Rotten Mango - #211: The Millionaire “Human Girl” Collector & Sex Dungeons

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

If you walked into his house, you would be tempted to walk right back out. The smell alone could have knocked you back through the front door. Every surface, every wall, every square inch of the floor was littered with dust.  He collected tens of thousands of bottles, empty cereal boxes, trash, magazines, everything. He kept it all. I don’t know how you would find anything, let alone anyone in a place like that.  It would have been nearly impossible to know that in a tiny little empty sugar box that blended in with the rest of the trash - there was a note. It read, “my name is Amy help me… I have been kidnapped.”  In this house, 5 women were held captive for 15 years, and he almost got away with it.  Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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in all states or situations, prices vary based on how you buy. Better being better boom. Welcome to this week's main episode of Rotten Mango, I'm your host Stephanie Sue. Now Brian always had problems with his dad, but at least he tried to maintain a relationship with him. Unlike his other brothers who just moved out of the family home, they were practically estranged from his parents. They never talked to each other. Brian didn't think that was right. I mean, you know, at the end of the day,

these are his parents after all. The brothers all loved their mom. I mean, how could they not? She had been battling cancer for over a decade. Anytime they saw their mom, she was sick and bad, and that just broke their hearts. Their dad though? He was a whole different story. Brian and his brothers had gotten into multiple physical fights with their dad, because I mean, listen to the audacity of this man. It was just incredible.

While their mom was dying of cancer in their family home, their father moved in his 16-year-old girlfriend to live there in the family house to have sex with her. Their father was like 50 at the time, I mean it was disgusting. It seemed like the other brothers could never forgive their father for that. But Brian, he tried to move past it. Which is why he was his dad's go-to errand boy. You know the child that's responsible for driving the parent to and from the airport when they go on

trips? That was Brian. So he showed up dutifully. They get in the car and they start making the drive to the airport. I mean, it was uncomfortable. There was a heavy silence in the car. Like I said, Brian's close to his dad, but it doesn't mean they're best friends. There were still some things that Brian didn't quite understand about his dad, which is, you know, why did his dad ask him to help build a bunker,

an underground sex dungeon, if you will. And now, why was there a blindfolded little girl in the backseat of his car? They drove in silence for a while before Brian broke the silence. A dad? Uh, who's um, who's the girl that you have blindfolded? Fixed silence. And his dad responded. Nothing. Don't worry about her son. She's got problems with her weight and her family asked me to help her lose a couple pounds. That's all.

And with that, Brian gripped tightly onto the steering wheel and he kept driving. Did he know that his father had kept this little girl hostage in a bunker, assaulting her daily, subjecting her to torture every single day for the past two years? Did he know that his dad was going to have more victims? Did Brian do nothing to stop it? I guess we'll never know. This is the story of John Jamelsky and his underground sex dungeon. As always full show notes are available at rottonminglepodcast.com but here's the wild thing about this case. When the news broke of what was going on in John's sex dungeon, I mean the case was thrust into even international spotlight.

How could this have happened? Who let this happen? How long did it go on for? Over a decade, that's crazy. Someone must have known! So you would imagine that there's gonna be so many sources on this, covering this case, talking about it. But not really. It's weird. There's speculations for why that is that we'll get into later, but there is a book called Case the Girls Good Night, written by Mark Gatto. Now he's a former NYPD officer. He had 29 years working in the police force. So there's a lot of interesting perspective in this book. It's probably

the best deep dive that you're gonna get on this case. So if you're doing extra research or you want to do your own research, that is the best place to start in my opinion. So with that being said, let's dive head first into John's life, or more particularly John's house. If you walked into John's house, you would be tempted to walk right back out. I mean, the smell alone could have knocked you back through the entrance of the front door.

Every surface, every wall, every square inch was littered with dust, debris, trash, cans, bottles, old cereal boxes, newspapers, magazines from decades ago. I don't know how you would find anything or let alone anyone in there. You could easily lose your dog or a human. This was a true hoarder's house. So it would have been incredibly difficult for anyone to find a tiny little empty sugar box. You know, like the dominoes, sugar box, the white box. It was empty.

It looked like all the other empty boxes that were being hoarded and littered on the floor. But this one was different. Inside was a tiny little piece of paper that read. My name is Amy. Help me. I've been kidnapped. So this case is interesting. Other than the hoarding aspect, there is a collector's aspect.

I feel like it's interesting. Some people are born to be collectors, right? And it's not just collecting things that you like. Some people just love a collection. They're very crazy about it. My sister has like a shoe collection that's... And it's not even just a shoe addiction or a liking for. My sister has like a shoe collection that's, and it's not even just a shoe addiction or a liking for shoes, it's like a collection or like a nail polish

collection. She's got nail polish from maybe when I was like eight years old, that is so clumped over, you can't even use it, but she has to collect it. Why? I don't know. See, that's what I'm saying. She can't throw it away. No. Same with her shoes. They're shoes that she's worn since she was 16. She's in her 30s now and she never wears them anymore, but she refuses to donate that like it's a collection. Meanwhile, other things she's totally fine with like donating and stuff, but shoes nail polish. I'm not really a collecting person, but John was and it kind of ran in his family. Some said that John had a dream of being a collector of women. Okay, that's.

So later authorities would speculate this because he had, you didn't really have a particular type, I guess you could say. His victims ranged in age from 14 to 53 and they were all different age groups and they were all different backgrounds. There was one who is indigenous, Asian, Hispanic, Black, white, so was he starting a collection? A lot of people thought that he was. I mean it's just so dark and sick to think about but just keep that in mind while we talk about today's story. So John Thomas Jamaltski was born in Syracuse, New York. Listen if there's anything that these cases have taught me, it's that you should never trust a nice looking couple

in California, and you don't trust anyone named John from the East Coast. Or just don't trust anyone in general. But John Jamel's ski is gonna be out here making it worse for the Johns of the East Coast. So he's born in this small community in New York, which side note, if you're not from the US, New York City is not all of New York.

There's gonna be a lot of suburban areas, even rural areas that don't feel like Manhattan, and that's where John Jemalsky grew up. His parents saved every little penny that they made to afford this nice house in the suburbs of New York. And it sounded like John was raised kind of well. I'm going to be honest. John Sr. was pretty good influence on his kids. The guy was not rolling in money. He was frugal, he stayed home though, he didn't drink,

his whole hobby was repairing and collecting clocks. So he was a collector for sure. I mean, the gene is just in the family, and he had a ton of clocks like all over the walls. And the family grew berries and vegetables in their farm slash backyard, so anytime people would pass on this big street in front of their house, they would have this little berry table outside and people would just buy berries for their road trip. I mean, really, there is nothing in this guy's childhood that screams alarming. In fact, it screams, picture perfect.

I guess the troubles or the problems really started with school. John Jr. had a really, really hard time fitting in. Okay, his grades were average, but his social skills were kind of bizarre. It's almost like he didn't care to fit it, or maybe he was socially not capable. I don't know, it's unclear, but he never tried to talk to anybody in class. He never tried to make friends, and just as much as John Jr. was an interested in socializing, the guy had zero concern for his hydrate. And it's not that he was depressed because I know that some, you know, not a good amount of people that can afford good hygiene might not

partake in it if they're depressed, right? But it's just confusing because he had no other signs of depression. He just did not care about his clothes or his face or his hair. So he wore the same exact clothes to school every single day without washing them. He never washed his face. He never showered. So yeah, when John walked in the room, there was a bit of a smell that kind of followed him, okay? And he was developing a little bit of acne because he wasn't washing his face at all. And again, I have no idea why he refused to groom himself. John's classmates, though, they were really messed up and mean. They gave him a nickname that stuck for years.

though, they were really messed up and mean. They gave him a nickname that stuck for years. It was just germs. Straight to the point. Very confusing. Listen, it's sad, but it's really hard to feel bad for the guy because you find out what he does later. And it's just, anyway, so somehow, even with his average grades, he graduates high school, then college, and there's just really nothing remarkable about this guy. He's just an average guy with subpar hygiene. That's it. It wasn't until after college that he joined the Army reserves that a different side of John came out. So a lot of people speculate and I kind of agree with this statement, but in grade school and college, John was bullied. So when he went to the army reserves,

he created this story about himself and he brought it back home later. He said that when he joined the army, he could be with whoever he wanted. Women just threw themselves at him. They were literally just legs spread open, throwing their legs at his face. Like he was describing it as if he couldn't even get a second himself because women were trying to climb through the bases, climb onto the tanks in the army. And like, they're like, giant, jamele ski. I need you right now.

Like, that is the life that he is picturing for everyone. He's like, that was me. Like, girls literally broken to the fort to be with me. Yeah, he thought he was like America's GI Joe, you know what I'm talking about, like a war hero or something, it was weird. And honestly, I think John has the tendency to be quite delusional.

He's someone that will see a situation completely differently in his head because that is the reality that he wants to live in. So after the army, he comes back home and he's like, you know what, I'm just so glad to be back. Cause you know, there's just not a lot of hot woman here, but man in the army, I was so exhausted.

This is like my vacation. You know, I just, I was the most popular guy on base. I was so sleep deprived from all the sex that I was having. Oh, you wouldn't even know. Who is he telling his friends? Just imagine you're at the grocery store, check out Lane. Okay. He's telling you, he's telling anyone that's gonna listen.

Sir, it's a McDonald's, right here. Do you want a big Mac or what? Like, come on, we gotta keep it pushing. So John comes back to town. He coaches the little league baseball and he ends up marrying this woman named Dorothy Richmond. And together they have three sons, Paul, Eric, and Brian. And John goes back to being a normal dude. He strikes me as the type that peaked in the army or allegedly

peaked in the army and he would just bring up stories of the army non-stop. Like you would be eating a french fry and be like, that's a good french fry. And then he'd be like, you know, in the army, we didn't have french fries. I was out in the trenches. I was fighting for your freedom. I thought you were on desk, dude. Isn't that what you said? No, okay. We get it. Thank you for serving our country, but please stop telling us about your sex life. Thank you. So, John and his whole family, they were pretty normal. The only thing that made them stand out was, um, John's stinginess.

I mean, the guy was insane. You know how his dad was frugal? This guy took it up a few hundred notches. His dad was more financially responsible. John Jr. was neurotic about money. So here's a couple of examples. Back when everyone bought a Sunday newspaper, you read the newspaper and in the back of the newspaper, there's a bunch of coupons that you can clip.

You take them to the store the rest of the week and you use them. But John felt like it was counterintuitive to purchase the newspaper with money to get coupons to save money. He just wanted to save money. So he went to the library every single Monday and was like where are your old Sunday newspapers? Hand them on fucking over. And if they're like, we can't do that or like John like this last time, he would get so visibly red in the face. like this last time he would get so visibly red in the face. Just so angry, so aggressive. He was not embarrassed of making a scene. He would get in their faces and he would say, you know what? I am a paying customer. No, he's not because libraries are free, but I'm

a paying customer. I deserve those free coupons. How are you going to make it up to me? He was so close to getting violent that the staff just tried to give him whatever he wanted because they just wanted him to leave. The man wanted his coupons and he was not playing. And I'm not judging him because listen, maybe he really needed those coupons to feed his growing family. Maybe that explains the anger.

Maybe it's the stress, the pressure of feeding your kids. But it wasn't. John was a secret millionaire. What? When John senior died, he left John with a sizable clock collection. And a lot of them were vintage Tiffany and company pieces that were each worth more than $40,000 back then,

which in today's money calculating inflation is $200,000 a clock. What? But did he sell them though? Yeah. He did. And John inherited his dad's house and surrounding property, which developers later purchased for a whopping half a million dollars.

And with that money, John invested a ton of money into real estate and into the stock market and he was making sizable returns every single year. Hmm. We don't know the exact value of his assets, but the guy was a millionaire. And he was out here harassing people for coupons, making them shake in their pants. But wait, there's more. Back in the day, and you can still do this in a few states. But you can cash old bottles and cans for their deposit value at local stores.

So it's about like five or ten cents. And what happens in these states is that you get surcharged five or ten cents per bottle and then you're just getting that back. When you recycle it, right? But a lot of the times people won't, so they'll just recycle them and then people will go through the cans and bottles, collect them, and then take them to the distributing center to get their money. John starts doing that.

Yeah, he would spend every waking hour of every day that he wasn't working, not spending it with his boys or his family or his wife, the secret millionaire, but he would go and collect these cans. He would go out and pack his car to the brim with these cans and bottles. I mean, he would stuff more and more and more until there was no way in the world of physics that he could fit another bottle in his car. Then he would drive home with all these cans. He would take his time to put the cans into his house and then he would spend hours and hours Separating the ones that were worth something to the worms that weren't Then he would drive half of it to the distribution centers to redeem the money

But some brands were not recyclable in New York So he would save all of these and drive to the neighboring state of Maine to go get that cash Like five cents on the gate to rate and snapple bottles. And again, there are a lot of people that do this in LA. We would see a lot of people do this, primarily like elderly. I saw a lot of like elderly Asian women doing this and like K-Town and stuff, but it's not by choice. So my heart really goes out to those people, but John was just not one of those people.

He was one of those people that had money, but was so disgustingly stingy. He just wanted more? Yeah. And I think it's strange because he willingly spent so much time away from his family, away from his kids to do this. I mean, every waking minute of every day that he wasn't working or sleeping, he was doing shit like this.

I mean, it was his thing, he was obsessed. The town just knew him as a creepy smelly dude that roamed the streets for hours looking for bottles. I mean, I wouldn't pass, I wouldn't put it was his thing, he was obsessed. The town just knew him as a creepy smelly dude that roamed the streets for hours looking for bottles. I mean, I wouldn't pass, I wouldn't put it past this guy to wrestle a pregnant woman from a bottle. What do you mean you're not done during the Gatorade?

I suggest you get done. And it wasn't just that he spent time away from his family to collect bottles. He never spent any money on his children. They always wore the same clothes, they got bullied at school, they wore the same shoes to school. I'm not saying that he should spoil them. I mean, come on. He's a horrible father.

And to add to that, John was briefly arrested for attempted burglary. He was like, let me try to rob a house and get some valuables to sell. It was really bizarre. He was caught. Yeah. So other than his borderline psychopathic frugality and the attempted burglary and the lack of personal hygiene, John was an average guy. Like there were no other reports of him being particularly violent or abusive, unless you were denying him as God for second right to coupons. Other than that, the guy was not violent. Everything about him was average, except that he was a hoarder. So remember how he collected those bottles?

He also displayed them like trophies in his house. There are pictures of this, and it's kind of wild, but he had rows and rows of those shelves on his walls, and he would just display his black stick and glass bottles on those shelves like they were Oscars. He just kept hundreds, if not thousands, and thousands of empty bottles of all shapes and brands displayed in his house.

So they're all different ones? Yeah. So he's treating it like a collection. No, but he would keep multiple of the same. So imagine a Coke can comes in multiple sizes and then you have the plastic bottles and then the glass bottles, he would keep multiple of the same and they were all empty. There's no Coke in there. And none of them are like limited edition. And he would just put them on his wall. Imagine every time you drink a bottle of water or a soda, you would put it on your wall. And you would organize it by brand, by size. So he had a size for eight ounce co-cans,

12 ounce co-cans. And again, these are not like limited edition co-cans. Yeah. You're like, what about his pantry? Why doesn't he stuff it in his pantry? You can't walk in looking for a snack because it's filled with empty plastic bottles and it's filled with empty cereal boxes, food packaging, I mean he kept everything. The walls, there was no place to hang art because again, it's filled with plastic bottles.

Which by the way, those plastic bottles, he was really weird about it. He would reorganize it maybe one through twice a week. Just spend so much time taking everything off the walls, dusting these empty plastic bottles that you could find literally in someone's dumpster right now. And then he would put them back and reorganize it. Maybe he's just has a thing for bottles. Yeah, which normally is fine. I don't blame anyone for a hobby or judge anyone for a hobby, but it's the fact that his house was the living conditions were getting unbearable. And he didn't care what it meant for his kids or for his wife. It was very selfish.

He refused to get rid of anything. Anything, empty shampoo bottles, empty ketchup bottles, clinics, tissue bottles, and for some odd reason, this guy kept every single piece of mail that he ever received in his entire life. I'm not just talking the sentimental stuff. I'm talking every water bill, everymarketing magazine every single piece of mail He is a hoarder. Oh, yeah, and then the trash pile up just got worse and worse

And he even started piling out trash on the back of his house like in his yard So this guy had a pretty big yard. It was it was not a normal sized yard. It's huge It's like a mixture of a yard and a farm It's not as big as a farm where you don't see your neighbors. You still see your neighbors. But it's like a it's a nice size lot. I would say think three or four regular lot sizes and he has a lot of length in the front of the road or front of the yard So it's not like just a driveway and then it's house But it's not rule enough that you can't see your neighbors and this is important

So he starts using his backyard to buy a Laptrash. I mean, it was so unsightly because apparently John didn't like the idea of hiring a gardener. So he straight up let his grass just grow and grow and it was like waste tie. So you want like the color grass too? Yeah, and then in the grass, he would just throw trash in. Like whatever he wanted. Bathroom sinks, old tires, refrigerators that were old and musty and broken.

Rusty motorbikes, abandoned cars, three snowmobiles that were no longer working. I mean, it was strange, because these aren't even things that are just coming out of him. Like, it's not like he was renovating his house and got rid of this sink and was like, I'm just gonna throw it in the backyard. It's not that he had a car that just stopped working, so he's like, I'm just gonna throw it in the backyard. It's not that he had a card that just stopped working. So he's like, I'm just gonna throw it in the backyard.

It wasn't like that. He just went out looking for these things in a junkyard. And then he threw it back in his backyard and made the junkyard his backyard. I mean, I can picture him already cruising down the junkyard, looking like he just hit a jackpot, taking his sweet time and energy to halt shit at home. I mean, what? So you can throw it in your backyard? He's lucky there was no HOA where he lived because HOAs don't play. They're like the IRS of your town. They're insane. My sister apparently had the wrong kind of flower bushes in her garden.

They made her rip the flowers out and get new flowers. What does that even mean? How can a flower be wrong? Yet, H.O.A.s don't play. Now, he didn't have an H.O.A. but the neighbors did try and get John to clean up his yard. So at this point, the area where John was living, it was a nice area.

It was slowly getting more and more gentrified. You know, it's getting more suburban, more wealthy. So all the neighbors, they've got these nice houses. These pristine yards and they would go got these nice houses, these pristine yards, and they would go on these little walks, these power walks, he's bringing down our house value. Let me look at the curb appeal, oh gone, because of his junk yard, I don't even like to jog past his house anymore.

I mean, I can't even sell my house, because buyers will drive past his house thinking we live near a junk yard. We should call someone. The neighbors did. They called the authorities multiple times, and the authorities were like, hey, John, ever heard of cleaning up a little bit. But they couldn't do anything. It's not illegal to be an irresponsible dirty homeowner.

So they just left it to it. So John decided, I'm going to erect a wall. He started building a six-foot fence around his yard. Now normally, these neighbors are the type to get pissed off about it. Because again, it's very unsightly. The curb appeal of my home value is going down, right? But they were just so happy that his trash was getting covered up. Out of sight, out of mind, they were losing less curb appeal this way.

And then, John's certified midlife crisis began. His wife got diagnosed with cancer. And you're like, why the fork is John making this about him? Why is he having a midlife crisis when it's his wife? That's the one that has cancer. Yeah, same. My question is the same. Why is he making it about himself?

I don't know, but he did. John decided my wife is dying. Oh my god, I have sex with now. That was literally his thought. So he entered into his 49 year old emo teenager phase where he started spending money on designer jeans. Oh, now he wants to spend money, by the way. Sneakers. Other trendy clothes that teenagers, literal teenagers are wearing. He's 50. He starts dressing like a teenager. He starts talking like a teenager. He let his hair grow out and he wore it in a ponytail. He started walking around like a teenager. And to really finish the look, he starts dating a 16 year old named Debbie. I repeat, a 16 year old Debbie,

and he's 49. So he starts dating her. And he he's gonna move Debbie into their house, which is like just Wild so Dorothy his wife is bedridden and sick from her cancer and he's decided that he's going to have his 16-year-old girlfriend Move in with them. I mean even John's kids were so disgusted that one of them decked John in the face So because it was causing so much family tension John asked Debbie to move out But you better believe he was pissed off about it. He was annoyed. He felt like it was causing so much family tension, John asked Debbie to move out, but you better believe he was pissed off about it. He was annoyed. He felt like it was his right, his constitutional right to break the law

and have sex with a minor, you know? He felt like it was his right to have someone in the house that would satisfy him. And if his wife can't do it, then like, why can't somebody else do it? Yeah, that was literally his thought. He probably justified it in his head. He kept telling everyone, Debbie made him feel younger.

So maybe in his head, he's like, well, it's like feel younger than I can take care of my wife better. And she's sick. Except he wasn't even taking care of his wife. So after Debbie's kicked out, John starts leaving the house to engage with sex workers and he just really didn't like it. Because he really doesn't like paying for things. Since, you know, he's cheap.

And he also hated the fact that they don't do everything he says. You know, they weren't like really his to own, you know, and that kind of bothered him. Because his wife and his girlfriend, he felt like they were his. Like, part of his little collection. He can do whatever he wants with them. But these women, they weren't. So he was kind of annoyed about that. So he's struggling with these little emotions, wow, so sympathetic. Anyway, John's kids, they grow up, leave the house, but John is closest to his

youngest son, Brian. Because I don't know, maybe Brian's trying to understand this guy's midlife crisis, at least to some degree. Because that's why even when John called his son to help him dig a hole in the backyard, Brian didn't think anything was weird. He was like maybe he's planning a new tree. A rose bush maybe? Well the hole ended up being more than 10 feet deep, 24 feet long, and 15 feet wide. That's bigger than like a pool in someone's backyard. That's not a hole. That's like a whole new foundation for a house. That's a big hole. That's multiple rooms, full sized rooms that you can stick into that hole. Does the sun know what it was about? Yeah, so the sun was like, my dad's just quirky.

I think he just wants to see if he can dig a hole, you know. We're just gonna keep digging. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but if you're a loved one or your neighbor suddenly develops a fascination with digging holes with no apparent purpose or use, it's time to start questioning what's going into that hole at night when you're not looking. I've never heard of someone being like, my favorite hobby. Oh, just love digging holes, refilling them with soil and then digging another one and then refilling it with soil and then digging another one. That's a good one.

Have you ever tried it? The stress release? Incredible. I have never heard that in my life. Brian said, it's just a challenge, you know? My dad just thought, well if I can do it, I might as well try it. We didn't like build it in secret in the middle of the night. I wouldn't call it like a dungeon or anything. It's just a hole. But at the same time, he said, I did feel this bad omen, you know? Like something bad was gonna happen as a result of the bunker that we were building,

but I still built it. First of all, nobody saw them dig the hole because they had erected a six foot tall fence around their property, and secondly, it was a dungeon though, because after digging this massive hole, John called up some contractors, had created essentially a concrete dungeon that was three feet under

the soil. So remember how the hole was ten feet deep? Now it was going to be a seven foot tall bunker with three feet of densely packed iron on top. And if we were walking above, nobody would hear your footsteps if they were in the bunker. Three feet is a lot. So the contractor knew? Yeah, and he was like, it's a bunker.

I'm a doomsday pepper. The bunker was not connected directly to was like, it's a bunker. I'm a doomsday preparer. The bunker was not connected directly to the house, not yet at least, so it's just a hole in the wall and they patched it up. And then eventually, he starts digging a tunnel from his basement to the bunker. The tunnel was like 10 feet long,

and it's a tiny, tiny little tunnel, like one person at a time. If you start going into the tunnel, it would be, you'd be hard pressed literally to turn around and you turn back out. It's a type of tunnel where you have to just go all the way out and then get out into the bunker and then physically move your body around and then head back down. Now, this is where I get super alarming. One on earth is going in this bunker. John told his son and anyone else that might know about it. It's a bomb shelter, you know?

It's like a two birthed one stone. First of all, I'm gonna use it for parties. We can party in there. Second part is, you know everyone's worried about the USSR and they're talking about China. China's on the come up, you know? And one day, both of them are gonna nuke us. So I got the bunker.

All of that is just alarming because who wants to party in this bunker? Absolutely no one. Let me take you through a bunker because it's not a party room and that tunnel just think about even if it were a party room. Think about the the danger aspect of having drunk people in and out of this 10 foot tunnel that's suffocating. I mean, I don't even want to think about it, right?

And then all the lack of oxygen in that bunker with all the people and then this one exit, I don't know. Anyway, in a bunker you would assume that there are lines and lines of canned food, like necessities that you would need to survive in case of an emergency, aka the whole purpose of doomsday prepping and the whole purpose of a bunker. That's not what was going in John's bunker. In fact, he had like no food in his bunker. Whether you're doing intense to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided

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What a police. What about the police? It was the height of the crack era and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history

and the investigation of the police's biggest corruption scandal in NYPD history, and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%. I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series, available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.

I'm not a big guy, man, but I love being that dirty motherfucker. The first site that you would see through the front gate of John's property, okay, I'm just gonna give you like a look of his house, the feel. It's in the middle of a somewhat affluent residential street, so you might think that you feel safe there. But in front of you is a six-foot tall gate. It's kind of strange, but you pass it, and again, you can still see neighbors so you feel somewhat safe. There's trash everywhere, the minute that you walk in. I mean, strange. Is this an abandoned property in the middle of a street like this? That doesn't make sense. Some developer would have bought

it up. The lawn is so uncapped wise there's so much rusty, the smell of that rusty metal junk is just permeating through the air. You pass through the tall grass. You find yourself standing in front of John's house. In the smell, the stench, you can smell it through the door. It's like a ticking time bomb of old factory detonators ready to go off. But pass that creaky door. You're slapped across the nostrils by the pungent smell of mold and age. Aged dust.

Aged everything. You navigate your way through the stackable of papers, cardboard boxes, you get to the entrance of John's basement. All the windows throughout John's entire house have been covered with wire shelving and then bolted and chained across and the chain's form an X pattern. There is no escape through the windows. Then one of the basement walls has a small tiny little door. I'm talking 32 inches by 37 inches, just enough for one person to enter at a time.

It's less of a door but more of an entrance into a hole. You have to climb up into the hole onto your hands and knees, crawl for about 10 feet, and the dampness. I mean your knees and hands are going to be so damp and the deeper you go the more claustrophobic you get, but just when you think you're at the end, you're not. There's more. Your eyes are blinking rapidly from the dust that's just been accumulating, and in those moments you're making to yourself, okay, I just, I need to appreciate fresh air.

Maybe I should you turn it out of here because it's just been so dank since the minute that I stepped onto this property. When you finally get to the end of the tunnel, there's not even much room for you to turn around. You would have to get out and get back in. So at the end, you push open the metal door, feels heavy and stiff and it gives that rusty, rusty squeak when you open. And you find yourself standing on a ledge that's a few feet off the ground,

and you find yourself in the first room, the bathroom. It smells like that awful wet garbage that's been sitting out in the rain for days, and you have to squint so hard because the lighting is so dim, there's like one light bulb in the entire space, and it's not bright. The walls, the floor, the ceilings, they're all concrete, but it smells like mold. If there was more light, you would see that the walls were a bit damaged, as if someone had pounded on them. There's cracks and dents, a large portion of cement is broken off and is just laying on the floor now. There's reinforced rods of steel that are exposed on the surface of the walls.

The bathroom, if you can even call it that, is just this old bathtub that's caked in mold and dirt and the water source is a dirty hose coming out of the wall. I suspect only cold water ran through the hose. There's a makeshift toilet. It's like a frame. Imagine you took a couple pieces of PVC piping. It's so thin. I don't think you would even support a two-year-old to sit on it. But underneath it is a bucket. One of those plastic ones that you get from like, lows or home depot. And that's the toilet. Wow. That's the bathroom.

The bedroom is no better. It's also not a bedroom. It's an empty cold musty room with a piece of wood on the ground and a thin piece of foam on top. Not a mattress, not a mattress cover. One of those old yellow foams that you buy at the hardware store that you would I don't know pack into drywall. That's what you would have. As the bed. And a single light bulb dangled from the ceiling, but it barely worked most of the time. And if it did and if it was brighter, you would see the graffiti on the wall.

Letters were choppy and unevenly spaced. Some red, ready to ruckus. bring on the pain, peace to all those who enter. Again, does this sound like a bunker to you? I mean, my main problem with Brian is that if he felt weird about it and if he felt like something could have happened, why didn't you just check on the bunker once in a while or ask his dad to go see it together? Anything? Nothing. And that would have cost a lot of girls trauma and potentially their lives. So the thing about the bunker was that it wasn't even built in anticipation of anything. It was built as a solution. Meaning, John didn't build it so that he could kidnap someone and lock them in there.

He built it because he had already kidnap someone and wanted them to be closer to him. Let me explain. John was struggling to find sexual satisfaction in sex workers, like I said. And overall, consenting adult woman just was not his flavor. It was not his interest. He hated the idea of dating another teenager because, with Debbie, it was so much energy and time and money that he had to waste. To try and get a teenager to date him, he had to work for it. But also fighting with his sons about dating someone illegally,

God, is so much drama and so much work. The simpler solution would be to kidnap a girl for sex and keep her downstairs in the bunker where he could visit her whenever he wanted and wait for her to stop. So one night he's driving around listening to music, something he and a lot of serial killers call cruising, he was cruising around, and he spots this 14-year-old girl walking down by the street by herself. Which side note, normally we talk about the victim's lives as much as we can, because I think it helps to build a connection. I think that's the only way to understand like the gravity of a violent crime, but in this case, all the victims have wished to remain anonymous. So we don't know anything about the victims except their ages and ethnicities.

Now, if you are researching this case, you can find some names here and there and some pictures, but I'm going to use fake names for all of this. So 14-year-old Amy was a bit of a troubled teenager, or at least that's kind of how the police categorized her. She had run away from home a few times prior, so they're like, okay, well, if she goes missing, she probably ran away from home. So that night, she had hung out with some friends. She starts walking back home and John pulls up beside her in his car and he convinces her to get in because he's going to give her a ride back home. It's going

to be safe. It's going to be simple, no big deal. I think she also trusted him because John has this ability to relate to teenagers. He wasn't like that creepy old guy that pretended to be a teenager. He actually acted like a genuine teenager So as a teen you might think oh this guy's not a creepy old peto or at least the ones that were taught they look like he looks nice But instead he took her to his mom's house where his mom was still alive and living in the house He took her to his mom's house and forced Amy into the basement and it's speculated that he drugged her in some way because she said that she lost consciousness, woke up a few hours later, chained, naked, and it made sense because his mom didn't report any screaming at any point, which even if she heard it, I don't even know if she would report it. So she's in this basement in this tiny concrete storage unit.

It's seven feet by three feet, so it's enough space for someone to lie down on the ground, but that's about it. And the door had this big lock and a clasp on it and you couldn't get out. Once you were put in that storage unit, that was it. This whole room, if you could even call it that, it was unfinished, it's just concrete, no heat, no AC, no toilet, no electricity, nothing.

So John threw Amy in there, chained her to the wall so that she couldn't try and climb out, and for the next six months, six months, that is where Amy was left. Six months, I mean I can't even begin to comprehend how long six months is to be confined in a space like that, to be tortured like that. But it was even worse for Amy who was only 14. So for six months, Amy had nothing. She was in complete darkness in a cold concrete room. This is in the winter in New York. I mean, you're talking freezing cold. Amy was naked. She had no clothes, no

blanket. She didn't even have carpeting. It's genuinely a miracle that she didn't die during this period. The only source of light that she got ever was a single candle that John would bring in every day when he moved her. So for six months, she would only visibly see her dream in her best, every day, for six months. And this was just the start of her two-year captivity. So in this concrete room, I mean, he's barely bringing food down probably because his mom would notice.

The guy is stingy beyond relief as well, so maybe he didn't care to buy food. He didn't care to even keep her alive. There was no plumbing so Amy was forced to relieve herself right next to where she slept. The conditions were utterly inhumane. It's astonishing that Amy didn't get seriously ill. And I know people are going to be like, why didn't Amy just fight back? Which is not a great way of thinking by the way, but let's say you are wondering that. John started his psychological torture on her, and this is just sick, but John was able to talk to Amy during his torture, during his rapes about, she didn't divulge like, this is my name, this is where I go to school.

But he was able to gather enough information, find her last name in the directory of the area that she lived, and found her home address. Then he went to that family home, spoke to Amy's parents as if he was the landlord and he needed to take pictures of the house for insurance purposes. Amy's house? Yes, and Amy's parents had no reason not to believe him. So he took pictures. He tried to terrify hurt you the most. He took pictures and was like, I'm going to kill your whole family, including your little brother. And to add to that, John started talking about how easy it was for him and his people to

hurt Amy. And you're like his people. What are you talking about? John claimed that he was part of a huge sex cult, an underground sex cult, very Jeffrey Epstein vibes. He said politicians, famous people, police officers, they were all a part of it. They would come to have sex with each other's

in prisoned hostages, and there was a hierarchy. John explained that in this very house, there were other girls. Girls that started just like Amy, here in this room, but they earned the trust of the group. So they earned a better life. They were moved up into a normal room. So one of the best ways to get to the top of the food chain and try to survive is to have sex with John.

He was even like, every time you don't have sex with me that you're in here, it adds to more time. We have a log. Amy said she basically just gave up and laid there. And for the record, John was not in any sex cult, and I'm not saying that these types of cults don't exist, but John was not in one. Well, at least not in reality, maybe in his head. So finally, when the dungeon is complete, he decides to move Amy into his bunker. She was blindfolded, she had no idea where she was going, she just remembers being forced to crawl a super long tunnel, and when she finally was able to take her blindfold off, she was in the bunker, and her leg was chained to the floor. I mean crazy enough this was

actually better conditions than what she had before. She had a toilet to use but again most days she was in complete darkness. Other than having a bucket for a toilet and a little bit more space, everything was the same. Now that John could get to Amy more easily instead of driving over to his mom's house he actually beat her more frequently. He would leave her only food like little crumbs for food, He gave her a water bottle every few days. If Amy screamed, nobody could hear her. The bunker was virtually soundproof. John's bed ridden wife was always home, but nobody heard. And the torture didn't stop there. John forced Amy to keep a journal, a diary, of everything she did that day.

So if she brushed her teeth, she would have to log that. If she took a bath, she would have to log that. If he weaped her, she would have to log that. But he didn't like her using the word rape. So he made her log it as sex as if it was consensual. John also forced Amy to drink alcohol, which seems to be something that he would do with his later victims as well because there were more than 50 videos and photos found. Some of the videos depicted John dancing and exercising with his victims and they look out of it, but they look like they're being forced to act like they're enjoying it. I imagine he forced them to take these photos so that he could look at them later or these videos, or maybe in case he needed to argue that they were having a great time together.

So anyway, Amy was so depressed that she would sleep 20 hours a day. The only time that she was awake was when John would come downstairs, and straight up handmade stale, he would read the Bible to her before weeping her. I mean, it's so chilling. I can't even imagine the additional religious trauma that you're going to have to endure. I mean, it's just crazy. And as time went on, it said that John came down, pretending like he was on a date with Amy. Like he wasn't there to blooper, he would buy her small gifts and snacks and flowers,

and I think this is just another part that shows how freaking delusional this guy is. Not that he's so delusional that he can't be held accountable for his crimes, he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he just tries to force everyone to live in his reality. After Amy's first year of captivity, he trusted her enough to write back to her parents. But she was forced to lie. She said that she had run away to New York City, she was staying with friends and she was fine.

And then after two years out of nowhere, John was like, hey Amy, I'm taking you on vacation. To good old California. Okay, so he sat there and he gave this whole monologue of threats of what was going to happen to her family if she tried to run away during their romantic getaway. Which by the way, he also told her that they were going to California so that Amy could have sex with his other cult leaders. So there's that.

Anyway, he reminded her that he knew where her family lived and he would get to them. So she was blindfolded, let out of the bunker, thrown into a car, Brian's car, and Brian trove them to the airport. Yeah, that Brian. I just don't know how he could have ignored something like this. Wait, so he saw? Yes, her blindfolded. What's his excuse? Remember, she's just like a family friend I'm helping her lose weight. Which is a really bizarre excuse and

Brian's like that's cool. Yeah, so he dropped them off at the airport They flew to California and in California they're visiting casinos going out. I mean they were out in public I just don't see how anyone would see them and not think something stranger is going on He's clearly 55. She's 16. I mean, it's clear they're not acting like father and daughter or even uncle and niece. It's just like, who are these people? But nobody said anything. I guess maybe it was just too unclear.

So after a week of this, John bought Amy a plane to get to New York and she got on the plane alone. That's it, he let her go. And when she got back, her parents were so happy. I mean, she had been gone for two years. They thought that she was living it up in New York City, and they missed her. They wanted to see her.

And now that she was home, maybe she wanted to keep them happy. So for 13 years, Amy didn't tell us so. She wanted to protect her family. She knew if she told her parents they would drag her to the police and maybe John would come back for them, or worse, her brother. Now, side note, around this time the police were already poking around the Jamelsky family, not because they thought that John was kidnapping people, but John's mom had died in a super-strange way. She was 85, and she died around the time that Amy was imprisoned in her basement.

So it's speculated that John might have killed his mom for maybe potentially finding Amy? Because no heat was turned on in the house. The body showed signs of dehydration and malnutrition. I mean, it just feels like if he's keeping girls locked up, who's to say he's not keeping his mom locked up. But because she was so old and the autopsy revealed nothing to sinister, they just ruled it a natural death. But you just can't help but wonder now, you know?

Maybe she did find a girl in her basement and her son would do anything to keep her quiet. That's just the speculation. Now, after releasing Amy, John comes back to New York as if nothing has happened. He just moves on, cleans out the bunker, removes all traces of Amy, and that's that. He goes back to collecting bottles. His collection grew to over 10,000 bottles. What do you think was the reason that he let her go? Just over it? Yeah. Looking for a new one? A new one. That's why people say that they think that he was a collector. Yeah, and he's not scared that she's going to tell the police or find him eventually.

No, I guess he thinks that he's scared her enough. It's bizarre. So he would line up all the bottles, like 10,000 of them, on the shelves and it was just weird. All the labels had to face the same way and he would spend hours and hours on this. And then he would go out into the streets looking for more bottles and girls. And in May, John picked up a 14 year old girl, Brittany. And like Amy, Brittany had a history

of running away from home, which would result in the police not looking for her now that she was missing. Britney had actually been placed in a foster care home for her quote to behavioral issues, and that's when she ran away. So she happened to run into John on a dark lonely street one night. He offered her a job. All she needed to do was deliver a package for him and she would get paid. He claimed that it would take less than an hour to get finished. He would need her to come to his house, get the package, and then deliver it. That's it. Super easy. No, because Brittany ran away, I mean, she needed the money. She gets in the car with him. They get to his house and he's like, come to my basement. I need you

to fetch the package. He had her crawl through the tunnel because they needed to get to the quote storage room. And listen, again, it's one of those things that you feel like, well, I don't know if I would crawl through the tunnel, but these girls are young. She's desperate for money. They're in a position where they don't feel like they can say no. They're already here.

And once they're in the tunnel, it's virtually impossible to turn back. So through the tunnel they go, and once Brittany ends up in the dungeon, she starts feeling uneasy. The walls are covered in graffiti and sure enough, next to the mattress, or rather at the piece of foam, there's a few boxes that look like packages. So she's like, okay, oh, okay, there are packages. He tells her, go on, try lifting it.

It's really heavy. It's filled with gold. She smiled, okay. And starts picking up the boxes and helps him bring them to the tunnel door. And then he told her, I'm gonna bring these through the tunnel and I'll be right back. Just sit on the piece of foam. So she sat there waiting for 30 minutes. And when he walked back in through the door, she jumped up ready to leave and he smiled

at her and said, Hey, what's that on your feet? And she looked down and John leaned down, suddenly pulled a chain around her leg and locked her ankle with it. She was now chained to the floor just as Amy had been. She starts screaming convinced that he's going to kill her and he just says calm down, I'm not going to hurt you, I don't even want to do this in the first place, I'm being paid to do this.

Here take these pills, they'll help you calm down. The pills were a heavy sedative, it knocked her out, she woke back up, chained, naked on the ground, and John was taking pictures of her. Sorry, it's not even for me, it's for my boss. I have to take pictures of you because we're gonna send these overseas and we're gonna sell you on the internet to the highest bitter. One time we got like $30,000 for a girl. So she spent the next few days, naked, chained, raped. Slowly, she would have some freedom, like she would get a sweater. Then slowly, she was allowed to roam the bunker for two hours a day while he watched, but he was never allowed to leave.

He told her that there's only a few rules here. One, she had to have sex with him every day. Second, she had to drink a gallon of water every single day, which honestly is such a strange rule, but it's about control. Brittany hated it. She refused to kiss him the first time he got mad. He would wait for hours every single day. He even gave her a calendar and instructed to write down every time they had sex.

A.K.A. every time she was raped. He had her journal everything. He even instructed a sample of Britney's blood and get this. This hoarder collector, junk lack of hygiene dude, took her blood. And he was like, oh, I'm scared because I've raped you and like, what if you have STDs? John would even later say that he kept Girls' hostage because he was scared that if he didn't, these girls would go out catching STD and give it back to him.

Who the fuck are you? As if he's some sacred, important person that can't be quote-tainted. I mean, you're just a disgusting pig that people need to be protected from. I don't know what you're saying. John showed Brittany photos of her family. He psychologically tortured her. Brittany developed severe depression. She was convinced she was going to die or be sold into slavery.

She started getting suicidal ideations. She started self-harming with cigarettes that John had given her to calm down. And it's speculated that's why John let her go after quote, only 13 months in captivity. He blindfolded her, dragged her to his car, and drove to her house, and screamed to get out. She plopped down on the cold ground before he could change his mind, and there she was, in front of her mother's house. It had been over a year. And just like that, she was free. She ran inside and hugged her parents and immediately told them everything that happened and about how John knew where they lived. He just dropped her off and at first her parents didn't care.

They're like, we need to go straight to the police. But the next day, they saw a suspicious car driving back and forth through the house. From the neighbor had. Brittany peaked outside through the shades of their windows and sure enough, it was John. What? At this point, Brittany's parents were too scared to go to the police. They felt like it was safer for Britney if they just tried their best to protect her without police involvement.

I mean, it was clear threat. And I think it also is important to mention that Britney was considered a quote runaway. So it's likely that the family just have not really good experiences with the police. Of them not really helping, of them blaming Brittany, and just not being useful in any way. I mean, I just can't even begin to think of the layers of trauma that this caused to not only be free, but to know that they're watching you. They're keeping tabs on you, and you think that there's this whole cult out to get you.

I mean, who's to say that they wouldn't do something even if you never tell the police? Who's to say that they're not coming back for you? So after Brittany's release, John does some remodeling in his sex dungeon. And it occurred to him that, would a minute, if one of the girls decided to bunk me on the head while I'm in here, she could easily escape.

So he installed a passcode to the inside. And he would mention to the rest of the future girls, hey, if you try to kill me while I'm in here or if you try to knock me out, you're gonna starve to death, cause you don't have the code. A year later, John finds his next victim. 53-year-old Celeste.

She was much older than the previous two victims and she still looked very useful. She dressed and carried herself with this young spirit and maybe because of her age, John didn't try to talk her into the car. It seems like he stopped to say hello and then just yanked her inside and threatened to kill her if she screamed. He tied a white sock around her mouth, pushed on to the floor, and side note, later John

would say, I never used violence on Celeste to get her in the car. We're absolutely 100% apart on how this happened. Pretty much saying, no, agree to disagree with her story. Like, what? John drove Celeste home and forced her into the bunker, chained her to the ground, and was like, scream all you want, no one can hear you. Anyway, it's not like I want to kidnap you.

Yeah, you guessed it, he's being paid for it, the whole sex cult speech that he gave the other victims, and he continued to rip Celeste every single day, and he even started taking Viagra at this point in his life because he was getting older. So he's taking Viagra to accomplish this and he starts experimenting with psychological torture. He got this 5 foot tall skeleton of a human, put it right next to Celeste's bed, she would wake up to it, fall asleep to this realistic skeleton.

I mean, it was mind games. He forced her to punch holes into old bottle caps and string them together to make necklaces. He made her separate piles of screws and nails into these different glass jars. He would even force her to sing for him, and he would say, she would sing to me. She had the most beautiful acapella voice with no, no instrumentals whatsoever. I mean, it was absolutely beautiful. John was convinced that Celeste actually was thankful that she was kidnapped because if they had met in the real world they would have dated anyway. What? He also beats Celeste so hard on the head that she busted

near drum and is permanently deaf in one year. I just don't get how they're in love in his mind. So after nine months of captivity, like the other two previous victims, he blindfolded her and let her go. But unlike the other victims, Celeste immediately went to the police station. Now here's the problem. Celeste was Vietnamese and her English was not perfect. The detectives claimed they didn't understand a word coming out of her mouth, which is fine. I don't speak Vietnamese either. That's fine. That's why you get a translator because I don't know, that's your freaking job. But nope, they didn't do that. They just felt like her story was not the most realistic. It sounded made up, I mean she seemed hysterical and they said, you know, usually kidnap victims are dead. So why

aren't you dead? So let's say she was in tears. She had been traumatized and now in English her second language, the people that are supposed to protect her were asking her and demanding her to answer, why aren't you dead? Can you imagine? Celeste left the police station and tears and the police refused to listen to her. If they had taken her seriously, John would not have two more victims. But of course, he does. He kidnapped his next known victim, May of 2001. So it's side note, there's always a few years between each kidnapping, and it's possible that John had a cool-off period, or he took breaks, maybe his personal life got busy.

This hiatus, I kind of understand, because his wife had died from cancer. Soon between Celeste and his next kidnapping, his wife had passed, and apparently John was really distraught about it. Which I don't really believe, but anyway. But there is speculation that there were other victims during that period that don't want to come forward or can't because maybe they were murdered. It seems like he did have a violent streak and maybe there were other girls that he did murder because maybe they fought back. The ones that he let go, he was confident that they wouldn't go to the police. I think we're still less, you know, she's older

and he thought, well, she's Vietnamese, the police aren't gonna understand what she's saying, so they're not gonna believe her. I think with the two girls, he had psychologically tortured them enough to believe that they won't say anything. I don't know how to feel about it. It's just one of those things

that we'll never really know the answer to. Now, May of 2001, John claimed he had to kidnap his next victim because it was a sign from above. His wife had died, he was heartbroken, and there on the road he saw the ghost of his wife when she was 26. He said, this woman looked identical to my wife when Dorothy was younger. So I pulled up beside her and I was like, hey, what's your name? Danielle, well you want to go for a drive. So they drove around drinking some beer. Danielle said it was okay,

but there must have been something in the beer because she started stumbling out of the car. And before she knew it, she was naked and chained in the dungeon. John said, you know, we were just having a hell of a good time. We're talking about everything you could possibly think about. She just had the cutest dimple on the side of her face. Yeah, very different perspectives on being kidnapped. John told Danielle the same spiel, you know, the whole sex cult. He also convinced her that there were other sex slaves in the building, and since the graffiti on the walls spelled out other woman's names, Danielle believed him. From time to time, she even heard muffled screams in the distance, and she was sure that there were other prisoners. Now, we know that John was playing tapes of women's screaming.

It is unknown where he got these tapes, but since he's known to take tapes of his victims, it's not entirely impossible that their screams were recorded. Danielle said, hearing those screams made her so depressed she considered suicide. She banged on the walls until her hands were raw and bleeding. But unlike other hostages, Danielle wasn't afraid to fight John. And maybe that's why I just after two months, he released her. She went straight to the police, and just like the last, the police were skeptical. Can you believe it?

They straight up said that the story sounded unbelievable, like a movie. They're like, it's too crazy. I mean, I don't want to say outright that I don't believe you, but at the same time, like, I don't believe you. Danielle sat there giving an incredibly detailed version of events and even described the dungeon in great detail with all the graffiti, the red thick letters that said wall of THUGS on the wall. I mean, she was traumatized.

The last thing she wanted to do was this, but she did it. She's trying to help the police catch the guy. She even remembered the make and model of his car in the year. So pretty much, she handed the police everything that they needed to capture the guy. She even remembered the make and model of his car in the year. So pretty much she handed the police everything that they needed to capture this guy. Now site note, Celeste went to the police, they didn't believe her, so surely they would believe Danielle since she's the second victim who had similar stories. Well Celeste and Danielle went to two different police departments. Which is normal because in any county how many police departments are there, you know? Like even just Los Angeles, there's LAPD,

there's Beverly Hills PD, you know, I'm sure there's like a Santa Monica PED, there's so many. It's normal, but they usually talk to each other. But they didn't. They didn't ask around to see if any other neighboring jurisdictions had any reports of a woman being trapped in a concrete sex dungeon, because Danielle straight up told them, I heard screams of other women. I know there's other women.

And to make matters worse. When news later broke of John Jamal's ski, the police were like, well shit, we did the best we could. Like if this happened again, I think we'd do the same thing. Which I don't know why the captain set that with his whole chest. Like it just makes it worse. But like go off I guess.

Now here's a wild part. Danielle told the police everything. From the graffiti on the walls, the setup, the layout, I guess. Now here's a wild part. Danielle told the police everything. From the graffiti on the walls, the setup, the layout, even his car. So the police, they do a half-ass search for a Mercury comet 1974 model. But they couldn't find any matches to an owner that looked like John. But Danielle was off by one year. It was a 1975 model. Now, this is a very easy mistake to make. You would assume that someone would make a mistake like that,

so you would automatically widen your search. If they had just widened it by one year, they would have found John, who matched Danielle's description to a T. And from there, they could have easily found his house and easily found all of Danielle's descriptions in the house to a T, even the backyard, the front, everything. So due to police incompetence on this case,

John had another victim, 16-year-old Ellen. Ellen was born and raised in Syracuse, and she had run away from home and school for a few times the past few years. Her family had even sent her to a foster care to try and fix her, so that's great. She runs into John and he tells her that she could make a lot of money just posing for pictures.

So she's like, okay, yeah, I'll come with you. But then as they're going, he's like, yeah, I need you to be nude and she's like, oh, no, that passes the line for me. But he leads her down into the basement, like the other girls. And the same thing happens. He forces her to keep a diary. He talks about the sex cult. And most of Ellen's died in the beginning. She said it was just cool, late in crackers. He forced her to take nude photos and videos all the time. He showed her photos of other nude girls. He told her that he was going to sell her on the internet. And now, John and Ellen's relationship, though, was a bit different from the previous victims. John was emotionally attached to Ellen. He would want to read the Bible with her. He

wanted to hang out with her. He trusted her so much that he eventually let her roam the dungeon. Then she was even allowed to roam his house under his watch. Then, she was allowed to go into the backyard with under his watch. Sometimes they would go to the supermarket together. They went bowling, they played pool, they went to McDonald's. Ellen was watched like a hawk outside. She interacted with people at restaurants, but she never raised alarm, never asked for help, because she said that she knew she had one chance to escape

and she needed to make it work. They even went to karaoke together so just imagine a man that's clearly in his 50s and a girl that's clearly 16 going on stage to sing a song together and you know they're not daughter, father and daughter. One day John was like, hey Ellen, you want to come outside with me to collect some bottles. So they started collecting bottles and went to a recycling place to recycle some of them. And Ellen is like, hey, can I use the pay phone? He's like, what? You have no one to call. Well, I need to call the church to ask a few questions because the last time we read the Bible together, you know, there was something that I didn't really quite understand. Remember, I asked you about it?

Well, I was just seeing if I could get like a pastor's opinion. So he's like, okay, sure, use the pay phone. Instead of calling a church, she called her sister, and she whispered into the phone. I mean, just imagine the panic, the adrenaline, the stress. She told her sister, a man cannot me and he's keeping me. Her sister Veronica could barely hear her. She could hear a man in the background. So she tried to give Ellen her number to memorize,

and Ellen was like, maybe I can call you back, maybe I can't buy. So Veronica, being quick on her feet, tracked down where the payphone was, is outside a store. She called that store and asked the employee if they had seen someone that fit the description of Ellen. And he's like, oh yeah, I just saw that dude with Ellen and they said that they're going to a car dealership.

So with that, both the employee and Veronica called the police, led them to the dealership, they show up, and Ellen was described to start yelling the minute she saw the police and she screamed, thank you, you saved my life. She ran into the arms of a female police officer, which by the way, this female officer was called to the dealership to investigate a suspicious man. She had no idea someone had been kidnapped. The police arrest John and he was surprised. He said, I don't get it.

I don't get it. Ellen is my girlfriend. She lives with me willingly. Anyway, if you guys don't mind, I'd like to get this sorted out as soon as possible. I'd like to be with her tonight if possible. What the fuck? John proceeded to tell the police what a wonderful relationship he had with Ellen. He was even planning on taking her to his 50th high school reunion, and the boys were going to be so jealous, they would finally see that he made it. He rambled about how he had

been planning a birthday party for Ellen, but he wasn't dumb. He wasn't planning on marrying her. Not because she was a minor, and someone he was keeping hostage. But because he had been there done that with marriage, it wasn't his thing, you know, his ex-wife died of cancer, and he cared about Ellen, but, you know, he's been around the block. Ellen's gonna find someone her own age later on.

I mean, this is the conversation he's having with police after being arrested for imprisonment and kidnapping and the leap of a minor. Ellen explained the screams that she heard coming from inside the house, and with that the police broke into the house without a search warrant because this is considered an emergency situation. They made it into the damp, disgusting, dank dungeon, and they froze. All of them looked up at the wall, and they looked at each other. And they realized that they made the mistake that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

And I hope it does. The mattress, the plywood, the foam, everything matched what Danielle and Celeste had said to it. They thought that Danielle had made it up, that she was crazy, it was too unbelievable, but there it was. So the police searches house and found over 50 videotapes included, um, with some of his victims, photos of the girls being forced to bathe in the tub, videos of the dungeon were taken and asked and released. The public was asked to come forward if they knew any other victims. Ultimately only five victims were identified, but there definitely could be more.

Originally the prosecutor was going for the highest possible sentence, kidnapping, which was 26 years to life, but after talking to the victims they came up with a plea deal. They went for 18 years to life with the stipulation that all of John's assets would be sold off and given to the victims for their suffering. The victim's identities would also remain to sealed and he would receive a chance at parole. So, that was the agreement. John Hope to see Ellen during the court proceedings. The victims gave their statements, Celeste said,

The cold, dampness, darkness, and loneliness, I will never forget the constant hunger, thirst and fatigue. The thought of death, would it be better than the life that I was being put through? I cannot speak of the terrible things that he did to my body and made me do to his." Danielle said, she lived in constant fear even when she was freed. She told the courts that she was afraid of the dark and old men. She said, I have horrible dreams at night. I cry out and I jump in my sleep. I've lost her job. Several friends, John Jamalski is a sick, evil old man who should be punished. He had no right to take away my freedom.

My right to breathe fresh air or my right to be treated like a human being. Ellen wrote that she hated her captor and lived in fear every day. You'll never be able to know the fear that I felt. Being raped every day, then I may as I have. Remembering how I had to fulfill his sick fantasies and make these disgusting videos, being humiliated, never having privacy, being chained to a fence like a dog, the only thing that got me through this horrendous nightmare was my faith in God, praying every day that he would help me go home. He is the sickest man I have ever known.

After the impact statements, the judge sentenced John to 18 years to life. They said, Mr. Jamalski, there's no question in my mind that you should die in prison for what you have done. So now, John's in prison. But it gets worse. Later in an interview, he said, if I'm freed, I'm not going to kidnap more women. Why? His answer wasn't, I wouldn't do that because it's inhumane and I've learned my lesson and I can't believe I ever did that. It wasn't, no, I, I have so much more so I would never put someone through that again. He said, I just, you know, I'm old. I just don't really have sexual or just anymore so it's all about John. Yep, he doesn't

see anyone as a human but himself. He was up for parole December of 2020. He was rejected. Mainly because he refused to go to the sex offender like program that he had to do in prison. He was like, I'm not one of them. But he has another parole hearing coming up this summer of this year. He will be 87 years old, and I know what you're thinking. Why do absolute garbage people live so long? But there's more. John was asked why he thought it was okay to keep girls as slaves, and he said that he calculated the cost of giving the girl shelter and food in the amount of sex that they provided, and he felt like it was an even trade. Yeah, he also complained about how one of the victims that he calculated the cost of giving the girl shelter and food in the amount of sex that they provided and he felt like it was an even trade. Yeah, he also complained about how one of the victims

loved steak sauce and would use half a cup of steak sauce during every meal and did he ever complain? No, he kept buying steak sauce. So he's pretty much saying in fact I was losing money by keeping these girls. He also said, I never even looked at these girls as kidnapped victims. If I did something wrong, it was probably cheating on my wife when she was alive and maybe unlawful imprisonment. I genuinely felt like I was going to get like 30 hours of community service. He did not understand his crimes. This biopiece of human trash thought that he would do some street cleaning and maybe pick

up some new bottles for his goddamn collection after what he did to all these girls. He even told MSNBC, I'm not the monster that they're painting me to be, I'm a pretty nice guy. I would never hurt anyone physically. And you know what, the bunker was beautiful, there was a bed, there was water, the only problem was you couldn't leave whenever you wanted, but I mean, that's fine. And they're like, what about the ankle chains, you chained them up? His response basically was, I'm just quirky like that.

He was like, I'm just quirky like that. He was like, I'm just a bit unorthodox. Oh, and by the way, his last parole hearing, he argued that he offered the girl's bubble baths, so he should be let out. Yeah, he was like, I'm a really nice guy. Even when I was holding them co-ocaptive, I offered them a bubble bath. I don't even think it's true, but what would that change? Absolutely nothing. I hope that he gets denied parole again this December, and with any Christmas like I hope he dies in prison. And I hope the victims have been able to find some peace, happiness, success, and safety

in their lives since John. And I hope you guys stay safe. And I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-suit. Bye! and I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sort. Bye!