My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 396 - Good and Fine

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

On today’s episode, Georgia covers the disappearance of Sandra and John Jacobson and Karen tells the story of Mark Olmsted and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. I'm Candace DeLong and on my podcast Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds you hear about in the news. Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon Music Out. Download the app today. Hello!

Hello! Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgeras. We're here to do podcasting at you. You know the drill. Want to?

Want to? Want to? Want to? Want to? Too bad. It's too late. You can't press stop now. It's too late.

You got to commit. Your earbuds are locked into position. Listen. Guess why we put super glue on them, so now you can't even take them out. Look, look and listen. Just listen. Or just listen, I guess it's a podcast. How are you? It's going on. I'm good. Nothing. I have nothing. You don't have to always have something. I don't think I do. That's my concern. This isn't a, let's talk about our thing podcast. That's not it.

That's very true. How about yourself? What do you have? I have that I went to Vegas over the weekend and saw RuPaul's Drag Race live at the Flamingo app. Who was in it? I was with Kara Klink, Lats messed up in SVU podcast,

and I just texted her to like, tell me, because she knows everything about Drag Race. Yes. And she hasn't texted me back yet, so as soon as she knows. Oh. How was it? Magical.

And I'm saying this because I want everyone who's in Vegas to go. It was like such a beautiful, fun show, and these performers are unbelievable. They give it there everything and it looked magical. It was just really special. So I'm just highly recommending it. Love it. Here's a very odd, like I'm a huge fan of World of Wonder, which is the production company that produces RuPaul's Drag Race. And as kind of since I would say the like mid 2000s has been like their website was just where I would go if I wanted to know what was going on because they just were always

talking about the latest thing. I mean, yeah. You know, so I'm a big fan. But I can barely handle reality TV. I get very embarrassed for people. I get very confronted when people are fighting. It stresses me out. Like, I'm fighting.

I don't like a lot of that. And especially, I think, because drag queens are really, really mean. And so their kind of fighting is like next level. So I've never watched it. It's not real fighting. It's like, this is the catty-ness of it all. And it stresses me out too,

because I'm like, I can't handle that. I can't handle someone even jokingly talking to me that way or I'll cry. No, no. Constantly being confronted with the hard truth about yourself in a slightly joking manner. Right. I mean, how do they do it?

It's like, it's almost like they're like, they're Navy SEALs and they're just going through the training they need to be in a world that doesn't accept them. Totally. So it's basically like, they're compatriots and the people with them being like, oh, will you better get ready?

Yeah. And I'll get you ready by ripping the shit out of your makeup. Yeah. And if you can't handle this level, yeah, then you're not for this world. This world isn't for you. I will say this though, because of TikTok, I've become obsessed with Trix and Mattel and Katya,

who have their own kind of separate side show, but they were both, I believe Trix and Mattel won. I'm not sure if Katya won, and I do apologize, we're not knowing, but I could watch clips of those two talking for the rest of my life. What's their show called? It's just it's called. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced, but that's how I pronounce it when I see it. It's like UNGH, H-H-H-H-A, whatever. And they just are like, you know, sometimes they're watching TV shows,

sometimes they're just having conversations, but what's on TikTok are just like a ton of like outtakes or like clips. The first clip I ever saw was the two of them on this set. And then Trixie Mattel goes, someone's snoring. And then they, everyone goes really quiet. And you hear snoring. And it was their COVID person was asleep. Oh my God. A sleep and snoring loud enough that they could hear it. And then they got really quiet and they were just whispering and they're like, oh my God, I'm so humiliated. I can't remember.

Like I totally relate. Like I get it. I get it. And then Trixie Betel was like, what if I got COVID? What if it got COVID right now? There's like, it's so funny. So anyway, I think I'm like, hey, I don't want to go through what it takes to win RuPaul's Dragways,

because I can't be in there emotionally for that. I don't have the bandwidth. I'll meet you on the other side when you have a show. I'll watch you. And the other side is also live and fucking Las Vegas, turns out. Yeah. It was so fun, there was like a slap fight segment too.

We have like fake slapping across the face and they brought like an audience member up and like there was like, there were fucking pyrotechnics and then like, you know, up in the air parts where they get, I mean, it was magical. It was magical. Jesus. And how many people are in that show? It was five of the drag participants, the hosts. And then there were these like six boys

who were all dancing for their lives, you know, like sure. They were in every scene. They were like bringing it and being like the background dancers of the whole thing, the pit crew. So it's a full fucking stage show. It's a full stage show, but it's not, yeah, it's like a good size, it's not overwhelming. It's like perfect, perfect. Yeah, like don't go to, you don't need to go to like fucking the Beatles, Cirque du Soleil,

or anything like that, you know? Just go to drag, raise, live. Go to something funny and awesome. Yeah, it was really funny. I wonder though if people would take issues through calling them drag participants. I know, I was like, what do I say? Drag queens.

Drag queens. Yes, drag queens. Don't do whatever you call that. Don't take them down enough. Do you ask a lot of them? Do you ask a lot of them? I don't know. Drag participants.

I don't know why I did that. It was like one of those those like, is that still, can I say this word? Still? Are you allowed to say Queen's? Yeah. Am I allowed to call anyone a Queen if they're not like royalty? Am I allowed to call people the thing that they call themselves?

Right. Because that's also an assumption. Who am I? Who am I to say Queen's? Right. Look at me. I'm basically a soccer mom without me kids. That's the saddest second thing. That's not a queen.

Are you okay? I just took a huge sip of diet, Jindrel, as you said that. I almost did a solo spit take into my microphone. I have an update up from Cara Clank. It was Coco Montrice, Alexis Mateo, Bosco, Pagina Heels, and Kennedy, Davenport. And each one of them, like brought everything they had.

You know why? Cause they're queens. Cause they're queens. Cause they're queens. That's why. Cause they're queens. Yeah. That's. Because they're queens, that's why. That's why. That's awesome. I wanna see that show.

That's a fun thing to do in Las Vegas. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's an argument for Las Vegas. I do have a, it's like a mailbag update off of my Spring Heal Jack story that I did a couple weeks ago. Okay.

The subject line of this is, I live beside Spring He Hill Jack's cursed family. Oh dear. And then it just starts dot dot dot dot. Well technically the curse is broken now, but that's a less interesting title. And then it says, I was just listening to Karen Spring Hill Jack story and was shocked to hear Lord Waterford being mentioned as a possible suspect. I'm from the little village that borders the grounds of the Waterford estate in Southeast

Ireland. Most people outside the village are always shocked to hear that there is a Lord Waterford. I think the standard assumption is that we got rid of all those hereditary titles when Ireland became a republic. The village has an odd relationship with the Bay House, and then it says, Kura Moore, and then in parentheses, it says, don't pronounce the G and you'll be grand. Or you'll be ran. Maybe they might be you'll be.

It was a big employer for the village over the years, but most people never stepped foot inside the house. Kind of how it works, right? My grandmother said that sometimes the Lord's sons would try and integrate with the village and join the soccer team. The locals just took it as an opportunity to play really rough, but the sons thought they were having a great time. I grew up spending my summers in the woods on the estate, swimming in the river and not

trying not to be seen by the caretakers. And in parentheses it says, and this was in the 90s. It was only when the 8th Lord died a few years ago, and his son took over where the grounds made a bit more public, and I got to go on a tour of the house, which is where I heard of the curse on the family. Back in the time of the first Lord Waterford, late 1700s, there was a widow with an unruly son living beside the Kura Mor estate.

She apparently brought him to the Lord one day to try to put some manners on him, so the Lord hanged him from a tree. The widow went on to curse the family so that the next seven generations would not die in their beds. That's classic Irish prevent right there, but I can't remember how all the Lords died, but all seven generations died either a broad or in horrible accidents. The few I can find online are third, our man Springfield Jack, broke his neck in a fall wall hunting. Sixth escaped being killed by a lion, but then went on to drown when

he was 36. And seventh died at 33 in a shooting accident. Right. The eighth Lord was apparently the first to die of old age at home, thus proving the curse has finally ended. Wow. Right? Stay sexy and don't get on the wrong side of Irish widows' roof. Damn.

Don't die in your bed is so specific. And it like almost sounds quaint, where it's like, I'll just die in the couch. But no, that's not what that means, everyone. No, that's not the vibe of that curse. And then it's like, and now let's take this to, oh, that's right, what she's saying is you will not have a pleasant day.

Right, it's not her curse and even die in a lazy boy. No. Not on your orthopedic. This is the living room is not a part of it at all. You're gonna be out and about. Shall we go to exactly right corner? Is it time to go to? I believe we make that choice.

Am I choose yes? Hey, we have a podcast network called exactly right media. Here are some highlights from it. Rave reviews are rolling in for infamous International LeP Pink Panther Story. Thank you guys so much for all the support hitting those charts. We're on the charts.

You guys are saying nice stuff. Thank you so much. And this week the Panthers develop a new talent which is prison breaks. This is a great episode coming up. So follow the show wherever you like to listen and do all the things that you know to do to support podcasts. We really appreciate it. And then on wicked words, Kate Winkler Dawson is joined by Titty Smith, the author of Death by Talons.

And then the side thing is did an owl murder, Kathleen Peterson. Smith explores neighbor Larry Pallard's theory of her cause of death. Did an owl do it? That is the question. And Kate Winkler Dawson in her expertise is gonna help us theory of her cause of death. Did an owl do it? That is the question. And Kate Winchler Dawson in her expertise is going to help us get to the bottom of that. And I do need to get to the bottom of that because I have held forth on my quote unquote opinion about that theory, but it's based purely in just my gut feeling. And there's no better person than Kate Winkler Dawson. And just FYI, Titty Smith spells their first name,

T-I-D-D-Y, just so you know. Just to make that clear. Just to make that clear, I think it's important, but I can't wait to listen to this episode because now I'll be able to have an informed opinion. Oh, also this week, Babs, Tess, and Brandy's guest on Lady to Lady is actress and TikToker Becca Bastos. And also, hey, guess what? The warm weather is waning.

So this is your last chance to get some cute tank tops and muscle tees. The never-submit shirt featuring Pearl Hart's quote has been restocked also. So you can get them at myfavoretmurder.com. Get those workout tank tops in and those, you know, you're like running tank tops and your dougit-suit tank tops. Check those out. And I guess that's that. I guess it's time to start.

From the creators of Even the Rich comes a new podcast called Even the Royals. Hosts Brooke and Eresha pull back the curtain on Royal Family's past and present from all over the world. Even the royals covers the stories you thought you knew, like Marie Antoinette, was she actually the victim of a propaganda campaign that led to her eventual beheading, or Catherine Domenici, who was assumed responsible for one of the most devastating massacres in French

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All right, well, today I'm going to tell you a quick little story about the 1996 Unsolved Missing Persons case. Yes, it's unsolved. I was Sandra Jacobson and her five-year-old son and the botched investigation into their disappearance. So, hold your pants up for a cold case, please. The main source for this story is reporting by Trisha Turinskis, who discussed this case on her podcast, The Vault,

and wrote about it for the forum of Fargo Morehead, which is the main newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota. And we use Trisha's reporting in episode 363 for the brand and Swanson Disadherence episode that I did. And she actually reached out and suggested this story to us as well as when to cover it. She wants more attention on it. So how cool is that?

That's incredible. So crime journalist reached out to you, basically, to say, hey, if you like that story, you should also cover this. Yeah, incredible. Love it. Thank you, Trisha Turinskis. Bring an attention and awareness to these cold cases.

And Zendaya, but a number 17th, 1996, a Bismarck North Dakota police officer, named William Conner, is among the officers called to Centennial Park on the shores of the Missouri River. There, a car has been found. It's a gray 1990 Honda Civic. It's parked real close to the river. It's a really freezing cold frigid day,

so think of a North Dakota winter. It's very cold, gray. The average temperature is around 13 degrees. And you're by a river, so I'm sure there's like windchill or whatever. So police know something's wrong when they see that the car's driver's side door is open. Inside the car, police officers find the keys in the ignition and a woman's purse on the passenger seat. And inside the purse is a state ID card belonging to a woman named Sandra Jacobson. It's from her job at the DMV.

Sandra's driver's license isn't there. And of course, neither is Sandra. A few hours later, Sandra's mother calls the police and reports her daughter and grandson as missing. So, these things all kind of happen concurrently. Sandra Jacobson was born December 8, 1959, so she's 36 years old when she goes missing.

She has two sons, one is 16th from a previous marriage, and the other one who's missing with her is John, who's five years old. So just a baby. Sandra comes from a large family with deep roots in North Dakota and by Sunday night, once they learned that the car has been found, they all like head to the river to try to find her together. They urge the officer, William Connor and the other officers to keep searching for Sandra. And John, Connor says, quote, I had a can you eyeing at the time. And so I was down along that river for, oh my gosh, I don't know, several hours that night.

He says it was below zero at that point. The wind is howling and the river's already freezing up. So there's like these big chunks of ice floating down the river is what he says. So it's not an ideal place to search for someone. Wait, police don't find anything. And before the car had been discovered, a little bit of snow had fallen, so there aren't any footprints that they could follow that would give many clues.

So on Monday, November 18th, a detective named Tim Turnbull starts looking into the missing person's case, so it's his case. Sandra's mother, Brannise Green signer, says that Sandra and her son John came to her house for dinner on the night of Saturday of November 16th at about 7.30 pm. Sandra had sounded fine on the phone earlier that day, but by dinner time when she went to dinner with her mom, she was in distress and seemed to be having a mental health crisis. So Sandra had struggled in the past with obsessive thoughts around religion. Bernice offered to take Sandra to the emergency room and Sandra agreed to go, but said she first had to fill up her car with gas. So Sandra and John, five-year-old John, left to get gas around 8 p.m. And then when the two didn't return, Sandra's family drove to her home, which is a trailer in center North Dakota about 40 minutes away.

Sandra and John weren't there, and Bernice reported her daughter in Grunsen missing the next morning right around when they found the car. In Sandra's car, a receipt is found showing that she really did buy the gas that night, but after that, no one knows what happened to them. So the report includes another detail. Hours before she was last seen by her mother,

Sandra Jacobson had called the Bismarck police several times and told them that a loved one of hers was being targeted by a satanic cult. So she was definitely having maybe a mental health breakdown. She said that the cult was active near her home and centered North Dakota. And then when the Bismarck police asked why she didn't contact centers, police department and said the Bismarck police department,

she said she doesn't trust them either. So she's something's going on. Detective Turnbull has an immediate hunch that Sandra and her son wound up in the I.C. Missouri River and they asked the Burley County Sheriff's Department to search the rivers. Like that's where they're focusing on. But despite an overhead search by the National Guard and divers going into that frigid water, there's no sign I know of Sandra Arjan. The divers aren't able to search as thoroughly as they'd like because of those chunks of ice that are already forming

in the river. Sandra's family and close friends immediately doubt Detective Turnbull's theory. So they don't think that Sandra would have ended up in the river. One of her close friends that Sandra never liked going near the river. She always avoided it. The entire family maintains that no matter what kind of mental health crisis Sandra was experiencing, she would never do anything to her son and that she also wouldn't

leave her older son behind. So like the theory that maybe she purposely went in is not making sense on money levels to her friends and family. The second thing that happens on Monday, November 18th is that Sandra's husband, a man named Alan Jacobson flies in from St. Louis where he'd been on a business trip. So he'd been gone the whole weekend. So, Alan had learned the day before on Sunday the 17th at Sandra and John were missing. The couple had been separated and Sandra had been telling friends and family that they were beginning a divorce for sure.

Sandra believed that Alan was handling all of the paperwork for the divorce, but investigators would later be unable to find any evidence that Alan had initiated the divorce at all So maybe he just didn't want it. Maybe he was you know hadn't started it yet for whatever reason It doesn't seem that weird to me Alan doesn't bring up the divorce when he meets with the detective Detective Turnbull's notes from the meeting do note that Alan was also concerned about Sandra's mental health

He said she had religious obsessions. He also said she had, quote, off the wall theories that he was having an affair or affairs. Alan says that Sandra called him at 615 on the morning of November 16th, the day she and John later went missing and asked him to recite the Lord's Prayer for John. And then Alan says that he left for a business trip in Missouri that same day, November 16th, and he had just returned when he got to the police station on November 18th. And so Detective Turnbull doesn't immediately attempt to verify this timeline, which is like basic detective work, right? A month later, in December, in late December, Detective Turnbull's bosses tell him to properly vet Alan's alibi.

And so the facts, when he goes back over the timeline again and tries to, like, I think he was so focused on this, she went into the river on her own accord theory that he didn't even try to verify any of the facts that her husband, who she's trying to divorce, you know, is making, and tell his superiors, or like, maybe you should confirm that. If you don't think he did it, confirm that.

Confirm it. Yeah. Yeah. Either way. And also the idea that just in the way that you just repeated that story where it's like, well, he's out of town, so he's like flying into like, learn this information. So he doesn't have like a presence at the beginning of the story. So if that detective is so like fixated on like she was having a mental breakdown, so she just went into the river, the end, then this guy is a sympathetic character. Totally. You didn't realize like he's writing, I mean, that's what I'm doing right now is writing

the story in my head of what all this might mean as opposed to keeping it all open and figuring out what it means based on fact. Yes. Exactly. in my head of what all this might mean, as opposed to keeping it all open and figuring out what it means based on fact. Yes, exactly. I mean, yeah, you have to dot your eyes and cross your teeth as a detective, I think, and he's not doing those things because he has a preconceived notion of what happened. So there's not any evidence that Alan caused any harm to Sandra and John, but this is just the first of many examples

where basic police work wasn't done or wasn't done in a timely manner. Alan says that about eight in the morning on Saturday, November 16th, the day his wife and son would later go missing. Alan got in a van with some co-workers and they drove to Missouri for work. He says he stayed in a hotel in St. Louis

on the night of November 17th. The hotel manager confirms this. And so it's kind of like, it's confirmed he's at the hotel. It's never confirmed that he like actually spent the night there. You know, it's kind of a harder thing to prove. But there's no evidence either that he didn't spend the night there. That happens. And then Bismarck police never, they never searched Sandra's home, which is a trailer in center in North Dakota. They never search

her home for clues. Even though Sandra's family says that she had kept a detailed diary and the diary is never recovered because it didn't go in there immediately and to see what was going on. Like it's almost like they didn't suspect foul play, so they were going to take no steps to look into the possibility of foul play. It just feels like, and I would imagine that this is a pretty, a town that's on the smaller side, and a place that doesn't deal with stuff like this very much. Because I always think about when we talk about stories like this, like my hometown, when I was growing up in Petaluma in the 70s, there was 11, I think, I think my dad told me there was like 11,000 people that lived there. So it's pretty small, you know, comparatively.

And to try to think of that where it's like suddenly someone's just gone, what do you do? And what are, what are people doing? And how are they doing it? And it just over and over makes me think they have to standardize a federal standardization of investigation, whether it's missing person, murder, whatever it is. It's just that these are the things you have to do that are required by law for you to do as an investigator.

Because it can't be about some person's opinion. I think this and I think that. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It can't. That's a really good point where it's like, it doesn't matter what your opinion is. It's like when you get in a car accident and your insurance card says, get this, get this, say this, don't say, you know, it's like there's rules for it.

Yep. It should be the same when you're investigating a fucking missing person. And it's almost like if there had been any blood at the scene, things would have gone differently, but because there wasn't, it was an immediate snap judgment. Right. And that snap judgment, although like it's just one of literally 50,000 possibilities, and you're literally not going to look into any other. Did I just say literally twice in a row? Like I'm fucking 25. It's just that kind of thing where the first thing I thought of is I could see someone followed her

from the gas station to whatever weird point that was and took them and put them in the white van that I can imagine. So it's like, now I'm the investigator and I'm only investigating white vans. That doesn't make sense either. No singular thing makes sense in the very beginning of it. Total investigation like that. Investigate is the operative word here, everything. I mean, neither of us are professionals. I think we've proven that time. And again, these are just observations over literally seven years and hundreds and hundreds

of the same of these kinds of stories that drive you insane after a while. Absolutely. So they don't search Sandra's trailer, Diaries never found because Alan as her husband and the house has never searched or declared any kind of crime scene, he's allowed to come and go as he pleases, which I will repeat that he is not a suspect and it has never been proven that he had anything to do with it, but because he hasn't been definitively ruled out, because the investigation was lacking, it is weird that he could go in and out and just like do it I really wanted at her house. The police also don't process Sandra's car for fingerprints or other

evidence, which is like that's the potential crime scene. Yeah. That's basic stuff. Sandra's purse is released to Allen in late November and the car is released to him in December, and then he sells the trailer a few months later, which is his prerogative if he had nothing to do with what happened, you know. And it's not that detective turnball isn't doing anything in the case, it's more that all of his attention

is focused on the river. Over the winter, divers try to search the frozen waters until they can't anymore. Once the water opens up in the spring, he asks the media to tell boaters to keep a lookout and they do get tips, but nothing ever pans out. His instinct isn't entirely unreasonable. Whoever parked Sandra's car by the river, whether it was Sandra or someone else, wouldn't have been able to leave

that area on foot and get very far because it was so cold that night, but that's not what we're insinuating. And it's 1996. So he hears that she's experiencing a mental health crisis, and he thinks suicide immediately, you know, maybe in my guts, where his brain goes. And to this day, I'm sure that's not all that uncommon for people to think that. And then Detective Turnbull interview Sandra's first husband, a man named Vernon, and he learns that Sandra had once been very preoccupied with the end of the world. She and Vernon had made a pact that if the end of the world happened, they would jump off the memorial bridge together, which spans the Missouri River right near the

Centennial Park where her car was found. Vernon, the ex-husband adds, however, that Sandra had abandoned this plan later in their relationship because taking her own life would stop her from being able to go to heaven. So she wouldn't have done it. Right. So on May 20th, 1997, six months after the disappearance, a child shoe is found near the river in Centennial Park. Authorities think that maybe the shoe could be five-year-old Johns and Alan Jacobson, the dad, tells investigators that it might be his son's shoe, but the older brother and the grandma,

and cystic the shoe is too large for him. Also, the day of John's disappearance, it's 33 degrees out during the day and the shoe is a keg slip on. So that's not appropriate shoe for the weather, right? So it's probably just some shoe and they're never able to prove that it was his. And then so on February 3, 1999, a few years later, Turnbull declares the case inactive. In June of 2004, this happened in 1996,

the police officer who was at the scene with his dog who was doing all that searching, William Connor, he's now a sergeant and he gets a phone call from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So, the representatives say they found a woman named Sandra Jacobson living in a nearby town in North Dakota. It turns out to be a false alarm, but it does inspire Sergeant Conner to take another look at the case, which has basically been untouched since 1999, so like for five years.

On that same call, the representative from the National Center for Missing and Exploded, children tell Sergeant Connor that they haven't been able to get in touch with Alan, the husband and father, to get a DNA sample to keep on file in case someone matching John's description ever turns up. They also can't get pictures of John for the poster they wanted to make. Connor gets samples and photos from Sandra's other family members, but doesn't get to speak with Alan until April of 2005. Like, can you imagine the fucking National Center for Missing Exploded Children is trying to get a hold of you about your son's disappearance and you're not calling them back?

That's a bad look. For how long? Well, it's 2005. I don't know how long they were looking, but... No, that's very odd, because also also wouldn't he want to be finding out? Yeah. Even if you want to tell some story about that they were estranged or they were going to get divorced or whatever, that doesn't have anything to do with how he feels about

finding his child. You know, it'd been five years since anything had happened with the case. Like, is he not calling, you know, once a year to be like, what's the update, what's the status, that kind of thing? Or is he just in so much grief and is just such a horror show that he's like completely checked out?

I mean, yeah, absolutely. When the people do finally speak to Alan in April of 2005, Alan tells Sargent Conner that he sent photos for an aged enhanced photo of John, but it turns out Sargent Connor that he sent photos for an age-enhanced photo of John, but it turns out Sargent Connor had been the one to send those photos. And in that same conversation, Alan says he didn't want to give them a DNA sample for whatever reason. That's not an indication of guilt, however, you'd think you're looking for your son.

That you'd want to do anything you could to help. Right. It doesn't sound good to an outsider. It doesn't. Right. So Alan tells Sergeant Connor that he and Sandra, he, we're working on their marriage when she disappeared, which is that odds with what Sandra had been saying to her friends and family at the time, but she could have been telling him one thing and telling them a different thing, you know. He also admits to having had an affair. It's not around the time of the disappearance had been earlier, but this is at odds with his previous account

when he said that she had off the wall theories about an affair kind of like using that as fuel to say that she had a mental health issue. But he actually had been having an affair. So yeah, but you know, that's something that should have been looked into originally. Just to get a sense of who the detective was talking to. Totally. Am I getting information from this person as it reliable information?

Do we know what is going on or should we even be listening to this person? Exactly. We should be detectives. I mean, here's the thing, there's a bunch of people, this is like a thing I see on TikTok a lot where it's like women should be the only people who investigate Because of all these things the their ability to multitask their ability to kind of see through this stuff by the fact that most women The way they grow up and are in the world. They have to have a sixth sense about the people around them and have to get that sense of if a guy is creepy or not or for a person seems riskier or not. That's

a thing that you develop when you're like a preteen, if not younger, and there are some men who never develop it at all. And yet they go in there and just like, well, we'll see. Now this guy's fine. I know this guy's, he's cool I can tell. And we're like, actually, that guy's creeping me out. I saw a thing recently that, like a meme that was really cool. That was like, you know, men have been saying for years that women shouldn't be in positions of power because they're too emotional as if anger isn't an emotion. Right.

Like that hit me so hard, or it's like that is an emotion. And how is that one acceptable? But when we have empathy or when we have, you know, whatever, it's too emotional. It's all bullshit. Sad. It is all bullshit. It's all it's all been bullshit. It's always been bullshit.

The children are realizing now it's wonderful. Thank God. Okay. So Sergeant Connor now finally has to try to get Sandra's phone records. Hey, that would have been a great thing to fucking look at. Back then in 1996, the police did get her landline records for the month of October, but for some reason never got them for November, the month she went fucking missing. And that would have included two weeks leading up to her in John's disappearance, which seems like it would have

been crucial information. So by 2004, when Sergeant Connor starts to look into the case, the phone company, Bill Longer, has those records. Of course. Alan Jacobson had a cell phone in 1996, but no one ever attempted to get those records. Fucking estranged husbands, phone records. And when Sergeant Connor contacts Verizon,

he's told they only have records going back to 2001. Police also never looked at Allen's landline records and those were gone as well. One set of records Sergeant Connor does have is Sandra's car phone records. So Allen actually got those at Detective Turnbull's request during the initial 1996 investigation. And one thing you notice is that in the hours leading to her disappearance, Sandra made multiple

calls to a life insurance company. In each call she hangs up 10 seconds after the call is answered. In the original investigation, these calls were dismissed because the number was similar to the Bismarck Police Department, who she had been calling about the satanic cult worries. But when Sergeant Connor looks into Sandra's life insurance policies, it turns out that she did at one point have a policy with the company she had been calling. And by the time she disappears, that policy had lapsed. So I mean, on her way to disappear, she's calling a life insurance company that had lapsed. That's suspic.

Right. And that's a whole other possibility that then looms large of like, are you trying to disappear? Totally. Totally. Yeah. Sergeant Connor looks for other life insurance policies. He finds one worth $30,000 that Alan had collected five years

after Sandra and John's disappearance. Which doesn't seem unreasonable. Not in the least. So Sergeant Connor tries to reexamine Sandra's phone calls to the police about the satanic cult on the night of her disappearance, but finds out that the recording had been deleted. It's just gone, which it seems to infuriate him.

It doesn't seem like it was just right on purpose, but it wasn't saved, and those calls should be saved indefinitely. Sandra made other calls from a car phone that evening. She called her first husband Vernon, who she had that end of the world packed with. He missed the call. She also called another family member

and was distraught and not herself according to them. In the months following Sandra and John's disappearance, their close-knit families had tried to navigate the holidays without them. Sandra's sister-in-law says, quote, holidays were her thing. Everyone had to be together. Everyone had to have fun.

She was all about family. Family members remember five-year-old John as a little ball of energy who loved to run around the house He would tie a towel around his neck like a cape. So he looked like a superhero. I know Sandra's first husband Vernon died in 2005 He was run over by his own car on a rural road in Tuddle, North Dakota, and his death is also still unsolved. That's horrible. Which makes you think it wasn't an accident, but, you know, if it's unsolved.

This means his son, who was 16 at the time of his mother and brother's disappearance, has lost both of his parents. Sandra's parents have both died without knowing what happened to their daughter and grandson. Sergeant Connor has discussed the case in the years since the disappearance and remains skeptical that Sandra died by suicide and took her son with her. So thank god for that. A lot of the unanswered questions in the story have to do with Alan, but rather than identifying him as any kind of suspect, they really just shed the light on how many stones went

unturned in this case. We don't know what evidence might have been found in Sandra's car or in her trailer or in her no-member phone records, even though all of that evidence was accessible at the time. Maybe we would have learned about somebody else in Sandra's life. There also is a possibility that Sandra and John did go into the river on November 16th, 1996, but all we know is that is the only possibility that's been thoroughly investigated

and Zero Evidence proving it has ever been found. So that speaks volumes. And that is the story of the disappearance of Sandra and John Jacobson. Wow, there's so many stories like that and they're so heartbreaking. Right. And oftentimes when this happens, when you tell me

like an unsolved cold case, it's like the more information you learn, the more confusing it gets. And it's almost like it makes sense to me when an investigator would grab onto one theory and just be like, this is what we're doing. Because there's a simplicity to it and a kind of like, why would she be calling a life insurance company?

Is that connected to what she was going through or was that if she was having obsessive thoughts, was that connected to that somehow? Because life insurance doesn't sync up with any sort of end of the world scenario. There wouldn't be any insurance, so don't worry about that. Like, you can't just keep writing it off Life insurance doesn't sync up with any sort of end of the world scenario. There wouldn't be any insurance, so don't worry about that. You can't just keep writing it off as a mental illness

because there's different things actually happening within that framework. Clearly, she was okay enough to be driving, getting gas, making phone calls, do all these things. Saying that she'd go to the hospital to get help for her mental illness is like, that's something a person who is just in a completely different mind state. You know, like, if you agree to it, there's some part of you that's open to take good and take care of. Although, can I just say this, there's also the piece where if she in her, and I don't know what the extent of like really just obsessive thoughts would mean if it spills over into some sort of paranoia

But if somebody says you have to go to the hospital because this might be getting bad again Right, and you actually don't believe that's true because you whatever thoughts you're having are guiding you to a certain thing Like that's that's kind of an interesting like maybe Telling somebody yes was just the way of getting away. Totally. And then there was kind of a, we have to get away from this town. Absolutely. But that doesn't sync up with how involved she was with our family. If she was really religious, suicide doesn't flow with that in my thoughts, but who the fuck knows. Well, I think it doesn't go with if you are having like, okay, say whatever those thoughts

might be, and these are obviously completely made up, but it's like God is talking to you, right? God is trying to tell you something. Then God wouldn't tell you that. We wouldn't say that, right? And hurt your son, yeah. No, no, no. That would be, then you'd be able to maybe recognize

that that isn't what's happening, but what were those thoughts? Was it a theory? Was it like something's gonna happen? Because I think there is something to that, like the end of the world kind of packed with the first husband. Right.

Put you into the mindset of the concerns. Of what? You know, and a lot of people believe this is like God's gonna come back. We're all gonna get judged right we're all gonna get separated out only the good people will make it to heaven So what's the plan or maybe that's not even the theory of the end of the world? Maybe she just means like the end of the world like a horrible Nuclear attack something bad like that. I mean, and the point isn't even like defending her

that she didn't do something and she had bad thoughts and went through with these horrible thoughts, but the fact that there's no evidence either way and there wasn't a good enough reason to believe that wholeheartedly, like, you know, that doesn't give you answers. There's no answers. Right. It isn't her history. And just because you have any sort of mental issue,

does not mean that you're suddenly going to act erratically and go do any number of things. Like, it all has to be pulled apart, analyzed, looked at, and the facts have to be put on the table. I mean, I said that a bunch of times, but it's like, standardized it. Standardized. That's right. What facts need to be found when and why and by what time? 48 hours.

48 hours. First 48. Well, I hate to say great job to an unsolved cold case as I will be thinking about this now for the next several weeks. Sorry. But I guess that's kind of the idea is getting people to listen, pay attention and perhaps come forward if they can. Yeah, definitely. All right, well, this story I'm about to tell you is also confusing, weird, and kind of takes a lot of turns.

Okay. But it's very different. The person who it's about is also one of the authors of like the source material. It's simultaneously tragically sad, incredibly bizarre, and then also kind of like, whoa, you can do that? Like, it's quite a story. Who could it be? Well, I don't know if you would've heard of it, but you would've learned about this person

if you read the 2019 GQ article by writer Nathaniel Penn and it was called the curious cons of the man who wouldn't die. No. So that's, I'm gonna tell you the story today of a man named Mark Olmsted. The other source, main source that was used is a 2017 post on Medium by Mark Olmsted himself,

and it was called Breaking Broke Bad, a true gay crime story I wouldn't believe if I hadn't lived it. Okay, that sounds fun, right? It starts bad and then it gets crazy, but I don't know if the word fun would be used ever. And as I was reading it, because when I first heard it, I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then when I read Marens Research and I was like, reading it as it laid out, I was

like, oh my God, this is like, this is really something. And it's kind of that part of the thing I love about true crime podcasting especially, is it you kind of, it's very clear, you know who's good and who's bad or you know what's going on in the story. This is not one of those stories at all.

Okay, wow, okay. So it is a story about the Olmstead brothers. The oldest brother in the Olmstead family was Luke. He was the oldest of four children. He was a good student. He was an eagle scout. You know, he did everything by the book. And as all oldest children are forced to, he was a parental figure for the rest of the family.

His little brother, Mark, is the opposite of him. He's two years younger. He's the creative one. He is the jokester. He's the improviser. He's the one that gets to live like that because he has a responsible older brother, basically. And I guess they had an alcoholic dad. So that's even more pressure on the old sibling to like handle shit. And that's what Luke did for the family. So there were opposites in personality and I think growing up in the 60s, but then the one thing they did have in common is they were both gay men. So in the late 70s, Mark comes out when he's 18. At the point, the gay rights movement in the US was in full swing.

It had been about a decade since the Stonewall riots. And if you don't know, that's when the members of the LGBTQ plus community banded together and fought back against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar in New York City. It was a pivotal moment. I think we covered it in the show. You did.

Pretty sure I covered Stonewall, right? We did a great job. Oh, thank covered it in the show. You did. Pretty sure I covered Stonewall, right? You did a great job. Oh, thank you. So go listen to that one. It's in a really amazing cool story about the moment that galvanized the very oppressed and very harassed gay community in New York City. And those riots also inspired people all around the country to come out and to stand up for their rights and for their humanity.

So it really was a flashpoint moment. And so it had been about a decade since that had happened. So then that's when people started having gay pride parades and doing things to say, we aren't going to be hiding anymore. And we aren't going to be, you know, in the back of bars trying to hide from the police like it's not like that anymore. We're not from doing that anymore. And so Mark felt free to assert his sexuality at a time like that, but Luke struggled with it. He was way at college and when Mark came out, Luke wrote him a letter

that said, and it was kind of like a, it was a coming out letter, but it was also had some tone in it, because Luke said to his brother, quote, I have the same feelings, but I don't act on them. So the little free spirited brother gets to come out of the closet and everyone accepts him for who he is and gets to celebrate him. But the older brother who feels like part of his responsibilities are to be the head of the family and everything is a little annoyed that like, yeah, that that happened. Yeah. That's exactly right. And I think also them growing up in the 60s, this kind of thing was just unimaginable. Unseen. There was no visibility. There was no

Unseen there was no visibility. There was no Nothing. Yeah, so around 1980 mark is moving to New York City to go to NYU and basically with Mark support and encouragement loop comes to New York to and mark basically encourages him to like dip a toe in the dating scene and try to get out there and just kind of live. It's New York City. You can do what you want. You can be who you want. And he does. But what these days, everyone forgets this absolutely nightmare era was about to start. Because in June of 1981, reports of previously perfectly healthy men who are now being diagnosed with deadly illnesses that are typically seen in much older or severely immunocompromised patients are starting to roll in. And doctors and medical experts are baffled.

They don't know why these patients are getting so sick. They don't know what's infecting them, they don't know how it's spreading. What they do know is that it's happening, the numbers are growing, and most of the patients, if not all, identify as gay men. So these early reports usher in a sense of confusion and deep fear for society as a whole, of course.

I've talked about this on this show before, but I remember watching the seven o'clock news with my parents as they did every night, and it was out of San Francisco, and I remember watching as Dave McElhatten was just like a mystery illness, and it was just mystery illness, because it was, you know, it was 1981.

So they didn't know what to say about it. They just were saying, this is happening and it's happening like in this city and in other cities. Apidemic. Oh my God, how terrifying. Yeah. So of course, the whole nation's going, what the hell's going on, but it was especially horrifying for gay men, of course. Yeah. like Mark and Luke. In fact, Mark would later write that his whole life changed on July 3, 1981, when, quote, the New York Times published the first article about a bizarre new immune-suppressive syndrome just being seen among gay men. That was the day figuratively speaking that I got up from one chair and moved to the one next to it. And as events unfolded in increasingly dark increments, kept move to the one next to it. And as events unfolded in increasingly

dark increments, kept moving to the chair next over ever closer to the edge of a cliff, I could not see until I was teetering into it." Oh my God. End quote. So by the late 1980s, the medical community had a sense of what was going on. People were getting infected with a virus now known as human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. At that point, there was more of an understanding of how it spread. According to the CDC, this most often happens through unprotected sex and the sharing of needles and syringes with an infected person, it does not spread through the air, through sharing toilets,

through saliva, tear sweat, hugging, or insect bites. That sounds obvious to people now, but like that's what we thought. That's what they told us. And that's the way that gave people were treated, As if they were fucking cesspools waiting to pass this disease to everyone. It was horrendous the way they were treated. It was horrifying. And the ignorance, it was like, I remember watching an episode of Oprah and this man,

and they were trying to do like a town hall style episode about the AIDS crisis. And this man, she was somewhere else, she wasn't in Chicago, I don't think, from what I remember. But there was a man who stood up and said, I don't wanna be around him and I don't wanna have to eat after him.

And it was just like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, it wasn't just people being scared and unsure, but people were absolutely kind of creating what was gonna happen and how it was going to happen to them. So I think it gave a lot of a lot of big its fuel for their bigotry. Entirely. And guess what didn't help the president of the United States who did not say the word AIDS for the first five years. I mean, the Reagan administration, it is one of the ugliest black marks on any leadership group I think ever to have something like

this going on in the country and to simply ignore it, not speak of it or act like it's not their problem. And the fact that they thought, not just, you know, Reagan is essentially just the figurehead, the people who were doing the job before and around him made that decision. And that was very much a Christian knee, undercurrent of they get what they deserve vibe. I don't even think it was an undercurrent. It was a straight up Christian right. Yeah, they get what they deserve vibe. I don't even think it was an undercurrent. It was a straight up Christian right.

Yeah, they get what they deserve. Yeah, it was horrifying. Well, what was great about that was that activists and advocates in the gay community and for the gay community like ACT UP, which is the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. They started fighting for better health care for HIV and AIDS patients, and they took a lot of measures to basically try to push the United States towards finding a cure. And it was such a change too,

where it was just, they were just starting to be like, hey, could we have a parade? And suddenly they're literally fighting for their lives. Totally. Reagan wouldn't address the HIV AIDS epidemic until 1987 after over 20,000 Americans were dead wild. But we're just trying to set this tone for people in their 20s, as a person in her 50s, who literally was 11 years old when this happened, it was

one of the most horrifying, scary, and also to live so close to San Francisco, where a lot of activism was happening and a lot of gay people in that gay community was really coming together and like fighting for themselves. It's just, it was such a strange, strange thing and I feel very lucky to have been so close to so many really smart, loud, brave people who got the word out there and were basically saying, you do not get to do this to us and you will be giving people their medical care and all the other things. Right.

And the respect they deserve is human being. Right. Yeah, you don't politically get to just make a choice to turn your head and pretend like this isn't an American problem. Totally. Okay. So let's get back to the Almsdip brothers.

So now it's the late 1980s and Luke and Mark live on opposite coasts. So Luke has become a doctor and he's moved to San Diego to complete his medical residency. Mark's still in Manhattan, he's trying to become a writer. So Luke decides he wants to come and visit his brother for the weekend, and Mark's of course thrilled until he sees his brother walk through the door, and he is shocked by his brother's appearance. Luke is thin and frailil and looks very sickly.

Mark asks him what's going on and Luke tries to say it's because he's on a macrobiotic diet. He knows he looks thin. It's what everyone's doing in California. And Mark sees that as an opportunity in a moment and he just says to his brother, I just got tested and I have HIV. And then his brother breaks down and says, me too. Oh my God. So horrifying.

And not to like continually go off the mark with this, but this is the kind of thing like this was happening a lot. And I didn't even have the sense of it until I was in college. I was with my friend Alicia and she lived in this apartment building and her good friend lived downstairs. She got the apartment because her friends basically recommended her. And her friends were a gay couple. And we went down there to pick something up and I think they had just one of their friends had just died. And my friend Alicia was still really upset about it. And they started talking.

I was just kind of there drinking tea while they were having their conversation. And this man, I wish I could remember his name. I just remember he was incredibly good looking. But he started talking about living through the AIDS crisis and the AIDS epidemic. And he basically said that this friend that had just died had died from something else.

It was, you know, cancer or something. And he said, do you know that everyone I used to know died? They all died. This wasn't oh one friend over here or one friend over there. This man was telling us about how everyone he knew, everyone in his social circle, everyone he knew that he worked with,

they all died of AIDS. It was a scourge. And it was all young men who have futures and, you know, were activists and were suddenly able to enjoy their true selves and who they were on their lives. And because of the fucking government in action, just got mowed down in the prime of their lives.

It was also older men who were... No, no, I'm just saying just to fill that out. There was also older men who were in the prime of their lives who were the best. They were the best designers. they were the best composers, they were the best lyricists, they were the best makeup artist, there was the arts just had the guts ripped out of the center of it because of the people, think of Broadway, what Broadway lost, think of what fashion lost. Like, you could look around and just go, oh yeah, where do gay men flourish? And then it's eviscerated because truly generation upon generation of people are lost because of the

inaction and because of the bullshit. And it's more of a tragedy than anyone has processed or can no. I lost one of my closest friends from sixth grade, Ken Mason, he died when he was 21 years old. And it was one of the worst things that I went through that anyone in our class, we were dumbfounded. We didn't know what was going on. And it was horrifying. He died in his mother's house in his old bedroom, and he was starved, and he was in a hospital bed. And it was the kind of thing that that was one person that I knew. Right. Alicia's friend, it happened to everyone he knew. Everyone's different levels of sick. It's, it was so traumatic for the people who live through it and the people who survived it.

And that's kind of what this story is really about, but it gets super crazy. But I kind of just wanted to like paint that picture because I think young generations of people just have, they thank God, they just don't know it like that. It's like in the same way we know polio or something where it's like, yeah, you get a vaccine and you're fine and that's not a concern.

That's not what it was like at all. Yeah, it was, yeah. That's so interesting because you do, I was a little, I'm younger than you, I was born in 1980, but I, you know, I definitely remember, and then there was Ryan White, the kid who contracted HIV from a blood infusion. So he was my age.

And so that's what my introduction was to the way he was treated. And it's monstrous. It didn't have to be like that. It didn't. It's like what's so upsetting about this whole story is he didn't, he didn't have to lose all his friends. Right. Right. It was because they were gay.

There's no other reason. Now why they were ignored by the government? That's right. By the medical community, it was almost like to rid the country of something that was unacceptable to Christian, the Christian community. So you know, government and religion are not supposed to be hand in hand, but this is a perfect example of why they shouldn't be. Yes, hand in hand.

We can't be making decisions based on stuff like that. And we can't devalue human life in a way like that. Everg, I mean, I think those lessons and I think the advocacy and the strength of the advocacy that came out of that era, it basically, it was a necessity. And the idea that young people now get to be who they are early on, and I am in no way saying

that it is easy, and I'm in no way saying, I mean, we still have this problem. This, the idea of huge problem, yeah. Making it, obviously, we're, we haven't progressed in many, many, many ways in this country. Except that I do think there are a lot of people who may have, who could have been on the side of been in the middle or on the religious judgment side,

and instead lost people they loved, experienced what this really was like, and learned their lesson. Cause it's their lesson, it's the fundamentalist lesson to learn of what this kind of action, how unholy, ungodly, and disgusting that action,

or lack of action actually was. So essentially, now there are incredibly effective retroviral medications that people with HIV can take to control the virus. Back in the 80s and into the early 90s, medications were experimental at best. So testing positive for HIV was gravely serious, obviously. So when the

brother shared these diagnoses with each other, they then make a vow that they promise that they're going to be there for each other as they get sicker, because they're just assuming that's what's going to happen. Yeah, it's almost like a death sentence or they're assuming it. Yeah, right, right. So Luke goes back to California, the brothers continue to keep tabs on each other. And then in 1988, Luke calls Mark and he has a plan. He wants to open an HIV and AIDS clinic

and he wants Mark to come and help him get it off the ground. Mark does not hesitate. He packs his things and moves to Southern California, but he knows that really it's because his brother's illness is advancing and his brother needs him to be close by. So they moved in together in Los Angeles and at this point, according to the CDC, by 1990, eight years into the epidemic,

100,000 Americans have died of AIDS-related illness and that's a higher death toll than the number of Americans killed in combat during the Vietnam War. Jesus. So Luke's health is in rapid decline. By the fall of 1990, he's a doctor, he's got this clinic and his colleagues have to tell him

you can't come into work because you look sicker than the patients look. Oh my God. Journalist Nathaniel Penn reports for GQ that quote, Luke would return just once more as a guest at an office Halloween party in 1990. That night he and Mark came dressed

in matching flying non-habits and wimples. Mark had rigged his costume out of paper and scotch tape in a matter of minutes. Luke had taken hours with his, patiently measuring, plotting, and cutting. Luke had always beaten Mark at everything, sports, chess, and at the end of the night, he won the costume contest, too. And, quote, by early 1991, it's clear that Luke is dying. So he and his younger sister, Sandra, have already decided Sandra is going to take care

of him for his end of life. So Mark drives his big brother to LAX, puts him in a wheelchair, gets him to his departure gate, and gets him on the flight to Seattle where Sandra is waiting. Sandra says, quote, it was Luke's decision to leave Los Angeles. He knew that Mark wasn't strong enough to help him die. And quote, who is strong? I mean, like the people that can do end of life, things like that are incredible. And I mean, some of the hardest work there is probably to do, especially for a relative. Totally. It's a Mitzvah. Luke Olmsted, who is only in his mid-30s, we don't have his exact birthday, so we don't know

this has exact age. He's a baby. He's in his mid-30s when he dies of complications from AIDS on February 9th, 1991. So for Mark, his brother's death is, of course, extremely painful. His brother was his closest friend, and he's gone now. So Mark is immediately saddled with all sorts of menial administrative tasks as the executor of his brother's estate while he is in full mourning and grief, which happens to a lot of people at those times. He's horrible. I can't imagine. So, Mark settles most of his brothers affairs, but a few things do slip through the cracks.

He doesn't notify Luke's bank or his credit card company about his death. And it's hard to blame him for this oversight because he's not just grieving his brother. He sick too. He sick himself. So all of this is incredibly, I mean, would just be weighing constantly on. It's so interesting. Yeah.

But just like the story I told you of Alicia's friend, Mark will lose one close friend after another every few months for the next few years. So the same thing is happening to Mark that is happening to all gay men. They're just watching their friends and acquaintances and just the people that work down at the coffee shop just die, just disappear. Marco later say quote, I don't know what that much grief does to a brain, not to mention the anticipation of being the next to die.

that much grief does to a brain, not to mention the anticipation of being the next to die. Mark does try to keep his head above water by pouring himself into his writing. And eventually he completes a screenplay that he's very proud of, and he starts to shop it around L.A. And at first things look optimistic, there's a director named Christian Blackwood who options it, and at one point, will be Goldberg is reportedly attached as talent, but before that can get off the ground, Blackwood tragically passes away from lung cancer. Next, the script winds up in the hands

of a director named Norman Renee. And for Mark, Renee seems like the perfect collaborator. He's an accomplished theater director and a filmmaker, whose first feature film was an AIDS-centric drama called Long Time Companion. Really quick, normally, I wouldn't be naming a movie right now, except that I'm pretty sure by the time this airs the writer's strike will be over. Yeah, I think so too. And God, D.M. I hope that's true. Let's mark this area in case it's not. But it looks like it will be. And then we can go back to promoting all of the things that we want to promote and talking about all the things

we want to talk about. That's right. So Mark has even flown out to Italy to complete rewrites on his script with Renee. But then again, Norman Renee dies of AIDS. So the whole project ends. So at this point, Mark, who's only in his mid-30s as well, feels like he cannot escape death. It's infiltrated both his personal and his professional life. His grief is all consuming and worse. He's becoming increasingly convinced that he's next.

He says, quote, all the loss, the grief and the professional loss, it created a bit of insanity, especially since I'd been diagnosed with AIDS in 1993. That's where you are basically on the two year plan if you are lucky. To his ass. Corrifying. So genuinely thinking that he has maybe two years to live, Mark decides to embrace nihilism and hedonism. The epidemic has left him feeling powerless, depressed and completely out of control. He wants to take some of that power back and basically live his life on his own terms.

Yeah. I love all of this plan. This is all about it. All for Nile. All about it. All for Heedon, isn't it? Let's fucking do this. Yeah.

So Mark says quote, I was proceeding as if this was my last hurrah. This was my bucket list. End quote. There's just one hitch in Mark's blossoming plan. He needs money. So this is where this story takes a big turn, because Luke left behind a bank account with around $10,000 in it, which is $22,000 today. So Mark withdraws the money

and signs as his brother Luke. He then realizes he's still been getting Luke's disability checks, like he didn't inform the right people about Luke's death. And so he starts caching them too. So he goes out, he's settling his bar tabs with Luke's credit card. He basically is like, oh, well, if I'm done anyway, let's take this money that was just sitting here. Yeah. And let's basically go out in style. And something about it is actually kind of exciting for Mark. He feels like he has almost a new identity, an identity that has excellent credit. So when his brother Luke's driver's license expires shortly after his death, Mark goes

to the DMV and renews it as Luke and goes and basically takes his picture for the driver's license. Okay. So now it's Mark's picture on Luke's driver's license. Got it. Now, this is the part where like when I read that part, I'm like, oh, this is the part where you have crossed the Rubicon into fuck it world. Yeah.

And he was hurting, but the government who's fucking ignoring him to begin with? Sure. He's the executor of his brothers estate. So it's like it was probably his money anyway. I am fine with this, morally. To me, getting your picture taken for someone else's license, that's when you're like, yes. Now you're being pro-active, it's fraud.

And Mark does not ever deny any of that. He's fully... I'm not mad at this fraud at all. I'm not mad at this fraud, you know. Mark's being cautious about this. He knows he's blatantly committing fraud and he doesn't feel good about it. He does pay off the debt that he accumulates

on Luke's credit card. And then in 1993, he faints while he's home alone. When he comes to, he can barely catch his breath. And when he gets to the hospital, he learns that his CD4 cells have dropped to a dangerous low. And now he also has pneumonia. So this is worse news he could be getting. Yeah.

He's certain that this is it for him. So sure, in fact, that he quits his job he goes on disability and he basically just waits for the end. But incredibly, he gets on some drugs and his health improves. So he goes home and he's kind of like the end that he was expecting came and it wasn't the end. So after this close call, Mark says, screw it basically. So now he's like, I'm gonna die young, I'm gonna go out guns blazing. And it's in that period that he telling his own story

says, quote, that he traveled a lot. He was very generous. He was the one to pick up the tab for dinner, cocktails, up the Yin Yang. That's his quote, is the yin yang. That's his quote. It was a direct love. Can I tell you that maybe 20 years ago, I heard this as an anecdote that a lot of gay men who thought they were dying took credit out and just fucking lived their lives, then medication came around to help and they owe them. Like I've literally heard this as an anecdote.

Yeah. And it's actually, you're telling me it's true. It's real. And they probably heard it because of this story. Yes, exactly. It sounds like the details are suddenly like sounding the same as what I've heard. And also, it's just that kind of thing.

I think you and I talked about this all through, like, we talked about this all through quarantine, we talked about it when Trump was elected or whatever, where it's just kind of like, at what point do you just go fuck it and start doing everything you want all the time? Yeah. Because whatever,

because the exanuating circumstances of your life is such that you're not seeing any way out. Right, when you're paying your monthly fucking student loan debt and realizing that all of that money is going to the interest, what are you fucking do? There's no way out of it. What do you do, but say, fuck it and live the best possible life you can. That's right.

That's why our government has to get rid of student loan debt because it is predatory lending. It's a scam. These companies are not the companies that people thought they were when people used to love companies. And it's like companies have our best in mind. It's not real anymore. Why are we paying tens of thousands of dollars

to become capitalists? Like why are we paying so much money that we're in debt to work in your system? That doesn't fucking make any sense and to pay your taxes. Yeah. Like put people through school to become the best possible doctor, lawyer, fucking carpenter, whatever they can be

and the economy will fucking explode from there. Like why do we have to be then in debt as well? Okay, take whatever you want out of this. As soon as Reagan got brought up, I got fucking angry and like just. You know the killer line that I had when I did my mother's eulogy at her funeral was I said, no, I don't know.

The one thing I was talking about her life and how great she was and all that. And then I was like, but the one thing I know that my mother would want you all to know today is that she hated Ronald Reagan and the entire church, 500 people in that church. Like, it was like an explosion of laughter. Amazing. Because my mother ranted about Ronald Reagan

every goddamn day and night to anyone that would listen to her. Because she was a psychiatric nurse, everyone should know that. Yes, and they closed down all the mental hospitals and that's why homelessness is the problem that it is now. That's right.

Not because those people individually are so guilty, it's because they have no services, they need services, they want services, and our government went, you know what, we don't have to pay for that anymore. Don't worry, trickle down economics will end up fixing it all. And if you're in the middle class,

why do you even care about those people? They're not your problem. Why should you pay for them? Well, guess what? Guess what? Because that's the way society works. That's the way healthy society works. That's also the way every other country on the planet.

You should not go into bankruptcy because you have cancer. Like that is not an okay fucking concept. Or like your co-workers give the person who has cancer their fucking vacation days because they don't have enough vacation days. And everyone celebrates society helping each other. They should have as many days off as they fucking need

to combat cancer. You should be able to stay home and take care of your brand new child. This is the story that touches on all of those things. It's just a different version of the same story. Okay, so the issue here, which is many people's issue when you go hard partying because you're like, I'm living it up to the fullest in my last days, is my 20s. Yeah, exactly. And similarly, Mark starts using meth.

Oh, hey, no, that was my teens. That was your teens, that was your teens. He said, and this made me so sad when I read this line, he said that meth made him, like in the midst of all that fear and grief and horror, meth made him feel like his old self, social, flirty, energetic and carefree. Yep, that's so sad.

Does that? So aside from his disability payments, Mark has no real money coming in. So he continues caching checks, draining bank accounts, swiping credit cards in both his own and his brother's name, with reckless abandon. And before long, he's racked up over 50 grand in debt.

And about that, he says, Mark says, quote, there was just absolutely no reason to believe that I'd be around to deal with the consequences. I knew what I was doing was dishonorable, not respecting my brother's memory and illegal, but I was doing Crystal meth more and more, and I was getting very addicted to getting away with things. So it's just the whole thing was the lifestyle, basically. It's an adrenaline rush, probably, right? So then one day, Mark sees an escape hatch.

It's not a permanent solution, but it's a way to alleviate some of his debt. At the bottom of one of Luke's credit card bills, there's an option to ensure the card's balance should the account holder die. So Mark hatches a plan. He's going to tick that box on Luke's credit card bill, mail it back, and then get to work on an updated death certificate that makes his brother Luke's death seem recent. And then when that's done, he'll notify the credit card company of Luke's death by mailing in the doctor death certificate. So Mark tracks down Luke's death certificate, which he hasn't home.

Then he takes a separate piece of paper and he cuts out a tiny rectangle and he writes the date from the current year on it. He puts that on to Luke's death certificate over the date of death. He makes a photocopy of it, and to mark surprise, the copied death certificate looks legit. But to give it an official flourish, he needs to replicate a government seal somehow. And Mark being the creative figures it out as Nathaniel Penn reports in his GQ article, Mark had dutifully bought an embossed color seal that read CC and used it to validate certified copies of the death certificate. If anyone had scrutinized the seal, they would notice the small print that reads Corona Cougars. Mark had bought the seal at an office depot. The Corona Cougars were a local

youth baseball team. Oh my god. Oh my god. Yeah. He's just having fun at this point. Yes. And he really is when Luke's next credit card bill shows up in the mail and the entire balance is zero. Yeah. So the plan works. So by the year 2001, we're 20 years into the AIDS epidemic, over 450,000 people have died from AIDS. But thanks to the tireless work of activists, huge progress has been made to combat the crisis,

and chief among them are the new drugs called protease inhibitors that are extremely effective treating HIV. So now finally, a positive HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence. But many people still carry the trauma of living through the epidemic, and of course, Mark is one of those people. The years that he spent morning, not to mention, convinced that he's been near death, are truly taking their toll on him, and of course it does not help that now he is addicted to crystal meth. So even though he has a job that he loves, which is writing for a magazine, he's not earning nearly enough money to chip away at his enormous debt,

and it all weighs on him. And Nathaniel Penn writes about Mark, he was consumed with having enough money to survive, with finding a way to get more whenever he needed it. Money became inseparable from the terms of his illness and a kind of metaphor for it. So like the more money he has, the better he feels, the healthier he is, the less the closer he is to death.

And so Mark gets a new idea when he learns about something called a viadical settlement. So a viadical settlement is when an insurance company sells a gravely ill individual policy to a third party. That third party then fronts the sick policy holder a percentage of their life insurance payout and keeps the rest after their death. What?

How is that okay? Because of the fucking medical system that we have, because of the privatized fucking healthcare system that we have. Doesn't make sense. The people who are dying of an illness can actually go, well, at least you can take a little bit of this thing. You've been paying off for 35 years

and have a little more to fight all of this wall of debt. It's nightmare. Basically, to mark being able to cash out his life insurance policy is a great solution to him. The problem is he's on medication that is keeping the virus in check. So he is not sick at the moment. He's not symptomatic.

So in a move that signals Mark's total sense of hopelessness, he stops taking his medication. This causes his CD4 cell count to nose dive, his immune system takes such a hit that a group of doctors determine he will likely die within the next two years and they sign off on the viadical settlement. The third party company winds up giving Mark $58,000, which is over $100,000 today.

And he immediately uses this money to pay off his ballooning credit card debt. So, he basically, he's left with about $10,000 to spare. It's not enough to get buy on. And on top of that, of course, this scheme to basically pay off money and deal with money has left Mark's health completely racked. He's in an especially dark place. His methodiction is raging. And if he contracts any sort of infection right now, he could die. With addiction and desperation at the wheel, he decides to quit his magazine job and start dealing meth out of his West Hollywood home. As Nathaniel Penn puts it, quote, Mark believed he was finally living with dignity now,

even if he was dealing meth, he was paying his bills with cash that he had actually earned. Dealing meth was this opportunity to get out of the like scamming and the fraud. In 2002, when Mark's CD4 cell count is still dangerously low, he gets sick with a virus and he has to be hospitalized. Now Mark is in his early 40s, but his immune system can't fight back. He winds up in the hospital for three weeks.

The prognosis is not good. Mark and his doctors don't think he's going to be able to recover, but then using one last combination of anti-viral meds, Mark's doctors stabilize him. When it dawns on Mark, he's gonna survive. His feelings are more complicated than ever. He basically has been completely fucking with his health, right, to get these payments. Yeah.

He's on meth, he's lost his career. So basically when he gets out of the hospital, he has to go back to dealing meth. But something in him has shifted because he's survived once again. So he starts taking his medication again regularly. So there is a small sign of hope. He clearly, it isn't complete nihilism anymore. He's like, there's something did turn in him where he's like, I might be able to get out from underneath this.

So then in August of 2003, Mark's apartment is rated and the police arrest him, but he gets off with a slap on the wrist to get his record expunged. All Mark has to do is pay around $2,000 in restitution and do 300 hours of community service. Writer Nathaniel Penn calls this, the quote, white boy special. Right? So true. Mark says quote,

that was my opportunity to get sober, but I wasn't ready for that yet. The addiction was too deep in me. End quote. So once again, Mark comes up with a plan and this time he's gonna fake his own death. Oh my god This plan is the height of him addicted to meth. Yeah, right? So it's like desperation desperation and like end-game end-game

He forges a death certificate in his name He writes his own New York Times Obituary like you can pay to have your obituary in the New York Times, he does that. Sends it all off. He does it in the voice of his brother Luke. So it's like his brother is notifying these different places. Wow. These different credit card companies

and these whatever it is. And just saying unfortunately, now he's dead, you know, whatever. And for months, Mark's convinced that he's pulled off this latest con. No one ever comes looking for him, no one questions his fake documents, he seems to be home free.

Then he makes a huge mistake. He keeps on dealing meth out of the same house where he was arrested. Oh, dear. Less than six months after faking his own death, the police come back around of that house. They get reports that drugs are being dealt out of that house again. So when they come to investigate, they then realize Mark is still alive. So the death certificate had gotten sent

to the police department to say, don't worry about this guy anymore. Unfortunately, he died. So like, they show up all his stuff was scrubbed. They show up and they're like, you're not dead. Oh, you're right. Mark says, quote, I always make this joke. If you fake your own death successfully, you have to move. He says, to now, but I had a rent stabilized apartment. Yeah, everyone. I had a rent stabilized apartment. Ooh, yeah, everyone. LA is a hard place to rent from. It's a stabilization, it's a beautiful thing. So Mark is arrested and eventually convicted on drug charges and manufacturing false documents,

including fake ideas and passports for himself and his deceased brother, Luke. He sentenced to 16 months in prison. Mark says the quote, prison sucks. And I consider it a piss poor way to handle any and all nonviolent crime. That said, it was far from the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And quote, which is really saying something. It does. Wall incarcerated and newly committed to getting sober, Mark falls back in love with writing. And he sends dispatches to his friends and family,

and before long, his sister Sandra encourages him to start a blog from prison. Yeah. These posts will eventually be published as a book called Ink from the Pen. Whoa. Right? I love it.

That's such a good title. Mark says the quote, by writing about everything going on around me as it happened, I learned to live in the moment again, which was entirely different from what I'd been doing for so many years, which is live for the moment. That's a good one. End quote.

So Mark has remained committed to this idea ever since. He still lives in LA where he has carved out a successful career in the film business for himself and he continues to share personal stories from what now must feel like a past life. Eventually Mark tells his life story to Nathaniel Penn whose GQ article, the curious cons of the man who wouldn't die, is clearly heavily cited in this research. This is basically just a short inversion of that article. Basically, I'm giving you all the reasons

you need to now go read this article. Right, right. The article is widely read, shared, fond over, and it actually winds up being optioned by a major film studio. Yes. There have been incredible leaps and bounds made since the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic.

And today's antiretroviral medications allow people who are HIV positive to live long healthy lives, getting tested remains incredibly important, though, so that patients can be connected to life-saving treatment and to know how to mitigate spreading the virus. It's also important to point out that the epidemic is not over. HIV AIDS continues to be a serious health issue throughout the world. Tragically, over 700,000 Americans have died of HIV AIDS since the earliest days of the epidemic, and millions have passed away worldwide. Mark himself has acknowledged the unlikeliness of his own survival. For whatever reason, he somehow escaped death when it seemed all but certain.

Meanwhile, he's lost so many people he loves dearly. Mostly his brother Luke. Mark is quoted as saying, I would go to prison for another 10 years if I could have Luke back. Well, maybe not 10, but five. And quote, which is the most perfect sibling quotation. A little broader quote. Mark has passed the statute of limitations for most of his financial crimes and as of 2019, he was still making monthly payments towards his outstanding credit card debt.

And one question about whether he has any guilt connected to his schemes, Mark says quote, I give my income to charitable causes because I have this idea that I need to do some sort of Robin Hood payback. But I'm not making excuses. It was illegal. And quote, and then he adds this quote, there's no proof that what happens in your life could have ever happened any differently. But there's a lot of proof that it could have only happened this way because that's exactly what happened.

That helps me not spend too much time in regret. There are things I would have done differently if I had to do it all over again, but I don't necessarily regret anything." And that's the story of Mark Olmsted and his brother Luke, two men whose lives were upended and forever changed by the HIV AIDS epidemic. Wow. Oh, Karen, that was great.

That was a suggestion by the great Hannah Crichton. It has everything. That story truly had everything. I want to watch the documentary now, like so bad. Yeah, that was amazing. They got an option, that story. Yeah. And like you're saying, Mark Olmsted was not the only person

that went through that. Right. There were people who were facing the brink of the end. They're facing the end. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. That was, I mean, I'm like speechless for once in my fucking life. That was, it was crazy. Also, this is another two-hour episode.

Good, fine. Good. Good and fine. Good and fine. All right, well, thank you guys for listening. We hope you learned something about the Reagan administration or our own personal anger or credit card fraud. Credit card fraud.

It's a more of a dos and don'ts thing. Yeah. Getting around the system, fixing the system. The laws are made by the lawmakers who are run by billionaires, so. It has to change. The system has to change. It has to be smashed. You guys can do it and you will do it because you must do it. That's right.

That's right. Also, stay sexy. I don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck, our managing producer's Hanna Kyle Crichton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squilachi. Our researchers are Marin McClauchion and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and Twitter at my fave murder. Goodbye! You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at Wendery.com slash survey.