My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - Special Ep - Fox’s Prodigal Son Special!

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

In a special presentation for Fox’s new drama Prodigal Son, Karen and Georgia cover the cases of Sante Kimes and Dolly Oesterreich. Plus, an interview with star Bellamy Young!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. Today's bonus episode is supported by Prodigal Son, a new drama on Fox. For Malcolm Bright, murder is the family business. His father was a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon. To understand how his dad became a murderer, Malcolm became the best criminal psychologist there is.

Now he's making amends for his father's wrongs by working to solve crimes with the NYPD. Emmy and Golden Globe nominated actor Michael Sheen and Tom Paine Star in Prodigal Son, airing Mondays beginning September 23rd at 9 It's Unique. It's a Monday. That's right. It's a bonus episode. Brought to you by the brand new Fox Drama Prodigal Son. That's right. With the super super hot Lou Diamond Phillips. Oh, you're going straight to LDP? I am like, this is my chance to get Lou Diamond Phillips an Honorary Achievement Award in the Emmys.

Is that a thing? No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. He has still got it. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no.

No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no. No, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. whole situation and her friends are very concerned and they say, you know, like, do you need help? What do you want us to do? She says that she can handle it. They know she's tough as nails, so, you know, everybody feels okay about it.

The next morning, July 5th, 1998, Irene asks one of her maids if she would run some errands for her and when the maid gets back from running those errands, she can't find Irene anywhere in the house. The maid immediately contacts Irene's business manager, who then decides to contact the police. And when the police search the home, they don't find any signs of a disturbance. There's no blood, any signs of struggle to indicate that there was violence or an incident of any kind, so they start questioning Irene's friends and the tenants. But Manny Garan is nowhere to be found and when they run a name check on that one new

mysterious tenant, the name Manny Garan is fake. So suddenly the mystery tenant is now a possible suspect in Irene's disappearance. It just so happens that on that same night, July 5th, a mother and son by the name of Chante and Kenneth Kimes are arrested in front of the Manhattan Hilton for stealing a Lincoln town car from a dealership in Cedar City, Utah. Wow. Yes, they finally track them down and they get arrested. So when a detective who was on the scene for the Silverman case sees the story of the

Kimes' arrest on the news, he sees Kenneth and says that looks exactly like the description of Manny Garan. Yeah. Traditionally handsome. Hey, that guy's traditionally handsome in a way that bores me, but that I also immediately trust for reasons I can't explain. So he puts it together that they are one and the same person. So on July 7th, 1998, the NYPD have Chante and Kenneth Kimes properly identified and

in custody and that's when they discovered that the mother and son are being tracked by the FBI as suspects for a slew of crimes across the nation, including arson, fraud, and murder. Buck. Okay. So now we'll go back and we'll talk a little bit about Chante Kimes. She was born Sandra Louise Singh in Oklahoma City on July 24th, 1934. She grows up in Nevada with her parents, Mary Vian Horn, and Mahendra Prama Singh.

And there's almost nothing known about her childhood factually. They believe that her birth certificate was forged. So her exact origins and even date of birth, they're not sure about it. And the funny thing is, as Mary Tyler Moore playing Chante Kimes, all she talks about is how much she hates getting older and aging, and it's pretty funny. So it would make sense that the first thing she does is erase her birth certificate, get rid of those numbers. Burn that fucking thing.

It turns out she was born in 1888. Oh. Okay. So friends of the family would later attest Chante's parents were respectable people and that she was a troublemaker who caused chaos from an early age, but according to Chante, her parents neglected her, her mother was a sex worker, and she was left to run amok and fend for herself all her life. So little of both.

I mean, listen to the whole story and then decide who you believe. So what we do know is that Chante graduated high school in Carson City, Nevada in 1952 and immediately married her high school boyfriend. And that marriage lasts three months, no judgments. And then in 1956, she marries again this time. It's another ex-boyfriend from high school. He's a Sacramento contractor named Edward Walker, and they have a son together named Kent.

So aside from being a wife and mother, Chante is a petty and not so petty criminal. He indulges in shoplifting, grand theft, larceny, just to mention a few, and her son Kent, who would later go on to write a book called The Son of a Grifter, describes how his mother would often force him to be her accomplice. So in 1961, Chante gets caught shoplifting and she's convicted, and that ends her second marriage. That was already troubled, but that guy finally was like, what are you doing? This is weird.

He's a junior high, okay. So in 1970, Chante meets a multi-millionaire Newport Beach developer named Kenneth Kimes. Great. Right? Great. Get that second husband. Get that nose. Number three.

Number three. They marry a year later, and in 1975, they have a son named Kenneth Jr. So her sons are named Kent and Kenny. Not creative. Not the coolest, probably, for Kent. Okay. So now Chante's landed a rich husband. She's living the high life, but it does not stop her from perpetrating her scams, frauds,

cons, and crime spades. Look, when you got a knack for something. She really had a passion for ripping people off in any way she could. I'm a wife. I'm a mother. And I'm a con artist. And I do them all. Great.

And I do it all well. I do it all. So the family has homes. They're super rich. They have homes in California, Hawaii, Las Vegas, to name a few places. She commits crimes in all those places. Good for her. Right?

She steals a car from a dealership in Hawaii. She makes false insurance claims over lost and stolen items like expensive rugs and Rolex watches. Can you do that? What's that? You can do that? I mean, she did. Okay.

She got caught, though. So she had to hire a lawyer. And she racks up $12,000 in legal fees and she never pays up. So she scams the scam lawyer who got her off, which isn't the smartest. But that means you're committed as a fraud. Absolutely. She has a passion. And she continues doing this over the years.

Sometimes her cons are entertaining, like when she convinced people that her husband was an ambassador, which allowed her access to a White House reception during the Ford administration. But she was the original White House crasher. That's right. Good for her. She also would pass herself off every once in a while as Elizabeth Taylor. She basically had the same kind of like 60s, 70s Liz Taylor big bouffant hairdo and was

pretty other than that. She doesn't look like Liz Taylor at all. So I'm sure she was wearing big sunglasses or something. But her other crimes were more serious like committing arson to collect insurance money on family properties. And all the while, she's rich. Yeah. What are you doing?

It's hilarious. I mean, it's just like, you know, rich people. So in 1986, she's convicted of the charge of slavery. What she's doing is, yes, in her home in Las Vegas, she's luring Mexican girls to come and work for her. And then she keeps them locked in their rooms, doesn't pay them, is physically and verbally abusive. And they one of them finally gets out and reports her, and she's actually convicted

of slavery and sentenced to five years in prison. Wow. Yeah. There's a scene where Mary Tyler Moore burns her the maids hand with an iron because she's like sassing off. It's crazy. So yeah, obviously it was a pretty extreme. Yeah.

So, now we'll talk about Kenny Kimes. So this is, imagine that's your mom. No. Growing up, Kenny is isolated from other kids. Chante homeschools him, of course, because she says she doesn't want him mixing with children like of a lesser breed than him. Was it a fucking canine day camp or something? No mutts.

So he's raised by nannies and taught by tutors. And of course, he wants to hang out with her kids and feel normal, but instead his mother forbids it. She does let him hang out with some select children that she has chosen. And in the Mary Tyler Moore movie, she pays to have come over and hang out with him. That's how you do it. That's how you get a kid that's normal and feels just good about himself. Right.

Yeah. So when Chante goes to prison for the slavery charges, Kenny tells people it's the happiest he's ever been. He gets to live at home with his dad. He's outside of Chante's control and he is loving life. Everyone around him notices that suddenly he seems happy and normal and like a regular kid. That's awful.

Right? Yeah. Then she gets out of jail two years early. Right. Yeah. And she finds her son happier and more well-adjusted and independent and of course hates it. He has friends and a life outside of the home and that's not cool with her. So Kenny and Chante's relationship is very strained.

And then in 1994, his father, Ken Kimes, passes away. So without his dad around, Kenny is now powerless to fight again Chante's influence and control and he falls back under her spell. It's a weird way to put it. Her controlling, manipulative, abusive. Abusive, weird ways. Spell. It's a spell.

When he tries to defend himself against her, they have these intense arguments but in the end he always caves and says, telling other people that his mom is quote, always right. He even, he was going to UC Santa Barbara and in 1996 he dropped out because she demanded that he leave school. So now here's, now we're going to go off into a separate sidebar story. In the 70s, Chante knew a man named David Kasdan and for some reason he allowed her and her husband Kenneth Sr. to use his name on the deed of their Las Vegas property, perhaps

because she burned some stuff down and they, you know, the insurance, there was some insurance issues. I don't know, that's editorializing on my part. But. I love it. In 1997, Chante tries to take out a loan on that house in David's name and without his permission or knowledge and when he finds out about the loan, David Kasdan calls the bank, reports it as fraud and stops Chante from getting that loan.

Then he realizes that she's a con artist and he calls her up and threatens to expose her. So Chante cooks up a plan and convinces her son Kenny to go do her dirty work. So on the evening of March 13th, 1998, Kenny and another man slip into David Kasdan's home and shoot him in the back of the head. They're about to rip him off. He like puts a stop to being ripped off and he gets killed for it. Yes. What a bunch of bullshit.

Yeah. Because he calls and basically says, I'm going to tell everybody that you're a con artist. Don't help someone that. Just do it. Just do it. Exactly. Don't give the warning. No.

It's not victim blame at the same time it was a mistake. I just think that like you can't deal with crazies in a fucking normal way. Well, he probably thought because and this is the interesting thing about her and this is me based on Mary Tyler Moore's performance. But she comes, it's everything is about almost like a light seduction with every one. So everything when her Ken come senior would say like, you've got to stop the shop lift. Oh, please don't call it that. Yeah.

You have to use the words. She won't have the conversation about anything in reality. She's like delusional. She is delusional and she won't let anybody come into that and ruin that delusion in any way. Right. So this guy basically called up and is like, I know who you are and I'm exposing you and she was like, that can't happen.

Right. His David Cassin's body is found days later in a dumpster near Los Angeles. But the murder weapon is never found. Shontae and Kenny become prime suspects, but they leave town before anyone can find them or question them. Oh dear. So the mother son criminal duo land in New York City with another deadly scheme in the works.

So apparently Shontae and Kenny had heard about Irene Silverman and her $7 million Manhattan home turned apartments complex. And they really wanted to meet Shaka Khan. Right. So their initial plan was Kenny's going to move into the apartment complex under a false identity and then they're going to rob Irene. But then as Irene proved to be a sharp assertive badass who was suspicious of him from the get go, the plan escalates.

So when the NYPD arrests Kenny and Shontae for car theft on July 5th, 1998, in the stolen car, they find a handgun, the empty box for a stun gun, ammo, plastic handcuffs, syringes, and flu nitrasapam, which is a sedative 10 times more powerful than Valium. Friends. Guys. Get rid of the evidence. Right. Most importantly, they find several forms of Irene's ID, including her Social Security

card and power of attorney forms with Irene's forged signature on them. Sweetheart. You've basically taken the whole case, the entire prosecution's case, put them in one bag and stuck it in the back seat of your car, stolen car. Okay. So police also find a notarized deed in Shontae's gym bag because she's still going to the gym. She's still working out. That's her.

She got to keep that shit tight. What do they call it? The gymnasium then. No, this is the 90s. Never mind. This is a 24-hour fitness. It's fine. Yeah, they call it Equinox.

The deed has Irene's forged signature on it, and it is signing over the $7 million mansion to a company called Atlantis Group. What's it called? It's called, I'll tell you, Atlantis Group LTD, which is, of course, a shell corporation that Shontae set up. So with all... They're all masterminds. They must have so much energy.

Oh, they really... They loved it. They love paperwork. Yeah. They love practicing signatures of other people. They have time and energy for schemes. They pay a lot of attention to things. They really...

Yeah. They care. I want to take a nap with a cat. They care about stealing. Oh, right. So with all this evidence against them, Shontae and Kenny are tried for the murder of Irene Silverman in March 2000. They killed her?

Oh, right. She went missing. Well, yeah. Where'd she go? Hold on. Did I miss something? They don't have the body, but there's so much evidence that does not look... No, no, no.

Nothing is... Nothing in that gym bag is anything you take to the gym. In March of 2000, their trial begins, and it is, as some would say, bizarre. Shontae and Kenny demonstrate a very strange mother-son relationship in the courtroom. Kenny is constantly complimenting his mother's looks and personality while you're testifying it. Yeah. I mean, anytime.

Stick to the facts, please. They also exchange glances that indicate they're more than friends. Ew. Wait, more than friends? More than friends. And... More than son and mother? Yeah.

But I'm being cutesy. Okay, got it. By the way. Because it is later discovered... They're doing it? They do it. They sleep in the same bed in that apartment in Irene Silverman's apartment building. Yeah.

And there's no hard evidence that's ever brought forward that has the proof, but they're weird enough in the courtroom and don't realize they're weird enough to cover it up that everyone's like, what's going on? I've got some hard evidence for you, and it's your son's boner, and it's creepy. And no one likes it, except his mother. Shontae has a constant disturbance in court. She constantly delivers rambling monologues, trying to convince everyone that the authorities are trying to frame her.

That's gotta be it. I was looking around like, is it still her turn to talk? Order. She even passes a note to a reporter during the trial trying to influence his reporting in her favor. Do you like me? Check one? For yes.

What? And the guy's like, I mean, I guess I'd like you, but you kind of look like Liz Taylor. There's so much evidence against Shontae and Kenny that even though Irene's body is never found, they are found guilty of her murder. Yeah. So, Shontae and Kenny are both sentenced to life in jail plus 125 years. Good. That's how clear it is.

In the Mary Tyler Moore made for TV movie, the judge actually says, and this was my favorite, he calls Shontae, the judge calls Shontae, a sociopath of unremitting malevolence. Wow. And says she's the worst defendant to ever appear in his courtroom. So she's a true creep. They never find her body? No. Aw.

Then in March of 2001, Kenny's extradited to Los Angeles where he stands trial for the murder of David Kasdan. And that trial begins three years later in June of 2004. At first Kenny pleads not guilty, but then he decides to change his mind when he hears he's going to get the death penalty and he testifies against his mother and pleads guilty. Fuck. And during his trial, Kenny admits to a third murder that wasn't even on the court's radar. That of a Bahamian banker named Sayed Bilal Ahmed and he was in charge of Shontae's offshore

bank accounts. Fuck. And Ahmed vanished in 1996. After having dinner with Shontae and Kenny, Kenny tells the court that all of the crimes and murders that he committed were done at the demand of his mother and she masterminded every single one. So Kenny Kimes is still alive. He is now 44 years old and he is still serving a life sentence without the chance of parole.

Shontae Kimes passed away in prison of natural causes in May of 2014 at the age of 79. Her Facebook page, however, is still active and it's apparently being maintained by her legal team. I found that out because there's a lower third on the YouTube movie and that says go to her Facebook page and it's all about how they're maintaining her innocence. Oh, come on, guys, friends. And that is the incredibly bizarre and salacious scam-ridden story of the mother-son murder team of Shontae and Kenny Kimes.

Oh my God. Yeah. Good one. Thank you. You did good. I'm not mad anymore. Oh, good. I was really holding a grudge that you stole that from under my...

It's, to me, it is one of the weirdest because there's so much...it's unproven, but there's so much rumors about the fact because she was very inappropriate with him sexually and there are just all kinds of rumors about the fact that they were lovers, which is even more disturbing. But that aside, I decided that we could allude to it, but more importantly, it's alleged, more importantly, they just killed people. They just killed people so that they could...it's that thing of they wanted to be rich, but even when they were rich, it wasn't enough.

They wanted other people's stuff. That's the craziest. I can't believe he's only 44. I know. Because he started as a baby. He was doing that in his 20s. That's crazy. I don't wonder how much, like, if his mother had influence over that, if he would have

done any of it, if it weren't for her influence, not to defend him. I don't think he would have. I mean, like, not to defend him, but at the same time that... She sounds like a manipulative mom, and we all know how those are. Well, I mean, I think she was a true psychopath. Yeah. And if he's, you know, under her spell, there's no one else, like, he can't fight her. She literally kept him locked away.

Yeah. I mean, what choice did he have? Yeah. It's pretty creepy. But maybe he loved it. We don't know. We don't know, and we can't say. That's right.

Rad, great job. This bonus episode is supported by Prodigal Son, a new drama on Fox. Malcolm Bright has a gift. He knows how killers think and how their minds work. Why? His father was one of the worst. A notorious serial killer named The Surgeon. To understand why his father committed those crimes, Bright becomes the best criminal psychologist

there is. Murder is the family business, and Bright uses his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers in this one-hour drama. All while dealing with a manipulative mother, annoyingly normal sister, a homicidal father still looking to bond with his prodigal son, and his own constantly evolving neuroses. Out of all the stories we've done on this show, I feel like there's so many that have to do with family dynamics and how twisted and crazy they get, and this shows that perfectly. I mean, it's a little, you know, heightened, but it's so real.

Well, and it's exciting because, as we talk about, it's a procedural, but it also has like the family drama aspect. So it's a kind of, it's a new kind of crime drama that you kind of haven't seen before. And if you like Michael Sheen the way I do, he's such an incredible actor, you've never seen him like this before. That's right. It's amazing. The prodigal son is a realistic, delightfully disturbing, edgy thriller with a wicked sense

of humor from executive producers Greg Berlanti, Chris Fedek, Sam Slaver, and Sarah Schechter, and starring Michael Sheen, Tom Paine, and Bellamy Young. Tune in Monday starting September 23rd at 9-8 Central, only on Fox. Goodbye. Well, I'm doing a story. There's a family theme in it, but it's not exactly the same. It's not a traditional family. It's not.

It's kind of creepy though. Uh-huh. Creepy family times. We love it. And this is one that I started to work on, was like, great. And then realized that I think we did it when we were on the dollop. Okay. Is that right?

And I think you also did it when we were live somewhere. What is it? Dolly Ostrich. No, I did it on a television show, not to be named on this episode, but we haven't done it on our show. Okay, great. So this is your version. It's a total re-approach.

Okay, great. Yeah. Good. And this is perfect. It's almost like you were trying to find a family situation that's even creepier than the one I just described. Creepier? And I was like, oh, if you're going to do the one that I wanted to do, then I'm going

to want to do one that you've already done. How about that? You've really showed me. I'm really vindictive. That's just part of my personality. I love it. Okay. And so I got a lot of information about this one from a podcast called Let's Go to Court

with an exclamation mark. Are you serious? That I'm going to listen to from now on. Yes. How great is that? It's just court cases. Yes. They just cover famous court cases.

Let's go to court. Let's go to court. Let's go to court. Exclamation mark. And then one of the, because one of the hosts got a lot of her info about this episode from a bunch of old newspaper clippings. So she did the research. Nice.

I thought you were going to say one of the hosts got her research from the dollop. And then there was an LA Times article. There's a website called TheVintageNews.com, our best friend, Murderpedia. And of course, all that's interesting. There's a bunch of articles you can find in like YouTube videos and shit. Yeah. This story is epic. Here we go.

This fucking dolly. Okay. And then a disclaimer. And this is from Lily, my research gal. A lot of newspaper clippings had conflicting details about ages and some info. So a lot of it's just kind of guesswork, but you know, I'm not making shit up here. I get you. I've actually, I had to read, unlike usual with my research, when I did the story for

the unnamed project that I talked about it on, I had to read those old articles. And it's so crazy. It's, I bet you it was almost like the reporters of the day were like, we don't understand what's happening. Like everyone just kind of like... Sex. People have sex all the time? Sex and...

Okay, go ahead. Let me tell you about it. Let's hear it. All right. So this woman named Walburga Korschel, for real, she's born in the 1880s in Germany. When she's young, she immigrates to Wisconsin, grows up poor at a farm, but when she's 14, she starts working in a factory where she meets 17-year-old Fred Osterich, Osterich. Like it's very German.

His father owns a shoe store, so he comes from a pretty well off family. Three years later, they get married, they move to Milwaukee, they open a shoe store along with a bunch of other stores. And later they open an apron factory and they become wealthy textile manufacturers. So Dottie... Live in the immigrant's dream in America. Just called her Dottie. Oh, that's your cat's name. That's my cat's name.

She's also rich. So her name, she goes by Dolly. So Fred and Dolly, they don't have a happy marriage, unfortunately. He works long hours, spends more time at the bar drinking with his friends than he does at home. He's basically always drunk or always busy. So she's like, boo. Yeah.

She eventually gets fed up with his behavior. So one autumn day in 1913, she tells her husband Fred who's at the textile manufacturer, yo, my sewing machine is broken. And so it's kind of guessed as to whether she did this on purpose or this was an accident. But he sends a 17-year-old auto son-hoover. He is a repairman at the factory, the textile factory. And he is hot as fuck. He's like Lou Diamond Phillips, hot.

He's not traditional. I'm making this up. Featured in the new Fox drama, Prodigal Son. Right. Now, there's no way she didn't go down to that factory to be like, you forgot your lunch, Fred. And then she's like, what, what, what, who's this now? 17.

And it's kind of creepy too that her husband, Fred, was 17 when he met her as well. She likes him young. She has a thing for 17-year-olds. But it sounds like she did know who he was because when Fred sends auto to come fix Dolly's sewing machine, she shows up at the door in a silk robe, stockings, heavy perfume and nothing else, which is sounds disgusting. Like to me, it's like, OK, the silk robe I get, but stockings I'm thinking like muck looks.

But I bet it was like sexy garter belt. Sexy old-fashioned stockings. And then heavy perfume. Yeah. I bet there's like, it's called arsenic and rose, it's just disgusting. Yeah. A perfume back in the day, it was like no one cared about anybody else. It was like, I'm going to smell like this, no matter how it impacts you.

Because did they even have regular showers back then? It's like, cover it up. That's right. Or are you thinking of the 1500s? Great. OK, so 17-year-old Otto opens the door and he's like, let's fucking do this. Hell yeah, so 17-year-old that's just like a naked lady. Naked lady with muck looks.

I love it. So Dolly and Otto start hooking up. They meet in hotels or at her house during the day when Fred's gone. And soon Dolly's nosy neighbors start to notice that this fucking hot, young piece is coming in and out of her house. Yep. Karen. Stop, don't.

And so they're like, what the fuck? Because they're nosy. That's how they were back then. Sure. They didn't have a lot of, they didn't have the internet. No. They didn't have cell phones. No.

They had to peek out their curtains at their neighbors. That's right. Mind your business. So Dolly then tells. This was before Mind Your Business. That's right. Dolly tells everyone that hot, Otto is her quote, vagabond half-brother. Hot.

So that's how she gets away with him coming over all the time is saying that they're related. Yes. Which makes it even more creepy. Yes. Well, maybe that's what she was into. Right. Well, we don't know. We don't know.

Muck looks. Okay. But Dolly still wants to continue her affair with Otto, but she wants her nosy neighbors to mind their own fucking business. Sure. So she makes Otto quit his job, and this is so that he won't be seen coming in and out of the house anymore. So she says, how about you quit your job at the factory and just move into my attic and

live there in secret? Oh, perfect solution. Yeah. So now you don't have to come and go because you're just staying in the attic and no one. I'm going to keep you like a bird. Exactly. Like a human man bird up in the attic. And again, he's probably 17 still.

He's like, sounds great. Hot. Let's do it. Even better. Even better. Dolly tells him he can't leave or else people will know he's there. Her brother. Her brother, mind you.

Yeah. So she sets up a desk and a cot for him in the small space. The Los Angeles Times says, quote, at night, he read mysteries by candlelight and wrote stories of adventure and lust. He wanted to write like mystery stories himself. By day, he made love to Dolly and helped her keep house and made bathtub gin. Sounds pretty fucking great. This is the life.

I want to read and write all day and make gin and fuck. Yes. What? I'm sorry. What's the problem here? I'm a young man in the beginning prime of his life. And I have... It's middle age in that time.

Yeah. That's right. He was almost dead. But he had a sure thing. Yeah. He had a place to live rent free. Free booze. She probably fed him.

I would imagine. He got some food there. And then he got to go with his books. He didn't have to take her to the movies or do anything. No. It's called... That sounds like being married. Yeah.

Pretty much. You can keep Vincent the Attic. So then Brad would come home in the evenings and Otto would go to his room and spend time reading the novels that Dolly had checked out from at the library and writing his pulp fiction that he wanted to write. And Dolly would take some of the stories that he wrote and then they had them published under the pen name Walter Klein. So like it was working out for him.

Like you know how hard it is to sit down and write. We wrote an entire fucking book. It's awful. If you'd put me in an act, I wouldn't have fucking finished it. I would have just been like, I'm going to do push ups for the rest of my life. I'm going to talk to the spiders. This goes on for five years. Man, Otto, I wonder what his life was like before that this was the better alternative.

It must have been pretty bleak. It must have been. He's like, I love it up here. This is the best I've ever been treated. It's so warm. It's like, you know, sometimes you go into a small room and it's really warm and you just get tired. Yeah.

It's like slightly drugged by being in the attic. That's a good point. Or totally drugged. Or on bathtub gin, which is not safe for consumption. Not good for you at all. No. So it goes on for five years and Fred does notice some things though and it's almost like she was gaslighting him a little bit.

So Fred would ask Dolly about the noises that he heard and couldn't explain. And she was like, he also tells her about seeing shadows moving in the upstairs windows like when he's outside and about his half finished cigars that keep going missing. Hey. Where's my butt? Just don't fucking smoke your mistresses. Okay. Don't smoke the smelliest thing that can be traced.

Right. And don't steal shit. Yeah. They're also constantly low on food, but Dolly always convinces Fred that it's nothing and that he should go see a doctor because he's crazy. Oh. Like she totally gaslights it. That's rough.

Yeah. At one point he does see a doctor, but of course they're like, there's nothing fucking wrong with you. So he thinks that the house is haunted or that he's going crazy. And so he decides that they need to get out of the house and move somewhere else. Yeah. That's a perfect solution. That's it.

Move to LA. Yeah. That's what they do. That's the perfect thing for crazy people. That's what everyone else does. Because you'll look normal if you're in LA and you're crazy. No one can tell. That's what I did.

Everyone's just concentrating on their own fucking insane shit. That's right. You go to a town where everyone is self obsessed and no one will care if you're crazy. That's right. Well, I'm the Los Angeles. The thing when you think everyone is staring at you in the room in Los Angeles, nobody cares about you. Nobody stares at you in the room unless you're a casting director.

That's right. So Dolly isn't stoked, but she agrees to move to LA on the one condition. She has one condition and that is their new house has an attic. Okay. She is smart. She is just subtle and smart. Yeah. But you know LA, like we don't fucking have those here.

Yeah. There's a lot of bungalows. Yeah. So my new house has a creepy basement and then in the creepy basement, there's a pull down crawl space that I'm calling the fucking attic so that you can get your man up in your 17 year old. He would fit. Georgia's shopping for 17 year old.

No. I'll put Vince up there. Vince, stop it. Vince, you go in the attic. So she could move into my house if she wants to, but they do find a house with an attic in Lafayette Park Place, which is near MacArthur Park. Oh, okay. So like near Rampart.

Right. So she gives Otto the money. She's gotten from selling his stories, which I guess she was fucking keeping, sends him to LA by train so she can keep boning. And then he works as a janitor and lives in an apartment while he waits for her. So he gets a taste of freedom and what it's like to live alone. And still when they move. And he's like, no thank you.

Yeah. He's still like, I can't wait to get into that crawl space. Yeah. Which is euphemism for her vagina. I didn't even think of that. Some color to crawl space. Get the cobwebs out of the way. Oh, no.

What's this old box doing here? Christmas. The front and dolly move to LA and they start a new factory. So they're still rich as fuck. That's the other thing about this is this is a really fucking wealthy couple. She's keeping a dude to bone. Yeah. As a side piece in the upstairs.

I kind of find it empowering. It is not. It is not. It is not. It is not. I don't think it is. It's not good. Although it doesn't.

He had several chances. Yes. To get away. It wasn't against his will. So at least it wasn't against his will. It seems like a little bit of a like a BDSM kind of a thing. Okay. In my like that to me says that like he kind of likes being told what to do and controlled.

Sure. Sweating a lot. Let's hope. He likes to sweat. He likes to write. Yeah. In a suffocating heat. Yeah.

Yeah. And she wants that curl space. Tended to. Don't. Wait. Oh. Okay. So Otto continues to live in the attic for another four or five years.

So this is like 10 fucking years at this point. Such a long period of time. As the brother. And Fred still hears strange noises and food and cigarettes continue to go missing. He starts drinking more and more because he's like, I am going crazy. Yeah. I'm crazy. I might as well just keep going.

It's pretty sad. But Dahlia and Fred start arguing more and more as well. So that brings us to the evening of August 22nd, 1922. Dahlia and Fred go to a party. They get in an argument and leave. Awkward. Not a couple. Like it's in a fight at a fucking party.

Just in front of everybody. I'm sure they had a couple bathtub gins before they left. So, you know, they came in with a nice heat on as my dad likes to say. Shut up Fred. He's always like this. She turns to the rest of the party. You're embarrassing yourself. Stop everyone else is just trying to do the Charleston.

They're just like, could you please shut up? Fight. Fight. Do it. Do it. Here. Eat a knife. Eat Fred.

It's just cigars. Eat a knife. My secrets. I've had secrets. Everyone's like, she is out of her mind. She keeps talking about her crawl space. Why does I don't want to speak about your crawl space, Dahlia? So they go home and the fight continues.

He gets louder and Otto upstairs who's like in love with Dahlia starts to get freaked the fuck out because he hears it getting violent, the fight, which this is all speculation in here to say because what happens next is that Otto crawls out of his crawl space and grabs, but not literally not figuratively, he grabs two guns up along to Fred, goes back up and then comes out of this cubby hole in the ceiling where the couple's fighting. And suddenly Fred sees this fucking pale, sweaty food with two guns that he recognizes from 10 years ago. Remember?

Yeah. Because he knows him. Yeah, he was his employee. I'm sorry. He recognized it in him. He's like, what in the actual fuck? They're in Los Angeles now. It's like.

He's like, I really am crazy. I am out of my mind. I'm a drunk and I'm crazy. He recognizes him. Fred goes nuts. They start fighting and then the gun goes off and eventually Otto overpowers Fred. This fucking, this cave dweller overpowers Fred, which sucks, and shoots him three times in the chest with one of the guns.

So Fred, the husband, dies immediately. So what they're saying about them fighting and him being violent is just based on what Dolly and Otto say. So we don't know if it's true or not. So he could have actually been ambushed entirely and Otto dropped from the ceiling like a creepy white spider and then Fred was like, whoa, dolly could have been the violent one. Like we don't really know.

Yeah. So then when Fred dies, Dolly apparently thinks quickly and decides to make it look like a robbery. So she has Otto lock her in the bedroom closet and then he and then Otto takes Fred's diamond watch and both guns and get goes back upstairs and do his fucking at it. And then Dolly starts screaming and yelling, neighbors call the cops, the cops come. He's still hiding. He doesn't even hightail it and like go away at a park or something.

No, no, no. He loves that. That's his home. Away from the crawl space. Okay. The cops come. When the police arrive, Dolly tells them how the robbers shot Fred. They stole belongings, locked her in the closet, she tells them all that.

And the police are like, what in the actual fuck? This doesn't look right because the robbers took only the watch and there's a fat wad of cash in Fred's jacket pocket. The neighbors never saw anyone coming or going. And Dolly has a motive because with Fred's death, she becomes a sole owner of their large fortune. Wow. But without any concrete evidence, they can't charge her with anything.

So she goes free and they never check the attic. Yeah. Well, what I, I love too, sorry. So it's weird to have this conversation knowing it because we never do it this way. Well, remember when I did a drunk history and then I didn't realize what I had, I had even done it until you were halfway through the story that I had done on drunk history. Yeah. I was reading the letters and I was like, why does it sound familiar?

I know this for some reason. But what I like is that because it's like the one thing that was keeping it, keeping her story straight was that she was locked in the closet. Yeah. And the cops were like, just, there's no way it could be any different. Like we have to believe her because of this one weird detail. Because if, if that's not true, what do you make up? Like the truth is stranger than fiction.

I have one word that they didn't think of, accomplice. Like why didn't. But where's the accomplice house that, you know, it's, yeah, it's just the weirdest. Yeah. And why not believe her that this is what happened? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So with her husband out of the picture, Dolly gets all the money, she buys a new house in the Larchmont area. Oh, yeah. I thought you'd like that detail because you can never remember the word Larchmont, right? I can't. Every time I tell people to go there, I'm just like, hmm, what is it? That area. It's very charming, everyone.

Good bagel shop. It's great. Salt and straw ice cream. It's great. Oh yeah. Did I ever tell you about the time I got a ticket? I got a ticket because the meter expired and then I thought I had gotten two tickets. But the second ticket was a coupon from Salt and Straw to get a free ice cream because

I got a ticket. Oh. That's what they do for people if you get a ticket. Shut your mouth. Isn't that genius? That is genius marketing. That is like, I know you're having a bad day now, but here's a little good day. Ice cream.

We'll feed right into your eating disorder. I used to have a, I used to go to a therapist on that block on Larchmont and I'd go in and talk about my shopping addiction. And then next door, there was like a everything under $20 clothing store. So I'd be like, I can't help myself. Turned out fun. That therapist should have walked you to your car. She should have.

Jennifer. Jennifer. Okay. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Larchmont. And then even, even though she and Otto are now theoretically free to live in the open and have like a fucking real relationship after 10 years, he's like, um, kind of like living in the attic.

No. Yes. What? Yes. I don't remember this one. He continues to live in the fucking attic. So it was his, it was his jam all along. It was his dream.

Yeah. It was his dream. Maybe he, maybe she showed up at the door with like the silks and all the sexy shit and he showed up with a bag to go live in the attic. Yeah. Like it was both of their plans. Yeah. And then around the same time though, Dolly starts hooking up with her estate lawyer.

So remember she was like, I inherited everything and she was like, and now I want to bone my lawyer. Sure. She's like, he represents her riches. Yeah. He was like, yay, thank you. And maybe he was hot. His name was Herman Shapiro.

Yeah. He sounds hot. Yeah. You know, estate lawyers, they have a reputation. Hey. Brown suits. Come on. Pencil behind your ear or whatever.

So they date, so she dates this estate lawyer for a short time and as a gift she gives him, this is how smart she is, Fred's diamond watch that was stolen in the fucking robbery. Dolly. And she, and he asked like, well, I thought this was stolen and she was like, oh, I found it between two couch cushions. Good cover. I was wrong. Oops.

But he didn't think it was important enough to notify the police. Probably not. Wow. You know. Yeah. He's like, oh, it's a really nice watch. He's like, sure, get it. Get the watch.

That's right. So then, but then like Dolly's husband Fred, Shapiro spends long hours away due to his profession. So Dolly takes on another lover at the same time. She can't get enough. She can't. Roy Klum. And she asks Roy to dispose of one of her husband's, her now dead husband's gun saying

that she was afraid that the police would think it was the gun she used to murder, that was used to murder her husband. So she's like, just get rid of it so that like they don't get confused. I just don't want the bother. Yeah. Right. I don't want them to be confused. Yeah.

So he was like, great. You've got a great crawl space. I'll absolutely do that for you. He throws it. Ready for this? Into the La Brea Tarpets. The best. The best place to hide a weapon.

The best. Yeah. And then she sweet talks her neighbor into burying the other, the second gun in her, in his backyard. Here's the thing we have to say about Dolly. Yeah. She must have been charming as hell. That's right.

Because she gets everyone to do the weirdest shit for her. That's right. Every man that comes across her is like, what do you want an errand? Do you want me to adjust my entire life in the weirdest way? What do you want from me? I'll do it. What can I do? You want me to stop time and like stop my fucking brain?

I don't know. Why didn't Dolly write a dating book? Oh. How to trick men and get them up in your crawl space. What? Okay. Okay. So a year later though, this is the thing you got to worry about.

Dolly breaks things off with this third lover. Right. And he's fucking pissed. So he goes to the cops. So they go to the tar pits and somehow find the gun. I can't imagine how. Okay. Quick sidebar, sorry.

And it's a pit. But there's an amazing episode of Criminal about LAPD officers that scuba dive into the La Brea tar pit. Oh, right. So find a thing. Yes. I remember that. It is amazing.

I remember that. Okay. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Criminal. I'm Phoebe Waller Judge. This is Criminal. Okay, wait. So they get the gun and they arrest Dolly for her husband's murder. And then when the story hits, the press is Dolly's neighbor is like, oh shit and digs

up the gun and brings it in as well. But neither weapon can be tied to Dolly because of corrosion. So she fucking wins again. She does it again. Dude, girl. Get it. She's blessed. Hashtag.

Truly blessed. So while she's awaiting trial, her lawyer lover Herman visits her and she's like, can you do me a big, I know I've asked you for some weird shit. Here's another one. Are you ready? When you go by groceries, there's a man living in my attic. Tap on the ceiling of the bedroom closet, let him know so that he can come out. And she assures him that the man is just her vagabond half-brother.

Everything's on the level. There's nothing to see here. Officer, keep moving. So he does it. Yeah. He goes and gets the groceries, but instead of tapping on the bedroom closet ceiling, he whistles and moments later it says, a pale and sweaty man emerges from the cubby hole in the ceiling.

Oh my God. Can you imagine? And then the guy begins to scream and never stops. Never stops. No. Hoi, hoi. Otto had been living in the attic for about 10 years and hadn't had a real conversation with anyone besides Dolly for a long time.

So when he sees this Herman fella, he's like, what's up, best friend? His eyes are super wide. He dropped down head first, like Spider-Man. I see head first, totally. The Herman thinks it's Dolly's brother. Sure. So then, because he hasn't talked to anyone so long, starts chip, chip, chatting, and he fucking brags about all the sex he's having with Dolly, just like shut your mouth, dude.

So fucking Herman, the boyfriend gets pissed off about it, not creeped out, pissed off. He orders Otto to leave the house and never come back. So Otto later days to Canada. So finally Otto leaves. What a horrifying moment for Otto to have to cross the threshold of the front door of that home and then be in the world. All I did was talk about sex a lot. I thought it was allowed.

And also just what do you do? You've been in a very confined space for years and years and years. Go to Canada. Go to Canada. That's the solution. I have great candy and people are very nice. Very nice. Health care for all.

Can you imagine? Imagine. We'll get there. As for Dolly, the police still can't explain how she could have shot Fred from inside the closet. So they let her go, even though they have the guns, and Herman ends up moving in with her lawyer. Man.

That guy will put up with anything. Man, that must have been some good. I'm not going to keep saying it. Seven years later, in 1930, Herman and Dolly have a nasty breakup. And because Dolly starts hooking up with yet another guy, that's why they break up. Herman's pissed about the affair, but thinks that if he doesn't leave voluntarily that she's going to fucking kill him. So he moves to St. Louis, Missouri, but he's so angry about how Dolly treated him.

He writes a 15-page affidavit dealing with how Fred really died and mails it to the L.A. District Attorney. Nice. Herman's letter is all the police need to finally arrest Otto, who had moved back to L.A. at this point, is now 40 years old and living under his pen name, Walter Cline. Still writing. Good for him. Nice.

It's hard. And they also arrest Dolly. And Otto, it tells them everything, he confesses, and he colors the whole attic situation in a favorable light. He tells the story of hearing Dolly and Fred fighting, how he came down and killed Fred, and basically he's like, I'm a hero, fuckers, I'm a weird, weird hero. I'm the palest hero you've ever seen, almost translucent. Well, they give him a name in the newspapers, they call him the Batman or Bat Lover.

And it goes 1930s viral. Like everyone has just scandalized that this fucking, you know, in their minds, Hussie is just taking lover after lover and keeping one up there and holding one down there and that one's dead and this one's your lawyer. It was unheard of at the time to keep a lover in the attic like a Bat Lover. Right. You keep them in a hotel room like a normal person. So Otto goes on trial in 1930, please not guilty by reason of insanity, but the prosecutors

are pushing for the death penalty. The trial becomes known as the Batman case and they, their defense, his defense argues that Otto had been a love slave. And he had the mind of an eight year old boy. Oh. Right. So this will not, this story will not let you have fun. No.

Every time you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. And then you're just like, oh, that's a bummer. Gross. Yeah. So they visit the house where he was staying and they visit the attic and they are all the jury members by the time they come out on the other side, they're dripping sweat. And I think by the time they come out, it's like being reborn and being like, oh, fuck. And that's how hot yoga was born right here in Los Angeles.

And everyone hates themselves who does it. No. Yes. Have you tried it? It's the worst. I hate the heat. It's the worst. I got yelled at in it.

A jury of six women and six men go into deliberation for seven hours and they find Otto guilty of manslaughter, which carries a one to 10 year sentence. But then Otto's genius fucking lawyer, Earl Wakeman, is like, okay, yeah, but the statute of limitations that means has run out. So he can go now, right? Oh. Because it's been years and years since Fred was killed. And so the judge is like, yeah, I guess so.

Oh, I guess you're right. And he sets the verdict aside and Otto goes free. Wow. And then all it says is he went on to marry and have kids. Otto did? Yeah. Ew. It's the tiniest house.

Just a tiny house. Aw. I don't know. Tiny kids. A little triangular house. Aw. Real hot. Heater on day and night.

That's right. Typing away. A few months later in August of 1930, Dolly's trial begins. The jury goes into deliberation for three days and they end up deadlocked. And no one is willing to change their minds. The judge dismisses the jury and eventually the DA asks the judge to drop the indictment against Dolly since they had no new evidence. So she goes free as well.

Wow. Yeah. So Fred never got his justice. No, he didn't. Over the years, Dolly invests her money wisely and her fortune grows. She and that other fucking, the other affair she was having because she was bored with Herman, they date for 30 years before getting married on April 5th, 1961. Wow.

And she's 69 and he's 65. And she ends up dying. And some say that she's in her 80s though, it's like hard to tell exactly what age she is. But they're together for 30 years. Dolly ends up dying 16 days after they get married in 1961. She could not settle down. She was like, I'm settled and now I'm going to die.

And that is the story of Dolly Ostrich. Wow. Yeah. It's an amazing story. It's a good one. I feel like we could tell it like once a year and it would never get old because it's just the twists and turns are unbelievable. What about Vagabond brother?

Is that your band name? For sure. Oh, here's, I'm going to start introducing any date I have as my Vagabond brother. It's the perfect cover. Well, that's sweaty pale guy. Oh, that's just my Vagabond brother from out of town, from upstate. That's right. Don't worry about him coming in and out of my house because he doesn't live in the attic.

That was amazing. Great job. Thank you. Your version was great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Anthony. Yeah.

Didn't mean to trump you yet again. No. We're best friends. Here's an interview we did with Bellamy Young, who plays the wife of the serial killer. The surgeon. The surgeon in Prodigal Son. She is so lovely and delightful. She's like creepy and cool in the show.

And so we weren't like, didn't know what to expect when we like met her and interviewed her. Right. She was so funny and so light and lovely. Yeah. It turns out she's just a good actress. Yeah. She's not the character that she plays on the TV show.

Right. Yeah. No, we had a great time. It was very exciting to talk to her. It's very fun to interview people. Yeah. And she was so easy to talk to. So listen now.

Here is our interview. One of the stars of Prodigal Son, Bellamy Young. Cool. Thanks for being on the podcast. Yes. Oh my God. I'm so excited. So sweet.

We love the show. Yes. I was just... Did you get to see the... Did you get to see the pilot? Yeah. Yeah. I'm so happy.

I want to talk about it when we talk about it. It was great. Yes. You're so elegant. Yes. I just love it. Thank you. Yeah.

Oh my God. It's a delight. Yeah. Do you always play rich, lady? Because you're very good at it. Oh, thank you. Well, you know, you know, those who can't act as it. No, I don't.

But I have to say, I mean, you know, Mellie was, you know, of a certain means and Lord knows Jessica's old, old money, you know, her family before the Whitley is sort of owned most of Manhattan. So it's really fun. There's such a dry debauch sort of thing that happens when you're just like swimming filthily and money. Yes. Yeah.

It's really, really tasty to roll around in. I love it. I feel like we could just take you and put you right into succession. Yes. That's great. You guys, I'm obsessed. Oh my God. The best.

Totally. Yeah. Because, oh, heaven. Yeah. Love that show. There is, I, that's what I like too. There is as much as there is the stuff I, the murdery stuff that I like and go to for shows like this.

There's also an aspirational aspect like when you guys are having dinner where I'm like, can you imagine sitting there and at a table that big and being that far away from people as you eat dinner? I love it. And how do you even eat soup in that set? I know. I couldn't do it. Clink.

Clink. Clink. Clink is the loneliest clink in the world. So do you, do you like true crime? Is that something you've ever paid attention to or? You know, I, I have, I've had death around me my whole life. I have, my mother has buried four husbands and you know, I know there's just a lot. So, so I was tuned in very early to the fact that I would like to stay here.

So I began sort of amassing, I'm a rules oriented human and I started amassing rules like, you know, to begin with, it was like, you know, I watched Jaws, I'm like, okay, don't go in the ocean. I watched, you know, Friday 13th, don't go to summer camp, don't go to prom, like whatever. But then it got to be, you know, like, um, Dahmer, like, don't go to clubs. Uh, Bundy made me think about college. Yeah. She just made me sleep with my windows closed, you know, I just try and codify things that

keep me on the right side of, well, life. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I still get super, super nervous. I mean, I was always a child that would watch the scary movies on Saturday afternoon from behind the recliner. Like, that's definitely like, I want to see it, but I want to be like, it's at a safe distance. Yeah.

You guys know, I love what you do because you, you channel it somewhere that some, that we can do something with, you know, you, there's always a positive place to go with the energy of, of fear or of, um, revenge or whatever you, but you really know how to get positive, um, result from that. So thank you. That's so nice. We get asked all the time, like, what, you know, why do women love true crime? And of course we're only two of the women in the world, so we can only go to her.

But I think you're, you make a great point where it's like, you're just trying to prepare yourself for things that can actually happen in the world. And maybe they're embellished on TV and movies like Jaws. Yeah. Yeah. It is coming from somewhere real. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, as a percussionist, he travels the world all the time and he's always having these incredible adventures and he's a, a true person of light and he'll, but he'll do the thing where after the gig, he'll like meet somebody in the audience and go play snooker with them till 4am and then go out on a walk and play hot like soccer in the middle of the road. And, and we were talking with some friends the other day and my friend Kat was like, yeah, that's just not something a woman can do. Yeah. That is a gender experience that you're having like a very gendered experience.

And it's, it's true. We got to, we got to pay attention in different ways. Yeah. And unless you go in the, the buddy system where you're like, I'd love to play soccer. Here's my friends that are coming with me. We're all going together. 19 friends. We don't have solo, we don't have solo snooker privileges.

No, not at all. Tragic. So was that, you know, little bit of pensiveness or fear or, you know, whatever when you were doing the show, was there any, any of that that you brought into it with you? I mean, was there or are you coming, when you do your character, are you coming in it from, you just go in and you're her and entirely and there's no nervousness about it. You have that.

I think any actor who says that shame is very far from them at any time is lying. Cause we didn't get all get here by being like, well, just in city rooms. I think before Jessica, a lot of what she has, you know, he was the serial killer, Michael Sheen plays my husband. He was arrested in 1998 on our TV show and is living sort of in Hannibal Lecterland. And I have been living on, in my own prison of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which is, you know, also quite severe and what was, first of all, the writing's beautiful. So I feel so lucky coming off a scandal where, you know, to live in a matriarchy for seven

years and have monologues and, you know, scenes that felt like one acts and just delicious. You think I might never, I may never get to work like this again, but we have beautiful writers on this show and I feel so lucky to get to be Jessica. And so so much of it is on the page, but also the shame is right there, you know, to still be tethered to him in name by choice, but, you know, because we have our children and also that what so many people feel is that the need to atone, you know, they're not going to atone cause they're there and they're psychopaths and whatever if they're still alive even, but you survived and how did you not know the guilt of not knowing the guilt of surviving

and the drive to atone? So that I also think, you know, I think when in your life and everyone's life, you, you irrevocably lose in a sense when the first person you know dies and when you've had a lot of death around you, that's just always there, like a little, you know, like a tiny little featherweight blankie that's sort of always shrouding you and that's always close to me too. So I can, I can get to the shame and I can get to the drive to atone and I can get to the, just the knowledge of death very quickly.

So yeah. Interesting. Yeah. She's like carrying that on her shoulders even though it's, you know, your head is held high but. And it doesn't always come out when you have that shame as that, as humility or, oh, I'm glad that it's, you know, sometimes it's that thing of just cut everybody off, get rid of it.

It's that, you know, people deal with it in all different ways. That's a really interesting thing. Yeah. Like you, you, you're layering that character with, you know, those human, I guess, qualities. Yeah. That's what acting is. And writing as you know. Right.

Tried that. Yeah. Was there anything, the, the like tone of the show is kind of spooky and, you know, macabre? Did anything happen? I'm so glad you guys have seen the first episode because I'm so proud of it and like, I just like to look in people's eyes when they've seen it. It's so. It's gorgeous.

And so funny. Yeah. It just amazes me that both things are so present but that's life, you know, you got to laugh to get through it. But. Yeah. It's gorgeous. Because you'll love this because, because you are deep in it.

Like they just keep the, hmm, what's the right way to say it? They're just so smart about the crimes and the way they present them, the way they tease them apart little by little, the nomenclature of how they address the psychopathy. And it's just really heady and disturbing and delightful. Yeah. All the family stuff, the family stuff is so human, you know, we've all been through something and we all don't want to grow up and be our parents. Right?

It's just that. On crack. Times a million. Right. I was thinking about that while watching it, you know, I just read the B.T.K., the daughter of the B.T.K. I read her book and it's like, how do you, how do you look at that person, whether it's your father or your, you know, husband and think that's the person I knew for so long

because it's not necessarily. Yeah. But no. And psychopaths are so good at the masking and, and living double lives and doing all those things that leave the people close to them like, what the hell is going on? That's the other cool thing is this is a, it's a procedural, but it's also a family drama slash touch of comedy. I mean, I feel like that's a totally new combination for, for a crime show.

And it's so pretty. Like they pump it all the time full of all that fog and stuff and it just looks dark and creepy and we've been, we were shooting some scene, oh God, a couple of episodes back and where they built us a basement. And I, I think this has revealed very, really, there's a, you know, a girl in a box and something's happening. And I was down there yelling at a child, which, you know, I always get hired to yell at children. That should be the real question.

But I got so scared just because it looked so good. It just looked so good and it got very, yeah, it got really real for a minute. So that's cool. Yeah. That's cool when they're the set dressers are so good that you can actually put yourself there. Yeah. Yeah.

Did anything creepy happen on set? Was it haunt? Tell us it was haunted or something like that. The creepiest thing is, um, and Michael, I mean creepy in the best way. Yes. Like watching Michael Sheen work, you know, the first time, the first time really that we were together was at the table read and he and I were both at South by in Austin when the table read was happening here in New York.

So they skyped us in. Another one of us are very adept at anything technological. So someone else was in charge of it and we're like scooted sort of thigh to thigh and we're trying to see on a camera, a little laptop camera and, um, it got to his part, you know, his first scene and, um, our little, you know, our little thighs were touching. I swear I could feel his atoms change like I could feel it come over him and he did his part and he did his thing and he did his, like he's doing this amazing work. And then it washed away and then he looked through the things like, I've got eight pages.

I'm going to go pee. I was stunned by both the like level of work and then the like, you know, the humanity of the pee. Well, and he is like he, we were just talking about that because he always plays a noble character or just as such a relatable character or he's the every man or he's that great British, you know, the British guy that you love or whatever. And this is his American accents impeccable. Amazing.

I mean, I love waiting to see one. Tom's too though. You know, Tom's British too. Really? Oh my God. I didn't know that. Yeah. I did not know that.

Oh, that's hilarious. Credit to him then too. That's right. But I mean, like I, when I look at Michael Sheen, I always feel like I know, oh, I'm looking at it in this. I was just like, oh my God, he's gone entirely. Who is this guy? He wrote, he just wrote a, um, he wrote a movie that he's trying to get produced of,

I think it's the Green River Killer. He had just done like three years of deep dive on this particular serial killer, not to mention psychopathy of serial killers in general. And so he, baby, he's locked and locked. Oh yeah. He's in there. He's got it ready to go. Yeah.

He's, you can tell though, because there is that he's got the sparkle in his eye that, you know, it's the serial killer sparkle where when people say like, why would you get into a car with that person? It's like, because they're so good at it. Because they know what they're doing. They're shiny. Yeah. Yeah.

Very much. Smart. Very much so. Yeah. This is, you can opt out of this question. We were saying of anybody, uh, of cast members on the show, who do you think could secretly be a serial killer? Do you say Lou Diamondfellow?

Yeah. Please don't. My childhood. Please don't. Well, I think that Lou, you know, we did, uh, Richard Ramirez, we did a night stalker movie, Lou and I. What? That's totally, um, and so I will say if, like, you should Google at least part of that because

honestly, his performance is staggering. Oh my gosh. Does he, he plays Richard Ramirez? Yeah, he does. Oh, shit. Oh, we have to look that up. Thank you. Thank you.

And the kid that plays him like in the 80s is a flashback, you know, has both, uh, time periods. Wow. Um, oh gosh. How did they do this? I'm gonna blank on his name right now. Chief. Yeah.

He had prosthetic. Wow. And the drawings that were actually Ramirez drawings, um, we had on the day that we did the takedown when they ca, when the mob captured him on a Hubbard Street, we had two of the guys that lived there in the scene. We had the car that he was trying to jack was the car we used in the scene. Wow. The detective that was on the case was our consultant.

So when I think about serial killers in my class, I think, I know who it is. That actually is my favorite. We, I, we did the night stalker, I think in, you know, the first year we started doing this podcast, but that is truly one of my favorite, uh, you know, true story moments is them recognizing him from the newspaper and the entire neighborhood coming together and chasing him to, it's like, I give, it's getting me chills now when I know the story so well. I love it.

He's still like, he's not atypical, not atypical, but, um, well, yes, I hope atypical and because he was so, you know, without method, without care or without remorse, just interested in killing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so on our show, and I, I know you've got the questions, but, um, we, we like to ask people what their hometown murder is. Do you, do you have a hometown murder or a story that you like Karen read about, um,

what's his name? Oh, John Wayne Gacy. Karen read about John Wayne Gacy. I read about, you know, Ted Bundy as a kid was there one that you were just like, oh, this is the thing in the world that freaked you out. The, I just, I'd very clearly remember the first person I knew to be murdered because she was a dear, dear family friend. Um, her name was Jamie Hurley.

Um, and her parents, her dad Lee worked with my dad at, my dad was an auditor for the state and he was a collector, a tax collector. And um, you know, I forget what Mickey had done, but when I knew her, like when I was born or adopted, um, I knew Mickey as bedridden. She had rheumatoid arthritis so bad, like she had lost her ability to, I mean, she had to use a bedpan, like she couldn't get up, nothing, nothing. And um, Jamie was their only daughter and she stayed a lot at our house because, you know, it was enough to take care of Mickey, you know, it was easier for my mom to cook

or, you know, like, and she and my mom was an English teacher and she and Jamie got along so well and Jamie was like 20 years older than I was at that point and well, would have still been. Um, if you're doing the math, um, but at any rate. She was always around and, um, and then I remember my mom having to have this conversation with me about Jamie getting murdered and I just had no, like I had known people to die, but I just had no antecedent for murder. Yeah.

And I, I just remember the like cognitive dissonance about having to try and take that in. And then as she explained it, it got even more awful, Jamie had been working at juvenile evaluation center, um, sort of out, I think near Swannanoa and, um, you know, she'd taken an interest in this kid and, um, that kid invited her for ice cream and the last time anybody saw her was like in the parking lot at Ingalls and they got in the car and they found her body like, I think once later in a shallow grave and, um, he eventually, uh, that was, I think she went disappeared in like May and they got him in like July, um,

Leslie Eugene Warren, this is his name. Um, they called him the babyface killer on some fucking show or other and, uh, he had killed four women. Um, Jamie was the third he was in. Yes, we lived in Asheville and he had, they caught him in High Point. They had arrested him after, because he was a person of interest, obviously, because we all knew where Jamie went, um, but they could only get him for, um, not having like the title to his car and like larceny of a purse.

And so they had to let him go and like gave him a, you know, bail of like 25 grand or something. And so he was in High Point, killed another lady when he confessed to Jamie's, he was like, oh yeah, you should look in this parking garage and the trunk of this car because that's where you're going to find this other person. And it's still alive in all of us, obviously, because it's horrific, but also because my mom's whole life best friend, Faye and her husband Ben now live in that house. So we're like always in that house.

Wow. It's so heavy in there. Like none of the actual horror happened there, but there's just such grief and like there's just so much grief. So yeah. Yeah. It's such a profound story. Heavy.

Wow. Amazing. I mean, and that's, that's the thing too is like, you know, we talk about these stories a lot. Um, they're human stories. These are, they're family stories. They're, even if you don't know the people or whatever, it's like, it's part of the, um, I think reason that it holds interest.

And maybe like we were talking about before of why do, why do women love true crime? And there's, I think there's a piece of it that's, it's you, it's about holding grief and, um, and maybe that idea of like, I'll hold it for you and you can hold it for me because we're all, it's the thing we're all afraid is going to happen or that you maybe think about. Um, it's like, it goes, it takes it to the worst. It's the worst case scenario of anything, obviously. Um, yeah.

And I think you can empathize with the family and friends of people who have to go through that and yeah, you know, maybe we hold it a little too much, but yeah, we'll hold it. Just something. Yeah. Something to think about. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you. I'm so sorry.

Yeah. Bless Jamie. Yeah. What was her name? Jamie. Jamie Hurley. Jamie Hurley. Okay.

Also just the frustration of they, they could have had him and it's like a technicality. Yeah. One more person dies. Yes. Okay. I have a technicality. Yeah. Is face killer featured in the first season of Mindhunter?

I feel like. Oh, maybe it was Investigations Discovery. Is that right? Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I've heard of him before. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I mean, is there anything else you want to talk about with the show that you're excited about? Because we can definitely get back into that. No, I don't know.

You're in charge. You're in charge. You'll tag it when it happens and when they can tune in and all of that. Yeah. For sure. Yes, great. Thank you so much for watching the rest of the season. Yeah.

I know. Congrats on an amazing show. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. I feel so lucky to be here. And in New York, I'm so, so happy. I feel very, very, very, very happy.

That's great. Thank you so much for making the time with us too. Thank you guys. And sharing. I will say thinking, listening to myself, talk too much. No. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Wait. Let me take a picture of us. All right. Sorry. Ready? One, two. Wait. Lean in.

Lean in. Okay. Thank you for being so open with us. We appreciate it. Yeah, we really do. Nice to meet you. Really, really, thank you for what you do. It matters a lot.

Thank you. I mean, grief touches so many people and, you know, the way out is always through, but then you don't know where to walk, you know, you come out into the light again and you're just a little stupefied and you guys really put a path in front of people. So thanks. Wow. That's so nice. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you soon. Okay. I'll be great. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

All right. Thank you so much, Bellamy Young, for talking to us. That was so fun. And thank you, Fox, for sponsoring this episode. Remember to watch Prodigal Sun on Mondays starting September 23rd at 9, 8 central. And we hope you like this bonus episode. This has been really fun. Yeah.

We had a great time doing it. It was super fun to do a themed show and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely

true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path.

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