Let's Go To Court! - 195: Boston Massacre & Alexis Murphy
Episode Date: November 10, 2021Alexis Murphy had a bright future ahead of her. She was the captain of her high school’s volleyball team, a robust social media presence, and plans to go to college. But one day in August of 2013, s...he left home to buy hair extensions and never came back. Investigators tracked down surveillance footage of Alexis at a gas station in Lovingston, Virginia. The footage didn’t reveal anything explicitly sinister, but it did reveal that a local creep had held the door open for her. Then Norm joined the podcast to give us an American history lesson! (Turns out, if they didn’t sing about it in Hamilton, we don’t know anything about it.) Norm gives us the story of the Boston Massacre. It went down on March 5, 1770 amidst growing tensions between colonists and British soldiers. Private Hugh White was the lone soldier guarding the Custom House. When colonists insulted him, Hugh fought back. Hugh wasn’t outarmed, but he was outnumbered. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Norman pulled from: Famous-Trials.com - https://www.famous-trials.com/massacre “Boston’s Massacre” by Eric Hinderaker https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237384 In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “What happened to Alexis Murphy” True Crime Daily “Timeline: The Search for Alexis Murphy” NBC29 News “Alexis Murphy’s Family Addresses Marijuana Allegations” NBC29 News “Randy Taylor Trial Day Two: Alexis Murphy’s blood found, defense pushes human trafficking” by Lisa Provence, C-Ville.com “Day 4: Mystery man testifies in Randy Taylor trial” by Lisa Provence, C-Ville.com “Randy Allen Taylor trial Day 5: Taylor’s fate in jury’s hands” by Lisa Provence, C-Ville.com “Alexis Murphy Remains Discovered Seven Years After She Vanished” investigationdiscovery.com “Murder of Alexis Murphy” wikipedia.org YOU’RE STILL READING? My, my, my, you skeezy scunch! You must be hungry for more! We’d offer you some sausage brunch, but that gets messy. So how about you head over to our Patreon instead? (patreon.com/lgtcpodcast). At the $5 level, you’ll get 25+ full length bonus episodes, plus access to our 90’s style chat room!
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A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group.
One semester of law school.
One semester of criminal justice.
Two experts.
I'm Kristen Caruso.
I'm Brandi Egan.
Let's go to court.
On this episode, I'll be talking about the Boston Massacre.
And I'll be talking about the disappearance of Alexis Murphy.
Norm is in the studio! Or the sex dungeon.
Yep. Yep. It's both. It works as a studio and a sex dungeon.
Dual purpose room.
Good to have you here, Normie.
Thank you. Normie C.
Normie C, we're so excited that you're here.
Yeah.
Back from the dead.
Alive and well.
Yeah, people speculated that I killed you.
Yeah.
But this is obvious proof that you are not dead.
Could be a deep fake.
People are now speculating that I have murdered David and buried him next to Norm as well.
Because I've done a lot of newlywed murders recently.
I mean, you have.
They're not wrong.
The other thing people are speculating is that David and I have secretly gotten married,
and that's why I'm doing newlywed cases.
That checks out.
No, we have not.
I am here.
I'm back to kill the feminist agenda on this podcast.
Excellent.
Here I am.
I'm so excited you're here.
Yeah, me too.
Do you want to tell the people why you're here?
It is my beautiful wife's birthday this week.
It was November 2nd.
So I thought, you know what?
Let's give her a week off from work.
I'm going to do a case.
It's like a birthday gift for you.
I love it.
Yeah.
And you know what?
I thought, ooh, maybe I could take this extra week to work on a super big case for next week.
And I didn't.
I don't blame you.
big case for next week and I didn't.
So I don't blame you.
Imagine if people did this in like the corporate world where like I went in for you.
I feel so lucky that I have a job where like you can literally be like, I'm going to do your job this week.
Great.
Great.
Yeah.
But what if I do a terrible job?
We won't invite you back.
We won't hear about it.
The people will not be shy.
That's true.
You can do that. Yeah. People do not shy. That's true. You can do that.
Yeah, people do not hold back on the feedback.
You know this.
You're right.
Yeah, I do know this.
As someone who was once accused of ruining our feminist agenda.
Well, they were right.
I mean, I guess we should just do an ad, right?
I think we should. All an ad, right? I think we should.
All right, let's talk about...
The fall brings a lot of my...
You don't have your ad copy up, do you?
God damn it.
What ad are you on?
Pretty Litter.
Where does it say anything about the fall?
Please share or ask co-hosts to share what your favorite fall scents are.
Fireplace burning, cozy candles, holiday meals, pumpkin, everything all the time.
Patty, please include all this.
They need to know how unprofessional she is.
Oh, my God.
I'm sorry.
I am the basicest of bitches, and I fucking love false scents.
I don't want to correlate them to cat litter.
Okay, I also like false scents.
I'm so sorry.
For as passionate as you are about false scents, I can't believe it was that hard to rope you into this conversation.
I've got 12 false scented candles at home right now.
I just bought some the other day. Okay, this is going to be too long
of an ad. It's too long of an ad. And we're not even talking about litter yet.
We haven't even gotten to the ad yet. Okay.
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A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group.
Should we do a little Patreon plug?
Obviously.
Poor guru.
Oh, don't you obviously me, ma'am.
There have been many a time when you're like, and I'm rolling into my case.
And I can see you going to my case now.
No.
No, of course.
Hey, head on over to our Patreon.
We've got amazing things there.
What do we have?
28 bonus episodes?
Something like that.
I was going to say seven, but I think it's 28.
Is it 28? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It's 28 bonus episodes? Something like that. I was going to say seven, but I think it's 28. Is it 28?
I don't know.
Yeah, you're right.
It's 28.
28 bonus episodes.
There's videos there.
If you join at the $7 level, you can get in on our monthly Zoom hangouts, which, I mean, I'm all biased because I'm on them, but they're a good time.
They are a good time.
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We get a whole video archive, too.
There's a ton of videos on there.
There's a ton of videos on there.
And those Zoom Hangouts, if you can't make them live, we record them.
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On our Patreon. Join
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Alright, Brandi, you got a little case
for us? I sure do.
Norm, I don't think you're going to like this.
All right.
Didn't do this one with Norm in mind.
Did not.
I'm just glad we didn't do the same case.
Yeah, so, you know, Kristen and I always text each other and let them know, you know, call dibs on cases.
And I was like about to do that with Norm.
And I was like, I don't have to do that.
There's not a chance.
There's no way in this case.
Yeah.
Shout outs to true crime daily,
which you're obsessed.
It's a website I enjoy,
but again,
no byline,
no byline.
Don't enjoy that.
And then to Lisa province for Seville.com,
which I believe is kind of like a pitch type website.
Okay, but other people don't know what pitch is.
You know, like the pitch.
Yeah, it's already.
So like our alternative weekly independent journalism.
Yeah.
And Leaseprovince did some excellent trial coverage on this case.
Like a daily breakdown.
I know.
That's very helpful, isn't it?
So helpful.
All right.
I'm getting nervous because Norm is here.
I know.
We got a celebrity in the studio.
He's so judgy and bitchy.
I'm grading you on your case.
Are you?
No.
Okay.
I'm going to write a
mean review if you mess this up.
Please don't. Don't do it.
Laura Murphy
was hours into her overnight
shift at the post office on August
4th, 2013 when
she received a call that no
parent wants to receive.
Did the
lights just flicker?
Yeah, they did.
They did?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
What's going on?
You think there's a ghost in here?
A g-g-g-g-ghost!
Halloween did just end.
Yeah, and the ghost did not leave.
The ghost did not leave.
Creepy.
Anyway.
Anyway.
Her daughter,
17-year-old Alexis Murphy, had
missed her midnight curfew.
Her grandmother had awoken in the early morning
hours to find that Alexis wasn't
home. Alexis
was the type of 17-year-old who was
so responsible that she had literally
never missed curfew
before. She was the captain of her
high school volleyball team and planned to become a collegiate athlete,
and she took her future very seriously.
So when Laura got that call,
she immediately knew that something was wrong.
Laura had talked to Alexis the previous afternoon
as she had gotten ready for her overnight shift.
Alexis was pumped.
She was heading to Lynchburg, Virginia,
which was only about a 20-minute drive from where they lived in Shipman, Virginia.
Heard of it?
Not familiar with Shipman.
Familiar with Lynchburg.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alexis was a high school senior and was prepping to get her senior pictures taken. And on that day, August 3rd, her mom had given her money to go buy extensions and to get
them installed. This was 2013, you said? Yeah. Were extensions good by then? Yeah. And so
Alexis's black girl friends got together. I'm sorry. I was picturing white girl extensions,
which those have come a long way, baby. They have come a long way, baby. You're absolutely right.
Alexis and her mother had left the house about the same time that afternoon, and Laura headed to work, and Alexa headed to Lynchburg.
Alexis was big into social media, and she had a pretty big Twitter following.
In that afternoon, she had tweeted, Berg bound, just a little after 3 o'clock that afternoon.
Berg bound! Just a little after three o'clock that afternoon. When Laura learned that her daughter hadn't returned from that trip, she called Alexis's father, Troy Brown, to see if he had heard from her.
But Troy hadn't heard from Alexis either. He was just as worried as Laura was and told her
that they needed to call the police and report Alexis missing.
Something was wrong. This was not like their daughter. She had never done this before.
And on top of everything else, she had borrowed her dad's car that day.
She would have never failed to return it as promised. So Laura and Troy reported Alexis missing to the Nelson County Sheriff's Office.
And this is one of those rare refreshing times when they just like went right to work investigating the teenager's disappearance.
Like immediately.
So that whole like someone has to be missing 24 hours before you report it.
That's all BS, right?
No, it's not BS.
It's not necessarily BS.
I think because she's a teenager that probably played into this more, why they immediately went to investigate it.
With adults, you see that a little bit more.
But yeah, it's kind of a jurisdictional call, I think.
I always see it in movies.
Yeah.
And it happens.
Yeah, a lot.
There's nothing I can do for 24 hours.
Wow, you sound like every police officer ever.
Sorry, lady.
It hasn't been 24 hours.
So I think part of the reason here that this was investigated so heavily like right away is partially because of Alexis's heavy social media presence.
When word of her disappearance got out, her thousands of social media followers were quick to spread the word and like a search started immediately.
Wow.
OK.
By the night of August 4th, helicopters were brought in to do an aerial search and the FBI joined the investigation.
Wow.
Yeah.
Like right away.
Well, there must have been something additional.
I can't find anything that explains why the FBI joined right away.
I don't know.
I found no explanation to that.
But they were literally the first day of the investigation the FBI joined.
Okay.
And the FBI quickly released a missing person bulletin for Alexis.
It read, in part,
Norm, you can't type while...
I can't.
No.
Hang on. What the fuck? you can't type, Walt. I can't? No. Hang on.
What the fuck?
You can't type? No!
I think I did this last time. You did!
And Kristen did this exact same thing to you.
I just, I thought I had a theory
about the FBI and I just wanted to Google
something real quick. No, you can't. I mean,
if you're listening to a podcast on your own.
It doesn't hold up. It doesn't hold up. Continue. What was your theory?
That they were, that Lynchburg was close to D.C.
Well, I mean, yeah, FBI is headquartered in Virginia.
I actually thought the same thing, but it's not close.
It's just the same state.
Damn.
Okay.
My bad.
I won't type anymore.
Hold on.
I'm just going to make a grocery list real quick.
Could you keep it down?
I'm working on my novel right now.
I'm multitasking.
You're really distracting me with this story.
Okay.
So the FBI put out a missing person bulletin, and this is what it read in part.
Seeking information.
Missing Nelson County, Virginia teen.
Alexis Tierra Murphy has been missing since the evening of August 3rd, 2013.
Alexis was traveling in a white 2003 Nissan Maxima GLE SE with Virginia license plate WYN3706.
She was wearing a pink blouse, full-length floral print spandex pants, a.k.a. leggings.
Yeah, okay, thank you.
I was like, I was honestly trying to picture
those and I was picturing like wide-legged
weird things.
Lula Roe? I mean
it could be. You never know.
You don't know. And brown boots.
She was carrying a dark and
light colored... I'm sorry. Yeah, the dogs.
Yeah. Is the mailman here?
Your guess is as
good as mine.
May I show you?
I'm getting hot.
I'm taking this hoodie off.
Do you have something under it?
No, I don't.
What if he did?
Norm, I don't want to see your man nips.
They're real tiny.
No.
You'll have to squint.
You'll have to squint.
Give me glasses.
This is the most confusing part of the bulletin to me.
It said, she was carrying a dark
and light colored gray purse.
What? Dark and
light colored gray purse.
Those are opposite.
Like, is it like a patchwork
purse thing? Who wrote this
bulletin? I don't know. Is someone who's never heard
of the word leggings before?
Okay. The bulletin. I don't know. Someone who's never heard of the word leggings before? Right. Okay.
The bulletin included
two pictures of Alexis and a picture of
the vehicle she was known to be driving.
It also gave a physical description
of her as a 17-year-old black female
standing 5 foot 7 inches tall
weighing 156 pounds
with black hair and brown eyes.
The bulletin asked for anyone with any
information to please contact the authorities immediately
and noted that no bit of information was too small.
Okay, from here, like the order of things
in the early part of the investigation
is a little bit hazy
because like every article puts them
in a little bit of a different order.
My guess is that because a lot of things happened very closely together or kind of at the same time.
And so the order gets jumbled.
But on my list of three things, the first thing was that they found the car Alexis had been driving.
It was found abandoned in a movie theater parking lot in Charlottesville, which is not that far from where she lived, but not.
The University of Virginia.
It is located in Charlottesville.
It is.
If you'd let me finish my sentence.
Why did you stop?
Yes.
Yes.
So they did a search of surveillance camera footage from the mall that was kind of across the street from the movie theater.
Oak Park Mall.
I don't think so.
Is the mall that is located here.
Oh, I didn't know you were done.
I didn't know you were done.
Okay.
You'll never come on again.
He's going to walk out of here before he does his case.
So they look at that surveillance footage, and it does show a couple of clues, but nothing that was super helpful.
The car is seen pulling into the parking lot around 1030 the night that Alexis went missing.
You couldn't really see anything, though.
Someone was driving it.
They got out of it and walked away.
But the video was really grainy.
They tried to enhance it a bunch.
You never could tell.
You couldn't tell if it was a man or woman that got out of it.
You couldn't tell anything.
So not a lot of help.
And the car showed no signs of Alexis.
Like, she didn't leave anything behind in it.
It was just an empty car.
Had it been, like,
cleaned out, you mean?
Not necessarily cleaned out,
but, like, her purse wasn't there.
Her phone wasn't there.
I assume the keys were there.
I don't know.
What do you know, ma'am?
What I do know
is that number two
on my list of three things
was that they went to work
nailing down Alexis's last known location.
Norm, do you have something to say?
I'm offended.
It's about time someone spoke up.
Go ahead, Norm.
Nope.
Everyone, Brandy just burped.
I did.
And it's inexcusable.
I apologize.
Norm's never seen a woman burp before.
He's married to you.
Because he's married to me, exactly.
No.
He's married to a lady.
I bet Norm's walls have shaken from his wife burping.
It's true.
We've got plaster walls.
When those shake, it's trouble.
Well, no shake is trouble.
Our house cannot be insured because of my birth certificate. Because of your birth certificate.
Okay, so they knew that there was this gas station in Lovingston, which is another town right in that same area, that was a local hangout for teens.
And Alexis was known to
frequent there. And so they went and they looked at the security camera footage of the day that
she disappeared to see if she had been there at all. And sure enough, she had been there around
7.15 the evening of August 3rd. She was pictured on the video just coming into the gas station and
paying for gas. She seemed totally normal.
She was happy. She was laughing. She was talking to people. And then she like paid for her gas and
then went out to pump it. Something did catch their eye though, as they watched the footage
of her walking out of the store. A man had held the door for her. There was no interaction at all between her and him.
He just held the door.
She hadn't even looked at him.
But there was something to investigators about the way he looked at her.
Ew.
It was odd enough that the detectives committed the man to memory.
Not that that was all that difficult, though,
because the man had a huge fucking Daffy Duck tattoo on his neck.
No, Brandi, shut up.
He had a giant Daffy Duck tattoo on the side of his neck.
Wow.
No.
Yeah, huge.
Huge neck tat of Daffy Duck.
Daffy Duck?
Yes.
Big fan.
Oh, my God.
I mean, that's quite an identifying mark right there.
Yeah.
They also noticed that he drove like this old Chevy Suburban, like the old like 70s style one,
and that it was painted in a camouflage pattern.
This man was not blending in.
Even though he clearly had made an effort.
Was it like a homemade camouflage?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
Why did I even ask?
This didn't come off the line that way.
I don't think this was a paint job Chevy offer.
Well, he was trying to blend in because he had a camouflage.
Was the Daffy Duck, was it well done?
I didn't see a close-up of it.
But what I think is the most hilarious about this is I've seen a picture of this man.
I don't remember
seeing any other tattoos on
him.
His first tattoo ever. He just went all in on a
Daffy Duck neck tattoo.
Wow.
Is there, okay.
I'm getting
stuck on the wrong thing. Okay.
But there's nothing to Daffy Duck.
How do you make a connection to Daffy Duck?
I don't know the answer to that.
Right?
He likes the cartoon.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, but I mean, he has no real personality.
Oh.
Daffy has a personality.
How dare you?
Have you never seen his bill spin around his head?
He's also Duck Dodgers.
What?
Oh my gosh, you too.
What the fuck is Duck Dodgers?
His alter ego, he's like the space hero, Duck Dodgers.
Oh, okay, yeah.
Okay, all right.
Rabbit season, duck season.
I believe it.
On his neck.
Just regular old Daffy.
Puffer and fuck attached.
Also, this man's like, I don't know.
Is that Sylvester?
That's Sylvester.
Oh, man.
I'm clearly not a Daffy fan.
How embarrassing.
I'm not a Daffy fan.
You're proving my point.
Yeah.
There's nothing to Daffy Duck.
There's nothing about Daffy Duck that's memorable.
Sorry.
Yeah, there's nothing to Daffy Duck. There's nothing about Daffy Duck that's memorable.
Sorry.
Worth noting also, like, this man, I would put his age at late 50s.
He's just like this, like, yeah, 50-something white dude with a big Daffy Duck neck tag.
I've got to tell you something, and I'm not bragging, but I knew that.
Because...
That wasn't a mystery to you?
No!
Anytime you see, like, a Tweety Bird tattoo, it's always on some old white person.
Yeah, on her.
It's on a woman's tit is where it is.
Or, like, the Tasmanian Devil.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's also on your...
They probably grew up with those cartoons.
Well, but who is getting a Tweety Tit Tattoo?
Brandy, don't be rude.
Kristen's secret Tweety Tit Tattoo.
Everyone, I just pulled my bow down.
What would you...
Would you shit yourself if I pulled down my shirt to reveal...
I'd like to shit. I'd like to shit.
I'd like to shit, as they say in the South.
You know, I collected Tweety Bird when I was a kid.
So to your point, Norm, I've never once wanted a Tweety Bird tattoo.
And I very much grew up with Tweety.
That's fair.
Okay, so we've got a total weirdo yeah total weirdo and like weird enough that just
standing there holding the door investigators are like don't like the look of this guy
okay so the third thing on my list in no particular order is that they discovered that
alexis's cell phone was still pinging it no longer active, but the location was pinging on it.
And it was pinging really close to her last known location, the gas station.
So not by the mall?
No.
Okay.
The FBI determined that the phone was pinging in an area just about a mile north of the gas station.
And so the FBI and the Virginia State Police like swarmed that area where the ping was.
The area was like an abandoned property.
There was an old house kind of right off of this like main rural highway, I believe.
And it was really overgrown, this piece of property was.
There was really dense vegetation.
The way it was described is basically
by the time you walk like five feet from the road,
you're basically in the shadows
because there's so much vegetation.
So they get to this piece of property
where they've narrowed down this pingas coming from.
As soon as they start to like walk onto the property, they're parked in some overgrown brush.
Was it camouflage?
No.
Chevy Suburban.
No.
Ew.
Mm-hmm.
And so they're like, yeah, definitely saw that car before.
Yeah.
And then before they know it, here comes this guy stepping out of a camper that's parked on the property.
And he's like rushing up to meet him.
And he's got a huge fucking Daffy Duck tattoo on his neck.
I'd now like to share with you what I thought was the most comical line from this article on True Crime Daily.
line from this article on True Crime Daily.
Investigators believed he was the same man they'd seen on the surveillance tape at the gas station.
Is this a second man with a Daffy Duck neck tattoo?
Could be another guy.
We've all seen him.
So yeah, they barely get to this property where they know her cell phone is pinging
from and they see a camouflaged Chevy Suburban.
And then there's the camper that's on this property.
And then, like, a rundown abandoned house.
And out of the camper comes this dude that they've already seen on the surveillance cameras.
Well, they're not totally sure, Brandy.
They believe it's the same guy.
And so he comes up and, like, he's like, hey,
what's going on? What are you guys
all doing here?
And they like note that this guy
is, you know, obviously
a weirdo. He has like his camper
set up and he's got like a big security camera
on top of his camper
like facing the road.
And so he
introduces himself.
He's like, hey, my name's Randy Taylor.
You guys want to come on in?
Sit down.
Let's chat.
And so they, a couple of detectives,
walk into his camper with her, with him.
And they're in there for like a minute
when one of the detectives notices something
in like the carpet on the floor.
Oh, no.
It's like something shiny.
So this detective like reaches down, picks it up with, we're going to say, picked it up with a glove.
Okay.
Just, you know, imagining, you know, they take out like one glove.
They don't even put it on.
They just.
We've seen movies.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's a diamond stud earring or nose ring.
Okay.
And so they're just like, bag that up, talk to the guy a little bit.
And while they're just kind of like.
Does Randy even notice that happening?
I don't know if Randy notices it or not.
But during the time that they're talking to him inside his camper, they also find a bloody fingernail.
Oh.
Inside his camper, they also find a bloody fingernail and a piece of long black hair that was consistent with a black female.
So the texture of the hair matched.
And so they bag that up and they thank him for his time and they leave.
But they take that evidence and they send it off for DNA testing.
In the meantime, they're like, OK, what what do we have? Like when he left the gas station,
do we have any footage of that? Did he follow Alexis out of here? And so they look at some different surveillance footage angles, like from surrounding businesses i guess and they are able to see
randy taylor driving away in his camouflage chevy suburban i think they had like some kind of
special program that was able to you know see past the camera
cool well that's why the fbi that's that's what you get when you get the fbi involved
FBI.
That's what you get when the FBI gets involved. Yeah, when you get the FBI involved.
God.
Well, did they find her cell phone?
Okay.
So, no, on that initial search, they did not find her cell phone.
So keep your pants on, as I would say to Brandi in this situation.
But they do see him pull away in his Chevy Suburban, and then she follows directly behind him in the white Nissan.
Mm-hmm.
She follows him?
Yes.
Well, that's just a coincidence, right?
I mean, she wasn't like going anywhere with him, right?
Or was she?
Why would?
I guess you can keep your fucking pants on.
I can.
Why would she want to go anywhere with that guy?
Yeah.
Big Looney Tunes fan.
Oh, no.
Norm.
What?
Okay, so they run DNA tests on that evidence that they've pulled from the fingernail, the hair.
The hair strand had the bulb attached to it, the root attached to it.
That means it was ripped out.
They had the bulb attached to it, the root attached to it. That means it was ripped out.
And then they also tested the diamond stud.
And all three of those came back matching Alexis's DNA.
Okay.
Now go in and fuck his shit up.
So now they're like, okay, obviously this guy's a suspect now.
Which again, this article really spells it out.
This is what they say.
Once that was a match, it became clear
that Randy Taylor was a suspect.
They don't want to jump the gun.
Allegedly.
And so they go back to
his trailer and they have a conversation
with him and let him know like, hey,
we found these things in your
camper and they have this
missing girl's DNA on him.
Anything you want to tell us and he was
like okay okay i did see her that night and they're like what do you mean you saw her he's
like i ran into her at the gas station and she was with this guy this black guy with dreadlocks
and they followed me from the gas station back to my place and sold me
weed. Except for
the black guy was
in camo the whole time because he didn't
show up on the surveillance tape. You know, don't
even worry about that. Okay.
Kristen. Alright, I won't.
And they were like, okay,
so
they came with you here
to your camper to sell you weed as just like some guy they ran into at the in the gas station parking lot.
And he was like, uh-huh.
Yeah, we had a good time.
We hung out for a little while.
They were here maybe hour to not sure.
I left at one point and bought beer and then i came back and the guy and i drank you
know a beer together and then they left and and when they left alexis was happy she was smiling
she was laughing and uh yeah that's the last time i saw her
you know what i do when i meet two people for the first time?
I just, like, leave them alone in my house.
Leave them alone in my home?
While I go and buy some stuff.
Right?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And so they're like, okay, great.
Do you have a name for this mysterious black man with dreadlocks
who was in your camper alone the very first time you met him?
Mm-hmm.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah. His name was Damian Bradley. Damian Bradley. was in your camper alone the very first time you met him.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah.
His name was Damian Bradley.
Damian Bradley.
I do like that name, even though it's clearly made up.
It's actually not made up.
What?
Damian Bradley was a real person.
Oh.
And a person who kind of knew Alexis.
He used to work at the gas station.
Shut up. Yeah, he worked at the McDonald's to work at the gas station. Shut up.
Yeah, he worked at the McDonald's that was inside this gas station that was like a local hangout.
Wow.
Yes.
And so they track down this Damian Bradley.
And they're like, a little bit suspicious because this guy has skipped town.
He's moved to Birmingham.
Wow. Yeah.
And they're like, okay, this
does look like a
little suspicious. So they track down
Damian Bradley and they're like,
you know, they do the thing where they like shine
the light in his face and they're like, where were you
on the evening of August 3rd,
2013? Wow.
And he was like, I was
with my dad and my girlfriend
in Alabama.
And they're like, oh, you were, were you?
And then it turns out that his alibi was like airtight.
There was no chance that he was anywhere near the gas station or Randy Taylor's camper that night.
And they were like, OK, well, this whole fucking story is made up.
Do you think Randy made that story up?
I think Randy did make that story up.
I always trust a guy with a Daffy Duck neck tattoo.
And like this comes out later, but it turns out that Randy was just like this creepy guy
that hung around the gas station like for hours at a time and just like stared at everybody.
So he knew enough to be like, oh, this guy does at least kind of know this girl.
Imagine if he if he was like, yeah, his name was Bob Marley.
All right, buddy.
Yeah. So now investigators are like, great, we have the DNA and we know that Randy has made up this complete story.
And so they place him under arrest and charge him with abducting Alexis Murphy.
When they report this information to Alexis's family, they like show them a picture of Randy Taylor.
They give them the name and they're like, no, no idea who that is.
And so then they show a picture and Alexis's aunt, Trina Murphy, was like, oh, my gosh, I know that guy.
What?
He had worked at the dealership that she had bought a car from.
And, like, Alexis had been with her.
And he had been the one to give them the keys to the car they bought.
Shut up.
Yeah.
But he's just such a memorable person.
Yes.
That she was like, yes, I remember him.
I just remember. on that small transaction.
He has a giant Daffy Duck tattoo on his neck.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess this is good advice for creeps.
If you're going to be a creep, don't have such a fucking identifiable tattoo.
So at this point, they're like, okay, Randy has done something to Alexis, but there's still no sign of her.
And they don't know really what is going on.
And they don't know who Randy is.
And so they start asking around town.
And this is when they find out that like, yeah, he's the creep who just like hangs out
at the gas station.
He'll like park in the back of the lot and just like, no, watch people as they go in
and out for hours.
And then every now and again, he'd come in and buy a pack of Paul Malls.
I feel like every small town's got one of those guys.
Yeah, got a gas station creepo for sure.
Gas station creepo, yeah.
Don't you remember when we used to ride our bikes to the gas station when we were camping
and your dad would always be like, watch out for yahoos.
Oh, yeah.
You know what?
Randy Taylor is a yahoo. Oh, yeah, you know what? Randy Taylor is a yay-hoo.
Yeah, it's funny.
You're kind of blowing my mind right now
because yay-hoo back in the day
was just kind of like, oh, yay-hoo, whatever.
Now I'm like, oh, my dad was saying
watch out for pedophiles.
Yes, it's like watch out for the gas station creeper
that every town has.
Yep.
Can you tell us about your gas station creeper that every town has. Yep. Can you tell us about your gas station creeper?
He can't because it was him.
Well, you see, I'd sit out there.
What does the gas station think about this?
Well, what can you do?
You can't run the creeper off.
Sure you can.
He's buying cigarettes.
He's buying a pack of Potholes every now and again. But you're creeping
out everybody who comes in so maybe
people don't want to come to your gas station.
I think it's just like that thing
that people don't really consider it
that big of a threat. They're just like, oh yeah,
that's Randy the Creeper.
Our resident creeper.
Yeah. Okay. I think people
write off creepy people like that all
the time.
I mean, that is why I became friends with you, because I was like, someone has to be her friend.
You ass.
So they find this out, and then word gets out that they're trying to investigate this Randy Taylor guy,
and they get a call from the clerk at the porn store in town.
Wow. He's like, yeah, Randy porn store in town. Wow.
He's like, yeah, Randy is a regular customer of ours.
In fact, you know, he had been here that night
just before he'd gone to the gas station
and he bought two pornos.
Daffy Duck does Dallas.
I do know the name of one of them. You have to tell us. Mexican Pussy. That's the name of one of them
you have to tell us
Mexican Pussy
that's the name of it?
that's the name of the porn
they were not creative porn names
no
I can't remember the other one
I guess you get the gist
of what it's about
or what it is
not really what it's about
what it's about
yeah that doesn't tell me
anything about the plot
it doesn't tell me the plot
that's true
I don't know anything
about the plot
man okay yeah and so It doesn't tell me anything about the plot. It doesn't tell me the plot. That's true. I don't know anything about the plot.
Man.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so now they're like, again, this is, I think, okay, I sometimes think, and again, I'm not shitting on my source.
I think you are shitting on your source.
But I think sometimes they put in these like paragraphs that are just kind of filler.
And like, surely no one is investigating this and really
thinking this, right? Because at this point, they're like,
well, when we got that call
from the worker at the porn shop,
we thought, huh,
maybe there's a sexual motivation
here.
But even then, a lot of people
watch porn and they're not going to
abduct someone from a gas
station.
Even then, I don't know that I'm totally on board with that. watch porn and they're not going to abduct someone from a gas station. Well, yes.
Even then, I don't know that I'm totally on board with that.
Now, if you're paying
for porn in 2013, then
you should be investigated for that reason alone.
Well, this guy lived in a camper
on an abandoned property,
so I think maybe his Wi-Fi wasn't great.
Wait a minute.
If he was buying porn and he lived in a camper,
do you think he was whacking in his camper?
I do.
I was like, where is this going?
Oh, finally.
Yes, I do.
That's the whole reason Brandy told this case, was so that you could do your Hank Hill impression.
Officer, Brandy was whacking in his camper.
And so now, according to this source material, the federal agents were like, you know what we need to do?
We got to take another look at that camper.
And so they got a search warrant because Randy's in custody,
but they've only charged him with abduction at this point.
And they still don't know where Alexis is.
And so they go back to his camper.
They get a search warrant.
They go back to his camper and they do like a seven hour search of the camper.
That had to be disgusting.
I am sure that it was.
And on this search, they find a tea...
What?
What?
Oh, I'm not familiar.
A teaspoon?
A t-shirt.
T-shirt.
Okay.
They found a t-shirt, and it was balled up and, like, shoved under the couch.
And then it had, like like a set of artificial eyelashes
kind of balled up with it.
And then they found black hair extensions.
The shirt was the same shirt that Randy Taylor
had been wearing in the surveillance video from that day.
Fuck.
Only now there was a big stain on the back of it.
And that stain was determined to be blood.
Yeah.
They did a DNA test on the hair, the eyelashes, and the blood.
And it all matched Alexis.
But they still hadn't found Alexis' cell phone.
And they knew it had been there in that area.
So I think this is kind of cool.
I'd never heard of this before.
They brought in these canine units from the Department of Corrections that are specifically trained to find cell phones.
You know, because people smuggle cell phones into prisons.
Yeah.
And so there are cell phone finding canines.
OK.
So they brought them in and they found Alexis's shattered iPhone on the property.
One article said it was found 15 feet from Randy Taylor's camper.
Another article, which was like actual trial testimony, said it was found 70 feet.
Those are very different numbers.
I know.
From the camper.
Surely it would have to be 70 feet because if it's 15 feet, I'd be like, why did you bring the dogs out for this?
Exactly.
Yes.
I think it has to be the 70 feet.
And also, like there was like a lot of heavy brush in the area, lots of vegetation.
And it was found, like, under that.
Was there vegetation?
There was vegetation.
And the phone had been completely destroyed.
Like, it had been smashed.
The battery had been pulled out of it.
Like, the cables that are inside that connect the battery had been ripped out.
There was no salvaging this phone at all.
They could not recover any information from the phone.
Do you think the dogs can sniff out particular brands of phones?
Like it was like, this is the Apple iPhone dog.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
We get the T-Mobile dog.
I bet the Nokia dog doesn't get a lot of work anymore. Absolutely. Yes. We get the T-Mobile dog. I bet the Nokia dog doesn't get a lot of work anymore.
Yeah.
So the discovery.
He's like, this is stupid.
I'm moving on.
I'd like to talk more about the Nokia dogs.
The Nokia dog.
Nokia sniffing dog.
Now he mostly just sits in the recliner and drinks all day.
He's got nothing to do.
It's kind of depressing.
But you know what?
They're going to need him again one day.
Well, yeah, but he's going to say, no, I don't work anymore.
I don't do that anymore.
I'm retired.
Don't do this no more.
Please, Nokia dog.
He's the only one who can help.
This perp had a Nokia phone.
He thought he could get away with it.
There's only one dog who can sniff this out.
I don't do that stuff no more.
All right, continue, Brandy.
I'm sorry.
Anyway.
All right, continue, Brandi.
I'm sorry.
Anyway, the discovery of Alexis's phone was particularly hard for her family because Alexis was glued to her phone.
She was always on social media.
She always had her phone.
So the fact that it was found at Brandi's property meant that she hadn't left there alive.
There was no way. Yeah.
For five months, authorities searched for Alexis Murphy, but the search...
This makes me so angry because, dude, they found evidence that she was there.
Yeah.
They found her blood there.
Just tell them what you did with her body. No. They found her blood there. Just tell them
what you did with her body.
No.
This whole time he's like,
no, I have no idea
what you're talking about.
She left.
She left here.
She was happy.
She was laughing.
She was with Damian Bradley
or whatever his name was.
Bob Marley.
Bob Marley.
But the search continues
and it found nothing.
There was no sign of Alexis.
Finally, the prosecutor made a bold move.
He decided to charge Randy Taylor with the murder of Alexis Murphy, despite the fact that they did not have her body.
That is a bold move.
I think you've got enough, though.
Yeah.
And at this point, her family's just being tortured.
Exactly. Exactly.
But without a body?
They do it. It's not ideal.
Her blood was found in his
camper. There's footage of
her leaving
with him.
They found her extensions in there.
It was unprecedented. There had
only been, to this point, only two cases ever tried in Virginia without a body.
But the prosecutor, Anthony Martin, said we should not.
He has a Daffy Duck neck tattoo.
And that was all he said at that press conference.
And people were like, oh, okay.
Okay.
Now, he said we should not reward a person by not charging them with murder just because they are good at hiding the body.
I agree.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
And again, her poor family.
Yes.
Ugh.
Randy Taylor pled not guilty.
Of course he did.
And his murder trial began on May 2nd, 2014.
So he was given a public defender.
The public defender
made a bunch of motions to try and get
a bunch of evidence thrown out. None of
them were successful. I believe he tried to get a change of venue.
Was not successful. Just because
Alexis' case had garnered a lot of attention.
Yeah. Because she was this
cute 17-year-old. She had a big social
media presence. Her
body was still missing.
Yeah.
In his opening statement,
Anthony Martin
told the jury
all about the physical
evidence that had been
found in
Randy Taylor's
Tramper.
Or Camper.
Tramper.
Camper.
It's like a trailer
slash Camper.
I was thinking
it was Tramper-sized.
I'll thank you never to bring that up again, Kristen.
Norma, did you know that one time Brandi signed up for a Tramper Size class?
Tramper Size.
Yeah, I went to Tramper Size, which is like an aerobics class that takes place at one of those trampoline parks.
Sounds super fun, right?
Yeah. Well, I super fun, right? Yeah.
Well.
I thought so, too.
But it turns out I went to an advanced class, and it was all, like, 16-year-old cheerleaders
and me.
And they're, like, practically touching the fucking ceiling, and I'm like, did I get off
the trampoline?
Did I catch some air?
And so I made it exactly seven minutes, and then I said I was going to go get a drink of water.
And I left.
How old were you?
30 years old.
Oh, Jesus.
No, probably not.
But I was probably, yeah, about that, between 28 and 30.
Wow.
I love it.
It was horrible.
And the guy, the guy that was teaching the class, he knew what I was doing.
Well, of course he did.
I was like, I'm just going to go get a drink of water real quick.
And he was like, okay.
And then I like walked down.
Because you have to like walk down the stairs off the trampolines.
And he like poked his head around.
He's like, now come back.
No, he didn't.
Yeah.
That tool bag.
Yes.
I was like, fuck off.
Yeah.
You see, I'm not a high school gymnast!
Get away from me!
So anyway,
it turns out that the prosecutor laid out the evidence that had
been found in Randy Taylor's
camper. Oh.
They had found Alexis'
blood in there, her torn fingernail,
her hair with the roots
still attached.
But Randy's defense attorney, Michael Hallahan, was like, hey, there's just too much reasonable
doubt here.
No, not really.
They don't even have a body.
They don't even have proof that a murder occurred.
I mean, they kind of do, though.
Yeah.
Yes, I think they absolutely do.
Testimony started with Alexis's family members.
Her mom got on the stand and she talked about how Alexis was a happy teenager.
She was about to, like, go through her senior year she was the captain
of the volleyball team
she had gotten a job
that she was doing really well at
at Kid to Kid
in Charlottesville I would assume it was some kind of daycare
facility I don't really know she was doing really
well there she'd just gotten a raise
and she talked
about how that day she had given her money
to go buy hair extensions
because she was getting her senior pictures taken
and she was supposed to get her hair done.
And she said, she talked about
the phone, how the phone had been found
on Randy's property. She said,
Alexis was never, never
without her iPhone.
She was obviously very emotional during her
testimony and she said, that was the last day
I saw my daughter. Alexis's grandmother, Gail Taylor, testified she was the one who had woken
up in the middle of the night and realized that Alexis wasn't there. And she, too, talked about
how excited Alexis was that day to go get her hair done, get her extensions put in, and that it was completely out of the norm for her not to come home.
Everybody had immediately known that something was wrong.
She said that Alexis was a scared kind of person who always called home several times,
just to let them know, like, hey, this is where I am. This is where I am. This is when she like just to let them know like hey this is
where i am this is where i am this is when i'm gonna be home she said that she'd left the light
on for alexis that night and that when she woke up in the middle of the night she saw that the
light was still on she immediately knew that something was wrong The employee from the porn store, which was called Ultimate Bliss.
I like that name for a porn store.
That's good.
Testified that Randy was a regular there.
And on that day, August 3rd, he'd been in at about 5.20 p.m.
And he'd purchased two videos.
A doll's house.
No, what?
And Mexican pussy.
Oh, a doll's house was the name of...
The name.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
No, he didn't purchase a doll.
I don't think they sell doll houses.
I was so grossed out.
I was like, no!
No!
Two employees from the gas station testified that Randy was the gas station creeper.
He was there very regularly, sat in the parking lot and, quote,
gawked at the teenage girls who came into the gas station after school.
Okay, I still maintain that if this is your business, you have to get rid of the creepers.
I think this happens all the time. I think this happens all the time.
I know it happens all the time.
Yeah.
But I think it's part of your job to get rid of the creepers.
Yeah.
If nothing else, from a business standpoint, it's bad for business to have a fucking creep sitting there creeping everybody out. Absolutely.
Bad for business.
Creeping everybody out. Absolutely.
Bad for business.
Melissa Jarrell, who was the employee who had been working on the evening of August 3rd,
testified that he would sit there for hours watching everybody
and that he was the last person you'd want to be alone with.
She testified that on that night, August 3rd,
that she watched Alexis walk across the parking lot and she saw her turn her head as if someone had spoken to her.
And then she watched as she walked over to Randy Taylor's car and they spoke for a brief moment. And then
the prosecution played for the jury
the video of the two cars
pulling out of the parking lot
together, one right after the other.
I wonder what the hell
he said to her to get her to follow him.
Yeah.
So,
and we don't really know,
and even in his closing argument, the prosecutor says, I can't tell you.
Of course not.
I can't tell you how Randy got her.
If he's not admitting that he killed her, there's no way he's going to be like, and this is what I said to lure her back to my tramper size.
The belief is that he offered her weed.
Sure.
offered her weed.
Sure.
And this, like, there was this big whole thing about how, oh, I thought she was this great 17-year-old girl,
but she's smoking weed, and this guy was able to lure her back to his camper by offering her weed.
So what if he was?
Yeah, she's like any other.
Yes. I mean, somebody offers me weed, I might.
Yeah.
So the parent, like, that came out during the investigation, and the parents had parents had to like make a statement and be like, OK, she's not perfect.
She's a teenager, but she was a great girl.
Yeah.
Like, OK, maybe she smoked weed occasionally, but that doesn't mean like she asked for this.
Right.
Better be the perfect victim.
Yeah.
Otherwise, fuck you. Right. Exactly. victim. Yeah. Otherwise, fuck you, right?
Exactly.
Good lord.
Yeah.
A couple of FBI agents testified about how they searched Randy Taylor's camper.
And one of them, a female agent, talked about how uncomfortable she had been in his presence.
And he just stared at her the entire time yeah
on cross-examination uh fucking randy's defense attorney talked about how oh so um
the agents searched this camper for over i don't, a couple of hours the first time and then seven
hours the second time. And it took until the second time to find that balled up t-shirt
under the couch. How did they miss that on the first search of his, of his trailer or his camper?
And then he said, what I submit is that in that initial search, that T-shirt and Alexis Taylor's hair and eyelashes weren't there.
Planted, huh?
That's what he, yeah, that's what he argued in court, that the FBI had planted that evidence.
I'm sure he has evidence of that happening.
Well, yeah, there's no evidence of that.
Well, why wouldn't...
So
everything was planted then?
No, so that's just it.
The first search was just like a
preliminary search and
an interrogation of Randy Taylor.
They didn't do a thorough search until they got a
search warrant. Okay.
And that's when they found that stuff
during a thorough search.
So the hair that had been
ripped out by the root,
the defense attorney
would argue like,
that just happened
while they were
hanging out.
No,
when she was alone
in the camper
with Damian Bradley.
Oh.
Mm-hmm.
We're still sticking
to that story.
Yeah, because Randy left
and went and bought beer.
Who knows? Even though Damian went and bought beer. Who knows?
Even though Damien had the alibi.
Who knows what happened in there when he was gone?
Okay.
Who knows?
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Not a great defense, I've got to say.
So up until the trial, it had kind of been a mystery how Alexis' car had ended up in that movie theater parking lot. But at the trial,
the prosecution was able to put forward some evidence of how it wound up there and tie it
to Randy Taylor. I was going to ask that, like, yeah, why was her car in the movie theater parking
lot? So they pull up. So the prosecution played surveillance video from a nearby business,
an armed forces recruiting station that showed
the Nissan appearing in the parking lot somewhere around 1030.
And then they put a witness on the stand, a bartender named Jerry Madison Jr., who testified
that he was working at Applebee's, which was like right down the street at 10 p.m. that night.
And that sometime between 10 and 1030, Randy Taylor had showed up at Applebee's.
He was all sweaty.
He was aggravated.
And he sat at the bar, ordered two Heinekens and said his buddy was passed out outside.
But nobody ever came in with him.
Nobody ever joined him.
And then after he'd sat there for a few minutes,
he asked the bartender to call him a cab.
So he drove the car.
He drove the car.
He left it at the, yeah, at the movie theater parking lot,
walked down to Applebee's and had them call him a cab.
down to Applebee's and had them call him a cab.
The cab driver testified that he drove Randy Taylor out to Woods Mill,
which is an area about three miles north of where his camper is.
He didn't drop him at his property.
That's wild. Yes.
Yeah.
What, did he walk home?
I don't know. But if you weren't up to anything suspicious, why wouldn't you walk home I don't know
but if you weren't up
to anything suspicious
why wouldn't you have
why wouldn't you just
go home
yeah exactly
hmm
huh
yeah
so
when it was the
defense's turn
to present their case
they attempted
to put forth
a theory that
Alexis had been
human trafficked.
They called an agent from the FBI child abduction raid response team and asked him a question
about sex trafficking.
But the prosecution objected immediately and the judge sustained the objection and the
witness was dismissed without answering any questions.
Because was there any evidence that that's what happened?
No! So get out of here.
And so there was this big argument. The jury was like
asked to leave the room. There was this big argument and the
defense attorney was like, I want trafficking
on the record! And the
judge was like, no!
Absolutely not. It doesn't apply here
at all. Exactly!
During closing
arguments, both sides agreed on one thing. Randy Taylor was a liar.
Randy's attorney said, you know what? Randy Taylor is not charged with lying to the police
or smoking marijuana or driving on a suspended license. Yeah. He lied to investigators repeatedly.
You can suspect he's guilty of something, but that's not beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pretty weak argument.
Yeah.
I don't think that's good.
My client is full of shit.
Yeah.
In their closing arguments, the prosecution said, when it comes down to it, only two people know what happened in that camper Saturday, August 3rd, between 717 and 730.
One of them is here.
That's the defendant, Randy Taylor.
The other has been silenced.
The prosecutor referred to the testimony of family and friends who had said, you know, Alexis was this rising star senior.
She was happy in her life.
She was looking forward to going to college.
He said all of that changed when she walked across the parking lot of the Liberty gas station and that man held the door for her.
And then he went on to talk about how Randy Taylor had lied to investigators through the whole thing.
He said he thought he could fast talk his way out of this. He tried the oldest trick in the book,
blame it on someone else. And he dragged in poor Damian Bradley. The prosecutor went on to admit that he didn't know why Alexis had gone to Randy's camper that night.
He said, yeah, it could have been drugs, but that is abduction by deception.
Yeah.
That does not change the outcome.
The prosecutor described Randy Taylor as a hunter looking for prey.
The prosecutor described Randy Taylor as a hunter looking for prey.
She was seized and detained by him as soon as she got on that property, like a deer hunter.
The one thing that could have saved her was her cell phone.
The biggest problem in Randy Taylor's story, he continued, and it is a story, is that she left alone and was fine.
Is it reasonable for her to leave without her hair extension, her nail, her blood, her cell phone?
He reminded the jury that it was not necessary to produce Alexis's body for a homicide conviction.
And he repeatedly used the word child to describe Alexis.
She was a child.
He said, Randy
Taylor wants you to reward him
for disposing of the body.
In an hour long closing argument from the defense attorney hallahan he said there's no proof or evidence of her death and he insisted that police had the wrong man when there was clear evidence
that a third party was present that night. I'd love to hear that evidence.
Yeah, where's the evidence?
Where's the evidence?
He used Alexis's family's testimony against them
in his closing argument saying,
they told you themselves
that she never would have gone
to a strange man's home by herself.
Oh, so they don't know shit about her?
Is that the point?
Or that's proof that somebody else was there.
Somebody else got her to go to that house that night.
To go to that camper.
That's a good point, though.
I think it's a good argument.
I do.
I do.
In a situation where your client clearly did it, that's
kind of the only thing you can argue.
He also said
that the testimony from
the porn store clerk
was proof
that abduction
or killing was the
furthest thing from Randy
Taylor's mind that night.
Oh, wow.
He just wanted to watch some porn.
He wanted to whack it in his camper.
He wanted to whack it in his camper.
Okay, I have to say,
I don't think that the porn store thing is super relevant at all.
I don't either.
I think it's kind of just to shock everybody.
But that's not proof that it's the last thing on his front.
What?
This poor guy just wanted to whack it in his camper to Mexican Pussy and a doll's house.
As long as it's not a physical dollhouse, apparently, I'm fine.
He also, Kristen, you're going to like this.
Let's hear it.
He questioned the testimony from the cashiers at the gas station.
If they were so creeped out by Randy Taylor, why had they never called the police before?
Oh, people don't call the police on creeps all the time.
Exactly.
But I think they should.
Yeah, no, I agree.
And I think a business has an obligation to get rid of some of the creeps that are hanging around. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think a business has an obligation to
get rid of some of the creeps that are hanging around.
Yeah.
In some kind
of last-ditch effort to
try and get in his sex trafficking
theory.
Sneak it in. He did. He said,
you know what? We don't really know what happened
here. Did he just, like, wheel in a TV
and put on Taken? He said, what if someone? We don't really know what happened here. Did he just like wheel in a TV and put on Taken?
He said, what if someone
paid him $10,000
to kidnap
Alexis and ship
her overseas? Did Randy say
that's what happened? What?
Yeah. Yeah.
What if that's what happened?
You ever think of that?
No, I didn't.
Are we just shouting out random theories now?
Aliens, man.
He finished by saying, you're going to find there's not enough beyond a reasonable doubt.
You may not like him, but that's not enough to convict him.
In their rebuttal, the prosecution was fired up.
They put up like a whiteboard presentation of like Randy's lies and listed them all out. And then they opened the evidence bags
and pulled out Alexis's bloody fingernail
and held it up for the jury
and said,
no abduction, no murder,
while holding up like the bloody evidence.
Yeah.
And then they finished by saying,
evil triumphs when people do nothing.
Don't let evil triumph.
This trial only lasted, like, five days.
It was pretty quick.
And the jury of five men and seven women
found Randy Taylor... Guilty. murder and abduction with the intent to defile.
So he's found guilty.
His sentencing is scheduled, you know, for like a couple months out.
And then something happened.
They found her body.
Nope.
He died.
Nope.
She had been sex trafficked. Liam Neeson found her body. Nope. He died. Nope. She had been sex trafficked. Liam Neeson found her. No.
Two months after Randy Taylor's murder conviction, a suspected serial killer in the area made
headlines. His name was Jesse Matthew, and he happened to be a large black man with dreadlocks.
The same description Randy Taylor gave police of the man he claimed had come to his camper with Alexis Murphy the day she disappeared.
Okay.
Huh.
So Jesse Matthews was charged with the abduction and murder of two women from the area, Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham.
Both girls went missing out of Charlottesville, which is the same area where Alexis had disappeared.
And the police and prosecutors were shitting their fucking pants.
Yeah.
They were like, is it possible that we just convicted the wrong man?
Mm-hmm.
Probably no, because
of the bloody fingernail
and all... And he showed up at
Applebee's sweating? Right.
So they did, like, a real quick,
like, cross-examination
of their case against, like, the
Jesse Matthews case. They did a DNA,
like, comparison, and
they were able to definitively
exclude Jesse Matthew as a possible like comparison and they were able to definitively exclude
Jesse Matthew
as a possible suspect
in Alexis Murphy's
death.
How do you know?
Were they
was he off killing
somebody else?
No.
So they were
so they had some DNA samples
apparently from the scene
that had never been tested.
OK.
But they came back as Randy's
not Jesse's.
There was no sign that Jesse Murphy, or I'm sorry,
that Jesse Matthew had ever had any contact with Alexis,
had been anywhere near the trailer.
It just was purely a coincidence that there was a serial killer
operating in that same area at this time.
Okay.
So now it's time for Randy Taylor to be sentenced.
And all of this time, he'd been, you know, maintaining his innocence.
And then, right before sentencing, he makes a play to try and get a reduced sentence.
He's like, hey, hey.
I'll tell you where the body is.
How about I tell you where the body is. And in exchange, you sentence me to 20 years in prison.
20 years?
Yeah, which he was going to be sentenced to two life sentences.
Yes, absolutely.
And so the prosecutors, like, bring this to Alexis' family.
No.
And they want nothing more than to give Alexis, like, the proper burial.
I know.
They say no.
They said no to the deal.
Yeah.
They're like, we will find her.
We know we will find her.
Yeah.
But this man has to go to prison for the rest of his life.
Yeah.
And so they turn the deal down.
I wouldn't have blamed them if they took the deal.
I wouldn't have either.
No, I can't imagine not knowing.
Well, and the defense tried to do a thing where they're like, hey, this guy's already, you know, so old that like 20 years, that's practically a life sentence, right?
His health's not even that great.
And did you guys see that Daffy Duck tattoo?
And they were like, no, two life sentences, please.
Yeah.
And so he was sentenced to two life sentences.
And this meant that he went to prison and he kept the location of Alexis's body to himself.
The family made a statement after this saying, like, it wasn't a question to them because they felt if he ever had a chance to get out of prison, he would do this again.
Yeah.
And they thought that he'd already done it before.
So it turns out that Randy Taylor was a person of interest in another missing persons case.
A 19-year-old went missing from the town of Orange, which is just like 30 miles from Charlottesville.
She went missing in 2010. Her name was, did I say her name? Okay. Her name was Samantha Clark
and she has never been found. Wow. The last person she spoke to before she went missing
was Randy Taylor. Yeah. Alexis's family did an amazing selfless thing.
Absolutely they did.
By saying, no, he's just going to rot.
Mm-hmm.
So when this information came out that he was a person of interest,
he had lived in the same trailer park as Samantha at the time of her disappearance.
And when this came out, there was all this talk about how that case was cold
and how, you know, no one was really doing anything about it.
And so the Orange police chief, Jim Fenwick, came forward and he was like, no, this case is very much still being investigated.
And we know that Randy Taylor is involved and we fully expect to charge him at some point.
The police chief said that Randy Taylor is very much currently considered a person of
interest in the Samantha Clark case.
They plan to charge him at some point and move forward with it.
And if convicted, Randy Taylor could face the death penalty.
But this left Alexis's family still not knowing where her remains were.
They searched for her, but there was really nothing to go on.
And then in December of 2020, Randy Taylor finally led the police to her remains.
Wow.
So they were located on private property in Nelson County, which is the county that she disappeared in.
The investigators said that they did not negotiate with Randy to get him to lead them to her remains.
But they did sign a transfer order for him.
He wanted to transfer to a different prison.
And they granted him that. Well, that is negotiating. I agree that's negotiating, but probably worth the
outcome. So her body was located December 3rd, 2020. The announcement of the discovery was not
made until March of 2021. This gave time for a positive identification and it gave Alexis's family
the time they needed to finally give Alexis a proper burial. Yeah. Alexis's family released
a statement at the time that it became public that her remains had been found. They said,
our family is so grateful for the continuing love, support, and prayers for Alexis and our family over the past
seven years. While we have been grieving the loss of Alexis since 2013, we had remained hopeful that
she would be found alive and well. Alexis was the fashionista, athlete, and joker of our family.
We are blessed to have loved her for 17 years and her memory will continue to live on through all of
us. Our family would like to extend a heartfelt thanks and sincere gratitude to the citizens of Nelson County, the FBI, the
Virginia State Police, the Nelson County Sheriff's Office, and all of the search and rescue teams for
your commitment and unwavering support to find Alexis. You all kept the promise you made in 2013
to bring Alexis home. And that's the story
of the disappearance of Alexis Murphy.
Oh gosh, that's so
sad. Yeah. So that
serial killer guy,
he was convicted of two murders
and it just
they also think that Randy Taylor's likely
a serial killer and they just like
happen to be operating in overlapping
areas.
Well yeah, there's not like a serial killer and they just like happen to be operating in overlapping areas well yeah there's not like a serial killer you know this is my jurisdiction yeah probably not
i'm the creep at this gas station buddy yeah
but samantha has still never been found sam Samantha has not been found. They completely believe that Randy is responsible for her death.
And to date, no charges have been filed against him for her disappearance or death.
Yeah.
So I did just a quick read into that.
She went missing in 2010.
They lived in the same trailer court at the time.
And he called her
right before she went missing
and asked her to meet up with him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Yep.
That was, uh...
That was terrible.
That was terrible.
Yes.
That was a case that Norman would never do.
Yep.
Never.
I 100% knew there was no chance of overlap there, Norm.
Gosh, her poor family.
I know.
I know.
That's got to be so horrifying to have a child that comes home on time, all the time,
you know, bright future, real excited about the future, and then they just don't come home.
Yeah.
That's got to be horrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, yeah, immediately you would think something horrible happened.
Yeah.
All right.
Tell us about a massacre.
So you thought you could come on here and tell us about a massacre, huh?
All right, Brandy and Kristen.
I am curious.
What's the oldest case you guys have done?
Old.
Yeah, very old.
You're not going to blow anyone's mind.
No, I'm talking like cavemen?
No.
But like we've done 1700s quite a few times.
Maybe 1600s.
Have we done 1600s?
1700s might be as old as we've gone.
This one's pretty old.
What is it?
What?
Yeah.
How old is it?
How old is it?
This took place in 1770.
Oh.
But before we get into this.
Revolutionary War?
Pre-Revolutionary War.
Oh, shit.
There was no country yet.
Oh.
I mean, it was here.
I'm going to be doing some great British accents during this case, by the way.
Turn it off now.
In honor of Kristen's birthday.
Okay.
So one of my favorite interpretations of history comes from historian Carl Becker.
And he said that history is the memory of things said and done.
Okay.
Yeah.
And in many ways, this applies to trials as well.
Yeah.
Because when you have a witness come up, they tell their version of events from the past.
And so I thought, well, let's combine history.
Let's combine trials.
Let's talk about an event that happened in U.S. history that has kind of been interpreted
differently throughout the years.
And that's the Boston Massacre.
Oh, I feel like I know a little bit about.
I was going to ask both of you.
Kristen, you lived in Boston. I was many years, which is like four years.
Yes.
What do you know about the Boston Massacre?
Okay, I have a name in my head, but is it...
I don't know that it's...
Is it Nathaniel?
Yeah, Hale.
Nathaniel Hale.
Is that not right?
No.
Okay.
All right.
Well, then I know nothing about the Boston Massacre, it turns out.
Who's Nathaniel Hale?
Was the shot heard around the world, Norman?
Nope.
What are we thinking of?
What is the shot heard around the world?
That sounds familiar to me.
Oh, it was the Boston Massacre.
From the Boston Massacre.
What if I just schooled you?
Oh, it's Nathan Hale, not Nathaniel Hale.
Oh, that's the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
That was the first battle of the revolution.
That's what I was thinking.
That's pretty close.
Now, who is Nathaniel Hale?
Nobody.
Nathaniel Hale, American soldier.
Oh, in the Continental Army during the American soldier. Oh.
In the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
Okay.
Yes.
No.
This has nothing to do with Boston Massacre.
In 1769, Nathan Hale was 14 years old.
Mm-hmm.
So.
Yeah.
Think on that for a while.
That's right.
He was going through puberty.
So, yeah.
You want to know what I know.
Yeah.
What do you know about the Boston Massacre?
British soldier shot colonial guy.
Colonial guy.
People were like, oh, hell no.
Oh, no.
No.
Who shot first, the chicken or the egg?
Right?
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.
So they got their muskets.
Well, it's very clear neither of you know anything about the Boston Massacre.
And they were like, I must get my musket.
And then they took all their tea and threw it in the harbor.
Yeah, threw it in the harbor.
And then they parked their car in the harbor.
There were no cars back then.
That's why it was so shocking.
And then the molasses plant happened.
And it was a real sticky situation.
Which is an insensitive thing to say because it was so horrible.
Didn't we get it?
No.
Are you mad at us?
I don't even know where you guys went with this tangent. You ruined your whole case, Norm.
You just gave everything away.
Kristen's pretty kind of close.
Was Alexander Hamilton there?
No.
Damn it.
The general...
Here comes the general.
Raza!
You're going to...
Am I going to be able to tell this case. You're going to storm out.
Am I going to be able to tell this case?
Don't you storm out of here.
Am I going to be able to speak?
Yes, I'm sorry.
You made a real mistake by opening it up to both of us.
I did.
I shouldn't have asked.
That's where you erred.
Okay.
Okay.
The most common interpretation that even I remember from school was a bunch of British soldiers shot into a crowd of Bostonians.
Yeah.
And it was the Boston Massacre.
Yeah, Nathan Hale was there.
Nathan Hale was there.
So was...
Alexander Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton.
And when they got shot, they dropped their teabags. And they got a teabag. was there. So was Alexander Hamilton.
And when they got shot, they dropped their teabags.
And they got a teabag. They were teabagging
each other.
As it turns out.
Anyway,
it's a little more complicated than that.
Okay.
So, let's go back in time.
It's the year 1765.
In France, the first modern restaurant opens up in Paris.
In 1765.
Is this where you learned the fact that you shared with us today?
I did.
I did share this fact.
Mr. Boulanger.
I'm probably saying that wrong.
It's a French name.
I'm going to tell people what.
I'm going to get to it. Okay. It's probably Boulanger. Boulanger, I'm probably saying that wrong. It's a French name. Wait, aren't you going to tell people what? I'm going to get to it.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
Probably Boulanger.
Boulanger.
Boulanger.
Boulanger.
He opened up a soup restaurant and he sold a soup, which was a white creamy soup with
sheep hooves in it.
What?
Chowder?
Chowder.
Sheep hooves?
Hooves.
Sheep hooves. Hooves. Sheep hooves.
Hooves.
It was the first modern restaurant.
And the word restaurant comes from the French word restaur.
I don't know.
Restaur.
I don't know how to say it.
Norm, your French is impeccable.
Yeah.
And it means.
How is your French worse than mine?
Restore.
It means like to restore, restoration.
Restoration hardware.
Yes.
Sheep hooves.
Hooves.
Can you believe there wasn't a restaurant before then?
That's crazy.
Anyway, also in 1765 in the American colonies, they were colonies of the British Empire,
the first chocolate factory opened up in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
It's a neighborhood of Boston.
Not in Hershey.
Not in Hershey.
Dorchester.
It's called Baker's.
Still around today.
Oh, yeah.
Baker's Chocolate.
Yeah, they make chocolate for baking.
Yep.
They are owned by Kraft now, sadly. Yeah, that's chocolate for baking. Yep. They are owned by Kraft now. Oh. Sadly.
Yeah, that's disappointing.
Hasn't been the same since the corporate takeover.
Also in 1765.
How long is this part going to go on?
Hang on.
Also, I'm giving you fun facts about the year 1765.
Also in 1765, Price is Right host Bob Barker was born.
That's not accurate.
It's not.
You're killing Brandy here.
Brandy had to process it.
He looks great!
Brandy had to process it
and think, wait a minute, there's no way he was born.
Just a second there.
Wait just a gosh darn minute.
Okay.
And finally, in 1765, revolution is in the air in the American colonies.
So in the 1700s, the British fought a series of wars to protect their colonies., as you know, there are many European countries that had colonies all over the world.
The Swedish, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish.
And there was a big old war called the Seven Years' War, also known as the French and Indian War.
Yeah, it took seven years.
Seven years.
And the British government said we spent –
Nathan was there.
Nathan was 14.
Is that where Nathan Hale was?
No, he was going through puberty.
A lot of changes were happening in his body.
He was with his brother Enoch at Yale.
Going through puberty.
Nathan Hale went to Yale.
Anyway, the British government said, wow, this was really expensive fighting these wars.
The British government said, wow, this was really expensive fighting these wars.
You know what?
We should have the colonists pay for these wars because we were defending these colonies.
The colonists should pay for it. And so the British passed a few acts to tax the colonists.
In Hamilton.
In Alexander Hamilton.
One of them was the Stamp Act.
Yeah.
And so that meant, this is a ridiculous act, by the way.
Well, don't be so biased.
We'll decide.
Go ahead and lay it on us, Norm.
If you wanted to use printed material in the colony, you had to buy paper that was made
in London.
And it had a stamp on it that showed that you paid for it.
in London and it had a stamp on it that showed that you paid for it. So legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, you had to buy it through London.
You had to pay that Stamp Act tax.
And you had to use British currency.
You could not use colonial money.
And British currency was kind of hard to come by in the colonies.
Yeah.
What the problem was, this greatly affected very influential people in the colonies.
People that had newspapers, lawyers, tavern keepers, merchants.
And so you have the most influential people in your colony getting pissed off.
Yeah.
Britain keeps shitting on them endlessly.
Yes.
So there's other.
Yes.
That's a line from Hamilton.
Oh.
Yeah, I fell asleep during Hamilton.
No, you saw it once.
I saw it once and fell asleep.
You know what is a saying that I just made up?
What?
Don't start a fight with someone who buys their ink by the barrel.
And I think that saying that I just...
Is that from Hamilton too?
No, it's something that I just made up.
It's not from Hamilton, but I didn't make it up.
I'm lying.
But I'm just saying this is what this is what they're saying.
Don't fight with someone who has a newspaper.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dumb asses.
So they also tried to tax sugar with the Sugar Act.
Tea.
The Tea Act.
Boston Tea Party.
Yeah, we heard about that.
Of course.
At the beginning of this episode.
And so the British Parliament passed all of these acts by going around Parliament. They didn't even talk to Parliament
about this. Rude. They directly taxed the colonists, which the colonists said violated
the English Bill of Rights. They said, well, you have to go through Parliament to do this,
and we have no representation in Parliament. Taxation without representation. Representation.
Yes.
That's a buzzword I remember.
And the colonists believe they didn't want to pay for a war that Britain fought for its own benefits.
Okay.
And Britain saw the colonists as spoiled.
They paid less taxes than British mainlanders, and they had way more rights than British mainlanders because they had their own little
local governments. They'll be
back. What?
They'll be back. Wait and see.
Arnold Schwarzenegger? What are you talking about?
Is this a Hamilton thing?
I'm sorry. Yeah, this was a
real mistake.
Britain also said, hey, we fought these wars to defend the colonies, which was true.
The French and Indian War.
Yeah.
Britain was protecting their colonies.
Okay.
Are you acting like you know?
Not only what I know from Hamilton.
So anyway, the colonists start protesting all this.
Okay.
So anyway, the colonists start protesting all this.
Okay.
And so Parliament ignored the protests, and they sent troops to the colonies to enforce all of these laws and to collect taxes.
And colonists had to pay for housing, and they had to feed the troops, and a bunch of resentment boiled between Britain and the colonists.
And by the way, the Third Amendment of the Constitution. Are you aware of what the Third Amendment is?
Yeah, I am. Yeah, but you tell us to make sure that we've got it right.
We'll make sure you've got it. Go ahead and say what you think it is.
Um.
I'm more of a Fourth Amendment person myself.
Basically, people have the right to not quarter troops in their home without consent.
Because back then...
Some of us don't support our troops.
Because back then, the British troops could just show up here and say, I'm staying here.
Yeah, I'm living here.
That sucks.
I'm living here.
That fucker sucks.
You gotta feed me.
I want feet pics. Ew. Ew. It's weird. Ew. No. I don living here. That sucks. I'm living here. That fucker sucks. You gotta feed me. I want feet pics.
Ew.
Ew.
It's weird.
I know.
Ew.
No.
I don't know.
The troops wanted feet pics.
You don't know who you're gonna get on your doorstep.
Yeah.
Okay, well.
That would suck ass.
Yes.
Yeah.
Unless, like, some really hot soldier shows up and you're single, ready to mingle.
I think that's the plot of A Doll's House.
No, that was Mexican pussy.
That doesn't even make sense, Norm.
Okay, so all of the Sugar Act, the Tea Act, the Stamp Act, they all got repealed because the colonists were just pissed off.
They all got repealed because the colonists were just pissed off.
And so the British assigned Lord Townsend to the case.
He was in charge of colonial revenue. And he passed in 1768 the Townsend Acts, which he said, all right, we're not going to tax sugar.
Did he name them himself?
I'm not sure.
That's so douchey if he did.
He said, all right, we're not going to do that.
After himself? I'm not sure.
That's so douchey if he did.
He said, all right, we're not going to do that.
But if you want to import anything from Britain, you got to pay a tax on it.
So paint, glass, lead.
So these were necessities the colonists needed that they weren't making themselves yet, that
they had to get from Britain.
And so the colonists were like, you're putting a gun to our head.
You're like forcing us to pay these taxes.
This is like just as bad as the other stuff.
Well, hang on.
Don't you have to pay some tax to Britain?
Yeah, I think we're arguing the wrong thing.
I know.
Are you for the British?
I mean, don't you have to pay something?
They did, but they thought they were being extra taxed, I guess.
Like, we have to import glass.
We don't have a choice.
We don't have a choice.
Okay.
You know?
All right.
It's like if you went to the grocery store and they said, you have to buy bananas or we're going to shoot you in the head.
That's not what they're saying.
I know.
That's not it.
And there's a banana tax.
It's insane.
You must buy bananas.
And the banana tax is 50%.
That's outrageous.
So obviously the colonists are pissed off.
And this was the beginnings of the revolution because a lot of these colonists were from different parts of Europe.
So like I said, Dutch, Swedish, French.
And all of a sudden they're united now in their unhappiness with the situation.
Yeah.
Lafayette.
What's that?
He's French.
The Massachusetts Bay –
It's a revolution.
The Massachusetts Bay Assembly sent a letter to all the other colonies encouraging them to boycott the Townsend Act.
And Britain flipped their shit when they found out about that.
Language.
Language.
On this podcast, we do not use any. They flipped their poo when they found out.
I think that sounds worse. It creates more of a visual. Visual. There we go. When they found out. I think that sounds worse.
It creates more of a visual.
Visual, it sure does.
I was picturing like literal shit being flipped.
In a frying pan.
Poo pancakes.
No thanks, I'm full.
So Brynn sends in the army.
I got a lot to go through.
I love having you here.
This will be a four-hour episode.
This is so fun, though.
I'm so sorry.
So, Brinton sends in the army to enforce the Townsend Act.
In 1768, they captured John Hancock's ship, the Liberty.
John Hancock made a ton of money bootlegging goods to avoid
paying those taxes.
Naughty. Right? He's like Al Capone.
He was the Al Capone of the
revolution. So the
Sons of Liberty, which was a
revolutionary organization, they start spreading
propaganda and they kind of get
people riled up. There's like little riots
in the streets, you know.
On February 22nd, 1770,
there is a mob outside the customs official house
and somebody threw something through this guy's window
and it hit his wife in the head.
Oh, shit.
Okay.
And the guy panicked,
took out his gun,
fired it into the crowd.
And that's how it started?
What started?
The Boston Massacre.
I'm not even to the Boston Massacre.
Okay.
This was the shot heard around the world.
Anyway, he grabbed his gun, fired it into the crowd,
and he killed an 11-year-old boy, Christopher Cedar.
Wait, was the wife even hurt?
No.
Wait, so she was just fine?
Oh, my.
He got a little spooked.
Someone broke his window.
He said, good heavens, and grabbed his gun, shot him in the crowd,
killed an 11-year-old boy, Christopher Cedar.
Obviously, 2,000 people attended this boy's funeral.
So this gets people out in the street
and they're now actively looking
for confrontation with British soldiers.
People are pissed.
On March 2nd, 1770,
there was an off-duty British soldier
and he went up to some rope makers,
which was a fine occupation
back then.
And he asked.
As opposed to the trash that it is today.
Yeah.
Rope makers don't make shit today.
Okay.
They don't make them like they used to.
They don't make them like they used to.
Off-duty British soldier went up to some rope makers and he was like, hey, do you guys have any work available?
And this was very common among British soldiers.
They always looked for extra wages while they weren't on duty.
And the rope makers looked at him and they replied, yeah, why don't you go clean my house?
Oh, shit.
And so then he did.
And the British soldiers said, good heavens.
Another brawl.
Huge brawl ensues between soldiers and colonists.
But, you know, it gets settled.
Everything's okay.
Or is it?
I don't think it is.
I think this is all built up to something.
And now we arrive on March 5th, 1770.
It's a cold winter night in Boston.
King Street.
Did you ever go to King Street in Boston?
I'm sure I did.
Okay.
Good story, yeah.
So in King Street, there is a wig maker's apprentice standing in the street hanging out with his boys.
He's a young boy.
Everyone wore a wig back then, as you know.
Yeah.
The wigs were in.
I thought it was the wealthy people wore the wigs.
Yeah, wigs coming out the ass.
Boy, how do you keep that clean?
So the wig maker's apprentice, his name was Edward Garrick,
he started yelling at a British captain named John Goldfinch,
who was just walking by.
And Garrick said,
There goes the fellow who hath not paid my master for dressing his hair.
Oh, shit!
There goes that fellow!
Now, John Goldfinch had already paid his bill the day before.
So he just ignored the kid.
Yeah.
And kept on walking.
Well, there was another British soldier standing on guard.
He was outside the Boston Custom House, which was on King Street, which is today known as State Street.
Oh.
Oh, then I have been on that street.
Okay.
Were you trying to trip me up earlier?
No, no, no.
Oh, okay.
So his name was Private Hugh White.
Hugh White?
It was Hugh White.
He was the sentry on duty
and he overhears
Edward Garrick yelling
at his beloved captain.
And so White can...
Oh, captain, my captain.
I know I paid your bill.
And then Cap'n Crunch
came out.
And that's how we get Cap'n Crunch. You know what, Cap'n Crunch came out. And that's how we get
Cap'n Crunch. You know what, Cap'n Crunch,
that's stolen valor. I don't think he's a Cap'n Crunch.
I think he's full of shit.
Cap'n Crunch.
He drops the
tea.
So Hugh White confronts Edward Garrick
and says,
He is a gentleman, and if he owes you anything, he will pay for it.
Oh.
So Garrick fires back and says, oh, I didn't even know there were any gentlemen left in this regiment.
Oh, shit.
And so this offended Private Hugh White, who was clearly a PC liberal bitch.
And after an exchange of words, bam!
Private Hugh White slits Garrick's throat from ear to ear.
What?
Okay, he didn't actually do that.
Oh, what?
He didn't slit his throat.
He hit him over the head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him down.
You're really taking advantage of the fact that we don't know history.
I am.
By just making shit up.
Okay.
So he knocks Edward Garrick down.
And this causes a little commotion.
And people around are like, what's going on?
So a crowd starts gathering in front of-
Hey, come on.
Do the locomotion.
You've got to swing your hips now.
A song and dance breaks out on King Street.
Come on, baby.
Jump up.
Jump back.
Kristen knows a lot of the locomotion.
She does.
Whoa, whoa.
So a crowd starts gathering in front of Private White. does. Whoa, whoa. So
a crowd starts gathering in front of Private White.
Yeah, they break out.
And they said, now that you can do it,
let's make a chain now.
Come on, baby.
Why do you know so much?
I don't have no idea.
Oh, okay. Norm's
really getting fed up with us here.
So anyway, for the fourth time, a crowd gathers in front of Private White.
And they start yelling insults at him.
They call him a lobster back.
What the fuck does that mean?
Well, the British uniform was red.
They call him a lobster back.
They start throwing ice at him.
Shards of ice. They start throwing snow a lobster back. They start throwing ice at them. Shards of ice.
They start throwing snowballs at them.
They start throwing rocks.
I forgot it was wintertime.
It is a cold winter night in Boston.
Where'd they get the ice?
It seems like it'd be hard to come by.
Not in Boston in March.
Yeah, I put it together.
Is it March?
You lobster back.
March 5th, 1770.
Many in the crowd
were taunting Private White
to fire his musket.
Because if he fired his musket, they could attack him.
Self-defense. They're like,
fire your musket. Come on, fire your musket.
Hit me, bro. Hit me.
So there are now 50
to 100 people in this
crowd moving toward Private White.
Private White's musket was loaded.
Well, yeah, but it's just a freaking musket.
But according to British law, British soldiers cannot fire on civilians unless there is an order from the magistrate.
So his musket is loaded, but he really can't do anything.
Okay.
And one man in the crowd, his name is Henry Knox.
He would go on to become George Washington's Secretary of War.
He told Private White, if you fire that musket, you will die for it.
So Private Hugh White is a little scared.
And in this mob is a 47-year-old man named Crispus Attucks.
Does that name sound familiar to Crispus Attucks. Okay.
Does that name sound familiar to you?
It does.
Okay.
Is he the guy who dies?
I'll get to it.
Okay.
Crispus Attucks was half black, half Native American.
Many believe he was a free man, but historians do debate today if he was free or if he was a runaway slave.
He worked in Boston as a sailor and a rope maker, and he had just gotten back from the
Bahamas, and he was on his way to North Carolina.
He just stopped in Boston until his ship took off a few days later.
Christmas Addicts was not a fan of the British because they always were looking for work,
and he was a rope maker, and so there was-
I thought he was taking work from her.
Taking work from her.
They took our gerbs.
Yeah, okay.
Either way, Christmas Addicts was a physically imposing man.
He was six foot two, which was very-
Well, that's it.
That's a fucking giant.
Back then, he was seven feet tall today.
And according to witnesses, we don't know for sure, he was leading the mob and he had a large club and he was angry.
So they backed up Private White to the front door of the custom house.
So he's like, he's got nowhere to go.
Okay.
And so he loudly bangs on the door behind him and he screams for backup.
And he yells, turn out main guard, which is the signal for I need help. Okay. So they send a
runner from the customs house to the barracks of the British soldiers. And they notify Captain
Thomas Preston of Private White's dire situation. So Captain Thomas Preston was dealing with other issues as well because when this started, other mobs kind of broke out around the city.
There was a mob of 200 people near Dock Square.
There was a little mob forming outside the barracks where he was.
And someone also rang the fire bell in the town, which brought tons of people out
of their house to see what was going on.
So the mobs are just getting bigger and bigger.
So Captain Preston wasn't really sure what to do.
So on one hand, if he did nothing, Private White would probably die.
The mob would probably kill Private White.
But if he took his soldiers to help Private White, they would be vastly outnumbered by the mob.
And so he's putting his other soldiers' lives at risk too.
And again, under British law, he can't fire on the crowd without an order from the local magistrate.
So he's not really sure what to do.
This dude took 30 minutes to think about what to do.
Poor Private White is getting pelted by all sorts of stuff from this mob.
So he finally decides after 30 minutes,
okay, I'm going to take seven soldiers
and we're going to go to the custom house
and we're going to save Private White.
Private Ryan.
So this heroic act would later become the basis
for the 1998 critically panned British film Saving Private White.
Terrible movie.
Do you think he was just waiting it out?
Like if I.
Maybe it'll all just boil over.
Yeah.
Like if I sit here and pretend to think about it long enough, they'll just kill him and then they'll be like, oh, no.
Oh, no.
I was about to do something.
I was going to do something.
I was just tying my boots.
I was tying my boots.
That's how he would say it.
No.
Anyway.
So, Preston and the seven other soldiers arrived just in time.
Private White was still there.
I bet he was.
So they formed a semicircle around him,
and they had fixed their bayonets,
but the muskets were not loaded.
So they just held their bayonets out?
Okay.
So Captain Preston yelled for the crowd to disperse,
but they refused.
They kept throwing objects at them.
They were yelling insults.
They were daring them to fire.
So Captain Preston said, okay, I'm going to try to scare the crowd.
So he orders his men to load their weapons.
And again, Henry Knox is still there.
And he reminds Captain Preston, if you fire those muskets, you will die.
And so what happens next varies.
I'm not really sure what happens.
A private Montgomery, who was one of the soldiers Captain Preston brought with him, he is struck in the head.
He's either by an object thrown or a club.
Either way, he gets smacked in the head and he falls down.
And then someone yells, fire.
But we aren't sure who yells it.
Either way, Private Montgomery, he gets up, and he shoots into the crowd.
Oh, shit.
Oh, no.
And then several other soldiers start firing their guns as well into the crowd.
Captain Preston yells for them to halt.
Stop!
But damage was done.
Eleven people had been shot.
Three people died immediately.
Wow.
Crispus Attucks was shot twice in the chest.
Oh, my.
Samuel Gray and James Caldwell.
And two others were mortally wounded and died later, Patrick Carr and Samuel Maverick.
What about Nathan Hale?
Nathan Hale was going through puberty at Yale.
So word of the shooting quickly reaches the governor, Thomas Hutchinson.
And he arrives on King Street with more soldiers.
And he finds Captain Preston visibly shaken.
And the crowd is now furious.
Well, yeah, fucking people were shot.
So Governor—
Sounds like they were asking for it, though, right?
Governor Hutchinson runs up to the balcony of the State House, which is right next to the Customs House,
and he yells to the crowd, please disperse.
We will have a proper trial.
And he yells, let the law have its course.
I will live and die by the law.
Oh, God.
Okay.
I hate that.
There was an audio recording.
That's what it sounded like.
The first audio recording.
So the crowd says, all right.
So the crowd begins to disperse.
And after midnight, there is an investigation and Captain Thomas Preston is arrested.
He is interrogated.
And after his interrogation, the eight soldiers, including Private White, are also arrested.
So we're about to have a trial.
Okay.
So obviously, this is called the Boston Massacre.
And back then, the word massacre, when you think of the word massacre today, I think there's always an association with body count.
Yeah.
So like, oh, 50 people died.
That's a massacre.
I think 11 wounded sounds.
Especially when all you've got are muskets.
But even back then, if you just use the word massacre, it could be if you just like brutally murdered somebody, it would be considered a massacre.
Just one person.
But anyway, this whole thing didn't calm anyone down.
Both sides used this event as propaganda.
So British loyalists said, oh, it was an unruly mob.
They weren't following the law.
They should be punished.
It was self-defense.
The revolutionists said this attack was premeditated.
They were planning this the whole time.
The whole time?
The whole time?
The whole time?
Daniel.
Daniel.
I have to leave.
We have to go.
I have to leave now.
So each side printed up pamphlets with vastly different stories about what happened.
Oh, yeah.
History is the memory of things said and done.
Anyway.
Rattle that around in your mouth for a little while.
One of the most effective pieces of propaganda was a cartoon printed by my boy, Paul Revere.
Oh, God.
I was like, quick, who created Garfield?
And like Jim Davis came out.
Jim Davis.
I was like, oh, God, that would have been such a good troll.
Jim Davis was born in the 20th century.
He's not yet alive.
What did your boy, Paul Revere, say?
Well, he printed a cartoon called The Bloody Massacre.
And it is not accurate portrayal of what happened.
It shows the British soldiers standing in a straight line, literally firing into the crowd.
And you see the captain behind them ordering them to fire.
And there's people shooting from windows.
Definitely not what happened.
But it's very powerful.
It's probably the most effective piece of propaganda.
not what happened. But it's very powerful. It's probably the most effective
piece of propaganda. And that
image is in most... I remember
in my high school textbook, that
image was in there. And this was
a cartoon? Partoon.
I think I saw that on someone's neck
once. Tattoo, yeah.
I met
that. Tattoos are involved in this
case, by the way. Really?
What?
Believe it or not.
I'll get to that later.
Believe it or not, I'm walking on air.
So Governor Hutchinson says, all right, we're going to have a trial, but I'm going to wait until October.
Why?
I got to let things calm down.
People are fired up.
It's fucking March.
I know.
Got to cool off.
People got to cool off.
Well, a lot of shit's going to go down between March and October.
So the colonists actually convinced Governor Hutchinson to withdraw all soldiers from Boston.
They said, people are pissed off.
Get all the soldiers out of here.
And then there won't be any confrontation.
So he does.
He moves them all to Castle William, which is offshore Boston.
Nantucket.
They go to the Hamptons. They have a great time.
That's in New York.
For anyone who doesn't know.
So for the trial, the courts appointed Samuel Quincy, a British sympathizer, as the special prosecutor.
And Mr. Samuel Adams.
The beer guy?
prosecutor. And Mr. Samuel Adams, the beer guy, the beer guy, he convinces the courts that, hey,
you got to balance things out. You know, you can't have a British sympathizer as the prosecutor.
OK, you got to have someone on our side, too. And so they are like, all right,
this is this is not common, but we're going to let you do it. So the town of Boston actually pays for a patriot named Robert Payne to join the prosecution as well.
So you have a British sympathizer and you have Robert Payne both on the prosecution.
Again, this was very odd at the time.
But the bigger question was who's going to defend Captain Preston and the eight soldiers?
Everyone in Boston hated these guys, the most hated men in Massachusetts, probably.
Yeah, don't you have to bring a British dude in?
Yeah.
But one man did agree to defend the British soldiers, and his name was John Adams, future
second president of the United States.
Oh, shit.
Wow.
John Adams?
John Adams, you say?
I know him.
That can't be.
That's that little guy who's talked to me.
Hamilton?
Uh-huh.
No, it's just us improv-ing.
Ad-lib.
Okay, so John Adams was an outspoken critic of the British.
So he was, you know, kind of a revolutionist.
But he was also a big fan of the law.
Did he live and die by the law?
Lived and died by it. So John Adams admitted that taking the case caused a lot of anxiety for
himself and his family, and he worried his law practice would fail as a result if he took the
case. And not to mention his cousin was Samuel Adams, who was in the Sons of Liberty.
Adams was paid 18 guineas from the soldiers for his services.
And I'm sure you're wondering, what is a guinea?
Yeah.
A guinea is a gold coin.
A guinea.
It's a, you got 18 pigs.
It's like, these aren't even really big enough to eat.
So a guinea is a gold coin that originates from the Guinea region in West Africa.
And it was a form of currency back then.
And adjusted for inflation, if he was paid today, he got about $3,500 for his service.
That's not quite enough to ruin your law practice.
It was not a lot.
So there's actually two trials.
There's one for Captain Preston, and then there's one for the eight soldiers.
Now, interestingly, the soldiers wanted the trials to be combined.
Here's why.
They knew that Captain Preston's best defense was to deny he gave an order to fire.
Yeah, and blame it all on them.
The soldiers' best defense was that they were only following Captain Preston's order.
So if Preston won his trial, it would severely hurt the soldier's trial.
Yeah.
Right?
And ultimately the courts denied a joint trial.
There's going to be two separate trials.
So Captain Preston's trial comes first.
It took place October 24th to October 30th, 1770.
And one of the leading historians of the Boston Massacre, his name is Hiller B. Zobel.
He contends that the trial was decided at jury selection.
We're just putting out a Hiller B. Zobel.
Hiller B. Zobel.
What's his first name?
Hiller.
Hiller.
B. Zobel.
Naturally.
All right.
So five of the 12 jurors were British loyalists, and none of them were from Boston.
Oh.
And so historians wonder, why did the revolutionists, why did they kind of back off on, because they were obviously like, you have to have a fair trial.
You have to have some of our guys on the prosecution.
But these jurors were obviously not on their side.
So he said, well, why did Boston leader – why did they back off of this?
And historians theorize that they decided maybe it's good if the soldiers get acquitted because then the British government would kind of like back off from like harassing us more.
Maybe it's good that they get acquitted.
A sacrifice basically. But we don't know for sure.
That's just a theory.
That's just Hiller B. Willard talking.
Hiller B. Wilford Brimley.
That's just Wilford Brimley talking.
So the main issue in the trial is, did Captain Preston give the order to fire?
And in his deposition, Captain Preston was adamant.
He did not tell anyone to fire.
He claimed he never intended to have his men fire,
despite having their guns loaded.
He just was trying to scare people.
Was Jack Nicholson there?
Did you order the code red?
Don't make me, Brandy.
I love that movie.
Did you order the code red? Don't make me, Brandy. I love that movie. Did you order the Code Red?
You got that right again.
I'm going to do that for movie night.
I love it. Oh, no.
It's such a good movie.
What movie is this?
A Few Good Men.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So Captain Preston said people were throwing stuff at him and his troops, and he heard a voice behind him in the alley yell, why don't you fire?
But all he heard was fire.
All the soldiers heard was fire.
Now, the prosecution was extremely unimpressive.
They brought 23 witnesses to the stand, and only four of them claimed Preston gave the
order to fire.
The only thing the prosecution succeeded in doing was establishing how confusing everything
was that evening.
John Adams called 23 witnesses of his own and many of their stories matched the prosecution's
witnesses. But the key difference was John Adams' witnesses said they didn't hear Captain Preston give
the order to fire, and there was conflicting reports about where Captain Preston was standing.
Some say he was standing in front of his troops.
Some say he was behind his troops.
But it was established he was standing in front of his troops.
But they heard behind them an order to fire.
And so the jury deliberated for just a few hours, and they reached their verdict.
Not guilty.
Captain Preston did not give the order to fire.
So a month later, on November 27th, the eight soldiers stood trial.
In their defense of following orders, that wasn't going to work anymore.
So their new strategy was to kind of amplify the chaos of the night and say,
shit was crazy.
We were acting in self-defense.
Yeah, I think that's the perfect strategy.
Yeah.
The prosecution called 34 witnesses and the defense called 51 witnesses.
All this took place over five days, which is.
Man, they were really.
Yeah.
Needless to say.
Yeah, running through those witnesses.
It was a clusterfuck.
Yeah.
Language.
We don't use that kind of language.
Clusterfudge.
Oh, thank you.
Oh, that's like a fudge with a bunch of nut clusters in it.
Here's how bad the prosecution was.
So they called up one witness.
His name was Samuel Emmons.
He was called to the stand, and he was asked to identify the soldiers he saw on the night
of the shooting.
And he replied, he couldn't identify any of them.
He said, I wasn't even on King Street on the night of March 5th.
Well, what the fuck's he doing on the scene?
My brother was.
They called the wrong guy up.
Oh.
So it was super embarrassing for the prosecution.
Well, yeah.
Oops, clusterfudge stripes.
Am I right?
So John Adams calls up 51 witnesses.
And it was nothing.
It was just over and over the same story and
details. Angry
mob, men and boys with
sticks, ice, oyster shells.
They were looking for a fight.
They were attacking these soldiers.
Is anyone going to get in trouble
for the fact that
they were boys?
What's your joke?
Is anyone going to get in trouble for the fact that there were men and boys?
We're overlooking a huge crime.
I believe he said men and boys, ma'am.
You pervert.
Norm, will you ever do this again?
No.
No.
John Adams also had to kind of save himself.
So he said this was an angry mob.
These were not ordinary Boston citizens.
People of Boston are wonderful.
This was just an angry mob.
Yeah.
But he was also, John Adams was kind of a little racist.
Oh, he was?
He brought up Crispus Attucks.
He said this was an angry mob led by a black man, quote, whose very looks was enough to
terrify any person who had not the soldiers then to fear.
Ooh, hate that.
So, yeah, he harped on the fact that, hey, all these people are saying this big, angry black man led this mob.
Wow.
The soldiers were scared.
I have never heard that the founding fathers were racist.
This is news to me, too.
But I will point this out.
John Adams was one of the few, maybe one of the only, no, not the only, one of the few founding fathers who was not an enslaver.
Okay.
I mean, it's such a low bar.
Well, here's such a low bar. Yeah, it's a low bar.
Well, here's the thing.
I have always heard John Adams was not an enslaver.
He was, you know, one of the good founding fathers.
And then I researched this case and I was like, oh, well, that's shitty.
But again, I think, you know, it's such a low bar.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
He didn't purchase people.
What a great guy.
Yeah.
That is a low bar.
John Adams wrapped up his defense with a somewhat famous speech.
There's a line in this speech that people use quite a bit even to this day.
He says, I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit to you facts are stubborn things.
And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot
alter the state of facts and evidence, nor is the law less stable than the fact.
If an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear.
They had a right to kill in their own defense.
If it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all,
struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs,
or sticks of any kind.
This was a provocation for which the law reduces the offense of killing down to manslaughter.
In consideration of those passions in our nature which cannot be eradicated, to your
candor and justice, I submit the prisoners and their cause."
For the jury left to deliberate, the judges reiterated to them that malice is the grand criterion that distinguishes murder from all other homicides.
So the jury came back two and a half hours later, and John Adams thought, oh, that's not a good sign.
Yeah.
Came back quick.
Six men were found not guilty.
Six?
Six.
Two of them, Hugh Montgomery, the man who was struck in the head, got back up, fired
his gun, and a Matthew Kilroy, they were convicted of manslaughter.
Was it because of his last name, they thought?
They thought, Kilroy, this guy.
This guy for sure killed people.
There was enough evidence to show that their shots most certainly killed people.
So a week later, the two men stood before the court,
and they did something that was common back then.
They pleaded for the benefit of clergy.
You familiar with this?
No, what is that?
You seen this? You heard about this?
No.
You seen this thing?
So basically, you could plead for a lesser sentence in front of the judges.
Some offenses were not considered clergyable.
Manslaughter was something that was considered clergyable.
So you could say, hey, I'm really sorry.
I won't do it again.
Now way back in the day, benefit of clergy, you had to recite passages from the Bible.
You're a changed man.
It's got to be based in religion somewhere.
But they got rid of a lot of those rules.
And the original reason they had this was you had to read passages from the Bible.
So it really benefited literate people.
Yeah, of course.
Oh, yeah.
But then the Age of Enlightenment happens and a lot more people can read now.
So they got rid of that rule that you had to read passages from the Bible.
And they just said, okay, we have this benefit of clergy now.
So the two men plead for benefit of clergy.
The punishment for manslaughter back then was death.
Oh, shit.
But this crime was considered clergyable, and the plea changed their punishment.
They were granted benefit of clergy.
They had to get their thumbs branded.
Ouch.
They got tattoos.
What did they say?
Was it Daffy Duck?
That is going to be crazy if it's Daffy Duck.
Each man received a Tweety Bird.
No, each man received the letter M branded on their thumbs.
For manslaughter?
Yes.
And the reason they do that is if you do it again, they see the M and they say, oh.
You're a repeat offender.
You don't get benefit of clergy.
Sick tattoo.
But don't tattoos on your hands like wear off after like.
Well, this was a branding.
This was a hot iron.
It's not going anywhere.
Sizzled it right in there.
Yeah.
So the Boston Massacre becomes yet another rallying cry for independence from the British.
The revolution was coming.
Imminent.
And for John Adams, he feared retribution for defending these soldiers.
And for John Adams, he feared retribution for defending these soldiers.
But it actually helped him tremendously because he was seen as this intelligent, unbiased leader.
And so the revolutionists said, hey, if you stick up for our side, you'll persuade tons more people to join the revolution.
Yeah.
Which he did.
Yeah.
And it would be extremely powerful and influential. And, of course which he did. And it would be extremely powerful and influential.
And of course he did.
He was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress.
He helped draft the Declaration of Independence.
He served as a diplomat to Europe.
He helped draft the peace treaty with Britain after the Revolutionary War.
And of course he served as vice president under George Washington. and then he was the second president of the United States.
I've already shat the bed.
Yeah.
Is this a Hamilton thing again?
Yep.
So Crispus Attucks, he was painted as a villain by the defense in this trial.
But in the 1800s, he became an abolitionist icon because he was often said to be the
first man to die for the American Revolution hmm and he became a symbol of
equality and patriotism so again history is the memory of things said and done. Oh, I feel like we're really learning stuff today, Normie.
And that, my friends,
is the Boston Massacre.
So Nathan Hale wasn't there?
For the up-teens
time, no.
He was not.
Well, there you go, folks.
The Boston Massacre.
That was great.
You're forgetting the last part of the story, though.
What's that?
They had the M brands, and the guy murdered someone, but then he was like, no, this is a W.
It says, what's up?
He turned it into a stick figure, and he said, it's my right-hand man.
I need my right-hand man back.
So yeah, growing up,
I always thought it was these evil British men
and they just fired into a crowd and like...
Yeah.
Evil, evil, evil.
But yeah, it's way more to it than that.
There really is.
And honestly, I'm kind of with the British on it.
Well, so is John Adams.
Yeah.
John Adams, to his credit, said, I'm not taking the case until I hear your side of the story.
And he only agreed to take because he believed the British soldiers were innocent.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, you can't have a bunch of people go up against one guy.
That boy insulted Captain Goldfinch.
And no, he did not slit his throat from ear to ear.
Just whacked him over the head.
Man.
Whoop-sh.
Whoop-sh, whoop-sh.
You're getting a spanking, Edward Garrick.
Oh, no. I guess it'd be, you're getting a spanking, Edward Garrick. Oh, no.
I guess it would be, you're getting a spanking.
No.
Whoops, whoops, whoops.
You know, at this point, I think we have to move on to an ad.
Yeah.
Oh, Norm, what do you think?
Should we take some questions from the Discord?
Yippers.
Oh, boys.
So Brandy got in here.
Let the people know that Normie would be on this episode. Oh, boys. So Brandi got in here. Let the people know that Normie would be on this episode.
Oh, boy.
So you might have some questions directed at you.
Clark Breckenridge, a.k.a. Lil Nut, wants to know, Norm, how did reanimation feel?
Brought you back to life.
I wouldn't know until I was back.
I don't know how the reanimation felt.
You know, being in the basement wasn't so bad.
That's some good dog snuggles, right?
Haven Monahan wants to know, what gift can I get my neighbor that says,
sorry, my dogs ran into your house and disrupted your party, asking for a friend?
Peanut did that one time to our neighbors, Kevin and Jeannie.
Not during a party, but she just, you know.
They left the garage door open.
I think he was bringing in groceries.
And Peanut just ran over there and went in their house.
Jeannie was upstairs putting makeup on, you know, and all of a sudden Peanut pops in.
Peanut showed up.
A good gift.
I mean, a bottle of wine. I was going to, a bottle of wine?
I was going to say a bottle of wine.
Are they adults living there?
No, it's a bunch of children.
It's like a Home Alone situation.
Macaulay Culkin.
Kevin!
Speaking of Home Alone, Lego just released the McAllister house, as a Lego set.
I saw that.
It looks amazing.
Fun fact, the inside of that home was built in a school gymnasium.
It's not in an actual house.
Oh, shit.
But the outside shots were an actual house.
Behind the scenes.
Movie magic.
By the way
have you seen
have you seen the trailer
have you seen the trailer
for the new
Home Alone movie
no
they're making a new
Home Alone movie
why
I don't know
Home Alone is popular
it's a little
British boy
oh no
stop
here's what I don't understand
how does that movie
work with today's
modern technology
it doesn't.
It will not.
Furthermore, I thought about the original Home Alone, and I just thought, it just doesn't make sense.
I don't get why the police didn't do anything.
Yeah, the police absolutely would have done something.
They didn't do shit.
Yes.
They just drove by and were like, this lady's crazy.
Everything looks fine.
Everything's fine.
Yeah.
You know, I'm starting to think that some of these movies from our childhood.
They're bullshit.
Mrs. Doubtfire, Liar, Liar.
Some of them just don't make sense.
Don't make sense.
When you really think about it.
Mrs. Doubtfire makes sense.
How far will you go to see your children?
Will you try to kill your ex-wife's boyfriend by putting pepper on shrimp?
Will you throw a lime at the back of his head?
Oh, by the way, who orders jambalaya and says not spicy?
It's supposed to be spicy.
Yes, it is spicy.
Pierce Brosnan, you idiot. If I were the chef, I would tell that supposed to be spicy. Yes, it is spicy. Pierce Brosnan, you idiot.
If I were the chef, I would tell that guy to F off.
Not spicy.
I'm allergic to pepper.
Mouthful of hand asks, Brandy, are you doing these deadly newlywed cases because you are afraid for your life?
Absolutely not.
That's not what I heard.
No, Norm!
No, there's another theory that I was doing because I've secretly killed David and I buried him next to you, Norm.
He's down there with me.
I'll be joining him in about 30 minutes.
Richard M. Balls wants to know, you can have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life.
What is it?
Money.
Money.
Duh.
Obviously.
Come on.
Why didn't you just buy anything?
Yeah.
That's the.
That's kind of cheating, that answer.
That is the cheating answer.
Okay, let's say you couldn't take money.
Okay.
Gasoline.
Hmm.
So you never have to buy gas again.
Or that cluster fudge you were talking about earlier.
Cluster fudge.
Yeah, I was going to say like M&M's or something.
Yeah, something fun.
Yeah.
Imagine a never-ending bucket of M&M's.
That sounds pretty great.
Or Reesey-Peecy.
That's not how people say it. That's how I say it. Some people say it&M's. That sounds pretty great. Or Reesey-Peecy. That's not how
people say it.
That's how I say it. Some people say it.
Reese's Pieces.
Reesey-Peecy.
Okay, I'm
curious about this. NatLikesCats
wants to know, Brandy, as a hairstylist,
do you deign to use hotel mini shampoos
when you travel, or do you bring your own?
I bring my own.
Hotel shampoos suck. travel, or do you bring your own? I bring my own. Hotel shampoos suck.
They do suck.
There's a very specific reason.
Because I worry that I'm going to get the hotel where they have a two-in-one.
Oh.
And that I'm not going to be able to comb through my hair at all.
I need a straight-up conditioner.
Absolutely.
Brandy, when I was a young boy.
Did you use Pert Plus?
We were on a trip to Colorado and we were buying supplies and I found a three in one.
He was an adult man.
Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.
And I said, what a deal.
It was the worst thing I've ever used.
Of course it was.
Because you can't do everything well.
Okay.
So American Crew is a professional men's line and they make one of those and it's actually
pretty decent. So you could use a
professional version of that on
men's hair. That's never going to work for me.
Is it a body wash too? It is.
So I can wash my butt, wash
my hair, and condition it.
Yeah. Incredible.
But it's professional. How much is it?
So it's probably expensive. Yeah.
It's a little bit more expensive.
This was $3 when he sent it. It was like little bit more expensive. Or, yeah, it's a little bit more expensive.
This was $3 when he sent it to us. It was like $3, yeah.
And I thought, you know.
No, you can't wash your hair with Axe.
Yeah, it wasn't Axe.
I don't even know what brand it was.
It was Gary's.
It may have been like best choice.
Chubbo cleansing.
Always save three in one.
No, David uses the American Crew three in one. You just the American crew. Three in one.
You just lather head to toe in that stuff.
Wow.
Yeah.
Thank you for that image.
You're welcome.
Which part are you picturing?
All the parts.
Because it cleanses all the parts.
David washing his dong.
All right.
That's what I thought of immediately.
As you often do you're always just picturing David
washing his dong
are you doing it from the side so you can see his glorious
bubble butt at the same time
yeah ideally
Patrick Starr the trucklet wants to is this a Weekend at Bernie's situation?
Oh, man.
Weekend at Bernie's.
Is that Norm propped up in here?
I do love that movie.
The sequel is even crazier.
Weekend at Bernie's 2.
I don't know if I've ever seen it.
I'm not sure that I have.
Because he gets, like, reanimated and he starts doing a Congo line under the ocean.
It is wild.
I can't believe they made a sequel to that movie. I can't believe they made a sequel to that movie.
I can't believe they made a sequel to that.
CoWorst
wants to know, what's it like being called
the husband of the LGTC podcast
Kristen Caruso? It's an
honor. No one's ever called you
that, though. I know. Boy, I'm waiting for the day.
No, someone has. Well, as
a joke, right? Yeah.
I thought it was funny, though.
It was like on a Twitch stream or at a convention.
Somebody said it.
No, I want it to be like for real.
For real.
The way people actually call me the gaming historian's wife.
Wow.
Yeah.
I have strong opinions on this one.
Sex Demon Sea Witch wants to know, Christmas lights, multicolor or white?
I like them both.
I'm strictly white.
You like that white power, huh?
Stop it.
I don't like multicolor lights.
You don't like diversity.
That's interesting.
Oh, great.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Fuck.
Okay.
Growing up, we only did the white lights
and I did think it was very pretty
but I do like the multicolored too
because that's what my wife makes me have
no we don't have any
no but on your tree you do multicolored lights
we do
we have a very cool tree that can do both
yeah it does both
thank you very much I just have a very cool tree that can do both. Yeah, it does both. Thank you very much.
I just ordered a new Christmas tree.
Yeah?
Yeah, and it can do both.
But you best believe it's only going to be on white.
Prayers for Norm's Butthole wants to know, best gift shop you've been to?
And what did you get, Brandy?
We all know Brandy loves a gift shop.
I do love gift shops, too.
You both love gift shops, don't you?
Like, going into museums, I'm like, I'm not going to want to buy anything in this museum.
Then I go to the gift shop, and I'm like, oh, I want everything in here.
The Nelson-Atkins has a really good gift shop.
World War I Museum has a great gift shop.
Really?
For real.
Do you buy panties in there?
What?
Authentic World War I panties.
Peonies.
That's what I said.
That's not what I heard.
That's not what I heard either.
It took me a second.
I was like, what are you saying?
They call them knickers, though.
I get all my panties from the World War I Museum.
I would never use that word.
I hate that word.
Dirty knickers.
Oh, my God.
Bidets for Brandy wants to know, what's it like being married to Kristen, Norm?
What's it like to live the dream?
It's an honor.
And a privilege.
Alright, well.
It is a lot of fun. You said that like
there was a gun to your head.
You got your head, yeah.
I am speaking to you.
It's wonderful.
It's a lot of fun.
It's a lot of fun.
When you're married to your best friend, it's a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. Yeah. It's when you're married to your best friend, it's a lot of fun.
Oh, that's really sweet.
That's the secret to a successful marriage.
You marry your best friend.
Because you're gonna be spending a lot of time with him.
Yeah.
A lot of time.
Like too much time.
So much time.
Like every waking hour.
Kirkland's signature detective wants to know favorite way to cook a turkey. Like too much time. So much time. Like every waking hour.
Kirkland's signature detective wants to know, favorite way to cook a turkey?
I've never made a turkey, but I just this morning watched a tutorial on TikTok about a turkey brine that looked delicious.
Okay.
I've decided I don't think turkey is very good.
Oh, really?
But is it turkey or ham?
Maybe I'm thinking about ham.
You two are very stupid. No, I just don't think turkey is a great meat.
Okay.
I think it can be very dry, which is why people typically don't like it.
But if you do it right, it can be moist.
Norm, to your point, even good turkey isn't that great.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
You really got to dress it up.
So what was this brine?
Oh, yeah.
So it was a brine and it was brown sugar based.
So it was like water and brown sugar and a bunch of seasonings
and then oranges.
They squeezed a bunch of oranges in there and let
them just like float around in it.
And then they put that turkey
in there and you soak it for
like 24 hours and then they were going to
smoke it.
I don't know. It looked interesting to me.
Yeah. Oh, and there was
Worcestershire sauce in it.
Worcestershire sauce.
I mean, that almost reminds me of barbecue with the brown sugar.
Yeah, there was a barbecue seasoning in there as well.
I think you soak the turkey in pickle juice.
Why?
Get some nice flavor in there.
That sounds terrible.
A turkey would then haunt my mouth for days.
Pickled turkey.
Ooh, bidets for Brandy
wants to know, Kristen, how are the kitties?
How do they get along with the pups?
I mean, they don't like
them.
We're not going to sugarcoat
things, alright? The cats don't like the dogs.
I feel like Boo has been very adventurous lately.
I mean, Boo will not be bossed around in this house.
This is her house.
Boo is queen.
She pays the mortgage, so she decides where to go and what to do.
Boo is queen.
I think Kiki hangs out with the dogs.
Yeah, she's getting more comfortable.
Yeah.
Yeah, Boo's definitely leave me the hell alone.
And also, I think the dogs are getting a little more tame.
Dottie really doesn't care about the cats anymore.
Kit is still like, oh my god, there's a cat in the room.
You know.
But she'll get over it eventually.
Oh.
Norm, I'm dying to know if there is an answer to this.
I think I know it.
Okay.
Fastest Bailiff in the West wants to know, Norm, what is the worst meal Kristen has ever
cooked for you?
Oh, rude.
Rude.
I have a guess.
What's your guess?
The Greek yogurt fettuccine Alfredo.
That might be it.
What are some other contenders, Norm?
This poor boy.
I mean, I think they all involve Greek yogurt.
Yeah, there was a time that he texted me
and he was like, Kristen just made me soup
and that's Greek yogurt.
Yeah, there was a soup you made.
He called for sour cream. My pudding. Who put that Greek yogurt in it? Yeah, there was a soup you made. Yeah.
It called for sour cream.
My footing.
Yeah, and the yogurt just like congealed at the top.
I can't remember what kind of soup it was, but I think that was the worst. It was a white chicken chili.
That's it.
It was white chicken chili with Greek yogurt.
Sorry.
I have to answer the question. Oh. Sorry. I have to answer the question.
Wow.
What's the worst thing
I've ever made you?
Hmm.
I don't know. Okay.
So you cook
really well.
The only thing is like, I remember
especially when we first started dating,
I would ask you, did you drain the fat off of this?
And the answer was always no.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Like tacos.
I didn't drain the fat off the ground beef.
And yeah.
Yeah.
That's fair.
They were delicious, though.
Dictator wants to know, too soon to put up Christmas decorations?
Yes. No or no? put up Christmas decorations? Yes.
No or no?
And I say no.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
Do whatever you want.
Live your life.
Okay.
Yeah.
I am not a big fan of decorations.
What do you mean?
I mean like Halloween decorations,
Christmas decorations. Why? He's against
fun. I'm not against fun.
I don't know. Well, Kristen is so
into Christmas decorations. I know.
So like, she's in charge of it.
Alright. And he just
hates it. I help
put up the tree. That's my one job.
Kristen, not
Kristen, wants to know, Brandy, if someone came into your salon and asked you to do their hair like Gwen Shamblin, what would you do?
Oh, man.
I would escort them out of my business.
Okay, for real.
I don't even know where I would begin.
So someone shows you a picture from The Way down, which is the HBO documentary.
And they're like, this is what I want.
Yeah.
You'd probably laugh, right?
Because you wouldn't even.
I would assume it was a joke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But they're looking at you seriously.
So what do you do?
And then I would explain to them.
That that is ugly hair.
That that would require a lot of styling every day.
And they're like, I am here for it.
And also, it's my belief that that would be very damaging on their hair to do that much
backcombing.
There has to be a whole system of backcombing under that thing.
What if they're offering like quadruple the price?
Like, I'll give you anything.
I need this haircut.
No.
See, I like the idea more of like no, I, you know,
I've got a lot of time on my hands
so I'm ready to dedicate
time. Who knows how long
I have on this earth before I get hit by a bus.
I don't care if I damage my hair.
I just want it to look amazing. I just really like it.
Right now with that
Gwen Shamblin hair.
Have you ever refused
a haircut?
I have explained to someone that the haircut they want would not work for their hair type.
And then one time a lady was like, I still want it.
And I was like, okay, all right.
And so I gave it to her and it was terrible.
And she called the next day and was like, I hate this haircut. And I was like, yes, I explained
that to you and she hung up on me.
Hold on. You have to tell us everything.
What did she want? So she wanted
a
scene haircut. Do you know what a scene haircut
is? It's like a
mid-2000s
even girl haircut
with a really long
side bang and then like very short, choppy layers that are teased up and then very long, straight.
Like thin.
Yes, front pieces.
This woman had very thick hair.
Oh, God.
And wanted to do no styling.
Oh, well, yeah.
And I was like, that is just never going to work.
It's never going to work.
And she had obscenely long hair.
And I was like, you would have to lose a ton of length.
No, I don't want to lose the length.
I'm like, those layers are never, it's just, it's not going to work.
I want you to do it anyway.
Oh, my God.
And so I did it.
And it was terrible.
The haircut was terrible
and i styled it up for her and it looked terrible even professionally styled it looked terrible
looked terrible and what did she say when she looked in the mirror and she was like
yeah i'm gonna have to like work with it a little bit to figure out how to get it to do you know
like the picture and i was like totally absolutely oh yeah work with it and little bit to figure out how to get it to do, you know, like the picture. And I was like, totally. Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
Work with it.
And then, yeah, the next day she was like, I hate this haircut.
And I was like, yes.
I bet you do.
I'm sure you do.
I warned you.
I told you this would not work for your hair.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What was she angling for?
I don't know.
I don't know what her end game was.
Can we turn back time?
But she hung up on me.
Because I was like, yes, I'm very sorry, but this is what I explained to you when you asked for this haircut.
Yeah.
And she was like, this is going to require, like, a ton of styling to get it to look like anything.
And I was like, yes.
Yeah, sure will.
Yes, it will.
And even then it's going to look like shit.
Yes.
That is correct. Oh. Did it's going to look like shit. Yes, that is correct.
Did she ever come to you again?
No, of course she did not.
And I would have asked her to leave.
I wouldn't have because I wouldn't have liked that confrontation.
No, you wouldn't have.
Man, a scene haircut.
Yeah.
I remember those back in the day. Oh, a scene haircut. Yeah. That's old-timey.
I remember those back in the day.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
What do you think?
Is it time for some Supreme Court inductions?
I think so.
And you know what?
Right now, we are going to list your names and favorite cookies.
Brandi, are you going to repeat that right now?
I'm not, because I was paying attention.
What I was thinking about, though, is that this all started by us making fun of Norm.
The Supreme Court. Yeah, it did. It's true started by us making fun of Norm. The Supreme Court.
Yeah, it did.
It's true. How do you feel, Norm?
I mean,
I think it's cool that I'm part of the lore
of LGTC permanently.
Yeah. For those who don't know
the origin of Supreme
Court,
Norm, it was on your first guest spot with us.
Not true.
Yeah.
False.
It was your hot dog case.
That was not my first guest spot.
Oh, it wasn't?
No.
Oh, no.
We did video game cases before that.
All right.
Sorry.
Get your facts straight.
My facts are all wrong.
Anyway, Norm was telling us about how the case progressed through the court system, and he's
like, and then it went to the Supreme Court.
And then we started singing in an Oprah voice.
Super.
Make fun of him.
I was just stressing how crazy it was, because that case was so stupid.
That man got hit in the eye with a hot dog, Norm.
How dare you?
The guy got hit in the eye with a hot dog.
That man got hit in the eye with a hot dog, Norm.
How dare you?
The guy got hit in the eye with a hot dog.
It is still one of the funniest court cases I've ever heard about. And I loved talking about that case, but yeah, what came out of that was Supreme Court.
Supreme Court.
It's a sticker, by the way.
Buy it today at lgtcpodcast.com.
Wow.
Look at him.
Look at him.
He mostly inserted that ad.
All right.
Good job, Norm.
How about a Pray for Norm's Butthole sticker?
I don't know where people would put that.
The sticker manufacturer would be like, I'm not printing these up.
I'm not printing these.
We'd have to go to the porno store for a case.
Ultimate bliss.
Ultimate bliss.
Cirilla's.
Have it on the shelf right next to a doll's house.
Our local porn store is called Cirillas.
That's a chain.
That's a chain, yeah.
That's a chain.
Oh, it's local to us.
Big Dong took it over.
Yeah.
Our local porn store was taken over by Big Dong.
Hey, it used to be called Priscilla's
and then they renamed it Cirilla's
No, it was called
Cumbusters
then Priscilla's, then Cirilla's
Like, was there some lawsuit
that they had to lose the Priscilla's
name and they just like changed
the letters around a little bit?
I expect you to do a full case on this
They put them in a baggie,
jumbled it up,
and then they came up with Cirillas.
Are you ready to do induction, Jen?
I'm sorry.
Yes, I am.
What are we doing?
Name and favorite cookie.
Oh, okay.
I wish somebody would have said that.
Uh-huh.
Sarah Stevens.
Publix Bakery Heath Bar Cookies.
Ooh.
Can I just comment on the cookies as they're there?
Sure.
Do you think that's Will-a-mean?
Will-I-am.
Will-a-mean wit.
Givul de coke.
It's a big round cookie filled with almond paste.
One almond is placed on top in the middle, but if you are really lucky, there's two.
The literal translation is filled cookie.
Say it one more time.
I cannot.
Tracy B.
Chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips.
Sarah Shunk.
My best friend's grandma's lacy chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
Megan H.
Sea salt chocolate chip cookies. Maggie. Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Maggie Vokes.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.
Beth M.
Molasses Cookies.
Hannah Harvey.
Almond Joy Cookies.
Libby Queen.
Oatmeal Scotchies.
Angel Rubber.
G-String.
What?
Oh, that's supposed to be her whole name.
Yeah, okay.
Angel Rubber G-String. Chocolate Chip. What? Oh, that's supposed to be her whole name. Yeah, okay. Angel rubber G-string.
Chocolate chip.
What?
Kiki.
Just spoonfuls of Nutella.
That's not a cookie.
Christian.
Peanut butter chocolate chip.
Danny Willits.
Homemade Neiman Marcus cookies.
Wait, how can it be homemade?
Oh, so there's like a whole thing about this.
Like there's this internet.
Oh, like a recipe.
There's this whole internet story about how this woman like went to Neiman Marcus, asked them for their recipe, and they ended up charging her like all of this money.
And so then she posted the recipe on the internet so anybody could make it because she paid all this money for the recipe.
I don't know if there's any truth to that, but that's the internet story.
Now I want to make them.
Yeah.
It's on the internet.
It's got to be true.
I don't think that's accurate.
Daria Lafave.
White chocolate peanut butter clusters.
Cheryl Morasis.
Almond toffee cookies.
Kelsey Clem.
Unbaked chocolate chip cookie dough.
Olivia Reiser. Unbaked
Pillsbury Christmas sugar cookies.
Oh, we have a theme.
Courtney Corwin. I'm not
a huge cookie fan. I would rather have
cupcakes. We didn't ask.
Wow.
Sam
Roberts.
Sorry, Courtney.
I know you gave us money, but we don't care.
Chocolate chip.
Reina Salas.
Snickerdoodles for life.
Welcome to the Supreme Court.
I'm so sorry. Did you just rip all the cables out?
I just punched all the cables.
Let's do that one more time in case we need to.
Welcome to the cables out. I just punched all the cables. Let's do that one more time. Yes. Welcome to the
Supreme Court!
I like how the second time we did it, you still
flailed your arms about it. Well, but you know,
I kept them in the cabin.
Like that scene in Forrest Gump where
he goes up to talk about his time
in Vietnam, and the
lady pulls all the microphone cords out.
Kristen, it's a movie.
It's a film.
It's a 90s film, though, so Kristen may not like it.
I'm not familiar.
Kristen does not like 90s films.
Thank you, everyone, for all of your support.
We appreciate it so much.
If you're looking for other ways to support us, please find us on social media, on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Patreon.
Please remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen.
And then head on over to Apple Podcasts.
Leave us a five-star rating and review.
And then be sure to join us next week.
When we'll be experts on two whole new topics.
Podcast.
Oh, fuck.
I got distracted.
I'm sorry.
Podcast adjourned.
And now for a note about our process.
I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited vocabulary.
And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia.
So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts.
I got my info from...
Yes, you don't.
Hang on. It's loading.
Take it away, Normikins.
I got my information from Eric Hinderaker's Boston's Massacre and from FamousTrials.com.
Ooh.
Oh, Dougie, oh.
I got my info from an article for True Crime Daily, articles for NBC 29 News, articles by Lisa Provins for Seville.com and Wikipedia.
For a full list of our sources, visit LGTCpodcast.com.
Any errors are, of course, ours.
But please don't take our word for it.
Go read their stuff.
What happened?
I don't know.
My mouth wouldn't move.
My, my, my, my, my mouth.
This is episode 195.