Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Okay. I've got my ears.
That'll help. How long is yours? Sure. Okay.
Hello, Patreon subscribers. Hello. Welcome. Welcome.
I have a treat for you today. Do you? Haley, what do you feel about chili? Do you like chili?
Depends. I like a spicy chili. Not really like a sweet chili. Same.
I also like a spicy chili. So I like like a Texas chili, like really spicy. Yeah. My aunt has a recipe and my mom makes it sometimes and my brother makes it.
For a sweet chili that has like black olives in it and things and it's good, but I just want more from it. Oh, like I'll eat a bowl of it and I'm like, oh that was nice. But I just want a little bit of zest. So I make mine pretty zesty.
It's pretty spicy. I think you'd like my chili. I'm sure I would. Yeah.
Yeah, it's hearty. It's good. I like chili. I like chili.
Just in general. I like chili. Me too. Well, I'm glad to do, but you may not like it after you heard the story.
Oh no. I have a idea. Yeah, I have a idea. All right.
So, you know, we're traveling to March of 2005. All right. So there's a lady name. I'm probably going to mispronounce your name.
It's fine. Aylia. Okay. She said that she ordered a Wendy's chili and suddenly, while eating it, she found a severed human finger.
Not a hair, not some of those things that you might find, but a severed human finger. Okay. So like, so when I find a hair in my food, when I'm out and about, I just do the thing where I pretend it's mine, because more than likely it probably is. Yep.
Just mine that's fallen out and it's just hair. Yep. And you just pick it out. Yep.
And you move on. It's kind of hard to pick out a finger. Maybe not so much with a finger. Yeah.
I'm going to go ahead and say no to that. I mean, I'll give you a finger if you want. Okay. No.
Okay. I don't need fingers at my chili. I can't believe you don't like this. So what we're saying?
Finger. Do we mean like just the tip? Or he said, sorry, I couldn't. I couldn't.
We mean like the whole finger. Like to the joint. Yeah. Or just a couple of whole whole finger here found.
Yeah. Human finger. Now we're talking. Okay.
A thumb. It says severed human finger. I'm not really sure. I think it's a thumb actually.
Okay. Be hard to hit your ride now. Yeah. Thumbs up.
Oh, that's a little thumb dexterity. You're going to struggle with it. It's really hard to hold your pencil now. Yeah.
Anyway, yeah. After she found that, she decided she was going to sue Wendy's. Obviously, you don't really anticipate when you order the chili that you're also going to find a human thumb in it. And that brings about the question.
Who the hell's that? Who's happy to get into the chili? Yeah. Like my first thought is not going to be, I mean, you know, don't know how I'm going to react when I find it on the chili.
But my first thought is not going to be, oh my God, I'm going to sue this restaurant. It's going to be, oh my God, who's thumb is this? Is there someone thumbless? Thumbless.
Like, which worker was it? What happened? Are they, are they, are you okay? Like, do we need medical attention to this restaurant?
Does someone agree? Have a thumb here? Did they murder someone and chop them up in little pieces and I just got the thumb? Like, I mean, rather than other parts of the body, I guess, but it's exactly.
But I found the nose. Don't order their, but I'm worried for safety of whoever's thumb that is. Exactly. And what a crazy story.
I actually remember this story very well. Can we sit that 2005? You're probably in elementary school. I was in third grade.
It was 21. Anyway, so it was determined after an investigation by the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner's Office that the finger did not at all come from a Wendy's employee or from anybody at the facilities that provided like the ingredients that made the chili. How can you tell that? Did you talk to all of these?
Well, I guess it was a lot of interviewing and a lot of all of those things. They just lined everybody up and said, hold up your fingers. Give me the thumbs up. Oh, all right.
So early reports that suggested that the finger was fully cooked. But the coroner's office concluded that it was not consistent with an object that had been cooked in chili at around 170 degrees for so long, which in this case would have been around three hours. So it kind of seems like it was just dumped in there. Which makes you think it would have come from somebody in the restaurant that the chili's already prepared.
Right. It's like before they put a lid on it. They just throw a thumb in there and the thumb landed. This chili's real good.
Thumbs up. Cut that thumb off. Yeah. Just bite your nose.
Cut off your hands. I don't like it. Yeah. So things about this story started to seem really, really weird.
So they started investigating Ayla herself and she had a home in Las Vegas. They didn't disclose any details about the investigations, but quickly a rumor started to spread that Ayla had a dead aunt. Oh, no. Who might somehow be related in this case?
Although Ayla denied that anyone in her family had recently died. She claimed to the police that she treated her family like terrorists, acted against her violently, but neighbors like seemed to downplay any events like apparently there was a lot of drama going on in their family, a lot of conflict. Here's the thing. If there's a lot of conflict in your family and your aunt dies, wouldn't it be easy to just, but then you ask yourself what's the point of that?
Just to sue Wendy's? Right. If you get some attention on yourself, weird. So it was later discovered that she had filed numerous lawsuits in the past against various retail establishments.
So Wendy's is one of the many. Oh, so she's actively litigious. Yes. She was arrested April 21st, 2005, so about a month later, and she was taking to the Clark County Detention Center where she was charged with felony attempted grand larceny and grand theft.
The grand theft charge was allegedly in connection with a fraudulent sale of a San Jose mobile home that happened in 2002. So just lump it all together? Kind of. Yeah.
Like why the heck not? So it was actually owned by her live-in boyfriend at the time, and according to a statement filed by the police, they tempted grand larceny charge was connected to the Wendy's chili case. Yeah. Okay.
So it's like, you know what? I was lumping all year. Let's just do it. Let's just do it.
Let's do it. Okay. Excuse me. So she had inflicted around $2.1 million in losses for Wendy's because here's a thing.
If you hear that there's a thumb in chili, you ain't going to go to Wendy's anymore. No, like, oh, forget that. You're out there. You're out there.
You're lost tons of money. Yeah. And so prosecutors said that Ayla was pretty much nothing but a scam artist. She was litigious.
All she did was file lawsuits. And according to court records, test indicated that this finger hadn't even been cooked in the chili, that it was, yes, it was a human finger, but it basically been stuck there. Whose finger was this? At the press conference.
We'll get there. Oh, God. On April 22nd, 2005, the Wendy's franchise holder, Joseph Desmond, urged people, please, and I go, please come back to Wendy's because we serve wonderful hamburgers and shakes and everything else. Wendy's announced that on the weekend, it would offer free frosty shakes to the Bay Area customers to show goodwill and commitment in the wake of the investigation.
Wendy's later expanded its offer to free frosty's nationwide. Oh, I'm sorry, but I do love good frosty's. I do also love good frosty. I'm a little lactose intolerant, so I can't do too much, but not too bad.
So about a month later, police stated that they had identified the finger as belonging to Brian Paul Rossier, an associate of Ayla's husband. Rossier had lost his finger in an industrial accident and an asphalt company in 2004. Okay. And had subsequently get this sold the finger to Ayla's husband so that he could settle a debt that he had with him.
What? So I guess if you incurred debt with somebody, you just give him part of your body and we're good to go. It sounds like the mafia? It sounds like the mall.
My finger fell off anyway, and I guess maybe Ayla and her husband had had this thing going on. Well, maybe we could put this body part in here. So okay, your debts are absolved as long as you give us your thumb. You sell it to...
I feel like it's a thing. Was that a mob thing or a mafia thing? We don't sell a bush kneecaps kind of thing. Yeah, you'll find your finger off and you're all sitting on the mail or something.
Yeah. So when you get the staff kind of where we're at? Apparently police received a tip from an unknown caller on the... There was a Wendy's hotline.
Of course there is. Hi, welcome to Wendy's. Would you like a frosty and a baked potato? So it was discovered that the caller was actually Rossier, the man who had lost it and then given, you know, sold the thumb.
So in 2005, in September of 2005, Ayla and her husband, Jaime, pleaded guilty to conspiring to fall false claim and attempted grand theft. Ayla was banned for life from all Wendy locations. We've had her life banned for life. She was also sentenced to nine years in state prison.
Her husband, who supplied her with the finger... Oh my god. Can I see a finger? Oh my god.
No. Her husband got 12 years in four months. My mother's a finger. Yeah.
I feel like her's crime is worse. I do too. What does he get? What does he get 12 years and she gets nine?
I guess because he had legal parts. Maybe. But maybe then he was allowed to go to Wendy's. Maybe.
She appealed to reduce her sentence as saying that the decision to impose five years for aggravating circumstances was based on fact-finding and how to jury conclusions. This is what the judge ended up saying. Like, no, we rationalize this and you spend time in jail. So interesting part about this is that it turned out that Wendy's actually lost about 21 million dollars in revenue.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. She served four years of her sentence and in 2013 she received another prison sentence for something that was unrelated.
But she again had filed a false police report and she was in possession of a firearm and as a previously convicted felon you're not allowed to do so she reached her probation and she had to go back and serve some time. You know what's interesting about this story is that in history like there have been other cases of this. Of putting fingers in chili? Well, in like weird like lawsuits of things that people did on purpose so that they could file these lawsuits and Aila had prior to this filed 13 civil lawsuits.
Oh my gosh. And all over the country like in California and Nevada. In 1998 she brought a lawsuit against the San Jose Law Offereda Review newspaper saying that it was sexual harassment. That's something that happened.
There was sexual harassment. Oh. She lost this lawsuit. She also had one against General Motors and the Goodyear Tire Company saying that there was prejudice and yeah.
Yeah. She also filed a claim against the fast food restaurant El Pollo Loco. She actually won this one and she got $30,000 saying that her daughter whose name was Genesis contracted Salmonella poisoning from eating there which I mean come on most restaurants you could get Salmonella for. I have food poisoning from the two.
The Ryan's food bar. So and then in 2013 she made international headlines again after being sentenced to two years in prison for being an accessory to as a felon. Yeah. Yeah.
In 2012 her son Guadalupe accidentally shot himself in the ankle. Oh my gosh. So she probably used his ankle for something. Oh no.
Probably put it in Chile. Okay. And at that point her son was not allowed to use gun because he was on parole so you know then he got in trouble. She failed filed a false police report telling officers that her son had been shot in the ankle by two men.
Yeah. Eventually he admitted no he had shot himself and mom was arrested as well as him. He a monkey. Gotcha.
So that's the Wendy's chili. So I remember her on Good Morning America talking about like I opened my chili and there was a thumb and everybody was horrified and like we're never going to Wendy's again and then it came out that she was a fraud. I'll never forget that story. I love Wendy's.
Yeah. I like Wendy's too. Um let's try to think. I haven't had them in a really long time.
They have a good um now it's the the pub burger. It's all like a pretzel. That sounds good. I've been there in a hot minute um I fast food of choice.
The cookhouse. Oh another good option. I'm in the south. So if you all have never had cookout um they're affordable which I mean Taco Bell used to be affordable.
And now they're like Taco Bell's like 13 dollars for a meal and they're like I'm sorry what? Yeah. I'm gonna have to mortgage the house to go buy a taco. Um but anyway you know they're affordable and you can get these little trays and they have these things called cheese bites that are cheese curds they're phenomenal.
I never had those people say their milkshakes are good. I again I'm like to a share my milkshakes. Yeah I get a tray usually get um cheese case. Yeah.
Same um pash puppies. Another good double order pash puppies. Sometimes I do a double order of the cheese and I get a huge curd. Usually get a giant bite.
Oh cool. Actually so I am drinking out of a cookout cup. Let's see that. Which had that coconut um probably a week.
I just keep cleaning it out and I put water in it. Oh okay. Yeah yeah. I cleaned it out.
I'm glad. It's handy. Yeah. Can we talk about maybe just getting you a like a metal water bottle right over there?
I have a lot of water water. No no no no no no no no. The harvow are working right now. Have a lot of water bottles but I'm very particular.
I'm strong. Same. And here's the thing. I have one before and it had a straw that was kind of built in that really didn't move.
It gets real dirty and it's very hard to clean. So I finally just had to toss it. I have one that I have that has a straw. It's like the Stanley Cup dupe.
Yes from Timu? No from Amazon. Okay. It's in my car.
I'll show you one of these tonight. Okay. I'll probably be in front. I had someone recently show me one that they had.
It was actually a dupe from the Dollar General. It was pretty, really pretty. So I'm thinking tomorrow I need to hit the DG and see if I have it. Yeah.
I've been to the DG in a minute. Yeah, actually honey there surprisingly. There's one in every corner. Oh no.
All right. Well that was fun. All right you all chillies. You know, watch out for what you eat and watch out for litigious women.
Cheers. Sounds crazy. All right. Have a good one and we will see you next time.
Bye. Bye.