffs, he looks out into the sea of people
• 14:04
  in the gallery.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: He spots the young pre law student he just chatted with.
• 14:08
  He smiles, he waves at.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Her, and he addresses her by her first.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Name out loud in the middle of the courtroom. Oh
• 14:14
  my god, my stomach just drops thinking about it. It's
• 14:17
  horrifying because here's the gut punch. The mother realizes, with
• 14:22
  this sudden, absolute paralyzing mortification, that she is seated directly
• 14:26
  in front of the grieving parents of Gaysey's victims.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Think about the spatial awareness of that room, the heavy air, the.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Tension it must have been suffocating.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: And suddenly the architect of all this misery is warmly
• 14:38
  greeting her. This creates an extreme case of cognitive dissonance.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Because she's holding two completely opposite truths at.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Once, exactly. In one hand, she holds the reality of
• 14:48
  a polite, pleasant man who just had a nice chat
• 14:51
  with her, made her feel seen and remembered her name
• 14:53
  right In the other hand, she holds the reality of
• 14:56
  the devastated parents sitting mere inches behind her, whose children
• 15:01
  were tortured and stuffed into a crawl space by that
• 15:03
  exact same man. Her brain has to reconcile those two
• 15:07
  realities simultaneously.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It's like a grotesque magic trick. The charm, the pleasantry
• 15:13
  is the remembering her name. That isn't just a personality trait.
• 15:17
  It is the misdirection.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It is the magician waving his brightly colored wand to
• 15:22
  keep you from looking at his bloody hands. But in
• 15:26
  that courtroom, with the parents sitting right there, the illusion
• 15:29
  completely shattered.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Imagine the visceral horror of a monster knowing your name.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: How do you ever ever trust your own judgment of
• 15:37
  character again? After having a friendly, pleasant chat with John
• 15:40
  Wayne Gacy, You'd second guess every single person you ever met.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: It is a trauma that clearly echoed down through generations
• 15:47
  as her child submitted the story decades later. It inadvertently
• 15:52
  placed the mother right at the intersection of unimaginable loss.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Her polite interaction linked her to the epicenter of this tragedy.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: And again, the sources show this is not a singular event.
• 16:02
  There are other corroborating accounts of people brushing up against
• 16:05
  the masks of prolific killers, sometimes intimately, and realizing their
• 16:10
  own judgment was completely compromised.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Right the text Men shows a submission from someone who
• 16:15
  had a distant family member who was actually Ted Bundy's
• 16:18
  former fiance.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: And we're not talking about his post arrest partner who
• 16:22
  famously married him during the trial.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: No, we're talking about someone who dated him early on,
• 16:27
  saw the mask slipping, broke up with him, and actually
• 16:29
  timped off the police early in history.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: She saw the charm, but she also saw the cracks
• 16:34
  in it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And then there is a submission regarding the Atlanta child murders.
• 16:38
  Wayne Williams.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, Wayne Williams was convicted of two murders and linked
• 16:43
  to dozens of others between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen
• 16:45
  eighty one. The submitter's older Cousins served as a forensic
• 16:49
  psychologist for William's defense team.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: A forensic psychologist that's a trained expert.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly after evaluating him using all the clinical tools and
• 16:58
  training available to her, she officially declared him sane and competent.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It really demonstrates how deeply these individuals can manipulate even
• 17:06
  trained professionals. It's not just everyday people relying on heuristic, No, it's.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Clinical experts being duped by the camouflage too.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: It really makes you realize how fragile our perception of
• 17:16
  safety is. We want to believe we have an internal
• 17:19
  radar for evil.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: We want to believe our internal alarm bells will start
• 17:22
  ringing wildly if a predator walks into the room.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: But these stories prove that the alarm system is faulty.
• 17:28
  Sometimes the monster just smiles, asks how your day is going,
• 17:31
  and you.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Smile back, which I think is a perfect transition point
• 17:34
  to ask an even darker question.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, I embracing myself.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: We have discussed the charismatic masks killers wear. We've talked
• 17:41
  about the polite farm boy and the charming contractor, But
• 17:44
  what about the moments when the mask isn't flawless.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, when it starts to slick.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly what happens when the monstrous reality is literally seeping
• 17:52
  into the everyday environment, physically manifesting in the real world,
• 17:57
  but people completely ignore it or write it off as
• 17:59
  a Monday annoyance.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, this part of the source material completely messed me up,
• 18:04
  because it is all about the physical intrusions.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Of evil, the silent screaming clues that we just stepped
• 18:10
  right over while we're rushing to get to work.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Kendall Francois, the Poughkeepsie killer.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Kendall Francois murdered eight sex workers in upstate New York
• 18:18
  between nineteen ninety six and nineteen ninety eight. The factual
• 18:22
  reality of this case is gruesome.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: He really is.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: He was living in a house with his mother and
• 18:27
  his brother, and he was storing the bodies of his
• 18:29
  victims in the attic and crawl spaces of his family's home.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And the submitter for this story knew him not as
• 18:34
  a killer, but because Kennel Francois was their middle school
• 18:37
  hall monitor.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: He was a daily fixture in their adolescent life right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: And the detail that sticks with the submitter the thing
• 18:44
  they remembered vividly, even before Francois was arrested. The thing
• 18:47
  all the kids talked about was that the hall monitor
• 18:50
  perpetually smelled awful.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: He had this horrific, lingering, metallic odor.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: And the horrific retrospective realization for that middle school years
• 19:00
  later when the news broke, was that the terrible smell
• 19:03
  in the school hallway wasn't just poor hygiene.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: No, the smell was the scent of human decomposition clinging
• 19:11
  to his clothes from the bodies hidden in his family's attic.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Now, normally people use the boiling frog analogae here. You know,
• 19:18
  you throw a frog in boiling water, it jumps out,
• 19:20
  But if you put it in cold water and slowly
• 19:22
  turn up the heat, it boils to death because it adapts.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: That's a common way to frame it, sure, but.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think that it quite fits the horror of this.
• 19:28
  It's more like nose blindness, right, you know, how you
• 19:30
  spray a new perfume and ten minutes later you can't
• 19:33
  smell it anymore, but everyone else can.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Right, old factory adaptation exactly.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: It's like the brain's olfactory adaptation, but applied to a
• 19:41
  lethal threat. It's the threat blindness, because when you see
• 19:45
  someone every single day in a middle school hallway, you
• 19:48
  adapt to their quarks.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Your brain says, Oh, that's just Kendle, he smells bad.
• 19:52
  Let's get to algebra class.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: You rationalize it because what's the alternative.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Precisely, the human brain is not fired to default to
• 20:01
  the most extreme, horrifying conclusion. We normalize anomalies to maintain
• 20:06
  our sense of safety and order.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Like if your neighbour's yard smells terrible, your brain searches
• 20:11
  for the most mundane explanation.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: You assume it is a broken sewer line or maybe
• 20:16
  a dead raccoon under the porch. You do not assume
• 20:19
  a serial killer is burying victims in the flower.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Beds, because that would be crazy.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the psychological leap required to go from bad smell
• 20:26
  to mass murder is simply too vast for a healthy
• 20:29
  mind to make without undeniable, irrefutable proof. The brain literally
• 20:34
  protects you from that realization.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: And we see this rationalization play out in other cases.
• 20:38
  From the text. There's the story of Joseph Bannis and
• 20:41
  Jeffrey munt Right.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: They were next door neighbors to one of the submitters.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And they were eventually arrested for murdering a man and
• 20:47
  burying his body in their basement wine cellar. This was
• 20:51
  actually a huge case. It was featured in the HBO
• 20:54
  documentary Murder in Glitterball.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: City, and the submitter lived right next door while this
• 20:59
  was happening.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: When your neighbors are hauling dirt and concrete around, you
• 21:03
  just think, Wow, they're really committing to those basement renovations.
• 21:06
  You don't think they're constructing a tomb.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: We also see it with the case of Dorothea Puente.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: The notorious boarding house killer in Sacramento.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, she murdered nine of her elderly and mentally disabled
• 21:19
  tenants and buried them in the yard of her boarding
• 21:21
  house to continue cashing their social Security checks.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Awful.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: The submitter and the BuzzFeed piece casually drove past her
• 21:29
  house on their daily commute, precisely as the police were
• 21:32
  digging up the yard and arresting this seemingly sweet cardigan
• 21:35
  wearing elderly landlady.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: That visual is so striking to me. You're driving to
• 21:40
  get your morning coffee, you're listening to the radio, and
• 21:42
  you look out your window to see a crime scene
• 21:44
  unit exhooming bodies from the lawn of the sweet old
• 21:47
  lady who waters her petunias every Tuesday.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: The sheer proximity of it is staggering.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And then there is a Jumpierre Orlivitz case. This one
• 21:55
  is brutal.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: It was a two thousand and seven thrill kill. Yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Orlivitz was a high school student who decapitated and burned
• 22:01
  a man in his grandfather's garage. The submitter was a
• 22:06
  high school classmate.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: But the craziest part of that submission.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: The submitter's mother's friend actually served as a character witness
• 22:12
  for Orlovitz at his trial.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the intense friction between the
• 22:17
  reality of evil and a community's perception. A character witness
• 22:22
  is literally someone standing up in a court of law
• 22:25
  under oath, placing their hand on a bible to vouch
• 22:29
  for the normalcy and goodness of a person who has
• 22:31
  committed an unspeakable atrocity.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I have to push back on that, though. How can
• 22:36
  someone sit under oath and vouch for a killer like
• 22:38
  even if they were fooled before the arrest, once the
• 22:41
  evidence is out, once the trial is happening, how do
• 22:43
  they still cling to the idea that this is a
• 22:45
  good kid.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Because acknowledging the alternative shatters their own reality. What do
• 22:50
  you mean if they admit that the boy they carpooled with,
• 22:53
  the boy they had over for dinner, is capable of
• 22:56
  a thrill kill, then they have to admit that they're
• 22:59
  entire higher worldview is flawed. They have to admit that
• 23:03
  they are utterly defenseless.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So to protect their own psychological integrity, they double down
• 23:09
  on the camouflage.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They cling to the polite facade because the truth
• 23:14
  is just two destabilizing. It underscores how completely blind we
• 23:19
  can be to the darkness. Right next to us.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: We see the manicured lawn, we share the polite greetings,
• 23:24
  and we completely ignore the metaphorical or sometimes literal stench
• 23:28
  of decay.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Which is why we rationalize it away.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I really want you, the listener, to stop and think
• 23:33
  about this right now. What strange things in your own
• 23:35
  neighborhood are you currently rationalizing away?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: The neighbor who is digging in their yard at two am.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Or the weird metallic smells coming from the apartment
• 23:43
  down the hall, the person who has entirely blacked out
• 23:46
  their basement windows.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: You probably telling yourself it is just a quirky hobby
• 23:50
  or a plumbing issue, or someone who works the night
• 23:52
  shift and needs to sleep during the day.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You rationalize it because they are just part of your
• 23:57
  daily scenery. But this deep dive proves that's sometimes this
• 24:01
  scenery is a facade.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: That normalization process is incredibly powerful. But we also have
• 24:07
  to look at the other side of the coin.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's the other side.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: We we've talked about what happens when the camouflage works
• 24:13
  and the killer blends in, but we must also examine
• 24:16
  what happens when a crime happens the truth remains hidden
• 24:20
  and the killer goes dormant.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: When the clueser missed, and the environment.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Is rationalized right, because the tragedy does not just hit
• 24:27
  the pause button.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: No, the pain doesn't just freeze an amber. It mutates.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Precisely, the void created by an unsolved case a cold
• 24:34
  case generates a massive destructive vacuum in a community.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And that vacuum sucks in innocent people, destroying lives and
• 24:42
  entire families through the crushing weight of false suspicion and
• 24:45
  false narratives.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to a story that I think is
• 24:48
  the most heartbreaking in the entire collection. It involves the
• 24:52
  BTK killer Dennis Raider.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Oh Man, The collateral damage in the story is just staggering.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Let's ground this in the history. First B stands for
• 25:01
  bind torture kill. Dennis Raider actually gave himself that acronym.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Of course he did. He was such a narcissist.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: He murdered ten people in and around Wichita, Kansas between
• 25:12
  nineteen seventy four and nineteen ninety one. He was a
• 25:15
  deeply sadistic killer who taunted the police and local media
• 25:19
  with letters, poems, and puzzles.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: He posed his victims, he took trophies from the crime scenes,
• 25:24
  and he just terrorized the city. He was literally the
• 25:27
  bogeyman of Kansas.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And then after nineteen ninety one he stopped. He went
• 25:32
  completely dormant for years. He wasn't arrested until two thousand
• 25:35
  and five.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And how he was caught is famously absurd. I mean,
• 25:38
  it's almost comical if it weren't so grim.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: He asked the police via a newspaper ad if a
• 25:43
  floppy disc could be traced back to.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Him, and the police essentially said, nope, totally safe, send
• 25:47
  it on over he sent them.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: A floppy disc and they immediately traced the metadata to
• 25:52
  his church, where he was the president of the congregation.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: He is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences. But we
• 25:58
  aren't here to talk about his ego. Let's look at
• 26:00
  the collateral damage of those dormant years, that fourteen year gap,
• 26:04
  through the eyes of our submitter.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: The submitter describes growing up in a neighborhood next door
• 26:08
  to a boy who was a few years younger than them.
• 26:11
  This boy lived alone with his father.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And the dark whispered secret of the neighborhood, the thing
• 26:16
  all the kids knew but weren't supposed to talk about,
• 26:19
  was that when this boy was an infant in nineteen
• 26:21
  eighty six, his mother was found murdered in their home.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: The mother was Dolores Davis. She was shot and strangled
• 26:29
  while her baby slept nearby.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And because in almost every single domestic murder, the spouse
• 26:35
  is the primary suspect, the boy's father immediately became the
• 26:38
  top suspect for the police, but there.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Wasn't enough evidence to convict him, so he wasn't arrested.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: He just lived there in the same house, raising his son.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And this is where the societal ripples of cold cases
• 26:50
  become so incredibly toxic. The justice system could not prove
• 26:54
  his guilt, but the community had already convicted him in
• 26:56
  the court of public opinion.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: The submitter explicitly states that they spent their entire childhood, say,
• 27:01
  eyeing this man.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: The neighborhood gossiped incessantly. Parents likely warned their children to
• 27:06
  stay away from the yard.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: That boy grew up in a house entirely shadowed by
• 27:11
  the pervasive, unspoken belief that his father had slaughtered his mother.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: It's tragic.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I get so passionate about this because gossip like that
• 27:19
  is a social poison. It's like a chemical spill. The
• 27:22
  original murder, the horrific taking of Dolores Davis's life, is
• 27:26
  the initial toxic spill, right, But the false suspicion, the
• 27:30
  whispers at the grocery store, the side eyes at the mailbox,
• 27:33
  the ostracization that poisons the entire neighborhood for decades. It
• 27:38
  toxifies the son's childhood, It isolates the grieving father.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: It destroys them slowly, day by day, year by year.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Imagine mowing your lawn while the neighbor across the street
• 27:48
  quickly ushers their kids inside. Imagine living with that for
• 27:50
  nineteen years.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: And it remained exactly that way until January two thousand
• 27:54
  and five, sixteen years after his last known murder. Vtk's
• 27:58
  massive ego could not hand the fact that people were
• 28:01
  writing books about him, theorizing that he was dead or
• 28:03
  in prison, and speculating about his identity.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: He needed to prove he was still the smartest guy
• 28:08
  in the room.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: So he resurfaced, and to prove he was still out there,
• 28:12
  he mailed a package to a local Wichita newspaper.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: And what was in the package Dolores Davis's driver's license.
• 28:19
  BTK had kept it as a trophy for nineteen years.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: The delivery of that single piece of plastic completely rewrote
• 28:26
  the history of that neighborhood overnight.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It officially made Dolores Davis the tenth and final known
• 28:31
  victim of the BTK Strangler.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And in an instant it proved unequivocally that the father,
• 28:38
  the man the neighborhood had shunned, feared, and side eyed
• 28:41
  for almost twenty years, was entirely innocent.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: We talk a big game in society about innocent until
• 28:47
  proven guilty. It is the absolute bedrock of our legal system.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: But this story proves that community gossip operates as its
• 28:54
  own ruthless unofficial jury.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And they don't care about reasonable doubt. I cannot fathom
• 28:59
  the silence of that wrongly accused father having to grieve
• 29:03
  your brutally murdered wife while your neighbors look at you
• 29:05
  like a monster, all while the real monster is sitting
• 29:08
  in a church pew across town thinking he's a genius.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: It's a profound injustice.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Why do we do that? Why is a community so
• 29:14
  quick to destroy a man's life without.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Proof, Because the void of an unsolved crime demands to
• 29:19
  be filled. Human beings struggled deeply with ambiguity, especially when
• 29:24
  it involves violence.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: If a predator strikes and vanishes, it means everyone is vulnerable.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: The threat is everywhere. But if the community decides the
• 29:32
  killer is the husband, or the drifter or the weird neighbor,
• 29:35
  they regain a false sense of security.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: The false narrative creates boundaries.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, if the killer is the husband, then we are
• 29:43
  safe because we aren't married to him. Society needs a
• 29:46
  scapegoat to process the trauma of the vacuum that is.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: So bleak, but it makes perfect sense. We crave resolution
• 29:53
  so badly we will literally manufacture it, even if it
• 29:56
  destroys an innocent family.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: And the source text touches on this with another brief,
• 30:00
  corroborating case involving David Millgart.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Right Canada's most wanted wrongful conviction exonery.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, David Millgard is one of Canada's most famous and
• 30:09
  tragic wrongful conviction exonneries. He served twenty three years in
• 30:13
  a maximum security prison for a nineteen sixty nine murder
• 30:16
  he absolutely did not commit.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And the submitter in the BuzzFeed article actually spent time
• 30:21
  with mill Guard while he was on the run at
• 30:23
  one point, and later corresponded with him and became friends.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Twenty three years stolen from a man's life because the
• 30:30
  narrative demanded a culprit and the system failed to find
• 30:33
  the real one.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It's devastating. We rely on these narratives to feel safe.
• 30:38
  But sometimes the connection to a crime isn't a long
• 30:41
  term neighborhood grudge or a twenty year false suspicion.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the connection is sudden. It's incredibly jarring.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: It's a physical reminder that the media spectacles we consume
• 30:50
  on television, the things we watch on the couch and
• 30:53
  our sweatpants involve real, breathing people, which.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Brings us to the profound impact of brushing up against
• 31:00
  the tangible artifacts and bizarre encounters of highly publicized crimes.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Right Because when a case becomes a national sensation, it
• 31:08
  often loses its humanity.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: It becomes a two dimensional media circus. We consume it
• 31:12
  as entertainment, but physical objects have a unique way of
• 31:16
  crashing through that abstraction and making it brutally real.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The perfect example of this is the story involving Patsy Ramsey.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: The nineteen ninety six murder of six year old John
• 31:26
  bene Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado, remains one of the most
• 31:29
  heavily scrutinized and polarizing unsolved cases in American history.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: The bizarre ransom note, the child beauty pageants, the family's
• 31:37
  immense wealth. It created a media firestorm that lasted for decades.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: And John Beney's mother, Patsy Ramsey, who died in two
• 31:45
  thousand and six, became a massive tabloid fixture. She was analyzed, criticized, impersonated,
• 31:51
  and suspected by millions.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: She became less of a grieving mother and more of
• 31:55
  a character in a national soap opera.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: The smitter for this story says their mother worked retail
• 32:00
  at a high end department store in Denver in the
• 32:01
  nineteen nineties, right during the absolute height of the media frenzy.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: She sold clothes to affluent clients.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Years later, long after she stopped working there, the mother
• 32:11
  was cleaning out her closet and donating old suits she
• 32:13
  used to wear to work.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: She reached into the pocket of one of the suits,
• 32:16
  and she pulled out Patsy Ramsey's business card.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: What is fascinating here is the emotional weight of a
• 32:21
  mundane object. A business card is designed for networking, for
• 32:25
  the trivialities of daily commerce. It's just ink on cardstock.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: But finding it years later in a coat pocket serves
• 32:32
  as a visceral trigger.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: It suddenly and violently humanizes a woman who had been
• 32:36
  reduced to a caricature by the tabloid press. It is
• 32:39
  a physical relic from a national tragedy, resting right there
• 32:43
  in the palm of a retail worker's hand.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: It's like finding a piece of a sunken ship watched
• 32:48
  up on your local beach. You know the ship sank,
• 32:50
  You saw the news reports, But holding the wood makes
• 32:53
  the abstracts suddenly very real.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And there are other examples of this in the text.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's a submitter whose town has a real
• 33:00
  estate office operating out of a house where they literally
• 33:03
  found the Tommy guns used in the nineteen twenty nine
• 33:06
  Saint Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Imagine signing your mortgage papers talking about interest rates in
• 33:12
  the exact same room where al Capone's men stashed the
• 33:15
  murder weapon, right.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Or the submitter who attended the same high school as
• 33:18
  both Patty Hurst, the heiress turned SLA bank robber, and
• 33:22
  Sam Bankman Free, the disgraced cryptocurrency founder.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: The submitter notes that their names were kept visible daily
• 33:29
  on school plaques and free book tables. History and infamy
• 33:33
  layered right over the mundane high school experience of locker
• 33:36
  combinations and gaffeteria lunches.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: But touching an artifact is one thing. Finding a business
• 33:41
  card or looking at a plaque is static. What about
• 33:45
  when the artifact looks back at you. We have to
• 33:47
  talk about the direct eye contact stories.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: The transition from inanimate objects to living, breathing perpetrators. The
• 33:56
  text includes an account from a submitter who took a
• 33:59
  tour of the King Penitentiary.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: In Canada right and during the tour they saw Paul Bernardo.
• 34:04
  For those who don't know, Paul Bernardo is one of
• 34:06
  Canada's most notorious and sadistic serial killers and rapists.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: He and his wife, Carla Homolka committed unspeakable crimes in
• 34:13
  the early nineties.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And as the submitter looked at him standing there in
• 34:17
  the penitentiary, they locked eyes and Paul Bernardo winked at them.
• 34:21
  He win wink no, no, absolutely not. My blood would freeze,
• 34:24
  I would never sleep again.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: It is the most casual, cheeky human gesture, but coming
• 34:29
  from him, it is bone jelling.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: It forces you to realize that there is a conscious
• 34:34
  entity in there. He is aware of his own infamy.
• 34:38
  He is actively playing with the people observing him.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: It brings up this massive philosophical question about true crime tourism.
• 34:46
  Why do we do this, Why do we take field
• 34:49
  trips to maximum security prisons? Why do we keep plaques
• 34:53
  of infamous people on our walls.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: It's a form of morbid curiosity, but it's also a
• 34:57
  way of seeking control, isn't it. We want to look
• 35:00
  at the monster while it's in a cage, to reassure
• 35:03
  ourselves that the system works.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: That's a huge part of it.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's like a child touching a hot stove
• 35:07
  just to make sure it's still burning. We want to
• 35:09
  get as close to the fire as possible without getting burned.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: But the wink from Paul Bernardo, that is the fire
• 35:15
  leaping out and licking your hand.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate horrifying realization that while we are
• 35:20
  safely observing the monsters, the monsters are looking right back
• 35:23
  at us.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: They see us, and sometimes they aren't just looking back.
• 35:27
  Sometimes they're the ones giving the tour.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yes, the Lorna Anderson story, this one
• 35:34
  felt completely surreal.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering detail from the BuzzFeed compilation. A
• 35:39
  submitter was on a prison field trip.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: With a group and their tour guide. An inmate at
• 35:44
  the facility who had earned privileges, was casually chatting with them,
• 35:48
  showing them the grounds, explaining the daily routine, and.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: During the tour, the guide casually revealed her identity. She
• 35:55
  was Lorna Anderson.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: She was half of the infamous murder Ordained case from
• 35:59
  nineteen eighty five three in Kansas, where she conspired with
• 36:02
  her minister to murder both of their respective spouses.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Imagine signing up for a prison tour to learn about
• 36:08
  the justice system, and your cheery guide the person telling
• 36:11
  you where the cafeteria is is it Amine who plotted
• 36:14
  to have her husband assassinated on a highway so she
• 36:16
  could run off with a preacher.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: It shatters the boundary between the observer and the subject entirely.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does. And the text concludes with perhaps the
• 36:24
  most modern and certainly the most tragic form of brushing
• 36:28
  against the spectacle.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: The Highland Park Parade shooting submission.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, a submitter who had a college shulebotomy classmate who
• 36:35
  survived the twenty twenty two Highland Park Parade shooting.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: This classmate was on the ground directly dodging bullets during
• 36:42
  a rooftop massacre that dominated national news for weeks.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: It bridges the gap completely. It's not a historical artifact
• 36:49
  like al Capone's Tommy Guns. It's not a killer behind
• 36:52
  bars like Paul Bernardo.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: It is someone you sit next to in class, someone
• 36:55
  you practice drawing blood with, who was forced to run
• 36:58
  for their life in a mass cat event.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: It reminds us that behind every breaking news chiron, behind
• 37:04
  every casualty statistic we scroll past on Twitter, are real
• 37:07
  people who have to go back to phlebotomy class on
• 37:10
  Monday morning and try to act normal.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: It requires an incredible amount of psychological resilience from the survivors,
• 37:16
  and it forces us, the consumers of this media, to
• 37:19
  acknowledge that the violence we consume as content or news
• 37:23
  is a lived trauma for thousands of people quietly existing
• 37:27
  in our everyday spaces.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: If we pull all these threads together, the picture it
• 37:31
  paints is incredibly unsettling.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It really is. We started by stripping away the illusion
• 37:35
  of the safe social circle. We saw how Gary Ridgeway's
• 37:38
  hunting grounds perfectly overlapped with a casual, mundane double date.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: We examined the terrifying charisma of the mask, and how
• 37:46
  John Wayne Gacy used charm as a weapon to disarm
• 37:49
  a pre law student, only to humiliate her by waving
• 37:52
  in a courtroom full of grieving parents.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: We look at the silent clues. We ignore the threat blindness,
• 37:57
  like the physical stench of death clinging to a middle
• 37:59
  school hall monitor, because our brains simply refuse to accept
• 38:03
  that evil is standing right in front of us.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: We discussed the devastating, decades long collateral damage of cold cases,
• 38:10
  highlighting how a community's false narrative and gossip destroyed a
• 38:13
  father's life while the BTK killer sat quietly in a
• 38:16
  church pew.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: And finally, we looked at the jarring artifacts of tragedy,
• 38:21
  from Patsy Ramsey's business card to the bone chilling wink
• 38:24
  of a locked up serial killer, proving that the distance
• 38:26
  between us and the true crime spectacles we watch on
• 38:29
  TV is practically non existent.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: The through line here is undeniable. The justice system sometimes
• 38:35
  fails for decades, Small quiet towns hide massive, rotting secrets.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: And the most dangerous killers on earth look exactly like
• 38:42
  the guy bagging your groceries or the neighbor mowing the lawn.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the warning embedded in the source material.
• 38:50
  The BuzzFeed article is a fascinating read, but it is
• 38:53
  also a necessary call to vigilance.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this source text literally warns you you might want
• 38:59
  a double check your own neighbors. You might want to
• 39:02
  flip through your old high school yearbooks.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: You might want to look a little closer at the
• 39:06
  background of your family photo albums because you never know
• 39:09
  who is standing just out of focus.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: But I think there is an even deeper psychological takeaway here,
• 39:14
  something beyond just checking your locks.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: If history's worst predators, the most prolific and sadistic killers
• 39:21
  we have ever documented, rely entirely on our assumption of
• 39:25
  normalcy to hide.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Right, If their greatest defense mechanism is just acting like
• 39:29
  everyone else.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Then there's our very definition of normal serve as their
• 39:33
  greatest weapon. By establishing these rigid socle scripts smile, say hello,
• 39:38
  keep your yard clean, bring a cast role to the
• 39:40
  block party. Have we simply provided predators with an instruction
• 39:44
  manual on how to become invisible?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: That is the thought I want to leave you with today.
• 39:48
  It is going to stick with me for a long time.
• 39:50
  As you go about your week, as you walk through
• 39:53
  the aisles of the grocery store, as you commute to work,
• 39:56
  or as you attend your next neighborhood barbecue, take a
• 39:59
  look at the polite smiles around you.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Look at the people seamlessly blending into the crowd following
• 40:04
  the script perfectly.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And ask yourself, are you truly safe in your community?
• 40:11
  Or are you just relying on the camouflage to work