My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 169 - This Old Sandwich

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover the Power Rangers Murder(s) and the murder of Denise Huber.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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To my favorite murder. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts for all of your true crime and comedy needs. Yep. That's what my mom told you about. The one your sister keeps forcing you to listen to. And you're like, girl, we're never going to like get over that thing that happened in 10th grade. Yeah.

So you can't use this as a hold on a second. It's working. I love you again. Oh my God, we have so much to talk about and it's bad stuff and it doesn't have anything to do with us. We don't ever have to talk about that. Good. Really, it's just, we're creating with this podcast a series of ice breakers for Thanksgiving

and say your upcoming Easter discomforts that are heading, not you personally, no, it's me. It's me too. Sorry. I've asked you this question. Questions like this so many times. You love to question my Judaism. It's just, is there the Easter equivalent, which I know is not the story wise, not the

equivalent, but is there a spring celebration in Judaism? Passover. That's really? Yeah. Because you know, there's like an egg on the Seder plate. Yes. You motherfuckers stole it. That's why the eggs are the thing.

You guys were first. You were first. You had all that good ideas. Luckily, I mean, sadly, I'll be gone for my family's Passover dinner. What's the plan? Is it at a house, private home? It's at my mom's teeny tiny apartment that we all cram into. Fun.

It's fun. And then, yeah. And then that man of Shevitt starts getting poured, everybody, the truth starts getting spoken. Yeah. I get a scar. Last time I got a scar in my hand from walking into a wall, it just gets, it gets fun. It really does.

Walking like the Bride of Frankenstein, we're trying to hands out. Making a hilarious joke with, and I talk with my hands and I turned and didn't see the stucco wall coming at me. And now I have a fucking legit scar right there. You should see your mother because there goes your fucking hand modeling career, Georgia. Stucco. It was supposed to be your safety net when all this fucking falls apart. And my toke fucking gets screwed up and my foot modeling career is over.

Goodbye, internet foot fetish website. You used to be the star of. The wiki feet. Thank you. No. I own stock in it. It's not true. But it is a great dream to have.

It is. Shoot for your dreams, everyone. My aunt Carol was mad that I wasn't going up for Easter. And my dad's like, what for? The traffic? Are you going with the traffic? I know. Just for, like, those big Catholic holidays don't really bring the family together the

way they used to. Because they're enough. Which was by force. Forced, exactly. Exactly. So, now it's more casual of going up because Nora has her ice dancing competition and then we all actually have a great time. Yeah.

Instead of being forced to fucking eat eggs or whatever the hell you do. Yes. It's, we have to eat eggs. It's basically Easter as a Christian egg eating contest. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. There's poor chickens. It's like cool ham, Luke, but on Easter.

Just gulp them down. Just keep eating them. Swallowed eggs. The Lord that you love him through egg consumption. Parents, swallow your eggs. I'm trying, mommy. We were talking about though Easter between our family and the hospitals, which are our closest non-relative relatives because they were our neighbors for years.

And we used to always do Easter at one of our houses. And I'm sure I've told the story before, but my uncle Steve, because I was the youngest, he taught me how to pay attention to non-verbal cues because when I was two years old, we were all doing the Easter egg hunt in the backyard. And of course, all my older cousins are running around and finding all of them. And I'm like too kind of stumbling around. And then I realized my uncle Steve is walking ahead of me and he keeps intentionally walking ahead of me.

And finally I look up and I just noticed that he's doing this with his cigarette hand. So he's always smoking, always had a cigarette between his first two fingers. And he was just exactly, he was a total, he was a total like Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman type. And he's strong and silent. He was pointing at where all the eggs were. He was showing me where they were. So two-year-old Karen was like verbal clues.

Yes. Got it. I looked up, non-verbal clues. That's what I meant. And I was like, what's he doing with his cigarette? And I put like all of a sudden beautiful mind style, I put it all together. He's pointing at where the eggs are, he's helping me cheat. And then I was like, of course.

And then it turned out he never existed. It was you. It was you. Easter Bunny. For the cigarette all along. The Easter Bunny has a big mustache and he smokes. Can I tell you that we have the thing at Passover called Hide the Afi Komen, which is you hide a piece of matzah somewhere and the kids have to go find it and you get money if you, it's

like. I thought Yafi Komen was a CNN contributor. I really, up until this moment, did I even say it right? Sorry. No, so it's like they're. How much money do you get? They're related. It depends on your family.

That would make sense. You know? It always depends on your family. Rich kids are always $20. Yeah. When the kids are like, you get eight presents for Hanukkah, it's like, well it depends on your family, fucker. Yeah, that's right.

That makes sense. I called my friends, fucker. As a kid, as a two-year-old, I too was verbally, I used verbal cues. Yeah, the verbal cue of fuck you, fuck yourself. They never asked me about Hanukkah again. That's right. That's what you learn, Karen. But Passover, and I know I've told you this, our friend the Greenbergs invited us over,

Marcia Greenberg, and her husband, who is a doctor. A doctor. A doctor. And they lived in Marin, and they invited us over for a Passover. Ooh, fun. We went. It was a spread to beat the band. Good fucking food.

In their beautiful home. Of course, I got to read because I was the youngest at the table, right? That's so much fun. Yeah, I was always the youngest. Yeah. So I was like, this is the religion for me. Yeah. I've had Judaism has been so close to my heart because I'm like, these are my people.

They get what I bring to the table. Why is this religion different than all other religions? What's different about this? Karen's like, I don't care. I just want to join. Mom, I want to switch. But that's when my mom explained to me, I guess now that I look at it, she was just like, no, not everybody has that spread.

To me, that was the set, almost like a Thanksgiving dinner. That's what you got for Passover. And she was like, no, no, no, they're rich. That was like, they shipped in fresh fruit from whatever. All the things that we got were the rich caterer. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Because I was like, this is the religion. Yes. Well, you still eat pretty good when you're poor, too. Yeah. At the fucking, what are they called? Holidays. Yeah. You guys got to cover.

We love it. We're more about suffering and pain, penance. Live it up while you can. Live it. Love it. Pass it over. Learn to levitate. Let's move on from our religious.

This is a religious podcast. To I'd rather talk about it. Let's do Corners. So everything is new. It's all new. We have a new fucking office that actually has like sound paneling in it. Yeah. This might sound much different to you than it normally does.

And that's because our acoustic panels have gone up and the recording studios one step closer to being finished. That's right. This is our office, Karen, or business women. I know. How cool is that? It's the greatest. There's a drawer over there that someone put together for us.

We've got a mug of pens just fucking sitting there. We can use any one of the pens we want. Any and all. We could take one home. We could put the whole fucking jar in our purse. And then someone will put new pens out. I believe. When we're paying for them, though, that's the problem.

Oh, that's yeah. The back end. So another new thing is that we got our website and our fan cult totally refucking refreshed. It got Botox. It got Juventurm. It got Fillers. It got fucking. It got the Beverly Hills Express.

That's right. We heard you. We knew the interaction wasn't great. We knew. So we've been working on this kind of behind the scenes this whole time and we finally got to debut it. If you hadn't had a chance, please go over to www.myfavoritmurder.com and take a look at the brand new website and consider joining the brand new fan cult.

That's right. It's so much different now. There's a new logo that's on new merch. We're going to maybe do a fan cult store with fan cult only merch. The forums are amazing now. They're not fucking shitty in all caps anymore. We definitely heard your feedback on that one. We felt the same way.

Can I just say that's been on my mind. The fan cult and website looking bad has been weighing on my mind for as long as it's been bad. Well, of course. It's the way it's how there's this audience, this listenership so wants to be in communication with each other and with us and the idea that we weren't able to facilitate that correctly for so long has been driving us insane. It's very frustrating.

It's been a huge stress, but I'm really proud of the new site and the new fan cult. It's a new company and we basically wrapped our arms around all of the issues and it's really exciting to us. The videos look better, unboxing videos, there's exclusive content, ticket contests. Our book tour, very short, but we're going on a three city book tour to promote it. It's called, Say Sexy, Don't Get Murdered. You may have heard of that title. It's from this show.

Yeah. Have you listened to your sister yet? Do you even care? We're proud of it. It feels like home. And also it feels like we're finally delivering this baby that we've been pregnant with for like two years. Enough with this already.

Stop it. We're not elephants. Good. How long are they pregnant for? Two years? Steven, test me. Holy shit. Steven thinks it is two years, but I believe that it's a really goddamn long time.

I guess human's nine months. Ten months, technically. Why? Because they judge it from the end of your last period, so you could have been pregnant or something like that. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? For that whole time.

It's actually technically like ten months. Ew. I know, right? Even grosser. 95 weeks. What? Come on. No.

Well, a year is 52 weeks. Okay, great. I knew that. Yeah, human pregnancy is 40 weeks and elephant is 95 weeks. Basically double. Basically double. Yeah, two years. Basically almost 22 months, yeah.

A little less then. Hey, speaking of elephants giving birth, tomorrow is Steven's birth. I don't know. That's not the sound of shittier than I said. I would restate. I did not mean your parents are elephants. I just meant. Speaking of birthdays.

Birthday! Yay! Thank you. What tomorrow, so what day would it be? The day this comes out. The day this comes out was yesterday was Steven's birthday. Yes, April 17th. Yeah.

Oh, today's Tuesday. Yeah, or is it? We're ahead this week. Yeah. Right. For us tomorrow is Steven's birthday, but for you yesterday was Steven's birthday. So please get those online birthday wishes to him. Please.

You know he lives for it. He lives with cats and birthday gifts. Please don't send me cats. That would be a lot to take care of. Yes. Oh, I met a cat over the weekend. What kind? Oh, my gosh.

She was just little Siamese with a broken tail and maybe she was incontinent from it, but she was so cute I just wanted to cry. What part was cute about the incontinent? She was just cute. Okay. Sent to DeOre or local fucking or local cat rescue. Are you about to go over the three cat limit? Hear me out.

Four cats. Hear me out. One over the limit. That's my argument. What if four is the limit? Doesn't four make much more sense than three? Right? Yeah.

Two and two. Yes. That's counting. Look. It's basic fucking counting. Don't make me count for you. I don't want to have to add your cats. I, while I was driving to Petaluma this weekend, I was actively looking for stray dogs on the

side of the fight. Right. When I'm honestly 16 years ago, as I was driving up the five, I saw two dogs running on the side of the road. Oh my God. And I didn't stop for them. And it has haunted me ever since and, but it was near, I could see that we were near somewhere.

I think it was near Bakersfield. So they could have been lost, but they probably were dumped. Either way. Oh. Ever since then, I'm like, if I spot one, I'm taking it and that's God's way of giving me a new dog. I saw a fucking dog in my neighborhood off leash and I was like, my new dog, like I slammed on my brakes and was like, yay.

And the guy, the guy who just walked by, I was like, I was about to steal your fucking dog. Yeah. That's all I want. I know. Me too. I mean, I'll hide a puppy in the bushes and you hide a kitten in the bushes and we'll find each other.

Yeah. Yes. That's nice gift-giving. Right. For your friends that you can't get anything for, how about you plant a stray animal of their choice into a bush you know they pass. Right. The same time every day.

Yeah. What do they do and hang around that bush? That's really weird. They should, you should save it. They put it in the front with their raincoat and that's always got their hands in the pockets. Why does Michelle like bushes so much? It's really weird. Have you ever noticed like she, she can tell you what every kind of bush is when you pass

it? It's so weird. I mean, some people call it a green thumb. I think she's a pervert. She's a bush pervert. She's a bushman. So yeah, definitely join the fan cult. What are we talking about?

I don't know. I don't know. Do you have any, any corners to correct? There was just a little bit of a corner that Stephen printed up because, so this woman named Donna is from the Bay Area and she was a big fan of hippos. She's a hippo head. She's a, and always has been since the 80s, early 80s she says, worked at the Oakland Zoo.

Whoa. She remembers mugs. From your, from our hometown. The hometown where their mugs basically half swallowed a child and then got punched and then I was for it and everything worked out okay. But basically she was there to say she was there when mugs lived at the Oakland Zoo. And she still has mugs that said save baby mugs, coffee mugs that said save baby mugs. And so she's sending them to us?

One of them. Just one. Just one Donna. You know your room, it's going to break one anyways. You might as well just send it to us first. Yeah, exactly. Because we need them. Basically just Donna's here to say she's, it wasn't a, it wasn't a fucking fever dream

of your childhood. She was there. She had those mugs. She's got the mug to prove that mugs, the hippo is real. And also, I think, does she run hippos.com? Is that her thing? I think it was posted on there. Oh, she posted it on hippos.com.

Oh my God. Which I have to say. I would have hippofeet.com, is that what you're saying? Because I'm up for that next. It's the ballerina hippo feet with the toes painted pink. What I liked is just there's really good hippo clip art that was featured throughout. Oh my God. Yeah.

You know. That's adorable. When you have a free chance, go on over to hippos.com and to spend a little time. And it's just good to know for that person that got swallowed, oh wait, I want to show you, this was the, this was the one I was looking for, join us on Facebook. Oh, the International Hippo Society is having a reunion in Albuquerque, oh sorry, that was last year. Look at that clip art.

Don't break my heart. I want to go to that fucking, what is it, a 5K where hippos chase you and you're just running super fast. I am in. It's a 5K, but you just keep getting dipped into a baby hippo's mouth and then running to get out of it. What about that drunk hippo clip art right there? Oh, that's a shit-based hippo.

Yeah, I love that idea. He's thumbs-upping everyone. All right, so anyway, join the fan cult. Join that fan cult. God, things are new over there and the hippo content. We bought hippo.hypos.com. And we folded them into the new website. That's right.

We are hippos.com. We are hippos. We are ballerinas now. And we're also hippo.com, which is all about the rules and regulations of doctors. That's right. We're just taking over websites. Watch out, Amazon. Yeah.

Bezos. What's that? Is that his name? Yeah, I believe it's the newly single Jeff Bezos. Oh, you're... Yeah. Hey, pay your taxes, buddy. Getting political.

Yeah, that's what we're like. Politics. Fucking hippos. And then, Matzah, it's just happening. Get with it. God, I wish you could have seen all the gestures we were doing. Oh, my God. Georgia started them.

Over here. I was kind of mimicking her. Over here. Over there. It was like semaphore. If you've been to a live show, you've seen it. You've seen the great gesturing that goes on. When you're listening to a live show and people just start laughing for no reason and you're

like, why are they laughing? It's because we're weirdly touching each other in like a weird, pinchy, awkward way. Yes. We're reaching out for support, physical support for each other. Or sometimes, I'll just turn and do a take to the audience, like Carol Burnett style, where I'll just do a big one kind of thing. Yeah. She's a big, Karen's a big facial actress.

Yeah. I like to be. That sounds gross. A facial actress is not the porn style, which, God bless, I mean, let's call it more of an eyebrow actress. Wouldn't you say that? I would always say that. I say it all the time.

Have you ever logged on to Wiki Eyebrow? Ew. It's so gross. That reminds me of, there's an Instagram called girlymags. It's like girly.mags, and they just will post stuff from the 90s. They'll do like an eyebrow slideshow of what are eyebrows look like famous people's eyebrows in the 90s. Yeah.

It's just, I don't know. They were razor thin. Kids must think we were fucking crazy back then. We were. We were on diet pills. Everyone was on either diet pills or it was this thing of like, the style was, you know, you try to do a throwback thing if you can't, if you have enough taste on your own, but there was no internet to guide you.

Right. So. It was pretty 40s of us. Yes. It was very 40s. I mean, I had full on Clara Bow eyebrows for a long time, but in high school, they were full on Brooke Shields, late 70s Brooke Shields. What we're trying to say is trends come and go, be yourself, but don't get anything tattooed

onto your face. Hide your razor when you're drunk. I mean, you're fucking tweezers and razor. Hide everything. Hide sharp blades to cut your bangs with when you're drunk. Yes. Yeah. Don't make any hair, head, face, hair decisions when you're drunk.

You're always wrong. Yeah. And don't do what I used to do, which is get drunk and then berate my roommates into cutting my hair for me. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it.

I'm the friend who'll fucking won't say, no, I don't know. I'll be like, give me. Yes. I have scissors and I'll come do it. Let's do it. And he's like, all I'm asking for is an A-line bob, except for I have 17 layers of hair. It doesn't look like it on the surface. I get halfway through and be like, I don't want to do this anymore.

That's literally what would happen. I can't tell you how many times Dave Messermore was like, I can't finish that it's too much hair. And then I'd be like, it's fine. Tomorrow goes super cut. Well, we're staying together this weekend in Nashville at Airbnb because there was a hotel issue. So we're staying at an Airbnb.

You me and Vince. There's a jacuzzi. I'm sure Vince is going to go straight to the grocery store and get me canned wine. Nice. I'm going to cut your fucking hair. What's that experience going to be like when I'm sober? You're going to be sober. How about I just spin you around 30 times and then I'm like, can I cut your hair?

I mean, you could also dose me. There's a lot of ways this weekend can go. Listen, Grand Old Opry, just get ready for care and do a fucking look. New look. It's going to be way less hair. It's going to be next level, literally, because I've shaved it with the next level clippers. That was, it's funny. Oh, like you changed the clippers setting to the next level.

It's good, huh? I got it now. There was an easier way to go. It was a thinker, but I feel like it means you respect me because you made such a high end joke. Thank you. You're welcome. Looking for a better cooking routine?

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slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Arisha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast Even The Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities

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You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Is there more business? Da da da da da. Boo boo boo boo boo. Be boop bop. I think we're ready. I think you go first. Yep.

Karen goes first. Amazing. I think that's perfect because the story I'm going to do, and I should actually say stories, is the Power Ranger murder. Do you remember? No, I was a little too old and into math at the time. See it same here. I am old enough so that when all of the Power Ranger things were happening to the children,

it was 93 to, I mean 93 to fucking now basically. 93 is my peak math years. Okay, well that's when this started. Yeah, I was gone already. Same here. I moved to LA in 94 and I was on those diet pills and I think 95. So I wouldn't have paid attention to the beginning of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers at all.

Too old to begin with. Too old in every respect except for to see little kids kicking and punching each other much more than they normally did before, but that's fine with me. I love it. I love violence, but always have, but that's what this podcast is not about, loving violence. But yeah, so I was in the age where wasn't paying attention, wouldn't be into it anyway. So I truly have no idea what the show, aside from the research that's been done, no idea contextually about this show, what it's about, and it's really funny when you write up a

show like this that's like basically a kid's show that's completely a made up universe and it's of course based on, believe it, Japanese, originally Japanese show. So everything about it is just, I don't even know what anyone's talking about. And it sounds like a dream. It does. And when you look it up and read it like off Wikipedia, it doesn't help. Yeah, it's like how did this pitch make it to a TV show? Right.

And they didn't have to because they were like, kids already love it. On the other side of the world, we know it always translates over here, let's do this thing. For Hollywood, everyone's on diet pills. Let's make this show. They won't know the difference. It won't seem weird because everyone's high. Let's do this thing.

It's the 90s. There's no websites. You're right. Right. There's nothing to base it on. There's no internet. They have to go with this. So we'll start in the early life of a guy named Ricardo Medina Jr.

He was born on January 24th, 1979 in Kern County, California, but the Kern River, your favorite place to go on vacation. Okay, great. His family moved to Downey. Another place I love to vacay. It's so beautiful there. Downey, California, famously known for the Carpenters, Karen Carpenter and her brother Richard were raised in Downey.

Okay. And then, of course, this guy. So he grows up there with his hardworking middle-class family. He's big into sports in middle school and through high school. He was a wrestler. He played football. He was in street hockey and he did martial arts. He also, as a kid, took up singing and acting because he wanted to, according to his IMDB

profile, quote, use the attention to make a difference and be a positive role model. Which I think is what most kids, it's like if you live within 250 miles of Los Angeles, you wanted to be on television. Right. Probably. Or a movie star. Right. As any kid.

I mean, even if you didn't, but especially if you lived in Southern California, it seemed like the opportunity was there. It totally does. It's like, it's actually an option. You can, you're right by LA. Other famous people were places where you, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. No, you could see the pattern.

You could see the path where back then, that's kind of what it took was near Binance. What's the word for that? Near Binance. Proximity. Thank you. How did I do that? Yeah. We are un...

Our fucking brains are synced. We're doing it. And our periods are. We should do a podcast together. So yeah, before the internet and before American Idol and all these things where it was like, we want just anybody to come and show how everyone's talented. Listen, can we not make star search? Can we not be little star search right now?

Oh, I'm so sorry. The O.G. talent show. Fucking, do you remember Star Search? Do I? We were on it. Four stars. No, but I mean like, we loved. That was the best show.

I love this show. I wanted to be a spokesmodel when I grew up because my, I had low self-esteem and thought it was stupid. So that's all I could, that's all I really thought I could do. Like I'm going right there. I wanted to be, remember the early versions of it when they had the acting thing and people had to come and do scenes? It was so uncomfortable.

They'd be like, cut over to a set and it'd be like a written scene that two actors had to act out. Oh God, I loved that show so much. Rosie O'Donnell. The comedy, stand-up comedy. Children was on there. Children rapping. So many children rapping.

Children rapping. People laughing. Smile after smile from Ed McMahon. Three out of four stars. There's tons of people. Three and three-quarter stars. Three and three-quarter stars. That was a thing.

My friend Karen Anderson has a really good story about being on there, but cut this because I can't remember what it is. Don't cut that. Okay, go on. There's nothing about her, how many stars she got. But she was on it? Yeah. A bunch of comics from back in the day, like went and auditioned for it because people

were actually like, Rosie O'Donnell was on it and like it got her somewhere, you know? Okay, so what are we talking about? We're talking about, oh, showbiz. So he pursues acting through his teen years and in 2002 when he's 23, he lands his first major role in the Power Rangers series and it was actually season 10, Power Rangers Wild Force. Oh, so it was already like an established thing. It was way established.

So it's like a big gig probably. It's a huge gig. He gets the leading role of Cole Evans, the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger who heads the Power Rangers team. Me too. Right? Well, probably your favorite character of the season. I mean, the only one to me.

Okay, so now I'm going to go into talking about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Please do. In a way that could not be more ignorant or Wikipedia based. So go with me and enjoy this as I'm sure the young children of today listening because they know that this is like, this would be like if somebody was describing Scooby-Doo to me. Yeah. Where I just don't understand any.

So here, I'll tell you the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers plotline. Okay. So season one, which started in 1993, in August of 1993, and apparently it says that this show essentially launched the TV network Fox Kids. That's where it started. Okay. Okay. So the plot is astronauts on an exploratory mission open up an extraterrestrial canister

and they release several monsters led by an evil alien sorceress named Rita Repulsa. Oh, that's a good name, Stephen. Stop me if this is wrong. Oh yeah, Stephen. This is your fucking jam. Probably. For my seventh birthday, I got the original Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Megazord and I showed Karen for Halloween, I dressed up as the Black Ranger.

Oh my God. Post your photo of you in your little Power Rangers outfit from your birthday and Instagram. It's amazing. And you guys tag us. If you have any young Power Rangers outfit photos, yes. Post it on Instagram. Hold on a second. Yeah.

Explain what the Zords are first. Okay. Of course. Oh my God. We have an expert in the room. But that's perfect because first of all, birthday memories. Yeah. For Stephen's birthday.

Yesterday. Um, yesterday. But also then we have someone here that can actually, um, you're going to now be the go to when there's actually questions because I, all of this is like I'm reading a translated thing. Yeah. Okay. So Rita Repulsa.

Now free Rita and her monsters plan to take over Earth. The wise sage Zordon from planet El Tar summons five teenagers to his planet and he gives them each the ability to perform, to transform into the Power Rangers. This gives them special powers that will help them fight off Rita and her goons. Each Power Ranger has a Zord, which is basically a dinosaur. Uh-oh. It's all, it's all overlapped. It was like the perfect thing.

It was Jurassic Park and Power Rangers were my two favorite things as a kid. Now Power Rangers was before Jurassic Park, right? Yeah. They started like around the same time. Okay. Um, and yeah, this story takes place after, after my, but this origin story is, is, was my Power Rangers. Okay.

Yeah. Can you just describe what his Zord looks like? Sure. Um, the, the original Zords, there was a T-Rex, there was a Sabertooth cat, there was a Triceratops, there was a Pteranodon. Listen to his voice. Uh, and then there was a, um, a mammoth. So they were like trans, the transformer.

Yeah. They were basically robots and then all the, the main kids like controlled it and it would, they became one giant robot that like fought guys and like almost like Godzilla suit type monsters and stuff. So it's like Paw Patrol, but they turned into fucking. No idea what that is. Okay. Like I have a young nephew and that's why I know what that is.

Oh. Oh, it's today. It's today. Okay. Okay. I think I get it. I don't at all because it's basically your, you're saying dinosaurs turned into robots. They were robot dinosaurs.

Oh, okay. Yeah. They were, they never had scales. No, no. Got it. So each Power Ranger has a Zord and then they're assigned to them. They can invoke when they want to power up and then all the Zords can join together to form of course a Megazord.

Oh, sure. And what the Megazord fights other, other like monsters that Rita Rapulso would like summon and they would like destroy Angel Grove, which was the city. I hate it. I feel like so nerdy right now. Yeah, please. We love it. It's great.

Now let me ask a question. By the way. Wasn't there some, the fact that we're letting you talk about this? Yes. We didn't get anything else. This is our chance of being like, now we're the older sisters. You know, when the Power Rangers would like strike those poses, did that have something to do with calling the Zords up or getting it all together?

Yeah. They basically would like summon, it would like summon the robots to come out like the, to like come from wherever they were. And it was like, then they would be like in their, you know, just kids and then they would like, the costume would like come over them and they would, it was like a telephone booth for Superman. Yeah, exactly. But they were just, was it a gesture?

Did they yell something? It's morphin time. Oh my God. And now did anyone ever mistake that for it's muffin time and serve them banana chocolate chip muffins accidentally? The kids, they gotta eat healthy. It's morphin time. Wow.

Yeah. So that's the baseline. Did you know any of that? No. Great. I didn't either. I'll just skip to Power Rangers Wild Force, which was the season that he was on. This is now season 10.

There were 26 seasons altogether. Holy shit. Each year had 60 episodes. Oh my God. And it just went from 93 on till 2019. It's still going. Are you serious? I swear to God.

It's just on a different channel now, I believe, but like they've never stopped. They just keep, so it was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the first couple seasons. And then it changed. And like for example, so it's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season one, season two, season three, season 3.5 Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. What? Season four is Power Rangers Zeo. That has to do with the Zeo Crystal being restored.

Restored. Resored. Resored. This is not to you about Power Rangers. Season five is Power Rangers Turbo, season six is Power Rangers in space, and seven is where were they if they weren't in space before? They were on fake earth. Was it fake earth?

Well, it was. Yeah, I think like Angel Grove was just a fake, it was supposed to be, I guess, Burbank or whatever. A studio. Okay. Lot on Burbank. Yeah, they're just like a grips daughter that can also change into a dinosaur robot over the fuck.

Season seven is Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. So every after that, it just kept on changing. Season 10 was Cole Evans, who was Medina's character. He's a boy living with a tribe in a jungle outside the fictitious town of Turtle Cover. Does that ring a bell? Stephen was out by season 10, trying to find his, quote, destiny. And then one day he stumbles upon the Animerium, a floating island where wild zords roam free. And there he meets his new mentor, Princess Shaila, or Shaila, essentially filling the

role of Zordon from the original series, I don't remember the person, Shaila gives him and four other Rangers their metamorphosis powers. And the new Power Ranger team must use their new abilities to defeat the evil Orgs, a team of monsters headed by the Master Org. Describe my face right now. Georgia is bored and angry. That's the boat, the angry is the Botox. So basically, Ricardo Medina Jr. is on season 10 of the Power Rangers for that season.

Only that season. And that's it. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. Especially because the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are on the list of highest-grossing media franchises in their 26 seasons and then the additional movies, merch, everything. Yeah, I bet. $1 billion in retail sales, $13 billion in merch, $218 million in box office.

Oh my goodness. So it's quite the franchise. Yeah, but I bet the actors made little to none of that. Probably. And especially because it sounds like they probably just, first of all, they all had masks on when they were the Rangers, right? So they didn't need to. Well, so the actual show was that the fight scenes were actually footage from the original

Japanese show. So all they did was just take the scenes with the cool teens in the 90s. That was all original here. And then they just reused all the fight scenes to save money. So they showed their actual faces. Yes. Like if you were an actor on it, you were an actor on it. Yeah, but then once the fights and they were in the outfits and the zords, all that was

just footage from Japan. And it was a lot of that, right, posing and kind of like a lot of cheerleader arms. Yes. I think it's called Kung Fu. I don't think it's called a cheerleader arm. It's not. I think Bruce Lee would have an issue with you calling it cheerleader arms. I feel like everything is centered and based in cheerleading.

And then from there, it's Kung Fu got the idea from cheerleading. Dragon Ball Z originated in cheerleading. It's just cheerleading. Okay. So after Wild Force ends, Ricardo keys on CSI in a one off role. He gets a part on ER. In 2005, he gets a spot as a contestant on the VH1 reality show Kept. Do you remember this one?

Absolutely not. Jerry Hall, former model, used to be married to Mick Jagger. She tries to turn American boys into refined British gentlemen. That was a reality show on each one. They were just giving him away at that point. Youngins. Yeah. Seriously.

I mean, they were just like, people want to watch this stuff, make up to take two disparate things, two things that are the opposite, put them on a show, call VH1 were all set. So he got eliminated in the fifth round, which isn't terrible. But then six years later, his luck turns around because he goes back to his Power Ranger roots and he gets the part of the villain Decker in seasons 18 and 19 of Power Rangers Samurai and Power Rangers Super Samurai. Right? That all ends in 2012.

Okay. So in 2011, a 32 year old, so now we're like, that's basically the background on Ricardo Medina Jr. In 2011, a 32 year old man named Josh Sutter moves to LA to help his sister Rachel open a business that places rescue dogs with new homes and it's called Lucky Puppy. So they rent a house in Green Valley, which is just west of Palmdale, and Josh lives in the house and they keep the dogs, the rescued dogs, they keep, they board them and care for them in this house.

And the eventual goal is to turn this property into a dog paradise where all the dogs that aren't placed in homes can live a happy, healthy life. That's amazing. Yeah. So they're basically, they're selling rescue dogs to people and then taking the money and putting it back into trying to develop this like a farm where dogs can live. Which who wouldn't want to live there? That's like the, if you can retire and do anything.

And it has cats instead of dogs, but whatever. Yeah. It's just what you like. While he's working there, Josh meets a coworker named Sandra Vazquez. They fall in love with each other. So Sandra says she fell in love with Josh's warm heart and even killed nature. In late 2014, Rachel and Josh hire Ricardo Medina. So this is basically two years after all of his TV stuff has dried up and he gets a job

there helping care for the dogs and then they also let him live in the house with Josh. Ouch. That's got to hurt after you're, you know, he's trying to be an actor for like years and years. Yes. And you're on, you're on a show that is ostensibly a humongous hit. Right. You're in a successful show.

Yeah. You've been a part and like, I'm sure kids recognize him, there's like, there's an element to it where he did get a touch of fame in a, in the kind of way that I, it sounds like is just enough to get a little bit fucked up or maybe buy exactly the wrong amount of drugs, which is what happened to me. So no judgment. You mean right now that's happening? It's happening now.

I meant to tell you, I'm on so much crank right now, I can't believe it. So they hire Ricardo. He starts working there. He moves into the house. Working at first is great, but then Josh and Ricardo start arguing a lot and everything starts to deteriorate. And at one point, Ricardo threatens to release all of the dogs into the wild. No, don't do that.

That's not cool at all. So on the night of January 31st, 2015, Ricardo has his girlfriend over to the house and according to him, Josh had told him he didn't want him bringing his girlfriend to the house, but he ignored him and invited her over anyway. This is how bad it is. And like, it would be very interesting to know the real details behind this, but we always probably never will in any meaningful way. But essentially Josh comes home and Ricardo's girlfriends parked in their driveway.

Her car, obviously. Josh comes home, Ricardo's girlfriend's car is parked in the driveway is like blocking things or something. Dude, I fucking dealt with that shit. Or you're like, you don't even want her there and then it's like, and then she's just coming up the works and you come in, come in hot. There's nothing worse than not liking your roommate. Absolutely.

It's a nightmare. So, and this is only two months after he started working and living there, two months. So it wasn't good from the get go and clearly building. Josh comes in pissed. He confronts Ricardo in the kitchen. They get into a screaming match and it escalates into a physical fight. So this is now all according to Ricardo. He says that Josh's violent outburst scared him badly enough that he and his girlfriend

ran and hid in Ricardo's bedroom. Josh, however, says this fight isn't over and goes and kicks down the bedroom door and charges Ricardo and Ricardo just grabs what's ever closest, which is a Conan the barbarian style sword. Oh my God. Oh, like a blade. Yes. Like a big, thick, heavy sword.

Yeah. Holy. That he constantly held over his head for no reason. What a fucking coincidence that it's the closest thing to you. Yeah. And not like your Garfield fucking penny jar or whatever. Yes. What do they call it?

Oh, like a piggy bank? Piggy bank. I thought you meant, did you see that story about the Garfield phones washing up on that? It's my favorite thing. I was just talking about it over the weekend. So good. Even though it's garbage. Look at that.

Yeah. Look at those haunting and it's like in France or somewhere where I'm sure they're just like, what does this get? I don't understand. Okay. So essentially he, he claims that in self-defense, he stabbed Josh in the abdomen with his Conan the barbarian style sword 10 times. 10 times.

No, that's not, that's not how you defend yourself. No. But then he calls 911 and stays at the scene. So when the authorities arrive, Josh has taken to the hospital. He's pronounced dead on arrival. Oh my God. Of course. He's been stabbed 10 times with the Conan, the barbarian style.

I mean him staying there and calling 911 tells a difference like is like, oh, well that's not. Yes. Like we have to hear what's happened here. It's like suddenly it's his narrative that's kind of running the show. So the police don't arrest Ricardo. They hold him on a million dollars bail. They don't formally charge him with any crime because they have to go, he, he's claiming

self-defense and they realize they have to further conduct an investigation before they can charge him. They don't have enough evidence to hold him. So he's released on February 3rd, 2015. And after his release, he makes a brief public statement saying, I want to say I'm very, very, very sorry for what occurred. I'm very happy to be out of jail and my heart goes out to the Sutter family. Thank you.

There's so many little, I want someone who's good at dissecting shit to dissect that. I want to say, just say it. Yeah. You say it. You want to, but you don't. Yeah. I'm happy to be out of jail. Don't fucking say that.

It's not about you. That's unnecessary. Right. It's like saying, I'm happy I won this or something. It's not, yeah. It doesn't seem like anybody went over the statement with him before he presented it. I mean, every single line of that has wrongness in it. I want to say.

I want to say, I'm very, very, very sorry, but. You're not saying it. It's the, I'm sorry you're upset about that. I'm sorry you're upset. Too bad you're so sensitive. Janet. So, Janet and Karen. According to Josh's autopsy, he'd been stabbed a total of 10 times and he also had stab wounds

on his hands indicating he was trying to defend himself during the attack. Even Josh's sister and his girlfriend do not buy Ricardo's self-defense story because they've only ever known Josh to be a calm, rational animal lover who would not hurt a fly. Right. Which obviously since his whole life was devoted to that, you know what I mean? It's not like that's just kind of like. Well, you can be, I mean, I don't think it's true with this guy, but you can be nice to

animals and a fucking monster still. True. But if your sister and girlfriend have said, say that you have never been angry or violent, like one of them at least would know if you have had an anger problem in the past. Yes, true. And usually if you have, if you are a sociopath, when you don't have empathy or conscience, animals are the first to go. That's when you start, you don't see animals as, you know, living creatures with feelings

or anything like that. It's just like, oh, what's this? So it doesn't, but you're exactly right. I mean, you might not be that extreme and you just fucking hate people. Yes, true. Very true. Anyway, his girlfriend also points out that Ricardo stabbed Josh multiple times so that idea of self-defense is crazy that clearly, and quote, this is what she said, quote, to

continually stab someone over and over again. That's not a split decision, a split second decision. That's a killer. And minutes before the argument that led to his death, Josh was on the phone with his father, Donald, discussing the best new ways to grow organic vegetables on the property so he could use them to feed the dogs. And of course, the father backs up Rachel and Sandra's characterization of Josh saying there's not a mean bone in his body.

I feel like, yeah, here's what self-defense is for real. Plunge the knife in, leave it there. Oh my God, freak out. Freak out, call 911, apologize, cry, the whole thing. Yeah. Yes. I mean, don't do that, everyone. However, that's what that is.

That's what that is. And clearly, if anybody, there is that, it's that frustrating thing of someone's dead and the other person killed them and is the only one there to tell the story, we don't know why that door was broken down. He can say Josh broke it down, or he can have opened the door, stabbed Josh, and then kick the door down himself, like any number of... Or Josh could... So was Ricardo's girlfriend there too?

She was. She was in the room with him. So what's her story? I mean, there's nothing, nothing quoted as her saying, so I'm sure she just backed up his story. Yeah, maybe. I would imagine. Yeah.

And I'm not saying that like he wasn't mad or he, who knows, he simply don't, except for there's so much said in 10 stab wounds, as we're saying. Totally. That's just, it's overkill, insanely violent, and stabbing someone one time is so disturbing. Right. Taking the knife out and putting it back in. Sword. Conan sword.

Conan, the barbarian style sword, heavy, huge, I'm sure inflicted insane amounts of damage. Oh, he did. Okay. So the investigation goes on for a full year before police have enough evidence to charge him. So on January 14th, 2016, Ricardo's arrested again on a first degree murder charge. So he's in jail, back in jail, he faces a life sentence, and his attorney strikes a plea

bargain with the court, and on March 16, 2017, Ricardo pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which is while still a felony, a lesser crime that carries a far less severe punishment, a maximum sentence of six years in prison. What? No, let's raise that everyone. On March 30th, 2017, Ricardo is finally sentenced to the maximum amount of time, six years. And he continues to serve that sentence to this day, and it'll be released in 2023. So Ricardo Medina has an agent that described him as a trusted friend who had never exhibited

a violent streak. And he said that he did not have a criminal history prior to the arrest. And he said, quote, I've known Rick for years. He really is one of the most peaceful guys. He was thrilled and loved being a power ranger. He rescued and trained a wonderful German shepherd, and he was a client and a friend. And he said it's still very difficult. This agent says it's still very difficult for me to believe that this was anything but

self-defense. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, what if the story is true? Then it's like, well, he's fucked because he's the only one who can tell it. I know. And it's really vague. And I looked back, because I was thinking, so here's, at this part, I was like, I thought

there was drugs involved in this, or I thought there was something a little more sinister involved. I think it was this gray, you know, this kind of like, basically, clearly to me, it seems like the cops couldn't prove anything more than that manslaughter charge, obviously. There just was no evidence of anything else. Yeah. Then I realized that was because there's another power ranger murder. And so that's what I was just looking at, because I put in power ranger murder drugs,

a different power ranger murder came up. And so this, but this is, and the reason it didn't come up first and foremost is because this is a non-speaking power ranger murder from 2004. Okay. It counts. It fucking counts. It counts. If you got on to that screen, the word power and ranger are in it.

Mighty. Maybe morph it. Maybe they morph. Maybe they don't. But this guy was essentially an extra on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Fair enough. Fair enough. And so this is a story, and you probably know this one.

I fucking don't. A man named Tom Hawks, who was 57 years old and his wife, Jackie, who was 47. Oh, yeah. The boat? Yeah. Yes. So they're from Prescott, Arizona. And they had been sailing around the world on their 55 foot yacht, the well deserved,

which is such an amazing name for a yacht. They had used it. They had done all the stuff with it. But then I think a family member was having a baby and they wanted to be back in Southern California to be nearby for the family. So they put an ad out selling the well deserved, putting this well deserved up for sale for $440,000. Wow.

Yacht money, baby. Yacht money. Let's get yachts. I get seasick. I'm going to pass. I'm scared. I'm scared of the open ocean. I'll be at the restaurant that overlooks the ocean waving at you.

Good job, Karen. I'm going to be out. Good cut to me. The yacht is sunk. It's surrounded. Can someone save Karen? I just started on my time. I would do it.

And I do want to do it. On November 15th, 2004, Tom and Jackie are taking out the well deserved for a test run for their prospective buyer, 29 year old Skyler De Leon and a couple of his friends. So when he first responded to their ad about selling this yacht, they didn't trust him, but he showed up with his wife and brand new baby and their older son. So then they realized, oh, this is just a young family and they have this interest and they have the money and we're being judgmental or whatever. So they actually end up striking up a bit of a relationship and then basically Skyler

comes back and goes, I want to take the yacht for a test run. Oh, and also I'm going to bring a couple of my friends if that's cool with you. And yeah. And the Hawks were like, sure, that's okay. Yeah, we trust him now. Our hackles are down. Yes. Hackles.

They all go out for a test run out of Newport Harbor and they're out on the open ocean. And that is when the three men overpower the couple, force them to sign the boat's ownership over to them. What the fuck? Hand cuff them to the anchor. Then throw them overboard and drown them intentionally. Oh my God. The Hawks' bodies were never recovered.

Oh, what is wrong with this world? Yes. So that was November 15th. So basically 2004. So basically how it happened for the family was they went out for this test run. The yacht comes back, but they don't come back. So they don't really know what's going on. And then 10 days later, someone tries to access their bank account from Mexico.

Holy shit. And so that's when the family's notified by the bank. The bank goes straight to the police and is like, we're not sure what's happening here, but like this needs to get investigated. And of course, the second the police start investigating, all roads lead back to Skyler De Leon. Yeah. The non-speaking power ranger who actually he wasn't a power ranger.

He was just an extra in an episode of the Power Rangers, which is why this is not the foremost power ranger murder, but it did happen before. Yeah. Okay. So essentially the plan was that they were stealing this boat. So basically Skyler De Leon tells the police like, oh no, I gave them the money and I got the boat. I don't know what happened to them.

Yeah. It was a normal transaction. Goodbye. Standard yacht buying, you know, how I always do. And then you look at his mugshot and you're like, that guy would never be in the market for a fucking yacht. Yeah. Sorry.

No offense to your goatee, but no one fucking buys it. For real. It's like you give a goatee? No, but his hair is spiked up with a ton of gel. Same thing. Yeah. It's an indicator. It's an orange county.

It's an orange thing. It's how they do. So essentially they trace it all back, of course, find all the evidence. Skyler De Leon is convicted of the murders and given a death sentence. And his wife is given two life sentences without the possibility of parole. Yes. Then they find out that also De Leon is charged with scamming $50,000 from and then slitting the throat of 45-year-old John Jarvie of Anaheim, California, whose body was found near a roadway

in Ensenada on December 27th, 2003. So basically once they start like uncovering what's happening with the hoxes, then they realize that he's done this before. Yeah. And basically they were trying to collect and scam people to get money so they could launder their drug money. And it's kind of lame because then there's an article about how De Leon's attorney at the start of the trial said, Skyler is guilty of all three murders, but at the end of this,

I'm going to ask you to give him a life sentence without the possibility of parole as the appropriate sentence and then goes into this whole thing of what a difficult life he's had as dad was a drug dealer and abused him and all that stuff where it's just like, and clearly the jury is just like, too bad. Like I was abused and I've never killed anybody. Yeah. Exactly. That was the lesser one that I found right at the end before I went to do the other one.

And this is the very involved and very confusing and foreign to me, mighty morphine power rangers murders. But also very informative. And now I know everything about the power rangers. Right. So thank you. That was a pleasure. Great.

Thank you. That was a fucking solid pick. Thank you so much. I'm envious and yet happy for you. Honestly, the second one I found 11 minutes before you started laughing because we were sitting across from each other, finishing our murders and I heard you start laughing. And then I was just like, oh man, how do I do this and like tell it quickly and actually know what I'm talking about?

So I've actually seen and I'm sure you have to. There's definitely at least one 2020 or 48 hours or something about the Hawks's murder. And you should definitely look into it because it's, I mean, the whole thing is really, really gross, obviously. And really, it's that thing of to launder drug money. They killed, they terribly murdered that couple to launder drug money. It's just this world that makes me want to leave, not leave the house. Yeah.

It's so terrible and inhumane, but it's just, you know, don't trust anybody. We got the solution right here. That's right. Oh, and I just want to tell you one more thing. This is just my favorite Power Rangers related media, piece of media. You got to have one. Right? Which is a picture I found on Tumblr.

I still believe in Tumblr, even though all the porn's been banned and there's a link. It was never about porn, man. No, it's about love and making love. Yeah. Bad cookbook photos from the 60s. Yes. Awesome, hilarious family photos that then become legend because they're real. One of which is this legendary picture of the pink Mighty Morphin Power Ranger kicking

her grandpa in the face. That is classic. Isn't that the best? And beautiful. Oh my God. Everything about, and he's clearly just playing along with her being a Power Ranger. We had that couch in the 80s. I know.

He's so cute. I love this. It's a, I want a shirt of this. It's a grand image, grand. Okay, sorry. I will send this to you, Steven. So this is a murder that turns out is one of my top hometown murders that I completely forgot about.

I love it. So I'm always like, I don't have any good ones or I've done all the good ones. Right. And then I was on the phone with my mom the other night, there was wine happening for both of us. Great. And we were talking about murder, as you do. And she reminded me of this one and I, and I was in, I was 11 years old at the time.

So I, she must have shielded me from it somehow, but I've seen forensic files about it. I must have just blanked on this, but it's totally like happened next door to Irvine where I grew up in Orange County. Amazing. This is the murder of Denise Huber, aka the cold storage killer. Don't know this. I'm sure you will. I'm sure you've seen this forensic file before.

And this is the fucking weirdest part. It takes place in Newport Beach and Prescott, Arizona, just like your fucking story. That's right. And involves a fucking asshole who tries to use his shitty childhood as an excuse for killing someone. I feel like it happens so much. It does. So buckle the fuck up.

Yeah. Because here we go. I got a lot of info from a Ranker article by Phil Gibbons, the forensic files. It's called Frozen in Time. Yes, of course. And there's also a book about this called Cold Storage by John Lasseter. Wow. John Lasseter, the guy from Pixar?

Don Lasseter. Shit. Yikes. Okay. Glad you know who the Pixar head is because I don't. All right. He might not be anymore. I think there's some problems.

Okay, anyway. We will get into it. Show us your taxes. Pay your taxes. Similar but sexual. Great. What's not sexual about taxes? I mean, it's one of the sexier things.

That's why we love accountants so much. That's right. We talk about how sexy and exciting accountants are all the time. Loosen that tie. That's me rewriting history because we've shat on accountants so many times. That's right. Okay. And dentist.

Okay. In June 1991, here we are in Orange County. I'm 11. It doesn't matter. I'm not part of this. I'm 21 in Sacramento and on my 21st birthday, drank at a bar that was a biker bar. And at the end of the night, walked out the door and said, as I said, I don't think I'm that drunk, tripped on my own sandal and fell straight flat onto the ground.

Now. It's your stucco wall story, but mine. The sidewalk snuck up on me. That's right. On my face. Okay. And it was all uphill from there. Yes, it was.

So 23-year-old Denise Hoover, she's bright. It's a fucking, it's a tale that we've heard a million times. She's bright, friendly, young woman. She's fucking got her world ahead of her. She graduated from the University of California Irvine, which is my fucking town with a degree in social sciences and she was just starting her life as a grownup. So of course she lives at home with her lovely parents, Dennis and Ioni Huber. They live in Newport Beach, California, which is an upscale city in Orange County.

And she works part-time, two different jobs so she can afford to move out someday. She's a waitress and a sales assistant at Bloomingdale's, Bloomy's, and she's saving up to afford her own place and also until she could get a job in the field she wanted to work in. So she loves traveling, reading, water skiing. She probably would have contributed a lot to society and it was a wonderful fucking person, beautiful, of course, blue-eyed brunette, her whole fucking life ahead of her. She also loved music.

So on the night of Sunday, June 2, 1991, Denise picks up a friend from Huntington Beach and together they drove to the Los Angeles Forum in Inglewood, let me know that place. Is that the place for, what's the roller skating movie? They film it there. What's the roller skating movie? Just roller skating? You mean Xanadu? Yes.

Oh! That was filmed at the forum? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. I've never been there. Outside of it. Oh.

Okay. Anyways, they go to the forum, it's about 45 minutes away from Orange County, and they go to see Morrissey. Oh. I know. Heartbreaking. Mm-hmm. They're like us.

They drink in the fucking parking lot because they don't have a ton of money. They share a beer inside because they don't have a ton of money. They go to a bar on the way back and around 2 a.m. Denise drops her friend back off at his house and she starts her short drive home. It's like it's from Huntington Beach to Orange County, it's like not even 10 minutes. So shortly after 2 a.m., just minutes from her parents' house and her off-ramp, her car blew a tire on the southbound lane to the 73, which is the Corona Del Mar Freeway. It's like a really small little connector freeway.

Denise pulls over to the side of the freeway. The area is well lit. It's in view of several emergency call boxes that she could have easily walked to and just off the freeway as a residential neighborhood. There's a gas station she could have easily walked to to call for help. Of course, we didn't have cell phones then, so that's the only way to get help. But Denise vanishes. The next morning, Denise's parents worry that their daughter hadn't come home.

Of course, the night before, call her friends. No one's seen her. Her best friend, Tammy, was like, I can't just fucking sit around. So later that night, she just is like, I'm going to drive around and see if I can find her car. Oh. Yeah. And also, this is starting to sound familiar.

I know you know this one. Okay. Poor fucking Tammy. She finds Denise's silver blue Honda on the freeway pulled over with a flat tire where Denise left it about 10 p.m. that night. She finds it. The car is unlocked. Its battery is drained from the emergency blinkers having gone on all night and all day.

Her keys are gone and her purse is missing. There's no signs of blood, no signs of foul play, or any other damage to the car. And also, the flat tire doesn't seem like it was tampered with. It seems like she actually got a flat tire. So police arrive and they don't have a shit ton to work with. They just have an empty car. Police dogs quickly lose her trail and luckily, and we don't hear this a lot, they believed her parents when her parents said she's not someone who just would have fucking left

with someone. Yay. You know? Detectives conduct interviews with everyone in Denise's life, her boyfriend, the dude she went to the Morrissey concert with, people she fucking met at the bar, like all of that shit, and they can't come up with any answers to what had happened to Denise. She just fucking vanished into thin air. So grasping for any break in the case, they did this crazy thing where they staked out

the freeway where her car went missing, took pictures of the license plates, and this is before the internet and shit, ran those plates with the DMVs and sent those people letters saying, were you on this freeway that night? Did you see anything? Wow. I know. That's a great, some kind of strategy. Yeah.

I mean, at least they're doing something. Totally. That they come up with fucking nothing, unfortunately. So Denise's family, they're obviously frantic and kind of Orange County, and this is what my mom was telling me, that she remembers the bumper stickers and the fucking billboard and just people being so worried about this really normal girl who'd just vanished out of thin air. They put up a six by 30 foot banner on the side of an apartment building, like, you know,

the kind that say, if you'd be home, you'd be home now if you lived here. It's that overlooking the spot where her car had been found reading, have you seen Denise? And it has her photo and all this stuff with the phone number for the Costa Mesa Police Department. But you know, nothing comes up. Even psychics are like, we don't know. Her father covers his car with those photos. He says, every time I saw a girl with long brown hair, I'd go back and I had to see her

face and make sure it wasn't Denise. Of course. These poor parents were just frantic. And despite all their efforts in the whole fucking community, including my mom, rallying around trying to find Denise, the trail went cold. So cut to three years later, 1994, when 40-something-year-old Elaine Conalia, she owns a paint manufacturing company with her husband in Phoenix, Arizona. So she's this fucking kind of cool woman and she meets a man selling paint at a swap meet

in Prescott Valley, Arizona. What the fuck, right? That's really weird. So weird. Yeah. So the man's a 30-something-year-old gaunt, bearded dude named John. He just looks like your average creep. Your average like, your average 90s creep.

So many dudes right now. They just have a single tear rolling down their cheek. Who isn't gaunt with a beard in the 2019? Yeah, that's true. But he- Steven. Steven's not gaunt. Happy birthday.

We take it all back. He looks like Ted Kaczynski's son and maybe a little Italian too. Oh, okay. So it's like that kind of gaunt, the like you've been living in a forest with gaunt. So Elaine meets this dude named John and according to Elaine, he's personable, seems intelligent, articulate. He's this fucking normal dude and they met at the swap meet where Elaine and her husband sold paint sometimes and this guy John sold paint as well.

So John tells them, they met him a couple of times, he tells them he had been a painting contractor in California and moved to Arizona for a fresh start and that business hadn't been as good as he'd hoped. So he wanted to sell his surplus paint and his house was nearby, did Elaine and her husband want to come by it and they were like, great, let's do it. So they get in their car and they follow John to his home, which ends up, you know, he's this grubby dude and ends up being this like exclusive country club area, like luxury custom homes, like golf course area.

Whoa. Nice house. Whatever. John leads them, they get to this house, John leads them to the, around the side of the house, there's a driveway at the end of a wooded fence and there, among all these insane amount of paint cans that they go to buy, Elaine sees a 24 foot GMC rider rental moving van that had been backed into the pad and was partially covered by a canvas tarp. Do you remember this?

It's starting to seem familiar. Yes. There's like, okay. So I wrote to Elaine's cautious eye, it was also covered in a million red flags. Yes. I already love Elaine so much. Elaine is nosy as fuck and doesn't mind her own business. Hell, I love her.

Hell yes, Elaine. Do it, Elaine. And to all the Elaine's of the world, we salute you. That's right. My aunt Elaine, what's up? So she notes that in her mind, she's like calculating some shit and she's like, the truck I could tell had been, she could tell had been sitting there for some time. It was yellowing and dusty.

She said she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and at the side of the truck because it just seems so out of place and odd, which is the reason I mentioned that it's a rich community. It's just like, what is this weird truck doing here? Right. The truck had California plates and so assuming the truck had been stolen, Elaine, the busy body that she is and should be, she writes down the license plate number, the rental company's serial number.

Bless her. And everyone, this is like a U-Haul, like a U-Haul truck that you'd rent for like us moving your small apartment, let's say. Yeah. Right? But it's a rider so it's like bright fucking yellow. Yes. So, if she writes such a down, takes it with her, they buy the paint.

This guy's creepy. They get the fuck out of there. She kind of forgets about it until a couple days later when a friend visits their warehouse to purchase some paint and he happens to be a detective. Oh. Yes. Okay. And Elaine tells Detective Stephen Gregory of the Phoenix PD about the strange truck

she had seen in the Prescott County Club tract and gave him the license number along with the serial number and she's like, why don't you check this out, I bet you anything it's stolen. So, he, Detective Gregory calls Rider and is like, you know, do you have any trucks that have been stolen from California? Here's the number of the representatives, like, I don't see anything in my system. And Detective Gregory was like, how about you fucking double check? Thank God.

Really? Turns out he's a great detective. Yeah. Just for that simple reason. So, shortly after the rep calls back and was like, oh shit, you know what? It's been missing from Orange County for six months. Whoa. Yeah.

So, no one at Rider had ever contacted the police about it, even though they knew it was missing. So, it probably would have stayed missing if it weren't for Elaine having been like that. You know what? I don't like it. It makes me feel, well, because here's the thing though, she got a gut reaction. Yeah. She trusted her intuition.

Your hair, the hair on the back of your neck stands up for a reason. That's right. It's an honor that, and follow it, I think you prove, it will be proven that you're right. And even if you're wrong, no harm. Who cares? There's no harm. Yeah.

You didn't do anything? You just wanted to check something. You should be nosy. It's fine. It's fine. Don't mind your own business. That's when people get fucking hurt. That's right.

Stop being so goddamn selfish, Elaine. No, Elaine's good. No, I mean, not Elaine. Okay, so the rental company then reports the vehicle stolen to the Orange County Sheriff's Department so that the truck can now be searched. Nice. So they're like, great, let's fucking do this. So in the morning of July 13th, 1994, like right after they find out that it's been stolen,

they just fucking get up in there. Deputy Joe DiGiacoma goes to the house, checks out the rider truck, and then he's like, this is fucking weird. There's the thick electrical extension cord that's coming from the locked back door that slides down all heavy. There's an extension cord coming from that locked back door. It goes over the fence and into the neighbor's yard and is plugged in there. What?

Right. And he's like, oh, great, this is a fucking meth lab. Oh, right. So he contacts the narcotics team of Prescott. They get there and they're like, let's fucking do this. This is breaking bad. It's not made yet though. They cut the lock.

A fucking locksmith has the most fun day of his life. Breaks that lock. They go into the truck and in the front, there's like paint cans and just a bunch of bullshit. Then they go towards the rear of the cab. What do they call like the truck thing? It's not a pickup truck. It's like a truck. Right, because that would be a truck bed.

Right. But it would just be the back of the container. Yes. As a truck container. Thank you. Sure. It's not accurate, but I like to participate. Thank you.

You're welcome. When they go back there, they see a large white rectangular chest freezer. The switch for the freezer is in the on position. So the freezer had been running constantly, hence the electrical cord. The freezer is also locked and a dozen heavy masking tape pieces had been placed around the way to keep it double time closed. I don't know. So locksmith cuts that one again.

And yeah, immediately when it opens, the officers smell a horrible scent. And inside, they could see frost on the walls showing that it had been there for a long time and a large object completely covered with black plastic garbage bags at the bottom. One of the officers reaches in to touch it and says, I feel an arm. Yeah. And immediately they close the freezer and call the homicide unit. Don't fucking touch a thing. Right.

Which is great. Yeah. The freezer is taken to the medical examiner, Dr. Anne of Bullcults. Buckles. Bushelts. That just became a moment to yourself. Georgia. Georgia.

The freezer is taken to the medical examiner, Dr. Anne Bushelts, who is able to identify the body. And three years after her mysterious disappearance from the site of an Orange County freeway, Denise Huber has been found. Oh my God. I fucking know. Do you remember this at all? Yes.

Okay. I remember seeing it on one of those shows. Yeah. On like American Justice or something. Yeah. Like back then he was even on America's Most Wanted. Yeah, I bet. You know.

Let's talk about this fucking dude, John, who owns this truck in this house, the paint guy. John Fomilaro is born in Long Island in June 1957, youngest of three children. Eventually they moved to Santa Ana, California. So this is all about John's mother, Anna. She's the domineering force of the fucking family. He has two siblings and she just like dominates them. She's super fucking religious.

She's verbally abusive and she controls everything about their lives, doesn't let them play with any kids, doesn't let any kids come over. And she is super strict, whatever. No excuse for murder. Right. I'm just telling everyone a story. It's the background. Yeah.

So Anna, her yard is super fucking clean and orderly and lovely, but inside she's a hoarder. Like a legit hoarder. Oh. Yeah. She has newspapers, magazines, food, laundry, just boxes of shit. She wouldn't let her kids throw anything away unless they showed it to her first. Yeah. Just so much, it stresses me out so much because I feel like I have the capacity to be a hoarder

inside of me because I get it. Yeah. There's just this weird of, what if, what if, I might need it. I can't let go of it. Everything, because I have certain things that I'm like that with, but like plastic bags, I'm like, what if I use it again? It's just the, yeah, but it's like, almost like you just take that mentality about the plastic bags and then you just spread the logic around to everything else, which is

crazy obviously, but there's, it's so much unresolved and then having a perfect front yard. Yeah. That's that whole thing. That's like, I don't want anyone to know this shit. Yeah. Well, my grandma fucking washed tin foil and reused it, but she went through the depression and also escaping Russia.

Yeah. No, no, that's good. That's almost good sense. Yeah. You're just like, I'm saving this string. I don't give a shit. We don't know what's going to happen. I just don't like clutter.

Right. Well, it feels so much better when you get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I told you the first time I watched a hoarder's marathon and then got up and immediately cleaned out the closet in the room that I was watching it because it freaked me out so bad. Nothing feels better than that.

Yeah. And this Anna also hoarded silver because she was fiercely anti-communism and thought that the family needed to hoard food and silver to survive a possible Russian invasion. So she wasn't fucking doing the best she could in her head. Well, and it's just that thing of fear dominating your life in that way where you are preparing for an eventuality that will never come and you're basically shutting down your life and of giving this fear all of this power. Yeah.

You're talking about me right now. Well, I'm talking about everybody. Yeah. This is what we're all facing and dealing with constantly. You know, my dad gave me silver for my and Vince's wedding because when the end days come. You'll have something to barter with? Yeah.

Paper money's not going to matter. You need to. Barter. It's just, yeah. I get this a little bit. Sure. I get this a little bit to this extreme, obviously. Yeah.

I actually like my dad. No. Well, and also it's like, what if he's right? Yeah. What if he's right? That's my problem. Like, what if it's true? What if I will fucking get in a car accident?

Like, but you can't live your life in what if? Well, because when you do that, what you're doing, I had a whole conversation with my therapist about this today, but it was instead of about like future apocalypses or whatever. It's about relationships. Yeah. When I had a long time had this idea of here's how I'm not going to get hurt again. Yeah. I'm going to date people that aren't that thrilling.

And that way, when the bad part comes, I won't care that much. It's safe. And the problem is, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't. Because you're going to get hurt either way. You cannot prevent it. And when you like underdeal yourself the way I was doing for so long, then you don't get any of the good part and you get the bad part.

But you're not going, you might not be hurt either way. You could bet on someone who turns out to be fucking great and who sees through all your bullshit and is like, shut up. Yes. I'm talking about Vince. And me. And me being like, well, yeah, but you're right. I mean, like it's that thing where when we decide what the future looks like and it's

only bad, and then we start preparing for that future, then we start living for a future like that. And we prove ourselves right. And we're like, see, but really we just fucking did it to ourselves. Yeah. And it's sad. Yeah. We're working on it.

We're working on it. Work on it. Work on it. Work on it, Karen. Georgia. Get rid of your silver. Okay. Um, so John isn't violent as a child, but he has these crazy mood swings, hyperactivity

to depression. It sounds like bipolar. I'm not a doctor. What? I know. You told me when we started this. I meant to tell you, I got in my hippo. Why are you wearing that white coat on the side?

Why do you have a stethoscope? Why do you keep taking my balls? What? Why do you keep taking my balls? That's not what I heard. Okay. By what? I don't know.

Nothing. Okay. It's even happy birthday though. Seriously. Seriously. It's your best birthday ever. You're welcome. We got you a Power Rangers costume.

Go Power Rangers. Go. Okay. Um, whatever. This all this shit. They call him, they call him names. He's like, you know, life is hard. Life's hard.

That's all this shit. And let's talk about his mom though still. She's fucking, she's, she bathes them into their preteens years. But pardon? Herse. Go back please. Including her son, her two sons. She bathes them in newspapers.

So. That's not clean. No, it isn't. That's the problem with a hoarder bathing you. Right. They're just like, here's this old sandwich from three months ago scrubbing under your armpits. Well, she scrubbed their junk really hard.

No, no. Until they were like in like preteen teenagers. That's straight out of V.C. Andrews. Exactly. Oh no. I'm trying to hit home that this shit's fucking. That is bad. There's some shit going on.

Okay. Um, she, her fucking breath change, her brother later, his brother later says her breath changed when she would be scrubbing their junk. And they'd be like, this is your special area and it needs to be cleaned correctly. So she'd do it for them. No, no, no, no. Don't let anyone touch your junk. But that happened to her obviously, something along those lines.

And so she was really big about like, you can't even watch kissing, no dating, all this bullshit that we've heard a million times. She would, sorry, that's not funny. She would burst into their rooms at night to make sure they weren't masturbating when they were teenagers. Like it just wasn't a way, it wasn't a healthy way to grow up and grow your brain parts. Bad stuff. Um, and so this culminates in 1980, Anna runs for a seat on the Santa Anna City Council

campaigning against- Sorry, the hoarder? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Well, she's like, she's campaigning against abortion, pornography and a local adult theater. So she's got this fucking gusto to change. She's fired up.

Yeah. All these sinners and shit. And then it's like, we're moving up to two baths a day, everybody. Yeah. It's getting serious. Mm-hmm. Okay. So she's got the candidacy, her older son, John's big brother, Warren, he's now a chiropractor.

He's arrested from a lasting two 10-year-old patients and we're having unlawful intercourse, which come on, with a 17-year-old girl. Oh, man. Yeah. Warren's convicted and he's committed to a state hospital as a mentally disordered sex offender. Mm-hmm. That's what they call him.

And to get away from the embarrassment, that's when the parents moved to Prescott, Arizona. Yeah. Okay. Can I do an aside of a quick hometown? Please. Just a little bits of it. That, because I always look it up on the, okay. Yeah.

To cross-reference it? Yeah. Yeah. And this is sticking with Anna. Hello. Karen, Georgia, Stephen and Pat cohorts. I was recently diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and I found MFM to be an excellent way to distract myself and keep my blood pressure down as I await my upcoming surgery.

Wow. In 2002, I was a first semester nursing student and it was assigned to the local VA hospital for clinicals. On one of my earliest clinical days, I was walking down the hall when a little old lady came out of a patient room and asked me if I could help, if I could come in and help her husband. Quick description of the little old lady, kind of small and with a toothy fake smile plastic on her face and eyes that were simultaneously too bright and dead inside.

Oh. Also, she seemed hella innocuous but she was actually venomous as fuck. I politely informed her that I was a nursing student and that I would get someone who knew what they were doing to come help her. I went and found the staff nurse that I was assigned to told her about the woman's request and the nurse immediately stopped what she was doing, looked me square in the eyes and said, never go into that room without a staff member. Whoa.

She explained the woman who flagged me down had a history of tricking nursing students into coming into the room, having them do some innocuous task and then fucking with her husband's dressings, IV, catheter, bedding, whatever and blaming it on the nursing student. Oh. I'm talking about Anna if you don't know this already. Okay. I kind of caught on. Yeah.

Okay. I don't think you're stupid. It was a bit confrontational the way you said that. Which part? I'm talking about Anna. Yeah. As my supervising nurse went to see if the patient actually needed anything, she whispered to me and their son is a serial killer, which ended up not being true but a killer.

Yes. I heard a lot of stories about her and her incessant sabotage, mental torture of staff. She would pocket her husband's meds and then accuse the staff of not providing them. She would remove his catheter and blame staff for his wet sheets. The woman's mind games resulted in a lot of people quitting and she was at one point refused access to the property after she brought a gun on campus. What? Little old lady following a verbal altercation with some of the nursing staff.

Dang it. And it says, stay sexy, don't get murdered and if you have a family history of aneurysms, go get yourself checked out. Smart. And I'm not going to say her name because of hippo reasons and I don't want her to get in trouble. That's right. But.

And you're a hip act. Thank you. You know, your name. That is, it's because it's almost like it's, you know, like we're saying, like the hoarding thing is like tip of the iceberg, clearly it's about other things than as you're talking about the other things. And it's like, oh man, it is way worse. It's way worse.

And then it's like something like that where, where was the husband through all of the other stuff? The thing, he was that meek, let her do whatever she wanted. She was all her. It was all her. They were super religious. So he was like, it's God's fuck, whatever she's saying is God's will and so like back her up.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. You know, it's one of those situations that just sucks. So, so they went to Prescott, Arizona, the parents to skid out a lot of that massive child molestation shit. Right. John stayed in Orange County and attended various colleges.

He studied some shit. He once saved a woman who was being assaulted at Knife Point at a bus stop, which to me is so weird. Yeah. So obviously he, he killed Denise, but yet he also had this like hero complex and saved this woman at who assailant was attacking her with a knife. He tackles the assailant, takes away the knife, pins him to the ground until the police arrived. Like he was also saving, there's just, it's just this weird brain.

Yeah. So he gets into the house painting business, he hires a team of painters and moves his business into a warehouse in Laguna Hills, California, which is like 20 minutes from Newport Beach. Okay. Several, he has several girlfriends over the years and he has friends. They all say he has a good sense of humor. They describe him as fun, intelligent, nice, respectful, considerate and polite, but they

also describe him as secretive, manipulative and a smooth talker. It's like, fuck and pick one. Yeah. Really? Well, it can be both. Because it's that thing where like the fun times are fun. It's a good thing to remember. It's easy to have fun.

It's easy to have fun. But then when the shit goes down and someone suddenly is just gaslighting you for reasons that you don't understand, that's when it's like, yeah, the fun, it doesn't counterbalance. It has to be as close to 100% as possible. You want someone who's reliable, I think is what the secret is. Yeah. Consistent. Consistent.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My father had been hospitalized, like our fucking hometown just told us. So he moves next door to his parents, where he parks the 24-foot rider truck that he had brought with him from Orange County, where it sat with an electrical cord plugged into

next door into his parents' house, remember it was over the neighbor, until fucking Elaine comes along and is like, not today, motherfucker. I don't like this. I don't like this. And red flags. So John- Some might argue she was sent by God. That's right. I think Denise's parents say that later.

That's right. So John, he's a formalero, he's 34 years old, he's arrested, obviously. They search his house and it turns out he's a hoarder too now, saved everything in his life and in a box labeled Christmas, fucking handwritten. And if you watch the Friends or Files episode, you can see a lot of cool photos and shit of obviously all this stuff. All that evidence. And in the Christmas box, they find a lot of incriminating items that John couldn't

part with as a hoarder. So black garbage bags that are similar to the ones that Denise was wrapped in in the freezer, they found Denise's wallet, purse, everything that would have, they found her fucking driver's licenses in there, her car keys, the outfit she was wearing the night of her disappearance, this poor baby girl. And then another box contained a bloodstained hammer and basically the outfit that John probably was wearing that night covered in blood, like he couldn't get rid of it. Which I don't, like everyone talks about maybe, you know, the killers want trophies

and shit, but the hoarding part I think is more likely than him wanting a trophy. Yeah. He couldn't. Right. Like throwing something away was threatening. Yeah. He drove this thing from California to, or like Arizona, he could have buried this stuff in the desert.

Right. He didn't. He didn't want to keep it. Yeah. Yeah. So of course that blood ends up being Denise's blood. They find a receipt from a Montgomery ward for a freezer. That's the same model, obviously.

The freezer is delivered to his Laguna Hills storage unit only nine days after Denise Huber's disappearance. And when an Orange County criminologist, they go, they perform what forensic files wouldn't exist without. Yeah. Luminol test. Yes. So, on the floor and of course it's blood and the fucking people who, I, this is one

of the parts I'll never forget, the people who had taken over the storage unit later were like, oh, we thought it was just a stain and we hosed it down. Never hosed down a stain. No. No. I mean, what? Yeah. So.

Storage units. I know. So creepy. So creepy. They call it a warehouse, but it's clearly a fucking storage unit. And so, because since it was determined that Denise was murdered in that storage unit, John's extradited back to Orange County for trial. So he's extradited back to California for trial.

So John Fomalero immediately, the detective say that he's just as cool as a fucking cucumber, doesn't react or anything immediately. He's like, I want an attorney, doesn't say a thing ever about it. And he refuses to testify, pleads not guilty. So the prosecutors could only speculate what happened to Denise, which is that her tire did blow out normally. And she probably got out of her car, started walking towards a call box. And as John Fomalero drove by, he saw her on the side of the road, pulls over.

It's possible he was out looking for a victim since it was so late in the night, but we don't know. It might just be fucking awful time and place. And there's no blood near the car. So they assume and Denise had no defensive wounds, so it's theorized that she might have initially gotten into his car willingly to get help. But when they searched his house, they found two sheriff's deputies uniforms in his possession. So it's probable.

And because this is my favorite murder, we can say definitely fact that he was posing as a cop. That would make so much more sense because why would she get into a strange man's car when the call box is right there? You wouldn't, it would be like, what do you want me to drive you down to the gas station that you can see? Right. Or like, just take me to my parents' house.

They'll help me. Cause she was literally like, I think the off ramp for her parents' house was right there. So just drop me off at my parents' house, they'll come get, like my dad can change a tire or whatever. Sorry, that was sexist. My parents can change a tire or whatever. They theorized that when she was in the car, cause he was driving in it, he immediately was driving where he shouldn't have been driving.

So he probably rendered her unconscious pretty immediately. And then based on the autopsy, he duct taped her face and eyes and handcuffed her and brought her to a storage warehouse. And then because they had all her clothes that he kept, they saw that there were these weird scuff marks on the back of her heels that indicated that he had dragged her from the car to the warehouse, which is so fucking awful. Once there, John Fomalaro raped Denise and then placed three white plastic bags around her head, cinched them, and then took what medical examiners later surmised to be a 14

inch iron nail puller that was found in his home and hit her over the head at least 31 separate times. Oh my God. Yeah. Based on the fact that there was no external trauma and no signs of defensive wounds, it's thought that she was most likely unconscious when she was killed, which like. All favor? Yeah.

A little bit, yes. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. So during the trial, all this other corroborating shit came around, like two of his exes came forward and was like, there were these weird moments where he handcuffed me against my will and like humiliated me and he was violent in these weird little times, but both of them

had gotten back together with him afterwards, had freaked out, was like, fuck you and left. And then he fucking convinced them that they just didn't understand the situation, that he was like, no, that's, I thought we were playing, I didn't, you, I didn't mean it like that and convinced these women that, which like they knew that it wasn't right. And so they broke up with him and left. He's a psychopath. He's a fucking psychopath. He knows what to say.

He knows how to talk to people. He knows how to be like, the friends were saying, charming, casual, fun, whatever. Exactly. Yes. It's terrifying. Also, it came out that possibly Warren had also molested John as a child, you know, Denise's murder was determined to be an incredibly violent and brutal assault. And for it, John Fomalero was found guilty and received the death penalty.

Whoa. Yeah. But of course, it's California, well, not overturned. California has a moratorium on the death penalty. And so Dennis and Ioni, the parents of Denise say that they may never see their daughters killer put to death, but they've made peace with it. Because we have this whole, we're like a symbolic death penalty state, meaning you can be on death row, but we're probably never going to kill you.

But you'll never get out also. Right. Okay. Yes. Well, that's important. 100%. Yeah. I hope.

Her dad said that the wound never heals. You just learn how to deal with it. As a side note, identification and other materials associated with other women were found during the search of his house. Some of them were like cleared and they're alive and fine. And some have never been identified. So it leaves the possibility open that John Fomalero murdered other women, but they still don't know.

It's the cases still open in Arizona. Because they always say that, like especially that age, you don't start midlife and you don't start with an intensely brutal murder with potentially posing as a cop and all that. That's not a first off. Yeah. That's a long pattern. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a long held developing pattern. Murder squad? Can we get on this? If I mean for real. So despite all his fucking stupid idiot appeals, he remains on death row in San Quentin. So Elaine, Kenalia, our friend Elaine, our best friend, she and after he was caught, she spoke with Denise's parents and she told them how sorry she was.

And they told her that it was God's will that she helped them find her last child. Yes. And they were like, you know, connecting and shit. Elaine told them that she had felt this really weird feeling while she was at the house and that she felt a strong pull coming from this truck. And her parents are like, this is, it was like intervention. It was supposed to fucking happen. Yes.

Denise Huber was buried in August of 1994 next to her grandparents in South Dakota. Her 200 family members and friends attended her services, after which dozens of brightly colored balloons were released in Denise's memory. And the inscription on Denise Huber's headstone reads, you will always be loved. And that's the story of the murder of Denise Huber. Man. My fucking hometown murder. And such a good, like, oh my God, there's so many elements to that.

You know, yeah. That's such a good story. It's so weird because I remember like bits of this and that like, I remember seeing, I think on like the forensic files or one of these shows, like a row of specific storage unit doors that look really specific to Orange County because we have these like wide swaths of like fucking weird storage and shit. And every time I drive by one now, I think of like someone was murdered in one of these in one of these stories.

But like it never, it never like came to me that it was this murder. Yeah. So now I have this like connection to it. Unbelievable. Fuck. Yeah. I remember, I feel like the first thing that seemed familiar was the stretch of road that she got the flat tire on that was like isolated but not, it wasn't isolated, but it was this

kind of like she was stuck in this patch of road. Yeah. It was definitely like, I didn't drive down that freeway, but the freeway that's like next to it, the 55 was really similar. It was just this short freeway that got you from Newport to Costa Mesa or whatever. It was like not a lot of traffic during the day, let alone at two in the morning. So I could see it being, it feels isolated even though you're surrounded in Orange County. There's never any like, you're never isolated in Orange County.

Right. But it does feel that way. Yeah. Man. I know. And just all that. Yeah. It's very fateful and you know, Elaine getting her nose in there and just being like, I don't

like the way this looks and I want someone to do something about it. And then that detective who was like, I'm going to do something about it. Yeah. I take you seriously. Yeah. And I'm going to double down and I'm going to fucking make sure they check. Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah. And you know, good for them. And also, I think I've heard a long time ago that when you get a flat tire, and I know we have cell phones now, so it's different, but when you get a flat tire, drive off the freeway, even if you fuck up your rim, it's important to get to like a well lit gas station or something and not pull over on the side of the road. Yes. Not that it's her fucking fault, obviously.

Of course not. But that's what we have. But when you don't know that, like, yeah, you can drive on rims for a while. Yeah. Obviously, it'll fuck your rim up. But you can drive on a flat for a while. Yeah. You can drive on a rim.

There's an amazing story in the Tales from the Tour Bus. Yeah. And I think, was it Jerry Lee Lewis? They drove on rims because they didn't want to miss a show. Oh my God. And when they pulled up in, I'm pretty sure it was Chicago, the back of the car was on fire because they had driven for so long on the rims. Don't do that.

I'm going to look it up. Yeah. Don't do that for sure. But what I'm saying is that basically you can go for much further than you think. Right. Get off the freeway. I mean, first of all, for fucking safety, there's cars zipping by. Yes.

It's scary and dangerous. But also, yeah, you want to make sure there's people around you. Get to a gas station. Get to a well lit place. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Fucking hooray. Let's fucking hooray this shit because we need it. I wanted to fucking hooray this for three days because I just found, so, um, my sister is best friend, Adrienne. I'll never not describe her that way. It's how I know her.

So it's how you know her. Big podcast person herself. So what she asked me, um, uh, oh, first of all, she called me. Now these are my, my sister and her best friend are the two, uh, people I spent the most time with on all of my life since I was 10. And they were the most bored, irritated older sisters. They never were interested in anything I had to say. I would always try to hang out with them.

They were always trying to get me to leave the room. Adrienne wasn't like that. My sister was two years younger, two years younger. And so they were the ones that were like, here's how you can hang out in my room. This is my sister's idea. You have to make up a lip sync to Papin and Tars get nervous or would have some song. They would, they would tell me what I had to do. Then I would spend an hour in my room making up a thing and then I'd have to go in and

do it. It's like you're being hazed constantly. Yes. But it's like, we're still deciding whether or not you can. The answer was always no at the end and I would just go back and like try it again. So they basically trained me for show business. Performance. Yes.

Exactly. They did. But they also trained you for the heartbreak of it too. Cause you're just used to hearing no. No was like, okay, I'm just going to try again. That's great. Yeah. So I owe them my career.

So anyway, and they both have good taste. I trust them. So I probably wasn't giving that lip sync performance my all and I should have used a chair. And sat backwards on it. So anyway, um, so, and Adrienne's the one that like when we obviously started this podcast called me and was like, what are you doing, Richard Mears? And I was like, oh my God, you're into this show. She's been in it and part of it from the beginning is totally.

So, um, I recommended to her the teachers pet podcast that we have become obsessed with and she, when I saw her this weekend, had just finished it. And then she goes, have you listened to who the hell is a Hamish? And I was like, I don't know, you're talking about, she goes, oh, that was the podcast that started when the last episode of teachers pet ended. It's another podcast by the Australian, the newspaper. And it is so good. It's about this fucking con man named Hamish.

He's got a million last names and his path of destruction is un fucking believable. I am here for this. I recommend it. It's, first of all, and I, we've said this before with teachers pet, I want to listen to Australian people talk all the time. They are super intelligent. They use very big words. They clearly have a good educational system there.

They're great at expressing themselves. I don't know what it is. And it's cute. And it's, the phrases are funny too. So it's like, oh, that's cute. Like they call it this, these things. And it all goes up at the end. Right.

I'm, I know I do New Zealand sometimes when I should be doing it. They call, they call things stuff that we think is funny and weird, so it's entertaining too. Yes. They're, yeah. Their slang is good. Yes. But then also just their ability to be interviewed.

It's like they're all kind of podcast ready. Casual and not nervous. Yeah. Not nervous, very earnest, intelligent. So it's just person after person who has come up against this con man who has conned multi-million dollars out of people over years and has never like, has never gotten caught until recently. Oh my God.

I have to hear it. I need to learn. Do I, will I learn how to spot a con man and not get, get, get? Yes. Well, because what it is, is you have to, what I think the lesson is, is you can't spot a con man. Right. Because they are masters at camouflage.

I don't like it. So, but there are things, it's, you can spot a compulsive liar. And that's people like write off and joke about compulsive liars, but that is one of like the foundational things of people who don't have consciences about how they affect other people. Yeah. Don't care. They don't care what your, what your reaction to their story is.

They're going to tell you because in their mind, here's how it's going to go and it's going to be believed. Yes. And so you're impressed. I don't think I've ever met a compulsive liar before. They're pretty amazing. Like a real one. Yeah.

And it's sad. Or maybe they were just so fucking good. No, but like one of those like that's, there's no way that happened. Right. Where it's the thing of if you say, I went skiing this weekend, they said, this is an example they gave. They, he goes, well, I was actually a ski champion and they, the people that used to work with him because he started off as like a commodity trader or whatever, they just

would joke about him because no matter what you said, he would come back with a bigger thing. Okay. I do know someone a friend dated who did that all the time. Yeah. And I think there's pieces like that that you put together. There's also like big stories and there's, they, they try to get you. When you first meet, they try to get you with sympathy.

So they'll come in, if I was an orphan, my parents were killed at this age, I've been through this. I've been through that. And then suddenly, especially with women, you have all this empathy and you're kind of have that look of always been through so much. So when he's lying to you or when he gets caught, because you know, the logic behind always suffered so much, whatever. It's amazing.

So anyway, I recommend. It's called again. To the hell is Hamish and it is, I think it's eight, eight episodes altogether. It's so good. And I just, the, the Australian newspaper is like killing it in the podcast, Rain Eyed. They're just so good at it. I'm so excited because I just finished, I've been watching, no, listened in a week to a podcast too.

Let's, let's have it be my fucking, all right. Which one is it? I'm stealing it from you. Okay. Do it. That I am so bummed is over. And there was this moment where I was like, and why do I want to clean the house so bad? I know it because I want to listen to this fucking podcast.

It's, I think a lot of people listen to it, but it's called the root of evil or just root of evil. And it's the one that, you know, the TNT thing we just did. I am the night. I am the night. So the two of the granddaughters of George Hodel, yes, the fucking, I believe fucking Black Dahlia murderer slash piece of fucking shit, like rapist, they narrate his life and all the horrible things he did.

And their mother is Fauna, the girl who didn't know that she was, it's just this insane fucking family story. If you think your family story is bad, listen to this. It's worse. And it's just really well done because it's all family and the girl, the, the women who are doing the interviews, it's their family. It means a lot to them. They have so much heart and they care.

And it's, it's just an incredible story of survival and, you know, these, this, this beautiful story that can come out of it, even though it's awful. Yeah. I do hope, but it's also like devastating and I cried in the shower recently. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what, I feel like that's, so that's the true crime experience. Yeah. Yeah.

So root of evil, who the hell is Hamish? Yeah. I had one other thing. I had, oh, I went and saw my friend Crystal Langham do a pole dance competition. She started pole dancing like six months ago and to make herself learn it and to be good at it. She signed up for a competition that was like four months away, which I think is great. It's very smart.

Yeah. And, but she's been stressing about it. It's been, it's awful. And she went and got fucking first place. That's amazing. And she, and I went on Sunday. She fucking killed it. This whole pole dancing community is a really beautiful fucking thing that I didn't really

know existed. Yeah. If you were looking to dance and do stuff, go learn a pole dance. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. It was inspiring. Congratulations, Crystal.

Yeah. Congratulations, Crystal. It was also inspiring to me. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Because it's very physical and that's really cool. Yeah. So, I think I'm going to find you out for pole dance competition in four months.

Yeah, no. No. No. Okay, great. No. You sure? Yeah. But, but if you sign me up for something in swimming.

Oh, okay. How about, how about, what if you become a, um, yep, synchronized swimmer? Yes. Well, I already, you know, I think I've bragged about my cousins, Mary, Kate and Eileen. Yeah. Who were on the San Francisco Marionettes, which was a competitive synchronized swimming team. Erin.

And we used to go watch them like sitting in the fog in like the mission, watching them practice with their nose clips and they're like, we got taught to do the thing where you, you are laying on the water, then you go down and you just leave your legs up and you go down like an L shape so that you're down, you're going down straight, your upper body is going down straight and then you flip one leg up and then the second and you drill down. Yes. We got, they, my, Eileen taught us for like an entire summer, what that like basically combination so hard, it's amazing, the whole time underneath the water, you're like doing

like goldfish arms. I'm going to be on the sidelines with a Mai Tai going, Karen, you're killing it. What's your activity? You're doing your Mai Tai. Are you, what about pole dancing? No, I'm not doing that. Are you kidding me? I would, I was inspired to do something.

Not that. There's no fucking way. Just to do a thing eventually. Yeah. Do a thing that you want to try and give yourself a challenge and I promise to be there on the sidelines with a Mai Tai, cheering you on. Well, I hope you rise to that challenge and I hope that dream comes true for you. That's my dream.

That's it? That's it? I think that's it. Gosh guys, thanks for listening. Guys, we appreciate your ears and your hearts. We do. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you to Steven and his birthday. Happy birthday to Steven. Happy birthday Steven. This, we love you. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.

Bye. Bye. Bye.