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
The Baker Butcher Part 2
We are back for part 2! Rachel has the missing person again this week (see below). It's also time to talk about "The Dinosaur Artist." As always; we also chat about what we've been reading, watching, and listening to.
Our next book is Deborah Blum's "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York."
Sources:
Robert Hansen -
Very Scary People Season 3 Episode 3 - "The Butcher Baker: Terror In the Wilderness, Part 2"
Wikipedia "Robert Hansen"
Nicholas Smith -
For the Lost (nd.) Nicholas Smith
Missing People in America - Missing Nicholas Smith
Get in touch with us:
Instagram: Details Are Sketchy - @details.are.sketchy
Facebook: Details Are Sketchy - @details.are.sketchy.2023
Instagram: Kiki - @kikileona84
Instagram: Rachel - @eeniemanimeenienailz
Email: details.are.sketchy.pod@gmail.com
we should do our intro. Oh yeah, um, I'm kiki, let me, let me start again I'm kiki and I'm rachel, and this is details are sketchy, a true crime podcast. And uh, you're, you've got your tea. I've got my tea, your english tea I've got my british, your English tea.
Speaker 2:It's very British.
Speaker 1:It is very British. I've got a very greenish peppermint, yeah, and we got our water.
Speaker 2:And our bellies are full from delicious Thai food. Did you finally find your straight peppermint tea? I did.
Speaker 1:Where was it? You mean, where did I get it? I got it from Target. Okay, yeah, target Target, along with spearmint. I'm trying to boycott them, but they're really hard, yeah, to boycott, because in the town we live in, I mean the small city we live in, we don't have a whole lot of options yeah, I like those damn cookies, aren't they?
Speaker 2:delicious they are, they're like I was gonna say that they're like crack, but that's probably not a good analogy.
Speaker 1:They are like a very addictive cookie well, sugar is incredibly sugar is incredibly addictive, so um, okay, so you are going to do the missing person. I am going to finish with the butcher baker. Before we do that, I will just say if you haven't listened to Butcher Baker Part 1, you should go.
Speaker 2:And do that before you listen to this one. You gotta go do that, otherwise this is not going to make much sense.
Speaker 1:It probably won't make much sense, okay, so.
Speaker 2:All right, let me pull up my one. All right, so, uh, today my missing person that I'm covering is nicholas smith, who went missing from las cruces, new mexico, which I wonder where that shout out yeah, hometown in 1991, before I got here yeah so it says he disappeared on february 23rd 1991 from las cruces, new mexico, with his mother, edith warner. They were living in university park in the student housing section of new mexico state university. I also lived there not at the same time, obviously yeah there was a murder there.
Speaker 1:They found a body of a lady like 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, yeah, oh wonderful oh yeah, I forgot you lived there.
Speaker 2:Hopefully it wasn't in either of the two units that I lived in um. Nicholas is Edith's child from her previous marriage. Edith reportedly asked for a divorce in February. On February 21st, edith told her art instructor she would be back in a few hours, but she did not return, however, and Nicholas did not attend school the next day. Nicholas did not attend school the next day. In 2008, police say they believe that foul play was involved in edis and nicholas cases and they remain unsolved wow, that's like 34 years ago and then later I'll have.
Speaker 2:I have another page that goes into a little bit more detail. Oh, I, I'll wait. No, I was gonna give you the number, but I should do that later yes, okay, okay, well.
Speaker 1:So butcher baker part two. I really have no idea where I stopped. I believe fulthy has come on board. Yeah, last episode we found three bodies I went into detail about two and we also have a living victim, cindy pulson, who will come up in this section as well. Um, and we also found out who the murderer was. It's a baker in anchorage named robert hansen in one. We're going to go back to the crimes he committed before the victims we talked about last time. So we're going to go back 12 years to November 1971. It might have been 13 years. My math is not mathing, I don't know.
Speaker 2:You would think that baking would give someone enough joy that they wouldn't feel like murdering you'd think, you'd think, but I think he really only got any jollies from hunting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're surrounded by all that bread, all that cake I know bread makes you happy and the best carbs in the world. Happy people eat bread yep okay.
Speaker 1:So we're going back to november 1971 and there is an eight-year-old real estate secretary or office assistant named suzy heppard. Uh, she was in her car driving along, got to a traffic light and she noticed the man next to her was smiling at her. And so she looked over and smiled back at him, as one does, and that guy was Hanson and he thinks they have a connection. So, oh my God, yeah, yeah. So he followed her home, knocked on her door Now Susie had decided to take a shower I mean, she's just getting home from work and she answered the door in just her towel, yeah, which that's her prerogative, no judgment, right, but a dude like him, he kind of made her then become a prostitute in her mind, a sex worker yeah, it's mud.
Speaker 1:So he said he needed to make a call and asked if he could see the phone book for all of you youngins out there. We used to have these things called phone books where you looked at people's numbers.
Speaker 1:Suzy agreed and he walked in and asked if they could go on a date and she said no and that she had a boyfriend and he left. Now, suzy then, I guess you know, did her thing, went to bed, got up at 5 am, got dressed and went out to her car. Hansen was waiting there with a gun. She was understandably scared and started to scream. One of her roommates looked out the window and saw her with the guy holding a gun and the roommate called the police. Hanson ran, ditching his gun and hat. Someone in the documentary specifically said hat, others said clothing, so I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 2:The police show up. I'm imagining like a hat and trench coat, disguise, yeah.
Speaker 1:The roommate. Okay, wait, wait, he ditched his hat. So the police show up pretty quickly after receiving the call. They had a canine unit that tracked him and found some clothing and the gun. They also see a guy walking without a coat and he looks a little out of place, so they stop, stop him. So I just want to put an aside here. While Alaska is cold, you get used to the cold and there are a lot of people who walk around without jackets when it's really really cold out Understandable. I was one of them at 12 or 13. And granted, I was an idiot, 12 or 13-year-old.
Speaker 2:I feel like when you're younger, you're also more immune to extreme weather.
Speaker 1:Being uncomfortable, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I remember I used to walk around all summer long too, yeah, In 100 degree weather or whatever, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I don't know, my body's like no more. If it's over 65, it's no bueno, no good.
Speaker 2:I used to not even carry water, which I'm sure is inconceivable. But that was like pre when I started carrying my water bottle. But, like, because in New Mexico they have or used to have I don't know if they still have, but they used to have a law that you can't like deny somebody water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, deny somebody water, yeah, and so I would just, if I was thirsty, I would just stop, like usually like a little doctor's office, because they would always have like water coolers and like those paper cups and I would just like drink a bunch of water and then go on my way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, yeah, I was the opposite. I used to carry my water with me all the time, and now I hardly ever carry it. And I've been leaving stuff everywhere, so that's mainly why.
Speaker 2:Then you won't piss off Hugh Grant. Apparently, one of his pet peeves are people who carry water bottles.
Speaker 1:He's got a lot of pet peeves he does.
Speaker 2:Life is a giant pet peeve for him. Oh, he's lucky, he's hot yeah.
Speaker 1:Like he's curmudgeonly but, he's fun. Yeah, if he were an american curmudgeon, he wouldn't be nearly as tolerant tolerable.
Speaker 2:It's that british accent very true, like it.
Speaker 1:It elevates everything it does, it does not always.
Speaker 2:I mean like, for example, pierce morgan right yeah fuck him yeah, but for hugh grant it works well. I mean, hugh grant is not like pierce morgan no, he's just irritated by the world. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1:So, um, this dude's out walking, he doesn't have a coat and he seems out of place, and when the police stop him, it's they it's hansen, by the way, in case you didn't guess. He told police he was out walking because he had been out driving and he started to feel woozy, so he had parked and gotten out. Fair, I suppose. When he was told why they had stopped him, his response was basically that if he did it, he didn't remember because he blacked out yeah stick a pin in that.
Speaker 1:We're gonna come back to it, boop. Okay, good job. The police tried to get the da to charge him with attempted kidnapping, but he wouldn't go for it. So they charged him with assault with a dangerous weapon. Despite Despite the seriousness of the charge, hansen was released on his own recognizance. One of the officers knew that he had been released on his recognizance and that he just knew in his gut that that was not going to be the last they would hear of Robert Hansen. So he did something that people apparently it wasn't the done thing back then, but he started a sex offender book and he put robert hansen's picture front page nice. And so then they kept adding to it every time they came across a sex offender. That's pretty awesome in 1971, in alaska as well. I shit on alaska. It's a pretty place. Yeah, there are some.
Speaker 2:There are some people there yeah, no, did I mention I mentioned last time, right, that one time I read some kind of article about like how, like insanely high like rape and sexual assault is in alaska yeah, yeah, I think you said that, okay, so.
Speaker 1:So one month later, patty Roberts, who had done some dancing at a nightclub in Anchorage, had stopped at a cafe to get a hot tea. She remembered she had left her car running, so she left the cafe to go out and turn off the engine. I don't know how you would forget something like that, but yeah. I mean, I suppose I would probably forget something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay. So she turns off the engine and then a man with a gun forces her into his car. They drive a bit and then he stops and binds her with shoelaces. He tells her that if he's going to take her down to the Kenai, which is a few hours south of Anchorage, and that they would be together for a few days, he tells her he would not kill her. I'm sorry, he told her he would kill her and anybody who saw her if she tried to do anything. Now, Kenai oh, I just said this, it's about three hours south of Anchorage and it's basically the middle of nowhere, particularly back then. Now I looked on google maps and it seems to be fairly populated. I mean, there's still huge swaths of right of just nature, but um, that's where the sasquatch lives uh, so there are only pockets of people that live that far south.
Speaker 1:And he also would have her undress, like he would stop, he would have her take off some clothing and they would get back in the car so that she wouldn't or couldn't run away. They stop at the sunrise motel and he told her she better not do anything stupid or he'd kill her, and he, of course, spent the night raping her. You hear on the episode. You hear him talking about it and basically what he says is that she did whatever he wanted, like she was clearly like letting him do whatever he wanted in the hopes that she would get away, but he learned at that point that he really liked that, that she would be so submissive yeah, that's gross. The next morning he told her she was good, like good at what she did and that he liked her, so he was going to take her to a cabin. She was terrified and tried talking to him and told him that she wouldn't tell on him that she was a single mother, and in the course of the conversation he learned that her child was staying with her parents. Now, at some point he decided to go through her purse and he finds a piece of paper with her child's name on it, as well as her dad's name and their address. So he told her that he would let her go, but if she ever told on him he would hurt her parents and her child, and he ultimately took her back to the cafe where her car was parked and he let her go.
Speaker 1:Now patty's dad was a state trooper, so they say that in a sentence and then they never go back to it. So I don't know if that's the reason why she ultimately went to the police, yeah or um, if it's just to illustrate like how close he right he came to getting caught. So Patty was very reluctant to go to the police but she did and she told them what happened. The trooper she spoke to called the Anchorage police and said they had a rape victim and wanted to look at the sex offender book. They had started and said they had a rape victim and wanted to look at the sex offender book. They had started and of course, as I said before, hansen was the very first picture in the book.
Speaker 1:Patty identified him right away. They got an arrest warrant, went to his house and arrested him. Now he told police that he had hired Patty and that there was a fight over money. By the end of 1971, hansen was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in both the Susie Hepburn and Patty Roberts cases. He was also charged with kidnapping and raping Patty. Now I just want to point out, because they shit on the police a lot in this documentary and, granted, even they admitted they let a lot of these girls down, women down, but I just want to point out that they did arrest and charge him with these cases.
Speaker 2:It is the prosecutor who decided not to press charges in Patty's case, so which really incensed a couple of the investigators turn your ire onto the prosecutor in this instance in this particular one, I would say, yes, the patty's case was incredibly strong and um, I feel like sorry to interrupt, but I feel like there's so many like issues, right, kinks with the whole fucking justice system, right, and like, if one party you know fucks up, like in this case the prosecutor, in some cases the police, then it just fucks the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, it does. The prosecutor was reluctant because, as he felt that, taking a case like Patty's, where she is a dancer and there is some question about whether or not she was also taking money in exchange for sexual favors, that the jury would prejudge the victim because of that. Okay, so the DA drops Patty's case and decides to go hard on Susie. In the end they make a deal, so Hansen wouldn't have to go to trial, and he then, of course, learned an indirect but very valuable lesson If you go after the dancers or the sex workers, they probably won't prosecute. Go after the dancers or the sex workers, they probably won't prosecute. Yeah now, if you remember, hansen had told police that he didn't remember attacking suzy, and so a psych eval was ordered and they concluded that he had disassociative personality disorder, with schizophrenia, with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1:So in March. That doesn't really have a whole lot to do with anything, but that's just a thing that happened, yeah. So now, if you remember, Hansen had told police that he didn't. Oh, I'm sorry, I already did that In March 1972, he pled guilty to the assault with a dangerous weapon charge in Susie's case and was sentenced to five years in prison. You want to get really mad.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Guess how much time he served. How much Three months. Oh, fuck Come on, and then he was transferred to a halfway house for like three months, that's like how much time that dinosaur smuggler served, and I was pissed about his sentence. I know God. Okay, we'll talk about that when we get to that.
Speaker 2:I thought Is this the time to talk about that book?
Speaker 1:The dinosaur book? Not yet Today. Yeah, okay, yeah. So I think they said that he went to a halfway house for three months, but he maybe had gone for a few years, but regardless he is out. What a fucking dick. So currently he's out and in 1972 he gets out after three months. So he's out.
Speaker 2:It was march he got sent in so he got out in june my phone.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that the ringer was on In 1976, robert Hansen tries to steal a chainsaw from a Fred Meyer department store. Dude's an idiot. He said he wanted to give it to his dad for his birthday.
Speaker 2:Now in case you're keeping count After he cut up some women with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or, in case you're not keeping account, this is his third felony yeah, so there's a question about whether or not they should throw the book at him. But his wife, being the dutiful uber-religious woman she was, possibly is I don't know if she's still alive, possibly is I don't know if she's still alive Got a bunch of people to come forward and say that Hansen was really a good guy and that he deserves a break. He gets five years. But his lawyer appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court. They argue that he could be a productive member of society as long as he can get treatment for his mental illness.
Speaker 2:His alleged DID and schizophrenia yes.
Speaker 1:He served 16 months before he was released on parole. He served longer for stealing a fucking chainsaw than he did for trying to abduct a woman that's about right, that's that's.
Speaker 2:That's about how society views ladies.
Speaker 1:We are 51 of the population.
Speaker 2:Can we please all just band together and take over, please, right, please well, that would be great if, like whatever bad actors and religion and all these things, didn't set women and non-binary people against each other.
Speaker 1:True, I know. That's why I'm saying let's overthrow everything, let's just all band together, we'll figure that shit out later let's just get to the root of the problem here, which is men. I love guys. I don't know why. I don't know why I find them attractive and there are good men. My grandpa was a really really good guy and I know there are really really good men out there, but men as far as the institution as far as the institutions are, yeah, the institution are yeah, the institution of patriarchy.
Speaker 2:Give us a try. Yeah, let us do it. It's true, we can't possibly make it any worse. We're so fucking competent. You know that. We're so competent, we are competent, you know. Even even I feel like myself, like I. You not know how to do that, or how can you not?
Speaker 1:know, actually really funny to be at the front of the class looking at students, because the women are constantly rolling their eyes. Yeah, at the shit that you know I'm teaching them right like what men are doing, what they're saying, yeah, what they're writing down for perpetuity, and the dudes are just impassive you know, like what's wrong with that right?
Speaker 2:it's like really, really, you can't see it, just the fucking just the fucking audacity, like I remember when I was in school and many, many years ago and I was taking intro to political science which is funny because government was my major, so I was really just starting out we had some section and it was talking about women's rights or something, and then some whatever 18, 19-year-old white dude just stands up and he's like, well, women, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like don't fucking speak for women, just blah, blah. And I'm like don't fucking speak for women, just sit the fuck down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Yep, I said that too, because you know, you know me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've got a big mouth. I was like you need to sit down and not speak for women.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that we're off off, we're gonna keep that rant for I know a while there's more. I've got. I've got, I think, five pages more, okay, okay so we're all pissed on the table we're all pissed. He served 16 months for a chainsaw, three months for nearly kidnapping a woman, and he gets released on parole because they say, okay, he'll get mental health issues. Guess what he did? He didn't get any, of course, of course not. And oh, you want to be even more mad? Okay, go for it. He was released without any supervision.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:So he was released on parole without any consequence, like he didn't have to do anything. He didn't have to check in with anybody, yeah, ever.
Speaker 2:No, like piss tests or.
Speaker 1:Nothing. That's crazy it is fucking crazy. Okay, I'm sorry I'm going to say the F word a lot in this. If grandma ever listens to it, fuck this. She accidentally somehow got into, I don't know, spotify or apple podcast or something a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Did she listen to one of our podcasts?
Speaker 1:no, she accidentally pressed play on another true crime podcast where, like every few words is a swear word, particularly an f word, and she couldn't figure out how to turn it off because she didn't even know how she turned it on. So she like sat there for the whole time and they just kept playing because she sat there and listened to it because she didn't know.
Speaker 2:She didn't know how to turn it off and they just kept playing.
Speaker 1:Another podcast, another podcast, the same but like a new episode. And so when I I usually call my grandmother before I come home so she can put the dogs in the room, so they don't get out, and she was like please, hurry home, I can't listen to. Like there's F words like every few things, like I hope this isn't your show. I was like dude, that's a guy. I don't think either of us sound like men. Yeah, I was like we swear, but Maybe not that much.
Speaker 1:Not that much, no, but I am going to be swearing in this. We do this one.
Speaker 2:A lot Not safe for work, things I do.
Speaker 1:We do, I certainly do.
Speaker 2:I feel like I say fuck a lot. Yeah, I do. We talked about that ginger lube, ginger flavored anal lube no, it's a ginger plug.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. So yeah, maybe she shouldn't listen to our episode.
Speaker 1:You can't see listeners, but katie just turned bright red yeah, I can't believe the things I've revealed on this podcast. Yeah, um, and I edit it and still let it go out, right, god, okay. So he's released totally unsupervised. So we're going to fast forward to 1979. And, if you remember, I mentioned that a body of a woman had been found near the Eklutna power line. Now I didn't really go into it, but it was one of the last things I said in the last episode.
Speaker 1:She is referred to as Eklutna Annie. Hansen told police that he couldn't remember if she was a dancer or a sex worker, but that he was taking her out into the wilderness. But his car got stuck and as he was trying to get it unstuck, she started to run. He ran after her, tripped her, got her on the ground. She begged for her life, no-transcript. He stabbed her and I believe it was with her own knife that she had kept in her purse. Her body was found the following year 1980, by the Eklutna power lines. That's why she's called Eklutna Annie. They are still, to this day, unable to identify her. She is believed to be between 16 and 25 years old. Yeah, we'll get to the ages at the end.
Speaker 2:I used to carry a knife when I was younger and I used to walk all around town and I used to carry like a big ass bowie knife, yeah, in my bag, but these days, yeah, if, if I had to do that again, I would carry like pepper spray or something instead. Yeah, for that very.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they see a lot of people, not just women but men too and raped at least three or four women before Eklutna, annie Mm-hmm. So in May 1980, 23-year-old Joanna Messina was camping out in Seward, alaska. She was originally from New York and was trained as a nurse, and she had a dog with her. It's not going to end well. Just FYI, hanson and Joanna met in.
Speaker 2:It's not going to end well for the doggy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or the woman Hanson and Joanna met in the harbor area in Seward where he had a boat. They began to talk and, according to him, it turned a little flirtatious and he thought that she really According to him. It turned a little flirtatious and he thought that she really according to him and he thought she was really nice that she liked him. For him that's kind of a big thing with his. Yeah, the women he picks uh and he wanted to.
Speaker 2:She liked him for him, so he's gonna murder well hold on, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1:so he wanted to ask her to dinner him. So he's going to murder her. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. So he wanted to ask her to dinner, never mind that he's also married but whatever. He liked, that he believed she wasn't a sex worker and that, as I said, she maybe liked him for him and not his money.
Speaker 2:How would she know about his money, didn't he just fucking met? Hold on.
Speaker 1:But well, not that he had a lot of money, but that sex workers, you get paid for sex, so you want the money that's what I see.
Speaker 2:That's okay. So that's the standard that he's going by.
Speaker 1:Yeah but hold on. As the day wore on, she allegedly told him she didn't have any money to get home and asked him if he did, and he also claimed that she propositioned him. Whether she did or not, in his mind she was now a prostitute. Oh, he drove her and her dog outside of seward where he asked uh, where she allegedly equals okay to murder in his mind yes.
Speaker 1:So he drove her and her dog outside of seward where she asked for money again. Allegedly. He claimed that he threw five dollars in her face, basically telling her that that's all she's worth, and they started fighting. At some point he struck her, uh, in the head with the end of the shotgun and then shot her twice and the dog once. Wow, he threw her into a gravel, pit, the gun into the river and then dumped the dog and her clothes in some woodland. So she's another victim of course.
Speaker 2:I mean of course he's a horrible person, he's a serial killer, but how horrible, yeah, plus. So he's like, he's like looking for prostitutes, but then he's like, oh, I don't think she's a prostitute so she is so great, even though, like he was looking I don't think he was to solicit.
Speaker 1:I don't think he was looking for prostitute at that point. Okay.
Speaker 2:But that's like one of his main victim types is prostitutes. Yes, that is something that he actively pursues to solicit prostitutes so that he can target them for victimization.
Speaker 1:Yes, but there are also a number of victims who are not prostitutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That apparently ticked him off. They're prostitutey enough according to his standards, exactly like they?
Speaker 1:they reject him.
Speaker 2:I think is the like if you ask for a couple of bucks for a ride. I guess that makes you a prostitute it probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1:It probably wouldn't he. He would see it as a rejection that he is not wanted just as he is, that they only want him, they're only using him. He has an issue with women and being used. Well, obviously, yeah, I know that's obvious, but I mean that's what he's thinking in his head. He wants to have this loving relationship with a woman who wants him for him, never mind that that's his wife. But they always seem to reject him. And, of course, because he's a fucking creeper, of course I never consider that.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's you exactly okay.
Speaker 1:Now going forward, uh, to where we left off in the last episode in 1983, we have, I believe, his. I forgot to write his title down here. I think it was Sergeant Glenn Fulthe. He was investigating the murrays of Sherry Margo and Paula Golding, as well as the other missing dancers. Sherry and Paula's bodies had been found in 1983, or maybe 82. Paula's bodies had been found in 1983, or maybe 82. Falthy went to the FBI and asked the Behavioral Science Unit to develop a profile of the subject responsible for the crimes. So the profile said the subject. It said many things, but these are the things that should stand out. The profile said the subject would be an avid hunter with a speech impediment. Robert Hansen was an avid hunter with a speech impediment.
Speaker 2:He would have an. How do they know?
Speaker 1:he would have a speech impediment. I have no idea he would have an extremely religious wife and would probably be which he did and he would probably be a very successful businessman, which he was Also. The police had found shell casings in the graves of Sherry and Paula, so they sent them off to the FBI as well, and the FBI determined that they had come from the same weapon, specifically a Mini-14.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that means or what that looks like, but I was kind of staring off off, but I was thinking about how in the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, the serial killer that Will Graham is trying to pursue, francis Dollarhide, right, the red dragon, he has a speech impediment caused by, like a cleft palate when he was a kid and that's part of their killers that he's done profiles of. I wonder if he worked on this speech impediment.
Speaker 2:Like a big thing, do you think I'm? I'm quite. I mean, I was born with a speech impediment a lot of children are yeah, so I'm like what is it about that? That?
Speaker 1:It could be. I mean, I don't know, I'm just, you know, throwing things at the wall, but maybe it's the prostitution thing, like if you pay somebody they can't judge you, right, I mean, they can, but they're not going to judge you for your speech impediment. So it's about their insecurity with the speech impediment.
Speaker 1:It's insecurity and I don't know why. Speech impediment specifically. Now that's what they pulled out, that's what the documentary pulled out. The thing was pages long so there might have been other things, Like if he didn't have a speech impediment, maybe he had some sort of disfigurement or something.
Speaker 2:I wonder if that is more of an issue I don't know like historically than than currently, because I, you know, thinking about like older media and stuff, there's often characterizations of people who have stutters or other types of speech impediments, is like this, is like a comedic trope or something like that, and I wonder if that was something that really well, yeah, if you remember, he was made fun of in high school and like I wonder if that is maybe not as big of a thing anymore.
Speaker 2:Like I remember when I was a kid myself and, uh, my sisters also, um, people used to often think that our speech impediment was like an accent, like a foreign accent. But I don't remember being particularly the only. I remember being mocked by my older siblings about it, but not particularly by others, um, uh, but it was something that I I kind of outgrew, uh. Well, I mean, I still have it occasionally, like sometimes it will slip through and I'll say like an r, as a w? Um, but it was something that I remember particularly like working on, because I wanted to be able to pronounce those words correctly and not have people comment about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I mean maybe the making fun of and the using it as tropes. Maybe it's because there had been a concerted like anti-bullying or like a greater emphasis on being kind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Starting in like our generation.
Speaker 2:And I mean. Yet it's often like white men that people are like oh, poor thing, look at their past and they were bullied, yeah, and, and you just using that as justification.
Speaker 1:It's absolute bullshit. Yes, and, and I didn't mean to imply that's no excuse, I'm just saying I think and I don't think that you did, but I was.
Speaker 2:I just it's a stupid thing.
Speaker 1:It's a stupid thing I mean and obviously I don't think it's because he was bullied that he does this. He enjoys it. It's just his. His choice of victim, I think, is comes from that yeah yeah, yeah, he would do that, whatever, you know no.
Speaker 2:No doubt it ties into that and those experiences.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I'm just saying that it's not an excuse, not at all. Exactly. Yeah, I remember when Columbine happened, they were always like they were bullied blah blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, and also they like blame, everyone like blame, like Marilyn Manson. Yeah, yeah or whatever, although I know he's got his share of problems. But, like you know, just blame anybody but the actual shooters. Yeah, yeah, didn't they even interview Marilyn Manson? They were like do you feel responsible?
Speaker 1:That's so absurd. It is absurd yeah.
Speaker 2:Crazy times, although I think crazier now, but in a different way. In a different way, I mean, we still do do that to a lesser extent, particularly, I think more so with female artists. We're like how dare you produce this explicit content? What if children listen?
Speaker 1:to this. Yeah, like they aren't listening to males. Right Men do it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and it's like these people are adults, they're producing content for adults. Yeah, and like, don't let your kids listen to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, now off that rant again. This is going to turn into a very long episode, sorry guys, but they don't have the weapon. They don't have fingerprints or fibers to connect Hansen or anyone to the murders, and obviously I think this is either just before DNA became really a thing or DNA is super, super new, because it's like early 80s Fulfi, with help from the FBI, put together a search warrant for Hansen's home.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And they know it's about time. Yeah, they know that serial killers tend to keep mementos of their kills and hide them and bring them out at select periods of time to relive said kill. One of the things they're looking for is Sherry Morrow's arrowhead necklace. Yeah, his plane, his home and his bakery. The FBI take him in for questioning Now in order to try and get him to confess. They try to like psych him out right. They put a bunch of case files all over the interview desk. They had photos of the victims. They had a big map of the Knick with a circle drawn saying Bob Hansen was spotted there. Hansen denies it at first, of course, and they try to call his bluff by saying that they know the shell casings are his. He claims that they would probably find them all over Alaska because he would go up in his plane and shoot at wolves.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Sarah Palin of it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't remember her name. Name, but that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, god, he's got an excuse for everything they throw at him. Yeah, all they really want is something to hold him so that they can keep him in jail in order to continue building their evidence. Now the searches aren't going well. Either they aren't really finding any mementos or a 223, or was it 233?, I don't remember and after a few hours, hansen asked for a lawyer.
Speaker 1:So they got to stop questioning him. What is this? Oh so I wrote bodies, but I meant buddies. Hanson had some of his buddies give false alibis for him in the case of Cindy Poulsen.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely crazy that they would.
Speaker 1:Well, they don't believe he's a serial killer, they think he just he's like look, I did it, but I don't want my wife to know. Basically is what he said. So, as it turns out, the wife of one of the men drove by the Hansen house while it was being searched, saw and saw what the police were doing. I don't know if she, like, went up to the police and asked what they were doing or if she just figured it out on her own. Either way, she called her husband and basically told him to stop covering for Hansen and tell police the truth. And he does. Once he told the police, the other friend did too. Yeah, after his interrogation with police, hansen was charged with the kidnapping and rape of cindy. But they did, uh, but they still need evidence against him for the murders. And they do finally find some. First, an officer looks in the attic and under some insulation he finds a stash of guns and some bags with jewelry and driver's licenses in it yeah most importantly, they find the arrowhead necklace to connect him with sherry morrow.
Speaker 1:Then they find an aviation map with 24 X's marked on it behind the headboard of his bed. Now, they don't think much of it. At first they think maybe the marks are just hunting spots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're hunting spots, yeah just not for moose, not for Moose. And they wind up, though, showing it to the guy who investigated the murder of Joanna Mussina. And they asked him where he found her body and he pointed at the map and he said here, you already marked it. Yeah, and then they knew that it's a map of where the bodies were buried. Yeah, four months later, hansen is sitting in jail awaiting the trial for the kidnapping and rape of cindy and he still has not been charged with a single murder.
Speaker 1:Wow, now it was very difficult to have an airtight case against hansen and he had not confessed to any of the murders. So it's still very, very, very circumstantial and also apparently very complicated with a lot of legalities. The authorities hint though, uh, that they've got more information. They don't, but they claim they do. And in february 1984 they get a call from Hansen's attorneys saying that he wanted to confess. Yeah, he readily confesses to the four the police know of the four murders Sherry Morrow, joanna Messina, eklutna, annie and Paula Golding. Yeah, but he makes a mistake and he actually reveals an additional murder. He says he carried her down the railroad tracks and put her out in the river. He didn't know her name or any names of the women he killed and he didn't recognize any of their pictures. He just knew the locations. Just knew the locations. And when he's shown the map that they found in his house, he admits that 17 of those marks denote bodies. So that's 17 of 24.
Speaker 2:So what do the other marks denote?
Speaker 1:Don't know. Hansen agreed to fly with the investigators to the marked grave sites I'm sorry, to the grave sites so that they could mark them and they would be able to find the victims. Once the snow thawed he was able to recall within a few feet where he left the bodies, going back all the way to the 70s, that's. I mean, I guess that's not really all that surprising, but considering I can't remember what I ate for dinner last night Right In the end. The remains of 12 bodies were recovered when investigators eventually returned to the sites.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hansen confesses to murdering 17 women and raping 30. Based on his map, investigators believe there are probably more and the autopsy reports show that toward the end of his murder spree I don't know if you could really call it a spree, but you know he was really just when they were running. He was really just spraying them with bullets in the back as they ran away and he would also stab them after shooting them as they ran away. Yeah, uh, and he would also stab them after shooting them. The judge handed down the longest sentence he could under the sentencing guidelines of the time, which was 461 years, and the judge was unsparing in his condemnation. Not only did he content condemn hansen, he condemned the courts and the police and, in his estimation or and he also, I'm sorry, condemns everybody along the line that failed, including society at large If they had stopped him in 1971, most, if not all, of those women would have not been raped and or murdered now. Hansen died in prison of natural causes in 2014 so before more than he deserves.
Speaker 2:It is more than he deserves.
Speaker 1:First, I want to mention a couple of things. So first, well, the show and other shows regarding this case, as well as podcasts, and that includes ours tend to focus on Sherry Eklutna, annie, paula, joanna yeah, I have Paula twice. Okay. So Sherry Eklutna, annie, paula, and Joanna and Cindy that's who I meant all of whom were either dancers or sex workers, or allegedly. Some of his victims, though, were not, and a few were actually teenagers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We tend not to talk about those. So I have a list of other victims. Okay so, celia Beth Van Zatten, age 18. Celia beth van satin, age 18. Hansen has denied killing her, and he also denies killing any of the other women that were not involved in sex work. Yeah, okay so, celia. Celia beth van zieten.
Speaker 1:Megan siobhan emmerich, age 17. Mary kathleen phil Roxanne Eastlin, age 24. Her body has never been found. Lisa Futrell, f-u-t-r-e-l-l, age 41. Andrea Mona Fish-Altieri, age 24. Her body has also never been found. Sue Luna, age 23. Robin Pilkey, age 19. They found her partial remains in 1984, but she was not identified until 2021. D'lynn Sugar. Renee Frey, age 22. She was found in 1985, but was not identified until 1989. Malai Larson, age 28. Teresa Watson, age 22. Angela Lynn Federn, age 24. Tamara Tammy Pedersen, age 20. So those are the known victims. I should say I should say um, the. Cecilia beth van satin um, they think he did, if I remember incorrectly, he denies it. They're not for sure, but they're like pretty sure, sure enough to like count her. Yeah, um, so that's, that's the end of that. It's a lot of victims. It is a lot of victims, and those are just the women he killed. That doesn't include the 30 women he raped or more.
Speaker 1:We got any more to say about that, or?
Speaker 2:that's fucked up.
Speaker 1:It is fucked up it is fucked up and you know it's really fucked up. I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the trope in shows of a person taking people, like dumping them off into a wilderness or something and hunting them down. I know that sounds terrible, but in my fiction I do tend to enjoy that, because I feel so weird to say enjoy. I am fascinated by the idea that a person can do that, like I'm not. I know people can kill, but like that, like that is extreme to me, to me and um, it's actually. That trope is usually based on a, on a short story that was written, I think, in like the 1920s or something, but this case blends into that well, and so like a lot of shows and episodes of crime shows, uh, like fictional crime shows, like svu. Yeah, take something like robert hansen and you know, taking women out into the woods and hunting them down.
Speaker 2:I thought it was so telling that he doesn't remember like their names or their faces, yeah, but he remembers like when and where he killed them yeah, but um, what I was, what I was saying, is like part of me like really feels I don't know.
Speaker 1:I question, I guess, whether or not shows like that have a responsibility not to do that, to perpetuate that. You know, I go both ways. I go both ways I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because I'm not saying they influence anybody to do it. I'm just saying, in a way, it's like continuing to publicize the killer right and make money off the death of victims. Yep, you know, yeah, good point, but I, you know, and I also question things like like this, like what we're doing. You know we're also putting his name out there. I said his name many times. Yep, um, but what I found interesting about that episode? Okay, so I mentioned it in the first part, but I didn't mention it here. The episode I'm referring to is Very Scary People. There are two parts. Yeah, the people that were interviewed for this kept calling him Bob, like they knew him personally.
Speaker 2:Right, like he's their pal or something, yeah.
Speaker 1:And don't get me wrong, I don't think that these people have any sort of admiration or anything with him, but it's so weird. It's just so casual, it's so casual, yeah, that they would call him by that moniker rather than Robert or Hansen or the killer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously we're here doing this, talking about this stuff, so I mean I think, yeah, it's a hard what's the word? It's a hard line to walk you know, because it's like we want to know like what happened? Why did it happen? Like you know who are these people who are capable of doing this, but at the same time, you know it's. You know we don't want to glorify it in any kind of fashion or celebritize it, you know what I mean yeah.
Speaker 2:That kind of, you know, almost celebrity level worship of some kinds of serial killers, you know, like the more well-known ones particularly, but overall the genre, yeah, genre. So, even that is, yeah, you know, yeah, kind of almost fictionalizing it. Yeah, and it's not, yeah, you know. But uh, I mean, I would hope that our listeners know that we're not glorifying or no, I mean, I don't think anybody who listens to true crime. We're not like serial killer fangirls.
Speaker 1:No, no, and I don't think most true crime is. I mean, it's out there, but that's not so much what it is anymore. Yeah, people are, I think people are Much more sensitive and aware of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pitfall yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, aware of that. Yeah, pitfall, yeah, okay, so um, do you want?
Speaker 2:to do your the rest of your person and then we talk about the book. Ah, yes, we do have to go back to my missing person, which seems like possibly, like I said, foul play as well. But yeah, that caught my eye because it is a case from our town. So vital statistics Nicholas is a white male who was born July 11, 1979. He has brown hair and hazel eyes and was last seen wearing a yellow t-shirt with lettering on the front, multi-pocket blue jeans and white high-top sneakers, and he was 12 at the time of his disappearance. His mother, edith, is a white female, was born December 19th 1955. She has brown hair and blue eyes and she wears glasses. Her nickname is Sis and she may use the last name, deweese, or the name Tanya Deweese or Tanya Warner, and she was 35 at the time of her disappearance. The circumstances the two were last seen in student housing in Las Cruces. They left New Mexico State University at the time. Seven days later, edith's husband filed a missing persons report. Edith left behind her three-year-old son, andrew. Nicholas was her child from a previous marriage. That's kind of suspicious. Yeah, it is. They are classified as endangered missing. So this has a little section about theories about their disappearance, it says.
Speaker 2:From looking at the facts it's apparent that Nicholas and Edith were missing voluntarily, at least at first. Edith apparently intended to leave her husband and take Nicholas with her. They took personal belongings and money. Where does a person go if they have to get away fast and have cash and gold and silver on them? Las Cruces is only 50 miles from the Mexican border. It seems natural Edith and Nicholas would go there. It's easy to cross the border where it used to be yeah, and they could lay low for a while and live cheaply without having trouble from Edith's husband.
Speaker 2:Many Americans who wanted to avoid scrutiny for one reason or the other ended up in Mexico. This would also explain why there has been no activity on Edith's social security number since her disappearance in 1991. She would have had no use for the number in a foreign country. However, it seems unlikely that Edith and Nicholas intended to be gone this long. Edith never saw her other son again and Nicholas never saw his biological father again. Women leave their husbands every day, but few of them have no contact with their loved ones for over 10 years afterwards.
Speaker 2:The two likeliest scenarios are these that Edith and Nicholas were running from something a lot more serious than is apparent, serious enough to cause her to jettison her other child, most of her possessions and her family and friends.
Speaker 2:And they are still hiding in Mexico, possibly in one of the communities of Americans that have sprung up in that country, or they may be in fear of their lives if they return to the States in whatever drove them south, or, more probable, in the author's opinion, edith and Nicholas went to Mexico intending to stay only a few weeks at most, then return and settle back at home, but the border area is rife with crime and would be particularly dangerous for a young woman alone with her child and eleven thousand dollars. Nicholas and edith would be prime targets for violent robbery and since they weren't reported missing for a week, the criminals would have ample time to get away and cover their tracks, in which case edith and nicholas may have run out into the desert Still undiscovered. Either way, the answer to their disappearance probably lies south of the border. I'm surprised they didn't posit the husband.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know what that writer is talking about. I mean, why would she say I'll be back in a few hours if she was planning to leave, because that's going to make that person worry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly I don't know the fact that they say she was planning on leaving her husband, the fact that her and her child from a previous marriage disappeared, but not the child that she had with that husband that she was planning on leaving. That is very suspicious to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why would she take one child and not the other Exactly?
Speaker 2:Exactly, she would take both of her children. She would take both, yeah, but the husband might be willing to eliminate one child that was not his biological child.
Speaker 1:Right and not the other one. Yeah, so yeah, I don't know if I really buy the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure if I buy that either across the border.
Speaker 1:Mexico thing. I mean, maybe they did intend to but that, but didn't succeed. I don't feel like that was the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and they're much more likely to be killed by somebody that they know than by some like anonymous criminal in Mexico, yep.
Speaker 1:When was that written? Because they said it was 10 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when was that? Maybe an older report?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Great question. It looks like they're. It doesn't say when the article was written, but it does have an updated photo and that updated photo like age-progressed photo of Nicholas, which was created in 2015. So maybe the article is from around then that time and it also has a number. Though, if you have information about Nicholas or Edith's whereabout, please email for the lost at this address. Oh, that's just a link. Or you may contact the New Mexico State University Police Department Missing Persons Unit at 5. Oh yeah, this is old because it's got 505. Person's unit at 5. Oh yeah, this is old because it's got 505. 575-646-3311. All tips and emails are kept confidential.
Speaker 1:We say old because just what, like 20 years ago, maybe not even that long we finally had enough people to get two zip, two um area area codes in our state yep, yep, 505 is albuquerque area, yep, down south, we're 575 it's true, so that's why I knew that that was outdated. Yes, yes, I was also making a crack at our state.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Very large, but very small population, yeah, although that is changing, yeah.
Speaker 1:To give you maybe we've said this before, but to give y'all an idea of the population LA has more people in it than this entire state of New Mexico, although we are getting a lot of the Californians here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe we'll get a third area code.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe, okay, and as far as we know, they are still missing.
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Speaker 1:There has no been update. There has not been an update. Update. There has not been an update on their whereabouts. So the book we read was the dinosaur artist obsession, betrayal and the quest for earth's ultimate trophy by page williams. I'm gonna make a confession I only read up to the part where the dinosaur goes back to Mongolia. Okay, there's still an hour left on the audiobook, so I cannot imagine what that is, because, as far as I'm concerned, the book is done. Did anything exciting happen after that?
Speaker 2:Or important about uh, what happened, like with the dinosaur bones after they?
Speaker 1:went back to mongolia, their attempts to make like a museum in mongolia.
Speaker 2:I read that part, yeah, yeah. And then uh, the uh paleontologist lady, or archaeologist lady I think they made a big deal about how she was shunned or something in the paleontology circles because she was technically like an archaeologist where she studied invertebrates or something like that. Some kind of bullshit excuse, of course, why she wasn't good enough, but she uh worked on, uh making like a museum or some kind of exhibit like at the site where the bones were collected because they made like an educational tour bus and they wanted to work on like building a museum like at the site right where the bones are excavated.
Speaker 2:The whole project was forestalled somewhat because then they got new political leaders and shit like that so and uh, the the guy eric, uh, it talked about his whatever marital problems, like he yeah, that was before the dinosaur moon.
Speaker 2:But they got a divorce. Did you see that part? They got a divorce and then he was with this other chick and then they broke up. But then they like got back together and they got married and then they lived on like a fucking boat and he but he was still like under like whatever, like parole or something, and he served three months in prison. Yep and his ex-wife realized that she would never, that he would never give up like hunting fossils and shit like that.
Speaker 2:And so she's like kind of like oh, I'm done with him, but not really obviously because they have kids together, um. And then they uh, like in the end of it they uh, eric and his new wife or whatever, decide they're gonna take their boat around like the coast or something like that. So they fitted it for ocean travel and that was like the end of the book. So not anything really particularly exciting there.
Speaker 1:No, um, I was like I do not really care about this man's story, like no I felt like this entire thing could have been like an atlantic or or new yorker article yeah like a long article yeah careful, but not it didn't. It didn't need to be this long of a book, yeah it could have been a quarter of the book. Very true, there was way too much. Yeah, it could have been a quarter of the book. Very true, there was way too much irrelevant information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like I don't care about his damn love. It's like sorry, not sorry, I don't care about his love story with his wife and how they met and I don't care about his new chick and their fucking boat and all that shit. Yeah, and I didn't you know like I felt some sympathy for the entire profession of independent fossil hunters, but I didn't feel any particular sympathy for this character. Like he obviously knowingly broke the law multiple times and then they're like, oh, but he's a good guy, like take it easy on him, blah, blah, blah. Like come on, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was hoping for more crime and less personal story. Like normally I like personal story, but that was a lot. That was irrelevant, like I didn't need to know his mother's story, Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I liked the bits where it showed flashbacks of other fossil hunters. Yeah, that lady that they talked about on the coast of England. That was pretty cool, even though, again, not super related to the actual crime itself, but I think it is nice to see, well it it?
Speaker 1:it relates to the obsession for dinosaurs, yeah.
Speaker 2:It relates to the obsession of dinosaurs and I think it showed, like you know, like a more positive portrayal of how independent fossil hunters can benefit paleontology and not break the law.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, although she would have been breaking the law now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but at the time I mean that was before the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she was not. A lot of men got credit for a lot of her work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, that's really fucked up. It is, but not surprising fucked up.
Speaker 1:But not surprising. No, not at all. It's early 1900s. So was her name Mary Anning.
Speaker 2:I can't remember.
Speaker 1:I used to know her name because of my thesis.
Speaker 2:Mary.
Speaker 1:Anning sounds right.
Speaker 2:Mary Amming sounds right. Even that, though, like I'm not sure I needed to know that her, like older sister, died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no no, that was irrelevant as well. Yeah, I liked the science history bit. I mean, that's my wheelhouse.
Speaker 2:That's what.
Speaker 1:I got my degree in and I enjoyed the stuff about the actual paleontology, the actual science, the division and the discussion of, like the lay person and the academic, because that happens in history Exactly A lot the thing about that Tucson like rock show.
Speaker 2:And that was really interesting. Yeah, I thought.
Speaker 1:And also, you know, a discussion of what does history, who does history belong to Exactly? And we're still dealing with that question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who gets to?
Speaker 1:study it? Who gets to own it? Who gets to study it? Who gets to own it? Who gets to own?
Speaker 2:it who?
Speaker 1:gets to study? Who gets to own it um?
Speaker 2:but uh, so so much of it was irrelevant. Yep, I was so bored. Yeah, there was a lot of irrelevant stuff and yeah there are definitely parts where I.
Speaker 1:I was more bored with this than I was with helder Skelter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was mostly horrified by Helder Skelter.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, horror was that one.
Speaker 2:But yeah, even yeah, helder Skelter definitely got long-winded bits. Yeah, it just got. Especially parts where the author is like building himself up and like I don't care about you dude.
Speaker 1:Well, I just mean in the sense that there's a lot of information in Helder Skelter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is a lot of information. Yeah, it's like 500 pages of information.
Speaker 2:This is a lot of information too, and not all of it is no, no, and I I understand that she's trying to show eric's obsession yeah and um, but I think she could have done it in a few paragraphs rather than 50 pages that he had to take these bones and put them together and make it into an actual, complete and realistic, lifelike-looking. He clearly had a gift, yeah, and so that work was something that I hadn't really thought about too much or? Enough appreciation for and in that sense I was sad for him because he did all that work to put it together, yeah, and didn't get anything in return for that.
Speaker 1:But I'm like it's also illegal but you broke the law and he knew that it was illegal.
Speaker 2:Like if, if like someone had, if someone had uncovered that legally, and then been like can you put this together and I'm gonna pay you for it? Like that's the way to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But so I did feel slightly bad for him about that. But I was like you knew you were breaking the law of getting these bones in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to me how people get so obsessive Because I mean this is a dinosaur, but there's books about you getting super obsessed with an orchid. You know, there's tulip mania, yeah, and it's insane. Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't say it's insane it is extreme, it is insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't say it's insane, it is extreme. It is extreme. Yeah, we didn't really say what the book is about, so in case you didn't read it, it is about a people paleontologists, both lay and academic. In this particular case, it's about a layperson who is obsessed with dinosaurs and fossils and finding them and putting them together. And he goes to Mongolia and finds the bones of a type of Tyrannosaurus, tyrannosaurus batar. Yeah, is that what it's called? Yeah, tyrannosaurus, tyrannosaurus batar, is that what it's called? And um, he illegally brings it back to the united states, puts it together, tries to sell it through the hair. Is it the heritage museum? Um, and uh, he did all of that illegally. And the f not the fbi the federal government gets involved and it was because of that paleontologist lady, because she was present at the auction.
Speaker 1:She heard about the auction and knew that that type of dinosaur is only native to mongolia yes, yeah, I should have mentioned that there is a, a mongolian paleontologist, a woman, who realizes that he should not have that.
Speaker 2:And so she's the one who.
Speaker 1:So she starts stuff and gets Mongolia involved and the American federal government gets involved and Eric is found guilty and he is sentenced to prison.
Speaker 2:She should have gotten so much more credit for that.
Speaker 1:She should have gotten so much more credit for that. Yeah, so much more credit for that. She should have gotten so much more credit for that. Yeah, but it's a very long book for what it is. Why couldn't we have more story from that lady? Background story from that lady? Yeah, yeah, but anyway it's, I don't know it's not my favorite. The crime didn't even happen until like halfway through the book.
Speaker 2:I also wanted to know a little bit more about like they kind of touch on, like how celebrities buy these bones and like things like that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's either Nicolas Cage or Leonardo. Dicaprio, both of them. Shame on you, leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage. Shame.
Speaker 2:Shame. Well, Nicolas, they both gave back their bones, but they said Leonardo DiCaprio, quote unquote, upgraded his to a real T-Rex skull. So I was like you didn't learn your lesson, Leo, Maybe Nicolas Cage did. They didn't say anything about him getting a new one Kind of wanted to know more about that aspect, like who's buying these and and like you know what I mean, like having them in their homes, and so they did touch on that a bit, but I wanted to know more about that aspect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because you can't like it's such. They talk about how it's such a hot business. Yeah so obviously there's quite a number of people who are in the market for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry, paige Williams, I was not a fan of your book. Yeah, could have been an article. Maybe it was an article. I think it started as an article. Yeah, yeah, it's too much of a book, or a shorter book yeah, a shorter book. So do we have anything more to say about the book? Um, we kind of just trashed it. Sorry page williams. It was well written, I mean like it was a readable. It was readable book yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I expected to be more titillated.
Speaker 1:I did too. It sounded like it was going to be a fun ride.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The fun ride lost about five pages True. So okay, next time Katie's suggestion. Oh well, we do have to pick a new book and I do have a suggestion. All that Is Wicked, a gilded age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind. Okay, by kate winkler dawson. So there's that one. Or the poisoner's handbook by deborah bloom those both sound potentially good.
Speaker 2:Which one would you like to do? Both would be fine with me. Well, let's pick one first and then we'll do the other one.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you want a shorter book this time? Yes, okay, then let's do the Poisoner's Handbook. Okay, and then we'll do All that Is Wicked. So let me grab that book so I can give the information. Okay, so our next book, four episodes from now. I have no idea what episode number that is. It is called the Poisoner's Handbook Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine In Jazz Age, new York. Okay, by Deborah Bloom, b-l-u-m. Alright, so that's our next book, four episodes from now. Okay, we're going to talk a little bit about what we've been reading watching. Let's talk about death of a unicorn. I've been thinking about that movie.
Speaker 2:We went to see death all week in theaters.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is so upper alley. The theme of that movie is so upper alley.
Speaker 2:I was delighted Entertained.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Um okay, I was delighted, I was entertained. Yeah, yeah, okay. So can we summarize it without giving it away?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, great. So let's see, it is a horror comedy.
Speaker 1:Heavier on the horror, less on the comedy, but comedy is still there. It stars Paul Rudd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. Paul rudd, so yeah, it stars paul rudd and jenna ortega. And, um, it is about a father and daughter who are kind of on a working retreat and they things start to go awry when they hit a strange animal that may or may not be a unicorn, yep, as, which I don't think is a spoiler, because it's in the title and also if you watch the trailer right and it gets it away as well. Yeah, so yeah and then yeah things start to go awry.
Speaker 1:yes, involving, involving capitalism. Yep Down with capitalism.
Speaker 2:And there definitely is quite a bit of gore in there. Yes, there is.
Speaker 1:My least favorite kind of gore. I had a lot of shutting my eyes and closing my ears because that's like. My worst kind of horror is the. Yeah, I guess I can't say it, but, um, yeah it's, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:It is a fun movie despite the horror I mean, don't go in with like, super, like it's gonna be this super deep, super profound kind of yeah, no, no, because it's not. No, it definitely. It does have you know its themes and yeah, it's, it's. There's definitely times where you know that dark humor is in there and yeah, yeah, there's some, definitely some funny moments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go in with the idea of being entertained. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely some funny moments. Yeah, go in with the idea of being entertained. Yeah, rather than.
Speaker 2:And I think there's, you know, a bit of an homage definitely to your B-horror creature feature. Yeah, so yeah, Don't expect the creatures to be hyper-realistic. I think that they are a bit unrealistic on purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just a lot of fun. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:If you are into going to see movies in theaters, you know people complain a lot about there not being original films. So you know, if you have the means and the time, this is a good original film to support.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it would be, I think, probably better to see in the theater. Honestly, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think so. Yeah, there's another horror movie out currently as well. That's called the woman in the yard. Uh, so if death of a unicorn is not really your speed, uh, maybe this one is, um. So I've only seen seen the trailer for it as well, but there's like an ominous woman in the yard and she wants the protagonist's children. Is the vibe that I get.
Speaker 2:So, is she a ghost, is she a witch? I don't know, but yeah, so if horror comedy is not your speed, maybe this other one might be, but Death of a Unicorn was good.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking about it all week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all week. Yeah, you have.
Speaker 1:Not because it's profound Again, not because it's profound, I don't know, I just really enjoyed it. It was just a good romp. It was a good afternoon time.
Speaker 2:It was good, a good popcorn feature it's Paul Rudd.
Speaker 1:It was, you know, a good popcorn feature. It's paul rudd. How can you?
Speaker 2:not want to see a movie with paul rudd. It's gory. It doesn't take itself too seriously no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, it's just. It's just a really good time, and now I've been seeing unicorns everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll never look at a unicorn the same. No, I won't.
Speaker 1:Do not piss them off.
Speaker 2:I'm still waiting for, like a big screen killer mermaid situation. Oh God, that would be fun Into the drowning deep.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Please make it a movie.
Speaker 1:That would be fun. That would be a lot of fun. I will never go in the ocean again, though, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if I'm going in the ocean.
Speaker 1:anyway, Okay, so that movie we saw together. Rachel's been seeing some other movies, so since this is already so long, maybe just genre and title. Yeah, and whether or not they were a good time of the movies that I saw, yeah, okay, uh.
Speaker 2:So I saw alien romulus and I thought that was quite good. Um, I five stars, nosferatu 4.5 stars. I sawa found footage, uh, a paraguayan found footage called uh, no interest that one I would say like three and a half stars, like is a lower budget, uh film, an independent film, and I thought that it was pretty fun. Uh. So I think it's worth a watch. Um, and I saw did I talk about go jam haunted asylum last time? Because I feel like maybe I did, but I'm not sure I don't know how long it's been, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I watched go jamylum and I thought that that was a 4, maybe 4.5 stars. It's also found footage, similar kind of haunted theme. I thought it was quite well executed but I was interrupted a lot while I was trying to watch it. That's no fault of the film.
Speaker 1:Y'all saw my Best Friend's Wedding again, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I did see my Best Friend's Wedding, so also a solid film, but I watched it from like a free streaming service and there were so many ads that I found it extremely disruptive yeah. Yep, and I think that that is it. I'm trying. Oh, I also watched the fourth kind, which is this is kind of a semi found footage, like mockumentary style. Um, found footage, uh, alien abduction film starring Mila Jovovich. So I thought that that was pretty good. I would say four stars, pretty solid, alien abduction.
Speaker 2:Nice, if you're into that kind of thing. All right, and yeah, that's it. Nice, cool. What did you read? What did I read? I read Our Share of Night by. I want to say her name is mariana, let me pull up the good reads thing. Yes, mariana enriquez, and can I?
Speaker 1:see the um, the the picture. Yep, okay, I've seen that. That's put like it's.
Speaker 2:Everybody loved it yeah, yeah and yeah, and I did love it as well. It's like a sweeping epic that takes place over like quite a period of time in Argentina, from like the early 1900s until to like the 90s Oops, here we go. The 90s, oops, here we go. And, however, and it jumps around in time and in POV.
Speaker 2:And so I enjoyed that because I found it to be engaging like in that you know it's not just like a linear, you know long story that is told from one perspective. I think it's a little more engaging that way and it has a very heavy backdrop of like Argentinas, like how do you say Argentina?
Speaker 1:Argentinian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, history and political stuff, and it is about basically like a cult that is seeking immortality from dark forces and the characters that they are trying to use in order to make that happen. But, of course, those characters are autonomous people who have their own ideas. It is not a vampire story. So, I heard it was a vampire story and it seems like that was it.
Speaker 1:I thought it was too. I was going to pick it up because it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seems like Well, I think you would still enjoy it because you really like cults and stuff like that. So it is, from what I understand, it takes aspects of like Argentinian, like lore and shit like that, which I'm not super familiar with. But yeah, there's magic, there is the. Some of the characters are somewhat monstrous in a way and there are aspects where you're like this could be adjacent to vampirism, but it's not vampires. So so don't go and think it's vampires, because that was my mistake and I was. I kept waiting for, like, the vampires to fully develop and they it never. That never happened. So I think that, think that, yeah, I enjoyed it a lot, but I would have enjoyed it more if I had known that it wasn't vampires and not expected vampires to occur, right. So, and the other book that I read was sweet pea by cj. Sweet Pea by CJ Skoos. So that is a movie about A movie or a book Sorry, a book.
Speaker 2:It is a book, but it's been made into a show now, I believe, about a female serial killer and it's from her POV. So yeah, I had high hopes for it, like kind of a mayfly situation and they kind of described it as like Bridget Jones is a serial killer and it was kind of that. It was okay. It's okay. It wasn't as good as I had hoped it to be, but it was fine. Yeah, so Well, cool yeah, and I think that is it I think I talked about. Everyone in this room will someday be dead last time.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's it for the new books. Our share of Nightbook was quite a big one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what she said.
Speaker 1:So the only movie I watched was Death of a Unicorn. I got sucked into YouTube way too many times, um, but I found some stuff done by dutch people. I mean, they're minimalists so, yeah, we don't click on that part. But I kind of feel like I you know, the proverbial stork took me to the wrong place. I feel Dutch. They're very direct people. They don't have to be polite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's nice, and they have a word called Nixon, which pretty much means doing nothing, and by doing nothing meaning just staring at the ceiling or watching the clouds go by. Like your mind is clear, you're not doing anything, and they cultivate that you know, and they have a culture that they call sixes, so it's based on their grading system, which is one through ten right.
Speaker 1:Six is what you need to pass. That's what they aim for. They start to worry if you get over a six, because that means that you're not well adjusted. But you're spending too much time on one thing. You should be spending more time with your family, with your friends, doing nothing relaxing. You don't want to be stressed out like we Americans are, and that speaks to my.
Speaker 2:So there's not a culture that everything is work and you have to work until you fucking die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So it just speaks to my. I'm not saying they're lazy, but in America I am lazy, but I feel like if I were in Holland I would be normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have a more balanced perspective.
Speaker 1:They have a more balanced perspective on life, and so, and plus, I loved it, the like five hours I was there the nicest people in the world when Hania tried to get out of her thing. Anyway, that's a story for another time. Yeah, but it was, I don't know. It was just fun watching those videos and knowing that there are people like me out there. I may be a terrible American, but there's somewhere out there that I actually belong, right, so I watched quite a bit of that. But I also, technically, I, read quite a bit. I just didn't finish anything, so I read the majority of the book. We were today the dinosaur artist. I started a memoir called Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa. So Zappa's Frank Zappa daughter, right? Um, she's, does she go by moon unit? I, yeah, or maybe just moon, yeah jesus.
Speaker 2:Just think about how david bowie named his son zoe bowie, but then later he changed his name to douglas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she kept her name. Yeah, um, her brother, I think, changed his name, but, um, it's moon unit. I didn't. You know. You would think that it's moon unit as in like a unit of the moon, but unit as in, family unit. Yeah, so it's separate, anyway it's. It's interesting. I'm not really a celebrity memoir person, but it sounds interesting. And if you don't know who she is, besides being Frank Zappa's daughter, she is the voice of the Valley Girl on his Valley Girl song. She did the gag me with a spoon, I can't really do it, but yeah, and she's also she's written fiction.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I picked it up is because I read her novel many, many, many years ago, like when it first came out. I'm not saying it's a great novel, but I knew it was kind of based on her life and it sounded fascinating. So I read it and it was fascinating for what it was and enjoyed it. So I thought I'd give her a memoir a try. Okay, um, she, let's see. What else did I pick up? I picked up, um, a book called the sirens call by chris hayes. Now he's a journalist but he's kind of obsessed with the idea of attention as a resource, as a valuable resource and it is very valuable today it's one of the big ones, and I'm only 19 pages into it, so I don't really know his arguments or anything.
Speaker 2:I don't think we acknowledge that enough.
Speaker 1:No, I don't, and of course he's like that too, or he's basically saying that too. Oh, the one I'm the farthest in is a book called I keep wanting to say it's the Creative Circle, but it's not the Creative Circle. It's like the Creative Art or Artist or something like that. But it's a book. You notice it. It's like a gray book and it has a giant circle with a little colored in circle in the middle.
Speaker 1:It's by Rick Rubin who is a famous and very successful music producer. I'm blanking on the names that he has produced, but I geared to you. Even if you don't listen to him, you know who they are. Okay and parts of it. I like the name Rick Rubin sounds familiar to me some of it I really like, but he is quite woo-woo and he's also a bit anti-science not a bit, he's a lot, one of the things that irritated me.
Speaker 2:What is it with rich people and being woo-woo? What is?
Speaker 1:that I don't know. He talks about the source, which I mean I could kind like people talk about artistic people, creative people talk about the muse, so fine, whatever, but he's talking about it in the way that, like a lot of tarot readers talk about it and astrologers. But I guess one of the things that irritated me the most is that, like he, I'm fine with the idea. In fact, I applaud the new definition of creativity, which is that we are all creative. Having a solution for a problem is a creative idea a creative endeavor, yeah, very true, starting a business is creative, because I always feel like sorry
Speaker 2:this is like I don't know, like people who are deemed creative are like held up on this, like pedestal. And I always felt frustrated because I never felt like I'm particularly creative, like I don't produce any kind of art.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, but yeah, I am pretty good at like problem solving or like getting out of sticky situations, if I do say so and yeah that is a type of it is it is, he does not.
Speaker 1:However, and this, this part, pissed me off and I had a little argument with him in my head uh, well, maybe screaming match would be better. I screamed at him in my head is that everything is creative except science? Science is not. It is one of the most creative fields out there. It is you can't do, the you can't come up with a hypothesis.
Speaker 2:You have to create a hypothesis.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly you can't do that unless you have an imagination Dude.
Speaker 2:Like have you ever read like an experimental like or a book about experimental physics? Like, how do they come up with this shit? Yeah, it's very creative and like science. Right is the exploration of the world?
Speaker 1:yes, and you cannot explore the world unless you have a curious and creative mind yes, exactly, yeah, um, so that I was a little irritated by that. But other than that, it's mostly musings. It's generally careful, it's generally put in as like a creative self-help book and I can kind of see parts of that, but it's mostly just musings on art and the creative process and creativity itself, and what is it and how do we get it. I mean, it's a fun book to read. It's just parts of it are ridiculous. Yeah, and then we've picked our two new books that we're just reading on our own.
Speaker 2:What's the one you picked? Oh, it's To Be Devoured by Sarah. What is her last name? Tatalinger, I want to say, let me check and it's a horror novella. Yes, it is a horror novella. It's supposed to be like extreme horror that possibly deals with cannibalism. So don't read it while you're eating yeah, it is called to be devoured by sarah tantalinger soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I picked a reread. We're gonna do east of eden by john steinbeck, one of my most favorite lady villains of all time. She's fantastic, catherine, you should see. If you don't want to read the book, you should see the jane seymour version of the movie. It's fairly accurate to the book and she is amazing as catherine in that movie nice, so if you're gonna ever get a hold of it. It's hard to get a hold of, but if it's hard to get a hold of, but if you can, it's a good film.
Speaker 2:With the digitalization of media, some stories are disappearing or very elusive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, so I think that's it. Yeah, what else are we? That's it. So our next book is the Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Bloom. That'll be four episodes from this one. Please like, subscribe, download, review and follow us on our socials. We have them both for the podcast itself and our individual ones. They will be in the description box and thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Oh, email us. Give us an email. Yeah, ask us questions.
Speaker 2:Have you checked it lately?
Speaker 1:I can check it right now, not for a while, okay, so do all those things for us. We'd greatly appreciate it. And next time it's going to be Rachel's true crime story, yep. So have a good one. We'll see you in a few weeks. Bye, bye.
