My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 346 - Fistful of Butter

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

On today's episode, Georgia and Karen cover serial killer Robert Garrow and the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.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. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Heartstar. That's Karen Kilgareff and here we are face to face. A couple of silver spoons. That's right. Still on fucking zoom. All of the things. I was thinking the other day about how difficult working and this is in this in this day and age you have to you have to qualify everything with like not harder than this. There's definitely

worse things out there, but there is this very specific type of mind fuck when you work from home on a zoom, but do a thing that says dependent on like a timing and connection as podcasting. Yeah, it fucks you up and somehow we make it fucking look seamless. Literally, as you were saying that you were glitching out on my Wi-Fi. So that is how like it couldn't have been a better time for it to be like it's easy to podcast from home. Everyone try it. Oh wait one second because my thing my Google Nest got unplugged once. Sorry. All right. We had tech diffs for a sec, but here here we are again. Yeah, my my zoom it kind of like rolled it scrolled then there was the face of the devil really fast and then my face came back

and a little max headroom just said like yes do a deep cut there for the us gen Xers max headroom if a demon was haunting max headroom. So what you're saying is it's spooky Halloween season. Oh we start are we kicking it off like everyone else is right there it's like already happening. Well because the 12 foot skeleton army is is up and up and Adam's right. We got a text from Stephen over the weekend of a sighting in the not flesh but you know wild wild thank you of a 12 foot skeleton up and Adam. It's a trend that now like is about people see them and go I have to show this to Karen and Georgia and then we get roped in. That's right people who have them go this is taking up more basement space than I expected for like a one time joke but now I

can't get rid of it. What are you gonna put it on the curb and like hope someone takes it. No they think it's decoration so you can't get rid of it. Yes that's true. Further out you try to set it from your garage. You're like no this is a large item pickup but it's like amazing decoration. Yeah or they're like now you're threatening your neighbors can you please stop putting the 10 foot 12 foot skeleton 12 into the neighborhood. I used to think it was a 20 foot skeleton I kind of like that feel they're just gigantic I mean 12 is plenty. You think by now they'd have the technology it's been what three years and you can feel like they could get it together to get a 20 foot skeleton at this point. We there there's always room to go up always.

To the moon. To the moon and back. To the fucking. Happy spooky Halloween season. I like the idea of just declaring it mid-September. I feel like mid-August is when I first saw it so I feel like we've been kind of we're like on the back end of it really. Really it's time to put up our Christmas tree. Our collective Christmas tree you and me. Yeah we technically have missed Halloween really if you want to be technical about it. Yeah yeah and I do I always want to be technical you know that about me. That's why you went to ITT Technical Institute. Right. Can I read you a tweet that I got that's an update to my survival story that went out last week about Antonio

Saina. Yeah. Remember in the beginning of that story when and when I talked about how he had like eight to ten rolls on him? Marcella Jalbert I'm gonna put a little French pronunciation on that could be Jalbert but I don't think this. They wrote to me and said Brazilian American here with the intel on the rolls Antonio Saina had. Wait rolls of toilet paper? No no no like I remember I said what are those dinner rolls why would you bring rolls with you? God I thought I missed a key part of that story. No it was just a funny detail that then here comes Marcella and she's like I have key information to you. Yeah. These are an absolute all caps absolute staple in a Brazilian home. They're breakfast, a side, a snack with coffee or literally whatever. They have a hold on us

and it is not at all shocking that he had 12 on hand. Really he had 12 and it's called pão de sal which either means salt bread or there's also pão francês which is french bread and then there's a follow-up. Also they translate to salt bread or french bread and they're eaten most commonly room temp not toasted with room temp butter. I mean that is a follow-up that's what I'm looking for in a person listening to this and going yeah you you wondered about a weird detail here comes the weird detail patrol. Absolutely. Especially when it's car based. Like any detail you can give us that's car based I'm gonna need to know about it please. Because you know what is gonna happen next I'm going to find a Brazilian bakery and we're going to try these on the air. Yes. Right? Yes.

Okay. Yes. So Marcella you're a part of this I guess Venmomi $5 you're in this taste test with us. Everyone has to put in $5. They can't be five bucks they've got to be like $125 I would say. Yeah but there's shipping and handling I'm gonna keep a lot I'm gonna keep a lot of this. Right the handling part is key. I'm gonna touch your rolls so much. And that costs everyone knows it costs a lot of money to get cared to handle your rolls. Here's how we warm up we room temp that butter as I just hold it between my hands. Don't be. That's right. Filthy. Oh I there's nothing I love more than to hold a foil butter pat until it until it's usable. Until it's warmed up. Oh yeah butterfist that's what you got to have in your life because it's just a fistful of butter.

You got to go through life with a fistful of butter. That's right. And a and a pow day soul. Carves. So exciting. I read a I listened to a book that's a memoir that I really loved that like made me remember that we wrote a memoir. Yeah and in that way. Remember our memoir. vaguely. So this chick Jeanette McCurdy do you know her book I'm glad my mom died she just it just came out. I fucking listened to it too. You did not. Yes I did. Oh my god. How good was it. It was fucking unbelievable. Oh my heart was in my like I was about to cry most of the book. Yes she writes about a lot a little like about her struggle and with so many things of course I identified with the bulimia part and she said this one thing that I really love that her eating

disorder therapist taught her which was you can slip but that doesn't mean you have to slide and I love that so much where you can fuck up with whatever your fuck up is whatever the thing that you're always struggling with but that doesn't mean you have to just like do what I do and put a match and the whole thing burn it to the ground you're a fucking loser and you screwed up you just slipped you didn't slide. I mean it's it's hard though if you have perfectionistic tendencies what I think is amazing and if you guys don't know Jeanette McCurdy by name she was on what's the show called iCarly. We're both way too old for it but it was a huge hit yeah I never saw it and she had a butter sock you just said the thing about butterfist but she had a butter sock.

That's what made me think of it yes is like butter speaking of butter. Her talking about that and I understood that it was like for the iCarly generation that was like Fonzie's leather jacket but I had no clue what she was talking about the entire time and it was still the most compelling thing I've heard in so long. Yeah it was really good it's exactly what you think of when you're like stage moms and getting kids into acting too early and I bet it's harmful to them and I wonder what it's like to go on auditions as a little kid and like then you hit puberty like she explained it all you know in a way that I've been it's so fascinating I'm so curious about but also her own personal struggle yeah and how she dealt with it and she's so raw

and open and it was just I really enjoyed it. It's an amazing book she's such a good writer and then she named her book I'm glad my mom died. She's also an amazing narrator because it was like it was no fat no nothing unbelievable like that's ballsy and hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time and so good and then you hear this story and you're like mm-hmm yes yes narcissistic mom I see you what's up yeah hey hi that's so weird because I couldn't think I knew there was something I want to talk about and I couldn't remember and that's what it was oh wow that's so weird yeah I also I don't know are you watching The Patient on Hulu the new Steve Carell and Dom Hall Gleason TV show? Fuck I totally forgot to keep watching it because Vince couldn't watch it

that's how good it was you know he doesn't like suspense yeah and he also was like this is so twisted that I can't watch this so I watched it alone and then he's been home from when he was out of town so I haven't caught up oh my god the premise is so fucked up and good. It's so good and it's so and also those are 20 minute episodes which is very strange like when they end you feel like the rug's been pulled out from under you and it is like I feel like I was gonna say Steve Carell doesn't get enough uh like praise for being a really good actor but I actually think he does now that I think about it I'm like yeah no I think he actually he just makes great choices he does because his range is so wildly unbelievable and watching him play this

psycho dude is in quite a predicament it's just unbelievable and so intense it's so intense and then for one what's the guy's name one on one to play against Steve Carell like that Dom Hall Gleason oh my god how challenging and fun must that be and to play a psychopath right I know and how good so do you remember did you watch the first season of Black Mirror he's the guy that's the robot of the woman's dead husband that she after a while was like it starts to bummer out yeah that's him and also Brendan Gleason is his father who was the guy from in Bruges yes although he's a very famous Irish actor yeah I know the name very well okay yeah he's a real badass actor because he's from a family of actors yeah yeah he's got this yeah good for

him he's like I'm about to show you what being around one of these people is actually like and it's so believable and so like when the assistant when he's like yes dead face but then also like heavy-eyed it's so creepy I think I only got to the end of one of the seasons when he starts talking to the person who he can hear upstairs and then they cut away and I have so I have to catch up from there oh yeah okay okay all right Vince is gone tonight I'm fucking doing it it's happening it goes so fast you I think you're gonna like it there's a little bit of a there's a there's a pacing like two-man play element to it yeah yeah power through it because sometimes people get that construct and then they're like don't try to be highfalutin with me yeah it doesn't it's not like

you know I always say that that's my motto don't try to be highfalutin with me Georgia gets really upset if people try to get highfalutin yeah and then she does what I was just doing which is yeah she kind of swings her arms back and forth like an old-time cowboy it's a march in place a lot of elbows don't get highfalutin with me don't get highfalutin with me tattoo that on my back because that's how much I need it yeah a lot of great content a lot of great content around lately should we do some exactly right highlights hey tell people what's going on let's do it I'm happy to talk about on my other podcast do you need a ride we have the great Bridger Weinerger from the podcast I said no gifts which you can listen to every Thursday on the exactly right podcast

network he has a hilarious podcast if you haven't tried out I said no gifts because you're like oh me I don't I'm a seven-day Adventist I don't like gifts or whatever your personal background story is what I'm telling you is put that aside this is not about gifts this is comedy comedy comedy so comedy it's the funniest show Bridger's had some of the best guests Darcy Cardin Tony Hale Tony Hale I know but when Yang weird Al at Chris Fleming there's so many amazing hilarious comic artists that go onto that show and play the I said no gifts game with Bridger and it's such a delight it is give it a try if you haven't listened to it it's a really great comedy talk show that you just have to you have to hear and just it'll take you away from all your misery that

you have from all the highfalutin people in the fucking world that's right don't let the highfaluters get you down listen I said no gifts and do you need to write okay on September 28th the next episode of MFM animated by Nick Terry will premiere so don't miss knife bears on the exactly right media youtube channel please subscribe or whatever you do on youtube to the exactly right media youtube channel please thanks and to follow up with that if you're so moved because you like those cartoons and so much that Nick Terry makes for us you can go over to the my favorite murder store my favorite murder.com and get a MFM animated merch there's new MFM animated merch and it's basically if you want a lazy Halloween costume this Halloween there's one waiting for you over

there oh we've got some great new great new merch you're gonna love it all right is that it I think it is a quick start to get you going to get you revving I could tell you the story about how there was a police helicopter over my head this week and then when I looked out my front window there was a guy crouching behind a car excuse me but is that too much will it bring you down are you legally allowed to say that nothing happened and it turned out that the crime they were somebody shot themselves like in the leg in like a an encampment down by the river so it was not it was just a crime of a person fucking up with a gun uh-huh but there's like all these you know outcars and helicopters everywhere so of course it was after the fact less much less scary yeah but while it was happening

and I saw the man crouch down no was he crouched well because I think he was hiding from the helicopter but he wasn't who they were look okay I'm so I don't know Karen I need all the answers all I know is that here's what I did I was standing there without my glasses on looking in that and seeing that and I'm like well whatever that is the gate's unlocked so you better get down there right now so I grabbed my keys and so fast and so quietly I run to the gate and lock it really fast and then run away and lock all the doors and then wait and when I got back the guy was gone so it wasn't like eminent anything but it was that kind of thing that is just like wow that's that's uncomfortable maybe it's just a guy who's scared of helicopters yeah that's what I so you

know what I said was it could have been somebody walking a dog leaning down to pick up shit right as I look out and I'm like oh my god it could have been he's crouched right it was just a weird no that's creepy jarring jarring thing to see it's like if he was if he wasn't doing anything wrong and he wasn't like that's the most inconspicuous thing no the most conspicuous thing he could possibly freaking do is crouch down when a helicopter's overhead dude yeah like what who else would crouch aside it's like if somebody is on drugs and like they don't understand what they're looking at crouch down or they're hiding so it's just like that it's like it was just daytime chill there's you know very few people in this neighborhood and then a crouching guy where I was just like

here we go it makes you it makes you ask what's in a crouch because a crouch can be so many things you know I also think there was there his hands were not it was not like he was crouched down doing something actively I could tell his hands were up by his head so it looked like a very like stop drop and roll position it just looked like an emergency it's a nefarious crouch for sure I mean there was there was guilt in there there was guilt in there for sure all right well I'm first all right right let's go for it okay let's do it looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning shopping and prepping handled hello fresh has you covered hello fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year hello fresh

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plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20 goodbye hey I'm Mike Corey the host of wonder is podcast against the odds in our next season three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of chow chilla 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 follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts you can listen ad-free on the amazon music or wondery app all right so today i'm going to talk about serial killer robert garrow but this case is

about so much more than that it's kind of just a horrible serial killer story but the story is also about what his case meant for legal ethics and attorney client privilege and this is also known as the buried bodies case so the sources i used today there's a 2016 radio lab episode that covers this case about the legal aspects of it and so i listened to that and got a lot of info from there i also used a crime library article by mark gato a post standard article by dick case a buffalo law review article by jeffrey chamberlain a new york times article by mary breasted a bunch more you can see them in the show notes so karen let me tell you about the adirondacks real quick i wish you would i love their chair that's right the adirondacks are the largest national park in the

lower 48 and the total area is bigger than yosemite yellowstone glacier grand canyon and the great smoky national parks all combined so it's fucking huge i know that's actually quite something that was a ton of parks right i named a bunch along with lakes and waterfalls and hiking trails the adirondacks has lots of little small towns and villages peppered throughout its wilderness it's very popular with summer tourists as you i'm sure have heard it's very beautiful think dirty dancing where it took place i think that's the adirondacks yep maybe not isn't that in the it's the jewish cat skills cat skills okay i always get cat skills and the adirondacks mixed up and i just did it okay but it's like that kind of area you know what i mean yes totally so on july 14th

1973 23 year old danny porter and his girlfriend 20 year old susan pets are camping for the weekend in the adirondacks danny grew up in mansfield ohio is in and was enrolled in harvard's government studies program he's a photographer for the harvard crimson both these kids have their whole lives ahead of them susan comes from a chicago suburb called skokie she's a journalism senior at boston university and writes for the east boston community news and they've been dating since the fall of 1972 so once the two arrive in the adirondacks danny and susan set up camp about 28 miles east of a town called speculator however before their camping trip is over danny will be found tied to a tree stabbed to death and susan will be gone without a trace police quickly

surmise who their likely suspect is as there's a serial sex offender who had gone on the lamb a month before after being arrested for first degree sodomy involving a child when he sexually assaulted two preteen girls so he had skipped bail and headed deep into the adirondacks to hide out so he was just on bail for these he fucking left town they know he's hiding out the adirondacks and so a warrant is issued for his arrest his name is robert garrow with police reports describing him as white 5 foot 11 inches tall weighing 210 to 220 pounds baldish brown hair blue eyes and a tattoo on his left forearm consisting of the words mom and dad and a heart the police said he wore sunglasses and had a hat on most of the time so everyone's on the lookout for him let me tell you

a little bit more about this man just to catch you up it's the basics we've heard a million times before and the story is about so much more than him and so i don't want to really get into it but just to sum it up robert francis garrow is born in dan amora in upstate new york on march fourth 1936 he spends a lot of his time in the adirondacks so he's really familiar with the area he's the second of six children all of whom are severely physically abused as children being beaten constantly and sometimes so severely that they're beaten unconscious he doesn't attend school so has also has no friends because of that at age 17 he joins the air force but he's bullied over bed wedding which is something he's done his entire life a year later he's court-martialed for stealing

money from a superior officer and served six months in a military prison in florida and he's eventually released in 1957 now 21-year-old robert returns to new york where he marries and has two children but he can't hold down a job and is fired from one after the other around this time this is just a weird little aside he said to become involved in an abusive sexual relationship with his lawyer who ties robert up and whips him but by this time robert is prowling the streets on his days off looking for young women he's a big guy as i said in 1961 the 25-year-old pleads guilty to raping a teen girl and assaulting her boyfriend he's convicted and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison but only serves about seven years and in august 1968 now 32-year-old robert

is paroled for good behavior he gets a job as a mechanic at a syracuse bakery where he maintains the machinery but he goes straight back to raping women and now he also targets children in 1972 the 36-year-old ties up two young college students he's arrested for unlawful imprisonment but the young women declined to press charges and this brings us back to june 1973 when he's arrested for a first-degree sodomy involving two preteen girls in the town of getis and this is when he skips bail and goes on the lam deep in the adirondacks and a warrant is issued for his arrest a month later on july 11th 16-year-old girl named alicia hawk goes missing and is a suspected runaway and on july 14th as i told you in the beginning danie and susan leave boston to go

camping and danie is tied to a tree before being stabbed to death with a hunting night and robert kidnaps susan a man reports finding an abandoned car in a dirt road in the adirondack and danie's friends notified the police that he hasn't returned so the cops head out to the area officers find danie's car locked no signs of a struggle so they're not concerned but danie's friends take matters into their own hands and go out searching for them and on july 20th they find danie's body tied to the tree oh his own friends his own friends found him because they could just tell something wasn't right only 20 yards from his car but susan's still missing so then on july 28th 18-year-old mount pleasant high school graduate philip demblowski and three

of his high school friends go camping in the adirondacks the group is from schenectady new york where philip is a member of the national honor society the group set up camp near root eight just outside of the village of speculator the next morning on july 29th robert is driving northbound on root eight he sees the group's campsite off the side of the road and stops the car he takes out his 30 caliber rifle and a hunting knife he unzips the tents and orders the teenagers to come out of the tents he forces the group to walk about 400 yards away from their campsite into the woods near the town of wells and instructs each one of them to tie the others up then oh my god this is so horrible then philips friends listen in horror as robert stabs philips in the chest multiple

times so they're all tied up far away from each other but they can hear their friend being stabbed to death horrible philips friends are so freaked out that they're able to get out of their restraints they all make a run for it they escape and report the incident to locals who alert the police and the group identifies robert who has fled in his car through police photographs so now they know this psycho is on the loose this murderer and susan pett's is still missing police now wonder dany porter and philips murders are linked they obviously know someone dangerous is on the loose and these murders are probably linked and they realized too that this murder scenes are only 25 miles apart and robert's parents live close to where dany is murdered so they're hoping they

can find susan alive still and apprehend robert so law enforcement launches the biggest man hunt in new york state history and this becomes a huge story and people who are camping and the adirondacks find out about it and just get in their cars and leave so all these campsites are abandoned which means that robert can use those campsites himself oh so he has ample ways to survive supplies yeah so for 12 days over 100 square foot mile area state police troopers and local police work around the clock using tracker dogs and helicopters to cover every inch of the adirondacks robert's wife and son are even brought in to record a message which is broadcast from police cars pleading for him to give himself up roadblocks are set up throughout the park where officers

stop motorists and search their trunks drivers are warned not to stop for anyone hitchhiking residents of the lake pleasant and speculator area are locking their doors and sleeping with loaded firearms under their pillow and it's a normally busy tourist season but everyone leaves and it comes to a standstill the adirondacks robert continues being able to hide in the woods because he knows the adirondacks like the back of his hand having spent his formative years in the area he vades police every day for 12 days but finally on august 10th robert's apprehended by officers in the woods near the hamlet of witherby after being spotted and shot he's shot in the arm foot and back but survives and is taken to the hospital wow he's treated for his injuries and

he claims he's now paralyzed from the shoot the shooting but doctors dismiss his complaint that he's insistent that he's paralyzed and he files a 10 million dollar civil suit against the state of new york alleging negligence in the medical treatment he receives sure absolutely there we go if you're going to be a douchebag go all the way with it you might as well that's right the idea that you would be insisting that you're paralyzed to doctors who are like dude you're fine you can tell yeah it's we went to school yeah for it for this specifically yeah we can tell yeah even though he's captured in charge with the murder of philip dumblusky investigators are still looking for susan petz and suspect robert in the disappearance of alisha hawk as well so now in custody he

appoints his so he gets an attorney named frank armani to defend him not the same attorney that he had been having a sexual some kind of sexual relationship with okay good yeah great good good first step so frank armani this attorney who's not a criminal defense attorney he's known robert since 1972 because he represented him in some minor legal matters and in this radio lab episode he's immediately like i knew this guy was super dangerous i don't know why he wanted me to defend him but he insisted on it i tried to get out of it he's like i had no experience in murder trials but the only reason he takes it is because the judge insists he takes it he says he has to take it take the case oh no yeah because you know right to an attorney but it's like if you

if you're like i can't defend him to the best of my ability because i don't know how to do that then probably shouldn't be the attorney but he's forced to be to represent this monster they're like look look this is the at around dex you don't have attorneys just falling off every deck and off of every chair please do this job that's right and so this guy is in 2016 he he's interviewed in radio lab fully he's in his 80s and like remembers the whole fucking thing he sounds like christopher walken it's wild that's genius yeah so he's like all right if i have to do this i'm gonna recruit someone who i know can actually help me with this so he recruits his friend francis belge who has a lot of criminal trial experience um he has to like beg his friend to do it because he's

like this is this is a high-profile case and i don't want to be you know i don't want to be defending a murderer known murderer but he does it so the hawk and pets families want to know if robert has killed their daughters so they think that the girls could still be alive that he could have been keeping them somewhere that whole time and if so if they are dead they want to know where their their daughter's bodies are of course so robert initially insists he knows nothing about the young women but in late august he confesses to his two attorneys that he's raped and killed two women and hidden their bodies so he can he confesses privately to his attorneys about this robert says he picked up alicia she was walking along glenn wood avenue in syracuse and raped her

at the rear of an apartment block and when she tried to escape he stabbed her before hiding her body in oakwood cemetery nearby he acts like he's insane doesn't remember details says he has headaches and that's why he kills he's kind of you know all over the place and really evasive even with his attorneys so he draws a diagram showing where one of the bodies is frank and francis these are the attorneys want to know if robert is telling the truth so they have reason to believe susan could still be alive but tied up so they follow the diagram and they don't tell the police about it and they go searching for the bodies and after several hours they find susan's body in an abandoned coal mine air shaft at the base of a mountain in mineville so then frank lowers francis down

into the shaft by his feet to take a polaroid photo of susan's leg as proof that they found her okay so at this point this is where like kind of everything turns did they have a legal obligation to their client and attorney client privilege or did they have a legal obligation or a moral more so obligation to let these families know that their daughter is dead and here is where her body is so that they can have some peace i mean tough call what with the fact that i've flunked out of state school but yes why would you go and involve yourself basically in the investigation right as the dependents lawyer knowing you're going to fuck everything up if you find something you now have like eight more problems on your hands but you just go do it so

you can see like there's that doesn't seem like a smart plan because if like if you don't find anything it doesn't prove anything but if you do find something which they did then you have then you're like yeah then you i think you have to turn it over to you the authorities are trying to find out what happened in this case but then the sixth amendment to client attorney privilege that you can tell your attorney anything and it's a secret unless you're going to kill someone essentially then that's just gone to shit there's no point in it at all however i will say they were never going to argue for his for his innocence they were going to argue for his insanity defense so they were never going to try to get him off totally they were just going to try to get

him into a better facility and maybe less time because of insanity defense but they're but they're doing it they're doing it dishonestly though yeah totally totally like call some people call some people that come with you that wear uniforms and write things down on official paperwork right so this is where the story becomes what it becomes they choose not to say anything at all they leave her body there and they don't tell anyone oh oh i thought you just meant they didn't inform the proper authorities they literally keep it a secret yeah yeah because of patient what do i keep calling it that because of attorney client privilege god can see all i have to say is god can see them god can see you what are you doing no the next day francis one of the attorneys

goes to the oakwood cemetery where uh where he said he left one of the bodies and finds alicia hawks badly decomposed remains so they find both women based on roberts diagrams and admissions and they don't tell anyone both bodies yep that's egregious and ridiculous and no that's a firm no on my side yeah my i rest my case they destroy the photographs and diagram destroying that diagram to me seems like tampering with evidence for sure right could they use the diagram if it's attorney client privilege i don't think so it's to me it's more just simply the knowledge yeah the the here's two pieces of very important evidence yeah you're hiding yeah that you're not turning over to prosecution yeah it's not a decision they take lightly and they they do both it do it does trouble them both

very deeply but they think that they're doing the right thing i know it should uh they did the wrong thing yeah but as lawyers they feel they have no choice under the professional ethical obligations to their client but they made the situation that way sorry to argue with you oh no i think but i mean you can't claim the excuse that you basically manufactured you set it up that way so that then you would have this excuse that's total bullshit at the same time alicia and susan's families are of course totally distraught they think there's a possibly their daughters are still out there alive you know and so frank knows the hawk family from bowling and church and alicia's sister and frank's daughter are even in the same class at school so he this is small town he has

personal connections with these families alicia's father bill makes a public plea for information while susan petz's father url flies to syracuse and a one-on-one meeting pleads with robert's lawyers these two people who have seen her body have seen his daughter's body to give him any info robert made given them but they say they have no information so how fucking heartbreaking that is just chilling he pleads with them where is my daughter do you know where my daughter is can i if she's alive i need to find her if she's not any defined her do you know anything has he told you anything like pleading with them human to human and they don't tell him anything and they just sat there staring at him and lying yeah and they lead up to robert's trial so frank and frances

do one thing to try to get this information out they put a plea bargain to the prosecution saying basically um we'll give you these two girls bodies like we'll let you know where they are and admit that he killed them if he can if um if robert is sentenced to life in a psychiatric hospital instead of prison they don't specifically say we know where they are they say we'll help you find them meaning like maybe we do and maybe we don't and the prosecution's like fuck no that's not happening because this is a huge trial at this point too this guy's a monster at you know everyone's following this trial this prosecutor can't just be like lenient on this murderer you know he he dismisses it completely yeah you can't bargain that because well he didn't know for sure if they even had the

bodies to the prosecution well but they they did yeah the defense did and that's that thing of like they can say all day long after the fact that they lost sleep over it felt bad about it yeah yeah and the prosecution's defense it doesn't seem like he knew he had any idea they actually knew where the bodies were so in december 1973 four months after robert's confidential confession some kids playing near the abandoned mineshaft finds susan's body and just a week later a college student walking through oakwood cemetery finds alicia's remains so a week apart they're found so that many that many more people have to be traumatized also exactly exactly robert's trial begins on june 10th 1974 he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity he admits to murdering not only

philip and danie but he also admits on the stand to murdering susan and alicia so um he's totally unemotional throughout the confession at times he says he can't remember certain details he's evasive in his responses so at one point francis one of the attorneys asked robert about alicia and says something along along the lines of is that the one i found this would have probably never been found out if he hadn't accidentally slipped and said that during the examination in in court is that the one i found so everyone in court are fucking what the fuck are shocked right his secrets now publicly exposed now everyone knows the attorneys have been sitting on the information about susan and alicia's bodies the whole time the public and the media are

totally fucking outraged by the whole thing that the attorneys knew about the location of the bodies for months and didn't tell anyone i mean taking a photo it's so disgusting i just don't see the excuse it's their eyes were open the entire time they made a very definitive decision a very uh i think bad decision obviously like there's no excuse for it they can't they can't later be like i felt bad let me let me play devil's advocate client and private said to them i yes i killed them he's on he's going to trial for murder not that not their murder though yes i killed them here are their bodies no one's an imminent danger at that point and the prosecution could then use that confession and those bodies in this case that he's being tried on so in there i'm just saying in

their minds i could see i think they're wrong i totally think they're wrong and it's totally immoral but i could see where they thought that that was their that was their job was to not tell anyone at least until after the trial was over yeah i don't agree with it i'm just saying that that's what their argument seems to be well yes and we can all like i think that's the whole thing of lawyers is like trying to figure out angles right trying to rationalize and do this i'm just saying like to me what's very striking is what you said which is they play they bowl with these people they these people whose child it is that's been murdered and it's like that information is informing the court about the person totally that they're representing i get that it's like

bad strategy but you're this isn't new york city yeah it's a it's a small town where everyone knows each other so it's like who are you actually protecting not strategy though i think legally they really thought they were not allowed to tell anyone about this legally i get it but i feel like there must be this must have happened before where someone who who is representing a serial killer with a body count yeah suddenly has to tell someone else like tell the authorities right like there's more there's more going on yeah i'm interested i'm interested like what that uh what that privilege covers i guess yeah legal people let us know please but really short like two sentences yeah like a quick quick like one little one of those cute little paragraphs and instagram that are like

real short and to the point two minute tiktok the jury doesn't accept roberts plea of insanity because his escape attempts and concealment of susan and alicia's bodies prove he fully understood the difference between right and wrong so on june 27th he's found guilty of first degree murder and on july 1st is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison so you're right the him concealing these two other bodies it seems like it shouldn't have been allowed in this trial to begin with but prove that he knows the difference between right and wrong so it is part of the trial so maybe they did just want to save their asses and and get their insanity defense or their insanity plea in there and win the case in a sense as best they could yeah the thing i was just thinking is

i feel like if not reporting anything because you are like rationalizing i'm the lawyer this is privilege okay but then you wouldn't go try to find the bodies because that would implicate you right you it would be like i don't want to know so yeah is that them is that the big mistake that they went and inserted themselves in these cases i mean it seems like only based on television but it feels like that's when the lawyer's line is i don't want to know don't tell me it has nothing to do with our case right totally that's a separate thing you're gonna have to talk to your other lawyer yeah instead these guys are like hey we'll go do we'll get involved yeah no it's a really we'll go find answers like it's fucked up that's a good point fucked up so of

course the pets and hawk families are still furious with francis and frank even though they got a guilty verdict almost overnight both attorneys lose clients they're deserted by their friends and receive obscene phone calls and even death threats people are out for vigil anti-justice they vandalize the attorney's homes offices and cars the public call for the removal of frank and francis's licenses to practice and even want them prosecuted for obstructing justice or being accomplices after the fact onondaga county da john holcomb announces a grand jury will consider whether the attorney's conduct meets the threshold of a criminal offense francis explains his actions to the new york time saying quote the information was so privileged i

was bound by my lawyer's oath to keep it confidential after i found the bodies i spent many many sleepless nights over my inability to reveal the information especially after mr. peds came in from chicago and talked to me so whatever yeah i mean they painted themselves into a terrible corner yeah you're right they should not have looked for the fucking bodies and but they still if they still had that information did they have an obligation a moral obligation to give that information to the authorities probably a moral obligation not a legal obligation is what it feels like we're saying which is kind of sad in february 1975 a grand jury indicts francis for violating two aspects of the new york public health law one requires that the dead be given a decent burial

while the other requires anyone knowing about the death of a person to report it to authorities so he gets indicted by a grand jury well that's also an interesting thing to know that that's a law yeah totally so you are actually breaking the law if you learn that and don't report it i guess so as a lawyer well i don't know hold on he um he has some support in legal circles the national association of criminal defense lawyers provides a brief advocating for him and they say if he's convicted this will basically destroy attorney client privilege going forward no client will ever be able to talk freely with their attorney without fear of violation of the professional code of ethics so slippery slope yeah in august 1975 the court finds francis did as he was ethically

bound he protected robert's fifth amendment rights to not incriminate himself and their conversations about the location of the bodies were protected by client attorney privilege and the indictment is dismissed but you're right the conversation is protected not him fucking going out scooby-doo style and finding what would you why would you implicate yourself like why would you yeah that's a great point why would you go learn information you cannot share that would drive you insane it doesn't help anything you're you have no intention of helping the investigation what is the value but then when is he obligated to tell authorities about the location of these murder victims is he ever at that point if he doesn't find them he's just

told this by this obviously mentally ill you know lunatic then at what point is he obligated to give this information over i guess if nobody when the when the case was over and if no one found them i don't know i guess is what their plan was i'm i'm confused by it yeah the appeals court holds up the decision however the judge comments that attorney client privilege shouldn't be considered some type of blanket free for all saying attorneys must quote observe basic human standards of decency hey susan pett's parents filed a complaint with the new york state bar association but in february 1978 this is dismissed the bar association states clients must be reassured of confidentiality if they're to fully disclose all relevant facts and even though both attorneys

are absolved of any criminal or ethical responsibility their reputations are just totally ruined frances starts drinking heavily he quits the law and moves to florida frank has a heart attack but stays in law and works to rebuild the business he once had so they're both of their reputations are ruined and their whole lives like friends would not talk to them anymore you know family members yeah the loss the losses seems so not like they didn't think that part through right what would people think of us if we did this right right it's just like by the book only could they have gone to the judge and been like we have this i'm sure this is like me being community college dropout being like couldn't they go to the judge and be like we have this

information that we can't keep to ourselves as attorney client privilege but this is big and we don't know what to do with it can you replace us so we can no no they couldn't obviously well it also it sounds like if the bar association backed them right then technically they did they did they did what was right but like they involved themselves to a degree where then they them they were bat the bad guy right like it spread right onto them definitely like just ostracized by your town yeah it's horrible yeah in march 1975 robert pleads guilty to murdering alicia hawk danie porter and susan petz and is sentenced to 15 years to life for each count robert demands to be moved to a minimum security facility claiming it's the only place appropriate for him given his

paralysis remember that prosecutors strike a deal with him saying that if he drops the negligence lawsuit against the state they'll move him so he agrees and is transferred to the quote elderly and handicapped section at fishkill correctional facility in new york here's a surprise to nobody on september 9th 1978 guards at the low security elderly and handicapped building at fishkill notice he isn't in his cell they don't think much of it because remember he's paralyzed where's he gonna go but he isn't paralyzed and he has escaped the night before he walked out of the door of the facility scaled a 15 foot high prison fence and he has a 32 caliber pistol with him which his son had snuck into the prison concealed inside a bucket of chicken during a visit jesus christ

i know also think about hit that fence is three feet higher than a 12 foot skeleton that's that's high to be fake paralyzed and climb a fence like that that's a really high fucking fence that's no joke that's some parkour shit right there authorities search his cell and they find a hit list that includes frank and francis's name on it so for whatever reason he's still pissed off at these guys those guys are fucking losing coming and going i know this is the worst thing that's ever happened to them i know officers tracker dogs and helicopters converge on the area and then spread out in the belief that he again is on his way to the aterondacks they're all freaking out when actually he's hiding out in a nearby wooded area only a few hundred yards away from the western edge of the

prison watching everything going on he's there for three days concealing himself in a hole covered with foliage and then on september 11th robert emerges from his hideout he's spotted by guards a shootout ensues he's shot three times and finally falls dead on the spot following his death his son is sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the great chicken bucket escape the case is okay so this is a crazy thing about this this case is a watershed moment for the way ethics is taught across law schools in the us so this case specifically is taught in all ethics classes in law school oh in 2002 the american bar association amends a confidentiality rule this now means that in some states lawyers may reveal information the

client provides if it's believed someone's life is at risk so they did the right thing legally yes i see that yeah where it's like they know but the both women were dead it would have implicated their client it's unfortunate here's the thing they should have stopped when he confessed yeah and ben like don't tell us about shut like that it'll fuck you yeah and us yeah but instead they did i just think that part is weird it is that they went and got information they couldn't tell anybody on purpose why did they want to be involved so badly in this i completely agree with you however it's it's crazy that it's taught as the correct thing to do it's there's no like there's no moral like what about the morals right because you have to the it's the relation

it's about the attorney-client relationship and that makes sense to me that makes sense to me it's such a hard case susan petz has awarded her journalism degree posthumously at boston university but her mother reberta remains unhappy the case is taught in all legal ethics courses in the 2016 radio lab episode she says quote i'm pretty horrified to think that this is what's considered correct because i don't think it's ethical at all and to think that it's being taught as the right way to do things in an ethical class is totally incomprehensible to me and that is the story of serial killer robert garrow and the legal ethics and attorney-client privilege fight wow that was a borderline roundtable discussion that we just had two people who

don't know what they're talking about thoroughly discussing modern law and we were both right and we were both wrong completely and we're both as wrong as we are right yeah i mean god that's i that truly is like a great example of it's about this not that yeah when you're like how can that be yeah or like don't become a lawyer because it's hard morally and there's so much memorization so much oh my god ew like you have to reform please the way you read like they're reading constant there's no audiobooks boring it's and it's not fun memoirs it's fucking torts although what if for people who want to be lawyers torts are like our true crime where they're like this is the detail i'm looking for on exactly how to do this how to rule and regulate

different minds man different minds different upbringings so we have never covered this story which is kind of crazy because it's it's one that we like but i think it's because long ago last podcast on the left covered it and it was that kind of thing where it's just like they did marcus parks did such comprehensive amazing research the whole presentation was so monumental that i think i've always been like now they they did it that's if you want to know the dirty down and dirty details of this horrifying cult please listen to the last podcast on the left's episode about it uh today i'm covering um shinrikyo okay the doomsday cult of japan the main sources used for today's episode are the episode the omishinrikyo death cult by

last podcast on the left destroying the world to save it by robert j liftin which is a book shoko asahara and the cult at the end of the world by david kaplan and andrew marshall for wired that was a 1996 article and a book called underground the tokyo gas attack and the japanese psyche by haruki murakami i love haruki murakami he's such an incredible author yeah and then there's other um sources that you can find in our show notes please forgive my pronunciations i will do my very best but man there's it's just that kind of thing you i think i'm good and then i'm like rechecking things and going wait i wait i actually did that wrong yeah so but i'll do my best so starting out it's 8 a.m on march 20th 1995 put yourself there choker am okay chokers

black tights plaid skirts yep right very specific baby bangs it was a real specific time it really was this is morning rush hour in tokyo japan the city's subway stations are teaming with people on their way to work in march of 95 around six million people use the tokyo subway system daily that's double the amount of people who ride the new york city subway system at the same era in this at the same time period so that's kind of like wild to consider kind of wildly too many people one of these tokyo commuters is a man named dr aikawa hayashi and he's a brilliant heart surgeon with an impressive medical background but as dr hayashi boards a front train car on the chiota subway line holding an umbrella and a few liquid filled plastic bags he is not the same man

who took a nose to do no harm the dr hayashi of today has a mission and that is to bring about the end of the world so just as dr hayashi's train approaches the next station he drops the plastic bags to the train car floor and uses the sharpened tip of his umbrella to poke holes in them and then once he's done he steps off the train exits the station and gets into a car that's waiting for him outside and meanwhile the doors close and it continues along its route carrying the punctured plastic bags so within minutes of dr hayashi leaving the train everyone on board is coughing eyes are red and burning they're choking and eyewitness named kiyoa izumi describes the scene this way she says when i took a deep breath i got this sudden pain it was like i'd

been shot and all the sudden my breathing completely stopped it felt like if i inhaled anymore all my guts would come spilling right out of my mouth oh my god all around her commuters fall to the ground some are seizing some are foaming at the mouth at the next stop she pushes herself off the train she's not exactly sure where she's going and nowhere seems safe to her and she would later say quote i took a good look around but what i saw was how shall i put it hell describes it perfectly three men were laid on the ground and spoons had been stuck in their mouths as a precaution against them choking on their tongues i was at a loss for words i didn't have a clue what was happening and may i break in as a person with seizure disorder to say don't put anything in the

mouth of anyone having a seizure that's a misnomer neither spoons nor anything don't put anything in anyone's mouth if they're having a seizure interesting okay good to know meanwhile dr hayashi is in his getaway car and the second he gets in he's injected with an antidote against the deadly effects of the sarin nerve gas that he's just exposed himself to just a pinhead size drop of sarin is enough to kill a healthy human being dr hayashi has just left a leader on the train and he's not acting alone he's part of a five-man team which includes three physicists and an electrical engineer my god so all five of these men have left several leaders of liquid sarin in separate cars on three separate subway lines and they've timed these sarin drops so that at 8 15 in the morning

all of these trains that they were on will converge into the kasumi iseki station they picked that station for all the cars to meet in because it's the closest to all the government buildings in tokyo so the hope is that basically a bunch of sarin will get evaporated into the air and basically just cause mass destruction and and kill tons and tons of people near the government center yeah yeah the tokyo subway sarin attack on march 20th 1995 remains one of the worst terrorist attacks in japanese history it leaves 13 people dead over 5 000 injured and it brings to light a disturbing cult because dr hayashi and his group of terrorists are not the end of the story they're merely puppets disciples of ome shinrikyo the most notorious death cult in japanese history

led by a psychopath named shoko ashahara of course shoko ashahara isn't his real name he's born in kyosu which is in the most southern of japan's four largest islands he's the fourth of five children in a very poor family and he is born with a condition that leaves him with limited vision so because of this he's eligible to go to a boarding school for blind children free of charge with guaranteed meals and so his parents enroll him at a young age because that's the only kind of opportunity he would have one of his teachers would later say quote if matsumoto had gone to a regular school he would have been picked on but in a blind school because he could see to some degree he was very special and i think that word special is questionable or the

usages like could be right um they didn't mean it in the way that we would interpret it not Montessori special not an individual got it so in school matsuma you're like i get it that's fine in school matsumoto uses his his partial vision to his advantage of course like this makes him the king of of his classmates totally he acts like if they go out into the city he acts as a guide he basically does anything he can to make his classmates dependent on him and then he uses that as an opportunity to dominate to bully even scam them he's described as imposing and manipulative but he also is someone who might be willing to guide his peers to off-campus restaurants or coffee shops as long as they buy him like a meal too wow so like right off the bat he's showing cult leader

tendencies or yeah or just like what's good for me yeah no matter the situation yeah not a lot of like just generosity of the heart right so yeah even as a kid it's clear that he wants power he becomes the kind of like urzats leader of a gang of his misfit peers because they all see him as the authority figure but his aggressive personality scares many of his fellow students he repeated he repeatedly ran for and lost student elections which made which made him terribly depressed apparently oh i got it been there haven't we all he also does this which is kind of the same as constantly running for student elections which is that he arranges fights between his classmates and he calls it pro wrestling at one point he even threatens his teachers one of the school's

guidance counselors remember him saying i'll shoot you to death before clarifying and saying quote as long as i don't really shoot you it's not against the law i can say whatever i like damn so again getting off on a technicality troubled youth so when matsumoto is 20 years old he moves to the nearby city of kumamoto where he gets a job as an acupuncturist and a masseur or perhaps a massage therapist it's a modern day but it was 19 it was the 70s he can't stay out of trouble of course though because that's his personality so in 1976 he's criminally charged for injuring another person there aren't really any details about what that means but we do know that he's fined 15 000 yen which is about a hundred dollars and the following year he moves to tokyo because

of that incident to basically get out of town by 1978 matsumoto seems to be getting his life on track he marries a woman who comes from a wealthy family and they also port him as he opens a pharmacy that specializes in chinese herbal medicine so his business becomes very successful and he begins exploring his spiritual side so in 1981 he joins a new religion at the time called agon shu which combines hindu and buddhist teachings he's also getting into mystical forms of yoga reading up on the american new age movement and big red flag he's also becoming obsessed with the book of revelation which is the scariest book in the christian bible the one that makes the least amount of sense oh and he also is reading the writings of nostradamus the

16th century astrologer red flags right there right you know just a lot of negativity yeah so around 1980 matsumoto moves on from agon shu along with his pharmacy that's very successful he opens a yoga school and a cafe called alam and by all accounts he's an excellent instructor but even as he makes conscious steps to transform himself into a guru he still can't stay out of trouble so in 1982 he's arrested for selling quote fake medicines at his pharmacy he gets a light prison sentence he's humiliated and financially devastated by this but he seizes the shakeup in his life as an opportunity to reinvent himself and kind of dive deeper into the spiritual side of things so in 1984 matsumoto starts going by the name shoko asahara which partially translates

to bright light and basically that's what he's known as for the you know until that seren attack yeah and he's now dedicated to he's got this successful yoga school like a yoga practice and then he also has his ambitions beyond just teaching yoga which is evident in the flowing purple robes he's begun to wear oh here we go now we're in the outfit era of when he's starting to believe his own bullshit yeah he travels to india and napal to meet with high-ranking to Tibetan llamas including the Dalai Lama himself back in japan his yoga teachings become a hodgepodge of hinduism buddhism christianity modern psychology and like just a general self-help all right uh 1987 he decides to name his riddle a dissect he calls it aum shin rikkyo which means teaching

of the supreme truth and he starts recruiting followers and he's really good at marketing so what he does he gets radio airtime in russia and japan he becomes a recurring zany figure on japanese talk shows he basically normalizes himself yeah he starts popping up at universities where he basically is there to speak and he seeks out math and science students anytime he goes out to recruit for aum shin rikkyo he brings along his most beautiful current members to entice people into joining and being interested smart right he knows that the ideal recruit is a disaffected alienated but highly intelligent young person who longs for an alternative to the structured conformity-minded japanese culture hey so he's just kind of right he's just playing people against their own upbringing

and their own kind of rebellious tendencies right ashahara sells that alternative basically he leans into fantasy and science fiction and he gives interviews to sci-fi magazines like one called twilight zone which is not related to the american tv show where in 1985 he stages a now famous photograph that appears to show him levitating i don't know if you remember that one but it's like he's he's sitting cross-legged and that's what it looks like but it's fake yeah so in his many interviews and media appearances ashahara talks about all the time travel exciting new gadgets and one of his favorite topics the apocalypse okay for your fun for your fun funny zany talk show he's aware that many young japanese people have grown up glued to manga and anime about heroes and

villains world destruction and nuclear fallout so before long ashahara has attracted thousands of followers and they're not just students and loners like he started out with now many of japan's best and brightest including scientists engineers physicists chemists and doctors are joining this cult the all membership eventually reaches 40 000 people worldwide right i didn't realize it was that big with members living in at least six different countries but the majority are in russia and japan so as his popularity grows ashahara starts corporatizing his public image he launches a publishing company that puts out magazines manga and books including one book called declaring myself the christ where he you guessed it declares himself the christ he even starts

selling leaders of his own bathwater for five hundred dollars us oh no what's up uh only fans yeah i i think it's so specifically disgusting and also he sells his own blood for ten thousand dollars us i don't know he promises followers that both of these things will give them magical powers then take the bathwater don't buy the blood yeah i meanwhile people are flocking to ome shinrikyo facilities to begin practicing under ashahara to begin they have to turn over all their money property and assets to the cult then they're given new names it's peak they had around 1500 live-in followers on their cult properties wow a lot of other people lived at home and just were in a cult from their house but um i thought that was kind of a crazy like that's a serious

campus yeah totally in this environment ashahara is able to control almost every single aspect of his followers lives and many of alms activities seem to be specifically geared at breaking them down which is how cults work yeah um so some examples of those are the followers are forced to fast for long hours then when they do eat they're only given two tiny portions of rice and vegetables a day they're only allowed to sleep for a couple hours at a time in cramped uncomfortable rooms they have to practice celibacy and they're disciplined for having sexual urges not not having sex just having the oh the vibe don't just having good vibes just don't tell anyone that's not of course this does not apply to the leader who forces new female members to sleep with him

as part of their initiation yeah not very hindu no not very buddhist no they're also required to practice a difficult cleansing exercises for hours on end as a form of meditation so all of those things as we have talked about in other episodes about cults add up to basically depleting people's bodies of energy and you know health and exhausting them and then not letting them sleep and that is how you break someone's mind that's how you brainwash someone right you're in survival mode so you're not thinking clearly and thinking straight and making rash decisions and yeah and you're losing who you are your name has been changed you're you're just doing whatever this guy tells you and the more you're you're abused and treated terribly the more you're

rationalizing it and then you're just in and you're starving and you're exhausted and you know you're in this totally new world so so of course things get it's a cult things escalate they always do so in 1988 ashahara orders an aum member to be hung upside down and repeatedly plunged into extremely cold water as one of these cleansing rituals that they need to do he had decided this guy needed this specific one the man who's already exhausted from a lack of food and a lack of sleep is it basically dies because he goes through this experience oh my god so on top of all that aum members also provide free labor for the cults many side hustles they build and sell computers they operate aum affiliated gymnasiums and restaurants and travel agencies oh my god yeah

he's like a small businessman um all over the map and they even start buying small businesses and properties overseas they buy like a they have a cattle ranch in australia and then marin made wrote a note that said one book i read says that aum members even ran a cult affiliated dating service oh uh but then she couldn't find anything else about that so she didn't want to put it in officially but i'm like that is i'm reading that like are you kidding me before long aum shin rikio and of course ash ashahara have amassed a fortune i mean that's that many businesses and that many people who are giving over their high performing people before they join and they they sign everything over to the cults by 1995 some estimates put the group's net worth at a billion dollars jesus

1995 money which i think is two billion in today's money so it's so it's probably clear by this way that aum shin rikio is a cult specifically a doomsday cults because he's ashahara's never stopped talking about the apocalypse this whole time whether he's doing yoga or computers or whatever like he's doing he's still the message remains he not only being obsessed with the book of revelation and nostradamus he's also positioned shiva the hindu god associated with salvation through destruction at the center of this like belief system and ashahara's teachings now are starting to get really dark for example he teaches a distorted version of the buddhist principle called poa where he claims killing someone is an act of altruistic kindness because it allows

that person to rid themselves of bad karma and start over with a clean slate so he basically this is like that ultimate sign of brainwashing and somebody that has total control over his followers he basically convinces his followers that this is the truth that when you kill someone you're actually doing them a favor and therefore he now has all these people who are basically hit men for him whenever he wants to because that's all been accepted as uh basically killing in the name of spiritual cleansing so the man who who was dumped repeatedly being hung upside down and died in 1988 he had a friend who was also in the cult named shuji taguchi and he was shuji was so devastated when his friend died that he threatened to leave so this gets back to ashahara

ashahara gets paranoid that taguchi will go to the authorities and basically rat on him so ashahara orders his followers that to poa this man in the name of spiritual cleansing and shuji taguchi is strangled to death by three of his um shin rikio fellow cult members oh my god so now they're just like straight up murder now they're just murdering people like to cover yeah and for convenience and right if um wants him wants them to so of course this is that thing where people when they hear stories about cults like go well i would never do that or that could never happen to me or i would never join an organization like this or if they started doing stuff like that that i would leave yeah you know if you know anything about cults you know that people get

into them because they have an emptiness or they're looking to fulfill something and ashahara targeted his marketing strategies at a very vulnerable demographic young people who believe themselves to not fit in to regular society a 1995 new york times article quotes a professor named susuma oda who says that um shin rikio has a particular appeal to young people looking for a father figure whose own dads might have prioritized work over family time oda also suggests that quote religious sex in japan are to some extent the equivalent of the drug culture in america offering people relief from stress and the opportunity to develop create creative powers wow so speaking of drugs uh-oh there are drugs everywhere in ome shin rikio they're all over

the properties many people involved in this story are basically on never-ending acid trips they do a ton of lsd oh god a nightmare yes they do lsd they do meth they make their own barbiturates oh my god because they have so many doctors and chemists that are in the cult right so they make they make their own drugs basically i bet there's some good drugs right to the point where they start kind of like doing a little business with the japanese yakuza because they're like oh we're we're drug dealers we're also drug makers yeah it's the it's how breaking bad was conceived so a cult where everyone is on drugs is not unique to ome shin rikio this coupled with ashahara's obsession with the end of the world often draws comparisons to the manson family of

course and although there is some overlap ome shin rikio is like on a whole different level you have to remember that there are tons of math and science nerds right smart people yes and there's a ton of money around these cult members are very willing to sink that money into these far out experiments so dr hayashi who was the person i was talking about at the beginning of the story he's one of the cult's senior most mad scientists he goes so far as to put electrode caps on insubordinate cult members and deliver such intense shocks that in some cases people's short-term memory is wiped oh so they're experimenting on themselves and they're on their own meanwhile another senior ome member someone named hideo murai they have a background in astrophysics um so

they try to develop laser weapons using soviet technology and at one point they managed to make a laser that can slice through an iron plate what the fuck what is the end game here there's so many like twists and turn and like so many facets of their it's like they have add is a as a whole and can't constantly have lsd so they're just kind of like i don't know i want to i've always wanted to do more drugs and we could kill somebody with it from far away oh my god um yeah so they're they basically are they're making lasers they're studying missiles rockets all sorts of explosives they actually are working on a death ray that's like the that's the idea behind that laser yeah they're making they're also casually trying to enrich uranium at their australian farm

in the hopes of making a dirty nuclear bomb so they're going full on like we are start gonna start the end of the world yeah this involves to the wall armageddon shit going on so by 1990 police know that the omen shinrigyo cult and its members are up to some incredibly illegal shit and on top of that the families of the cult members have been begging authorities to do something about it but when no action is taken a lot of people begin to believe that the cult has infiltrated the japanese government the military the legal system and basically there are people acting on behalf of the cult yeah to protect it and a deep dive um in wired magazine notes that a regional judge once donated a million yen which is almost ten thousand dollars to the cult so the theory of

people being on the inside is very possible but the cult also uses intimidation to stay under the radar journalists talk about receiving threats if they gave home any sort of bad press so now the heat is on ashahara is getting increasingly paranoid the drugs aren't helping he decides he needs to do something to protect the cult so he runs several ome members including himself as candidates in the 1990 japanese elections oh no so because his plan is some of them are gonna win and then they're gonna go into all these different offices and places in government and then shut down any investigations about the cult makes sense from the inside it's a massive failure every single one of his candidates loses by huge margins ashahara himself only gets 1700 votes out

of 500 000 that are cast wow he again these losses humiliate him it's the student elections all over again oh shit life is a horrifying flat circle will it ever end so many people who are experts on this cult and what they did say that this is this basically perceived insult is the final turning point and this is when ashahara starts ramping up his militant vision of doomsday and instead of a plan to survive the apocalypse he starts paving away for his followers to usher the apocalypse in so after the election ashahara gathers his disciples near okinawa for a so-called armageddon seminar so he tells his followers that he is the blind saviour from the book of revelation that aum Shinrikyo is officially in a war against evil and that their group is the only

one capable of surviving the apocalypse and after everything is destroyed they're going to start a new in the vein of shiva and that'll be their salvation and ashahara's big idea is to carry out an attack on tokyo so big that japan will think that the united states did it and then that will usher in world war three which will then usher in the end of the world that's the plan but first they have to prepare so the members aum members try to build up a weapons arsenal to varying degrees of success they still don't have the nuclear bomb figured out they try to plan to manufacture automatic rifles that falls apart so they do try to create anthrax they even travel to zaire in africa to try to get an ebola sample so that they can figure out how to weaponize ebola

but that doesn't work either because you have to remember they're on tons of drugs right so they go try to lose it kind of like things like they never leave the the huck and hudson bookstore they try to check their ebola bag and they lose at the airline loses it they just start staring at all those different kinds of peanuts on the wall they're just like i love it here so in 1993 at their facility at the base of mount fuji talk about cartoon the cartoon villain they finally figure out how to make sarin and so sarin is among the most toxic chemical agents known to man it's 500 times more deadly than cyanide wow and it was first developed in yep you guessed it nazi germany it was used at all the death camps and of course ashahara becomes obsessed with sarin

he talks about it all the time in his speeches and in his sermons and later police even find omp pamphlets that contain two parodies of popular japanese television theme songs reimagined to be about sarin uh twisted maren actually included the lyrics they're just it's the weirdest yeah it's just the weirdest thing you've ever seen it's that kind of thing where i don't care if it's it's an obsession with murdering people or if or an obsession with like arrest development you got to stop doing one thing over and over yeah and you got to like fold other people into the conversation so that they can go hey you're talking about that too much but what if all the people around you are talking about it too if you've put yourself in the position where

we only are ever going to talk about no stardomus and the book of revelation yeah then of course anything you think that comes up is like well this is really bad this is the end of it you're asking for it like you have to open the window a little bit more take like a week off of lsd every now and then please also meth oh god that drug you can make people do anything if they're on meth can you imagine how pure that meth was too like that should look fucking just pop your brain cells like audibly pop your brain cells oh god i was so smart when i was on meth like you think you know everything yeah you gotta make a plan the plan usually involves digging or building something to go up opening a restaurant i'm always telling everyone

while ohm scientists are tinkering with all these weapons of mass destruction it's getting harder and harder for the police to ignore the police from family members and the complaints made by people who live near the ohm properties some of whom have had to file lawsuits against the cult and of course those lawsuits piss ashahara off and in june of 1994 in matsumoto ohm members target the homes of judges overseeing this cases of the lawsuits that people had against them can't do that these basically this became a test run of what they were going to end up doing in the tokyo subway system they released sarin gask from slow moving trucks in front of the judge's house at basically to attack the judges oh my god and that it ends up killing eight people

and injuring hundreds holy shit so basically they've been killing people for a while now they everyone has adopted this idea that it's actually good what they're doing is good for people killing them off and letting them start over some estimates put omshin rikio's body count at 80 people most of these killings involve either dissenters people actively investigating the cult going back as far as 1989 in one of their more high-profile murders omshin rikio members targeted a lawyer named susumi sakamoto they were working to disprove ashahara's claim that his ten thousand dollar blood gave people magical powers but before he could bring the case to court cult members broke into sakamoto's home murdered him murdered his wife and murdered their young

child oh my god so even though people pretty much immediately knew that omshin rikio are the ones who did it this murder wouldn't be conclusively connected to them for years it isn't until February 1995 when one of their killings has consequences because they go after a wealthy omshin rikio member who's donated hundreds of thousands of her own money to the cult and she decides to leave ashahara obviously wants to keep getting her money so he enlists his disciples to find her and bring her back but she's gone so far off the grid that instead of tracking her down because they can't find her they bring in her elderly brother who had nothing to do with this cult to get information but they end up bungling the whole mission because they're on drugs and killing this brother oh my

god so in the wake of this murder investigators finally start to scrutinize the cult and its activity and they start to link a bunch of all affiliated dummy companies to suspiciously large orders of dangerous raw chemicals so they're just starting to kind of link it all together they know about what happened at the judges houses in matsumoto so a case connecting the omshin rikio cult to that is starting to build quickly ashahara knows that a police raid at ome facilities is eminent um and that couldn't like unravel his entire enterprise so he makes a hail mary move to deflect attention and he decides that ome shin rikio is going to attack tokyo ahead of schedule which basically brings us back to the beginning of the story so his long-term plan of kicking off

the apocalypse by right you know kicking off world war three it gets moved up to march 20th 1995 and the deadly sarin attack on multiple train lines in tokyo's incredibly busy subway system kills 13 people injures thousands and of course deeply traumatizes many who will live with what they saw that day for the rest of their lives yeah chemists who later analyze their sarin found that the sarin had about 30 purity a federation of american scientists report says that quote had the chemical mixture and delivery system been slightly different the resulting tragedy would be unprecedented if not beyond comprehension so basically the chemists at ome shin rikio they basically made very specific mistakes and if they hadn't made those if they had they had

been on drugs basically tens of thousands more people would have died that day i wonder if there's anyone on that team who is making those chemicals who purposely fucked with them to make it less deadly i i love that idea i like i mean that's me being taken it down from the inside but that's very possible because at this point at this point they're killing their own so there's gotta be people in there who don't know what else to do but yeah kind of going through the day to day right yeah oh i like that idea that kind of gives you a little hope of like it does but yeah i mean otherwise it's like these brilliant scientists fucking up that bad seems impossible unless they're on tons of drugs or did it on purpose yeah right why not both why not both let's have it be both

so police quickly pieced together evidence that ome shin rikio is behind the attack two days later police raid the headquarters at the base of mount fuji they don't find ashahara but who's now on the lamb they do find a russian military helicopter gobs of lsd and meth millions of dollars gobs of lsd is it's so evil and awful like that actual attack and how yeah alarming and but the idea that behind it are cult members on like with pupils the size of fucking pizza trays yeah they have the worst intentions and they can't execute yeah that's terrible it's insane and also just like so you're gonna run and leave millions of dollars behind yeah you you didn't get like a side suitcase just to get that well they thought they'd get away with it probably and like come back home

or they were just like oh my god my hand is purple and my other hand's orange like yeah okay so the gobs of lsd meth millions of dollars and the supplies to make enough sarin to kill four million people holy shit so over the next several months japanese police conduct more than 500 raids make dozens of arrests including ashahara himself who's been hiding out for two months he's charged with 17 different crimes including murder and before these horrible attacks many people in japan knew of omshin rikkyo as kind of just a weird kooky religious sect right that the leader would be on tv every once in a while people are shocked to learn that this is the group behind one of the country's worst terrorist attacks well you know my uncle lived

there at the time and i think we did it i think he did a hometown once where he rented out his room to one of the killers he was like not in tokyo he wasn't in tokyo at the time and he rented out either his room or a room in his apartment and it turned out they were there in town to do the sarin attacks holy shit yeah and like the cops came and questioned him but of course he had nothing to do with it that's amazing yeah so the prosecution paints ashahara as a twisted evil cult leader who pulls all the strings but his defense argues he's pure of heart and his disciples are the ones acting independently and trying to kill everybody in the trial ashahara never speaks for himself and when he does the few times he does he gives these weird meandering incoherent answers and

because of this it's all anyone's talking about and after a while it just starts to feel tedious and drawn out and people don't want to watch it anymore so finally in february of 2004 the tokyo district court finds ashahara guilty of orchestrating the subway attack um along with several other aum shinrikyo members he sentenced to death reports say that when he's read his charges he quote crossed his arms smiled openly yawned snorted scratched his head smelled his fingers and mumbled incoherently whoa so even after ashahara's capture and prosecution aum shinrikyo didn't go away which i find so weird yeah um the sect splits into two different organizations that actually still exist one is called hikari noa and the other one's called aulav and both

have tried to distance themselves from aum shinrikyo's violence but they still have some things in common for many years aulav was under constant government surveillance and one of the main reasons was they targeted lonely alienated college students who felt isolated by the pandemic oh both organizations have a smaller but sizable membership they still target people in the fields of math science and technology so just to wrap up psychiatrist robert j liftin who wrote the book ending the world to save it is referenced heavily in the research for this story he published a paper in the 80s that establishes three hallmarks of dangerous religious cults and i always love to talk about these um number one a charismatic leader who quote increasingly

becomes an object of worship and the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority so it's a first sign the second one is a coercive process of a doctor nation or education which leads to members working in the best interest of the group and the leader but not for themselves and lastly this is a quote from this book economic sexual and other exploitation of group members by the group leader and the other cult leadership trump sound familiar that's not a whole thing everybody buy a trump bear buy a flag yeah grab a buy the pussy donate give us all your money you don't have any and already have all the money but she will if you give us all your money if there's someone in your life that you worry about that

perhaps is getting tied up in a group that seems dangerous or manipulative experts say that you should work hard to maintain a warm supportive trusting relationship with that person if it is safe for you if that is even possible for many people it's not possible but if you can we should do is try to keep in contact you should try to provide them with an access to media and other perspectives just to give just to keep other information in their life and whenever you're with the person just remind them who they are as an individual who they were before they got into the group and maybe help that person restore their sense of self which is what they have lost when you when you join a cult that's what you lose but do not do that at your own expense

because cults are powerful and people make their own decisions so you can only control what you can control yeah and boundaries are important too that's right and it's becoming more and more common these days whether it's like multi-level marketing that's high pressure and gets into like social things or all the way up to straight up like cults where people online it's always the same story i told you that the that podcast the opportunist where it's like that woman who started a cult online basically saying they're fighting they're fighting the devil coming back to earth and she went from being the person telling the story to being god wow and like it's the i mean like so many people are out there trying to manipulate people yeah for sure be smart be keep

your eyes open totally and that is the horrible story of the om Shinrikyo doomsday cult wow great job that's a little speech at the end by me i know i know it's very long and i'm in the dark you are in the dark right now i can literally barely i could see like a white outline of your face i didn't even see that that's really funny yeah it's very funny wow great job that was a hard one to to do a quickie on and you did a good job of it thank you thank you right i didn't know a lot of details about that one especially not the drug part that's fucking wild yes for real and i i listened to this whole story i mean i've heard this story you know from multiple places but i really maren maglashan who's my researcher really synopsized it well in that way where how

do you talk about all these things at once because it went on for years and years totally there's so much more to it i know that haruki marakami's book really really gets into a lot of that stuff and he's such an incredible writer i'm sure that's a good resource yeah all right all right all right we fucking did it two hour almost we did it we've done it once again once again thank you all for listening thank you all for being here in our little cult with us yeah that's right don't put this one we appreciate you we love you we love you and uh don't go to sleep don't go to sleep ever ever never ever just never go to sleep keep your eyes open never go to sleep that's our only rule oh there's one more rule stay sexy oh and don't get murdered goodbye yeah elvis do you want to

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