My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 342 - The Debras of the World

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

On today's episode, Karen tells the story of Stuart Alexander, another murderous "Sausage King" and Georgia covers the disappearance of the Death Valley Germans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook, and listen to True Crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hey everybody, we have news. Two of your favorite podcast hosts from the Exactly Right Network are joining forces on a new show, and we are proud to say that it does not disappoint.

That's right. On this brand new podcast, the illustrious Kate Winkler Dawson and the legendary Paul Holes take a look at historical true crimes in the light of 21st century forensics, introducing Buried Bones. Kate has spent the last 25 years as a true crime journalist and storyteller. And as a retired investigator, Paul has worked on some of America's most complicated cold cases and solved them. Each week on Buried Bones, Kate presents Paul with one of history's most compelling cases. And Paul uses his vast knowledge of modern forensic techniques

to bring very new insights to very old crimes. Stay tuned at the end of this episode for the trailer of Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, and do not miss the show's premiere on September 14th. And to get new episodes every Wednesday, follow Buried Bones on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Goodbye. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstar.

That's Karen Kilgariff. And we're here to present you with a true crime podcast. Yes, there it is. Here it comes. Ready? Here it is. Be Gwyn. Start starting now. Now. What's going on? What's new? What's exciting before we get into our true crime podcasting stories? Do we have anything? Go ahead. Do it. Be conversational.

Okay. Get the conversation going. I'm watching Game of Thrones again. No. I'm on TikTok. Oh, you mean you've come back. Yeah. I thought you started again. No. I don't like it that much. Actually, I skipped like an entire season and I just went to the end of the like season six

because I was like, all right, all right, all right, dragons, dragons, like this, that, the other. You couldn't take the dragon tension anymore. No. You were just like move it along. Yeah. All right. So did that join TikTok just because I want to be cool like you and with it?

Yeah. Come on. Oh, I'll follow you. What's your name on it? Karen Kilgariff. Well, I was just thinking maybe you were being like secret or you're like a public. No, no. And I will say this, like I have no intention of posting anything on there. It's purely to watch other people and see what basically my sister and my friend Audrey post because they're really funny and it's very small potatoes, but please join us. There's been a couple of people who are lovely enough who have asked for me to follow them,

but I'm probably not going to because I don't want to get into other people's business. I'm just there for truly like a handful of people that I just want to spend every morning with who are like their accounts are either about. There's a really fucking hilarious one and it's a guy. I cannot tell if it's a person who actually has an Indian accent or if he's doing one, but it sounds very legit. But he says very spiritual kind of like almost meditative things, but he swears during it. And it is so funny.

The one was like, he was talking about deadlines and he goes, deadlines are bullshit. Don't worry about deadlines. Has anyone died? No, because they're bullshit or something like that. What if that's my first follow? Can I do that? What's his name? Get in there.

What's his name? By the way, my name on it is just hardstarking, which might change because Georgia hardstark was taken already. What? And I think I'm just going to do like vintage halls and state sale halls and stuff like that. Just silly things. Sure. Bring it.

There's so many of that. There was a girl who was in my, it's like the for you page where they go by the algorithm and then give you what they think you'll like. Yeah. And a girl popped up doing the, basically doing, here's a bunch of my outfits and it made me think of you. Yeah. Yes.

I'm going to do that, I think. Do it. It says you're private. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm private. I'm very private. Oh, the guy that I really love is named Terry K, T-E-R-R-Y-K-A-Y-E. Following.

So funny, so deep. And then like, but then does comments on other videos and is hilarious and sometimes sings, but oftentimes gives these pep talks where I'm like, he's talking right to me. Okay. Well, he's my second follow. You're my first. Nice. He's my second.

I already put a photo. I put a video of Mo. I got these like those tiny plastic hands. Oh, yeah. And I put them on him and I made a video of him with his tiny plastic hands. Oh, they're really suit. So that's kind of content you can expect from hard-starking over at TikTok. Go follow hard-starking.

Please don't come around by my spot. I'm just trying to, you know, here's the thing. Twitter is not a very nice place to be anymore. It is like social media is burning down. People are mad. People are self-righteous and indignant. And then people are also scared and trying to see if they can't solve things on their phone. And I think the bad news is you can't.

Yeah, you can't, but you can keep trying until you burn yourself to the ground. And just can't get up in the morning anymore. And you have back pain and you're like, why do I have back pain all the time? This can't be in my head because I'm too stressed. Because you won't finish the back pain book. You're a third of the way through it like I am with every single book I read. You're talking to me. I switched to you, but I'll go back out wide.

Because no one reads past the first third of any self-help book. They just don't. No, you're like, I get it. Yes, that's totally me and I'm not doing anything about it. Goodbye. You get that first pep talk where you're like, you're right. This is what we have to do. Goodbye.

Yeah, or like these examples of like Debra who was 42 and exhausted and didn't know why. I'm Debra. That's totally like me. Don't care how she solved it. Goodbye. Here's the thing, you're looking for a connection with Debra. Yeah. It's not all about this end result.

It's not all about the journey of completing your back pain or whatever. Sometimes it's just about knowing other people are like you. That's a good point. Like connecting with the Debras of the world to know that you're not alone. No. Kveching is sometimes the thing you need, you know? Yes, it is. And also hearing a Debra go, hey, me too, or hey, this is how my specific kind of grief manifests.

That's right down here in my lower lumbar region. Right, or what? It made me think of a lady that she showed up on my feed and she was talking about how if you work for a month to open up your hips, you can release the trauma that's stored in your body. Yeah, I keep meaning to do that. You do like the frog pose, right? Yeah, is that right? You have to do it for 30 days.

Yeah. Okay. I've been meaning to do the plank challenge for like a week. For eight years? That's an old one. I've been meaning to do it for a week for the past eight years. So guess how many weeks is that that I could have done it a lot? 52 times eight, there's no way to calculate that number, no way.

There isn't. Nobody ever figured that out. No, that's... Should we do a plank and frog challenge together with our listeners and open our hips and our minds and our sciatic nerves and everything? Let's try the 30-day Open Your Hips Challenge. Okay. I like it.

Okay. Free your trauma. There was a girl trying to do it and she was swearing. It was really funny. Oh, it's so painful. And leaning forward and like, yeah, you have your... You have one leg like tucked up underneath you and you're leaning over it while the other one stretches back.

Oh, that's the pigeon, that one, I mean. Oh, so you've done this? Well, I've done yoga, but I haven't like purposely done a pose at home. You know what I mean? Just on its own. Yeah. Okay. So I'll do the pigeon challenge.

I actually love that one. Let's do it. I'll find the one I found earlier and I'll send it to you. Okay, send it to me and we'll do it. Here's the thing. Let me warn you though, and this is really important because I think you are like me in this way where there are ads on TikTok that you don't see coming because you just think it's a girl talking to you about, you know, she...

I did this thing to my eyebrows or whatever. And then all of a sudden you're just like ordering an eyebrow stencil with eyebrow color stamp that I just received yesterday and immediately tried to use to give me those super everybody hasm eyebrows. Thick old eyebrows, yeah. I could not stop laughing. The stencil did not fit on this weird Jack Nicholson eyebrow that I have, of course. You do have intense eyebrow shapes.

Yes, they're good. 90s speed eyebrows that don't... So there's no stencil that fits these. Well, that's how you make your own. My favorite murder, promo code murder eyebrow stencil. The biggest eyebrow stencil you've ever seen. My eyebrow stencils be two lowercase L's laying next to each other because that's... I'm not kidding.

When I took this stencil off after you stamped it on, pulled it off and I look like Groucho Marks was trying to get it together. Like it was so funny. I was crying and then I had to get on that department head meeting and it was like, oh, but I had an extra set of eyebrows on top of my regular ones. Oh, I didn't notice. God, I wish I'd known I would have pointed it out to all the department heads. No, I basically had to remove and then like do cover up on top of.

But all I'm saying is I have bizarre Clara bow eyebrows. All I'm saying is actually separate from my eyebrows. Yeah. I've truly bought about six things off of TikTok. They make it so easy. You just go on, you're like, I need that powder foundation. I need that camisole that's also a body, whatever. Like half the cat toys at my house are from an Instagram ad for sure.

Yeah, it's so easy. They've gotten so good at it and like they have certain buttons you touch where it's like, oh, just use this way to buy it and you don't have to fill anything out. Well, it's an algorithm, right? Cause it's like, we know Karen buys beauty supplies. Well, I last night I was scrolling through it and somehow it thinks that I'm into scary, creepy movies that look real. Like I filmed my girlfriend at night sleeping and this is the face that, and it's like a monster face.

And I was like, why is this, why, I don't like this shit. I'm in bed. It's three in the morning cause I can't fucking sleep. Why do you think I want monster faces? Did you save a monster thing? I don't think so. And then it thinks I want like the worst pimple popping videos. Like I want good ones, good clean pimple pops.

I don't want you to bring a fucking exacto knife out. Oh, and they're like those ones where they're on like a back porch and it's yeah, someone's like, it's someone's uncle getting removed on the back patio. And their nails are just like the person who's doing it hasn't washed their hands in three weeks. It's not a sanitary situation. No, that's not what I'm asking for. Please tick tock, please. I want a nice little blackhead, like something easy game of thrones,

something easy, something satisfying and game of thrones and game of thrones. I think that's how I still have yet to understand tick tock. And I don't like to go into things and just be signing up and be there cause I don't understand what's happening. So I need to get the lay of the land. Yeah. And then once that all makes sense to me, maybe I'll not be private and maybe I'll post, you know, videos of the dogs or whatever.

And maybe we'll do a tick tock, do it, dance together. Maybe, you know what we should do? Dance. Nor can teach us all the dances. One, two, three, four. Yes, go ahead. The Lizzo one. Yes.

I just watched Lizzo do her own dance. But what we should do maybe for the fan cults for our video, for the exclusive video is we should both do this eyebrow stencils and show. I'm in. Would that be hilarious? No. And I want the gnarliest eyebrows. Let's get gigantic.

Because here's the other thing. My eyebrows. Then in a way that like I, you can't pluck above the eyebrow line and the children of today know this because everyone's a beauty expert and everyone's beautiful, which is the other thing I noticed on tick tock is like not a man or woman or anyone on that app shows up and isn't so appealing. And you're like young because everyone looks good when they're young. Yeah.

They're young or they have filters, my sister explained to me. Oh, right. Okay. I'm going to need more to give us a filter tutorial because I don't understand it. I end up having a nose ring and freckles and that's not, like there's a filter where you can have like a, like puts a nose ring and freckles on you. I swear to God.

But I don't know how to just myself look like normal hot. Instead it's like, it's like, oh, you were actually in the. You look like a little fox with ears and. Yeah. You look like a little blind hot and I want like normal hot. Just you just want to be, you just want one pass of beauty. Yeah. Before you get on that camera.

Yeah. I'm just relieved to hear that's an option because I would always be like flip my camera around and almost have a heart attack and then just be like, I don't know how these people do it, what lives they lead. You don't have to do it anymore. It's all Instagram versus reality. Look it up. It's all fake.

Well, you have shown me those ones where everything when they try to make their waist smaller and then the whole, like they're standing in front of the San Francisco Bay and it's all swirled behind them. Or like there's a video of them and then suddenly the glitches and it's like neck, neck, neck, neck, neck down here, neck up here, neck's up here. Don't worry. And that's because they stretch their neck out. No, it's because there's a glitch because the filter like tightens up here, like pulls

everything up. Oh, and then the glitch is like, here's your real one real quick, like cause you move too fast or something like that. It's like. Your jaw comes out for one second. Yeah. Listen, we need to accept jowls. Georgia.

I know, but do you though, but at this point, like in what's happening in our culture, it's like you kind of don't have to accept jowls. No, they're called. What are the stitches that you can get now called? Is that the one where you thread some threads? Threads. Yeah. And they pull everything up.

Yeah. And then they dissolve. And then you're, and then six months later, you're left with your same old face cause it went back. And then you're like, wait, I paid all that money. Yeah. What happened? So that's why I'm trying to accept.

Well, that's good. I mean, I think, you know, what's going to change everything is a month. The metaverse. Planking. Oh, yes. Okay. I don't want to agree to, do you mean just like the plank so that your gut gets like tighter?

The whole body does, but yeah, like basically a push-up position, you know, like a plank. Oh. Like a push-up. Right. Remember when the planking trend of just planking somewhere and taking a picture of it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that. We're not doing that.

A plank as in like in yoga, a plank pose, which is the top of a push-up. Gotcha. Oh, that's so funny. We both did it for a month and you just had like, had been planking on the ground the whole time. And I'm taking pictures of myself like planking at bombs or whatever. Here I am in the produce section, planking. Isn't it funny?

And you're just like, wait, what? I meant plank pose. Oh my God. You're like, I hate it. It doesn't work. I just remember that it was some writing job I had and one of the APs on the job was doing the plank places. I think he was really funny.

I remember that. And I was like, so it was like 2011, 2012. And I remember watching her like post it and show me and thinking I'm officially out of popular culture now. I don't understand this and it doesn't make sense. Well, you shouldn't put your face on the ground. It's fucking disgusting. Like get your face up off the ground.

You know what I mean? Any, any like one of those things that has to do with like putting your actual face on the ground is just not, I'm out. Or like, I really like the concept of the ice bucket challenge in terms of raising, figuring out ways to really raise money. Right. But it didn't do that. Did it?

I think, I don't know whether or not it did. But also it was like you're guilting people into pouring ice cold water on themselves for internet cloud. Right. Guilt them into giving money for internet cloud. Right. I mean, I think wasn't it supposed to be in like to eventually do it? Yeah.

I don't know how it any of it works. Also remember, Coney, 2020. Oh, we've just gone, we've gone right off the relevant scale. Right into irrelevance. Here we are a decade later and we have no idea what's going on. But there are people on TikTok who do things and make things. And as I watch them, it makes me believe in humanity again. Yes.

Sometimes that happens for sure. I saw a guy introduce his new puppy on the street. Someone was filming him from their window. Introduce his new puppy to the neighborhood cat just by holding the cat up. And they like met the cat was like, I don't really like this thing. And then the old man like kept walking and it was, it made me happy. That's beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah. I saw one where an old man was at the airport and he walks up, there's a group of girls facing the doors where you come out if you've just come off a plane and this old man. So it starts as a shot of the back of these girls and you're like, we don't know what this is, but it's clearly a baggage claim of an airport. Oh yeah. And then an old man walks into frame and looks down and goes, oh, someone left their phone here and picks it up.

And then he kind of puts it back down and he's looking around. And then he just stands in front of the camera shot and you hear the, their friend come out. So you hear the thing that they were trying to film, which was their friend returning from somewhere or arriving and it's just this old man standing there for a while. And then finally, one of the girls comes over to pick the phone up and he goes, oh, there it is. I thought it was lost. Oh my God.

It's so awesome. Oh, that's like way better than you could have ever imagined. Yeah. Hey, how do you like this? If you love rad videos, there's a new MFM animated. God, I loved that. Did you love that segment, Segway? Yes, I did.

Remember Segway's relevant. Well, this is very exciting. Lady to Lady, our podcast that joined exactly right last year. They are coming up on almost 10 years in podcasts and they've been around for a long time, going strong since 2012. And today their 500th episode is available and they actually got from Third Rock from the sun. They're all been super fans.

They talk about this actor all the time. They do. French Stewart is on the show with them. And so we just wanted to say congratulations, lady to lady. We love you guys. Thank you for bringing your show over to our network. Yep. You're classics, big fans.

Congratulations. Congratulations. High five, French Stewart. You nailed it. And Karen Kilgarov, if you've heard of her, and Chris Fairbanks have comedian Lori Kilmartin on this week's Do You Need a Ride? And that's a longtime friend of yours, right? So it had to be a really fun episode.

Yes. I came up when she was a headliner in San Francisco. She was a guiding star. She's such a solid comic and so great. She wrote on Conan for 10 years. She's the real deal. And her latest album, Corset, is out now. So make sure you check that out.

She is just truly one of the most hilarious comedians out there. And you should follow her on Twitter if you're on Twitter and you're still enjoying yourself. She is a hilarious follow and she's very smart and says great stuff. Classics all around. I have a corrections corner. And it's because Taylor Galley sent it to me, so I appreciate it, Taylor. And Taylor said, loving the coverage of the 1964 Alaska earthquake. However, and this is where my cheeks begin to burn.

Oh no. Important to note that Anchorage has never been the capital of Alaska. It was Sitka before the purchase of the U.S. when it was then moved to Geno, Alaska. And I knew that in my subconscious, in your heart of hearts, because my sister, when she was in sixth grade, made, and I think you're a little bit too young for this. But as a child of the 70s, going into the 80s, my parents bought a home stereo that came with a microphone. No.

So on a cassette tape, you could hit record and you could make a tape of yourself doing whatever the fuck you wanted. And to memorize the state capitals, and I feel like I've told you this before, my sister made a tape of herself reading the state capitals that then she would listen to. And she said it because no one had any experience in broadcasting or anything. She said all the state capitals like this, like Sacramento, California, Geno, Alaska. And I memorized them because I would hear her doing it. Well, clearly it didn't take.

Well, I feel like it expired after 30 years because I'm really mad at myself for not catching that. You made room for other memories, other thoughts and feelings and ideas like, there's only so much room in our brains. True. Thank you. I appreciate it. So thank you, Taylor, for sending me that, kindly, no shade whatsoever, and really it

felt not as bad as it could have. Love it. All right. Well, will you please go first this week, I think? Will you please go? Please, goddammit. Will you stop planking and just fucking go? Fine.

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So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca 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 Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California.

They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. All against the odds wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. So you know, couple weeks could be months hard to tell these days, the way time is passing in my brain, but I did a story that was about Adolf Luke Gart, the sausage king of Chicago.

And it was only after we posted that episode that I began to be told by many people who listened to this podcast that there are other people who claim to be sausage kings who are involved in crimes and murders multiple Wow. So thus begins the sausage king series of my favorite murder, my God, because there's several and we're going to cover them all as they come in. I think Jim Morrison was originally going to call himself the sausage king, right? But yeah, I am the sausage king. I can do anything.

That's right. I think that was the lyrics. That's gotta be it. Wow. A sausage king series. I'm fucking here for it and not just because I have to be, it's my podcast. You're required to be here for it, but thank you for clapping. Thanks for putting in the extra effort.

It means a lot. This sausage king story with a short history of meat safety. So the US Department of Agriculture's Food and Safety Inspection Service or FSIS, they do very important work. Employees are tasked with ensuring that the laws and regulations around food safety are enforced so that we can all eat meat, poultry, and eggs without fear of ingesting deadly bacteria and getting sick. Thank you for your work and your service, right?

It's a very easy job to take for granted because by definition, if they're doing a good job, we don't have to think about the job they're doing. That's how that works usually. So with federal food inspectors and their state-level counterparts, they do a crucial public health service that literally saves lives and is not always easy. The compliance officers that work for those places are also called meat cops, and they have to inspect production facilities where meat and poultry are prepared for sale. If those facilities aren't operating in a sanitary safe way or they're not labeling

and dating their products correctly, these officers or meat cops will issue citations, and if facilities accumulate enough citations and don't fix their issues, they can get shut down. And if there's one thing that everybody hates, it's getting a ticket. So it's not surprising that food safety inspectors get a lot of hate as they do their job. In fact, in the early 2000s, in California, a special advisor to the USDA addressed a meeting of around 200 food safety inspection service personnel, and they asked the following questions. The first one was, has anyone present ever been verbally abused while on the job?

Almost every attendee raised their hand. Then they asked, has anyone present ever been threatened while on the job? Nearly half the attendees raised their hand. And then the last question, has anyone present been physically assaulted while on the job? And about 10% of the room raised their hand. This is a difficult and serious job. So with all of that in mind, it's a kind of thing that most people don't know unless maybe you're in the business, your family's in the business or something.

So keeping that in mind, I'm about to tell you this story, and it is the story of Stuart Alexander, the Sausage King. So it starts around three o'clock on June 21st, the year 2000, and USDA agents Tom Quadros and Gene Hillary and California state agents William Schlein and Earl Willis have been waiting over an hour at the Santos Linguisha factory in San Leandro, California. They're there basically to shut down this facility and to discuss this with the factory's owner, a self-proclaimed Sausage King named Stuart Alexander. So he's been hit with multiple food safety violations at his factory, but he's made

no effort to fix any of the issues. He operates his business without adhering to any of the very strict rules and regulations from the USDA as if he is a literal Sausage King. So today, like many other days in recent months, these agents are on site and they're there to shut him down. But when Stuart finally arrives at the factory, because when they got there, he wasn't there, so they had to wait around for like an hour. So when Stuart finally does arrive at the factory, he storms through the retail area

where the agents are waiting for him, and he's furious. He goes straight to his office and slams the door, and he doesn't seem to be coming back out. So these agents are very aware of Stuart's anger issue. In fact, one of them has already called 911 to ask a police officer to come down and supervise in case things escalate, but no cop has showed up. So the four inspectors stand there waiting, hoping that Stuart is in his office kind of collecting himself, cooling down, and that when he's feeling better, he'll come out and

talk to them and basically find out what needs to happen next. But the problem is that Gene, Bill, Earl, and Tom have no idea that just beyond the door in the privacy of his office, this so-called Sausage King is loading three pistols. Okay, so let's go back to the origins of the Santos Linguisa factory. This company started 80 years before in the 20s on the very same property in San Leandro, where a woman named Pia Santos is making sausage. It's Linguisa, which is a certain type of garlicky, mildly spicy sausage. And she's Portuguese.

It's a family recipe, and everyone loves it. All of her friends, like she makes it, gives it to her friends. Her friends go crazy. They want more. She starts selling it out of the basement of her home with the help of her husband, Antonio. But the word gets around. Before long, they're selling it at a farmer's market in Oakland, and the more people that try this sausage, the more the demand just skyrockets.

It's like a hit. Everyone loves it. Their basement operation becomes outmatched by the growing number of orders that roll in. But luckily, the lot directly next door to their house goes up for sale. And because they've made so much money off of their garage sausage, they can afford to buy this piece of property. So they do it.

They buy it, and they build a small facility for their sausage production, and they call it the Santos Linguisa Factory. And that sausage business just continues for decades. Eventually, the ownership passes from Pia and Antonio to their grandson, Herman Alexander, in the 50s. And then when Herman passes away in 1993, the facility shuts down. But people of the Bay Area are not having it. And there's such a demand for this sausage that Herman's son reopens the factory just

four months after his death. When he actually ends up telling a reporter, quote, people went crazy. They wouldn't stop calling. Some even called the Chamber of Commerce to find out what happened. And that man was Stuart Alexander. And this would be the beginning of his reign as the self-proclaimed sausage king. So by the early 1990s, when Stuart inherits the factory, there's been over a century worth of regulation and reform and legislative action around food safety in the United States.

So a very different story than his great-grandmother when she started her sausage factory or when she was made sausage in her garage. Right. A little different. A lot of trust there. A huge catalyst for the practice of meat inspection comes in 1905, which was the year Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle comes out, which was about the hellish conditions of Chicago slaughterhouses. I remember reading that.

It was so disgusting. So awful. Reading is good. Reading is fundamental. Books are great. And people finding out about stuff that isn't right outside their front door and then caring about it is what books are for, a.k.a. don't let weirdos shut down your local public libraries. Yeah.

And banning books is fucking bad. Banning books is what fascists and Nazis do. That's right. Okay. Just a quick sidebar. So there is an uproar over what people read and learn about in the jungle, and it directly leads to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act, or FEMA. And both are signed into law the following year after that book comes out.

And this is aimed at cleaning up the commercial food industry with FEMA more narrowly focused on the distribution of meat specifically. So the law requires that meat producers adhere to inspections and uphold very strict sanitation standards and later on poultry will be added to that law as well. So as the meat industry expands and diversifies, regulators respond accordingly. And in the 60s, individual states start passing laws mandating inspections and sanitation standards of their own. So now there's federal requirements and state requirements that producers must adhere to.

Okay. So that just gives you an idea of what the situation is. So now we talk about Stuart Alexander, who was born in 1961 in San Leander, California. Actually his great grandparents success with their sausage factory enables him to grow up with a certain level of local fame and name recognition and privilege, of course. By the time he's in his 30s, he's helming the factory, but he also has enough money to have bought buildings and become a landlord. And he has his own garbage collection company.

Interesting. He's doing it. His portfolio is diversified. There's always money in the sausage factory, turns out. And in the garbage company that takes the garbage away from the sausage factory, perhaps. So under Stuart's leadership, business at the Santos Linguisa factory stays strong, but it was already a well-oiled operation. They had employees that had worked there like for decades.

And also people loved Pia's linguisa. So they actually never once had to spend a dime on advertising. Wow, that's wild. That's how strong the word of mouth was, yeah. And they fulfilled orders across the country. It was a national brand, yeah. Pretty cool. So when Stuart takes control of the factory, he vows to carry the family business to its

100-year anniversary, which is a bit of pressure, I mean. Not really because it's just a well-oiled machine that you just have to make sure you don't drive off the road. But Stuart was the kind of person that might drive it off the road, because as you have come to expect in stories like this, all is not as it seems at the sausage factory. So people would talk about Stuart's quote-unquote eccentric personality, but really it sounds more like he was really entitled and that entitlement had kind of been left to fester unchecked.

He has a real problem with authority. He's very anti-establishment, quote-unquote. So he basically thinks he can pick and choose the rules he's going to live by. And obviously, very bad quality for a business leader, especially somebody whose business is about food production. It's all about the rules. And it's an important thing to have those kinds of rules. And then on top of that, he has an anger issue.

He's so belligerent with city zoning inspectors, they will not do in-person visits with him. So he's been a problem with others. It's got a reputation, yeah. Yeah, yeah, down at City Hall. So by the 90s, Stuart's racked up thousands of dollars in fines, taxes, and liens for things like refusing to pay state unemployment insurance or not paying the mortgage on his other properties. In one extreme example, Stuart sinks a ton of money into flipping a local building that

he intends to use first as a restaurant and then as a community space. But he gets no building permits that are required to do that. And so city inspectors hear about it and they basically bar anyone from occupying the building. And now the building is completely useless to him. And of course, he's furious about the problem that he single-handedly created by not getting the permits. Oh, okay. Right?

Around the same time, Stuart's financial situation is starting to spiral. It's reported that he's losing millions of dollars mostly in real estate as he tries to crawl out from under his other debts. He files for bankruptcy twice. He closes out the decade with a failed bid for San Leandro mayor. Oh, interesting. Personality type. He runs, as you would assume, as an anti-establishment, anti-bureaucracy candidate.

And he places third out of four candidates. That's all more of his money down the drain. He's experiencing turmoil in his personal life. He is reeling from the recent deaths of both his father and soon after his younger brother. And probably due to this, at least in part, his anger issues drive him over the edge. In 1996, he's arrested for attacking his 75-year-old neighbor after a dispute over garbage. Oh, no. Yep.

The fight escalates to the point that Stuart is charged with both elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. And those charges are only dropped after the two engage in a costly settlement out of court. So, with all that in mind, it's no surprise that Stuart's begun to take up a personal vendetta against the meat inspectors who keep on showing up at the factory to cite him for his federal and state violations and not doing anything about them. Once he's cited, they usually give you 30, 60 days, 90 days to get it right. And he's basically doing what I used to do when I lived in San Francisco, made my dad

so mad, and I would get parking tickets because it was his car. I would park in the crosswalk in front of our apartment, and then when I got tickets, I would just take them and throw them over my shoulder. I'd get in the car. You'd litter. And just throw them over my shoulder. Oh, no, in the back of your car. No, into the back seat.

Okay. I was like, wow, doubling down on those tickets, littering. I'd rip them up and throw them in the air. Oh, when we were young. You know, thank God I didn't have a sausage factory, but also it's that thing where it's like, if that's your mentality, why do you have a business? Yeah. Why do you have multiple businesses?

There's, yeah, there's some basics you got to follow, or it's like, it's your own fucking fault when bad things happen because you're not following some basic rules that are put in place. Yes. Yeah, it's pretty crucial. Yeah. It's not about like you being loose and free or whatever. So as they would, the inspectors just keep coming back and Stuart basically insists they

can't tell him what to do. So they can, it turns out. Now, this is 1993 and you may remember there was an E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box that year. I was just thinking about that when you started the story. Yeah. That was so scary. It was specifically like this happened where over 700 people got sick in four different

states. 171 people were hospitalized and four children were killed because of this E. coli outbreak. And that was because the Jack in the Box didn't cook their meat long enough. That was like central. They didn't heat it up enough. Right. And so when E. coli appeared in the meat, it didn't get killed off because oftentimes a lot of that stuff gets killed off just by the heat.

Right. This story dominated the nightly news. It was a massive jolt of awareness to the American public about foodborne illnesses. And just like the response to the jungle all those years ago, it's another wake up call for regulators. So in response to this E. coli outbreak, the USDA adopts strong measures to remove contaminated beef from the marketplace. And so of course, the meat cops are on the front lines for all those initiatives.

They become the face of the regulation and the enforcement in the field. And they know firsthand how much increased regulation frustrates meat and poultry producers. There are people that get frustrated and then there's Stuart Alexander. So Stuart's feeling the effects of this strengthening around the rules and around and the intensity around food safety, especially after inspectors cite the Santos factory for not cooking sausages at high enough temperatures to kill certain bacteria. So essentially he gets caught with the same problem that's going on. So the new federal requirements allow individual facilities to come up with plans of their

own to kill the pathogens. They're not telling them exactly what to do. Stuart does nothing. So he refuses to implement any changes. Annie claims that increasing cooking temperatures will ruin like the sausage recipe, but he doesn't have any other plan. So he just keeps on doing the wrong thing essentially. And then it turns out that he is basically given a solution on a silver platter because

a study had been conducted in the early seventies at UC Davis and they demonstrated that the method of smoking linguisa developed by Stuart's own father adequately killed bacteria. It was his own family's solution. So all Stuart actually had to do was fill out some forms that included this research and the Santos Linguisa factory would have been shown to be in compliance with the new federal rules. But he does not do it. No, I would.

Don't do that. Don't do anything. Don't start now. I relate to this phase of his life where like the mail starts piling up and you're like, well, if I start now, I'm going to get really scared. So I'm not going to start the really scary part first. Oh, God. Stuart eventually accumulates so many citations that in January of 2000, he voluntarily shuts

the factory down. His personal financial and legal issues seem insurmountable. The Linguisa business that was unsinkable for 80 years is now in peril and it's all on him. It's all his faults. But he is incapable of self-reflection. So instead of trying to resolve his own issues, he does things like post a huge sign outside the factory that says, quote, to all of our great customers, the USDA is coming into our

plant harassing my employees and me, making it impossible to make our great product. Gee, if I'll meet plants could be in business for 79 years without one complaint. The meat inspectors would not have jobs. Therefore, we are taking legal action against them. Whoa, what's up, unhinged, like right out there. That's basically like if you got one of those restaurant sanitary reviews and you got a biggie, and you're just like, we're taking this all the way to... Right, they told you like a month ago to put fucking labels on your boxes and you didn't

do it. So I don't know if it's on them. Clean up those ants, just do it. No biggie. So essentially this whole move is like he's making a big show of I'm shutting down the factory. But several months later, in June of 2000, federal inspectors noticed there is activity at the factory.

It basically looks like Stewart's decided to just resume production. So he's taken down his big mean sign and all the trucks are coming and going from the factory again. And this is when the USDA meat cops call up the California state inspectors and they decide to partner up and go down there because this is truly dangerous. It's like... Yes, yes. You can't mess around with this stuff.

And they're not going to, especially after the horrible thing that happened, you know, with the E. coli outbreak. But at this point, it's on them if something bad happens. So they're not going to just like look away, right? So on Monday, June 19th, 2000, a California state inspector named Earl Willis goes to the Santos Linguisa factory. He's been there before he's requested a police officer accompanying him because he knows what Stewart Alexander is like.

But today he's joined by Jean Hillary, who she's a federal inspector. And at this point, this factory has lost both its state and federal permits. They're there to show that they're making food illegally in both state and nationwide. So after a fraught encounter, they basically talk to Stewart and they look around and then they find that he has in fact been producing food illegally because they find that he's been shipping sausages to buyers marked with forged USDA inspection certificates. Oh, man, you just doubled down, like for real. It's that idea of like, oh, this, this is how I'll solve the problem and start cheating.

And it's like, but the problem is that your food could kill people as far as you know. Right. But the truth is it can't. If you would just get some of your shit taken care of, you would have learned that. That has to me, that has the feel of the family annihilator who had the Tiffany lamp all along. It's just like, oh, the answer was right there and you said you just decided to go insane. So once they find that out, that he really is forging those and like he's doing everything they, they're afraid he's doing, they go back two days later, Wednesday, June 21st.

And they're ready to talk to Stewart Alexander and say, we have to shut this down. And this time, Jean and Earl are joined by Earl's longtime colleague at the state office Bill Schlein and another federal inspector named Tom Quadros. So they get there around two o'clock in the afternoon, Stewart's not there. This is basically the story I was telling you at the beginning. They wait around for over an hour. And then of course, Stewart shows up, he's furious, he blazes through, he storms past the inspectors, he goes right into his office.

He dials 911 and he tells the dispatcher that government meat inspectors are trespassing on his property and he wants them removed. He's a real Karen. Earl is unnerved by Stewart's aggressive behavior. So he steps outside to call 911 himself and requests that an officer come by to be there for this in case things escalate. And they've, they've all had to do this before. They've all actually had to involve police when they go to this sausage factory before.

The dispatcher doesn't think much of it. It doesn't seem like anyone's life is an immediate danger. So Earl's told to call back if there's any issues. So he hangs up and he's walking back toward the building to go back inside to meet up with everyone else. But it's right at this time that Stewart bursts out of his office door armed with three handguns and opens fire on Jean, Tom and Bill, and they all fall to the floor. So Earl hears the shots and he basically turns and runs.

He knows that this guy is like crazy and aggro or whatever. So the second he hears gunshots, he just runs up the street. Inside Stewart realizes that Earl was outside and now he's getting away. And so he goes out and chases Earl for two blocks and shoots at him in broad daylight in like a busy retail area. Oh my God, that is unhinged. Yeah. And Earl's dodging the bullets, obviously, like it's so crazy.

And because of the time of day and the location, several people witness this bizarre and horrifying scene and only when Stewart runs out of ammunition does he stop, turn around, walk back to the factory and calmly reload his weapons in his office. And then he walks back out through the retail area and as he passes these agents' bodies, he shoots more shots to make sure that they're all dead. Oh my God, that's fucking horrifying. At this point, a cop has finally arrived on the scene 20 minutes after they have been called and he arrives on a bike.

No. Like a bicycle. He rides on a bicycle by himself to a triple murder scene. And Stewart Alexander, who was basically on a rampage, walks out of the building toward the officer and as he gets closer, he says, I'm the one you're looking for. It'll later be determined that Stewart Alexander fired nearly 20 rounds inside at the inspectors in the factory. Wow.

Did the one other one get away? He lived. Yeah. And that's the weird thing is he was clearly rampaging, but then he gave himself up to like a bike cop. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like he respected authority for the first time.

Or he just was kind of like, I've snapped. It's over. I'm done. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was a vendetta. He was blaming these people, these inspectors for all his problems. Totally.

So it's just like, I guess, yeah. So Stewart Alexander's trial begins in May 2004 in Alameda County. And Marin, our researcher, made a note here and said, it's not incredibly important for the story, but I found it interesting. Stewart Alexander's trial started right before Scott Peterson's trial. Oh. So that's probably why I, having like been from up there, have never heard this story. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Basically that media circus just drew all eyes away. There's a bigger murder in the area. So during this trial, the prosecution makes Stewart Alexander's violent confrontational past obviously front and center, witnesses testify that he has at various points used a tire iron, a baseball bat, and gasoline in attacks on other people. Oh my God.

Out of control. But the jury doesn't have to rely on witness testimony to understand Stewart's violent side because everything that happened in the factory that day was caught on security cameras and it was Stewart himself who turned them on shortly before he opened fire on the inspectors. It's almost like he thought he was justified in doing it and he wanted proof or something. I mean, yes. Who knows? Who knows?

Who knows, but that idea that he was the one in control and chose to do that is, is fascinating and odd. It kind of sounds to me like, and obviously I'm just making this shit up, but like he thinks he's being a vigilante in a way and like completely, you know, like he's on the right side. Yeah. That's sick. The jury was never tasked with evaluating whether Stewart killed Gene Hillary, Tom Quadros,

and Bill Schlein or attempted to kill Earl Willis because it was undeniable. But they were trying to avoid a potential death sentence. So Stewart's defense argues that he was mentally unwell and that he acted impulsively and they basically tried to convince the jury that it was not a premeditated attack because you have to prove premeditation for a first degree murder and you have to have a first degree murder for a death sentence. So basically the defense was just like trying in every way. Right.

That's like their only angle at this point. The plan doesn't work and on October 19th, 2004, after a six month long trial and three days of deliberation, Stewart Alexander is found guilty on all charges and these charges include three counts of first degree murder for the homicides of Bill Schlein, Gene Hillary and Tom Quadros and one count of attempted premeditated murder for the attack on Earl Willis and multiple special circumstances that make Stewart Alexander eligible for the death penalty, including murder of a public official in retaliation for performing his or her job, as well as multiple murder, which is when a defendant is found guilty of several

murders in the same trial. Wow. So when the verdict is read, the courtroom erupts with gasps and sobs, particularly from victimist families, but Stewart Alexander does not react at all. And two months later on December 14th, 2004, Stewart sentenced to death and then on December 27th, 2005, so almost exactly a year later on death row, he's found dead in his prison cell and an autopsy determines that he died of a pulmonary embolism. This is a true crime that feels specifically and distinctly American because of the gun

violence and the anti-establishment conspiracy theories, all the unprocessed rage and denial. It's very us, especially at this time right now. It's more importantly about the tragic loss of three people who are deeply loved by their friends and families. And those people are Jean Hillary, who was 56 years old. She'd raised three daughters before returning to school in her 40s to earn her bachelor's degree. She was really proud of this accomplishment.

And soon after she got her bachelor's, she got her job at the USDA and she was a hard worker with a big heart who volunteered her time with local organizations like the Children's Swimming Program. Tom Quadros was 52 years old. He left behind a loving family, including his 21-year-old son, Chris. The father and son had dreamed of one day opening a trading card shop like sports cards once Tom retired from his job. So Chris eventually actually got to bring that dream to life.

He opened TQ Collectibles in his father's honor. And actually, he has an online shop. It's not brick and mortar, I guess, but it's TQ Collectibles still. It's still around. And William Bill Schlein was 57 years old. And like his colleague Jean, he also had three children that he deeply adored. Bill left a lasting impression on those around him. And during his testimony, Earl Willis spoke lovingly about his colleague Bill, saying

that they'd become incredibly close after working together for 19 years. Earl said, quote, Bill's word was his bond. He was a stand-up guy. At the USDA and at its state-level counterparts, conversations begin over how to ensure that this never happens again, like how they're trying to do with teachers in this era of mass shootings. Some wondered back then if compliance officers should be armed during their on-site visits. Like that concept is instantly controversial and never meaningly considered as a solution

because as any person knows, it's stupid and insane and it's not a sincere suggestion. It's literally people who are paid off by gun lobbyists trying to make us believe that guns have to be in the conversation forever. Because if introducing more guns is going to solve the shooting problem, that doesn't make any sense. Or like as my sister, the teacher said, hey, how about you get us fucking air conditioning first before we're all armed? How about you cover the basics before you start spending money on that bullshit?

Commemorative events take place in California and Washington, D.C. in honor of Jean, Tom, Bill, and the survivor, Earl. And currently, tens of thousands of inspectors work each day to keep American meat and poultry safe for consumption. And it's because of them that the United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. And that is the story of the second murderous sausage king, Stuart Alexander. Wow, two sausage kings and they're both incredible stories.

You know what I mean? Like we're not just like, well, here's another one because this goes with the theme. What is the wildest story? There's another one. No. I swear to God. Yes. It's a vegan's argument.

You know what I mean? It's just like. How about a vegan sausage king? Can we get one of those stories going? Yeah. Yeah. How about the impossible sausage murders? The main sausage for today's story are the sausage king by Bud Hazelhorn for San Francisco

magazine, 2001, shout out to San Francisco magazine. Oh yeah. When I lived in the city and I could get my grimy little fingers on a copy of that thing, I was like, oh, this is living. So good. Someday I'll read these articles and I'll have not two jobs. There was also a KCBS radio podcast by Natalia Guravich called the sausage king all about this and the food safety and inspection service slash US Department of Agriculture has a website

and a bunch of information was taken from. There are history portion of the website and you can go to today's show notes for the rest of the sources. Wow. Great job. That is truly a wild ride. Crazy. All right, so today I'm going to talk about a disappearance of a group of German tourists

who went missing in Death Valley in the summer of 1996 and they became known as the Death Valley Germans. I've never heard of this, but let me just say this as a lifelong Californian. I don't know one person who has gone to Death Valley. Oh, no, me neither. That's a tourist thing, right? You think so? You must be, right?

We all know to stay the fuck away. You drive through to get to maybe Vegas or something. I don't even know if it's on the route because I would never go. Is it above? Yeah. I think I've looked at Death Valley as a like, where is it? How do I make sure I never go there? Yeah.

But you have to go out of your way. It's one of those places that it's like when it's really hot and everyone's talking about how climate change is, they use that as the barometer for how horrible it is in Death Valley right now. And this is how you know how bad it is nowadays. No one talks about Death Valley because they're like, oh, don't worry about it. It's 112 in New Jersey. So you don't even have, Death Valley is 138 probably.

It is. Yes. So I actually found this story late at night through Reddit by finding one of the people who's responsible for kind of solving this mystery. His name is Tom Mahood and he has a blog called OtherHand.org and he researched the whole thing and figured it out, I'll get more into him. And he, what's the word when you? Citizen detective?

He's, yes. He's a citizen detective, but he basically talked about the whole thing and finding everything out on his blog, OtherHand.org. So the other sources I used in today's episode besides that are the websites for the US National Park Service and Department of the Interior, a two-part Perump Valley timed article by Robin Flincham and a strange outdoors blog article and a bunch of other places you can see in the show notes. Strange outdoors blog, right?

Write that one down, yeah. So okay, we're going to start on October 21st, 1996, Death Valley National Park Ranger Dave Brennan is conducting aerial surveillance from a helicopter, just fucking looking around, taking a look, driving in a helicopter. In a tank top because it's 136. Right, there's no AC in a helicopter, I would assume. Wait, sorry, really quick, can I look at Death Valley on the weather app right now? Like right now?

Yeah. It's Friday afternoon at 6.30 in the evening. What temperature is it? Death Valley, California, 114. Ouch. Isn't that bad actually? Isn't that bad, yeah. Maybe there's global cooling and we don't have anything to worry about.

Let's go camping this weekend there, wanna pack your bags, Karen? Let's go camping in Death Valley. Let's do it. Basically what he's doing is looking for illegal drug manufacturing labs, which is a common occurrence in remote US desert areas as you've seen in the first incredible episode of Breaking Bad. As Dave flies over an area called Anvil Canyon, he sees a minivan parked off a remote dirt road, which is very rare and weird for many reasons.

The only vehicles suited to this sort of rugged terrain are four-wheel drives and the van is also about, and also no tourists are allowed out there. It has to be people who work for the, I don't know, work for the desert. The Park Service. Yeah. Work for the desert. They all work for the desert in a way. That's true.

Desert employees. And the van is about six miles from the nearest decent dirt road, like the actual drivable dirt road. Depends on your dirt road standards. Yeah. Decent. I don't know. The older I get.

Is there, are there some pebbles on it or is it just plain old dirt? Is there grass strip up the middle? Sure. Classy. The lavender, because that's nice. That's a gorgeous driveway. That's right. This couple with the fact that Death Valley is known as the hottest place on earth makes

Dave be like landing my helicopter, I need to see what's going on with this minivan. What he finds is a locked green Plymouth Voyager with California license plates. It's caked in dust and buried in sand up to the axles. So obviously it's been there for some time. The front left and two rear tires are flat. Their rims are damaged. The van has been driven some distance over rocks on flat tires. Dave reports the discovery and when California Highway Patrol runs the license plate, they

find that the van has been reported as stolen to the LAPD by the rental company that it's been rented for. It was reported stolen on September 10th, 1996, so a little over a month earlier. Okay. And when they look deeper into the van's history, they find the mystery of a German family that disappeared. So let's go back to three months earlier. July 8th, 1996, a family of four Germans on vacation fly out from Frankfurt and land at

Seattle Tacoma International Airport in Washington State. It's a blended family made up of 34-year-old architect Egbert Rymkis, his 27-year-old girlfriend Cornelia Mayer, who's known as Connie, and with them is Egbert's son, who's 11 years old, Georg, spelled like George, and Connie's four-year-old son, Max. When the group lands at SeaTac, they fly straight to Los Angeles where they pick up the rental car, the green 1996 Plymouth Voyager minivan from the airport. They drive to Southern California, they stop in San Clemente. But one point on July 12th, Egbert calls his bank in Germany and asks them to wire him

$1,500 to San Clemente, so not a long is known about what they did there. And for some reason, he needs $1,500 out of nowhere. The bank accidentally wired the money to the branch in LA, so he doesn't receive it. Oh, no. Because it's a bank, and they can't do it right the first time ever. But can't they just... Because it's digital, can't they just change it and fix it? I don't know.

It's 1996, so everything's probably worse. Yeah, it's so involved. It involves Western Union. Right. So please banks don't come after us for me saying that right now. You're fine now. Sorry, they're giving background SFX. Appreciate you.

So they don't get the money that they need, and then the family makes their way over the border to Nevada, where they check into the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in the city of Paradise. And on July 21st, Egbert faxes his ex-wife and his son's mother, Heike, who's back in Germany, asking her for money, but she doesn't send it. So then the next day on July 22nd, the family checks out of the hotel and drives to Death Valley National Park. Let me tell you a little bit about it.

It's the largest national park in the lower 48, and it is known as the hottest place on earth. It's situated along the border of eastern California and Nevada and covers over 3,000 square miles of wilderness and has almost 1,000 miles of road. It's the driest and lowest point in North America, and the average annual rainfall is less than two inches. One part of the park known as Badwater Basin, it's just a rad band name, is a long, narrow basin 282 feet below sea level.

And in the summer of 1996, temperatures in the park are as high as 130 degrees. Man. Yeah. So sorry, nobody, did they not tell anyone they were going? No one was like, hey, don't go there. I think people go there on summer break. I think it is a, having experience with a single father who didn't know to do with his fucking kids when he had them for two weeks every summer, and he'd take us camping and

we hated every minute of it. I think, you know, you have this minivan and you have a tent and like sleeping bags and you have to do something with these crazy kids. Oh, and if there was an issue with money, he couldn't take him to Disneyland, he couldn't take him to Vegas. Yeah. Oh, okay. That makes sense.

So yeah, it does. It does. I remember camping in really shitty fucking places, it's not fun, but that's what happens when your single parent needs to entertain his kids. Yeah. Nature. Thank you, Marty. We learned a lot.

He did later say he wanted to give us character and it absolutely did. Give me character and I hate camping. So, but it's not the sort of place that you should go unprepared, let alone on a whim. Cell phone reception even now in the park is virtually non-existent. And of course, back then in 96, no one really had cell phones. Visitors must bring their own adequate drinking water, food and a GPS nowadays. Having said that, you're unlikely to get lost if you stick to the main roads, but if you take a detour down a remote road, it can be dangerous.

So and there's a lot of places that look like main roads when you turn off of them that aren't that just, you know, turn into nothing. So on July 22nd, the tourists arrive in the park and stop at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center to buy two guidebooks translated into German. On their first night, they camp at an area of the Paramount Mountains called Hanapa Canyon. Their plan is to drive around the park until they have to return the minivan to LA on July 26th and then fly home. So on July 23rd, they take in the sights around several tourist spots.

The guidebook contains maps showing routes back to LA, including a westerly route to Yosemite National Park via a place named Butte Valley. If they drive that way, they'll go through some other passes and then north towards an abandoned town called Ballarat, which sounds rad. But there's another shorter route to Los Angeles, but it's a lot riskier. And in the guidebook, it goes through a place called the Anvil Canyon in the southern part of the park. So looking at the map, there's no way of knowing that the road conditions for this route are

actually treacherous. The day the Germans are set to start their return trip to Germany, July 27th, so five days later, comes and goes. No one has heard from the family. Egbert's ex-wife is worried when she doesn't hear from him or her son. When she contacts authorities, they tell her there's no record of the family flying back into Germany or even leaving LA in the first place. The disappearance is reported to Interpol, but no further efforts are made to determine

where Egbert, Connie, and their sons could be. The first clue comes three months later. So they were in there in July, and the first clue doesn't come for three months. When, as I said in the beginning, on October 21st, 1996, Death Valley National Park Ranger, Dave Brennan finds the van. Again, three tires are flat and fucked up. The van has been driven some distance over rocks on flat tires. It's just like abandoned in the middle of this area where they should not be.

Dave reports the discovery. The van is reported to stolen, blah, blah, blah. And on October 22nd, Death Valley National Park investigator Eric Inman and Inyo County Sheriff's Office Detective Jim Jones and Corporal Leo Boyer head out to Anvil Canyon to investigate. And there are no tracks around the vehicle apart from Dave's from the day before. So it's clear it's been there for a while. In the vicinity, they find discarded food wrappers and holes in the ground containing human feces and toilet paper, as if someone clearly got stuck there.

When they peer inside one of the dusty windows, they spot a child's shoe on one of the seats. And upon opening the van doors, they find two unopened bottles of Bud Ice beer, an empty bottle as well, an empty bottle of bourbon, and one that's three quarters full, and a bunch of luggage and clothing and other things belonging to the missing German family. But no people. No people. Oh, no. No people.

A ground and air search for the tourists begins on October 23rd with over 200 people involved searching for them. About 1.7 miles east of the van site, search and rescue workers find a Bud Ice beer bottle wedged in the sand under a bush, the same type that was in the abandoned vehicle. And next to the bush is a large print in the dirt, which looks like an adult has sat down to rest in the shade of the bush. The search effort increases on October 24th when two helicopters and more searchers arrive. In the following days, a huge area is searched by 250 people.

As authorities scour every logical route, the family could reasonably travel on foot from the van. But by October 26th, there's no progress. They don't find anything else that could have belonged to the tourists. So the search is called off. The search effort cost around 80 grand, which in today's money is about 150 grand, and they don't find anything that could lead them to the family. Years pass.

No further official searches are conducted. And I think a lot of probably armchair experts go out there to conduct their own searches in Annville Canyon to see if they can find anything the original search may have missed. But no remains or clothing are found. It's totally mystifying. So it's not long before all manners of theories start circulating about the family's fate. Some people suggest that Egbert and Connie staged their own disappearance and fled with their children somewhere like South America to start a new life.

Yeah, but you can do that by leaving your mini van in the parking lot at Treasure Island in paradise. Exactly. The theory does gain traction when Egbert's ex-wife says that there were custody issues over Georg. But when are there not custody issues? It's such a vague term, and it seems to happen all the time. So another theory is that Egbert is trying to access the China Lake Naval Weapon Center,

which is situated just outside of Ridgecrest, California, which is the closest city to the southwest border of Death Valley. So right next to Death Valley is a naval weapon center, essentially. And he would be trying to access that for... Well, they think he wants to get his hands on top secret military technology by, you know, jimming a fucking lock at this naval place. Well, he sips on a butt ice. Right.

I don't know. No, you don't know. It's not... It's not... You do know is what I'm saying. It's not real. You know by not knowing. Yes.

You know. Yeah. But it's absurd. It's another absurd. Like, why would you start from this place? If you were doing that, why would you bring children? It's just... It's absurd.

Yeah. Some people wonder if the family had actually gotten stuck, then stubbled across a drug manufacturing lab in their search for help after becoming stranded, which makes a little more sense, I guess. Or maybe they just found some fucking lone killer living out there on his own. It is near where the Manson family ended up later. But there's no evidence for this scenario, obviously, and it's dismissed by investigators. But this stage, the Mayer family has Connie and Max legally declared dead, but the cause

of death remains unknown. Two men who organized their own separate searches are former Death Valley prospector Emmett Harder and retired Virginia Tech professor Dick Hasselman. And so they know the area well. They kind of just go and try to find what they can. They hit a dead end, but they write their reports and their findings really well. This is 12 years after the family went missing. Retired civil engineer named Tom Mahood, who I mentioned in the beginning with that blog.

He learns about the case. He's able to read up on everything that Harder and Hasselman had searched, so he doesn't double back. He's able to start afresh. And so he reads all up. He's fascinated by the mystery, and he's inspired to join the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit in early February 2009 as a volunteer. So he's got a day job.

He's doing his own thing, but he's just so interested in this case, and he's like, they have to be out there somewhere. Maybe I could find them and give their families some closure. Well, what I like too is that he's going through the search and rescue program, so he's going to do it right because there is such a risk. I mean, like there is one thing when it's like your local forest that you've been to a bunch of times, but like Death Valley, man, is like, it's risky just to visit it. Totally.

And like, yeah, if you end up having to be rescued because you're an amateur trying to help find, solve some case, and you don't bring enough water, and you just cost them time and money, you know, you're not helping, obviously. But this guy knows what he's doing. Tom's initial theory is that the family sees the AT&T tower that was on the map that they had, and they figured they could approach it to find help after they had gotten stuck. But he also wonders if actually they had traveled towards the China Lake Naval Base thinking there was someone there that could help them too.

Maybe they ended up in a place called the Windgate Wash. So the Windgate Wash wasn't included in the original 1996 search because investigators are adamant that the family wouldn't have gone in that direction. But Tom thinks it has to be a possibility since there's nothing else has been found. Yeah. Yeah. Anything's a possibility when it's been 12 years and nothing's been found. Yeah.

And if it's like unlikely, so you don't search there first, that's fine. But if they're nowhere else, yeah. Right. Yeah. He does have a lot of history of other people searching, so he's able to just be like eliminate certain things. I love the idea those other guys wrote up reports. Yeah.

Like, that's great. Totally. They're like professionals, professional amateurs, like us. Aren't we amateur amateurs? We are amateur amateurs. We're all the things. You know, we contain multitudes. We're professionals at being amateurs.

You have to admit that. You have to admit we're some of the most professional amateurs you've ever listened to for two straight hours talking. For six years, which is a master's degree, right? I mean, if we were studying this whole time, yes. We were. We were studying ourselves and TikTok. On November 12, 2009, Tom and his experienced fellow search and rescue volunteer, Les Walker,

head out to explore the boundary of the China Lake base, which is an area covering about one to two miles. This is the hike that you and I would take in Griffith Park. This is an insane, you have to leave at a certain time in the morning and he journals all of it in his blog. If you don't leave at this certain time in the morning and turn back at this certain time in the afternoon, you're fucked. You're going to be stuck out there with not enough water because you can't carry the amount

of water you need to spend the night. Most of the temperatures drop at night, so you can't carry the amount of stuff in that heat that you need to spend the night. It's very, very tactical the way you have to actually perform a search and rescue. It is the hottest spot on, is it the planet or in the United States? The planet. On the planet. Get away.

Also, I don't want to go hiking in Griffith Park just in case. I don't either. I would never ask you. In case I'm scared to shit out of me. I saw a snake before, so I'm done. Never going back. They hike about eight miles south of the van site until they find themselves in Wingate Wash near the China Lake Basin, eight miles of hiking in the heat at the base of a vertical

north-facing 30-foot cliff at the north end of a small hill. They find themselves looking down and spotting scattered bones. They quickly realize that the bones are that of a human. Over an area of about 500 feet, they also find items including Connie's passport, her wallet containing her bank card, her day planner, a two-liter wine bottle, a toothbrush, and business cards from places the group stopped on their vacation. This is the first time in 12 years that someone has found something other than that butt ice bottle near where their car broke down.

The men alert the authorities in the California Office of Emergency Services coordinates a large-scale multi-agency search involving almost 30 people and three cadaver dogs. Part of the reason for the delay, it took them a couple weeks, is that helicopters are required to transport search personnel into the area because it's so remote. So they're not just going to let a bunch of people fucking climb up these hills, that's how treacherous it is, even for people who have experience in these conditions. So what is this family doing there? It's like just run your plans by two lobes.

Just get the word out a little, just go to the mini mart at the gas station and just see the expression on the guy's face, be like, I'm going to go out there. Yeah. So this is the shortcut, but should we take it? Should we actually do this? Is it worth taking the shortcut? Yeah. It's like we got off on a boat one time in Ireland, I can't remember what the islands

were called, but there were these little islands that you could take a ferry out to. So me and my sister, and I can't remember who else was there, but we get off on this island and we just start walking, we just go and start walking to the right. Yeah, wandering is fine when you're in a foreign place. We wander and then an hour later, we basically wander back and we don't see any of the stuff that was on the map. And these two old guys that were sitting at the dock where we got off goes, you could have asked us and we would have told you that wasn't the way to go.

They were like, look at those ladies walk away from where they should be. They just watched us go like, well, if you don't want to know, then we won't tell you. Well, you can assume that maybe the money, you made a good point that the money is a factor too if they find a shortcut to Los Angeles and they're low on funds for the gas. Yep. Yeah. And there's nothing on the map indicating that they shouldn't take that, that direction.

It's just a small decision that like impacted everything. That's huge. Yes. Because it is the wilderness. It is Death Valley, but also I opened it just to look at it where it's like, oh, where is that? Where is whatever? Death Valley.

Yeah. Death Valley. It says green is anything else in California on the map. There's only one little kind of brownish part. It doesn't look like this foreboding desert thing that it actually is. Maybe that's why they named it Death Valley because they were like, we know it looks fucking gorgeous. Yeah.

Stay away. If we put the word death in there. So during this bigger official search, more scattered skeletal remains are found as is the soul of a small shoe, I know, but more formal identification and potentially determining the cause of death takes some time. The Inyo County Sheriff's Department contacts Interpol to obtain DNA samples from the family. But by March 2010, the only progress authorities make in terms of identifying the bones is confirming that they belong to an adult male and female.

Later that month, Tom Mahood takes another hike back. He goes back to the scene where people had already searched, officials had searched. He finds health insurance cards bearing Connie and Max's details and a set of house keys. So there were more stuff scattered about that had been left behind. Finally in May 2010, it's announced that DNA analysis on the human remains is partially successful. The adult male is confirmed to be Egbert, but unfortunately there's insufficient DNA to identify Connie and none of the skeletal remains are those of the children.

Despite this, authorities are confident there's no foul play involved and are certain the entire family has met a tragic end in Death Valley. Just in terms of the most probable version of events, this is what Tom thinks happened. After a day of driving around and camping, the family drives south to Warm Springs Road. There's proof that Connie had signed a logbook noting their plans to head a certain way. And they discover too late that the remote rocky roads are only suited for four-wheel drive vehicles, not minivans, and then as they approach the mangle pass, the road is impenetrable.

It's such a remote area, they have little choice but to turn back, taking them another couple hours to go back in the direction they came from. And so then they change directions and take that shortcut via Anvil Canyon, but they totally underestimate the difficulty of the terrain and conditions. The van is jolting and shuttering up this Anvil Canyon road into the Wingate Wash. Three of the van's tires are shredded before the axle breaks, bringing the van to a stop. They're now stranded and Egbert would have been studying the maps, looking for the shortest route to flag someone down.

He sees the China Lake Naval Weapon Center marked on the map. It doesn't seem impossible to walk to. And so he thinks he'll walk there and he'll find it patrolled and they can get help, but it turns out that military installation isn't even patrolled. So there wouldn't have been anyone there to help them in the first place. So the next morning on July 24th, it's thought that the group locks the van, takes two water containers and heads to east down Anvil Canyon, then they turn south towards the boundary of the China Lake Naval Weapon Center.

It's extremely tough going because none of the group has hiking boots. When the family is about eight miles away from their van and halfway to the facility's perimeter, they succumb to heat stroke, dehydration and exposure. Their personal effects and recovered remains are eventually returned to their families in Germany. There's no question that the dedication and tireless work of people like Tom Mahood has hopefully provided some answers and comfort for the families. It's impossible to know the minutiae of Egbert, Connie, Georg and Max's last days together,

but their loved ones now at least have a realistic idea of how things sadly transpired. And that is the story of the disappearance of the Death Valley Germans. Good. Isn't that sad? I was up all night reading about that recently. Yeah, that's the thing. The first thing it made me think of is that thing where when you are in peril, it's very easy to make bad decisions because that idea that a couple of times he's trying to get

money and he can't get it, that's a big panic. It's a panicky thing. It's panicky because like you said, their options are, it's not like they can, he's trying to look for shortcuts, he's trying to look, they're going camping. It's all kind of making do, but not knowing the area they're in. It just stresses me out so bad and that idea of like, I'm sure there was like fighting where it's that kind of thing of turn down this road, then if it's the wrong road and you turn back and everyone's.

And the kids are hungry and everyone's tired and over it and yeah, it is sad. It's like this family with the best intentions of having a summer vacation and it just gets so tragically off the rails. It's really sad. Just unravels terribly. That's really good work on the citizen detective part though. Yeah, right. He was determined and he fucking figured it out.

He did say one thing that I thought was interesting where he kind of later found out that he had messed things up by like, when he actually stumbled upon some of their belongings, like picked it up to take it back to show that he had found them. And he got in trouble for that. And we got an email, I looked it up on my favorite murder at Gmail and Alexis Kay gave me a quote that he said, which is quote, I learned some valuable lessons such as finding human remains in the Bat County subjects you to all sorts of bureaucratic craziness. My advice is to just phone in the GPS coordinates anonymously, then run like hell.

Wow. Yeah. I wonder, I don't know how to figure out the GPS coordinates. Is that something that's on your phone? Yeah, you can do it on your phone now. You can, you know, you can say to someone, hey, here's where I'm out at the beach and drop a pin. It's dropping a pin.

But giving, you drop a pin to another person. Yes. Hmm. Here's where I am at the beach. Here's my pin. And then just, just so someone knows, I'm going to look at TikTok and see how to drop a pin. I bet TikTok will show you how to do it.

TikTok shows you everything now. They really do. And they do it quickly. It's always like, here's the top five ways to drop a pin to your friend when you're at the beach. Guys, if you're at wandering on your own and you're just like having an adventure, fine. But drop a pin and let your friends and family know where or someone know where you are. Truly.

You know, drop a pin. It's a scary world out there. So you can pretty much rely on almost any cashier at 7-Eleven to steer you right. Or the local gas station. Or whatever. Definitely. Just approach them and say, here's the plan. Would you do this?

Or no. Right. Or where's the best cafe right now? Or will you please wire me $1,500? Yeah. Right now. Oh. Wow.

That was an episode that we just did of a true crime podcast that we did and do all the time. Good one. It seems like you needed more proof that we do it. So we did, once again, we did it just to prove to you that we do. Yeah. We could have just dropped in and told you, but you don't trust us or believe in us. So we had to-

No, you always have to have your way. You had to shame him. Oh, what do you mean? You had to shame him. Pixar didn't happen. Okay, fine. There. There's an hour and 47 minutes of a podcast.

There's your proof. Thank you for being here. Thanks, guys. We love you. We love you. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.

Yeah. Elvis, do you want a cookie? I'm Paul Holes. I'm Kate Lakewood Dawson and we're thrilled to announce our brand new podcast coming to exactly right on September 14th, Buried Bones. As a journalist, I've spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And as a retired cold case investigator, I've worked on some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

And Buried Bones will be using our individual expertise to examine historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. It's a study of the human psyche and a reflection of just how far we've come. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries. We discuss cases like the Littlefield murders in 1937, Maine. One couple is dead. Two men accuse each other of murder, both are convicted, but who really did it?

Or the so-called Prince of Poisoners, one of the most notorious killers in 19th century England. Plus the assassination of President James Garfield only four months into his presidency in 1881. Each episode of Buried Bones will delve deep into the investigative details of a historical true crime like toxicology. I actually have a book written in 1892. The Essentials of Forensic Medical Toxicology in Hygiene.

Oh, that must be a fun read. Interrogations. This is a golden opportunity. You have two conspirators who are now turning on each other. Who do you think flips? This is where the interview becomes critical. You either going down or he's going down, you better start talking about what actually happened.

And even Paul learns a thing or two. I wasn't expecting that. That's the goal, Paul Holes. Buried Bones premieres Wednesday, September 14th on Exactly Right with new episodes every Wednesday. Follow Buried Bones on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to new episodes of Buried Bones one week early on Amazon Music or early and ad free by subscribing to Wondry Plus and the Wondry app.

This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Marin McLashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Feel to show an Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavoritmurder. Goodbye.

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