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Hello and welcome to and that's why we drink the podcast with M. and Christine, your badass ghost hunters.

That's that's me. I have no pants on today. Tell me who I am. Oh, and that's Christine. She has pants on today, I think. How do you know? I think I cannot be sure. Oh, well, speaking of no pants, I have things to say about that real quick. I'm sure you do. One of our friends, Lizzie, I never got to I didn't show you because I wanted to show you on camera, send me a Christmas gift.

Oh, and it's from has to do with the episode. I think it was like one ninety one where you gave me my own like Mexican wrestling name. Yes. Yes, of course.

So I had never owned a hat that says L Burritos and pantalones which is the pants burrito.

Holy crap. And it makes me so happy. That's so cute. Is that not the nicest scene pantalones.

People love that. But anyway.

Well, the the redheaded devil or something that checks out. Anyway, I want to I you just I, I mentioned I'm not wearing pants and in the spirit of that I wanted to let you know my hat also lets everyone know I'm not wearing pants so.

Oh I love it. I for once I am wearing pants because once the camera is on me I feel like maybe I owe that much to the people who are watching.

Not me, not you know, I would never on your behalf but anyway I am I drinking today and why.

That's a great question. What I was not prepared to answer. I am drinking water out of my again my in a pizzeria cup because I'm trying to stay hydrated. Lovely. Why do I drink well.

Hmm. You things now that you've opened the floodgates. First of all I drink because I apologize in advance that my audio is very equably next week. It will not be like that because I am ordering a nice little soundproof situation for myself now. Well, I'm sending you a plunger though. I thought put a plunger for it.

Maybe I'll get like an honorary plunger and just have it next to me. That'll be my decor. Yes, I love that. The other reason I drink is because my ADHD meds are not working like I should. Yeah, I'm super bummed. And like it's gotten to a point where the my psychiatrist has been like, we've kind of hit the max dose. No.

So like I now I'm probably gonna have to start back at square one or maybe it hasn't kicked in right away and he's like, you can do it for another two weeks or so and we'll see if things change. But if not, then I don't know enough about psychiatry. But they were saying something about I'm going to have to add assault to it, which apparently makes it like more problematic because it's like more addictive or assault or like something like apparently it's called a salt.

Oh, I thought you were saying like assault with a deadly weapon. They're going to assault me with some salt. Apparently. I don't know why I can't just get some fucking Adderall. Like, I don't know why I got to be trying all the stuff I was never prepared for. So I'm hoping that I can just ask him, like, why didn't you just start me on, like, the most common thing? Because it's controlled medication. They're going to give you a hard time about it because people abuse it.

Listen, it's the same with the Klonopin. You get a really hard time any time you go to a new psychiatrist.

If anything, though, for the last twenty eight years, like I've been my own issue, rather just try one like try and issue that like could become a non-issue in that. Like it'll help me for myself, you know what I mean.

Well, hopefully that's what happens because when I, I had a psychiatrist who was like, I know you and I trust you and I don't think you're abusing this.

But then when I moved and got a new psychiatrist, they were like, well, how am I supposed to know that you're not abusing this medication?

And it's like you have to start all over the process of, like, convincing them that you're not going to, you know, about anyway.

That's probably why I why I drink in a bad way, but I do drink in a good way. And that Alison is home after six yet. So there's that. Why do you drink and what do you drink. That's what I'm drinking, a London fog.

I know places like I'm running to the coffee shop down the street to grab like coffee beans.

Do you want anything?

And I was like, I want a London fog because Emini recording today and they had one and it's really good. And they sweet did it without asking.

It's very good if you work at Starbucks, you know.

Well, not like every Starbucks employee across, you know about those employees specifically, but I have complained a lot openly at Starbucks who is supposed to know the recipe half the time. That's never right, because it's just apparently it's like a rare thing to ask for or it's not weird and they always forget to sweeten it. And I always complain specifically to you about that. So I'm glad that they sweetened it for you. Yeah, automatically.

And it's really good. So I'm trying to come up with new ways for you to visit me and oh, here comes Moone. Oh, my God. Knocking all of my shit over.

OK, who ways to learn me and the little kitty cat and my favorite tea. Exactly. I'm trying my best here. Come home and say hello. Oh, it is what people call a void cat because he's all black, so it's really hard to see it like photos his face. So he's keeping you sheltered. He's saving your eyes from the beauty that the cuteness.

Oh, I have a reason why I drink, which is really weirdly related to I'm talking really fast.

I think I had too much caffeine today, but I it's really weirdly related to what you said, which is that I realized yet.

I mean, I don't want to, like, rain on your parade at all. And I'm sorry if I do, but I realized. Yes, Lady Gaga says rain on me. All right.

Yeah. Every takes. Did you know actually that is an original quote that was stolen by Google.

You know, the gags. She loves to do that. She likes to borrow your favorites. And I love her. I love her.

She actually has a new album coming out called Noodle's All the Way to the Top. And I heard about that. And I was like, Miss Gags, what are you doing? Come on, don't, don't don't be foolish. Like you don't know.

Sometimes Bear tells me, you know, my dad sometimes Bear tells me that he listens to the intro of these episodes and I'm like, oh, god, oh God. What did I say? I don't remember.

Can someone make an album, by the way, are like an album artwork of bear in the gags, like he doesn't know who the hell Lady Gaga is, promise you.

But so sometimes he says that and I'm like, oh, God, what did I say?

And then he is really disappointed. Look on his face. And I'm like, maybe I should start thinking better about what I start the episodes with.

And here I am. I'm not doing that. So sorry that my father would look the same way if he even tried to listen. So you're I don't know if you're luckier. I'm really well. And listen, actually, that's how I usually feel.

And then he's like, I tried listening to another episode, like, pains him physically, you know, it terrifies me, bumble girl who I've been becoming friends with.

I'm always scared when I meet someone on Bumble and they don't know who I am, which is what I want. I want like a clean slate, like I want like, you don't know me, but I still creep on me because that's what you do when you meet someone online. You sure learn about them and they're like, oh yeah, haha. I listen to a few of your episodes to like oh God, oh your vibe. And I was like, let me guess.

You're breaking up with me.

Yeah. That's the worst. It's like you have to find a line of like somebody knows you well enough to be like Oh I understand, appreciate you. But like the other line of not knowing you at all because then they're going to be scared.

I've made a few friends where they have said so I know that like you're known for this thing, but I hope you don't mind. But I'm not going to listen because I want to get to know you like. Wow. Like between you and me. And I was like, that's the nicest thing you could do. Like, yeah, it's like, please God, don't make an opinion of me. Don't judge me. Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah.

I mean sometimes I wonder that because I'm like and if you listen to you Sandy too I'm like talking about my here it is my Dilbert Eminem machine all the time.

And I'm like if a new friend is like listening to the podcast and just hears me bragging about my Dilbert Eminem machine, they're going to be like this for cable.

Yes, I'm very proud of this. That's a word you you did not use the first time you mentioned that, showing you my true colors, future buffs.

Well, anyway, I'll tell you why I drink. Sorry, I got sidetracked.

Oh, my God. You didn't even say it. Sorry.

OK, the reason I drink because you said Lady Gaga something or other rain on me, my point, whatever.

So what I'm saying is that I found out yesterday, I realized that the Lexapro is working and I don't think I've ever had like an experience where it's just I mean, you found out it's working.

So I I was prescribed it because I was on Wellbutrin and it like it's an antidepressant, but it also is known to increase anxiety. And everybody knows I'm like a very anxious person.

So I never really put that together. And I was like, well, I'd rather be anxious than depressed. And so I just kept taking it. And then my new psychiatrist was like, oh, well, they actually work really well together.

And I was like, OK. So I started taking the Lexapro being like, I don't know what this is going to do, if anything.

And all of a sudden, so I realized it like it hit me because yesterday I had this, like, little interview on a podcast, a true crime show that I'll let you guys know when it comes out. But I was like setting up for it.

And usually I get, like, just terrible stomach pains and like, I get so nervous to get on a zoom call or a phone call. And poor is always like we're literally talking to, like our manager.

It calm down, like we're calling Eva.

We're calling I've literally you you relax. I'm terrified and I'm like, I have to cheat.

This is embarrassing at the change shirts because I'm like sweating. I have to like use the bathroom ten times, like it's really bad.

And yesterday I was sitting here and I was like preparing and the guy was running late and I just sat there and all of a sudden the thing started ringing.

I was like, wait a second. I didn't even like I was like freaking out. I wasn't having to do breathing exercises.

I was like a little nervous, but I was like, oh, this is what a normal person feels as far as like, oh, God, I'm a little nervous for this, but not like my whole body is shutting down because I don't want to hop on the phone apurpose goosy phone call.

And I was just like, I think that must be what it's like. So I'm just very thankful and a lot of people have written in saying Lexapro really did wonders for them, too, so thank the Lord.

How long did you have to be on it before then? Like five weeks, I think.

OK, and so I finally was like, wait a second. So I don't know how long it's been like adjusting, but yesterday was the first time I had, like, something that would have absolutely made me, like, piss my pants.

And I was like, oh, that's weird. I'm just a little nervous, but that's it.

And so anyway, I'm very thankful for it and it's really changed. And I didn't have taken Klonopin or propranolol. I was like, holy crap.

So anyway, cheers. Wow. Good for you. I know I didn't want to like, again, rain on you like a garcés, but I was just very thankful that for once I was able to diminish my anxiety for once ever.

Wow. Well, OK. Well, good for you. I'm very happy. Very happy for you. Thank you.

And a lot of people have written in saying, like, hey, I started I went and sought help for my ADHD or I started antidepressants because you guys talked about it. And that just makes my makes me so happy that people are, you know, opening up about that.

A lot of people have through t time Tuesday because I see everyone's gossip, whether or not I posted. That's true. And a lot of people have been saying that this is like their year to go figure out their mental situations. So very excited for me. It's the year of sandwiches for you. It's the your mental health. When I'm depressed, it's a wide range. But listen.

New Year, new president. New meds in today's garbage day is even earlier.

It's garbage can be trash, though. Today, literally, like a couple hours ago, we got a new president. Oh, and also, by the way, I know a lot of people were like, did anybody do they not even know we were recording last week? And we got off the recording and Eva said, hey, maybe you should look at your phones.

And it was like capital has been breached and people are mobbing the interior. And we were like, this has happened in the last two hours while we were recording, like The Simpsons, blah, blah, blah. And then we get off and it's like, hey, the whole world has gone to shit. So we didn't ignore it. We just didn't know it was happening. It was I mean, we really could not have picked a less convenient time.

It was so like as we were as I was talking about The Simpsons, I was getting like a flood of text from people being like, check the news. Look, your mom was calling you. Yeah, I was like, I'm recording. Like, whatever tragedy has befallen the nation, I will check later. And then I found out it really was a tragedy that had befallen the nation.

Isn't there a weird thing that, like The Simpsons, The Simpsons also predict that? So they I'm pretty sure that was a Photoshop situation.

Oh, OK. Because that would have been really weird before I started looking into that. I believed it because I was like so on Simpsons stuff. Right. But when we found out about the capital, people were starting to tag me in this thing, but basically said they're like, oh, they also predicted that this would happen. As I'm telling the story, Simpsons predictions that another thing that that they could have predicted happen. And so that was really weird.

But now I'm seeing that that was like fake and they were trying to free people out. So I'm not sure. Well, anyway, anyway, thank you for drinking London fog and celebration.

It makes me miss you like more than I thought I was just drinking. I guess I only ever have these with em. And so now I'm just like, really sad.

I guess I need to go take more of you iced it because that's going to really fucking rock your socks. No, but it's like twenty five degrees here today.

So I'm going to but I wanted to make sure they sweeten it properly first and they take the heat and then pour that puppy over some ice cubes. Okay. Change your world.

OK, next Wednesday when the next government building is being swarmed, I'll try that. Yes.

OK, perfect. No and especially thank you because Postmus and Starbucks are now no longer working together, which I had no idea until you posted that. So I can't even get them anymore because they made a deal with Uber. But Uber, Isa's menu is super limited, so one and Fox aren't even available. So if I turn out, I have to make one. And it is talk about a tragedy that's befallen the nation.

So I heard that actually on The Simpsons, season four, it was something pretty fox. This is not the year. OK, so it's been a year for everything else, but not by loving Fox. OK, anyway. Yikes. Sorry everybody, welcome to. And that's why I drink where I don't wear pants and Christine drinks my favorite drink from across the country but is sweating a little less so.

And that's what happened. Learned in Vegas for baby. There's a lot the el fogie all the way. Yikes.

Christine, I don't know if you saw it, but in my new recent textbook fame, I've been catching up and apparently someone has made a TED talk about us talking about how much we love love.

It's really funny. It's like I'm talking about my boobs because of their love. It's become very meta and layered and nuanced. I'm obsessed with it. But it's true. We love third love. I love third love, especially because first of all, there's a fish finder quids that you can take, which you know how much I love a quiz. And they're designed for a perfect fit. They have more than 80 sizes from cups to eye, including half cups, which is like something I hadn't even heard of before.

And I actually just got a new bra with actually told everyone on Twitter, which like I'm sure they didn't want to know, but I told them anyway.

But I got a new bra and it's like it's really pretty because it's like kind of lacy, but it's also really comfortable, which I feel like has never been done. Like the kind of hybrid.

Yeah, it's I feel like you either have to be really like and comfortable or like cute and really uncomfortable that I found the perfect match with.

I hope it's I hope it's named the chef's kiss. You know, the third love knows a perfect bra for everyone.

So right now they're offering our listeners twenty percent off your first order.

Go to third love dotcom slash drink now to find your perfect fitting bra and get twenty percent off your first purchase. That's third love dotcom slash drink for twenty percent off today.

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So this is episode two of seven. Also, this is our very first episode of We Are Celebrating four years today. How do we get some right.

My dude for freakin years, four years ago yesterday and posted on Instagram that they asked me if I want to do podcast and I said, I don't think so.

Think so. And then I said, you're really depressed, you need a new hobby. And I said, fine, I guess.

And it worked. And look how beautiful it turned out. We're such we're we're our own worst enemy. Or it's like, why do you celebrate today? Oh, yeah. I guess also today's our four year anniversary. Technically, technically, February is the anniversary.

Yeah. This is like the conception and we are like we are pregnant with the broadcast. We're expecting expecting anyway, someone take that clip and really destroy the gossip tabloid like the podcast tabloids.

You know them. You know, you've heard it's just me tweet also. Wait a minute. If someone hasn't created a National Enquirer about just podcasters yet, that's what this year is about for me. Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim. OK, no one else. That's us that's never heard about it. The very first story hot off the press. We are expecting four years later. But it's OK. Oh also sorry.

I know we have to start the episode, but this is also the first episode ever, not under the Trump administration, because we started in 2017 and Trump had been nominated. Well, this probably aligns with my depression.

It's making a lot of sense now, but we started in twenty seventeen, so we have never done an episode under any other administration besides Trump.

I know. Looks like they're having I don't know what an aneurysm.

Are you okay. I never knew that. I never put that together. Well. Oh wow. So something good came out of Trump's administration. No, we'll see how this goes.

I mean, I hope we can do it. I'm a little nervous. Joe Biden might be our might be the the end of it all for us. Joseph, you help Joseph get us a girl get together, OK? Hmm. Wow. So we're expecting and Trump isn't a part of it, which is nice. Trump Spin does not have custody any longer. I love that.

That's so special.

Special. It's day. It's our conception day is to wash your fucking trash.

OK, yikes. Welcome to 207 apparently. Two hundred plus episodes later, we're finally out of the woods with Trump. And I'm going to cover a story that has a lot of names to it.

It is best known as the Cheltenham Chill the Fuck. Cheltenham does have a lot of names.

You've already said four different ones. It's English, so it's got that. Your name, how you spell it. Cheltenham.

Oh, yeah, Cheltenham. Yeah.

I would say if I to ignorant, which I am welcome.

And it's called the Cheltenham Ghost because it is from Cheltenham which is in Gloucestershire. So I mean like OK, Glouster Shire. So like excuse in England with your Chester Shire. Who knows.

You know it you know. Well so the Cheltenham goes. It's also known as the Pittsville Ghost. It's known as the Morton Ghost and it's known as the dinosaurs poltergeist.

Oh my.

A lot of names they all have to do with basically like one of the basic facts of the story, mainly the location. So the reason it's called the Morton Ghost sometimes is because up until nineteen forty eight, the identities of the family were concealed until and that was the plan until everyone had passed away. And then they would announce the actual names of the family members involved. So their code name or their fake family name everyone knew them by was the Mortons.

So that's why they were called the Morton Ghost. Got it. So that's one explanation. And I'll get through why why it's named the other. Basically, the other names have to do with the location to. Nor is the name of the actual house, how fancy houses have their own names. Oh, yeah, like mine, the builder, the Dilbert Evernham Machine, Casa Hike's, I believe we will.

Ever since we watched Charmed, I told Allison that this is called the manor, which I really like.

That's good. I really love that because they would always be like, oh my God, there's another Zeeman and meet me back at the manor. And I was like, love that the man. And so I don't use it as often as I should, but maybe that should be my resolution for twenty twenty one where any time is like, where are you, I'll be like the manor. But also we're in a pandemic. You fucking knew that. So my try which thank you.

At the manor right of it. And it's all coming together.

OK anyway so the house's name is Dinaw so that's how dangerous Poltergeist comes out. It's also called the Evil Ghost because it was on Pittsville Cercas Road. Didn't call it the circus ghost. That would have been more fun, but whatever. And then Cheltenham is because that's the part of Gloucestershire. It's and so it's all basic facts. So this has to do with the Despard family, DSP, JRD. So I think this part Despierta, I know the patriarch of this family is Frederick Despard.

He's from Ireland. He's in his 50s. He's an Army vet, and he is well traveled, as you can tell, by his children's birth certificates. They were all born between 1858 in 1876, and almost all of them are born in totally different places. So I know one of them was actually born in a few of them were born in Cheltenham. One was born like Tanzania. One was born. Oh, my God. I mean, all over the Channel Islands.

Yeah. So just a fun fact for you. In 1858, the same year that his first born showed up, I suppose Fredriks wife, his her name was Rosina Meredith Despard, and she died from an unknown cause. But it was a likely from child birth from their oldest kid who was their daughter named Frieda, I guess after Fred. And then so after his wife died in the same year, he remarried to a woman named Harriet and Nixon.

Great. So then they have children, Fred and Harriet. The first one's name is Rosina, I guess, after the first wife, which is kind of odd. Interesting. And then they have another daughter named Edith. They have two more daughters, Lillian and Mabel, and then they have a son, Henry, and then another son, Wilfred.

Oh, I love all these old timey names, Mabel. It's fun. I know. I love grandma names like Edith. That's just so much fun.

Yeah, you don't. Oh, I love it. I was trying to think of like what's the most grandma name I could think of. And I kind of failed myself because I was like I couldn't think of anything on the spot.

Ethel actual Louise useless. You're coming up with some wild ones.

I've got to think of the most bananas. Old one fun fact when I lived in Geraldine sorry, Geraldine. When Alison lived in Tanzania, they would call her Alice because I like that name.

That was also the name of my imaginary friend who was an old lady ghost apparently. So story for another day.

I don't even want to. I do. You told me that. I said I had it.

I said I had an imaginary friend. Her name was Alice. And I started describing her and I was like, it's really weird because our family friend Alice had just died.

And you were like, well, what did Alice look like? And I was like, well, she had long grey hair. And you were like, Christine. I was like, I don't remember the conversation, but I agree with myself.

I'm pretty sure it was the week we met like we had we had literally not even started the podcast yet. We hadn't even conceived yet. And you were like, Christine, I hate to tell you this. And I was like, no way. And you were like, Christine, listen to what you're saying. This is that old lady following you.

So I can't believe I wanted to conceive with you after that. That's the great card. Listen, you knew what you were getting into. I was like, that's the one. But anyway, so they all have old people names. I do like the name Henry a lot. I love that name, too.

Or so in 1882, this is where the beginning of, like, the real nuts and bolts of the story are. So the family moves onto to Circus Road and they move into the Dinaw house. Apparently the house had lived in Servants', a coachmen, a gardener. So I would say they were pretty well-to-do. I would think at this point, Rosina, the daughter is nineteen. She's more or less the main character. I had a hard time understanding if she was the main character or if it was kind of her and a gaggle of her siblings that were a part of the story.

But she is the one that gets mentioned the most. So I'd say she has a little more star power. So she's nineteen. And the whole story really starts where one night in her room she hears someone at the door and she thinks it's her mom and she opens the door to see what her mom wants. Now, I'm going to tell you a quote that's kind of long, but what's. On about it is any quotes that I give you, and these notes are all from actual reports from the speaker, from the Society of Research School.

So here is the first quote. This is what Ruzena says happened. Once you open the door to expect her mom there, I saw no one but ongoing a few steps along the passage, I saw the figure of a tall lady dressed in black standing at the head of the stairs. After a few moments, she descended the stairs and I followed for a short distance, feeling curious of what it could be. I had only a small piece of candle and it suddenly burnt itself out and being unable to see more.

I went back to my room, which I imagine is like from a horror movie like, oh no, the candles burnt out. Now the whole place is pitch black.

Yikes. Yeah, no thanks. The figure was that of a tall lady dressed in black of a soft woolen material, judging from the slight sound in moving. And the face was hidden in a handkerchief held up and the right hand. This is all I noticed. But on further occasions, when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of her forehead and a little of the hair above.

So just right at the forehead and Alison is walking in while I recall you, like, glanced above the laptop.

I thought it was the end of you as she just barged in here like she owns the damn place, OK? She's like, this is my manner. OK, I was thinking, which of this manner.

Thank you. Yeah, she's I know exactly what she had to say. And it was those words verbatim where you could see her hairline.

Basically the face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand. This is all I know. But on further occasions I saw the left side of her forehead. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress. As she held it down, a portion of a widow's cuff was visible on both wrists so that the whole impression was that of a lady and widow's weeds, which I will get into widow's weeds in a second.

OK, so that was her experience, her first experience. So the finger was also said to have worn a bonnet with either a really long veil or a hood, and she basically looked like a woman in mourning. And Rosina only told this to her servant, Miss Campbell. But her sister Frieda also ended up saying a woman in black. Later, Frieda saw a figure crossing the hallway and Frieda thought that it was a visiting nun. Oh, sure.

That happens sometimes. Not just my nun that walks around and through just goes through walls and up and down on the floor. Also, one of the maids saw a figure and thought it was an intruder. The youngest son, Wilfred and his friend were on the terrace when they saw a woman in the drawing room, which hysterical, which we have those now. And the two boys, they saw a woman in distress in the drawing room sobbing when they went into the drawing room to check on this woman and ask her, she was apparently the room was empty and the maid said that nobody had been there, too.

So then in 1884, two years later, this is kind of like the real peak of their paranormal experience. All the siblings are Rosina is having a lot of paranormal experiences with this woman. She once even saw the ghost standing silently in the drawing room for thirty minutes straight.

It's like, did you time that did you take your eyes off of her? Did you walk and see her and a half an hour later see her again? I don't know. Was she just doing this for 30 minutes? I hope so. One minute. Thirty one. You were like, this is too much.

I lost the staring contest.

So the sister Edith also said that this woman would pass her on the staircase.

OK, that's creepy because you're like in a confined space, like you have nowhere to go.

A confined space where if you need to escape, you are falling down.

Yeah, right. You're going to break a leg. There's no getting out of the way.

It's taking the rule. Yeah.

The only way out is through. So Edith said this is a quote from Edith. I saw it cross the hall, push open the drawing room door and go in by herself also like it. I didn't like that either.

Yeah. So the most common thread about all of these sightings amongst the siblings is that they see a woman's face. She's always dressed in black and she's always hiding her face and a handkerchief held in her right hand. Nobody ever sees her face. She's also always dressed and widow's weeds. So this is where I get into a very unnecessarily long fun fact.

As long as it's fun, it's fun. It's just there's a lot to it. So this is where we do a deep dive, if you will. Sure. So widow's weeds. This is old English for the word robe. Weeds is English for Romeo. And so it was Widow's Weeds was basically the term at the time, like the Victorian era term for like you're mourning grieving attire. Sure. Here we go. Fun fact. Widow's weeds are most associated with Queen Victoria because she was known as the ultimate mourner.

What could that mean? Christine asks to herself, as well as the audience.

So after Prince Albert died, this is the this is eighteen sixty one. After Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria was so distraught that she only ever wore black for the rest of her life. And basically, she was the reason that, like mourning and funerals all started this like really black doll attire. She basically revamped, in a way, the funeral industry in terms of like clothing and accessories.

And it it's like even I loved funeral chic. You know, that was our style in New Orleans.

She is the original fashionista. She is the Tyra Banks. The funeral, she.

Oh, wow. What an icon. Queen Victoria, she really had it in her. And so because she wore black for the rest of her life, everybody else started assuming that once you are in mourning, you wear black. All all you do is wear black you because you're both wearing black right now.

By the way, we are in mourning of always I'm not sure of garbage day of the. We're not in mourning of that. Just kidding. No, we're in celebration. That's why you got a little you've got a little snap of neonate. True. There. We're in funeral chic, which is not mourning.

It's it's celebration.

No, the chic is what makes it chic. So because of her wearing black dress for life and kind of being the catalyst and the funeral industry's fashion world cemeteries had an influx in certain monuments and symbolism and, quote, funerary accessories during Queen Victoria's reign. Traditional mourning was that a woman would wear widow's weeds for a very long time after someone they love died, sometimes longer than a year after the death. Wow. And if a widow left her house, everything she wore and everything she brought with her, including her purse, her earrings, her umbrella, her hat, her shoes, her buckles on her shoes, everything had to be black because that was the Queen Victoria when.

Oh, my fashion icon. And so even in eighteen forty, this is just like a fun fact within a fun fact. Twenty years before this happened, there was a work woman's guide that showed you how long you were actually supposed to traditionally mourn a person. And here's a dash of patriarchy for you. And by a dash I mean a gallon.

I was like a dash. OK, so pretend you're in eighteen forty.

It it smells real bad, I can promise you that.

Well, there's no deodorant yet, that's for sure. No names, no dative. I don't know where my candy cane deodorant is, but that would be so depressing without it. So it's eighteen forty.

Bleys dies right. Oh OK.

We're talking about what I forgot.

I was really like prepping myself for just like you take me on a ride and you are looking for a ride with a steep hill.

So if Bleys died you would be expected to mourn and by mourn I mean wear these widow's weeds. Never go on public without wearing not only black, because this was 20 years before she had kind of made that rule, but go into mourning, not see anybody else, not date anybody else, not leave your home unless necessary. You would be mourning expectedly for two and a half years, Wolf, if you died. Here's the patriarchy. Blaze was only expected to mourn for three months.

Oh, so rough.

So rough being a woman. So anyway, excuse me, I just burped this week.

We're dismantling the patriarchy one minute at a time.

So that's just a fun fact with than a fun fact. So back to the eighteen sixties with Queen Victoria, just like really showing us up on the runway while mourning her husband, Queen Victoria, because you had to wear everything black. She also started wearing she didn't want to stop wearing jewellery, so she made jewellery instead of out of like diamonds or pearls or anything. She only wore jewellery made out of fossilized carbon.

Whoa. OK, which makes it look like black glass. Almost cool. And so that was called apparently that combination are the fossilised carbon. Its nickname was Jet. And so fun fact. That's where Jet Black comes from.

No way. Yes, that's crazy. I have no idea. Funerary fashion. Fun fact, quadruple EF four again.

Oh, I love it.

So Jet-Black comes from the jewelry she used to wear when she was mourning her husband. And I think that's fascinating.

All of that basically to tell you that Queen Victoria is the reason that now when you see a woman in black, it is especially as a ghost. When you see a woman with black issues, it's mainly the thought is that, oh, she's in mourning or she's grieving someone because of the fashion from then. Which then makes me wonder. So pre eighteen sixties, if we see a woman in black as a. So, like, what does that mean, like.

Did she just really dig black, was she ahead of her time? Maybe. Oh, or maybe she was just a spinster maybe. But I would think fancy clothes, only black.

I don't know.

Well, I do think it would be if I were to, like, pretend like I was an expert and like I was a historian in terms of ghosts. If someone showed me a picture of, like a woman in black, I would like to look really arrogant and be like, so it's it's post 18 60s, because obviously the Ferarri fashion of the time, you know, if you want to sound like a super douche, if anyone ever mentions a woman I'm black, you could probably bet that it was after 1860.

So let's see. So that was just a very long winded downward spiral of a fun fact. I love it. But to let you know that the main goal that everyone is seeing in this house and the only go so everyone sitting in this house, they're all describing her basically as a woman in black. So if you want to be a historian, you could say this is post 1860 and more and more folks are witnessing this apparition. It's not just Ruzena anymore.

It's not just the siblings. They're having visitors come in who are starting to notice this woman. And people are mistaking her for like a solid figure, living, breathing, human being. She's like, there's no doubt about it. This is a living human walking around. And then the only reason they say otherwise later is because she disappears into thin air. So she was starting to get really comfortable around the family, I guess. And this set up where she was showing herself for like 30 minutes at a time became more and more frequent.

So it was the people were just getting used to her just being in the room for 30 minutes at a time and then vanishing. And as time went on, she also began to try to speak to, you know, I don't like that she's like gathering power, right?

Oh, yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. I was just thinking she was getting comfy with the kids like a like a Mary Poppins, if you will. But funeral she Mary Poppins. So basically she's trying to speak. She never actually does successfully speak before people get super creeped out. That's not what happened.

That's almost creepier that she's trying to speak and cance like, OK, you're not listening.

I don't know. I'm just making to the left and right. But you're right.

I feel like at least if she could speak, we would know what she wanted. Right.

And maybe it would be like a beautiful weather outside. Like maybe it's a really inane and it's like not even frightening. Excuse me.

Good, madam. My body is not buried in the right spot. If you could just move your feet to the left, I won't bother you ever again and then be like, oh well, problem solved.

But no. So I guess she was she could not speak, but she would try to. So this is another quote from Rosina. She came in the drawing room and walked to the sofa. So I went up to her and I asked if I could help her. The fact that you can approach her to me freaks me out because usually you see something from the corner of your you blink and it's gone. Right. This woman sees you be the leaning towards her and she's like, what about it?

You know, like, I can't talk, but I can stare at you.

I could sure as hell look at you. My ground. Yeah. Oh. So I went up to her and asked if I could help her. She moved and I thought she was going to speak, but she only gave a slight gasp and moves towards the door. I told her again, but she seemed as if she was unable to speak. So now this person is like gasping for air, trying to talk to you, and it's not coming out so calm.

So during this time, there were reports coming in from, again, visitors and the siblings that they were all hearing footsteps on the landing and they were feeling this sense of being stared at, especially one of the daughters. I think it was Edith who would say I felt an icy cold shiver and the figure bent over me as if to turn the pages of my song book who.

So that's like I was going to make a joke about. That's not really Mary Poppins. That's more like Maria from The Sound of Music, like making helping you out with with the music.

But in terms of helping you with a songbook, I don't know if I would like that. You're fucking with my stuff now.

Yeah. Like, I feel like if this if this person is just playing the piano or playing the guitar or something and this ghost is now messing with your stuff, it's like it's trying to interact with you, which I really hate.

And it's like getting better at it, which I also hate. And because it's solid and now it can also touch things, it's not like, oh, it looks solid, but it only goes through things or I can't actually grab other solid things. It's like, oh no, it's able to turn pages for you.

It's able to wait. But did she say it did turn the page?

I thought she said it looked like it was trying to are going as as if to turn the pages of my song. But you're right. Maybe it just like acted that way and didn't.

Actually, I don't like that she had the confidence that. No, certainly not. She needs to stay that way. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be like, first of all, don't touch my shit. I'm clearly trying to make music happen.

Also pretending this is a recital and you keep interrupting.

Also, don't come at me because like we I think innately should want to be away from each other, like have some. Distance, but you're getting you're approaching me. What if what if the song was what if she was helping, like, oh, the song is reaching the next page?

So she was going to turn it for me, you know, but still, I don't love it.

I'd be like, I thank you. It would be super eerie if she was trying to turn the page to a song about whose title had a message in it or something like Who helped me?

I don't know what I Beethoven featuring Mozart.

I'm buried two feet, three feet to the right hell right.

Starring Maria from Sound of Music. And so anyway, one of the main visitors, I guess he was a childhood friend. So he would come over to the house a lot. And therefore the spirit was getting comfortable with this guy. Also, his name was George Gooding, and he saw a lot of ghosts or he didn't see a lot. Of course he saw the ghost a lot of times. Sorry, but he also told the speaker that apparently the family dogs would act really distressed whenever he knew that ghost was about to appear.

Oh, so that was almost sad, almost kind of like, oh, the animal. I mean, it makes sense to me, though, because how often do we hear stories where animals are freaking out and then something creepy happens? So he said that the dogs would always get really excitable, but the family cats didn't give a shit, which is a classic one time.

One time George actually got all the kids to form a circle and hold hands around the ghost, which sounds very science.

But really the goal was to just corner her, which is so stupid in my mind when she is known to just vanish into thin air.

So they tried to corner her and then she just like walked through them and disappeared. And then they were like, oh, rats. Like didn't work back to the drawing board, I guess. So he did.

He was on to something, though, because this became a regular thing in the household where the kids would try to corner the ghost.

That's a fun game, though.

It was very ring around the Rosie Blake ring around the dead lady goes around the house trying to think of what rhymes with Rosie, but deadly, specifically paranormal. The ghosty ring around the ghost. Yeah, sure. Take me out. But this became a regular thing where they were trying to trap the ghost, which means they were literally trying to build traps at one point and like they tried to use cords and trip the ghost. They really didn't get it through their heads.

Like this thing was just going to walk through.

Whatever they did, they tried to trip it. That's mean. But they're really trying to come up with, like, little like Kevin McCalister traps, like booby traps, booby traps to try to catch this thing.

And then they had never worked. But so anyway, that became a common thread. And then in August 1884, this is like two years into them having such a regular bond. I would say with this ghost that it sounds like this is super frequent. But Rosina finally decides, OK, siblings, we're going to tell the parents about this ghost this whole time, the parents.

Oh, well, they didn't know. I thought this was like a like a family affair. Yeah, no. Apparently the parents had no idea.

It's just the siblings and this George guy and the animals and the visitors who thought this was a nun or something. So Rosina told the parents about the ghost and they surprisingly took it seriously like us. I mean, I'm not sure why I said surprisingly well it is.

I feel like most of the time parents don't seem to, especially in the eighteen hundreds. I just imagine them going like, oh, that's rubbish. And then walking away and then like getting on a horse and never coming home or something. That's really that sounds pretty accurate.

Sounds ossur. I mean you are a historian so. Yeah. They just say no, no, that's not true. And then they go hang out with Queen Victoria, but the parents do take it seriously, which I guess we also would have done.

And they go to the landlord about it. They're like, OK, so what's the history of this house? This is, again, another probably unnecessary deep dive. But the landlord gives a history of the home that says it was built in 1860. Hey, hey. Oh, the same time as Queen Victoria's fashion came through.

Oh, I didn't even put that together.

I was like, cool, why are you making that hand motion at me? And and apparently it used to be a market square garden. Fun fact. It was called garden reach and Garden Reach had orchards and large lawns and it was super populated. Eventually the property was bought by a guy named Henry Henry Swen, who was his last name. Oh, Henry was married to a woman named Elizabeth in eighteen fifty one. They had five kids. The wife died.

He remarried in 1870 and this new wife's name was immagine. And they would get into a lot of fights about a lot of things. They were not a happy couple specifically about how the kids were brought being brought up. And like the immagine also didn't like that when his first wife died, Henry didn't give her all of his wife's jewellery, didn't imagine.

All of his wife, his now wife number wife's wife, number two, was mad that she did not inherit wife number one jewelry from oh, OK. That was like the big fight that they like aired. But all right. I mean, so that's got to wear it.

I guess I was Imogen's thing. Apparently, Henry did still have the jewelry, but he hid it under the floors. He hid it under the floorboards of the drawing room.

Oh, this is so interesting.

OK, sorry. I'm just thinking like all the theories of like what she's doing there in the drawing room.

Anyway, I like to think that if I were like a math teacher, like, that's the sound I would want to hear from all of my kids though, like, oh, this is so interesting.

But that I'd be like this is how the quadratic equation works.

But honestly, if someone ever said, like, oh, that's so interesting, I'd be like, you're being a shitty I would literally be like, go to the principal, you little punk, even if you meant it, it hurt me.

So you go, yeah, you don't need to mock me.

OK, it's like sounds very rude. That really happened. It took me a long time to figure out long division. I think I've discussed this before on the show, but I figured it out way too late in the game. Like by the time calculators were.

I have no idea how to do long division. I'll be honest with you. No one time I went on a date with a math teacher and on our first date I was like, Can you teach me long?

I wish I could learn it. Somebody teach me it's the care. I can get to it to a certain point. And then it's like we I crossing out, I carry something and I lose it. I can't I can't remember.

Well I, I clearly forgot about it because then I asked this girl on the date about it so clearly didn't stick with me. But there was a moment, senior year of high school where someone taught me long division or the math teacher taught me long division on a during our break and I went, oh I get it, I get it.

And I definitely look like an asshole. Like but really I had just figured out something I should have learned a decade ago.

Well, listen, I would have been I wish you could see. I wish someone could teach me.

Let me call that person I never went on a date with again. The person you ghosted and see goes.

I'm just I guess and they were just weird shit. Oh, OK. I made sure that we were not going to be listening to the podcast.

That would be so OK. And even if we do, she deserves to know that I was a terrible day. So fucking bad. It was Pokemon girl.

Oh. Well, you didn't tell me that Pokemon girl was a math teacher. I did not know that, by the way, Wolf.

It's not meant to be an insult to Pokemon. Pokemon just got its just the title.

Yeah, that's just the title of this particular date.

Pokemon got mentioned a lot during that date, and therefore I just know her as Pokemon. One of the first conversations I ever had.

We were at the farm and we were like, so what do you want to talk about? I was like, I guess I can tell you about this weird date I went on.

That's true. I remember I remember we were sitting at the table. I just got my poppy loaf. I was gonna say I just bought my popular I Pokemon girl's real fucking odd. Anyway, I hope you're doing well and rolls her eyes.

They're doing well. Teaching math. You did teach me long division. Very well. That was possibly the best part of the entire day.

And I just got I'm not kidding, I wanted to show you I want to do a little fashion show. I just got some really cute sweaters from Stitch Fix and I just was like, how does this person who's designing my box and, like, getting my fix ready know exactly like I kept everything because everything in it, I was like, this is me and this is my clothes.

I'm so excited.

I've used statistics for years now and most of the things I bring with me on tour are because literally a random person knew exactly what my child was and better than I did for me. Yes, exactly. It's crazy.

And my mom's using it now, too, because who on earth wants to go out shopping right now? Like, you don't want to do that. So it's even a better time. Used to not I in the. Sorry, I know I just ranted, but let's tell you about statistics. They offer clothing hand selected by extra stylists for your unique size, style and budget, which is also helpful.

You know, if you want to spend a certain amount on pants but not on sweaters, like, you can definitely arrange that and you can try on pieces at home before you buy, keep what you love and then return what you don't. And they have free shipping, easy returns and exchanges and they include a prepaid return envelope and each fix.

You know, we love a good quiz and you literally get to pick all of your favorite styles, your budget, what your interests are, what you're trying if you're interested in experimenting with new stuff and new colors. Huh? I've got it all. So you end up looking like a real fashionista by the end of it.

Get started today, a fixed dotcom slash drink and you'll get twenty five percent off when you keep everything in your fix that stitch fix dotcom slash drink for twenty five percent off when you keep everything in your fix stitch fix dotcom slash drink.

So I know this is something that we all do, but guess what, our eyes actually weren't meant to look at screens all day because it messes with our internal balance and then it affects our sleep because of stress, headaches, blurry vision and eye fatigue.

It's not great. Can confirm, Christine. And thank God we have Felix, God, thank the Lord between phones, tablets, computers, TV candles, LED light bulbs, they're all shown to emit more blue light than their incandescent counterparts. And like you said, I specifically get migraines, but I also lose my sleep. I lose my focus. I can't get it together. And with Felix Gray, they take away a lot of those issues for me.

That's right.

Because Felix wear glasses, actually filter 15 times more blue light from screens and other clear blue light lenses to help restore your balance. And the original optical lenses relieve most eye strain symptoms from daily screen time. And they also have advanced sleep glasses, which are the ones Bleys has that really serious daily eye strain. And they were specially designed for late night screen time. So they help improve your sleep, which is amazing.

I also got my mom some Felix Gray for Christmas and it worked out perfectly because that woman is a night owl when it comes to her screams and she's actually getting sleep. Now, finally, a pair of glasses designed for the twenty first century. Go to Felix Gray glasses, dotcom drink to shot glasses that work as hard as you do.

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OK, so so yeah. Henry and imagine Henry had all of the jewelry hidden under the floorboards of the drawing room and Henry also became an alcoholic. Some story say that immagine also became an alcoholic just because they were always fighting with each other. Apparently they were such a scandalous couple that newspapers were keeping tabs on their relationship, which sounds a lot like my National Firer idea for the Pittas tum tum tum tum. I'll just every episode or every cover it'll be like and then Christine fighting again.

And I just feel like just like looking so scared.

Then it'll be the other tear in between our photos, explosive conversation heard by a source.

And that source is every fucking balls always you always fucking evea anything for a story. But so apparently the newspapers kept tabs on them and eighteen seventy six they ended up officially breaking up, but they went to court a lot for very stupid things in the divorce petition. So that immagine had been known for drunkenness, indecent language, which sounds just like any old friend of mine. And she allegedly also would throw furniture at him. She also accused him in front of his children and the servants of cheating on her with one of the housemaids.

Oh, boy. She also accused him that one of the housemaids children was his illegitimate child and. Oh, and that she was she also ended up being seen in the court as being super violent and unstable. So no one totally knew if they could believe her accusations.

Meanwhile, Henry, on the other side was part of a lot of slander cases for like like one time said that the milkman was abusive to the neighbor's dog or something. He also threatened to shoot a boy because the boy assaulted one of his servants. He also went to court and was found guilty of putting a stick into a wheel of a stroller so a baby would flip out of the stroller. Oh, my God, he was found guilty. But at the same time, it's like there were just so many wild stories like this is bananas live inside with a hobby chief.

He has one. It's called sticking a stick in a stroller and watching babies for catapulting babies down the road. It's my favorite pastime, threatening to shoot little boys. Oh, my God. This man is very unstable, clearly off the rails.

Anyway, whatever the official reason was for their divorce, they split up. Henry ends up living on this property for a few more months. And then he died that same year. And then when he died, the house was renamed from Garden Reach to Pittsville Hall because it was on Pittsville, Circassian. And then at some point, immagine also died really shortly after he died, the building was purchased again and was changed from Pittsville Hall to being called Dinaw.

And that's basically within that time because there had been so much scandal in town about the couple who lived there because they were both really unhappy and both died within the last few years of the house being purchased. And because I guess at the time, because the building's name kept changing so quickly, that was a sign of like it being held under different management or wanting a different sanitation or something. So just all those things together gave the town a really bad feeling about the house, that the property was a curse in some way or haunted like Cecil Hotel trying to rename itself.

Yeah, it's not going to work.

We still remember what it was called last week, dude. But so basically all of those things together had the landlord give the. Desperate family, the house for a really low price, because they just wanted to be able to sell it to someone. Sure. And they made the disbarred family promise to not perpetuate any stories of the building being haunted because they didn't want anyone to, like, keep that reputation going. Yeah, but even though the family never said anything or maybe even didn't know about it until super late, there were still servants that were quitting on the spot and fleeing the house because they were seeing this woman in black just showing up out of nowhere.

So even though nobody was talking about it, there was still something everyone was saying and experience.

It was in the Enquirer, the National Enquirer.

I wrote it myself. So I'm sure you did. And then also, I mean, one example was that their neighbor heard a woman crying in the orchard and they thought it was one of the siblings who was visiting the house. And I guess I guess it was the oldest one. Freeda, she was visiting after her son had just died or so. And so the neighbor thought like, oh, I hear Frieda crying in the orchard because she's grieving her son.

So he sent his son over to go check on Frita. And he said, oh, Frieda looks like this like I guess they'd never seen each other and was like, oh, well, go check on Freeda. She looks like this. And apparently the woman that he described did not at all fit the description of Frida. And Frida wasn't in the orchard that day. So he now saw and heard a grieving woman that everyone else had been seeing because it fit the same description.

But now she's moving out to the orchard. Oh, God. And spreading.

She's spreading. I don't like it. So what's weird is in 1885, the ghost became more transparent.

So instead of being super solid, she's starting to be kind of see through, which I thought you meant like she became more honest about everything like that. She really started, like, looking in the mirror to open up. Yeah, but no. So in five, she, like, physically, visibly was more clear, which is interesting. It's almost like her energy wasn't as strong anymore.

Finally, geez, I was getting nervous.

Was like growing and growing after a during that time people started seeing her less and less and by eighteen eighty nine I think she just completely faded away. And then soon after that even the, the weird sounds like footsteps also started fading away throughout the house. So by 1890 there was just no sign of her. Rosina also ended up deciding to figure out who the woman was because she wanted an explanation and she assumes she never got a full answer. But she assumes at this point that it was probably imagine for a few reasons, and her specific ones were that immagine is the only person who had any resemblance to the figure everyone saw.

The widow's garb that she wore didn't match Henry's first wife, so must be the second wife. And sorry, there was a truck that went by every time you, like, flinched.

I'm like, oh, we're doomed. Is that all?

Her power took her one hundred thirty years, apparently. So this is another quote from her. Another reason why she thinks it's immagine. Although none of us had ever seen. Immagine several people who had known her identified her from our description. Also on being shown a photo album, I picked out one of her sisters and said that she was them, that she was most like the figure. And we were told that immagine and her sisters looked a lot alike.

So if you're saying that this random woman looked a lot like the figure, you're saying an image of her makes her probably image.

Also, apparently, her stepdaughter and others had told her that she, I guess, imagine her scepters is an image. And stepdaughters who they had found or made contact with said that image and loved the front drawing room.

Just love being there while she was looking for all those jewels under the floor.

Exactly. Also, there's the note of, like all the jewelry you wanted that tore apart your marriage is. Yeah, some others say that the ghost could be like the mistress of someone who lived there or something or like another housemaid or something. But mostly people assume it's immagine. And the desperadoes, even though they moved to the house and that's when this big story of the ghost really showed up. People were seeing this ghost before they even got there, which was interesting to the speaker because they were trying to investigate this.

And they were like, if it was all smoke and mirrors made by the Despard family, then explain why people were saying it before they even moved in.

True. That's a very good point. Yeah. So they did their homework and they they tried to find as many people as possible who had seen the ghost before the discharge even moved in. Basically the whole neighborhood at one point or another. They'd all seen someone, they'd all seen a woman in black either walking down the street, turning the corner up in the window, out in the garden. Everyone had seen a woman in black at some point. So in 1890 to this officially became like a case that that spark was working on because.

They wrote an account about this ghost called The Record of a Haunted House, which seems very vague.

But back then, you could name anything, anything, because it doesn't exist yet. Now, I'm sure there's right.

Yeah. Also because, like, they probably had a whole 10 articles and they were like, this'll do.

So one of the founders of ESP, his name was Frederick Myers, and I guess he lived in the area at the time. And so he was really interested in the case. And that's why he brought to the Spaan. They investigated it before any other accounts. So the spider found that Rosina actually kept records, which is how they were able to pull so many quotes to put in their own report. So a lot of their records are straightforward, direct quotes from Rosina because she had kept all of her accounts written down.

She kept notes that every time she saw this spirit. Right. And so that was really helpful for them to compile their own record. I said earlier that she never told anybody about the spirit except for Miss Campbell, who some sources said it was her servant. Some said it was her friend. Maybe it was both. But so they were able to get all their information from letters that Rosina had written to Miss Campbell, which makes me think, hmm, why did they have to write letters to each other and be all hush hush if they lived in the same house or if they were really good friends?

And so there is the speculation that they were lovers.

Oh, OK. Anywhere to bring the gays. And I'm going to do it. Interestingly, this rumor again for the tabloids, if you will, I should just start my own ESPE. I mean, I'm part of the NPR, but I should make my own. That's just the gossip mill of just like hell.

Yeah, but just like so you need to keep your spot in the paper, but keep this this part on the DL and the gather information as you go and then like keep notes and then later you can just like do a tell all exposé.

You know what terrifies me is that when I joined the spread, the person who I got my congratulations letter from said like, oh, I listen to your podcast.

Oh, no, are you serious right now? Which means the Espers keeping tabs on this. So what happens when you say no? You told me you're in it. What does that mean?

Like, do you have to do work for it or like no honourary?

So I'm part of the speech. I'm also part of that aspire, which is the American spirit. Sure. I'm part of the girls club. I'm part of the parapsychological association. They're all more or less. If you're really invested, you can do Zoome meetings. So I've done TSOU meetings with the Ghost Club and SPREP because historically those are the oldest ones. And have I talk about them a lot on the show, like Harry Prices and Bushcare Whodini was in them.

So like they mean more to me. So you just do meetings and people either share stories or a lot of them are scientists and so they hold conferences and lectures.

I'm like the science of this or the science of that or like, is it really telekinesis or is it you know, it's like such like science lectures Scottsdale's.

There's also like the real big perk that you get is that they all have their own like monthly journals. And so just like I say, oh, the SPR put out a report, they still do that. And every month we get like a new basically a newsletter, a glorified newsletter. But it's like a science articles, like a journal type thing, like a journal, like Ghost Club specifically is really liberal. Like it's basically if you want to write anything, if you want to article for the Ghost Club, go for it and people will post.

There's like a whole section on. People just write their own ghost stories and not like write fake ones, but they'll tell their own experiences. Are the memberships paid? Yeah, yeah. That's I think that's how the only way they can fund it. Yeah. But yeah. So they, it's basically just zoo meetings and monthly journals that you get from them. So cool you can submit your own stuff. They also do their own investigations. So like if you want to, unfortunately I can't be a part of the Spahr one because they're literally not in America.

Right.

But if I ever were to be in England, I could go to one of their chapter meetings or something or hop on to a cool castigation if I wanted to. So.

Yeah, so jealous. That sounds awesome.

I want to do like a zoom with you to hear about the Zoom's with them.

They're surprisingly dry. I wanted it to be like, like Ghostbusters, but like it's very much like minutes know. So yeah. Anyway, it's fun. I like it. But unless you're like in it for the also boring stuff then probably shouldn't be a part of it. But if you are into that stuff and you want to be a member like me joining us, you are the Ghost Club or parapsychological association by the way.

A lot of them too. There's different tiers to what membership you are and you get different access to stuff. It's like access to like different conferences and discounts to. I think one of them is discounts to merch. I don't think actually any of them sounds like a patriot. It sounds like patriot. Yeah. But it's like a very expensive patrón. It's like I think there's. We're like the top tier is like five hundred dollars. Oh, wow.

So it's like a donation to any society. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, yeah. Like Monium or something where you are like levels of contributor and stuff. Yeah.

I mean the super expensive one. I'm not a part of that one. I think that's called the right association or the Ryan Society or something saurus.

No I didn't even say right cause it's such a dumb ass.

I know that because J.B. Ryan was a big guy and all cyclical stuff. So the writing something I know there's like a tier there where I was like, holy shit, I'm never going to pay homage. I'm also part of a move on that basically. Yeah, that was like I was going to mention you move on is, I would say, the most fun of them all because it's UFO's and stuff. But move on. Also, there's something I really want to do that I've told Eva about, but I don't want to say it too much because I don't want to like I do want to manifest it, but I'm scared at the same time.

But apparently they have like like in an invest, like they train you to be a UFO field investigator and like to do that.

I really want to I think it'd be like a cool patriotic video if, like, I filmed my. Yeah.

Do the same in general without even a video. But theirs is really fun because their monthly newsletters are actually monthly reports on how many sightings around.

How have you never told me this. I'm like getting angry now. You're just like these cool things you get every month. And I'm like, you've never told me these things are so fucking cool.

Elizabeth Griffo sightings in your inbox.

I think there's a way I think I did it when I first joined. And then since then, I haven't touched it. But you can you can type in any setting. You can see, like all the history of the reports since like the 70s. But I hope I don't if you're part of me, don't listen to this part. I don't think it's maintained very well. Like the website looks like it's like someone's grandpa handling it, like the merch is has clearly not been touched since the Internet was created.

So it's like it's it's fun, but also like you have a lot of kinks to work around. So, OK, I don't know.

I think if if all of a sudden they gave the job of handling all of the digital stuff to a bunch of twenty five year olds, it could really be something. But I think right now it's a twenty five.

But I can work a Squarespace. You know, I have thought about that. I was like if I had more time in my life I would reach out to them, be like, let me handle this for you.

Yeah, I'm over here like offering our services. I'm like we can barely get like an episode. That's not true. But we can. We have priorities, let's put it that way.

Anyway, this is a very long winded way to say the spa had about ten articles in eighteen ninety two. And that's why this record was called the Record of a Haunted House. And one of the original founders, Frederick Meyers, was interested in it because he lived in the area. Most of the records came from rosiness letters to Miss Campbell, the part I was trying to get to was that one of the members of NPR is the one who spread this rumor that they were lovers.

And that member, his name was Eric Dingwall. And I don't know if you remember that name, but he is also the frenemy of Whodini who ended up spreading a bunch of shit about him after he died.

I did not remember the name, but holy crap, I think I am reincarnated because I'm really loving the drama.

He pulls out of stories, just spread it. So what, I die. You're just going to start spreading.

Your stupid gossip was actually an alien.

Yeah, because you're going to have full control of your gossip rag and I'm going to be dead.

And finally, oh, finally gotten access to move funds behind the back end of their website.

Kristy's really, at any time that you like, search any city in their database, it'll just be like sighting of Christine cheaper. It's just Christine. She's the only alien.

Well, anyway, Eric Dingwall was one of the people that when Houdini died, he said some pretty mean shit about Houdini. I think it was either Houdini or Harry Price, but he wasn't the best looking at all. Yeah. So anyway, an eighteen eighty three, three years after nobody ever saw the ghost again, or at least the family didn't. The despot's moved out. Five years later, Dinaw was renamed again to in homes in the US and it became a boys prep school.

After that it also became a nunnery. It became a nursery college where you could literally go to school to learn to be like a nanny. Just go, oh. It also became accommodations for the Diocese of Gloucester and then it became apartments. I think it's still apartments in there called St Ann's.

Can you imagine, though, like living in that apartment, it's like, oh, is this place haunted? Well, it was a nunnery, a boys school, a widow's like home, and with jewellery under the floorboards like any possible, literally don't get to speak when you're like, oh, yeah, welcome to my fucking haunted house in Cincinnati.

Well, first of all, you grew up in that goddamn house behind a cemetery and the bishop died in the elevator or some bullshit like that.

Don't get out of your house, no name, by the way, it really should have some weird ass haunted mansion. It was my house, your mom's house. I have some weird, spooky mansion names.

I think it's a Procter and Gamble house or something. I don't remember. My house actually does have a name, which I think I'm sure somebody just gave it like to be fancy.

It's because of the owner, the people who named it. I'm not going to say it because it'll probably let you find it. But it has like when they were trying to post it on, like Zillow and shit, they were like giving it names like this ridiculous word, which now I'm like, OK, they were just trying to make it sound fancy, but I'll tell you about it later. It's very weird.

Well, anyway, you of all people don't get to talk about it. You're right. You're right. You grew up in a house as fucking creepy as that, which still looks like it's from the seventeen thousand hundreds. But whatever my favorite pastime and our relationship has been going to your house with new people to show them how terrifying it is to be like Lisa still has a video of going into the attic where all those things are written on all the walls and like there's just plaster falling out of the ceiling.

And then, like, this is my bedroom.

And she's like one of my prized possessions. And my phone is the video of, first of all, my first video ever of going through your house by myself, because I woke up at seven a.m. or whatever, and I was like, what haunted am I on?

And then the second video is bringing Christine Martin or Eva or someone or you were going you were like charging 50, 50 bucks a pop.

It's like keep your hands and feet in the fucking, because this is because there are like nails coming out of the walls and you're going to cut your hand open.

Yeah, it's very creepy. I know. You're right. I take it back.

And also your now house where it's like, oh, it's full of a state cell death. I'm sure there's a staircase literally from an abandoned church.

So you're right.

Listen, I take it all back anyway. The building or the property is now St. Anne's apartment complex and in the 1970s is a member of the spa who was collecting witness statements. I guess he was an author writing about the case. And so he was collecting witness statements of various poltergeist activity around the area. And he found that at least 17 people had witnessed the woman in black recently and over 20 people had heard weird noises on the grounds. He also said that evidence of the woman in black or his final word on it was that evidence for the woman in black.

The evidence was still there up until at least nineteen eighty five, one of them in nineteen seventy, was that a woman was taking her driver's test and when she was on that road in front of the house, she had to slam on her brakes. And when the teacher said why, she looked shocked because she was like, didn't you just see the woman in black standing in the middle of the road looking at us? I would have hit her.

But she was like four or five seconds after standing there. She vanished away in front of the girl's eyes.

And she's just a drama queen, this lady. So as of at least nineteen eighty five, there were signs that the woman in black is still seen today. I don't know why she took a hiatus when the family like in nineteen eighty nine, maybe she comes back every hundred years or some bullshit. But anyway, that is the story of the Cheltenham Ghosts Bill Ghost Morton goes janoris poltergeist.

Well you. That is creepy.

That was a lot of that was a lot of information.

Oh barely any of it. Did you need.

No I love it. You go oh. Gives me the creeps.

Do something about like the fact that she could like you know what I wonder. Sorry.

This is like going totally off the rails but when like maybe she wasn't interacting, maybe she was just like standing where she used to stand or something and people thought she could see them. Or did they say, like she really did, interact with the kids and stuff.

I guess the closest thing to interacting I can think of is when the piano. Oh yeah. Because one of them was. But they also that when Rosina was trying to talk to her and she couldn't speak tried. True.

That's true. That's true. OK, that's the most. Yeah. Because I was singing about the piano like maybe it was a drawing room where there was like a place for a piano. And so there had always been a piano there.

And she was just like, she was just like I was like her. Yeah. Her residual blueprint being towards them but didn't actually do anything but others would be doing. You're right. But also like for all we know, like Rosina just caught her in the middle of a residual blueprint of trying to talk and not talking to you. So there's no real proof that she was intelligently interacting with people. It could have all just been residual stuff.

Man, she was creepy, though, I got to say. Hmm. Yeah. There's something extra creepy about that one. I don't know why. I think it's just the amount that she kept showing up in different places.

It's like, yeah, it's just like, can you give it up already? Like and also like it is interesting. We're like her energy was dying down at one point, resurfaced in the nineteen seventies also it was. Mm. It wasn't even in the nineteen seventies. In nineteen seventy was. A driver's test girl, and when the author was actually getting all of the information from people, what I saw online was that at least through the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, all the way through the nineteen eighties, that was the range that he was able to find people who had stories.

So so if she faded away by eighteen ninety and he was able to get new reports of her by 1940, that's only like a 50 year nap.

I don't know, nap. And for all we know because it turned into so many things and so many people were churning in and out of there, that maybe people had experiences but like just up and left or moved and never got to report what they had seen. I don't know. Fascinating.

Fascinating. It's so freakin creepy.

Anyway, if you happen to live in the St Ann's complex, let us know if you see a woman in mourning.

I would love to know if people today see it.

That would be really interesting, especially because now it would be we're coming up on another like 50 years or so. Right. I mean, true, I guess in another 15 years would be 50 years.

I don't even know if the 70s, if it was the 70s and we'd be like right in the 50 year mark right now.

Yeah. So maybe people are seeing something. Well, also, I can say also, since now it's an apartment complex, it's all split up.

So it makes you wonder, like, is she in certain parts of the house or like, oh yeah, where is the drawing board?

Who has to live in the drawing room, the drawing room.

And also it makes me think, too, with all those renovations, like you would think you'd stir something up, right?

True. True, true, true. True. And I probably think there's not a piano there anymore. So maybe there's like a lady just bending over do.

You mention if you have a ghost, you're like, yeah, all she does is bend. I don't get it. I don't know.

She runs her fingers and bends. But you could really the rumors in my tabloids could really spread something pretty powerful of like, oh, she went to tie her shoe and she never came back.

Well, you see the final moments of her sad life empty. You are not as a Gemini, you are not allowed to be.

I'm sure there's a law banning you from controlling a Gossip Girl.

Maybe for Patrón, though, we could I can make like a fake gossip newsletter.

I'm pretty sure that's Xenophon's actual newsletter. And you could probably add a section because Xians Gazette or the Zanon Gazette, which is the Patriot newsletter, like could use a bit of gossip. I think you and Zanon would be a powerful duo. I would happily do the gossip. You think you should. OK, well, there you go.

Now, if you would like to be a part of the Xenome Gazette and my my gossip getting out of control, it's like ask not ask not Dear Abby in college at CMU.

If you went to see you at the time that I went to see you, then you remember the very short lived under the Sheets column. I was a sex columnist and it was very ahead of its time. Was it? You know, but I was always so jealous because the person was anonymous too, because I'm sure they didn't want to get harassed or whatever, but like because it's a small school, everybody knew everybody. But it was a column in our weekly newspaper where it would be like a Dear Abby, where they would answer two or three X rated questions and legen.

I mean, that was like what I went to college. It's like five, ten years ago. The world was still, to me a lot different in terms of sex positivity back then.

Well, you're also in Virginia. I was also in Virginia, which I do think plays a role. But like the column, I remember being like, whoa, I didn't know. We talk about this kind of stuff. And I remember it like getting bands like the column Legs. So anyway, maybe I'm going to have a sex positivity column coming from the person who just called themselves the most vanilla person on the planet.

I don't think I'm going to leave her in the sex column. Here's the real column where you hybrid them together, where it's the vanilla person trying to give X rated.

And now this is becoming like its own podcast or YouTube series.

That would be very fun of, like me trying to explain how supportive I am without knowing any information.

You like that supportive parent where it's like to just shut up. Like, I don't like I get it. You don't understand, do you?

Do you want to on that on with all those things that you want, all the sex things. OK, yikes. Please tell me your story so I can stop talking. OK, good.

Can I go. OK, ok. So I have to pee so bad I drink our London fog. How long this episode is.

I just got a text from Tom my stepfather.

Oh I know what it says. Yes it says so your mother and I were talking this evening. Great. First your first problem since she is out driving everyday, it's hard for her to have conversations with her mom. So I said, why don't you call your mom at six o'clock every night and I will exercise. And then we talked further and I realized. When I'm at hockey on Mondays because Tom is part of a hockey league, sure, sure, I realize that when I'm at hockey on Mondays, I have no one to talk to on my way home.

So your mom had a great idea that when I'm coming home at 10, 30 Eastern Time, I will start giving you a call because God done with Marvel Mondays at the same time.

Oh, no, he knows your schedule. Talk about winning the lottery. You didn't even have to buy a ticket. Winner, winner. Chicken dinner.

So good luck. Everything. Apparently now I have a phone date's locked in for a late night phone date with stepdad.

And I will say a lot of people on Marvel Monday have been asking me if I like the name MiFi. And apparently it's become a real thing. I do. I do very much like being called MFC, by the way. But I don't think you realize what you've done. I don't. Apparently, a lot of people nobody calls me anymore. So if you if you go through my comments on tech talk, I have like a thousand people going anything out of the ordinary.

Look what I've done.

You've created a monster, my own name.

So anyway, I just wanted to let you know how you're involved again in my life. Oops, I love that.

I just, like, dip it in and then dip out. And it's like I've just wreaked havoc in your whole environment. I'm so sorry.

You are welcome. Oh, OK. Well, on that note, on that note, tell me tell me a story.

Tell you a tale. So this is the story. OK, I'm doing this thing again where this is a story I've wanted to cover for a long time.

This is the story of the murder of Betsy FIRREA.

And I was OK.

There was a podcast that was done by NBC Dateline, and it was called The Thing About Pam, and it was like a true crime podcast. It was a huge deal. And I listen to it.

I binged it when I was back in L.A. like a year or two ago.

And it's hosted by Keith Morrison of Dateline fame. And it's so good. It's so compelling. It's fascinating. And I always knew I wanted to cover it, but it was like a six part series. And so I was like, I don't ever know how to get that down.

And the storytelling was so good that I was like, I don't know how to get this down into notes. Took me a long time to finally, like, commit to doing the story.

Here we are. It's it's a story of the murder of Betsy. And I also listen to a Generation Y episode on this topic. And they did a really good job, too, so.

Oh, OK. Well, here we go. Tuesday night, December 27, 2011, Russ FIRREA, who lived in Troy, Missouri, went over to his friend's house for their weekly game night around six p.m. They watched a few movies, played a few games, and Russ left around 9:00 p.m. to head home.

How old is he? Sorry, I know you just started this.

I did not say how old he was. I have not actually even sure how old he was.

Game night, these little I really mean any age. OK, actually, you know what?

Probably probably in his 40s, his wife was forty two so. Oh OK. Well he was probably I would imagine similar age but he and his friends have been doing this game for years.

So yeah I think probably like early to mid 40s is my guess, but I definitely didn't write that down.

So Russ Freha lives in Missouri, heads home around 9:00 p.m. When he gets home, he finds the body of his wife, 42 year old Betsy Fariha, dead on the couch.

She had been stabbed over fifty five times with her arms almost entirely severed from her body.

Holy shit. Yeah.

And there well, the murder weapon, which was a serrated kitchen knife, was found in her neck.

Oh. Oh, my God. OK.

And another knife was found under the couch cushions of the couch she was laying on. Holy shit.

OK, so Russ calls nine on one, understandably, and he is freaking out. They play the role call in the Generation Y episode. It's like him, like hysterical, shrieking, crying, screaming.

And I mean, can imagine if I were like, no, like plays. You walked in and like he just didn't have fucking arms anymore.

Surely it made my heart or my hair stand on end. I was like listening to him and I was like, I can't fathom the scene.

So again, big thanks to all the dispatchers out there because I can't imagine what that must be like.

Truly, you must be good at creating a boundary bubble for yourself, which I'm not going it.

I can't imagine. I feel like despatcher therapists need therapists, you know.

Yes, Greta. Just like a little just a lot like a chain of therapists all the way to the top, all the way to the top, you know.

Oh, so he calls nine one. But while he's on the phone, he says, my wife has killed herself. And so the dispatcher sends police an ambulance, obviously, and she's asking him, is she breathing? And he says, no, she's dead. She's dead. There's a knife in her neck. So investigators arrive.

They conclude she's been dead for at least an hour, likely longer. And he had called 911 at nine 40. So just to give like a timeline here. Sure. However, with the 50.

Five stab wounds and a knife in her neck. They were like, we're pretty sure this is not a suicide. Yes, I have a hunch you can't cut your own arm off when your other arms already off. Yeah, OK.

I didn't even think about that. Yes, that's probably the clearest argument of all. Yeah, I think I think I'm pretty sure. Yeah, so. And like with the one in the neck at the end, it was just like it's just what are you talking about?

So, you know, they were they were like, that doesn't seem likely. So of course, he being the husband, he was pretty quickly the prime suspect in this murder.

He was arrested the day after the murder. They did a diligent search of the house. And in his closet, they found a pair of slippers covered in his wife, Betsey's blood. So bingo bango.

They also used basically what they called his volatile, emotional, volatile, volatile national state to to kind of pin that on him and be like he was erratic.

He was acting like he was too hysterical.

But I don't believe that stuff like I mean, in that if I walked in and you didn't have fucking arms and there was a knife in your neck and there was blood everywhere, like, what the fuck am I supposed to act like? Like, no.

Well, it was like a lose lose situation because if you call and you're like, my wife has been murdered, they're like, you didn't even care. And then if you call and you start screaming, they're like, oh, he's acting like there's going to be analyzed no matter what. You're either there's only a complete on switch or completely off switch. And it's like hysterics or shock. There's there's no in between. Yeah.

And they kept saying kind of like, well he was able to when we interviewed him, like he was able to just kind of like turn off the hysterics and talk like normally I'd like.

Yeah but but like also your who knows what the fuck your brain is doing when if you're trying to preserve yourself or you're suddenly being interviewed by police and you just shut off the hysterics.

I don't know. I just feel like it's not fair to say like this is how you're supposed to act when you're under the suspicion of your wife's murder, you know, because you're also thinking, well, shit, now I have to, like, defend myself.

I mean, my my first thought is like, yeah, I would be a complete fucking basket case if I walked in on someone I cared about looking like that. But then you're right. Like part of me might think, like because you're the one that found her, you're going to be one of the prime suspects. And then I would try to like play a cool while also having a fucking crisis.

And then I look really shady and I feel like my body does that shut down thing where I just like I don't even reactor care until later and I go into shock. And that's self-preservation. Yeah. Yeah. Or like disassociation or dissociation.

Sorry. Anyway, so whatever. So again, you're right, I don't really believe in that either of like it didn't seem realistic or whatever.

Yeah I, I, I fall for a lot of stuff, but when it comes to how someone's acting, when they see their loved one. Yeah. Mutilated I it's like I'm out of like I don't have it on that one.

I do find it fascinating when they do those analyses of people's 911 calls and like the language they're using and if they're not using the person's name or like I think that's fascinating because it's like the psychology of like language and things like that.

I was like, can you can you give that a shout out again? Because you did that really well with the Netflix, the guy who's who killed his wife and two daughters. Oh, yeah.

You called it something like linguistic forensic linguistics. Yeah, I think it is. I think it is forensic linguistics. And they I think you're right.

That was I remember being super intrigued by that. So just in case anyone wanted to look that up.

Yeah. It's so interesting. There are like websites dedicated to let me look it up, not forensic 911 calls. So there's a book called Analyzing nine one one Homicide Calls.

I know that forensic audio video analysis. Yeah. So I know there's a website on it. I don't know it off the top of my head, but it is interesting.

They go through an expert like linguist. Linguistic experts go through and say, like, you know, she's calling about this person's her best friend's death, but she refuses to say, like, the name of her friend or, you know, things like that. And when or she's like distancing herself in some way. And I know with the JonBenet Ramsey case, there's this whole analysis of the 911 call where her mom keeps saying, I'm the mother. But like, it's a weird phrasing, you know?

So there's I think that's fascinating. But like, yeah, you're right. Once it gets into, like, she's not sad enough or he's not emotional enough or he's too emotional, it's like, how do you even if, you know, it's not a black and white thing. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So yeah.

So anyway, that's where we begin. But then they find a pair of bloodstained slippers in the closet and yet not a good look.

So next, police bring in Betsey's best friend and this woman is fifty eight year old Pam Hupp and they bring her in to be questioned. So Betsi, the woman who was murdered, was a mother of two.

She worked in a state farm office and she frequented as a part time job on the side with her husband, Russ, and they owned a business called Party Starters and a raise the roof.

OK, now, I don't think that's your. That's the. The bear and the gags, oh, god, no, sir Bear brings a basket of dried blueberries. OK, so that's he had met Pam at work at the State Farm Office.

They worked in insurance together and they were close friends. So they had fallen out of touch for a little while. But then Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 and she found out the following year that her cancer had moustache to size to her liver and become terminal. And that's when her friend Pam kind of came back into her life and got involved again and started taking her to chemo and taking care of her. Right. So when Betsy found out how severe her condition was, she started thinking about, like leaving her husband and daughters behind and started to worry about, you know, if she died, what would that look like for her family?

So she worried that the worst would happen, that she would pass away and that they would her teenage daughters would not be good with the money.

Russell would, quote, piss it away like she was just worried they wouldn't take care of themselves and that the daughters wouldn't have money when they grew up. So Betsy made the difficult decision of changing the name of the beneficiary of her State Farm life insurance policy to her friend Pam, and did not tell her husband that she had changed the beneficiary from him to Pam. Got it. And she basically told Pam, you know, if I die did this, she was like, this is a timely thing.

If I do pass away, then I want you to take this one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and keep it in a trust for my daughters so that they are able to, you know, not, quote, piss it away, like she said, and they're able to have it as a safety net growing up.

So back to the day of the murder, Betsy had undergone chemotherapy that day and had then gone to her mother's house. Pam drove her home from her mother's house, making her one of the last people to see her alive, aside from Russ, her husband.

So according to Pam, she dropped Betsey off at her house at approximately 7:00 p.m., which was earlier than usual, because apparently Betsy was really exhausted from chemo. She wasn't feeling well and thought maybe she had a bit of a cold coming on. So when Pam was interviewed by police, she told them that Russ had a, quote, violent temper.

He was a violent drinker and had actually threatened Betsy before to the point that Betsy had considered leaving him, although she was too ill at this point to actually go through with it because of the cancer.

And one of the stories that Pam explained, which is like pretty horrifying, is that I guess Russ would hold a pillow over her face as a, quote, game to try and, you know, I don't know, to have fun, apparently, to like to like torture her to, like, hold a pillow to suffocate her until the last minute.

And and she would wake up apparently, like suffocating on a pillow.

So, you know, she she's saying, like, this is a volatile relationship. This is he's a violent man. Betsy was scared of him. Sure.

So Pam told the police that Betsy had actually been longing to move back to Lake St. Louis, which was closer to her chemo treatment center where her friends lived. And she'd actually already hatched a plan for her and Russ to move into her mother's house. And Pam said that that evening, Betsy had told her that she was planning on bringing the idea up to Russ. She was planning on going home and saying to us, hey, I think we should move back closer to my chemo, to my mom's house.

And she basically told Pam she was terrified because he was going to be furious that she was like bringing this up. This was not something he was going to be happy about. Yeah. So Pam said she felt guilty about leaving Betsy to face her husband alone because Pam knew how violent he was.

And then as part of their investigation, police found Betsy's laptop. And on it, they found this sort of like diary document that she had left like a word document.

And it was Betsey's kind of journal entry, talking about how afraid she was of her husband. She even included a section where she described being terrified that he was going to murder her.

So this is all like panning out basically as like they got the right guy. It sounds so far pretty straightforward. Yes, exactly. I mean, it's just yeah. I can't imagine there being a twist to this currently. Yeah. It's it's pretty like open and shut case from the start, seemingly so.

On January 4th, 2012, which is a day after Betsey's funeral, Russ was charged with first degree murder and armed criminal action and he was held.

He couldn't meet his bail of two hundred fifty thousand. So he was held in jail until his trial began nearly two years later in November. Wow.

13 Loz. Yeah.

So during Russell's trial, his defense attorney argued that the timeline just didn't add up for him to have murdered his wife because he had the testimonies of the four friends that he had gone to game night with who all said like, no, he was with us from six to nine. And if you're saying, like, she was dead over an hour when he called, police like that just doesn't add up. Right. Sorry, over an hour. Before he had called nine one just doesn't add up.

He also had receipts, he had made multiple purchases from different gas stations and an Arby's throughout the course of the evening, like on his way home from game night. So they were like, this just doesn't add up. Like he had receipts. He had an alibi for different friends say he didn't do it. He was with them.

It also feels, though, like with receipts like that, it feels like you're trying to get an alibi.

So that's part of what they argued. Yeah, because the prosecution said, well, why would you go to two separate gas stations at night? But he he argued this one gas station has better gas prices and this one has the cigarettes I like. So he was like, this is a normal thing. I go to this gas station for gas and I stop at this one.

Just want to get her snacks. So sue me. Yeah. And so and he went to Arby's also.

So this is what the defense is saying, like, no, look at his timeline. Right.

And then the prosecuting attorney whose name is Leah Aski, and she comes back in a picture, she countered this argument by saying, well, it's a little obvious and like you said, and she believed that Russ's friends were providing a false alibi and they had been in on it and had colluded with him to carry out the murder.

So she's arguing that one friend went to Arby's to pick up the receipt. One friend went to the gas station, went to while he actually went home and murdered his wife. And then they all said, no, we were all playing games together. So that was the prosecution's defense.

Didn't even think about that or not prosecute prosecution's argument. Yeah, right.

I didn't even think that, like, I would have thought that, like, maybe the friends were like saying like, no, he was here when he wasn't. But I wouldn't have thought, like, right there that deep in where they're getting you and they're actually involved.

Right. Like they actually are criminally involved in this murder. Yeah, exactly. So that's what she's arguing.

So on November 21st, 2013, Russ FIRREA was convicted and on December 22nd, he was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison and sent to the Jefferson City Correctional Center. Wow, the end.

Just kidding. I was going to say, well, my fiance was like, since he's already been tried, wouldn't that be double jeopardy or something?

If he gets so double jeopardy is when you are tried and found innocent or not guilty, then you can't be tried again and found guilty. OK, if you are found guilty, you can appeal and get a retrial and fight for your innocence.

But oh my gosh, you're a lawyer. Wow. Yeah.

For a days like somewhere is like, don't even fucking start. Christine, I just graduated and took the bar.

Squire Schieffer when I one time joked about that and Rooney was like, I can't joke about like titles like that, I get in really big trouble. I was like sorry.

Oh yeah, OK. I was like, Rene, the attorney.

She's like, I'm not an attorney yet. Please don't say that because I'm going to get in trouble. It's like, OK, my bad.

Isn't Esquire, though, like the official thing you get to put at the end if you're so I looked it up once, I would literally be one.

I mean, it's the most Jemini thing I could possibly think. But every title I would literally become a lawyer just so I could say Esquire.

Yeah, well, so Esquire is apparently what you can put even if you don't pass the bar, I think. But you put JD, I think if you have. Oh right. I don't know.

I looked it up once because I was like I would love to Esquire, but apparently that's just not a thing you do. So well, I didn't pass the fucking bar. Can I be a NASCAR? Certainly. I am certainly not. You could spell it wrong. I'm in a square. I'm in that square with a K and a W Esquire and a heart over the eye.

OK, yeah.

OK, so yeah, double jeopardy is basically like if you're found not guilty, you're clear they can't charge you with that specific crime again. Got it.

OK, so right. So he's Sentosa sent to prison in the end. Not really.

Although the prosecution had said like Russ's four friends were in on this murder, they colluded with him and they were part of this murder. For whatever reason, nobody ever brought any charges against them.

In fact, the forefronts hadn't even been aware that they had been accused by the prosecutor until a reporter told them later, like, how do you feel about being, you know, named as colluding with him on the murder of Betsi FIRREA?

And they were like, wait, what if they had no idea that was even happening in court?

So as much as the prosecutor said, like, oh, they were in on it, like nobody like went and filed charges against them, which is a little bit odd in my opinion.

Yeah. So in January of 2014, Fox partnered with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to explore the case, and they basically wrote this exposé and they released it the following month. And the exposé is where shit gets just bananas.

So first of all, the expose they revealed that the one hundred and fifty thousand dollar life insurance that Pam had received had not gone into a trust for Betsey's daughters, as Betsy had wanted, but had actually stayed.

And Pam's little pocket.

Oh, OK. She immediately, four days after the verdict came through, that Russell was guilty. She dissolved the trust immediately and took the money. Or herself, not a good look, not a good look at all, but she did have a reason. She said she had been going through a really hard time. Her mom, who has suffered from dementia and arthritis, had died by suicide only three months before this exposé was launched.

Yikes. And that plus the loss of her close friend, Betsy. She sort of had her reeling and she was just like scared, et cetera.

But the experts was also exposed.

Some other interesting nuggets of information nuggets. OK, some nuggets. So investigative reports featured an interview with the nine one one operator who had taken Russ for his call. And she stated that although the police described Russ as emotionally volatile, she believed his hysteria was fully genuine. And she was like, if anyone had asked me, I would have said, like, no, I. I don't think he was faking it at all. Like, I listen to a lot of these phone calls.

Right. And I'm pretty sure what he was acting was legitimate. Yeah. Which obviously doesn't prove anything, but it's a point in his favor. So next one, which is a little more damning, the experts, they also claim that prosecuting attorney Leah Aski, so the one who said, like, oh, Russ, friends made up this timeline and one went to Wendy's and one and, you know, she she was the one saying, like, Russ is guilty and put him in prison.

So Leah Aski, the attorney, had actually been in a relationship with Mike Lang, who was an investigator on the case and actually was testifying in the trial. So they were like secretly in a relationship. So she wanted to win this case. There is the possibility that she said, like, I need you to testify and help me win this case. Obviously, you'd hope that didn't happen. But they also hadn't revealed their relationship to anybody. So it's just really sketchy that she was dating a police officer who happened to be heavily involved with the murder case.

It's just like it's not that shouldn't happen. No, it's like a conflict of interest comes a thousand.

Oh, yeah.

And especially since they didn't tell anyone, it's like, well, that's extra shady, you know. Yeah.

This is the time to be completely forget about everything. Put our cards on the table. This is not the time for secrets. No, not really.

And he actually was also the captain of investigations for the whole sheriff's office.

So he had a lot of power and a lot of information, you know, like sketchy.

It's sketchy. So two members in the jury actually found this out and went to report, went to the media and said, like, hey, nobody as the jury, we found him guilty. But nobody told us she was dating one of the witnesses and a guy involved in the case. And so they were pissed because they were like, well, we should have known that if we were, you know, trying to determine this man's fate like we want to know.

So they were the ones who actually flagged this to the media. And so essentially, yeah, all that. But things only get even crazier because on August 16th, 2016, oh, my God, this is just like we're listening to the original Dateline.

And I remember being in Target going, oh, yes, I just like what's happening, why Pam survives an attempted murder on her life.

OK, just get ready.

So August sixteen, twenty sixteen. She's sitting in our car in the garage when a man with an armed knife accosts her, demanding she drive him to a bank to retrieve, quote, Russ's money. So luckily, she was able to knock the knife out of his hand and run into her house. But the man chased her. She grabbed her gun where she kept on the nightstand and shot him in self-defense.

Oh, she immediately called the police who searched his body and learned that he was one Lewis Royce Gump and Burger.

OK, I know Mr. Burger, a resident of St. Charles, Missouri.

And on his person, they found a note that had the following instructions handwritten on it. It said, Kidnap Hupp. And that's Pam's last name, kidnap Hupp. Get Russ's money from her up at her bank and kill her up. Take her back to the house, get rid of her, make it look like Russ's wife. Make sure knife sticking out of neck.

I like how you OK.

Someone is clearly new to the team because if you needed instructions of like, OK, kidnap. Yeah, yeah. Kill, kill, kill.

Yeah. Like you couldn't remember that that's what you were fucking there to do. Yeah.

And so the point of this letter was like fully clear instructions of how to kill Pam, make it look like Russ's wife, get Russ's money. That heat belonged to him quote unquote. Oh it does.

All it does is make it clear that it was like at least not the original suspect from the first murder. Like because in my mind, I mean, you're look at me like, oh, well, no, no, because I'm wondering because the the way they looked at it was like, well, this would be Russ giving these instructions saying, like, get my money from the bank that like, I tried to get my money back.

That Pam, I'm just saying this like this clearly is this person did not kill the last person because, like, the fact that they needed to do less to replicate it makes it seem.

Oh, no. So actually, nobody ever thought that. He he's not even. Oh, my gosh, I don't know this guy. This guy's just like in the in the mix. All of a sudden they just think that this guy has been hired by Russell to murder Pam to get his money back. So we're on the same page, OK?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's not necessarily what they think, but that's what at least this is meant to portray. Let's put it that way. Like that's the image that was meant to be created with this note and not but footage.

But also this could have been Russ or the real killer planting his own to do list. So it looked like he was a new guy on the block when he could have been the original guy. Is that one of the options here? Just continue to just continue. Just maybe. I don't know. We're going to find out the answers.

I think I've been so involved in my head that I have read this so many times. I've just not even able to comprehend. I'm sorry.

No, it's I'm sure I'm not getting my point across. Clearly.

It's also but this is why I was so afraid to cover the story, because it's so fucking confusing. And like all of this is overlapping in different timelines. And so the way Dateline did, it was so like woven into itself in, like interviews.

And I'm just so I just I love them so much. They're taken away. I love you, Keith. OK, so all of this these instructions that this man, Gump and Burger had apparently this hit man basically had been given, we're supposed to be rewarded with ten thousand dollars.

That was what was written on the note, like for ten thousand dollars.

This is what you have to do, like a recipe list. Ten thousand dollars, one one dash of kidnap and then two cups of kill knife in neck.

But it's like one of those blogs where it's like the first 10 pages are like I lived on a farm and I love whipped eggs.

How about you leave a comment below?

It's like my my favorite pastime is playing games with the boys and then going to Wendy's after clearly but at different gas station for my cigarettes.

My my son doesn't even know it's not real beef, OK? I don't know where I'm going.

So the reward money was allegedly in this note. Ten thousand dollars. So in his pocket, police find nine one hundred dollar bills.

But things get even weirder because then they search Pam's house and on her dresser they find a one hundred dollar bill.

And to make matters even eerier, the serial number matched the bills found in his pockets.

OK, got it. So this is someone's first kill also.

Yeah. So basically she has a bill and the odds because she's saying, I've never met this man before in my life, the odds that this man's in our house to kill her and she happens to have a sequential bill to the ones in his pocket are so extraordinary that they were like this.

The odds of this are not this is not a coincidence that she happens to have a bill that matches his serial numbers like it's ridiculous.

So something was obviously off and police were like, OK, this is getting a little fishy. So they did more research into Pam. And cell phone records actually showed that Pam had been in government Berger's neighborhood less than an hour before this alleged attempted kidnapping. And she was like, I've never seen this man before. I don't know who he is. She was literally like on his block within an hour, which makes no sense. It wasn't like where she lived or anything like that.

On August 10, 2016, a police report had been.

So this is about a week earlier, a police report had been filed stating that a woman, a mysterious woman matching Pam's description, had approached a local resident named Carol Alford and had posed as a Dateline NBC producer and offered her a thousand dollars to reenact a nine on one call.

So this woman, they interviewed her on the Dateline episode, which they fucking ate this shit up because Dateline was like she was pretending to be one of our reporters.

Like they were just so thrilled about the fact that, like, because in the description for the podcast, it's like and learn how Dateline got sucked into the story of the murder because they fangirl go about their own show exactly like she thought.

OK, but if someone like I mean, not like I hope this doesn't happen, but like if someone were to involve reenacting and that's why we dream. I know, you know, it is very meta. It's I'm with you.

I think it's like really fascinating. It's of course, Dateline snaps the story up and it's like we're going to like milk this. And they did a great job. I'm not I'm saying you and I would do the same. I agree with you. Right. But it's very funny because.

So this woman had called police have been like, yeah, this strange lady, like, drove up to my trailer and said, I'll give you a thousand dollars because we're trying to reenact a 911 call. I just need you to like, say this audio and then I'll give you a thousand dollars. So they had security camera footage and it showed that the woman, the mysterious woman, had been driving Pam's car so they couldn't make out the person, but they saw the car.

And we're like, well, that's pince car. So it's starting to fit together. Right? Did you hear that? What was that?

That was the cats running. I thought it was something that was not a lot of I. They're very much alive. Both us hurled their bodies into the room.

They chased each other a lot. It's really obnoxious.

Oh, boy, if you hear that kind of sound in my room, be more afraid because it's not a life of animals.

I'm sorry. In advance. Nobody's doing that. They were like pretending he doesn't see Judy, but he's definitely, like, ready to pounce. OK, that's fine.

So they also discovered when they were searching Pam's apartment that her they had a swatch of carpet that appeared to have been positioned to protect a rug and Pam's house from getting blood on it when Compan Burger was shot. Goodbye.

OK. It was like, oh, I don't want to ruin my nice Wayfair rug in the process.

So, OK, not also not a good look, but on top of all this, police were like Gompert Berger himself would not have probably would not have been able to commit such a crime because following a car crash in 2005, Compan Berger had actually suffered from severe mental and physical impairments, which made investigators very skeptical that he would have been able to carry this out by himself. And so they were like on top of everything else, he was just working a job, trying to provide for his family.

This seems really unreasonable that this man gets stuck in, like sucked into this high stakes hitman situation. It just doesn't fit.

Then investigators found that the knife that Gompert Berger had allegedly used to threaten Pam had been purchased at a nearby dollar tree in Pam's neighborhood alongside several other items they found in Pam's house. So the receipt basically had the knife and then a bunch of shit that was, I don't know, like her her new glasses, I have no idea. But her reading glasses, I don't know what it was, but they were all found to be from the same trip at the local dollar store.

Yeah. So it's not looking good. No, it's suddenly turning very quickly against her.

So all this was so compelling that police determined Gompert Berger's innocence. Unfortunately, obviously, he had been killed. And on August twenty third, twenty sixteen, Pam was arrested and charged with first degree murder and armed criminal action against him.

So the prosecuting attorney and the chief of police basically theorized that Pam had done the same thing and lured him to her home by presenting herself as Kathy and NBC Dateline producer and offering to pay him to reenact the nine one one call.

And then when he arrived, she killed him in cold blood and pretended he had threatened her and was coming after her and then planted this note. Right then they were like, well, why would she plant a note mentioning Russ?

Like, this is a totally strange like it's suddenly like pulling back to the old case.

I guess so. But I feel like it could I could easily explain it away to me. It would make sense of like, oh, well, you're trying to redirect, like, who the original person was, like, nothing to do with me. So that was Ross. Yes.

So that is that is literally exactly what she was doing. But at the time, they were still convinced that they had put the right guy in prison because it seemed so clear cut that it wasn't until now that they were thinking, wait a second, like maybe we got this all wrong. So, I mean, exactly what you're saying. Like, why would she write Ross on it? Well, clearly, she was trying to like she felt like things were turning a little bit toward her and she was like aggressively trying to push them back at us.

Yes. Unfortunately, doing the opposite clearly.

So when she was arrested, this is a little bit horrific. She asked to visit a bathroom and then she used a ballpoint pen to stab herself in the wrists, in the neck.

But, you know, think of the commitment, I guess would be yeah, it's like a heinous thought if I thought I have to stab myself in the heart. Wait, what I wanted to know. Sorry, in the wrists and the throat, which also is still terrible. The throat is terrible. If the if the options were to go to jail or stab yourself in the throat, I'd be like, I guess I'm going to jail. I couldn't.

I couldn't. I couldn't.

I would just end up like drawing on myself like it would. Yeah, yeah, I would. Or I would like do a test around where I just kind of like popped out and I'd go, oh, oh that was terrible.

Yeah, I know. No way. No way. So basically sorry. Sorry, I don't know the forensics. Not that I'm like, you know, the Hot Shot Olivia Benson or anything but like well none of us I'm I'm pretty sure you could very quickly see like based on how it went into your neck if you stabbed yourself.

Oh no. She wasn't trying to hide it. She was just trying to like, get out of, you know, how sometimes when people are cornered, they do this, like, desperate move. Yeah. Like, well, you can't catch me if I'm dead sort of thing. Gotcha.

OK, so the the theory is that she was basically cornered and desperate and there wasn't really much sense to it except like, I'm going to take myself out before you can.

Yeah, OK, that makes more sense. But it didn't work because it was a plastic pen and it didn't actually really do any harm.

So anyway, all that to say she tried it, it didn't work. Oh.

So they were like but also now now they're looking at her like, why the hell did you just try to stab yourself in the throat if you're innocent? You know. Exactly right. What a good look.

So. Bail was set at two million dollars for her, and on December 16th of 2016, a grand jury indicted her for first degree murder and armed criminal action of Compan Burger. But, of course, now there's still that untaught that loose end of like, well, why did she do this? We need to figure out where this came from and what it's like pointing at basically. Right. So meanwhile, Russ is still in prison for life. And as this is all going on with Pam, this is what's kind of been happening on Russell side, is that his attorneys are continuing to contest his guilty sentence, saying he had nothing to do with it.

And then in July of 2014, Betsey's daughters, Lisa and Mariah, sued Pam for their mother's money because they were like, hello, that was supposed to go to us. You even said it in the trial that that was our money. And now you're just, like, owning it yourself.

This is a this is of all the trials, probably, I think, the easiest one to judge. Yeah, you'd think so. Right.

Well, but she had signed it over to Pam, so it was all like hearsay, you know what I mean? Oh, OK. So it's a little bit like he said also.

OK, I mean, we could fight about that forever. I would just be like, well, who would believe that? Like this woman, like just gave all the money to her own friend and not her children, but like, well, you'll see what she comes up with because there is a theory.

I know, because because people were wondering that exact thing. Don't worry, she has an answer.

So she seems to have an answer to fucking everything she does. And it's usually pretty stupid. It's also always a really, obviously bad answer. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

So they did the civil trial where the daughters are suing her for their money back for their mother's money. And when Pam was asked on trial whether Betsy had mentioned that she wanted the money to be used for her daughters, Pam, in a major turn of events, said absolutely not.

And obviously, this completely contested what she had said in the first trial of like I did this for her.

She wanted me to take this money to give to her daughters and take care of them. So anyway, on February twenty fourth, Russell Farias case was remanded in June.

It was decided he would get a new trial to reassess all this information. And luckily for lawyers on Russell's case, they received a new videotaped police interview with Pam where she tried to explain why Betsy had left her all this money.

OK, yeah. She told detectives that she and Betsy had been lovers.

God, why are there two lesbians on this? I know this episode is really just extra scandalously gay today. When you said it earlier, I was like, but I didn't want to spoil it. Oh, I thought you were just excited that I mentioned lesbians. Oh, I was like when I was I was just extra excited that I had a parallel story to bring up.

So she says neither of us were lesbians, to be clear, but trauma had made Betsy hungry for a sexual relationship with Pam. So Pam, quote, replaced what a husband would be. It was a small, small thing to give her some weight.

So they were hanging on. So they were not gay, but doing everything that would be defined as gay. That's right.

OK, well, and also she said she was only doing it to, like, take care of her dying friend who.

Like sex. Like sex. Yeah. Who had a terrible husband and was like wanting for full sexual fulfillment.

So she asked a good friend right there. Yeah, right. I know. But get this best friend.

OK, well, not quite, because apparently one of Pam's acquaintances literally snorted when they heard this, saying, I can't I too would have snorted at that courthouse or that room. So it was like, oh, no, no, we're not. We're just doing really gay shit in like also like we're sleeping together, but we're not gay, but like, we sleep together, but we're not gay.

But I have to tell you why she snorted. It's not like, you know, because Pam was a fucking raging homophobe. So, like, literally making this up and her friend is like that.

No more hysterical. That's even more so.

Apparently, this friend of Pam said Pam was the most homophobic, homophobic person I'd ever met. She'd say, that's not normal. That's not right. Any time somebody talks about like any sort of homosexual relations. And so the friend was like, that is bullshit. Like she would never she's making this up is like a last ditch effort to be like, oh, we were lovers. I'm not gay, but we are lovers. And that's why Betsey wanted me to have this money.

But like, she was making fun of my gossip tabloid like this. Oh, funniest front line news ever. I know someone wasn't like stabbed fifty five times.

It would have been very funny, but it would be, it would be extra funny if the person who snorted was very gay. Like it was just like yeah.

And that's, that's rough because it literally says like her close friend. And I'm like well that's rough because if you're their close friend then you and you know they're the most homophobic person ever, then like you're not keeping very good friends in my mouth. No, you don't love yourself.

Honestly, you're not you know, you're kind of homophobic yourself, I would imagine. If your best friend is, I feel like without even having known the context, I mean, look what happened. I mean, I just like hysterically laugh, but without even knowing the context, if you were in that courthouse and you heard someone use that as the like like I'm gay, but I'm not like I'm I mean, I would have just I would have heard one person snort and I would have just everyone would have fucking lost it out of I'm like, OK.

Oh, and they were banging the gavel like order in the court. So that was like such a small thing.

But like it just really tickled me. I know.

And it's such a bummer because she really just fucking used like being gay is an excuse of like it's such a fucking bummer. It's like it wasn't even horrible. None of it was even true. She just was like she was like, I'm going to even throw my own beliefs out the window and pretend to be like the most heinous thing I know, which is a lesbian, quote unquote. So it's terrible with money. It's funny. It is funny.

It's terrible. It's funny.

It's ridiculous because we know it's ridiculous. Like if she had really played this ruse and it had worked like, that's one thing. But people were like, okay, lady, like you really said the fuck down.

Yeah. Straight stupid woman, straight stupid woman who hates gay people. Sit down yet.

So anyway, the snorting happened. She said she was a lover of Betsey's and that's why she deserved the money and wasn't giving it to her daughters.

And I can just imagine Betsey beyond the grave being like, sorry, what did that bitch just say?

Like this is the kids being like, truly? I mean, yeah, all the trauma they've already gone through and now it's like, oh, and now apparently my sick mom was having a lesbian affair with this woman who she didn't even you're saying love but like but you could offer her you could you could serve her better than our own father, like her husband.

Her husband was like, oh my God, yes. I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, OK.

Yeah, I'm a husband. But also. Yeah, and you're right, because it's extra icky because she's basically saying, like, we're not gay, but like she wanted this and as a friend and she was dying and a friend I just gave it to.

It's like you don't fucking she she wanted it and like her own husband couldn't offer them. Yeah. It's extra gross. So she's a real effort of the entire family structure completely. These kids at least, and the husband's like in prison for this.

So basically they're going back on trial. And Russell's lawyers get a hold of this tape and they're like, interesting, OK, fun twist. Also, interestingly, in the original trial, this is where it kind of fell apart, is that in the original trial, the judge hadn't allowed Russell's attorneys to present any evidence about Pam. So they the judge didn't allow the attorneys to say, hey, Pam got the life insurance money. They didn't allow them to say Pam was the last person to drive her home and see her alive, because according to the judge who, by the way, was later got in huge trouble for, quote, not understanding the law and was actually very, very criticized for, like abusing human rights.

So this person and was suspended and stuff like. So this judge originally was like, no, you can't say anything against Pam in this trial because this trial's not against Pam, it's against Russ. So there was no chance that they could point to another person and say, like, Rustin, do this, look who has more motive. So the jury, all they had was Russ. And they were like, well, that makes sense. He was there.

And he and his wife apparently argued a lot.

So now finally, that that they're doing this retrial, there's a new judge who says, like hell, yeah, please bring all this information about Pam so that we could, like, open this up and show the jury and other people like, yeah, Russ may have had some motive, but Pam has like a thousand times more motive anyway.

So let's see. Oh, it also so that the evidence that they were finally allowed to include also included cell phone records showing that Pam had been at the fariha house for thirty minutes after the time she had claimed to drop her off.

So she said I dropped her off and left. But now they had evidence showing that she was there for a half hour for no unexplained reason. They also had information that Pam was named the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy that they were finally allowed to include.

And so remember, Russ had claimed he'd been with the four friends. Yeah. And the prosecutor said he was colluding with these friends.

They were they were part of it. Well, one of the officers timed how long his drive would have taken. Twenty three minutes and found the food receipt in the back of the SUV stamped at nine oh nine. So if Russ had made it home in the time slot and gotten food, he would have had only nine minutes to stab his wife. Fifty five times clean up and call nine one one.

So they were like, it's really a tight window. Like he right.

He would have had to do all this in a short window, clean up himself, shower and fifty five times like that's horrendously a lot.

Yeah. But the strongest evidence in the prosecutor's case. So it had been that there was blood on the slippers because like hello that's like nail in the coffin for us. But if you look at the. The slippers had no blood on top of them. They only had blood on the sides.

And so what they thought was that somebody had like put blood on them and or walked through the blood and then tossed them into his closet, trying to frame him basically like, look, he did it. But if the person had been wearing the slippers, it would have been what was on the bottom. I was going to say even the beginning earlier when you mentioned the slippers, like the first time around, I was like, does anyone really that stupid to put them in the closet?

Yeah, it's like, oh, let me go kill someone. Then put my exact outfit right back and let me clean up the blood all over it. Alex Hidayat. Yeah, absurd. No, exactly. And obviously that's such an open and shut like. Well, his clothes were covered in blood, OK, he did it. But like then if you look at it's like, why is there no blood on top of it, just on the bottom.

Why didn't he throw those shoes away if they already had also that like it doesn't make any sense, why would he put them right back in the closet where you would go look at his shirt? Why when you put them in a safe for under a fire or you imagine in the ocean?

Can you imagine that feeling, though, when they pull the slippers out and they're like, there's blood on these and put them in a bag and you're like, wait, what? Like because you didn't do it? That must be the most damning feeling of like, I didn't wear those slippers.

I mean, I would I would like to think if I got framed for a murder and someone found my bloody shoes in the closet, I'd be like, I'd like to think that I have friends who would back me up and be like, if we're going to kill someone, they wouldn't just fucking that's that's not even critical thinking right there. That's like like the shoes. If I ever kill somebody, the shoes I wore will never be able to be found again.

The fish flaps will be found at the bottom of the ocean with Jack, with their original home, with their original ancestors.

They'll be with actual fish.

Yes, fin and gill.

OK, so anyway, the slippers now are kind of off the table because they're like, well, someone walked through the blood but hadn't worn them. It doesn't make any sense.

So also regarding the fact that, oh, did I not even tell you this? Oh, my God, I totally missed this bullet. Ross had been brought in as well for questioning and he had failed a polygraph test. Oh, so that I'm sorry. That was like way early bullett. I somehow missed that. But yes, that was one of the first things that also was a nail in the coffin is like he had bloody slippers. He failed his polygraph, like everything was just against him.

Well, so with the polygraph, apparently, he later explained, like I went in a room with a guy with the computer. They didn't hook anything up to me. He also had been awake for thirty two hours and had smoked marijuana.

And so like there was, he said he's not a big thinker, but like, you know, there's no way that, like, this would have been a legit polygraph because a right.

He was like totally out of his mind at this point.

And B he wasn't even hooked up.

They were like making it up to try and, like, pressure him into to admitting guilt. But he's like, I didn't even, like, take a polygraph. They just sat there and asked me questions and tried to convince me that I had failed. But like, I wasn't even hooked up to any monitor. So that was all baloney as well.

So on top of this, Pam said that on the evening before Betsey's death, after she'd dropped Betsi off at home, she had tried calling her multiple times because she was nervous about finding her way home from Betsey's house, because they were like, why do you keep calling her on when you just dropped her off? And she said, oh, I just didn't know how to get home. And like, first of all, she'd been to Betsey's house many times.

And second of all, why would you go drive your friend home?

Because she's sick from her chemo and needs to sleep and is getting a cold. And the first time, if you call her and she doesn't answer, you know, she's asleep and sick, like, why are you calling her over and over again?

Also, it's like twenty sixteen or something like, yeah, I have a phone that like you have a phone that can tell you how to get home.

Well I think it's twenty twelve so I don't know. Did people have twenty, eleven, twenty eleven now. I didn't have a she had a Tom-Tom. I had that's all she had a Thompson.

I had a BlackBerry or something but that's a different story. Yeah. So it was just weird because they were like well why are you, you just said you dropped her off because you were so worried about how sick she was.

Call someone else or try and find you.

If you're that close and you already know how to get home from your friend's house because she had been there a week before as well, like she'd been there multiple times. And this didn't seem to be an issue before.

So very strange things were not looking great.

She apparently had originally dodged a polygraph test as well.

So she'd agree to she had agreed to one. But then she mentioned sustaining several head injuries over the year. So the doctor, the police were like, well, can you get a doctor's clearance so he can say, yes, you're you're clear to take a polygraph. So she wrote to her doctor and said, Dear Doctor Fisher, could you please write Detective Kizer a letter stating that I am not able to do a polygraph due to medical reasons, don't need any more details in that.

So. Clearly, instead of saying, hey, can you clear me for a polygraph, she's like, can you tell them I cannot do a polygraph? Right, fishy. Fishy. Yeah. So obviously now the defense is pointing to Pam as the one with the motive. And Russ at this point was found not guilty and was finally released from jail for a crime he did not commit.

So that's good.

So now timeline's cross. We're back to how Pam had shot Gompert Burger in her house. And so that was actually the month that it was announced that Betsey's case was being re-examined. So like you said, that was a month she found out, Russ, getting out of prison and now they're going to be like, who actually murdered her?

So now I need to turn the tides back and say, no, Russ did it.

So I'm going to have this weird note in this man's pocket also, because, I mean, she like she premeditated a murder just so that it would help her her storyline look. Right.

It's OK. She's a bad, bad lady.

I mean, I know that she did like the whole, like, news lady thing, but like, I did want to know if she went into this with the intention to just murder somebody.

Yeah, it's pretty cold blooded and horrific, especially because, like, he had a lot of disabilities and she took advantage of that. And, you know, it's all just very upsetting.

And like, she's a cold blooded like it's scary how how bad she is and how much she doesn't care. Anyway, Rusty's out of jail.

Pam is like desperately trying to point fingers back at Russ and all of a sudden all the fingers are pointing at Pam. So it seemed like this was just her way of reframing Russ, which now wasn't working anymore. So this is not all, though, because like I said, Pam is a cold blooded bitch.

So in twenty sixteen, after Pam was charged with the murder of Gompert Burger, the police department also reopened the case of the death of Pam's mom, who had died by suicide, quote unquote, on October 31st.

So Shirley Newman is Pam's mom and Shirley's son, Michael had said like, no, I believe her death was accidental or she had died by suicide. But after Pam had murdered and Burger and was now another suspect in Betsey's case, everybody was kind of like, maybe we should reassess the other death that happened.

What a death happening around those around this lady. She's the center of it.

So to break down what happened to Pam's mom. So on the evening of October 30th, Shirley Newman, Pam's mom, was driven home by Pam following a hospital visit, which already sounds familiar to Betsey's story at approximately five PM, dropped her off at her apartment and then instructed the staff of the facility or whatever not to expect her for dinner that evening or breakfast the following day Mike.

And by the way, nobody. Then the next day when she was dead, nobody was like, that's odd.

No, because it just didn't wild. I know. I know. I don't know.

It's really I feel like I feel like someone should have reported out of like, oh, well, that's weird that it was she told. Yeah. Applied. We shouldn't expect she wouldn't be around.

Yeah. Yeah. It's very sketchy. Hmm.

So on October 31st, unfortunately, a housekeeper found Shirley Newman dead beneath the balcony of her home.

So she had fallen through the aluminum railing of her balcony like not over it, but through the bars.

And like you can see it, there's like bars busted out of it.

And they did a medical examination.

It concluded that she had died from blunt trauma to the chest from a fall. But the autopsy showed that she had eight times the normal dose of Ambien in her system.

Well, OK. So that's why they thought it was a suicide, because they were like, well, she nobody accidentally takes a Ambien. If you forget, you take another one, you know, whatever. But eight in a row is a lot. So they were like, well, that that's why it was initially called a suicide. And her son even said, like, yeah, I think that this was something she took too much medication and was in a trance or state and fell.

But like, weirdly enough, this Braitling apparently was so it was like nearly impossible to bust or you need, I think, like, I don't know, four hundred pounds of force or there's like something that they studied it they talked about in Generation Y, but like you need like so much force to be, you don't just like fall and bust out these railings.

And I've never. Yeah. And I've never been like an Ambien person, but like I imagine you're a real zombie. Like you're not. Yeah. Throwing a lot of force into something if you don't have to.

You're right. Right. And like, falling is one thing, but.

Yeah, exactly. But it's not like you get like super strength and can bust through the railing and then you would have had to bust through the railing and then like slid through it and fallen, you know what I mean?

Like, it's a very odd area. It's a very odd thing that they hadn't really considered before. Pam was also the last person to see her alive. Also sounds familiar to Betsy's story. And so from the death of her mother, Pam and her siblings, each received approximately one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of investments and they shared a ten thousand dollar life insurance payout.

But earlier that year. Prior to her mom dying, Pam had been videotaped, this is really eerie saying basically she said, hey, if I wanted money when she was trying to defend herself about Betsey, she said, hey, if I wanted money, my mom's worth half a million dollars and I would get all of it if she died. So it'd be a lot easier for me to go for her than go for that. See, it's like, OK, why would you say that?

A and B, like, she wasn't even worth half a million. It was a lie. It's so sketchy. I don't know if she thought that she was worth half a million, but she was worth ten thousand dollars in life insurance.

So I don't know. She was apparently worth something, I guess something something that I am really wanted.

SYKES So the police reopened their investigation. They interviewed the housekeeper who found the body, and they then concluded again that the death was accidental. But in November of twenty seventeen, the chief medical examiner changed the manner of death from accidental to undetermined. And I think that's a pretty rare thing to, like, change the manner of death so long after. I'm not positive about that. But in her notes, she stated, since her death, many things have happened that involve the daughter.

And so all of that investigation, including the one in Lincoln County and the one in St. Charles, became pertinent information. I was no longer willing to say it could be an accident.

So medical examiners like, nope, changed my mind. There's no way this was a fucking accident.

Interesting.

So in twenty eighteen, during Pam's trial for the murder of Gompert Berger, the judge ruled that prosecutors couldn't present evidence relating to Shirleys death, but they could present evidence related to Betsey's murder. So there's all these murders going on. She's on trial for Gompert Bergers murder. Specifically, she entered an Alford plea, which I've mentioned a few times on the show, but it's hard to remember.

But basically an Alford guilty plea is where you admit that you say, I didn't do it. I'm maintaining my innocence. But I believe that if a jury saw all this evidence, they would call me guilty. So I'm going to put in a guilty plea. But I'm to avoid the trial. I'm going to put in a guilty plea to avoid a jury trial, but I'm maintaining my innocence. Got it.

It's like I'm aware how shady this looks. Yes, I have my own skin. I'm going to plead guilty.

It's like a technicality, almost like I'm going to plead guilty. But I am putting in the record that I did not do this right.

So as a condition of the deal, Pam didn't face the death penalty. She was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. She's currently serving her sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri. And in a phone call to her husband, Pam claimed she had pled guilty so her family wouldn't have to witness an ugly trial.

So she's still maintaining that she's fully innocent and did this for her family. It's like, yeah, OK, I heard that before, lady for real.

So in piecing all this together, basically her motive for everything she did was money. She worked in the life insurance industry, like I had said, and she had actually been fired twice for forging signatures. So she had already been fired.

This come on now, like, why on earth are you even trying to kill anyone? I mean, it's ridiculous. I know we have to like we can't just straight up say someone did something I, I personally don't see another way. No, no.

And I mean, I think it's pretty much assumed that she did it also. Like who's hiring her after being fired twice for forging signatures and a life insurance place. So it's really sketchy. Yeah.

So she had also collected money for a family impacted by cancer. And when she was kind of looked at for that sees death, she said like a I like my mom has a higher life insurance policy.

It'd be a lot easier for me to get it that way and be if I were so desperate for money. I actually raised fifty thousand dollars for this woman who it was her last Christmas because she had cancer and I raised fifty thousand dollars for her family, yada, yada.

Well, later they fucking looked into this.

She did raise fifty thousand dollars and she didn't give it to them. She kept it. And the family said the family whose mother did die after her last Christmas, said, We've never heard about this. Like she was using their family as like a fund raiser and saying like, oh, we just need to help her through her last year of life and she has a family to support. And then she fucking kept the money. It's yeah.

Just for the second. You even said it. I was. Yeah, yeah. You looked really sad. You know, that locatable. Stop thinking. Stop. Don't even finish the sentence already. No, it's fucking wow.

You sound all like our all of our iTunes reversed. You just stop talking please.

For once. So every single nasty review reviewer people like just interrupts Christina all the time. I had ADHD.

Do you do people say that. Oh, everyone thinks that I'm just like the most annoying when it comes to interrupting you. I was like, I needed what. Excuse me. So I unmedicated.

How dare you.

I don't know if if when it comes to I mean, I haven't looked at the reviews in a long time, but either we don't get too many nasty reviews. But I would say 90 percent of the nasty reviews we have are because I won't. That hurts my. Feelings, oh, don't forget about my feelings, yeah, don't fucking say that about em. I only read the ones that said I was like a dumb valley girl, so whatever.

But hey, I meant to say this actually in this episode, fittingly enough, but if you guys can write a review on iTunes, it's super helpful. Well, we have to ask for one in.

And I think both podcasts are like Ray and review and we never say it. So if you have a minute, can you just say I love one?

M interrupts Christine It's great. It's my favorite RB.

Like I love that M is now medicated and therefore there's no more interruptions. So for all the people who had something to say, come back, even though I've said that the medication wasn't working. But it's working a little bit.

It's not it's really not working the way I want it to, though, which is such a shame. I really wanted to be laser focused on it. And like now I'm I'm still too distracted for me to be saying that the successful medicine.

So anyway, yes, please write in review and maybe make those those mean reviews.

It does it does make me feel better because sometimes if I like check our podcast page just to like see if something uploaded and I scroll down like the featured reviews, a one star and it just like my heart crumbles into a million pieces because it's like I used to like this show and now they suck and I'm like, OK, that really hurts my feelings. Anyway, I'm just a big baby.

I mean we're both babies. But I know it does make me really happy though, because there really weren't too many mean reviews. But the in between them, there were so many nice ones. So I know. I know, Jase. So thank you to all the people who do say nice things. The wonderful reviews are so. Yes.

So heartwarming and like affirming and wonderful. And I know we did have some rough patches with touring, so it always kind of sting.

I always stings. I always feel bad in people. Like after they started touring, I couldn't listen to them anymore and it's like we couldn't listen to each other. No, I don't like it was we get it. We fixed it and nobody did.

I moved across the country to fix it. I love them.

It's a by no, I think I definitely think we fix it. After that first year, we just didn't know what we were doing. I mean, we were out of our element. Yeah. We were imagining all of a sudden someone says, hey, people really like you and now you have to completely flip your world upside down. And you have no precedent for this. No.

And then all of a sudden we were so. But it's also your fault because you agreed to this. Like, you can't you know, we know that it was like a rough time. And so we really tried to get things. I think we did. Yeah.

Especially with I mean, we I would say I mean, people are probably already turning off the episode, but wait, there's more don't leave yet.

OK, well, we're basically face timing, but we really did nail it like I mean, granted, like the the pandemic hit. But and our first chunk of here for the booze, like we fucking figured it out.

So we nailed it. We got the formula. We were like, this is how we can retain our sanity, limit our. Yeah.

Our breakdowns. Yeah. It was a good show. I was really proud of us. It was such a it's really such a shame. We say so often that the show was so fucking good. And I would say anyone who actually had I got to come to the here for the show would say it was a fucking amazing show. I hope I'm on top of that. It was the behind the scenes finagling we did to make sure that like like the our actual podcast itself also stayed.

Really? Yes. It was like up front work that we did to make sure that during the tour we had it easy enough to make this our priority, like the regular episodes approach.

Basically, if you listen to other podcasts after this and I end up blowing up and doing really well, that they start touring if during their first tour they sound real fucking anxiety, give them a goddamn break and and just power through because they're going to figure it out like it's it's so worth it.

So, yeah. And we and like we recognized it like it was, it was really hard because everybody was pointing it out and we were like, we're trying to fix it. And I'm not complaining in a way of like this wasn't our fault.

Like it was because we agreed to it. But we learned pretty quickly, like, how to fix it. Anyway, sorry.

This is like a ten minute rant about us trying to, I don't know, defend yourself.

You and we appreciate everyone who stuck with us. I did, too.

When people say I've been listening since the beginning, it makes my heart swell because I'm like, that means they got through a rough patch.

They really did.

And we appreciate it. So if you know anybody who ever says, like, oh, I, I used to, but I couldn't get through a certain patch, just say like they figure it out.

It's okay. You haven't met Ziemann. Yeah. You do. You even know who. Lemonis Do you even know.

Stay OK. Sorry.

I promise that we're getting here anyway. I love you all. If you could leave. Are you super hopeful. You don't have to.

I don't. You know, it's not the end of the world, but it is helpful because sometimes I really hate seeing those one stars. And maybe I should just talk to my therapist, really the co-host of a one star review.

I know it's painful. It's like one day you do. One day you should really fuck yourself up and like do a beach, you see any episode on and that's why. So I hadn't thought of that.

Most people suggest. Do you know that sometimes to be true, Sandy, we like really are self sabotaging because people send once. Our views of ourselves to us and say, isn't this funny, and it will be like Alexander and Christine are like the most blah, blah, blah, and they're not funny and they just want to hear themselves like me, just like really cute stuff. And they send it to us to go, isn't this hilarious? And I'm like, no, it's just me also.

But like, you guys kind of found the perfect formula because like now when people give you one star reviews, you can roll it off your shoulder a lot faster.

If it does it, does it keep you at the bottom of like you, we said, like we've said, like we do not appreciate one service, like, OK, we make a point also in the show to like highlight five star views of companies and stuff to be like, hey, people who leave one stars are assholes and are ridiculous. So basically nobody wants to be a one star. That makes sense anyway.

OK, sorry. Yikes.

Everyone just go away. Just turn this off.

No, I want my story putting people already stop listening after your story. I want people to stay.

So she still maintains her innocence in prison. So her motive was money, whether it was her mother, whether it was this company Burger Guy, whether it was this family that she duped for fifty thousand dollars who had cancer, which is just so sick.

So this neatly sicko's.

Oh, I mean, segues into how Russophobia, a wrongfully imprisoned man, seemed to have a little bit of justice, at least in twenty twenty, in that the eastern Missouri Sheriff Department reached a two million dollar settlement with him. So at least he got a payout eventually, which obviously does not ever make up for being wrong time. And yeah, but it's something to help him restart his life. He's also like, lost his job, his reputation, all of that.

He says he can't rebuild. So it's it's really rough.

And since Pam was only convicted of killing Gompert Burger, the case of Betsy for his murder is technically still open, even though we kind of know who did it.

And to think she stabbed her 55 times, it's just so fucked up anyway. And Pam's mother's death is also still undetermined.

And Vox says on the website, their website, quote, It's also important to know that this is a story that's still ongoing, following Russ Frias overturned conviction and eventual acquittal in a second 2015 trial. His wife's murder is now still technically unsolved. The current prosecutor is trying to change this, and new documents and information about the case are still being released. So it might come to terms that she is finally convicted of Betsey's murder, which I think would be a nice piece of justice for the family.

Right.

So you can listen to the thing about Pam, which is an excellent, excellent podcast like so well done. And research the interviews. You talked to the woman who said that, like Pam pretended to be Kathy, a Dateline reporter. So it's all very in-depth and interesting. Generation Y also did a good job. And I want to leave on something a little bit positive, but also sad, which is just just like the the final note on the victims in this case.

So Betsy Freha died on December 27, 2011. She survived by her two daughters and husband and is remembered by Russ, especially by her outgoing personality. Shirley Newman died on October 30th, 2013, and is remembered to be a loving mother and grandmother. And Louis Gompert Burger died August 16. Twenty sixteen. He is survived by his family, including his son and daughter. His ex-girlfriend Shannon remembers how he always wanted to make everyone laugh. And that is the story of the thing about Pam is that she's a terrible person.

Yeah, the one thing that's most important about Pam is to stay the fuck away from her. You believe? Oh, my God. Do not come near her. Yikes. Wow.

Well, thank you. I appreciate you. Sorry, everyone. Please go right and review us for the chaos that is this podcast, because I hope people don't give us the one star like they're just begging for attention.

I'm like, oh well, someone will but someone else will refute it. So we're going to help.

So we just love you guys and we want to keep doing this because you're just I don't know, especially after four years.

I think we have a slight fear in the back of our minds of like, oh, my gosh, are we old now?

They're getting bored of us. Yeah, we're Gemini's.

So we always want to keep things like by saying, yes, I see. That's why we're starting a gossip mag.

Go to oh, I go to tabloids and gems if you will. Oh we'll work on that. Well we'll shop it. But anyway, thank you guys so much. You can find everything at and that's why we drink dotcom. Yeah you sure can. And our socials are the Schultz and Schiefer and you can find us that podcast.

Yes. And even social as you gross with three three days. Look up you through our search, I don't know, just type in dog and then we know, is it three S's? You're probably right. I think it was three W's. OK, well, we'll find out a lot.

OK, anyway, maybe just goodbye.

She's in there. She's in there. You'll find her here. Oh yeah. You. Oh, you're right. It's three S's, my dumb ass. The three isn't even even correct me last week because she's too nice. I'm sorry. It's three S's, not three W's.

OK, you gross.

And that's why we drink ice.