From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This is a grim episode, fellow conspiracy realist, and as such it may not be suitable for all our fellow listeners. We're playing with dark live fire here. This is a two part episode about serial killers. As we discussed in previous episodes, this genre of criminal is extraordinarily rare in the world of crime. You know, if you have ever looked at the statistics, you know that most homicides are committed by someone familiar to the victim. Here in the United States, fifty four point three percent of murders are committed by someone you know, someone the victim knows, and acquaintance and neighbor, a friend or romanic partner, etcetera. We have done, to be clear several episodes on serial killers in the past, specifically those who have yet to face justice for their crimes. And today, unfortunately, we are updating this exploration. It is twenty two and some of these individuals are still on the loose. So here are the facts. Let's do a brief recap of our earlier episodes. We can start with good news. We talked a long time ago about the original night stalker. I think we even made a video on that. Ben and Uh, this was someone who was unknown. They had many names, they had many victims, and turns out, through some DNA evidence and a really interesting investigation that was again decades and decades long, the person was caught. Person named Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. That's right. Mr d' angelo Jr. Was a former police officer who was responsible for at least thirteen murders that we know of, uh, fifty sexual assaults, undred and twenty burglaries, all between the years of nineteen seventy four and nineteen eighties six. He's a busy guy. Uh. He was not identified until early eighteen. I mean that's how it goes. Sometimes. It's fascinating going evading the law for that long. Um, He is alive, though currently incarcerated in California in the California State Prison in Corcoran. He's currently seventy six years old, and like a lot of serial killers of of his ilk uh, he is both unremarkable and completely insane. Um totally on extraordinary. You know, a lot of these these people are looking for attention, are looking for some kind of glorification um, and most of them don't get it. I remember when I was younger, there was a guy who did a school shooting. He kind of did like these photo ops three. He was holding the guns and like a hammer like old boy, and I thought, at the time, being very naively, oh my god, this guy is totally gonna get remembered for this. I can't even remember the guy's name, And that's fortunately the way this stuff goes sometimes outside of a few outliers. But yeah, he told investigators that he had another person in his head. Um seems like a sign, you know, psychiatrist here, but it seems like a symptom of some kind of schizophrenia. And he had an alternate personality that he called Jerry, which which the essentially acted as the voice in his head that told him to commit these acts of violence, and unfortunately, this dark shadow of the human species has been around for a long long time. We have explored cases of serial murderers from the ancient past, people like Shu sin Ittier uh fifth century uh Ce Yemenite, a guy who is one of the first recorded serial killers. We also looked at the stories of murderers who almost certainly died off the record, why possibly due to vigilante actions, and vigilantes are gonna play a part in today's episode. We're going to hit you with a question that we're not sure how to answer towards the end here. The most intriguing of these cases, like the people who are probably dead but officially got away, would be Pedro Alonso Lopez, the so called Monster of the Andes. He was a murderer and assaulter of children. He was arrested in nineteen eighty in Ecuador and the government of Ecuador freed him at around the end of nine. He was interviewed in prison and he called himself the man of the century. He was released for quote unquote good behavior, handed off to Columbia for charges on a twenty year old murder at the time, and Columbia the government there declared him insane. They held him in a hospital in the capital until about when he was released on a bail that was the equivalent at the time of fifty US dots. Right now, as we record April two, there is a clear although distant possibility that Lopez maybe alive today. If so, he is seventy three years old at the time of this recording. Just a quick side note here, Uh, the research for some of these episodes that we do on serial killers and some of the really darker stuff, especially when murderers involved. Uh, it has a serious effect. I I mean I would ben, I would say, and old personally on me has an effect. I remember that the Lopez episode that we did and specifically the research, and I would just caution anybody who wants to look deeper into it, just be careful. There's some things that you can't unknown and unseen, and that's just that's one of them. Just put that out there for everybody. I think people kind of take for granted the psychological toll some of this stuff can have on you, especially folks that are you know, actively seek out true crime type podcasts and you know TV series and documentaries. Uh. It certainly can act as an entertaining element, but I think there's some maybe un checked negative impacts that it can have, you know, on individuals in collectively, because I certainly feel you on that map, agreed, And we are doing this because it is important. There are literally lives at stake. There are people who will never have their children, their lovers, their relatives, their friends with them ever again. And we're recapping this are here is the facts portion comes to you because we want to give you a brief look at the gains and losses of tracking this particularly rare type of murderer over time. Yes, good news. Some do get caught. Many get caught. Sometimes they get caught for another crime, right, Sometimes they get caught after their demise. Sometimes very few cases they get caught. Why they are active? However, given the backlog of forensic data in the US and abroad, given the at times corrupt horse trading of government and law enforcement, we have to sadly note many serial killers are active. Now here's where it gets crazy. Yeah, it's true, folks, fellow conspiracy realists. There are multiple serial murderers who, as of April two, have yet to be apprehended. Some have likely died and they got away with it. Some might be imprisoned for you know, related crimes that don't enter into their their reputation as murderers. There are individuals who, for instance, may be locked up due to assault or shoplifting or grand theft auto. There are probably right now some who are dormant at the current moment, meaning like B t K, like Dennis Rader, they paused for a while until they felt they needed attention, until they're they're crazy. Spiral went further into the abyss uh there for the most part, as we established, unintelligent, but they're not restricted to the United States. Let's share some examples across the globe. Historically we've kind of focused on the US in the West, but they are by no means serial killers are by no means unique to one part of the planet. No. UM, let's go for this one to Japan. Between April and November of and Hiroshima, twelve people were killed due to paraquat poisoning h and another thirty five people were seriously injured. UM investigators were able to trace this back to a drink popular I guess it's a sports drink. It's called ornamin c imagine the c has something to do with vitamin C some kind of energy drink, and that was the common factor in all of these cases. Around the same time, the company that actually manufactures the drink launched a marketing campaign that offered free bottles of the drink from vending machines anytime someone bought something else, kind of a bogo kind of situation. Um and yeah, I mean you're find something else and then you know what a deal and you get this other drink and you know that's the thing that poison tins. Not a particularly good bye one, get one And just for everybody's knowledge, paraquat is an herbicide that was very common in uh. The common name for it is metal biology and v I O L O G E N and it is very very toxic to humans. It's actually often used has a reputation for being used to kill marijuana plants are being growing legally. He might remember Big the Big Lebowski Um Jeff Bridges character the dude insulting someone by calling them a human paraquat because that was the eighties, you know period. Movie was probably something that the hippies were none too happy about in terms of you know, getting rid of their their weed plants. Yeah, this is this is true, and it goes into the idea of uh a social contract right, the unspoken rules and considerations of a culture. Imagine wherever you live, that you go to a vending machine, you put in some change, or nowadays you swipe a card and you're getting you know, water or I don't know, a phanta or you who whatever, and you you do your little thing, and then you get your your bottle of your you who are your fans? Are your mountain dew? And then all of a sudden, another bottle pops out because it's part of the promotion. What do you do with that? You didn't want the eronomanc In Japan, people started placing this drink, this free drink, on top of a vending machine. It's kind of a nice thing to do for strangers. And then if you come along and you see that and you're thirsty, you might say, hey, I'm gonna save a couple of yet, I'm gonna grab grab this o c right here. And that's what led to the problem. Law enforcement concluded that someone or some group of people have been lacing those free drinks with that herbicide paraquat again, as Matt said, it's quite toxic to human beings. And then after they laced it, they put it back on on top of the vending machine. And police, yeah, police couldn't do couldn't do a thing because it was super difficult to narrow down where someone had picked up the drink where they found it. Vending machines are everywhere in urban areas in Japan, and most of these vending machines were in backstreets, very narrow you would call them alleys in the US, and there wasn't any sort of video footage around. It was an opportunity for agents of chaos. This crime appears to have stopped solely because vending machine operators started posting warnings stuff that said, hey, don't take strange drinks that you find at a vending machine. And then it also spurred an unfortunate, an unfortunate trend of copycat attempts using things like limes sulfur. There are also a couple of cases of people attempting to poison them selves and be tied to this phenomenon. But the frightening thing is right now, folks, not only is there no clear conviction for a person or people behind this poisoning. There are no suspects, no one knows, and whomever is doing this is likely walking around free in Japan today. It is weird to think that somebody who had the money to you know, go to these vending machines, make purchases, purchase you know, this toxic substance, place it in those things. If this that person is, you have to imagine they're old enough to do those things without suspicion, right, But then you imagine it hasn't been that long. They are very much likely still alive. And the super disturbing thing for me in this case is how long distance these kills are for whoever this person is, right, Like, it's I think it's very un likely that whoever poisoned these drinks was actually they're observing when somebody came up and was a victim of theirs, right, It's almost as if you just did it and walked away. And it is also not like Ted Kazinski or one of these people that you know how to target or knew they were sending something through the mail to a specific person. This is a random person that was going to get injured or killed due to their actions. Which I just I don't understand the psychology of that and how it It just doesn't it doesn't even compare to me to a lot of the other deaths that we're gonna be talking about today, and killers who are so up close and personal with their actions. It's just interesting that this was enough of a phenomenon, like around Japan because of this seemingly failed marketing attempt, that someone was able to capitalize it and kind of go undiscovered. I mean, it's like the drink equivalent of like YouTube putting that album on everyone's iPod. That's still to this day, people can't figure out how to get off that. We don't want your I don't want your new album, we don't want your free drink um, and you literally created a public health nightmare or the opportunity for one anyway. Well, you know, I love him or hate him, you can at least we can all at least agree the band You Too has not been poisoning people physically. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we will return, unfortunately with more examples of serial killers on the loose. We're back, Matt. This is one that I believe really stood out for you. It takes us to Brazil. There is or was a serial killer who got away that the media called the Rainbow Killer due to the nature of the victims this individual was targeting. Oh yeah, sure, this one made a couple of lists that exist out there you can find right now of you know, unsolved killers. Um, this one is particularly grizzly. And as we start telling you the story, you'll kind of figure out towards the end why it feels something feels off with it. Over the course of just I guess it's eighteen months officially in Brazil, this person that was dubbed the rainbow Killer or the rainbow Maniac that was that's the one that I've seen most commonly used. The Rainbow Maniac. Uh. This person killed at least thirteen people. It's thought that perhaps that number is sixteen or even higher. But thirteen people in particular were killed execution style in Patteris Park and they were then I guess dumped or sometimes just left in nearby bushes there within the park. And this specific meth of killing was often a gun shot to the head and when the victims were found at least in the thirteen these thirteen particular cases, the victims trousers, their pants were pulled down of like to their their knees. I believe was there also signs of the trauma, like outside of the bullet wounds, like they were beaten before being executed. Yeah there, Yeah, well we'll get into it. One of one of the victims was shot many more times than the others. Yeah, it appears that the first documented case happened on the fourth of July two thousand seven. These murders took place around the same geographical area, right around that park you described, Matt. And also, we are not native Portuguese speakers, so pardon in a miss pronunciations. We do want to be respectful. This is happening in context in the country. There are ultra conservative groups that are railing against the idea of lgbt Q people just existing. They're just they're mad that those people exist. Uh. And this park is kind of a ground zero hook up spot for illicit rendezvous. And we know that in two thousand and eleven, one person actually went to trial, went to a jury trial on suspicion of these homicides. This guy was a retired police sergeant named Yarro Francisco Franco. He was arrested based on the testimony of two eye witnesses. In particular, two of them put him at the park at the time of one of the murders, and one said he Franco had the same posture as the assailant. But again, we know eye witness testimony can be unfortunately it's not it's not waterproof, it doesn't always hold sand. And as a particular victim was supposedly shot twelve times, the one that uh, this person was, you know, supposedly seen carrying out Yeah, and as a result, the jury found this person, Franco, not guilty of the murders. This establishes a pattern that we see often in the world of serial murderers, praying on the disadvantaged, right, praying on the folks who exist on some level at the fringes of society. Now, to be clear, Brazil has a reputee Asian as a tremendously gender progressive country, at least on paper. But if you look at nonprofit gay rights groups, places like Group of Guy, the Baia, again Portuguese speakers, uh, this is the oldest organization of its type in the country of Brazil, and they will tell you that Brazil remains one of the world leaders in the murders of lgbt Q and non binary individuals. And at this point, you know, I think maybe we take a second to note the danger of the media in in these sorts of crimes and in reporting them here in the US. If you're not a citizen or resident of this country, if you haven't spent a lot of time here, you need to know that there is a terrible habit in reporting. It is a kind of is feede click baity thing we would call it now, where you give these criminals some sort of catchy name, right like Matt No, we were just talking a second ago, rainbow Maniac, rainbow killer. This may not be helpful to the actual investigators, you know, And unfortunately we know from interviews post arrest with proven serial killers they like the monikers. And I think it's a dangerous thing. I mean, you guys do true crime shows all the time, you ep them, you produce them. What do you think about this this nomenclature. I guess it feels like this is a dated thing, like these kind of gross nicknames that are like, yeah, inflammatory and flashy, like I can't think of you know, in in in America that going over well, you know in mainstream media or like you know, newspapers. Oh yeah, that totally makes sense, right. I mean, even if I think a killer called themselves something again the way the zodiac the zodiac did, uh, or the freeway phantom or something like that, you probably well, I wonder. I wonder because you would get clicks right right now, The media would get clicks on their websites and on social media if you've got a name that can trend. I mean, that's I think that's the tough truth about it. Yeah, it's it's the hybridization of media to where there used to be to some degree, you know, ethical guidelines and how it's kind of a free for all and whose first to market with the story or who gets to coin the name. But I still wonder if, in the kind of woke uh you know culture that we live in, if it wouldn't just kind of be a bad look and people would be like, oh, gross, BuzzFeed, you know what I mean. I don't know, that's just just a thought. It's interesting because there's also a bit of a faucian bargain at play. I would pause it if you can by hook or by crook get more attention to a story than are you raising the possibility that these crimes will be solved? That is that's a dilemma, it's a pickle. It's a question without an answer just yet, And speaking of questions without answers, we're going to pause for a moment, and when we return, we're going to talk a little bit more about self identifying murderers and about the power of those names. And we've returned, we want to end part one of this series on this case, speaking of questions without answers, folks, fellow conspiracy realist, we want to know your opinion, as I believe it's fair to say that all of us are on the fence here. Our final story today takes us to Bangladesh. It is a beautiful country with an ancient history. It's an ancient land, and it is besieged by sexual assault. So heads up. We did a disclaimer at the beginning. We want to do another disclaimer now because we're about to explore some intensely unclean and disturbingly true facts here. It is from January to September of twenty alone, over one thousand women were sexually assaulted in Bangladesh. Forty three of those victims died as a direct result of those assaults. And you have to note this statistic, which is true and confirmed, does not count non binary people, It does not count trans people, It does not necessarily count children. It is only an official statistic stick, which sadly means it misses a great deal without getting into the harrowing experience of any assault victim reporting these types of crimes. It is certain that there's a lot more to that number. A lot of these assaults simply do not get reported. And this led someone in Bangladesh. We believe one person to take matters into their own hands. Yeah, it's weird. This one's a bit weird in my opinion, because we're only talking about two weeks, right, this is it's almost a spree killing, less of a serial killing. But it also matches those the descriptions of those deaths and killings and killers as well. Um in the years twenty nineteen, there's two weeks, Like we said, at least three men it. I think there might be more. At least we're going to be finding out more, I think in the future, unless this really was just a single spree thing. But three three men who were suspected of sexual assault. They were all the prime suspect, right or one of the prime suspects within cases. They were each found murdered, and each of them had a note around their neck. In two of those cases, the men's names were written on that note. Yes, and at least two and you can you can find the pattern. You can see the notes. These notes escalate in specificity, or so it would seem. The first one simply reads, I am name. We're not going to give their specific names. Quote I am name, I am the rapist of quote victim name. This is my punishment. They were found dead, murdered via gunshot. The second note says, quote, I am the prime accused in a rape case and quote dead the same way. Looks like the same firearm. Not publicly identified yet, but local law enforcement seems to confirm that they believe it was the same person. The third not the third note escalates and ticks a couple of boxes for serial murderer. This is a self identified thing. Yeah, it said, I am name, I am the rapist of a madrassa girl of Bandaria. Uh and this is the consequence of a rapist bewaring rapists Hercules. Yeah, chi chilling, dude, It's powerful. And there's some weird stuff with this case. Okay, so there are victims of sexual assault and then these victims of murder are are suspects, right, So there's been no trial, no legal process to confirm whether or not they were actually the rapists. But these the families of these victims, the murder victims, have some interesting stories that they've been telling the media, and many of them are that at least in two cases that plain closed, men showed up in either a van or another vehicle and picked up you know, their husband or their friend or their son or their neighbor and put them into that vehicle and they drove off and that was the last time the murder victim was seen. That to me is very highly strange. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like more than one person, more than one perpetrator responsible. It sounds like there's cooperation going on here. And it is almost certain that the individuals or individual responsible whomever is identifying as Hercules, that individual or that group does not think of itself as a serial murderer. It thinks of itself as doing justice. When the courts failed to do so and well, and they identify themselves as in a part of an investigative team, like so part of the law enforcement there in in that area of Bangladesh. I mean, that's that's creepy. It's like plain closed officers. Maybe they're not officers at all. Maybe they are, And how how can you prove that because you'd have to be a pretty significant and serious investigation, and it seems like maybe that's not gonna happen. Yeah, it's a good point. The police and local law enforcement don't seem particularly keen to solve these cases. Also, it is possible and and again legally we're not saying anything for sure, but it is possible that they could be involved with law enforcement whomever is identifying as hercules. And this gets to the question we want ask you, fellow conspiracy realist vigilante crimes. This unfortunately ticks all the boxes of serial murder, right, we see a specific demographic of victim, we see a specific motivation for murder, we see a specific type of murder. Again, it looks like it was the same firearm or similar firearm even down to you know, we don't have information because it hasn't been publicly released, but it it seems like the same person or people doing this thing and then also looking for some acknowledgement from media, looking for some notoriety, call me hercules whomever is saying. And the question is then, you know, the question then is if this ticks all the boxes for serial murder, where we go with this? Where do we go? Because obviously whomever is responsible for this seems convinced that they are. They're taking the lives of people who deserve it, and that's not us passing judgment. We just want to know what you think in that regard. Yeah, Well, the only reason I cast or kind of cast out on it being a serial killer is because that it doesn't seem like there's much of a cooling off period at all. It seems like a mission, like you're talking about here, Uh, someone feels like they're on a mission to kill people. But it's I don't know, it's it's different in a lot of ways. Did we talk before about there has to be a certain stretch of a cooling off period for it to be considered serial murder rather than spree killings? Yes, yeah, per FBI definition. Yeah, but would a vigilante be considered a serial killer if they're not compelled by some psychological drive. I guess, I guess the re it doesn't matter. It's it's about the pattern, But the intent seems like it would matter. Wouldn't you label this person of vigilante rather than a serial killer if they are targeting certain individuals as retribution? That's the question, you know, it's it's a question that's difficult to answer because you could also consider cases like um, it's not a one to one comparison in any way, but you could consider cases like mafioso or organized crime hitman, you know, enforcers like the iceman. That guy killed a lot of people, and to him it was his job. He didn't, you know, he wasn't uh, He didn't have some voice named Jerry in his head telling him to do stuff. He didn't always coming through a cell phone in his ear. He was gonna get paid a million dollars to do stuff, right. His neighbor's dog wasn't commanding him to go out and kill like Burka Wood said or anything like that. We're asking you, folks, what is the line between vigilante retribution and what would qualify as a spree murderer or a serial murderer. Is there a line at all? And if so, what do you think that is? More importantly, will these cases that we have just kind of given you the broad strokes of will they ever be solved? Will someone find who was poisoning those vending machines in Japan? Will someone in Brazil finally get convicted of these various crimes? Will the case of Hercules ever be solved? And Matt to your point about patterns. If this entity individual or group identifying as Hercules returns and attributes more and vic hims, I mean, if it, whatever it is, if it racks up more deaths, does that not officially make it a serial killer at that point because then we would have the dormancy period which takes it past a spree killing. That's an interesting thing. Yeah, because we're talking twenty nineteens gonna be three years here? Yeah, I suppose. I I don't know, man, It's odd to me that there were four three known for sure killings that were done by Hercules, at least according to the notes that match up, that they all occurred in those two weeks, then they didn't happen again. Man, I just I want to learn more about the case, like I want to do a deep dive on that at some point, maybe not maybe not on the show, but that this this in particular has just got all my wheels turning. Agreed, and I think this is one of the ones that's going to stay with us because we also have to we also have to consider the idea that law enforcement may be involved. We also have to consider the fact that the three the three murders, uh, those those individuals were not suspected in the same crime, only in the same type of crime, which again curious or and curious or We want to hear from you, folks. Please join us later in the week when we look at Uncaught serial Killers in part two, which is an unintentional tongue twister. This is one of our darker episodes. We want to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online. That's right. You can find us on Facebook. We have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. You can also find us on Twitter. You can also find us on YouTube or handle on those platforms. Is at conspiracy stuff on Instagram where at conspiracy stuff show Yes. If you don't like social media instead, give us a call our number one eight three three s T d w y t K. When you call in, give yourself a nickname. You've got three minutes to leave that message. At some point. Please let us know if we can or cannot use your voice and name on the show. We very much would appreciate that. If you've got more to say then you can fit in that three minutes. Why not instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This is a grim episode, fellow conspiracy realist, and as such it may not be suitable for all our fellow listeners. We're playing with dark live fire here. This is a two part episode about serial killers. As we discussed in previous episodes, this genre of criminal is extraordinarily rare in the world of crime. You know, if you have ever looked at the statistics, you know that most homicides are committed by someone familiar to the victim. Here in the United States, fifty four point three percent of murders are committed by someone you know, someone the victim knows, and acquaintance and neighbor, a friend or romanic partner, etcetera. We have done, to be clear several episodes on serial killers in the past, specifically those who have yet to face justice for their crimes. And today, unfortunately, we are updating this exploration. It is twenty two and some of these individuals are still on the loose. So here are the facts. Let's do a brief recap of our earlier episodes. We can start with good news. We talked a long time ago about the original night stalker. I think we even made a video on that. Ben and Uh, this was someone who was unknown. They had many names, they had many victims, and turns out, through some DNA evidence and a really interesting investigation that was again decades and decades long, the person was caught. Person named Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. That's right. Mr d' angelo Jr. Was a former police officer who was responsible for at least thirteen murders that we know of, uh, fifty sexual assaults, undred and twenty burglaries, all between the years of nineteen seventy four and nineteen eighties six. He's a busy guy. Uh. He was not identified until early eighteen. I mean that's how it goes. Sometimes. It's fascinating going evading the law for that long. Um, He is alive, though currently incarcerated in California in the California State Prison in Corcoran. He's currently seventy six years old, and like a lot of serial killers of of his ilk uh, he is both unremarkable and completely insane. Um totally on extraordinary. You know, a lot of these these people are looking for attention, are looking for some kind of glorification um, and most of them don't get it. I remember when I was younger, there was a guy who did a school shooting. He kind of did like these photo ops three. He was holding the guns and like a hammer like old boy, and I thought, at the time, being very naively, oh my god, this guy is totally gonna get remembered for this. I can't even remember the guy's name, And that's fortunately the way this stuff goes sometimes outside of a few outliers. But yeah, he told investigators that he had another person in his head. Um seems like a sign, you know, psychiatrist here, but it seems like a symptom of some kind of schizophrenia. And he had an alternate personality that he called Jerry, which which the essentially acted as the voice in his head that told him to commit these acts of violence, and unfortunately, this dark shadow of the human species has been around for a long long time. We have explored cases of serial murderers from the ancient past, people like Shu sin Ittier uh fifth century uh Ce Yemenite, a guy who is one of the first recorded serial killers. We also looked at the stories of murderers who almost certainly died off the record, why possibly due to vigilante actions, and vigilantes are gonna play a part in today's episode. We're going to hit you with a question that we're not sure how to answer towards the end here. The most intriguing of these cases, like the people who are probably dead but officially got away, would be Pedro Alonso Lopez, the so called Monster of the Andes. He was a murderer and assaulter of children. He was arrested in nineteen eighty in Ecuador and the government of Ecuador freed him at around the end of nine. He was interviewed in prison and he called himself the man of the century. He was released for quote unquote good behavior, handed off to Columbia for charges on a twenty year old murder at the time, and Columbia the government there declared him insane. They held him in a hospital in the capital until about when he was released on a bail that was the equivalent at the time of fifty US dots. Right now, as we record April two, there is a clear although distant possibility that Lopez maybe alive today. If so, he is seventy three years old at the time of this recording. Just a quick side note here, Uh, the research for some of these episodes that we do on serial killers and some of the really darker stuff, especially when murderers involved. Uh, it has a serious effect. I I mean I would ben, I would say, and old personally on me has an effect. I remember that the Lopez episode that we did and specifically the research, and I would just caution anybody who wants to look deeper into it, just be careful. There's some things that you can't unknown and unseen, and that's just that's one of them. Just put that out there for everybody. I think people kind of take for granted the psychological toll some of this stuff can have on you, especially folks that are you know, actively seek out true crime type podcasts and you know TV series and documentaries. Uh. It certainly can act as an entertaining element, but I think there's some maybe un checked negative impacts that it can have, you know, on individuals in collectively, because I certainly feel you on that map, agreed, And we are doing this because it is important. There are literally lives at stake. There are people who will never have their children, their lovers, their relatives, their friends with them ever again. And we're recapping this are here is the facts portion comes to you because we want to give you a brief look at the gains and losses of tracking this particularly rare type of murderer over time. Yes, good news. Some do get caught. Many get caught. Sometimes they get caught for another crime, right, Sometimes they get caught after their demise. Sometimes very few cases they get caught. Why they are active? However, given the backlog of forensic data in the US and abroad, given the at times corrupt horse trading of government and law enforcement, we have to sadly note many serial killers are active. Now here's where it gets crazy. Yeah, it's true, folks, fellow conspiracy realists. There are multiple serial murderers who, as of April two, have yet to be apprehended. Some have likely died and they got away with it. Some might be imprisoned for you know, related crimes that don't enter into their their reputation as murderers. There are individuals who, for instance, may be locked up due to assault or shoplifting or grand theft auto. There are probably right now some who are dormant at the current moment, meaning like B t K, like Dennis Rader, they paused for a while until they felt they needed attention, until they're they're crazy. Spiral went further into the abyss uh there for the most part, as we established, unintelligent, but they're not restricted to the United States. Let's share some examples across the globe. Historically we've kind of focused on the US in the West, but they are by no means serial killers are by no means unique to one part of the planet. No. UM, let's go for this one to Japan. Between April and November of and Hiroshima, twelve people were killed due to paraquat poisoning h and another thirty five people were seriously injured. UM investigators were able to trace this back to a drink popular I guess it's a sports drink. It's called ornamin c imagine the c has something to do with vitamin C some kind of energy drink, and that was the common factor in all of these cases. Around the same time, the company that actually manufactures the drink launched a marketing campaign that offered free bottles of the drink from vending machines anytime someone bought something else, kind of a bogo kind of situation. Um and yeah, I mean you're find something else and then you know what a deal and you get this other drink and you know that's the thing that poison tins. Not a particularly good bye one, get one And just for everybody's knowledge, paraquat is an herbicide that was very common in uh. The common name for it is metal biology and v I O L O G E N and it is very very toxic to humans. It's actually often used has a reputation for being used to kill marijuana plants are being growing legally. He might remember Big the Big Lebowski Um Jeff Bridges character the dude insulting someone by calling them a human paraquat because that was the eighties, you know period. Movie was probably something that the hippies were none too happy about in terms of you know, getting rid of their their weed plants. Yeah, this is this is true, and it goes into the idea of uh a social contract right, the unspoken rules and considerations of a culture. Imagine wherever you live, that you go to a vending machine, you put in some change, or nowadays you swipe a card and you're getting you know, water or I don't know, a phanta or you who whatever, and you you do your little thing, and then you get your your bottle of your you who are your fans? Are your mountain dew? And then all of a sudden, another bottle pops out because it's part of the promotion. What do you do with that? You didn't want the eronomanc In Japan, people started placing this drink, this free drink, on top of a vending machine. It's kind of a nice thing to do for strangers. And then if you come along and you see that and you're thirsty, you might say, hey, I'm gonna save a couple of yet, I'm gonna grab grab this o c right here. And that's what led to the problem. Law enforcement concluded that someone or some group of people have been lacing those free drinks with that herbicide paraquat again, as Matt said, it's quite toxic to human beings. And then after they laced it, they put it back on on top of the vending machine. And police, yeah, police couldn't do couldn't do a thing because it was super difficult to narrow down where someone had picked up the drink where they found it. Vending machines are everywhere in urban areas in Japan, and most of these vending machines were in backstreets, very narrow you would call them alleys in the US, and there wasn't any sort of video footage around. It was an opportunity for agents of chaos. This crime appears to have stopped solely because vending machine operators started posting warnings stuff that said, hey, don't take strange drinks that you find at a vending machine. And then it also spurred an unfortunate, an unfortunate trend of copycat attempts using things like limes sulfur. There are also a couple of cases of people attempting to poison them selves and be tied to this phenomenon. But the frightening thing is right now, folks, not only is there no clear conviction for a person or people behind this poisoning. There are no suspects, no one knows, and whomever is doing this is likely walking around free in Japan today. It is weird to think that somebody who had the money to you know, go to these vending machines, make purchases, purchase you know, this toxic substance, place it in those things. If this that person is, you have to imagine they're old enough to do those things without suspicion, right, But then you imagine it hasn't been that long. They are very much likely still alive. And the super disturbing thing for me in this case is how long distance these kills are for whoever this person is, right, Like, it's I think it's very un likely that whoever poisoned these drinks was actually they're observing when somebody came up and was a victim of theirs, right, It's almost as if you just did it and walked away. And it is also not like Ted Kazinski or one of these people that you know how to target or knew they were sending something through the mail to a specific person. This is a random person that was going to get injured or killed due to their actions. Which I just I don't understand the psychology of that and how it It just doesn't it doesn't even compare to me to a lot of the other deaths that we're gonna be talking about today, and killers who are so up close and personal with their actions. It's just interesting that this was enough of a phenomenon, like around Japan because of this seemingly failed marketing attempt, that someone was able to capitalize it and kind of go undiscovered. I mean, it's like the drink equivalent of like YouTube putting that album on everyone's iPod. That's still to this day, people can't figure out how to get off that. We don't want your I don't want your new album, we don't want your free drink um, and you literally created a public health nightmare or the opportunity for one anyway. Well, you know, I love him or hate him, you can at least we can all at least agree the band You Too has not been poisoning people physically. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we will return, unfortunately with more examples of serial killers on the loose. We're back, Matt. This is one that I believe really stood out for you. It takes us to Brazil. There is or was a serial killer who got away that the media called the Rainbow Killer due to the nature of the victims this individual was targeting. Oh yeah, sure, this one made a couple of lists that exist out there you can find right now of you know, unsolved killers. Um, this one is particularly grizzly. And as we start telling you the story, you'll kind of figure out towards the end why it feels something feels off with it. Over the course of just I guess it's eighteen months officially in Brazil, this person that was dubbed the rainbow Killer or the rainbow Maniac that was that's the one that I've seen most commonly used. The Rainbow Maniac. Uh. This person killed at least thirteen people. It's thought that perhaps that number is sixteen or even higher. But thirteen people in particular were killed execution style in Patteris Park and they were then I guess dumped or sometimes just left in nearby bushes there within the park. And this specific meth of killing was often a gun shot to the head and when the victims were found at least in the thirteen these thirteen particular cases, the victims trousers, their pants were pulled down of like to their their knees. I believe was there also signs of the trauma, like outside of the bullet wounds, like they were beaten before being executed. Yeah there, Yeah, well we'll get into it. One of one of the victims was shot many more times than the others. Yeah, it appears that the first documented case happened on the fourth of July two thousand seven. These murders took place around the same geographical area, right around that park you described, Matt. And also, we are not native Portuguese speakers, so pardon in a miss pronunciations. We do want to be respectful. This is happening in context in the country. There are ultra conservative groups that are railing against the idea of lgbt Q people just existing. They're just they're mad that those people exist. Uh. And this park is kind of a ground zero hook up spot for illicit rendezvous. And we know that in two thousand and eleven, one person actually went to trial, went to a jury trial on suspicion of these homicides. This guy was a retired police sergeant named Yarro Francisco Franco. He was arrested based on the testimony of two eye witnesses. In particular, two of them put him at the park at the time of one of the murders, and one said he Franco had the same posture as the assailant. But again, we know eye witness testimony can be unfortunately it's not it's not waterproof, it doesn't always hold sand. And as a particular victim was supposedly shot twelve times, the one that uh, this person was, you know, supposedly seen carrying out Yeah, and as a result, the jury found this person, Franco, not guilty of the murders. This establishes a pattern that we see often in the world of serial murderers, praying on the disadvantaged, right, praying on the folks who exist on some level at the fringes of society. Now, to be clear, Brazil has a reputee Asian as a tremendously gender progressive country, at least on paper. But if you look at nonprofit gay rights groups, places like Group of Guy, the Baia, again Portuguese speakers, uh, this is the oldest organization of its type in the country of Brazil, and they will tell you that Brazil remains one of the world leaders in the murders of lgbt Q and non binary individuals. And at this point, you know, I think maybe we take a second to note the danger of the media in in these sorts of crimes and in reporting them here in the US. If you're not a citizen or resident of this country, if you haven't spent a lot of time here, you need to know that there is a terrible habit in reporting. It is a kind of is feede click baity thing we would call it now, where you give these criminals some sort of catchy name, right like Matt No, we were just talking a second ago, rainbow Maniac, rainbow killer. This may not be helpful to the actual investigators, you know, And unfortunately we know from interviews post arrest with proven serial killers they like the monikers. And I think it's a dangerous thing. I mean, you guys do true crime shows all the time, you ep them, you produce them. What do you think about this this nomenclature. I guess it feels like this is a dated thing, like these kind of gross nicknames that are like, yeah, inflammatory and flashy, like I can't think of you know, in in in America that going over well, you know in mainstream media or like you know, newspapers. Oh yeah, that totally makes sense, right. I mean, even if I think a killer called themselves something again the way the zodiac the zodiac did, uh, or the freeway phantom or something like that, you probably well, I wonder. I wonder because you would get clicks right right now, The media would get clicks on their websites and on social media if you've got a name that can trend. I mean, that's I think that's the tough truth about it. Yeah, it's it's the hybridization of media to where there used to be to some degree, you know, ethical guidelines and how it's kind of a free for all and whose first to market with the story or who gets to coin the name. But I still wonder if, in the kind of woke uh you know culture that we live in, if it wouldn't just kind of be a bad look and people would be like, oh, gross, BuzzFeed, you know what I mean. I don't know, that's just just a thought. It's interesting because there's also a bit of a faucian bargain at play. I would pause it if you can by hook or by crook get more attention to a story than are you raising the possibility that these crimes will be solved? That is that's a dilemma, it's a pickle. It's a question without an answer just yet, And speaking of questions without answers, we're going to pause for a moment, and when we return, we're going to talk a little bit more about self identifying murderers and about the power of those names. And we've returned, we want to end part one of this series on this case, speaking of questions without answers, folks, fellow conspiracy realist, we want to know your opinion, as I believe it's fair to say that all of us are on the fence here. Our final story today takes us to Bangladesh. It is a beautiful country with an ancient history. It's an ancient land, and it is besieged by sexual assault. So heads up. We did a disclaimer at the beginning. We want to do another disclaimer now because we're about to explore some intensely unclean and disturbingly true facts here. It is from January to September of twenty alone, over one thousand women were sexually assaulted in Bangladesh. Forty three of those victims died as a direct result of those assaults. And you have to note this statistic, which is true and confirmed, does not count non binary people, It does not count trans people, It does not necessarily count children. It is only an official statistic stick, which sadly means it misses a great deal without getting into the harrowing experience of any assault victim reporting these types of crimes. It is certain that there's a lot more to that number. A lot of these assaults simply do not get reported. And this led someone in Bangladesh. We believe one person to take matters into their own hands. Yeah, it's weird. This one's a bit weird in my opinion, because we're only talking about two weeks, right, this is it's almost a spree killing, less of a serial killing. But it also matches those the descriptions of those deaths and killings and killers as well. Um in the years twenty nineteen, there's two weeks, Like we said, at least three men it. I think there might be more. At least we're going to be finding out more, I think in the future, unless this really was just a single spree thing. But three three men who were suspected of sexual assault. They were all the prime suspect, right or one of the prime suspects within cases. They were each found murdered, and each of them had a note around their neck. In two of those cases, the men's names were written on that note. Yes, and at least two and you can you can find the pattern. You can see the notes. These notes escalate in specificity, or so it would seem. The first one simply reads, I am name. We're not going to give their specific names. Quote I am name, I am the rapist of quote victim name. This is my punishment. They were found dead, murdered via gunshot. The second note says, quote, I am the prime accused in a rape case and quote dead the same way. Looks like the same firearm. Not publicly identified yet, but local law enforcement seems to confirm that they believe it was the same person. The third not the third note escalates and ticks a couple of boxes for serial murderer. This is a self identified thing. Yeah, it said, I am name, I am the rapist of a madrassa girl of Bandaria. Uh and this is the consequence of a rapist bewaring rapists Hercules. Yeah, chi chilling, dude, It's powerful. And there's some weird stuff with this case. Okay, so there are victims of sexual assault and then these victims of murder are are suspects, right, So there's been no trial, no legal process to confirm whether or not they were actually the rapists. But these the families of these victims, the murder victims, have some interesting stories that they've been telling the media, and many of them are that at least in two cases that plain closed, men showed up in either a van or another vehicle and picked up you know, their husband or their friend or their son or their neighbor and put them into that vehicle and they drove off and that was the last time the murder victim was seen. That to me is very highly strange. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like more than one person, more than one perpetrator responsible. It sounds like there's cooperation going on here. And it is almost certain that the individuals or individual responsible whomever is identifying as Hercules, that individual or that group does not think of itself as a serial murderer. It thinks of itself as doing justice. When the courts failed to do so and well, and they identify themselves as in a part of an investigative team, like so part of the law enforcement there in in that area of Bangladesh. I mean, that's that's creepy. It's like plain closed officers. Maybe they're not officers at all. Maybe they are, And how how can you prove that because you'd have to be a pretty significant and serious investigation, and it seems like maybe that's not gonna happen. Yeah, it's a good point. The police and local law enforcement don't seem particularly keen to solve these cases. Also, it is possible and and again legally we're not saying anything for sure, but it is possible that they could be involved with law enforcement whomever is identifying as hercules. And this gets to the question we want ask you, fellow conspiracy realist vigilante crimes. This unfortunately ticks all the boxes of serial murder, right, we see a specific demographic of victim, we see a specific motivation for murder, we see a specific type of murder. Again, it looks like it was the same firearm or similar firearm even down to you know, we don't have information because it hasn't been publicly released, but it it seems like the same person or people doing this thing and then also looking for some acknowledgement from media, looking for some notoriety, call me hercules whomever is saying. And the question is then, you know, the question then is if this ticks all the boxes for serial murder, where we go with this? Where do we go? Because obviously whomever is responsible for this seems convinced that they are. They're taking the lives of people who deserve it, and that's not us passing judgment. We just want to know what you think in that regard. Yeah, Well, the only reason I cast or kind of cast out on it being a serial killer is because that it doesn't seem like there's much of a cooling off period at all. It seems like a mission, like you're talking about here, Uh, someone feels like they're on a mission to kill people. But it's I don't know, it's it's different in a lot of ways. Did we talk before about there has to be a certain stretch of a cooling off period for it to be considered serial murder rather than spree killings? Yes, yeah, per FBI definition. Yeah, but would a vigilante be considered a serial killer if they're not compelled by some psychological drive. I guess, I guess the re it doesn't matter. It's it's about the pattern, But the intent seems like it would matter. Wouldn't you label this person of vigilante rather than a serial killer if they are targeting certain individuals as retribution? That's the question, you know, it's it's a question that's difficult to answer because you could also consider cases like um, it's not a one to one comparison in any way, but you could consider cases like mafioso or organized crime hitman, you know, enforcers like the iceman. That guy killed a lot of people, and to him it was his job. He didn't, you know, he wasn't uh, He didn't have some voice named Jerry in his head telling him to do stuff. He didn't always coming through a cell phone in his ear. He was gonna get paid a million dollars to do stuff, right. His neighbor's dog wasn't commanding him to go out and kill like Burka Wood said or anything like that. We're asking you, folks, what is the line between vigilante retribution and what would qualify as a spree murderer or a serial murderer. Is there a line at all? And if so, what do you think that is? More importantly, will these cases that we have just kind of given you the broad strokes of will they ever be solved? Will someone find who was poisoning those vending machines in Japan? Will someone in Brazil finally get convicted of these various crimes? Will the case of Hercules ever be solved? And Matt to your point about patterns. If this entity individual or group identifying as Hercules returns and attributes more and vic hims, I mean, if it, whatever it is, if it racks up more deaths, does that not officially make it a serial killer at that point because then we would have the dormancy period which takes it past a spree killing. That's an interesting thing. Yeah, because we're talking twenty nineteens gonna be three years here? Yeah, I suppose. I I don't know, man, It's odd to me that there were four three known for sure killings that were done by Hercules, at least according to the notes that match up, that they all occurred in those two weeks, then they didn't happen again. Man, I just I want to learn more about the case, like I want to do a deep dive on that at some point, maybe not maybe not on the show, but that this this in particular has just got all my wheels turning. Agreed, and I think this is one of the ones that's going to stay with us because we also have to we also have to consider the idea that law enforcement may be involved. We also have to consider the fact that the three the three murders, uh, those those individuals were not suspected in the same crime, only in the same type of crime, which again curious or and curious or We want to hear from you, folks. Please join us later in the week when we look at Uncaught serial Killers in part two, which is an unintentional tongue twister. This is one of our darker episodes. We want to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online. That's right. You can find us on Facebook. We have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. You can also find us on Twitter. 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