Details Are Sketchy
A bimonthly true crime podcast, in which two friends share an unsolved disappearance or unsolved case, a crime they're most intrigued by, and talk all things true crime.
Details Are Sketchy
Spy v Spy? The Mysterious Life and Death of "Jennifer Fairgate"
In this episode, Rachel brings us the story of the death of the spy (maybe) Jennifer Fairgate (not her actual name), and Kiki tells us about the missing woman Ashley Loring Heavyrunner.
Our next book is "The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy" by Paige Williams.
Sources:
Jennifer Fairgate
Harlow, S. February 1, 2021. Death in Room 2805: Who is Jennifer Fergate? https://youtu.be/dlA-fv2bK48?si=fAsNRzxaibKkiSeH
Unsolved Mysteries. October 19, 2020. Death In Oslo. S2(2). https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11388574/
Nicole, A. October 10, 2022. Hotel Mysteries: The Oslo Plaza Hotel and Jennifer Fairgate. Medium. https://medium.com/@coffeeandtruecrime/hotel-mysteries-the-oslo-plaza-hotel-and-jennifer-fairgate-882c657028f
Midkiff, S. October 23, 2020. Unsolved Mysteries Left a Few Jennifer Fairgate details out. Refinery 29 https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/10/10063608/unsolved-mysteries-who-is-jennifer-post-series-updates
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki. Jennifer Fairgate. https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Jennifer_Fairgate
Ashley Loring Heavyrunner
Fbi Missing Person (fbi.gov)
"A Young Woman Vanishes" - Kate Hodal - The Guardian
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We have a missing person today. Wait, let's do our intro. Oh yeah, Okay, I'm Kiki and I'm Rachel, and this is Details Are Sketchy A true crime podcast, and this is episode thirty Something, something, Five. I think it's an episode. It is an episode. It is an episode, and it is Rachel's turn to do the main case and my turn to do a missing person, and I actually have one today. The missing person is so. It's either Ashley Loring Heavy Runner or Ashley Heavy Runner Loring, it depends on the source. She was born November 23rd 1996. She has dark hair. At the time of her disappearance, she weighed about 90 pounds. Her place of birth was Browning, Montana. She's 5'2" female and she is a Native American. I believe Blackfoot, I believe Blackfoot and she has a scar in the shape of a checkmark on the top of one ofragate quote unquote. Jennifer Farragate, though, is an alias.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of a spoiler, but not really so. Let me open my notes, that might help. So this case takes place in 1995. Takes place in 1995. So on June 3rd 1995, a woman was found dead in her hotel room in Oslo, Norway, under such strange conditions and circumstances that the cause and condition of her death, and even the question of who she was, remains a mystery to this day. This case was featured on the Netflix series Unsolved Mysteries that aired on October 19, 2020.
Speaker 2:Season two, episode two, titled A Death in Oslo, which is kind of a lackluster name in my opinion, especially for what a gripping, cold case. And honestly, the episode could have gone harder on this case, because when you watch the episode it is really good. But then there's even more interesting details that were not included. I'm not sure why, maybe just for lack of time, but it did seem like. I don't know. We'll kind of get into it, but they went down some rabbit holes that they could have filled with even more interesting things than what they did, I think.
Speaker 2:Okay, the woman in question has the name, or rather the alias of Jennifer Fairgate or Furgate. However, as I have just disclosed, that was not her actual name. However, as I have just disclosed, that was not her actual name and, despite the publicity of the case and the publicized drawings and descriptions of her, as well as crime scene photos, I cannot talk today of the recently deceased the recently deceased no one has ever come forward to claim her as family or with any information really regarding her to her identity, so we're all kind of left to speculate. Now, Jennifer Fairgate, sometimes also called the Oslo woman, even though she's not from Oslo, first traceable information or point where she appeared on the public record was on May 22, 1995, when she or presumably it was her called the reception desk of the Radisson Blue Hotel, also called the Oslo Plaza Hotel, which is one of the fanciest hotels in Oslo, and it was Norway's first skyscraper.
Speaker 2:It remains the second tallest building in Norway to this day. The hotel opened in March of 1990, and the grand opening ceremony was conducted by the King of Norway himself, King Olaf V. The Plaza Hotel was remodeled later, in 2012, but then and now it was considered an ultra luxury hotel. As I said in the Netflix documentary, this was a place where kings and queens, politicians, celebrities, the ultra rich would stay.
Speaker 1:So super fancy yeah.
Speaker 2:There is a footbridge between the hotel and the Oslo Spectrum Arena, which hosts major concerts and events, including hosting the Eurovision in 1996. The hotel is also within walking distance of the Royal Palace and the National Gallery Museum, which features Norway's largest exhibition of art. So, all in all, the Plaza Hotel would be the place to be if you are a wealthy tourist or maybe well-to-do business person with lots of cash to spare when visiting Oslo. Now, during this initial call to the plaza, the woman who identified herself as Jennifer Fairgate spoke in English and she booked a reservation at the hotel. We don't know when the initial date she booked were, because nine days later she called again, on May 31st, and she told the front desk that her plans had changed and that she planned on checking in that same evening, so presumably earlier than what she had previously scheduled. So, whatever her previous plans were now, she wanted to check in on that same day that she was calling, may 31st, and check out on Friday two days later, on June 2nd. On this call, however, jennifer Fairgate spoke fluent German, with what the front desk clerk reported was an East German accent or possibly an East German dialect. She also said she would be checking in with another person, a man named Lois Fairgate. She said that they were a married couple from Belgium.
Speaker 2:Jennifer Fairgate did arrive to check into the hotel at around 10 40 that evening, and she was described as having blue eyes, close cropped, dark hair and being a small, petite woman who was wearing a long black leather jacket. She arrived in an extremely busy time for the hotel because three flights had just come in in Oslo and so a ton of new guests had been brought over to the hotel, so there were a crowd of guests that were all lined up to check in. The receptionist who checked Jennifer in reported that it was an all-hands-on-deck situation, with everyone on shift for reception working to check in guests, and that he personally had a long line keeping him busy. Two different employees were called seeing Jennifer Fairgate at the time she checked in, but they each gave somewhat conflicting accounts, so it's difficult to know what exactly happened or how it went down.
Speaker 2:The receptionist who checked Jennifer in she had to fill in a form when she checked in, giving information such as her address, her phone number, a credit card to keep on file, her passport number and so forth. The paperwork says on it Jennifer and Louis Fairgate. However, those names were pre-typed out from the information that she had previously given over the phone, so it doesn't really give an indication whether she was checking in with another person or not. What we do know is that she signed her own name. As notice that she signed her own name as Fargate F-E-R-G-A-T-E instead of Fargate F-A-I-R-G-A-T-E that she had given over the phone, and she gave a birthday of August 23rd 1973, and a Belgian address in a town called Verlaine, which would later turn out that the town exists and the street name that she gave was a real street or close enough to a real street. She gave the name of the street as Rue de la Stade and there is a street called Rue de la Station or Station, but she gave a house number 143, which turned out to definitely not exist, as the house numbers on that street only go up to 98.
Speaker 2:Under occupation. She just wrote service and, perhaps most strangely of all, under the part where she was asked for her passport number and issuing passport authority, she simply put a mark on each one that looks somewhat between a check mark and an X For payment. She checked cash, which, while it was common to accept cash payments at hotels in the 90s, this wasn't just any hotel. It was a very upscale luxury hotel and even in the 90s the hotel had strict policies to have a credit card on file at all times. For incidentals, however, no credit card was given and none seemed to have been asked for.
Speaker 2:The other hotel personnel who remember seeing Jennifer Fargate, or Fargate when she checked in was Sasha's supervisor, evie I don't know how to say Yearston Only. Evie's recollection was different a little bit than Sasha's because she recalled Jennifer arriving with a dark-haired man that was about six feet tall and between 35 and 40 years old. Evie told a Norwegian paper. Evie told a Norwegian paper. I'm certain she was with a man I was at my regular station. At the other side stood that woman. Behind her was a dark-haired man, but whether she had arrived alone or with a Louis Fargate, she was put in room 2805 and instructed to put an elevator to take to her room and given two key cards, and initially I thought well, two key cards that might indicate that she was with another person. However, throughout her stay, one of the important bits of evidence or information that we have about this case is when she entered her room, because they had a system that logged key card entries into each room and she only ever or whoever entered the room only ever used one key card the entire time. So that kind of indicates that it's only one person entering the room Right A few hours later, around midnight, sasha and Evie both reported seeing Jennifer again in the lobby, but once again their accounts are different.
Speaker 2:Sasha reported that while at the front desk checking in some more guests, he saw Jennifer standing by the elevators alone and it seemed like she might have been waiting for someone. Evie reported seeing Jennifer and the same man who she had possibly checked in with at the front desk earlier exchanging American money for a Norwegian kroner. Neither witness recalls the exact time that these sightings took place. So, unlike the first eyewitness accounts, it's possible these accounts don't actually contradict, because perhaps Sasha did see Jennifer waiting by the elevator for someone and then maybe she did meet with that person and go with them to exchange money, and so maybe they are both you know, seeing something accurate. Let me find my purse.
Speaker 2:So here I'm talking about the key cards. So the key cards of the Oslo could track whenever a guest used a key to enter their room, and tracking Jennifer's movements with her key card is a big part of the case. But the key card tracking did have some limitations because it could not track when somebody left their room and if somebody was inside the room and let somebody else in, it wouldn't track that either. Right, jennifer entered the room upon initial check-in at 10.44 pm and then again at 12.21 am. So that would be consistent with her leaving, going downstairs and doing whatever maybe with this dude, maybe with not and then the next car log showed again. Remember, the car log is showing she's entering the room.
Speaker 2:The next log is at 8 34 am on thursday morning. So no witnesses reported seeing her like down to breakfast or anything. But at some point she left the room again and did something. Yeah, maybe she did have breakfast and just nobody saw her. Maybe she left the hotel and had breakfast, who knows, maybe she just went down the hall and got ice, right, we don't know. So there are no witnesses reported seeing Jennifer that morning. There were no more sightings of Louis Fairgate or the mystery man. Jennifer had been spotted with on Friday night ever again. History man. Jennifer had been spotted with on Friday night ever again.
Speaker 2:However, we do know that sometime on Thursday Jennifer went to the front desk to change her reservation again and extended her stay until Sunday, two more days than her initial stay had been scheduled. Now, at this point she did receive two new key cards, but here's a weird thing, right. So she had to register again and once again no credit card was logged on file, no ID number or passport was taken. So one time seems like it could possibly be written off as an oversight, especially given how many guests they were receiving when she arrived. But now the same thing has happened again and that seems really weird, given how strict the hotel policy was on having like a credit card on file and like at this fancy luxury hotel.
Speaker 2:So when front desk supervisor Evie Yurtson was asked how a guest was allowed to check in when no identification or credit card, she responded it is incomprehensible to me. We had strict routines at this hotel. It just shouldn't be possible. But on the other hand, sasha, the front desk clerk who had checked her in the night before, claimed it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. I remember there was a long queue of guests. It was all about assigning rooms as quickly as possible. We mustn't keep the guests waiting.
Speaker 2:But again, that only explains why the error was made during the initial check-in. It doesn't explain why it was made a second time, and one of the podcasts where I got some of this really good information as the or not podcast, it was a vlog, uh-huh. She pointed out like it would be really curious to know, like, did this happen with any other guests, that they neglected to take this information? Yeah, or was it just her Right? And also, which clerk checked her in the second time? Was it that same Sasha guy, again Right, because he sounds a little bit shady. Regardless, that's all we really know about that.
Speaker 2:After that, the key card was not used again until the morning of Friday at 8.50 am, morning of Friday at 8 50 am. So that could mean that after she extended her stay, she left the hotel and did not return until the following morning, or it could mean that she returned to her room, where someone who was already inside let her in. However, it is important to note that housekeeping entered the room on Thursday to clean it around 1240 that day, and at that time the room was very neat with nobody in it at all. The senior housekeeper did report that on Wednesday, when Jennifer checked in, the housekeeper had been told to prepare the room for two people. However, it appeared as if only one person had been staying in the room.
Speaker 2:So they had given a second duvet, given enough towels and bathrobes and things for two people. But the second duvet had been folded and set on the side, only it didn't look like it had been used. Folded and set on the side, only it didn't look like it had been used. So the housekeepers went ahead and put the extra duvet in the closet and they restocked the room. So while cleaning, the housekeeper noticed a bright-colored pair of beautiful high heels in the closet. That caught her eye because of how beautiful they were. I couldn't find what color they were, but there were some kind of bright color.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so whether or not she left immediately after she booked the extended stay, or whether she came back to her room, was let in by somebody and then left before 1240, she was gone from the hotel from somewhere between 20 and 24 hours because she didn't check back in until like 12, sorry, not 12, 8.50 in the morning on Friday. Where she went, what she did, nobody knows. There's no record. There's no sightings of her in Oslo. Nobody knows. It's possible she had a place or places to go, walked around the city all day and night. She could have even had time to leave the city and return again by train, but whatever she was doing, there is no evidence or trail of her. However, while she was gone on Thursday, hotel administration finally realized that she didn't have a credit card on file for her room number. So the front desk sent a message directly to Jennifer's TV. This is old school style, but like do you remember how they would have like messages pop up on the tv? Yeah, so they had a message pop up on her tv saying, hey, like you need to come down to the front desk and like get this fixed with the cashier, and like she would have had to click okay in order to like continue playing the tv, and on thursday nobody clicked okay. Nobody was there. However, on Friday at 8.50, right after Jennifer's key card was used to log her alleged entry back into the hotel room, somebody did hit okay, all right, they kept sending this message, acknowledging the message, seconds after she presumably entered the room. But she did not go down to the front desk and put a credit card on file. She just hit OK and then watched TV, did whatever.
Speaker 2:A housekeeping employee for the hotel named Karen Labrote was working on the 24th that day and she was at her housekeeping cart when she may have witnessed Jennifer coming back from her 24-hour stint. She saw her walk down the hallway toward her room. As Jennifer passed the maze, she told her good morning in English before unlocking her door with her card key and entering. But a second later Karen reported that the door opened again and Jennifer's hand extended out of the room, placing the do not disturb sign on the door. It's speculated that she must have left the room one more time because the key was used again that day at 11.03 am. But that would be the last time that the key card was used and presumably the last time Jennifer would leave her room alive. So and nobody saw her at that possible outing, so we don't know what she was doing. Possible outing, so we don't know what she was doing.
Speaker 2:At 8.06 pm that evening, jennifer ordered a room service dinner a bratwurst and potato salad. Her meal was delivered at 8.23 pm and, since it was a luxury service, full service hotel, the meal was wheeled into her room on a cart and the employee that delivered the food was named Kristen Anderson. Kristen made some observations when she was in the room. She said that the room was very clean, very neat. It looked like it hadn't really been lived in much. The bed was still made and Kristen felt like it had not been slept in. Because the housekeepers use like a special technique and if everybody's been in a hotel like who knows how they get those damn beds made so tight and like you cannot yeah, no, it takes an act of god to get that cover up exactly, and who knows what kind of extra special techniques they might have at like a really bougie hotel
Speaker 2:and so, uh, it was very difficult for the guest to replicate and it looked as though this bed was still made up that way. Anderson also saw a wheeled suitcase in the room and she speculated if the woman who was staying in the room was a flight attendant, which wasn't uncommon. She reported that Jennifer was wearing a long skirt and gave her a very outsized tip of 50 kroner. Kristen thought that that was very noteworthy, because typically they would consider a 10 kroner note to be a very generous tip, let alone a 50 kroner note. She reported that when she wheeled in the food, jennifer had the money already ready in hand. She wasn't interested in small talk, she just wanted to get her food, hand her the tip and get gone. Kristen recalled that she didn't have any trouble placing the food down because the table was completely empty and clean. That night someone purchased something to watch on pay-per-view on the TV and the next day another pay-per-view purchase was made, but there's no record of what those pay-per-views were or whether they were watched. On a Friday night at 8.57 pm the front desk sent another message to Jennifer's TV asking for her to come down again to put a credit card in file. The message was acknowledged by someone clicking OK, but Jennifer did not come down to the cashier's desk or attempt to put a credit card in file.
Speaker 2:At some point between when her food was delivered and when her body was found, someone removed and drank three sodas from the mini bar A coke, a diet coke and an orange soda.
Speaker 2:This has struck many people as strange that all three of these drinks would belong to Jennifer, because most people either drink Coke or a Diet Coke, and it's pretty rare for people to drink both Orange, yeah, and orange soda too, or all three, yeah. And another thing that I know is weird, which here is a picture moment, if I can find the right picture. It looks like one of the drinks was put into a glass and it looked like to me there was like an orange tinge in the glass. So it looked to me like the orange soda was put in the glass, and to me I'm like, if you're somebody who puts a drink in a glass, you're not also somebody who drinks the drink straight from the bottle, and so why would you drink the two drinks straight from the bottle and then put the third drink in a glass? And so a lot of people believe that these drinks are being drunk by different people. A lot of people believe it's two different people. I think it could be possibly three different people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing that might make sense is like unless the mini bar only had like one of each kind of drink yeah that could be, and you're just really thirsty and you're like fuck it, like I don't usually drink diet coke, but there's no more regular coke right left and we don't know for sure because we don't have like an inventory of the mini bar right.
Speaker 1:But I would expect, since it's such a fancy little whatever hotel, that they wouldn't just have one of each drink well, I stayed in a 300 plus dollar a night hotel and they only had one of everything and they rarely replaced them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so maybe, but but uh, yeah, so that's one theory. It could be, yeah, that they only had one of each drink and she was really thirsty, or it could be different people together drinking these drinks and, as you can also see from the picture, there was an open bag of potato chips that was also from the mini bar. So on Saturday June 3rd at 7.45 pm, the front desk once again sent a message asking Jennifer to come down and put the credit card on file with the cashier. This message was also seen, acknowledged and dismissed. The hotel staff was getting frustrated that Jennifer was acknowledging these messages but not addressing them by coming up to the front desk to place a card on file. So Evie Yearston sends an employee up to check on the situation. Irsten sends an employee up to check on the situation and when the employee gets to the door they see that that jennifer placed the do not disturb sign. So I guess according to hotel etiquette she's not supposed to disturb or knock on the door. So the employee decides uh to, she goes down and she tells her boss, and so at that point Evie decides to step it up and she sends up a member of the security team named Espen Nos to investigate.
Speaker 2:Espen goes up at 7.50 pm on Saturday June 3rd. So when Esmond gets to room 8, uh 2A05, he knocks on the door but according to his testimony, just seconds later he heard the sound of a gunshot. Now, according to one's uh actually I got it confused, not the sources, I got it confused. So then he raced down the elevator where the security office was located and let his supervisor know what happened. So then the security chief with some junior security officers went back up to check out the situation. So let me blah, blah, blah, ignore those notes that I made because I was a little bit confused about the happenstance, but that was my problem. So it was 14 minutes between when Espen knocked and heard the gun go off and when the chief of security gets to the room and enters the room using his special key card.
Speaker 2:So the key card is a big deal as well in this case. So the security team, or the chief security officer more like, is the only person in the hotel in possession of this special key card that can enter a double locked door in the hotel. So other staff, such as the front desk and the housekeeping, they have key cards that can open doors, but if the guest has locked the door from the inside, they can't open it. But the security team, or the security chief, is the only person who has a special key card who can't open a double locked door. And so when he goes to open the door, he realized that the door was double locked. It was locked from the inside. So, blah, blah, blah, the security chief realized when he opened it that the door had been double locked, which turns out to be a big part of the case and a major part of why the police will ultimately rule the case as a suicide.
Speaker 2:So once the security chief was inside, he reported that the room was dark but the TV was on. He called out, but nobody was responding. The TV was on, he called out, but nobody was responding. So he moved into the room and that's when he saw the body of our Jennifer Fairgate lying on the bed. He called out to her, but she was non-responsive.
Speaker 2:He could smell a sharp acrid odor in the air which was most likely gunpowder. I did see an interesting hypothesis from someone who claimed to have worked in a funeral home, and they claim that deceased individuals who have died by homicide whether it's self-inflicted or murder do have kind of like an acrid smell to them that is caused by like the flood of adrenaline in the moments before their death. However, I still think the smell was most likely from the gun that the security guard Espen reported hearing. However, I did think that that was an interesting hypothesis to mention. Some people have hypothesized that she had died earlier and that the smell was decomposition, and I do think that she may have died earlier.
Speaker 2:We'll get to that, but it wouldn't have been enough time for her to decompose, especially in a nice cool hotel room. So we definitely uh the the lady who wheeled in her dinner the day before has seen her at like 24 hours before. So at most she's been dead for 24 hours and at the least for like not that long, like half an hour at this point, more to 15 minutes to 15 minutes. So so once he sees, once the security chief sees that there is a body, he backs out of the room and he has his junior security officers watch the door and he goes down and calls the police. So the only time that the room was unguarded was at 14 minutes between when the first security officer heard the shot went down to get the chief security officer. But I will note that is plenty of time for somebody to leave Get the fuck out yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 2:Once the police arrive, they start taking observations and log the crime scene. The position of Jennifer's body was strange. It looks like she sat down on the edge of the bed and then just laid the top part of her body down, which I guess would make sense for if she sat down on the edge of the bed and shot herself and then collapsed. Except that she was kind of also on the edge of the bed and shot herself and then collapsed. Except that she was kind of also on the edge of the bed and it seemed like she could have almost like fallen off the the bed here. Let me show you what I mean. I don't have the full. Let's see. Do I have that side view or do I only have that top view?
Speaker 2:Oh, here we go. Here's that side view. See, it looks like she was like sitting and then just kind of yeah, in the netflix episode when the investigators were trying to recreate how she might have done it, they envisioned her already lying on the bed, pressing the gun to her forehead, which seems like an odd choice. But it gets even more strange. In her right hand, which was crossed over her chest, jennifer was holding a nine millimeter Browning pistol, which is a semi-automatic handgun that has a history of being used by military and special forces personnel, and Jennifer was holding the gun in a very unusual grip, with her thumb pressed down on the trigger and the rest of her fingers wrapped around the grip. Should I have a picture of that for you two?
Speaker 1:Hmm, yeah, I take it that's blood on it On the gun.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's blood on the gun Because it kind of looks rusted. But we will also note there is no blood where. On her hand On her hand. There's no blood on her hand, and where she was shot was right in the center of her forehead. Okay, so she would have been holding this gun like that. Yeah, and also.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess this would be weird, so it would be more comfortable to do the song, and when the investigators were showing how she would have done it, they also envisioned that she would have wanted to take her other hand and place it around the barrel of the gun Sorry, I'm leaning back and you probably can't hear me that she would have wanted to lean back and place her other hand around the barrel of the gun to study it, because particularly that is a common thing that you will find with people who commit suicide because they're, they're shaking, they're scared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but again, on either of her hands there's no blood and there's no gunshot residue her hands were both completely clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit. So she was dressed in all black, with low slung black heels, black stockings, a black bra, a black jacket or black shirt and black silky pajama, short underwear things, pajama short underwear things. And she had a plain gold band on her right hand and on her left wrist, which is also very interesting. She was wearing a very interesting watch, a Citizen Aqualand watch, which is a pretty intense watch used by many types of military personnel and also by divers. It's like a diving watch, it's like waterproof, it's all kinds of proof. It's not usually like a typical ladies watch.
Speaker 2:One thing that was not really covered by the Unsolved Mysteries episode was that the gun had shot not one, but two shots the shot that had killed Jennifer and another shot into a pillow on the bed, and the pillow was turned over, so you could not see the scorch mark and there was a bullet hole in it, and the bullet hole of course, went down through the bed and into the concrete underneath, and of course, the bullet hole that had gone through her also went down through the bed and into the concrete. So there we go. That's how they know that she was laying down. The police hypothesized that the shot into the pillow in the bed was a test shot, and that was the first time the gun was shot. And then the second shot, jennifer, was the one that Jennifer used for an early self-checkout. The Browning gun had been fully loaded with nine bullets and after the incident there were seven bullets remaining. But why would she want to flip over the pillow to hide the entry point of the test shot when she was committing suicide and why would she even think about or care about doing a test shot? You would think that in most cases that would make somebody lose their nerve.
Speaker 2:Jennifer's grip on the gun was reported to be very tight, so tight that when the forensics experts removed her grip from the gun, they heard a click of the trigger decompressing. That would imply that her grip had never loosened from the moment that she had pulled the trigger. If she had in fact pulled it herself, however, the Browning pistol is known to have a strong recoil, which is seen in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, and typically in the moment of death her muscles would slacken and she would have dropped the gun. Now there is a somewhat rare phenomenon where the muscles can and says seize up in the moment of death and that could account for the tight grip she had on the gun. Now there is a somewhat rare phenomenon where the muscles can and says seize up in the moment of death and that could account for the tight grip she had on the gun, but doesn't really explain how her hand dropped neatly onto her chest instead of like next to her head, or why she had a strange, such a strange and awkward grip on the gun in the first place, or why there was no blood splatter on her hands or any gunshot residue, which is very important and a significant finding in this case. It was reported there was blood splatter all over the hotel bed, on the bedside table, on the wall and even a bit on the ceiling, but there was not a drop of blood on her hands and her hands were extremely clean. And when shooting a gun it doesn't always leave gunshot residue. But it's particularly strange to not have any gunshot residue when the bullet is fired at point blank range, like she would have had to done if she had ended her own life, and especially with the speed at which they responded to the crime, because sometimes the gunshot residue will fade over time. But police were on the scene within an hour. Next to the bed there was a black attaché case, but the case only contained 25 more 9mm bullets on top of the ones that were already in the pistol, and so she would have started out with 34 bullets, which is a hell of a lot of bullets to have if you're just trying to kill yourself.
Speaker 2:It's also very noteworthy and strange that not only was the military-style Browning pistol she used unmarked, but the serial number had not just been filed off, as is typical for unmarked or illegal firearms. It had been meticulously removed with acid in what was reported to be an extremely professional fashion. Even today, with advanced technology, that can usually determine what those serial numbers used to be when it's been filed off. For example, forensics experts were not able to decipher the serial number on this gun because whoever did the removal was thought to be so thorough and professional. They knew exactly how deep to go to remove every trace of the serial number. They could only determine the gun was produced in a factory in Belgium in 1990 or 1991.
Speaker 2:Jennifer's fingerprints were also found throughout the room, but they were not found at all on the gun or on the bullets inside the gun. Nor were any gloves found to explain how she could have loaded the gun without getting prints on the bullets, and no match for her fingerprints has been found in Interpol to this day. Another suspicious aspect of the case is that the remains of her bratwurst meal that she ordered the day before were found in her stomach, indicating that she had died within a few hours of ingesting that meal, which, if you recall, she had ordered around 8 on Friday evening. Now it is possible she had saved some of the meal, or saved it entirely and not eaten it until Saturday, but there was no fridge in the room and it seems unlikely she would want to eat day-old bratwurst and potato salad that had been sitting at room temperature for a whole day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds gross, yeah and it didn't seem like she ate some on Friday and then some on Saturday, because hardly any was eaten off the plate at all. I have a picture of that of the plate. You can see she hasn't eaten very much of the plate at all. I have a picture of that of the plate. You can see she hasn't eaten very much of the meal at all. Yeah, no, she ate like a bite. Yep.
Speaker 2:All of the clothes she had in the room were uniformly black or gray. I think there may have been like one mustard colored sweater and all she had were tops, tops, blouses, jackets, sweaters and some bras and underwear. There were no pants, no skirts, nothing for the bottom half of her body. Interesting, all of the tags on her clothes had been removed. Now, at first that didn't strike me as weird, because those tags were hella, itchy and uncomfortable and that alone wouldn't make me suspicious. Because why wouldn't you want to remove those? They were awful, yeah. However, efforts had also been made to rub out brand names that were branded or emblazoned in other fashions that wouldn't interfere with comfort, such as rubbing out the name on the outside back of her shoes and on her bag. That does indicate it goes beyond a comfort issue and that she may have been trying to erase the origin of those items, and this is apparently a common practice, or was a common practice, in international espionage at the time. It may not be anymore because of the globalization of things, but looking at where things came from, where things were bought, that was a way that you could potentially trace somebody back to where they were from. Yeah, despite these attempts, they were able to trace some of the branding origins of some of her clothes and items. Her shoes were Italian made and her briefcase and blazer were German. There was a bottle of men's cologne next to her plate of food, but it was a generic brand that could be bought at any European pharmacy. Now, this could possibly be seen as evidence that a man was staying in her room, but it could have just been that she liked the scent.
Speaker 2:Jennifer was found wearing eyeliner, but there was no eyeliner or makeup of any kind in the room, and there were no toothbrush, hairbrush or any kind of specific toiletries that you would expect, aside from the complimentary soap, shampoo and conditioner provided by the hotel. Someone had taken a shower, however, as the soap and shampoo, along with towels and bathrobe, had been used, and actually I have a picture of the bathroom there it is. It's not that exciting, but you can see somebody's taking a shower. The bright shoes seen by the housekeeper and the rolling suitcase seen by the bellhop were nowhere to be found. There was also one other unusual finding in the room a newspaper that was labeled for room 2816. You know, people could like, order, like newspapers, and they would be delivered to their specific rooms. Right, this newspaper was for room 2816 and it also on the newspaper that plastic sleeve that they would come in was found, the only fingerprint in the room that was not belonging to Jennifer. However, there was no word or information about whether or not police ran that print through Interpol or whether or not they questioned the person who was staying in room 2816, which I found to be strange.
Speaker 2:Another strange thing Now I've come to the Another strange thing Now I've come to the end of my notes. So another strange thing is that the hotel did have security cameras, but they don't seem to have been checked or there's no record of them having been checked. So while it could be confirmed, like these kinds of things like was she with a guy? Was she not with a guy? Where was she? When was she Like, did somebody leave her room? Was she letting people into her room? But nobody seems to have checked these things or it wasn't recorded. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe they didn't work. Maybe they, like the police, were like hey, can we see your security footage? And the hotel was like they're just cameras.
Speaker 2:That's definitely a possibility. So, as far as witnesses go, most people reported most of her. People in the rooms around her reported they didn't really see or hear anything. People in the rooms around her reported they didn't really see or hear anything. There was one gentleman who was in the room like across from her 2804, who was said to be a Belgian businessman and he, when they tried to question him, he acted kind of shady about it and then he was like oh yeah, I felt so sorry about, I heard about what happened to her, like, and I felt so sorry about it.
Speaker 2:Only, the thing that is weird about that is that he stayed at the hotel Friday night and checked out Saturday morning, well, but Jennifer's body was not found until Saturday evening, and so how could he have known about what happened to her? Yeah, but what happened to that guy and like where did he go? Nobody knows Right, and he was called Mr F, and so about the double lock, right? So about the double lock right? That was. Police ultimately ruled the case a suicide because they said nobody could enter a double locked door from, or they could not have locked it From the outside From the outside, exactly.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm trying to say. However, on the show they interviewed a former member of Norwegian international security and he said, yeah, it would be no problem for somebody who like a spy or somebody who was in, like international security, it would be absolutely no problem for them to open and close doors and to to have locked it. That way. He said there's no. He said there's no locked door for I forget how he said it, but basically there's no locked doors for spies. And so, yeah, a big one of the one of the biggest theories is that she was a spy, um, and and there's also some other theories like that she could have been a high-class prostitute.
Speaker 2:But here's what I find a little bit unbelievable about that, because one of the one of the rationales they're like she didn't have pants Right, like, and they're like did she even have pants the whole time? Because she was seen wearing a coat, and like, did she have pants underneath it? Like, why wouldn't she have pants? Especially because the, the bellhop observed her wearing a skirt Right, but, like the killer or killers, like she had been observed with that rolling luggage that disappeared. Obviously, her pants or the rest of her clothes were in there. Like it makes sense to hang up your blouses? Yeah, and not necessarily your pants.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly Particularly if there were jeans or something along those lines. That don't wrinkle.
Speaker 2:So I don't think that it's some like scandal, like oh, she didn't even have pants.
Speaker 1:How does that even make a prostitute? A prostitute can wear pants Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly and like none of the rest of her. Like clothes or whatever seem like. None of the rest of her like clothes or whatever seem like scandalous in any way. They're very sensible. Like very like you know, just black and gray. Like why would she have this like really sensible blouse and then just no pants? Like that's her like I don't know shtick or whatever, right High class no pants, susan, or something it does not explain. Like what were all those bullets for? Like, if she was just a prostitute, like why would they go, whoever go to such lengths to try and cover it up? Like who cares? Like nobody cares. Like if a prostitute gets killed and they're like, oh, it's just a prostitute, even a high-class prostitute like people don't put so much effort into covering up their identity, right?
Speaker 1:so I think she either had to be like an assassin or a spy although it's odd that she would wear only black as an assassin or spy, because you'd want to blend in, but as somebody who wears black all the time, that sticks out like nothing else.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do you think it stuck out so much in Norway in the 90s?
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know what Norway was doing, but the people I've met from Norway, I didn't see any black on them, yeah because I mean she was noticed, but like I don't know, I don't know she stuck out.
Speaker 2:So so much. But yeah, it is, it is a little weird. It is a little weird that she had all black, but it also doesn't quite fit the prostitute thing yeah, no, I, I wouldn't say that she's a.
Speaker 1:I don't buy the high-class sex worker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could have been a costume Like all black. It could have been like a persona.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, but still, if you're a spy or an assassin, you don't want to stick out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but do you have another theory about?
Speaker 1:who she's other than suicide, but that would I mean it. It could be both things. She could have been an assassin and spy and killed herself. Very true, you know, um, because, like the the hand grip doesn't bother me, because, like, like, if you know, trying with your trigger finger to hold the gun on either side, that's very awkward. Yeah, to do the thumb is very, very easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then how come she didn't have blood or gunshot residue on her hand?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not saying she didn't, I'm just saying the hand position part doesn't bother me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what? I think whether she's a spy or although, oh, I didn't get into part of the thing. So they, they ended up burying her like in basically an unmarked grave. They exhumed her and they took dna evidence and they trace her uh lineage to east germany and so she was at least of east german origin, which lines up with some of the things.
Speaker 2:Like some of her items were german, like her attache case and her blazer, and one of the times she called uh, they said that she spoke fluent german, right with an east german accent and a lot of the, the stasi or whatever, like the german east german secret police, yeah, after the fall of the Berlin Wall went into like espionage and stuff, and so it's possible that, although she was on the young side, they found that they were able to like radio like age her, based on like the amount of like a certain type of like radioactive carbon or whatever in her teeth and they found that she was 24 and she looks a lot older than 24 yeah, yeah, she was 24, and so she would have been quite young, like when the berlin wall fell, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't being like she wouldn't have been that young, she would have been in her late teens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if she was 24, she would have been 19. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. She could have been groaned or being on that path. Mm-hmm, yeah, the Norwegian intelligence agent, or former intelligence agent, said that that could be also a reason. Former intelligence agent said that that could be also a reason, like if she was an espionage. He said that that would be a could be a reason why no family has come forward to claim her because he said that a lot of times like the family will get paid off under the table.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. So, yeah, I was thinking about that locked from the inside thing and I was looking on here and there. There was a case not too long ago, I forget where, but one of the leaders of Hamas was murdered by Mossad. Yeah, and he was found in a room that had been double locked from the inside. Yeah, yeah, so clearly it's possible.
Speaker 2:Intelligence. Clearly it's possible. Intelligence, that's the word that the ex-intelligence agent used.
Speaker 1:He said there's no closed doors for intelligence. Yeah, yeah, I imagine it would have been quite easy for someone who knows Well. At the very least, it's clear she didn't want to be traced in any way, even if she wasn't a spy.
Speaker 2:She reminded me of Villanelle from Killing Eve. Uh-huh, have you seen that show? No, she's like an assassin. Yeah, she's like a lady assassin. She's not very subtle. She kind of reminds me of her and she also kind of reminds me of her and she also kind of reminds me of trinity from the matrix yeah, yeah, she looks just like her yeah, her short black hair and her leather jacket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, maybe trinity was based on her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just kidding, I have no idea I don't know, but I also thought that like um with her, like coloring and stuff like that and her short hair, like she could have put on a wig and like yeah passed off as a bunch of different looks.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and uh, what did that uh older intelligence agent say? He also said that it's very common for an intelligence agent to have like a second place to go to. Like if they thought that there was a problem like with whatever their operation was, and so like he didn't think it was that strange that she disappeared for like 24 hours, yeah, he thought that she was going to whatever like her second place.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm so.
Speaker 2:Like a safe house, yeah, something like that. He didn't really elaborate, right? I guess there's only so much you can say, right, yeah, um, and they asked him. They were like well, what else could she be like, if? If she's not a spy, which could she be? And he said I, I can't imagine that she's anything else but a spy. Yeah, um, assassin is my other thought. Yeah, and but other outside of that, I was like I don't know, yeah it certainly feels that way and there's a.
Speaker 2:There's another case that's kind case, that's kind of. That's kind of similar. It's not really it's not super similar, but it's also like and similar in that it's like a Jane Doe who was found with all her tags cut off and they think that she may have been like a Russian spy. Yeah, so yeah, I wanted to go into that a little bit more as well, that other case, but I ran out of time.
Speaker 2:That's all right so but yeah, I think that that oh, oh, oh. So my my thought of like what could have happened right is that, whatever her sting or whatever happened, something went wrong or maybe. Maybe, like she was set up for the beginning and like, like it was always like gonna be, like they're killing her and like she was set up to mess up, or yeah, or maybe she did mess it up the job or whatever it was, and so whatever, like she messed up and and her buddies or her handlers or whatever the fuck, I don't know.
Speaker 2:You know they come and they have drinks with her or whatever, and the way that they showed like that it would be likely to have killed her, as if they, you know, like pin her down basically on the bed, like she was a small woman, and then held the gun to her head and and shot her. Oh, another weird thing is that in the autopsy toxicology report they only tested her for alcohol. They did not test her for any drugs yeah so they don't know if she was under the influence of anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like they could have slipped something in her drink.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's why she possibly didn't have signs of like fighting back or yeah. And then whoever stayed in her room to like clean up, frame the scene and maybe had a shower to clean themselves up, ate the chips and and whatnot. And then, when the person knocked on the door, they realized they're out of time. They did the shot into the pillow, yeah, and then put the gun into her hand and left yeah, um, why?
Speaker 1:why would they want to do that?
Speaker 2:put the shot in the pillow to well, for for two reasons to depress the trigger so that the the trigger is down in her grip, and two, to scare off the person at the door, because I mean, like, who's going to charge in if you hear a gunshot? True, so that's my possible theory of what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, interesting case.
Speaker 2:Anything else. I also thought, and I've read like some people, people are like why haven't they traced her, like genetic genealogy or whatever like, and yeah, I wonder that as well, like well, what I was?
Speaker 1:what I was reading is that norway has very strict privacy laws regarding dna and stuff well, there you go.
Speaker 2:Okay, that explains that, but uh, but it would be because you would think like you wouldn't want to find somebody.
Speaker 1:Also, genealogy is not really much of a thing in Europe. Yeah, it's really only the United States that gives a shit Right, which makes sense because we are such a mixed country in a way that other nations I mean they're mixed, but they're not mixed like us.
Speaker 2:That's very true. But as like a forensics tool and stuff like that, Well, true but, Seems like candy.
Speaker 1:I mean genetic dn or genealogical dna as crime evidence is new? Yeah, only the last few years. And then you have, um, the privacy laws like, and they're having, they're even questioning it here in the states with the coberger case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I mean, it is a big question, yeah, of privacy, I agree. Yeah, it is a big question, yeah, of privacy, I agree.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean genetic genealogy. I don't think it would be helpful in that case if genealogy period isn't much of a thing Right In Europe. But putting DNA in a database, yeah, but then that's also a privacy thing which was think, which people argue every now and again here too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also a privacy thing which was think, which people argue every now and again here too. Yeah, I guess you could put in a thing and then like, if somebody put their whatever did their dna test and they're like, hey, guess what, you're related to this mystery woman, yeah, like that could be something interesting yeah, but then her, her, somebody related to her, would have had to move here probably yeah, to do that because, like, because, yeah, it's interesting, because I I think about that all the sometimes not all the time sometimes, like, because I've done the, the dna stuff, right, I only get connected to people here in the States, right, I've never been connected to anybody overseas.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know my DNA comes from Scandinavia and Germany and England and. Ireland, but I never find a relative over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've been connected to a couple of people in the UK.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I have like 60% of my DNA from the UK.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty evenly split between the four.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, anything else. I think that I might think of something else later, but that's all I could think about now, so I don't know. Yeah, what do you?
Speaker 1:think I don't know. I mean, it seems interesting and yeah, I think spy is probably spy or assassin or something along those lines is probably true. Charlie's angels yeah.
Speaker 2:Charlie's Angels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, charlie's.
Speaker 2:Sensible Angel.
Speaker 1:Because it doesn't seem like a suicide. Yeah, and it wouldn't explain all the other things.
Speaker 2:I would be really interested in knowing some of the stuff that is unknown. Like you know what the hell was ordered on pay-per-view.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And stuff like that, and like who checked her in the second time? Yeah, yeah, because that's. The other thing is like how the hell did she get checked into this hotel with like no car and stuff like that, no passport or anything, yeah, and then it just slid under the radar, not once, but twice, yeah, like that seems like like there's somebody like on the inside involved who's like you know whatever, like oh, you get a pass yeah, could be, although we don't know that other people in that mad crush didn't also yeah, no, absolutely, and that's why.
Speaker 2:That's why it would be interesting to know if other, if that happened with other people too, and um, but like the second time though the second time it wasn't known to be a particularly busy time and and she had to check in a second time to get the extension yeah, and so that's why it's like twice um well, maybe they assumed that they had the info from the first time maybe, maybe, so, um, yeah, and also let's see the.
Speaker 2:The vlogger hypothesized that she came in on the train and like arrived at the hotel intentionally like at the same time that all of those like plane arrivals were coming in, to blend in with the crowd. Because there's also no record of like how did she get to norway? Like yeah, you know? No, nobody knows. Like there's no record of her coming by plane or by anywhere well, if they don't have her name well, very true, yeah, very true, but also like nobody's, nobody's like. Yeah, we saw her on the plane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so well, I mean, I don't know if I would recognize anybody I've flown with either, you know, unless I was like attached to them in some way. Yeah, you know, like I I mean the person sitting next to me who I had a conversation with going to nashville. If something had happened to her and the police came and gave me like a photograph, I wouldn't have been able to tell you yes or no, right?
Speaker 2:But no. However she got in, she seemed like she probably used like a fake identity a fake passport that she either discarded or it was in that wheelie luggage that mysteriously disappeared. Yeah, that wheelie luggage that mysteriously disappeared, yeah, whereas the wheelie luggage, the wheelie luggage- knows all Yep.
Speaker 1:Is that it yeah?
Speaker 2:I think that's it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let me do the missing person. I'm not fully prepared, but we'll wing it. Oh, that's the werewolf one. Okay, the werewolf one, the werewolf missing person, not missing person, but oh shit, hold on, I get people. They ran away.
Speaker 2:True crime whatever.
Speaker 1:And they have a little, not a little. They a thing called uh werewolf confessed to eating his son and other murders. Was he really a killer or a victim of mass hysteria? And it's about a man named peter strump who thought he was a werewolf. Allegedly well, the people who executed him all thought he was a werewolf was that that guy from like old-timey germany?
Speaker 1:uh, probably. It doesn't give me a. I haven't read all the way down so I don't know what year sounds old-timey german. It does sound old-timey german, although I was watching something not too very long ago and it was in not germany, but it was in like one of the the the caucasus, like bulgaria or estonia or someplace like that, and I mean it was like that year, and they were, um, uh, filming a village where they believed that there was actually a vampire roaming around. Yeah, you know, still like in the 21st century, a vampire, a vampire is it a scary vampire or a glittery vampire?
Speaker 1:according to them, scary nice. Okay, so let me do my missing person if I can find it Okay. So again, her name is either Ashley Heavy Runner Loring or Ashley Loring Heavy Runner, Depends on the source. I'm going to read the little bit that I have on her from the Guardian.
Speaker 1:So on a summer's evening in early June 2017, Ashley Heavy Runner Loring messaged some friends on Facebook looking for a ride into town from her family's ranch in the Blackfoot Reservation in Northwest Montana. As she waited for the friend to arrive, she grabbed some clothes, packed them into a blue string backpack and said goodbye to her grandmother. Then she ran outside to the waiting car. Later that night, someone posted a short video of a party somewhere on the res. In it, Ashley, who was 20 at the time, was on the couch surrounded by people drinking beers and chatting. At one point, Ashley messaged her older sister, Kimberly, who is in Morocco, who's visiting her fiance, and she wrote send me some ms meaning money, can you? And her sister replied I wish I can, sis, but I'm in Africa, Are you okay? And Ashley replied. Always, Some days passed, Kimberly had returned to the US, called Ashley.
Speaker 1:Ashley didn't pick up, but she didn't think too much of it because Ashley apparently lost her phone. All the US called Ashley. Ashley didn't pick up, but she didn't think too much of it, because Ashley apparently lost her phone all the time and they had had a plan to move away from their little area of Browning and into Missoula to start a new life. But a week went by without a word from her and in mid-June the father was hospitalized for liver failure and Ashley never showed up and Kimberly, I guess, called around and whatever, and she discovered that no one had seen Ashley since the night of their party. So she's been missing since then. So if you have any information concerning this case, you can contact the FBI Salt Lake City Field Office at 801-579-1400 or the Blackfeet Law Enforcement Services at 406-338-4000. You can also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate, or you can submit a tip online at tipsfbigov.
Speaker 2:Sounds good.
Speaker 1:Hopefully somebody has heard something about her, and yeah, Hopefully, although apparently nobody looked into her disappearance for a long time. That's awful, yeah Well, she is an indigenous woman and that happens all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably only going to get worse.
Speaker 1:No doubt Okay. So what have you been reading? Or writing? Reading or writing, reading or watching, or both I have not been writing except for this podcast.
Speaker 2:What have I been watching? I just watched that Unsolved Mysteries episode. Other than that, I haven't really watched anything. I have read, let's see. I read Sense and Sensibility and Misery. Did we talk about Incidents Around the House last time? Yes, Okay, wow. Then I've read Sense and Sensibility and Misery.
Speaker 1:Well, I think maybe you did, I don't remember. I know you talked about it to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that.
Speaker 2:I probably talked about it on the podcast.
Speaker 1:When did you read it? Because we recorded two weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Incidents around the house is what I read. I don't, I have no sense of time, apparently from 116 to 122, probably not then, okay, well, I read incidents around the house by josh mall, so that was pretty good and I recommend it if you like Josh Mallerman and if you like like kid POV and like Skinnamarink kind of thing. And I'm currently reading a fantasy book called Tests of the Road by Rachel Hartman.
Speaker 2:So, that's pretty good. It's going to work for the 2025 book challenge, the one where it's supposed to be set in the same universe, because apparently it's not a sequel, but it's set in the same universe as a book that was already written. So I kind of wish I had gotten the other book too.
Speaker 1:But well, I think that's part of the, isn't that? Another one, yeah, but I.
Speaker 2:What I mean is I wish I had read the other book first.
Speaker 2:Even though it was, it's not like a direct sequel I gotcha the events of the other book take place first, and the other book was written first, gotcha, and so I think it would have made a little bit more sense if I had read the other book first. Yeah, but this book was on sale and it had a kind of eye-catching cover, so I got it. That's nice, and I was like I'm going to read more fantasy. Yeah, it's pretty good. I thought it was gonna be like ya.
Speaker 2:Um, it is, it is kind of ya, but it's like like ya, like young adult, adult like not it's a bit dark for teens, I would say say yeah, I mean, I'm sure, teens can and will read it. But, yeah, it's got like essay and suicidal ideation, things of that nature. So yeah, it's a bit on the dark side for teens. What I would recommend for teens Mm-hmm. So yeah, but it's good Good. Yeah, and it's yeah that's all I have to say. I'm not done yet, so I can't say whether or not I recommend it yet I'm enjoying it so far, that's good, I don't want to.
Speaker 2:How far in are you halfway, halfway? Yeah. I don't want to jump to recommend a book when I don't know how it ends.
Speaker 1:Yeah if you, if you had to give a star rating gun to your head, what would it be?
Speaker 2:um, like four, I guess so far. So far, that's like my standard radius and I like this book, but it's not like the. Yeah, I think I definitely rank it higher than all these romanticies.
Speaker 1:Rachel's, not a romanticie girly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me give me more handfuls of this grim stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's see what have I been doing. Well, I rewatched another K-drama called Business Proposal I think I talked about that before. It's on Netflix if you want to watch it. It's not bad, it's kind of amusing. And then I watched well, yesterday because I was too tired to do anything else. I was watching a show like a docuseries, I guess you would call it on hitler's henchmen, okay, so I don't know where it stopped, but but it stopped with me talking, so it was clearly about whatever.
Speaker 2:It didn't want to hear about Nazis.
Speaker 1:Apparently it didn't want to hear about Nazis, so a brief recap. I won't go through all of it again, but it was. I watched a docuseries on Nazis, specifically the henchmen of the inner circle of Hitler, and it was really fascinating and I'm not done yet Highly recommend, Although a little oversimplistic for their motivations motivations, I think, is what I said before but it's also okay if you're feeling overwhelmed by how bleak everything is right now and you don't want more it's just. It's just a recommendation.
Speaker 2:You don't need to no, I know listen or watch anything I'm just saying like, sometimes I'm like I should like educate myself more, but, like you had told me before, we have to find the balance between staying informed and and what was it like our own well-being and overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because if you're overwhelmed you're not really going to be much use to anybody. Very true so, yeah, if, if I find history consoling because I'm a historian, so the bleakness of the past, I guess I I wouldn't say it doesn't bother me, but it's not like the bleakness of the presence. What are you looking at? You're not listening.
Speaker 2:You just got sidetracked by my books the bleakness of the past does not reflect on the bleakness of the present well, it's kind of true, you know, because you're not living through. I'm just saying I was listening okay yeah, I was just also kind of glazing off yeah, well, I find it interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you find history consoling, watch it. If not, whatever you know, you don't have to.
Speaker 1:You don't have to educate yourself on anything it is interesting, I just also, I'm like fuck humans yeah yeah, like let's just end this human race I don't know if I'm that far gone, uh against the humans, but yeah um but or just supremacy speaking of, uh, ending the human race, I'm also reading a book called I don't know why I cannot remember the name of it, saved my life, but it is called everything must go the stories we tell about the end of the world by dorian linsky. He basically it's um, I don't know if you'd call it a history, necessarily, but it is he sort of walks through all the different types of apocalypses that humans believe in, right from the religious ones to the climate change and everything, and how, like pretty much since the dawn of time, it's been the end of the world, you know, and um. So it's kind of. It's kind of just going through the writings and whatever beliefs and ideas from various times about various different ways in which the world will end and humans will cease to exist, and it's quite fascinating.
Speaker 2:From a logical scientific perspective, the human race will end just like other species.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, he's not arguing against that. That is fact. But he's talking about how we, every generation, has the this is the end of the world, yeah, belief, and sometimes it's the same and sometimes it's different. He's just going through the different ways in which humans over the millennia have believed the world would end, including ours. Right, anything from religion to climate change, to the bomb, to all kinds of things, but climate change is not a myth. He's not Objection, he's not necessarily saying myth. That was my word. The way in which people think the world is gonna end. Okay, okay, it includes religion to various mythologies, to climate change, but he's just talking about the way we as a society talk about it, write about it all of that, the various ways over millennias that people believe the world is going to end. He doesn't say the world isn't going to end, but he's talking about how everybody at some point has believed it was the end. Like y2k, we all thought the world was going to end when the computers stopped working right, I didn't.
Speaker 1:I was very confident it was oh well, me too, but a lot of people did I know, I remember I was like.
Speaker 2:I was like you. Adults are freaking out for nothing yeah, and for decades a lot of people believed it would be the bomb, but also possibly my confidence was because my mom was constantly freaked out that the world was gonna end and it didn't, yeah, all the time.
Speaker 1:So I was like, I was like no yeah, well, a lot of us don't buy into that, but there are people who do and people who genuinely believe, like, whatever time they're living in is the end times, sure? And so he's just going over the various ways we think of that over time. And I've almost finished rereading the perilous undertaking, the second victoria's speed. Well, nice, hey, hey, I there's only one part I don't buy. Hmm, so far. Well, so they're in the grotto the first time, yep, right, and she's looking at all the dildos, yep, and she somehow doesn't realize what they're used for. I don't like she's not an innocent person in every other way.
Speaker 2:She including sex, like she's not a virgin, as she she tells people all the fucking time you know, I thought that she, I thought that she was just trying to draw out what's his name maybe, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt like she genuinely yeah, didn't know or she was just being too pedantic, like what is this, like you know, yeah, what is the significant cultural significance of this?
Speaker 1:thing. Well, I mean, that's definitely how she started, but she definitely acted like she didn't know. Well, of course, I was listening to the audio book, so the way the actor read it might have been, yeah, that way. But yeah, no, I wouldn't have bought that part at all, but I can't wait. This is the one where she's like she whacks somebody with a dildo, right, yeah, okay, I'm waiting for that to happen. I think it happens at the end. Yeah, yeah, what a way to knock somebody out. It would have had to have been like a glass or wooden dildo.
Speaker 1:We have to start carrying dildos as weapons to protect ourselves? Yeah, that would be hilarious. Can you imagine that headline? Yeah, because you know it would be a headline.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If some lady did knock out a dude with a glass dildo. Oh, that would be funny.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm so pedantic all the time that's okay, it's all right, but yeah, so that's it. That's all I got Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I found this one amusing. I may have liked it better than the second one. Um, you mean the first one?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know what I mean. Yes, so do I. It's the first one was a little. It took a while for things to pick up, get going. Yep yeah, are we reading the? Um, the other series by her, the killers of a certain age?
Speaker 2:I was interested in that one. Yeah, okay, like serial killers of any age, okay, I'm not like them.
Speaker 1:But not serial. Uh, they're assassins. Yes, assassins, yeah, better, yeah, lady, assassins. Uh, yeah, I'm probably, I'll probably have it done. They're not gay lady assassins are they?
Speaker 2:they're not what I said. I said they're not gay lady assassins are they?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I haven't read it killing I don't know, haven't read it, but I should be done with this one. I'm reading it on my way to and from work, so I should have it done Monday and then we can read the other one. Okay, yeah, good, all right, I guess that's it, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't like serial killers, but I'm just saying like that's an interesting fiction?
Speaker 1:Yes, I don't. I think people know what you meant. It's interesting in fiction.
Speaker 2:Yes, but like a lot of people do, like serial killers for real though.
Speaker 1:That's true, but if they've listened to our thing, I think they could see that we don't. So what is our book again?
Speaker 2:Oh, the Dinosaur Book. Let me find the name. Let me find the name. The Dinosaur Artist, obsession Betrayal and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy by Paige Williams Awesome.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's our book. Yeah, I'm psyched. That's our book and we will be going over that in episode 38, yep, which should be two episodes from now, and I think that's it. So if you would be kind enough to hit us up on our socials both the episode, the podcast, the episode the podcast Insta and Facegram, plus our personal Instagrams, or you can email us All of that information will be in the show notes and I suppose that's it.
Speaker 2:And if you have any theories about who Jennifer Farragate might have been and what happened to her, let us know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be interesting to see what other people think. All right, all right, thanks, bye, bye.
