My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 212 - Hot Money
Episode Date: March 5, 2020Karen and Georgia cover astronaut Sally Ride, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and the Corpsewood Manor murders. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy N...otice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to my favorite murder. The podcast. What more do you want?
That's Karen Calguera. That's Georgia Heartstark. Now what more do you want?
What more do you want? Because we just gave you more, which is the introduction of our needs.
Oh, a whole hour and 45 minutes of utter nonsense? Fine. Easy enough. We'll just start talking.
Here we go. Oh, your boyfriend wants you to turn it off too bad. Put your headphones in and ignore
that creeper. Right? Absolutely. What's going on? I don't think anything.
I have anything. I have not much. Oh, we have a merch sale going on and we also excited to say
that we found out that so we had for sale that my favorite murder, black and white pin,
an animal pin that we were selling and we sold out of it and all the proceeds were going to go
to rain, rape, abuse and incest national network. Right. And so we sold out of the pins and we are
donating 10 grand to rain. Rain gets 10 grand from you guys because you guys played ball
with this pin idea. Thank you so much. We're so excited to be putting your money where we want
to put it. Where our mouths are. That's right. And so we're going to get a whole new batch in
stock and then we're going to pick another really worthy cause and we're going to have all the proceeds
of the next sale go to that. So we're going to keep doing it. So keep adding that my favorite
murder, black and white pin to your Yeti truther shirt or whatever. Whatever you so choose your
dog collar with a thing on it. Right. I can't remember what the dog collars look like. And
we'll give all the proceeds to a worthy cause. That's right. So that's exciting.
Go to myfavoritmurder.com to talk about it. To talk about it. No, you can't talk at your computer.
Get on your CB, but sit in front of your computer. So you can get. Okay. I feel like we talked about
the center season one when it was Jessica Biel as the star. She is now still the, I believe one of
the executive producers, but it is now season three of the center. The great Bill Pullman is
still the detectives. Still being the creepiest creep. He has, he has got lower back problems
that are, that's impeding his ability to walk around freely. And it is the most amazing acting.
A person that's, he's like, I'm a beleaguered, of course, detective.
But he's also such an awkward weirdo in it. It's so, it's so charming, but also in real life. I
feel like I'd be like, I don't want you detecting my fucking shit. Are you seriously? I'd be like,
excuse me, could you detect over here in my, in my Boudoir? I love his thing. It's like,
he's damaged and he's hurt, but he's also noble and he's trying to fix something. Anyway,
this season, season three, starring Matt Bomer, who you know personally, Georgia,
from the Magic Mike series is stripping. He was, at least in the Magic Mike part two.
He's got that chisel jaw thing going for him. Matt Bomer is, Matt Bomer is so good looking,
he looks surprised at how good looking he is. I bet he is so good looking that people are like,
we can't give you like certain roles because nobody looks like you. Yeah. It's, I'm, I started
having a hard time with this one. And then I went, this guy is such a good actor. He's overcoming
his own face, which it looks like a poster for a, like a diamond company. Your unfortunate,
beautiful face. Your face that would stand in the way of most acting, but you're good at it enough
and clearly have adapted in your life. Yes. Where your beautiful face isn't standing in the way,
but also is adding to what a creep you are. Because also how amazingly creepy is Christmasina.
Yeah. Who plays the, oh, he is such a good creep. God, he, and also he wasn't really like that.
Well, he was on the Mindy project. Oh, that's it. And he's been on a ton of stuff. And he's
usually the like, hunky kind of the guy girls like. And then this thing reminds me of a Zachary
Quinqua. Pinto? Yes. Are you French? I was like, was it pinto beans or quinoa? I couldn't remember.
My claim to fame is that one time in the early 2000s, I got to go, we went on a road trip with
Zachary Quinto because we went to San Francisco for the weekend and Mary Lynn was on 24 with him.
So he came with us and we had a whole weekend. It was, he was the best. Anyway, all that aside.
Oh yeah. So Christmasina, the first moment he's on screen, like a door opens and he's
standing there. And I was like, I got to chill just by how he was like, his. Dead eyes. Yes,
he was like, like such a good villain. Yeah. It's, it's so impressive. Anyway, I feel like it's like
very, no one's talking about it's a little bit unsung where it's like the center delivers every
season. I'm holding hands with it. I'm caressing. It's, it's a beautiful unfortunate face.
It has, I wrote down your unfortunate beautiful face that has to be the episode name. Okay.
Okay. I mean, I don't like deciding this early. I know. And I don't want to take away from Stephen
because Stephen writes down so many great ideas. It's Stephen's passion to read us his list of
ideas at the end of the show. And then we're like, when did we fucking say that? What's that about?
What? If I was Stephen, I would start adding in random shit that we never said where it's like
two burritos lying side to side. I started listening for like three years too late,
but I started listening to the podcast, Ear Hustle. Yes. Holy crap. I mean, I knew it would be.
It's incredible. I didn't think it would be good. Now I know it's good because I'm listening. It's
just really good. Yes. And it's, it's basically daily realities inside prison. And it's just what
prison life is like. And I found out ear hustle means eavesdropping. So just like talking shit
and eavesdropping and stuff. It's really good. Also, I think, you know, podcasting is, we talk
about this a lot, but it's so intimate. It's so personal. You're just on, or at least we are,
just on Mike, like blah, blah, blah. Here's what we think about. Here's what we care about.
What a fascinating thing to instead of always talking about people in this weird kind of
objective, like distant way, people in jail who, for whatever reason, they get to tell their own
story. Yeah. It's really cool and empowering and great. Yeah. And even the mundane stuff that
they talk about, which isn't mundane, you know, the less like, here's my story and more like,
here's how you get a cellmate in prison. And this is what it's like. And the whole episodes
about that. And it's like, just fascinating. Yes. I really like it. It's very cool. It's very
humanizing and very like, you know, you want to, that's what all this, that's why all this is so
awesome is because it's like, then you hear that story. And then you're like, yeah, you don't look
at things the same way and people the same way. Totally. Very cool. You don't judge people as
much. You can judge them a little. I mean, like, not everyone. Look, it's hard to refrain from
judgment of ourselves, of those around others, of others. Shit. Oh, okay. We have to do exactly
right corner. Yes. Our podcast network. We have a couple announcements. This week's murder squad
guest is none other than our very best friend, Henry Zabrowski from last podcast on the left.
The greatest freaking adore. The greatest man. Such a great man. So that's on. They're talking
about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Monday, March 2nd. So that's up. This podcast will kill you
just released a new episode about hepatitis C. Amazing. Those ladies are killing it. And just
so you know, and if you don't know already now, you know, there, the one of the last ones they did
was all about the coronavirus. So you have, if you're nervous and you want to really know what's
going on, they broke it down. So what side of the face mask are you on? Oh, I'm in the inside of
my house side of the face mask. Okay. Are you hand shaking? Yes. Oh, so you don't care? I handshake,
then I give a kiss on the mouth. Then I suck on your ear lobe lightly, just so you remember the
exchange. While you die and I live, because I'm taking in all bacteria, my immune system can
fight everything. Okay, you're getting little bits of it. Yep. Here and there. We used to you.
I get gas, and then I run my finger along the top of the gas nozzle. Please don't say what you're
going to say. Please don't say lick your finger. You're going to go with that lick and doorknob and
shit. Sure. Just for the love of the game. I'm pretty okay with it right now. I mean,
I'll get there. Let's wait until there's good reason. Right. And look, there's always good
reason for lots of things just to freak out about lots of things in this world around us right now.
Absolutely. So let's just keep it chill. Yeah. Let's keep it chill. Although, I will say was
when I was leaving therapy this morning, my therapist and I do a final hug. Oh. I mean,
we've been, I've been going to her for almost 17 years. So it's like, okay, bye. Thank you. Quick hug
and a cough right over her shoulder. Oh, it's like she burped you. Yes. It was the weirdest. Like,
I didn't feel it coming until I was doing it and I couldn't stop laughing. I'm like, I'm so sorry.
I'm like, first of all, I'm not coughing as a practice. That kind of kind of cough. It's not.
That just came out. She wasn't mad. She's legally not allowed to be mad at me. That's right. You
pay her to not be mad at you. The percast in a interspecies cuddling turn of events
has Brooke from the Fall Line guesting on it. Nice. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's awesome. And then
the Fall Line themselves have episode four of season six, the Cedar Town Jane Doe episode.
So make sure you listen to that. They're doing the God, the God's work.
Karen, tell us the next one. Oh, do you need a ride with Chris Fairbanks and Karen Colgarov,
the great April Richardson as featured on. She's visiting over here from her new life over in
Brighton, England. And so she came over to do some stand-ups dates. And so she's staying with me,
so I made her do my pod. Hell yeah. And it was perfect. I mean, it wasn't very eventful,
right, Stephen? We just kind of drove all around. Yeah, we just drove to swingers.
Yeah, that's right. And then we got there and then ate and then drove back.
Guys, as of now, as of next Thursday, March 12th. Yes. The big premiere of I Said No Gifts with
Bridger Weinerger. We're so excited. It's going to be so hilarious. Please try it out. Please
subscribe to I Said No Gifts just because it'll push them up in the charts and then more people
will see it. It'll be really awesome. And the premiere can be this big, exciting thing that
is very well deserved. Yeah, it's very well deserved. And if you watch the Comedy Central
Show corporate, the guest on the premiere episode is Matt Ingebretson, who's one of the two stars
of corporate along with Jake Wiseman. And he's a hilarious, amazing comedian. He has a great
speaking voice. My love of him. The two of them have been friends for years. So it's a great
episode. Yeah, we're so excited to finally have that one come out. I know it's so cool. And I
remember they recorded that one. And then Stephen told me and he was like, it was so good. And I
was just like, I know, I just know, I know, I know it. So yeah, it's very exciting. And now we're
going to start rolling out the new podcast. It's real cool. Things are moving and grooving.
Yeah. Who's first this week? Karen. Really?
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I'm sure you do this too on your social media, the choice you make on social media.
Instagram. Instagram, I don't like to endorse it, but you can. No, I am on Twitter and so on
Thursday morning when I wake up, I'll usually just kind of look at my Twitter real quick to see if
anyone is screaming in all caps at me. Just to do a quick pass of like, excuse me, whatever,
the excuse me pass and nothing was really happening. And then I stumbled upon this
tweet. This was from someone named John Bird at J Bird tweeted. That's his handle. His tweet said,
I love my favorite murder and Karen Kogarev. But yeah, then you know the bad things coming.
I need to flag that Sally Ride was not on the challenger when it exploded. Ride was the first
American woman to go into space. And then there was more of the tweet, but I had already left
my body from what a fucking devastatingly terrible, stupid mistake that was. And that was one of those
ones where it was a conversation and it just came out. And I said, yes, I do that to you all the
time. Because you're good at improv. Yes, and me and support whatever comes out of my mouth.
John, thank you first of all for being so such a gentle, corrective hand. Because it really,
it was the best way to learn that I had made, I disdain to heroic American women. So what do we
do when we're horrified and we leave our body? Yes, we do a big old corrections corner. So this
week I'm going to tell you all about the space shuttle challenger disaster. Hell yeah, you know
that crossed my mind to do. Did you? 100%. Yeah. So no, I had to do, I had to do it and Jay Elias,
my researcher and our coordinator, what do we call him a coordinator now? He has a title
coordinator. He did the research history.com, space.com, Britannica.com, and of course,
the best science website in the world, Wikipedia. Please give them $5 if you can. But before we
get into that, I would like to give you a quick yet comprehensive report on the great Sally Ride.
Great. So that you, I know whenever makes this mistake again. Great. And this, most of this
information is from Wikipedia, as well as her New York Times obituary. She was born in Encino on May
26, 1951. Her mother was a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. And her father,
Dale, was a political science professor at Santa Monica College. And she had a sister named Karen.
No way. I went to Santa Monica College too. Did you? Yeah. Was Professor Ride, did he teach you
anything? No. Okay. Okay. So Sally starts playing tennis when she's 10. By high school, she's ranked
in the top 20 in the nation for the junior tennis circuit. I don't know if you know how hard that
is, but there are people who are insanely great tennis players and they only get to like 800 in
the rankings. So she must have been a spectacular tennis and an amazing athlete. She graduates
from Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles in 1968. She goes to Swarthmore College just outside
of Philadelphia. But after three semesters, she I think gets homesick and moves back to California.
That's editorializing. That's what I assume because she's like, this ain't for me. Yeah.
So then she takes, she starts taking physics classes at UCLA and she wants basically wants to
play tennis professionally. Then in 1970, she transfers to Stanford. So she's thinking about
playing tennis professionally, but she's smart enough that she can just go, you know what? Instead,
I'm going to go to Stanford, which is she must have been obviously she's an astronaut. She's
really smart. She becomes Stanford's number one women's singles tennis player. Holy shit.
She even met Billie Jean King while teaching a tennis camp in the summer and Billie Jean King
told her to quit her job and go pro. Wow. It's how good she was. Yeah. But instead,
Sally stays at Stanford and she earns degrees in English and physics. Usually those are very
disparate subjects. The students do not hang out in the same area of the life. I was going to say
the snack bar of life. In the snack bar. The canteen. You know the snack bar at Stanford.
Oh, what do they sell there? They're just mechanical pencils. Oh, money.
Yeah. You can buy hot money. In 1935, she earns her masters specializing in astrophysics
and free electron lasers. Oh, I learned that at Santa Monica. Right. Remember when you dabbled
in free electron lasers. And then she goes on to get her PhD in 1978. So she's the real deal. So
while she's finishing her post-grad studies at Stanford, she applies to the NASA astronaut group
eight program. There are 8,000 candidates and she's one of 35 accepted in this program and
only six women in the group total. Wow. She completes her training in August 1979. She gets
her pilot's license and becomes eligible to be a US Space Shuttle mission specialist.
So on June 18th of 1983, Sally Ride takes her first trip to space in NASA's 7th Space Shuttle
Mission STS-7 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. She's the first American woman in space and the
third woman in space globally. There were two female Russian astronauts, cosmonauts. I think
they call them that got there first. Got it. But she is the first American woman. Cool. So the point
of that mission was to deploy two communication satellites. Sally operated the robotics arm
that made the deployment of them. Can you imagine? No. Well, she also plays tennis with it.
They're like, you got a great swing robot. It's like a very small asteroid comes by. She's like,
guys, I got to take that robot. My God. Love or whatever. Love 40. Yeah. In 1984, she again
goes on a mission on the Challenger on NASA's 13th Shuttle Mission STS-41G. Okay. If you're
keeping track at home between those two trips, she spends more than 300 within those two trips.
She spends more than 340 hours in space. Wow. She is in training for her third mission on January 28,
1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes during launch. Sally Wright is appointed to the
Rogers Commission to investigate the cause of the explosion. She's the only astronaut or specialist
appointed to both this commission and later to the 2003 commission to investigate the Space Shuttle
Columbia disaster that killed all seven crew members as it disintegrated upon reentry into the
Earth's atmosphere. Wow. So, Sally Wright was there for both of those and was there to investigate
both. Sure. She left NASA in 1987 to work at Stanford Center for International Security and
Arms Control. In 1989, she becomes a physics professor at UC San Diego, and she dedicates
her life to encouraging students, especially girls, to study math and science, developing
programs under her nonprofit, Sally Wright Science. She even writes a couple children's books about
space exploration. On July 23, 2012, Sally Wright passes away at her home in La Jolla,
California, from pancreatic cancer, which is horrible. She was only 61 years old. Oh, my God.
In 2013, Sally Wright was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for all of
her life's work, her extraordinary life's work. And that is the story of Sally Wright, the first
American female astronaut in space. That writes all the wrongs from last week. Both of ours. I
get it too. I mean, look, but later when I, in, you know, putting this together, saw that they
both wrote on the Challenger, I was like, this is my excuse. Yeah. This is my rationale. Take it,
grab it, run with it. Right. Which would imply that I knew they were both on the Challenger,
which is completely impossible. No, you absolutely knew that. I absolutely knew it.
I was 16 when the Challenger exploded, so I was very aware of it happening, but I definitely.
Did you guys watch it in class or were you told? No, we saw it on the news afterwards. Yeah. I mean,
our school didn't do stuff like that. Yeah. You had to have a teacher have a nervous breakdown to
get that AV cart pulled in and watch some dumb movie. They would not give you that for just
anything. Well, television is the devil. You're right. And it'll rock your brain.
Now open to Ephesians 629. So now let's talk about the Challenger, the explosion of the
Space Shuttle Challenger. Okay. So on Tuesday, January 28th, 1986, a crowd of hundreds gather
at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida for the Space Shuttle Challenger's
10th launch. The Shuttle's primary mission is to deploy the second tracking and data relay
satellite, TDRS-B. You don't have to do that. I mean, what a day. I feel I'm weirdly kissing up
to like the person. Remember the guy we met at that works at JPL? I wish I could remember
his name off the top. I'm so sorry. He was the best. Don't worry. No, he was a fan.
Him and his wife loved the show. And he was super cool. And he gave me and Stephen and
Scotty Landis a really good tour of JPL. The guy who gave us tours, Lou and his wife's
name is Lindsay. Lou at JPL and your wife, Lindsay. Hi, friends. Thank you. Okay. So that
satellite helps astronauts in space communicate with ground control. So they're basically putting
up more communications satellites. But their second mission is to release a small satellite
called the Spartan Halley spacecraft, which would follow and observe Halley's comet for two days.
Remember when that was such a big deal? Yeah, I remember that. So, and then after two days,
it would be picked back up by the Challenger crew before they return home. So the Challenger is
the second space shuttle ever to reach outer space. It completed nine missions over the course of three
years and was the same shuttle that Sally Ride manned three years before as the first American
female astronaut to go into space. Connections. Boom. There it is. I must have known deep down.
Okay. So on board are five NASA astronauts. Commander Francis Richard, aka Dick Scoby,
pilot Michael J. Smith, and three mission specialists, Ronald McNair, Ellison,
Onizuka, and Judith Resnick. And the sixth crew member is a payload specialist named Gregory
Jarvis. So a payload specialist is not an official NASA astronaut. They're brought on the mission
by NASA because of they have certain academic training or skill sets that are needed for a
particular mission. So they're trained rigorously by NASA. But they're usually researchers or
engineers. But they're not allowed to look outside the window. They're banned from looking out that
space. You have to earn that. That's right. You have to be a real astronaut to get the view.
And you certainly can't touch that arm. Sally only. Sally's tennis elbow. Do not touch Sally's
racket. Her space racket. Yeah. Okay. So the seventh and last crew member on this mission is 37-year-old
Christa McAuliffe. So she is a high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire,
who won the Reagan administration's teacher in space project. So she's trained by NASA and as,
well, I'll talk about the teacher in space project in a little bit. I wish she would.
Because I know you're baffled. What could that mean? I don't know what that... Wait,
they bring space back to a classroom? Hold on a second. They make a teacher stand in a certain
space and teach. So she gets trained by NASA as the mission's second payload specialist.
All right. In addition to her regular onboard duties, she also planned to teach two 15-minute
lessons from space. So the first would involve a tour of the space shuttle to explain the basics
of how it functions. And then the second one about the benefits of space travel. And both of them
will be broadcast to millions of students through a closed-circuit classroom TV system.
I was five. So I bet that we were doing that. Right. Right? Well, I think it was... They were
seeing it as, first of all, the Reagan administration did a ton of cuts to education and the funding.
They sure did. They were like, here's how to get all of them at once.
Yeah. So this was this thing where they're like, well, we'll do something nice for teachers. It'll
make us look good. But then also we'll get people... Because NASA had having been so huge in the late
60s, interest had waned. So they were like, they're going to beef it all back up again.
Guess what, guys? Yeah. This was the way they were going to do it. So at 11.38 a.m.,
after several delays that morning, the shuttle lifts off in front of an audience of hundreds
on the ground at Cape Canaveral and millions more watching on their TVs at home and in classrooms
across the country. But just 73 seconds after liftoff, disaster strikes. Okay. So let's go
and talk about Krista McAuliffe more specifically. She was originally Sharon Krista Corrigan from
Boston, Massachusetts. And she followed the space program very closely as a child. She watched John
Glenn's Orbit of the Earth in Friendship 7 in 1962. And of course, in 1969, Apollo Moon Landing,
she was fascinated by all of it. So she grows up to marry her high school sweetheart, Stephen
McAuliffe, in 1970. They have two kids named Scott and Caroline. And in 1984, when President
Reagan announces the initiation of the teacher and space program, Krista finds out about it.
And she rushes to apply. There are 11,000 teacher applicants from all over the country. And I was
reading this article about it. And that one of the guys who was one of the finalists said that
they had 11 different essay portions of that application, because they were trying to weed
out the people that were just trying to be like, Oh, I want to, you know, I'm just in it for the
fame and glory or yeah, or something like that. But it was like, if you if you're going to actually
write 11 essays, you really want to go out, go to outer space. We've done it. You got to commit.
Obviously want to go to outer space. So, so Krista gets nominated by the state of New Hampshire.
And then she goes on to become one of the 10 finalists selected by an official review panel
in Washington, DC. God, those people had to read so many fucking essays. I mean, I bet you they
didn't know they were like three words in. Did they even finish the essay? Okay, then put it in this
pile. So on July 7, 1985, Krista McCullough and the other nine finalists traveled to Johnson
Space Center in Houston, Texas for a week of briefings, medical exams and interviews. And when
that week's over on July 19, 1985, Vice President George H. W. Bush announces that the winner of
the Teacher in Space program is in fact, Krista McCullough. She takes a year long leave of absence
from teaching and begins training for the mission. Wow, how incredible must that have felt.
Just an amazing opportunity. And like you would never in your life think that that's what you
would get to do once in a lifetime opportunity. Yeah, so cool. Okay, so the Challengers launch
is initially set for January 22nd, 1986. But the team at NASA encounters a couple different delays.
So first, another mission had run long, so they can't launch the Challenger until the other mission
comes back, which I think is kind of funny. It's like, is this Southwest Airlines? Like,
it's weird that you wouldn't schedule this a little further apart. But that was basically what
happened. Or like, is the schedule that random that it might take one day or might take seven days?
You know, we hung out here by the Big Dipper for a little too long. We decided to go to the
aerospace snack bar. Hang on. Sorry. It's just like the one at Stanford. So that was the first
delay. Then the launch is delayed because of bad weather. And the third delay is caused by
technical issues. First, there's a broken exterior latch, and then there's a stripped bolt. So
finally, the launch date is set for January 28, 1968. No. Nope. Wow. Finally, the launch date
is set for January 28, 1986. But the day before the engineering company, it's called Thyacall.
They're responsible for some of the construction. They tell NASA that they believe it'll be too
cold to launch. Because the forecast is calling for temperatures as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit
in Florida, which is kind of insane. It is January, but it's Florida. And that actually,
that temperature is the bare minimum that you can launch a shuttle at. And so they recommend
postponing it. But the NASA manager that was in charge of the launch says that they can't
recommend a delay without proposing a minimum temperature to target. So they all hop on a
conference call to discuss it. Guys, don't leave it up to conference calls to fix shit.
I got to this part in the paragraph, and I was just like, God, I hate conference calls.
But engineers love them. So they get on the horn. Everyone starts talking. The people from
Thyacall, they reiterate their concerns. They explained that the rubber O-rings used to seal
the joints on the solid rocket boosters, which from now on, I'll call SRBs because that's what
they call them. I wish you wouldn't. The SRBs. Okay. So these O-rings are confirmed to function
at 54 degrees Fahrenheit at the lowest. So any temperature below that could be dangerous.
What? So if the primary O-rings fail, there are secondary ones that kick in. If those fail,
the shuttle could destruct. Guys. So now the NASA officials on this conference call,
they dismiss the concerns. They're convinced the secondary O-rings will get the job done
if the first ones don't. You shouldn't plan for something to fail, right? No. And you shouldn't
be like, but then, yeah, it's not that big of a deal where it's like... Yeah. These other things
will take care of it. I think this is the kind of thing where in retrospect, it seems inane.
Totally. But in this kind of like very bureaucratic world where they're like, look, we got to hit
these schedules. Pushing it a couple of days is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yeah, probably. I mean, we're both wrong. We're definitely both wrong. Both are very wrong.
I feel like of all the conversations I can be wrong in, one's about being an astronaut. It
is really up there. Yeah. But basically, they're just saying, we can't just keep on delaying this.
Sure. There's so much press about it. Everyone's waiting and watching. We understand that you
guys are kind of worried, but it's fine, basically. So in the morning of March 28th,
the temperature in Florida is 28.9 degrees Fahrenheit. The launch pad is covered in ice.
So a team works to remove the ice, but the temperatures are dangerously low. They delay
the launch a bit to give the ice more time. The ice team more time to clear the ice.
They're out there with their ice picks. Yeah.
How we know they do. How you know they get rid of ice.
Yeah. Okay. So when that team report, when the ice team reports that the ice does seem to be
melting, they reset the launch for 11.38 a.m. And so at exactly 11.38 a.m., the countdown begins.
The crew ignites the solid rocket boosters, the SRBs. Thank you.
And the shuttle lifts off. But just as Thaya Call feared, the O-rings in the right SRB are too cold
to function properly, and the joint in the right SRB fails. Pressurized burning gas escapes from
that booster, interacts with the external fuel take, and 73 seconds after liftoff,
the space shuttle challenger explodes over the Atlantic Ocean.
Millions of Americans are watching live, including thousands of children, probably tens of thousands
of children watching from their classrooms, and Christa McCulloch's family who are watching
in person at Cape Canaveral on the ground. Can you imagine the kids in her class back at home
watching? Just, I mean, someone, oh, I think it was April, because she was like, I saw that,
I remember seeing it, I was in second grade. And she said, her teacher burst into tears
and just rolled the TV back out of the room. Like you, every, the entire nation was traumatized
all together at once this on that morning. You can watch the video online and like,
think of, think of watching it live, you know, and like it fucking explodes. Like,
there's no question it explodes. No, it's not like, Oh, there seems to be a problem. It's just
like out of nowhere. This thing that everyone had been looking forward to that they'd been talking
about. And like, it feels so patriotic, right? Like, we're all, we're all like, it's so hopeful.
Yeah, it's like they were kind of trying to recapture the initial that, you know, those early
days of space exploration, it's like, we're back and we're strong and we're doing all this stuff.
And we have teachers with us, it's for the children. There's civilians on that shuttle.
So it goes without saying none of the seven crew members survived. After the explosion,
NASA's launch recovery director sends search and rescue teams to recover the victim's bodies
and the debris. The recovery is so extensive, it lasts more than a week. When it comes to sharing
information with the press, NASA becomes very closed off. They tell the public almost nothing,
which of course, all of America's demanding answers. So Reagan commissions a committee
to investigate what exactly would be, so Reagan commissions a committee to investigate what
exactly caused the explosion. That is the Rogers Commission, which Sally Ride served on.
The chairman was William P. Rogers, politician and lawyer, who previously served as attorney general
and secretary of state. There are 13 members total, including Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride.
The commission finds that NASA neglected to heed the very real and very important warnings from
Thayakal over the course of several years leading up to the disaster. So there were engineers in
other parts of NASA that were checking it out and going, hey, we need to be careful about these.
I think the O-rings, just that whole idea, there were warnings that happened before the day of,
it wasn't just the temperature issue.
These things that were made for this rocket aren't going to work right now. It's like,
these have been made for years and they're ignoring the warnings.
Because I think, obviously, that's the kind of thing that gets tested and looked at and
investigated constantly. NASA's insistence that the secondary O-rings were enough of a safety
measure was against protocol because the O-rings were listed as a critically one component.
So this means that if the component fails, everyone could die. So it is actually forbidden to
rely solely on the backup part for something like an O-ring.
I mean, that makes fucking sense. I'm not an astronaut.
But at the same time, they created a very intonable situation with the pressure
where they can't just keep delaying it and it doesn't look good if you're delaying it.
Everything about that, when I was reading this part anyway, I just felt so terrible
for the team that was trying to make this decision. I'm like, can we just do this?
They were used to it. This was a thing, the shuttle went up a lot.
Totally. And it was probably like, there's always some critical thing that needs to be decided on
last minute. This is just another one of those.
Yeah. Afterwards, the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology holds hearings
on the matter as well. On October 29th, 1986, they released a report that agrees and goes
along with the Rogers Commission. They ruled the disaster was due to poor technical decision-making
by top NASA and contractor personnel, effectively splitting the blame between NASA and Thayakal.
As a result, NASA's unable to launch any other shuttles or spacecraft for nearly three years.
And they work on a total redesign of those SRBs. And in the case of the Challenger, Thayakal gives
up their multi-million-dollar incentive fee in exchange for not accepting liability.
But afterward, I'm sure they were like, we told you. But afterward, NASA adds a clause to their
contract with that company, stating that in the event of a technical failure causing, quote,
loss of life or mission, that Thayakal would forfeit $10 million of its incentive fee
and formally accept the blame. Okay. So the remains of crew members
are recovered. And on April 29th, 1986, astronauts Dixkobi, Judith Resnick, and Michael Smith are
all buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Mission specialist Ellison Onizuka is buried
at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ronald McNair is buried at
Reslon Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina. And Krista McAuliffe is buried in her hometown,
Concord, New Hampshire, at the Calvary Cemetery. Every year in late January or early February,
NASA holds its day of remembrance to honor the lives lost in the Challenger tragedy,
as well as those lost in the Apollo 1 fire of 1967 and the destruction of the Columbia in 2003.
And in 2015, the Kennedy Space Center opened an exhibit called Forever Remembered, where visitors
can see debris from the Challenger's final mission. So this is pretty cool. Instead of building a
monument for their loved ones, the families of the Challenger crew established a Challenger Center
for Space Science education program, basically introduces students to space science and provides
space simulation missions that kids can experience for themselves firsthand. And the program gives
them the chance to learn teamwork and problem solving and encourages them to explore the world
around them. And it's grown to be an international success serving more than 250,000 kids globally
every year. And that is the heartbreaking national trauma that was the explosion of Space Shuttle
Challenger. Wow. Great job. Way to make good, make good. It's a make good story. It's a make good
horror story. But those are, I'm glad I know the difference now and we'll never make that mistake
again. And we'll very quickly and sharply correct people. We all knew. Well, that was great. And
I'm glad you did that. Me too. That was a, that was a good one. Thank you.
I got this suggestion from the fan cult forum. We have a message board of suggestions that
people send in and they send them in and they write them with their finger. They type them,
Karen, do you know? Is it still in all caps? It's a CB message. So this was suggested by C.
Baird. And this is a story that is the craziest one I had never heard of. Really? So this is
the corpsewood manor murders. I love it already. Any idea of it? It doesn't sound familiar to me.
I got info from ingest, ingestigation discovery. What if ingestigation discovery is just weird
shit people ingest? They're like, look, a whole saw. How did she ingest that? Let's take an ingest
discovery. An article by Christine Colby and all that's interesting article by Gina de
Murrow, a website called abandoned southeast.com. That is a person who is a photographer and goes
around to all these abandoned buildings and places in the southeast takes photos and tells you the
story about them. Okay. There was in one of my first very difficult and highly demanding office
jobs where I was basically there from nine in the morning till nine at night. When I finally would
have a moment to myself that those are the websites I would go on to. They're incredible.
People taking pictures of like this used to be a steel mill. Right. And now it's literally rusting
top to bottom and no one's allowed in here. And when you go here at night, you hear weird
sounds or whatever. Yeah. There's high schools that have lockers and their desks are all still,
I mean, they get to go in all of those places and they're beautiful photos and they tell you
about them. So go check that out. It's abandoned southeast.com. I got an article from the Chattanooga
Times Free Press by Tyler Jett, a website called Week in Weird article by Ken Summers,
Rome News Tribune article, the lineup.com article. There's a lot of articles out there about this
by Oren Gray. And then I checked our emails and my favorite murder emails and someone,
this person by the name of S.A. Hunt, who's an author of like gothic fantasy interesting novels.
It's SAHuntBooks.com. Kind of like broke the whole story down for me using quotes from different
authors who've written about this story. Amazing. So it was really helpful. And then I also got one
article from the website for Church of Satan. Hell yes. By Peggy Nadramia. Okay. All right.
So you know this is going to be something. The Church of Satan's evolved. Exactly.
Let's do this thing. All right. Here we go. In the 1970s, Dr. Charles Scudder was a professor
of pharmacology at Loyola University in Chicago. And it was at the Institute for Mind, Drugs,
and Behavior. That's what that means. Acid? That's right. They basically performed government-funded
experiments with mind-altering drugs like LSD. Fuck it. What's up? MKUltra. What's up? Yeah.
Nice. Welcome to the party. MKUltra. Now, did these people know they were being experimented?
I don't know. Any details, but probably not. Meet Ted Kaczynski. Hello. And then we go down that
rabbit hole. That's not. Okay. So he was described by co-workers as brilliant and soft-spoken,
but confident. He was definitely an eccentric, especially for the kind of conservative university
in the 70s. He would dye his hair purple at one time. He owned a monkey. He was kind of like,
he seems like a perfect absurdist and contrarian. And organ grinder. Right. Did your monkey have
a vest? That's right. Dr. Scutter was divorced and had four grown sons. And he lived in a deteriorating
mansion in Chicago, along with his two enormous English Mastiff dogs. Ooh. I know those big guys
with all the drool in the face. Yeah. Alongside. And the face. The big faces. Yeah. Alongside a
quote, quite feminine man named Joseph Odom. So it being the 1970s and being gay, still considered
very taboo, Joseph Odom was described as a housekeeper and a quote companion to Dr. Scutter.
Sure. But in reality, the two men were in a long time relationship. And in fact, Joseph Odom,
went by Joey, helped to raise Dr. Scutter's kids. Oh. So they were companions. Yeah. They were
companions. They were in a relationship. They were life partners. They were life partners.
But by the mid-70s, Dr. Scutter was fed up with university politics, the constant upkeep and
bills related to his fucking dilapidated home and the general bullshit hustle and bustle of life
in a big city. And probably also not getting to live his life as an openly gay man. Right?
Yeah. There'd be a lot of restrictions. I think also Chicago being very Midwest and kind of very
tradition, a very traditional place. At least it felt like that when I lived there, where my friend
wore overalls to Nordstrom one day and these women were staring at us like we were nude. Wow. It was
one of the weirdest experiences where I was just like, they're just overalls. Yeah. It's a fashion
thing. Right. Okay. I like that. So he and Odom decided they were over it and they were ready
to escape the chaotic city life. So Dr. Scutter found a 40-acre plot of land in the Appalachian
foothills. Appalachia. Deep in that. So Dr. Scutter found a 40-acre plot of land in the Appalachian.
Appalachian? Throw an Appalachia. Appalachian foothills. Deep in the remote woods of Northern
Georgia. So what were you saying about conservative? No, they went out of the frying pan into the fire.
He's like, I better dye my hair green now. They were completely, so it was 40-acre plot,
completely surrounded by national forests that he bought it for super cheap. And so in 1976,
on his 50th birthday, Dr. Scutter resigned from Loyola University. Like later days,
my little brother. Bye. See ya. Sold off or gave away nearly everything he owned and set off with
Odom and the dogs, whose name were Beelzebub and Arsanath. Okay. To begin a new peaceful life
in the Appalachians where they could build their dream home and live off the land. Wow.
I don't know. This seems like the beginning of a horror movie. It is. Okay. So Scutter said that,
quote, the change was like crawling out of an old outworn skin. Oh. Yeah. It's like super positive.
When they arrived that first winter to what was basically just some old
treed up land and... Is that a word? Tread up land? Do you mean like forest?
Tread up land. No, I don't mean forest. Yes. It got all treed up. It was layer land, but it was treed up.
This weren't no cleared out land. It was treed up. It was treed up to the gills.
It was at the top of a winding logging trail and the men looked around. They see these all,
you know, these trees in the middle of winter all gnarled and shit. And they were like,
this let's name this new homestead corpsewood. That was their idea. That was their idea. Okay.
I thought you were going to say they were going to like, let's tree this shit down.
They're not from Chicago. That's right. During the next two years, the men cleared the treed land
and used... They stayed it down as the term. Thank you. And used 45,000 bricks to build by hand
what Scutter referred to as, quote, their castle in the country. So they weren't architects. They
had never built anything before. They dug fucking trenches and laid down pipes for... Plumbing?
Plumbing. But they built it themselves. I don't know if you should... I don't know.
Unless they're just... If it's just a plain old square, that's fine. But a castle?
I think from back then too, it was like, you just did shit yourself.
True. And I'm sure if, you know, college professor and like a housekeeper that's holding shit down,
that maybe they're like, we've got this plan. Let's do it this way.
Well, they did it and wait till you see it. It looks like a legit medieval, like a small scale
medieval macabre, brick castle. Really? Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's got a turd at entryway
and a winding staircase inside leading up to the second floor. They built fucking a second floor.
Here's Steven Schover. Is that the new one? Let me see. Is that the new one? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, okay. Well, they do in this one, it's the finished and it has a gargoyle. So that's adding
to the creepiness? Spoiler alert. Super sorry. No, we can take that. No, no, give it back to him
because you're going to read too much. Well, I'm not reading anything, but I'm just saying this is...
There is a real... It's almost like the Blair Witch got like a designer. Yeah. And she's like,
let's do this thing. Yeah. Because it's... But it is... I'm telling you, I'm looking at this picture,
it's treed up. It's treed up. There's trees all over the spot. Can I have you and Steven
apologize to me right now for laughing at me? No, never. Damn it. Okay. So Corpsewood Manor was
almost completely self-reliant. I guess they had no electricity but had an on-site well for water.
Okay. It had a wood stove for cooking and for warmth, a chemical toilet in the outhouse,
gardens, and they grew their own food. And behind the house was a small vineyard for
making homemade wine. Nice. So this was like a nice little villa that these two lovely gay men
who wanted to get the fuck away from the confines of everyday society and their bullshit and judgment
and fucking build their dream house. And they did it. They fucking did it. They did it. Yeah.
In addition to the castle that they lived in, they also built a smaller building they called
the Chicken Coop on the ground floor. It was a chicken coop. Okay. So that makes sense there.
Above that was like they kept the chicken feet and canned goods. And then on the top floor was
something of a boudoir, I would say, which you said that word earlier and it's like in my story.
Oh, psychic lock in. There it is. So depending on where your info comes from, the boudoir was
either where the couple would host gatherings and for guests to stay overnight in or it was a sexy
sex room with BDSM paraphernalia and porn and stuff. Sure. I mean, look, first of all, it's
natural. Do whatever you want. And secondly, they're not moving out into the woods to read books.
I'm telling you. And you know what? It could be both. It could be like they could do it all. Yeah.
But why not if you're out there anyway, like if you're getting away from everybody and you're
away, do what you want. Exactly. Get a slide from the boudoir down to the chicken coop. That's
right. See what happens. Prying eyes, man. Either way, it was nicknamed the pink room.
Okay. So I think they and they would have guests from out of town come stay with them. I think
I think Dr. Scutter, who is such an eccentric, had like friends from all walks of life and
like to hang out with them. I would love it. I would be friends with Dr. Scutter immediately.
He was probably the coolest person to hang out with. Hell yes. And he had acid, right? That guy?
Yeah. You see the acid guy? Yes. And Joseph Odom over here was an incredible cook and like
super sweet and lovely. So like they were so much fun. And all their food was organic. Yeah.
Which is great for me because I'm super organic. I'm so vegan. Thank you. Finally, it's the food
up to my level of quality that I'm looking for. That's right. Karen's so picky. You got one
around the road. I'd be like, Jerry, are there any GMOs in this because I can't have it anymore.
Karen, we're at the Cracker Barrel. Does this rice pilaf have preservatives in it?
Okay. And there is a pink gargoyle in there. Oh. Was that the one you said was pink? Yes.
That's kind of genius. Okay. But here's a little thing. Here's an eccentricity about Dr. Scutter.
Okay. He was a card-carrying member of Anton Leves Church of Satan. Okay. All right. Yes.
So sorry. Just say really quick. As a kid who grew up in the 70s, young child, because Anton
Leves had a house in San Francisco. Yeah. We're going to talk about it. Okay. But it was very
scary and it was kind of used in this way. But actually, the Church of Satan is not scary at
all. So here we're going to do a Satan corner real quick. Great. Technically, Dr. Scutter was an
atheist who, quote, believed in the unity of the universe. But he was fascinated with religions. He
was fascinated with the occult. And he assumes that he enjoyed the kind of fuck it, like fuck the
system, hedonistic, humanistic mentality of Satanism, which, guys, that's what Satanism is. Yeah.
Technically, atheistic Satanism does not acknowledge the existence of either God or Satan.
They're fucking atheists. All that satanic panic, evangelical bullshit. You know, don't buy into
the hype, guys. Your parents lied to you. Okay. So in a sense, Dr. Scutter, when he issued his
normal life in Chicago and moved into the forest to live out his dreams, is in line with his satanic
beliefs. Right. So he didn't actually believe in Satan or the devil, but as a symbol of self-reliance,
independence, and individuality, which is what satanic people stand for. I don't know. Satanists,
it's kind of cool. They like to stir shit up, which I think is pretty in like this like funny,
like absurdist way that I appreciate. Well, and also they're really about human rights.
Right. Because it's that kind of thing of saying, you don't get to say,
you know, abortion is illegal and immoral. Therefore, I'm going to kill you because that,
in and of itself, is so hypocritical and so insane. And it's like.
You don't get to pray in school. If you're going to pray to a Christian God in school,
then they're going to come around and sue that fucking school district to say that
they get to say they satanic rituals in school. Like they just, they don't want satanic fucking
prayers in school. They want to prove to you that these other religious, you know,
these other religious entities shouldn't either.
Right. Because they're saying, so you don't approve of my religion, which is quote unquote,
the church of Satan. And that's easy to, it's easy to understand why that's, you can't approve of
that. But they're saying, I don't approve of your religion. Your religion is like the church of
Satan to me. And also it is a wake up call to when you're indoctrinated into the religion,
you were raised in, you see other religions as, as not real. You see other people as believing
and being lunatics and, and like, oh, they're extremists. They're, they're, you know, whatever
zealots. And it's basically calling everyone on their shit and going, that's what everyone is,
that when you're in a religion and it's not your own personal spiritual path, but instead this kind
of group think and it's ways to control, to alienate and to then justify your attacks on other
people. Guys, take LSD and open your minds. Also look at what shirt I'm wearing just now,
I realized. I haven't done my laundry. It's a big star of David and it says Hebrews on my shirt
right now. Well, that's bullshit, man. I'm Jewish. I'm going to sue you. I'm an atheistic Jew. What
am I going to do about it? What are you going to do? Okay. So this is interesting. Yeah. All right.
So I just want to get across how sweet they seemed and how fun they seem. Yeah. And, and how
independent and they just wanted to live their lives back in a time where you really were not
allowed to, you were not. No. So because he was so interested in the occult, Dr. Scudders,
and then I put hashtag decor inspo was all kinds of strange macabre objects and antiques. In fact,
when he left Loyola University, he took with him two skulls, two like ancient skulls that he used
as decor, which is such a like goth high school decor thing to do. Yeah. It's very metal. And
some vials of LSD. Well, hell yeah. He was also about to get treated up. I mean, we're going to
sit out there and make friends at the mother fucking trees. That's what's going to happen.
You're going to climb them. You're going to climb them. You're going to get all up in them. You're
going to become a tree yourself. So he was also an artist. He created stained glass window pieces
that he used as the windows of the house, including a stained glass Baphomet Seagal.
Baphomet, yeah. Did I say that right? Which is the symbol of the church of Satan, which is that
cute little goat. Hi, I'm the goat. Yeah. A pink argoil, I told you about that. And a sign outside
that read beware of the thing, which is actually from the Adamus family. So clearly he was a
playful Satanist. Well, and also it's almost like they built the perfect house to draw high school
students to come around and to get like the locals to start talking about them. Yes. And either
maybe even stay away, like get scared of them or, but I bet it's going to go a different way.
Unfortunately, they should have gone to Northern California to do that. Yeah. Where all the hippies
weren't exactly chill, man. That's funny. Right. So despite the locals living in the neighboring
town of Chattoga County being scandalized by these two gay Satanists, the kindness and
hospitality that Scudder and Odom showed to the neighbors was evident and they were always willing
to have guests over to enjoy a few glasses of their homemade wine or listen to Dr. Scudder
professionally. He could professionally play the harp as well. Holy shit. Yeah. So it seems
like a lot of the neighbors became too or started to like them. Dr. Scudder and Odom spent six years
living in their dream home, building and digging and caring for the land. They made friends with
them at the locals. There was a wedding hosted in the Rose Garden that Odom had planted. Wow.
And when local hunters would come by and ask the couple for permission to hunt on their land,
they would always allow it. Great. And this is how it's thought that they came into contact with
a 17-year-old local named Avery Brock. Brock was a hunter and a part-time truck driver and he had
been invited to Corpsewood a number of times to hang out in the pink room. And there's some
speculation that at one point he possibly engaged in sexual activities with either both or one of
the pair. But it seems as though Brock became friends with the couple and hung out and drank
wine with them on a couple occasions. Yeah. So in November of 1982, though, Avery Brock moves
into a trailer that belonged to a 30-year-old unemployed construction worker named Tony West.
And Brock told West about the, quote, queer devil worshipers and how he thought that because
Scutter and Odom, they lived this life that was so laid back and carefree and kind of indulgent
that they must have a shit ton of money stockpiled at Corpsewood. Oh, no. Right. So Brock and West
began devising a plan to rob the couple and run away to start a new life. On the night of December
12, 1982, Brock and West picked up two teens, Joey Wells, who was West's nephew and his girlfriend,
Teresa Huggins. And the teens had tried to go on a date, but their car wouldn't start. So Brock
and West were like, just come with us. We're going to go drink at the Satan house or whatever.
And once there, the group were invited in by Dr. Scutter. They drank wine and the local kids huffed
what was locally known as Toot-a-loo. What? Toot-a-loo, aka paint thinner and glue. No.
They had a name and they would just have this stuff. Toot-a-loo. Scutter's like, I have pure LSD.
What more do you need or gorgeous wine that we made ourselves?
He gave them the wine, but it doesn't seem like he actually used or gave out the LSD. It might
have just been this like kind of souvenir he brought from Loyola. So he wasn't drugging kids.
He wasn't, it doesn't seem like he was selling it. Maybe his out-of-town friends would take it.
Who knows? Sure. After several hours of drinking and talking, Brock said he was going out to the
car to mix up some more Toot-a-loo. But when he returned, he was holding a rifle and West held
a knife to Scutter's throat as he was tied up and led from the pink room to the main house,
which no one was allowed in the main house, which is maybe also why the pink room is where people
stayed. Oh, so they like hung in the chicken coop. That was like the party spot. Upstairs,
BDSM, maybe. Okay. So they take him into the main house while he's tied up and all the while
Scutter himself is trying to calm the two teens down who they hadn't been aware of what was
happening and they were scared for their lives. They attempted to get the fuck out of there,
but the car wouldn't start. Oh no. So they come back and like be there for this whole thing.
And so when Dr. Scutter was led into the home, he and his partner had built with their own hands
and had just tried to live a fucking nice life together without stupid fucking society coming
down on them. He was met with a horrific scene. Joseph Odom, his longtime companion,
laid dead on the floor, having been shot in the head four times by Brock. Oh no.
Alongside the couple's two beloved dogs. They he killed the dogs too. Yeah, before they brought.
So they basically went in and killed everyone in the house, every living thing in the house.
And then brought Dr. Scutter down to this scene. So like it's just so, the thought of seeing this
thing and not only is the love of your life, you see that horrific scene, you know you're like,
it's just over. Yes. What a terrifying last scene. Yeah. Theresa Hudgens later divulged that when
Dr. Scutter saw his love dead on the floor, he sputtered and babbled incomprehensibly
and moaned in grief. And he was led to the library and gagged while Brock and Wes demanded him,
they tell him demanded, he tell them where the money was hidden. Here's the thing.
Well, it's true that Scutter did receive a small trust fund from his deceased father's estate. It
was like $100 a month. Almost every cent he and Odom had had gone towards building the property.
So there was no money to be stolen. There was no cash there ever. Yeah. And they just lived the way
they wanted to live. Yeah. At this point in his grief. And so Scutter is trying to calm
Theresa down and saying, are you okay? Like in his own fucking grief, he's trying to calm her down,
which she says she always remembered. He defies the robbers' orders and stands up from the couch
and stumbles towards his lover's body. And his final words were, I asked for this.
Oh. Then he was shot in the head five times at Point Blank Range. Oh my God.
The murderers took anything of value they could find, like a silver candelabra,
as a gold-plated dagger, a leather jacket. And since their car wouldn't start, stole Scutter's
black jeep and went on the lam. And then two days later, on December 16th, a neighbor called the
county sheriff after visiting Corpsewood Manor and noticing bullet holes in the door. And that's
when their bodies were found. And that same day, Theresa Hudgens went to the police saying that
she had escaped from Joey Wells' house, where he had been holding her captive since the murders,
because the murderers were like, if you fucking tell anyone, we'll kill you. Yeah.
So he'd been like trying to get her not to tell. But she escapes and tells
the police, and Hudgens and Wells cooperated with the police, and they're not charged.
But now the police are in a nationwide manhunt for Brock and West.
The killers drove west and needing to ditch the black jeep that they had stolen,
because it was too conspicuous, because fucking Dr. Scutter had painted pentagrams on the doors,
and that's the fucking car they stole. Assholes. They held up a man at a Mississippi rest stop
intending to steal his car. And the man is cooperating. He's Navy Lieutenant Kirby Phelps.
He's on his way home to visit his mother for Christmas. And West marches him into the woods
and shoots him twice. And kills him. They're like going berserk. Yeah, totally. Don't do
tootaloo everyone. Yeah, for real. I just realized that. Yeah, they're on, they're
huffing paint thinner. Paint thinner and what? Glue. Yeah, that's not good. No. The killers took
Kirby Phelps's car and kept going, but within a short time, both of them had turned themselves in
during the investigation. So this is almost the worst part. It's really all awful.
During the investigation, the police found what they, of course, considered to be bizarre artwork
strained throughout the home. Dark occult, you know, Satan-y shit. So they're like these men
were Satan worshipers. And Tatuga County investigator Tony Gilland said, you could feel the presence
of evil as if like Satan was there. You know what I mean? Yes. The evil had actually come from the
two killers who identified as Christian and in fact, just attended a Bible study two days before
their murders. I mean, you know what I mean? Listen, you can't do it. It's not that simple. If only it
were that simple that you could be guaranteed. If you go to Bible study, you leave there and you'll
never do anything bad. And then if you have pentagrams on your Jeep, that means you always
do bad things. If life were that easy and that black and white, we would all be so much calmer
and having a better time. Totally. But actually, people use religion to hide
their own evil sociopathic bullshit. Or, and this drives me crazy. Maybe it's because my religion
that I was raised in doesn't have this, but you'll be forgiven for whatever the fuck you do.
You're going to be forgiven. So it's all okay. That's not a thing. No. Well, not with murder.
I mean, not with this kind of stuff. No. And also, I can't... I'm like, what if you bet on it and
you're wrong, you know? But also, I can't... That's not... They're not real Christians if they're...
If they actually think, oh, I can kill these people. I can do what I want. I can kill these
people and then I'll be forgiven. Right. Like, yeah. That's not actually what Jesus wants for
anybody. I promise. I knew him first as a Jew. But I made really good friends with him at camp.
He told me. Okay. Among the couple's possessions was a self-portrait that Scudder had painted
because he was an artist showing himself... There's like a gag on him and five bullet wounds to his
head. Steven, pull it up. And they found a number of books on the occult, several bottles of LSD,
and homosexual pornography. Right. And so, of course, they're like these evil men almost saying
they deserved what they got in obvious ways. Meanwhile, what pornography would the police
find on your computer right now? Oh, my God. And homosexual pornography can also... In the 80s,
it could be a book of art, of beautiful art of naked men by an amazing talented photographer.
Right. That's homosexual pornography to people who don't understand. And also,
kind of the celebration of this culture that up until very recently was entirely oppressed.
Right. And threatened and like you couldn't... So, you had to have your secret Tom's a Finland
book that people passed around because everything you had, you know, so many people couldn't be
out. Or they took fun naked photos in the pink room, whatever. That's the painting.
Ooh, that's scary. Isn't that creepy? It's... I almost like didn't want to include it because
it's almost unbelievable that painting. We'll put it in the Instagram. Also, though, the wounds on
his head could be gunshot wounds, but also, it's very similar to the wounds on Jesus's head from
the crown of thorns. Totally. So, it also could be that thing. It's symbolic. Yeah. But yeah,
that's pretty crazy coincidence. Right. That's just like a weird little tidbit that I almost
didn't want to. I mean, also, it could be that thing too, or that the police are walking around
and they're just getting scared and they don't like feeling scared. I mean, you'll see the inside
of the house. It's kind of creepy. It looks like a medieval and they have this like baroque furniture
and like, you know, super macabre shit. So, I understand that it's creepy to these people who
live in fucking Laura Ashley though, but like... All right. It's like they're Goths. They're
just Goths that went to the woods. Totally. Okay. So, of course, this whole thing turns
into a media circus. Local news reporters are more interested in the couple's issues and
eccentricities and the devil worshipers than finding actual justice. So, they become essentially
what everyone thinks is like one of the most tragic victims of the satanic panic or early victims of
the satanic panic. Oh, yeah. And there's rumors about the couple's lifestyle, that they had
homosexual orgies, that they raped children and there's drug use and all these things happening.
It's just all these rumors. And of course, you know, everyone in town goes nuts with these rumors.
And the sheriff had previously tried to bring charges against them for their behavior,
the Scudder and Odom, but found it was protected under the freedom of religion. Yeah. You know?
Right. Thank God. Thank God. Thanks, Satan. So, of course, in public opinion, many people
thought that they deserved to die for these reasons. And that's what really bothered me about
when I first found this article in the fan, or this story in the fan cult and I looked it up.
And the first couple articles I read, the subject line would be to Satanist, you know,
getting murdered. It's just like kind of is still doing them, blaming them. Yeah. And then I read
into it and it's the saddest fucking story I've ever heard about these two very innocent victims.
Some people hypothesize that if maybe Lieutenant Kirby Phelps hadn't been the third victim of
Brock and West, then maybe the killers might never have even been tried for murder because so
many people didn't fucking care. Right. Because the jury would have, the jury of their own peers would
have said it. Yeah, it's fine. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's really sad. Eventually,
West has found guilty of two counts of murder and sentenced to death and Brock pleads guilty and
received three consecutive life terms and they've both been denied parole many times. And in the
mid-1980s, a fire burned down Corpseville Manor and today there is remnants of like brick ruins and
that's all that stands of Scudder and Odum's Dream Home. And on the website, Abandon Southeast,
you can see all the photos. Oh, wow. And it's like a beautiful old abandoned place that we would love
to go to. And teenagers and locals still sneak onto the property. Some of them steal the bricks
that are left there, but everyone's like, they're cursed and my best friend broke her knee when she
was leaving or whatever. She was drunk. Exactly. She was on Tootaloo. And they all think that
it's, there's a curse there and everything like that, but it's like, no. Well, if there's a curse,
it's because two people were murdered. Right, exactly. There's a small private funeral service
held at Corpsewood Manor for Dr. Charles Scudder and Joseph Odum. Odum's ashes were scattered in
the Rose Garden by his family and Dr. Scudder's ashes were taken back to Wisconsin by his sister
and buried in the family plot. And as I said, some of the articles still seem to like want to cast
blame on them or make them these scary monsters. But I did love that when I went to findagrave.com
just to get some info, someone listed Joseph Odum as Dr. Scudder's spouse. Yeah. And it really,
and it was just this really lovely moment. Yeah. And that is the Corpsewood Manor murders. Wow,
I've never heard anything about it ever. Ever. That's incredible. We've been in Atlanta,
we've been in Georgia to do live shows. I wonder if it's because it is this,
because of the moralizing and the kind of like, this isn't the usual story. Right. Because, yeah,
I wonder if that's the reason. And there's a ton of books about it, The Corpsewood Manor
Murders by Amy Petula, The Corpsewood, A True Crime Like No Other by Daniel Ellis,
Corpsewood, The Eyewitness Account, who actually is co-written by Teresa Hudgens.
Wow. She tells her account of the whole thing. And there's a lot of
gory details that I've left out, obviously. And then on MotherEarthNews.com is an article
that Dr. Scudder wrote about what it's like to live off the land. Oh, wow. There's a lot of
quotes from him in that as well. I wonder if in any of those books, there's the neighbors that
they made friends with who are there to say, I think so. Yeah, this isn't. Yeah. I'm a local,
I'm one of the people that you think would be against and I was friends with them. There's
a couple neighbor accounts that are like, yeah, like you could tell they talked about it late
one night and he explained to them what Satanism really means to them and they understood it.
Right. Which is not that he believes in Satan. Yes. Because also oftentimes, in my hometown,
it's very country and there's a lot of people that live way out in the middle of nowhere.
And you would think that they would be, the assumption is that, oh, it's farmers or
conservative. Yeah, they're conservative and closed-minded and judgmental or whatever.
And like when Christo, in 1975, Christo built the running fence through Petaluma. It went
through our town and then out to the ocean. And it was, you know, Christo is this unbelievable
French artist that does huge site-specific sculptures. But this thing with the running
fence, I saw it when I was five years old and it was them. My dad has a picture of it in the
living room. It's so unbelievable and amazing. And all these farmers and dairymen and people who
had the land that they wanted to run the fence along, they fought for it. And they were saying,
we get to do anything we want with our land. You don't get to say, because the local city council
in Marin County, in Sonoma County, we're trying to tell them, you can't have that here. We don't
want your French art here. We don't want your whatever. But then the actual farmers that own
the land were like, screw you. You don't get to tell us what we do with our land. And if we want
them to do it, they get to do it. And then they let them, they did it. And it was, it's an incredible
thing. So I'm just saying, you know, I think sometimes people live out away from society.
Everyone has the same idea. We're like, yeah, we don't want that shit. That group think
mentality that oppresses other people just. Well, it came down to two fucking too bad seeds who were
high on greed and toodaloo and fucking just decided to take what they wanted and took the lives of
two people who did not deserve to be that they were friends with that they acted like they were
friends with that were kind enough to take them into their home. Yep. Wow. It's really sad. Wow.
That's a great story. Thank you. Okay, should we read a couple of fucking arrays? Let's do it.
We'll go first. This one says, I'm going to be on Jeopardy. It's been almost two years since I
auditioned and to be selected as a pretty random stroke of luck. I don't feel very ready, but I'm
listening to MFM as a break between intense studying and all my deep anxiety over being TV,
being on TV, doing math on the spot, not fucking up answers and trying to learn literally everything
in the world. You guys remind me to be here for a good time, not a long time. Did we say that?
It sounds like things Vince would say. And that quote, who cares if it's perfect, just do it.
Yeah. And I also need to go to San Coochick and while I'm in LA. Yeah. Thank you for so many
ways you've been here for me over the last four years, and I hope I can share
how much you mean to me on TV. Oh. Love A. Congratulations. That's incredible. Do you know
that test is so hard. I know so many really, really smart people who have not gotten on that show.
This is called, this is from, Bethany is killing it. There were periods in the middle. That's why
I said it like that. My fucking area is that I was recently accepted into a highly competitive
naval officer program. I've been enlisted for almost 10 years and I never thought I'd be good
enough to be an officer. But after years of my husband and mentors pushing me, I put in a package
and selected my first try. Wow. I want to use my eventual leadership position to show young women
and men in the military that they are capable of anything. I've been through a lot of shit since
I've been in, but I haven't let any of it keep me down. And I want to show young sailors that
women and leadership are just as capable as men. Wow. Congratulations. No name. Bethany. She's
killing it. Congratulations, Bethany. That's amazing. Good work. This one says, being better than
your parents. Oh, I see. I missed the name on. So this is from Trouble Cat on the, on the fan
cult. I just wanted to say fucking a hooray to myself and all the other parents these days
who are teaching their children that even adults have to say sorry to children when they fuck up.
Mm-hmm. Best lesson I'm teaching my kids is mom is human and mom can say sorry when she hurts
your feelings. That's amazing. I love that. Well done. That's beautiful. This is mine from Instagram.
Oh, hey, it's Kendall. That's who this is from. My fucking array this week might not be super
deep, but I'm still incredibly proud of myself. Tonight after months of student teaching, I'm
submitting my final project to obtain my official teaching license. I was always told that it was
a waste of time and money to become an educator, especially a high school art teacher due to
society's lack of respect and poor pay. Yet now more than ever, the world needs the language of
art to remember what empathy, kindness, and grace looks like. Wow. This all starts with our youth
who bring me so much joy and hope for a much brighter future than the world they are currently
growing up in. Wish me luck, SSDGM. Good luck. That's great. This one's great. It says my fucking
hooray. Hi, MFM. I'm currently on my way home from a party where I met and chatted with the one and
only Steve the Shemmy. What? In parentheses, friend of the show. He unnecessarily began with
what? Hi, my name is Steve as we shook hands leading to a chummy joking exchange centered on
coronavirus and the end of existence as we know it. Fucking hooray for my first celebrity interaction
and for my coworker Bill, whose February 29th leap day birthday party sparked the meeting.
Oh, my God. SSDGM, Savannah. Savannah. That is, I'm so jealous of you. My face is on fire right
now. It's the coolest. Of course Steve Bushemmy is the coolest and just introduces himself. Steve.
It's me, Steve. Steve. I'm kind of like an ex-fireman. Anyway, it's nice to meet you. We're all
going to die of coronavirus. I have one more. Tara Sem says, here's my fucking hooray. I was
recently on a slowdown over a mountain pass, but we were moving steadily. It was a gorgeous sunny
yet snowy day. We checked the ways up to learn there had been an accident ahead, but it must have
stalled traffic some time ago because when the traffic started moving faster, we came upon snowmen.
Every few yards, someone stalled in traffic had built a snowman on the shoulder. There were
miles and miles of snowmen. Some had faces, some had arms, and some had boobs. Fucking hooray.
That's so good. Every time someone went and then stopped, they were built a snowman.
Stalled out. Now, we're going to do one. I love things like that because that's the
effect, the group think effect that's the positive. They're doing it. I want to do it too.
I'm leaving this thing that someone else is going to laugh at that I'm not going to see the
result of, but I'm doing it for someone else's joy. I love that. That's great. What's yours?
Okay. This is from Georgia Hardstark. Grade five.
Just today, I was at home in our cute little house and I was working on my murder and
Vince is on the other side of the couch packing merch for We Watch Wrestling. I just stopped
and thought how fucking cool it is. It's the middle of the day and we're both working on projects
that we love and that we're passionate about and how grateful I am that we get to live that life
and that we're not working for the man. We're doing these things that we care about
and that mean a lot to us. I didn't think that this was what being an adult got to be like
and it just made me really happy to see that. I made him stop and he went,
uh-huh. Yes, baby. No, we're really lucky. I have to go vote and I have to go to the post office and
it's just nice and that also means I think that my new meds are working. That you get to have a
moment where you stop and have gratitude. The fact that I did that is like not, yeah. That's great.
Yeah. That's lovely. This fucking hooray brought to you by quick and long. That's what I thought.
We were like, not working for the man. I'm like, we probably are working for a man in a lot of
ways. You're never not working for a man. But you know what's funny? I was going to do our,
we had a fun like a network party because basically we've been working on this network for so long
and there's people, obviously all the podcasts that are on it currently, but then there's a bunch
that are coming and lots of people and waiting long, long, long time for their podcasts to come
out. But it was this really fun night and we, it was one of those things where I was like,
we need to do a thing where we can just buy everybody a drink and everyone can be in the
same room and we can all be like, we're doing a thing. And then it just took on the life,
this life of its own. And we ended up just like we tried, we picked a place that was just super
close to where we work. So it would be kind of convenient for everybody. And it ended up being
that room, I'm not going to say where it was because I don't want everybody else going there,
but it was the most beautiful room where we just thought it was just going to be like the side room
at this restaurant or whatever. You're talking about the room itself. The room itself was so
gorgeous that I was like, oh, this party's already a hit because we're in this space.
Because we look classy as fuck. For a long time, my career was a bunch of decisions that felt bad
and wrong. And I just did what I had to do, but I kept kind of trying to course correct the decision
making process. So the next time I did something, for a while, I was like, I have to do it for money
because I'm in terrible financial strait. But then once it was like, but I could still keep on trying
to do additional things and just keep on kind of like taking swings and see if I could just get a
hit, just get a hit, just get something going. So to be standing in that gorgeous room with Danielle
Kramer, who's amazing running our network and she's a master and all the people that we've
been working with, it was like a true joy. I did the coolest. Yeah, I was totally on that gratitude
train myself. I love it. It's very cool. Yeah, and the lasagna cupcakes from heirloom catering.
They're always a hit. It's always a hit. And guess what? We would not have that party and we
would not have these moments and we would not have anything if it were not for you guys,
the murderinos and the listeners who have been there for us and with us since day one.
We are so fucking grateful for you guys. I can't believe it on a daily basis.
It's amazing and we really thank you and we really love you and we're very proud of you and
we're very proud of ourselves. Yeah, we want to send it out into the air. I don't know.
That you guys are pointed to the ceiling. We can't say it enough though because we really,
you know, thank you guys. You made it happen for us. You're you're making it happen for us.
So thank you very much. Thank you. Also stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye Elvis. Do you want
a cookie?