S5 Ep21: Your Dad Was a Ghost

Before we get to our show, here is a podcast we think you're going to love. Hey, Milton. Hey, Bailey. What's your favorite cryptid? Oh, that's easy. It's the Mothman. He just shows up, warns you of danger, and then just leaves. It's literally me at any party. What about you? My favorite is Bigfoot. She's real hard to track down, and much like me during quarantine, she's real hairy. If you love all things strange and obscure, then you will love the Happily Ever Haunted podcast. My wife, Bailey, and my husband, Milton, cover all things paranormal and beyond in a fun and entertaining way.

You can find our podcast on your favorite podcast app this July. And remember, those that haunt together, stay together. Hello and welcome. Friends and enemies, it's perhaps it's you! Your unofficial Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast. I'm Liz. And I'm Samantha. Hopefully coming to you loud and clear. Unlike the last time we recorded this episode. Yeah, you may have noticed this episode is late because Samantha went to edit it and it sounded like trash garbage. And for some reason, her audio sounded like she was in a cave or something. I don't really understand. All the settings are the same from last time, but...

We never change anything, and yet somehow it sounds different every single time. Today, Liz sounded like she was talking through a cast iron pot. I don't even know what that would mean. I sounded like a robot. It sounded very metallic. Yeah. So then you just, I guess, wiggle your cords around, and then it gets fixed. Look, I don't know anything about anything. I have a question for people who record a podcast remotely all the time, and my question is, why?

Because I don't like this very much. The only reason we still have this podcast is because we still have a sliver of hope that someday we're going to be able to sit in the same room. Yeah, for real. I wish Samantha was here. I miss podcasting out of my dining room together in the Witch District. It was so much fun. When we can have snacks and pet Lenny and I don't know. It's just not quite the same. No, it's not. Okay, the last time we recorded this episode, you did a taste test of the Kit Kats. And I think we at least need to touch on that.

Yeah. So we had a snack. What do we call it? Snack hour? I don't know. It's been so long. I know. That's what reminded me of it. We tried to do a remote snack time, snack hour, with the new Witch's Brew Kit Kats that came out for Halloween. We both approve. They get a thumbs up. They're delicious. So good. Marshmallow flavor is what they are. We talked about how we've tried Kit Kats that are like non-chocolate, that have like a different coating, and it's very hit or miss. Like there was that one we tried, I think on the podcast, that tasted like fall scented candles. Yeah, that wasn't my favorite. That was bad.

That one was maybe a pie flavored one. It was like pumpkin pie maybe. Did not taste good. Smelled great. Did not taste good. I got those at H Mart. Yeah, they were purpley. They didn't have chocolate. Really tasted like a candle. We tried those last year. This year, this is for a U.S. audience. Very sweet.

There's a lot of sugar. If you are a coffee drinker and you want to try those Kit Kats, get a little swig of coffee after you take a bite. It's really good because there's so much. It's so sweet. I don't think I could eat a full size of those, but a little snack size. I almost feel like they're not really marshmallow flavor. They're just sugar flavor. But Max said they kind of taste like a Rice Krispie bar. And then I get it. A little bit. Because there's the crispy bit in the inside. So it does kind of taste like that. I saw an article, which I didn't read the full article, but it looked like it was just a rundown of all the Halloween novelty.

treats that are coming out, at least in the U.S. There's like those Frankenstein peanut butter cups. I'm disappointed in the Reese's peanut butter cup because there's really nothing special about them except that part of it is green. Oh, it's not a different flavor? I saw one of the comments that was mad that it wasn't like a caramel apple flavor, which made me mad because that's what it should be. It should be like a caramel apple peanut butter. It's just partially green. It's not even all green. Why would we want that? And it's a regular peanut butter cup. It's not even like... Everyone, I feel like, is in agreement that the Reese's...

eggs the Reese's pumpkins the Reese's whatever they make in the summer now stars are good those are the best because there's less of that like outer thick chocolatey part it's just like more peanut butter also they make a like Reese's Pieces egg too which is like I love those I'm not what I'm not I don't like it interrupts all I just want a mouthful that peanut butter I don't want like the crunchy bits inside Samantha, this podcast is over. It's a very controversial opinion. I feel like our listeners are probably divided on that one too. Are you kidding me? And I like the Reese's eggs, but I just don't need them to be combined. Oh, Samantha, this is a betrayal. It's a hot take. Yeah, it really is. You're burning some bridges today. You're like, I don't need to be connected to that other land. Goodbye. I'm really not a fan of these companies just taking the same thing they have and just making it like a different shape. Like I saw, I think the Hershey's.

What are the cookies and cream Hershey's bars? It's fangs. It's supposed to look like fangs. But it's the same candy. It's the same candy. It's just in the shape of a fang. That's kind of a cop-out. Make it a different flavor. It also just means you get less of it. Instead of a full rectangle, now there's a little bit cut out, so it's like a fang. That just means you get less. It's not special because it tastes the exact same. I guess you can hold it up to your mouth before eating it and pretend you're a vampire if you're five.

For me, no, that gets a thumbs down. I'm not interested in that. I am interested in these Hershey's Vampire Hershey's Kisses. Oh yeah, you told me about those. I told you wrongly that they're raspberry filled. They're actually strawberry filled. Oh, okay. Well, that's good too. I think a chocolate covered strawberry. Yeah, I'll take it. And it's in a like purple striped like foil. But then you know that little piece of paper that usually says kisses? That just says vampire.

For some reason, that's hilarious to me. Not like Happy Halloween or like Trick or Treat or something. Just Vampire. I dig it. Which I now want it more than ever. Like they sounded good. But then I was like, that's bizarre. Vampire. When do you think you're going to get your haul of Japanese candy? Probably not until after Halloween. So I ordered too much Japanese Halloween candy from this woman on Instagram. Look, I might never get that candy. And I'll be writing in the scam goddess saying I just sent some woman. Because I can't. Okay. I think we talked about this when we record it.

We can no longer go to Minnesota's largest candy store. Yeah, we did talk about this. It turns out they're their pigs. Yeah, it turns out it's run by horrible people that got permission from the governor to open early during the pandemic closed out. I guess because technically candy is food. I don't even, what? I don't know. There's that. They were super shitty about Black Lives Matter. They just, they seem like total assholes.

So, and, you know, also there's a pandemic and I'm not going to a candy store full of the only people in Minnesota who will shove you. They're all there. I don't know why. We take an annual trip to this candy store usually and spend way too much money. Well, it's by the, you know, it's like by the pumpkin patch and the apple orchard. When we do our like fall outings, we usually end up going to this candy store, but that's not gonna happen this year because there's the plague. And also these people are terrible. So I ended up spending instead, sent too much money to some woman in Japan to send me a bunch of Japanese Halloween candy.

that i don't even know what it is but it all had the most amazing packaging i've ever seen and i literally just went i'll take all of that i love the idea of you just being like all of it give me one give me one of everything but it's coming by boat like it's gonna be in the mail for like three months so yeah it's gonna be a while before you get that it's probably gonna be fucking christmas before i mean in a way i don't really care except that i'm impatient and i want to know like i want to try those treats now you sent me a picture of it and that packaging is so freaking cute all of it is all of it has like adorable little ghosts that are wearing top hats or witch hats and like smiling little pumpkins i don't know i just it all looks like i'm gonna want to frame it all max is gonna be concerned about me But that's OK. It's only going to get worse as the winter stretches on. We should probably stop talking about candy. But I actually want to know from our listeners, if anyone has done a candy subscription, because Liz and I were talking the other day about how it would be really good to sign up for a subscription box to get through the winter, to have something to look forward to each month. And I'm thinking a candy box would be good. But there's so many options, all different price points. I want to know which one is actually good. Am I just going to get the same candy every month? Or am I going to get one candy bar and I spent $30? I want to know which ones are better.

yeah that's a good question yeah I got a little while to think about it because I think I am gonna like save it maybe for after the holidays and like I don't know use it to get through the doom and gloom that I'm sure is coming or it's gonna get worse but yeah i i can't fully explain this but i'm kind of looking forward to how weird i'm gonna get like just we're all gonna be okay look winter in minnesota is intense as it is there is a period of time where it gets like kind of hard to leave your house because of snow storms and it's just too cold and whatever like usually we get in all of our socializing now we just we go hog wild for halloween and then we know that we're you know we're um i don't even know what you call it yeah we're gonna be we're gonna be shut-ins for a little bit but this year after months of not leaving the house we're gonna have winter and i'm just i'm honestly like on the edge of my seat curious how weird am i gonna get I think we're all going to get weird. Am I going to surprise? Am there going to be a moment where I look in the mirror and I'm like, who's that? Who's that weirdo? And I go, oh, that's me. But are we all going to be so weird that we're not even going to recognize our weirdness? Because everyone around us is just as weird. Or everyone we interact with. We're not going to be around anyone. You really won't be interacting with anyone. That's true. We're going to be like, yeah, Phantom of the Opera level shut in, Samantha. It's your dream. Maybe I'll start writing that Phantom of the Opera fan fiction. Please do. Oh, my God. That could be a bonus for patrons.

Samantha's penned Phantom of the Opera fan fiction. I'm not a creative writer. I can't do it. I'm too self-conscious. It's never going to happen. Okay. Is anyone out there an artist that would like to draw an illustration of Samantha with the Phantom of the Opera? Okay. That I'd like to see. In a big heart. Sure. Yeah.

Is this already going off the rails? Why am I talking about how weird I'm going to get in winter like I'm normal right now? You know how I'm the picture of sanity? Well, I can't wait to see. Sitting here talking about unsolved mysteries on a podcast. Yeah. Before we started, Mac was doing his impression of me that was like, I have a podcast. I have to record. It's a bitch. Someone didn't solve this mystery. That's apparently how I sound.

This is true love. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. Okay. I think we have some updates. Oh, yeah, we do. Whoa. Good point. First update. Thank you so much to everyone that bought a tote bag. Those have all been sent out. So if you haven't gotten it yet, you should be receiving it shortly, except for listener Melinda in Australia. I have no idea how long it's going to take. Good luck with that. Yeah. No, it was awesome. We put them on sale the first day for patrons only, and they almost completely sold out. And then the last two were going on the next day. So that's amazing. You guys are awesome. If you were hoping for, I mean, you're not.

The metallic foil is no longer. We're not going to be able to do another run of the tote bags. But if you were hoping for some sort of merch from us, we are looking into some different merch options. So keep your eyes out. There's stuff on the horizon. Yeah. For stuff that might be coming. I know it's been much requested. So, yeah. Keep your eyes peeled. Yes. And I am slowly but surely working on the zine. If you contributed to that, that will hopefully be available, look, at some point. I don't know. I'm doing the layout now. The covers came in. They look really good. So that's exciting. Yeah.

I also wanted to read this kind of interesting letter that we got, this unexpected letter. It was quite unexpected. I know when Liz told me that this email came in, I had a very specific reaction and I was surprised when I actually read it. Samantha was 100% convinced this was going to be a complaint, and that was not the case. So this is some things about Season 5, Episode 20, Skeleton in a Box. And you may remember that we talked about the death of Chad Langford on an Army base. The Army claimed he committed suicide, but every sensible person went. That seems weird. So listener Charles wrote in to tell us, Before I go on, I'd like to establish my background. I've been in the Army for 17 years, 14 active duty, and three in the Georgia National Guard. See, that is a surprise.

This is where I was like, this is going to be a complaint. This is going to be about the flag. This is going to be about something this person is not happy about. I mean, I guess I'm surprised anyone listens to our podcast, but I'm definitely surprised that this person listens to our podcast. OK, so he wanted to clear up a couple of things about Chad Langford and add a bit of knowledge. So his first point was that we made fun of the codename Papa 2, which was Chad's.

code name on the base and to me it sounds like Papa Smurf's evil twin. I do stand by making fun of this because I still think it's silly but his explanation makes sense. Come in Papa 2 over. Okay so Papa 2 is probably code for parole true. Papa is phonetic alphabet for P and he was in a patrol car. That makes perfect sense. It still sounds silly. It still sounds silly and I kind of don't understand why you need a code name. Is it just because code names are cool? I don't know. Are there like people hiding in the bushes that are going to ambush only patrols but if they hear Papa 2 they're like we're gonna let that one go.

Something I've never understood is like we always hear Secret Service code names for like the president and the first family and stuff. Are we supposed to know that? What's the point of having a code name if everybody knows? I don't know. I guess because code names are cool. I don't. I think so. Someone else needs to from the military. Maybe this is the only person in the military who listens right back in. I mean, probably.

And his second point, now before I say this, I'm not saying whether or not he definitely killed himself or was murdered. It seems like the Army didn't do a particularly thorough investigation. However, active MPs do not work undercover. That's the sole providence of CID. MPs handle the everyday work of policing on the base. There's definitely something weird as hell about this case, but Chad was probably lying about working undercover. I really love your podcast and look forward to the next episode. Virtually yours, Charles. So I'll say that I'm...

not completely convinced that just because chad's not supposed to be working undercover it doesn't mean that they didn't assign him to do that because there seems to be something fishy going on but it is interesting that that shouldn't have been part of his work so cid is like the police of the army base so technically he shouldn't have been that's like cid work he shouldn't have been doing that but it does kind of make me wonder if that's why they wanted to cover it up yeah i don't know i don't know it's an interesting point We had some reflection. So we've been talking about this a little bit, especially after we got this email, because it was like, OK, that's interesting. And something that you pointed out that we talked about in our last recording was like the earring. And I think we should touch on that, because I think that's important. Or at least, I mean, there's no information about this. We don't actually know. We can only speculate. But I don't think we have enough information to make a really good guess about this case. I just feel like the Army either covered up information or didn't collect information so that we don't have a really good sense of what happened. But I will say that upon reflection.

It occurred to me that a man having an earring was interpreted differently in the early 90s than even by the late 90s. And that was definitely associated with gay culture. So I was wondering if this was almost maybe, and I hate to use this term because it's so gross, but like a gay panic situation. Like, was he killed because someone thought he was gay? And the army covered it up? It seems like a possibility that I didn't think about the first time. I'm not saying that's what happened and it's probably not. But I also wonder if that's why Unsolved Mysteries harped on him having an earring and we were like, who cares? What? And it's also like not or wouldn't be the first time that the military has covered up a murder on an army base that might be related to sexual assault or something else unsavory that would look bad for the military. It's not like unprecedented, right? So it seems if we're trying to think of like the more obvious thing, was he doing a secret undercover mission?

Or did something like that maybe happen? I mean, we can only speculate. There's nothing to go off of because they didn't collect any evidence. All they did was some psychological autopsy where they called his friends and talked to them for 10 minutes. I mean, apparently you could just like call people crazy after they're dead with no like precedent. Yeah. You don't have to like really establish that in any way. I feel like either way, the army thought they were going to look bad. So either he killed himself and they thought that would make them look bad or he was murdered and they thought that would make. So like they were somehow motivated to bury the story because it seems like something that should have been thoroughly investigated and it wasn't. But I.

I don't know if that means they feel like they dropped the ball on like a mental health issue or they were like, oh shit, we don't want anyone looking into blah, this illegal activity or whatever. Yeah. It's a sad story because he was so young. Yeah. I hate that. I know. But I don't think we'll ever really know what happened to Chad. No, it's unfortunate. Okay. Should we move on to the episode we're here to talk about today? Yes. Are we at that part of the show? This is season five, episode 21. I did look into watching this on Amazon again because the last one was available with a million ads. And it does seem like.

They've made the rest of the episodes available with a million ads. You can pay 99 cents per episode to watch without ads. But considering you can watch for free on YouTube, I don't see why you wouldn't just do that. Also, 99 cents per episode is kind of a lot. There's 24 episodes in the season. Yeah. I don't know. That's going to add up. Yeah, I'm not doing that. Not while they're on YouTube. So I'm going back to YouTube. But if you, for some reason, it's more convenient for you or whatever, you can watch them on Amazon. There's just a lot of ads. If you're a literal billionaire and you were like 99 cents, I don't even know what that is. Throw it away, I suppose. Okay.

The first thing we're going to talk about is an unexplained death. And what's weird about this mystery is that it actually connects to a mystery that we've talked about before. But for some reason, Unsolved Mysteries doesn't bring that up in this segment. So this is another death connected with Inslaw, which is, no, it's not your favorite coleslaw recipe app like we speculated before. It was actually criminal database software for police agencies and stuff like that for law enforcement. So we had previously talked about the death of Doug Johnson and the speculation.

And what made Doug Johnson's death so weird is that it seems like he was murdered by mistake by someone trying to kill Don Devereaux. So Don Devereaux had information about illegal government conspiracy, all sorts of stuff connected with Inslaw, known as the octopus, that he was supposed to be handing over to Danny Casolera, except that before he could do that, Danny Casolera is murdered. So this is the mystery of Danny Casolera's death. It's interesting that they don't bring up this Doug Johnson connection when talking about it. I don't know why they don't. I mean, I looked at it and it was on the wiki. So at least whoever's writing the Unsolved Mysteries wiki knew that they were connected. But yeah. Because I was watching this and I was like, I know we talked about insla. I know we talked about the octopus. I remembered a coleslaw joke. I didn't immediately remember the context. I did have to look into it. I was like, all I remember is making a joke about coleslaw. I don't remember what the mystery was. Sweet, sweet, delicious coleslaw. Related, no. If anybody has a good recipe for pineapple slaw, I'm listening. Okay? I want to make some pineapple slaw. Yum. I want, specifically, I want the pineapple slaw. Sold at Sparky's.

and hatch new mexico that's very specific very specific if you have a recipe for something of that ilk please please i made some spicy pickled pineapple a few weeks ago because it was in a recipe book and you gave me you gave me none i still have some you can have some it was too spicy for me i could you can't really even taste the pineapple i like spicy food but it was like too much Okay. So you can have the recipe for that if you want some unedible, super spicy pineapple. I don't know that I do. I think it would be good. I shouldn't say that. It would probably be good if it was like on something, like maybe some fish tacos or something like that. Oh, that sounds good. That might be really good. You can't just eat it by itself. I don't think it's meant to be. God damn, now I really want some.

Pineapple slaw. Please help us. We need pineapple slaw. Okay. So we're talking about the summer of 1991 at a Sheraton hotel. Housekeeping discovered the guest registered to the hotel dead in their bathtub. And this was 44-year-old Danny Castellera. So he was an investigative journalist from Fairfax, Virginia. A suicide note was found in his room. Curtis is here saying, this is suspicious. Okay. So there was a suicide note found. It was asking for forgiveness, particularly from his son, and said something about how God would let him in. In the bathtub was a single laser blade.

Danny's wrists have been slashed a total of 12 times with eight cuts on the left wrist alone. One was deep enough to sever a tendon. Now, at this point in the segment, they say that there are no signs of struggle, but that's kind of contradicted by things we learned later. So I think that really just means, like, the furniture is in order. It's also contradicted by the reenactment they show, which Unsolved Mysteries is not known, really, at least I don't think, not that we've seen, to, like, gore up their reenactments. In the reenactment, there's, like, a bloody handprint on the wall and, like, smears of blood everywhere. I'm like, what do you mean there's no struggle? There's blood definitely outside of the bathtub.

In a way that would suggest that at least someone got out of the bathtub or there was a second person, because otherwise it doesn't make any sense. For some reason, it took authorities two days to notify his family. The reason for that is never explained. His mother and brother were immediately suspicious of his death. His brother asked what happened to the papers that were in his room, which had been the result of a year-long investigation. However, these were never found. We then hear from fellow journalist Jack Anderson, who just wants to tell you that he is also suspicious.

the type of investigation that danny was working on like if you die during that like anybody's gonna be suspicious so also danny was apparently afraid of blood and even minor medical procedures such as getting a shot so it seems unlikely that if he was going to kill himself that he would pick slashing his wrists particularly so many times particularly so harshly um he had also just announced to his friends that he was close to breaking the story he'd been working on for the past year now this is the insult thing it started as a story about computer software theft and mushroomed into a story about government corruption, implicating U.S. justice officials. He originally had interviewed the owners of the software company Inslaw about their program Promise, which was supposed to organize information for law enforcement agencies. So this is like a really early database for computerizing records, right? So it's almost bizarre to think back to a time where like police records would literally just be like all paper files that someone had to physically go look at. But when it's like, oh, run it through the database, right?

This was one of those early databases, this program promise. So it had been purchased by the Justice Department, but then the Justice Department started to withhold payments. And because they were such a big client, that drove Insla into bankruptcy. During their bankruptcy proceedings, they found out that the software was being used in Canada, despite them never selling it there. We also hear about Michael Reconishuto, who told Insla that he worked for the CIA and he saw undisturbed.

unauthorized distribution of the software as part of covert operations. So the software sales were being used to fund ops kind of off book, like things they didn't want to account for in their budget. They would make money selling the software to possibly Canada or whoever, and then use that money. So it was like not traceable. Another thing that I saw noted somewhere, and it's probably really obvious, but I just hadn't really thought about it, is that when the U.S. Justice Department is illegally reselling the software, they're also including spyware. So hypothetically say they're selling the software to Canada. Canada is using it, but that means the U.S. Justice Department can watch what Canada is using the software for and probably even just like what's going on with their whole computer network. Spying, cool. Spying on our allies. Yeah. Michael B. Conasciutto actually testified to Congress on the matter because...

This was like a big 80s scandal. But right after testifying, he just happened to be arrested on drug charges by the Justice Department. And he was still being held when this segment was filmed. We now hear from Elliot Richardson, who's famous for being Nixon's attorney general. He also testified on this matter. He was actually the lawyer representing Inslaw. Richardson is best remembered for resigning rather than participate in the Watergate cover up. He's the Watergate martyr because Nixon asked him to fire the special prosecutor looking into Watergate and he refused. So maybe that makes him trustworthy. I don't really know.

This is when we're told that the conspiracy is known as the octopus and it involves the Iran-Contra scandal, the BCCI banking scandal, the October surprise, like all those 80s scandals seem to be connected to the Justice Department and this like off the books money. And that conspiracy and whatever else is like caught up in that web is known as the octopus. I get why they call it the octopus because it's like, yeah, all the eight legs or whatever. But I just can't stop thinking of like a cartoon. octopus villain it's like purple and like lumbering through the sea and it fights the porpoise of justice i definitely picture it having an eye patch it reminds me of a couple years ago i was playing with a kid and the kid really liked pirates and like sea stuff so we're like playing pirates and he had a toy octopus and the octopus like comes over to the pirates and the pirates go oh no it's the president Like the villain of the game was just called the president. So that's the times we live in, folks. The future our children are going to grow up in. It's like, who's scary? The president. So we're warned that this investigation brought Danny in touch with many unsavory characters from the criminal underworld. That's not scarier than the U.S. Justice Department. I'm not more scared of criminals than, like, the government can do anything.

could rendition you and you will go no, like officially you will go nowhere. You could end up in Guantanamo. I don't know. Anyway, we're supposed to be like, oh, maybe it's not the government. Maybe it's these criminal.

whatever this is a really good example that that educated criminals work within the law okay uh at this point okay so the brother danny's brother who i forgot to write down his name he in real life had a beard but is a reenactor he had a mustache what did you call it the pepper plant because it kind of looks like two chili peppers resting on his his lip it's quite the look so we learned that danny had been receiving death threats people would literally call him in the dead of night and just tell him he was going to die cool yeah Which he says this really casually in the reenactment. And maybe this guy just wasn't phased by stuff like that. But he was like, oh, yeah, people have been calling me, telling me I'm going to die. I would never be so casual about getting multiple death threats. But whatever. He did seem like, oh, yeah, I'm probably going to die. But what are you going to do? Chill as fuck. Yeah. So he specifically had told his brother that if something happened to him, to not believe it was an accident.

So you can see why the family is suspicious. So he had been tracking the finances of the octopus and he had a new contact with the IRS. He was meeting with him to get printed hard copies. That was the day before he died. So he goes and meets with William Turned, who formerly worked as a major defense contractor.

He gave him documentation that was proof of corruption he believed was connected to the octopus. 24 hours later, Danny is dead and the papers are gone and are never found. All of the paperwork, all of the evidence that was connected to this investigation that he'd been working on for a year, all of that is gone and never resurfaces. I have a really hard time believing that this man was literally working on this story the day before, getting these extremely important documents for his story, and then the next day just decided to kill himself. I mean, I find that unlikely too, but I'm slightly hesitant to say anything because I would like to live.

NSA, for the record, we totally believe this story. We totally believe this story and we totally respect the government and I am not scared at all. I'm saluting the flag right now. Yeah. You can't see it because it's an audio medium, but I swear it's true. I mean, I know that you listen to me via my phone and you probably think my life is really boring, but just like, don't come for me. Okay. I'm sure that helps.

This is also very funny to me because I just like got into an argument on Twitter with someone about how this country is so great. And that person who I mean, they could have been 12 in a basement. Who knows? But that person was like, you know, you should be more thankful that you're in a country where you're even allowed to say bad things about the government because that's like how low the bar is. But I was like, yeah, I know that I'm completely free to do that.

RIP, Danny. So Unsolved Mysteries tells us that a complete autopsy was reformed, but the problem with that statement is that he'd already been embalmed. Yeah, it wasn't likely procedural. It's not a good autopsy. His family hadn't released him to be embalmed, but that also was going to fuck with toxicology, stuff like that. So they did perform an autopsy, but the Unsolved After, he had already been embalmed despite protocol. At his autopsy, a bruise on Danny's arm and head were found and, quote, never accounted for. He also has three broken fingernails. So this is what I was referring to when I said I don't really...

like that, there wasn't signs of a struggle, except that he's bruised and his fingernails are broken. That sounds like, I mean, I'm bruised all the time. Maybe that means nothing, but I don't usually have three broken fingernails on one hand. That seems like a sign of a struggle. Also, didn't they find like a bloody rag or something? When I say they, I don't mean the investigators. I mean, after the investigators peaced out, after not like investigating anything, the cleaning company that came in. Yeah, the cleaning company actually found two bloody towels under the like sink counter thing of the hotel bathroom. So it looks like those had been used to clean up blood before someone just went, fuck it, and dumped them. That wasn't collected into evidence. They also had the room cleaned like less than 24 hours, I think.

after his death like the crime scene wasn't preserved so we're not so there's evidence that someone tried to clean up the blood but who uh why wasn't there a more thorough investigation the other mysterious element of this this case or this mystery is that at danny's funeral towards the end a little i think like a limo or whatever like a black car pulls up a highly decorated military official in uniform gets out with another dude who's just like basically in a halloween costume as an fbi guy like seriously wearing a trench coat and a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses The military guy puts a medal on Danny's coffin before it's lowered in and salutes him before getting back in the car. And no one knows who that was. No one in his family knows who that was. So at the reception or wake afterwards, people were like, oh, and who was that military guy who came to pay his respects? And everybody was like, oh, I thought you knew.

Nobody knows what that was about. And I don't think we know what that metal is because I think it's buried in the ground. I'm not sure anybody knew before it got covered with earth. I don't know. Okay, so that is the end of that. Let's see what Unsolved Mysteries Wiki says. I'm honestly a little bit hesitant to speculate about this too much.

No evidence of robbery was found at a scene. Yeah, except that all of his papers are gone. Unsolved Mysteries Wiki. What do you call that? Several people believe Danny was murdered by the secret clandestine government agency to hug the octopus. But such a presence is unconfirmed at best. His family believes they killed him because he learned too much during his investigation of Inslaw and the U.S. Justice Department. The results unsolved. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious what happened here, but the less we talk about it, the best. I think you're right.

Okay, let's move on to A Lost Love. A Lost Love. So we are looking for a man named Jim Burke. And the person who's looking for him is William Bill O'Neill. William Bill spent much of his life looking for his birth father. Ever since he was a child, he felt lonely in his own family. We have a really sad reenactment of little baby Bill coming home from school in his ugly sweater and just laying on the couch dejected because he has no friends and apparently his family doesn't care about him. They don't go into details in the mystery. But I definitely think he felt...

like an outsider in his own family because his family made him feel that way. He talks about realizing that he was the only one that had hazel eyes and everyone else had brown eyes as if that's something you would notice as a child unless your family was already making you feel like you don't belong. Yeah, he's like searching for a reason it sounds like because there's got to be plenty of families where one kid has different colored eyes and that's fine. Yeah, my family. I'm pretty sure I have green eyes and my siblings have brown eyes and I've never thought about it until right now because my family didn't treat me like shit.

So he was the youngest son of six children. He was told that his father, whose name was Paul O'Neill, had died shortly before his birth. The problem with that is that years passed and as the children grew up and started their own families in 1983, Bill's older brother Tim went to their father's grave in Chicago and noticed that the date of the death was December 20th, 1958, which would have been approximately two years before Bill was born. Yeah, this lie doesn't work. No, it wouldn't work for anyone. She needed to think about that a little bit more. This is real easy to prove it's not true.

It's literally carved into stone. The last time we talked about this segment, I think you said that white people just do things like this sometimes. And I think it's really true in this case. Well, I might just like not talk about things that are actually really important. And yes, that's just like wasp behavior through and through. Because I feel like everyone around this woman had to have known that like her husband had died, two years had passed, and suddenly there was another baby and it clearly didn't belong to her dead husband. But everyone just like didn't bring it up. I really don't understand what she's...

said at the time like I kind of get that she told her children later like oh your father died before you were born and of course he's just gonna accept that but she can't tell the neighbor that when she brings home the baby she can't be like I had sex with a ghost this is my dead husband's kid like I don't really understand what was going on in the present no and also it's a bad lie because it's literally in stone that she's lying did she think they would literally never go to her their father's grave that's a weird assumption i do think they moved to a different state and maybe they just didn't like look at the dates that closely or really think about it until suddenly tim was like wait a minute wait a minute so after this realization tim visited their mother who told him that she did not want anyone to know the truth and tim decided to keep this secret for several years yeah all right i guess i won't tell him like what is up with this family i think they're really conflict adverse like anything that's gonna you know rock the ball they have to avoid and i i think a brother's kind of going well it's really not my business but i feel like he has a right to know yeah i think so so bill kind of had a feeling that he had a different father than everybody else and eventually he called his mother lynn uh i can't remember exactly if he called tim it's been a while since i watch this episode now if he called tim and pushed him and then tim in the reenactment tim is over at his house and they're arguing about something or i don't know it sort of almost like comes up

And then Tim's like, well, you don't know everything. And he's like, oh, yeah, what don't I know? He's like, never mind. He's like, no, you're going to tell me. And he's like, never mind. And he's like, it said I'd have a different dad, isn't it? Like, he guesses it. And that's the only reason he admits it. But in the reenactment, he hilariously has a photo of the gravestone with him and is like, see? I was like, is he just carrying that around all the time? It's not like it's on his phone. It's not like a printed four by six photograph from Kmart. The proof. Yeah. I stopped by the one hour photo and I printed out this proof for you just in case we got in this argument. So that makes no sense. But I think basically.

yeah he called him on it yeah and then he was he was forced into a corner where he had to admit it or like probably very unconvincingly go no your dad was a ghost same as me how things are discussed in this family they certainly don't just tell each other the fucking truth uh okay so after getting this information out of tim bill calls his mother lynn and she didn't tell him the truth necessarily but she was basically like how did you find out I think she's deflecting. She's like, let's not actually deal with the fact that I've been lying to you your entire life. Who told you? It's like, no, no, no. That's not the issue right now.

The issue is that I could have had a relationship with my father, except you told me he was dead. Cool. Thanks, Mom. So she told Bill how she had met Paul in 1953, and they were married the next year. Over the next four years, they had three children. Paul was a World War II vet and suffered from chronic kidney disease. And in November of 1958, Lynn was seven months pregnant with her fourth child when she and the three other children visited Paul at the Veterans Hospital. During this visit, she met Jim Burke, who was a friend of Paul's. Sadly, Paul passed away a month later, and soon after, Jim and Lynn began dating.

Which isn't, like, the coolest thing to do, but it is what happened. During the summer of 1959... Okay, I have a theory about this, but I'm going to let you get a little bit further. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have a theory. During the summer of 1959, Jim moved to California and the O'Neills moved with him. A year later, in September of 1960, Bill was born. The next year, Lynn became pregnant again. However, her relationship with Jim began to deteriorate at this point. By the time her youngest daughter, Peggy, was born, Jim was completely out of the picture. Okay, my theory, and this kind of explains why she never told...

the children about the real father is that jim is married so i think she meets jim yeah i think he has another family i think she meets jim at the va hospital right before her husband's death the two of them end up hooking up they seem to have like a long-term affair considering she fucking moves to another state for him from chicago to california but then he just pieces out like he's like they break up he's just gone and she's left with six children Yeah. In a state, presumably she doesn't know that many people. She doesn't have a support system and six children to take care of. Yeah. And this is, so Unsolved Mysteries never says this. And probably because they were like trying to get Jim to come forward and like maybe he's still married to his other wife and whatever has his other family. But it's all but confirmed because spoiler alert, they do find some of their siblings and they're older than them. They're older siblings. So Jim had already had two children by this point. And so I think part of the reason why she's acting like her dead husband managed to father two children after passing away is because she's seeing someone who's married.

Yeah, it seems like it would be obvious that that's not what happened to like everybody, but you know what? I'm also guessing that she doesn't know people where she moved. So there's probably less people she had to lie to in California. But she's like a side piece and she's moving out to California and she just gets dumped. Yeah, it sucks. It has six children. It has six children. So Lynn struggled to support six children by herself. And then Peggy had a medical condition known as failure to thrive, which we looked up last time we recorded this. And it's basically, it can be caused by all kinds of things, but it's essentially an infant that's not gaining weight at the proper rate. So it could be caused by like a stomach issue or epilepsy or there's all kinds of ailments. It could be caused by tons of stuff. So the reason it's alarming, I'm sure particularly then, is that it's hard to say what's causing it. It's like, well, your kid's not growing.

but we don't know why. Well, and I'm sure that it probably requires many tests to like, essentially, I'm sure you just rule things out. I'm sure there's not like one test for what it is. You just have to like cross things off the list, which I'm sure is many doctor's appointments, many procedures, many medications, plus whatever you have to like the stress of trying to get your child to gain weight. I'm sure it's just overwhelming, especially when you have five other children. So yeah, it's in some ways understandable, but then Lynn.

I don't know. Anyway. Lynn's not your favorite. I think it's safe to say that. No, because Lynn decides to put Peggy up for adoption, but she told her children that Peggy went to the hospital and fucking died. Yeah, that seems cruel. I can see, okay, this woman is a single mom at a very unsupportive time. I can see that she doesn't have the money to take care of this baby that has medical problems. That seems understandable to me. Telling the siblings that the kid is dead. Maybe that's easy. I don't know.

That doesn't seem like the right solution. To just be like, she's very sick and she has to go live with someone else who can take better care of her. Like, maybe you'll see her when she's older. Not, oh, she never came back from the hospital? And you want to know where she is? She's in heaven. Have we talked about heaven? Because that's where she is. Look, I don't have children. It's really probably inappropriate for me to say what I would do with this situation because it seems like a horrible situation. But I'm also just kind of a proponent of telling children the truth. Like, they are human beings. They are people. You can tell them, like, an age-appropriate level of the truth.

I don't know that they need to know like how sick she is or, you know, I don't know how old the other children are. But telling them that she's dead seems very dramatic. Yes. I don't understand why Linda can't like. And also, it's not like there's a funeral. It's not like the mom is publicly grieving in any way. It sort of suggests that like, oh, when children die, we just don't fucking care. Nothing different happens. Life completely moves on. Like, oh, if you drop dead, all your siblings are going to school that day. It doesn't matter.

Like, it seems like a really weird mindfuck. Yes. All right. So in 1990, Lynn told her children that Peggy had not died. Peggy had actually contacted Lynn at that point and said that she wanted to meet her family. What a surprising after meal conversation that must have been. Remember how I told you that your little sister died? Turns out she's not dead and she wants to meet you. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, mom. What did you just say? Yeah.

Mom, you need to work on your communication skills because we probably do. Lynn, we talk about being a little more honest with each other. So Peggy had been adopted by the Coleman family of Sylwyn, California. She'd been renamed Karen. Bill got her adoptive parents' phone number and planned to talk to them. But when he called, he was surprised that Karen, Peggy, answered the phone instead. They had a lovely conversation and have since been reunited. They seem to really care for each other, are very close. And now they are searching for their biological father, Jim Burke.

Two-time and Jim, as we call him. Two-time and Jim. This is solved, sort of. Well, I mean, it is solved. On the night of the broadcast, Eileen Esler of New Lenox, Illinois, called the telecenter and said that she was one of Jim Burke's four children from another marriage. Bill and Karen were saddened to learn that Jim had passed away in 1988. However, they were overjoyed to learn that they had four half-siblings who wanted to meet them. One week later, Bill and Karen were reunited.

Eileen and another half-sister, Sheila Ann Haskins, met with them at Karen's home. The reunion is filmed, which we love to see a reunion. It seems like they had an instant bond. It was lovely. Since their reunion, Bill and Karen have also met their other two half-siblings, and Robert's back tells us that at a family wedding later in the year, they're going to meet several other long-lost relatives, including some grandparents.

That's really sweet. He seems like a nice dude. And I know that he was looking for his dad, but I feel like the connection with these siblings is actually going to be more valuable than that. Because his dad had the opportunity to be in his life, but the siblings really didn't. So he can have a relationship with them now. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's really lovely. So this segment to me has the MVM. Bill has a mustache.

For a white guy with a mustache, it looks pretty good. It's not bad. It's not bad at all. It's hard to be white and have a mustache. This is the only time it's hard to be white. It's hard to be white and have a mustache and not look like a 70s porn star or a child molester or maybe like a 2010s hipster that also looks like a carnival barker. Remember when that was a thing? Oh, yeah. So I'm calling it the standard. I feel like this is the standard to which mustaches should rise. Sure. Because it's not going to get better than this. It's very well trimmed. It fits his face well. No complaints.

That is a standard of a mustache. All right. We're going on to a wanted. This one's super brutal. It takes place in Ontario, Canada. It is a double murder at the Blind River rest stop off of Highway 17. We first hear from Gord McAllister, who spent the night there. It was June 27th, 1991, going into the morning of the 28th. He was there with his wife of many years, Jackie McAllister. So the two of them had just bought a camper. They were going on a long road trip as a vacation. They pull over at this rest stop that's by the river. It's really peaceful. And they're like, oh, this would be a great place to spend the night.

Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, someone claiming to be a police officer was banging on the side of the door of their camper, saying that they had to move and they couldn't be parked there. When they opened the door, a man with two guns enters, saying that he's going to rob them. Unfortunately, because this is a very sad mystery, this reenactment is terrible. I don't know where they got this actor. I don't think he's ever acted before in his life. I mean, I don't think this kid did a school play. I don't think he was in a manger scene at church. Like literally he has never acted before because they just stick this stringy, disgusting, bleached out wig on his head. And then he enters the camper holding these two giant guns and goes, I'm going to rob you.

And it's unintentionally hilarious in what is actually like a very sad case. But awful. This reenactment is as bad as the audio on the episode we had to re-record. Folks didn't hear it, but it's bad. Oh, it's bad. Oh, it's bad. Okay. So the robber asks for their valuables. Obviously, they're kind of shaken as they're getting together like purses and wallets. She's trying to take off her wedding ring, stuff like that. After getting them, he just shoots Jackie anyway. In this sort of miraculous feat, Gord managed to leap out of the camper when the door was still open. So he leaps out of the camper and he rolls underneath it.

he from there sees that there's now another car in the rest area and a guy had just gotten out of his car um so the person tries to okay so the robber now murderer is leaving the camper he sees that there's now this other witness the guy gets back in his car is trying to drive away when the murderer shoots him through the windshield um and then he the murderer gets into his van and flees flees the scene leaving gord alive gord didn't realize that he also had been shot until he gets down to the road to try to flag Don't help. So we see a reenactment of him. He's in his pajamas. He's bleeding. He runs out the road and flags down a semi. But then the semi is like, oh, my CB isn't working. I'm going to have to go to the next stop. So by the time help arrives, unfortunately, Jackie has passed away. They would have been married 39 years that September. It's heartbreaking. Gord clearly loved this woman. And basically.

According to this segment, it's like, I don't have the will to live anymore. Yeah, this is so awful. The other victim, the witness that was in a car, was Brian Major. He also died at the scene. He was 29 years old and left behind his wife and young son. I think he was like a mile or a mile and a half from home. Like, ugh, just awful. So the newspaper ran a police sketch based on Gord's description of the killer. And from that, a witness came forward to say that a few minutes after 1am, he saw a blue van peel out of the rest area. And the reason he remembers this is because it almost hit his car. So that car was heading due east.

The van was suspected to either be the killer or very important witness. I mean, basically they suspected I was the killer, but they wanted that person to come forward anyway. I don't know. Then we get a reenactment of Gord sketch becoming hilariously computer enhanced with some very outdated technology that's like making a collage of human features. Even this composite looks really weird. It's just because that guy's wearing a wig. So the hair is like so blonde and fried and it's like, it's like scarecrow straw.

Yeah, it's really bizarre. So we hear from Gord telling us that, yes, he's the only witness to this double murder. He is the person that can identify the killer. And for a while, he was under police protection. And he thanks them for their help. But he's not anymore. Basically, because he does not care if he lives or dies. Yeah, he really feels like he has nothing to live for anymore. And he says if the killer comes for him, then at least they'll catch the killer. Yeah. Even if he's dead. Even if he's dead. He's like, maybe they'll catch him this time. Great. This is the world I want to live in, where things like this happen. Because Gord is completely out of box. He's like, come kill me. Whatever.

Guess what? No update. It's terrible. Okay, so from Unsolved Mysteries Wiki, I can tell you that this is unresolved. In 1999, a suspect named Ronald West was identified by police. He is currently serving...

time in prison for two unrelated murders from 1970 and several home invasion robberies from 1995. However, he has never been charged with the Blind River murders. There is some circumstantial evidence that links him to the crime. At the time of the murders, he lived about 12 miles away from the crime scene. He also owned a .22 caliber rifle and a 20-gauge shotgun, the same type of weapons that were used in the murders. His ex-wife also noticed that he owned a blue van and looked similar to the composite, but with a blonde wig. Sadly, Gord passed away February 14, 2012, without seeing a resolution to Jackie's murder.

Yeah, it's really awful. It's very, very sad. Both Jackie and Gordon McAllister are on Find a Grave if you would like to pay your respects. There's really nothing to say about it. I wish they had done a better reenactment. That's my final thought. Yeah, that reenactment was pretty, pretty bad.

All right. So we have one more. This is actually an update, which we normally don't talk about updates because generally updates are just like the same segments we've talked about before. We haven't talked about this before. But for some reason, the actual segment isn't, we haven't covered it. It hasn't been in one of the episodes we've watched. Someone pointed out that skeleton in a box episode that weirdly got cut off and wasn't available in all kinds of places. It took us a while to find it. Maybe like a copyright issue or maybe there was some music in it that they didn't have the rights to or something. And so they had to edit that. And it's possible that segments like this were never included in the streaming services because of similar reasons. We really don't know.

I would rather that be like a conspiracy or something. I'd rather have like a fun conspiracy of what Y on Soul Mysteries is hiding episodes from us, but it's probably something lame like that. Anyway, so we've never seen this segment before, but the update is included in this episode and it's really interesting. So we're going to talk about it. All right. So I think the original episode or the original segment for this was a final appeal. This is the case of John Purvis. On November 8th, 1983, 38 year old divorcee Susan Hamwee was found murdered in her Fort Lauderdale home after a friend called the police claiming to have not heard from her in several days.

They indeed found her in the home. Unfortunately, she had been sexually assaulted, strangled with a telephone cord, and stabbed to death through the heart with a carving knife. Wow. Tragically, a second tragic incident occurred because upstairs, Susan's eight-month-old daughter had died of dehydration. Samantha, this is a real bummer. This really sucks. Two crucial pieces of evidence were found at the scene. One was the bloody carving knife, and one was a red human hair. There wasn't any fingerprints or anything on the knife. This was before DNA.

Obviously, it was a big piece of evidence, but it didn't really lead them anywhere. So police started canvassing the area, and the next day, they questioned Susan's 66-year-old neighbor, Emma Jo Bartlett, and her 42-year-old son, John Purvis, who lived with her. Her son was schizophrenic, and she was caring for him. John had red hair, so the police immediately considered him a possible person of interest, based literally only on that. It's a great system. I see no need for change. So John's mother, Emma, was pretty adamant that the police were not going to talk to him. I think she's a pretty smart lady because she flat out refused to allow him to go with the police. Eventually, he was like, well, I want to help. And she relented, but wanted to go with him. Unfortunately, when they got to the police station, she was not allowed in the interrogation room. So I think they did some trickery with her. The detective at the time did not know he was schizophrenic. But after questioning him, I think they probably got an idea that this might be someone they can manipulate. However, at this point, Emma came in and demanded they stop the interrogation immediately.

But the police were determined to question him alone. And four weeks later, they were able to get him in front of psychiatrist Joel Kloss. It's not clear how this happened. It is not explained in all mysteries. But John is an adult. So I think they could have easily convinced him that, you know, he would be helping or something if he came in to the police. I mean, it's wildly inappropriate, but I don't know that it's illegal. Yeah, exactly. Just like how the police can lie to you. It's like not OK, but totally within the law. Right. So John Kloss was brought to the station to administer a personality test using what is called TAT, T-A-T cards, which seem completely.

bunk um the cards show ambiguous drawings and require interpretation by the part of the person being tested and john class tells us that one of the cards quote elicited an unusual response we're not told what is on the card or what is considered an unusual response it seems completely subjective and totally bogus it's so weird that they don't tell us what that means yeah that could mean anything that could mean we showed him a picture that looked like the sun and he said the moon like that what does that mean it means nothing anything it's like we showed him a picture of a dog and he said it was a cat like Okay. Exactly. So at this point, we get what's essentially a textbook false confession. John asked Joel if he would have to go to jail or could he go to a hospital instead? And he kept asking, do you think I did it? Because at this point, he's like confused and... He wants to be helpful. He's trying to like...

i don't know maybe assert his independence in some way like right he's trying to be an adult but well he's getting nervous now he's asking the doctor do you think i did it do you think i'm going to jail because i think the response from john the psychiatrist to this unusual response freaked joel out and he's like wait do you think i did this murder which i think is a normal question you would ask well he's trying to figure out what the hell is going on yeah exactly that's not a confession Saying, wait a second, do you think I did this? Like, it's just dawning on him that that's a possibility. Like, that's not a confession. No. However, it seems like John passed this information on to the detectives who interrogated Joel further. And they told him that he, if he just told them what happened, he would get to go home, which, again, is a lie. So he essentially told them what they wanted to hear. He confessed to killing Susan. However, despite the fact that the details of his confession did not match the evidence at the scene, they took him to trial with basically just the air evidence.

Hair evidence. Hair got thrown out because it didn't match. It didn't match. Hair evidence as it is is bogus as fuck. Like if you can't get DNA from a strand or a follicle, just like comparing hairs, that doesn't mean anything. Right. And people used to be convicted on that. Oh, totally. But the hair evidence got thrown out because even though it's completely bogus. It didn't even work. It's the loosest thing where you just like look at two hairs and you see if they look similar. Exactly. Which most of the time means like, huh, I wonder if these both be hairs from a black guy. But in this case, they had two red hairs and they couldn't even like, with the bias of wanting to say they were the same, they couldn't even make that stick.

exactly so they took him to trial with only the confession and he was sentenced to life in prison he was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to life in prison uh he of course swears he was innocent innocent and um see this is why i wanted to be on a jury i was like no i'm gonna turn a jury around I don't. It's so horrible. So he exhausted a lot of his appeals. But in 1987, a new defense attorney was assigned to John's case. And in the spring of 1992, his defense attorney contacted Unsolved Mysteries in hopes that the show would profile evidence. Which generated a lot of attention. Because I think anyone with any sense at all watched this episode and was like, this is a huge miscarriage of justice. Not only for poor John. He's a very sympathetic person, too. Oh, yeah. It works well for something for television to bring attention to. Because you hear that guy talk and you don't go, oh, that's a cold-blooded killer.

No, you hear him talking and you're like, this man wouldn't hurt a fly. Yeah, he seems extremely nice and extremely sympathetic. And I think it's clear to everyone that not only is this innocent man locked up, but this horrible murder, the death of a woman and a baby, is now gone unpunished because the real killer is out there. Well, because they didn't care. No, they didn't care who really did it. They wanted to put someone in prison. Okay, so this case is solved. After Unsolved Mysteries filmed the story, police decided to reopen their investigation into the murders. They focused on, surprise, surprise, Susan's ex-husband, Paul Hamley. Wait, it couldn't be an ex-husband.

Samantha, are you sure about this info? Are you sure about this info? You know what? It's an Unsolved Mysteries wiki, which has never been wrong. So Paul Hamwee was a wealthy real estate developer in Aspen, Colorado. At the time of the murder, he did have an alibi. He was in Aspen recovering from a broken leg. But in the summer of 1992, police followed up on a tip that they had received back in 1985 and apparently just decided to do nothing with it back then. The information led them to a man named Robert Beckett. In exchange for immunity, Beckett...

admitted that he and an accomplice, Paul Serio, had been paid $14,000 to murder Susan. The man who hired them was Paul Hamley, and his motive was to avoid paying $180,000 in alimony. What a dirtbag. Just pay up. Pay up. His daughter died. Wow. Oh my god, he didn't even think about that, did he? Apparently not, because he is a cold-blooded killer. In January 1983, Paul Hamley and Paul Serio were arrested and charged with the murders. Trial of the Pauls. All Pauls go to jail.

Paul, sorry, John Purvis was finally released. He was officially exonerated at a formal hearing on February 24th, 1993, and has since been reunited with his mother and the rest of his family. John's mother, Emma, passed away in 2006. Sirio and him, we were both convicted of the murders and sensed to life in prison. Sirio died in 2004. Beckett, who was given immunity for his testimony, was later convicted of an unrelated murderer. So shitty people all around. This is a really, I mean, this man, poor John spent 10 years in prison, which is horrible and certainly traumatic. It has a happy ending because he gets out on some mysteries to help do that good deed. It's a little annoying that the fucking police.

that are interviewed for the show pat themselves on the back real hard for like reopening the case and solving it when they were the ones that were not you television viewers had to solve this case because you fucked it up so bad not only did this tragic death happen with the mother and her child but then you went and created a whole other tragedy that didn't need to happen from his family sent to prison for 10 years yes the investigator this interview which i assume he wasn't around he probably wasn't like originally a part of it but he definitely in front of the camera on some mysteries says you know what i think just you know mistakes were made but it really wasn't anybody's fault actually i think there's a significant amount of faults I don't think anyone really talked to John and went, that guy's a killer. Also, you shouldn't be allowed to try people with just a little evidence. That's ridiculous. Well, anyway, that's that segment. Frustrating. Okay. Let's read it. All right. Mysteriousness. Okay. It's actually pretty mysterious, mostly because of the octopus. Because I feel like that's a really deep rabbit hole that you could go down if that's your kind of thing. There's clearly something there. There's a lot going on. I'm not going to be digging it up. You can dig that up.

I am done. Hopefully I'm done talking about the octopus. But it's pretty mysterious. We don't really know what happened. Yeah. And several of these perpetrators were never found. The murder was never solved. Yeah. Poor Jackie. Her murder is never solved. It seems like it's that dude that's in prison, but we don't really know. Mysterious. Thumbs up. Mysterious. Thumbs up. What's next? Reenactments.

Okay, actually, some of these reenactments are good, but the fact that there's this one that's so bad at the worst possible moment to be funny, it just taints everything. Thumbs way down. For that stupid blonde wig and getting someone who can barely utter a sentence. I think they picked him because he looked a lot like a composite sketch, but he's never acted a day in his life. He was no Matthew McConaughey. There's a reason why Matthew McConaughey went on to be Matthew McConaughey and this guy went on to be nothing.

I'm sure that's not true. I'm sure he was very successful in whatever non-acting related career he was. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to like throw away his whole life, but there's a reason why we didn't see him again. No one goes, oh, that's, did you know that so-and-so got their start in Unsolved Mysteries? Nobody's saying that about him.

It's true. It's true. All right. Our next category is fashion. And I feel like nothing really stood out to me. There's some good retro fashions in the Lost Loves because we're in the past. But honestly, nothing worth writing home about. It's not remarkable. No. A few good mustaches. There's one that we've decided is the standard all mustaches are going to be held to. So that's good. But I don't know that it carries the fashion category entirely. I would say sideways even is generous. Yeah, I agree. But I'm a generous person. Sideways it is.

all right and robert stack we need a trench coat we get some like he's standing in a hospital at one point or is that a different is that a different episode uh you know he's by isn't this one where he's by a grandfather clock yeah which i feel like is his natural habitat that he might have if someone told me he invented the grandfather clock i would believe it i'd be like that makes sense i don't even know i don't even know that what that means but it's just like oh old grandeur yes that's robert stack does that deserve a thumbs up no sideways again For all that praise. What are you talking about? Thumbs up. Sideways. We've talked about this before, but now that we've watched so many seasons, it's like, you really got to stand out to get a thumbs up in some of these categories. Because we've seen some excellent stack. And just standing in front of a grandfather clock is not going to cut it. No. It's not an ad for grandfather clocks. This is supposed to be Unsolved Mysteries. He's not holding a puppy. Thumbs sideways. Yeah. So how are we going to rate this one on our Robert Stack Scales? 0 of 5. The thing is, it's a pretty solid episode. I feel like it's well-paced. I feel like we get a good amount of information for each mystery. They could have gone really deep on this inslock whole sloth thing, and they didn't.

They kept it short and snappy. I think it was much better than the last one, which I found kind of confusing. This one made perfect sense. It's not my favorite episode, but I think it's solid. So it's definitely not, I don't know, I feel like it's not a four. It's definitely not a three, so yeah. I think it's like, do not skip it. There's good stuff here, but also, yeah.

also three and a half i think yeah yeah um okay we're coming to the close of the show i do have some recommendation updates nice the first one is that i remember that i had recommended the book you which became the netflix series so i thought i should mention that over the summer i read the sequel hidden bodies which actually became season two of you And that book is a big old thumbs down. That book was terrible. It was really pretty bad. It's remarkable to me that they made a good season of television out of that lackluster nothing of a book. Like that should be taught in school. I'm very impressed. Because the first season of You, which is like the first book, I was like, eh.

i watched it i enjoyed it i never really thought about it again it's the season two and i was like oh this is great i love this and i've watched it twice that's why i ended up reading the book and the first book i actually thought was very good and very funny but the second book is just like meandering it doesn't really do any like it's clear that the first one was like you know a hit and she had to write a second one and she was like uh so he goes to la like there's just nothing there um so i don't recommend that my other update is of course a buraska update because really this is secretly a buraska fan podcast I wish. And that is that if you listen to the audio drama Baraska and you're like, oh my God, what happens next? Could they make a second season? There is another chapter by that author. So the original story Baraska was written by Rebecca Kringle, but her pen name that she used to use was C.W. Walker. So if you go to C.W. Walker's website, you can actually read that fifth chapter, Baraska 5.

of what happens next um and i actually was going to order her book which i actually did but it was because i wanted to read that chapter um and then realized it's not in any of her books she's got three volumes of short stories available but it's not in any of those so it's just on her website um so as soon as i found that out i was like oh my god i have to read this right now immediately and i found that very satisfying um so samantha and i had been kind of speculating whether or not they can stretch that out into another season and i sure hope so so They ended up adding a lot for the podcast, particularly like middle of the story. The rising action of your plot diagram is considerably lengthened from the original story, which is the original story is kind of set up. Then you find what happens. Right. But in the podcast, they really stretch out that suspense and spookiness and you wondering what's happening and things get real weird. So I hope it is my hope that we can get a season two and maybe a Netflix series. I mean, come on.

please that would be amazing please okay but that's not really my recommendation my recommendation is i read a book that i really really like i just finished slammerkin by emma donoghue so someone recommended this to me seriously 10 motherfucking years ago and it has been sitting on my to read stack that whole time and i had not gotten around to it because if you were going to categorize this it would be historical fiction which is really not my jam but as it turns out it's really fucking good so it doesn't actually matter that that's the like genre you would put it in um this is what the back of the book says born in 1748 and working class london mary saunders lusts for linen lace and a shiny red ribbon ribbon that leads her into a life of quote prostitution and freedom unknown to virtuous young women there are however three rules of the london streets she knows she must never forget never give up your liberty clothes make the woman and clothes are the greatest lie ever told even that doesn't really make me want to read it gotta be honest but this is so good I loved it it's just really really well written and I think you get such a good sense of this character and her life and it's inspired by a real person that not that much is known about and it's clearly just like what led this person into the situation and you know what was their life like and what was going on in England at the time and I just found it

really fascinating and super good um I remember people talking about this like 10 years ago but it came out in 2000 I don't know if there was like a little renaissance or whatever but it was popular for a minute and I can see why it's very enjoyable highly recommend that's awesome I'm kind of in between books right now while I wait for holds from the library so maybe I'll check it out it is the best novel I've read in a while thanks how about you samantha so i'm recommending a documentary that travis and i stumbled upon on we watched it on amazon um it is and it came out last year i think in october and the documentary is called stuffed and it's about taxidermy which at first i was like this is not gonna be good we went at one point i forget if it was like nat geo or tlc or something there was like a uh mini series about like pet taxidermy where people will get like their chihuahuas stuffed and it was very weird and super silly and i was kind of like this is what this that's what this is gonna be see i'm kind of surprised you don't want to do taxidermy because i'm into like Just because you're not squeamish. I guess just because you physically could. That's true. I'm not squeamish at all. And I could. Because I've been to an event with you where there was a picture of maggots in someone's eye sockets. And you were like, oh, good. This is what we are here for. That's true. We went to that. Was it like a true crime event at a museum? Which was kind of geared towards kids. And I was like, where's all the gore? And when I finally found it, I got too excited to the point where it kind of freaked out the guy at the booth. It kind of freaks out a guy who looks at dead, decaying bodies all day.

i was expecting not necessarily gore but like i wanted to like learn about like actual i don't know yeah yeah it has a mixed mixed they didn't know exactly who their audience was anyway yeah after seeing you be like oh maggots and eyeballs this is what i'm in for i'm like i'm surprised samantha doesn't want to cut up dead animals and stuff them and keep them around as pets my like context for text when i think of taxidermy i think of like hunting like you send your deer you shot to the taxidermist and then you moat it on your wall which not not my aesthetic i'm just gonna say that but this is a look this documentary was a look into the world of taxidermy that I feel like not a lot of people know about. I certainly didn't know about it. I'm going to read the description.

Stuffed is a documentary feature film about the surprising and unique world of taxidermy. Through the eyes and hands of passionate, renowned artists across the world, the film allows the audience to dip into and explore this diverse subculture, where sculptors must also be scientists. It's a genre of art formed by a collection of people who have a fascination with nature matched only by their desire to protect it. They love animals and see life where others only see death. In an unexpected twist, Stuffed reveals the importance of preserving nature using taxidermy as its unlikely vehicle and the taxidermist as its wild driver. So I enjoyed this because I thought I learned a lot. The people that are featured are extremely interesting. I particularly liked the part.

about museum taxidermy which like looking back on it I'm like well of course that's what they do in museums they preserve animals and put them on display and their aim is to make it as realistic as possible so there's a whole science involved in museum taxidermy which I found really interesting there are two ladies that I think in California I don't quite remember they run like an all-female taxidermist business and they were trained in museum taxidermy and then they start this business where they make beautiful art like I would not consider taxidermy to be like my style necessarily but I was surprised at my reaction to seeing some of these pieces that they create which are absolutely beautiful just the way they pose them the way they create you know using other elements like plants and things like that it's really beautiful and I would say that the cinematography in this documentary is really good as well the way they shoot the different art pieces that are created um is really amazing um there's other there's like a push and pull between like those ladies who are very scientific and like want to make a taxidermy piece that's as realistic to nature as possible and like these other guys that are like complete characters who want to make the most beautiful piece possible and sometimes that involves changing like one example i can remember is they had a lion i think or a tiger or something and they made it honestly it doesn't matter but they made its mouth bigger because they wanted to look like it was more impactful when it was like roaring and that's something that like other people who are more scientific are against i don't know it's very interesting the people involved are super interesting they make

for great storytelling. I really liked it. I was surprised. It was like a look into a culture that I didn't really know existed. But I don't know. Those ladies are super cool. They have a very goth vibe. It's definitely right up our listeners alleys, I think. Check it out. OK, so I know you don't want like a moose on your wall, which same. I think that's gross. But why have you made a diorama of like mice having a tea party? You know, I kind of am into that. I don't know.

I don't know that I like the idea of displaying dead things like in my mind, even though I think that the art they've, that they create in this documentary, the examples they show are beautiful. I don't know how I'd feel about like being around that all day. Yeah. A friend of mine that I was going to visit once really wanted to sign us up for this taxidermy class. And I think it was just like a mouse, but I was still like, absolutely not. And she was shocked that I wouldn't be into that. And I was like, it just sounds disgusting that I'm going to like.

Yes. Like I'm going to get there and vomit. And they're going to be like, why did you come to this class? Well, I think probably 90% of it is gross and dirty and strenuous and very tedious. Especially like a mouse. Terrible chemicals. I don't know. It does just make me think of Norman Bates. But he was hot. So there's that. It's true.

That's probably a note to end on, I think. It's a good place to send you to stop. Yes. You've been listening to, perhaps it's you. You can find us on the social medias, Twitter, Instagram. We have a couple of Facebook groups because we're that cool. You can follow me on Twitter, live tweeting bad 90s Y2K thrillers I've been watching lately. You can see randos go, hey, what you doing? Thinking out loud?

Which happened to me the other day from someone who had literally just joined Twitter. It didn't seem to know how it works. Welcome to Twitter, old man. Yes. This is how this works. I'm live tweeting the movie I'm watching. And they were like, oh, cool. Twitter's wild. I was like, what is happening? Anyway, that's the thing. We have a website. Perhaps it's you.com. You can listen to the episodes there. You can contact us. You can see whatever recommendations I've bothered to put on the recommendations page.

you really got to send us your spooky stories. We're getting close. Oh my God. Yes. We don't have like, we have like no stories to do. So if we don't get enough, we may have to do something else. Yeah. So if you have a story about perhaps seeing a ghost or a demon, or you had a psychic dream, or I don't know, you were involved in some sort of fraud or anything unsolved mysteries related that way, let us know. That's perhaps it's you podcast, gmail.com.

If you want to support the show with your money and also get some cool shit, like a lot of bonus content, you can check us out on Patreon. Just search Perhaps It's You. You'll find us. $1 gets you a back catalog of, I don't know, like 30 episodes. So many episodes. Too many. The Unsolved Mysteries reboot. And as you probably know, Netflix has announced the next six episodes are coming out on October 19th, and we will be covering those as well. This month, we're talking to Rob, formerly from Our Strange Skies, who is an expert on aliens. We're going to be covering that episode of the reboot and the last one, which is super sad. Oh my god, so sad.

But those episodes are a lot of fun and our back catalog has some really interesting stuff. We talk about chicken people, which is a totally normal thing. We've managed to talk about the low files three times. Yeah, that's wild. It's a perfect number. More money and get like a coloring sheet emailed directly to you. All kinds of cool stuff. We're the best deal in town. Yeah, we really are. God, we're so unappreciated for the deals that we give. Is that all we have to talk about? I think it is. So, Americans, I'm going to need you to stay home. Take a break from solving any mysteries. There's a plague. If you're somewhere safe, fine. Go out. Solve some mysteries. Everybody else? No.

Only mysteries you can solve from your couch. No other mysteries. All right. Keep barking, everyone. Bye. Bye.