Welcome to the show. So years ago we embarked on a strange conversation that continues today. Everybody's aware that serial killers get a lot of attention in the media, despite the fact that they are a minuscule portion of people committing homicide. It's distressing to know that, despite the hundreds of millions being spent to try to apprehend these monsters, a lot of them get away. It reminds me of the current stories that's happening right now at the University of Idaho with those for students who are found stabbed in their home and no suspects, yet nobody knows is this a serial killer? Well, there are a lot of them out there historically that either never got caught or we don't even know their true identities. Let's dive into serial killers on the loose, from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. His Drew is riddled with unexplained events and you can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Bett, my name is the coming bed. You are unit that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. But no ordinary episode of stuff they don't want you to know. I mean, arguably ever have had an ordinary episode stuff they don't want you I haven't seen it, I haven't heard it. Uh, so this will be another extraordinary episode. It's different in that we are returning to a topic we examined in the past at length, the dark, murky world of crime, specifically homicide, specifically the rare wrist and perhaps most well known form of homicide. I really want to insert that sound effect from Law and Order dank dun, and just imagine the phrase dick wolf uh blossoming in your head, but not just dick wolves blossoming everywhere. Yeah, yeah, it could be a person in real life. But we don't want to mess with your imagination or impose limits on your creativity. So whatever you think when you're hear the phrase that was blossoming in your head, just run wild. You can write to us about it. We might not be able to read it on air. We've examined serial killers in the past, boy have weay, and we are picking up where we left off in our previous episode on serial Killers Uncaught and otherwise in this episode. To start off, we're gonna do a little bit of review. I guess you can call it from the last episode. What did we talk about in that one, Matt Well, In truth, we've this is like episode or five in a way, just because we've covered specific serial killers and then other serial killers that disappeared or were never apprehended. So we had the original night stalker that we went over in some serious depth, which was terrifying. I had nightmares for a while that the guy was out there listening to us and then was going to come and find us. Also unapprehended. Agreed, Yes, the Highway of Tears another situation where that was one with the truck drivers in the Native Americans, right, Yes, I think Canada and uh more serial killer or killers that have not been apprehended there, and we for a Highway of Tears. We partnered with How Stuff Works auto experts Scott Benjamin, who is quite the true crime officionado and as Noel mentioned in our first episode on various uncaught serial killers, killers who were on the loose and could be alive today, may even be alive as we're recording this episode. Uh we uh. We had Christian Sager from Stuff to Blow Your Mind come onto the show, Friend of the Show, and we looked at several different killers, the new Bedford Highway killer Lisbon ripper Pedro Lopez, who was I don't know if you can assign a value, but in terms of numbers of people killed, he's by far the highest, and the victims that he chose all children. What does it take to earn the nickname the ripper? I just you know, can you casually do that? Can I even all the ripper? I guess if you you know, if we're back in lime wire days, if I ripped sick beats, does that count? That could count? That could count. Usually in the case of murderer, Uh, it's assigned by journalists, people kind of coin. It's sort of a rush to like be the one to give the clever name to by the at large murderer. And that's why there are a lot of the insert geographical location here stranglers, a lot of the insert rippers. You ever wonder about the ones that don't stick? Yeah, some sad sack journalists that just kind of was really trying his best. But then so you know, the the other one took off and he was just left in the dirt. Yeah, yeah, I think about that too, because I could see the pitch meetings where they're trying to divide the line between is this a workable name for a serial killer or does this sound like a DC supervillain? Yeah, well you see that in movies a lot too, or there in the newsroom and the grizzled old you know, editor was like, no, we needs something that bleeds. It bleeds, it leads. Come on something that will capture them imaginations. How about Bend the Ripper. That sounds good. And I was like, well, what what about the bone collector? Yes, and they're like, that would work. That's a great I like the way you're thinking, Darren, but we gotta have a bone on the scene disembowler. Right, it's such a weird thing to think about that those are a little exaggerated about what would happen. But but yeah, pretty pretty similar to things that are actually happening while on the streets there are people being murdered. Well, there's a certain callousness to this kind of reporting. You can't deny. Well, there's a callousness I would argue to reporting in general, especially in the West, because remember how post Nixon. Well none of us are old enough to remember ride after post Nixon, but all of us listening now are the facto post Nixon. As soon as the Watergate scandal happens, then people began just saying, you know how we make something really sell attached the word gate to it. Right, It's been happening ever since. It's been happening ever since. We're apparently in the midst of stupid water Gate right now. Stupid water that's what John Oliver is calling. Have you guys heard about the Oliver effect? That such a sidebar? Apparently last week Tonight, which I think is a great show, has a noticeable and statistically significant effect on legislation. They call it the Oliver effect, and not just in the US, even in New Zealand. Man, what was that the one with the eminem Yeah, where they ripped off it. They did a they did a copyright free impressed impersonation of Lose Yourself the instrumental track, and then they had a bunch of is it offensive to say Kiwi or is that just like say brit Well if if if it is, then that's a shame because that's also a really good key for how they pronounced words. Yes, everything is kind of like Kiwi. Sorry, Speaking of ripping things off, how about the Lisbon Ripper, Right, yes, the Lisbon Ripper was one of the unfortunately many people who got the ripper added to their name, and then there was also the Craigslist Ripper, all the Long Island serial killer. What's troubling about this is, as we covered these, none of those crimes ms have been tied to a person. Those people remain apprehended and not got us thinking what else is out there? Because we said in the first episode we only scratched the surface, right, So today we are returning to the grim, morbid minds of serial murderers. And I mean just a slight disclaimer. This stuff is disturbing, unsettling, upsetting stuff, and if we get a little light with it occasionally, I swear to you it's literally just to keep us from going insane. But if we do have younger listeners out there, maybe parents who are listening with the younger ones, I'm not saying don't listen to it. I'm just saying, use caution, be aware. Uh So, first things first, we want to define what makes a serial killer. This is a troublingly controversial definition. The FBI's definition of what exactly makes a murderer serial killer has fluctuated over the past decades. We know the term serial killer was coined in the mid nineteen seventies by a guy named Robert Wrestler. Uh not spelled in like a fun wrestling way r E S s l e R, because you know, I don't know if people would take it seriously if he was Mr. Wrestler, it's like Mr. Jack Potts, though it would be Robbie the Wrestler the former. He was the former director of FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and he chose the word serial because people in the UK and law enforcement called these types of murders crimes in a series, and because he grew up watching serialized films. Before this, these criminals were sometimes known as mass murderers, or the act was called stranger on stranger crime, which doesn't really cover it, because a mass mur could be anything from an explosive device or war or war lord that's a great point, or a spree killer who was just like I'm mad about something, so I'm gonna take it out on everyone in this McDonald's. And I guess contained within that serial killer moniker is a lot of psychology as well, in terms of how they choose their victims with their m o is how they go about planning these crimes. So there's much more premeditation involved in being a serial killer than saying being a mass murder or a spree killer, any other kind of random or accidental killing. Right, Like so many people who kill someone in the course of trying to commit another crime successfully, bank robbery, burglary, am out of postage stamp fraud, that's the one I keep going back to. I still can't believe that's a crime. But we do have these hard and fast definitions or qualities of serial killers that that we want everybody to be clear up. It comes from the Crime Classification Manual, and it says that a serial killer is someone who a commits at least three murders, be in at least three different locations, see encounter some kind of cooling off period in between murders, so stops murdering for a while and then and we already know that definition is imperfect because there are serial killers, like, how do we define that location? Right? We are there are serial killers who routinely killed people within their homes. Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, uh I can not remember his name, but that monster who had been at a torture truck. Also, by the way, if you check out when you check out the FBI's classification of serial killers on the interstate, you will rethink rest stops in this country. We also know there's a difference in the way that the media portrays serial killers versus the way these people act. Sure, so you know we've seen, like I hesitate to use the word favorite, but what are some of the most memorable serial killers in fiction? Animal lector right? That's one, Yes, that was the main one. I was gonna say. Henry Portrait of a serial killer is a good one, pretty like a very solitary depiction of sort of like this lone wolf serial killer situation. That's a good one. American psycho. American psycho is great. Yeah, and of course psycho, oh yes, and also psycho. So we know that in real life serial killers typically work alone. Is very very rare for them to cooperate, uh, And they typically kill strangers who fit the m o of whatever it is they're into, and they kill for the sake of killing as opposed to you know, crime a passion. According to a recent FBI study that's been approximately four hundred serial killers in the US in the past century, and they've killed anywhere from winning five hundred to almost four thousand victims. And back to the whole aspect of media involved in this, we've got a depiction that is created by the media versus reality. So first off, you know, just for get the tired old, romanticized dexter or hannibal electric tropes. There's no way to really tell from outward appearances whether someone is or is not serial killer, but we can use psychology to profile people a bit from what we know. More than of serial killers are male, Caucasian and in their twenties or thirties, and many criminologists believe serial killers also experience three very specific behaviors in childhood, known as the McDonald triad. Matt, what's that about, Yes, Noel, the McDonald triad are three things, bed, wedding, arson, and cruelty to animals. So it's strange to me that these are the three things, because you imagine, cruelty to animals is kind of a ramp up to cruelty to humans. Arson shows that you don't really care about the consequences of an action like that. Possibly you don't care and then bed wedding that feels like an outlier to me. So it's more degree to which or the age of which someone stops involuntarily wedding the bed, So it's not bed wedding in general, that's a very common thing to people when they're learning to use restrooms in the way that our society says is correct, it's a bell curve of not wedding the bed, I think starting out early. And but you know, if you know, some people will involuntarily h urinate if we're just gonna be dry medical about it, well into their teens. And this under the McDonald tread and bended by McDonald, of course, is to him one of the primary clues to the problem. We should say that, like many other things, is controversial because it's always tough to measure people who don't want to be measured or found. Which even goes back to the earlier statistics. You know what we said of serial killers or male what that probably means is eight of apprehended serial killers' and so we do know that there are a few other observable commonalities. Serial killers are likely to have come from broken damaged home situations, to have been abused whether that is through physical or sexual activity or through neglect like chaining someone up in an empty room. Uh. And we also know that you can't really You probably have met somebody at your school or at your job with people joke about that person being a serial killer. We have a few here which I won't name, But the truth of the matter is there's not a single observable like outward personality fingerprint for the UH for the proof positive of a serial killer. As some might be shy and introverted, others might be super gregarious like Ted Bundy, an outgoing But the crazy thing is, you know, I think we've talked about this on the show before Ted Bunny represented himself in court and he almost one. He was he was. We had said this earlier before. Uh, Matt, I think you phrased them as people who would charmed the pants off of you or your your head. But we also know that they're not created equally. That there may be a tendency toward higher than average intelligence, but there will also be people who have lower than average IQ scores and the i Q of course I can hear people typing the emails. Now know the i Q test is not a great measure of intelligence have different processes, different motivations. But we do know that there is another type of classification system that groups people by their acts and uh nold, do you want to break this down one? You know? I do? Ben Ronald dam and Stephen T. Holmes attempted to break down these differences with a classification system called the homes typology. So the home typology groups killers accordingly. Uh. Serial killers can be activo um, those who kill quickly, or they can be process focused those who kill slowly. Um. For act focused killers simply killing the act of killing itself is what does the job. That's the whole point, the whole point, um. And within this group, you've got two types, the visionary and the missionary. Missionary is not as fun as it sounds. Well, let's get to it. Let's get to it. The visionary murders because they hear voices or have visions that direct them to do so. Um. So that this is you know a typical scenario where you know the devil made me do it, or you know you have a voice in your head that's whispering to you to do horrible acts my mother. Yeah, yeah, Often demonic, divine or departed influential relations right, like in Psycho Freezing, that's a spoiler. But I think Psycho is about seventy years old, so I think we're okay. I actually had an argument with my girl for the other day. She said, it's never are cool to spoil anything, and I'm like, we've been over this. I've got it's okay. The community says five years at the statue limentage is like, I don't care. I just think you want to spoil things because it makes you sound like you know at all. That sounds like you guys were ultimately arguing about something else. Probably. But then there's the missionary murderers, and as you said, Ben, not as fun as it sounds at all. The missionary murders because um, he or she believes that they are meant to get rid of a particular group of people. Either I will murder every Blockbuster manager. Yeah, that's pretty much been been accomplished already, or or there are people who would say, for instance, um, due to wrongs or due to my divine understanding, this uh specific type of person, this could be race or ethnicity motivated. Uh, they think they must be cleansed of the earth, even as we're gonna see later on things they have to do with monthly cycles, hair color. Yeah, there's any kind of things that would fit into the and it could even fall into the category of like a vigilante that's like killing you know, doctors, an abortion clinic or something like that, or anybody that the scene congregating abortion clinics, so to kind of pick out and like say that I'm doing the lord's work, for example, or to have some sort of like crusade mentality, yeah exactly. And then the process focused serial killers a little bit different. These are the ones you typically see in like the grizzly gruesome film depictions where someone's doing some ritualistic, gnarly stuff. Yeah exactly. So this would be you know, for them, the risk of sounding glib, it's about the journey. They don't the they don't necessarily get off on the death unless it occurs under a very specific process or workflow. Would be a sadist, Yeah, a sadist um. And and they have three different types, just like this visionary missionary. There are three different types of headonists. Uh. And then there is a separate special category called power seeking killers. So the three types of headness are aiming for lust, thrill, and gain, and they're they're pretty self explains to where lust killers derive sexual pleasure from it. Thrill killers get a kick kind of endorphin rush. Game killers believe they will profit in some way. And these these are not exclusive categories, but people tend to fall more into one than the other. Like A. J. H. Holmes was making money from ripping people off in his murder mansion, but he was also clearly into killing people in a myriad of torturous ways. Power killers want to play god, to be in charge of life or death, and many times, um this would be the case of you know, the the nurses who are discovered to have been slowly poisoning patients over decades and in the past were very hard to catch. Then you get into classifications of serial killers by their organizational skills and their social skills, which feels again it all feels so strange trying to organize the people into the groups, but it makes a lot of sense when you're hunting serial killers right as law enforcement. Um. So they can either be organized or distor disorganized. And that's when you look at the type of crime scene, how it's set up. Then you've got non social or a social Uh. This is going to depend on whether or not they exclude themselves from society or whether a society excludes them. And then uh, the majority of identified serial killers are organized and non social, so they don't want to hang. But they do have a plan. They do have a plan, and they like things to be a very specific way. And here's some silver lining which is gonna be We actively went through when when the three of us working out this episode and tried to find silver linings, ladies and gentlemen. So one of our first silver linings is that serial killers are fall are far less common than the media and culture might have you believe. The FBI and other experts estimate that at any given time they're anywhere from fifty too well three hundred active serial killers in the US. Stuff to prove those numbers for certain. And there's one thing for sure, one of the only things that we know. They're out there somewhere beneath the pale moon line, dancing or sometimes just picking up the mail from the post. Yeah, don't trust people who go to their mailboxes at night. That should be archery d very true. And guess what we're gonna tell you all about it right after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. At the top of the show, we rambled off several different serial killers that remain uncaught, hanging out somewhere, maybe they died, maybe will just never find them. But guess what, there are quite a few more, and they remain uncought today, or at least their crimes remain unsolved. So so many of these people out there, we can't cover them all in a single episode. We're probably going to do a third one of these at some point, or maybe a separate show just about crime and serial killers. Oh that would be good, or just a specific show on each one. This doesn't mean that these murderers are necessarily anonymous. In several cases, investigators are convinced that they have discovered the identity of a given killer, but did not have sufficient evidence to make an official or clean conviction. And that's that's what happens when you're on the side of the technically, speaking to good guys, you have to obey rules that the others do not have to obey. And in other cases, a string of murders by an unidentified killer may actually be the work of another known murderer. And here's where we get to our first example of serial killers that remain on the loose Part two. So first we're going to talk about a killer by the name of Bible John, which, of getta say, is pretty powerful name. It sounds like a villain and preacher. Bible John is believed to have murdered three young women after meeting them at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, Scotland between nineteen nineteen sixty nine. Uh. There was very little doubt that these murders were all carried out by the same person. All three victims were women, they'd all been strangled, specifically with their pantyhose or their nylons uh, and they were all beaten to death. And the name Bible John is derived from the single suspect in the case. The last victims shared a taxi with her sister and a man who said his name was John was quoting from the Bible at them. But because this technical remains unsolved doesn't mean they're suspects, right. Several experts believe the Bible John murders were in fact committed by a known and convicted serial killer with the much less intriguing name. Peter Tobin So Tobin Um is a convicted Scottish serial killer and sex offender who as we speak is serving three life sentences um with what they call over there a whole life order which is basically like life without the possibility of for role at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between in two thousand and six with a very similar m O and a whole life order. You know, it sounds like a weird sign on for a series, but it is. It is something that this government will do to prevent someone from leaving the prison system in Europe, in Eastern or in Western Europe at least by and large is much more centered on rehabilitation rather than you know, attribution or using prisoners as cheap labor. Sure the main thing in the US. Right, So this is this guy super messed up. He targeted women who are menstruating, young women who we would found, who we found at this ballroom, and he would this is the kind of thing we're talking about where a serial killer can charm you where he would meet you meet these women at the bar and then essentially go home with them or you know, go off with them to have a private moment or something, and then he would turn you know, sounds like this guy is the very definition of a missionary serial killer. If he was targeting menstruating women, it's like he was singling them out for what he interpreted to be some sort of uncleanliness or impurity, I suppose, and then you know, wanted to call them from the population. Yeah, it's a possibility when you when you get into some of the rules and laws that you can find in books of the Bible, like Leviticus or something. If you take those two seriously, you can get into some dangerous belief and thought territory there. Oh, and another thing, he took the handbags of these women, He would like dump all the stuff out of the handbag and then well, who knows if he actually took it, or if he hit it or got rid of it or something. Fetishes and relics and trophies are very common in a lot of serial killer cases. Luckily he only got the three. But you can imagine, you know, I'm gone unchecked for long enough time, you might have found his den and there'll just be like a pile of handbags. And if and there may well be and if this Bible John is the same person as Peter Tobin. What's morbidly fascinating here is that we may be able to trace the evolution the increasing sophistication of a serial killer. It's sort of similar to the red Dragon cases Uh mentioned in the Animal Lecter series. This brings us so so technically, just to sum it up, technically, Bible John remains unconvicted or unapprehended, but a growing number of investigators convinced that this is actually Peter Tobin. You just can't prove it, right, because in the nineteen sixties there was nowhere near the level of technological sophistication when it came to investigating DNA, preserving bodies, et cetera. But this is not the only example. Yeah, and next we've got the Oakland County child killer A k A. Sorry to chuckle, it's just this is kind of fight since I got like a villain on the tick or something, the babysitter that just makes me shiver, and I shiver rarely. Yeah, I know, I see I guess again, I'm doing that thing where I'm getting light with it, because if you don't, then it's like it's almost too much to handle. Defense MECHANI is pretty pretty cruel. Um. So the babysitter um concerns serial killer, a serial killer or killers active in Oakland County, Michigan for thirteen months between February nine seven six in March nine. Yeah, and this person or group is responsible for the murder of four children, two boys and two girls between the ages of ten and twelve. So particularly grizzly, and the victims were held captive between four and nineteen days before all of numbers slain. Their bodies were always found wearing the same clothes in which they were last seen, all quote neatly laid out on the ground in various locations around this place in Michigan, Oakland County. Um. And the babysitter moniker comes from this process of cleaning the bodies after they were finished with whatever they were doing with them. Um in his thought that it was postmortem that they were cleaned like fingernails clipped and everything. Right. I bet there was no evidence of sexual assault. There was, Man, I hate even talking about this. Don't don't listen to this if you're a kid. Um. There was tearing specifically on the boys. So, yes, so this was a process killer. It sounds like it is. The only reason I say I said that was because it makes me think of like I think things I've seen in crime shows where a lot of times the killers when they when they lay the body out with such care and precision, they're almost like, you know, trying to honor the body and buying it. So I'm wondering. But but I guess there was sexual motive. Huh. There appears to be. And when you start looking at the suspects, well, again, these are suspects that as the Internet has grown and there's more and more information out there and people can become a sleuth online, a lot of this stuff has come to light and also from the parents of some of the victims. So what what are Can you tell us a little bit about the suspects? Sure? So one of them, uh is Christopher Bush? Said? This is this guy's name. He was the son of woman named Harold Lee Bush at the time was the executive financial director of General Motors. Very well to do suspect. Yeah, a family of well to do people. Um, let's see. At the time, there was this place called Brother Paul's Children's Mission, which was located on North Fox Island in Lake Michigan. So I don't want to get too much in the geography. But if if you're looking at a picture of Michigan and you're just looking at the north nor northern tip of it, if you go a little bit to the west, that's where North and South Fox Islands are. And this was a front for an underground child porn network where all the terrible things that happened to children within one of those they were occurring on this island. And there was an investigation into this, this ring of people who were making child pornography, and this guy, Christopher Bush was caught up in it. They commiscated eight rolls of film from this guy. He was twenty five at the time, so young enough to be very active, yes, But then you know he ends up getting arrested again for some more criminal sexual conduct involving children with someone with some other dude named Gregory Green. But where it gets a little crazy here is that Gregory Green ended up being held on a seventy five dollar bond. But this guy, Christopher he got off every He didn't get out completely, but he got away with a one thousand dollar bond. And you know, you imagine having powerful, rich family maybe that helped out there. So he was arrested in February of seventy seven, but the murders continue till March. Yes, and there was a sheriff, like a nearby sheriff department. They got a phone call that this guy was seen by just a neighbor or something at a cottage I guess that the family owned that was quite a bit north of where the family's main house was. And this person knew that this guy bush was not supposed to be around miners, around kids, and he was apparently hanging out at this cottage with them. And this was on March nineteen. And here's the thing. The final victim, Timothy King, went missing from March sixteen until March twenty two when his body was found. And what happened to Christopher bush Well ben According to his death certificate, this guy died by committing suicide on November twentieth, nineteen seventy eight, when he was twenty seven years old, so just about a year after these killings had stopped, these four killings, and I don't know, it's not weird, I guess, but his body was cremated and the house where he lived with his parents was then sold off very soon after. You can understand why survivors would want to forget that memory. Yes, even just from the previous you know times, the things he had gotten in trouble for right, even if he wasn't the killer of these children. And he's not the only suspect. No. Next we have Francis D. Sheldon, who was a well known multi millionaire actually from an immensely wealthy family who were the sole owners of North Fox islandber that island pretty pretty high up on the hog. If you own an island, no, I do not. This is the island that had brother Paul's children's mission on it, that was a front for a child porn ring. Oh my gosh, interesting yikes. Sheldon fled the country to the Netherlands to avoid charges of sexual misconduct to adolescent boys from Port her On told family members that Francis Sheldon had molested and photographed them on this island. Evidence taken from child porn magazines showed children with a background identified as being in the North Fox Island right, verifying that the boys had been to the island, And there were reports of Sheldon's death that surfaced in nine um and a Michigan warrant for him was canceled in May of nineteen at with state police reporting quote exceptional clearance, suspect is dead and cannot be prosecuted, but was obviously involved, right. I mean that's you're starting to see a picture here of perhaps a group of people who were, you know, doing terrible things to children on an island and then possibly which is Pedophile rings are unfortunately often dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories, but there is hard evidence that they have existed. One needn't look no further than Jimmy Saville and wonder which of his current living friends will be posthumously exposed as yet another monster. Just a side note, and most importantly this ties into a future episode. No spoilers, Uh. There are people who are concerned that Sheldon and some of his associates did not actually die, but that they switched identities. And we will have an upcoming episode that looks at how possible, plausible or impossible implausible it is to fake one's death. It's gonna be fascinating. I can't wait for you to hear it. Over the years, several lawsuits have been filed against the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office by the victims families. Most of these come from a guy named Barry King, the father of Timothy King, and deal with what are called Freedom of Information Act or f o I, a request because he feels like he has been denied the information regarding the Timothy King case, specifically by law enforcement. Yeah, pertaining to the suspects that we outlined there. And just a side note this, if you want to learn more about this, I would caution you away from it just because it is a dark, dark place to go. But if you do want to um, there are places you can find information. Katherine Broad who is one of the sisters of the victims. Uh, Timothy King was her brother. She's got a website Katherine Broad b r O a d dot blog. There's a documentary called Decades of Deceit that was produced by the King family. And there's a Reddit user named o c c K Throwaway that made these four really long in depth posts where you can their links galore there and you can just follow the rabbit hole to your own insanity. And speaking of insanity and rabbit holes, let's continue a bit further. Uh, Well, I believe you will like this moniker, the freeway Phantom. You know, it's a shame that it went to such a monstrous person, because I would love to, you know, have a friend known as the freeway Phantom because they were good at a smuggling course, like in Smoking the Bandit or something. Yeah, are they ghost rode the whip like to perfection Phantom? Oh? You know there could be a whole phantom squad of Phantom cadre. Well, here's what happened. In this case. An unidentified assailant abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled six female youths in Washington, d C. From April of seventy one through September seventy two. The victims were all African American girls. They were all between the ages of ten and eighteen. The phantom left hand written notes too, and statements from victims before their deaths heavily implied the killer was a white male, and it was very very hard to track this. In these cases, allegations of police UH not putting in enough effort repeatedly surfaced. We saw some similar things like this with the Atlanta UH strangulations of child murders, possibly right for which in Atlanta, Wayne Williams is currently incarcerated. So this is a case where investigators feel like they had the person they traced. This is very grizzly stuff. They they started looking at people who would have similar m os. Right, that's the first thing you do. Has is there any legal is there anybody in the legal system that has been proven to already have either the wherewithal or the motivation to commit these sorts of horrendous acts. And they immediately gravitated towards members of a group called the Green Vega Game. Law enforcement officials involved with the case believed that four men who are involved in hundreds hundreds of rapes from nineteen sixty to nine seventy three were implicated in the child murders, but they weren't convicted, and as he said, they were collectively just four guys collectively responsible for these crimes in d c and in Maryland, and they were also involved in abductions. So the police Individu Julie interviewed these gang members and then they visit a prison in Lorton, Virginia, where the gang members were serving sentences due to unrelated convictions. Right during the interviews, this is weird. One gang member initially implicated another member and said, well, this guy said he did it, and here's how he told me he did it. And the thing is, uh, both inmates were serving time at this same prison, and the one who was giving the info said, well, I'll tell you the whole story, but only if I remain anonymous. So he identified the inmate who told him the story, the time and the location of the crime, and certain specific details which were not provided to the public, but which were known only as far as the cops could figure out to the detectives and to the freeway phantom. So the information checked out. So they found their guy, right, the guy that this one per when they interviewed, pointing at right. Yeah, but that's that's like, um, it's not quite a smoking gun, but that is very close to smoking gun, where you know, if if just the investigators and then right, because there's no you can't really count on somebody wild guessing specific Here's the problem though, here's why he's still on the list. Because they had amassed all this evidence and they were ready to move, but then something happened. The case files were lost and then like everything gone, poof, poof, goodbye. How does that even happen. Isn't that somebody was inside right just in the seventies. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's still all paper, all paper, So I mean they you know, and I'm sure they have duplicates on some level, but it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to have them find their way into are some sort. But it sounds like intentional to me, is I guess that is what I'm getting at, you know, because all of the files, you know, especially when you consider how much paperwork they had to generate in the course of this kind of investigation, people with you know, stacks and stacks of rap sheets alone, unrelated and they all know each other and they're like children. So of course the community to this day doesn't buy that. This gets me starting to think about serial killer cults. Yeah, yeah, he is. Well I don't want to think about that, you guys. More nightmare stuff for me. Well, if they exist, they don't want you to think about it either. Good for they put hair on your chest, No they don't, you're smooth, smooth, baby like chest. I don't want them to put peep in my bed because then I might be a serial killer. Yeah, so that's that's what happened with that one, But we have next. Can I say this one because I just love saying yeah, yeah, give it a shot. The Maniac of of Ah spiritsk the Maniac of Novah spears. So this is uh, this is an interesting case. This is more recent. There were seventeen women murdered between two thousand six very specific m o in a town in Russia called The victims were found on the outskirts of town. They were mutilated in decapitated, dismembered symbols were carved into their bodies, and in every case their hearts were removed. Often this disfigurement was so extreme that law enforcement could not identify the body's fingerprints, gone dental in any any teeth, probably knocked out, tattoos, scraped off the skin. Okay, they had a few things in common. They were all women, they're all locals, and they were all prostitutes. In two thousand and six, for some reason, the killings just stopped. And that is something that's extraordinarily rare. In the case of the babysitter, you know, we saw a very short thirteen month period right with four known victims, But that that leads us to believe that if circumstances hadn't changed, those killings would have continued. So it's very strange for this stuff to stop. The murderer disappeared, and this led police to believe something that there are usually three common things that happened, three common explanations when a serial killer or a series of murders stops occurring, and the police will always assume, well that killers maybe moved, or they've died, or have been arrested on another crime. Right, And in this case, they still continued to hunt for the killer, and they found really interesting series of suspects UM and two thousand and fifteen, the police arrested a cab driver by the name of Alexei Ivanov on suspicion of the murders UM. He instead confessed to a series of unrelated murders also all women. Yeah, I mean, I guess where there's smoke, there's fire. So what we're saying here is that apparently Nova's bearrisk is a is a pretty pretty tough neighborhood. You know. Can you imagine that you're searching for one serial killer, which is already so rare, and in the process you pick up another guy. It's like, well, yeah, I killed. Of course I killed a series of not not those not those though those aren't those aren't mine. It's probably like one of those small towns in like British cop shows where there's a serial murderer like a week you know, right, Yeah, that's the weirdest thing about Suspension of Disbelief. Yeah, you know, it's a small town. Everybody still leaves their doors unlocked, despite the fact that about once every year or so someone kills twenty people. Not only that, Like you can even go further where it's like with Scooby Doo, like are they traveling around and that show? I mean, I guess they are. They're kind of on tour, right, are they a band? It's not clear what they do a whole lot of time on the mythology. No, it's been a while for me. Yeah, at least with jabber Jar, like they were definitely a band, you know, jabber Jar was totally like a one to one of Scooby Doo. They solved that they had like they had the talking animal with a speech impediment, even like I think Dude War and Ascott and Jabbage too. Anyway, we digress back to the Grizzly stuff. You see what I'm trying. I'm trying to d I'm trying to derail this a little bit because this is just so darn upsetting. But we will sally forth. There was a different suspect. Yeah, so there was, in fact another suspect. In twenty sixteen, police arrested a former cop by the name of Evani Choopliss Misan. Forgive my utter garbage pronunciation there, I'm doing the best I can. Um. This individual was suspected of the murders, though he had yet to be convicted. Um. And here's a little interesting twisty side note. I'm not going to say his name again, tell you that right now? What couldn't call him Mr T. Mr T not to be confused with the Mr T. This is the Russian Mr T. For the purposes of our show. Mr T was arrested by Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, which I guess means that he was under investigation as a dirty cop potentially, um, not local law enforcement. Right, So that's I think that's the thing. So the trial laundry internally exactly exactly, but on a federal level, on a federal level exactly. So the trial um is in fact moving forward and while the ministry is almost certain that this is their guy, um, he has yet to be convicted, even though DNA was found on some of the prostitutes, which he explains as a result of him spending a lot of time with prostitutes while on dutyous. Yeah, one of the one of the way he explained it is, um. You know, I have to have my irritual street. You know, I have to know who is going where, who is having drunk I go find drunk driver. Maybe he gives me a bribe, skip some paperwork. So he painted it as sort of his unofficial job duties right deep deep cover as it were apparently right. And then at one point he confessed he and he said that he did the symbols on purpose, and this was actually in a brutal calculation. This was actually pretty smart on his behalf, because if he was a police officer, he knew how to hide evidence or he should have UM, and he wanted the murders to look a cult or satanic in nature. And he said he wanted to, you know, have a red herring for the police. But then later he recanted and he said, no, I did that under pressure. If a Vegni Chuplinski or Mr t is convicted, he would be another example of the killer who appeared to get away only to be captured months, years, or even decades later. And this lets us end on a little bit less of a bleak note, because these sorts of killers, well they may get away for a long time, are often apprehended one way or another. And we'll tell you about just a few after a word from our sponsor, and we're back, you know, on a site note just to keep his lighte which I think is a good move. Um. One thing that always got to me about Scooby Doo is how it's so rarely turned out to be supernatural, always bothering me. Well, no, I mean in the original series, it was never supernatural. It was always some always old man from the haunted amusement park or whatever. It wasn't until like the twenty one Ghost of Scooby Doo with Vincent Price, where it was there were definitely ghosts in that when there were other iterations of the show where there were super natural elements, but the original series, and you think they'd eventually catch on and stop getting spooked because or at least start discriminating against their profiling old guys, old white guys, you know what I mean? Sometimes women. Maybe it was a cautionary tale, uh, for you know, old white guys. For kids. Speaking of older white guys was vans and vans. Although I would still drive a custom van like that. I don't care about the mileage. I want one of the wizard on it. I want one that's decked out like a studio apartment, you know, but with windows so people don't think I'm a serial killer. I want to torture rack in mind, you want to torture wreck dude, we should make a convoy. Sorry. That was when I took taking it light a step too far. That's what happens when keeping it light goes awry. Uh. So here's someone who things would arrived for this character. If you read about serial oilers, than you probably read a few years back about a killer known as b t K, which stands for bind Torture Killed. This is a self appointed nickname. Uh. This person was actually named Dennis Radar and from nineteen seventy four to nineteen well, from nineteen seventy four to nineteen seventy nine, he had killed ten people in total. Collected items totems, fetishes, relics, trophies, I guess the best way to say it from each murder scene. And he wrote numerous letters taunting the police. But then he underwent a dormant period. And here's the weirdest part on Dennis Dennis's radar's career as a serial killer. If he had not been drawn back by apparently fame and ego, then he would have been fine. And he would have continued working at the church that he worked at, and he or something veterinarian's office, uh, and just eventually make a deathbed confession or be something. His family would find all this stuff after his death. But he could not resist writing another series of taunting letters about how he fully planned to commit another murder in two thousand and four. Because he was inept, he sent correspondence that was easy to trace. H. He actually at one point asked law enforcement if it was possible for them to trace him based on you know, sending uh, like a three point five disc. You know, everybody was younger in the crowd. Um. If you look at the save button on your Microsoft Word, that's an image of those three point five discs, which I think people will forget over time. But they said, yeah, there's no way we can do that, and they totally did, and they found the address and there was a matter of time before he found him. He didn't fit a lot of the supposed profiles of serial killers. That's why he can't find them. He was the sleep man and it was a family man who had a lot of internal issues. But he is locked up, is under the jail. This is not the UK. They don't require a whole life order. He is going to die in jail. And then there were other people like the Grim Sleeper, Lonnie David Franklin Jr. Believed to re responsible for least ten murders in an attempted murder in Los Angeles. That sounds like a wrestling name, the Grim Sleeper, It really does. It really does, like he teams up with the Undertaker or something and he has a special hold. Yeah, that's his signature sleeper hold. And now we can now we can see stuff like that because he is also apprehended. He is also never getting out of jail. The point we're making is that these killers do get caught. This is not a bleak, hopeless story. In many cases, and with just the cases we've looked at now, it provides us some more questions than it does answers. Right, So, what happened to these folks, the unapprehended ones both from Part one and part two. Well, we know that some of them are just taken out because they're arrested for something else, and they're sitting in a prison cell somewhere doing time for burglary or you know, whatever other smaller crime they committed, or even maybe a single murder or something. We also know that with technology advancing the way it is for forensic science, it's more difficult for these guys to hide somewhere and do what the BTK killer did and just live with a family somewhere else in the world. Eventually, if you messed up one time, committing a murder or one of these horrible acts, you will probably get caught. And and you know, a lot of these people, because several of the things we talked about, we're in the sixties and seventies, a lot of them have died and will probably never be caught. It's yeah, what about Zodiac. I think he's still out there. If Zodiac is still out there, then is infirmed. Yeah, yeah, then he might not even know who the killer is at this point, because yeah, it's a scary thing. A lot of what you're talking about reminds me of the show The Keepers on Netflix. If you haven't seen it and you like true crime, it's worth your time. Is it a documentary or it is a documentary? If you know this, this concept raises an interesting, disturbing a better word of disturbing question. If someone's like that is discovered, is it prosecuting the same person? Oh, someone with dementia that doesn't even know anymore? Some like, let's say someone was convicted ironclad. We know they did it of several murders in the nineteen sixties, but now they're in their late eighties and it's sad to say, but that that it reminds me of what's going on with Bill Cosby. You know, I'm not I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose the man. But when you right before all this came out and he was on some late night shows, he did show signs of not being fully they're mentally and you get the sense that he doesn't entirely comprehend what's going on with all of the accusations. I don't know, I mean, did he just having witnessed dementia firsthand. I remember when I saw him on early on before all this came out. Um, he was on one of the late shows and it was just kind of a little bit sad because he just did not seem like he quite understood what was going on, and he wasn't like himself. So I'm wondering if that's a similar situation where anyone who gets justice it's not going to be as satisfying, perhaps because the person who did the crimes maybe is not aware that what they've done anymore. Those philosophical areas where is punishing the body of the thing, the person that did these things worth it even if it can't comprehend well, I would also say, you know, one of the one of the at the very least equally crucial factors here is closure, because that's what happened, right And speaking of closure, we do have conclusions. So yes, unapprehended serial killers are out there, according to FBI estimates, fifty to three D in the U S alone. Right now, that's a hell of a margin. But that also goes into you know, the definitions of a serial is the famous hitman Hitman, the iceman that qualifies a serial killer because it was his profession, right, where do we draw the line. Luckily, these sorts of killers, despite the wild estimates, hyperbole sensationalism, are extremely rare. But there are real life monsters and in the vast majority of cases you will not know if you walk by one on the street, you might have you know, it's a very real thing that people report, will believe in hunches, right, intuitions, uh, spiders, senses, But even that and that is not not proven to uh to work, because then we would just have people who are detecting these human monsters read it would be amazing at it. Yeah, and we've got to be fair to the jerks of the world. Just being a jerk doesn't mean that someone is a murderer or a danger to society. We cannot stress how important that is. However, if you do know of or if you do know of someone that you suspect might be actively doing something, you can and should report those suspicions. And this, you know, this is something that that sounds very televised, right, It sounds like the script for some some true crime drama, right, some law and order type thing. But what would you do? What would you do if your neighbor who was not an unpleasant person one day went on vacation quote unquote, and then you saw his car and there was suspicious activity, and then you read about people disappearing. You know, I know, I've been afraid to say anything. All right, I told you I'm gonna move. Okay, just be cool. But the jokes aside, ladies and gentlemen. The truth of the matter is that there's a very thin line between paranoia and actual evidence in reporting it because we've all we've all seen this before when there is an active, high profile serial killer, like in that movie was Summer of Sam about Sam Berkowitz um in that In that film, one of the things that happened was that law enforcement, and just like in Zodiac cases, was inundated with false reports. Some people just wanted attention. So it's tough, But it is true that with all the personal data being shared between whomever you pay your phone bill too, wherever you get your driver's license, wherever you pay your taxes, and everybody, when whatever social media you know you use, it seems more and more likely that previous on previously unidentified serial killers could eventually become a thing of the past. These aren't pioneer days where you could just go through the territories killing as you please. However, we can't forget that in some cases these killers function and positions of power, and they're able to influence the mechanisms meant to apprehend them, like, uh, like the police officer that Noel mentioned. Yeah, that is a huge point here that terrifies me, especially when there are multiple people in power that are working together. And one thing that Yeah, one thing that startles me too is how often a string of serial murders might not get reported outside of local news. And is that qua creation or is that just police with the best of intentions trying to prevent panic? Yeah, and something just isn't newsworthy enough to be run on a you know, from another major source. And how do you decide that? Does it go down to the name? Did you guys see that they're remaking Maniac Cop? What is that? You never seen Maniac Cop? It's like a like a franchise from the eighties where the murderer is a cop. He's the maniac cop like a vigilante. No, no, no, he's just a maniac's unhinged lunatic um with some Jason Vorhees esque, uh supernatural abilities, Nicholas Winding Reffin who did the much malign Neon Demon, which I quite enjoyed, and uh Drive and um, you know Valhalla Rising and Bronson and all that he's He seems to be going down the schlocky road a little further these days, and this is definitely no exception. So I'm looking forward to that. You guys want to do some shoutouts, I think it's time chat at conners. Our first shout out goes out to Shannon, who says, hey, guys, on the topic of UFOs, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe you've covered the cash Landrum incident. I only just heard about it myself today, and I think you'd find it fascinating. Well, thank you so much, Shannon. I'd have never heard of this, man. Have you heard of this? Yeah? Yeah, this is one of the only uf Well, this is one of very few UFO cases that actually resulted in litigation in the nineties in the US. People insisted that they not only saw something multiple witnesses, but that it damaged their health. What where was this? So this occurred in Dayton Texas. I think that's a I think that's a really interesting topic for us to delve into because we do have a pretty solid, solid mass of court cases. So thank you so much for writing engine and that's an excellent suggestion. Who's next? Whale next? We have a shout out for Chiara says hey, Matt and Ben and Nol actually knows not on here, but that's okay. I don't hold it against you. Kara, who hails from Texas. Um, She says, I am writing this who bring to your attention the recent computer attack nicknamed ransomware. I think it was actually called want to Cry, And ransomware is the type of the type of that is where and that it holds your data hostage and you have to pay out in bitcoin in order to get it back. UM. Anyway, as it is sufficiently frightening and seems to have come out of absolutely nowhere, there's no doubt that you've already caught wind of it. But I think it couldn't hurt to provide you a request. The new ransomware virus essentially what I would call and evil blue screen computer malware virus that's been crippling average computer users, but particularly companies and corporations by overtaking computer systems and blocking users access to their files and search engines, essentially acting in the way a blue screen would, rendering the computer useless UM being impassable unless the victim of the virus pays three bitcoins to remove it, the equivalent of around seven thirty six thousand dollars American sole explanation, the everyday blue screen, and formally referred to as the blue screen of death, is a protection fall initiated by Windows in the case that the operating system collapses. UM. What the virus does essentially mimics that function with one key difference. It sees his access to every file and every computer function until the ransom is paid. Yikes. Uh. The current theory is that at least one of the perpetrators behind this is a former Windows employee. And I know that Windows actually patched this. They caught it pretty early and so a lot of people were spared it, but it definitely did wreak some havoc. Um. She says, she's anxious to hear what we have to say about it, and I would also like to give condolences to all the hospitals, colleges, businesses, banks, railway systems, and absolutely everyone who is a victim of this virus in any way. It can't be easy. I agreed, it's pretty brutal. One really interesting thing here to me is that if you're going to be paid in bitcoins for ransomware like this, even though it's a cryptocurrency and it's protected in a lot of ways, it is trackable. So at any point, like they know, investigators know exactly what accounts the bitcoins will be paid to, and they can monitor them in real time, and as soon as someone tries to take those bitcoins out and transfer them into cash in some way or some usable form of currency, you're going to know exactly where it went. So I don't I don't know the I don't understand the logic behind it. But maybe there's a there's like a key there that I'm missing. I mean, maybe there's some sort of like vpn SQ way of redirecting, you know, the digital trail, or maybe there is a yeah, there's a secrecy parameter. I I think, uh, I think your concept of this being to some degree and inside job, and that the perpetrator may have you something they learned internally to wreak this havoc. I think that's fascinating. I'd like to delve into it. I'm also tempted to agree that there would be There would have to be a way for the money to be laundered somehow, otherwise no one would ask for that currency. And a cryptocurrency has several advantages over more orthodox or established forms of currency, so that'd be a good one to dive into. And uh, you know, I think it speaks very highly to KR's character that she took the time to give her condolences to the organizations and individuals affected by this, So thank you for writing in. Our final shout out of the date comes from Trent, and Trent says, Hello guys, top Oh this was I thought this is pretty interesting one. He didn't say that. That's me. Hello guys. The topic I thought of when recently listening to your podcast on the placebo effect. It was stated in the podcast that a severe burn victim would not benefit it from a placebo. I would have to disagree. I've heard all my life of the power of someone talking the fire out of a burn. Manly used this as a pain relief. It is a secret that can only be passed from man to woman or woman to man. The two cannot be blood related. Check out info into the fox Fire books. I was told that my great grandfather was able to save a child at a hospital that have been burned over a large part of his body. This may not be a placebo in the original context, but it is a case of how powerful the mind can be. Good luck. So from you know as an armshare folklore's this is fascinating idea of talking the fire out of a burn. I read a lot, maybe too much, and I have not read about this. There is a fox Fire folklore series and perhaps it is mentioned in there, in which case I'm going to return to it. Um, thank you so much strength. These are all excellent suggestions and we appreciate your time. So thanks to Kara, and and and Trent. And this concludes ours and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three st d w y t K. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production of I heart Radio. 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