Small Town Murder - #48 - Head, But No Shoulders in Cooperstown, North Dakota

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

This week, we take a peek at the mundane town of Cooperstown, North Dakota, where a man had a plan for violence, and achieved his goals. A beloved local, an outsider, and the search for a body... Well, most of it, anyway! Along the way, we find out how exciting an abandoned missile site can be, how quickly someone can go from sober to falling over, and exactly how much evidence can be in a person's home while they claim innocence!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Thursday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Crime in Sports Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/smalltownpodInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: [e-mail] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week, we look at the mundane town of Cooperstown, North Dakota, where a man had violent goals and he achieved them with horrifying results. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. You nailed it again. Thank you so much for joining us this week. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wissman. Oof, we're excited this week. Yeah, we are. We're very excited. We have a very packed episode of so much murder. We're going to shut up and give you murder pretty quick here. A couple things we have to go over really, really fast. First of all, Chicago tonight.

Right. Tonight. If you're listening to this, this is the day it comes out. Chicago tonight. It's a live show. See you there. Hope you got your tickets because I don't think there's any left. Boy, is it cold there.

It's cold. And yeah, you bastards get two episodes this week, so good for you. But everybody else, that's fine. Also, CrimeInSports.Threadless.com is where you go for all of your small town murder and crime in sports merch. We have everything.

Shirts, mugs, bath mats, all the there's a million different things. Different cuts. You can get onesies that say shut up and give me murder on them. It's ridiculous. Different cuts. You can get onesies that say, shut up and give me murder on them. It's fantastic. So head there. Do that. So funny.

They are. There's some hilarious stuff on there. So check it out. Detroit. Detroit. February 16th. Yes. Get your tickets for the Small Town Murder Time Suck Hybrid live podcast show that night.

It's going to be so fun. It's going to be a blast. That is at the Magic Bag in Detroit. Boston. Boston, the two days after that. February the 18th, Boston. Crime and Sports is the early show. And Small Town Murder is the late show.

And Small Town Murder, even though it's months away, is already almost sold out. So we're talking about once this actually sells out, we're probably going to add a 1 o'clock show of Small Town Murder. Middle of the day. We're going to be there for nine hours with two people. You're going to kill me that weekend.

That's going to be brutal. Also, live shows are new episodes. These are not like a rehash, like a best of, not us sitting around dicking around. We're going to do an episode. Right. We're going to have fun, God damn it. We're going to give you something new. And March, Phoenix, Arizona.

You're God damn right. That's right. Phoenix, Arizona. Stand up live in March. It's the 25th, I believe. March 25th. Stand up live. Stand up live. T. It's the 25th, I believe. March 25th. Stand up live. Tickets are going on sale, I believe, this week.

They should be on sale now. They should be on sale while you're listening to this. While you hear this right now. Get your tickets today for that. That is awesome. That's our hometown. So fill it up. Don't make us look like assholes in our hometown.

Thank you very much. They book us to do fucking comedy shows there whenever there's headliners or whatever that need somebody. They book us sometimes. And I'd like to fucking- Well, they show us no respect, so let's show them that we can pack the house. Let's show them that we deserve it. And then we'll go do other clubs.

Okay. So iTunes reviews, everybody. Thank you so much this week for your iTunes reviews. Your outpouring is amazing. It's absurd. It really is. That keeps us going on the business end so hard. I'm telling you, that drives us up

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Algorithms dance. It's like a little troll thing that dances with its hair all sticking up. Shakes its fat ass. But if you have not done it yet, please get on iTunes. Give us five stars. It doesn't matter what you say. It's not for our ego. We promise. It is really just for the business end of it. So tell us anything you want. Tell us your favorite flavor of ice cream. That's a good one. That's a good one. Any of them are good. The ice cream sandwich. That's the one.

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I can't say it any other way. You're killing it on that. Thank you so much. It really helps us out enormously and makes the show so we can do it and we can put all the effort we can into the show. So thank you guys for that. I reply to so many comments, emails, whatever, with we can't do this without you. And I'm not fucking just cliche writing that. I'm dead serious.

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We're amazed by it. Thank you so much for that. It doesn't matter what you donate. Just thank you so much for all of that. Before we get to the murder, we do have to do the disclaimer very quickly. It's a comedy podcast. It happens. It is.

It's a comedy podcast. The research is real. All the cases are real. Everything's real. Facts are real. There's going to podcast. It happens. It is. It's a comedy podcast. The research is real. All the cases are real. Everything's real. Facts are real. There's going to be jokes in here. So if you don't think that comedy and true crime

go together, this probably isn't for you. It just isn't, I'm sure. Now, that's on you because it's not bad. No. We don't say horrible things. It's not that bad.

We don't make jokes at the expense of the victims or the victims' families. We go out of our way to try to be human beings. We are assholes, but we are not scumbags. That is the truth. So without further ado, we will shut up and give you murder. Let's do this.

Let's go on a trip, Jimmy. All right. Let's head on a trip. Last week, we were in Nevada. Yeah, so hot. It was hot. It was a little barren sheriff's department everywhere. It was very strange. Thomas Lennon running around in It was hot. It was a little barren. Sheriff's Department everywhere. It's very strange.

Thomas Lennon running around in his tiny shorts. It was a little weird. We're going to go up north. Get your park on, Jimmy. We're going into the cold this week. Smidge cold, huh? Smidge cold. We're going to Cooperstown, North Dakota.

There's already one of those. Yeah, no, they decided we're going to add another one. This one is not the one with the Hall of Fame. There's one that's great. There's one that there's a reason for people to be there. When a baseball player's doing very well and they go, he's headed to Cooperstown, they don't mean here. I promise you they do not mean this

Cooperstown at all. There is not a Hall of anything here. Fame or otherwise, this is just it's in the east central. I like the beginning. You said the mundane town. I'm telling you, mundane is the best way to describe this town. There's just not much happening. Not much happened.

Where do we get the things to do? You're going to be like, whoa, that's okay. It's mundane. That's what they got going on. It's weird. It reminds me of some sort of rural Russian town or something. We'll get to it. Anyway, east central part of the state

in the middle of fucking nowhere i mean this is this is in this is small town murder i love middle of nowhere towns like when you're driving and you're just like fucking exhausted and you're going what who lives there right there's just an exit with like a one food thing on the sign and like a gas station like who lives there and you lives there? And you see houses. You're like, two people live there. Right. And there's houses everywhere. They dot a fucking hillside. Yes, and people live here. It's an hour and a half away from Fargo, which isn't a booming metropolis either. And it's two and a half hours to Bismarck.

That's the capital, correct? That's the capital. It is not. It's in the middle of nowhere. And is Bismarck with a CK? That is a CK, Bismarck. That's the dumbest shit. It absolutely is.

Fucking assholes. Why are you doing that? It's in Griggs County. It's actually the county seat of Griggs County. Okay. And this is a tiny town, so this is the county seat of your county. You're saying how small your county is. Right. Griggs County, the whole county has 2,400 people

in it. The whole county? The whole county. And it's a big, it's like a big, it's like a European country, this goddamn county. Every town in there, if there was a murder, we could cover it. Every fucking one of them. Every town. Yeah, there's any town in here. But there's not even that many towns here. It's just, there's nothing there.

It's literally like, oof, you just look out over the horizon, put your hand over your eyes. Like, wow, what is that, a couple houses there? Why? What the hell happened? What made you stop here? Right. Why? It is a small place.

Zip code 58425, area code 701. So if anybody boring calls you from there, you know why. 0.97 square miles. It's a little tiny town. Yeah. Little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. One square mile almost. Almost.

This is an exit. We're almost something. Literally, this is an exit. You see a couple of food and a gas, and there's a little motel thing, and you're like, who lives there? These people live there. Is this the town of almost like everything's just almost something? Like.97, almost a square mile. Well, it's funny because their town slogan actually touts something completely different.

Not an almost. Not even close to an almost. They're very grandiose about it. The town slogan, quote, unlimited possibilities. Unlimited. I assure you the possibilities are quite limited. I promise you that. There's 0.97 square miles. It's a very tiny place. I can't think of a possibility, honestly. That's not even unlimited. They could have said, there's a possibility, and I would have went, went no there isn't actually it's boring i would argue that so unlimited possibilities of how to be depressed and kill yourself pretty much yeah that's it unlimited possibilities of how to drown yourself in a stream while trout fishing uh so griggs county the county here is

uh settled in 1879 by you know i guess americans or you could say. I'm sure Canadians were there, too. Possibly. I'm sure there was some trapping going on. Unlimited possibility. Unlimited possibility. It became an organized county in 1881. At the time, it's, okay, part of what's now Griggs County and the western part of Steele County, that was the county at the time.

Yeah. And after an election, Cooperstown became the county seat. Got for griggs county but uh there's a town called hope uh hope this is it sounds like a nice town jesus i know they wanted to have they wanted to be the county seat so they went and stole the county records at gunpoint from cooperstown holy shit literally they were like we're gonna go to the next town and get their fucking right not even we're not robbing a bank no we're taking their records and we're saying we're the county. Well, you say you're the county seat, but we have all the records. So how does that work?

That's how they're going to do it. What is that? That's fucking crazy. That's where we are. That's the West. You know what I mean? This is nuts. We're going home and steal the records.

Can you just go steal the records from San Francisco and just say, I'm San Francisco now? I'm the county seat. Just go take them all and go, that's it. Me, Bob, Jim, we all came in here. Guns blazing. We took the records. So guess what? County seat.

Sorry. I don't know. The records matter. Whoever holds what's written. How can you be the county seat when we have all the records? I'm just asking you that right off the bat. How's that going to work here? We should just go take everybody's license.

Why not? You're not Donald Trump anymore. I have the license. I'm this now. That's fine. Yeah, they ended up catching these people in the end. I don't know if the Pinkertons came in or what back then. They were going to

have a trial to try these people, but they ended up having a big compromise and they ended up making separate rigs and steel counties. They said, okay, Hope, you can be the county seat of that county and we'll stay over here. We gave them half the paperwork. Pretty much. Here, you have this half. You have this deed. I have this deed. This is the east part. Okay, you take this one. This is so weird. Yeah. The railroad came around this time in 1882. They built a courthouse in 1884. this half dude this is the east part okay you take this one this is so weird yeah it's uh the railroad came around this time in 1882 they built a courthouse in 1884 uh by 1910 what a bizarre pissing match why would they do that i don't understand what's the what's the fucking

the only thing i could think is something to do with elections like you could they probably thought maybe they were going to cheat them on election results and they were going to get all their people in the county. Because if you watch Deadwood, it's an HBO show. I'm not sure if you heard of it. If you watch Deadwood, it's a big deal. County commissioners and all of this when things are annexed and counties are starting, they're all like shuffling. Al Swearengin's sending away for county commissioners to talk to this one. Who's in town?

I got to talk to him. Jesus, he almost died fighting Bullock and he had a terrible stone, but it came out, but it didn't matter anyway. He still propped himself up to death so he could talk to the guy. It seemed important. Nevermind. That doesn't matter. But back then, this was an important deal because you'd put people into power and they could levy taxes. They could do things that would take deeds away. Like that was a big deal in Deadwood is they were sitting in here. What's going to happen? Are they going to say that gold claims aren't official anymore?

This whole deal. So I think that's probably... It sounds like... It's some prospect or old west shit, I feel like. Yeah, it's government on a small scale, but it's like an HOA on a little larger scale. This is why I hate people that like being in an HOA and being on the board of that stuff. You sound like an asshole.

It's a bunch of people here running around yelling consart all the time. I feel like that's it, like with their mining pan. By 1910, there was 1,019 people here. Okay. So it started to grow a little bit. Now the people now, it's funny because that was 1910. In 2010, population 945. Wow.

They lost 10 people. They lost some people from 1910. That's amazing. In 100 years. In 100 years, it shrunk. Yeah. Shrunk?. They lost some people from 1910. That's amazing. In 100 years. In 100 years, it shrunk. Yeah. Shrunk? Shrunk.

Shrunk. In the 60s, it was up to almost 1,500. Oh. And it just kind of died from there. Population's down 24% from 1990. So it's a little town that's just slowly dying. And we'll find out why because I believe it's an age thing. I don't think people

are leaving so much as the median age here is 51.3 oh jesus that's an older town yeah 37.4 is the median and nationally so yeah 51.3 average is 51 that's a lot that's that's that's that's a little older for a town so you can see why people are dying off i feel like female population and this is another reason why i feel like they're old. Female population is almost 56%, which is way out of whack, and that's because women tend to live longer, I feel like. So I think maybe that's what's throwing it off here. I found a pretty cool thing here, and it's the most common first names among deceased individuals from Cooperstown. This is great.

So like old people names of people that have died. There are 15 Johns, 14 Claras. That's a shitload of Claras. I've got one in my entire life. 15, 14 Claras. And she right now is 92 years old. 13 Arthurs. That's a cool name.

12 Helens, 11 Williams, 10 Clarences, 9 Martins. The Spanish community keeps that Arthur going. They do. Arturo. That's a popular name. Esther is nine. That's a shit name. Yeah, yeah. Esther is nine. That's a shit name. And Oscar is nine.

And Florence is nine. All the men's names are like Spanish names that they keep those going. Like Oscar is still popular. Yeah, or Englishified, either Anglified. All those white names of women are going the fuck away, though. Thanks to Abigail and Lily. They're coming back now, though. Yeah, that's true.

People are naming their daughters like old-fashioned names now. Nobody's naming their kid Esther though They are Are they really? No Absolutely Get out of my life Are you serious?

Esther has become a popular I swear What a horrible name Every old lady name you can think of There are tons of babies with that name right now Little toddlers running around You bet your ass there are Poor little girl

Tons of little Come here Florence Little weird named Esther Esther's a garbage name, though. All of these names. Literally, all these old person. Clara is a popular name now. I could see that being a cute baby name, though.

Clara? Clara. She's got to grow up. The way you say it with your New York accent, though. Hey, Clara. What the fuck's wrong with you, Clara? That's one of those words that no matter what I do, it's coming out. They can't help it.

It's happening. I call her Clara. You call her Clara. It's happening. I call her Clara. You call her Clara. It's happening. It's horrible. I tend to say that, though, because of you. It puts an extra sting on it. It does. It makes it a little more horrible when it's horrible.

It sounds like there's disdain in it at that point. It sounds like it also stinks. It probably. Married population here in Cooperstown, 60%, which is 10% higher than normal. So, again, older people tend to be married. Less single people, obviously. Half the population have never married,

as usual. Really? So these people are goddamn getting married. I guess they're bored. You gotta hook up with someone and sit there to have someone to stare at. What, are we staring at the sunset? Okay. Well, I'll sit here with you and stare at the sunset. Otherwise, I'm going to be sitting by myself staring at the goddamn sunset. I found a Clara.

I better stick with her. This Clara is going to work for me. This may be the last one. It's going to work for me. This could be the very last Clara ever. I may stick with her. And more evidence of elderly. Super high.

Almost 60% of the people are married with no children. Okay. That says old at that point because they're not children anymore. A race of this town. I'm going to give you a guess. It's snow fucking white. No, no. Actually, it's a huge, huge community of people from the Congo. It's very strange.

Very Cuban society. There's a Cuban section of town. 0.35 square miles of the 0.97 is Little Havana. There's restaurants of the 0.97 is the is little havana yeah it's very very it's there's restaurants there clubs they call it majority havana that's true yeah you can you can hear the music bumping down the yeah it's very good as you pass their welcome echoing throughout the plateaus or the buttes or whatever the fuck's out there i have no goddamn idea uh 98.98% white. That's all white, Dave. That is super white. 0.83% black. Okay. So there's like

0.83%? 0.83%. That's pretty good. That's like seven. There's like eight black people there. That's not bad. Seven, eight black guys. 0.19% Hispanic. So yeah, it's white. That's about it. It's a white town. 62% of the people are religious here, which 50 is the norm. So this is on the higher. This is like down south level numbers here. 9.28% Catholic. I don't know where the hell they came from, why they're there. No Mormons, no zero points. No Mormons.

No Mormons. Not close to Utah, still no Mormons. It's not very close to Utah. Well, I guess. It's up and over. This is over by Minnesota and stuff. This is closer to Canada than Utah. Yeah, exactly. 0.0% Jewish,

0.0% Muslim, as you might expect. But those Mormons, they like to go hide in the snow. They do like to hide in the snow. I don't understand it. There's going to be tons of that here. There is less than a thousand people. There are seven churches and two Bible camps in the area. In a square mile, they got seven churches and two Bible camps.

So that's like, just to keep the doors open, everyone has to go to church. Like you have to have 60% of the people be religious to have seven churches. They've got more churches than anything else. No, that's it. Yeah, I'll guarantee you they have more churches than restaurants or something like that. Voting-wise, about 40% Democrat, about 57% Republican. That makes sense. So yeah, North Dakota is a pretty red state.

A couple of weird little details here. It is Cooperstown. They have these lists that they compile, like top 101 cities with the most whatever. Oh, boy. This is top 101 cities with the most residents born in Romania with a population of over 500. There's something to be proud of. They're number 32 on the list of that.

Yeah, number 72 on the list of top 100 zip codes with the largest percentage of Norwegian first ancestries. What the fuck? This is the Sahara Desert fart fact of the week, by the way, everybody, in case you've been wondering. It's a migrant-ass town, I guess. 150 Norwegian first ancestries. We're talking like in the 1800s.

This is like Clara and Clarence were married from Norway. I don't know if those are... You found Clarence out of that because of the CL. That's Clara-Claire. CLA, right to that. Well, I thought they'd be a funny couple. You went in the alphabet. I thought they'd be a funny couple if it was Clarence and Clara.

It's CLAR. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And Clara is the root word of Clarence. What the fuck is that? That's so weird. Number 32 on the list of top 101 counties with the largest number of people without health insurance coverage in the year 2000. No shit. Yes.

We're going to fly you there. Yeah, perfect. That's true. I could be with my people. Number 36 on the list of- Keep all you fuckers with nothing. Nothing. We'll all die together.

Top 101 counties with the highest- One person's going to get the flu and wipe out that whole town. That's it. Well, this actually fits. That's what it is. Top 101 countries with the highest number of deaths per 1,000 residents, 2007 to 2013. Highest rate of death, so they're just dying. Because they're so old, too, I think.

They're old and they have no health insurance. And they were number 37 on that list? They were number 36 on that list. Holy shit. None of those things are really positives, I guess, unless you're really into Romanian culture or something like that. None of them really seem great, but whatever. Unemployment rate in this town is about half of the normal rates, less than 3%,

which is ridiculous, but there's enough. It's so small that you can go, will you give Bill a fucking job already? God damn it. Hire him, please. He's just walking around downtown. He's wandering. Bill, just go work.

In that town, you could be a church janitor and fucking kill it. You could be president of the town. If you're unemployed here, they probably have a meeting about you at Bible camp. They have a meeting. They're like, listen, Bill's got no job. What a horrible meeting. I've seen him. He's just at the grocery store wandering. We all know he has no money. He's just shuffling. He's just shuffling.

What are you doing at the grocery store, Bill? You're not buying anything. We really got to do something here about Bill. I think that's what happens here. Household income here, average being about $54,000 in the country. Household income in this town is a little under $43,000, so a little less than average, but I don't know, not terrible for the middle of nowhere. That sounds like Social Security income, for sure. Well, 43 is higher than that. Is it?

Yeah, yeah. No one's getting 43 grand in Social Security, I don't think. That does seem like an awful lot. Old people eat cat food and shit to stay afloat. I don't think that their fixed income doesn't mean like 44 grand a year by yourself in North Dakota. That's so sad. It's very sad. I don't mean it like 44 grand a year by yourself in North Dakota. That's so sad. It's very sad. I hate that so much.

I don't mean it like it's a good thing. So I worked in a job where I would work outside a lot, and I was walking to go into a backyard for work, and I saw an old lady shit into a grocery bag. That's very nice. I don't know. In her backyard. Wow. Why not do it in the house? I didn't.. In her backyard. Wow.

Why not do it in the house? I didn't. So when I walked through the gate. Even if your toilet doesn't work, you have a room. Maybe she's just turning into a cat. I assume she probably ate cat food, too. Maybe that's why cats make this shit up. Did she bury it afterwards?

That's the question, baby. I turned the fuck around. So I walked into the backyard. I didn't realize what was happening. And I went to say good morning. And I heard the shit hit the fuck around. So I walked into the backyard. I didn't realize what was happening. And I went to say good morning. And I heard the shit hit the plastic bag. That is terrible. That's a bad day for her, too.

I don't think she expected that. And I stood there with my mouth open. I just walked out. I didn't even say anything. To this day, she may not have known that somebody saw her do that. Let's hope she went to her grave not knowing that the electric guy walked in and saw her shitting in a bag like a fucking cat. Unbelievable thing I've ever seen.

The jobs here, there are bag shitting is a very popular profession. The agricultural agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting they do a lot of, there's forestry here there's things like that, there's lumber. It is over 10% of the jobs. It's normally about 1% of the jobs. So that's, it's a rugged that. There's lumber. It is over 10% of the jobs. It's normally about 1% of the jobs.

So it's a rugged area. It's that sort of thing. Manufacturing jobs are higher. Construction's a higher rate. Everything else is lower. Retail, trade, technical services, professional, education. Health care is a little higher, but social assistance, because you have old people there. But other than that, it's pretty much a blue-collar kind of town.

I assume there's oil nearby. There's a lot of oil fields up there. I'm sure guys drive to go to the oil field and that sort of thing. I'm afraid that there is. Cost of living, 100 is par, as we say. Here it's 90, so a little less than the average of cost of living. Housing is the low one, though, here. Healthcare, groceries, things like that are a little higher,

because you're in the middle of fucking nowhere. If you want food there, you practically have to fucking airdrop it. So it's going to be, you're like Berlin in 1947. It's hard to get you shit. Relief aid rice coming everywhere. You know it, those little peanut butter slurry things they send to poor

African kids over there. Peanut butter slurry? Yeah, they give them like a peanut butter slurry thing that's full of nutrients and they eat it. Like a sleeve of it?, they give them like a peanut butter slurry thing that's full of nutrients and they eat it. Like a sleeve of it? Yeah. Kind of like a go-gurt? Exactly.

No, no, no. More like a Capri Sun. Oh, okay. Like a Capri Sun. You cut the top off and roll it up and squeeze it in your mouth. Gross. It's vile. It apparently makes you not die.

Well, it's a lifesaver. It's one of those things. Housing here is a 60 out of 100, so very low. Median home cost is about $111,000, so not bad at all. 26% of the homes are between $80,000 and $100,000. Got it. So very affordable. And if we've convinced you to move to Cooperstown, North Dakota, we have for you the Cooperstown, North Dakota Real Estate Report.

Let's do it. Real Estate Report. Let's do it. First of all, I thought it's so good. Love this. Two-bedroom apartment here will run you about $653 a month. That's very affordable. If there's any two-bedroom apartments there, but that's $400 less than the national average.

I found a two-bedroom, one-bath house. It's about 970 square feet. Good for an old lady and a cat, I would say. Yeah, for sure. She's got a spare room for her knitting, things like that. It's 970 square feet, $32,000. Wow. So you can, Social Security or not, even if you have to shit in a bag and eat cat food, you can probably afford that house, everybody.

That is so cheap. That's a good pitch, I think, too. Even if you shit in a bag, this house is for you. It's all yours. Three bedroom, two bath, 1,500 square foot house. So that's a decent house for you. You've got a couple of kids, whatever. 69,000 bucks.

Wow. On the inside, too. It didn't look bad. I looked into it. I'm like, maybe it's a wreck on the inside. Maybe it hasn't been updated since the 1870s or something. It's got blue shag carpet or some shit. No, I'm thinking 1,800.

It's got like elk skin on the wall to keep the cold out. Dirt floors. Shit like that. Yeah, no, it's not that bad. $69,000. That's as cheap as a fucking pickup truck these days. That's not bad. I found a four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,900 square foot house. This shit's hooked up

inside, too. There's like a four-car garage. This is like if you're doing well up there. You're running the oil field. if you're you're doing well up there you're uh you're running the the oil field right uh or you're a pastor or you're a pastor 200 yeah all those churches 299 000 bucks and that's like a really hooked up house mansion though they're not bad at all uh things to do okay this is their what they're proud of here okay uh things to do when you say this is what they're proud of yeah this is like what they're touting on their shit like you come here you go here first this is your thing you proud of. Yeah, this is like what they're touting on their shit. Like, you come here, you go here first.

This is your thing. You come to Cooperstown. That Cooperstown has the Hall of Fame. They got a baseball place. Big deal. You want to go see Babe Ruth's jersey? Great. That's fine.

Knock yourself out. The bat he used to hit a home run that he called in the World Series. That's great. We have the Ronald Reagan Missile Site 555. The what? The Ronald Reagan Missile Site 555. The what? The Ronald Reagan Missile Site 555. What does that even mean? It is a missile launch, like a, you know, nukes.

It's a pad? It's one of our nuke sites where they have missiles that were aimed at Russia all through the Cold War. How about we don't show that to people? We put them in the middle. Oh, no, you have a tour. Interpretive tours are available daily for the topside living quarters at Oscar Zero Launch Control Facility,

as well as interpretive tours bottom side of the launch control facilities and mechanical room. So get over there, launch some nukes while you're at it. Get over here, and we'll give you all the fucking top-secret security clearance stuff, how we defend our country. Come look at this. Well, this is how we defended our country 30 years ago, I guess. If you look at it, you probably can get a pretty good idea of what they have today. I suppose. This is like, yeah, this is some old school shit, though.

It's called America's Ace in the Hole, North Dakota and the Cold War. That's the exhibit. So it's one of those. I don't know how much. It looks like it's about as technologically advanced as the movie War Games. It's probably like, yeah. You're not looking at War Games and going, that's how they're going to do it today. A Super Nintendo probably has more, like from the 90s, has more technology.

Right, more technology and this shit. It did, though. It received the 2010 Governor's Travel and Tourism Award as the state's outstanding attraction of the year. Amazing. So, yeah. Outstanding attraction of the year. That tells you how many great attractions are in the entire state of North Dakota. What we just described, attraction of the year, everybody.

Attraction of the year. It's an exhibit about the Cold War. Pack the kids up in the car. Let's go. We're going to see the topside living quarters over at the Missile Site. Bye-bye, everybody. Pile in. No, we'll get you T-shirts when we get there.

I'd be afraid that some pie-faced, sticky-hand kid would hit a button that they didn't know they didn't disconnect. I'd be terrified of that. Jesus, what the hell kind of outing is that? Some sticky fuck jamming his go-gurt fingers all over some nuke. What the fuck? Crime rate here, what we are interested in, is actually just average. And it's these small towns. When we're under 1,000 in is it's actually just average and it's these small towns when we're under a thousand people it's really just

the numbers just get so fucked average in property average in violent it's hard to deduce anyway and come to a conclusion on what's going on if one guy decides to break in a couple cars that skews the whole town screws everything up so it's one of those deals but it doesn't matter let's talk about a guy who grew up on a farm near Cooperstown, shall we?

Yeah. This guy, he sounds mild, right? Grows up on a farm. Kurt Douglas Johnson. No. Not Kirk Douglas Johnson, but Kurt Douglas Johnson. Isn't there a Kurt Douglas? It's Kirk Douglas. I think there's also a Kurt Douglas. I do not think there's a Kurt Douglas.

There probably is a Kurt Douglas and and he probably means nothing to anybody. Nothing to anybody. We also have one here. As far as the movie stars go, there is a Kirk Douglas, and then Michael Douglas is his son. That's the guy with the throat cancer. Michael Douglas, yes. And he got it from Catherine Zeta-Jones' vagina. That's what they say.

I don't know. That's debatable. But then he took her back. What a nice guy. If my wife gave me the flu, I'll get a divorce. She didn't give him HIV. No, she gave him HPV. Yes, but that's very common, though.

That's excessively common. Yeah, but it's not common to get throat cancer from it. That's like half the population. Yeah, but she gave him some vicious stuff. Yeah, but I feel like if his... Hold on one second. some vicious stuff. Yeah, but I feel like if his,

hold on one second, I feel like if his pond was open to the breeding ground of whatever, then that's on him, I feel like, to get cancer from it. Because he didn't take his centrum? I guess so, yes.

He didn't take his centrum. He didn't take his whatever the hell. From A to zinc, James. There you go. What does the other one old people take? I don't even remember. I don't know.

Jamie Lee Curtis has to eat yogurt to shit now. He tried to read AARP to cure it, and that didn't work, so now he's got cancer. Oh, well. My wife gave me the flu. I'm telling you. I'm divorced. In a minute. Well, this is...

Okay. Jesus. That's very nice, Jimmy. You are going to... The female population is going to love you on that. That's nice. That's nice. That's the kind of support you want to get. Listen, honey, I know that, you know,

but I'm upset with you for this, and we're getting divorced now. I'm throwing up for the next three hours we're getting a divorce. That is terrible. So, Kurt Johnson does not have throat cancer and definitely never went down on Catherine Zeta-Jones, I would assume. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this guy's never gone down on Catherine Zeta-Jones, I would assume. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this guy's never gone down on Catherine Zeta-Jones. I don't know. Probably, right. I don't know for a fact, but

you know what? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that. We'll find him and we'll ask him and then we'll make a bet on it. That's true. And the bet is going to be nothing because you're going to win. I already know you're going to win. I don't think he went down. There's a possibility. Well, he grew up in Cooperstown. Graduated. James, this town

is anything's possible. Isn't that what it is? That's unlimited possibilities, Jimmy. Listen, he could have done it. Maybe that's how they got the slogan. Did you go down on California? The town slogan was something else. And then he came in to the town meeting where they're talking about Bill.

Catherine Zeta-Jones. And they're like, we don't believe you. And he goes, unlimited possibilities. They're talking about Bill. They want to get Bill a job at the meeting. And he just bursts in the door. Both doors swing open. He's like, I went down on Catherine Zeta-Jones. They're like, hold on.

And they bang the gavel. They're like, we're going to switch this meeting from instead of finding Bill a job, we need to rename the town. Give the motto a different one. We need a good one. Clearly, the possibilities are unlimited at this point in time. So let's do this. He graduated in high school in 1974. He graduated from North Dakota State University.

Okay. So this is a North Dakota boy. Educated, too. Educated. Oh, yeah. He's got a bachelor in construction management. Yeah. He and his family then moved to Bismarck.

He served nine years. He was a senior engineer for the North Dakota Department of Transportation. He's into highway design and shit like that. Then he moved with his family to Champaign, Illinois. He had three kids and a wife at the time. He worked for ERES Consultants, Inc. They specialized in pavement engineering. So this is a boring guy.

I mean, boring, yes, but fuck, he's doing it. He might not be boring. He's doing great. Oh, he's doing fine for himself. But I mean, this isn't like... In terms of career, what's the word I'm looking for? He doesn't come home from work and go down on Catherine Zeta-Johnson. They were like, hey, tell me about that pavement, baby.

And he's like, come on, honey, let's get it on. I don't care. This guy tugs over the toilet, for sure. You're so hot, you can give me 12 kinds of cancer and I'm okay with it. That's how this guy would be. But he comes home from Champaign, Illinois. He goes to Falls Church, Virginia for 10 years. He's a project manager at one of these companies that does this sort of thing in Washington,

D.C. And he commutes from Virginia. So this guy's got a nice career going for himself. He had a family.C., and he commutes from Virginia. So this guy's got a nice career going for himself. He had a family. In 2003, he returned. He comes back to North Dakota, and he's going to be a transportation research engineer with the Upper Great Plains Regional Transportation Institute. Sweet Jesus.

He's also contracted with North Dakota Department of Transportation, and he works with graduate students at North Dakota State University, his alma mater. And he kind of helps them with technical things and people in the same program as him. He's kind of like a mentor. Like-minded individual. He's like a mentor to college kids. Talking shop. Exactly.

Talking shop, getting in there. And I think he just enjoys the work because, I mean, he's stuck with it. He's gone to different places. Like he does extra things. He's going to help out kids at his alma mater so I think he's uh you know I think this is a genuine interest of him and a passion for pavement engineering I got a job something like that you know it's one of those things where you have someone has to do be a pavement engineer at some point someone has to go how do we make this shithole cars like a whole shitload of cars how do we make this shithole cars? Like, a whole shitload of cars. How do we make that happen?

Because I don't know how to do that. Right. If they said to you, engineer this road so it wouldn't collapse, would you know where to start? I mean, I could make it flat. Yeah, I could get a fucking bulldozer out. I could level the place. I can make the fucker flat. But actually, that's the part.

I'm terrified of bridges. I hate bridges so much. So much. I don't like them either. And the worst is in traffic when you have to actually stop on it. That's the worst in New York. And when cars are going the other way and you can feel that fucker flop, that's the worst feeling in the world. No, that's what I mean.

This guy knows. You have to know about weather. Right. You can't crack in the cold. You can't buckle. Right. There's all this different shit. You got to know how both sides can handle pressure.

You have to be interested in that. If this guy sitting in traffic feels that wave and does that wave because... Yeah, and he knows why. And he's trying to figure out how to get rid of that wave. Right. And I'm sitting there going, get rid of this fucking wave because I'm freaking out.

I'm on it. Don't worry. The throat cancer won't take me before I figure it out. It's fine. I got this covered. On a personal level, he liked working on his house, gardening. Sure. on a personal level he liked working on his house gardening he had a hunting shack

on Paradise Valley Road where he liked to hunt big bucks things like that he's just a guy who grew up in North Dakota and did his thing and he likes to shoot bucks you're a hunter good for you enjoy it whatever but this guy's got such a boring

fucking life yeah Yeah, he needs to shoot something, this fucking guy. Just to get some excitement. He attended Saron Evangelical Free Church in the Cooperstown Bible Camp. He was involved in both of those. So he's helping kids out at his alma mater. He's volunteering

at churches and Bible camps and figuring out how to stop the road waves from going on. Salt of the earth guy. Salt of the earth guy kind of a thing. And sitting in a boring town in North Dakota that he grew up in. He went back home, this guy. He's like, yeah, I'll go back to that place. He left.

He went to Champaign. He lived outside of D.C. He went to the fucking capital. He went to D.C. for Christ's sake. And he was like, nope, going back there. Not for me. But that's a guy who likes it here. It's not like he's a small town guy who never left.

Right. He saw other things and went, nope, I likes it here. It's not like he's a small town guy who never left. Right. He got the taste of it. He saw other things and went, nope, I like it there. Right. I want to sit out on my porch and wait for the big bucks to come by. And shoot them while I have my morning coffee. That's it. I want to do that.

I want to figure out their pavement. Right. Virginia, your pavement's your own fucking problem now. He also, this is in 2003, he moved back to Cooperstown. He also, this is 2003, he moved back to Cooperstown. He also worked out of his home as an associate research fellow for North Dakota State University for the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute. And he did that from home and he also had an office. He lives in Cooperstown.

North Dakota State University is in Fargo, which is an hour and a half away. Got it. So I don't know if you can really commute every day, but maybe he comes in once a week and, you know, whatever, gives a, who knows, hands in his paperwork. Talks about some asphalt and fucking moves along. Yeah, that's the thing. Maybe they have to have like a social asphalt meeting. They have the church meeting to talk about Bill. They have the asphalt meeting to talk about waves. He's divorced.

That's when he moved back to Cooperstown was when he got divorced. That's what sent him back there. Because, you know, you're out there, you're like, I'm going home. He got divorced. He has three adult kids that are grown up. So he's like, I'm going home. The divorce pushed him back home though. Yeah.

He got divorced and his kids were older. So he just moved back home. And so he's living there. Seems like a sad commute back. Yeah. That would be a sad commute back. Just to, from, yeah, from DC. You got adult kids.

You're going from rural. You're alone. You're going from an actual metropolis where they pass laws for this whole fucking country. Yes. And you're going to North Dakota. And he's alone on that drive where there's 900 people. Well, you know what, though? Maybe he can raid the next town, get their county records, and we'll see what the hell happens there.

He can be king of the road. That could be a possibility here. Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you all about thegreatcoursesplus.com. Thegreatcoursesplus.com. This is phenomenal. Guys, we're into information. We're into learning.

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That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash STM. And now back to the show. So 2010 we'll go to. So we've gone on a trip. We'll go back in time. Not too long. 2010. He's been living in Cooperstown for seven, eight years, kicking around back home.

He's got friends. He's got university things. He's got things that he's doing. He's a member of the community. He's got stuff going on. He's not a hermit. He's not Ted Kaczynski sitting in a hunting shack waiting for the big buck. He's a known guy. He's a known entity. A friend of his, we'll talk

about, we'll go to December 31st, 2010. It's New Year's Eve. Almost 2011. Yeah go to December 31st 2010 it's New Year's Eve almost 2011 yeah it's so confusing when people say New Year's Eve this day is that that year or the next year because people will do it both ways so it's New Year's Eve you party Cooper's nobody parties

there's Times Square you know what I mean they do a big thing in Vegas too they drop the ball in Times Square none of that shit compares to the pageantry and the pure just debauchery and hedonism of New Year's Eve in Cooperstown, North Dakota. Unlimited possibilities. Unlimited. Holy shit. You don't even know.

So, yeah, he's out around, out about in the town on New Year's eve in cooperstown uh december 31st 2010 uh kurt johnson uh he he's hanging out in different bars uh he's uh hanging out with a friend of his name annie somers okay uh she's uh she saw she saw him at the coachman inn yeah cooperstown which is like a little bar restaurant type deal uh she works there and she knows him and everybody knows everybody in this course and especially if you work in like the restaurant or one of the bars, you know fucking everybody. Well, you spend time with them. Yeah, they've all come. Everyone's

come in at some point. You know what I mean? It's just one of those things. And it's not just that. It's like you, if you work in the general store, people come in, you meet them, whatever. But if you work at the restaurant, you're sitting there with them for like half hour, 45 minutes at a time. If you're a bartender. You're going to talk. Oh, but a bartender?

Forget it. That guy knows everything. Well, this is a woman, Annie Summers. I mean, the bartender. Yeah, absolutely. So she saw him at the Coachman Inn. He said he was leaving, said, I'm taking off. Because there's a couple, there's like a little area with like three bars.

There's the Coachman Inn, the Oasis Bar, and the Fish Bowl. And they're all kind of like the Oasis Bar and the Fish Bowl, I think, are kind of across the street from each other. And then the Coachman Inn is kind of around the corner, away from that Fish Bowl riffraff. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Away from the party kids. Fucking classy over here, all right?

We don't play this shit. Those kids in their 30s over there at the Fish Bowl. Punks. Young punks. Fucking young punks. Whippersnapper. Imagine being a teenager in this town. Oh, Christ.

Holy shit, my God. Being called the most old-timey phrase. It's like the Footloose Town, you know what I mean? You're just fucking kids going to the edge of town to dance. Like, we're going to go to the hunting shack and dance tonight, you in? Yeah. Big act of rebellion. Ridiculous.

So at the Oasis Bar, there's a bartender there named Carrie Sad, a woman named Carrie Sad. She's the bartender. I mean, that's the life. She's a bartender on New Year's Eve. Good tips. But you're in Cooperstown, so I don't know what the tips are like. It seems like a depressing New Year's Eve. At the Coachman?

Around the corner? Oh, this is at the Oasis. This is a little lower class, I feel like, than the Coachman. But it's like the – I think the Coachman's like – This is their version of a pub run here. We're going to the Coachman, then the Oasis, then the Fishbowl, then we're going to pass out in an alley. All right.

We don't have any alleys. Fuck it. We're going to pass out in a snowbank when we're done. We'll just pass out right in the fucking middle of the street. And it's cold up here too. This is New Year's Eve. It's cold. It's, this is, there's snowbanks and drifts.

And I mean, it doesn't, this is not messing around. This is real winter shit up here. This is like the goddamn North Pole, North Dakota. It's awful. So Carrie Sad, the bartender at the Oasis, said Johnson comes in the back door. That's another small town. Yeah. Trope is just popping in the back door.

Like, oh, it's Kurt. Yeah. You do that in a big city and they'll fucking have you arrested. Where are you coming from? Hey, the emergency exit alarm will go off. You're like, what? Dude, your total sprinkler systems are going off. Where are you coming from? Hey, the emergency exit alarm will go off. You're like, what? Dude, your total ass sprinkler systems are going off. What, you think you fucking work here?

He pops in and they're just like, but Kurt, they do like a norm. They're like, how's the highway, Kurt? And he has like a quick comeback. Harder than my dick, give me a drink. Something stupid like that. You know, one hole at a time or whatever the fuck they say.

Yeah, some shit like that. So he pops in about 9 p.m. The bartender, Cary Sads, said that he does not appear intoxicated when he comes in the door. Just seems fine. And she's seen him before and stuff, so she probably would know if he's intoxicated. Yeah, she can gauge. She can gauge. And she said, seemed fine, came in the door, wasn't intoxicated.

Pulls up a stool at the bar. Hanging out. Small town. Everybody's talking to each other. It's New Year's Eve. I'm sure it's very social. He started talking to a guy next to him. A guy named Daniel Evan Wacht. Okay. Talks to him. What's that last name? Wacht. W-A-C-H-T.

Yeesh. Yeah. Wacht. That's awful. And I've heard it watched and I've heard it Wacht. And I'm going to go with Wacht. And I'm going to call him Daniel. We'll do that. Sitting next to Daniel and they're having some drinks talking. That last name hurts my head. It's a fucked up name.

So Daniel, I'll talk about him for a second. He is the opposite of Kurt. No, not in terms of hammer, in terms of a human being. He is not a resident of Cooperstown. He didn't grow up there. He's not a kid from the farm over here. He moved to Cooperstown about four months earlier. Okay. From California. Yeah. He is known around town, and he's made a reputation for himself in the four months he's lived there.

His nickname is Machine Gun Head. He got himself a nickname, and it's Machine Gun Head? Machine Gun Head, because he has a tattoo of a machine gun by his ear. Okay. So they weren't clever. They're not. That's what I was going to say. Another reason why you need to have some Italians in your town.

Right. White people. Every time we go to these little towns where you know there's no goddamn Italians, like they say in The Sopranos, it's Elvis country where there's no Jews or Italians. Every time you're in Elvis country here, this happens. If there's a nickname, it's fucking terrible. It's Old Bill. The mountaineer.

It's Machine Gun Head. What if Machine Gun Head had long hair at the time and you couldn't even see the tattoo? That's the thing. What the fuck? It's not clever at all. You really need to get into their character and who they are. Or if they're like, you know, a fat slob or something like that. You call him fat slob.

You call him, yeah. He's going to be, you know, Tommy the Bone because he's so skinny. You know what I mean? He's a fat fuck. It's going to be something like that. Right. So Machine Gun Head here, idiot Daniel. This guy, from 97 to 99, he'd served in the Marine Corps for two years, but he got out.

The way he put it was, quote, I didn't like the bureaucracy, couldn't take it anymore. Sounds like somebody couldn't stand being told what to do. That seems right. It's the Marines. It's difficult. There's going to be bureaucracy. You can't get anything more bureaucratic than the fucking military. Right.

Someone has to give an order to someone else, to someone else, to someone else, and a paper trail that goes to all things. It's the most bureaucratic thing there is. It's done that way on purpose. Yeah, you have to kind of enjoy that sort of— The structure. Yeah, the command, the rank of that sort of thing. You have to enjoy that. And if you don't, then you're just doing it just for the accolade of saying

I was in the Marines. That's the thing. Don't do that. No, that's, yeah. I feel like maybe he was like, yeah, I'll go in the Marines. That's tough. But he's also, I think he's just kind of out there. And I don't think he likes to be told what to do. I think he likes to be on the outskirts of society, judging by the fact that he has

swastika tattoos. Oh, for fuck's sake. SS tattoos all over him. How did he not get kicked out for that shit? Swastika tattoos. I don't know if that was, he probably got them afterwards. Pre or post, right. But I mean, swastika, SS tattoos, and a machine gun behind his ear. Jesus.

So he's making a statement, I feel, with his body art. He doesn't want to have to say a word. He wants you to know right away that he's a piece of shit. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't have to say a word. He wants you to know right away that he's a piece of shit. Yeah, exactly. So we know where he was from 97 to 99,

disliking the bureaucracy of the Marine Corps. And black people. And the Marine Corps. And Jews. And I'm sure black people and Jews. And everything else. Basically anything, I feel like. Anything that's not a white person with a machine gun on their head. I don't feel like he likes a lot of white people either.

I feel like he just hates everybody, this guy. I feel like it's not a matter of anything. He'll just hate a black guy 10% more. But he hates the white guy standing next to him too's not a matter of anything. He'll just hate a black guy 10% more, but he hates the white guy standing next to him too and would kill him either way. Let's go over his criminal record from 2001 up to this point. Let's just go over his list of things that he was arrested for. Okay, shall we? You want to go down a list here? This should be interesting. This is good here. Let's see. Only a couple. Don't worry. Don't buckle up or anything, but grand theft auto, burglary, force with a dangerous weapon, use of a firearm or animal

during a theft. Oh, Christ. Or animal. You can use an animal during a theft and get charged for that? Have your dog bark, give me your wallet. Okay? This is the weirdest robbery ever. That is bizarre.

Taking a vehicle- Give me your shit. Why do you have that? Why do you have a rat in your hand right now? What are you doing? It has rabies. Yeah, it's German Shepherd. Let's be honest here.

You know what it is. Taking a vehicle without owner's consent, possession and transport of a controlled substance, parole and probation violations, felon in possession of a firearm, willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence in manufacture or possession of a dangerous weapon. Wow. That's a lot of shit. Yeah. So this is not an upstanding citizen.

No. I don't think he has any research grants at the local universities, probably. I doubt. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe he knows anything about it. What are they discussing? This is what I'm talking about.

These two are hanging out. What the fuck could these two have in common to talk about? Fuck is that on your head? Oh, it's a machine gun. What about that on your shoulder? Oh, that's a swastika. And give me all your money. I have a cobra.

I have a cobra. Yeah, that's true. On top of that. By the way, that means somebody had to do that for that to be a law. Yes, that's a law. That's crazy. And then Kurt looked at him and said, did I ever tell you why the highways wave? And that's not a conversation is what I'm getting at.

These two are going to come to an impasse when they're talking. What a weird thing. So it's super weird. 2008, he was convicted of a crime. It's the statute that bars anyone convicted of a felony or who is addicted to the use of narcotics from owning or buying a firearm.

Apparently he had both of them in there. Addicts can't buy, huh? No. He was convicted of, I never heard of that before. I haven't either. That was a law that might have been where he was, though, too. That's a state law, it seems like. We can't pass national gun laws at all. That would be crazy. It has to be, because this is from California.

So maybe that's a possibility. He's convicted of discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner, possessing controlled substances with intent to sell in 2007. So he's going to sell some, you know, probably meth, I would imagine. It's definitely meth. He had an outstanding warrant at this moment while he's standing talking to Kurt Johnson in California for a probation violation. He's got a warrant right now. He's got a warrant now in California.

He's believed to be pretty violent. People like in his court. He's got a machine gun tattooed on his fucking head. That's aggressive. That's aggressive. It's aggressive. We'll put it that way. Make a fucking statement at minimum. That's not the guy where you, if you had your kids, you'd go, go try to sell him Girl Scout

cookies. No, no, no, honey, come this way. Not that one. He doesn't want any Thin Mints. He doesn't enjoy anything. He doesn't like Samoas. Samoas do not make him happy. Not at all.

No, not even the sharp red ones. And you have to be. The only way that man is happy with a Samoa is when he's gutting one. You know what I mean? Like a Samoan, he would love to see an actual Samoan be gutted. Because they're big. He can climb right inside one. He likes that.

Like Luke Skywalker. He can just climb on in for warmth. On November 6th, the North Dakota courts show that he has a misdemeanor conviction that day. So he's new to town. He is just reminding me of John Mulaney. I heard it too. He's new in town. No, that's too strong.

That's too strong. Jesus. So he ends up with a misdemeanor conviction for driving without insurance. Okay. That's his welcome party. That's his welcome. Welcome to town, everybody. insurance. Okay. And that's his welcome party. That's his welcome. Welcome to town, everybody. Come on in.

Here's a ticket, you dipshit. Kurt Johnson's been here forever. He never gets arrested. This guy just pulled into town. Crosses state line and they give him the ticket. Now, December 18th, 2010, we were at New Year's Eve. This was 12 days before, 13 days before. He's at a house party.

Daniel is, not Kurt. I don't think kurt's going to house parties if they are there's wine the only house party he's ever seen was like kid and play or something and he didn't even like it there's wine involved at his house parties and then people discuss pavement and things like that this is somebody getting out of control at his house party is peeing six times i feel like here there's shared bottles you know what i mean and not even of like liquor, not even like scotch or something, not whiskey. This is like

shared like Mad Dog 2020 or some shit, some Boone's Farm. We're all passing it around. Passing it around. We're all getting HPV throat cancer. Let's do it. Come on, Kurt. Give us your cancer. So Daniel is at a house party. There's a guy named Jason Bolstead there. He's with his

younger brother and his brother's friends. When Daniel and a friend of Daniel showed up, who must be a winner also, Jason Bolstad said he noticed the machine gun tattoo by Daniel's right ear. Because he looked at him. He looked at him. You can look at someone and you go,

okay, that's a guy I don't want to hang out with. And he said he didn't want his little brother around him, basically. He didn't want his little brother hanging around this guy because he looked like trouble. And you know what? He loves his brother. That's the thing. Well, and he gets more reason why he was correct in his assumption because he begins talking to Daniel. Daniel starts telling him that he's in the Aryan Brotherhood.

He said his friend came up and they were talking a lot of like throwing a lot of like you know white supremacist jargon around something about 14 words and all that shit though. Yeah. So it's yeah. I know that they're sitting there. I feel like they go. I feel like they go to this party and they're like let's show these fucking hillbillies

that were tough and every make everybody afraid of us. I feel like and I feel like they're probably like everyone there's probably a little younger than him. It's probably one of those things where he's like, I can buy beer. Right. So that makes me, you know, something. And I know 14 words. That's all I know.

That's it, though. It's the longest sentence I've ever said, and it all makes sense, so I'm proud of it. Yeah. So for some reason, this Jason Bostad decides to go with Daniel to his house, which I wouldn't go with this guy. They go for drinks. They get there, and he says that,

this Jason said that Daniel and his friend pulled out guns and set them on the table right away. Later also, he said that Jason said that

him and Daniel went out to a cemetery on the north end of Cooperstown and fired a gun at a tree. At the cemetery. At the cemetery. At the cemetery. That was their night. Everybody's already dead.

That was their night. Want to come back to my house and drink? All right. And they're sitting there drinking. Want to go to the cemetery, shoot a tree? Shoot some guns. All right. That's their fucking night.

What the fuck? Shit, this is why I said mundane at the top of the show. When the activity for the night is want to go shoot a tree at night when we're drinking and partying, that's partying. Jesus. They don't even have cable here, I feel like. I don't know. Get a tree at night when we're drinking and partying. That's partying. Jesus. They don't even have cable here, I feel like. I don't know. Get a dish or something.

The nuke site is closed. Let's go shoot a tree. Hey, want to go to Ronald Reagan Missile Site 555? Oh, shit. What time is it? God damn it. I really want to do that topside tour. Fuck it.

You know what? Let's go shoot a tree. Jesus. Jesus Christ, man. So Jason said that Daniel asked him if he wanted to join the Aryan Brotherhood. What? Yes. Hey, you want to join the Aryan Brotherhood?

Sweet. We got an opening. I don't want that question ever posed to me ever. Listen, we have an opening right now, and we're looking for a young man about your cut, and we think that you'd be a good fit. So maybe you want to come on and join the team. We want to teach you a slogan. This is a team atmosphere.

So if you want to go your own way, this isn't the place for you. We want to give you suspenders and red boot laces, and we want you to say 14 words in a specific order every day. We want you to be super fucking boring because that's all you talk about. Yeah, that's the other thing. That's true. How boring are you just saying that that's all you talk about? Yeah, we get it. Fine.

At least Black Panthers want to talk about something else. like yeah we get it at least black panthers want to talk about something else no it's okay we get it choose okay great what yes the black man yeah i know i fucking know all right jesus christ unbelievable even these guys wives after a while gotta be like you know what i'm fuck no i mean seriously can we talk about anything don't you like theater is there anything i just saw theirquote, because that's what they call them, it's old ladies, my old lady or my bird or whatever the fuck. And I just saw one just throwing up her hands in frustration going, what the fuck? Enough. My dad was right.

Yeah, I get it. Obama was the, yes, I know. I know. I get it, okay? You told me about that. Yes, Jew banking system, seven Jew bankers. I understand the fucking plot, okay? Thank you. Okay. You told me about that. Yes. Jew banking system. Seven Jew bankers. I understand the fucking plot. Okay.

Thank you. Yes. Can you stop writing 88 on everything I own? Can you knock that shit off? We're not naming our son Himmler. No, I'm not doing it. No, his first name will not be Himmler. I'm not going to name him that.

I'm sorry. No. So this little baby Himmler. Of all things to celebrate. You know what I mean? That's so crazy to me. And they lost. That's the other thing.

Why are you so fucking happy about it? That goes for the Confederacy, too. The Confederacy and the Nazis. Stop it with the Moans. The Japanese know how to take a loss. Yeah, they do. They take a loss. They do. They're like a football team.

They take a loss. They go shake hands with the other side. And they go, they played a better game today. Better luck next year. They take a loss. They do. They're like a football team. They take a loss. They go shake hands with the other side and they go, they played a better game today. Better luck next year. They played a better game today and you know what?

They're the champions and we're going to go, you know, we're happy for them and everybody on their team. They don't go like, nope, we didn't lose. Nope, we'll just keep going.

Nope, they're carrying on forever. Imagine the Buffalo Bills did that four years in a row. It's so fucking weird, man. Nope, we'll be there getting the rings. Yeah, it's a strange thing. So Daniel not

only asks him, he says... But Buffalo Bills fans are the most humble people. They rarely talk. They don't want to talk about it. Have you ever been to Buffalo? They know their place is a dump. They don't even want to talk about those four Super Bowls. We're happy that they gave us a football team. There's nothing here. We have a hockey team. You ever hear of the Buffalo

Sabres? No, exactly. Neither has anybody else. They just tip their cap to Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas and walk the fuck on by. That's the only time they're going to get a celebrity in their town is if they play for the team. So they're very happy to have them there. They don't care if they're good or not. So now that we've offended everybody.

The Buffalo Bills are the Nazis of the NFL. I feel like such shit. That's true. Sorry, Bills fans. Sorry, Bills fans. You're Nazi sympathizers. We apologize. You Jew-hating bastards. You guys lost.

So Daniel S. Bolstad, not only do you want to join the Brotherhood, tell you what, I'm going to get you on the horn here. He's like a telemarketer. Oh, boy. He cornered the guy. He's like, let me put you on with my sales manager. We'll get this wrapped right up. He did, man. He gets him on the phone with a guy that daniel said his name is nico

uh and uh bolstad said that he was quote some kind of leader of an aryan gang in california or something okay that's what was what uh daniel told him he says uh daniel tells bolstad i want i'm here now and i'm i'm to start up a chapter in the area. Obviously, me and the 12 old guys, we're all going to hang out at the Bible camp. I don't know. But we're going to start a white. It's all white people, so I guess your whole pool is open for recruitment. Your town essentially won.

It's doing what you want it to do. Yeah, so that's why he moved here. He looked 98.8. That is fucking white. But there's a couple black people to hate, though. You don't want it to do. Yeah, so that's why he moved here. He looked 98.8. That is fucking white. But there's a couple black people to hate, though. You don't want it to be totally white. There's got to be someone to hate or else it's not any fun. We need something to do.

We got to go pick on those guys. That's it. That's what I think he's thinking. So, yeah, he says he's here. He's going to start a white supremacist movement in the area. And then he tells Bolstad, quote, Bolstad said, quote, he told me that he was either going to blow something up or kill someone to prove that they were here. Holy shit. Bolstad told him that he wouldn't get away with it and the cops would be all over him, you know, because there's a thousand people here.

And they noticed the one guy who comes into town with a machine gun on his ear and then shit starts blowing up and people start dying. You know. May have a suspect right out of the gate. May have a suspect here. By the way, there hasn't been a murder in this town up right now at 2010 in 80 years. Wow. 80 years. So they wouldn't notice a murder.

Right. It's not like they'd be like, oh, it's not like on the wire they find like a drug dealer in the alley and they're like, I don't know, it's some yo in an alley.

I don't know. Some yo in an alley. That's what they would call the drug dealers in the 80s were some dead yo in an alley. It was like, ah, fuck it. You know,

it's not even a, you know, that's not a citizen. That's what they, I feel like that's not how they would react to it here. So he said, Bolstad said that, Daniel said, quote, he said that they were all idiots and that they were corn fed people up here. Holy shit. So he's like, they won't know me.

I'm slick. Meanwhile, it's too cold for fucking corn up there, right? I think. Is there corn? I have no idea what the hell grows up there. Jesus Christ. I would think nothing. He's just using some dipshit slang term for yokels.

Probably. Yeah, yeah. They're corn-fed, whatever. So back at the bar here on New Year's Eve, now that we get a background on the guy that Kurt Johnson's talking to, exactly what an odd conversation, what an odd pairing these two are. Carrie Saad, the bartender, describes Daniel as, quote, he had a shaved head, he had high combat boots, long trench coats, he had a tattoo.

I think it was an M16 on the side of his head. Wow. She knew the make of it. She knew the make of it, yeah. Everybody else is calling her a machine gun head. She's shooting big bucks. She's calling him by his technical term. I think it was an M16.

She's calling him M16. They didn't know that these two had ever met. Nobody knew or anything like that. They didn't seem to know each other, but they were talking. They talked for a couple hours while they were there. And then Carrie Saad said they went in the bathroom together

and came out. When they came out, Johnson was completely different. She said he seemed somewhat sober before, but came back from the bathroom extremely intoxicated, falling off his stool. Wow. What, they do coke together? I'm going to say K probably.

Oh, okay. That sounds like K to me. It sounds like because you're real, it feels like you're in a boat and you're dizzy and shit. Also, anything that has a K in it, this guy seems like he would be in possession of. I mean, it could be anything. They could have done heroin or something like that,

but I feel like, I don't know, I feel like this sounds like fucking ketamine to me, whatever. But anyway, I can't, that's just a whatever, who knows. But I feel like they must have done something in the bathroom. They did something together in the bathroom that was less, that was more than just shots. Yes. He said they, she said that, Carrie Saad said that Johnson seemed to go from not very drunk to very drunk. She said it was almost like Kurt went from zero to 60 in 45 minutes. Wow.

Which is strange because she knows him and that's not like him. Yeah. Also, too, later on we'll find out he has a blood alcohol content of 0.54, which isn't even legally. Oh, shit. That's dead. Yeah, exactly. That's so much. 0.4 is dead.

Now, Carrie Saad, she's sitting there bartending and she said Daniel was super weird with him, too. With her, with everybody. First of all, she said she heard Daniel tell Johnson at one point, quote, if you don't like me, you can just shoot me in the head then. What? Which is an odd thing to say to a guy you just met. Yeah. He also said weird shit to her. She said, quote, he asked me if I was Christian, before I could even say anything he told me that he was the devil

and was serving the devil. Yeah. So, how you doing? I'm the devil. I'm new in town. That's like I have AIDS. That's the John Malay. I have swastika tattoos. I'm the devil and I'm new in town. I'm doing

devil's work. Isn't that what fucking Richard Ramirez said when he got arrested? I think so, yeah. She said she was freaked out by the whole thing and she asked her husband to come behind the bar with her after that. That's how scared she was by this conversation. She was like, I don't like this fucking guy. Apparently Johnson was so

out of it at that point, started causing a disturbance at the bar. Wow. Like to the point where he fell over backward off his bar stool. Wow. Carrie Saad said she was going to uh she suggested to call the police to help get him home yeah which is funny in a small town that you call the car hey kurt's drunk can you take him home oh come on kurt let's go out here and they take him in the cop car on new year's eve right here they're like we have 14 fucking shootings there's people it's a mess out here god damn it dui's

everywhere daniel apparently said no no, he's fine. He kind of picks him up off the ground. He says, quote, we don't need any fucking cops. We'll take care of this, is what Daniel says. Then Daniel picked him up like a rag doll, she said. She said it was the oddest thing. He just yanked him, picked him up. Apparently he was pretty strong.

So at that point, Daniel says, well, I'll just give him a ride home. Shit, I don't care. I'll give him a ride home. And as a bartender, when somebody just said, I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's work. And now you're a sweetheart that's going to take somebody home? That's what I mean. I'd be terrified. And nobody knows this guy.

He's new in town, so nobody really knows him. I know, it's funny every time. I say it on purpose every time. I know. There's a guy named Tim Vincent in the bar also. He's just another guy who's hanging out. He helped Johnson to Daniel has a van outside because he's a weirdo and he's got to have a van. Of course.

So he's got a van out there, and Tim Vincent helps Daniel get Johnson out to the van because he's falling over. He can't even stand up. Tim Vincent said that he couldn't get Johnson over a tall snow bank that had built up. And he said that Daniel grabbed Johnson by the neck and waist and, quote, threw him into the side door of the van. Holy shit. He picked him up and tossed him in the van like he's tossing a drunk out of a back door. Yeah, like a back door. It's crazy.

It's super weird, man. That's an odd thing to see. And then they're just going to walk him back in? And he's like, all's super weird, man. That's an odd thing to see. And then you're just going to wander back in? And he's like, all right, happy new year. Already two fucking events that I'm just like, no, this is not good. He goes back in with his little party hat on. It's ridiculous. He's got the 2010 where the two zeros make the sunglasses.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And he's wearing them shits while that guy's throwing people around. Absolutely. sunglasses. You know what I mean? Yeah. And he's wearing them shits while that guy's throwing people around.

Absolutely. So at this point, about 3 a.m., he's outside of town and ends up in a snowbank in his van. And so he called the police and asked for a ride home from the van. And they picked him. This is like the Uber of this town. They need to do something. That's their job. How's your driving? How late do you stay up? Because the town needs fucking rides home. They need something. That's their job. How's your driving? How late do you stay up?

Because the town needs fucking rides home. We need rides. When do we solve crimes? We turn into a taxi service. No, no, no. There's no crimes. There's no crimes. About 9 p.m. we turn into a taxi service, so look out for that.

People dial 911 and we go. Shit-faced. Yeah. I need a ride home. 911 emergency. I got tip again. Where are you going? Where are you headed?

911 emergency. How drunk are you and where are you going? Where are you headed? 911 emergency, how drunk are you and where are you headed? The cop, one of the cops said, quote, it appeared Mr. Wok did not want us near his van. So they didn't want him near the van at all. And the cops were just like, let's get you home. Whatever, it's cold, it's the middle of the night, who gives a shit? So a couple days goes by, nobody hears from Kurt Johnson. So a couple days goes by. Nobody hears from Kurt Johnson.

By January 4th, his cousin, Murray Stocka, reports him missing to Sheriff Robert Hook of Griggs County. Got it. So now he's missing. No one ever, no, they never see him again. They search his house thoroughly for him. They even look in the cupboards and closets and crawl spaces. They don't find him. The sheriff's department. That's a thorough check.

Oh, everywhere. They're opening cupboards to look for the guy? Yeah, maybe. They made a point to to look for the guy? Yeah, maybe. They made a point to say, we even looked in the cupboards. We can't find this fucking guy. He is gone, man. He's really good at hide and seek. That's unbelievable.

Amazing at hide and seek. He also searched, you know, the cops came. They searched his house, the sheriff. If they'd have gotten his family to go look for Osama bin Laden, they would have found him. They're looking in fucking cupboards. I know where he is. Don't worry about it. I know what this asshole does.

Okay. He's been doing it since he was a kid. Ridiculous. So also they talked to the person who does the snow removal. Everybody's got a snow removal guy there at Johnson's house. And this guy said that there was no new footprints in the snow when he came to shovel on New Year's Day. So he did not. And it didn't snow that night.

So he said, you know, he didn't see new footprints going to the house. Like Kurt didn't come home and go to the house through the snow anyway. So the police do some investigating. They ask around town. They put together the, you know, obviously the timeline of what the fuck happened to this guy. And they figure out that the last time he was seen was with Daniel at the bar. So they're like, okay. They want to talk to him, obviously.

That's a thing. Now, he's employed. Daniel's a welder. He works at the Cheyenne Tooling in Cooperstown. He's got a supervisor named Tim James who said that Daniel did not report to work, had not been there since December 23rd because his mother died in California. Or at least that's what he told. He told his supervisor. And that's fine anyway because all he was doing was welding together swastikas every fucking day.

Just constantly. They're like, Jesus Christ, how did you weld a bust of Hitler? I don't know how that's even possible, but that's amazing. You're talented. That's the thing that's fucked up about this. You're not impressed by what you do. I can't believe you make so many iron crosses and iron eagles. You're using it for evil.

It's not great here. They're looking at informants around town. They have informants in this tiny town. How much meth did they get busted with? This is their lot in life now. They were looking and they talked to an informant and he says that they were he says that he was told that Daniel

was shopping in Fargo. The informant knows that kind of shit? Yeah. It's amazing that they're like, this is a good, he's almost as good as an informant as Bubbles. I mean, he's not like Bubbles. He's not going to go down and tell you the inner workings of the whole organization, go down there with different hats and say, I'll put a red one on the guys that matter and you guys take pictures of it while I'm up there.

He's not going to do that. He's not going to come up with a whole plan. That's a different thing. But he's still, he knows that he's shopping in Fargo. He knows like intimate shit. So the sheriff here, Sheriff Hook gets a search warrant to search Daniel's van because they said that they didn't want them. They were suspicious of the van since the 3 a.m. thing here. So January 5th at 1225 a.m. They woke a fucking judge up. No doubt. The phone rang. The judge is like, who needs a ride? And they were like, no, no, no, no. It's the police. We need a warrant, actually.

So January 5th, they show up. Now, they had kind of watched him a little bit. They watched him. They saw him go from his house to work in the morning on January 5th. So they see him go here. They end up confronting him at about 6 o'clock at Cheyenne Tooling. He's thought of in the warrant as dangerous or possibly dangerous, possibly armed. They don't know.

He's got all these weapons possessions and everything. At least one behind his ear. So, yeah, they're thinking, you know, so the warrant's good for anywhere, obviously. There was a caution in the California warrant because they found it at that point that listed him as armed and dangerous. The funny thing is when he got pulled over for the ticket for not having insurance when he first got to town the california warrant didn't come up gotcha so that is so weird that they didn't arrest him they should have arrested him right there maybe the warrant's just a state warrant it's not something that they have it here now okay just for some reason i don't know if the cop didn't run him through the just didn't give a shit he's just like here you go asshole like i

don't know we lazy small town cop i have no idea it was just the taxi he was like i got people i got the car loaded with people right now. There's people in the trunk. That's hysterical. I just saw that right now when you said that. Seeing like just

all these drunks in a cop car. Waving out the, it's like a party van. Turn the lights off. He's yelling back, will you turn the goddamn sirens off?

Turn them off. Get, keep him away from the fucking, I've got to go now. Here's your goddamn ticket. He didn't even run him through the computer. So they look, the agents,

they look at, he's got a maroon GMC Safari van. He gets out of the van and they order him to the ground, obviously. Do you want to nose that? Yeah, exactly. They order him to the ground. They find a 9mm Glock pistol with 10 bullets in there in his back pocket. So he's armed right there, which is, you know, he's not allowed to have weapons, first of all.

So they talk to him. They read him as Miranda writes. You know, they make sure to say that he says, quote, I don't even know what I'm doing here. Obviously, we're not talking about my parole violation. So he's like, obviously, this is a bigger deal. It's like eight people just converged on my van. This is a sting. So clearly you guys aren't just like,

hey, he's on probation violation. I didn't call for a ride. Yeah, they said, well, why do you have a gun? He says, I know I'm not supposed to have a gun, but he's trying to clear his California warrant. And he tells the cops this, that he's applying for, quote, sovereign citizenship.

What the? No. Those people are assholes, by the way. No, no, no, no. You are not a student. No. No. I hate those people. No.

I hate those videos when they get pulled over. No. I'm only rolling my window down this much, officer. I can hear you. I'm a sovereign. No, no. They're saying I know my rights. He's saying I'm not a part of this. I'm

my own fucking country, which is insanity. And he says that he wanted to be a sovereign citizen so he could, quote, squash all this little petty nonsense. What does that mean? Like having a gun when you're on parole in another state, which you can't even, you weren't even supposed to leave your first state to get one. You have to get

that stuff taken care of, by the way, if you want to be a sovereign whatever the fuck. You have to do that before you get the gun. You don't get to have the gun and then just say, no, no, you guys, I'll wash it clean. Hey, guys, I'm working on this shit. I know I have a warrant, but hey, it's cool. How dumb did he think these cops were? What a dipshit.

He says that he's a natural born citizen who still had his constitutional rights and shouldn't be subjected to statuses passed by, quote, self-serving people. He said that out loud. That's called a government and a country. Laws are passed by people and you follow them or else you end up in jail and you got covered in swastika tattoos. That's a much smarter thought than anybody that has an M-16 tattooed on their head should be saying. 100%. He tells them about the Marine Corps and the bureaucracy. They're like, yeah, he sounds like a winner, this guy.

It's getting better and better here. Police tow his van to a body shop to seal it for the evidence. Obviously, they want to check that. When they do search the van, they find an envelope containing five spent rifle shells. Who's saving their rifle shells? Spent shells in an envelope and more ammunition for a rifle. So obviously more firearms. They find those. So now they apply for a search warrant for his home for firearms and weapons.

They're building it up in ammunition. They say they found ammunition for a rifle in his car, blah, blah, blah. Like he says, I'm, you know, I can, I can possess sovereign. I'm sovereign you know, I can, I can possess sovereign. I'm sovereign. Damn it. Also an informant told the police about an incident, which Daniel had shot through his coffee table inside of his own house. So they're like, okay, that's why they,

that's how they got the search warrant for the house was like also to, he came from his house. They know to his job. So he had a gun in his house at some point. So they assume there might be more guns there. They interview him on January 5th. This is awesome here you're goddamn right it is he said he's been drinking with johnson sweet pea he said i seem like a good dude yeah uh which is weird uh he said he offered the the the guy a ride home when the bartender threatened to call the cops

he relays that all that is you know that's can't be disputed that's all backed up by other people corroborated right He said once they were in the van, though, Johnson was just belligerent. Oh, he just went crazy. He wouldn't even tell him where he lived. Really? He said, he wouldn't tell me. Now, the town is.97 miles. It's a guy that can't talk. Listen here, asshole, I'm going to drop you off in the middle, and you're going to be

pretty close to wherever it is. You threw him by the nape of his neck and his belt loops into the car, and you expect that guy to be able to talk to you? He wouldn't tell him where he lived in the town. Now, he could have just asked someone, hey, where does Kurt live? And they would have probably known. But instead, he just says, yeah. So Daniel said, what was I supposed to do?

He said, I went to my own house. He said, I left him in the van. He was passed out in the van by the time he got to my house. So I just went inside. He said, I mixed a vodka screwdriver. So he's in there going to have mixed drinks now. He's in there. I picture him a little stir stirring it yes that's very nice uh then he said you know he left him passed out there he said he came back later and uh johnson was in the van again he had a drink and went and checked on him and he said he was conscious now but he said he was still being

obnoxious he said he was still being a complete dick he was awake but he was just an asshole so uh daniel said i'm getting rid of this fucking guy. So he said he took him, he got back in the car, and he went and dropped him off at the Fishbowl bar across the street from the Oasis. So he said, I took him right back to another bar. I took him from my house. I said, you can't go in the Oasis, but go in the Fishbowl and fucking hang out in there and see if someone will take care of you in there because I'm not doing that. Daniel said, quote, I'm a nice guy. I thought I was going to do him a favor.

He's just a nice guy, Jimmy. I mean, obviously. They asked him if things went bad with him, and he said no. He said, why would I want to kidnap some old guy? It just doesn't make sense. That's his thing. Who would want to do that? That's bizarre.

Super bizarre. He pointed out that the police said they talked to people at the fishbowl, and they said no one in the bar said they saw Johnson that night. Nobody saw him at all. The only people that saw him were people that saw him in other bars, and no one saw him at the fishbowl. The last time anybody saw him was when your hand was around his neck throwing him into a van. The last he was seen is where he soared through a van door like a dead animal. That's the last time he was seen.

They just saw his asshole and elbows as you tossed him into a shit minivan. And drove away. Right. And he said, Daniel said about that, you know, he said, I don't know what else. He said, who knows? He said, quote, what if someone else picked him up? He doesn't have any friends? What the hell do I know?

He said, I don't know where the fuck he is. I'm not his babysitter. Jesus. That was his thing. What the hell do I know? I dropped him off at the bar. I'm doing the fucking guy a favor. You're breaking my balls now. I don't know where the fuck he is. You're breaking my fucking balls. I'm trying to do somebody a favor. Be was his thing. What the hell do I know? I dropped him off at the bar. I'm doing the fucking guy a favor. You're breaking my balls now.

I don't know where the fuck he is. You're breaking my fucking balls. I'm trying to do somebody a favor, be a nice guy. You're coming over here breaking my balls. Is that an actual quote? I don't know where the fuck he is. I don't know where the fuck he is. I'm not his babysitter.

That's the quote. That's the actual quote. Yes. You think that came from me? I'm a nice guy. I'll tell you when I'm kidding. I was not kidding at all. He said, I'm a nice guy.

I don't know where the fuck he is. I'm not a babysitter. He said, I'm a nice guy. I was going you when I'm kidding. I was not kidding at all. He said, I'm a nice guy. I don't know where the fuck he is. I'm not a babysitter. He said, I'm a nice guy. I was going to do him a favor. Why would I want to kidnap some old guy? Doesn't make sense. What if somebody else picked him up? He doesn't have any friends. I don't know where the fuck he is. I'm not his babysitter. Full range of emotions in a two minute thing. That's amazing.

Yeah. So they talked, they asked him about, he said he dropped, he dropped him off. He went home and then tried to drive to a friend's house north of Cooperstown, because it's three in the morning and you want to, you know, what are you doing? He's been drinking screwdrivers in his living room. But the snow, there was some snow, and he misjudged a turn and got stuck in a ditch, and that's when the cops saw him that night. So he tried to connect that to that. So they search his home. to connect that to that.

So they search his home. They find, on first search here, they find a canister containing gunpowder and marbles and as well as a coil of a fuse. He's building bombs? On an entertainment center of the home. Yeah. So they're looking at that and they're like, okay, this is a little odd here. So they discover more stuff here. They discover a shell casing from something upstairs.

They also find, and this is not great, they find a shell casing from something upstairs. They also find, and this is not great, they find a bloodstained couch cushion in a garbage bag in his laundry room. And he's missing a couch cushion on his couch. So this isn't like I found this outside or somebody threw it in my yard or their truck or something.

So, you know, they look at that. It's a smidge incriminating. It is. So you find that. They go back to get some questions you know, they look at that. It's a smidge incriminating. It is. So you find that. They go back. They get some questions. Yeah. They go back and get another warrant for a detailed search.

Now, this isn't just for firearms and ammunition. Now they want, we can tear the fucking walls down here if we have to, because now we're looking for evidence of Johnson. Right. So now you're getting samples. Before, they couldn't just start swabbing shit. They didn't have a warrant for that stuff. So what they do is there's a, in the basement, this is a rented home, by the way. He's renting a home. Daniel is here.

You mentioned being that landlord. That's what I mean. They find in the basement, they find a mud smear on a wall. Just a little mud smear near a small hatch door that seals off a crawl space. Okay. And also they find in the basement, they find a pair of muddy boots and mud stained coveralls down there. So they're like weird.

Where did these come from? Right. How did this mud get all over this shit? The sheriff said, quote, you know, there's nowhere to get mud in here in the middle of winter. Right. He's saying it's all snow. The only way to get it is down, downstairs.

Or in the crawl space. There's four feet of snow on the ground and it's frozen underneath. So where the hell are you getting mud from? So they found, you know, so with this mud, they said, let's check that crawl space. That crawl space seems interesting. That seems super suspicious there. And they find an area in the space with what they call recently disturbed earth, which is obvious signs where it's not just settled and flat.

Cat scratches or something. Yep. So they use a probe, and they get in there. What they find, 18 inches deep, is a head. Good Christ. Just the head. Sweet Pete. Not the rest of the body.

Just a head? Just a fucking head. Okay. They find a head wrapped in multiple plastic bags with a shitload of fabric softener sheets in there. Really? I guess for smell. Yeah.

Fabric softener sheets. He's a pot smoker. Yes. I wrote a film once where guys had a body in the trunk and they didn't know what to do so they bought a bunch of little tree air fresheners. They bought like a hundred of them and put them in the back. They were like, I don't know.

That should do it. That should do it, yeah. Alright, good enough. They walked away. So he put some downy in there. And multiple plastic bags. Yeah, he had a bunch of bounced sheets in there. He said, my clothes are never going to be softer and fluffier. This guy's hair is going to be super fluffy. It's going to be amazing.

So anyway, this poor guy's head, they don't know who it is. They just find a head in the basement. That's right away bad news. Now we've got a problem. When you're finding just a head somewhere, there's an issue. A, this guy just took a head and buried it. B, where the fuck's the rest of this guy is another issue that they have here. They also find a couple other interesting things.

They find a bullet casing, several items with Johnson's DNA on them, a bullet casing with a speck of his blood on it. These are all very, and a head. So when you add that up, it's a pretty strong case, I would say. Somebody's dead. They charge him with murder, obviously, here. Now, the sheriff, who knew Johnson well, knew him well, said he was barely able to make a

positive identification. But they used DNA and dental records to confirm, though. They found fragments of a 9mm slug in his head. I guess that's one good way to be identified when you're dead, is just put a fucking M16 tattoo on the side of your face. Everyone knows it's you.

You're set yeah unfortunately for kurt he didn't have any of those so they had to do that uh it's this is awful this poor guy yeah he just mind his own business this poor bastard drinking in the skull they found there was one gunshot wound in the forehead of this uh of this uh of the head uh they found a nine millimeter slug fragments of it that they believed to be from the gun recovered from the Glock 9mm that Daniel had. So we're getting DNA, ballistics, obvious common sense, and a fucking head in your basement. You're pretty shit out of luck at this point. First of all, I think his security deposit's voided at this point.

I think we can at least say that much. The landlord's pissed. You're not selling that couch at a yard sale either. we can at least say that much. For sure. The landlord's pissed. Right. This is terrible. You're not selling that couch at a yard sale either. No. They determined, no, definitely not. They determined that it was a close range shot in the forehead from a 9mm that killed him. They found the 9mm casing with blood spots on it in Daniel's bedroom also. So it's not even down by the head there.

When they did the DNA testing, they couldn't get to exactly Johnson, but they said it could only have come from his father, his grandfather, or him. The only people who could have done it. And since the rest of them were dead, they figured it was probably Kirk. Pretty good guess. Pretty good guess on that. So now they're looking for the body now. Like, where the hell is this goddamn, we need a body. Where's the rest?

How horrible is that? I just can't ever get beyond that. The decapitation of a body is so fucking nuts to me. It's, you have to, what, I don't know what kind of, I look at it two ways. One way you look at like someone who's like in a rage with a saw, just like, or you look at someone just cold and calculating like they just measured some wood to build a shed outside. And they just took their circular saw and calmly zipped it off. I don't know which is which.

I don't know which is worse. I don't know which is worse. The guy that's casually zipping it off is fucking. That's worse. That guy's scary. That's worse. That guy's dangerous. The guy who goes crazy, I feel like we could medicate him at least and he won't go crazy.

The guy over here, you can't cure that. He doesn't mind. He's like, this head zips right off. No problem. There's been some sort of medical study that proved that a head, when it comes off, is conscious. Your eyes will see and absorb what it's seeing for six seconds. Oh, like guillotine style?

Yeah, that is so much time. Clean swipe. That's a lot of time. Six seconds. Doing comedy, 10 minutes when you're new, that's a year. Yeah, I remember that. Being murdered in six seconds when your head comes off, I can't imagine. That's great.

That'd be a lifetime. Luckily for Kurt, I guess if you could say this, he was shot in the forehead first. That's the oddest lucky thing I've ever heard. That's maybe the luckiest thing so far. So they do more investigation here, and they figure out that Wacht drove to Crosby on January 4th in his van. They thought he returned on U.S. Highway 10 from Crosby through Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Okay. Okay.

The area and then back to Fargo and then up to Cooperstown. Okay. So they're looking at. That's a long, long trip. Yes. And they're looking at anywhere along that route. There's probably a body. A headless body. They're looking at... That's a long, long trip. Yes. And they're looking at anywhere along that route, there's probably a body. A headless body. Yeah, just a headless body. He says, it's so funny too, maybe he's like a professional killer, kind of like the Russian

guy on The Wire when they said, is this body from you? And he said, does he have a head? Does he have hands? If so, then it's not us. So there you go. I think that's him. Does he have a head? Does he have hens? So anyway, he said that he had made a social visit to Crosby. And so they said they knew he was somewhat familiar with the area. Look out for black or dark metallic gray plastic trash bags that may be strewn about, covered with snow or anything like that. Anywhere between Crosby, Minnesota and Cooperstown. Jesus. And Crosby is 140 miles southeast of Fargo. Sweet fuck. So that's another hour and a half to Cooperstown. So anywhere in this vast expanse of nothingness in the middle of the winter, there could be

a body out there. Not just a body. A father of three adult children is out there somewhere. This is fucking horrific. Sweet Pete. It's crazy. The sheriff said, quote, we're not looking for big, fluffy garbage bags sitting on top of the snow.

The bags that have been placed the first few days of the year and have been covered more with snow since and possibly uncovered by animals. So they're like, who knows what you're looking for. We may be waiting until fucking July to find this guy. This is horrific. He says, quote, we need to find this body, number one for his family, to give them some closure. This is just a looming question for everybody. We need to put that to bed.

So they're still looking for the body when they go to pretrial. Still haven't found the body, just ahead. Town is going batshit, as you might imagine. A local person, not even like a drifter, like a regular born and bred guy that everybody knows, and it's the first murder in 80 years, and it's the middle of nowhere. So this is the town, man.

This is the talk of the town. Daniel moves to suppress the search of his van and home, saying the warrants were not based on probable cause. They tried to say that the informant information that they got out of it saying that he shot through his coffee table, they said since that was in the affidavit, he said, well, he heard that secondhand. So the informant who said that heard that secondhand and didn't know it for a fact. So that was not an okay probable cause to put on the affidavit for a search warrant. Was it a fact?

Well, luckily there was a bunch of other shit too. So it didn't really matter. The fact that they knew he came from his house to his job with a gun on him made it moot anyway. That was just padding it. Maybe they shouldn't have put it in there, but whatever. It's always fascinating to me the mindset of somebody that does something horrific. Like he wants to get the evidence of a head being in his fucking crawl space thrown out of a trial. Get that thrown out.

You've got a fucking head, bro. Oh, not to mention blood and DNA. Yeah, yeah, but you guys didn't go the right way to find that head. Who gives a shit? No, there's a head. He brings it up a lot. Let's see here. I want anybody to have a fair trial, too.

But for Christ's sake, you've got a head. Once you have a head, not only just a head, it's not like somebody dropped the head off either. There's a whole bunch of other shit that goes with it. It's not like, I've never met this guy. No one's ever seen us together. There's no DNA, but there was a head down there. Someone must have broken and buried it. Happens to be his. No. This is deep. This is too much.

You are neck deep in this shit without a head. You motherfucker. So there's also a statement that an informant said that Daniel told this informant that he dropped Johnson off at the fishbowl and that he said, quote, no one saw me do it. And he's trying to Daniel's trying to say this is false. Now, the district court, what they did is they struck the statements from the affidavit and said there was still probable cause anyway. So tough shit. Yeah.

They said, yeah, even without that, it's still enough. I mean, we're still good. Yes. The state files notice to introduce pieces of evidence as well as like starting with his comments, Daniel's comments about him wanting to start a gang and blow something up or kill somebody to show everyone that he's here. We've seen you. You have a tattoo on your fucking head. Well, this one's really good here. Phone records show that Daniel signed up for an account under the name Rudolf Hess.

For what? A phone account. Really? The phone company. He signed up for the phone company under Rudolf Hess, who's a big Nazi. Yeah. That's a giant, you know. What is he doing?

He's picking Nazi party. I'm surprised it wasn't Himmler, like we said. So, yeah, so they do all that. Is this TV under David Duke? What the fuck is he doing? Jesus Christ. So they also talk about the unsuccessful search for the body. They never got Johnson's cell phone either.

They never found that. But they did. The phone company said that it was powered down at 12.01 AM on New Year's day. So midnight, and he was like, I better turn his phone off. I don't know if his alarm went off or something. He was like, oh shit. They also introduced statements that he told, Daniel told another guy, another informant that he, he had an idea of shooting a police officer during a, during a traffic stop. There was, he had, I guess there was records records of he had repairs and maintenance done on his Glock and about a month before this all happened on his gun.

So they were saying that, you know, he was obviously wanting to keep his handgun in working condition. So that shows that he wasn't just didn't have a handgun thrown in the closet somewhere and whatever. Now, there was some evidence of him holding a gun to someone's head at one point. What? And also his criminal record, which is all, that's not allowed. They allow

the discussion about shooting the police officer, but not the holding a gun to someone's head or his criminal record, only if he testifies as his record come into play at that point. They do agree that the evidence of the warrant for which he was arrested, that was admissible stuff there for the California thing. Griggs County State's attorney, Marina Spahr, she had her opening statement.

And she said that she basically laid out the – they found a head. Right. Last seen with this guy. Right. Head, DNA, blood. Guys, have a good one. It was probably like five minutes. And then she just says,

I'm going to go get a fucking sandwich. I'll be back. You guys know what to do here. Like, give me a goddamn break here. Now, Daniel's defense attorney, Steven Mottinger, told the jurors that the evidence, including the severed head

in the crawl space, isn't as clear cut as prosecutors would have them believe. No, it was a jagged cut in that head. Is that what he's telling us? Listen, guys, he said, quote, their evidence will show that there are other possibilities. Unlimited possibilities, I propose. He didn't say that, but he did say there are other possibilities

that someone else could have been involved. Somebody lost a head. There's so many other possibilities. Yeah, I suppose there are. Oh, my God. But how many of them are logical? That's the thing. At the trial, the jurors hear the 77-minute police interview, so they get to hear him talk and say, what am I, his fucking babysitter, all that shit.

You know, they hear that he's the last person seen with Johnson. There's DNA evidence that, you know, could only be Johnson. There's a nine millimeter casing that was fired from Wach's gun. And there's a nine millimeter bullet in this guy's head with and there's blood on the casing of this guy who got shot. So the cushion found matches Daniel's sofa and Johnson's blood all over it. A boot, a pair of gloves, a sponge in a garbage bag in the laundry room, and a belt that they thought was Kurt Johnson's. Jesus.

This is all evidence they have. There's DNA all over boots and gloves and blood all over the sponge. That poor defense attorney's got to look at all that shit and be like, you've got to look at that fuck with that tattoo and go, that tattoo is your best decision. How the fuck did you do this? How did you get to this point? How is it you've come to arrive here to use a crime and sports thing? What the fuck is wrong

with you? And this is, you've made my job so fucking hard, man. How are we supposed to try to get you any sort of fair trial? And you know, I said that in a past show that I don't like lawyers because they have, because they're so slimy. And like this guy, I feel so fucking bad for this guy well that's the thing you have to defend people right I mean it's just I mean and it's not necessarily that you're defending people you're

just trying to get them a fair trial because you believe in the constitution whatever you you're doing your goddamn job at some point I mean maybe that's why you started but at some point it's like it's my job to fucking defend these people and at try to figure out something. And at some point, you've got to look at yourself and go, I went to law school, you fucking jerk. I've put my life—I went through so much fucking hard work to try to get you a fair trial, and you're fucking me with all this evidence. You're fucking me. What are you doing? A head, really? I get the rest of it.

A fucking head? I can deal with a fucking bloody cushion, okay? We can work on that. OJ got—we can work on bloodstains. A head, I can't do.stains a head i can't do i can't do if they found nicole's head in oj's crawlspace we got a problem he'd have been in prison for that sorry nothing would have got him off if they found a head if they took a head out plunked it on the counter and said we found that in his house they go all right well that's you know my student loans

i have you fucking assholes yeah you know how much money I owe? Good God here. So they did say, the medical examiner said that Johnson was already dead when the head was amputated, thankfully. Good God here. Post-mortem decapitation. They said based on,

they didn't find what implement cut the head off. Awful. He said it had to be a nice sharp instrument that went through the skin and muscle. But he said a knife would have a tough time

cutting through bone. So maybe a saw, maybe something like that. Don't know. The Lamont Jacobson, who is a forensic supervisor at the State Crime Lab, he's the ballistics expert in this trial. He says it's his opinion that the bullet that killed Johnson was a Remington

Golden Sabre 9mm hollow point bullet, which matches an ammunition box found in Daniel's home. So pretty clear what the fuck happened here. He said that the bullet could have been fired from the Glock 9mm but the Glock's rifling doesn't make a distinct impression. He couldn't

be certain. But based on logic and the fact that all of that shit was in the same house, I would say yeah, probably there. Rifling, if you don't know, is the stripes that are made on a fucking bullet as it comes out of the barrel. Yeah, it's the ballistics. It's what they compare ballistics. Three whatever and a left twist

or you'll hear it on Law & Order all the time. It's very specific to each gun. It's very specific and also you see it on Law & Order constantly like, oh, it's just ballistics. Most of the time bullets are fucked up and can't be compared. So most of the time it's like it's splintered like here. They flatten, they break, they hit a wall. It's so much energy well it's a lot of energy so they don't get that a lot it hits

bone and it nicks the bullets everything like that so uh the defense challenged the validity of the ballistics test they tried to make a big deal of how many rounds were test fired saying you only test fired three rounds and then the the ballistics person said that jacobson said that uh a researcher who studied more than 500 glocks was able to match each gun to the cartridge in cases it's fired. You know what you're doing if you're an expert in this and you can do it. Right. Somebody that's seen it enough.

Three's all I need. Their big piece of evidence, the defense, was that they found a shovel later on wedged under something. The police didn't find it. The family didn't find it at first. Kurt Johnson's family found it when they were, I'm sorry, the guy who rented Daniel's house to him found it when he was cleaning shit out. The landlord found it.

The landlord found it. And it was a shovel with mud and shit on it, but it didn't match the mud downstairs or it didn't have any DNA on it at all. So they were like, there was a shovel there. That didn't have any DNA on it. That means he's innocent, right there was a shovel there that didn't have any DNA on it. That means he's innocent, right? No, that means there's a fucking head in your basement, sir. Mister, there's a head in your basement. They had Carrie sad.

The bartender testify about walks behavior at the Oasis. This is so silly. There's so much other shit in this house. You guys didn't touch. They're talking about that. And then they show the jurors a picture of a partially open plastic bag with Johnson's head

visible inside and yeah, Johnson's mother eyes in the courtroom. It's terrible covering her hand because I mean, they put this on the monitor

so everyone can see. Horrible. They focus, prosecutors talk about Daniel's affiliation with the Aryan Nation so he says and the fact that he said

either way, whether he's in it or not, that he said he was going to kill people around there to try to start shit. Right. Jared Bolst, Jason he says, and the fact that he said either way, whether he's in it or not, that he said he was going to kill people around there to try to start shit. Jared Bolst, Jason Bolstadt testifies about him saying how he was going to kill people or blow something up. Right. They show a picture of the tree they shot to the jury with bullet holes in it with the

nine millimeter shots. They pulled the bullets out of there. This is what I hate about white people. I don't know how I'm supposed to preface that statement that I'm about to say. I get why people are so mad at 30-something-year-old white men when you got assholes like this. Well, yeah, well, there's this guy. What a dickhole. That's the problem. And then there's you or me, but that's normal. And then we got to go, I'm not that guy. I'm not him. No. Well, I would hope that most people would imagine that this is a very-

This is such a unique situation. This is a very unique situation. But why do white supremacists, like the guys that just think they're better than everybody else, why do they have to make a statement? Like, why do you have to- Because that's why they're doing it, because it's an antisocial statement. I get it, but why do you got to do that? It has nothing to do with what, it has nothing to do with

what their thing is. It's just the fact that they have to have a thing. They gotta show everybody. If they were good at football they would have done that and they wouldn't have cared about this. It's just I'm better than everybody so I need everybody to know. Is that really man? We see that you've got that tattoo on your head. There's an abuse issue and

who knows what the hell. It's a mess. I hate white supremacists so much. They might be on the top of the list of the biggest scumbaggiest people on earth. They're not good people at all. Like you said, they're defending a losing proposition, too, which makes it terrible there. They get bolstered in cross-examination. They talk about how he's currently serving time in a correctional center while the trial's going on. He had a probation violation stemming from drug charges back in the day.

The cross-examination here goes on and they basically, the defense tries to say that Bostad didn't come forward with this information until he knew he was going back to prison on another thing. Okay. Which, yeah, that's what you do. You're not going to get involved with some crazy white supremacist guy whose first time you met him flashing guns and asking him to join gangs and shit like that, unless it's to get yourself out of prison.

For sure. You know? So they asked him, are you making any of this up to help yourself out on the stand? And he, of course, said no. No. But I'm definitely trying to help myself out. Yeah. I would say.

Modinger, Daniel's attorney, he attacked Bolstad's credibility, questioned whether investigators about their handling of evidence, too. They said they actually tried to say, like, you didn't have gloves on enough, including this is part of his argument here. He's questioning these investigators about their handling of evidence, including how often they changed their gloves and whether they could have spread biological evidence from one piece of evidence to another, including a nine millimeter shell casing found in Daniel's bedroom that prosecutors say had Johnson's blood on it. They found a fucking head. They found a fucking head. They found a head. James, let me ask you though.

It doesn't matter. None of that matters. See, but I'm not very medical. Holy shit. I'm not well versed. If I take my gloves off, can that make that head then be my head? Is that how it works? If you don't change your gloves enough, you can spread biological evidence from nothing into a head.

That's how it works. If you don't change your gloves enough and there's some DNA, it'll turn into a head. Does that make my DNA into that head? The weirdest thing. No, it's somebody else's head. That's how it works. And then you'll be accused of killing them. It's really weird.

So that's the thing, too, is the head. It's odd how it's under. There's a fucking head. There's a fucking head. DNA doesn't matter. Head. Just walk in with a head under your arm. You guys didn't change the gloves.

There's a fucking head. If you find a head. Who cares? Anytime there's a head found, that's probably you. Let's just say here. Fucking bananas. And the fact that the probably you. Let's just say here. Fucking bananas. And the fact that the muddy shit had his DNA all over it, Daniel's DNA. He buried the fucking head.

It was a goddamn head. Jesus. So Modinger, this defense attorney, in his closing argument said there's no eyewitnesses, no way to prove his client pulled the trigger. He also asked the jury why Daniel would, quote, kill a white man for recognition from a white supremacist. Because there's nobody the fuck else around. He had to go hunt black people in that town. There's only seven of them.

It's 98% white. And they're hiding because they know this guy's in town, for Christ's sake. They saw the machine gun and headed for Z Hills. This modinger had the balls to say, quote, hint, guess, and suspicion are not and can never be enough. How about a fucking head? How about is that enough? You can't get any more physical. They say that there's no physical evidence.

It's a head. That's so physical. Buried in his crawl space. You can pinch its ears. You can give it a haircut. How tangible is that? Give it a fucking noogie. Good fucking is that? Give it a fucking noogie. Good fucking Jesus Christ.

Give it a wet willy. Yeah, there you go. Holy Jesus Christ. This is bananas. Yeah. You don't, and it's not just like somebody hid it in his house. Nobody's going to go in your house, go into your basement, go into your crawl space. And bury a fucking head.

And then put your DNA on a bunch of shit and put everything in that's not how that's not how frames were no it's not and nothing he didn't say like i came into my house was ransacked and there was a head down there nothing everything didn't steal anything just planted ahead and they left their coveralls and the money boots oh but somehow got put my dna inside of those things so you know it's very odd's very odd. That assault shaker with my DNA in it. Yeah. You know how it works. So the prosecutor in the closing statement, closing argument, got up in front of the jury

and just said, are you fucking kidding me? He got a fucking head in his goddamn house. No, this is bullshit. Are you kidding? They just said, seriously? No, he actually said, she actually said, quote, you don't have to see Daniel Locke pull the trigger to know that he did. Because there's a fucking head in his goddamn basement. They didn't so much as put a couple of his hairs inside a book and put it on the bookcase.

They put his fucking head in the crossface. It's his head. It's not a little drop of blood. This is ridiculous. It's a whole head. A whole head. Not even just a nose or a couple of teeth. A whole damn thing.

It's a whole head. A whole head. Not even just a nose or a couple of teeth. It's all head. So, yeah, she also goes down the long list of DNA and just the mountain of just impenetrable physical evidence. Unanswerable questions. This is a nuclear missile well of evidence here. So April 2012. A friend of mine likes to say the evidence has to be definitive, not overwhelming. This shit ain't overwhelming. This is incredibly definitive.

Yeah, this is just, you don't even need a, this is, he should have pled guilty is what this is. This is how do you save your own life. What are you doing, you moron here? Well, North Dakota does not have the death penalty. Oh, that's nice. If it did, he probably would have pled guilty. At least try to plead guilty and plead down from fucking life forever.

But April 12th, 2012 is verdict time. Jury did not have a hard time with this one. I'm sure. They all came back and they were like, yeah, guilty. The day they did it to would have been Kurt's 56th birthday. Oh, Jesus. So guilty on the dude's birthday. So that's something anyway.

So July 8th, 2011, they finally call off the search for the body. It's been six months. I mean, he's dead. The animal, even if it's out there, it's now summer animals have taken it. You're never going to find this fucking guy. So they had low-flying planes. They've been searching the area since New Year's Eve. The sheriff said, quote, we've covered it.

I feel we've covered it to the nth degree. And I agree. They really did. Johnson's family even said they had given up. They'd given up on waiting for his body to be located, and they just had a memorial service for him in July there. How horrible is that, too? Yeah. The head has to be evidence until it's over, you know? And then you bury the head? Yeah. So terrible. I assume maybe after they found him guilty, they gave the family the head, maybe? I don't know. I hope so. How do him guilty, they gave the family the head.

Maybe. I don't know. They handed it to him. How do you give them that? Back in a K-Swiss box or something. That's what I mean. You put it in like a shoe box. That's terrible. How do you do it?

Like a cooler? Like it's a kidney or something? Like how do you do it? Oh, what's in the box? What's in the box? Maybe that's how you do it. Middle of the desert. And then you go, eh?

Eh? You have a FedEx box show up. Look at that. You get it get it that's the worst these poor family me too these poor feet these poor family they're miserable but yeah that would be what a terrible way to get just any way of getting that back is a horrible way to get it in the bag with the fucking with the dryer sheet still in it we're good thanks no we don't want that uh the uh county, Griggs County State Attorney, Marina Spahr, for sentencing, the Johnson. I just keep seeing Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. You know, yeah.

It's so bad. You have to. For sentencing here, the Johnson family comes in too, and they're, you know, also speaking on behalf of the family, asking for a life sentence. They want the maximum life without parole. Corey Johnson, who's Kurt's brother, both K's, by the way, they did a thing like that, recalled the law enforcement officials meeting with his family after they searched Daniel's home. And he said, quote, Spahr called me into the entryway to ask how my mother should be told about the details of the murder and the fact that he had been decapitated uh johnson said he told spar quote you need to be honest to tell her

the truth so he's saying this in court for sentencing so that's that's gonna be that's rough to hear for your jury uh he would later tell the press about his mother quote she's strong she's always has been uh on july on january, 2011. The children and family of Kurt Johnson received a lifetime sentence of memories and nightmares of his murder. Yeah. Our family will never be afforded the luxury of parole from these nightmares. And Dan Wach should never be afforded the luxury of parole. Daniel Wach can never walk out of prison a free man. The only way he can come out is in a pine box or after what he did to my brother.

A trash bag may be more appropriate. My man. A death sentence would have been the easy way out, he says. Fuck. That's what he says. That guy is not fucking around. And he's well-educated. And he's well-educated.

His family is a well-educated family. So they all went to college and all that sort of thing. Lawyers ask, the prosecutors ask the judge to consider all of his 17 convictions in California. He had 17 convictions, including auto thefts, burglary, and we went over the whole thing. Corrections and corrections at all. Yeah. The fact, no shit. The fact that he was a fugitive from justice when he did this and the fact that the gun he used was stolen in Las Vegas on the way out there.

So not only is it an illegally possessed by a felon, it's a stolen gun, illegally possessed. She said that he's failed all his adult life he's failed every attempt to rehabilitate him no time which i agree with the judge asked uh daniel if uh he has anything to say before sentencing which is in that point you have to you better start begging you better start fucking yeah whatever he said say i'm sorry 37 000 times this is the worst thing you could say. Quote, no, I don't have anything to say. Oh, boy. Fuck you.

That says fuck you. Not even, you know, I feel bad for the fence. I didn't do it, but I feel horrible for these people. If you're going to deny it, something. I've got nothing, sweet Pete. What a dickhole. He should have just said sweet Pete. That would have worked.

Sweet Pete. I got nothing. The judge cites all of his convictions. The judge asks everything. The defense attorney is asking the judge to sentence him with life with the possibility of parole, saying America's heritage is based on the hope of redemption. What a white supremacist thing to say. Are you out of your fucking mind?

No. Not for this asshole. The judge says, I don't think so. He says, you, sir. Hey, fuck off. Yeah. Get the hell out of here. Life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Good. Take a fucking walk, asshole. So they get him out of there. There was 45 people in the courtroom. They apparently were very, very excited about this. The mother and the siblings are all hugging each other. Law enforcement guys are all shaking each other's hands. Yeah.

They got this asshole out of here. We got to get out of here. We got drunks to take home. Yep. He wouldn't say shit after the sentencing. They drove him off to prison in Bismarck. Modinger, he's a court appointed attorney, this Modinger, too. He's not even making money.

He's just a public defender. Well, he's trying to make a name for himself so he can go get a job at a law firm and get the fuck out of Cooperstown, North Dakota. He says that, he says, you don't judge him because he didn't speak. He said he still has a constitutional right to maintain his innocence and did not speak in light of the appeal that we are filing today in state district court. This is bullshit. Wow.

Oh, that poor guy. He's saying everything right. It's just, dude, the fucking mountain you have to climb to help that guy at all is insanity. It's ridiculous. You're better off with, you're going to need a Sherpa to climb that mountain. You're going to need a couple of them, actually. You can't just pick that up by the neck and the waist and toss it in a van. It's not going to work.

The press got a whole, they found Nico. The guy that they called and said was the leader of the whatever. They found him. It's one of his friends. It's Nicholas Schwartz is his name. Schwarz. Is that Schwartz? A Jewish Schwartz?

No, no, no, no. Okay. I want it to be Jewish Schwartz and be a white supremacist. He says that this is someone that they met in prison. And they considered themselves brothers. And so they asked this Nico guy. They said, what do you think about it? And he just said, this is great.

It's an unfair verdict. He didn't do it, and then he swore and hung up the phone is what they said. Unfair verdict. He didn't do it. Fuck you. And hangs up. So interesting as shit there. I love that.

Oh, Christ. That's awesome right there. The residents of the town are still shook about it today because it's 80 years or not. You know, they know everybody knew knew Johnson, too. So it was really hard. Some people say they still don't think that walk did it. They said they met him while he was in town and they didn't figure him as someone who was capable of such a brutal murder. And they still don't think he did it with a fucking head and DNA.

What do they think? One woman said there's a lot more to it, but she said she doesn't want her name published for fear of retaliation. What? Her last name is Walked, apparently, because that's fucking crazy. Another person said he appeared to use drugs and alcohol to excess regularly and seemed to hang out with others who did. So we don't know. Maybe it was one of them that did it. Wait, wait, wait.

Johnson appeared to drink and is that what he's saying? They said no, no, no, no. Or walked in. Walked in all of that and he hung out with other people. Maybe his unsavory friends would have done that. Yeah, he could have gone out for a ride to go see his friend in Cooperstown, north of Cooperstown. And then somebody else was burying a head in his house. Hey, I know where we'll bury the head.

The guy with the machine gun on his basement. Machine gun head, he's out of town. He'll be fine with it, I'm sure. He won't be mad at all. It's okay to piss him off. He's not armed and dangerous and on parole or anything and covered in swastika tattoos. In possession of a stolen weapon. Yeah, no shit.

Spar, the prosecutor, she said that, you know, first murder case in 80 years. You know, the town is really shook up. She said, quote, there are doors locked now that weren't locked before. I know they look at strangers twice now before they invite them into their lives in some way. That's the small town murder. That's exactly what that is. Doors are locked now that weren't locked before. That's what this show is.

And we check to make sure there's no extra tattoos on heads around town. Yes. It's doors are locked now that weren't locked before. That's what the show is. And we check to make sure there's no extra tattoos on heads around town. Yes. We are very careful. We look at everyone, every goddamn tattoo.

He appeals in 2013. He's saying that the evidence obtained in the search of the van should be suppressed because of the probable cause thing that we talked about before.

He's saying that the right to free from free and unreasonable searches to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, he's claiming that, which is ridiculous, I believe, at this point here. Daniel argues that the fact that Johnson was last seen with him in his van isn't enough to establish probable cause to search his van. Seems like enough to me. I would want to check it but they the court says actually that's only one layer in the 25 other goddamn things that that happened there's only one dryer sheet in this box yeah yeah exactly uh he jesus christ he argues about the uh he argues about the uh

unreliableness of witnesses contained in the f of informants contained in the affidavit he argues that the guy uh the guy who said he shot shot the same shit he argued to get the things thrown out in the first place, he's now appealing on. Again, the court ruled exactly the same, excluding Burge's statements. He's the guy who talked about the gunshots in the coffee table. We conclude probable cause still existed to issue a search warrant for Wach's van. After every dismissal of all of his arguments, I want the court to say,

did we mention we found the guy's fucking head in this person's house? Is that a thing too? Okay, that's why we're dismissing that. Your arguments, whether valid or not, we found a head, so we don't care. Before you present this argument, are you about to tell me

that that was not a human fucking head? Because if you're you about to tell me that that was not a human fucking head? Because if you're not going to tell me that, then get the fuck out of this courtroom. Because there was a fucking head in your crawlspace. They have it on their mantle over there. It's under all the bounce over there. You don't smell it because there's a lot of bounce. They tried to argue that the information given by the witness that saw him toss Johnson into the van, the relative who reported Johnson missing, and the guy who does Kurt Johnson's snow removal are unreliable.

Okay. Because they didn't include information in the affidavit about their reliability or reputation. Yeah. The guy said there's no footprints in the snow. I trust Forrest Gump to fucking tell me if there's footprints in the snow. I don't need to know his reputation or if he's reliable. Do you see footprints there? No?

Okay. Then there's no footprints. No footprints. I think he would have seen them. Three feet of snow, I think a moron would see footprints. I'm not fucking, oh my God. So these are just, it's like you'd have to really look hard to find shit to even appeal in this to what to do. I feel bad for the defender.

I really do. That's a really awful job to get. He's in a tough spot, that guy. Can you imagine? I can't. Jesus Christ. Are you shitting me? Seriously?

You want me to? Okay. I guess I'll file it again. We're going to move forward. Here we go. They, of course, say that the evidence is fine. It's supported by probable cause. They did not err in giving the warrant.

He also, he's fighting against the home warrant and all the evidence seized in the home warrant, you know, like a head. They quote a thing here, quote, in order to justify the search of a house, there must be, there must have been nexus between the house to be searched and the evidence sought, which there was because they say, well, we know he came from his house with a gun. Right. So pretty sure he had a gun in his house. Right.

So at that point, we're going to search there. Because they actually watched him go from his house to work. Got it. They were like, he left and he was still there. He even brings up in the appeal things that didn't actually come up in trial. Okay. So it's like it was evidence that was excluded from the trial, but they put it in the appeal. So they were like, in the appeal ruling, they're like, this wasn't even in the trial.

Right. So we don't even know why you're doing this. Clearly, like, you know, your lawyer sucks is basically what they said, and he's terrible at paperwork, and we had to read this shit for nothing. They talk about his, you know, him saying that he's going to, you know, wants to start a gang. And the Bolstad, the Bolstad conversation about wanting to start a gang, wanting to shoot people to tell everyone that they're here. Daniel argues that there's no purpose to admit this evidence except to show that he's a violent character and therefore it should be excluded. Also, it says he said, I want to kill someone here to show who I am.

And then two weeks later, he killed someone. So that's also kind of relevant. He also said he wanted to shoot a fucking cop during a traffic stop. The things he's saying. They didn't even that wasn't even included. That was excluded from the trial. So he put that in the appeal. But it was ridiculous.

He tried to get the evidence that he got work done on his gun, excluded all that sort of thing. They said, no, I don't think so. That's all fine, too, because that was in December of 2010. And they said that was in the same time he was talking about shooting people. So talking about shooting people and getting his gun fixed, seems like you're fixing to shoot somebody, let's put it that way. You're so cute, James. Fuck, man.

Fixing to shoot someone. You're fixing to pop a cap in somebody's head. So Wacht argues here, this is the worst one. He argues that there's insufficient evidence to convict him of the murder of Kurt Johnson. It says, quote, this court will reverse a criminal conviction only if after viewing the evidence and all reasonable evidentiary inferences and the light most favorable to the verdict. No rational fact finder could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So that's how you'd have to, that's your ground for an appeal here.

You need that. Does it sound like he's going to get to that? No. With a head? No. No, doesn't think so. Fuck no. Yeah, they said the evidence,

the court actually, their answer to this was, quote, the evidence of Wach's guilt was overwhelming. Good, there you go. That's their statement to that was, quote, the evidence of Wach's guilt was overwhelming. Good. There you go. That's their statement to that. They don't even care. They said there was definitely sufficient evidence for the jury to convict him. There is a juror problem, too, a juror challenge.

And this is one of those small town things here. And it's so small, if you put it in another area, it's going to be so far away that no one can get to it. It's so weird when you're in these rural areas like this. One of the jurors was challenged for cause at trial, ended up serving on the jury because one of his siblings was murdered. He was back years ago. He was also distantly related to Kurt Johnson through marriage, but never met him and didn't know him personally. But he knew once it all came out, he knew of him that he was distantly related to him by marriage okay uh he says that he didn't hold any bias or implied anything against daniel he

said he didn't know kurt johnson and he can he feels like he can be fair sure uh yeah and also you had a fucking head in your basement that's the other thing so it really doesn't matter like these like if i were a judge or something or even participating in this trial everything you are you'd go you know about the head, right? Right. To hold a picture. I'd have it sitting on my desk the whole time, and I'd just pat him on top of the head every time he said something. Really?

I'd be afraid to participate in any of this and accidentally say something like, have you lost your head or some shit like that. He uses molars to crush walnuts. You're like, what was that now? What are you fucking- Nut? Nut? Can I get you one? Fuck, man.

I swear to God. Crunch. You know there's a head here, right? This isn't. This is a head. Open beer bottles with the mouth during the jumps. Oh, my God. Yeah.

See what I got here? It's a head. Just in case you want to come take a peek closer. Take a picture if you want. I don't know. Holy Christ. Final judgment here is they affirm the criminal judgment finding Daniel Evan Watt guilty of murder. 2014 applies for post-conviction relief in the North Dakota State Supreme Court. Again, the witness, the juror with the distantly related to Johnson, claims that they failed to—

he claims that his attorney failed to object to the admission of a pair of latex gloves at trial. So because of that, he has ineffective assistance of counsel. That guy tried his best. Dude, how do you argue this mountain of evidence? Anybody in this entire thing that you just be like, he did everything he could do. He did everything he could. Yeah, said the whole deal. The exact same thing.

He said the Jared Bolstad, Jason Bolstad thing. He tries to claim that Bolstad was going to prison for drug trafficking and that the federal government might indict him. Right. So he said that all he needed to do was somebody. Somebody said that they told Jason that all you need to do is testify against somebody to get out of this sort of thing, which may be true. And he might be making the whole thing up to get out of it. I don't know if Bolstad tells us. It doesn't matter because there's a head in his fucking basement.

So, you know, Jason Bolstad, when they questioned him about that, he said, quote, there are that there are plenty of other inmates around here with open cases. You just had to get a little information to make yourself credible and then make the rest up, and that the state's attorney will tell you what they need you to say and how to answer all the questions anyway. This is a guy, a witness, saying that he said this to Jason Bolstad. It's easy to get a statement out of somebody. I'm sorry, this is what he's saying Jason Bolstad said to him. Oh, okay.

A witness, which that might be true. It really might be. But unless Jason Bolstad said, I broke in and buried a head in his basement, I'm not fucking interested. I don't give a shit. Yeah. Denied. Neither does the court. Take a hike.

There's a head in your basement. 2016, post-conviction relief again. He's saying that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, illegal search and seizure uh it's the same exact shit again uh and once again the court the court uh denies his petition under uh the for habeas corpus relief and uh yeah he's shit out of luck at that point uh that's that's that's it he's pretty fucked unless something new comes up you're he's done forever uh in 2017 they talked to to Kelly Sadd, the bartender, actually. And she's, like, messed up from it, actually. She's a little sad.

She said, quote, it could have been anybody. I took it very hard. She said, it was a long time before I felt it wasn't my fault. There was music going on, groups here, groups there. She couldn't do it. She feels terrible that she just didn't monitor the situation better. And she feels like she could have gotten him a ride home from someone who wasn't, you know, machine gunned.

You did your best. She's busy. It's New Year's Eve. She's a bartender. She can't babysit everyone. There hasn't been a murder in 80 years. Who is she going to think, well, if I send him home with that guy, he's probably going to cut his head off.

So no, I'll send him home with Bill instead. No, she did her best. I feel bad for her. Bartenders, they're like, she did her best. I feel bad for her. Bartenders, they're like babysitters. They are. I feel bad for them. Daniel Evan Wacht is in the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck serving life. No release date whatsoever.

Shit out of luck up there. So, if you want to write him a letter and call him a douchebag, you can do that. That is Cooperstown, North Dakota. Holy shit. That is Daniel Evan Wacht. And poor Kurt Johnson. I feel really bad for old Kurt Douglas Johnson and his whole family. They seem like nice people, and he's a guy who just didn't deserve to.

No. He didn't do anything to anybody. No. Didn't deserve to go out like that. He was just trying to be a nice guy. On New Year's Eve as a divorced guy. Yeah, maybe he was trying to get laid. Yeah, probably.

Maybe I'll meet a woman tonight. This will be great. Somebody I haven't seen 400 times since, you know, everyone's the same people. What a terrible thing. Wow.

So if you like that story, you're a sick bastard, but we love you for it because we like it too and we're sick bastards also and you can show us how sick you are by going on iTunes

and giving us five stars. That would be wonderful. It helps us out so much on the business end. Like we said, if you want to do more like our fantastic producers that we're going to talk about in one moment, you can do that by going to patreon.com slash crime

in sports. You can make a donation one time donation over at PayPal using our email address crime in sports at gmail.com. Do not forget. Hope we see you in Chicago tonight. If not, hope we see you in Detroit February 16th or Boston at Laugh Boston February 18th. There are links, by the way, in the show description for all this stuff. Or in Phoenix, Arizona at Stand Up Live.

March 25th. March 25th. That is just Small Town Murder, one show. If you want to follow us on social media, you can do that on Twitter at Murder Small, Facebook.com slash Small Town Pod. That is us. And here is a group of people who are heroes to us. And honestly, we love these people more than this guy loves to bury heads. So more than he loves Himmler and Hitler and Rudolph Hess.

And 14 short word sentences. Yes, exactly. So hit us with that list, Jimmy. Real quick, I just want to give a quick explanation. For people overseas, people overseas have asked several times, what the fuck, who is Andrew Jackson? Yes. Andrew Jackson was a racist, sexist asshole that founded this country.

He didn't found shit. He did not find shit. He wasn't alive when we founded the country? He was alive, but he wasn't founded this country. He didn't found shit. He did not found shit. He wasn't alive when we founded the country? He was alive, but he wasn't anywhere in politics. He wasn't part of that? No. Wasn't he like a soldier or something? No, 1830s.

A general or something? 1830s. Yes, in the 1830s. Oh, in the 1830s. He was president in the 1830s. See, I don't know fuck about history, James. He made all the... I'm huge into the...

That's the thing. Yes, North and South Carolina were Carolina. So, yes, we know West Virginia and Virginia. Stop saying Jimmy was right, because That's the thing. Yes. North and South Carolina were Carolina. So, yes, we know West Virginia and Virginia. Stop saying Jimmy was right because he's not right. He didn't have any fucking idea what he was talking about. He was just naming states that had more than one. He didn't say,

I thought West Virginia split from Virginia. No, you can't be right by accident. You can't be. Didn't New Mexico say that they didn't want to be a part of Mexico? No, that's what happened. We're New Mexico. Yes, and at one point it was Mexico, so technically you're right again. See what happens here?

This is the problem. So I say accidentally racist things, I suppose. Whether you like him or not, he's definitely racist. That's why they call me. That's why Chase calls me. My moment's the Andrew Jackson moment of the show.

And this week, there wasn't one because this guy was super Andrew Jackson. Yeah, he was Andrew Jackson himself. He's just as Andrew Jackson as it gets. And the other thing is that we had one of our listeners pass away in England. Hannah was suffering from vasculitis. So if you want to donate to Vasculitis Cause, please do that. And if you know who we're talking about, don't bother with the family. They're having a tough time right now.

It's not the easiest thing. It's a tough thing. But, yeah, we really were going to miss Hannah a lot. Kind of bummed about it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Anyhow, I'll try to get beyond that. Our executive producers again this week were Jess and Chrissy. Chrissy Ancastaldi and Jess Landgren are fantastic ladies.

Thank you both for supporting and continue supporting us every goddamn week. It's incredible. And then we had Elena Frederick, I believe is how you pronounce her name. There are so many E's in her name. There's two in her first name and then there's three in her last name. There's a third one at the end of Frederick. It's ridiculous. Oh, wow.

Rachel Howard, Lena or Lina Ramirez. I don't want to pronounce that wrong. Lino Lakes. Lena, you're going to get tweets for the next six months. Trust me. Robert Combs, Tina Heranen. As I was writing this list, I was like, these are so easy this week. Oh, I'm going to kill it this week.

I'm four names in, and I'm already stumbling. I'm crushing easy this week. I'm going to kill it this week. I'm four names in and I'm already stumbling. Fucking crushing it this week. Otilia Abraham, Lisa Harbin, Tyler Shaw, Dirk Haley, or Hallie? I don't... I think I've done that before on Hallie. It may be Haley. I think that goes from person to person. It sure does. Just like every

name. It's ridiculous. Yeah, just like you can call your town Iowa and it's spelled like Iowa. Yeah, exactly. No last name, just Chris. Spazzy Moonchild, Maddie Finley, Mike Kennedy. Mike Kennedy is terrific, by the way. Yeah, he's good. Thank you.

The guy donates every week. He changes it up, too. We really appreciate that so much. Lindsey Ray, Kelsey Hebert, Jamie Harder, Jonathan Houle. That guy also, too. He's amazing. He's donated so many different ways, and I can't thank you enough, Jonathan. That's so awesome.

Thank you, man. Adam Hanson, Joe Fascio, and Carrie up in Portland. They're unbelievable. They send me so many snaps of their dogs. They're terrific young ladies. By the way, real quick, shout out to people. If any of you are in Seattle, we're trying to do a live show in Seattle. That's the next one we want to do, next one we want to book.

And we've contacted several of your venues and clubs. Nobody will fucking return shit. Nothing. I don't know. They don't want to sell out. Maybe it's you guys. I don't understand what it is. Maybe you guys have to do it.

But maybe you guys have to hit them up because we don't have an agent and we don't have managers and we don't have that shit. We do it on our own. We're fucking comedians and we do this shit on our own and we try to keep it in house. Katie Heisel's up there too, the girl that makes our map every week. We don't have anybody to represent us. A lot of these places, even if you can fucking sell out, which we can sell Small Town Murder out pretty much anywhere in the country, I think, at this point, they still won't give

you the time of goddamn day because the comedy business is fucking disgusting. We don't have a manager they can then jerk off the next week. That's why. So cut out that middleman, please, and contact your clubs in Seattle and tell them, hey, guess what? We need small-town murder. Just Pacific Northwest. Portland, too, but Seattle because I'm pissed off at them right now because they think they're

fucking hot shit and they can't return a fucking call. You know what? Then we won't sell out your building. I'll put 300 fucking chairs in a field somewhere and we'll go sit there and we won't charge anybody anything. You can fuck yourselves. How's that? So thank you, Joe.

Contact your clubs. Thank you. James Cook, Dita Vasquez, Tiffany Daniels, Kenneth R. Garrity. I want that to be Pat Garrity's cousin or some shit.

I don't know. I see Garrity and it's probably spelled differently but just a cool name. Angel Cantwell, George Salam. I'm sorry, George. Your last name is fucking brutal. Salam. Sorry, George. Your last name is fucking brutal.

Craig Butel. See, now I get two in a row that I can't fucking do. Wait a sec. What's that name? Salum. S-A-L-L-O-U-M. Oh, Butel. Craig L. Butel.

B-E-U-T-E-L. Yeah, that's Butel, right? I know that guy. Do you really? Thanks, Craig. I know Craig. Thanks, man. Appreciate it, brother. Thanks, Craig. Thank you. And did I get it right? Was it Butel? It's Butel, right? I know that guy. Do you really? Thanks, Craig. I know Craig. Thanks, man. Appreciate it, brother.

Thanks, Craig. Thank you. And did I get it right? Was it Butel? It's Butel, actually, but that's fine. You're welcome, Butel. People mispronounce it. He's from Iowa.

He wouldn't care. All right. He's very mild. Cassidy Marsh. Ingrid Stalk in Norway with her North Korea bucks yet again. Thank you. That was so cool. Stephanie Walters-Henriks?

Henriksen. There's no D. It's just Henriksen. Oh, okay. I think that was right. Did I write that right? I hope so Thank you, Ingrid. That was so cool. Stephanie Walters-Henriks. Henriksen. There's no D. It's just Henriksen. Oh, okay. I think that was right. Did I write that right? I hope so. Fuck.

Henriksen. Michelle Walter. Rob Maderski. Seymour Butts, which you're a fucking goofball. I like it. We'll take it. Thank you. We love you anyway.

Deanna Ordina-Jones. William McClellan in Scotland. He donated again. Thanks, Bill. Thank you. Rebecca Manners. Natalie Hodson. Sarah Lindsay.

Mark French. Janice Hill. Tyler Hunt. Retta Thanks, Bill. Thank you. Rebecca Manners, Natalie Hodson, Sarah Lindsay, Mark French, Janice Hill, Tyler Hunt, Retta Cruz. Actually, her son Levi got her to listen to the show, and now she fucking loves it. So thank you both, Retta and Levi, for listening and getting your mom into it. That's fucking dope, bro. That's so cool, yeah. You got the coolest mom ever. I love when people listen together.

Yeah. Because that's one thing, like podcasts are a very individual thing. You put your earphones in, you sit there. It's so personal. When people listen together, it's like old time, like family sitting around watching TV. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, we're all into the same show. We're all listening to this.

But back then- People don't do that anymore. Right. They don't sit and listen to the radio together. Everything's internalized, your own thing, my pad and my screen. And yeah. So when you're talking about it, that's cool. Thank you, guys.

Kim Hewitt, Katie Johnson, Christina Woog. W-O-O about it, that's a cool part. Kim Hewitt, Katie Johnson, Christina Woog. W-O-O-G. That's a tough one. It's just Woog, right? I don't know. I don't want to fuck it up. I don't know.

Sarah Stokes, Zach Pearson, Ryan Wroblewski with a W. So Wroblewski. There's a W on the front. Does that make sense? Wroblewski? Wroblewski? Wroblewski. It's a tough one. I'm sure that make sense? Wroblewski? Wroblewski? Wroblewski.

It's a tough one. I'm sure it's not correct. That's got to be a brutal way to go through life. Elisa Godernas? Yeah, Petrogallo. Thank you. It's fine. You're fine, Wroblewski or whatever your name is.

You're doing great. But with a W, that's fucking extra shitty. That's true. That doesn't help any. It just ruins everything. I got a silent W on the front of my name. I'm sorry. I have an I, so I get it. That's the worst. It's true. That doesn't help anything. It just ruins everything. I got a silent W on the front of my name. I'm sorry. I have an I, so I get it.

That's the worst. It's bad. Aliza or Eliza Godinuski? Godin, G-O-D, I think that's what I wrote. The Polish are fucking- Did I say Godinuski? Yeah. No, it's Godinez.

What am I doing? I was like, the Polish tonight are coming in full force. Good Lord. So many Poles. I'm eating pierogies later. Fuck this. Sam Coakley, Jennifer Dedrick, Matt Jarrett, L. Michelle Leatherman. L. Michelle?

It must be like Lynn or Lisa or something. I don't know. L. Michelle Leatherman. Liam Feltman. Naima. Naima Shea. I think it's Naima. N-A-I-M-A.

That's Naima. Yeah, Naima. Naima Shea. Jillian. Jesus. Anderson. And in my head, I say Hernandez. How does that even happen?

How do you even do that? I have no idea how you put those together. Jillian Anderson. Slate. Annette Wright. Sean Hoxie. S-H-E-A-N. Sean.

Jesse Bostian. Or Bostian. Bostian. Bostian. Death. Not death. Beth. What the fuck am I doing?

You have problems over there. Beth Denkinger. Big Papa Poncy. Or Ponce. I don't know. Tara I doing? You're having problems over there. Beth Denkinger. Big Papa Poncy. Or Ponce. I don't know. Tara Bridges. Odom. Armando Rodriguez.

Caleb Hartung. Jenny Kay and Rodney. Rob Walters. Nick Laycock. Again with that last name. That's a brutal last name. Yeah, that's tough. It's fucking dope.

But I don't know. I don't know if it's great or if it sucks. I don't know if it's great or if it sucks. I don't know if it's great or if it sucks. It's great because the latecocks sounds fucking great. It's all of what you make. It's what you make of it, honestly, I think. Siren Johnsgar, she also sent some North Korea bucks from Norway. Thank you.

Thank you. Daryl L., Emily Irvin, Shannon Ruger, Jonathan Desmond, Megan Schmelzenbach. Jesus. When I saw that donation, I laughed and went, oh, Jimmy's going to love it. Schmelzenbach. I got it. God damn it. Rachel Smith.

Stacey Huffaker. Devin Ray. Julia Schuster. Melissa Poole. Nicholas Konezovich. Yes. Konezovich. Yes.

I think he said you pronounce the K. I think you're supposed to, so it's Konezovich. Kelly McLaughlin, huge thank you to you. I appreciate it. That was an unbelievably generous donation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Michael Neal, another one. Thank you so much. Catlady Created. I don't know what that is.

I think that's a business, so Google Catlady Created. Buy her shit. Hannah Just, Melissa Hoover, ARRB. I don't know what that is. If it, Melissa Hoover, ARRB. I don't know what that is. If it's a business, there was nothing extra to it. Association of Animal Retail.

I think it was ARRB. Was it ARRB? Oh, I thought it was AARB. No, no. ARRB. Oh, Association of Retail. Uh-huh. Rental Breakfast.

I don't know. Boulevard. Right. Rental breakfast. I don't know. Boulevard. Right. Something like that. Candace Horner, Kelsey Perkins, Arlene So, Anna Schwartz. Thank you so much also. That was a nice donation. Dana Losey, Sarah Gilbo donated twice today. Thank you, Sarah. Molly Parker, Stacey Huffaker again. I guess she

donated twice. I didn't even... That's so nice. Thank you, Stacey. Teresa Shufu. A little plug. Did you see that one? Yeah. S-C-H-E-U-C-H-E-N-P-F-L-U-G. Nope. Fuck that name.

I love it. That's a good one. That's a good one. She wrote me and told me, because she donated before and told me that I completely fucked it. And I said, listen. Jesus. You give that to anybody, they're going to fuck it.

Nobody's going to make that right. I wonder what the percentage of people that have ever gotten that right is. Zero. Fucking her. That's it. Her grandmother going to make that right. I wonder what the percentage of people that have ever gotten that right is. Zero. Fucking her. That's it. Her grandmother. Shush and flug. I don't know.

Dulcy Thompson. Dulcy Thompson. Michael Euler. He's on Twitter, too. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you, brother. Steven Mace. Jeremy Ramon.

Marika Sand or Marika. It may be Marika. I know people did pronounce it like that. It's two Ks, though, in Marika. It's Marika. Marika Sand. Jane Richard. I'm people did pronounce it like that. It's two Ks, though, in Marika. It's Marika. Marika Sand. Jane Richards. I'm fucking wrong.

She's going, he's a fucking dipshit. Jane Richards. Katie Miranda. Majolene. Majolene. Majolene Spitzy. Wow. Okay.

Nope. Probably not. I'm going to go out of my way. And Matt Kleeman sent a nice donation, too. Matt, thank you all so much. Thank you, everybody. You guys were amazing this week from the interaction. I went through a tough one this week. I was quite fucking depressed, and it wasn't an easy week to get through, and you guys helped out tremendously. So thanks for your support, whether it's a donation or it's a comment on Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat, whatever. Yeah, guys. You can find me at WismanSucks, W-H-I-S-M-A-N

Sucks, on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. If you want to see my meltdowns throughout the week, feel free. You guys are the best, really. You keep us sane as we can be. We can't do this without you. You do everything for us, man. It really is. You guys have become

like a giant extended family to us. We really appreciate it. And that's how we consider you guys. So we thank you guys for letting us into your world, into your earbuds, into your cubicle, into your commute, into your workout or whatever it is. And if you want to involve somebody like a podcast creator in that life, you can find James. Where at, James? Ah, you can find me at Jimmy P is funny or try to spell my last name. Good luck. Like I said before, there's an I in there. You can find James. Where at, James? Ah, you can find me at Jimmy P is funny, or try to spell my last name.

Good luck. Like I said before, there's an I in there. Try to find it. Cut and paste from the show description and be smart about it. Do that. Find me there. You know, all that. I'm very busy with research and shit, but I hit everybody up as soon as I can.

And thank you. And I read everything. And God damn it, am I incredibly appreciative for that. And wow, guys, until then, it's been a crazy story yeah thank you guys for showing up yeah see you in chicago hopefully yeah uh until next week guys where you will get a live show next week we're gonna release uh to show you how fun it is surprise there's your surprise until next week guys it's been our pleasure Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media will have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you The Official Jinx Podcast. We'll be revisiting all six episodes of Part 1 and watching along with Part 2 as it airs on Max, starting April 21st. Bye-bye.

The Official Jinx Podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.