Sword and Scale - Episode 93

Episode Date: July 2, 2017

The highly polarized political climate we're living in colors our view of the world in one way or another. Sometimes it's hard to see the big picture and true underlying human tragedy when we're too busy judging the beliefs of others. This is a story of four people who died tragically, seemingly for no reason, in a supermarket, in the middle of the night.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences listener discretion is advised How do you know who's around you? What they're capable of? We interact with people every day, in our homes, at our workplace, and increasingly, online. People who are just like us, have their own quirks, their own idiosyncrasies, their own demons. It's easy for us to judge, because after all that's what we humans do.

Judge, separate them from us. Isolate ourselves in our tribe. Tribes made of political beliefs, and the intolerance of opposing political beliefs. And in this climate of vitriol, spewing in the form of millions of anonymous tweets, how do we know who's really around us and what they're capable of? Welcome to season 4, episode 93 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Thank you. Good afternoon, I'm Jasmine Brooks. We are interrupting this special report as former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee to bring you an update on today's multiple shooting deaths in the in township. I normally quiet

community in Wyoming County rocked by violence today. The bodies of four people are found inside the wise market on Route 92 in township this morning. Now investigators are trying to figure out what went so tragically wrong. Eaton Township, Pennsylvania,

in Wyoming County. The entire county has a population of just over 28,000 people. 1,500 of them live in this tiny town made up of 37 miles. This rural area is 98% white, where the median household income is over $50,000. Its mountainous landscape dotted with dogwoods, scarlet white and pinnocks and red maples. Lazy streams flow through the forests that make up this town, and the other towns surrounding it, which form a ring around Scranton, the sixth largest city in Pennsylvania. By no means is this a big city.

Not the kind of place you would expect a senseless act of violence. I couldn't believe it because nothing like that ever happens around here, not ever. It's very quiet and tonkianic. And this place is safe up here. We're in the middle of the country. You know, it's a nice, it's a wonderful town. People recall me on my way to work and you know, they're asking me what's going on and I had no clue.

I go there every Sunday morning to buy my groceries. Yeah, and we run over there for lunch all the time to pick things up where they're all the time. Little happens in small towns like this. People go about their day going to school or to their jobs carrying on with their lives, going shopping for groceries. Hey, good morning, Mindy Tom. In that supermarket,

we are talking about this half hour is right behind me. It's the white markets just off of root 29 here in the Tunkanic area. And according to investigators, this apparently right now is being considered a murder suicide. Three men are confirmed dead,

including the shooter as well as a woman. Now for the latest information, we want to talk to Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Tom Kelly. Where does the investigation and everything stand right now? Right now, a bunch of our investigators are inside.

They're taking, you know, photographs that are seeing measurements. It's a pretty big scene inside of there. Some of the aisles associated had nothing to do with the individual's involved, but there were shots fired at multiple locations inside the store. And Trooper Tom Kelly, apparently this store was closed at 11 o'clock.

The 911 call came in just before 1 o'clock this morning. Do you believe that this shooter worked here at the Wise Market? I can't confirm that right now. The store was closed to the public. So I don't know whether or not he was an employee or not. It's assumed that he may have been but we don't know for sure at this point. Describe this scene in there that other troopers and investigators have told you, what does it look like? It's just chaos right now because there's stuff all over the floor. There's a lot of, you know, there's still three bodies inside of there.

Four bodies actually. It's a mess and it's going to take a long time to just get everything documented before anything could be removed from there. So it's kind of chaotic inside. What do the state troopers and state police here want the public to know? Was this an isolated incident or a random act of violence? Now, we believe that for whatever reason it was this door that was the focus, we believe that it was the only one individual doing a shooting shooting. He then turned the guns on himself.

So he's inside now deceased. And the public in this area. We do not believe that they are in any danger from this incident. And there are some reports we learned just a minute ago that this shooter apparently put it out there somewhere maybe on social media saying this was going to happen. It wasn't a long time before this all went down. Can you confirm that and tell us about those reports that are out there that he said he was going to come and do all of it. Yeah, I don't have any official word on Facebook or social media posts. I did hear something about the individual, one of the individuals being named making posts on Facebook, so it's possible, but I can't confirm it officially.

So at this point, it's believed maybe that the gunman did work at the white at-wise markets. You're still looking into all of that, but as far as the people here, they were workers overnight, the victims, the other three victims. Yeah, and that's just based on the hours of the store. We're not confirming that they're all employees here, but we're assuming so at this point. Okay, and again, obviously the investigation still in its early stages as you told us minutes ago,

you still have to review surveillance video and everything else as you continue on with all of the thank you trooper Tom Kelly. And again, just to recap everything, we are live outside the wise markets on Route 29 here in the Tungkana area of Wyoming County. Where again, state police confirming a murder suicide. That's what they believe it is right now happened just before one o'clock this morning.

Three men confirmed dead, including the gunmen, along with a woman. Again, authorities telling us that they believe these individuals all worked here, including the gunmen, but they're looking into all of that. We hope to get some more updates from police, but again, guys, they have a lot of work ahead of them and the big question they're trying to answer is why exactly did this happen? Why did this gunman come in and commit this act of violence? Whenever anything like this happens, the question is always why. Everyone wants to know why this happened. How this could have happened

in their town, at their job, in their home. But the story we're about to tell you isn't a mystery. We know exactly who is responsible for the senseless violence and why, because he told us so himself. ["M ["M ["M ["M ["M ["M ["M ["M ["M

["M What's up humans?" So I thought I recorded on video this time. I'm using my iPhone 6 just hopefully because it'll make it a smaller file size to edit. Because I can't afford to fill up my hard drive right now. I really can't. I'm 14, 13, 12 days away from doing this, you know. This is it. 24-year-old Randy Roberts Stair lived with his parents in Dallas, Pennsylvania. Just 24

miles south of where his life and the lives of three of his co-workers would end. He left close to 80 gigs of material on his media fire account. He tweeted links to it on several of his Twitter accounts at 12, 10 a.m., shortly after starting his shift at the waste supermarket and eaten township, and minutes before stacking up pallets of food near an emergency exit, moving his car against the building to block another exit, and retrieving two 12-gauge shotguns

from the trunk of his car, along with over a hundred rounds of ammunition. The three tweets linking to the content on his media fire page were titled. One was titled Digital Set, the other was titled Journal, and the third was titled Suicide Tapes. I've been uploading pictures and stuff now, but you know, it's a fucking, it's a lot. It's so much stuff. Like right now there's got to be like fucking 80 gigs on there, somewhat close to that anyway.

And depending on anyone sees this, I download that while you can because I have to pay to have the extra space. Like I have a terabyte of space to upload whatever the hell I want. And I think that lasts for like a year or two and then once that's up then I gotta pay to renew it. So by then chances are it would get terminated and I'd lose everything. So download while you can or find someone that has downloaded everything. So yeah, speaking to the fans of the future here.

But Randy had fans in the present. You see, Randy Stair was an animator. He had developed a cartoon called Ember's Ghost Squad, a story about an all-girl rock band made up of ghosts of people who had died in extraordinarily graphic ways. Oh, and online he went by another name. Andrew Blaze. The cartoon followed the character's adventures in the afterlife. By most accounts these cartoons are strange. Attempts to be humorous always seem to be upstaged by just how dark the content is, and there is often graphic violence

sprinkled throughout. One of the characters who again appears female is voiced by Andrew himself. In fact, the character's name is Andrew. In this video from 2015, you can hear Andrew's angst-ridden character while another character unleashes a tirade against the world. Ha ha ha ha! Hey Andrew, what's eating you?

You're a lot more vocal than this. What's wrong baby? What's wrong? The whole world wants my head on a stick. Andrew, I think you need to lay off the ghoul tacos because there's no possible way that anyone on earth can get to you. Ever since I took my life it's as if World War 3 started. World War 3 did sign.

We killed Osama bin Laden, the answer to that was saying, you want to syllable of me as the oxpeckas, I still haven't seen proof of the lesbian and bumper fest, which I know for exactly this, because the war here is down the street for my grandma's house said so. But anyway, doesn't every World War stop like that? Someone dies, everyone goes, Ape shit and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam 9 accounts like this, and they would often hold conversations with each other in character.

Randy Stair or Andrew Blaise, however you want to refer to him, appears to have spent a lot of time developing these characters. I mean, if you've ever attempted any sort of animation, you'll know it takes a lot of time to make even a very short video. Some of his videos appear incomplete, the audio continues playing but the animation stops or it just goes to a blank screen. In other cases, he films a live action portion of the video starring himself rather than animating the rest of the video. Even in these live action segments though, Andrew is meticulous. He sets up every shot, just right. He puts a lot of thought into camera angles and lighting.

It seems quite clear he was very upset at certain people. Other animators or amateur voice-over actors who had promised to help him, but for whatever reason, couldn't or didn't. These people didn't share his meticulous anal-retentive approach to filmmaking, and he seemed quite angry about it. His final animation, which wasn't released until the file dump minutes before the murders, is titled The Westboro High Massacre EGS. Goodbye.

The video is very, very peculiar. It starts with a blank screen and white text, which reads, to all of the people who screwed me over on this video and left me hanging, fuck you. To all of the animators who agreed to help and shoved me aside as if I didn't matter, fuck you. To all of the worthless people involved with this video in general, who made me feel like I didn't even matter, fuck you. To everyone who agreed to video in general, who made me feel like I didn't even matter, fuck you. To everyone who agreed to help in general, and made me feel like I didn't even matter,

fuck you. You get the picture, it goes on and on. In fact, this is just half of the first paragraph. There are four other paragraphs, just as big or bigger than this one. He goes on to write that there are some missing shots left unfinished in this video with animatics in place and black holes due to in his words, zero of the 10 plus animators who I reached out to even lifting a finger to help out. He continues writing, this was going to be something amazing, this was going to be something awesome, this

was going to be something unique. In the end what do I have? Hardly anything, thanks to you, good for nothing, faggots. All of you animators can fucking drop dead. This was meant to be something spectacular and all you did was crush my dreams for it. The animators just pushing me aside for more important work when I was able to pay you by your outrageous fucking rates. Just fucking die. I'm going to be fucking dead by the time you see this video. Congratulations, you fucking blew it. I hope you forever rethink

what gets sent to you from now on. I hope you forever have the weight of the world crushing your spine into the fucking pavement. He then goes on to talk about how he had to do everything himself and even taught himself to animate due to the lack of help he feels he got, and complains that the animation was supposed to be over 10 minutes long, but because he had to do everything himself it's barely just 2 minutes. He complains that he waited for three and a half months for animators to help him out. But in his words, I get shut out in the cold like an ex-fucking wife.

You can kiss my deceased female white ass, you good for nothing, cock suckers." End quote. It's chilling because you know he made this video. He wrote these words, put them on the screen, animated the fade-outs, compiled this with all the rest of the video, and rendered it. This all takes an enormous amount of time. It's not like scribbling a suicide note on a piece of paper before walking into a

massacre. This was meticulous, it was premeditated, and planned for years. The following is part of this final animation. As the late Eric Harris once said, I hate the fucking world. What an inspiration. I would have killed to have met the guy. I think we would have connected on so many levels. This world makes me sick. All of you little fuckers are just a waste of space. Tell me.

What good is it to live in a world where you can't have everything you truly want? I just want to be free. I don't see why that's so much to ask. I mean, do you really honestly believe that you're staying here to land and hold a profession? Get married, maybe have a couple of kids, make and learn from mistakes and die accomplished. Boy, do you have a lot to learn, my friend? He utterly piss me off more than younger humans do, simply because they think they know and follow all the rules of life and know how it all works. You don't know jack shit! You're all blind mother fuckers!

Yes, life isn't fair. That's a given. But do you know why it isn't fair? Because you live a lie every goddamn day of your life! Earth is one giant detox center. The Illuminati is a crocus shit. Eternal squads inhabit the Earth at all hours of the day and night. Analyzing, searching, and recruiting. Me and Andrew are going to give the world a little insight as to what really looks around

in the shadows of your everyday lives. Death, the most beautiful, gorgeous, what's this thing about life? People care about you more than the life. The cartoon depicts a school shooting. Students cower under desks as the shooters, one of which looks a lot like Andrew, crouches down and shoots them in the face. This cartoon has a dedication in the opening credits. It's dedicated to the fans, the ghost squad, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters. The end of the video is a montage of Andrew's past video clips, almost like a best of compilation.

The cartoon shooting is set to upbeat poppy emo rock. Now, if things haven't gotten weird enough already, they're about to. Now, if things haven't gotten weird enough already, they're about to. The characters in these animated cartoons, including the one that represents Andrew Blaze, have a certain look to them, which is not exactly original. They are borrowed from a Nickelodeon cartoon called Danny Phantom, which ran between April 3rd, 2004, and August 24th, 2007. Now, I'd never seen this cartoon before. Nickelodeon was a little past my childhood, so I looked up what it was all about. It's about a character named Danny Fenton. He's a teenage boy who gained ghost powers through an accident in his parents lab. He takes on an

alter ego, that of Danny Phantom, to save the world from ghost attacks, all while trying to live a normal teenage life. It's a far cry from the dark, violent videos that Andrew Blaise made. I mean, after all, it was on Nickelodeon, so it didn't really depict any high school shootings or anything like that. In that show, there's a character named Ember McClain. She's an unpopular girl in high school who had dreams of becoming a rock star, but she dies in a house fire and becomes a ghost villainous who fights Danny Phantom with her hypnotic abilities. Why am I telling you all of this? Because in Andrew Blaise's cartoons, two characters always appear together. Ember McClain and another girl character, which represents and is voiced by Andrew

Blaze. It appears Andrew became infatuated with this fictional cartoon character named Ember McClain. His cartoon was called Ember's Ghost Squad, and it appears he actually believed she was not fictional. quad and it appears he actually believed she was not fictional at all. I've told you about her before. Like, if you look on the poster behind me, those were inspired by Ember McLean, which is a ghost from a TV show called Danny Phantom, which started back in 2003, 2004. You know, I was in late elementary school at that time. But this ghost, this woman always connected with me. Ever since I first saw her,

sorry, I'm looking at the wrong camera. I have my phone on top of my camera. Keep forgetting I gotta look here. But ever since I first saw her, something changed. And it wasn't like I grew up or anything like that. Like I realized, oh my gosh, I'm attracted to girls and all this. No, it just something changed.

It was like a spark and it just connected with me, made me feel warm inside and it felt very familiar, which was strange. It was like I'd seen her before, but at the time it was a brand new show and nothing had ever been done like that before with that type of character. You never saw that character anywhere else except that show. And this is just something changed. And at the time I was like 13 when I first started watching that show and I just grew attached to her.

I'm like anything I ever have in my life. It was like my first crush and it's a cartoon, you know, it's kind of crazy to think of it that way, but that's the truth. And whenever I like started feeling down and depressed, I thought of this character, like in later high schools, when she started to come back into my life. Like, um, you know, I watched Danny Fan, I'm in middle school, late middle school early high school, but then I kind of drifted away from it. And one's 12th grade walled around is when I started to get depressed and venture off into this darker area. And this girl was just there all the time when I got into that darker place.

And the character's backstory was she died in a house fire. And she made this song called Remember. And it's a song that basically sums up her death. And I couldn't stop playing it. It like hypnotized me. And that's the irony of it all is this ghost hypnotized you with her music. And it just, it changed me. I can't even explain it. It was just, it hoped me. Reeled me in, and she was always there when I got into this dark depressing place. And I just connected with her

unlike anything I ever have in my life. And that's when I started thinking about killing myself by burning myself, which I knew it wasn't gonna kill me. It was too risky to do. And I just had that thought in the back of my head for years. Like, I know I'm gonna kill myself one day, but when is it gonna be? How many more years am I gonna be alive, you know? And I thought, honestly, by 2015, I'd be dead. I didn't think I'd be alive much longer than that.

But anyways... Andrew Blaise was fascinated with ghosts. Cartoon ghosts. One cartoon ghost in particular. Ghosts. Demons. The paranormal, the unknown. Do they exist? Are they real? Have you yourself had an experience? So I just felt like making a video, discussing this stuff because that's all I do now

is animate cartoon ghosts in my free time, but there's so much more than just animating ghosts for a YouTube series. It goes back way farther than that. So pretty much my entire life, I've been thinking about the afterlife. What happens when you die? It is something that isn't everybody's head, at least at some point in their lifetime. But nobody really knows for sure what happens on the other side.

Since I was first able to understand it, I was interested in it. I was just intrigued. I was mind blown. It's like there's another world besides this world that you can end up with after you pass away. Just for some bizarre reason, death always felt interesting to me. It's very hard to explain. I just always connected with it.

I was just occasionally thinking about it as a kid, just going through life and just wondering what's next. Now you can go into all the religion talk you want, but we're not gonna go into that today. But for as long as I can remember, I was always thinking about this stuff and one thing that just terrified me and it stuck with me to this day was I was about five years old and I was just being loud and it was late at night, my grandmother just said, be quiet or you'll wake the dead. I was like ever since that time when I was outside at night, I had to be quiet or I was going to

wake the dead and they were going to come and kill me! Now I eventually got over that, but one thing just kept leading to another and as I got older, I just got more and more in-depth. Now pretty much every single person in their lifetime has dealt with someone passing away. And you know, you have the viewing, you have the funeral and then you have thoughts during the whole process of like, where are they at now?

Where is my grandfather at now? I hope he's with my grandmother who also passed away in the past, or maybe they're just gone forever and never coming back and I'll never ever see them again. There's a million random cluttered thoughts just go through your head during this whole process and it seems like it's totally different

when you're going through it than when you're just thinking about it on a regular day. Not many people like talking about this stuff, I personally find it fascinating, but that's just me. That's who I am. I love death, I love cemeteries, I love ghosts, I love demonic shit that you see on TV that people are up to debate about, like whether it's real or not. Just that stuff always interested me, although it almost gave me nightmares as a kid, we're just worrying about what I'm sleeping, and there's gonna be something like some kind of shadow figure hovering over my bed when I'm fucking sleeping,

or just standing in the corner of my room, just staring at me, I still find it fucking awesome. I just find it cool, that's all I can say. But it's not cool to everybody else, and it's like kind of the only use you for people to talk about, because they don't like talking about religion, or they don't like talking about the afterlife, or in general or just like watching the news and seeing people die and all this shit but I just find it fascinating. I didn't just wake up one day and say I'm going

to start animating cartoon ghosts for a YouTube series. The reason I'm able to come up with all this stuff is because I've lived this stuff. My mind has ventured into areas that people normally don't go into. And when you go into these areas all the time, you get a lot of fucked up ideas. Quite an understatement, coming from someone who killed three innocent people and then himself for seemingly no reason. We'll get into the reason Andrew or Randy thought he had. But first, let's hear about these fucked up ideas. Anyways, I guess I should talk about what the plan is now because there's been so many freaking variations and variables that go into this and what I intend on doing, what is possible doing and what I'm also probably gonna do. You know, Randy takes a

swig of his Miller light as he prepares to describe how he will commit his final act. There's all kinds of ways I can do this and I wanted desperately to find keys to unlock the propane cage and there's like eight to twelve fucking propane can, or tanks that are like this big, you know? Huge. And I dug through the desk in the manager's office. I found a shit ton of keys, none of them opened it. And the one that was on my key ring, fit the lock, but a win turn. I was like, fuck.

It was a bummer, it was a huge letdown. Like I thought it would've been amazing if I can get in there and you know, set up propane tanks and explode them all over the place and letdown. I thought it would have been amazing if I could get in there and set up propane tanks and explode them all over the place and everything. It would have been great, but it's not going to happen. The alternative to that is gather a bunch of the lighter fluid and mini propane canisters that unfortunately didn't really do anything when I shot at it.

It's just a poof, like a big plume of smoke in the air. But yeah, gather all those together in a shopping cart with all the lighter fluids there. You can get like fucking like 40 lighter fluid bottles. That's gonna be an explosion. So that's possible. That's probably what's gonna have to end up happening because I'm not gonna be able to get in that propane cage

no matter how hard I try. So, one big change has happened is I've been attending on doing it before break now. Mainly because that time slot is so goddamn tight. Between one in 145, it is virtually impossible to block all the exits and everything and then have nobody see it. You know, at some Wednesday nights are the smallest orders we have and last night was Wednesday and it was a puny order. It was really small.

There wasn't much of anything in terms of substantial size palace and everything. So unfortunately, that might be what ends up happening on the seventh, but the thing is, I-O-1 is where Brian always is. And that's the vegetable I-O-D, you know, microwaveable meals and all that. And generally, it takes like an hour or more to do, usually. Last night, I probably took him like a half hour for all I know. I didn't pay attention, but there wasn't a lot for it and the biggest problem with that is he would have to go into the back room and get rid of his cardboard and plastic for the next style. Well, if he goes into the back room, he's gonna see all the palettes I have lined up. So you can't do it. He can't risk that, you know, and

I just got me to thinking it's like, well great, because Victoria and Kristen, I found out now that's most likely their lunch hour because they've been in the back room for quite a while between one and like one thirty. So that's their lunch hour. They work like eight to three in the morning. So you figure one o'clock, that's a lunch hour. So I was like, fuck, because it because it was 135. They were in the back room still and that's when I intended on doing it. You know, that was my initial plan. So that got me to think it's like, okay, great. Maybe I got to do it sooner now, which blows in a way because then I have like no fucking time to like, preamp myself for it. I just

got to do it. Realize that what he's talking about here is figuring out when his co-workers will not be in the back room of the store. So he can barricade the exits without them noticing and then kill them. These are people he works with every day. And the nonchalant uncaring attitude in which he describes his plan is nothing short of monstrous. So this is what I came up with. 12, 10 is usually when we're pushing stuff out. We're not really ever in the back room much later than that,

maybe 12, 20 at the latest, but on a Wednesday, no fucking way. Monday and Fridays are the bigger orders. Wednesday is not that big at all. But anyways, you know, quarter after 12 is when we're pushing all the stuff out on cards and everything and Brian disappears for like five to ten minutes and I don't know where he goes either he goes to the fucking shit or every night or he's on the like the back manager's office computer or something which I didn't ask I should like that way I know where he is but that got me to thinking,

I got like 10 free minutes there. That's what I'm gonna send out all the emails. So like 12, 20, 12, 15, I'm gonna send all the emails out on my phone. So they're taking care of another way. He'll come out onto the floor, going out of one at like 12, 20 or, you know, whenever. And that's my go time. That's what I'm going to go

to the back room and start blocking the exits with pallets. The main problem I've found is the produce area. Produce is going to be the biggest bitch to block because unlike receiving, the receiving doors are double doors, but there's only one that can push to go out the other one you got to latch. And it got me to think and it's like great because produce is a bitch because it's a set of double doors. So you would need two pallets to block that, you know?

That's a problem because that's also the closest exit besides the bakery exit, which I'm going to block with my car. Produce is the closest way to get out. And it's um, that's the wild card one. I don't know how I'm going to block those. He's so detailed. So painstakingly diligent and detailing every aspect of his plan. Every exit door needs to be blocked.

He even has to get the timing just right to make sure that everything goes according to plan. Because I think I counted as like five doors, I got a block or at least clutter. So it slows people down from getting out because you got the one all the way down by the back managers office, which is the farthest away from anyone in the whole building. No one's ever gonna think to go out that one, but I still got a block in any way. But that one, I still intend on doing like, right when he locks the store up.

If not, I can do it while we're pushing stuff out, or just right when I'm about to block everything else. But that's the easiest door to block, just because it's so far away and always down there, there's always pallets of soda. And you know, somewhere like up to my chin and everything, you could block that fairly easily. The other ones, there's two, right next to the frozen food

freezer, which is like 20 feet from receiving. Pretty much there's one that's like 20 feet from receiving pretty much. There's one that's like 20 feet from receiving. The other is like 50. And they're tight exits because you got like, you got like the water softener back there or whatever. You got like these big poles in front of it. So you can't hit it with a power jack or anything, but there's a door in the middle of it.

So getting a palette in there is really tight, but it's doable. And then the other one, which is like 20 feet away from the receiving doors, which is pretty much the easiest besides the one by the back manager's office. And then you got the receiving door, which shouldn't be too hard.

The only thing I need to figure out is if you can push the one on the right, the one on the left is the push, the one to open, the one next to it doesn't have anything to push on, which you would think would mean it would be locked in place. So unless you had the other door open, that's what I'm thinking you have to do. But I need to see my next off night, my next non-load night, rather if it, if you need to push it or not. Okay. I really don't know.

He goes about his steps as if he's preparing a home improvement project. Listen to how he describes taking care of one problem, which is a store manager with keys to one of the doors he plans to lock. Now obviously you got the big truck bay doors, you got two on this side. There's only two, but they're always changed shut with the lock so you'll see what the bring your keys out and open. It's the only Brian would be able to get

out through there. Nobody else would accept him and me. Which I'm not worried about, you know, that's plenty of time for me to get into the back room and get him if I had to. 47 year old Brian Hayes would be one of the wise market employees to perish that night. His family set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for funeral expenses, which has raised close to $12,000 so far. Here is the description. My name is Becky Hayes, and I am the sister-in-law of Brian Hayes. Brian was a 47-year-old father, husband, son, and brother. Brian was a quiet guy and a man of few words, but he had a heart of gold. He loved his wife Tina and their daughter, Kaitlyn, tremendously. Immediately after high school, Brian enlisted in the US Navy and served on the USS

Eisenhower. He was deployed in the Middle East during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm serving our country. More recently, he has resided in Springville, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his family and was employed by wise supermarkets. Unfortunately, Brian's life was cut too short when he and two other co-workers were senselessly gunned down and killed by a co-worker early yesterday morning, at work before the coward then took his own life. In this world, we have to keep our eyes set on those we can love and who have a need that we can try to do our part to help with.

We have to take the sensationalism, hatred, and power away from those who think that destroying the lives of others will give them the attention and fame that they are so desperately craving. Our family chooses love. There is a sweet little seven-year-old girl that has to go to bed tonight, without the warmth and strength of her daddy holding her close. A wife will never feel the touch of her husband again, and a father has to do the unspeakable and bury his own child. ... Here Hearing about the tragic loss of four lives, including three innocent ones who were just going about their day, doing their job, and then hearing how this loss will affect countless other loved ones is the kind of thing that brings someone to tears. But not everyone has the same level of empathy.

In fact, some people don't have any empathy at all. One of the traits of a psychopath is that they don't feel any empathy for others. They know that they're supposed to show some sort of sympathy in particular situations, based on social cues, but they don't actually feel anything. The fact that Randy or Andrew identified as female puts a whole nother wrinkle in this story. Randy's bedroom, where he shot a lot of the videos he left in his archive, is just as paradoxical

as his own personality. The top of the walls are covered with a strip of blue wallpaper, the kind you would see in a kid's room, with military jets flying through the clouds. Below that, posters of my little pony, his cartoons, and the Beatles' abbey road album cover. There are stuffed animals near his bed, and two shotguns under it. You would think that the majority of sane people on the internet would realize that this is a tragic tale of the loss of life.

But in this heated political climate, common sense seems to go out the window. The dichotomy of views is on the realm of absurd. For example, a post on Tumblr states, start calling Randy Stair by her preferred pronouns. I don't care if you don't agree with what she did, don't misgender her. This was posted by someone using the account handle of Eric's trench coat, a clear reference to Eric Clebold, one of the Columbine shooters. In fact, this person's entire Tumblr account appears to be an homage to the killers. Another anonymous post reads,

Why do you think it's important to correct people's writing on Randy Stair as he, but you say nothing about his preferred name Andrew Blaise? If you are sensitive to his gender, why not be sensitive to his name choice too? Just wonder. Another account with the username Killer darlings says, transgender people are still trans, even if they do bad things. Trans people can do bad things too. And it is no excuse for being transphobic, misgendering them.

Pass it on to all the people who purposely misgender Randy Stair. It's within this environment that I stumbled across a YouTube channel, which featured an interview with someone that said that they knew and had worked with the killer. Something about this video bothered me. Perhaps it was the way the host kept interjecting, giving shout outs to her favorite followers who popped in on the livestream. Perhaps it's the way she and the guests both seem to spend a lot of time promoting themselves,

and talking about their YouTube channels. Or maybe it's the fact that they barely talked about the victims or how senseless of a tragedy this whole thing was. Something about their affect just didn't sit right. So I decided to reach out to the guest Randy's friend directly and have a chat. Hello. Hi, this is Mike with Certain Scales, a sk chat. Hello. Hi, this is Mike with Certain Scales, a skater. Yep.

How you doing? Oh, good. Thanks for taking the call, I appreciate it. No problem. I'd like to just ask you a little bit about how you knew this person, Randy Stair. If you could just, first of all, what do I call you? Skater. Okay, so you don't want to use your real name?

No, that's my real name. That is your real name, okay. Yeah. Tell me how you knew Randy Stair. I met her online and We were working together on EGS And you say her because trans

She was trans. Yeah, okay And how how well did you get to know Randy Stair? Enough to say that I definitely cannot see this situation coming from my all-away. She had a very distinct personality, talking to me, then how she did in her vlogs that she released. What was the personality? Happy kind, you know, talks about creepy shit, but you know, like, it's overall happy.

Would you say polite? Yeah. So this is a complete shock. You couldn't have imagined something like this happening. Yeah, I couldn't. When did you first get word? I think it was the day after. And I only got word of it because I released a video a year ago, which I had unlisted.

I don't know how people were finding it, but it was released a year ago and it was just me talking about the project and all that. And somebody commented like did you see what what they did and I'm like what's what do you mean? What they did and I'm like what's what do you mean and then somebody literally just told me what happened and I Google did and Sure enough And you were working with With Randy on a project, right a animation project Yeah, you're an animator Yeah, I'm an animator, but I ended up just doing voices for the project.

I did background character voices in the final project, the screaming, a lot of the screaming and stuff like that. And some of these animations have some very graphic depictions of violence. At any point did that not strike you as sort of strange or out of the ordinary? I mean, the thing is like, like Andrew went from like doing like very, very crazy like over-the-top comedic sketches to this.

And like, it was a very slow progression and I feel like if you have seen that and seen how like she was doing all this she um it would seem more normal. Like a lot of the things like I read somewhere in the articles that oh like there were Twitter accounts and they were all interacting and they were a part of her psyche or something like that. And it's like, no, they were the Twitter accounts of the characters from the show. You know? The final video where Randy or Andrew, whatever name you want to go by, He, I'm sorry, she...

Andrew would be fun. ...begins the video with some text on the screen, and it's a tirade of, fuck you, this, fuck you for that, to everyone that failed to help her do this animation. Did you see that, and what's your reaction to that? My reaction was, well, they definitely or do this animation? Did you see that and what's your reaction to that? My reaction was, well, they definitely deserved a big fuck you because she has been trying

to get people to help her out. People have like legit been like, oh yeah, work with you and then the next week is like, oh yeah yeah we have a lot more stuff to work on so we're gonna push you a shine and like she even went out of her way to pay somebody wants and they screwed her over big time. But don't you you don't count yourself within that? No because like I sent her what I could do for animation and then She's basically said you know that's that's not what I want and like he was like telling me like how I have loose ends and stuff like that and Like she's a major perfectionist so And you were just helping her out for free, right? Yeah,. And most of the people were just helping for free.

Yeah. So, do you think it's right to, to sort of, I mean, what, it seems like a little bit of, sort of entitlement there where she thought that people were going to help her for free and put this whole thing together. Oh, I mean one thing is like thinking people are going to do it, but then another thing is being promised by, like, I'd say, 17 animators that they were going to help for free. You know, a promise means a lot to her. But I mean within the greater context when you look at this now, it's just a cartoon and people lost their lives. So who cares about the cartoon? I don't know. I mean, would you agree with that or no?

Yeah, I would agree with that. But what's your point? I just want to understand how you feel about this after it's all said and done and you saw the video of this sort of rant about people not helping. I, Randi or Andrew. I do not condone what she did. And you know, if she released this video a few days before it, I would have tried to

be there for her as much as I could. You know. Did she ever say anything about her workplace, her job at this supermarket? No, but she would have if like, I feel like she didn't even have any problems with the employees there. Like she usually talked about like bullying and stuff like that. Yeah, who was the bullying coming from? That's sort of an important question.

I mean, she was bullied a lot in high school. And then right after high school, she got online a lot. She was, her main channel was open already for years then. And when high school ended, she kept Her main channel was like open already for years then and like When he's around when high school ended she kept on getting more and more hate online and All this people saying shit and I guess there was maybe one or two people in real life that still bullied her and Or treat her like shit. She really had a it seems like a real anger or hatred towards her father. Yeah, and a bit towards a bit towards the brother. What was that about? Do you know what that was about? I don't know what the anger was towards the brother, but I'm guessing the father just maybe was an asshole or something.

Doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would rape her or something, you know Father wasn't that bad of a person. Did you ever talk about personal things like this or her depression or anything like that? Like her depression and all that no, we only well we scratch the surface You know like she she was talking about how this is depressing her, the whole everyone screwing her over and stuff like that. And I'm like, you know, I was depressed too and I'll be here for you. And yeah. But that's about as far as it went.

You didn't get into anything very deeply. No, we didn't. You think there was anything you could have done or said to change anything? I feel like there's like even, even if I was paying attention to her Twitter as more, I would have probably even never known. But if I did know, I don't feel like anything I could have said could have changed this. Because she clearly had something else going on, maybe split personality or something, because

the way she was talking and the things she said in her vlogs were off the roof crazy What about the Columbine shooters did did she ever mention the Columbine shooters at all to you? No, no actually um Actually, that's one thing that didn't come out up actually like I, crazy enough, I actually did a whole, I was doing research on them like a month ago. But um, no, I never even, I never even like talked to her about that or like we never brought that up.

It was mostly just talk about like creepy back stories and you know dark stories creepypastas and stuff like that. Which were the sort of interests you had in common. Yeah. Can I ask what you were looking at the Columbine Tutors for? at the Columbine Tutors 4? Um, you know, just random YouTube video appeared on the side. I watched it. It got me interested about like some of the people who were killed in the Columbine School shooting and I looked up everyone up and yeah.

Okay, and what does it you do? You put out videos on YouTube. What are these videos about? I don't really do YouTube videos that much. Like, I do videos with fans here and there, but I'm a graphic designer. I do graphic designing. I animate here and there. I do web design. I'm all over the place with stuff I do. Okay. And has this incident made you look around your environment with any more scrutiny and sort of start to wonder what's around you. No, no it hasn't. Really?

Yeah. So the idea that you knew a murderer doesn't face you? Not really. That does it for this episode of Sword and Scale. We're coming back though next week with part 2 of this story. It's just way too big to cover in one episode and there's so much more. Until then, please join us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Check out our new after show, Sword and Scale Rewind and Subscribe.

And leave us a review on iTunes. If you really like the show, you can subscribe to it on Patreon and get early release for future episodes whenever possible. For example, part 2 of this story will be available on Patreon by the time this episode hits the regular feed. Until next time, thank you for listening and stay safe. Thank you. you