Wow. This is perhaps it's you. And we're recording yet again. Somehow we came back for episode two of season eight. I know. I was about to do our whole spiel, but I was like, is this even a rewatch podcast at this point? We have seen none of this.
this is just a we watch tv is that a thing like we didn't we weren't in these episodes we didn't make these episodes and we've never seen these episodes we don't really even like these episodes so i mean i sort of feel like this one had everything but it also it's a huge bummer it's really yeah this episode like actively destroyed us i don't really know what who season eight thinks she is yeah yeah she needs to calm down though if you are ovulating or like pmsing do not watch this episode if you were like just i don't know feeling kind of raw and emotional that they do not watch this episode because i was like this is putting me through everything It seems uncalled for and rude. Yeah, I agree. First of all, Unsolved Mysteries bring back some magic rocks. I was like, what did I do to you? Every single segment in this is a bummer. We get four mysteries. You'd think we'd be happy, but they're all sad. People have watched every episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Is this just how it is? From now on, it just becomes a true crime thing. And like, I mean, I guess there's one episode, there's one segment in here that's like a miracle. We get a miracle, but it's still sad. I don't know. It's not a did Jesus blink miracle. We're getting a late monster this season.
You just have to hang on for that. For whatever lake monster is coming out. Okay. Well, we'll look forward to that. It's probably going to be in episode fucking 35. Yeah. And also probably the lake monster dies and his whole family dies. And then there's like a lake monster funeral.
and you that sounds funny but it's actually like so grim in the episode they show all their corpses it's rough the whole the whole family the whole family lake monsters died yeah it was a lake monster family annihilator it was it was poison someone put poison in the lake maybe it was this guy who loves poison yeah yeah i didn't finish our introduction so does it matter that my name is liz or my name is samantha if you are listening to this is anyone listening to this for the first time i highly doubt it there was that chris person but i think they've longed long i think they i think they tuned in to go why did repod sponsor this episode listen to the episode and then had no clarification on that question they're they didn't get the answers they were looking for they're like well i still don't see why repod would sponsor them this podcast is a hot mess i doubt they tuned in for our unhinged banter again even though we did hey chris yeah hey chris let's be pals um friends enemies whatever bdwong whatever i don't know my only update i can only think of one and i thought i need people to submit to the zine or we're not doing another zine okay so if you want there to be another zine you need to send in stuff to perhaps it's you podcast at gmail.com and you'll have i originally said till july 1st but since i've gotten a total of zero submissions i guess i'll make that july 15th okay but otherwise we just i mean otherwise it'll be easy for me i won't make a zine sounds great sounds great honestly
um but yeah that could be artwork that could be a recipe that could be i would love a um uh horoscopes i think that would be great i would love a uh taro spread love it i really had to work that hard there not to say taro which i think i've done on this podcast 900 times and you're going liz that's like a purpley yam type thing that's not what you're talking about delicious deep fried though yeah so good but you're talking about taro and i go whatever i don't care I don't care about anything because this episode is so sad. The tone of this episode is... I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to take a deep breath. The vibes are off, Liz. Take a deep breath. I'm going to settle. I'm going to ground myself. I'm going to name those things you can see, hear, smell, whatever. I was at a little shop in the downtown area of the city I live in, and I saw that Warhead soda. I don't know if it has... The only reason I didn't buy it for us to do a Snacks with Snack is I don't know if it has caffeine.
So I'm going to look into that. And maybe next time we record in person, we can do a super sour soda. I know you would really love that. I know you would really love that. So I look forward to that if it doesn't have caffeine, which I don't know. I'm looking it up right now. Unfortunately. You're going to tell me it has caffeine even if it doesn't, just so you don't have to drink it. No, it says that they're caffeine free. I feel like citrus things are usually, but it does say, according to some random website that I'm on, that it's caffeine free. All right. Well, maybe I'll go back and buy some. I think they had it for flavor.
Okay. Which flavor do you want? The blue raspberry? Obviously the blue raspberry, yeah. Also, I need to find those cotton candy Oreos. They're out today. Oh, shit. Get on it. Maybe we'll have some blue raspberry sour soda and cotton candy Oreos. Oh, my God. The meal of a teenager. What can I say? Yeah. Yeah. Some pizza rolls. We just need some Flaming Hot Cheetos and we're pretty sad. I think they're making a movie about the person that invented Flaming Hot Cheetos. Is this something we care about? I don't know. Is that an interesting story? I don't understand.
They're just like running out of things that are brands to like make movies out of, I think. Okay. Because they're like, we made a movie about the deal for Air Jordans and people went and saw that. So now it's like. I don't think anything is going to be quite as scraping the bottom of the barrel. Probably more than 10 years ago, there was a movie about the guy that invented windshield wipers. Still, it's stuck in my craw. It's a story that did not need to be told. Unless there is a murder in the Flaming Hot Cheetos documentary. It's not a documentary. Wait, what? It's like the Air Jordans thing. It's like acting out. Why would you want to see that? I don't know. I want a Fyre Festival style. I don't even know because Flaming Hot Cheetos seems like they were super successful, but that's what I want. It's just how they came up with the Flaming Hot Cheetos. I'm not kidding.
this if you did not believe that this is a nation in decline i think i just gave you the information to rest my case the flaming hot cheetos film yeah like wow that's i want office planet yeah but the problem is in space most movies are about flaming hot cheetos can't escape it okay so i think that's just gonna cut it for updates right some of the some of the best banter at the start of an episode we've ever had me just angry complaining i'm sure people love that and then just talking about snacks i haven't eaten but want to you know and this was this was a snacks with stacks preview yeah where we covered possible snacks we'll eat and then movies about snacks that are apparently in the works unless that's just totally not true okay wait let me it was that a fever dream did you just lie to us about a flaming hot cheetos film that'd be honestly hilarious my best live all time hot you know because the third thing when you start typing hot cheetos is hot cheetos movie are they making a movie about animated no there's a trailer is it a musical what would you want would you rather see a flaming hot cheetos musical or get a root canal i mean i would rather see that flaming hot cheetos musical but you know it's directed by ava longoria what is happening
this is for hulu i guess makes slightly more sense than it's gonna be like in an actual should we watch the flaming hot cheetos film for patreon probably yeah what no this comes out on june 9. i don't know is she a cheeto no it's just like people making the i it has the guy that was the president on 24 and tony shalhoub what is he a cheeto i don't think any of them are cheetos samantha should i just play the trailer yeah no that's like a massive yeah let's just do that whoa i need you to narrate it for us are there dancing cheetos No, it's just like people at the Cheeto factory. Okay. Definitely what I want to see a film about. People at the Cheeto factory.
Okay, I can't even watch this whole trailer. I don't know that we're going to do this for Patreon. Does it look so bad we couldn't even do it for Patreon? No, I just don't get it. It just seems like a long commercial. I'm so confused. For Flaming Hot Cheetos. Yeah. I mean, it probably is. Big Cheeto funded this film. One of the comments says, this looks amazing. Basically, a two-hour Cheeto ad I'm willing to watch. Two hours? I mean, it's a movie. Who do you think? That is too long for a film about Cheetos. Every movie is too long now.
we should see how they made that movie about making tetris that made slightly more sense not that i've seen it this is literally like guy invented chip not even chip like the first chip just like a chip okay all right well i guess this is my fault because i'm so excited about the barbie movie but that's it seems a little different to me that seems a lot different actually there's like a story you know yeah there's like a little barbie world ryan gosling's there i don't know it's got everything versus the cheeto movie is just evil angoria as a cheeto if only look maybe it's really good maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm like you are this isn't just a big puff piece for a snack everyone already likes promotion for a popular thing that does not need any promoting okay do you want to talk about our first horrible mystery which is slightly funny to me because it's like so over the top but also it's like very sad and also like very scary to me personally I may have scheduled a very minor surgery this morning. I called and scheduled that. And then I sat down to watch this episode because obviously I'm bad at my job and I hadn't done that in advance. And then it's about a doctor killing people. And I was like, oh, good. Can't wait for that minor procedure. Samantha, if a doctor poisons you, just know that I'll get him. Thank you. I mean, same to you. I'll avenge you. Don't worry.
so this is a wanted we're looking for Michael Swango possibly the worst last name I've ever heard I was wondering if it's even real Swango he did have a fake name later so maybe not you made up the name Swango you think you would give yourself a better name but it doesn't sound real to me but maybe it is I'm literally just gonna google Swango now Swango. The only thing that comes up is him. Oh, okay. He's the most famous Swango. Oh, okay. So they think this is like a Ellis Island type of thing, where it's an Americanized form of an unidentified name. It's German name. Oh, okay. I gotcha. That makes a little more sense. Okay. But that's why it sounds so made up. These are some of his aliases. Michael Kirk, David Jackson Adams, Jack Kirk, Michael Swan, and Double O Swango. Double O Swango. Where did he think that McLovin-ass name was going to work?
So he is wanted. We're trying to find him. On February 7th, 1984, at the State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, an intern, Dr. Michael Swango, checked on a 69-year-old woman, Rena Cooper, who was recovering from routine back surgery. Don't make too much of that, Samantha. When he left, she seemed to be doing just fine, but moments later, she began convulsing. As doctors and nurses began to stabilize her, she struggled to tell them what happened. They gave her a pen and paper, and she wrote, quote, the doctor put something in my IV.
this is fucking terrifying like she's fine right she's recovering she's like the surgery went well whatever right it's probably an elective procedure like she's like in her hospital room waiting until she can like you know move around well enough to go home this doctor who does not need to be there comes in stick something in her iub she starts compulsing and she has to like scribble out what happened for a possible murderer to like the other hospital staff truly a nightmare scenario so while all this was going on a nurse walked down the hall to try and like calm the other patients because presumably this is just like a recovery wing from like normal surgeries and people are freaking out um there was a bunch of commotion so she was just kind of like walking around assuring people everything would be fine four rooms down she saw michael swango exiting the room with what she described as a very funny grin on his face i hate it chilling is what it is he's walking around poisoning people and then like smirking about it yes that's exactly what he's doing in that room she found a large hypodermic needle with a plunger down just like sitting out on the sink and robert stack assures us that this is not normal for a hospital setting that people just leave needles laying around shouldn't he know better why did he do that
it seems like he was very brazen i don't know if he's just one of those people that thinks he's smarter than everybody else or maybe in the commotion he like just like didn't have time to dispose of it or what but um yeah i don't know this is real dumb of him i feel like he you know that phrase about being granted the confidence of a mediocre white man like i think this guy really thought that his like male cis whiteness doctorate was gonna took him like even further than it did where he was like no one will ever suspect me well meanwhile like everybody's like oh that guy did it i mean while it's true that basically everybody he worked with assumed that he was poisoning people he really did get away with it but like they didn't do like they were like oh my god that guy's poisoning people well we'll just let him go that's basically what happened so in a way he was not like wrong um so speaking of which three doctors confronted him about what happened in rena's room he allegedly told them three different stories at it it bothers me no he's not a criminal mastermind he's not because he told he told one person he was never even in there and like people saw him in there so it's like dude this is not making this is not making sense um most people uh robert stack okay this is a quote from robert stack most people tend to hold doctors to a higher standards and perhaps that's fair yeah perhaps
Oh my God. So what we wanted to know, what Robertack wants to know is did Swango betray the trust of his patients for his own sadistic pleasure? Yes. And he says, if you ask him, he would probably say that he was the victim of bad luck and circumstance, but unfortunately the question cannot be posed because no one can find him. Also, I don't think he would say that. I think he would grin maniacally and then say something completely. Catch me if you can and then skip off. Yeah. I'd be like, and what are you going to do about it? And then he would like in front of you, tap some poison into your drink.
So we get his history. In 1983, he came to Ohio as a recent graduate of the Medical School of Southern Illinois University. He, according to other people, was charming. He projected confidence. However, he had a lackluster medical school record, which didn't seem to match the confidence that he had. This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, which is, what do you call the person that graduates in the bottom of their class from medical school, Samantha? A doctor? Exactly.
I'm fairly sure I've heard that one before. You know what? It's chilling, honestly. Yeah. I mean, this is him because he apparently just got worse and worse at medical school. He might just seem like he stopped trying. It's notoriously very hard. It only gets harder. And it seems like somewhere during the process, he just kind of checked out. He did. And people said that he became more and more withdrawn as he went through his college classes.
But he eventually did get into medical school and he did okay academically. But as the classes became more advanced and he needed to do more hands-on patient work, he seemed to like pull away from like actually interacting with patients. Great. Classmates reported that he did a quote superficial job when working with patients, which is like, yeah, not great. Probably because he wanted to be a doctor just to poison people is what it seems like.
His poor performance continued through the first six months of his internship. His supervisor placed him on probation, telling him that unless he had a significant improvement, he was not going to make the next step and be recommended for residency. His reaction is like, I've been working my whole life to be a doctor. Why are you standing in my way? And it's like, yeah, and you have to keep working. Yeah, you're not entitled to be a doctor just because you've gone through the motions. You have to actually be good at it.
Also, there's like more work. It's not just like you accomplished. It's not like you just run the race and then it's like, yeah, you ran it. He just really wanted to poison. He didn't really want to do any work. So this could mean that he would never or would mean that he would never be a full-fledged doctor. And it was shortly after he was put on probation that Rina suffered her mysterious seizure. So do you think he was mad about being put on probation and this is like how he acted out? I don't know. Honestly, I don't.
That was just his plan all along. He continued poisoning people when he went to different jobs. So I don't know. He just, he really did. Like him and poison. He saw poison from across the room and he was like, that's the one for me. It's true. It was a love affair. Tale as old as time. So get this. Reena was fine. She, thank God, survived. But at least five other patients died and they were all connected in some way to Dr. Swango.
it's very chilling there's really nothing to make of this comment but i was surprised that we see an angel a male angel of death it is right a little unusual there's usually it's a female angel of death but usually it's okay so i'm i mean i could be wrong but isn't it usually like a mercy killing sort of situation with female angels because he seems like he just wants to poison people he's not poisoning people that are gonna die and like putting them out of their his perceived misery you know i mean like i'm not saying that those feelings are justified but i feel like that's kind of what motivates i think i think at least in the beginning that people think what they're doing is for, like, a better good, right? This guy, you're right. He just, like, likes killing people. It seems like he became a doctor with the express purpose of just, like, legally poisoning people or something. It's an absolute nightmare. Yeah. So they did an investigation. And though evidence appeared to point towards him, the hospital officials chose not to call the police. Instead, they decided to, quote, watch him closely and quietly wait out the last months of his internship because they were just not going to, they were going to continue, like, his probation was going to run out and they weren't going to allow him to continue. So they just were like, well, he's leaving anyway. I guess we'll let him hang out. Hopefully he won't poison anyone else.
Oh my God. I totally have seen this book before called Dr. Death. And that's about him. Interesting. See, there was that podcast called Dr. Death about that other guy. Yeah, but that's about different. Actually, there's many things called Dr. Death. There's also something called Blind Eye. The terrifying story of a doctor who got away. Interesting. Interesting. You might need to read that one. That one looks, based on the cover, that one's the one that's a better quality.
I might have to look into it. So he didn't appear to be that disturbed by the hospital's decision to let him go or the whispered allegations against him. In fact, on several occasions during the last months of his internship, he treated members of the staff to extra spicy chicken. Okay. I'm really trying to be sympathetic.
but these these his colleagues literally think that he's poisoning people i don't know why they continue to eat the spicy chicken yeah yeah like they literally think he's a poisoner i'm not super sympathetic because that's very scary that he was allowed to remain at the hospital and they're just like i assume for like lawsuit reasons they want to fire him without like enough proof or whatever so like we'll just keep an eye on him but also we'll eat the food he brings in I don't think it's a great choice. That's what I'm going to land on. If you think that your coworker is poisoning people, I would recommend. Don't eat their spicy chicken. And if they look at you and call it extra spicy chicken and kind of wink and have a weird smirk on their face, the extra spicy he's talking about is the poison he put in there. I feel like everyone in Minnesota would be safe because the extra spicy part would scare them possibly more than the poison. So this would never happen at Mayo Clinic is what I'm going to say. It's true. So not surprisingly, three doctors became violently ill within hours of eating the spicy chicken. They were so ill. I feel like this happened more than once though.
I think it did. Yeah, they had like ruptured blood vessels in their eyes from vomiting so much. It's not like he put laxatives in it or something. No, they think he put arsenic in it. Yes, it's very serious. So that's great. So he left OSU hospital in 1984 without being fully investigated and no charges were ever filed. Do you think they had a going away party for him and then he brought the extra spicy chicken to his going away party and then they ate it again? They have a cake. Oh my God. So one month later, he said goodbye, Dr. Poisoner.
It has like a little bottle with X's on it on top of the cake. And he's like, ha ha ha, you guys. Here's some chicken. Be sure to eat my extra spicy wink wink chicken. So one month later, he had a new job. He wasn't a doctor, though. This time he was a paramedic in Quincy, Illinois. And he starts out his job by bringing in donuts for the whole crew. His co-worker, Brent, noticed the donuts tasted kind of funny and also did not have like the normal donut texture. They were like dense and they weren't springy is how he described them. But of course, he ate them anyway and then got violently ill.
i shouldn't laugh but it is kind of funny that he was like yeah it seemed gross but look i was real hungry and i get it i get it he was like eating the donut he was like something's off about this donut but you know what i'm halfway through and i might as well just eat the whole thing i get it but it is also funny sadly that donut what should he make it himself why is the texture off i have no idea how was there just so much arsenic in it that it affected the texture i have no idea they were like weird ass donuts yeah i don't know i have no idea um but yeah so he and several others became very ill they actually wanted to test the donuts but they mysteriously disappeared before they could find them again only an empty box into everyone's bellies it sounds like they make it sound like that's nefarious like he tried to get rid of the evidence and i was like i'm pretty sure you guys just ate all the donuts honestly i don't blame you i love a donut but i think you just ate them so this uh greg is another paramedic they ate one of the poisoned donuts and says that they didn't suspect of any wrongdoing they kind of just thought it was food poisoning um and since donuts were gone they figured there's nothing
Like, there's no meat. I guess maybe I don't really know what causes food poisoning, but the chance of, like, food contamination with pastries? I mean, it's not something I've ever heard of, but... They're the doctors, I guess. Maybe they thought he bought the donuts from, I don't know, a garbage can. I'm not sure. They were sprayed by the Rosanishis, too. No one could vote that day. They're like, oh no, we all have salmonella now. Literally the next night, Brent worked with Swango at a local football game, and at halftime, Swango offered to buy him a soda. He started drinking it, and within a few minutes, he became violently ill again.
like you would tell me you would stop hanging out with this dude who's giving you fishy donuts and then like i mean i like the idea of offering to buy your co-worker a soda that's nice but at some point you have to be like why is this guy only giving me food that makes me like so ill here i just am you know totally normal american experience paramedic required at children's sporting events in case someone is violently injured a thing that regularly happens okay sure uh he's like oh can i get you a coke why not he's like sitting there sipping it like this tastes a lot like extra spicy chicken So we don't get the details of this third mysterious illness, but apparently after he brought in some more food, maybe his chicken, I don't know, his coworkers got sick again. And at this point, they became suspicious. They also were suspicious because he seemed to have this weird fascination with grisly accidents and death. These coworkers are so fucking trusting. They're like, he gave us food once, made me sick. He gave us food literally the next day, made me sick again. He gave us more food, made me sick. Wait a minute. Pattern here.
Yeah, I don't know. I was also talking about how he wanted to see children in horrible car accidents burning alive. This coworker, I don't know if this was Brent or someone else, but this coworker goes on and on and on about this fantasy death scene that he apparently would talk about where he came upon a bus accident where there's children's bodies strewn everywhere and up in fences and shit. I'm like, Brent, my man, we don't need all the details. yeah good lord had to take a cpr class with like those dummies that was led by a paramedic and he kept devolving into these stories about horrible accidents he had been to as if they were like fun anecdotes and the amount of like stress that that like i was like oh my god shut up i just want to be put cpr certified on my babysitting applications like can we not also it was with those like dummies that have like an inside um I don't know, whatever, some electronic element that tells you if you're like compressing hard enough, which I was not. So I like fucking could not with all of my weight push down hard enough. And I remember being like, is it a problem that I've come to this training, but like honestly cannot perform like CPR surprise? Like, yeah, probably.
Okay. And then he told some other story about, yeah, like a bus driver getting decapitated. And you're just like, wow, you're a fun guy. I mean, that guy doesn't need CPR, so I'm not sure why you're telling us this. Oh, no, none of the stories involve CPR. They were all people being like horribly mangled. Great. Maybe that was Dr. Swango. Maybe. Check out paramedics in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Take a look. So finally, his coworkers cook up this scheme where they get a fake call to like send him out of the building and then they go through his locker. In his gym bag, they found two bottles of arsenic. One was empty and one was full.
So that's cool. Why was he keeping the empty one? I don't know. I have no idea. He was going to give it to the goodwill. So they called the police. They called the police. I'm not really sure. I assume they did. We don't get a lot of information about why the police show up at his apartment. In his apartment, they discovered more incriminating evidence, including dozens of bottles of poison, books about poison, recipe cards for making poisons, and an assortment of syringes. So it's not just like a little incriminating. It's like, I don't know if the footage we see in Owens All Mysteries is like literally from his apartment. I don't know if the police took that or if that's a reenactment. I can't really remember. But it's like them opening.
cabinets and they're literally just like full of poisons like this guy runs some sort of like poison hut and you stop by and he has like any like oh i need this rare poison he's like no problem he just like reaches right up there there's like recipe cards for poison like in his like that just kills me he's like here's a great tip like he's he's like a weird betty crocker writing down i will say robert's next narration of this scene made me laugh out loud where he was like poisons books about poisons recipe cards for making poisons i have expected him to be like doodles of the word poison with little hearts around them like yeah just posters that were big pictures of the band poison he was very very dedicated so there apparently was enough evidence to prove the cop's eyes that he was poisoning his co-workers. Well, there was literally a syringe full of rat poison, which I'm not sure how you explain why you need that. I guess you catch a rat and then you just, instead of feeding it the poison, you inject it. Yeah. So on October 26, 1984, Swango was arrested and charged with six counts of aggravated battery. He maintained his innocence. However, he was convicted of the charges and sentenced to five years in prison. He served half his sentence and was given time off for good behavior.
amazingly he found work again in the healthcare field so apparently he was able to convince employers that he had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice and that he had uh time for his crime uh involved in what he described as a barroom brawl um and he ended up at a medical vocational school um there three of his colleagues reportedly fell ill that's all you don't say um he also uh at one point was working as a doctor under a different name the name david adams he applied to the residency program of the ohio valley medical center and again he claimed that his conviction was the result of like a fight in a bar um i don't know if they don't like verify these things or what but for this particular job he was up against like hundreds of applicants and he got one of the positions which is like that this is actually a problem that the internet has helped with unlike basically every other problem is that now like they would just quickly google him and be like oh you're a murderer but at the time it seems like they didn't really do their due diligence to like pull up his arrest records or you know like
They should have maybe run a background check or looked into what he was saying. And instead, they just kind of took him at his word. And probably that had worked for, like, literally everyone else they had ever hired. But in this case, he was a serial killer. Well, I don't know much about the system that obviously that they use to, like, check on doctors. But Robert Stack tells us that the Central Registry for Medical Residents had a file on him that was, quote, an inch thick. So, like, the programs he was applying to just didn't check it. So, I don't know.
why but they just didn't check it and so at one point he was up against 180 people who applied for 12 slots and he got one of the slots despite the fact that there was questionable activity that followed him in at least four states it's very disturbing and also a great reminder to google your doctor before you yes i've definitely had stuff come up before where it's like so-and-so's under investigation it was not for murder but still Yeah, absolutely. Google your doctor. There's websites that will give you all kinds of information, good and bad about them. So on September 29th, 1993, his path crossed with Elise and Barron Harris. Barron was a 60-year-old cabinetmaker from Long Island. He had a fever of 104 degrees and a slight case of pneumonia. So the last place he worked was a veterans hospital, I believe. And I think that's where this man was. So he was admitted to the hospital for this probably not life-threatening case of pneumonia.
Elise, Baron's wife, thought that Swango was very professional at first. He seemed to be concerned, and she thought that he knew what he was doing, or at least the impression that she got. She thought he was pleasant. He had good bedside manner, according to her. He had told, or Baron had told Elise to go home and get some rest. He was just going to sleep anyway. There was nothing that she could do. So Elise told...
I think the next day, Swango told Elise that on the night of October 2nd, he gave Barron a sedative. And the next morning, Barron had been moved to intensive care. He had lapsed into a coma. According to Elise, Swango said that he had assumed that Barron just had an allergic reaction to the sedative. But his condition deteriorated so quickly that Elise thought it was strange.
And then he made like a weird comment to her that was something to the effect of, well, I hope it's nothing we did. Ha ha ha. And then walked away. She thought that he was smirky and had an attitude. Yeah. I mean, this guy, people talk about his charm. Okay. Medical professionals always on the show seem to describe him as very charming, but any patient that interacts with him was like, this guy was a smug bastard and I didn't trust him for one second. So that's kind of interesting. She describes him as having a half-cocked smile on his face and she thought he was sneaky. Yeah. So he's not making a good impression with everyone, just like the people on top. Yeah.
On October 22nd, 1993, Swanko was fired by Stony Brook University after they learned that he had lied about his criminal past. Once the story about him hit the wires and reports started converging on the Northport VA hospital, oh, reporters, sorry, reporters started converging on the Northport VA hospital and on his dorm room, he hastily packed up and disappeared. Before he vanished, he allegedly told Elise and Barron that he, or Elise, that Barron would never come out of his coma. Okay. That was true. Barron died on November 9th, 1993. Wherever Swango is at this point, the authorities believe that he is most likely working in the medical field. So that's great. Oh my God. So he had never actually been charged in connection with the mysterious death of his patient. He was wanted at the time for making false statements on a job application to a government hospital. This was the VA hospital run by Stony Brook University. In his application, he reportedly did not disclose his poisoning conviction or the fact that he had lost his medical license.
So here is the, I'm sorry, but kind of long update from Unsolved Mysteries Wiki. He was captured. After the arrest warrant was issued for Swango, he fled to Zimbabwe. In November 1994, he was hired by the Zimbabwe Association of Church Hospitals. Oh, God. It never stopped. Oh, it doesn't, because about a year later, patients at the hospitals there began to show signs of poisoning. On July 1995, he was suspended from practice at one of the hospitals in Zimbabwe. Soon after, he was accused of more deaths and poisonings there. As a result, he planned to flee to Saudi Arabia.
After securing a job there in June 1987, he headed to the United States to renew his work visa. When he arrived at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on June 27th, an alert customs agent ran his name through the computer and found the warrant against him. And he was arrested by INS agents soon after. Do you think that the customs agent ran his name because he was going by 00 Swango? And the customer agent went, yeah, that's not a name. This is not right. I need to look this guy up. Yeah, probably. And he looked him up and he was like, oh, the only other person I saved him, Swango, seems to be this horrible murderer. And also he looks a lot like you. That's weird. That's weird. I'm just going to push this button here. Swango was charged with defrauding a government agency and making false statements on a government hospital job application. In September 1997, he was also charged with illegally prescribing narcotics to patients. In January 1998, he was charged in Zimbabwe with poisoning seven patients. So Zimbabwe, at least, will charge him for fucking murder. We're just like, I don't know, your paperwork could be better.
And Zimbabwe's like, he committed murder. Yeah, five people in Zimbabwe died, and he probably poisoned at least seven. In March, he pled guilty to the fraud and false statements charges. In June, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. He served the time on those charges.
And while he was there, U.S. federal prosecutors had about three years to develop a murder case against him that would put him away for life. Prosecutors noted that proving murders was much more difficult in Swango's case because it was initially assumed that his victims had died of natural causes. They had the bodies of several victims exhumed and new toxicology results were performed. The tests showed poisonous chemicals in their bodies. Swango's own diaries also helped seal his fate. Sorry, I did not know that. The fact that this guy just like is writing fan letters to poison.
Sorry, that's funny to me. He's just like, dear diary, another successful poisoning. God, I love poison. Okay, do you want to hear the most unhinged sentence you'll ever hear in your life? I'm sorry, but I do. This is a quote from his diary. Quote, I love it. Sweet husky, close smell of an indoor homicide. Murder is the only way I have of reminding myself that I'm still alive. Okay, I'm going to say that's very incriminating.
I think if I was a lawyer, I would advise you not to write shit like that down. Think it in your mind. Oh my God. Hello, it is me, Michael Swango. If there is one thing I love, it is killing people. I will keep a tally of the number of times I've killed people. I love it so much. This guy is not a good criminal. Prosecutors determined based on his writings that he liked to kill people. No shit.
Wow. And we say that the school systems are failing. What? So on July 11, 2000, just a few days before he was supposed to be released from federal prison, were they not going to extradite him to Zimbabwe? What the fuck? Swango was charged with the murders of Thomas Smarco, George Siano, and Aldo Serrini, along with assault against Baron Harris. They were unable to prove in that case that injections of toxins led to his death. They had all been patients of the Long Island Veterans Administration Hospital, and they had all been in the care of Swango. In two of the cases, he falsely told coworkers that the patient's families had issued, quote, do not resuscitate orders when they in fact do not.
oh that's so cruel you know soon after swanko was also charged uh with the january 1984 murder of 19 year old gymnast cynthia ann mcgee who had died at the ohio state university while recovering from a bike accident oh my god a nurse witnessed him entering cynthia's room with a syringe shortly before she lapsed into a coma and died prosecutors allege that he was also responsible for poisoning rena but he could not be charged because the statute of limitations had passed remember rena did not die Right. In September 2000, Swanko pled guilty to three counts of murder in Thomas, George, and Aldo's cases. He admitted to intentionally killing them by, quote, administering toxic substances, which he knew were likely to cause death. He was given three life sentences without the possibility of parole. In October, he also pled guilty to killing Cynthia. He admitted to injecting her with a deadly dose of potassium that caused cardiac arrest. In return for the plea deal, Zimbabwe agreed not to pursue charges and the United States agreed not to pursue the death penalty. He is now imprisoned in Supermax prison in Florence and is in 23 hour a day solitary confinement. Wow.
Investigators and author James Stewart note that circumstantial evidence links Swango to at least 35 deaths and 20 non-fatal poisonings. They fear that he may be responsible for over 60 poisoning deaths, including several deaths in Zimbabwe and the United States. One of those alleged victims was 22-year-old Anna May Popka, who died under his care in 1984. His mother sued him, claiming that he was responsible. Her mother sued him, claiming that he was responsible. His own mother was like, I'm tired of your shoddy work.
Someone wrote his mother sued him, claiming that he was responsible for her death. And I was kind of like, wait a second, his mother's dead then. But that was just a typo. Another alleged victim is 21-year-old Ricky DeLong, who died in January 1984 at the Ohio State University Hospital. Swango, quote, found his body in an autopsy, later determined that he died after a ball of gauze was placed in his throat. Oh, my God. His family also sued Swango, claiming that he was responsible for the death. Also, that he kept saying 00 Swango, and it was very annoying.
This author, Stewart, also believes that Swango was responsible for the 1983 death of his fiance, Swango's fiance, Kristen Kinney, who allegedly committed suicide after suffering from symptoms consisted with arsenic poisoning. After she died, arsenic was found in her hair. Wow. So I feel like this is a much even bigger story than Unsolved Mysteries makes it out. Yeah, like all of that update was not in Unsolved Mysteries. This is just a dedicated Unsolved Mysteries wiki writer who probably read the book. It was like, actually, this guy was a serial killer who might have killed like 60 people. 60 people. Jesus Christ. And Unsolved Mysteries is like, here's a wanted. Did you ever think there might be a doctor who wasn't good at his job?
Well, that one was long, but it was interesting. It's interesting. It's extremely disturbing. I hate it. I hope no one poisons me after my back surgery. That would be very rude. And then I'll have to kill them. It's just going to start a cycle of violence that will never end. So if you're listening to this, please do not kill my friend Samantha, okay? I appreciate that. I don't want the Twin Cities area to turn into some John Wick movie where we're all trying to get revenge on each other for all time.
Okay, now I have a missing persons. This is also very sad to me. Okay, so this is going back to June 7th, 1994. In the Richland Hills, Georgia area, just south of Savannah, a stranded motorist gives his ID to, I think it's like Highway Patrol, identifying himself as Moses Law. But everyone, that was a lie. Moses, the person he was claiming to be, was an importer and breeder of exotic birds who owned an ant in Florida. The man he was talking to was actually Hari Gobin, one of Moses' employees. Stack says, who was Moses Law? Ask 10 people and you're likely to get 10 different answers. And I was like,
That's probably true for like pretty much everyone, Zach. People, you know, appreciate different things about a person. So unless it's like our friend Alexa and everybody says like, oh, she's the sweetest, nicest person you've ever met. Like you're probably going to get 10 different, I don't know. I just thought that was such a silly nothing thing to say. He seemed like a successful businessman, but everyone listen up. You wouldn't believe that a guy who sold rare animals also had ties to smuggling and organized crime. Huge shocker. Zach's like, wouldn't you think he was a successful businessman? I was like, not really. This is like broaching on some Tiger King shit, but okay.
Three days earlier, a delivery driver named Daryl, who I kind of want to be friends with, was making a routine bird feed delivery at the ranch, which was near West Palm Beach, Florida. However, usually when he made his delivery, someone would come out to the gate to let his truck in, but that day nobody came. So he ended up hopping the fence, and what he found at the ranch was unusual. There was no one there, and the hundreds of exotic birds had been left unattended, which included things like yellow-headed Amazon parrots and macaws. The total value of all the birds there was like $700,000 in mid-90s money.
Daryl also thought that the amount of noise the birds were making suggested that they had not been fed for a couple of days. Like they were much louder than usual. Poor birds. I know. So he was like, okay, no one is here, but obviously the birds need to be fed. So I'm just going to drop off the food and come back tomorrow. Well, he comes back the next day and still nobody's there. And also all of the feed that he left at the gate is still there. Like no one's moved it. So he contacts authorities. The problem is.
obviously our system works so great and that's why all these mysteries are unsolved is that he reports it takes 10 days for anyone to actually look into it oh my god which means that by that point a bunch of the birds are dead and then you have that episode has footage of all the dead birds in the cage and it's horrible this is why if you were in an emotionally fragile state you want to see a bunch of fucking dead birds and also like starving birds that are stuck in the cages with like their dead friends it's not it's really not my favorite no um the delivery driver would have expected at least one of the following four people to be there when he made his delivery moses who's the owner that we talked about his aunt lila who's the person that actually like took care of and bred the birds um and then they had two employees one was that guy hair gobin that we talked about and another one was roland ian so the delivery driver's name is daryl he has a mustache and it's not his fault but i called it guy i wish i had fed those birds I realize that's not his disarrestability. And he has like, you know, I'm sure he has to go make other deliveries and get back to his work by a certain time. Right. He probably doesn't even know like what to do. You know, I'm sure. He's just a guy who drops off bird food and this is not his business. And he even went back the next day to like, see what was up. And, but I still was like, man, oh man, I wish he could have somehow fed those birds. Okay. Anyway.
So we also hear from an animal control guy named Lance who's telling us about how all the birds were dead. And I really just wrote for his mustache, too sad about birds to name a mustache right now. I think by this point in the segment, I was literally on Pet Finder looking for birds to adopt before I realized that's not really a good idea. In my house with two dogs, there's a good designated space for birds. But it just made me very emotional. Okay, so then we hear from some bird experts that came to care for the surviving birds. They had to force feed a lot of them because they were too weak to eat. But fortunately, they were able to save most of the birds that were still alive. Okay, so...
we hear a little bit more about this business and it talks about how in the us in the 70s became more strict about importing birds from other regions which meant this company was focusing at least officially on breeding which is what aunt lila was in charge of oh we also hear a lot from the detective glenn he has a mustache and i called that trying not to look 10 years old because i think without the mustache it'd be kind of hard to take him seriously anyway so um harry was the person who handled like the day-to-day chores at the bird ranch i'm assuming that's a lot of like cleaning and feeding and stuff like that um and he had been working there since 1992. the other missing ranch hand was roland and that was a brother of one of moses's business of buddies and around the time of the disappearance according to them moses was talking about this is also it's just silly it shouldn't be funny because it's a sad story but he wanted to get into lizards he felt like the bird business was getting a little stagnant he wanted to expand with a new revenue stream of of course like we all do he wanted to get into the exotic lizard game and so the theory was that he had he had borrowed money from the illegal stores to buy lizards in order to breed them and i did text samantha something like i hate it when i'm just trying to get money for my illegal lizard operation and everything goes haywire when really i just want some lizards okay it's a tale all this time really yeah it's like happens to be at least once a month you go to the loan shark you're like yeah i'm gonna need like a hundred thousand dollars i know the the interest is gonna be 10 million percent like what can you do for me and he's like oh lizards again like it's just like so common he's like i'll give you the standard lizard package
you know this will be enough to get all the iguanas and gila monsters you need you know the standard lizard package i assume that's how like loan sharps talk yeah the standard lizard package so two days after authorities discovered all the dying birds that one employee roland was tracked down to new york and he was able to establish that he had been in new york since before moses and lysla disappeared so he had a solid alibi he's like i peaced out of there a while ago i've been working there i'm in new york now but he did say you know i talked to harry and maybe i should have said something about this but on june 4th or 5th he witnessed a guy in a white van come and then force Moses and Lila into the van with guns, and they also stole some birds. Yeah, you should have mentioned that. That seems really relevant. And I don't know what Roland's documentation status was. Maybe there was a reason why he didn't feel like talking to the cops, you know? I guess that's fair, but also people are fucking probably murder. Oh yeah, he did witness a kidnapping, though, and exotic bird theft, a thing you see on a regular basis. So then the authorities were thinking that this was revenge for a failed payment.
However, as you recall from the beginning of the segment, Hari was found driving away from the crime in a stolen vehicle using Moses' driver's license. And I was like, that doesn't really make sense to me because why would he be claiming to be the person the Lone Shark wants dead? Right? But the authorities totally bought this story. And they thought that Hari was using the van and license to get out of town after witnessing the kidnapping because he feared for his own life. And I guess I like that they just took that at face value, but I don't think it's true. It also doesn't really make sense that this would be a theft because even though they, I guess, took some birds, like they left the most expensive or most valuable ones there. So it would be if it was an exotic bird theft.
was poorly done also lila didn't have any connection to shady business dealings or borrowing money i mean obviously she works there and she was related to moses but everybody was like no she was a great person she literally only cared about birds like she was not involved in everybody else everything everybody seemed to like her and she didn't care about them she only cared about birds and we hear from daryl and he says that lila has to be dead because there's no way she would have let those birds starve to death they were like her whole life yeah so like even if her life was in danger like she probably would have still fed the birds so this is still unresolved um it was first aired in 1996 At this point, authorities now believe that Hari that was driving away in that car is responsible for the disappearances. The backstory is that Moses' mother claims that in 1993, so a few years previously, that Hari actually stole $29,000 from Moses and fled in one of his vans. However, Moses found him in New York and agreed to drop the threat charges as if he would come back to work.
What? Yeah. So also when that scene you see at the beginning, when Hari is pulled over in Georgia, he has a videotape about changing one's identity in the van, along with several rare birds and tortoises. Okay. Again, don't write this down. Videotape about changing one's identity is really, honestly, get me one of those tapes. Get me. I want to watch it.
I have a VCR. Get me one of these VHS tapes about changing your identity. That's so funny. Okay, that's like that Snowden guy had that book on like how to disappear when he was arrested. So good. Okay, in March 2011, authorities tracked Hari to Jersey City, New Jersey. He had been living under the alias Roy Smith. Roy Smith is the biggest name I've ever heard. At least it's like a name, but yeah, it's not so great. Roy Smith. It's not Johnny Poole at all.
Yeah, King Starbuck or whatever. However, when detectives are right at his workplace, he has fled. He is now believed to be in the Philadelphia area. Keep your eye out, listeners. Moses and Lila are presumed dead. That sucks. I guess he just murdered them to rob them. Okay, these people were so chill about being robbed the first time. Just rob them again. They'll probably forgive you. They literally were like, look, just come back. That was it. Okay, so you stole $29,000. That's not great. But if you come in Monday, I'll forget the whole thing.
and then he goes on to kill them apparently it's rude it's very rude and also he didn't seem to consider the birds at all no i don't like it i hope he's having a terrible time in Philadelphia okay you're up next with the dead baby Yeah. Great. Oh, this episode has it all. People getting poisoned by their own doctor, dead birds, illegal lizard money, and now miracle babies. Yeah. Not great. So this is a miracle. On October 6th, 1995, Todd and Tammy Carroll went to the hospital awaiting the birth of their third child. They were worried, however, because they had previously lost a child. The pregnancy before this one ended in a stillborn. Ended in a stillbirth, which...
It just really sucks. So obviously they had anxiety. It was traumatic. It was a traumatic experience. They were really worried. I can't imagine going through that. And then I can't imagine giving birth again. Yeah. The trauma. It's just unthinkable. So tests and ultrasounds were done on Tammy and everything appeared to be normal.
Her obstetrician, who's interviewed by Unsolved Mysteries, is Dr. Diana Ocon. And Dr. Diana induced labor at 8.45 a.m. The contractions grew stronger and more frequent throughout the day. Everything was proceeding normal. By 4.30 p.m., birth was imminent. Fetal monitors showed a normal heart rate. However, as Tammy began to push, the heart rate began to go down quickly. By 4.42, which was the moment that Logan was born, his heart rate, his heart stopped. It had gone...
directly to zero. Dr. Ocon began to have CPR done on Logan. An entire emergency team rushed into the room and worked for minutes, like an extended period of time trying to revive Logan. They continued CPR until no heartbeat was found and it had been so long that without any signs of brain activity that all hope was seemingly lost. He was pronounced dead at 5.15 p.m.
um obviously this was devastated for tammy and her husband um but they agreed to do an autopsy hoping to find some explanation this has obviously happened twice now and um they just want to know like what why like what is happening uh at this point a photographer who was like a volunteer at the hospital came in and um cautiously asked them if they would be interested in having some photos taken and they weren't they were really excited to have this done they said that they didn't have hardly any photos of their the baby that they lost previously and so they welcomed this opportunity even though it was very hard um and i mean i feel like this episode should come with several trigger warnings we probably should have said this before i started talking about it but there's obviously child loss and there's photos of baby logan presumed dead um and he looks actually quite blue in these photos and she's holding him so if you don't want to see that you probably want to skip this um yeah just i don't know that you need to see this episode unless you're in like a very strong mental place Because otherwise you're going to be seeing piles of dead birds and talking about dead babies and seeing a photo of what, I mean, everyone in the photo assumed that that baby was dead and they were taking pictures. So they're showing it on some mysteries.
At this point, they were basically just spending time with Logan until he needed to be taken for the autopsy. Tammy was having a hard time processing it. And so Logan was, she had Logan held by first her sister and then I think her mother-in-law. As they were having the photos taken, Tammy's sister kept hearing like gasping noises coming from Logan. And she asked the photographer about it. And the photographer said, you know, this is normal. I know that this is giving you a lot of hope, but this is just a reflex. It happens all the time and it's to be expected. And I'm really sorry. But they kept hearing these noises and they were like, I don't think this is a reflex.
About 40 minutes after he was pronounced dead, Tammy's step, it was her stepmother, was in a chair holding him when she realized that he was, like, getting warmer to the touch, which seemed like not how that would go. So eerie. Yeah. She's like, this baby is getting warm. Like, something is happening. A nurse came in. And I think this was actually the nurse that was going to tell them that, you know, we have to take him for the autopsy now. And Tammy's stepmother was like, I don't think we should do that. This baby is warm. This nurse.
realized that Logan had a heartbeat and rushed out to Dr. Ocon. It was basically like, you got to come look at this baby. I think he's alive. And Dr. Ocon says that she was actually a little bit annoyed because she thought that this commotion would maybe upset the family even more. And she didn't want to bring a bunch of people in there to give the family false hope only to tell them, yes, I'm sorry, your baby is still not alive. But she went in there anyway, the nurse insisted.
And she gets her stethoscope out and she listens to the baby's heartbeat. And in the, in the, there's this like really remarkable moment. I don't know if this is how it actually went, but in the reenactment, she goes, this baby's alive. And she grabs him and like runs out of the room. Yeah. They've like rushed it over to the nursery. But yeah, just to go like, this baby's alive. So they rush him over to the nursery and then they like run back in and they quickly like disconnect Tammy from all the monitors and like whisk her out of the room to the nursery. They're like, you're, you gotta see your baby. Like he's not dead. Um, and.
At the point that he was pronounced dead, six doctors had seen him and believed that he was, in fact, dead. And he was not. Within a few hours of his supposed death, by everyone's estimation, he was a happy, healthy baby boy acting like any newborn would. And they had no explanation for it whatsoever. The Unsolved Mysteries wiki says that this is unsolved. That's because we have not heard from Jesus himself. Only he can give the final word on that this is a miracle. But he has yet to check in. So at the point of this airing on Unsolved Mysteries, Logan was still a baby. I'm not sure how old he was, but he was still an infant. And Robert Stack tells us that they have no explanation for how he was revived. And they didn't know at the time if he would suffer any long-term damage.
obviously years later years have passed and we do know that he did suffer brain damage as a result of being without oxygen for so long um he had to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life uh but he lived happily with his family he attended school um unfortunately this does not have necessarily that happy of an ending because in 2020 he died at age 24. no samantha sorry sorry he did get 24 years with his family living happily um but yeah tons of mysteries curse i guess i don't know strikes again he passed away very sadly at age 24. So I almost didn't survive my own birth. I was not expected to make it because I didn't breathe for like 10 minutes. I wonder if my parents considered calling the telecenter. Oh my God, you could have been on Self Mysteries. I could have been on Self Mysteries, baby. I cannot imagine my parents doing that, but mom, dad, what the hell? We could have been on Self Mysteries. This is so sweet. I'm looking at Logan's obituary and it mentions on Self Mysteries. It also mentions that he was on the Maury Povich show. Oh, you know what? You should definitely put that in the obituary because people are going to be like, wait, is that the same? Just get it out of the way. Yes, it is the same person.
Oh, so sweet. What's interesting about this miracle segment is that it doesn't get very religious. No, there's not a religious at all. No, and it's because we prayed to the Virgin Mary. There's really no mention of it at all. They're just like, it's a miracle. Fair enough. There's several doctors. So there's the OBGYN. I think the emergency room doctor is also in the show. And they're all like, fuck if I know, but it's amazing, right? I do appreciate it. Yeah, there was definitely like, look, we can't explain it, but it's pretty great. You know, I'm sure also, they said that once he was in the nursery, that lots of doctors came by to see him. And I feel like they were just like,
Christ, finally some unexpected good news. For real, yeah. Well, we had that guy poisoning people around here not too long ago, so it's nice to get a case where, no, I'm just kidding. I mean, I can't think of many things worse than a family coming in for a perfectly normal birth expected to leave with a baby and then to have something like this happen. I can't imagine how that must just devastate literally everyone who knows about it in the hospital and to have the baby just miraculously wake up and be alive and be healthy. I mean, that's amazing.
Yeah, I was wondering what I should attribute my miraculous living to. And I'm just going to say my own stubbornness. Yeah, I was going to say spite. I was like, okay, I really suck at being born. I'm not breathing. This isn't great. And I was like, you know what? No, I'm not leaving here. I'm not leaving here until I make several seasons of an Unsolved Mysteries Rewatch podcast. I have things to do on this earth, I said, as a newborn infant that had gray, blue skin. And they had to shave my head and connect all those wires and stuff. And I was just sitting there like, you know what? No. Maybe you're going to have to reboot.
Yeah. I don't know what we could have contributed the miracle to, but we could think of something. Yeah. Whatever. Mothman. Your mom saw a Mothman on the way to the hospital. Yes. And he was like, wow. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. He was trying to be like, that birth is going to be very complicated. But she thought it was about bridges, obviously. So the message, that's the thing with Mothman. He's really bad at communication. Yeah. It's really a consistent problem. I think it's because he's from another dimension, but it's just like, wires are always crossed with that guy.
Okay, the last segment is a lost love. And again, I got the lost love. So clearly this season sucks. This season is just like, give me the lost loves. Clearly you were supposed to start season eight, right? Because now we're just off. We're going to be off forever. Okay. Robert Stack described this as the story of a love denied and a son lost. This is the case of Fozzie Mahmood, where a single moment changed his life forever, Stack says. But that's kind of not true. What? Okay, whatever. I was like, what moment then, Stack? In the spring of 1967, he was in San Antonio.
Oh, okay. The event that Stack was talking about was nothing less than love at first sight. Fozzie was a trainee in Air Force in Jordan, and he had come to the U.S. to study flying techniques. It was here that he met 20-year-old Zola Maldonado. That cannot be right. Maldonado. Okay, whatever. The point is, there's really great 60s dresses in this scene. And also, he fell madly in love with...
He fell madly in love with her. He said that she was a knockout and he was knocked out, which was really cute. Like she was in this green dress and blah, blah, blah. What makes all of this more interesting is that this is literally the first woman that Fozzie has ever spoken to in his life due to his very strict upbringing. So he literally meets one woman and then goes, she's the one for me.
Which, like, he still seems to sort of feel that way, like, years later. He was really hot in the reenactment, so. Yeah. That was true to life. Unlike that guy in our last episode. He meets one woman, and then is like, well, I'm done for. I'm just going to be sitting around hitting myself on the head with a shoe going, awooga, awooga. Very funny. Zola's parents were also very conservative, and even though she was 20 years old and a grown woman, they were not keen on her dating, particularly someone that was not from the United States. But despite this, they managed to go out daily, and they would go dancing, and, like, take hikes in the mountains and stuff. It sounds very romantic.
After dating for six months, Zola announced that she was pregnant. To her surprise, Fozzie was ecstatic at this news, thought it was great, and was like, great, we're going to get married, we're going to start a family, right? He was, you know, very ready to be committed to her and spend the rest of his life with her. Unfortunately, that would not come to pass due to the six day war between Jordan and Israel. So he is ordered to report back home in November of 1967, I think due to continuing conflicts after the war. He was promised Zola that he would return as soon as possible. However, that's not like really up to him. So when it didn't look like Fozzie would be able to return to the U.S. anytime soon, Zola initially started making plans to go to Jordan to be with him. In late June of 68, Zola gave birth to a healthy baby boy named.
amado marcelo oh my goodness fozzy was excited for the birth but also frustrated that he couldn't be with his new family like he loved the news he loved they were healthy but he was like man i wish i could be there um so eventually zola wrote to say you know what actually i'm not going to be inter-immigrating with a newborn baby because jordan doesn't really seem like the safest area right now uh and i'm kind of worried about bringing the baby there oh and also i'm gonna marry somebody else oh and that oh and that because the baby needs a father and he was so devastated that he actually did not respond to the letter he just accepted the fate his fate i guess uh by 1970 which obviously is only like two years later he was able to return to the united states he had tried calling Zola, but her mom would pick up every time and hang up on him, and eventually even had the phone number changed. Great. So then he goes to the house, and the mom answers and threatens to call the police on him, and he is worried about being deported, so he leaves, meaning that he never, ever got to see his son. In Unsolved Mysteries times, Fozzie lived in Oklahoma with his wife, Robin. They had a young son together, and he also had three grown children from a previous marriage, but he had never forgotten his firstborn son, who was going by his middle name of Marcello, apparently.
This is when you get to hear the most beautiful phrase in the English language within minutes of the broadcast. Should we get that as a tattoo? Oh my god. Within minutes of the broadcast. Within minutes of the broadcast. It's so beautiful. People, multiple viewers called in to let Unsolved Mysteries know that both Zola and Marcella were still living in San Antonio. And that Fozzie was immediately able to talk to Zola, who was no longer in the clutches of her clearly horrible mother, and was able to speak to his son for the first time. They were apparently, we don't get a reunion, everyone. I'm super sorry. But apparently they were reunited. I'm wasting my time, Unsolved Mysteries. You have the money. You can't afford it.
i know so they were reunited a week later and apparently remained a part of each other's lives visiting each other regularly um what is so nice about this is that you know fozzy seems like this really nice dude who honestly did love zola and want his son and want to be a part of their lives and you know just international wars got in the way it's not it's pretty much out of his control so i hope you know it's great that the segment brought them back together but also i feel like the segment sort of explains why he wasn't around right at one point robert's deck calls it something like the absurdities of war which is like really true it's like this is so stupid like he couldn't be with his child because of some dumbass war it's just dumb he didn't give a shit about clearly he was like what i have to go where um i don't know that robert stack would say that about an american war but he's not wrong yeah that's a good point like it's just a thing that was out of his control right like he just happened to randomly be at that one air force base in the u.s and he just happened to see zola the first woman he ever spoke to which is amazing to me and then yeah fall madly in love and then they were ripped apart by uh global politics
Great. Also, he didn't seem to really like Jordan. He came back to the US as soon as he could. I don't know that he really had any true allegiance to the Jordan Air Force. He didn't care about the war. He didn't care about any of that stuff.
He was just a victim of circumstance. Yeah. But anyway, that's the end. Let's say goodbye to this episode forever and rate it. Please. Yes. Mysteriousness? Kind of mysterious. How many people did that doctor really kill? What happened to our exotic bird breeders? How was it that Logan could come back from being dead for like two hours? Yeah. So I'm going to say hi. Yeah. Very mysterious. Thumbs up. Reenactments. Okay. Actually, I thought these reenactments were good. I thought of stuff with the birds. I liked the like 60s reenactments with like meeting Zola and stuff.
There was, like, a reenactment in the Angel of Death mystery with, like, dialogue, which is not very common. Like, we don't normally have, like, speaking roles in Unsolved Mysteries. There was this scene where they were, like, doing the investigation. It was a room full of doctors. They had this, like, I don't know, board up with all their theories and arrows pointing all over the place. And they had, like, some speaking parts. And that kind of caught me off guard. It was really good. Yeah. No, I think the reenactments in this one are pretty solid. Depressing, but well done. Thumbs up. Fashion. Okay, well, the fashion in...
uh your last the last one the last love yeah i've got to actually give it a thumbs up even though we've seen better just because there were some good mustaches even on people who weren't cops um and that includes the delivery driver daryl who apparently was wearing extremely short shorts with suspenders with a mustache good on him i hope daryl wherever you are i hope you're listening i hope you still dress like that happy pride daryl and i also liked the 60s dresses so i am gonna give it a thumbs up yeah um robert stack I mean, he had a few poetic moments. He was outside. He was in the telecenter, but he wasn't really in it very much. Yeah, I agree. So I'm going to say a sideways for him. It's all right. He was all right. I think he phoned it in a little bit. There wasn't a lot of mustaches. There was a couple, but whatever. They were fine. I mean, honestly, never declare an MVM anymore, which is most valuable mustache. I'm just going to give it to Daryl. Okay, everybody. Done. Yeah, that's fine. Daryl gets it. He gets it for the distinction of not being a cop. So good job, Daryl. Good enough.
i don't know how to rate this one because i it made me sad yeah i thought it was it's like good it's like this episode has everything it was good actually like the mysteries were like drew me in they were mysterious i don't know like they were it was a good episode actually but it made me sad i don't want to ever remember it again um yeah i don't really know how to rate this one i'm gonna okay i totally agree i think it's very solid i like that there's four mysteries i like that they're kind of actually all equal length and um they're interesting and you get like illegal lizards that you don't always get to talk about but yeah it's a bummer so I think I'm going to say it's a four, but there's like a footnote. A footnote, which is that I don't recommend you watch. Yeah. It gets a four on quality, but it's like, but also, you know, it's like Schindler's List. Is it a good movie? Yes. Do I want to put it on right now? No. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I think a four is good.
Maybe that was a little harsh of a comparison, but you get what I'm saying. Okay. We're actually going to wrap it up and not do any recommendations this week because Samantha's got shit to do. If you have a recommendation of what we should start calling the recommendation segment. It does need a name, doesn't it? How have we not named it? We're bad podcasters. I wanted to now match snacks with stack more. And I was thinking it could be like your unread book stack, like the two reads stack, but then it could only be books. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that's mainly all I recommend anyway, but you're right. It's really limiting. Yeah. Send us your...
your ideas for seeking we are actually seeking recommendations yeah that's a good point okay everyone you should sign up for our patreon so you can hear us talk about some really bad movies lately like the snowman if you want to hear me talk for two goddamn hours about how that movie makes no goddamn sense then you have to give us a dollar and then you also will get to hear us talk about this rob lowe movie called dog on where believe it or not the dog's name is gonker It's really a jump scare, I have to say. I'm not over it. No, I will never be over it, actually. So that's patreon.com. Yeah, sign up. Also, we've had some really good goodies lately, so you might want to sign up for a higher level if you want, like, sticker sheets and stuff. We've got some good goodies coming, too. Yeah, I've been hitting them out of the park, if I say so myself. And I do. You know, whatever. Social media is, like, dying, but there's that. You can follow us there. You can join our Facebook group, which is still hopping. Yeah, that's true.
it's the only facebook group that's still hopping i gotta say but uh join what we really could use is some new five star reviews so if there's a way if there's anyone listening to us that has not reviewed this podcast please give us a review but we only accept five star reviews you better download repod and you better like this episode so we can stay at number one yeah exactly because i really like being number one on repod we're also still number in the top one percent of podcasts on earth samantha can you believe it suck it all right and that's how we're gonna end good night everybody keep working