And That's Why We Drink - E366 Troll Butter and Moon Spit

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

It's Episode 366 and we're fresh off our Salt Lake City and Denver adventures! Today Em brings us to Kentucky for the absolutely bananagrams story of the Kentucky Meat Shower aka the Kentucky Meat Storm aka Carnal Rain and all the wild theories about what caused it. Then Christine finishes out her two-parter on William Heirens aka the Lipstick Killer. And did we just open a mocktail speakeasy?? ...and that's why we drink (mocktails)!Don't miss our last round of On the Rocks live shows!andthatswhywedrink.com

oh i'm back with the christine schieffer the america's her scene shifter i could never be so lucky oh wait i am every single sunday every single week every single moment of my life she never escapes me now i'm wondering is it a blessing or a curse has she invaded my mind we'll never know no wonder i'm always so sweaty it's like i'm always around myself and like whoo just get a little you know a little worked up hot under the collar you know what i'm saying i don't know show us your shoulders I'll tell you um no thanks I'm unshowered today I feel like you know if I were also a known cryptid that's a that's a burden I mean I wonder do you go to the conferences yet with Sasquatch and everyone do you talk about your

feelings sometimes I think about like who burdened me with this identity and then I'm like I couldn't tell you all right it's emothy i think you just like they've got to have a like a group therapy where all of you really talk about the the the limelight that you must yeah we do it's called slam poetry cryptid slam poetry have you been there i have it's weirdly erotic you guys do you know about the cryptid slam poetry i know that like it doesn't really always hit hard for a lot of people but man we have fun doing it in the fall so when it comes back you better get get your butt over there we have a a good time again it ends up wildly erotic

it does get weird really fast so i would warn you we say you send us your poetry your personal poetry about cryptids and at least half of them are people smashing Mothman like to smithereens. It's a lot about our listenership and their psyches. But, you know, I mean, I don't judge. I just am fascinated, you know. But somebody wrote a poem about you last time and it got really weird. Were they smashing me to smithereens what was happening do you remember we were like um this is a little alarming obviously i learned wow it must happen so often that you don't even remember okay i do remember there being a really intense poem about

me i just don't know how it ended and i'm a little scared uncomfortable yeah uh but the person now is probably their feelings are hurt because you just don't even remember oh well i sorry try again next time maybe they'll write again i don't know i'm sure i could go into google and type in poetry about m or something i'll find it i could always find it oh it's oh it's there i mean i'm sure I have it under my pillow. I mean, somewhere in my... Oh! Look, if someone ever writes a poem and it starts with, I'm showing my shoulders for you, I'll know that it was you. It was just a diary entry from Christine.

Christine, we just finished up our second leg of our tour. We went to Salt Lake. We went to Denver. How did you feel about the experience did you have fun I want your highs and your lows oh wow thank you for asking I had a great time um we had we had a lot of fun I slept 14 hours the first night I got there it's not a higher low which I mean definitely a high uh okay except I woke up at 4 p.m and we and I looked at my phone and it said

meet in the lobby at 4 30 and i went uh-oh um so aside aside from that i had a great time but you had a much more involved experience i went this away and that away i went every which way i did not know how gay salt lake is and i guess that makes sense that in like a really religious town, I think the town itself isn't gay. I think you just found the right pockets. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. A lot of places,

I just stumbled into places and they're just covered in rainbow flags. Street corner is like named after that fucking guy, Joseph Smith. It's like, that's what I'm saying. I feel like I was surprised because it's such a religious area. But I guess that if there's religion in an area, there's deconstructioners in the area. I guess like because also, did you know Salt Lake City?

They've got a hopping, hippin, happening speakeasy scene. And that would make sense to me because people want. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Definitely. It's like you're not supposed to be drinking so now but it's so interesting the psychology of like it's like specifically speakeasies not bars because it's like part of them still feel a little naughty about it and they're like oh we're doing it in hiding but then also like so many people apparently have like i don't know maybe they're just all transplants they all happen to be queer and they're just taking over salt lake i mean maybe it was just odd how many places i went like unprompted that were just covered in rainbow flags i love that i mean i'm so glad you found the right

yeah i'm so glad about that because i don't know much about the city since i slept 14 hours through my experience there but um you know i know about the big whale and I know some other things and yeah. I'll tell you, I had the best, the best donut of my life. I'm like almost scared to say it because I don't want it to be, you don't want people to like, I want to make sure that one's available to me next time I'm there, but it's called the Chubby Baker and the donut was called the brown butter donut. It took my breath away. I went three times butter i didn't know that that sounds delicious it was everything and then i went to obviously east high go wildcats because that's oh yeah they filmed high school musical in salt lake city at an actual high school called east high

i had no idea about that by the way like i don't know if everybody knows that but for i mean and it's not surprising to me if i'm the only one who's never heard that before, but I didn't know. Here's the range of people that I am friends with. I showed Christine a picture of the front of the high school, which looks like it's straight out of the movie, by the way. I showed it to Christine and she went, where is that? I kind of feel like I know that a little bit. Okay.

I guessed two things and one of them was high school musical. So I was close because I said, what was the other guess? I guessed one thing. And then I said, oh, I said two things and one of them was high school musical. So I was close because I said, what was the other guess? I guessed one thing and then I said, oh, I said Degrassi and high school musical. I was like, I don't know. It's a high school that I know you like. So I was close. To be fair. Also, and then I have other friends, one particularly named Ellen, who's like a Disney adult.

And I just, I FaceTimed myself next to a vague locker, like a ran, it looked like I was picking up like my cousin from high school. Like there was no detailing at all. No hint that I was even outside of Los Angeles. And she literally went, are you at the, are you at East High? And I was like, how did you know that?

I was like prepared to like talk to her normally and then turn my phone around. But she already knew by like the corner of the ceiling. She was like, did you know that i was like prepared to like talk to her normally and then turn my phone around but she already knew by like the corner of the ceiling i know where you are i sensed it she's like it's almost as if i've been there a million times um wow anyway i had a great time there fun fact about east high is that obviously their um their mascot is in the movie is the wildcats in real life the mascot stayed the same like the mascot and everything they used everything from the school but they changed the same the logo's the same but they changed it to wildcat from leopards and so it's actually the east high leopards and

even funner fact is apparently east high's rival no go figure is west high but west high's mascot is the wildcats no so it's like these what do they think of next the only reason i know this is because um at our venue in salt lake uh we by the way the entire crew there felt queer also but that's just my my feelings about it i don't know how true it was but everyone everyone felt a little like the vibe was right. And someone that we worked with literally went to East High. And he was like, I'll answer whatever you want. Wait, really? I missed all that.

Where was that? And so you were downstairs eating food. Oh, perfect. Oh, wait, no. I was Ubering back to the hotel because I forgot our most important piece of luggage there. So, yeah. Sorry sorry i was busy i feel like everyone that's ever gone to east hive has like some like like sad glint in their eye where they're just like it's like a war flashback and they're like now that i've announced it i'm prepared for all of your stupid fucking questions

and like fine bring it on he was like i'll tell you anything. And I went, good. I have so much to say. Did he sound like Eeyore? I'll tell you anything. I think his soul felt like Eeyore, but he really did put on the glam for me, which I appreciated. And I wanted to get a picture. The only picture I did not get at High School Musical was on the stage. But fun fact, anyone who was a High School Musical fan, the theater scenes actually were filmed at a different high school.

So it doesn't really count anyway. And I wanted to. But guess what stopped me? Teenagers were actually practicing a high school musical. So I could not. So anyway. Wow. This is a very good reason.

I love hearing about it because I'm like I like watch high high school musical and stuff but i was never like the biggest like i had friends in high school who were obsessed you know and i was never really that obsessed yeah well we i know that thank you though for clarifying um but yeah i just i was like that's so cool i had no idea it was in salt lake so you know um fun fact i'll post we can post pictures of me i obviously got pictures everywhere at the sharpay lockers and everything it's a sharpay yeah which is still pink right they're still pink and it's her and her brother which is so interesting because her theirs are pink in the movie i think like the other main characters have like red lockers and they weren't still red it was just it was just the sharpay pink ones maybe that was part of her contractual obligation. She was like, you need to keep this, my Pantone shade of pink.

A thousand percent. Anyway, I had a great goddamn time. I went to a lot of gay stores. I went to, I mean, truly, I tried everything. I did the whole, in Salt Lake, because a lot of people don't drink, because a lot of people areormon they have like restaurants that are just soda restaurants it's essentially bars that are only mocktails which i don't know why that yes do you want to guess because christine yeah yeah i'm tell me one time and i they're all like these kind of onomatopoeia type so there's like fizz and like uh fuck i already forget fizz is the one i always hyper focus on there's fizz and then uh there's the big one is swig swig yeah then there's there's also thirst

thirst and then my favorite is a pun because it's so delicious as in so delicious oh i didn't get that the first time that's cute yeah um i guess swig and so delicious, as in so delicious. Oh, I didn't get that the first time. That's cute. Yeah. I guess Swig and So Delicious are the two big ones. And then I announced loudly at the bar we were at, I'll name the next one. And Em said, no, there is no other one. And I said, no, I'm going to name the next one.

But you named it great. You named it great. And Eva said, let her name it Em. And I don't even know what I said. You said something with a ph phosphate phosphate now that's i said something but we but we remove all the vowels right you're at phosphate yeah um it's very silicon valley you know anyway it was a dream i like i go figure me going to mormon country would mean I'd have opportunities as someone who doesn't drink to go to all these places and try things.

I realize this later, but it's dry January or it was when we were there. So like everybody in the world is not everybody. But a lot of people are not drinking anyway. So I bet they were like leaning into it. Well, it was so weird. To be clear, I was not part of that group. Nobody at the New York show was, I don't think. No, I'm not a dry January-er.

But so they have all these like, it's essentially like a Starbucks where you just go through a drive-thru and the only thing to drink, the only thing to order are sodas. Although some of them had like a weird quirky snack that they were known for. Wait, so did you Uber through? Or how'd you do it? I met a man named michael and he was my lyft driver i essentially paid him for the whole night and i was like i need to go to one of each and i need you to just you're my show i need you to go to one of each i said i'll pay you good well let's just do this over venmo because lyft is not going to give you what you deserve

here um because i need serious how do you have the confidence to pull that kind of shit off i just couldn't i because i got in a car and i actually got in a few cars before michael and i was gauging their personalities and oh so you had to wait to the right one i had to find the right one and then michael who was a homeboy the second i got in the car he was ready for some social interaction because he turned around and stuck his hand out and went hi i'm michael and i went whoa i went if that's the energy you're gonna bring here's the energy i'm gonna proposition you but not in the way you think let's go so i wanted to try as many as possible i want to try as many as possible i went to all four of them and i just got kid sizes of things

and i've got like their top like five drinks at each of them. So I had like fucking 20 drinks in this poor man's car. Jesus Christ, you're worse than me. But here's the thing. Because Michael, he understood the assignment. And on top of that, he was like, let me tell you the best ones. And then he helped me finish them. Because he was like, there's 20 fucking drinks here, even though they're kid sized.

Like, let's let's just go to town together. And I essentially had like a bar buddy for the night. It was great. Oh, so you paid him. Did you drink them all in the car or did you get out? No, we had to drink them in the car on the way to the other place. So we wouldn't. They wouldn't hit them all.

Yeah. Man, I'm so fascinated. I just I'm like, I'm always so impressed when people like you are are bold enough to like make a plan like that, because I just could never, I like, I would never have the guts. I wanted it. I so badly wanted it to be a sit down restaurant. So I wouldn't bother somebody, but I also on principle had to go to these places and I didn't have a car. So I was like, I need to just find the right lift driver. There's no other option. there's no other option and uh i'll i'll end on this part is that it's very common in salt lake apparently for people to like at these soda places it's the menu is listed in the categories are different types of soda so like i went to one and it just said like dr pepper drinks mountain dew drinks sprite drinks and then they're all listed with like a fun name with like different

syrups and pumps and stuff that you can get mixed into them. And I took a picture of each so I could recreate them all back at home in the Schultz Forth Manor. So now I've got a full mocktail bar here. their thing there though because even though they'll put syrups and stuff in it their thing is to put cream to put heavy cream or half and half

it's like an Italian soda if anyone's familiar where you put cream into it it was not good you said that's a thing in Denver too that in the mountains they like these Italian sodas I cannot get my head around it. It was not that good. It was better than I thought it would be, but it was still not yummy.

Yeah. And then grosses me out. And the main drink, I guess, out there is called the Dirty Dr. Pepper, which is Dr. Pepper with either like coconut or vanilla syrup mixed into it, sometimes with the heavy cream. This I like. or vanilla syrup mixed into it sometimes with the heavy cream this it was i in theory that sounded good but all the syrups in soda just made them all taste like flat diluted soda because you were just diluting it with syrup oh there's not as much carbonation yeah that's fair so anyway would you

i i i am just gonna quickly say i drink because I just love how bold you are. And I'm just proud of you. I like having friends who are like bolder than me. Cause then I'm like, you know what? And if I can do it, then I can ask my Uber driver. I can proposition my Uber driver. Um, and so I just want to say thank you for that confidence you instill in me. And that's why I drink this week, but also quick question. Have you ever considered perhaps opening your own mocktail type of a bar because i feel like you would be the king of like you would i mean there's no doubt in any of our minds that you'd be like the premier person that'd be cool to create right and i feel like you like as far as everything like like you're very particular about the flavors the like you know

what you're doing about like in the mocktail sphere but then also the the decor the aesthetic like you'd be all over that you'd be all over the events you'd be all over the punny names like I don't know I just wonder you'd be all over like customer experience and I just wonder if that's something you've ever considered because I would guarantee you'd have quite a uh quite a quite a listenership that would that would show up and rally for you if you did that i so in a dream world i could run my own mocktail bar but this is a dream world the world isn't real nothing is real but you know what is real assholes and there's a lot of people who are like i've noticed at a lot like la just opened its very first like fully mocktail bar and their their whole thing is like it's just like all those

fucking uppity people who like i guess had a really great opinion about alcohol at one point and have changed their ways or they have like that filmmaker snootiness kind of to them and they're like well this isn't like i just i don't want to deal with people like that in my bar i would just want to be like no fucking assholes like if you want to mix yeah there was one drink that i got there was one drink i got at one of the places that was like mountain dew it was like strawberry puree and like pineapple juice or something and it tasted amazing it sounds delicious if you aren't low brow enough like i would want to i would want to do a mocktail dive bar. I would love to run one of those.

That's more what I pictured, like a speakeasy type. I would like to do that because- Like an underground, like, oh, well, you just have to know about it to go. Because all the other ones are just too blech. And also a lot of mocktail places, which if for some reason you're a bartender and you ever run into me and you want to make me a drink, I'm only saying that not because I think that that's what I deserve, but it has happened quite a few times. And I just want to put a PSA out there that if you were the next person to do this for me, I feel like everyone tries so hard to really amp up the mocktail because they feel like you've already lost the alcohol experience that they really owe it to you to like zhoosh up this mocktail. Similar as possible to a real cocktail. Like you've already lost the alcohol experience that they really owe it to you to like zhoosh up this mocktail. They want to make it as similar as possible to a real cocktail.

Yes. But like I don't give a shit about alcohol. So to make it as similar is doing nothing for me. And like I so I hate the idea of like they're like, oh, well, we use this. There's like all these brands now that are like alcohol replacements. And it's like it's our version of like mocktail gin. And I'm like, never on earth did I want real gin. So please don't put fake gin in it.

Like give me a fucking Sprite with an orange juice. Like some, like just normal fucking drinks. Like I want you to create like a phosphate bar from the olden days that were like, didn't your, like, you know, didn't your, didn't your grandparents have like an ice cream bar or something? Like why don't you just re, like clearly it's in your blood, you know? Why don't you re? I would love to actually. It was called the, well, I know I'm monopolizing the time here today. I'm sorry.

I'm just in a real chatty mood. I'm asking all the questions. No, no. Tell me. I like that. I feel very loved. Oh, good. But you ask me a question and then I really i take it way too far i know

what i'm doing when i ask you a question you know that right like i've known you long enough i know i know um no my my gammy who has passed and my grandpa we called him grandpa schultz who has passed they both met when they were kids because their parents ran businesses across the street from each other and so my gammy her parents and if you happen to know anybody, by the way, ask your grandparents because I'm trying to find information on this thing. I know the location and nothing else about it. And no newspaper on earth seems to have ever talked about it. My gammy, her parents ran what was called McDonald's Luncheonette's luncheonette and it i guess locals called it

max place and it was a luncheonette with a candy it was a candy shop an ice cream store it did like deli sandwiches um and across the street was the schultz pharmacy and shut up my grandpa he used to i guess help his dad at his pharmacy and my Gammy used to help her parents at the luncheonette. And so every now and then my grandpa and Gammy would go to each other's stores because they would be picking up sandwiches for their parents or one of them needed medicine for their parents. One of them was getting cocaine and heroin for their parents. Well, under the dust of the cocaine, they ended up falling in love. And that's that's how i came to be so under the dust okay that makes a lot of sense first of all but second of all wow so wait where

was this so that people who are good at like all the sleuthing baldwin new york um and after that why was it called mcdonald's luncheonette because my gammy's maiden name was mcdonald's wow and it's m-a-c i i think it was i have one picture that exists of them in front of the place but i think it was mc mc oh okay i i'm just curious for those for those who might do a little digging which it may or may not be me later yeah it was, uh, yeah, it was in like the, the fifties and sixties and it was called McDonald's. It spelled in some way luncheonette and it was known to the locals as Max place.

And it was across the street in Baldwin, New York from the Schultz pharmacy. So, um, anyway, uh, I don't even know what you asked. I asked if you would ever consider reopening something like that.

Cause I think you would really like knock it out of the park. I would love to run a, like a diner or a luncheonette. My mom and I actually always really good. My mom and I always had a dream about opening like an old school ice cream parlor together. That's it. Yeah.

And I think you could sell the sodas on the side as like a, you know, your own recipes or whatever. I really think you would hit it hit it big with that i do thank you i appreciate that i in a world where i'm not terrified of risk that it is who that's listen i'm listening to a book about confidence and we're made to feel like we can't do anything but guess what men run around and they're like oh well i just assume i can do everything.

So, you know what? Oh, well, now that you said that, you can do it. Just assume you can do it and it'll be fine. Thank you for the confidence boost. That's why I drank this week, because you made me feel very loved with all your questions. I did not mean to monopolize the situation, but I did enjoy talking about myself. Oh, good. No, I would rather i would rather just hear interesting stories um i wanted to hear about your grandparents uh sody pop shop so i'll ask one question that matches mine real quick do you know how any of your parents your grandparents met is there like any meet cutes um or no what to say you can just say no you're making it sound like it's like prison or something how to frame this um well if you recall the decade and uh state of the world during the time when my grandparents would have met oh you were germans i forgot yeah you forgot wow good for you for a moment just to get

by i can't um but yeah so so you know well you know what i did find one piece of information that my grandmother maria who i'm always trying to like reach out to and like connect with because i'm like named after her and she she was very like mystical before you know becoming not that way um very catholic but she apparently was uh she had she was in the front of the the catholic rally against uh nazi occupation of austria as far as i can tell from some old sources but but beyond that, I think they all kind of just had to step in line and follow the, follow the way that things had to be. So let's just leave it at that and say, I'm forging a new path in my life.

Wow. You could have just said like they met over coffee. Like, I mean, I don't want to lie i mean you know i don't i don't really know and to be honest with you it is kind of a sore spot for me because i don't know and my parents for understandable reasons do not discuss their really pass not at all we just don't do it you're not really supposed to you know or i think one day maybe it's too difficult you know right now but I think one day I'll probably do a better more um more in-depth

dive into all of that but uh with my parents having their boundaries set I don't ever want to you know overstep uh with her that's like the only time I think I've ever heard one of my friends parents have boundaries about information where I'm like maybe it is for the best no literally like my parents will not tell me I didn't know until a few weeks ago that my grandmother had a sister or that my grandfather had a sister I didn't know um I barely knew their I don't know my grandma's middle name like I don't know anything about them really so what nothing I'm like and it's it's very difficult for me but um i was gonna say that has to actually be a bit of an identity crisis because you're like how do it really does it hurts a bit um but yeah and then when i do find stuff out it's like do i really

want to know like is it just gonna make me feel even worse probably so and my brother's very comfortable i think just being kind of like um you like, we'll leave it in the past and not think about it. Or not not think about it, but like, you know, just understand it for what it is and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just very like, I think I'm just hurt over it and he's not. So I stand alone in that way. I think one day, you know, maybe when my parents are much older, they'll be like, OK, we can talk about it now. But yeah, no, I have a I have one grandpa who I've mentioned before on here very briefly. when my parents are much older they'll be like okay we can talk about it now but yeah no i have a i have one grandpa who i've mentioned before on here um very briefly but there's at some point i

don't know what happens in my family because there's a generation where everyone beneath them was like we do not talk about them like you do not want to know what they were doing you do not want to know what was happening and just know that we come from very bad people and i'm like holy shit but and now i'm like i can't know exactly that's how i feel i'm like i'm desperate to figure out what happened like who do i come from that's kind of how i feel and my brother's like why do you want to know i'm like i don't know because no one will tell me i guess yeah i just have to trust my ancestors who did who were trying to protect me before i was even born they're like maybe i really don't want to know but i'm like no i do i a part of me has to know but maybe i would regret it i don't know i know it's a it's a tough line to walk and um

yeah i feel for anybody who uh has a disconnect from their their ancestors as well i mean remember when you showed me pictures of your your ancestors and i was like so blown away like i was like i've never really seen a picture of my grandparents like yeah it's just so crazy to me i'm like how like it's just so i don't know i was like living vicariously i was like this is well thank you that means a lot because i um so that's for people listening that's on the other side of my family where as far as i know there's not too many. I don't come from bad people over there. The bad blood is on the other side.

But one of my big Christmas presents to my mom this year was I went through every picture she's ever taken since she was fucking born in the 60s. And I digitized everything and organized them into Google drives and did QR codes and put the actual pictures into binders. And so that way she like everything's connected. She even if the house burned down tomorrow, she still has those binders digitally. And then I also went through like I digitized all of our home videos. So there it was a very, very long, like almost a year long project I was doing behind the scenes. like almost year-long project i was doing behind the scenes and i found all these pictures which to this day i'm so grossed out with my mother because she was just throwing every loose picture she ever took into like this like big ass tupperware and didn't care about like the quality

like if the pictures were being damaged and like i found pictures from fucking and put it away yeah i found pictures from 1885 i'm like girl like you can't just throw this into essentially the trash bin under your i mean i understand that this is different but to be fair you said if somebody mailed you old photos like that you would put them in the dumpster so um that's true but it was our like our our family right so they they're more they matter right true and so um but the the pictures that i found i mean some of them fascinating. There's a whole binder of photos I didn't even know existed that are of grandparents before my grandparents. And, like, luckily my grandma's still alive and has told me stories about them. And she always told me about, like, one of my great-great-grandmas who we would have gotten along so well.

And then I found pictures of her. I know. I was enamored by her too. It's very moving. And actually, as I'm talking about it, I think I like opened something up while I was messing with those pictures because ever since, like just talking about it right now, I can feel someone in the room with us and I never had a connection to them. And so now I'm wondering, were they always looking out for me? And now I've opened a door in a way where like now I can feel them watching me.

Or were they never watching me and both of us grew connected together? Yeah, did we both like kind of fall in love with each other through this project? But I feel really connected to somebody. And I don't know if it's that grandma or there's an aunt that I think I might be sensing I remember the aunt yeah she by the way there's there's rumors that she was the first queer of our family so I like to think that she's really really looking down too but love that for her and you last thing I'll say we are literally already a half an hour in I'm so sorry everybody but I will end on everybody. But I will end on a ghost story. I'll end on a ghost story, which I've already told you, right?

I love it, though. I was going to ask you, too. Yeah. I was home and I was messing with all these pictures and I've been feeling something kind of stirring around and someone watching out for me. But it's a feeling I've never really known before. And so I was talking to one of my but it's a feeling I've never really known before. And so I was talking to one of my friends who's a medium and I was like, I just feel like someone's around. I know it's from these pictures and I don't, I've never felt them before. I don't know who they are.

And she said like, honestly, like just ask out loud to talk to them. Like it's that simple and just make it specific, like make it be a sign that like, it's so obvious that you would not be able to like make a coincidence out of this. And so I asked out loud, even in front of my medium friend, I was like, whoever's here, like, I can feel you. I know you're around. I don't know, like, what's going on. But I, I just need a sign that you're one of my family members because I don't know if by messing with this stuff I've opened up a door to everyone or if this is a family member. So if you can just send me like, I like to think of myself and the family

as like the one who knows the most about all of our ancestry and all of our tchotchkes and any backstory. I know that we don't have a lot of heirlooms. Spoiler alert, we fled for, we escaped the Holocaust. that we don't have a lot of heirlooms a spoiler alert we fled uh for we escaped the holocaust so we don't have a lot going on um and we don't have a lot of like things that have been passed down through the family i've never really seen a lot of heirlooms and i was like i know with confidence that we don't have anything really left after my great grandma if you can

bring me an heirloom from our family which i know doesn't exist if you can bring up me an heirloom that way i'll know that like a new one that you a new one i've never seen before like you and i said like and not only that but like drop it on my head like plop it in my hand. Like do it so obvious, like have someone hand it to me. Then I'll know that like, it's family that I'm sensing. Within 24 hours, my mom was like going, my mom was going through her closet and she was like, Oh, come over and like, you know, help me go through these earrings. And I ended up lifting up like her earring tray and we didn't know it was hollow. I didn't know it was hollow at least. And in there was just like these tiny little figurines.

And I was like, mom, what the hell are these? And she went, oh my God, I've been looking for those. And she grabbed them and plop them in my hand. And she went, this is the closest thing to a family heirloom we have. I was like, what? And they were these little statues, these little monkey statues of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. And she was like, when I was a kid, they were these little statues, these little monkey statues of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. And she was like, when I was a kid, they were really old.

So I'm thinking they were like she remembers that that queer aunt I was telling you about. She said that they used to be hers, but she remembers them being old. So they might have even been handed down to her, which was a great, great aunt. I think it's a queer aunt running around. I think it's her. And if it's not her, then was a great, great aunt. I think it's a queer aunt running around. I think it's her. And if it's not her, then it's her mom. It's one of the two. It's just I found that so stunning because I also listened to a book by Laura Lynn Jackson.

Because I have felt such a weird, lonely disconnect from my like uh people who've passed my my you know grandparents and stuff uh and she says like basically you just have to ask for something really specific and like it'll happen just like ask for ask for like a giraffe riding a tricycle or whatever and then like you'll see i don't know a cartoon and it happens all the time um and so i had asked for uh that stuffed alligator remember and then we read that next morning we read uh an episode or i'm sorry we did our listeners episode and in one of the things was like a ghost story about how a stuffed alligator appeared in her living room and i was like oh that's so weird so amazing it's kind of cool it's so if you are out

there and you're just thinking like i wonder you, don't don't be afraid to ask. Worst that happens, you feel silly. But anyway, the world is a weird place. So and that's why we drink. Amen. Tell me a story. Speaking of weird stories, Christine, I've been waiting to cover this for so long. Oh, and you have to know it

you have to already know what's coming or like not maybe not yet but when i say the title there's no way you don't know what the story is but get ready to banter because this is just beyond banana grams noodles all the way the top this is the kentucky meat shower oh holy shit i have heard about this aka the kentucky meat storm aka carnal rain that's the new album that zach bagans is releasing next week uh did you know about it before you moved to kentucky i had heard about it but only because i lived in cincinnati which is like oh 10 minutes from kentucky so i was basically always in uh you know in kentucky almost this is um one of my favorite stories i've always wanted to cover it it's just a mystery for the ages about it like originally oh

i couldn't even tell you years ago uh i feel like a lot of podcasts cover this that's what i just because it's so weird i know they covered it on lore and some other shows so yeah yeah uh i think back when mysterious universe was not problematic i think i read an article oh yeah they definitely mysterious universe yes yes um i i think i i think i must have read it there for the first time because that was where i got a lot of my like weird articles to start off of yeah well that was a great source it was a great source i really wish that it was it could still be a great source um so okay the kentucky meat shower which by the way i just want to start off with a quote from myself because i kept saying it as i was doing these notes uh

this is how you'll know i made it to heaven when it's raining meat gross that's how you'll know so if you're looking for like an heirloom plopped into your hand sign oh my god i made it yeah when filet mignon just rains down on people. That's how you'll know. Oh my Christ. So when the next Kentucky meat shower occurs, it means M has gained their wings in heaven. When a filet mignon falls from the sky, an amethy has gained their horns. Yeah, that's exactly right.

So immediately it's weird because to me, this happens in 1876. I feel like if it happened in 2024, we could say like, oh, like a butcher plane crashed. I don't know, something. A McDonald's luncheonette blew the top off the roof. This happened on march 3rd uh it is in 1876 and there is a woman named mrs crouch already feels like a fake story i feel like mrs crouch sure does just feels like the name of a vague it feels like something out of a Roald Dahl book yeah yeah and Mrs. Crouch she lives on a farm with her husband

Alan they live in Olympia Springs Kentucky which is exactly a two hour drive from Christine's house not to triangulate you yay if you drive in one direction for two hours exactly you will get to Christine's house we'll find it eventually

Mrs. Crouch was outside one day she is making soap For two hours exactly, you will get to Christine's house. We'll find it eventually. Mrs. Crouch was outside one day. She is making soap in the yard, which that's the most 1876 farm thing I've ever heard in my life. It's the most Kentucky thing I've ever heard, yep. And she noticed that the winds nearby were suggesting rain. However, the weather made it seem like the sky was pretty clear, but she kept hearing the sounds of a storm brewing.

Uh-oh. Around noon, all of a sudden, she sees or hears, depending on the story, something falling near the house. And she looks around and she realizes

that it is raining raw meat. What the fuck? Like, I know the story, but I just still can't understand. I. And in 1876, a lot of weird things haven't happened yet. You know, so. Right. Yeah.

Like, we haven't figured out a lot of weird shit, but like this one still is so fucking weird. The meat shower lasted several minutes. And that gives you enough time to like wonder if you're hallucinating or not. And then you just stare and you just wait. Several minutes. And you just look around. You're like, is this my forever now or does it end? And now your soap smells like meat. Yeah, that was like a special edition soap. You're like, is this my forever now or does it end? And now your soap smells like meat. Ugh.

Yeah, that was like a special edition soap. That was like, do you want to smell like you want to be covered in rubble? Do you want to smell like Em? Do you want Em to fall in love with you? This is my magic potion. I promise I smell better than that. But my tummy does smell like steak for sure. like steak for sure um so this meat shower lasted several minutes covered their farm or at least 100 yards by 50 yards of their farm jesus okay reportedly enough meat rained down to quote

fill up a wagon now could that be one of those little red wagons that kids have or is this like a fucking stage coach wagon i don't know i don't know but i imagine it was the wagon they used on the farm so yeah which was not a little kid wagon this was a big boy wagon most pieces were two inches by two inches so little squares okay not really little squares i Okay. Not really little squares. I mean, like. Big chunks. Pretty big chunks. And the largest piece that she saw was the length of her hand. That's a full ass.

That's a fucking sirloin. That's a New York strip right there. That's an expensive, expensive cut. Yeah. That's at least a $30, $40 piece of meat. And this is before cows had all these hormones. i don't know like how these might have been actually better to eat might have been i probably was um so it was the length of her hand was the biggest piece and apparently the meat appeared very fresh but it also looked very gristly uh the first thought is that it must have been beef or venison and she reported that it fell like snowflakes when it fell down

so like i'm imagining on dear dear your grinch music as i imitate it floating down. Um, oh, uh, Ahu Dore Valhu Fare, welcome meat shower in my hands. What if they rewrote the Grinch and the Christmas ham they ate at the end, or whatever that was, actually did float down that way.

The roast beast. I know way too much about the fucking Grinch. I have a problem. I know. I know I do. I was thinking green eggs and ham. There's a lot of meat stories that Dr. Seuss was about. Yeah, well, there's two, but I think you nailed it. You got them both.

Compared to other series for children, that's two more than most. What about C.S. Lewis' The Great Meat Shower of 1873? For a second, I was like, what? That's very on brand. So it falls like snowflakes. I don't even know physically how that can work because two by two. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it go splat?

Wouldn't it thud like hail or something instead of whatever? In my mind, physics would work. Yes. And maybe I've read the notes wrong maybe it's not fell like snowflakes maybe it felt like snowflakes but that also doesn't make sense because if you're getting pummeled with heavy thick meat if you're getting as i said earlier smashed to smithereens oh it's sick it really is um okay so get is this not the most linda thing you've ever heard in your entire life because tell me fresh meat is just pouring down her first thought very first fucking thought

of what this could be she thought her son had been killed and dismembered on his way home and the wind was blowing him across the farm that's literally that's my mother if i don't call her back in five minutes my god you wrote something like in the book in the haunted road atlas or something where you said like uh meanwhile my mom uh like calls the national guard if i disable find my friends or something and i feel like that line alone is like so apt i mean wow i mean to be fair as a deeply mentally ill person as well, with intrusive thoughts, my brain also would be like, great, there goes my loved ones. They're all hacked up into pieces and falling from the sky. So I'd have the same thing, but in a less... My mom would at least text a picture of it and be like, is this you? Or she'd be like, this could be you if you don't get back to me in the next

i'd like begin mourning already you know i'd be like in mourning she would send me a link about raining meat and then she'd be surprised when i called back because i'm alive she'd be amazed she'd be like oh my god it wasn't you it's like you texted me uh yeah so i can't imagine this this woman had to be an overprotective helicopter jewish yeah i wonder yeah she clearly had some some intrusive thoughts as well i feel you girl you know the son came home and was like you thought i was blowing across the farm in chunks what the fuck is wrong with prime rib was me what are you talking about um they must have just gotten into like a really aggressive fight or something and it was

the last time she'd seen her son you know the guilt yeah the guilt um anyway when she realized it was not the rest of their lives she would be like i wish it was you in that fucking meat you know the son was like i'm gonna go to the bathroom be careful i might rain from the sky exactly i feel like they're gonna like weaponize that because i was just on tiktok because you know i have a tiktok again um and i saw a tiktok that like referenced like a toxic marriage and remember that um what was that movie with adam driver uh oh and scarlett johansson um it was really good the one about their marriage falling apart basically um but they like played a clip there where he like whips around screams like every morning i

wake up and hope you're dead and i'm like i can just imagine that line of like every morning i wake up and hope you fall from the sky in a dead meat shower just tumbleweed your your bloody carcass across the farm much more creative that way just saying yeah you know like at board games they like make inside jokes about it and then they have to explain to the family why mom is when they get apples to apples like the blank card they're like oh boy here we go so uh i guess she realized oh it's not my son and still though thought it was good and thought it was an omen from god i mean that's almost better than the first thought she had yeah yeah yeah and soon neighbors who would also witness this from their windows because they're like something is raining out there and then they're like is that me is that her son is that our neighbor's son yeah so they start getting real curious you know if i were in that neighborhood i would have been

leading the gossip pack on the ground m is out there m is taking notes i'd be like we are getting to the bottom of this immediately um so all the neighbors are all of a sudden showing up at the house being like what the fuck was that because remember it only rained on their farm that is so weird okay so neighbors saw it from a distance or maybe like a piece hit their house and they're like this is fucking crazy but everyone goes to the crouches to be like are you good like what was that like why are you throwing steak at my window? Some neighbors reported seeing meat hanging from the fences and the blood of the meat was like staining the fence. They remember seeing the meat stuck in bushes

and they saw chunks fall hard enough from the sky to chip wood off the house, which goes against the snowflake theory, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah. If the range of snowflakes are chipping the roof, to chip wood off the house which goes against the snowflake theory by the way gee oh yeah yeah yeah if the range of snowflakes are chipping the roof um yeah but all i can think about when it's like stuck in the bushes is like this is geo's dream like if this if this happens m if the next whenever the next kentucky meat shower happens m and geo are both reunited in heaven and having the best day of their lives we're just we're rolling around doing like snow meat angels like

i mean while my window's getting fucking shattered and i'm like you two i swear to god yeah it'll be uh if there's two showers you'll know i got to heaven and then the second one is when geo passes it'll be me letting you know oh he's with me now we're good oh don't worry things are about to get a lot weirder yeah thanks so uh when a reporter later asked i love by the way i'm also the reporter in this and my reporter i like to think this was actually the lead of the gossip pack who just decided they were the reporter. You can always say you're a reporter. Nobody can really. There's no, like, official badge, you know.

Well, just, like, the first thing this person asked the Crouches was, after it started kind of clearing up, like, looking back on the story, was like, what did it smell like over there? Oh, great question. Great question. And she said she did it smell like oh great question great question and she said she did not smell it which like there's no way it's a bunch of raw meat maybe not right away like i would hope if it was fresh it wouldn't smell right away after like a day or two i would imagine it would start to smell yeah right yeah well pretty immediately just like how you predicted with geo pretty immediately the farm animals start eating the shit out of this stuff i'm so happy for them i'm so happy for them at least they got a happy day you know uh the crouch's cat also started eating it which they i don't even

know the cat like i like to think escaped the house the second he saw meat raining from the sky and was like this is my if it's a it's if it's a farm i imagine the cat did not live inside anyway so i'm sure he was just like what the fuck is going on so neighbors again they started coming around everyone's wondering how this came to be uh many of the witnesses thought it must be beef uh remember they were thinking it's either beef or venison witnesses are also saying they think it's beef but a neighbor who was an like an avid hunter said it is obviously bear because of its very greasy feeling like oh fun fact bears are greasy i guess um cool and so because because all people i don't think we've ever evolved. Just like the animals, the neighbors were like,

should we try it? Should we eat it? Somebody has to say it. Somebody has to say it. Somebody had to say it. Everyone was thinking it. Someone was thinking, well, it's free meat.

Maybe we should try it. One brave soul. Yep. And that brave soul's name was Jimmy Welch. Jimmy. Jimmy. And he agreed to try the meat for a dollar okay this is me back then you're the one running around like and i'm like will you give me a dollar

i'll eat it and then they're like no and i'm like fine i'll eat it anyway i don't need the dollar i don't care i feel like the dollar i feel like he just ate it and then people thought he was gross and he like made up the story about the dollar. He's like, no, no, it was a dare. Yeah. Well, apparently he could not even swallow it down. He ate it raw, which not good. Sure did.

Right. That's already bad. A local butcher, which. Eating raw bear. I don't know. Yeah, maybe raw greasy bear. Nasty. Which, like, even if I liked bear, I couldn't eat that. Like raw. Yeah, no, no.

A local butcher, two different sources told me that his name was Mr. Frisbee. Yeah. Okay. Frisbee. was mr frisbee yeah okay um he was apparently the meat expert which makes me think that like this this is his moment right like he's like like i am the butcher in town and it is raining meat step aside it's like this is his avengers moment he's oh hell yeah it's like i will save the town finally a cape yeah my apron my cape i'll throw it around my neck it'll look like oh my god yes he just turns the apron around and it's

just it's the perfect costume it's like clark kent's glasses it's got to be something quick because you got to go into battle immediately okay the butcher superhero that's pretty good and mr frisbee he also tries eating it he says says that it might be deer or venison or mutton. He did say, and this is a quote, this is a quote from a podcast I listen to about this, that the smell was a new one. Whoa, okay. Wait, what's mutton?

Is that sheep? Mutton is lamb. Lamb, oh, okay. The thing, sheep or lamb, and then venison? Is that sheep? Mutton is lamb. Lamb. Oh, okay. The thing. Sheep are lamb. And then venison is deer. The smell is a new one. Oh, God.

Which, interesting, because Mrs. Crouch said that she didn't smell it. And I'm like, you clearly just didn't want to smell it. I mean, she was also making soap. Maybe her nose was diluted. You know what I mean? Broke even. That's a great point. Yeah, maybe they canceled each other out.

what i mean broke even that's a great point yeah maybe they canceled each other out when he uh when this butcher he took some of the meat he pulled it apart and when he pulled it apart a stringy fibrous material oozed out like milk milk oh so he was like i don't know what that is but that ain't meat uh what does it mean a stringy fibrous material that oozed out a milky fluid it's giving salt burn so even if it wasn't meat after a few days it certainly began to rot like meat and just like you said earlier after a few days that farm started to smell rough oh super bad um and i guess the smell alone if people hadn't already witnessed the shower if the town wasn't already talking about it now the smell was enough to get people's attention. Reporters are coming out. Scientists are coming to collect samples for testing because they've heard that meat that's not meat is raining from the sky. Several papers,

including the New York Times, wrote about the findings and possible origins of this meat rain. One scientist from Scientific American said that the sample was not meat, but it was something called gnostic, which is a type of bacteria that's found in soil and is not actually visible at all until it's wet. So his thought, I guess what this gnostic bacteria does, it sits on the ground and if it rains that water or moisture expands it into a gelatinous form with thread-like tubes so it looks like meat because it looks like there's muscles in it and apparently apparently it's edible for animals i don't know if it's edible but animals will eat it so and then it'll fly across the world and rain onto you.

Yeah, the thread-like tubes turn into wings and then it flies away. Yeah, I was like, explain that part, buddy. So it's this gelatinous shit that kind of, it's like those sea monkeys where you can't see them until you put water on them. How do you spell that? Gnostic? N-O-S-T-O-C. O-C. Oh, okay, okay, okay. n-o-s-t-o-c o-c oh okay okay okay and nicknames for this for gnostic are witch's jelly which makes sense because of the time i've heard of witch's jelly because it's jelly that appears out of nowhere because it has to have moisture um it's also known as star jelly it's known as

fallen star which is what i call call Christine when I see her shoulders. It's also called Spit of the Moon. And it's also called Troll Butter. Ew! Okay. First of all, least favorite, Troll Butter. Total favorite new one to me is Moon Spit or whatever you said. I love that. Moon Spit is something I make when I'm working the bar ship when I do my shift at Star Tenders.

Honestly, Moon Spit is what you do when that one bitchy customer doesn't tip you. You're like, I'm going to moonspit right now, you fucking cocktail, you biatch. But Gnostic. I've heard of star jelly, and I've heard of witch's jelly. Yeah. But I just Googled it, and it looks fucking green it doesn't really look like meat to me yeah if anything it looks like rotten meat not fresh meat yeah definitely doesn't look like oh it's really kind of nasty like i'll uh i'll send a photo to the group

or at least to you there's a hydrated gnostic commune from the ohio state university and we can post yeah i'd like to know what picture you're looking at because maybe like to them could they have excused it as like meat fat i mean it looks almost like seaweed it looks like seaweed yeah and i i mean to be honest like every photo looks like that as at least the ones i can find interesting so i mean maybe i don't maybe you know how like carrots didn't used to just be orange they had like purple and everything and like used to be green uh-huh yeah maybe used to be green before it was rotten um yeah i don't know but the the main theory from scientific american is that it was gnostic maybe it was like they thought it was a different strand of gnostic

that was a different color maybe it changed colors because it was flying through the air i don't know because also maybe if it if it looked like that texture that does look like something that would fall like snowflakes really it looks like it would splat but i guess so would meet so maybe let me look at the picture again no that feels like it would at least look like it kind of rained a little bit more than like a thick plummet. Yeah, I guess you're right. Not just like one big like thud. Yeah, that's fair.

Anyway, so Gnostic was, they thought that maybe Gnostic was on the ground. Rain made it expand. But there was no rain. This was a clear day and the only thing that fell from the sky was meat or this material. clear day and the only thing that fell from the sky was meat or this material um so that takes out the gnostic theory because there was no water to build it out of the ground all right other scientists said that it's not gnostic it is actual meat but we don't know what kind of meat well okay i could have said that too yeah i, I guess I'm a fucking scientist. Some mystery meat. But so one person tried to cook it over a Bunsen burner, and it reportedly smelled like mutton, like rancid mutton suet.

And for those who don't know, suet is like a hard, raw fat. So they felt like maybe it's like rotten sheep fat, lamb fat. Okay. Yeah. In this same experiment or in the same, I guess, like lab, the same people who are working on the Bunsen burner thing, they also put a chemical solution over the meat material so that it would, I guess, eat some of it away so they could see closer up on the fibers and the tissues. And there were, in fact, fibers and connective tissues. So they decided, OK, so it must be meat. OK.

Many of the cohorts in this lab, after smelling it, say that it was definitely mutton. Which, like, is this town just riddled with mutton? Like, why is everybody know what that smells like? I love that they're all just smelling. They're like, the other scientists also smelled it and said it has to be and you know they smelled it for science they were like i just right right right right and they got paid they were on the clock for sure um some scientists agreed that it was meat but not mutton and maybe it was just animal cartilage and then under a microscope uh they said that the meat was had to be either horse lung tissue or human infant lung tissue oh god it just keeps

getting worse in the words of bethany w an Acquired Taste podcast to cover this, she said, apparently babies have the lungs of horses. Oh, I mean, they do seem to scream loudly and have a lot of energy. I guess I could see how that would equate. Yeah. But it is wild. It's like it's either horse or baby lung. Nothing in between. Nothing else.

Not a pig. So that's what they said after looking at it under a microscope. But another doctor checked out a bunch of samples and said some of them were cartilage, but one had muscular connective tissue. So it couldn't have been a lung because it was muscular. So that takes away the thought that it's a horse lung or a baby lung. This guy says't have been a lung because it was muscular so that takes away the thought that it's a horse lung or a baby lung this guy says it's not a lung and then the meat at this point like amongst all of the science that they were doing it's now like rotten across the board so uh right people couldn't really even determine the animal of the meat if they wanted to but now

they're saying it's definitely not human it's definitely animal meat and it seems like everyone's because people were just taking chunks of it and bringing it so maybe the samples were different parts of animal parts true like maybe one part's a lung you know and then one part was a lung someone else was like no it's clearly not a lung but that was because they had a different piece of the meat uh-huh um okay so that kind of takes away the theory that like it's one type of organ maybe it's like just the original chicken mcnugget and it's just like yeah bits of everything there's a beak yeah and so this also led to the theory that maybe there was, regardless of what type of animal it was, I guess they're assuming sheep or lamb since everyone thinks it smelled like mutton the most. Yeah.

But the thought is that some animal must have exploded in the air and his chunks were raining down on the farm. his chunks were raining down on the farm so either the animal was being hunted and the the boom of the bullet like like pushed them into the sky which i don't know if they made guns that powerful back then oh or there was some sort of like literal like land mine that a sheep stepped on and flew into the sky after being launched from an explosion. But this happened in like a small town on a farm. There was no fucking explosion. And like the, wouldn't they have heard it?

And also wasn't like the main hunter there who thought it was bears. Like he would have maybe known if anyone had been shot that hard into the sky. But one of the theories is that it exploded in the sky and rained down one new york times reporter claimed that the meat shower was literally a meat to your shower um where this is probably going to be your favorite theory because i like that's called like a meteor like meteor meteor meteor that it was a literal meat shower of when earth passed through a bunch of orbiting chunks of meat the theory comes from the fact that a meteor coming to earth must have either hit a bunch of birds and the birds all exploded together

what but we would have seen a fucking meteor let's be clear we would have seen a meteor like this if it was close enough to the earth's atmosphere it's hitting a pack of meteors no but meteors can be really small i guess. But also if a meteor is coming down from outer space and hitting birds so hard they explode, would there even be evidence of a bird anymore? But it's like, I feel like it would just be pulverized. I will tell you one thing. What? There'd be a beak.

There'd be a beak. And it would make it into my chicken McNugget. Except probably the bird ate it. I mean, not the bird. Probably the dog ate it. So. Well, the reason I say this is probably going to be your favorite theory is because that theory very quickly slipped into this theory which is that well maybe a meteor hit our birds or another planet with life on it exploded and their bodies are raining down on us i find that a little crazy because like then it would be so

concentrated just to that one area like it's right a little bit unlikely for well if you i've heard about an alien coming and crashing down on a very specific part of the farm before and that is called the birth of clark kent slash superman oh sure okay i thought you were talking about the uh the uh whatchamacallit in kentucky the the alien oh the hopkinville kelly hopkinsville kelly hopkinville yeah um no that's how superman got his start he his his home planet exploded and he flew down to smallville kansas and he crash landed into a farm so So maybe that's what's happening here. This was just Clark Kent's like really unlucky brother and his passage onto Earth didn't work. He didn't have quite the same like constitution

as his brother. So he kind of didn't make it past Earth's atmosphere. So they think that there must have been another planet that exploded. And this is called the cosmic meat theory because basically it suggests that all the meat that's raining on us is dead exploded alien flesh i mean i love it even if this was a legit theory though anything falling to earth through the atmosphere that quickly would have been incinerated before it ever touched the

ground so okay maybe they were in a ufo and they something went wrong and he fell out maybe honestly anything's possible at this point so um one one professor thought that this was dried tadpoles that the wind spit out onto the farm, like somehow got lifted up in a storm and just kind of came raining down on people. And that's apparently not a weird theory because fish and frogs have reportedly fallen from the sky several times in storms. Yeah, raining frogs. I've heard of that. In 1947, fish fell from the sky in louisiana fish also rained in australia in 1974 2004 and 2010 uh tadpoles have rained down in places like japan hungary the philippines and

india like a common theory is that um a type of tornado called water spouts lifts the fish and frogs out of water and grabs them back down um but none of that would explain literal meat or something that's not fish and tadpoles yeah you know what i have a question which i feel like might be dumb because you might have already kind of made it clear but was there any fur on these pieces one source i read said that somebody claimed that they saw wool which would confirm mutton but like don't you have to make wool or you have to no i guess it was i guess it would technically be right attached on top of it right it would just be like it's like a patch of fur essentially um yeah there someone said that they thought they saw wool which would confirm mutton but we don't

really know if that was them. I would just think if a cow exploded or something, you'd see so much hair and hoof and other pieces of it. Bones. What about bones? Hold on. What about a face? Shouldn't there be a face, an eye, a brain? And that also makes me think, by the way, if it was gelatinous matter, could it be raw brain?

I guess, but wouldn't it have to be a lot? Because one of them was like the size of her hand. Yeah. Like, do you know how much of it fell? Like a whole temporal lobe. They said a whole wagon full, right? That's a big old brain. Right.

That's the brain as big as mine,'ll tell you that oh boy it's hard to find but there we go we did it we do exist we keep it hidden but we do exist um yeah it's it makes this truly just makes no sense i mean even none of that even like the fish in the tadpoles thing it wouldn't explain a meat shower especially when the only way that fish in tadpoles would have gotten there is if rain had happened, but there was no rain. It was a clear sky. Hmm.

Some people like the crouches who were good Christians. Although I would argue that that mom sounded very Jewish with her complete weird ass fear. Yeah. Um, if this was, they thought that this must be an omen. A lot of neighbors thought it too. I mean, meat raining down from the sky, even if it's frogs.

It sounds like a plague, like one of the 10 plagues. Apocalyptic. Yeah. Yeah. So, but then people were like, why would God decide that he's going to rain down meat on one Christian farm for like five minutes and that's it because you done fucked up and you know what you did mrs crouch i don't know that's when like all of a sudden you like rethink your every single step from that day and you're like what did i do it

must like it was clearly a temporary oopsie daisy because i only got temporarily punished during my evening prayers maybe that's why he's so mad. You know what I kind of like about this, like that one of the plagues, that like the raining meat or raining frogs or whatever, is that it's not really, and I'm talking completely out of my ass. I'm sure there's a whole biblical context to this.

But from what I know of like raining frogs or raining meat or whatever it is, it's just not even a plague that's really that bad. It's just wildly inconvenient. It's just God being like, I'm going to give you something to think about, and it's going to really suck. As someone who has studied this as part of my Catholic upbringing, I think I can step in here and say it was pretty damn bad. Was it more than just raining frogs? What happened? Oh, sure. Yeah. so here we go um this is from the biomedical scientist.net this is just like a summation of some of the things that happened the waters returned

to blood the fish in the river died and the egyptians couldn't drink the foul water frogs swarmed forth covering every inch of land and entering houses and bedrooms all over egypt bugs crawled forth from the dust to cover the land. And that's just a couple of them. So the blood water is crazy. Then the not being able to drink, that's obviously the worst part of it because everything else is just infestations, right? Well, no, because then they killed the firstborn Egyptian sons, right? You're saying right as if I know. No, I don't know.

They killed the firstborn Egyptian sons? Well, it is Old Testament, so I don't know. No, I don't know. They killed the firstborn Egyptian sons? It is Old Testament, so I don't know. I thought maybe you'd know. Hordes of wild animals destroyed everything in their path. A fatal pestilence killed most of the domestic animals. The pharaoh, his servants, all their animals developed painful boils all over their body. Hail struck down all the crops in the fields, shattered every tree. The locusts covered up the land and swallowed up every crop and all the fruits.

Thick darkness over the land of Egypt, so total that the egyptians had to feel their way around couldn't see and then of course the final was all firstborn egyptian sons died uh and the israelites had to mark lamb's blood above the door to be passed over in the plague do we know what the time gap was between all of these like was it all at once like that's so no they they were kind of like back i think they were they were kind of um consecutive you know what i mean i do i do remember hearing did the 10 plagues take yeah i do remember hearing about the boils this is someone who's so removed from religion all i got from that was that god sounds like a real asshole that's well yeah that's the old testament for you baby um okay that's that's the whole thing and then the new testament jesus shows up and suddenly god's like um oopsies i was kind of mean to you all that's kind of like a like a like a guy who's like kind of a dirtbag and he's like

but now i've got a son i've got to really get my like change my game up you know yeah it's like a toxic yeah it's definitely very toxic um but it says we can feel comfortable i don't know i don't feel comfortable about any of this but sure uh this is by the bible history guy.com we can feel comfortable with a probable maximum time frame between february 1st and march 22nd 1446 bc well tomorrow's february 1st happy anniversary um that sounds awful house as an understatement obviously but like no comment no comment i never anyway so yeah so it was bad it was bad um okay got it so it was not just like a couple frogs it wasn't like pet smart had a like a broken tank okay they got sucked up into the filter and just like well like it's a plague it's like there's four frogs it's okay that would feel like a plague to me that alone i'd be like god you don't have to do all

this like fucking dramatic shit just like about it it. That happened in 1440. By this time, you and I would have turned it into the biggest like deal. We would have multiplied the number of frogs by like 40,000. And like, no, you don't understand. I was crawling through mountains of frogs uphill both ways to get to school. We just couldn't see. This is how we would like turn a story into something completely ridiculous. That's why we're the leaders of the gossip pack. That's right. Yeah, that all sounds like truly and again i i know i just said it but it really does make me like wonder i'm like why was god doing all that because all he had to do

was half of that and i would have gotten the hint or whatever well this is also coming from someone who didn't this is your people your peoples had to be saved you know i know it from pharaoh so don't remind me uh because they thought this was an omen they were like maybe this is god but they also thought maybe this was going to be a hoax like maybe the crouches were just like fucking bored on the farm and threw some meat in the air and what a wild prank but okay how silly also but how bored must you be in 1876 there's no tiktok you know it's like well i guess i should go throw some meat around yeah i mean she seemed like she was busy making making soap but okay okay. Well, wasn't soap made with lard? Wait a minute. Yes, with lye,

right? Did we just crack the case? Hold on. How to make soap? Wait, what is lye? With fat. Hold on. Lye is fat, right? No. No, no, no. Lye's not. Sorry. What is soap? There's some old soap made of. Soap was not vegan. Soap was not

vegan back then. No, no yeah so you're right the fat rendered from a slaughtered cow sheep or goat so she i knew this soap had something to do with something and this isn't one of the theories i'm gonna say i think we just discovered it i think she just had scraps of soap and she was like i got i don't want to do anything and she just threw the bucket over her shoulder i don't think she did it on purpose i think she was too embarrassed to admit it i think something weird happened and she was like i don't want to do anything. Woo. And she just threw the bucket over her shoulder. I don't think she did it on purpose. I think she was too embarrassed to admit it. I think something weird happened and she was like, I don't know what it is. Yeah. But smell my soap. I totally do. Something happened and I think somebody's not telling the truth. Speaking of old women, I just want to say I was on the plane yesterday coming home and it was a two hour flight. And I feel so bad for the person sitting next to this older woman on the plane.

As the plane landed, I heard behind me an old woman say, anyway, that's the story of my life. Oh, my Lord. Oh, my Lord. and then you looked over and you saw the guy sitting next to her just looked like he had like was just just fried from having to like engage for two hours with somebody that's my nightmare like not being able to i mean at least as a nice old lady i've been in worse like social situations but oh if you just want to take a nap anyway maybe she needed like a ms crouch to sit on the farm and make soap with and just talk forever but this poor guy was not there for it you know um okay so it could have been a hoax there was talk that maybe like mrs crouch wanted to move but mr crouch didn't

and so maybe she was trying to like cause problems so that they would leave but that feels like a really stupid way to do it of like just sprinkling meat all over the floor um yeah could do anything else but even though it could have been a hoax the another reason that it wasn't is because the entire town swears that they were like good upstanding people who like weren't like big pranksters like that and also only a few reporters came to town but other than that it wasn't a huge spectacle they never made any money off of it mrs crouch never even gave her first fucking name so it's not like she was getting something from this attention right but here's a theory i love

apparently there's a thought that maybe the meat comes from two brothers who got into a knife fight and then they got picked up by a fucking tornado and then they were thrown across the farm. Just like Ms. Crouch thought happened with her own son. So like, were they dead? Did anybody? Exactly. I was like, are there any crime reports of missing brothers who were last seen in the sky fighting? How does anyone know about the knife fight?

Yeah. If they both ended up, whatever. Yeah whatever yeah okay a lot of information is missing there that's wild here's my other personal favorite i think this is my top favorite theory okay not because it's accurate but because it's just so silly apparently one big theory out there was that a hot air balloon enthusiast who had his own hot air balloon was just passing through above the farm and accidentally dropped his lunch out of the basket his picnic oh my god and apparently his lunch was 100 by 50 yards of raw meat but you know on a hot air balloon they got that little flame talk about a bunsen burner oh that's doing a little fondue he was making uh he was making a functional decision

yeah work smarter not harder it's like a it's like a why why barbecue tonight when i can just cook it on the fly on the fly in the sky korean barbecue here we come i mean i think i think we're i think they're on to something with that one that's what i'm saying um and then the most popular theory and the most accepted theory is that you got to get your little book out about what what this group of birds is oh yeah but a flock of vultures which apparently is i do know that one oh is it you know it i think i do there's two words for it there's a committee of vultures and there's also a wake which like very funeral oh awake that's good a popular accepted theory apparently in flight they are called a kettle oh okay well they were in

flight so a kettle of vultures the theory is that they puked as they passed overhead that's the main oh shit fun fact when threatened a wake of vultures will projectile vomit towards predators to make a faster getaway one because the vomit is heavily acidic so it might hurt them theoretically hurt the predator but also they're emptying their stomachs so they will be lighter and they can take off quicker um so maybe they make so much sense so maybe they were all threatened by something and they like had a delay and they're puking maybe they just took off and then once they were in the, they decided that now's the time to throw up. That's the weird part is that they don't ever really throw up in the air.

So, but the thought is like maybe, again, this is from Inacquired Taste. Inacquired Taste. Hmm? What if they were up in a tree and something startled them? I don't know. Maybe. What if they were up in a tree and something startled them? I don't know.

Maybe. In an Acquired Taste podcast, they said maybe it was a classic, if you puke, I'll puke. Yeah, exactly. And maybe one of them was like, wait, oh. So maybe one of them had, they reflexed. They all reflexively threw up together after one got sick or something um and so that would explain the random chunks of different types of meat like all the samples were different meat and vultures are known to eat all the scraps uh and that does mean that all the people were literally eating raw turkey puke um wow but anything for a dollar right jimmy wilch yeah jimmy said dollar better

be worth but here's the other problem to produce that much meat there had to have been a lot of vultures and ms crouch the sky was empty so yeah also i've seen that she would have seen at least a flock of birds and maybe her first thought would have then been, oh, one of the birds must have died and that's what all the meat came from. I don't know. It's so weird. Vultures also vomit as a defense mechanism, not just to randomly puke in the sky away from predators. So it really doesn't make sense why they'd be throwing up up there but then someone came up with a great point that a lot of farmers at the time would if they had leftover meat which would have been often sheep meat or mutton if they ever had

leftover raw sheep meat they would poison it and leave it in the fields to lure in and kill coyotes so maybe vultures ate some of the poisoned sheep meat in a field took off and then all got sick together and threw up right over the farm oh my god which then means that poor jimmy wilch for one dollar was eating raw poisoned sheep meat from the inside of a vulture holy from like the stomach acid bile of a vulture. Yes. And then reportedly nine days after this meat shower, the same thing happened in London, also with minimal explanation. So it's happened more than once. How long after? Nine days later. What?

That's weird. That's weird. And the last fun fact I'm going to leave you on because you're only 90 minutes from here, Christine. If you visit Transylvania University in Lexington, they still have a piece of the meat preserved in their lab from the meat shower. Wait till I tell you when Blaze and I went down a rabbit hole about Transylvania because we learned so much about their mascot and they changed the mascot it's a whole thing why they change it from and to okay let me pull up the correct information so i don't misspeak uh-huh the transylvania school mascot is a bat right obviously yeah so it's a bat but okay hold on okay sorry poor blaze is like like you're telling it all wrong um it's a bat called raff because it's a type of bat that is uh like native to this area

okay but they used to be the pioneers and then students were like fuck no pioneers aren't cool anymore exactly right if you're gonna go to transylvania well also if you're gonna be in transylvania university you better have a dracula themed the fact that it's not a vampire bat pisses me off that's what blaze got upset about. And I said vampire bats are not native to the area. It wouldn't be correct. Who cares? I care. You're wrong.

It has to be a vampire bat. It's Transylvania University. I'm actually not wrong. And also, it'd be great. I would love it if their math professor calls himself the Count. That would be really special. Yeah. Is that it that's the whole rabbit hole i thought we were going on we had we went through an entire road trip about this uh and we got into a big heated discussion about the type of fat and at this point i don't totally feel like you don't feel safe to discuss i understand i just don't

remember enough to be honest uh okay well i side with blaze whatever he said i side with but um oh anyway that's the last fun fact uh that's that is the kentucky meat shower uh and that was the wildest thing i've ever heard oh but they're still called the pioneers that's what's that's what's happening they're called the pioneers but their logo their mascot is no longer a pioneer. Question for you. I'll ask you actually. Well, this is the first question that I'll ask you a backup question if it's easier to answer, because it's one of my favorite things to ask people on like a friend date.

What if you relax, by the way? OK, with your oh my gods. What? You're not being a very good friend date. Geez. I'm bullying you a little bit, i'm okay with yeah um if you had to pick a mascot like let's say like you like ran a school and you got to pick the mascot at all what would the mascot be second question which may be if it's easier for you to answer if you were to be a superhero or like be like create your own sports

team what would the colors be i guess if you were a high school what would the mascot and colors be the wild cats yeah no uh wow um you have asked me this before and i remember you made a really rude face at my answer so um what'd you say no i said like and like a cool olive green or like a maroon and then i did say something about it i have a weird personal uh offense too i love a muted i love a muted uh muted color um i don't know m it feels very on the spot what's your answer okay uh i don't have an answer that's why i like the spot. What's your answer? That's okay. I don't have an answer.

That's why I like to ask. So it's not wrong to not have an answer. But I like to think... Okay, I'm going to think about it. I think if it were a sports team, I don't know why I make it sports team, but I think about like the jerseys and how like a lot of times the outfit is just white, but it's got like little pops of some colors.

That's easier for me to swallow. And it would obviously be my favorite contrast of the dark purple neon green sure yeah it'd be glow-in-the-dark obviously obviously some sort of ectoplasms you know ghostly thing but i don't know what it would maybe it'd be the phantoms yeah i was gonna say i don't think you would pick an animal yeah yours would be more like the phantoms that That's good, Em. Thank you. Okay, you don't have to have an answer right now, but some food for thought later. Next time you're in a car with Blaze. I like it. Okay, so do you remember what I'm covering today? Oh my god,

it was a two-parter. Oh, Christine. How long has it been? Days. It's been it been days it's been a while it's been a while so i'm gonna do the part two of william hirons aka the lipstick killer oh yes can you do a previously on okay previously on um the fella named william george hirons uh he grew up having some bad hobbies which was petty theft yes yes he went to college and started ballroom dancing yes okay it's coming back yes but then he was struggling and he had some very weird hold-ups about, according to one source. Uh, and then he began stealing again to like, I don't know, feel better. I have no idea. He just couldn't help himself. So he started stealing again and he was on his way to a date and he was supposed to go to the post office to cash some money a bond or something he had he had stolen uh but the bank or the post office was closed so then on the way back he decided to rob

somebody for money to pay for the date and that is when he was caught yeah and then didn't at some point didn't he he when he killed somebody he he wrote in lipstick, like, please save me. I can't stop or something like that. Okay. So meanwhile, as his life is unfolding, because we're doing sort of like a cut to. Okay. So meanwhile, as this is unfolding, the first victim was found with, I believe, a pillowcase over her head. A lot of stab wounds and nothing had been stolen,

and her wounds had been taped shut. Yes, I remember that. Okay. And then another victim, Frances, her head had been wrapped in towels, and she had been stabbed in the neck, and a bullet wound was found in her head. But just josie's case nothing was stolen um except this time there was for one thing a bloody fingerprint smudge on the door jam of the apartment and the most uh notable one as you mentioned was written in lipstick across a wall the following words for heaven's sake catch me before i kill more i cannot control myself there it is and uh papers dubbed the culprit the lipstick killer and of course this is post-world war ii people are so over talking about you know all the depressing

state of the world and they just go into a frenzy about this uh about this story and uh they finally arrest him uh well, they arrest Bill. And he is, or William Hirons, a.k.a. Bill. And he has been stealing. He's going to the date. He's stealing something. He gets caught. He pulls a weapon. And he is, one officer who was on break, like smashed a bunch of like acme.

We said like acme flower pots over his head. And then he was arrested. And he happened to be in the Degnan's neighborhood where, and this is the most upsetting, not most upsetting, but like one of the most notorious crimes that took place in this sort of spree was the murder of a six-year-old uh girl named suzanne who had been found dismembered do you recall that at all yes and she was found uh dismembered her body was found in several drainage sites and uh the the killer had left a note with a ransom demand um and so basically what happened is that uh william hyren's bill was arrested in the same neighborhood as the one suzanne went missing in and so they said this must be our guy okay Okay. Great. Previously on. Sorry. I was scrolling.

I know. I put you on the spot there. I didn't mean to. No, it's okay. I mean, I should know, you know, but I'm trying to find the most important parts. Okay. So now we're on to part two. After Bill's arrest, he was taken to the hospital.

And as you recall, he had been smashed in the head with several flower pots. So he had a head wound that required stitches and he was in bad shape. He was exhausted, in pain, heavily medicated, probably confused. I would argue just about how frantic everything happened. And although it's unconfirmed, it's assumed, and it's very likely that he had a concussion. So he continually slipped in and out of consciousness, but a detective told reporters that he suspected Bill was pretending

to be this sick to avoid questioning. But whether he was pretending or not, police decided to interrogate him anyway without any representation present and they accused bill of the notorious lipstick murders oh and remember there was that other guy that they uh that they aggressively inter interrogated and beat up and then they had to pay his hospital bill and he had to leave town and he just happened to be a custodian in suzanne's building so like these cops really have they're very happy to just do whatever the fuck they want huh how about like it's like trigger happy but like i don't know interrogation happy

i have no idea what the right word is but yeah so they already have like a bad track record um so they decide to interrogate him without any representation present, and they accuse him of the notorious lipstick murders, as well as a brutal killing and dismemberment of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan. And their only evidence at the moment, like I said, was that Bill was burglarizing an apartment near Suzanne's home. So that was it. Like there was no, there was literally no no other connection except that he was in the same neighborhood so for six days bill was denied access to a lawyer uh but not only that he was also denied food and water oh my god for six days torture yep yep oh my god uh he was beaten and at one point his testicles were allegedly burned chemically to try and coerce a confession wow the thing that i can't get over that the first time i heard

i really wish i had never heard it is uh that he received also a spinal tap without anesthesia and you know about my spine thing i do on top of just people's general spine thing oh my god did i ever tell you about my spinal tap which i did i think but it was so bad sure did sure did that was one of the first doctor was blind yep yep that was one of the first I think traumas you ever shared with me and it because it happened in real time and I had such a I've always my whole life had a like a really deep seated fear about spines and then I start to wonder like did I know this was going to happen you know what I mean? Like it almost like.

It's like Natalie Wood knowing to be scared of water. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. It's the same kind of idea. Like, is there some weird, like deep down, you know, knowing about it? Yeah. Anyway, so he was given a spinal tap without anesthesia, apparently to like test for something, but like it didn't really make sense.

Like the explanation they gave for why they allegedly had to do a spinal something but like it didn't really make sense like the the explanation they gave for why they allegedly had to do a spinal tap like didn't really match up with any sort of scientific basis um and shortly after this spinal tap they tried to do a polygraph test but he was in too much pain to participate so they gave up oh my god oh my god like it's hard to hear it's hard i'd also like to give you the little uh reminder that at this point he's still 17 so he's a minor yeah good noted yeah noted yeah uh so police give him a dose of sodium pentothal do you know do you know what that is i i don't want to know it's uh considered

the truth serum it's sort of a okay a chemical that's meant to lower your inhibitions and allegedly like so i think it is supposed to inhibit your brain from being able to lie but like the science has not really confirmed it it's like pseudoscience a bit and i mean for for all we know it just makes you like kind of out of it and woozy and maybe you're not like as quick on your feet you know and you can't sure it's wrong it just makes you drunk like yeah maybe it just makes you drunk um is it just they're just shooting vodka into your neck i wish that probably would have been a lot better honestly um yeah so they give him a dose of sodium

pentothal without his consent or his parents remember because he's a minor um and he has not been able to access his parents for several days uh he's been denied access and uh so his parents sorry are his parents not wondering where the fuck he is? Well, he was at college. So, you know, it's only been a couple days. I imagine like back then you're not texting, you know. Oh my God. Okay, sorry for interrupting you.

No, no, it's okay. So to answer your question, sodium pentothal is an anesthetic medication and it's sometimes called truth serum. And it's used, it's been used historically to make people more compliant in interrogations and the theory quote-unquote is that it inhibits the part of the brain that allows people to lie but again it's sort of a pseudoscience uh in actuality people dosed with sodium pentothal might be more susceptible to suggestion so even though your inhib your your inhibitions are lowered, that doesn't necessarily

mean you're going to tell the truth. It might just mean you'll agree with what you're being told as the truth. Like you'll just go along with the story, right? So at this point, they're clearly trying to create this narrative. And, you know, the idea is people who have been dosed with this sodium pentothal might be more susceptible to suggestion, therefore confessions or testimonies made while under the influence of it. And so these testimonies are not very reliable and, you know, raise a bunch of red flags. But while drugged, Bill allegedly implicated someone else in the crimes. Like he said, I didn't do it. Someone else did it. And they said, oh who and he gave a name that sounded like merman harry merman something like that

and they said oh yeah who's that and investigators said is that your alter ego and apparently bill just seemed to agree that it was possible. But remember, he's been like tortured for days and drugged and starved and and also deprived of sleep, which I forgot to mention, which is definitely torture. Yes. And has also proven to be more damaging than like being drunk or like more more inebriating than being. And also, I feel like him like alluding to the answer being yes he could have just said nothing you could just gone and like that yeah exactly like yes made a noise that they said was a confirm you know confirmation exactly so he mumbled something and sounded like merman and then when the press got a hold of this these fucking dummies i'm sorry they interpreted this as they're like merman sounds like murder man and so for fuck's sake i know it's not even clever and so they

basically created this like the press created this narrative that bill's alter ego was this murder man bloodthirsty personality like his you know, weird villain version of himself, just totally went out of control. And when he finally underwent a polygraph test, the results were inconclusive, which we know polygraphs are not allowed as evidence in court for a reason. So police even brought Bill to the crime scenes to try and restage the murders and let the press come to like watch and take photos wild okay he was so basically the whole world's against him at this point he was finally transported to the cook county jail infirmary on july 2nd and just like that custodian previously arrested for the same

crime hector bill had to recover from these injuries he sustained during the interrogation. I mean, they're literally putting needles in his spine like he's he's being tortured. However, unlike their interrogation with Hector, they knew they had to make this one stick. These charges stick. And so they were like, we're not make this one stick, these charges stick. And so they were like, we're not letting this one get away. So the arrest took the heat off their most recent suspect in the case, who was a guy named Richard Thomas. And he was one that the police had been eyeing. Richard Thomas was a nurse from Chicago.

And although he had recently moved to Phoenix, Arizona arizona he was actually in chicago when suzanne degnan was kidnapped and murdered and when police arrived in arizona to question him he was facing jail time for another crime he had actually been arrested for molesting his 13 year old daughter oh holy shit okay wow yep yep uh some sources say it was his niece. The original newspaper source from 1946 says it's his daughter. Either way, it was a young girl. He had also been charged for crimes like extortion and writing notes to threaten people. Remember the ransom note? Mm-hmm. Yep.

A handwriting expert with the Phoenix police had seen the Suzanne Degnan ransom note and was like, hey, that looks a lot like that guy Thomas's handwriting and thought it was so similar that he called Chicago police to like, say, I think this might be your guy. Richard also frequented a car yard across the street from where Suzanne's remains had been found. Oh, shit. Okay. And like I said, he was in Chicago at the time of her murder. And like I said, he was in Chicago at the time of her murder. He often carried surgical instruments with him, even though he was a nurse, and bragged to people that he was a surgeon, even though he was a nurse. Investigators, like, I don't know how else to say it, except he's lying. investigators believed he had the anatomical knowledge to have dismembered suzanne or could

have at least researched it in his weird understanding of himself as a surgeon um which is something bill who was 17 and like knew how to play chess and ballroom dance like didn't know about art how a spine is disarticulated you know what i mean like that's not something bill would necessarily have known okay so in questioning richard actually admitted like the nurse who was being you know a person of interest he admitted to killing this little girl but then when they arrested bill chicago police called phoenix police and said oh never mind he didn't do it we got the real guy oh so richard was like yeah you're right it wasn't me it was that other guy yeah obviously well actually no somebody already like that was his luckiest goddamn break i mean i can't i can't so of course he recants his confession is there

a reason behind it like is there a reason why someone else said it what do you mean like why like he just he just it was his lucky break because somebody else admitted to it is that what you're saying no so they arrested bill well oh oh oh sorry this is where my my brain did a flip it's okay so richard is the nurse from chicago who at first was being looked at as yes yes as the killer and he confessed that he did it right but then this whole arrest with the flower pots and the torture of this young kid named bill who happened to be burglarizing somebody in suzanne's neighborhood happens and they force the course, a confession out of him. So they call back to the other police say,

Oh, nevermind. That guy, Richard didn't do it, even though he said he did. Oh, I thought they finally got built to actually confess under distress. And that was,

Oh, I mean, they sort of did like the Merman thing where he said, Oh, it's another alter ego of mine. But in reality, like he was doped up on sodium pentothal that's still an incredibly lucky move that they just decided to go with the person that

they've been torturing yeah right like for for that richard guy who literally said who as far as i'm concerned did it and who admitted to doing it and then all of a sudden police are like oh never mind you're off the hook i don't know why i would why wouldn't you crazy do you think at all this is just a random thought but do you think they if you're going with the two options or somebody admits to it and there's somebody who hasn't totally admitted to it but you tortured like i feel like they almost maybe even thought for a second that richard was the guy who did it but they needed to be able to like justify why they tortured this guy and they were like yeah yeah and that's one that's definitely one of the theories is like they were in too deep with this new because they'd already gotten in so much trouble not really so much trouble but they'd already fucked up with

Hector and tortured him and then had to let him go and ruined his life and paid a twenty thousand dollar hospital bill. So they were like, we have to make this one stick. Like this one has to be it, especially now that they've tortured him, stuck needles in his spine. Like, oh, well, if he killed a six-year-old, then it doesn't really matter that we did all that, you know? So yeah, I think that is kind of the theory is like they just went with it, you know,

and decided to believe it was bill and not richard and so it's just so baffling but yeah richard was like yeah you're right it wasn't me after all um so you know he was just off the hook and police decided bill was guilty and they thought let's build a case against him. So they searched his room. And of course, that's where they found thousands of dollars of stolen goods and bonds, you know, things he had stolen from people. They even found a surgical tool set among the many stolen items. And there, you know, that could have been damning evidence. However, one detective did tell reporters that there was no evidence it had ever been used

that it seemed to be just brand new okay so investigators determined there was a nine point match between bill's fingerprints and the print on the ransom note um and i don't know if you've seen like when they do fingerprint analysis with like the different dots you know to like pinpoint so there's no standard in the u.s as to how many points must align to confirm a match beyond uh you know beyond doubt but some departments do accept a nine point match however many require at least a 12 point match and in places like england and france they require up to 16 and 17 point matches and nine would never be conclusive wow okay but we're in 1946 chicago and they want him to be guilty and nine points was considered close enough so it's permissible

evidence and initially a forensics expert actually ruled bill out in the francis brown case she was one of the women that was found with her head covered declaring his fingerprints didn't match the print on the door jam remember when i it was the one with the lipstick on the wall and there was a bloody fingerprint but later a different expert came forward and said actually it does match bill's fingerprint so they just like found a new guy to say it does you know like they can just create their own evidence cute like it's just cute right yeah um and then of course police to answer your question received their confession because after several days of interrogation bill finally just

to basically make the torture stop yeah agreed to plead guilty yeah because like i mean i don't think i would have ever even lasted that long right like no i would have been like all right i did it like just don't especially at 17 like get a needle out of my spine you know like what the fuck call my mom like i'll be like call my mom i'll say whatever you want me to say i don't know how this was even like legal legally i don't know what the right words are but uh like in today's world that would have been pulled right out right of like oh well it was the confession was taken under i mean there's still quite a few coerced confession cases out there that people are fighting you know like one so drastically like spinal taps and starvation and not letting you call your mom and i mean i think

i think especially with the not letting your especially as a minor i think and especially not allowing you to evoke attorney your attorney rights and parental rights i think or your rights to see your parents i think that probably today would be like thrown out huge no go yeah okay yeah um i know that there are cases of you know keeping people and not letting them get a lawyer and but i think just with i think especially with camera evidence nowadays it's a lot harder to pull that off without consequences like you can watch videotapes like did you ever watch making a murderer which was like one of the first um uh probably it was so long ago now oh god it was when i was in glendale so it was must have been like 2016 um but it was like one of the first like true

crime docu-series that came out like before the big you know boom of them um but that was kind of the the whole story was that his case was predicated on like he was almost tricked some people believe he was tricked into confessing to something he didn't do and so you know this i think this thing kind of still happens like the manipulation and the coercion and the yeah but you're probably right that a spinal tap might not fly i feel like it could not be admissible in court to have like a minor being fully tortured on his balls like oh my god yeah yeah chemically burning his scrotum and like i'm not saying things like that don't happen anymore i'm just saying i think you're right that like it wouldn't be as widely accepted maybe nowadays it was almost 100 years ago so it does feel very wild west which is crazy to think about yeah it's crazy

to think this was like 80 years ago um but yeah so god it's horrible uh so his lawyers and even his parents insisted he sign a confession and enter the plea in exchange for a single life sentence so even his parents were like just enter a plea say, say you did it, just to make sure you're not put to death, you know? So Bill agreed. He wrote a confession for all three murders. And he later claimed that he actually used an article from the Chicago Tribune to add details to make his account realistic because he didn't know the details because he didn't do them, according to him. realistic because he didn't know the details because he didn't wow do them according to him but when he went to the courthouse to enter his plea on july 30th he pled innocent he said i recant my confession and prosecutors were fucking pissed they said okay you know what you're gonna

play games with us now we're sticking you with three life sentences for all three murders play games with us now we're sticking you with three life sentences for all three murders holy shit oh my god yeah he's playing a dangerous game here um bill claimed he feared for his life if he didn't accept these terms he would face the death sentence and he was convinced the media had made it impossible for him to get a fair trial so he basically just said fine i'll plead guilty this time and i'll accept my turn your your terms. So prosecutors and investigators were like, okay, easy, open and shut black and white.

Good job guys. Yeah. And, uh, regardless of whether Bill did murder Suzanne and Francis, uh, they actually had no evidence whatsoever, uh,

linking him to Josephine Ross crime scene, which is the one they said that his fingerprint was on, but like, that wasn't even true. So there was no trial trial only a sentencing the first day the sentence hearing was very long and the victim's family members were present okay and uh josephine josie's daughter was there who believed bill was innocent of her mother's murder finally someone like right i mean jesus she told the press i cannot believe that young hyrens murdered my mother he just does not fit into the picture of my mother's death

i have looked at all the things hyren stole and there was nothing of my mother's things among them and his whole thing was petty theft he just took little little trinkets and items and she looked at every single thing and said not one of these is my mom's so i mean that makes sense he would go murder her and not steal anything and then just go on stealing from people it just doesn't make sense i call that a slam dunk of like defense of like none of the like i am the child of this mother i know my mother i know my mother's things yeah this does not make sense like how is that not is tell me that worked in his favor oh no of course not so she just was there she i mean she's not you know being there was no trial so she's just there for the sentencing

so an eyewitness testified that he had seen bill carrying a shopping bag in the degnan's neighborhood on the night of suzanne's murder according to this witness, he had seen Bill's face in full view when Bill walked in front of car headlights. However, the same witness had previously told police that he couldn't see the face of the man because it was way too dark. So they were like, just say you did. And he's like, OK. OK. It's just so infuriating. Oh, OK. It's just so infuriating. Bill was ultimately sentenced to three consecutive life sentences and the prosecution suggested he be denied parole should he ever qualify. Bill, this is terrible, attempted to hang himself in his cell out of despair, but was rescued. Following decades, Bill just served his time in prison quietly and productively. He worked in prison.

He took on jobs. He got some managerial roles. He took advantage of prison college programs. He received a degree and studied several trades. And just like he was when he went to those reform schools, he was reported to be a model inmate. Of course. And above all else, he continually and adamantly declared his innocence in all three crimes for forever said i did not do them and i will ever get out

nope sorry uh oh my god so yeah over the years he pursued clemency hearings retrials lawsuits like basically tried every avenue to try and get his release but again and again his attempts were denied he remained in prison and clemency projects whose lawyers took on cases where they suspected wrongful convictions did take interest in bill's case but they also failed to prove his innocence and there were actually studies done by psychologists uh who published some cases on Bill that are questionable now looking back because they claimed everything from him having schizophrenia to DID, dissociative identity disorder, because of the whole Merman thing. I'm like, that is such a weak connection. Shut the fuck up with that.

He's serious? Yes. They were like, oh, he has a dissociative identity. Like, come on. like oh he has a dissociative identity like come on so bill's new defense team denied everything insisted bill had gotten a rotten deal from corrupt investigators and a subpar attorney i would agree with that and suzanne but for what it's worth suzanne degnan's family was extremely opposed to any clemency considerations which you can like they, if they think this guy killed their six year old daughter, like they're not gonna want any sort of leniency. And at a 2002 hearing, Suzanne's older sister, Betty, who was only 10 when Suzanne was murdered, spoke against Bill

saying, think of the worst nightmare that you cannot put out of your mind. You're not allowed to put out of your mind. But again, you know, they, of course, have been told and believe that this is the person who killed her sister. So in 1983, oh, this is horrible. Bill was almost released on parole by declaration of a federal judge, but Suzanne's siblings banded together and contested the release. banded together and contested the release. And the attorney general said, only God and Hirons know how many other women he murdered. Now a bleeding heart do-gooder decides that Hirons is rehabilitated and should go free. I'm going to make sure that kill crazed animal stays where he is.

Oh my God. They put him back in and soon politicians and even the Illinois Senate got involved and it was ruled that he would remain in prison. And he remained in prison. And as the years passed, his family died. But a few high school friends continued to visit him as they got older, like throughout the years. And he was sort of stuck in stasis, like they're all moving on with their lives and they're just popping in to visit, you know, his high school friends. But nothing he

could do and so bill continued to insist on his innocence and his supporters have repeatedly pointed the finger at that guy richard thomas the nurse yes who clearly seemed to be a better suspect and even confessed that said we also don't know which is a great point um if he was also yeah uh coerced like who knows if he was under the same duress like we don't know you know so i don't i mean yeah the fact that he like he did confess and if he was if he was guilty like he's just sitting pretty being like whatever right guess i made out like a bandit i guess so i mean jesus so ultimately being guilty of molesting his daughter of course makes him also a likely suspect so he definitely did do that but it doesn't necessarily prove he did anything to suzanne um but if he was guilty he like you said sat pretty until he took that

secret to his grave uh and now this is just one of the wildest sentences uh ultimately bill william hyrens served one of the longest prison sentences in u.s history oh my god he potentially did not commit uh that was over 65 years he served at some point oh well go ahead sorry no no go ahead i'm gonna say at some point like even if it's i guess it's not technically an open case because someone went to jail but like to i don't i don't really know the words to ask the question if there's a case that people are unsure about eventually so many years will have passed that there's no way to prove it anymore like there's no more witnesses i guess you'll always have a fingerprint on file or something but like as time goes on it's just harder and harder to hash back into something like that no i think

about that a lot and my only consolation when i like start to feel like panicky about like oh my god like it's the end of the road there's no no more answers but then I think you know what at a certain point we didn't know about DNA tracing DNA evidence maybe there's something in our future we haven't even conceived of like that's true fucking time travel I don't know like maybe there's some way that like the pieces will come together. Maybe somebody else will die and on their deathbed say something or or in their storage unit you'll find, you know, X, Y, Z. much more hopeless as time goes on. And then you start to think like, well, we have to move on to current cases. We have to, you know, it's like he spent 65 years in prison and he passed away in 2012 at the age of 83. So it's like we can pursue it maybe, but like it wouldn't get him justice. You know, he's already passed. It's just really too bad how many years 65 years 65 years oh my god and he was 83 when he passed so um he was a baby i know um and many people speaking

of deathbed confessions like hoped maybe he would reveal something before he passed, but he died insisting on his innocence. Uh, nothing changed. And Suzanne Degnan's younger brother apparently felt relieved at the news. Um, he said, I just never thought this day would come. I was numbed by the previous 29 years of going to parole board hearings. So they were just happy to have it behind them. Um, you know, thinking that he had done it, like they they're convinced it was it was him which i mean you might have to be if the other option is oh the killer's just out there having a grand old time maybe like as a coping mechanism they were like yeah we believe the police he did it you know. I don't know. I can't put myself in their shoes. But born after Suzanne's murders, Jim, who had made that quote about being relieved that Bill had passed, he had been born after Suzanne had been killed, his sister.

But he said his parents never spoke of it at home. And in his 20s, he investigated the crime himself. Oh, wow. He spoke of it at home. And in his 20s, he investigated the crime himself. He spoke of authorities. Yeah. And he did his own kind of investigating and concluded that the sentencing was correct and that Bill belonged in prison. So, you know, for what it's worth, he did his own. His own research? I don't know. Yeah. Own research. And that was what he concluded. So on Bill's death, Suzanne's sister, Betty, said, hopefully he's at peace and we don't have to worry about it anymore. I hope he made amends.

I never wished him ill. I just wanted him in prison for everybody's safety. It was never out of retribution. It was out of fear that he could hurt somebody else. And if we did not go to all these parole hearings and protest it and he got out and he hurt a child, you just couldn't live with it, which I think is a fair argument. It's not their fault the police fucking tortured him into a confession. Yeah. So Stephen Drizzen, the legal director at the Center on Wrongful Convictions,

regretted the center's inability to win Bill's release because the Center on Wrongful Convictions did try to get him out of prison. He said, we chased lots of leads, but bottom line, short of proving that the police framed him or finding DNA evidence that exonerated him and implicated someone else, we just could never prove his actual innocence. But the case sure looks different with what we know now. The case for Bill's guilt is anything but certain. certain so today if you google you know the lipstick killer you google william hirons uh he is the one known as the lipstick killer and is listed as one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century even though there's a potential he didn't do it and you know what there's potential he did i want to be clear like there's very much potential he was in the area who

knows uh do i believe he did it i don't think he will i don't think he murdered suzanne degnan the child at least no from well i wasn't there but i i think our hunches are exactly aligned you and me yeah i think we are aligned on that as well um so just like the degnan siblings many people do still remain convinced of william hyren's guilt including politicians and judges and of course the authorities who continue to deny his parole bids although i would say they probably have um a little bit of a bias but whatever um and the case is considered one of the most controversial of the 20th century due to police misconduct which i would consider pretty severe, both in

Bill's interrogation and the interrogations before him for the same crime. So the interrogation of the custodian as well. And that is the story of William Hirons. It's very unsatisfying. Yeah, I'm glad you said it because I kind of wanted to go great story but then i also wanted to go horrible story but then i also wanted to go it is i don't know how i feel i don't either it's very uh it's just it's just i i starting in the true crime world knew him as a lipstick killer i didn't even know there was question about it like i just always well yeah you hear a name like the lipstick killer you assume there's been some really solid ground on that. And I will also add that there were I mean, there are a bunch of other inconsistencies.

There was they had him write write something down that to check the handwriting compared to the lipstick message. that to check the handwriting compared to the lipstick message and then they they used the fact that some of the words were misspelled in the same way uh to like say he did it but then he later said oh no they told me to spell it that way so they could match right so like you think oh well shit if he's spelling like this really random word the exact same way and he's like no no that's how they instructed me to write it so you know i mean and again it's like he he said police said you know so the police denied that but there's just a lot of weird stuff um some people claim that uh the lipstick message may not have been written by the killer and may have been written by a reporter who wanted to make the story more salacious. Interesting.

Okay. Some people claim that the fingerprint on the ransom note was planted because it was a little too perfect. Okay. So, you know, there's a lot. These are all just claims that i've heard i'm not saying anything is proven one way or the other but there's just a lot of um question marks you know sure okay wow well i guess we'll never know especially now that he's gone but it's too bad good storytelling i appreciate the two-parter i don't know the two-parter has been completed uh

you know moving on well good job christine i don't know what to tell you i'm just just not feeling satisfied only bummed but happy to be here uh also everybody this is a shifting gears this is your moment to drink some water your weekly reminder you thirsty little rats i might go drink some wine but whatever oh right it is wine time for you isn't it do you have a wine already on on your mind of what you're gonna do a little sipping on tonight you know i got a nice pinot grigio in the fridge that i i love a pinot grigio i like that's my favorite smell of all of them really very fruity well i put it in my suitcase after a venue gave it to us so i consider it free wine so i'm gonna drink it yeah girl math um no i pinot grigio is always the one of all the wines that my mom would drink and I would smell all of them.

Pinot Grigio is the one that I would get excited to smell. The other ones I was like, eh, it just smells like kind of normal wine. But Pinot Grigio gets me going. Yeah, it has a very fruity smell. I like to think if I drink wine, that would be my go-to. You totally would be like a white wine like gossipy fruity bitch fruity bitch that's exactly where i was going yes all right well have a sip for me uh i'll have some water for you thank you and that's why we drink