Before we get to our show, here is a podcast we think you're gonna love. What's your favorite scary movie? Do black-eyed children haunt your dreams? Do you check your backseat before getting into your car? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I have a podcast for you. I'm Tia, host of His and Hers Horror, a bi-weekly horror podcast. Join my co-host and husband David and I as we discuss horror film history, creepypasta, urban legends, and more. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast fix. Stay safe and stay spooky, friends.
yep okay we're off to the races all right hello everyone hello hello this is perhaps it's you your absolute favorite podcast that happens to be about the classic television series unsolved mysteries with robert stack my name is liz my name is samantha and we are here to talk about episode season eight episode 13 i believe uh we were not here a fortnight ago in your earbuds because we needed a vacation and we took robbie stacky with us and we sure did for the record That's not just what we call Robert Stack, if you're not a long-time member of the Five. Robbie Stacky is an inflatable alien that I bought off eBay. We gave him the most sensible name possible. He's done a lot of adventures, Robbie Stacky has. Yeah, yeah. He was purchased for a photo shoot we did when we first started this podcast, like Maniacs. We immediately had a photo shoot with a giant inflatable alien. And you know what? Those photos turned out great. I don't regret that whatsoever. No, thanks, friend of the pod, Stephanie. And then we once, many years ago, went to the True Crime Podcast Festival. That was in 2019. And we brought him with us.
How did we bring a giant inflatable alien with us, you ask? Well, he was not inflated. He was in my suitcase. And then we had to go to the very fancy gym at the hotel. And this, like, extremely fit, good-looking woman was ready to, like, coach us or something. And we were like, no, no. Do you have a pump? We need to blow up this alien. And one of the best pictures of me ever is me holding up that alien in, like, the hallway of the hotels. We're, like, pumping it up. Anyway.
Anyway, Robbie Stackey has been deflated for a while. He's been in my basement. And I was like, this isn't fair. This isn't right. We need to hit the road and let Robbie Stackey have the break that he earned. He deserved a vacation. That's what I said. Exactly. And so we went to this place called Grandpa's Pool House, which you should not book because I want to be able to go there at any time. But it's in Stanchfield, Minnesota, a tourist destination known all over the world. A town I literally had never heard of until we went there. Grandpa's Pool House, though. Shout out to them. It's heaven on earth.
I wish I was there every second of every day. We were not celebrating Samantha's birthday. I don't know who told you that's what we were doing. We were absolutely not. We were letting a...
a well-deserved vacation for an inflatable alien who did get a splash around in the pool. If you follow us on the pool. Yeah, there's a photo on Instagram. Looks a little suggestive, but it's just the float he was on and the angle of the photo. Yeah, that actually wasn't on purpose, but I do obviously see it. He did hook up on that vacation, but that was with a weird inflatable. It's like a ring for a person, but then it has like a dude on the back of it. We named him Brett, and him and Robby Sacchi had a moment together, and you know what? It's their business. Yeah. I don't think we should be judging him so much for what he does on vacation, everyone. Mind your business, all right?
People are such prudes. Anyway. Stop what you're doing right now and look up Grandpa's Pool House on Instagram. It's true paradise. I can't believe it's just in Minnesota. I can't believe it's less than an hour away from us. I know. It was truly a delight. David Dale sponsored this podcast. That would be the perfect sponsor for this podcast. It actually would. I don't know if you're listening in Grandpa's Pool House. Probably not, but... The vibes are just right. Or just our speed. Perfect vibes. So relaxing. Loved every second. I know. Wish I was there right now. I know. I wish we could record this from the pool somehow. That sounds dangerous, but I would be willing to try.
Everybody would have to hear pool noises as we splash around. That's how it should be. But that's why we weren't here two weeks ago. We were busy. But we did give you a gift since we had to be gone, which is from the vault. We pulled the episode we did about the smash hit Netflix show Dog On with Rob Lowe, also known as...
Gonker? Just Gonker. Gonker the movie. Gonker the movie. Not Man Fuck This Dog. That would be crude, Samantha. I think we had made so many references to Gonker that it only made sense that the episode was put on wide release and was not limited to only the patrons. Yeah, but it was time everybody knew the secrets of Gonker and whatever Rob Lowe's character's name was and how they hike the Appalachian Trail. In case you're doing that thing with Samantha where you're on the app where you're lining up how much you walk with the Appalachian Trail.
Have you finished the trail, Samantha? No, you know what I did and I messed up is I was going to restart the Appalachian Trail on my birthday, which was February 1st. And so I ended it. But like if you go to restart it, it doesn't let you like start at the beginning. You pick up where you left off. So I couldn't start the same trail.
from the beginning, or I couldn't figure it out. The app is not that sophisticated, is kind of my biggest complaint. And so I don't know if anybody else started using that app because of me. If you did, I'm sorry, but I literally have not used it since. I've been using the other one I talked about still. I'm hoping to make it to Mordor or whatever. But yeah, I don't know. I just used the boring native fitness app for my Apple Watch, and I haven't been using it. It didn't really have exactly what I needed, and then I couldn't start over, and so I just kind of dropped it. Maybe I'll pick the Appalachian Trail back up.
I mean, Gonker is no longer missing. So that's true. They found Gonker. So what's even the point? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, well, in between the, this episode and our last episode, I did a bracelet presale in our Facebook group and Instagram to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. So thank you to everyone who bought a bracelet. You are super cool. I covered the shipping costs, which meant we got to send the full $205 that I raised to Doctors Without Borders. If that is something you would be interested in the future.
I did get some interest. I could do another sale maybe in March or April. So if that's something that you are interested in, be sure to join our Facebook group because that's always going to have the most up-to-date information, including like when we're not recording because we're in a pool. So unfortunately, the need will be ongoing. So I'm sure we'll need to raise more money. Yeah, I'm happy to do that if people want to. Yeah, I'm going to try not to go on a depressing tirade. Maybe we should just jump into the episode. I do have a minor update, which is I think we're on.
youtube podcast now okay i think i figured it out it did take a long time to get our catalog uploaded or whatever but they accepted my video of my face they accepted i was a real person over the age of 18 or whatever their requirement is um and i think we're on there so uh enjoy that i guess um i you know i confirmed that it seemed like it was correct but beyond that i don't really know how that platform works so um enjoy if you were a google podcast user um i guess if you didn't listen to our last episode or you don't know google podcast is going away um and so the replacement is YouTube podcasts and we're, we're there now. We're on there. So you better, I don't know. Can you review, can you review us on YouTube podcasts? I don't know, but you better if you can. And give us five stars. Don't be cheap. Don't keep out on those stars. Okay. I had to film a video of my face and give it to Google. So who knows what they're doing with that? Yeah. I'm so sorry. That's really not okay. We never should have started this podcast. Look at what's happened. Yeah.
Now that they probably own the rights to our voices or something. Probably. Luckily, look, the only good thing is that I filmed that video very early in the morning on like a weekend when I was sitting down to do that. It's not looking my best. Not sure that's how I really actually look. So there you go. If you're actually using that for my facial recognition, good luck. There you go. Yeah, that sounds good.
We are supposedly getting some more reboot episodes sometime this year, but to my knowledge, a date has not been released for that. So we'll let you know. We cover the Unsolved Mysteries reboot on Netflix, but only on Patreon. So you do have to pay for those episodes. But at this point, we're over like 70 episodes on Patreon. And even though we have released a few to the wider audience, there's a ton of content on there that has never been heard widely before. And this month's episode is pretty good. So you might want to subscribe if you haven't. Yeah, it's really something. And I also, it's really inspired me to, for like a new...
a new vein to mine for Patreon content. So I'm very, I'm very jazzed about it. I don't really want to spoil what it is. So just give us a dollar. You gotta give us a dollar to find out. Cause it is really, you're going to go, how did I never heard of this? And it's because it's one of TV's most notorious failures. That's why we go deep. We dive in. Okay. We're going to talk about now season eight, episode 13. I watched it on YouTube. This is a wanted. I do think this episode has a really great variety in the segments.
Okay, so I start first. This is an odd number. I'm on the wanted. So on January 13th, 1985, after an intense eight-year courtship, 29-year-old Karen Walters and 38-year-old Richard Cepelonis were married. She was a dedicated special education teacher. According to Robert Stack, shy and unassuming. Okay. Okay. This is the part where they were together for eight years. Yeah. I don't know why I thought it was like a quick thing. They do kind of make it seem that way like when we get into it. But no, they like had a long, I don't know.
half-in-prison relationship, whatever you call that. So the reason Robert Stack wants you to think that she's so shy and unassuming is that she's a teacher. She still lived at home with her mother and sister. I don't know why that's important. But Robert Stack also wants you to think that Richard had less than pure intentions. Why? He was a career criminal, Samantha. Look, I don't think Richard was a nice guy, but, like, if he was just trying to con this woman, it took eight years. Okay, also, spoiler alert, they're, like, still together, so that's a really long con.
It's widely just possible that they actually loved each other. I think that they do. I'm not sure why he would still be around if he didn't. But Robert Stack is like, ooh, Richard, bad dude, because he was serving time for bank robbery. Oh, my God.
And in connection with that bank robbery, also armed assault with intent to murder. He did brandish a weapon and threatened to kill someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Okay. So his sentence was 58 to 82 years. Why does it seem like a lot? I think that's outrageous. But it's because they really don't want people to rob banks. So they do make those sentences pretty stiff. However, he's not a threat to the public at large unless you work at a bank. Okay. So Robert Stack said that he had a long time to think about the crime that put him behind bars.
Wow, okay. So now we go back to that crime. That was on August 9th, 1973. Sepulonis and two accomplices were struck a bank in Woodbourne, Massachusetts. They burst into the bank carrying automatic weapons. One jumped out over the counter, and the other two pointed their weapons at bank executive Jack Buchamp, which I do feel bad for him because, yeah, they literally said they were going to kill him, and I'm sure it was extremely traumatic. But anyway, they demanded that he open the safe. However, he couldn't do it because it was on a timer. You know that sticker they put on the door of the bank? Don't bother trying. Yeah.
They were like, you have to open it or we will kill you. And he was like, well, I guess you're going to kill me because I literally cannot open it. So they had like a weapon under his chin and they just like held it there for a while. And I guess after a while they were like, okay, I guess you really can't open it because who is going to risk their life to like protect the money at this bank, right? So they decided to leave. But before they do so, they told that guy Jack that if they saw a cop outside, they would kill the cop and then come back and kill him.
whatever they just want to call the cops but a silent alarm had already gone off the robbers made off with more than 17 000 in cash which honestly not that much they gotta split that three ways a silent alarm oh yeah had brought the police unit to the bank within seconds when they pulled up jack was able to tell detective john gibbons which way the robbers had gone and like you know the color of the getaway car and all that stuff so um the detective was able to catch up to the car and pursue them for several miles shots were fired by both the suspects and the police to create a diversion the robbers pulled in front of a car in front of them uh and opened fire on the driver a 60 year old woman who was shot and wounded I don't know if Richard did that or one of his accomplices did that, but that is pretty shitty. And that gave them just enough time to escape. Two months later, Cipollonis was tracked down in New York City. He was convicted by a court in Massachusetts and remanded to Wapol State Prison, a maximum security prison. Robert Stack says that despite his penchant for violence on the outside, he became a model citizen on the inside. I really, this show really wants you to think that some people are just like born bad and there's nothing that can be done. And all prisoners are just looking to scam the weed innocent women.
At all times. They only think of scams and violence and murder. They have no other... I don't know. No thoughts, just murder. Just murder. They don't have, like, families or, like, I don't know, need money for shit. Yeah, no. They're just... It's like that super predator term, right? Like, nothing can be done about them. Anyway, whatever. He's just a dude who happened to rob a bank. He's not, like, a boogeyman. But anyway, he was a model citizen in jail. And over the next five years, he was, quote, good as gold. Then he met Karen.
at the time he gets out like him being a good prisoner and like getting a degree and shit was like part of his grand scheme yeah no everything even him being good is somehow sinister like he has nothing to do he might as well get a degree right like if he wants to it seems like he was fine in person like why does that have to be part of like a scheme like there's nothing he could do that would like it's like no matter what he loses yeah exactly if he's being good then that's part of the scam if he was like taking out people's eyeballs and selling them well then obviously that's bad I don't care that you say it's okay, Samantha. What would you buy an eyeball for? And for what purpose? I'm sure there's a black market for eyeballs. In prison? Okay, no. What? You know, there's like an Oregon black market. Oh, yeah, maybe. I don't know. You would tell your corny on the black market, I'm sure. But like, I don't know what you would do with it in prison. He's got his... That's how much of a schemer he is, Samantha. He puts it in like a cooler. He's entrepreneurial. He puts it in a cooler and then a really strong bird comes and picks it up.
And look, if the owl theory can be real, my theory can be real. I see no issues with it. He takes organs from people in prison. He puts them into a small cooler. He has an eagle come, pick it up, fly it away and sell it. Okay. As it's flying away, it does that screech, you know, freedom screech. Eagles don't actually make the sound of a hawk, but. No, I think eagles actually sound like very cute. Yeah, but people want to think they're like badass or something. So yeah, obviously we need a, we can't have an animal that doesn't just, I don't know, whatever. Makes a normal sound. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
God, I hate this country. Okay. So at the time, Karen was attending William Patterson College in her home state of New Jersey, and she was doing a college project, which involved writing to prisoners. And by pure chance, she got sepulonus. which Robert Stack acts like is really bad luck. It seems like she met the love of her life, Stack. I mean, it kind of does. Okay. So as time passed, Walters and Sepulonis continued to write letters to each other. One day, she decided to visit him. We get a reenactment of this, and I have to say it's so good. The flirting is really solid. Okay. The actor that plays Sepulonis is really good. He's really good, and he lays the charm on, like, really well. Yeah, yeah. I almost said thick, but it's not, like, smarmy. Like, he just, like, seems really into her, right? Yeah. So they hit it off. She begins to visit him more often. We hear from prison administrator Mike Crosoni.
I probably said that wrong. That believes that inmates often take advantage of people out in the community. Oftentimes they latch onto women who are lonely and want attention. I like that you pick someone and then why would it take eight years? If that's what you're trying to do, you would just drop her and find someone that's more gullible. It would just go get it done faster. Yeah. Like not only can like he not do anything right, but just like her willing to associate with him makes her lonely and sad. Right. Here's another question. Don't, can prisoners reach out to women like on their own? Like when do you, like if he, if this woman hadn't reached out to him, was there, do you have access to random women? Unsuspecting.
pools? Is that a thing? How are all these prisoners scamming all these women? How are they getting in contact with them? I don't know. I don't understand. They just open up the phone book and they're like, yeah, Samantha, she sounds real lonely. I'm going to write her a sexy letter so I can scam her. Yeah, I feel like that's not allowed. I have no idea. I don't know what the rules are, but I feel like where are they finding these fools? I feel like different prisons have wildly different rules regarding what you can have and who can send you stuff. I have no idea. I just think it still requires you to reach out to them first.
They're not joining dating apps. Well, certainly not in 1985. Okay, so whatever. This guy is very judgmental. He assumes that this relationship is her being taken advantage of because women often enjoy the attention. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's what we need.
That's what I'm always looking for. More male attention. Okay. So Sheila. Okay. But I did find this was easy. Interesting. So we hear from a Sheila Eisenberg who has researched cases of women who fall in love with men in prison. And basically, I think her thesis was like, what's up with that? What the fuck? Why would you want to date a guy that's in prison? And she notes that a guy who's not in prison, you know, he has a lot of responsibilities. He has a job. He has friends. He has commitments. You know, he's busy.
But a guy who's in prison, he's got a lot of time on his hands. And he can focus completely on your relationship. He can write you a letter every day. Kind of selling me on it, to be honest. I was like, yeah, it does seem like a lot of men not in prison are trash. And like, don't pay attention to their wives or girlfriends whatsoever. So maybe just having a prison pen pal who writes you sexy letters is better. I don't know. I mean, it probably is. So she was saying that as a result, women that are in these relationships feel very special and desired and wanted. And it is satisfying to them. They're getting that nowhere else.
and she elevates the romance to like a very high intense level it feels like sort of forbidden and you know honestly this makes a lot of sense good for you karen okay so by 1980 Robert Stack says that Walters was, in effect, leading a double life. And I was like, not really. She's allowed to date. She's allowed to have a private life. Robert Stack acts like it's very nefarious that she didn't tell anyone she was dating this guy in prison. And it's kind of like... Well, she probably knew they'd fucking judge the shit out of her. Yeah. You're not going to tell your co-workers at the elementary school you're dating someone in prison? It's none of their business. I mean, it's none of their business. But also, I mean, come on. Let's be so for real. You know how they're going to respond? Yeah, like you, Stack. So apparently her double life is teaching, learning disabled children, being highly regarded by her faculty members while none of them knew that she was in love with a convict.
Like, okay. Meanwhile, Sepulonis, quote, continued his winning ways. He excelled academically and became the first inmate at that prison to earn a college degree. You would think, again, that that would be something you would praise is like, yeah, you're so right. He can't, nothing he does. He can't like. They made it seem like it was part of his long con was getting a degree. It's so weird how this country has completely abandoned any idea that prisons are supposed to rehabilitate in any way, which I mean, they don't. So, okay. But it's like, he's trying to, if he's trying to turn his life around, right? Like, oh, I better have a college degree for when I get out. Like, no, that's nefarious. Okay.
So, in fact, he received two degrees. In 1982, Walters married him, even though he had served less than a third of his sentence. We see a little reenactment of their prison wedding. So two years later, his model behavior would, quote, pay off in a big way, which is just like the system didn't keep him in a maximum security prison, which why would he? He's not a security risk. So he was transferred to a minimum security facility where all the guards just thought of him as, like, very bright and personal and, like, not a problem. Like, essentially, not a problem. Easy to deal with. Oh, no. The worst. The most minimum security prison in all.
Okay, it really was. Was this a prison or was it just a house? They say that it doesn't have bars. We see a reenactment of him hanging out with his love and essentially just like a living room. Also, yeah, so Walters, what's her first name again? Karen. Okay, so Karen is able to see him a lot now because there isn't the same strict visitor rules. So she's able to go see him all the time. And it's at this point that the new freedom became the ultimate temptation.
which was to escape and live together. I thought it was to have sex. Well, that too. It took 10 months before Karen was, quote, ready to help him escape. And the trigger for that seems to be an incident where she and Cephalonis were caught having sex on the prison grounds, which I was sort of like, is there no conjugal visit? This is a very low, again, this is barely a prison. Is there no accommodations for people who are married to be able to bone? That's not allowed at all?
I don't know. Whatever. So as a result, she was indefinitely barred from seeing him, which seems unnecessary. So three weeks later, in the morning of September 20th... Where do you think you're having sex? In the bathroom? In the open? I pictured like a storeroom or maybe like a janitor closet. Yeah. And when I say picture... Maybe he has a room by himself. I did not think about this in detail for the record. For the record. But when you say that, I would say like, oh, like the janitor closet or the boiler room. If there was like somewhere in your high school that people would go to make out, like somewhere like that.
Yeah, you're probably right. But maybe not. Maybe they were just banging against a tree. No wonder they got caught. Okay, so three weeks later, on the morning of September 20th, 1987, she apparently drove to an isolated spot a mile from the prison. In her pocket was 20 grand in cash, her life savings, which, girl, that's a lot. Good job. So she just had that on her. And then around noon, Cipollonus just simply walked up. There was really no escaping. He just left.
So Robert Stack tells us Walters had made her choice. She left behind her career and her family for a life of a fugitive on the run with Sepulonis. She had been charged with aiding and abetting a felon. Authorities believe that they may still be together. Apparently, this was not in Unsolved Mysteries, but was on the wiki that after his escape, he left a taunting message for a Massachusetts state trooper saying, tell him Richard called and tell him he can call me at home.
very funny to this day authorities have no idea where home is oh my god shut up okay but anyway this is solved um and minnesota mentioned after a repeat i cannot talk today i'm so sorry after a repeat broadcast a viewer in minneapolis who had done business with cepillonus and walters recognized the latter's photograph they were using the names thomas and debbie langstone uh kudos to them those are the most realistic fake names we've heard because everybody else is picking like rock stud guy and That one guy picked, like, the last name Starbucks or something, you know? Thomas and Debbie Langstone. Yeah, that sounds real to me. They were living in a house in St. Paul. A task force, which included the local police and FBI, mobilized and the house was staked out. So they were arrested on October 1st, 1996. After they observed Sepulotus leave his residence and drive to a nearby convenience store.
they pulled into the parking lot and got him okay if it wasn't for karen sorry karen but you look she looks very much the same as she did it wasn't like the episode first he looks so different they never would cut this guy he looks nothing like he did when he was younger she should have changed her appearance more she should have because she was very recognizable he on the other hand i would never if you had put those two pictures side by side i would never have guessed that was him no she needed to cut her hair and dye her hair and that probably would have been enough maybe some fake glasses but really just a haircut a hair color change i think would have done it they never would have got caught she was picked up 20 minutes later They had been living there for eight years. They had completely fooled their neighbors, Samantha, by, I guess, I don't know, never robbing them. They were living a perfectly normal life. Well, except that a bag of robbery paraphernalia was found inside. It's probably just a ski mask for, like, Minnesota winters. I love that they say found inside the hideout. Guys, that's their house. That's where they live. It's just a house in St. Paul, the hideout. Okay, so it included a face mask. Again, it's called here. A gun, not illegal. Rubber gloves and large amounts of cash and small bills. Look, are people not allowed to go to the strip club? They probably didn't have a bank account. They weren't going to make a bank account in their real names. Yeah, that's a really good point.
The credit union is going to be like, I'm sorry, who are you? But again, look, just because they have a large stock of $1 bills, buy a gun, some rubber gloves, and a face mask, doesn't necessarily prove anything. Okay? Those could be for unrelated winter plus strip club activities. And it's none of their business. Okay. So that led them to believe that Sablonas was involved in other more recent robberies. Based on what, bitch? Which one? New names. What made did he rob? Anyway, they were extradited back to Massachusetts. She was charged with aiding in a belling of felon. She spent several months in a women's correctional.
facility he returned to prison to finish out his sentence he also served time in the escape charges however they've both since been released and they're still married so again you got a couple months honestly worth it yeah actually it is that's not a deterrent i mean i'm sure she didn't want to do it but a couple months you gotta spend eight years with him and then and then he gets out there's still together this is a love story yeah i mean i'm really good for them i do hope that he stopped threatening to kill people and shooting at old ladies or whatever but rehabilitated i don't know yeah give him a chance I love that Robert Stack the whole time was like this poor, innocent woman taken in by this handsome, charming man. She'll never see this con coming. And it's like, and they're still together. It's like, wow. Robert Stack, do you even believe in love? Probably not. Honestly, yeah, probably not. All right, Samantha, I'm so sorry, but you have to talk about some Civil War ghosts. These are the ghosts of Gettysburg. Is the battlefield of Gettysburg haunted? I don't know. I don't care. Okay, so I feel like they could have been clearer about which side these ghosts were on. They left that intentionally vague.
Because if they're Confederate ghosts and they're wandering around, restless, unhappy, that's kind of what you get. Yeah, it's kind of dope, honestly. Yeah, I hope you wander. I hope you never rest in peace. Like, that's kind of, that's not you. Sorry, you picked the wrong side. I think it's assumed maybe that there was ghosts on both sides. Okay, well, the Confederate ones, sucks to suck. The other ones, maybe we could help them cross over. We could release them. The worst type of ghost. I was like, oh, Civil War ghosts. I know.
So we hear Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Three days of brutal combat at the height of the Civil War left 50,000 Union and Confederate casualties. The Greeks literally ran red with blood. Did they? I guess. That's where I was next. I don't know. Okay. Someone could let me know. How literal is that? Let me know. Some report that Gettysburg is still haunted by the ghosts of those cut down in battle. I mean, if anywhere is going to be haunted, like probably. 50,000. A lot of dead people. Some of them got to still be here, I would think. Just, you know, statistically.
according to ghost statistics, you're like, yeah, you are the ghost statistician and you pull out like this giant book and you go through it and you're like, okay, okay, 50,000. Oh yeah, for sure. There's for sure some ghosts. 10% of those ghosts are still here. We hear from author and historian Mark Nesbitt who offers a theory as to why, which is basically just that there's so much emotional energy extended in a very short period of time that, you know, you gotta think that there's probably some of them still here. So basically what I just said, this like author and historian, we got paid to say this. You're basically a civil war expert is what I'm hearing.
Civil War goes for sure. Did this guy have a mustache? Because I did name a mustache that I just wrote down expert mustache. Maybe. I honestly don't remember. I was not paying that close attention to the Civil War ghost. To be completely honest. Some expert's mustache is named Grandpa's musket.
We'll say it was this guy, sure. Mark Nesbitt, congratulations. You are the real MBM. Maybe I'll Google him. Should we Google him and see if it fits the bill? Take a look. Basically anyone that writes about the Civil War, I would full-on expect that. Mark Nesbitt gives a Ghosts of Gettysburg candlelit walking tour. Okay, I'm suddenly very interested in Civil War ghosts. That sounds lit. We have to go, obviously, to Gettysburg. They open at 4 p.m. tomorrow. Okay.
All right. Ghost of Gettysburg dot com is his website. That's a good. You got a good domain. Good job. Yeah. No kidding. He does have a mustache. He has a handlebar mustache. Yeah. OK. That's it. That's grandpa's musket. OK. OK. Well, you know what? He deserves it. He deserves the title because he apparently is the Ghost of Gettysburg guy. Amazing. What kind of tours do they offer? Do you think we can take the train there?
Because we love trains. Maybe. I don't know. Tours run rain or shine. They have a gift shop. Oh, God. This is a problem. Every time I learn about anything, even things I don't think I'm interested in, eventually I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I should check that out. They have several different tour offerings. They're only $16.50. The 50 cents kills me. But I'm sure it adds up over time.
Amazing. Well, maybe we're going to go to Gettysburg and take a Ghost of Gettysburg tour with Mark Nesbitt. Sign up for our Patreon. We need to take Robbie Staggy on another trip, so be sure to sign up. All right, we'll definitely bring him with us. Okay, so Mark Nesbitt, yeah, he's the expert apparently. Many of the ghostly sightings have been reported by Civil War reenactors.
In case you didn't know what that is. The most trustworthy of sources. Civil War reenactors. Robert Stack tells us that these are folks who dress in period costumes and restage the battle blow by blow. Why? Is it why? It's why in general, but also who is reenacting the Confederate side? People do. Do you have to dress draws? No, I think there are people that want to because their family was. I don't like that. I don't think you should want to do that. We see.
in the episode like they do a little reenactment for us and someone is proudly carrying the guest in flag and i'm like who's that person did they draw a short straw or do they want to be that person people want to do it on tv i don't know i don't know i have questions um i once went to a small town parade in i forget where in illinois but in illinois all right which was not part of the confederacy let's be very clear about that so i'm at like a small town i think it was fourth of july parade for like a friend in college we all went and stayed at his house and then we went and went and saw this little parade and which was all very cute you know it's like the the high school band and like people twirling those sticks and whatever but then then this guy on a horse came by in full confederate gear just him just him and i started booing then all my friends started booing and he was really looking at us like what why it's like you're fucking dressed up like a confederate soldier look at yourself No, it's like in the horse world, too. You cannot take me anywhere. I'm sorry. You cannot take me. If these people were always met with boos, they wouldn't fucking do that. Like, we should be booing them. It's like better than they deserve. No, like if you go in fucking Minnesota, if you go to like a horse event or like, you know, we have a horse expo every year, which is a big like trade show essentially for horses and horse people. You will find like belt buckles. Oh, absolutely. Those knives with like the Confederate flag on it.
It boggles the mind. I just don't understand. It's hard to understand. You're in Minnesota. If you go any more north, you will be in Canada. It doesn't make sense anywhere in the United States, but it makes much less sense up here. Like, what is your brain? I don't know. I forget who does, but somewhere in the state is a battle flag that was captured during the Civil War, and every so often, someone in the South, like, asks for it back, and Minnesota's like, absolutely not. Go fuck yourself. And it's one of my favorite things. I can't even remember the details of it. I just know that we have that flag, and we're like, no, you're never getting that back. You lost. Go cry. Yeah, exactly. It's the meanest Minnesota can possibly be.
I love it. Amazing. Amazing. So we hear from a couple of reenactors. Ray Hawk says that he and a friend were approached by a haggard figure who they said was, quote, too realistic to be just another reenactor. And my question is, what if you had made your own reenactment costume and it was so good that people thought you were a ghost? I like that their main evidence that he's not just, you know, a dude with the same hobby as them is that he stank. And I was like, I thought a lot of you guys smell bad. Running around in the heat in those period costumes. They're made of wool. Yes. You all smell like that, my man. You think just that guy stank? Yeah, okay. Jesus.
But they thought it was original equipment, an original coat. They said it all looked original. Okay, well, a human can put that shit on, too. The man did hand them each two authentic-looking cartridges, and they looked down at what he had handed them, and they looked up, and he was mysteriously gone. He'd vanished.
Because he smelled so bad. He just banished his own stink. Robert Stack tells us that live ammunition hasn't been allowed at Gettysburg for 100 years. I feel like you could probably still bring it in your pocket, but only a ghost could get that in. I'm sure that stopped all of these weirdos that like reenacting this war. I'm sure they follow all of the rules. Yeah, they did send the cartridges to some expert named Ray who determined that they were a genuine Civil War issue vintage. Okay, but people have shit like that in their attics. I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know. In the summer of 1993, some friends were at Gettysburg for a battle reenactment. One evening, as they hiked along a creek, which is called Bloody Run, they came across a man lying in the bushes. We hear from Richard Knapp. Richard and his brother Dave are quite a pair. Dave has a fantastic mullet. It's real good.
But Richard describes what he saw as like a man lying there, but it was like, he's like misty. Like it wasn't like a solid figure. The man was shivering and looked like he was in a lot of pain and couldn't go any farther. This made Richard very emotional and he started crying and he actually had to have someone like come back and like lead him out of the trail. He was so upset by what he'd seen.
okay you know what this made me think of though is that on love is blind this woman is talking to this dude and she goes like okay so from your voice okay i don't know if you know the premises of love is blind but it's like couples but you can't they can't see each other to talk through the stupid wall it's so weird check it out anyway this woman's like yeah just from hearing your voice i don't know if i should say this but it sounds like you have a mullet and he did Ladies and gentlemen, he did have a mullet and she was into it. Okay, good for her. What a series of twists. That was one twist after another. Or he was like, no, it's okay. Go on, say it. And she was like, it sounds like you have a mullet. He was like, oh my God, how did you know that? I do. What do you think? And she was like, I love it. Her mullet spidey senses were tingling. Yeah, she felt that right in the coochie. Good for her. Good for him. So the terror of Gettysburg was not limited to the battlefield. We hear from Mark Nesbitt again, who says that army surgeons lacking medicine and proper instruments handled most injuries with one quick treatment, amputation.
Yeah, that's real vile. So it's not that they were just like, all these people died. Like, obviously they died. But of course, many people didn't die immediately. Or if they did survive, it may have been a fate worse than death. Because they could have had to have an arm amputated, a leg amputated. They could have just died a slow and painful death. I'm sure infections, all of that. So this was a place where there was a lot of misery. I'm not sure if it was Mark Nesbitt or someone else who describes it as basically hell on earth. Well, you don't want to take one shot of whiskey and then just have someone who's probably drunk saw off your arm with no... With like a rusty saw. Yeah, that has like probably other soldiers' blood caked on it.
Doesn't sound great. We hear another ghost sighting that happened. That is how much people loved slavery, is they were willing to go do that to try to keep it. Amazing. Oh, my God. Yeah, so this is Pennsylvania Hall, which was a field hospital during the battle. Today, it's the offices of Gettysburg College. Some say that the cries of the wounded still echo in its walls. Who said that? Who? Robert Stack said it, but he, you know. Yeah, sure.
Presumably many people. One night, close to midnight, two school administrators were alone in the building. They were using the elevator when the doors suddenly opened onto a real looking Civil War hospital. It's so good. It's very good. And we don't hear from the women. They didn't want to give interviews or they've never really revealed themselves. But we hear from Mark Nesbitt, who says that there was a stench of...
the dead and dying um they were the elevator suddenly wouldn't work so they were trying to like frantically hit the buttons to go back up but it wasn't doing it and they were just kind of stuck here like watching the scene of gore take place in front of them um it's said that one of the orderlies turned to them and looked at them like as if it was asking them they were he was asking them for something like either come help with what i'm trying to do or maybe help me get out of here like i'm stuck in this horrible purgatory where i have to do this over and over again um it's bleak it's bleak um and we don't hear from them but we do hear from a man who knew them this is uh security officer timone lynn Oh, I named his mustache too. What did you name it? Up to no good. Why? Because I did not like the mustache and I don't trust it. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes you just get a feeling from these mustaches. So he's the chief of security at Gettysburg College. And so he knows these women. And he says that like he doesn't really believe in ghosts, but they are down to earth people and something had clearly frightened them. So he believes that they saw what they think they saw or they thought they saw something or whatever. Do you think this is going to happen to us that we're going to be on an elevator and it's going to open on like a weird ghost floor where a ghost hospital is happening? No, I hope not.
Like something out of Silent Hill? Yeah, I really hope not. Please. That's horrifying. I'd be traumatized. No one of these women don't want to talk about it. So that's where the segment ends. It does end kind of abruptly. It's just like, yep, there's ghosts here. Yeah, Robert Stack is like, were they real or imagined? You decide. So anyway, maybe we could go see a ghost on Mark Nesbitt's ghost tour. I love the idea of the candle on a ghost tour. That's really what's telling me. Yeah, same. The drama. Okay. Now we have a missing segment. This is wild. All right. It opens up with Robert Stack saying, many of the cases profiled on Unsolved Mysteries are just one tantalizing clue from solution.
I said that weird, but whatever, you get it. A key eyewitness, a missing telephone number, or a clean fingerprint. But in this bizarre case of a missing truck driver, absolutely nothing adds up. Clues never yield answers. They only raise more and more questions. So this took place during Memorial Day weekend, Sunday, May 28th, 1995, in Arizona's Tonto National Forest. The last thing any campers were expecting to see crash through the woods was a 10-ton, 18-wheel semi-truck. The reenactments for this are really weird.
because they had to literally drive a semi recklessly around a forest. This must have been so fun. So fun. Okay. So we hear from Lynn Yarrington, who was camping with her husband, Jack, and she was astonished, as you would be, to see this extremely large truck just recklessly speeding down forest roads. Because, you know, if you've ever been to like a state park or a national park, you know that those roads are like not that wide and they're often dirt and, you know, they're not made for like... Cars can barely get through there sometimes. Yeah, they're not made for big, heavy vehicles. Certainly the ones that aren't like speeding and weaving around.
Yeah, so it says most vehicles that drive on those roads were much smaller, four-wheel drive ones. Okay, great. The truck, like, turned back and just, like, kept driving past them. Two other campers had a frighteningly close encounter where the truck basically was, like, trying to drive their car off the road. This looks terrifying. Yes, they thought they were going to get flattened, and they said that the driver of the truck wasn't even looking at them or really, like, acknowledging their presence. It was almost as if he couldn't see them. But they were also facing each other. So, like, somehow they came around a corner, and there he was, and it's such a narrow road with presumably trees on both sides. All they could do was back up. And so this truck is chasing them, but they're going in reverse. Reverse, yeah. Terrifying. They're staring right up.
the guy and they said it didn't even register and his eyes that he was even there was they were even there he's just cruising along as if nothing is wrong and they're obviously probably screaming scared for their lives driving in reverse on these windy roads i don't think there was a shoulder anywhere for them to pull off um but they managed thankfully to get away um but yeah apparently he had no expression on his face at all and he just kept driving so then later that day a carload of picnickers came upon the truck which was now just like stuck in a field somewhere and one of them spoke with the man they believed to be the driver uh this was a charles hall and he asked him how he had got in his truck stuck in the forest he was kind of like hey man like how what's up and the driver responded they made me do it and he's like what the guy said, no, you can't help me out. I'll never get out of here. I'm going to jail. And also this reenactor, I thought was a very good actor. He's kind of just like muttering. He's not really making eye contact. He's like, his body language is kind of awkward. It's sort of like, he doesn't know where he is. He's disoriented. He's, you know, he's convincing performance. It doesn't seem like he was in his right mind. Right. So this guy, Charles, after he says, I'm going to jail, it's like, Oh shit. Like, did I just stumble upon like some sort of hostage situation? Is this truck stolen? Did someone get kidnapped? Like he's like, yeah, he's scared. Cause he doesn't know what he's like unknowingly become a witness to. So he, um,
He's also wondering if there's someone in the truck that's holding this guy at gunpoint, like all these weird scenarios. Right. But he also noted that the person he was talking to didn't ask for help or like try to keep him there or anything. And I think it's just because he didn't really understand what's going on. But anyway, I don't know if that guy goes and tells the authorities or he just drives off like that's not my problem. But anyway, later that afternoon, we hear from Deputy Dean Wells, who he got a report that there was a truck just like stuck in the heart of the forest. And he's like, well, I better go see what that's about. So he was and he was very surprised that a vehicle that big could even like get that deep into the forest. This is not like a common occurrence, but it was stuck in the mud there.
So he finds the truck. It still has all of its cargo, which was 1,200 boxes of lettuce and strawberries. The refrigeration on the truck is still running. The contents of the thing is fine. The cab is locked. But the man that Charles had spoken to earlier has vanished. There's no sign of where he went. And I said that Dean Wells also had a mustache, this deputy guy. And I called that the Boy Scout because this mustache is very thin. And I think the only reason he grew it is because otherwise he would look about 12. And I think he's trying to look like a little bit more of an authority figure.
that's my theory so anyway when deputy wells checked the national crime computer he didn't find any reports of a missing truck there wasn't like a truck that had been stolen he was supposed to be on the look for and there was also nothing about like this dude right and there was no indication of foul play at the scene um also like i don't know everything about the truck was fine which for some reason was suspicious um there was no answer as to why it was just there so The following afternoon around 4 p.m., there's another sighting. Two people named Lynn and Jack are driving along the fourth road when they come across the driver. He's kneeling on the ground and staring at a tree. He saw that his mouth was moving and that he was making sounds like he was kind of mumbling, but they couldn't understand what was happening. And they just wanted to make sure he was OK. So they asked if he needed help. And he said, I got to light the grill. And they noticed that he had a $20 bill in his hand and he was hitting it with a rock, like kind of making the motion of starting a fire. But it also doesn't make sense. No. They looked around and there wasn't a grill and there was nothing he was grilling. And he didn't have anything else with him.
They decided to leave after he threw something at his car, at their car. And they were the last ones to see him. So later that day, a long distance trucker named Devin Williams turns up missing. He was 29 years old. He was a husband and father of three. He worked for the Flint Hill Transportation Company in Emporia, Kansas. By all accounts, he was not the type of person to dump a fully loaded rig in the middle of the forest.
I mean, who is? But no, he was known as very reliable. He always got his shipments on places on time. He was known as just a guy that wanted to do his job and get home to his family. He had never been a problem. And also, the eyewitness accounts, when they were showing a photograph of him, it matched up.
so they were like oh it must be this guy he had left home on may 22nd um which was also in kansas and he had headed west it was a route he'd taken a bunch of times he like drove from kansas to california and back to do this load of i guess strawberries and lettuce um and he had called in on this drive and his boss hadn't noticed anything weird right like he had sounded perfectly fine he was just like oh i've been having trouble sleeping but i'm still on schedule you know like whatever it was a totally normal trip right so on the evening of may 27th I think is the last time they heard from him. He called from Kingman, Arizona, and he was supposed to arrive in Kansas City, Missouri that Monday morning. But by Sunday morning, so he calls into work Saturday evening and he sounds fine. But by the very next morning, he's driving that truck around in the forest and acting extremely strange. And there's really not an answer to this. His wife, we hear from his wife, Mary Lou, who believes that something happened to him. Mary Lou, I agree. She says that this isn't like him. He wasn't an irrational person. He wasn't, you know, I don't know.
Reports that Devin was disoriented and incoherent prompted suspicions that he was on drugs. Okay. Okay. So Unsolved Mysteries talks about that for a while. Look, I'm sure plenty of truckers are doing drugs.
Unsolved Mysteries, drugs wear off. Like, even if he got extremely high, you know, was out of his mind, started driving his truck around the forest, got it stuck in the mud, at some point, he's going to- It's going to work. Someone saw him the next day. Yes, at some point, he would be like, oh my God, I'm fucked. I need to call a tow truck or something. He wouldn't just vanish forever because he did drugs one time, which is what Unsolved Mysteries is suggesting.
Okay. But also he had passed all his drug tests at work. So it's not like he was a known drug user or whatever. He has three kids. It seems like his biggest concern was getting home to his family. They talked to someone who knew him and she was like, yeah, the only time I saw him agitated was like if his load was late to get loaded because he was wanting to get home. Yeah. We hear from a detective who's like, oh, some people just want to run away from his problems. But his wife was like, what problems? Things are going better for us than ever. We were talking about remodeling the kitchen. She was like, our biggest problem was whether we were going to put linoleum or carpet in our dining room.
Also, so he's just walked away from the truck, right? And the cab of the truck is intact. That includes like his briefcase and ice chest and sleeping bags. All that is missing is a duffel bag and some of his favorite cassette tapes. So he's going to start a new life without even a sleeping bag in the wilderness. Robert Stack says if he had run away, he certainly concocted an elaborate cover.
Okay. Well, counterpoint. He didn't. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, if Devin had run off, where was he? They had foot patrols. There was a, you know, canine rescue search teams. People rolled around on four wheelers and shit, but they never, they didn't find anything. Robert's text says that hunters and hikers in the area never reported finding so much as a bone fabric fragment or scrap of clothing. We're going to learn from the update. That does not continue to be true. At this point, they start saying maybe he was abducted by a UFO.
if only i wish everybody i wish devon was fine and that he got abducted by a ufo and that later he went back to his family uh but that's that's not what happened a crazy story but yeah i wish he was like man you will not believe the probing those aliens do anyway nice to see you guys uh so this aired after a year after devon was quote detoured to an unknown fate which is i don't know my new my new favorite unsolved mysteries phrase detoured to an unknown fate back home in kansas mary lou is still clean to hope that he's gonna be found and the children are asking where he is and it's just sad as fuck and she tells them he's probably not coming home that he's up with god so this is still unresolved on may 2nd 1997 so that's what a couple years later i think that's like a year after the segment aired which would be like a year after yeah hikers found a human skull at the bottom of Some rim. They get very specific about it. I don't think it really matters. The update says it was a place they had looked, so they were just not searching that well. It was a quarter of a mile from when he was last seen. It was confirmed to be him by dental records. There's no evidence of trauma to that skull, but that doesn't really mean anything. There's no foul place, it's suspected. Several theories have been brought up to explain Devin's behavior, including a diabetic episode, sleep deprivation, carbon monoxide poisoning, mental illness, and drug use. I was wondering about carbon monoxide poisoning. Did they look into the truck? Was it in working order? I was kind of wondering if he had a stroke.
Oh, maybe. Yeah. Some sort of medical episode, I feel like. Yeah. And just unfortunately, he was in a remote enough location that by the time someone could go check and see if he was OK, he was already gone. He already wandered off. I think I think he had like a brain aneurysm or a stroke or something. And that's why he like sort of understands what he's doing isn't right. And that's why he says he's going to jail. He like kind of gets that's not what he's supposed to be doing right now. But he doesn't he doesn't really know where he is or what's going on. Yeah. I don't think he was trying to hurt anyone. I just don't think he was confused. He knew he was supposed to be driving his truck. Right. And he like it's sad and scary. And I hope that's not what happens to me. Sorry, Devin.
Yeah. think it's very rude that unsolved mysteries was like and he was probably on drugs the guy's missing like no i think it's it's bad to besmirch his character like that yeah because like it seems much more likely to me that it's carbon myoxide poisoning or some other medical thing and he just can't he couldn't think straight anymore and maybe if he got help he would have been okay but he wandered off and he died from the elements and apparently they couldn't even find his dead body at the bottom of the sink oh i feel so bad for him and his family i know kids just it's hard enough to process your loved one just disappearing and not having any answers but for it to be for you to be a little kid and be your dad like for two years and not really knowing What happened to him? I'm glad they at least know what happened to him. I know. Because you know kids at their school are going to tell them that their dad just ran off because kids are so fucking mean. Kids are absolutely cruel. So it's better that they know that their dad loved them and didn't leave them. They're in a family. Yeah. All right. Well, Liz, I have to tell you, D&D got another one.
believe it's taken this long for unsolved mysteries to give us another satanic panic type episode dungeons and dragons and it seems so late like when this was aired in like 95 96 to be like if you play dungeons and dragons you will get murdered is quite a take okay but they don't okay this is what i'm wondering do you think whatever fucking company corporation owns dungeons and dragons do you think they sent unsolved mysteries a season's assist episode because they don't say dungeons and dragons they just say it's a mystical fantasy game with cards where you role play i mean could be a knockoff of dungeons and dragons maybe they weren't literally playing dungeons and dragons there are like other role-playing games or yeah maybe they got in some legal trouble where dungeons and dragons is like i don't blame us for this kid's death yeah uh we trademarked that shit and uh don't yeah take take our name out of your mouth i don't know yeah well this is the tragic death of two young people um on a cool night in june 1994 four young people from dakoma washington were playing a game that robertsack says involved mystical creatures fantasy and magic i will say that once a guy came up to me and asked me if i played vampire role-playing games and i've never been more insulted in my life
That's so specific. I was in college. I was, you know, minding my own business by the coffee shop area of the school. It's a small school. And yeah, this guy that just was always in that area just came up and literally was like, so do you play a vampire? And I was just like, oh no. Do you think he asks everybody that and like just hoping that statistically he's eventually going to find someone that says, yeah, actually I do.
it's because i dyed my hair black i i must just i don't want to say that i give off that vibe but i can kind of see how when you're like well maybe i can invite the one but yeah again if you ever asked me that you might get slapped i was very very insulted and then he literally when i was like oh no he like literally walked away like backwards like okay all right it's hilarious um so anyway they're playing this fantasy magic role-playing game one night and then the next night two of them are dead Obviously, those two things are connected. Obviously, they wanted to be spooky, the satanic panic, whatever, but it's actually not connected whatsoever. It's not like they were on their way home from this party, the D&D party. It actually has literally nothing to do with it, really. If you ever play Dungeons & Dragons and then even years later turn up dead, that's why. Yeah, that's why. I made Samantha play Riverdale Clue, so when she turns up dead, that's also why. Yeah, that's why. We also played that Mori game, Are You the Father? Yeah. And I'm guessing one of us is going to die from that. You signed your own death warrant when you did that, Samantha. You took your life in your hands and you threw it away.
So the unfortunate victims were 25-year-old Michael Johnston and 19-year-old Rochelle Robinson. Detectives soon discovered that Michael and Rochelle had been lovers, despite the fact that Michael was married to someone who was not Rochelle. Yes, despite this, they believe that a cult possibly motivated their murders. Yeah, I wonder who would want to kill people that were cheating. Well, I guess we'll never know. Probably an occult satanic. Probably Satan himself. You know, at the end of Rosemary's Baby, that's what did it. Yeah, Satan is down there in hell and he's like, you know who I need to get? Michael Johnston and Rochelle Robinson. They've joined the dark side by playing a game. That's how it works.
Imagine the devil is like so powerful and so evil, right? But also like kind of nerdy and interested in very trivial things like what games you play. Yeah, exactly. That's how he picks the people to ensnare into, I don't know, darkness. The dark web of his, I don't even know. He's like, okay. You know, he's like really technical about the rules of any game you play. That sounds so annoying. Satan, calm down.
so technically technically the person third on the right and you're like shut up satan you're ruining game night again this is why we don't play monopoly at game night satan use every time um so some believe that the couple was lured by a charismatic killer into the dangerous world of the occult who believes that who There's the police in this town. Michael Johnston's body was found near Rochelle's car less than six hours after they left the card game. His throat had been cut and he had been shot once in the head at point blank range. Rochelle's body was found later that day on a remote road five miles from where Michael's body was found. She had been stabbed repeatedly and her throat was slashed to the bone. Poor Rochelle. Police believe that sometime after 1 a.m. Michael and Rochelle had parked their car on a quiet road near a popular shooting range called the Tacoma Sportsman's Club. They were alone doing, I feel like, what you could probably imagine.
They were having a fair, after all. You couldn't, like, go to Michael's house. Fred Rinky. What? Rinky? Rinky? Rinky-dinky. Got it. Was a detective for the Pierce County Sheriff's Department at the time of their murder. Detective Rinky-dinky.
He says, I don't know why he thinks that, they were forced to dress hastily. Rochelle Robinson had, oh, because Rochelle had Michael's t-shirt on. I missed that part. It was also inside out. I wonder when they find my body and I'm just a slob, they're going to be like, oh, she was forced to dress hastily. And my spirit's going to be like, oh, yeah, that's why she's wearing a shirt with chocolate on it. She definitely wouldn't just do that.
So their theory of the case was that they had been removed from the car quickly. Michael was handcuffed and forced to kneel in front of Rochelle's car. They believe that he was a passive victim, that the real target was Rochelle. There were several prick marks in her neck. Maybe they were trying to get her to leave because she was found a ways away from Michael. So they conclude that basically he was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time and they killed him and then took Rochelle into the woods.
They believe that the killer drove Rochelle to the isolated road and brutally murdered her. They believe it was a crime of passion based on the grim, like, gruesome nature of how she was killed. We hear from Kevin McMitchell, who was a friend of Rochelle's and recalled how in the months leading up to her murder, she was terrified that someone was stalking her. He said that a guy came to her work and, like, just stared at her until she got so scared that she left work. She also believed that she had been followed home by this man three or four months before they found her on more than one occasion.
okay but remember when we had that other case where the woman was being stalked at her law office where she worked and it turned out that her stalker and the person that kidnapped and killed her are two different people okay that did happen exactly one time but i feel like if we're trying to like weigh the odds of a charismatic killer who lured them into the dangerous world of the occult or a person that was actually literally really for real stalking her um you know i kind of think it's a husband because she's cheating the wife yeah So she's cheating. Well, she is single. She was having sex with Michael, who's married to a woman. I thought they were both married. Okay. Was she all married? No, no, you're right. I was mistaken. I don't remember her. Yeah, I don't think she was married. So then maybe it's the wife. Well, they did investigate the wife. They interviewed her. She's also interviewed on the show. And they ruled her out. She passed a polygraph test, I guess. There was insurance money, but they had equal insurance money on each other. And honestly, it wasn't that much money. It seems like they ruled her out. So then maybe her stalker was jealous.
yeah that she was boning someone else probably um and unfortunately the stalker's identity is not known um there is like a sketch of from people who like saw him when he came to her work um and it's really gross looking like what's on his face it looks like he's like picking his face or something um but other than that they would like make it as unflattering as possible he was quite ugly it seems like maybe he was you know either that or i don't know um But yeah, so like, I don't know, the police kind of hit a dead end. The official investigation wound down, but Michael Johnston's wife, Janet, decided to hire a private investigator. This is Jim Wright. Robert Sack tells us that Jim played it by the book and he actually questioned Janet first and investigated her to rule her out. So she hired him. She actually says of the affair, two unsold mysteries, that they were seeing each other, but she didn't know how long it had been going on. She's very matter of fact about it. It seems like she's pretty resigned about the whole thing. She's like, I don't know if he's going to leave me or what. We actually don't know because, you know, he's dead. So sad.
So Wright dismissed her as having any involvement in her husband's murder. However, he did discover that Michael loved the world of fantasy games, black magic, and the occult. He's not the guy that asked me if I play vampire role-playing games, is it? It's not the same dude. It could have been. Wright believed that this passion put Michael and Rochelle on a, quote, collision course with their killer. This is where things get real wacky. She had a stalker. No, no, no, Liz. He owned a deck of tarot cards. Okay, so do I. Well, you might be on a collision course with your killer.
I mean, I guess. I guess we all are. We hear from a literal detective who says, because of the nature of this crime, we believe that people who were involved were possibly in an occult-type activities and could be the kind of people that would commit this type of murder. Okay, if this guy is still on the force, he needs to be fired immediately. If this guy is retired and getting a pension, that pension needs to be thrown in the garbage. Like, how embarrassing to go on national television and say this.
Like, what an absolute fool. It's bizarre. I also don't even know what they mean. Okay, so when they say that he loved, quote, the world of fantasy games, black magic, and the occult, we get this hilarious, like, close-up shot of, like, a crystal ball and some tarot cards. Yeah. What did that mean? Does that just mean he played Dungeons and Dragons? Or that he sometimes went to the New Age bookstore, which is even worse. You're right. You're right. You're right. He doomed them from the beginning. Yeah. He wanted to get his aura looked at. He was talking about chakras.
all right no not chakras oh no he had one of those forks that you that you do the vibrations he may have had crystal or two yeah yeah they were right to be concerned i am i'm very concerned so more than a year passed since the murders um Robert Stack says that everywhere he turned, Jim Wright found the trail stone cold. So the investigation... I don't think that guy's very good at his job, though, so... Well, here's where they go next. Robert Stack calls it an unorthodox approach, which is turning to Nancy Meyer, a well-known psychic... She's back! She's back! No! ...who helped the police on more than 300 homicides. Helping them solve 300 homicides? No. No. Cashing checks from police departments in 300 cases.
So she makes a big to-do about how she didn't want Jim to tell her anything. She wanted to go in it completely blind because that's how it's authentic. Except that the theory she comes up with completely contradicts the actual evidence that we have. So not really sure how that works, but here's what she says. Okay, so Jim takes her, without telling her anything, to the road near the sportsman's club and she walks around. She says she is inundated with visions. But she comes up with a completely different story. She is adamant that Michael was not killed first and that he was also not an innocent bystander.
he himself was the object of the killing so it wasn't rochelle who the killer was actually it was actually michael and they actually killed rochelle first and then killed him The evidence does not support this whatsoever. But she insists that she cannot make sense of it any other way. It's so rude to go on TV and say this about dead people like it's true. Like she fucking knows anything. No, and then she keeps going. That's not even it. So she believes that the killer is a man in his late 30s. He had two young accomplices and they're the ones that crept up on the unsuspecting lovers. She believed this man was so charismatic that he had like all these people under his spell and then now they know too much. And so they themselves are at risk of being murdered and they should probably come forward so that the police can protect them.
Because this man's going to turn on him because they know too much, Liz. Nancy, you have read too many Fear Street books. I need you to put those down. You need to pack those in a box and give them to the Goodwill. They are rotting your brain. That shit does not actually happen. She says that according to Nancy, the killer stabbed Rochelle and then with the two accomplishes took Michael to the Sportsman's Club. No evidence of that ever happening. She says that her vision of the crime scene was so vivid. She was able to see all the assailants. She like does a sketch. They do like a police sketch of all three of them. Oh my God. Whatever. I don't know.
It's so stupid. Okay, that's the end of my notes. Let me look at the Unsolved Streets wiki. I know it's unsolved. What a brutal, horrible case. My computer crashed earlier. It closed my tab. I had the wiki open. No, it's horrible and brutal. And the fact that they were looking into psychics and so trying to find her stalker. Right, yeah. That's probably not the best use of police resources. Okay, so...
So yeah, it's unsolved. In 1998, a detective was reassigned to the case to work on it full time. It was examined by cold case detectives in 2012, but it's not known if any new evidence was uncovered from that. There is an episode of the podcast, The Trail Went Cold, if you want to listen to that. I can just imagine people opening up that fire in 2012 and being like, oh my God, why is all this about Dungeons and Dragons? Where is the actual evidence? Like, good luck. Good luck, cold case people, because they spent all their time on absolutely unrelated bullshit.
I feel like it was just, it was her stalker. I mean, it seems like the most obvious. It's either that or it's just totally random, right? Yeah. And it could have been. Or. I mean, did this happen in Seattle? Or they didn't pay for that. It happened in Washington. There's serial killers running around Washington all over the fucking place. That's a good point, actually. I was going to try to come up with a really convoluted story that they didn't actually buy their Dungeons and Dragons, which I don't even know if you have to buy anything. I don't know. But say they actually stole it from like a game shop and that made the game shop guy so mad that he dragged them down and killed them. So then Dungeons and Dragons would like be connected, you know?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's more interesting and honestly more plausible than what fucking Nancy came up with. Yeah, Nancy, seriously. It's hilarious that Nancy came up with this and they clearly at some point were probably like, well, Nancy, like none of the physical evidence that we actually have supports that. I don't think this is how it went down. And she had to double down because she claims she's a fucking psychic. I hope this inspired that department to never hire a psychic again. Because again, if so much money, so much tax money goes into police departments and if the Minneapolis PD was like, in addition to using money to just like kill people and beat people up, we're also hiring psychics. I'd be like, oh my God.
every decision you make is the absolute worst just stop nancy i you know i'm not in a position to give psychics advice but don't go into it so blind that you come up with a theory that's not possible yeah seriously go to the library and like read a couple newspapers first oh boy yeah for something that grim to be treated like so trivially is really like very unsolved mysteries but also very annoying close-up shots of tarot cards and crystal balls and candles oh no there was just like a shot of a skull like that and like something that just had like a star on it i don't even know what that was yeah it's like all right wow mysticism i'm so scared Oh my God. They were just playing Dungeons and Dragons with their friends. Yeah. To death. Well, it seems like they left that party, went and had sex. And then unfortunately, either her stalker found them or a serial killer that was running around Washington.
Yeah. Well, folks, that's the end of that episode. Let's rate it. Okay. Mysteriousness. Honestly, very mysterious. This one in particular. Yeah. Who killed those people? We do not know. What happened to Devin? We don't really know. Are Civil War ghosts just like hanging out, creating a... In a way, it's like the ghosts are also doing Civil War reenactments and they can't stop. Oh, it's meta. Yeah. They're stuck in that basement just pretending it's a hospital forever. Oh. That's mysterious. Yeah, that's very mysterious. Thumbs up for mysteriousness. Thumbs way up.
reenactments i feel like pretty good thumbs up yeah the the semi-truck ones those are great i'm sure that was so much fun the guy in prison flirting that guy was great the guy who played devon was great uh the dungeons are very silly but i'm still gonna give it a thumbs up that's up fashion maybe we get a mullet we do get some mustaches I feel the worst I've seen, but I can't really think of anything. Sideways. The woman that was shot at in your first mystery had a great tracksuit. Oh, yeah. Still sideways. Still sideways. And Robert Stack, I feel like... He waxed poetic, but damn, he was barely in it. He was barely in it. I did enjoy him kind of mysteriously talking about the occult, even though they shouldn't have even brought that up in this mystery. But yeah, I think sideways is fair for Stack. I don't... I mean, it's really more the writers, but I don't appreciate them being like, Devin was probably on drugs and more satanic panic bullshit. So I'm going to say thumbs down.
okay that sounds fine and how are we rating this episode honestly like i liked it i liked it i'm gonna say four yeah i think this is a solid four the mysteries have like a pretty pretty equal length for once we get a good variety there's some paranormal there's like just weird shit happening there's romance behind bars it's a little it's a little of everything as i was watching this i was thinking like you know i didn't i don't have nostalgic memories of watching unsolved mysteries not this particular show but i feel like i can i can i can feel it like if you were remembering watching unsolved mysteries at the dinner table like i feel like this is an episode that yeah it hits the spot it's like quintessential unsolved mysteries it's gonna scratch the unsolved mysteries age very well i don't know that there's anything in it i'm gonna like force someone to watch like say a magic rock but it's a very solid it's still good yeah it's still good um I don't have a found love. I don't know if you do. Oh, sure. I'll do one. So for my found love this time, I want to talk about the movie Lisa Frankenstein, which is still in theaters. Obviously, when you call a movie Lisa Frankenstein, I'm going to go see it. It sounds like it's made just for me. It is set in 1989. And it is very much a like, not only is it set in the 80s and there's like some amazing outfits. You should really just see it for that. The costumes are so good. But in the sets and whatever, it just has, you know, very intentionally kitschy 80s vibes. But it also has this just like tone and feel of an 80s movie. And that it's like much lighter, fair than.
Like everything now is like the fifth prequel. You know what I mean? Like there's so much lore and everything. Like you have to be like so devoted. And this is just like a light, fluffy, good time.
Which is funny that I say that because it also like involves axe murders. But I think that's like a good balance for me. It makes it like not too saccharine sweet. But it's also just like not that serious. The script is by Diablo Cody, who also did Jennifer's Body, which I love, and Juno, which I've actually never seen. And it's just really fun. I don't have like anything deep to say about it, but that's like kind of what I like about it. I just went to the movie theater. I went on the Super Bowl Sunday. There was fucking no one there. It was me and just two other random dudes who don't watch the Super Bowl either, I guess. And we had the whole theater to ourselves. And it was lovely.
you know that experience five stars the movie maybe like four four and a half robert stacks but there's also something very comforting about it so i can sort of see just like in the future me having this on a lot because it's just it's fun it's very funny i like the whole vibe of it it's a good time nice you're in the mood for like a movie that feels like it's from the 80s but isn't it's sort of like weird science for girls i would say except that i hate weird science but it's in that sort of vein It sounds very appealing. Weird Science for Girls. Weird Science for Girls. They should have had someone do a cover of the song Weird Science. That would have been great. I'm going to call up the director and give that note. I'm sure they really want to hear that from me. So yeah, I don't know. Check that out if you feel so inclined. We already talked about our Patreon. We've already encouraged you to give us a five-star review. It's been so long since we had one. Come on. Do it. Do it. Go to the Apple Store. Just use one of the phones there. I don't care. Can you review us on YouTube Podcast? I don't know. Try it out. Figure it out. You can review us on Facebook, I think. It's been 10 billion years since anyone did that or even used Facebook. The last review we got there was bad. It was quite bad.
I think it literally called us dangerous, but, you know, whatever. We put it on a sticker, I think, so it's fine. It's fine. What else? Yeah, join our Facebook group if you maybe want a bracelet or you just want to talk to the rest of the five because they are all sweet pies. And I can't really think of anything. We already talked about the Patreon. Patreon.com slash perhaps it's you $1 and you can get all of our bonus episodes, including this month's fantastic bonus episode, which may come on literally the last day of the month. I don't know. That's fine.
Uh, yeah, you know, we have more than 70 coloring sheets you can get through Patreon now if you give us $5. Like, people can post some pictures of them coloring those coloring sheets. I know. Go to the library. Print them out. Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have a spooky story, something that happened to you, did you ever see dark that was darker than the darkness? A phrase that will haunt me for the rest of my life? Send in! Perhaps it's you podcast at gmail.com. That's what we want to know. And we'll collect them for the end of the season for our season finale listener story episode. And if you want to just follow me on Instagram because I'm insomnia and sometimes I'm bored. Everybody likes Liz. Come bug me.
Oh, you can also look at my art, but also bug me. Okay, but do both. You got to do your time. You're doom scrolling anyway. Exactly. You might as well help me out. Come on. Come on. I think that's it. Look, hopefully we'll be back in the fortnight, but maybe we have to go to Gettysburg. I don't know. Maybe we've got another trip planned. Maybe it's to Gettysburg. Maybe suddenly we're going to Gettysburg. I don't know. I want you to know there is a frequently asked questions on this website for the Gettysburg Ghosts, and one of the frequently asked questions is, will I see a ghost on the tour? Yes. Can you imagine? Seeing ghosts is not guaranteed, but people have experienced things on these tours, so don't worry about it.
Want to be the person that's like, I was guaranteed I would see a ghost. Give me my 1550 back. Ma'am, it's in the fine print that we do not guarantee ghost sightings. How could you possibly guarantee that? They know the ghost personally. Yeah. We've asked general so-and-so to appear in a number of blood at 515 every evening. Yeah. So silly. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Keep barking. Bye.