My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 87: Hither And Yon

102 min
Mar 11, 2026about 1 month ago
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Summary

This rewind episode recaps My Favorite Murder's episode 87 'Hither and Yon' from September 2017, featuring discussions about solo event attendance, travel anxiety, and two true crime cases: Jack Gilbert Graham's 1955 bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 that killed 44 people, and David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), the 1970s serial killer who claimed demonic possession but later admitted to fabricating the narrative.

Insights
  • Childhood trauma and parental rejection can manifest as calculated violence years later; Jack Gilbert Graham's abandonment by his mother preceded his premeditated mass murder by decades
  • Serial killers often construct false narratives (demonic possession, external control) to avoid personal responsibility and manipulate legal/psychiatric outcomes
  • Community vigilance and witness cooperation are critical to solving serial crimes; Cecilia Davis's dog-walking observation and license plate notation directly led to Son of Sam's capture
  • Media coverage of violent crimes creates both public awareness and copycat behavior; the announcement of Son of Sam's hair-color preference triggered immediate mass haircut trends across NYC
  • Institutional failures in crime investigation (separate precinct handling of related crimes) delay justice; early linkage of initial shootings could have prevented additional victims
Trends
True crime podcast audiences increasingly seek nuanced psychological analysis over sensationalismSurvivor narratives and witness accounts are becoming primary storytelling elements in crime podcastsHosts are integrating media literacy discussions about how crime reporting shapes public behavior and panicPodcast format evolution: 'rewind' episodes adding retrospective commentary and updated information to original contentAudience engagement with solo event attendance anxiety reflects broader mental health conversation in entertainment mediaCross-promotion of literary adaptations (Before the Fall novel) within true crime podcast discourseDiscussion of historical aviation safety gaps and how single crimes catalyze federal regulatory frameworksExamination of how institutional systems (orphanages, military discharge procedures) fail vulnerable individuals
Topics
Childhood Abandonment and Parental RejectionPremeditated Mass Murder and Insurance FraudSerial Killer Psychology and Narrative Construction1970s New York Serial KillingsWitness Identification and Law Enforcement CoordinationMedia-Driven Public Panic and Copycat BehaviorAviation Safety Regulation and Sabotage PreventionDemonic Possession Claims in Criminal DefenseInstitutional Failures in Child WelfareSolo Event Attendance and Social AnxietyTravel Anxiety ManagementPodcast Format InnovationTrue Crime Narrative EthicsFederal Crime Investigation ProceduresParole Hearing and Criminal Remorse
Companies
United Airlines
Operated Flight 629, which was bombed by Jack Gilbert Graham in 1955, killing 44 passengers and crew
Netflix
Released 2025 docuseries 'Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes' featuring interviews about the case
Crime House
Podcast network producing 'Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes' and sponsoring this episode
iHeartRadio
Distribution platform for 'High Strange' investigative podcast mentioned in episode
Apple Podcasts
Podcast platform for listening to featured shows and true crime content
People
Jack Gilbert Graham
Constructed and planted dynamite bomb in mother's suitcase on Flight 629, killing 44 people in 1955
David Berkowitz
Son of Sam; committed 1970s NYC serial shootings, later admitted to fabricating demonic possession narrative
Daisy Graham
Jack Gilbert Graham's mother; abandoned him in orphanage despite wealth, killed in Flight 629 bombing
Karen Kilgariff
Co-host of My Favorite Murder; presents rewind episode with commentary and updates on historical crimes
Georgia Hardstark
Co-host of My Favorite Murder; researches and narrates detailed crime stories including Son of Sam case
Payne Lindsay
Host of 'High Strange' investigative podcast about UFO encounters and unexplained phenomena
Noah Hawley
Wrote novel 'Before the Fall' about plane crash sabotage; also created Fargo TV series
John E. Douglas
Pioneered criminal profiling and ViCap system; interviewed Berkowitz years later, exposing false demonic narrative
Jimmy Breslin
New York Daily News columnist who received letters from Son of Sam; his column drove record newspaper sales
Cecilia Davis
Dog walker who observed suspicious man and yellow car near Son of Sam crime scene; reported to police
Judy Greer
Encountered at Hollywood party; described as exceptionally kind and gracious by Karen
Lisa Kudrow
Encountered at Megan Maloney party; engaged in conversation with Georgia about networking
Joe Thornley
Sister of podcast creator; hosts 'Zealot' podcast about cults, ranked #1 in comedy podcasts
Steven
Traveled with hosts during Australian tour; became popular at meet-and-greets with signature pose
Vince
Manages logistics and organization for My Favorite Murder; accompanied hosts on Australian tour
Quotes
"I wanted to, I watched her go off. For the last time when she was getting on the plane, I felt happier than I'd ever felt before in my life."
Jack Gilbert GrahamFlight 629 case conclusion
"As far as feeling remorse for these people, I don't. I can't help it. Everybody pays their way and takes their chances. That's just the way it goes."
David BerkowitzSon of Sam case conclusion
"I am deeply hurt by your calling me a woman hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam."
David BerkowitzLetter to police Captain Joseph Borrelli
"In all honesty, I believe I deserve to be imprisoned for the rest of my life. I have with God's help long ago come to terms with my situation."
David Berkowitz2002 parole hearing letter to Governor Pataki
"It's the kind of fear that I think is so relatable. Everyone has it. You don't want to go somewhere by yourself."
Karen KilgariffSolo event attendance discussion
Full Transcript
This is exactly right. Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen in Georgia. Yes, that's right. Every Wednesday we recap our old episodes with all new commentary updates and insights. Ooh. Yay. Today we're recapping episode episode episode episode 87, which we named Hither and Yon. This episode came out on September 21st, 2017. All right. Let's listen to the intro of episode 87, episode 87. Episode. Welcome to my favorite murder. A true crime podcast for people who are into facts and percentages. That, in itself, is not a fact. That's right. That's Karen Katera. That's Georgia Hardstark. And welcome. And we are finally back in my apartment. Yeah, this is quite an adjustment. I know. I'm like, I've been really looking forward to this to just be like in our element. I was going to clean up the podcast loft. What happened? It, I mean, all you to do is look at it to know what happened. It's like a fucking bomb went off in there. An Australian gift bomb? An Australian gift bomb. We watch wrestling fucking merch bomb. Oh shit. There's empty fucking sparklets fattles up there. I always forget that there's two podcasts being beamed out of this apartment. Yeah. And there's a lot going on, not just us. Yeah. And both Vince and I are the keepers of the things. So it's just, you know, there's lots of cat bar. I'm going to be honest right now. Okay. Yeah. Good. I welcome that honesty. Yeah. I don't have any cat bar for Quill in my house at the moment. Although I did open the door to a new dog walker when I'm a cation. And she told me she had a replacement. But she didn't say the replacement was automatically coming. She just gave me the number of the person I could call. Oh. And so like 11 in the morning, while I was wearing, uh, when I wear my black pajamas, they become black with white hair pajamas. Yeah. And I was sitting there working on something and the doorbell rang. And I was like, what could possibly be happening right now? It's not the worst feeling when the doorbell rang. It's the worst. I sneak to the door quietly and look out the thing. People in the name like, uh-huh. Yeah. I'm like front door on the sidewalk. Right. So it's whoever. And a lot of times it's people who are, um, chilling for a church or real estate agency. Hey, are you thinking about selling your house? Hey, I think you should sell this piece of shit house and get out from get out from underwater. Um, it's usually that one time it was the bug man. Did I tell you about that? Uh-huh. When I opened the door and the guy goes, Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm. And then he stood back a little bit and goes, the bug man. Yeah. And I just shut the door. Because he was like, he started to say my neighbors used him to like, church and exterminate or something. But he was really young and good looking and I had like a uniform on. And I was just like, get out of here. Don't try to charm me. You're going to bug charm me like no, never, never. Um, so this time was weird because it was too beautiful northern European looking people with accents. Oh my God. So I was like, and George immediately goes out because they have the, the door up. This is a great story. But long the short of it is, I met the dog walker that I had no intention of calling because I didn't want to talk to a new person. I don't have to make some kind of a new connection. I know. I was going to be like, fine, I'll do it myself. Yeah. And then they, she, she just showed up now every day to like, it is her passion to walk her legs. Leave me alone. No. No, she's already, they've already been in. They've seen the worst of the worst. It's something where you like know that someone's counting on the money that you're paying them. Yeah. And then when you're in a position, we're going to show up no matter what, where you, I thought that I was getting this much money this week from this job that I thought I had. And then someone tells you you're not and you're so broke that you're like, well, now I thought I could cover rent and I can't, like that's happening to me and I burst into tears because I was like, how, you canceled on me and now I'm fucked. So what you went and did something? No, no, I never did it. But it's like, I know, I wouldn't want to disappoint. I wouldn't want to do that to someone who's like, hi, I'm here, like I'm supposed to be and you're like, no, actually, can't take this week off. Yeah. Um, we're going on this tour now. It started in Australia and who knows where and who knows when and who knows when and what and how and why and why and it could be, I mean, stay tuned. What we can guarantee you is an eventful. You never know. Night. You know what's cool about that is like, I have an issue with going to any, I, maybe a more so as younger like any event alone, like just showing up anywhere alone, freaking out. I've seen a movie alone once, like as an experiment because I was so scared and I'm like, no, I fucking exploit from with this girlfriend. I'm like, that's how great it was. It was there will be blood, which is like, you don't want to watch a lot. Like you need to talk to someone about it. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. That was the only time I ever got to move alone. That's how it went. You could hide behind because it's like a good movie with a good director. So you could be like, oh, I just had to see this film. Or I could be like, I was with my friend, but they got triggered and ran out. Yeah, that's right. I just ran. They hate milk. Munchies. Munchies. A lot of things. So yeah, so people are always, people who we meet at the shows tell us that they came alone because it's such an event because so many people have anxiety and they're like, and it was incredible and I met awesome people. Yeah, that's true. So that to me is like the people who are scared of coming alone, like you're going to be sat next to someone who you're going to be best friends with. It's really true. It's just everyone, world, and then because everyone's the same pretty much. Oh my God. Same has the same feel of person. It's hilarious to me. And also when people tell us they're alone, when they come to meet us at the meet and greet, I always go, there'll be somebody that's alone and they'll be like, that girl over there is right. We always like yell over of like, go talk to her. And like if you wear like a shirt that's like funny that like relates to something like a murder. Someone's going to come up to you like, where did you get that be my best friend? Someone had a shirt on one of the meet and greets that said the husband did it. Did I have about this? And I bought us both. I bought us both. Yeah, because that was the best shirt. And I wore to therapy just to be like, here's what I am in your face. And then my therapist, this is how I'm fucking sweet he is. He was like, oh, what? Well, yeah, it's always a husband's fault. And I'm like, no, the husband murdered. He just didn't get my point. Oh, he thought it meant like, fighting. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. And in fact, I bought a car this week yesterday, which was like exciting on a lot of levels and scary. And the car dealer was like, the super normal dude. And we were like, looking at the car and he opened the trunk and Vince choked like, which I love that Vince said this at. Oh, you give it a few bodies in there. And then he points to the emergency latch and just goes, just make sure you, uh, just to sample that. Oh my God. Whoa. It was like sold. Yes. Right? That's a good sale. You're my guy. I bought the car for him. Oh, old ZZ. He was, he definitely didn't listen to the podcast. Like, it's ever like tweeted it and feel like he must be, no, he was just, was like a family man. Lots of people have good senses of humor. Yeah. Yeah. He was like 28 or so. That's hilarious. Yeah. Uh, I like that style. I do too. No. I mean, you don't know if I'm in, if I'm in a, I'm in a, I've been locked in a trunk before my life, but you're just fucking picking it out. You know what it is. It's, if you've been locked in a trunk before in your life, the fact that you're making the joke first means you're okay with it, which means he can do what he wants. Right. And that it's actually additional relief that he would join in and not leave you hanging or go, oh my God, what's wrong with you? Right. It's just a classic like bullshit salesman personality. It's, it's why I like people like that. And I hate myself for liking them because it's such an obvious, like, those who are those smooth talkers are my favorite. Yeah. And they're the, they're the most full of shit. People who don't miss a beat. Right. They don't react. Health-thrialing. Yes. Exactly. They go along with it. It's like constant high end improviser. Sure. That makes you have to be smarter and quicker too. But it also is like you're being hurt. It's exhausting. It's, it's thrilling. Um, I cannot get a sense of time or place. Oh, because of that. I keep being back. And I know that it's too long to complain about jet lag. I'm still complaining about it because I'm still there. Well, it's not just jet lag. It's just that it wasn't a vacation. And we were constantly busy. And most people don't fly three times inside of their flight to and from home. No. No, the traveling that went on within the traveling was very intense, um, studying so much. And when I went to write my murder for this week, it was not enjoyable because there were so many that we had to do for Australia. And so many, I researched for Australia in terms of not to be for Australia. Right. Because they were so intense. There's some fucked up, fucked up stories from that. I have like five that are half written that I was going to do for Australia. Yeah. Um, it's almost, it's almost good though because now it feels like, well, we only have three in Detroit, Enteranda. How great is that? That's a fucking walk in the park. There's no big deal. That's a cake walk in the park. There's something about Australian, uh, true crime that is very dark. It's like, oh my God, it is. For some reason, maybe it's this judgment feels darker than regular. It feels like the only murders that are huge murders. Yes. I know like, they don't have guns. So it's like, there's drive buys. No, it's like a guy that's got, like picked up a handful of red clay and painted his face red and then hidden the bushes to intentionally kill the innocence. Yeah. Like it's a lot of that over and over. Or killed his family on the next level of family killing. Yes. What is that familiar side? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just picked the story that's the best to tell in terms of, you're not going to fucking believe it. Right. Right. Um, I also, I've dipped into like ghost stories and shit. I've gone when I can't go directly to it, which is a thing that like, I know a lot of murderers are like, I'm a murderino. I've been since day one. This is my jam, which is great, but not everybody does it 24, seven. And like, I personally can't do it. So I have a, I definitely have like murder fatigue right now because I just don't want, I don't want to read about another acts. But my dance just don't want it. I can't get enough. I still can't get enough. Like I had to, was researching a murder and then ended up, you know, watching six others on YouTube, which is like, has the most fucked up ones. And then I was like, this isn't even what you're talking about this week's stop. I have to like make myself stop watching it. Oh, I did the same thing where I kept, there's all kinds of somebody tweeted this actually because there was a Buzzfeed list of like 16 of the most fucked up murders you've never heard of. Which as someone tweeted us an all murdering us say, yeah, right? Like, try me basically. And they were most of ones that we've all heard. But I always, I read those, I go through it. And I'm like, of course, I've heard it, heard it, heard it, heard it. And I feel like now I'm at that point of like, it's almost like a magic, the gathering level nerd, murder, nerd thing where I've, I feel like I've had my hands in it for so long that I just am like, just for a little while. Like I don't want to play this game anymore. Just for a little while. And maybe it's just the traveling. It'll get, before we started this podcast, I would have to take long breaks from murder or stuff because I would get really depressed. So the only thing that's kept me from that now, which is because we've been doing it non-stop is this, it's a job now. But I fucking would get dark and deep and depressed and scared of the world. Yeah, because it's, it's scary. It's scary. It's definitely scary. On a positive note, self-care everybody. Steven. Harold did and lauded at all, all through Australia. People lost their shit. Basically at a secondary meet and greet line where people would walk away from us and then walk over to Steven's meet and greet. Yeah. And like I'm a present for Steven. I have. I need to go to give this to Steven and have him sign this. Yeah. Couple people are like, can Steven be in the photo and we made him do. Now Steven has a signature pose. Yeah. Which is on one knee with his chin on his fists. It's one of us. Child 90s like star prom thing. Yeah, that's perfect. Oh, can I shout out a fucking podcast that I've been listening to that I really love? The podcast corner. Of course. It's the fall line. It's a female investigative journalist who every season is going to talk about marginalized, crimes and marginalized communities in Georgia. Whoa. Yeah. Cause I think that's where she's from. So that's kind of what she's doing. She kicking off with the Atlanta child killer. No. She's, she's like doing ones that we don't know about that have been like bungled. Oh, yeah. So this is the 1990 or the first ones in 1990 disappearance of these twin sisters, Net and Jeanette Millbrook. They're a 15 year old African American girls on their way home. Good girls. They weren't going to the typical not runaways. Yeah. Fucking disappeared. Oh, of course. Well, the runaways and never got looked into. And so this is actually like reopening the case and they're looking into it again now and it might get another one of those ones again in Georgia where it might get solved. Yeah. That's amazing. You do runaways in the 90s. Yeah. I mean, it was a poor neighborhood in Georgia in, you know, in Georgia, African American community. But like the girls had seizure medication and didn't have it with them. Like you don't run away without your seizure medication. Sure don't know. And they were good girls and not the bad girls don't also good disappear. Right. But that's part of the when it's the disenfranchised cultures that the people, the larger media or the larger interpretation is always they were asking for it. Some dissuption is they did something and they deserved it. And that's why it happened. Right. And then they're because I think the people think that way so they can just break off from any kind of care, emotional responsibility. And it's like not my problem. I don't want to be an enemy or anyone I love because well, this is a really good one because she looks into all the possibilities, including a couple serial killers in the town, one of which sounds so fucking likely. Wow. And it's just a real, it's one of those, you know, female investigative journalism podcast that has a ton of fucking empathy. So it's, you feel it too. That's great. So that's the following. That sounds amazing. Yeah. The following. That makes me think that our friend Joe Thornley and my sister last name was. Someone just tweeted at me. She's number one. I know. She's got the number one podcast right now with her podcast zealot, which is about cults. She was, she was the home top, the end of the live Sydney show, which went up last week. She was the hometown murder, which we originally brought up because she said she can moonwalk and we knew'd be a heavy, heavy episode like because of what we're talking about. So we're like, come up in moonwalk by the way, they have a hometown and she totally did and she was charming us back and she's like, I also have a podcast called zealot about cults. And I looked at her Instagram and it was like, oh my God, I'm number 46 on that comedy. She's also, it's about cults, but it's comedy, which is like so of her alley. Yeah. I'm number 46 on the, I chance comedy podcast. And then I looked at him like, oh my gosh, she's number three right below us. No, she's number one. She's number one girl girl. Girl, that's how it happened with us. Like, yeah, I go. I messaged her on Instagram. I was like, I got, I know how you fucking feel right now. You better fucking enjoy this. It's the coolest thing that's ever happened. That's so good. So happy for her. Yeah, she deserves it. That's so funny. And it was purely because she sent the perfectly, the concept of the tweet was, you guys might not feel like talking by the time you get to the end. Let me just come up and moonwalk for you. And just the idea of that was so hilarious. She can't have imagined that we would have picked that because it's not what we do. No, it's just like a sidebar, but it was so funny. That was so funny. And she definitely moonwalked too. I mean, not for good. She's good at following. She moonwalked in high heels. Oh, my God. It was crazy. It was great. It was great. Happy for her. Um, anything else? I haven't watched the confession tapes. I don't want to talk about it. I watch some. I get literally 40 tweets a day and saying, watch it. Confession? False confessions are not my thing because they stress me out so much. It's so stressful. And I can't wrap my head around them even though I understand the ins and outs. It's just so hard. I get so angry and stressed out that I can't watch that. But I am watching, uh, our Jessica Biel, the center, the center on episode three. I'm really suddenly getting into it. Like the first episode, I was like, ma second, okay, third. I'm fucking there. Yep. That's good. How about the dirty, dirty bill Pullman? Oh, he's so sexy. Oh, he's dirty. Oh, my God. He's a dirty little. He's a dirty bird. He's a dirty bird. It's me. He wants to be shamed into submission. I also love that woman that plays his dominatrix or girlfriend or whoever. That woman is. He just looks like a normal woman. The second I see women like that on TV, I'm like, oh my God, there's just someone real on TV. They're letting someone not emancipated beyond TV. Do you know what else I love about her character? Is that she works at a classy restaurant instead of like, because she looks like she'd work at a dive bar on the, you know, off the drag. That's like, nope, she works at a high end restaurant. It's like, you're not fucking making her this character that everyone thinks she is. No, she's like a self-possessed, self-actualized sex worker, slash ex-girlfriend, slash something else. It adds to the interest of like, yeah, this is how complex human beings actually are. Yeah, that actually is. No matter what, and I think I'm, I think I'm really into it, but even if I'm not, the characters are really interesting. I think I'm really into it. Don't fight it. Just like it. No, I'm going to, I bought the, I bought the fucking season pass. I'm in. I'm going to get my money as well. It's great. Yeah. I am watching something because as I announced that I was just taking a light, a light axe break, there's a show called Toast of London. It's all over the mind. You have, if you like, I'm imagining it right now. Do you like Peep Show? And show. Oh, I love Peep Show. Oh, okay. This is Matt Berry, who, um, the bigger guy from Peep Show, right? No, no, no, he's not from Peep Show, but he just, it reminds me of when you, what, sometimes when I brought, watch British comedy and it's so, it's so intelligently funny that it makes me, it, like, it makes me feel like screaming as I watch it as you don't, because you have to be quiet the whole time because you're going to miss a fuck anything. So you can't laugh out loud. There's a lot of crap. You know, listen. Yes. You're just listening as hard as you can. And they're so dry. There's no, like punchline. And it's like saying everyone wants everyone to be this funny. Like we're doing it here. Why won't you allow? Right. You're with there. Anyway, it's called Toast of London. He is, like, kind of a washer back there. It's so hilarious. It's so hilarious. From dark places. Yes. Garth Meringue's Dark Place. Yes. Okay. I love him. It's like a new series. And it is, please go watch the hilarious. We just mentioned, I think you have to go online, probably, right? I think they're all in Netflix. Fuck dark places and Peep Show are two of the best shows. See if we want to see if Garth Meringue's Dark Place is on Netflix. Just excellent. Also, there was a clip. We have to stop talking about this, but there is a scene from Matt Berry's sketch show where he goes, I mean, going to help this girl. She's carrying a big fish mass. Have you seen it? And they're walking. He's like, let me take that for you. He's being super fake, sweet to her. And then she goes, he's like, are you going off this? And she finally goes, like, oh, my boyfriend's apartment's ready to go. Fuck you and throws it down. Yeah. And it's just as somebody did a super cut of all the times he does that. Oh my God. Just throw kick, drop kicks a dog. The minute a girl says, a woman says, I'm a boyfriend. My boyfriend. My boyfriend. Fuck you. It's so funny. And the fish tank had fish in it and he broke it and they were on the ground. Yeah, he smashed it as hard as he could. Listen. So good. So good. Well, go to YouTube. It's kind of ridiculous. But toast of London is on Netflix and Peep Show's on still on Netflix, right? And do you know that Peep Show, they're coming out with a new season? Oh my God. They're like doing a, I thought it's called something. It's, it's sorry, it's not Peep Show, but they're coming out with a new season. Oh, good. Hey, should we sit down? Yeah, should we talk about murder? Let's do it. Who the fuck is first? And what are we basing it off of? I mean, Sydney, Sydney, the last show in Sydney. I'm sorry, the show at the opera house. Oh, the opera house show. The show we did at the opera house. Who went first that time? I believe you did. Okay. You went last you to the shark arm. The shark arm wasn't Sydney. So then I was first at second night. So it's so that's me. Okay. And we're back. We're back in the pod loft. Pod loft days are still happening. Yeah. There's cat bar, you know, all the stuff that we used to talk about. What a compelling podcast. You know what I love is that going alone to our shows became a thing. I love that so much. Like I feel like we talked about a fear and then everyone knew. Everyone knows it. And then we like conquered it. I mean, it's the kind of fear that I think is so relatable. Everyone has it. You don't want to go somewhere by yourself. No. And it's so easy to tell yourself all the things that could happen or the judgments. And so then it's like almost creating that space where it's like trust that this would be a good space. Right. And then people keep going like, it is you are right. Yeah. It's very satisfying. And I'll say like I've gotten over that so hard that I love going places alone. I feel like mysterious. Like I'm Carmen San Diego or something like that. I know. I love it. Can I give a tip on going places alone? Definitely. If it's a party, and maybe this is just for me, but one of my most successful going to a party alone was kind of a little bit of a Hollywood one where I was like, I really want to go to this and it'll be fun. And it's kind of big. So I know I'll see people that I know there and it'll be fine. But it was just that like, how do I get through that front door? And so what I did was I left my purse in the car, put lipstick and like the things I wanted in the pockets of this coat that I loved. That's like I was like basically like a little swing coat. And then I just wore my coat on my. So it's like I had this weird little protection on. Yeah. I don't have a purse where I'm like, I just came in from outside. I had weird little like exchange student energy whereas like maybe I'm leaving right now. Maybe I'm not from here. Maybe you don't know. You don't know. You just can't know. You remind me of the last time I went to a party, the other thing that you do, you can wait till someone else is going in by themselves. I didn't do it on purpose, but I walked up to my friend's door and this is a total fucking Hollywood brag. At the same time there was a single, another single woman walking in, we met and became friends and walked in together. Yes. I walked into a party with Judy Greer. Oh my God. And it looked like I came with her. And she was the fucking nicest. Oh good. She brought a candle as a gift. She like housewarming gift. I love hearing that she was the nicest. Yes. And I brought donuts as she was lovely. She's so good. I know. She's such a good actress. And you could tell she was a little nervous too walking in alone. That's fucking Judy Greer. Well, it's like when you and I went to that Megan Maloney party that was like the her Witches Brew party and it was all women. And I had the same experience with Lisa Kudrow when you were like one person away from me because you were talking to somebody. Yeah. I was just kind of standing up waiting. And then she over her, she goes, did you just say blah blah blah? I think she was like, are you talking about a network? And I'm like, yeah. She basically was like, tell me about it. Yeah. I'm like, okay, Lisa Kudrow. Kudrow, Judy Greer. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sounds good, everybody. Act as a, I love it. All right. Tips and tricks. We done everything. We did everything. We're getting it all out today. Yeah. I think if you don't have stuff in your hands and you can make it so that you can keep your hands in your pockets the whole time if you want to and make it that you could slide out and Irish go by the entire thing at any point. No one would know. And you're purely safe. I like it. All right. Oh my God. You're a t-shirt therapy that said the husband did it. That was my favorite shirt for the longest time. I have one that's got a kitten on it and it says filled with rage. That's my favorite. I do wear my favorite TikTok sweatshirt, which is this amazing hilarious drawing of a frog sitting down, trying to touch his own toes with a cup of tea in an underneath that says self-care. See? You're just like us. But that's literally like kind of a one off. There's not many. I just get to 90s self-conscious. Yes. Or I'm just like I don't want to. I don't want to. Kind of a thing. Don't need anybody reading my body. Right. It's like a look at me thing. Yeah. I have a bantee if I can. No thanks. I'm not here. Look at these tits. You're like get over here. I love strawberries. I have a strawberry shirt on right now. Everyone. Oh yeah. That's right. I have many strawberry shirts. Well, it's a very 80s. Oh yeah. It was a thing in the 80s. Have you ever seen the 80s or did your sister or anybody else have that? Yeah. And did those, the jeans that had like little designs on the back pockets. Yeah. And then it was like I got ones with cherries on the back. Right. I got ones with blah, blah, blah on the back. Strawberries were big. I think it reminds me of the hungry hungry caterpillar as well. Oh yeah. She makes me really happy. Oh wonderful book. Okay. Should we get into it? Yeah, I guess we should. No, I think you should describe. We're wearing. We're wearing from our childhood. Okay. It is time now to get into Georgia's story about Jack Gilbert Graham and flight 629. They told us it was a weather balloon, just a glitch. It was a drone. Now it's just AI, I guess. The explanation keeps changing, but the stories don't go away. The video is appearing to show you off I was flying through the air or real. My name is Payne Lindsay, and this is High Strange, an investigative podcast about real encounters. Images of that rotating thing captured by US Navy aircraft. Credible people. We have clear things that we do not understand how they were. I talked to scientists, military witnesses, pilots, and people who saw something they can't unsee. There was no other explanation for what we saw that day. I remembered those faces and they were human. This isn't a show about belief. It's about curiosity, skepticism, and investigation into the unknown. High Strange is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen for free on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, this is the, sorry, I just forgot what I was doing. This is the story of Jack Gilbert Graham and flight 629. All right. So, Jack Gilbert Graham, let's tell him Jack was born on. Which flight 629 now? Oh, it's like to ignore that airplane flying into this place. Do we have something like a black box that if we get blown up by an airplane right now that they can find it? Can you save that? I don't think this would survive the airplane. I've voted it right now, just in case. The apartment has a black box. That's all the apartments came with black boxes. That's a thing. That's why you came here. That vintage ship painting? That's a black box. Oh, okay. What? So, Jack is born on January 23rd, 1932 in Denver, Colorado. I was going to do this for Denver, but then I'm like, I'm saving the shit out of this. He's a second child of Daisy Graham and her second husband. Jack is born during the Great Depression in 1937. His dad dies of pneumonia, which is with thing back in the Great Depression. It caused Daisy, Daisy then, his mother sent him to an orphanage because of their poverty. Super bummer. That's a thing back then. Yeah. Sometimes they just did it like it was a pawn shop, where it was like, stay here for a little while. That's right. I'll come back and get you baby farmers. Right? We're not they call baby farmers in England. No, I didn't know that. That makes sense. Where you just kind of drop them off and they grow your baby and then you come pick them back up. They grow your baby poorly. They grow your baby, but a lot of times what they would do is kill them and take the money. Yeah. They would take the money. Be like, sure, sure. Well, totally take care of it and get money from the state or whatever. Oh, no. So, but then Daisy goes and married and I had to quote this because it was so good. Well healed. Oh. Meaning rich as fuck. Yeah. Daisy marries a richest fuck rancher named Earl King in 1941. She's now like fucking live in the high life. Still doesn't get jacked from the orphanage. Oh. Yeah. Well, that's her old life. She wants to put that all that behind her. She doesn't want to like stress out rancher guy in his mansion. She ran away several times to be with her from the orphanage, but she always brought him back, which is like, oh, no, you're going to raise a. Oh, that's. So he would actually get to his mother's house and she would bring him back the mansion. That's like something an orphan would make up. She's like my mother lives nearby in a mansion. Right. And she must not just be able to come get me. So I'm going to make it easier for her and go there. Right. And then she's all no thanks. Nope. Then when Jack was eight years old, Daisy, she brought him home to the ranch to celebrate Christmas from the orphanage. Like, come on home from Christmas. Buies him a pony. And he's like, well, if you're buying me a pony, I'm clearly here to stay. Nope. Once Christmas was over, she takes him back to the fucking orphanage. Can you imagine living a lavish whatever week life, the week long life in the mansion that your mother gets to stay in your mother get a pony. And she, there was an older half sister. So I, but it doesn't say I wonder if she was actually living there, you know, also, why don't they just send him to boarding school? Right. And to be in an orphanage. Sure. Yeah. Um, so the husband, the richest walk husband dies and she takes them money for inheritance becomes a successful business woman and still doesn't fucking get him from the orphanage. I know. Daisy. Are you just telling me a super sad story this week? That's it. Okay. It's just all about orphans. Just take that up. Yeah. Well, don't worry. It gets worse. Okay. Um, when he's 16, he forges papers and he joins the coast guard and, but his real age is found out in his discharge, which is so sad where it's like he might have had a good life if they had just like he, he wanted to join the coast guard and, and be part of the military and they were like 16, which back then was like 27 in terms of like being on your own. You could probably drink already. I mean, but if it was still during, it's, this is a little after the depression because maybe it's like no free lunches. Yeah. Come back when you're 18. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go get your free lunch at the orphanage. Because maybe they would get in trouble for, you know, that's true. Dangerous. I don't know. Um, at 90. So finally at 19, he forged for over four grand in checks, um, to finance a road trip that got him and it ended up the forge checks got him two months in a Texas jail for bootlegging and running a police roadblock block at 100 miles per hour, which sounds like fucking fun. Yes. Bootlegging. Yeah. At this point, he's like, who gives a fuck? Yeah. I'm going to go everyone in charge is crazy. I'm going to live my life. Yeah. He's extradited back to Denver's mom pays his, his, uh, debt and probation is granted. So he then goes to the University of Denver, which is a layer like he must be have some, must be kind of smart. Yeah. In a way, I couldn't get into you to the university system here. I don't know. What did our Uber driver tell us when we were in Boulder? It was the night before school started for the bowl, University of Boulder. Uh, yes. I think so. Whatever. I think it was a college. College. She said, which I really couldn't get into. She said to us, no, he said to us, yeah, well, Boulder's known. Boulder college is known as a pretty easy to get into school. And since you're in that everyone there was stupid, which I was just like, okay, I don't feel so bad about going to community college and dropping out now. I went to sex state where they were like, please come here. Please come and be one of the 200,000 people that go to this. We mean you. Yeah. Oh my god, I love it. But we should add this that then after our show and we all went downtown to like try to find a party. Yeah. And where people told us over and over again, don't go downtown. Yeah. Or like, you don't want to go down there because it was all college kids party and college kids just running a muck in the street. All of them lovely polite. Oh, yeah. My sister asked for directions at one point and the boy was like, practically walked them to the door of the place and trying to find. Yeah. I'm not listen bolder college. I mean, I just I figure I put that out there too. Colorado. That's very fair of you. I wasn't coming. I mean, we can't call everybody stupid and just walk away. You're right. Dude, dude, okay. So, 10th and university meets his wife, Gloria, Daisy, the mom and Jack were estranged until 1954 when Jack was 22 years old. And Daisy at this point is running a successful restaurant. And in May of 1955, she builds a crown aid. She builds crown aid drive in, which is what it was called for him to manage. She just like builds a place for some hill of a fucking job. That's the big that's the big get back. That's the big sorry about the orphanage. You're like, remember when I abandoned the shit out of you forever? Hey, well, then how about some middle management? Yeah. How about you clean up French fry grease every night? Good luck with that. And then you can manage like roller skating waitresses who hate your guts. Love mommy. Love your mommy. Fucking. But Daisy and Jack, they still had a shitty relationship. They're often seen arguing. And then in 1955, Daisy's restaurant, her other restaurant, has a gas explosion. It causes severe damage, closes her restaurant for good. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. And the most interesting kind of explosion, gas line explosion. Would I bring it up if it wasn't relevant? Probably not. Probably. Yeah. Maybe not. We are so we still we won't know. We'll never know. There's a third choice. And we don't know it yet. Um, then okay. So Daisy at this point is a 53 year old widow. 53 at that point is fucking oldish shit. Yes, she's like, right. Yeah, I've done for you retire already. Yeah. Um, so so she tells Jack, Jack's 23 at this point. He's got a wife. They have a baby. He's like, made good and made a family and works for his mother. Like he's clearly trying to fucking play ball, make her want him still, you know. And she's like, oh, by the way, the holidays coming up, even though you have a new baby, I'm going to go instead go to Alaska and visit your older sister. Oh my God. I hate her. Hmm. It's so the people close to you are the ones that can hurt you the most. Oh, for sure. And they do. And why do we let them? Because you just that's life. It's like a it's a series of insults and injuries. Yeah. And you're trying to fix yourself so that you fit into what they are want from you, even though they have no fucking clue what they want from you. They're broken too. And then you realize you fix yourself for yourself and you drive through a fucking police roadblock. Like this is my, this is my movie. It's time in your life. You have fun. That's right. You're drinking fucking shitty bathtub, Jen. Yes. You're having the best life. You're just going for it. Yeah. And then in Texas, all places, which had to be fun. Yes. Go watch everyone go watch Paper Moon. I bet that's what his life was like. That movie is so amazing. Or Friday night lights. Oh, yeah. They were bootlegging in that movie. Or they could have been. There was that one season where the brother stole copper wiring. There was that one season where they had what's it called prohibition. What? What did you say? I just said pot. Oh. They took some pot. They took pot. That, that, that, that, okay. And that, they wrote, and that as they say was the final, final fucking straw for him. Yeah. And I was like, or maybe it was the pony years and years ago that was the final straw and he just like hadn't planned it yet. It just, it just straw went in and then it was, it just waited. It was benign until it became mulling. Yeah. It just got heavier over the years. Okay. November 1st, 1955. Jack's like, okay, you want to go to Alaska? Great. I'm going to the airport. Oh. I'll take you to the airport to go to Alaska. Um, it's so loaded because I just was like, it's literally loaded. It, oh, all right. I'm going to let you go or even there. Well, I just, just going to the airport by itself. Like the morning we were leaving for our trip, you were like, come to my house, if you want to ride with us, come to my house. We're leaving at 730, did it, and then I was just like, I, I'm so stressed and now I'm adding another thing to be stressed about waiting for me. Yes. I'm going to be on time. No, I think it's better that you, not that you would have done anything wrong. You were there with exact same time with us. It's that thing of we were, which I think we did very well with the anxiety of travel. Oh my God. We had such a good friendship trip. It was so fun. It was so good. We had the best Steven. Thank you for being a kitten in the, in the group of like just Steven's here. Steven's there. I think I'm mad when Steven's in there. It's like, yeah, we're, I think we're both aware, but also it's that thing of like just travel, anxiety, not knowing things, walking up. You never know what the fuck you're doing or where you're supposed to be. Which is great that we have Vince who could not let, who could not be in charge, not be in charge if he tried. Yes. And so it's the best. Yeah. He would never, it was up to one of us. He would lose his fucking mind. Yeah. He would lose his mind. Me too. Yeah. Between Vince and then Australian tour manager Nick, who was a genius. We love you. You're never going to listen to this podcast. He's too punk rock. Yeah. He doesn't, he was so punk rock. Yeah. He was the best. He's the best. I want him to always travel with us. Okay. So sorry. I'm just, I'm setting the table. I now have travel anxiety just hearing it. Travel anxiety sucks. Can you, okay, a picture of this. You're, everyone's a little scared of flying. You're anxious at the airport. Flying is new. It's 1955. Like, oh, passenger traveling is pretty new. And sitting at the, in the airport before you get on your plane is a fucking like cigarette machine that instead of cigarettes sells life insurance. What? For before you get on the plane. Oh, swear it's a fucking god. This was a thing until the 80s. Oh my god. So you go in there. And in this case, Jack puts in a dollar 50 and gets out a life insurance policy for his mother is about to fly to Alaska for $37,500, which at that time is, if this time it would be almost $350,000. And it's just like good luck on your, like everyone just bought some and it was like, yeah, die. It's so perfect. Like, it's so perfect. If he has any bad intentions, he didn't fucking put that machine there. Well, he's just using it. Like everybody else at that day. Everyone's like, it's a thing of like, oh, better do it for good luck though. You know what I mean? Like, of course, when I don't do it, it's gonna, it's like having your numbers on relapse. Like you always do 13. Yeah. But like this one time, it's like, well, what if 13 comes up? So I just always put it on 13. Same with renting a car. Yeah. It's gonna be the time you don't get rental insurance. Exactly. I did that. I did that. Whereas like, why did you bring up rental insurance, dude? Because now I have to get it. Yep. All right. Okay. Right. So I think they did away with that on purpose because it's terrifying to everyone. That's terrifying. So it opens the door to people who should not be able to just buy life insurance policies hither and yawn. But also, don't be rind yawn. That was, I got a stuff on that. I've never heard that, but I know what you meant. It didn't really apply to what I was saying, but hither and thither. It's like here and there, but I know. But I want to now see all those machines that they made in the 50s when they were like making like life is gonna be easier because we have these machines. I have like a photo, like a drawing of like a happy family. And then you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you'd walk on the tarmac. Yeah. Oh god. I could find one in like American pickers. You know that show. I'm sure it's going on. I bet they have. They must have kept them. I bet there's some that have like, it's some mechanic, they are playing mechanic who they were closing down that and they, he took it home because he's a hoarder and it still has the papers you would get. Oh, could you imagine? Yes. I need that for the podcast. It's such a good idea. Yeah. You need to put that up there. Can someone please bring us that? Actually, we, yeah. Okay. It's just around the same time as auto maps, which are the most hilarious. They're when cafeterias, they pretended to be automated. But it was just people putting dishes into those things. You like press. It's like pressing D7. It's like a hand coming out and handing you the like the cream porn or whatever. It's just there. Yeah. So you just have a bunch of plates. Like one of my, one of my time travel like plans is I would go to an auto max. I love cafeterias more than anything. Yes. A thousand percent. I would do one week's accident and one week time travel. And then we're going to go shopping at fucking May Company. Oh, okay. Okay. When they run the things like, you know, that they used to run the money along wires above. Yeah. They would drop it down. So we like, anyway, okay. But I want dresses. Yes. You can go do that. Well, I go look at the dresses and girdles. Go ahead. Okay. Great. Um, okay. Well, here's where it gets crazy. I said it out. Okay. Before, okay. Here's what happened. Wait, let's go back to before. Wait. No. Jack says to Daisy that he left a surprise Christmas gift in her suitcase. Spoiler alert. It wasn't a puppy. I wrote that. So it was kind of corny. Mm-hmm. Instead in Daisy's large tan stamps in a suitcase, alongside the photo album of Jack and Gloria's wedding that Daisy was going to show to her daughter in Alaska, he had placed a neat bundle of explosives. Oh, shit. Um, less than an hour after the flight took off, the United Airlines flight became the first confirmed sabotage of a commercial aircraft in the United States when it exploded mid-air. Oh, f- Have you not seen this? Crown to remember? No. Oh, my God. It crashed into farmland and sugar beet fields near Longmont, Colorado. Daisy and the 43 other passengers and crew all died. Oh, God. The youngest passenger was 13-month-old James Fitzpatrick, the second. The eldest was 81-year-old Leila McLean. Five children lost both their parents in the crash. Pregnant 22-year-old Carol Bynum and her husband both died. It was the worst mass murder in US history at the time and remains the worst in Colorado. And was one of the largest investigations in FBI history. Oh, my God. I know. The FBI obtained. So can I really quickly, I just want to say also, and I know it's fucking sideburnation over here, but I just finished what's weird about this that I was planning on doing this. And then I didn't realize until today when I finished this audiobook, I've been listening to that is so fucking good, but it's about a plane crash that sabotage that goes the whole story. You don't find out what happened until the very end. And in my car at like two o'clock today, I found out and I almost had a pullover because I was crying. Wow. Is it so good? Was it true story? No, no, no. It's a novel. Yes, a novel. It's called Before the Fall by Noah Holley, H-A-W-L-E-Y. Oh, spoiler alert. What did I say? The, you said what the ending was. What did I say? You said that it was the explosion. Oh, no. It's not an explosion though. It's just a, it's just a plane crash. Oh, okay, that's not the end. No, no, no. So the explosion isn't part of it. It's a plane crash that they have to then. So I'm about to talk about how they figured out what had happened in the plane crash by putting it in the hanger. So this same kind of thing happened. Well, they had a piece together to figure out what happened in the plane crash. And they do it by interviews and going back to the day of the crash and who did what and what happened and all the characters are really good. It's not an explosion. Okay, okay. That's a spoiler alert. Yeah, I thought that's what you were. I thought that was what I was saying. I don't know why. I just didn't even have a book. It's called Before the Fall. And the audiobook is great. The reader is really good. You know, it's hard to find that. That name sounds familiar, Noah Holly. I bet he did something really cool. I feel like it's the guy that I could be wrong, but that might be the guy that does, that does Fargo now. Yes. Really? Yes. Okay, coming back, Karen just fucking, oh my god, your memory is bananas. Is it though? Your memory is a certain way, is it? Is it? Noah Holly? Is it Holly? It's H-Holly, H-A-W-L-E-Y, but he's, he does a lot of things, but he's the reason that fucking Fargo series is so magical because it's being written. It's a novelist writing a TV show. I have pictures. I have pictures. Yeah. Well, now I'm even more proud of myself for finding this fucking book. The book's a nice one. He's got other ones here. So I'm going to download all of them. Yeah. Great audiobook, which sometimes I'll be like, don't get the audiobook read the book. It's better. This was a great audiobook and it's just weird that I'm doing this story at the same time as this because I literally, I don't cry at books and movies and I almost had to pull over because I was just like so taken aback. Awesome. I love a good author. Yeah. Someone that really does it, right? I'm so happy that we put that, that you put that together. Okay. So the FBI obtained use of a nearby barn. They reassembled the fragments of the airplane collector from the site and they were able to determine that that the explosives were used, which is so incredible to me that a flight of plane can blow up and crash and they can still put it together and figure out what happened. They put it together like a huge puzzle. It's incredible. It's crazy. It's crazy. Those people must be so smart. They went. Yeah. I'm not going to say it. I'm done with that. I'm done with folder. And then they and they determined that it, which piece of luggage it had come from. Oh, fuck. Yeah. It went off in that piece of luggage and they figured out what piece of luggage I came from. And they figured out with Stacey's tan, stamps and I. All right. So they started looking into her family and looked into Jack when they found out about his criminal past with the bootlegging shit. They also determined that Daisy's restaurant had been damaged by quotes a suspicious explosion as well. And the Jack had received the insurance settlements, which is like, dude, change your ammo a little bit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Don't keep exploding things. Yeah. Locals also suspected Jack of delivery, causing his new pickup truck to be stuck by to be stuck struck by a train that year for insurance money. So this guy was like after insurance money and into explosions. They also found that when she died, a large part of Daisy's estate would go to Jack. Oh. So insurance money again. Yeah. After a few days of questioning, Jack said, okay, we already want me to start. And then in great detail, he described building and planting the bomb that killed his mother and 43 others on flight 629. It was constructed of 25 sticks of dynamite, a six full battery, two electric primer caps in case one of them failed. And a timer set to detonate in about 90 minutes after he planted it or turned it on. Working in an electronic shop for just two weeks, he had given Jack all the expertise he needed to build the bomb. So this guy must have been fucking smart. Yeah. I then he said, I then took the sack of dynamite with the battery and timer attached and placed it in my mother's large suitcase. Based on all the evidence found at Jack's house, he was arrested, charged with sabotage, and later that was changed to murder. After the arrest, some newspaper people, radio station people were able to sneak cameras and recording into the jail and Jack told them, I loved my mother very much. She meant a lot to me. It's very hard for me to tell exactly how I feel. She left so much of herself behind, which I'm like, no, she fucking dead indeed. I mean, is that insensitive? It's insane of him to say. Yeah, it's super bizarre. I think he must have not had our emotions or feelings that we have. I don't want to call on the sociopath because people are like, that's not really. Well, it may or may not apply, but he's definitely was insanely damaged and abused as a child. The emotional attachments you have were broken at some point. His mother repeatedly rejected him. That's like, there's some serial killers that it only happens once and eventually. And it still doesn't mean she didn't love her. It could mean that he loved her more in a way that we don't feel love, but that feels like love to someone else. Well, it's all he knew. I mean, he lived in an orphanage. He had that thing of like, if you don't have emotional attachments to not just your parents, but to like a caregiver as a young child, you can't have those to anyone. Or it's really hard to change that. That's right. It's sad. Yeah. But he's also a murderer and murdered a bunch of innocent people. I mean, the plan of that, the coldness of the plan of revenge on his mom, but then just like total devastation on all these other people. So many families. It's so, it's so evil. Yeah. Um, when asked why he had signed the confession and confessed, he said that the FBI threatened to point out, um, inconsistencies and statements made by his wife, Gloria, but he wanted to keep her out of it. He just, like, didn't want her to have anything to do with it. So he was like, I'm in a confess. So she doesn't, you know, maybe she was lying for him. Maybe she was covering for him. He also told prison doctors that he realized he said he realized that there were about 50 or 60 people carried on the plane, but, but the number of people to be killed made no difference to me. It could have been a thousand when their times come, when their time comes, there's nothing they can do about it. It's almost like he's God. Yeah. And their time. It's clearly when really he had just decided. Yeah, yeah. He's pretending that that was, he was some kind of like the arbiter of fate or some right or just like, no, dude, you've just, yeah, the trial resulted in Colorado becoming the first state to officially sanction the use of television cameras to broadcast criminal trials. No federal statute at the time on the books that made it, it had been crime to blow up an airplane because it was so fucking new. And that led directly to federal laws, criminalizing airline sabotage and the formation of the federal aviation administration. At the time, though, on the day of Jack's confession, they wanted to quickly prosecute Jack, the simplest possible way was premeditated murder of a single victim, his mother. So none of the other victims, they couldn't, they didn't try him for those. Despite the number of victims, he's charged with only one kind of first degree murder. He were candid as confession, but because of all the evidence, he was found guilty, attempted suicide. And on May 5th, 1956, he was convicted of the murder sentence to death, executed in the gas chamber in January of 1957. And before his execution, he said about the bombing. As far as feeling remorse for these people, I don't. I can't help it. Everybody pays their way and takes their chances. That's just the way it goes. And about his mother's murder, he said, I wanted to, I watched her go off. For the last time when she was getting on the plane, I felt happier than I'd ever felt before in my life. Dude. And that's fucking our friend, Jack Gilbert Graham, and Flight 629. I like those kind of quotes where you can really, it really almost surmises the insanity of the person where it's like, you are totally cut off from empathy. You don't give a fuck about anybody, but your revenge. Not even in a way of like, you're about to die. It doesn't matter. Apologize to the family is even if you don't fucking mean it. Like, you can't even give them some kind of closure. No, because he doesn't care. He doesn't have a connection to care about those families. It's impossible for us to understand. Well, and also it's, but the thing I think it's interesting is like family is the source of his insanity or his, his damage. So he doesn't care about those families because he never had a family. He's like, fuck your, he's probably more mad that they had family. He's probably thinking that they feel the same way about their families as he does about his because he doesn't know what it's like to feel any feelings about your family. Yeah, only just negative or shitty or like, yeah, shit man. Crazy. Oh, and go look him up. Go look at his photo. He looks like if our friend Matt Bronner was playing a yoke with a widow's peak. Oh, my grease backer. Yeah, our friend comedian Matt Bronner playing a role as a yoke. Nice. Yeah. Well, that was good. Thank you. Thank you. It's fun to base them on TV shows. Yeah. You're talking right. You're talking right. Very hard work gets done for you. Yeah. And it's just a retail. Dude, that's all I can do. That's all I can do. I do the opposite stupid thing where I'm like, I'm going to do this hard one. And then it's like, it's so hard that nobody's ever made a documentary about it except for some fucking person who has like, they're so, have you looked on YouTube for your murder? And there's just these people, and I don't want to insult other people, but I am. They make these like story, they tell the story on video with pictures and things like that, but it's a computer voice. Yeah. And then the murder went, it's so weird. Well, I feel like it might be a lot of, there's like students, it feels to me like students that have to do a presentation for a class or something. Yeah. There's oftentimes the wording is very odd, but it's almost like people are trying to sound news person. Yeah. But it's at that point, it's the automated voice, which I'm like, just be any human can read the Wikipedia page. It doesn't matter if someone's going to like your voice, just read it. Maybe they have a weird high voice. Maybe. Or a strangely low voice. Maybe I mean, I have a fucking list and what's it called auto tune? No. What's it called when you when you have like the thing or you don't even, oh, you're from California? Yeah. I have a list in an auto tune. Never had a problem with the other voice. One of my voices entire time was auto tune. It would be tough. It would be or a one. That would be tough to keep it natural. Okay, we're back. Are there updates for this story? No updates, although we were just talking about how the awesome TV show Accrim to remember did this story. So go look that up. It was really well done. Just so you guys know, the $37,500 life insurance policy that Jack took out on his mother would be worth today, $453,000 plus, which is a lot of money. And also our episode title came from the story. Karen says that selling insurance at the airport opens the door to people who shouldn't be buying life insurance policies, hither and yon. Yeah. Which I'd never heard before. I, I don't care. I'm going to go ahead and throw some old people talking in at any chance I get. I love it. Let's go see a picture after this. It's a picture. All right. Let's get into Karen's fucking story about Son of Sam. Tune in to conspiracy theories, cults and crimes, a crime house original podcast to hear about the world's most shocking secrets and nefarious organizations. Follow conspiracy theories, cults and crimes now, wherever you get your podcasts. And for ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. Okay. Yeah. Now I got to be told to sorry. I love going first because then I got to sit back. I know right. I can be told to sorry. You just get to relax. I, I went. I don't know what I was doing. Here's what I actually did. Okay. Let me hear your process. Would you want to go behind the scenes? I do. And just go behind the music for a second. I do. Welcome. Um, pop up video time. I wanted to do a supernatural murder. Oh, but that's like a made up thing. It is. Essentially. Yeah. But that's what I wanted. I just wanted to be a little bit of a planet, a little bit. Sure. And so I eventually found the story of a man named Carl Pruitt who found, and this was like in the 30s, he found his wife and bed with another man. He strangles her with a rusty chain. Then he came in suicide. The family has him buried far away. I wrote this whole fucking thing up until I found very far away. And then a kid, people start noticing that there are rings appearing on his gravestone. Rings rings and concentric rings that are linked like a chain. So a bunch of kids are playing in the cemetery and they, the boy throws a rock at the head stone. Great place to play by the way. Yeah. That's where the good times are. If there was a rock at the head stone, chips it, they all go to ride their bikes home. He falls off his bike and the bike chain wraps around the neck and strangles him to die. So when the mother, this is season two of Shandra things. The mother finds out and here's all the town gossip of it was because he was, he desecrated the headstone of the killer of the chain killer. And so she goes down with an axe to take the headstone apart. The next day she's found hanging in her own clothes line. Oh, I miss. So then it basically goes on and on. I'm like, this is the best. This is going to be amazing. I get to the end of the article and the person who wrote the article begins to deconstruct ghost stories in America. And how this is fake like Carl Prue, it never existed. This person never existed. You can't find any of these people in any public record. And then I had to start over. I was really mad because it was so perfect. And yet it was such a creepy pasta. Like, oh, and then the, then these people, every single thing was so unsteady with the chain. Yeah. If they tried to touch that stone. She says, I don't know how, I don't know how you can find a murderer that gets you out of the murder world. Well, no, you can't. I'm just, I don't even know what I'm doing. So then I went all the way in and I'm doing son of Sam. Oh, that was not the direction I thought was going to happen. I just fucking turn that car around. But you know why I'm, you know, I understand. It's because he doesn't mutilate anyone. It's right. Or it's almost like he, listen, murder is murder and it's fucking horrible and awful. And son of Sam is a monster. But when you don't have to talk about someone, when is for us? I don't mean like they're starting murders. But when we don't have to talk about women getting their boobs cut off. Yes. And being raped and and savage. What's I'm doing right now? It's almost like a relief. It is because it still qualifies me. He's very famous and everybody knows who he is. But he did, he was on a murder spree in the 70s that was so strangely distant and odd disconnected, totally disconnected and yet very specific. He was like, I don't know a lot of people know this. I certainly didn't before I started reading about it. He only shot women with long dark hair. No, I didn't know that. I did neither. He's a total fucking Ted Bundy in that style. So it's just interesting. It's definitely a thing where you can dip in but you don't have to go into. There's not even a stab. Which is there? Let me stop you. Okay. You know what? What is your murder and I'll stop. Because that's what's interesting. So he also was a product of an elicit affair and his mother gave him away right after he was born to a couple named Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz who lived in the Bronx. And he was a troubled youth neighbor, say he was a bully. He was an asshole. He was really spoiled. He was really difficult. And he from an early age began engaging in petty lersony and arson. Arson. Arson. Arson. Right. So there's, I couldn't find anything. I actually looked it up specifically of like did something happen to him that he never talked about. But his mother died of breast cancer when he was 14. That's it. Man, that's got to be a huge shock. Then his father remarries. He doesn't like his new stepmother. So in 1971 when he's 18, he joins the army and he serves for four years. He's given an honorary discharge in 1974. And while he's serving in the army, he has his first and only sexual encounter with a sex worker. The result of that encounter gave him a venereal disease. And psychiatrists or whoever say that after that, whoever word on the street was that because of that experience, specific experience, he became enraged with women. Which we know can't be true. Like you had that boiling down somewhere ready to burst. It's not like, I'm great with women. And then you're like, oh shit, crabs. No exactly right. Well, yeah, and it's probably not crabs. No. Shit, crabs. I hate women. It's already a problem. He's one of those people that, yeah, if you're a bully that doesn't get along and has an asshole to everybody, you're not also a lady killer. That's probably not how they're right. I just love that they can blame it on this one. They're blaming it on the woman. Right. Which is just like, of course, it's not. Also when he gets out of the army, he looks up as birth mother and his birth mother explains how she gave him away because he was illegitimate. Forensic anthropologist, Elliott Layton described this as the primary crisis of his life, finding out that he was an illegitimate child that his father didn't want him shattered his sense of identity on top of that, the old VD, the little crabs, that he started a spate of arson fires in the early 70s that he actually, well, we can talk about this later, but that was his first crime was arson. And he would go and like these fires all over the Bronx and the surrounding area. If only I knew what that, what cities that in the Bronx. Manhattan. Let's call it. No, he kept it over in like, in his in the Bronx here. In Burrows, other burrows, other burrows and then other burrows. Brooklyn. Let's say Brooklyn. There's queens. There's queens and queens comes up quite a bit in this. Did he go to Long Island? I don't know. I doubt he would make that drive. Okay. He did become a mailman. So Christmas of 1975, he steps two women with a hunting knife on the streets of New York city. Jesus. But they fight back. This was Christmas Eve night. He fights back and he flees. He flees the scene. They're not killed. Wow. That's his first attempt. And that's when he switches over to a 44 caliber bulldog snub nose shotgun. No, none of it. A gun. A gun. It's a 44 caliber gun that he uses for the rest of his time. So July 29th, 1976. This is in Pelham Bay, the Bronx. One 10am and Donna Loria, who's 18 and Jody Volunt, who's 19, are sitting in Jody Volunt's car outside Donna Loria's apartment. And they're talking about the night they just spent at peach trees, which was the local disco. Oh, peach trees. Oh, this is, if you see the movie, you understand the Spike Lee movie, um, starting John Lake, was almost, it's actually really hilarious and great because disco exploded, like in this period of time. And so, you know, around New York City, people were just at discos every night. Yeah. And that lifestyle was like a big deal. It's just clubbing. Yes, it's disco music. It's clubbing with polyester. Oh, man. I'm so glad I, I hope when we go back in time, we don't end up there. I mean, I can feather my hair. So I feel okay about it. You probably be good, a good disco queen. I might be good, but I don't want, I, I don't want to show my arms. And that's a, that's a big, gonna be a big problem at the disco. I hate disco music and cocaine. You know, I feel like I just feel like in like the sitting in the corner being like, there you go, or such opposites. Can I have a dive bar, please? Okay. So there were peach trees. They're sitting in the car talking about it. Jody opens the car door to get out to walk up to her house and sees a man walking really fast toward the car. That's so scary on image. It's so scary. A man walking fast towards you was like, just punch at one in the morning, at one in the morning, right outside your house. Punch. A 44 caliber handgun out of the paper bag, nails down and fires five times into the car. Donna Loria was hit in the neck and killed instantly. Jody Vellante was hit in the thigh and then she leaned on the horn and the attacker turned and walked quickly away, which is also creepy. Yeah, that you don't run. Yeah. You know not to run because it's suspicious. Yeah. You just walk quickly away like business, your business is done here. Okay. So Jody just drives them as a white male in his 30s with a fair complexion about five nine weighing 160 pounds, short, dark curly hair in the quote mod style. Good for her for knowing all that like remembering all these details. So also Loria's father also saw him and told the police a similar looking man was sitting in a yellow compact car all night. He had been cruising the area, um, before hours before the shooting and several neighbors actually saw a man in a yellow car cruising the area. So about three months later, Carl Denaro, who was 20 and Rosemary Keenan, the old Italian Irish combination fire, um, 18, they were talking outside Keenan's house. When according to Keenan, it felt like the car exploded. So what had happened was that car was fired on five times. Um, Denaro, Carl Denaro, who was in the driver's seat, puts it into driving speeds away. Like yeah. And only later do they realize he's been shot in the head. Oh my God. He ended up getting he survived. Holy shit. He ended up having to get a plate in this head just to replace the skull, the part of his skull that was blowing. Wow. Um, they, the police did not attack, they not link this attack to the Loria Valenti attack because they were in two different precincts. Okay. So they were just separate shootings. We heard right. Crazy. Yeah. But I mean, this was New York in the late 70s. So there was tons of crime. Yeah. That's true. But Rosemary Keenan's father was a New York city. Um, I can't remember if he's detective or police officer, but basically once the daughter of one of their own, they, they turned up, um, the intensity on this specific investigation. She didn't die. She didn't die. Neither of them died. Okay. But they could, they didn't have that much evidence. There wasn't a lot, a lot to go on. So a month later, Donna, Demasi and Joanne Lomino had just walked home from a movie theater and they were talking on Joanne's front porch and they see a man in army fatis, approaching them. I guess it's like, yeah, no, I'm so it's not that weird. I mean, not really, but here's what's weird. It's not a hate. Okay. He's, uh, asking for directions in a high pitched voice. He before he finished it. So he starts asking a question before he finishes the sentence, he pulls out the gun and shoots both of them. Donna was shot in the neck, but recovered. Joanne's hit in the spine and she's paralyzed. A neighbor claims to have seen a blonde man running away from the scene clutching a gun. Okay. So January 30th, 1977, this is at the Forest Hills Long Island Railroad station in Queens at 240 in the morning. Kristina Friend and her fiance, John Deel had just seen Rocky and they were about to go to a disco. It's at a dance hall in Wikipedia, but I would assume that means a disco. And as they're sitting in the car, three gunshots, there's someone shoots into the car three times. In a panic, Deel drives away. He suffered minor superficial injuries, but Kristina Friend was shot, uh, friend was shot twice and died several hours later in the hospital. Neither of them saw their attacker. So now the police make their first public acknowledgement that the front deal shooting was similar to the other incidents and all of the crimes could be associated. Because all of the victims had been struck with 44 caliber bullets. The shootings seemed to target young women with long black hair and the police announced that they were looking for multiple suspects. Can you imagine like, let's say that happened right now in LA, if that was going on, I wouldn't want to leave the house. Do you know that actually it wasn't here, but it was a little while later, went after a couple more of these murders when they, when this, the, that fact of that it was, um, women with long dark hair, there was a rush on women getting their hair cut really short, like Dorothy Hamill and died lighter. And that's why that trend. I mean, like that's in New York City, all women got their hair cut and died. And they said that there was a shortage of wigs at beauty supply stores because everyone was just going batch it. Like in one day, once they made that announcement, everyone got their hair cut. Yeah. I love that idea. Um, okay. So March 8th, Columbia College is still 1977 at 730 in the evening. Um, Virginia, Voke shirt, Voke Sherichian, um, walks home from her classes at Columbia, a man walks toward her and when he gets close, he pulls out a gun and fires into her face. She put up her books to protect herself, but she was killed instantly. Uh, um, and moments later, a neighbor, uh, one of her neighbors rounds the corner. He hears the gunshots. And then he nearly collides with the person who just, he described as a short, husky boy, age 16 to 18, clean, shave and wearing a sweater in a watch cap, sprinting away from the scene. Um, uh, and other neighbors, um, matching not same description, uh, reported a teenager loitering in the area for about an hour before the shooting. Um, in the following days, the media report police claims that this quote, chubby teenager was the suspect. There are no direct witnesses to her murder. Um, and she lived about a block away from where Christine Freud and her fiance John deal were shot. Um, March 10th, 1977, NYPD holds a press conference stating that the weapon used in Virginia Vogue shirt, charions, Voskir, Richie and I think is Voskir, Richie and Smirter is also a 44 bulldog, um, that same weapon used in all the other shootings. Um, and of course, this whole story, the New York Daily News and the post go crazy on the daily. It's just constant, constant page. And what's the called fear mongering? Well, he should be afraid. Well, I mean, they were finally like justified. It also went international. They were naming, there's, they name in the Wikipedia article, like all the, um, you know, the Vatican had an article about it in the Vatican newspaper or whatever. Um, so April 17th, this is a month later, basically in the Bronx. Um, it's 3 a.m. and Valentina Suriani, who's 18 and Alexander Isau, who's 20 are sitting in Valentina's car kissing and each one is shot twice. Suriani died instantly. Isau died a few, a few hours later in the hospital. And it says again, it's a 44 and they were only parked a few blocks away from the Loria Valente shooting. Um, so then at the crime scene, they find a handwritten letter and, um, it's from the killer and it's addressed to police Captain Joseph Berrelli. Um, and this is where the son named son of Sam comes from is the letter. Okay. Um, so basically it reads, I'll do, I'm just going to do pieces because it's really long. It starts out, I am deeply hurt by your calling me a woman, Hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam. I am a little brat. When father, when father Sam gets drunk, he, he, he, he gets mean. He beats his family. And he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. Go out and kill commands father Sam behind our house, some rest. I don't know this at all. It's just fucking crazy nonsense. Yeah. But it ends like this. I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on earth. Return me to Yahoo's. Fuck. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. What the shit? May God bless you in this life. And in the next, and for now, I say goodbye and goodnight. Police, let me haunt you with these words. I'll be back. I'll be back to be interrupted as bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, uh, yours in murder, Mr. Monster. So I am, that is, I can't even, yeah, it's nuts. Um, that was like even scarier to them that were like, oh, we're not. This isn't a calculated person. This is a fucking lunatic. How are we going to track down a lunatic? Because you can't use logic. That's right. Um, also, yeah, that that wasn't nailed during. It was left at the murder scene. So it's somebody that kills people and then drops something intentionally. All the way. All of it is. Them. Yeah. Jesus. Um, so several psychiatrists are consulted and there's a psychological profile drawn up based on this letter and he's described as neurotic, probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, who believes himself should be the victim of demonic possession. So May 30th, 1977. So at that time, the daily news had a columnist, a very famous man named Jimmy Brezzlin, who was like super famous in New York. A lot of people out, not that many people outside know him, but he was like, he was like one of those like tough, you know, reporters of New York that I was, you know, hard boiled. He was high would call him hard boy. Yeah. Okay. Someone to call me hard boiled wonder. They will. They will. Um, so the son of Sam sends Jimmy Brezzlin a letter. Oh, shit. And on the back of the envelope, he wrote the phrases, blood and family, darkness, and death, absolute depravity and just 44 with a dog in front of it. So like 44 caliber. And then I'll just read you how it starts because it's, it's just more bladder, but it starts, hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. I'm going to see wrong. I know he's fucking dead on it's summertime. So he's probably very frustrated. Right. Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are watched away. And by the sweeper trucks, hello from the cracks and the sidewalks of NYC and from all the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that is settled into these cracks. This is poetry. Is it JB? I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous 44 caliber killings. I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and I find it quite informative. Tell me, Jim, what will you have for July 29th? Uh-huh. So, see, this one, he seems smart. Right. Almost as if he might be putting on an ash of some kind. Okay. So the daily news publishes this letter a week after they get it with a column from Jimmy Brezel, an urging the killer to surrender himself. And this article made that day's paper, the highest selling edition of the daily news ever, they sold more than 1.1 million copies. Wow. Oh, and it's after that that with Jimmy Brezel's column, this is when all the women get their haircut. Oh, yeah. That's in the movie too. Yeah. And it's hilarious. I saw it when it came out, but I don't remember it. It's good. Yeah, it's good. I like to. I just remember that from Ted Bundy too, like to an A bunch of girls. Yes, who had the same haircut? Hell yeah. Change that fucking shit out of it. Hey, highlights, everybody. Yeah. How about a highlight, Bob? Yeah. All right. I also love some of a summer of Sam the movie because it's almost entirely focused on disco. Yeah. The murders almost seem like an after. The murders almost seem like they're powering disco. You know what I mean? Like disco is a response to the murders. That's right. Or disco is because the murders are creating disco. Listen, John Lekwizamo is just a dream. Listen. Did you want to finish that? Look. Okay, look. Oh, no, that's it. I interrupt to do you to then say nothing. Okay, so now we're in June 26, 1977. This is Bayside Queens. So yeah, it's like for people, I am from California. So when we talk about all these different parts of all these different burrows in New York, Queens is a burrow Bayside is a part of Queens. Right? Right. I mean, I made the Bronx is a burrow and then the part of the Bronx that I was talking before. It's for us. It's long Island. It's like the Upper East Side is part of Manhattan. Yeah, it's so neighborhood. Right. Yeah, Manhattan is a burrow and then the Upper East Side is part of that. But Williamsburg is like, let's go on for an hour and say, never. I'm going to say the wrong thing for sure here. And all it can picture the people I know who live in New York being very mad at me. Well, something better than us. Also maybe I'm doing it for attention. Maybe I want you to be mad at me. Maybe I like it. All right. The morning of June 26, 1977, it's 3 a.m. Judy Placido and Sal Lupo, which that I think Sal Lupo might have been the main character in Summer of Sam. Oh, it just sounds familiar to me. But I could be making it up. No, I trust you on name recognition. This is where that all falls apart. Okay, they have just left the LFS disco and they're sitting in the car and the cars hit by three gun gun shop glass. So Judy, Sal Lupo is wounded in the right forearm. Judy Placido is shot in the right temple in the shoulder and in the back of the neck. They both survived, which is incredible. These people who are surviving these mortal up close gun blasts. Yeah, it's bananas. It's crazy. So Sal Lupo tells the police they had just been discussing the case of son of Sam right before the gun shots hit. Okay, so about a month later, it's July 31, 1977, Stacey Moscoots, who doesn't know Stacey Moscoots? And the mean like the second I read that name, I was like, I went to junior high school, so Stacey and her boyfriend Bobby Villanthe are taking a walk in the Very brave but they go back to their car when they see a man watching them. Oh no. But then when they get back into the car, they were so into each other that they start making out so they don't leave right away. They're kissing in the car. When they're hit by bullets, Stacey Moscoots was shot once in the head. Bobby Villanthe had been shot twice in the face. Jayce was killed while Bobby Vialante would survive, but he lost most of his vision, but he survived. She is. She's being shot in the head. So, these people on the fucking boroughs have some survivability. And it's for real. I mean, it's the New York City baby. Yeah. Okay, so this is the shooting that brings out the most witnesses of any of the other son of Sam murders. There was actually a direct eyewitness. So during the shooting, 19 year old Tommy Zeno was parked three cars down, or three cars in front of Bobby Vialante's vehicle. And moments before the shooting, Zeno caught peripheral glimpse of the shooters approach and then happened to glance in his rearview mirror just in time to see the actual shooting. Oh my God. He clearly saw the perpetrator for several seconds, due to a bright street light in the full moon and later described him as being 25 to 30 years old, five foot seven to five foot nine inches with shaggy hair that was dark blonde or light brown, but he said that the shooter's hair looked like a wig. So about a minute after the shooting, a woman in her boyfriend's car on the other side of the park saw a white male wearing a light colored sheep nylon wig sprinting out of the park and get into a small, and he got into a small light colored car that drove away. And she said he looked just like he just robbed a bank. And she also got part of his license. Oh, for G you are or for G V are there were other witnesses, one including a woman who saw light cars speed away from the park, 20 seconds after the gunshots, and at least two witnesses to describe a yellow Volkswagen driving quickly from the neighborhood with its lights off. One of neighborhood residents, here's the gunshots, here's Bobby Vialante's calls for help. Glances out her apartment window to see a man walking casually away from the crime scene while everyone else was running toward the sounds of the screaming. And I'm so excited right now. This is like, what's that? It's so tense. And multiple other residents, so this he was seen by tons of people that night. They witnessed a scruffy looking man with dark stringy hair and stubble driving a small yellow car recklessly away from the scene. He almost crashed into a car. He ran a red light, almost crashed into a guy. And the guy started following him because he was so pissed that the guy almost killed him. But he could only follow him so far and then he lost him. And then later found that it was son of Sam. OK, so on the same night, local resident Cecilia Davis is walking her dog. This is like the woman that brings it all together, which I love. Cecilia, she's walking her dog at the scene of the mosque with Vialante shooting. So she sees patrol officer Michael Catano take it a car, a yellow car, by a fire hydrant. And then moments after that cop left, a young man walks past her and studies her with some interest. And she feels concerned because he's got a dark object in his hand. So she said he was wielding a dark object. She doesn't know what it is. She just runs home only to hear shots fired moments later. So she calls the police. She doesn't say anything for four days. And then she calls the police. And they start checking every car that got ticketed that night in that area. Bucking chances, man. And not only did they ticket it, but someone saw it happen. Yep. And then knew about the murders. And someone saw what she saw happen was a guy that gave her weird vibes. Totally. And then she put all of it together where it's like, yeah, you got away from the man that was in danger of you. Then you stayed with it, witnessed something, and then reported it. Totally. Love it. Love it, love it. Way to go, Cecilia Day. Cecilia and her dog. Marty. Most of the dog. Marty. Oh, he made it. I'm so excited that that was actually the dog's name. I'm like, oh no way. She made it out. I'm like, oh, sorry, it's your dad's name. OK. So the next day, police investigate, they go and they check Berkowitz's car. It's one of the several that got ticketed that night. And they see, it's parked outside his apartment building at 35 Pine Street in Yonkers. And they see there's a rifle in the back seat. What? Hydro rifle. Yeah, right. So they search the car. They're like, that's probable cause. They search the car and they find a double bag filled with ammunition. Maps of the crime scenes, a threatening letter addressed to inspector Timothy Dowd of the Omega Task Force. So they know they probably have their man. They put it together. They put in a request for a search warrant, but they know they're very concerned with going into his apartment without having it because they don't want to lose the case. So they stand out. They wait outside David Berkowitz's apartment until 10 o'clock at night. And when he comes out and gets into his car, and he had a paper bag with him. And that 44 was inside the car. Oh my god. He gets in the car, sits down, and then detective John Fala Tico approaches the driver's side and puts the gun right against the next Berkowitz's temple. And then detective Sergeant William Gardella covers from the passenger side with his gun inside the car. Oh my god. And David Berkowitz has taken into custody for the son of Sam Rutgers. They say it's reported that he was very calm and very serene, almost seemed happy. So when they search his apartment the next day, apartment 70, they find the walls are covered in satanic graffiti. The whole apartment is a complete mess. There's liquor bottles everywhere. And they also find three stenographers' notebooks where Berkowitz had meticulously recorded hundreds of arson fires that he had set. Hundreds? Yes. He had been recording it since he was 21. Some sources alleged that the number of arson fires he recorded was over 1,400. Yeah. Does he recorded or set? Well, he wrote them into these notebooks. And they believe that they correspond to real fires that happened around. Oh my god. The Bronx and Queens and Brooklyn. Don't forget Long Island. Is Long Island a bro? I think so. What about Coney Islands? I think that's a neighborhood. And what about the islands? Where the statue of Liberty lives? Oh, you mean Liberty Island? Free to my island? All right. Now people are legit mad. Angry. Like even they know. He is questioned for half an hour and then immediately cops to everything and explains to the cops in great detail. All of the crimes that he perpetrated and when they ask him why, he says his neighbor Sam Carr's black lab, Harvey, was possessed by an ancient demon and Harvey made him do it because he wanted the blood of pretty young girls. What? Sweet. OK. So that's why he called himself Son of Sam. So the neighbor's name was Sam. Sam Carr and Sam Carr's dog. Like it was he was, but I don't get it. So, but later, so you know, I've been listening to the audio book of those two fight monsters, which is the guy from the who basically started the FBI, ViCap, all that. John E. Douglas, I think his name is. But he interviewed David Berkowitz years later when they were putting together there when they decided they were going to start profiling serial killers so they could get profiles of them, whatever. But he basically got David Berkowitz to admit that all of this shit was fake. The whole thing about the dog talking to him and everything was completely. It was completely made up so that he didn't seem responsible and that he could get off on the insanity plea. And it was purely because he was so angry at women. He had never had successful women. He was an angry man. He was very angry. He was very like a spoiled child. I think it was that thing he didn't know how to handle. He wasn't, he wasn't going to be his fault. And didn't get it. Yeah. And so he just wanted everyone to pay for his loneliness and lack of popularity. Which seems like such a narrative of a lot of spree killers that are just like, they feel entitled and they're pissed off that everyone else doesn't know. Yeah, they should be getting everything they want. It makes me think of that boy in Santa Barbara that just thinking of all those kids in Santa Barbara. It's the exact same thing where everybody else, it's not anything that has to do with them. They don't take any personal responsibility. It's everybody else that everyone else has to pay. Right. It's I guess narcissism and a lot of other fucked up shit. Anyway, he basically, he is tried, found guilty on June 12, 1978. He sentenced to six life terms, totaling a maximum of 365 years in prison. They send him to Attica in 1987. He becomes a born again Christian. Good luck with that. And before his first parole hearing in 2002, he sent a letter to the governor of New York. He lived that. How did I live? He's still alive. I'm sorry. He's still alive. He was only in his 30s when he was a, what is that prison? They put him to death or something. No, it's, um, he admitted to everything so they didn't give him the death. Right. Okay, go on. Jesus Christ, you just blew my mind. I know. It's not crazy. Yeah. Um, he sent a letter to George Pataki, who is the governor of New York at the time asking um, to have his parole hearing canceled. He said, in all honesty, I believe I deserve to be imprisoned for the rest of my life. I have with God's help long ago come to terms with my situation. And I've accepted my punishment. Wow. Um, then in 1993, he went into this weird thing where he was claiming to be responsible for um, satanic cult killings. Um, I think he may have gotten bored. He was trying to say that he didn't, he wasn't the only one responsible for the son of Sam murders that there were other people. And it was because of the satanic cult and blah, blah, blah. And when that um, story came out, uh, Jimmy Brezzlin himself uh, made the statement, um, when they talked to David Berkowitz that night, which was like the night he got arrested, he recalled everything step by step by step. The guy has 1,000% recall and that's it. He's the guy and there's nothing else to look at. For sure. So wow. That's your son. I'm gonna say. Austin Hitter. Heavy Hitter, which I always avoid because it's so much research. I know I miss big things and you know, sorry, Spike Lee. I was gonna do a heavy hitter this week actually or like I was gonna, I was gonna do a heavy hitter this week. You know, the thing where you're like, should I do this one? I should I do that one? I finished this one. Maybe I'll do this one. Yes. And then it was just like, no, Georgia, you need more than 16 hours before you decide to do a heavy hitter. I mean, you really do. And I think my Wikipedia recitation proves that. Yeah. No, that was great. People that shoot from a distant like there is something. Something very, I mean, obviously we're saying this. It's just so lame. It's just so cowardly to like stand from a distance and shoot a person and then just be like, I am the son of Sam. It's emotionally detachment way that you don't expect from most serial killers. Right. Who are just like in it for the suffering and seeing the suffering of others? Yeah. He wanted to end the lives because it was about his failures as a man. Right. Right. He could have been a mafia hit man. Yeah. If you got fucking painted as apartment and got a shit together. It's tough listening to dogs. Yeah. Poor dog was like, dude, I fucking love everyone. Don't bring me into this bitch. All I want are treats. I just want them to bring me inside everyone's while it's working. Why am I in the back? Give me a scratch behind the ear. Everyone's in a blue. And then don't bring me into your stories. I'm not satanic. I am. I love the idea of being possessed by an ancient demon. Yeah. Not a recent demon. I mean, the dog maybe was an ancient demon, but it was also like, but I'm past that. I'm born again. He, yeah. She's gotten healthy. Yeah. Okay. And we're back, Karen. Any son of Sam updates? There are a couple. So first of all, David Berkowitz still is serving a life sentence in upstate New York. And also in 2025 Netflix released the three part docu series conversations with a killer, the son of Sam tapes. And that featured interviews with victims loved ones, researchers and former law enforcement assigned to the case. There's also a new interview with David Berkowitz where he emphasizes his remorse and he acknowledges that he should have gotten help sooner. Wow. Yeah. I also looked at that. There was a documentary called The Sons of Sam, a dissent into darkness and Paul Giamatti was a voice in that. And it was really good. It talked a lot about like the culty feeling back then. And that like the crop see era, just like how there was just something going on. Yeah. Like satanic panic wise. Right. That there was kind of like dark things happening and no one could put their finger on it. Right. And so it was like Satan or its evil or its that. Now we know it's just Epstein. It was just yes. But also the person who made the documentary thinks there's more than one that David Berkowitz didn't do it all by himself, which is who the fuck knows whatever. Okay. I mean, very possible. Sure. Yeah. It's a good one. All right. Let's head back to the show where we are going to wrap it up. Well, shit, man. That's that man. Should we say one thing that makes us happy? Oh, good idea. Is it sleeping all week? Because that's my dude sleeping. Can I either have to do something? Oh, my new car. Oh, yeah, yeah. Can that be mine? This is. This is the first new car I've ever had in my life. Nice. It feels so luxurious. It's a Toyota Corolla, which is my first car I ever had. My first, my hammy down shitty little car that was just like the most basic you could get at the time. And this one has like fucking a moon roof and a fucking an automatic like your seat moves automatically. I never had a car with you as you get in. Yeah. When you need to move forward, it's just like you don't have to crank it. You know, you have to do that while you're driving an accidently almost hit your face on a steering wheel or crash, right or crash. It has like, it has adult things that I never thought I would ever have in my life. But it's a Toyota. It's almost like I'm picking an crazy expensive. It has a coach warmer, which is like to me the next level of fucking class. You can have those all the time. You just, you don't have to wait to get into your car. What do you mean? If I can slip something, you do an icy hot pack right in your underwear. Are you trying to get me a Houston truck in over here? It's just like, it feels, it feels grown up. And I'm like, I didn't think I'd ever care about it. Something like this. And I'm really just like pleased and grateful. It's great. It's nice. It's nice to like be like, oh, I earned something. Yeah, I earned it. I think I earned it. And I'm really happy about it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I guess mine would be, so this is Thursday. So tomorrow night, I am playing a show with my friends, the band's sure, sure. Right. At the satellite in LA. So if you live in the LA area, Steven and I will be there. These guys are coming. I think I can only put one name on the guest. I'm coming. Okay. But if you are around and want, I absolutely guarantee that you will love this band, sure, sure. They are so fucking good. They're going to be famous. I just played them for me. And I was like, it was one of those things where this reminds me of a little of this. And it was all like classic bands that you love. Yes. Really fucking good. Yeah. I told them, because we did a show together like four years ago. And it was just because my friend Kevin is in the band. And he was like, do you want to do a show with us? And I told him after the show, I was like, I was so scared to see your band. Because when do you go see a band and you're like, that was the best thing ever. It's not that often. Yeah, it's intimidating when you go see, not intimidating when you go see a friend who's like, come see me do this thing. You're like, all right. And you're like, oh my god, you're so talented. Yes. It's just so exciting. Yeah. And people are great. And their music is just so listenable. I mean, I've already given the recommendation. And you're playing music, right? And I am opening for them. Yeah. So I'm going to do a couple of my old moldy oldies. You have some classic songs and you have some comedy songs, too, right? Yeah. Are you going to do, I don't think I have classic songs. You don't do a lot of like, like, sad ones. Classic songs like, like a good bi-yellow brick road. Yeah. No, just like not outright comedy. Some of my comedy songs make you sad. Exactly. Yeah, but I can still hide behind the comedy part. So that's good. Yeah, I'm only going to do a handful. If I was at the show and someone did like, if they're, I would be like, get off the stage. I just want to see this band, please. So I know that. I'm excited to see you play. I'm excited to play because I haven't done it in a while. I haven't seen you play since I've known you. Oh, yeah, you got it. I did a show. It's right. I did a show when we were in Denver. I got to do it for the High Plains Comedy Festival. I got to go do a variety show after our show, which was super fun and a bunch of people that were at our show came to that show too. And I thought it was going to be kind of shitty because I hadn't played publicly in a really long time and it was super fun. So I'm super looking forward to it. But more than that, if you like good music, I would recommend being at this show. I think, yeah. I think it's going to. I'm excited. I mean, Steven. How long was that? Steven. Steven. Fuck. I like this episode. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Okay, we're back. All right. So as George said, this episode was originally titled Hither and Yon. But here are some possibilities. We were naming it today based on the episode. We could call it Cakewalk in the park from when George talks about writing free stories. I want to use that for something that's like, gotta be a book. And then we could also call it clubbing with polyester. That's right. Love it. All right, you guys, well, thanks for listening to another episode of rewind and let's go back to the pod loft where we'll say goodbye. Thanks for listening. I don't know. I feel like we have to sign off. Yeah. Right when you subscribe, but it's like, well, you've already done that. Yeah, you do that so much. We appreciate that. It's so nice. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for being here with us and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye. Bye. I'll just get out of the cat box. Hey, one cookie. Do you want a cookie? Oh, that. Yeah, Elvis. Want a cookie? Okay. You want a cookie? All right. Who's like, yeah, what do I do? I don't know. You keep asking me. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, wild, and a lot of people were waiting for him. I was like, what do I do? I don't know. You keep asking me. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Megowitz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Search Trace of Suspicion to start listening now.