This is exactly right. This episode is brought to you by defending Jacob, a new Apple TV plus limited series based on the New York Times best seller. It's a suspenseful, character driven drama starring Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery and Jaden Martel.

Defending Jacob is available exclusively on Apple TV. Plus, open the Apple TV app and watch the first two episodes for free today. We had a chance to talk to the show's screenwriter and director earlier in the week, so stick around to hear that conversation at the end of the episode. Oh, and welcome to my favorite murder long form. That's Carol Gorev. That's Georgiade Star. And we're good at this, Steve.

And on the ones and twos, we're all here.

Everybody everyone is here, meaning their own houses, and they're away from each other as far away as possible.

We've all moved to the four corners of Los Angeles County.

I live in Kohima, Georgia. Went down to Downey. Wow. Steven went back to his old apartment in L.A..

Steven Steven used to commute in from Alhambra. Just be like, dude, is it is that necessary?

They had a nice target in a Souplantation. Oh, all right.

All right. Steven sent us an article this week, and I was seriously heartbroken that Souplantation is shutting down. It's a problematic name.

And so maybe best case, the name is never going to be resuscitated. And that's great.

You got to. Well, what made we laughed so hard is we you know, we talk about Souplantation a lot. And there used to be one near Georgia's old department. And then Steven let us know on the text thread that that's where he brought his girlfriend, who's a professional chef, to that on their first date.

He brought her to Souplantation, was said, I love it, classy, Steven.

And then he sent me back the best gift of Manney from Modern Family breaking out of L'Espresso. Go.

You can't be out. You cannot be in the exactly right network family if your gift game isn't a fucking AA plus. It's very competitive.

And I would say, Georgia, you're amazing at it. And Steven is Liggett's because he's so young. Yeah. It's like you have them at the ready, right. iPIX, like the first like when I put in a word, I'll pick like the top three one of them. But Steven's like deep cut.

Yeah. And then of course on my phone. Yeah.

You've got this savours you've always got the Kimco. He can match that. It just fits everything. Everything. It's perfect.

It's like the best beige color in the world where it just fits.

And Rio de Janeiro we're talking about, she's peeking around the corner. Maybe we'll put it on the Instagram of her peak. And it's just it's perfect. Feel like we've definitely posted it before. You talked about this gif a lot, but like there's a she's got a look on her face that might be playful and, you know, like she's full of beans. Except for that, there is actually no expression on her face except for teeth. So then you can interpret anything you can project anything on to Kincaid's face.

And I do it well and we have. But then Georgia, there was the time where you had the cartoon guy that looked like it was from like a total eighties cartoon. And it was like someone told us we did something good. I think this might have been an Asian thread. And you just had this cartoon guy that looked like I was going like noodling. I like a guy with an electric guitar and I was.

Oh yeah. Oh, jealous. Like an er jealous like a er jealous like an air guitar going to me.

Yeah. I like a nice riff.

A riff. Yes. PERF like a prideful riff or it. I had done the very like I'd done one of those Beyoncé Queen gifts. Yeah. And it was just expected. It's like you can do it, that's fine. But everyone does that as well.

But did you know according to tell me your secret.

According to Venz I'm actually really good at guitar, like you're really playing chords and stuff, like it's kind of one of our things, sort of like if I want to make VINs laugh, I hate telling all our secrets, but like, do it.

No, I'll do it on stage someday when we have a live show and all this is over our first love. OK, how about, I promise, our first live show back o do the fucking air guitar. Yes please.

What a celebration that's going to be. I know it's I almost tweeted this today because first of all, thank you everybody for all your lovely birthday wishes.

To me.

It was it was my it was horrifying and it was Monday. But I stayed off because, like, it's I think it's very cheesy when people are like, thanks so much, every single person or whatever. But it was really just so lovely.

And people said really nice things and it was just cool. Yeah. And then I was going to tweet this morning, I was going to be like, thank you so much and thank everybody.

And then say it's just so sad that I can't go on tour, I can't go out and do my Molly Shannon impression impression and do the Sally O'Malley kick.

I'm fifty kick but then I so it's so sad then I realize that would make it look like I was trying to make the people who hadn't sent me a birthday wish like though like their. Guilt implication. I was like, just leave it all alone, but I did get sad thinking about how I used to do that on stage and that we don't get to like I know in public. And soon on the actual day of you being 50 and you've done this on stage, you don't get to kick your legs out and yelling 50 while Vince brings out of a fucking tray of whatever.

Some really nice person brought us backstage, like donuts, etc. with a candle in it. And then the fire marshal has to follow.

There's I've had, I think, either two or three birthdays in a row on the road. Yeah. I mean, at least two guys. I'm so sick. Guys, we miss you.

Well, we have another month until I turn 40, so.

And then we're just going to go rogue.

Then we don't have to like our liberty. I told George I want to restart the concept of the book club we the last time, which was very early in the first year, and we tried to get everyone to read V.C. Andrews, My Sweet Audrina, which was a we respect the the the the legacy.

V.C. Andrews is a legend. She ruled the eighties. It was an unreasonably bad it was Gellatly strangely dirty.

Strange. Yeah.

A lot of incest themes. Not even the incest. The whole thing was incest. Yeah.

It wasn't a suggestion. It was happening on the page. That's right. Very odd.

I felt embarrassed that that was my pick, but lots of people wanted to do it. And so since we're we're consuming so much more. Right. Everything is when I say to Georgia, let's resuscitate this thing, let's get it back up on its legs and read a book. So we're each going to tell you the book we're currently reading. And if you feel like joining us, then we can bring it up occasionally and talk about it. But it's the it's again, podcasting is a one way street.

So we'll tell you what we think about the book and yeah, that's about it.

And you'll comment on our Twitter and Instagram how you feel about it. Yes, exactly right.

And then tell us what book we should read next, which is go completely. And if you get your comments in and we collect them up in time, we can pretend funny ones. Yeah, we can have a whole you know what, Stephen might be able to bring some book club music up under it and maybe sound effects like we're all drinking wine and someone's weird living room and talking and actually having a book club.

Let's just work, we'll work it through, let's workshop it. But here's the book that I'm reading. What are you reading currently? The reason I got excited about this is and also I tell my dad because my dad reads books in like two days on his Kindle, so I just told him to read this one.

So he's going to do it to Uncle Jim and write Home Down Home Jim involved in the podcast.

I sent him this the listener art. Whoever made the the art for whom. Jim let me find out.

It looks like your dad and there's one photo of him on the entire Internet and somehow this person make it too hard.

It's make mout make Muthee drew this incredible fan art and it fucking looks like your dad.

It looks like it looks like him laughing too, which is my favorite part. But when I, I texted that art to him and he was like, what the hell is this.

It took me ten minutes to explain like how I was like Dad. I told the story of me asking you what you thought about it. It was a whole thing that he couldn't get through his head because he doesn't understand how they did it that fast. He doesn't understand why they would care. It it doesn't remember what he said. He doesn't remember the conversation. But he was really impressed.

He was really excited. And then sorry. Sidebar, before I tell you the book, he told me the story. He's getting all the carpet, which is so exciting. Me and my sister thought, oh, God, child, him I arpit.

Yes, he's pulling up all that old mov. I mean, like holy ladies carpet that has wine stains and sandwiches, molly all over stuff.

Sandwich remains maybe like a little mold by the sliding glass door where the rain came in.

Well you know, it's all pulled up and he put in hardwood floors and the next level.

Right. Sprucing up your place. I know. And and it's like he's you know, it's like it was like his project, but so it's a father son team that are putting in these hardwood floors. And so they're my dad's talking to the son, the younger guy. I mean, the sons, like, I think my sister's age. But they're saying they're talking he's looking at the pictures or whatever. And my dad has when we played Louisville listeners who worked at Louisville Slugger bat.

Yeah. You know, Louisville Slugger, the factory.

Yeah. And they they made me, Georgia and Vince, all our own personal lives even.

Now, firstly, sorry, sorry, everybody. Stephen, we're going to get you back. Yeah, we're getting a live bat.

So it's my dad has it in a glass box mounted on the wall, like you look like Babe Ruth or something, and you get the fucking homerun with it.

Oh, my God. For real.

And this was you remember when we got those? I called him because I thought he'd be so excited. Yeah. And he kept going, where do you find it? And I'd be like, good people from the police made it. And I was like, so infuriated. But once he had it in his hand and understood. Yeah. It's like it says my favorite murderer. It's got our logo and then it has like a quote in the back I think is quite beautiful.

The coolest gift. So neat.

So when he finally saw it, he was thrilled and then he mounted in in the full year, basically like it's a sword.

So it's it's our sword.

But so they're standing there talking about the other pictures and then the guy goes, oh, what's this? Did you get like did you buy this bad order? He goes, No, that's my daughter's podcast. They gave it to her as a present.

And he looks over and goes, No, why do I listen to that show and shut your mouth?

Yes, we got the guy putting in the flaws. Is it, man? Oh, my God. And he thought that I grew up in Sacramento. So he didn't. He's from Petaluma, too. He's known our family. But I think he assumed I was a cousin or maybe just like I don't know or just not related at all. So he he was his mind was blown.

And so when I sent my dad the home, Jim Arrigo's oh, I got a I get to show the floor guy, he's going to freak out like, you know, he's my dad's getting into the whole the whole culture of it anyway.

Love it. All of that is to say the book I'm reading right now is so yes, furious hours, murder, fraud and the last trial of Harper Lee.

Oh, I have that in my to read list. Yes, it's really good. I think there might be a copy at the office for you.

We're not the only covid-19 lives.

I know where covid-19 moved into when we got out, a clerk said, you get it.

Do some Lysol wipes for Georgia, but it's the author is Casey Sep CFP. And it's so you know, Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and then she helped Truman Capote right in cold blood and research and stuff. And then this was basically it's about how she came back to her home state and maybe even a hometown, because I'm I'm on Chapter two to cover this trial.

That's unbelievable. This this criminal trial. And it's so well-written.

There's it's so fascinating. I love reading this book, obviously nonfiction. Right. Which is fun. That's correct. Historical nonfiction. Nonfiction.

OK, but also historical. I mean, the 70s so long ago. OK, it's perfect because I'm reading I'm reading like a fiction mystery thriller book.

So so yeah. You get a choice. Yeah.

But mine's also like Mercury and like a whodunit e thing.

And it's, it's by this woman who's written like twenty mystery thriller, like those books that like we love to read on the beach on vacation Helyar by Karen Slaughter. But it's I n Karen Slaughter and it's called Pretty Girls and I can't, I'm listening to it on an audio book. I can't stop fucking listening to it.

And it's got like sisters names and it's got like strong female li like it's and it's about them solving a maybe a murder and like what do we do. And our sister got lost and like it's really good.

I can't do anything so I don't know what to but I'm into it. But we're in it. Yeah. All right. So if you want to do this with us, we're going to put we're going to put together some kind of followable book club process. Good idea. Meet us back here in a week.

We'll see if we had any progress on that. Let's see if we remember to ever talk about this again. Come on. It'll be fun.

Oh, I'd like to thank everyone. Thank you. I want to do a thank you corner.

Everyone who said when I was talking about the bird that wouldn't stop tweeting by my window all night to owl owl noises and hawk noises and that would get scared and run away or whatever. Didn't work but thank you. But it has gone away and I think maybe it was mating. And so now we're going to have a probably a bird's nest by our window instead. And are you going to take your Louisville Slugger and knock it out of the tree?

Why I got your mad. You take it down off the wall where you mounted it.

Oh, the Internet. The ire of the Internet. Oh. So that's Kandis, actually, you know, it's funny, I went to get the mail today, which I keep forgetting. That's the thing I can do. One more thing, a little task, and it's fun.

I walked out to get the mail. There was a bird's nest on the ground next to the mailbox. It fell out of the tree. I think it was empty. There was nothing sad in it or whatever.

It was just like a lot of hard work. OK, that's beautiful. Don't touch it. I don't know. I did not. OK, yeah.

I went down, I sniffed it and I got real close to it, to the mites in it.

Did a little real of it to see some of my teeth to see it was just to get a little jolt.

Oh I wanted to say this isn't really a correction, but it's more of a I mentioned my friend because you were telling said Nancy story. We don't know the stories that we're going to tell each other. So I was talking about my friend Luke, and I did a weird brain fart on his last name, which is awful because we worked together for five years. He's one of my favorite people on the planet. And I just was like, couldn't do it.

And then the next day he texted me like, oh my God, I'm so honored because he listens to.

And so I just want to give the full credit to Luke Womack, who is the most hilarious man in one of the most fun people I've ever worked with in my life, such as a comic genius who lives in the past, in my past, a comic genius.

He actually sent me a text that said, after we like that, you know, I was like, I'm so I miss you and I haven't seen you in so long. And then he wrote, Oh, and by the way, covid-19 sashay away with the last.

Genius, I love you, Luke. Thank you for listening. And, you know, being being you and for loving, passionately loving Vivienne Westwood so much. Yeah, he really is her number one fan. You know what? I've been watching to stay of away the Depression because, like, you just watch depressing shit, which you do every day in normal life. But now it's like you're hunkered down. So like, yeah, you need to get away.

I've just been watching Parks and Rec over again and it's so joyous.

You know who loves that shows Nora. She really is. Oh, yes.

Big time. How old is she? 12 now. She's 13 now. My God. I know. That's adorable.

It's so good. It's just so lighthearted and fun. And it's been. It's been Vince and I have just been like, putting it on instead of whatever. Yes.

It's a perfect also, I have to say, this will be a Nora's recommendation list because she knows every word to every episode.

But if you're looking for that kind of like, laugh out loud, get you through it.

Modern Family, you know, they just wrapped like their thirteenth season. You have a vast world to dive into if you've never gotten into Modern Family.

I swear to God, the joke writing is superb. So it's hilarious. It's just so good. Yeah, I love that.

Should we do a quick exactly right corner? Exactly right. So I'm going to do I'm going to feature this week this podcast Will Kill You, which is a great podcast. They're celebrating their fiftieth episode, bro, this week by covering the history of antibiotics, which is fucking fascinating. I can't wait to listen to it. That's just it's going to be rad. So good. Congratulations on your fiftieth episode. Yeah.

Late ladies, ladies, ladies. And also this week on I Said No Gifts, which I believe comes out today. Also, Brigger has our game night friend from sexy unique podcast, Carrie O'Donnell, hilarious writer, hilarious man. Stephen said he enjoyed recording it, that it all went great. So definitely check in if you're a sexy, unique podcast fan or if you've just heard those Carrie O'Donnell stories need to get more. Bridger and Carrie together are supremely hilarious.

I love it. In 2012, a 72 year old man named Samuel Little was charged with three Los Angeles murders dating back to the 1980s.

So we finally got to where we were going. The crowd at Liverpool were the only one appeal.

But since then, it's become clear he is the most prolific serial killer in the United States has ever seen, 93 victims, 19 states. Samuel Little has become infamous, but his victims, some of whom remain unidentified, are stuck in the shadows. It's time for that to change.

My experience in working with some of the victims families is that he was dead wrong. They were missed. They were very loved and their families were hurting.

The fall line presents a special limited series. The victims of Samuel Little will cover both solved and unsolved Southeastern cases and tell you how you can help the victims. Still waiting for justice, featuring rare interrogation tape, FBI interviews and in depth detail. This is a series you won't want to miss. Episodes begin on September 16th from Exactly Right Network. Find us on Stitcher Apple podcast or wherever you listen. So then at all, I think also like that it is who like it, I guess, whose first this wake me, right?

That's right.

Oh, OK. I just did it. It just didn't answer. All right.

OK. Whoa. You know, when you get one that you're excited to tell. So you're nervous about it because you want to get everything fucking right. This is one of those. And this one might be as strange as that Galapagos affair when I did a while back.

It's got twists and turns. It's a fucking story. And you might know a little bit about it.

But so this is the disappearance of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the most hated woman in America. That's right.

This story is amazing and she's amazing. So I got info from the Austin Chronicle, an article by Robert Bryce, New York Times. There's an article on Medium by Dylan Bartlett, The Washington Post by Paul Duggan. There's so many good articles about this out there. There's a Texas Monthly article and there's an episode up this really great show, Vanity Fair Confidential, that I watch.

That's about the size of watching that show because it's it's on.

Yeah, it's you know, I think you can get the idea, channel it, channel like app and watch all of them.

It's I mean, I think we've talked about this before, Vanity Fair, confidential. If you are into true crime, even if it's a story you've heard a thousand times, their version of it is unbelievably and you don't like corny reenactments, you want to hear from multiple sources.

It's like journalism.

Yeah, because these are Vanity Fair writers. This is like this is the Honor Society of journalism. Right. And then they interview liars. I know the local journalists. It's it's a good show. It's so good. So I watch that. There's also a show of Netflix show made for Netflix in twenty seventeen called The Most Hated Woman America in America. That's like based on it. But there's some things.

But I have the who plays who just in case you need it. OK, great.

So can you do a guest now starring Kathy Bates. It would have been great but like.

No I'm sorry she well let's get because she should.

OK, so Madeline, her name is Madeline Murray O'Hare. Madeline was born on April 13th, 1919 in Pittsburgh. She's baptized and raised as a Presbyterian in an upper middle class family until the 1929 stock market crash. And her family like fuck and lost everything in her twenties. She enlists in for World War Two and serves as a cryptographer in the Women's Army Corps. And when she's stationed in Italy, she meets this dude and has an affair with him.

His name is William Murray Jr. and he's a married officer. Yeah, and she gets pregnant with his baby, but he's a staunch Catholic, so he refuses to leave his wife because divorce isn't allowed.

So maybe that's cheating is also not allowed. Ray isn't weird because you're breaking some rules. I don't know how it works that way.

So he refuses to marry her. She takes his last name anyways. So she becomes that's where she becomes Madalyn Murray. And when she comes back to the US, she gives birth to a son and names him William. And so his his name his nickname is Bill.

So it's his name is Bill Murray. Oh.

Essentially went on to be a hilarious know so back home. So maybe that's so OK baby. Maybe the Catholic part is what made her become an atheist.

Maybe it just she already was very good. Yeah. She she's like, fuck this shit. So back home, Madeline gets a law degree from the South Texas College of Law and she moves with her son, Bill Murray to Baltimore. And then on November 16th, nineteen fifty four, she has a second son named John Garth Murray, fathered by an ex boyfriend.

So she has two kids. So one morning in nineteen sixty eight, as the tale goes, she's taking Bill to junior high Bill Martin Junior High to enroll in classes in Baltimore. And she hears the students reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of the class. And she's like, I don't want my son doing that. He's he's not religious. And they but they refuse to excuse him from saying the Lord's Prayer. So in a radical move, she takes Baltimore school board to the Supreme Court.

Yeah. To fucking talk about the church and state separation. Yeah. So you mean what our country was founded on, right.

Separation of church and state. So important.

And this is a time, though, it's the nineteen sixties when most, I think most Americans considered themselves religious in some way. There was a lot, there was a moral majority, there was just, you know, how you do things in religion, especially Catholicism is like Christian religions, obviously Christian religions.

Yeah. Christian religions were huge.

And so because that's I mean that's a thing that they my, my mom used to bring that she's like these people that fight for prayer in school. Right. They're never talking about anything from the Torah. No, no. They're they're. Ever talking about anything Muslim, they when they think of prayer, it's only the Christian point of view. That's right. So myopic. And so anyway, sorry.

That's exactly. No, I want I need this in there. I want it. And theism itself is looked down upon almost like in the same way Satanism was, where it's just like atheist who believes in not any of that. Of course people who are religious take it as you believe in the opposite of what I believe in, which isn't that. But, you know, they're mad and they think they're right.

So but still, even though it's like that in America, in a historic ruling, the Supreme Court sides with her.

And there was a couple other lawsuits at the same time and banned school prayer in nineteen sixty three.

How fucking literally, literally radical. She's a fucking radical. She's a true radical. Not really thinking of her junior high age son, though. And yeah, it would be to have a mom that's doing stuff like that and she's doing it for him.

But in the photos from back then, he just looks so unhappy and miserable.

And so so she's not the only plaintiff in the ruling, but she is the loudest voice and becomes like the face of it and kind of a celebrity of it.

And so Madelin, who's played by Melissa Leo, so, you know, yes, she like they age her and once she becomes the older version of her, it looks exactly like her. It's just this white hair, like she looks like a grandma, librarian and cute and everything. But then you talk to her and you know, those people that you talk to and you say something normal to them and they immediately you don't know who they are. They're checking you out of the library and then they're mad at you immediately because you're just like, why?

I don't. I didn't. I don't. You know what I mean? Yes. I was raised by those nuns, nuns. Those are my people.

Well, it's also that thing. It's it's just ironic because that thing of like, you know, the whole thing of like you don't want prayer in school. You don't want people shoving stuff down your kid's throat or dictating anything. But a lot of times those personalities and the people that fight for stuff like that are the people who shove stuff down other people's throats. Exactly. So she was loud and brash, right back at the people who were loud and brash at her about religion.

And she's combative. She's outspoken, she's fucking angry. She drinks beer. She curses like a sailor. Love it all. She says I'm a militant feminist. She fights for abortion rights. She's just, like out there and loud about it. There's a reporter named Valerie Williams who said, quote, I have never encountered a more bitter, more distasteful person than Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

She was extremely foul mouth to the point that even though we were doing an interview about something that she wanted us to do a story on, we had to stop the interview in the middle because she was cursing so much, which in my whole fucking country hard appreciate someone who said the word cunt on at the Grand on the Grand Ole Opry stage.

I appreciate that.

I mean, and also, you know, to to claim that you're a militant feminist in the late 60s, early 70s was it was insane. I mean, like, that's you know, it's only been cool in the last five years.

Yeah, totally. It's very edgy. I mean, all of it.

It's also, in my opinion, a lot of times this boils down to being a very intelligent woman in modern society. It's a difficult thing to be the kind of person that's smart enough to be a car.

Did you say she was a cartographer in the U.S. Army? Yes.

So this is a very well cryptograph photographer. Oh, she's doing Codebreaker. Yeah. And she goes to law school. She's a smart cookie.

You know, she's a smart cookie that's tired of of dumb people ruining shit.

And the thing about her being smart is she knows that the loudest voice gets heard because the fucking loudest voice in the evangelical Christians, whatever is fucking yelling at the pulpit to and they're getting a ton of what's what's his face. Jerry Falwell.

Jerry Falwell. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, she got it. You got to fight fire with fire. But right. It's the whole thing of women aren't supposed to be that way. Women aren't supposed to do stuff like that when they're not supposed to swear. Drink beer. Right.

And you're on the other side. So they're pests. And so so she appears on the debut episode of Phil Donahue. He was like, that's our first episode. We need her. He's a genius.

Also, there's no way his wife, Marlo Thomas, didn't have something to do with that because she was also a militant feminist. Nice. But she was that girl. So she was like the prettiest vergiat. She was like a Gloria Steinem type, like, let me make this palatable for you fucking patriarchy assholes. So she appears on field on his first show to publicly discuss her atheist views. The audience turns against her, as does the public. Yeah.

And in nineteen sixty four article in Life magazine, she's dubbed the most hated woman in America.

Excuse me. Leave that which she's proud of. She's like. Yeah, and I'm proud of that fucking title, so Madeleine goes on the news circuit and she criticizes and ridicules religion and religious people. I mean, she's fucking laughing in their faces. And she laughed at the entire concept of God. She riles them up and, of course, then gets more press for it. And because of that, she's harassed. She receives tons of death threats against her and her family.

She says, like the cat got killed and her she got mail with feces in it and her home was stoned, like she becomes literally the most hated woman in America.

So in the late 60s, Madeleine takes all her infamy and attention and founds the American Atheists organization. The aim of the organization is to, quote, defend the civil rights of nonbelievers, work for the separation of church and state, and address issues of First Amendment public policy. So after setting up the headquarters in Austin, where she lives now, she marries again and becomes that's where she's Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Her husbands are footnotes in this in her story, which I appreciate.

But she found a man. Yeah, sure. Spent everything just getting. So there's so many people out there like that.

There's someone for everyone. Madeline becomes famous. She is an atheist radio program, television show called American Atheist Forum. And it's on more than one hundred and forty cable channels. So she's fucking famous. And so for the next few decades, Madeline devotes her life to campaigning against the church's power. She continues to file suits challenging religious displays and rituals, including.

So one of the things she does is trying to get in God we trust removed from dollar bills, which is like, yeah, but it's government.

I mean, she tries to get the phrase under God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. She fights tax exempt status for the Catholic and Mormon churches. That was right. Yeah.

And then then there's some shit about the moon landing and how one of the moon, one of the astronauts is going to take communion on the moon. And and missionaries wanted to go to the moon in case there were other light for life forms that can convert them.

It's just they're fucking with her. Yes, it's absurd. And there's a clip of her just laughing about it. It's it's absurd. So and she's placed on J. Edgar Hoover's list of dangerous citizens, however. And maybe because of this, atheists all around the world start to fucking send her and her organization money to fight against, you know, to fight her fights. So at the peak of the American Atheists, you know, height of their power, it's estimated that Madelin controls up to 15 million in donated assets.

Oh, my God. And one of those fans is none other than Larry Flynt, who is the owner of Hustler. Oh, yeah. He tries to sign over his three hundred million dollar empire to her in case he dies. But his brother is like, this is not fucking happening. But he's like a fan and she writes for Hustler and Playboy. And, you know, throughout the years. Wow. And throughout the 70s and into the but becomes a super religious Reagan era of the 80s.

She goes to court many times. She battles religious symbolism and the official domain. She fights for legal legalization of abortion. But in the 80s, more and more people are going to church and becoming right wing. You know, the satanic panic didn't happen in a bubble. It's because everyone gets the same kind of fucking gasoline that lit this fire well.

And it's that cultural pendulum that always swings like this. You know, the the whatever they call it, the social revolution or whatever it's correctly called. Yeah. Of the late sixties and into the seventies. Then there was that malaise and that member like, you know.

Well, you know what I forgot to mention? This is doing the Kent State story, but those were like so many of those hippies and people and and college students who thought they finally had a voice and were finally going to change the world. It didn't work. And they became and my dad talked about this, too. They become disillusioned and stop giving a shit. And they're like, I might as well become a fucking capitalist. Yeah. And that's what happened in the late 70s and 80s.

Yeah. A lot of those people in the Woodstock documentary is amazing because there's a guy that, like, was at Woodstock doing the whole thing. And I think this is how they got the Mad Men final episode in the in the Woodstock documentary. He talks about this insane weekend that he has and then he went back to his job, his advertising job, and plop, plop, fizz, fizz.

Oh, what a relief it is. Totally Mad Men finally got it right. And he was like basically one of the biggest ad people after that. But he was like, oh, he had the whole realization at Woodstock of like this great idea. And then it was like, yeah, it's the pendulum swings and it's like we tried that. It's scary. It didn't I didn't get what I needed out of it now. So now we now we go this way.

And Ronald Reagan says, you know, let's all pray and trickle down economics. Right. And yeah.

So the American Atheist organization. They still have a membership in the high five figures, but by 1990, they're kind of dwindling. All the chapters around the country are gone and the organization is kind of on the low end of the pendulum and they have tax problems.

It seems like maybe they're laundering some money. That's it. That's me always. Yeah. And legal fights. And you know that they're doing drain the organization because they have to hire lawyers to fight these fights. And Madeleine starts considering leaving for New Zealand. She's like, fuck this shit. I can't she can't fucking leave the house. She's been, like, harassed and attacked. So on August twenty seven, nineteen ninety five, when a typewritten note is attached to the locked office doors at the headquarters of the American Atheists in Austin, saying that Madeleine, who is 76, her son, her younger son, Garth, who's 40, and Madeleine's granddaughter, who's 30, who's actually Bill Murray's daughter, but she is you know, they're all like a really close little family, the three of them.

She says they've been called out of town on an emergency. Don't know how long will they'll be gone. Don't worry about it. And so it seemed it didn't seem like totally out of the ordinary that they had, like, skipped town. But members of the atheist organization, they search the family home. There's no evidence of violence or a struggle, but it does seem like they left in a hurry because it's like the thing of half eaten food on the table, like they were in the middle of a meal, kind of a story.

She throws down her meatloaf and goes, We got to go to New Zealand right now.

All right, come on. You know how it is. Madeleine's diabetes medication are still there. Their passports are still there. And they left their dogs behind, like untaken of which isn't like them at all. And atheists take care of their dogs. Everyone knows that it's all they have. That's right.

Dog is their co-pilot got got one, um, bumper sticker. Yeah. But a few days later. So they're like, this is weird. We don't know what's going on. They try to get in touch with all of them. But finally, Garth, the son does answer his cell phone when they call and he's like, don't worry about it, everything's fine. But he's really vague about their whereabouts. And Garth and the granddaughter Robyn answer the cell phone occasionally in the next couple of weeks, give strange, vague answers.

And the last time anyone talks to them on September twenty eighth, Robyn, the granddaughter is described as being distraught and after that, no one ever hear from them again.

So of course, once people are like they fucking skipped town and are living in New Zealand living it up all the money they laundered. And some people are like, well, maybe the fucking people they angered finally, you know, killed them.

It's like, who the fuck knows? And it takes a year for Madeleine's estranged son, Bill Murray, who's now he fucking cut ties with the family to finally report her missing to the Austin police. But since there's no evidence of foul play, the police don't follow up on the report. And I still remember, this is Texas, which is probably one of those religious places ever. And so they don't give a shit about this woman. That's why in the nineties, you know.

Yeah. So a year after the Murray O'Hare disappearance, a reporter from San Antonio Express News, John McCormick. Now, this guy is our fucking hero of the story. Don't you love it when the journalists are the fucking people who solve the problems? John McCormick happens a lot.

It does. John McCormick is assigned to write an anniversary story on the disappearance of the three of them. And he just assumes that they fled the country and didn't want to be found. So he starts to dig into the story. He speaks with members of the atheist organization. And one of those members is a man named David Waters, who's played by Josh Lucas. Oh, yeah, OK.

Is he a bad guy? Josh Lucas always turns out to be a douche bag. Yes.

OK, OK. I'm just saying what is even in. Oh, tons of stuff. While he was in like Ford versus Ferrari as the douche bag from Ford, you know, like he always is that guy where you're like or he's like the boyfriend that at first you think is great.

And then he's like not great.

He's being typecast and pigeonholed when he's he is such because he's good. I mean, because he's good at it. So this guy, David Waters, insists fervently that the family left town. He's like, I think that they fucking stole a bunch of money. And here I have like letters and shit to prove it. And he gives it to any reporter that'll listen to him. He's on several news shows. He's on America's Most Wanted, talking about the disappearance, talks to any fucking reporter about it.

So let's leave him over there. After publishing his story, John McCormick gets so he puts the story in the paper being like, I don't really know what happened to them. This is odd. He can't figure anything out. He puts the story up. Then he gets a call from a private investigator who specializes in finding missing persons, which sounds like the best fucking job ever. Yeah, his name's Tim Young and he had read the article. It was like, I don't I don't care what happens.

I need to be part of this. Like, this is fascinating. So the two of them, McCormick and Fucking Young, for about nineteen months, they chased leads, they examined phone records and.

Credit card bills and they're able to place Madeleine and her son and granddaughter in the San Antonio area during the month after they disappeared and yeah, so in San Antonio, the three of them had maxed out their credit cards with cash advances. And they find that six hundred thousand dollars had been withdrawn from the organization's account by Garthe. So after September 20th, there's no more activity on the cell phones or any other credit cards or accounts, which just supports the authorities theory that the family was fleeing the country right there, like getting cash in later dating.

But it's just not adding up for McCormick and Young. They just aren't that they're not it's not coming together. Yeah. So McCormicks leads dry up until midnight in ninety eight when he gets a call from a man who had read his article as well.

And this dude is like, OK, so my brother is a small time con man. His name is Danny Frye. He had gone missing around the same time that the Murray O'Hare's disappeared. The three of them disappeared and he all he knew was that his brother was last known to be in San Antonio in September of nineteen ninety five, which was the time period doing some kind of job with a dude who kept getting mentioned. And these new sorry who kept getting mentioned in these news articles named David Waters, a.k.a..

Yeah.

And he was like my brother who went to see him, had actually served prison time with him. So then McCormicks like. Huh. So remember David Waters, who we just talked about, who worked for Madeleine?

What's his deal? Let's find out. Let's dig. Let's dig. So he had been hired by Madeleine in 1993 as a typesetter for the atheist's organization. I don't know if she knew that he had been in prison when she hired him, but she was very vocal about giving people serving their time and giving them second chances. So she actually didn't give a shit, which is what wasn't she vocal about?

Sorry, I'm going to keep this to myself. It's about it's about how darkly I like to toast my toast.

But I'm going to I don't like to talk about that.

I'm just going to be quiet that I like. Oh, so David Waters, he also was this charming, hard, smart dude. So he was good at his job and eventually got promoted to office manager Intel. The family discovers that he had stolen fifty four thousand dollars from the Atheist's Organization Fund. Well, I almost put this paper to the side. Don't do that. Tape it to the wall behind you.

So the family, they they press charges on David Waters. He's only given probation and ordered to pay back the money. And so Matalan is fucking furious that he didn't get like, you know, he only got a slap on the wrist.

So in the organization's July nineteen ninety five newsletter, she exposes David Waters criminal background and says everything that he had been in prison for and had ever done, which is that he was in there for 17 years old. He had been a man to death with a fence post. Oh, my God. That's why he was in prison.

And when he was released, he brutally assaulted his mother and urinated in her face afterwards.

Oh, my God. So he was a monster and she put it in the fucking newsletter. OK, sorry, we've been doing this podcast for four years. I don't think we've ever heard that. A detail like that.

I mean, we've heard, you know, and I wasn't sure if I was going to put it in there, but I want to just stress. No, it gives a very clear picture of it's his mother, his mother ship.

So this guy is not on the fucking level.

And she worked in the news, put it in. I must have been, you know, with all the money I've had. Fifteen million dollars. That must have been thousands and hundreds of thousands of fucking people who got this newsletter in their mailbox every week.

It was over by the horoscopes, but still it was in there. It was in there. The atheist horoscope. You're fine. Be nice. Don't be a dick.

You're the same as everybody else. We all have many. We can we all contain multitudes.

Yeah. There's no heaven. Be nice now. And he had stolen fifty four thousand dollars from them so he's like, you know, he's a bad guy. And shortly after. So that was printed in July nineteen ninety five. And remember they went missing in August nineteen ninety five. September is when the last people last heard from them. Right.

I think the line about him paying in his own mother's face was in the newsletter, I think it was, and I tried to find the newsletter, I couldn't find it.

But I think that was specifically in the newsletter.

I mean it's making me nervous. I know. Happened thirty years ago. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah, right. It's fucking Madeleine for you. It's called I don't give a fuck the Madalyn Murray O'Hair story. Yeah, it's called Come at me bro.

Yeah. The Madeline Marie O'Hare story come at me broke as I put it in the newsletter.

Yo, it's too late.

It's in the newsletter.

Delate, so McCormick and Young remember John McCormick, our newspaper writer, and our our I'm going to picture him really beautiful.

Let's say he looks like Paul holes in my mind.

Oh, private detective there. They're like, oh, shit. And they're like, let's do some fucking digging. Like, now we know what's we knew something was going on. So they find the phone records for this guy's brother, Fry and David Waters, and they're able to tie them together on the same time. And you know that they are all in San Antonio around that time. And there's also another third fucking accomplice.

His name is Gary Carr, and he was also an ex cellmate of David Waters, and he was a serial rapist and kidnapper.

So it's the three of them at the same time.

And one of them had worked for Madeleine and they all had copies of that newsletter in the back pocket of their leads.

Jean, they had put it in a baseball bat case and put it on their wall for some time in the future when they might need it. So they had all been in San Antonio during this time in question. And so McCormick and Young are like, let's bring this to the Austin PD, right.

Like we have like familia, like those little red threads with the push buttons that go all the way over to the the Carrie put up in a homeland. Yeah. The homeland map or the true detective style. You know, it's like just classic. They all add it up and they're like, what's up, Boston PD, here you go. And Austin PD was like, we don't give a fuck.

She begged us, there's nobody.

So there's nothing we can do about it. So they're like, she was not hot and she swore. So suck her right. So whatever. And they move on. And finally, by sheer fucking Godlee, maybe coincidence it was the Lord working.

OK, so if by sheer coincidence of McCormac sees a story in a Dallas newspaper about how three years earlier in nineteen ninety five, a headless Hanley's corpse had been found nearby in the Trinity River, and he contacts the Dallas police with information. And he's like, I think I know who this is. And with DNA testing in early nineteen ninety nine, it's confirmed that the corpse is Danny Frye, the brother that the guy had called about his brother, who was one of David Waters accomplices.

Whoa. Yeah. Not a good sign for everybody else involved. No.

So McCormick writes an article about the whole thing finally gets the attention of not just the police, but the FBI. And then they find out that the IRS special in an IRS special agent, Edmond Martin, had been looking into this case since nineteen ninety seven because he was like, this is fucking money laundering, if nothing else. Yeah. Because they had already evaded taxes and shit and they owed a bunch of money to the IRS, so he'd been looking into it.

So now you get to Folden. So there's the intrepid beautiful reporter. There's the intrepid beautiful detective. Private investigator. Yeah, private investigator Paul Style. And now there's a nerd from the IRS coming in to fill out that rag tag team.

So finally, on March twenty fourth nineteen ninety nine, seven weeks after McCormick's story is published, the agents from the IRS, the FBI and the Dallas County Sheriff's Office raid the apartments of the two surviving accomplices, car and waters and in David Waters run down ass apartment. And they're like, why do you have a shitty apartment? If he stole six hundred thousand dollars from these people, they find one hundred nineteen rounds of ammunition and it's a parole violation because he's on parole for stealing the money from before.

Great. That's good news. That's good news.

So he David Waters is arrested. Gary Carr is also arrested for similar parole violations. And Waters is sentenced to eight years on the weapons charged, but 60 years for violating the terms of his parole.

You would have zero. Yes. Nineteen sixty six zero. Wow. And he was like in his fifties by then. So you would have hope that he got sixty years for murdering a person with a fence post, but now it's for violating.

It was a different time. Yeah. Yeah. OK.

And then I wrote OK, but what does this have to do with murder. Georgia. I like you're off track at this point.

There's lots of murders so far. That's true. There's a headless corpse in a river. Right. That's murder most people want so worse murder.

So here's what happens. Knowing that he's going to prison for the rest of his life, that's on his parole violations. And not he doesn't want to be in a Texas state prison anymore. He wants that sweet, sweet, fucking federal cushy prison. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's all the tennis lessons and stuff. Exactly.

In two thousand one, he's like, all right, I'll confess to everything. If you put me in a federal prison and he does it and he fucking begins telling the story of the kidnapping and murder of Madeline, her son Garth, and. Her granddaughter, Robin, oh, so in August, twenty seven, nineteen ninety five, he says the three convicts waters' car and fry, all armed with handguns, they use a deliveryman ruse. They surprise Madeleine, Garth and Robin at the athlete's headquarters, kidnap them, take them to a motel in San Antonio, demand the contents of their bank account, which is the six hundred thousand dollars which is in New Zealand.

So maybe that money laundering really true.

But because they're like, we'll let you go unharmed once we have the money. But because it's in fucking New Zealand, it turns out that it's going to take a long time to get to the US 30 fucking days. So in this like, it's an it's like an apartment motel. What are those long term living apartments called?

Yeah, I think it's long term extended stay, extended stay.

It's an extended stay place. They're all they end up staying there for 30 days together. They play cards, they watch TV, they get fuckin takeout and they kind of like become friends and begin to trust each other. So the money is on its way. It gets stuck in a bank in New Jersey and the son, Garth and David Waters actually get on a plane and fly there together so Garth can get it out. And he trusts that he's not going to get killed so much that he doesn't alert anyone to what's going on.

Whoa. Yeah. Like he believes them that they're not going to kill him and his family, his mom and niece.

So not even I know. Wow.

And you know what? Maybe they weren't going to because according to the story and who knows if it's true when they get back from New Jersey, David Waters goes in and learns that car.

He was a rapist, remember? Yeah.

Had raped and murdered young Robyn, the grandmother.

Now, that's according to the story. And so Garth and Madeline don't know about that. And they finally get the six hundred thousand dollars and they traded all for gold coins at the local jewelry store. And once they have the money, the three convicts attack Garth in his sleep. They put a leather belt around his neck and he's fucking six, four and over two hundred pounds. And so he puts up this huge fight against these three men. But eventually they put a bag over his head and he suffocates to death.

It's awful.

It's so it's these I mean, it's just so fucking sad and heartbreaking and and greedy and mean and terrible and dumb and dumb. And that'll get caught. Yeah.

Madeleines killed in the same fucking way. Oh, God, it's really awful.

The three of them take the bodies back to Austin and storage unit. They dismember the bodies with a bow saw. They put them into fifty five gallon barrels and then they drive to a remote area and bury the barrels. And at some point maybe when they were burying the family. Well, David, water shoots fry in the back of the head, killing him. Maybe he was a Double-Cross or something. Yeah. And remember the headless body that's found?

It's his and they throw his hat hadn't hands into the pit with the rest of them.

Katka Yeah. So afterwards, waters and car go on a spending spree. They spend nearly eighty thousand dollars of that. Six hundred thousand dollars, but the rest of it the five hundred, almost five hundred thousand dollars they put in the suitcase in a different storage unit. OK, and now fucking ironically, and this does make me believe in a higher power, three local teenage hoodlums.

It's scary how God works.

Yeah, sure. Teenage adlam. Second God works in mysterious teenage Ludlum's. They fucking start breaking into storage units. They steal the fucking suitcase, has all the money that they fuck and three people were killed for. They sell it. They go on a crazy spending spree. Eventually they get caught as well. But it's like, you know, can you imagine like David Waters walking up to this fucking storage unit and that shit got stolen? It was.

It's like Fargo. It's just fucking it is a total Fargo.

And it also is that thing of like all the work.

I mean, it's very similar to Fargo, all the work to put in to stay with that family for a month. Yeah. You have to live with the people you're eventually going to murder. Right. What how could you do it?

It's it's horrifying. It's just shows how there's just so many people who don't have a conscience that like, yeah, we'll do such things to people that they get to know and like, you know, play cards with and shit.

It's just for money, just for Fargo. All that for just a little bit of money. That's right.

After his confession, David Waters leads the police to the remote ranch in Camp Wood, Texas. They find the shallow grave with three dismembered skeletons and the hands and skull with a bullet hole in them. Madeleine is identified by the serial number on her artificial hip. And later, the others are all identified through DNA. Gary Carr has given two life sentences without the possibility of parole for all of the crimes. But they don't ever try them for the murder.

No one. Ever gets tried for murder and kidnapping, David Waters dies of lung cancer on January twenty seven. Twenty three in federal prison and yeah, no one's ever tried for the murders.

But in an ironic twist, when they do go to court for these life sentences, the swearing on a Bible, the in God part is taken out partly because of Madeline's fight to get God out of.

Wow. Isn't that amazing? Yes.

So finally, the Marie O'Hara's are reburied in an unmarked grave to protect them from vandals by their son, Bill Murray, William Murray.

He even though he's estranged and clearly doesn't like his mom, he respects her wishes and allows no prayers or religious services at their funeral, despite the fact that he is now an evangelical Christian. Of course he is right, because you can't make your children do what you want them to do.

No, no.

In fact, he founded the Religious Freedom Coalition, which is the largest and most powerful Christian right. Lobbying group in the nation.

It's like, yeah, yeah. It's just how it works. Here's a quote from Madalyn Murray O'Hair. She says, I told my kids, I just want three words on my tombstone. If I have one woman, atheist, anarchist, that's me. And that is the mysterious disappearance and murder of Madeline Marie O'Hare.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Bonanos is that it's really I mean, it's that's amazing that you said that because it really is very parallel to Fargo, really just a lot less funny, but still just that insane.

And I mean, look, I love a loud, obnoxious woman. Clearly, I am one clearly. I love to swear clearly I don't give a fuck. But there is that thing that I think is that I think I've learned more recently in my older age, which is that that is a much more peaceful life when you are not so obsessed with these ideas in your head of how you need it to be, because it isn't true. Even if it's like, yeah, I honestly, personally believe that there needs to be a separation of church and state, because when you don't separate church from the government, then the church is used to sway people and to hold power over people where it should.

It doesn't belong. It should not be allowed. And it's also not considering everybody because everyone only thinks churches and Catholic or Christian church, which doesn't represent America. This is a country filled with all kinds of religions and backgrounds and atheists. And and you have to represent this country when you're talking about the government, the official representative of the country. Right.

But if you take your if you get so attached to your crusade that you start going in basically the same direction that you're accusing the people of being the oppressors, then you, the oppressed, become the oppressors. It's absolute power that corrupts absolutely.

It's the same thing every time. Yeah, totally.

I didn't realize I had such a speech. I mean, I love to make a speech, but I love it. And I like I love the I love the concept of her.

Yes. But I wish she had aimed more for the middle because we can't you can't just mimic the people you hate. You can't be exactly the same as them. And then go, they're the ones that are wrong. Well, no, no, you're doing it.

You know, your side cares for you and the other side yells they're their version of that right back at you and their tears for them. And no no one ever learns anything. No one ever comes to an understanding. No one says I get what you're saying, but I don't agree with it. It's I need to destroy you. And yes. And you can't me. Welcome to Twenty Twenty America. Exactly. You can't move forward if that's what's happening.

Right. And I mean, maybe not to be overly philosophical now, but maybe that's the huge benefit of such an insane thing like this pandemic and something as awful as what this country is going through right now. And the death of people are saying that it's waking them up to this idea that this big concept of whatever side they're on is merely a concept. Right. And what they need to do is whoever lives next door to them, no matter where that person lands in the political spectrum of the religious spectrum of the whatever, make sure that person is OK, because it's your neighbor and you should give a shit about the people around you and you shouldn't be picking teams.

You should be trying to help.

Like, because, you know, sorry. No, no, I'm just saying. No, you know what?

They they fucking benefit when we're fighting the fucking big government, the fucking people who make the laws, the people overlord's the overlords benefit when we're fighting against each other this angrily on this loudly, because then we're not paying attention to what they're doing to us, which is fucking making the poor poorer and fucking taking money from. All kinds of evil fucking people so they can benefit. Meanwhile, you know, we can't fucking pay rent because the entire government is shut down.

Yeah.

And they're just still considering whether or not they want to help people, right? Yeah. That was an amazing story. You're right. That had it all. Yeah. Unbelievable.

Also, it sucks to because just that what she was fighting for was important and what she wanted was basically just another version of equality. She wanted everyone to be represented instead of just the, you know, Christians or just the Roman Catholics or whoever.

She wanted everyone to be represented and she wanted it to be fair. Great job, that was really good. Thank you. Yeah, it was exciting. And as you were introducing it and saying, you know, those ones where you get really excited, I was like, yeah, because that's mine this week. Really? Speaking of which, but this is like kind of an update. So it doesn't really belong in correctors corrections corner. And it's a huge bummer.

So and thank you to Hannah on Twitter at Sincerely Hannah, for pointing this out. It's so rough. But she basically sent me, all of us, a tweet saying you didn't mention this part of the story that happened in 2003. And when I opened the article that she sent, I was flabbergasted. I mean, I was like my jaw dropped.

So basically, she sent me an article that one of the policemen who was right there, like the original team of rescuers for baby Jessica, Sgt. Andy Glasscock in 2003, drugged and raped a 51 year old woman and they found child porn in his possession.

So he's now in federal prison himself for 20 years. He's he's serving a concurrent sentence. It's a complete disaster story. And I basically J. And I both because Jake does like the research for me and he's like, I'm so sorry. I didn't see anything like this. And I was like, dude, I read every article. I mean, I love this story. I read every single article. I saw nothing about this. And we were talking about probably because it's he was used to be a hero cop.

It's and it's that kind of thing where no one wants to hear these stories after the fact. Totally. So thank you, Hannah, for sending that. And it's it's a true bummer. But I mean, it is a part of the story that should be told. Yeah. But now we go on to this is another survival story. And I'm very excited that JJ found it and suggested it because I was like, oh, that's one of my favorite ones of all time.

This is the survival story of Julianna Capecchi.

All right.

So searching my memory banks, it's a no, you wouldn't I don't think you'd recognize it from the name, but you will from this actual story. So we used BBC, dotcom, all that's interesting, dotcom, vice, Wikipedia, history, dotcom.

But I watched there's a Verner Herczog made for TV movie documentary about this woman's experience, and it's called Wings of Hope. And I watched it today. It's amazing. You can watch it's on YouTube.

It's like an hour long and it literally has an adult, Juliann Capecchi, walking through how she got through this experience and lived through it.

And it's unbelievable. And the reason Werner Herzog made this documentary is because so she she basically survived a plane crash in the Amazon and he was supposed to be on the plane.

No, I did not know that. I didn't either.

I didn't know any part of this. So so he was basically down there. He was I think I get into it actually later on.

But I'll explain that it's Werner Herzog.

It's so nuts.

And so it's amazing because this documentary basically, you know, I'll give I'll give you the information that I learned in the documentary and also in those other articles. But you can completely go watch it for yourself and watch or tell you firsthand. Amazing what happened. OK, so. So it's Christmas Eve.

Nineteen seventy one and seventeen year old Julian Copy and her mother Maria are waiting to board a Lanza flight, which is an airline that doesn't exist anymore for very good reason.

Lanza, Lanza, Flight five outweight from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru. OK, so Juliann has just passed her final exams for high school, graduated from high school the night before at forgive me for this pronunciation, a Dutch shule, Lima, Alexander von Humboldt.

That's the name of the high school Easy, and it's in Lima. So both of Julian's parents, her mother, Maria, and her father, Hans Wilhelm, are German biologist and they live and work at their ecological research station in Pucallpa.

How credible is their life right now?

Literally, she she got to grow up like they lived in Lima because both of the parents at first worked for a museum there. But then they got to, like, live their dream and basically go, we are going to go out into the jungle and study the animals and all the living creatures that are out there.

Incredible.

So basically and here's the story. So her father, Hans Wilhelm, he emigrated to Peru after World War Two. He didn't even have a passport. He was. He had no money, so he's a young biologist and all he wanted to do was study it like a jungle life and animals in the jungle. So he stows away on a freighter. He hides in a cargo area with that's filled with salt and he basically gets to South America, gets off the ship and then walks across the continent and gets himself to Peru, which is.

Yeah, essentially so and so.

Her mother, Maria, is also a biologist. She had been in Lima. She was there on business. But then also her daughter was graduating from high school and she actually wanted to fly back like on the twentieth or the twenty first. But then Julianne wanted to graduate with her, with her classmates, and she wants to go to the prom, which was right after. So they end up staying for all that and then getting to the airport on Christmas Eve.

Nineteen seventy one to fly out. The plane is seven hours late, and by the time Julianne and Maria bored, everyone, like, is angry.

They're anxious to get home for Christmas. There's all these people waiting. And there were supposed to be two flights. There's five eight. And then there was the flight that was supposed to leave afterwards. So there was a bunch of people trying to get on five away because they didn't want to have to because they were so late at this point, they didn't want to get home Christmas Day. But and and so Werner Herzog tells a story in Wings of Hope where he says he tried to bribe the counter person.

He gave them 20 dollars thinking they would get him on five.

So he was supposed to be on the other flight. He's trying to get on five tries to get on, by the way, and he doesn't get on.

Yeah. And so when the people like when everyone gets to board, all the people that are on the flight like Chir and they're like, yeah, yeah, we did it. And like basically like we made it onto this flight.

Even though weather conditions are turning bad, the crew is under so much pressure to stick to this flight schedule and get people home for the holidays that they decide to to continue on and not cancel the flight. So, yeah, Werner Herzog was there. He was supposed to be. He's filming a movie called The Wrath of God. That's about Spanish conquistadors trying to find Eldorado, the lost city of gold in the jungle. And they show a clip in In the Wings of Hope.

And that jungle is so dense and crazy. It's like it looked like a complete nightmare. So while all the stuff's happening with Julianne in the story, you can just picture Werner Herzog is in the jungle like 30 miles away shooting his movie.

And I just want to get on a plane. I just. OK, so. So they board the flight. Julianne and Maria take their seats in the 19th row for what should only be about an hour long flight, just like a little jumper to get to their hometown and in Wings of Hope, they say, Julianne says that her mom was sitting in the middle, she was at the window, and then there was a very large man that has the aisle seat who immediately falls asleep.

So everything's smooth sailing for the first twenty five minutes of the flight. And but Julian can see, you know, they can all see dark clouds outside that they've been like they've basically flown into a bunch of clouds and soon the plane is surrounded and then the turbulence starts and it's pretty bad. Then a thunderstorm breaks out and it gets worse and worse and luggage starts to fall from the overhead bins. Very scary. Christmas gifts, Christmas cakes, things, things are just falling out.

Yeah, like the mother and daughter begin to hold hands. They try to remain calm as around them. They can hear fellow passengers panic. Some start crying. Ten minutes later, Julianne sees a very bright light, hit the engine outside the window and she realizes the plane's just been struck by lightning. No. Mm hmm. And in a calm voice, Maria says, this is the end. It's all over.

Her mom says that to her. Her her mom says it. I mean, OK, so immediately the plane takes a nosedive, cabin goes black, everyone starts screaming the luggage.

And all these packages that have fallen out now are flying around the cabin.

And the sound of the failing engine is becoming this deafening roar. Yeah. And and Julianne talks about it where that was like kind of like all she could hear, like took over everything.

And then suddenly it stops and she realizes she's outside of the plane.

Oh, my God. Free falling in in her seat in their row of seat.

Her like they're falling. Her seat got sucked out of the plane in midair. Like she's just the plane broke apart. Holy fuck.

So she in in Wings of Hope. She says, quote, It wasn't that I had left the plane, but that the plane had left me.

Oh, that.

So she's she's still strapped to her seat and she falls two miles down to the jungle floor and all she can hear is the sound of the wind as the canopy of the rainforest is spinning toward her and she loses consciousness.

All right, so now we're going to go on a little history, Julianne Coffey was born in Lima, Peru, two German parents who I told you a little bit about, Maria and Huntsville home on October 10th. Nineteen fifty four. She's their only child at the time. Maria and Wilhelm both work for the Museum of Natural History in Lima. But in 1968, when Julian's 14, they leave Lima for the Amazon rainforest city of Pucallpa in eastern Peru.

It sits on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon River. And there, you know, a little bit into the jungle, they set up this research station. Basically, Julianne lives there and is home schooled there. And the plan was that she was just going to finish high school, like being home schooled at at at her parents research station as she is homeschooled there for a year and a half. It's, of course, any any child that's interested in animals and stuff like this.

It's a dream life. And she she even has her own two can. So, I mean, life is great. Fruit Loops everywhere.

But then in 1970, the local school authorities find out that she's just out there being homeschooled and they say, sorry, she has to go to normal high school to graduate. And because she wants to go on to college so she can study zoology and become a biologist like her parents.

She does go back to school, Lima, Alexander von Humboldt for her finals, which she passes. So she wants to graduate, go to the prom, whatever her mom hangs, hangs out and is like, that's fine, I'll change the ticket. But the only available flight after Julian's graduation and prom is on Christmas Eve on the airline, Lanza, they in this documentary Wings of Hope, talks so much shit about this airline. At one point it's like, do you remember Tower Air?

Did you ever have to fly Tower Air as a very broke comic in the 90s?

It was rough. It was like a it was kind of like a cargo plane that was like I remember sitting in in a middle seat in the middle section and it was like fifteen seats across.

Oh yeah. Like crazy. Everybody was passing things.

Most people had their own food. I was so hungover that I just tried to sleep and the lady sitting next to me kept waking me up for every beverage and food offering where I was like, I want please, please, I'm dying.

She'd be like, Do you want a drink? Do you want some tips? Anyway, basically, at one point in this documentary, Werner Herzog tells Julianna that he did research on Flight five, 08, and found out that the mechanics who worked on that plane had only ever worked on motorcycles before that.

Oh, no, that's a very different machine. It's a it's a different machine. And also the pilot, speaking of which, the pilots were not licensed to fly commercial.

Oh, no, that's not how you run a business.

It was bad news coming and going. And so, of course, Julian's dad advises his wife against flying land. So they had recently had two crashes like in the previous months. But Maria wanted Julian to have like a normal high school experience. And she's like, it's worth it. So she books the flight anyway.

Yeah. So that's how they got there. OK, so when Julian wakes up on the jungle floor, it's Christmas morning, it's early morning. She is underneath the row seats that she was sitting in. Her mother is nowhere to be seen. The large man on the aisle seat. No, she's alone. There's some wreckage around her. But because the plane broke apart in the air, she's separated from the bulk of the crash site. So she just kind of calls out to her mother.

No one answers now. She can barely see. Yeah. So she wears glasses. Her glasses are gone. She's really nearsighted. Her left eye is swollen shut and her right eye is swollen. So she can only open it like a sliver. Oh, my God. Also.

And now we we're going to go through a list of injuries. So if you're squeamish, you're going to want to now listen to the podcast.

Dr Death is just getting so squeamish. Alert her collarbone is broken and it's sticking out of the right side of her clavicle area.

I think is is a collarbone.

She can't feel it, though, OK? She can't she can't feel it.

She just looks down and sees it and can't feel it. She also has a ruptured ligament in her knee. Can't feel that she's got she's in the documentary, says she looked down and there was a cut on her calf that was so deep it wasn't bleeding and that it reminded her of a canyon because of how of how it was like kind of broken, torn up at the top.

Oh, she also has a really bad cut on the upper back part of her right arm, but she's alive miraculously. Yeah. So one of the theories of how it would be possible for her to survive falling two miles out of the sky, strapped to a row of seats, is that because of the severity of the thunderstorm? There were really strong. Wrong updrafts like there's, you know, it's like, oh, about warm air and cold air or whatever.

So there were really strong updrafts that were pushing against her fall down, slowing down like the force of gravity or whatever the gravitational pull.

Maybe if it was right, it was God, it was the hand of the Lord that kind of scooped her up. But also she landed in a part of the forest, the jungle forest, where the trees were really close together and intertwined with these really thick vine, like all the way through.

So they almost created like a little bit of a net as she fell. So she basically I mean, she was it's it softened, quote unquote. Her landing, as they say.

It's like Lost meets Alice in Wonderland. Yeah.

Right now, entirely. So she looks out insanely like it's how could you not think I'm a miracle and my life is destiny.

After you survive something like this, she's under like the seats are kind of folded over. So the back of the seat is like almost creating like a little tent like that. She's under it again. Can't can't really see she has a really bad concussion. So when she tries to even begin to stand up, she blacks out.

So she spends actually the first day just trying to get up and like and like she's for a while she crawls around on all fours because she's trying to find her mother. And it's, you know, everything is a huge, really difficult for her. Also, she is wearing a sleeveless mini dress now. It's nineteen seventy. Yeah. She's wearing a sleeveless mini dress. She was wearing sandals. She only has one on so she lost one of her sandals.

So she has and then she doesn't wear glasses so she's having to stick her one still shoed foot ahead of her.

When she finally does is able to stand and walk, she has to stick her foot out to make sure she doesn't trip like over a rock or anything like that as she moves along. So her first in her mind, the first thing she needs to do is find her mom. She's convinced if she's alive, her mom must be to her and her mom were super, super close. And she kind of in the documentary, she said you just kind of couldn't imagine being without her.

So she called for her a bunch and tried to find her. She's finding little bits of wreckage here and there as she's moving around the jungle. She actually ends up finding a bag of candy and takes it with her.

And it's her only food for a long time. She also there was at one of those Christmas Christmas cakes that fell out was also there, too. But then when she took a bite of it, she realized it had just been sitting in mud. So it had like absorbed a bunch of dirt and mud.

So then she threw it away and of course, later on deeply regretted having done that. So basically, she's wanders for a while and then comes upon another row of seats. There are three bodies still strapped into this row seats, but this row seats didn't.

The fall was not broken in any way, and it was driven three feet into the ground only from the from the impact of the fall.

So she with her concussion and her kind of weird thinking and trying to find her mom, she decides this is the first time she's ever seen a dead body. Obviously, you know, this is insanely traumatic, but she gets this idea in her head of maybe this is one of these people is her mom and she can so she ends up like getting a stick and taking a shoe off of one of the feet. And she sees that the there's nail polish on the toenails and her mom never put nail polish on her toes.

So she knew it wasn't her mom. And that's when she realized she was totally alone in the jungle, that her mom was gone and that she had to get herself. She had to start thinking clearly and get herself out of there. And she basically is like, I, I know now I have to press on alone. Basically, she kind of wanders around for about four days trying to find a direction.

And and the the coolest thing was that the school authorities were very wrong about the benefit of her home schooling.

She had all this like survival skills just just from having to live in the jungle, naturally. Yeah. So she is not scared of like when I first read this story, which was long ago, and with the Terry Jones story of Terry Jo, who was on the yacht and then. Yes.

Went out to sea as a little child. Yes.

I read a book. What's it called.

Compilation books aren't called compilation of. Yeah.

Compilation sounds very short stories.

It's well, it's true. Stories of survival basically.

And this this story. Thank you, Stephen. And God. Thank God.

Thank God one of us went to college. David, you want to be in our book club? Yeah. OK, so this this story was in that book with Terry Jo's story, too. And I remember just going, if I didn't have one shoe and I was in the jungle with bugs and snakes and spiders, and I would I would never stop screaming. I would just lose my mind. Yeah, but she she that's what she loved. And she knew what was poisonous and she knew what wasn't.

She knew how to survive just naturally. So she none of that scared her. And also she says whether it was the trauma of the experience or that it was like she said, she just had this. She'd never felt fear. She also never felt hungry. She just had this kind of like she was cut off and she was like, I just got to get to civilization now. So.

So basically, she knew that if you get lost in the jungle, what you have to do is listen for water, because if you can find a source of water, you can follow the water wherever whatever direction the water is running, it runs to other water.

That's apparently that's a water works.

So what? So she's as she wanders and wanders, she finally realizes one day that she's been listening to a sound that she didn't put together in her head. That was the sound of running water. And when she realized it, she was like, oh, my God. So she followed it. She finds a natural spring with a little rivulet of water running out of it. And she just walks along the rivulet and eventually that rivulet gets her to this little creek and you can literally watch her do it.

Werner Herzog went to the middle of the jungle, found the Noeleen wreckage, found all these sites, and you watch her re walk her way through jungle.

The plane wreckage is still there. Still there. Thirty years later, because how are they going to get it out and what for? Right. They probably get bodies out and then it's it's all grown over and they bring her back to it.

She agrees to go back and do it, like do it for the to show what she did. So you watch her walk through, you know, like when you're I mean, the first, you know, quote unquote is probably a foot wide. It's not, you know, but then you see it just gets bigger and bigger and deeper and and going downhill the whole thing. And then that she basically gets the little creek and that joins her up to a bigger creek.

And she knows that once she gets to a larger body of water, that actually is like moving and has a current if she follows that downstream, that that will bring her to civilization, that that's where you never go upstream. Just right. Right. All these things down on your hand go downstream. Yeah. So she also knows. So as she is doing this, she knows that walking in the water is less dangerous than walking through dense forest.

Oh yeah.

So and they talk a little bit about she she talks about like people always talk about piranhas. She says this she's she's standing in the middle of a river, a running river. And she's like a lot of people would be scared. And I was like watching it like my heart is racing. And she's like, but like people are scared of piranhas.

Piranhas are harmless in in water with a current. That's when it's still water that they like, go crazy.

So she's like she knows but she knows all the she knows everything. Yeah. She was the perfect seventeen year old to be in a to survive a car crash. I mean a plane crash in the forest. Yeah. She says more than snakes, tarantulas, even piranhas. The one thing to worry about in water like that are manta rays. They have poisonous smell. Yeah. Poisonous stingrays in the water.

What? No. Yeah.

So she basically when she finally gets to water, that's like big enough for that's a concern. She finds a big old stick and she walks and then just pokes around in front of her as she's walking with one shoe.

So she's like get out of my she's like making sure she's not going to stand on any.

Yes exactly. And just and poke some pokes like ground in front of her. So she wades downstream and as you know, so this a couple days have gone by now and she can hear the search planes. Oh.

But she's still in enough overgrowth that she can't she can't signal to them in any way. Right. And also the way this plane went down because it broke up in the air. Yeah. There's no main crash site.

Literally, the jungle just swallowed the plane and all the different plane parts.

And even if there was, she's walked away from it at this point. So, like, they don't know where she is.

No, no. They and and they're assuming everyone's dead. They can't see. Right. They can't see anything. It's just like this plane has disappeared. Wow. So they're kind of assuming and they it was one of the biggest search, search and rescue efforts in airborne search and rescue efforts in the history of Peru. But after they searched and searched and searched for like I think it was five days, they give up because they can't even find where the plane went down.

So they just have no idea. So as she's waiting downstream, she can hear them and then she hears them go away. So she gets really mad because she thinks either they found everybody else and saved them, just not her or just that they gave up on her. She doesn't know. But she again reminds herself, you just have to keep pushing forward. You just have to keep going.

So meanwhile, everyone in Peru basically is waiting to hear any news of Flight five, 08 that basically just disappeared in a storm, including, of course, Hans Wilhelm, who is facing the horrible reality that both his wife and daughter have died in this plane crash. Meanwhile, back in the rainforest, Julian is alternating between wading in the shallow waters and then swimming in deeper parts of of the water. And she's the days are really hot and humid. And then it'll start raining like it rains several times a day as she's trying to get out.

But the rain is cold. So she said when it hit her, it felt like needles and it happened a ton. But the good part was then she had lots of drinking water. So she theorizes that that's why she wasn't so hungry, is because she just constantly kept kind of kept herself all by just constantly drinking water. At night, of course, the air turns cold, mosquitoes and bugs swarm her. And like, you know, she tries to her her best to keep them away.

But they're everywhere.

And she at night to sleep, she gets out of the of the creek or the river and she curls up on the riverbank, gets her back to the bank and basically just tries to keep warm, even though she's soaking wet.

Anything can come get you any creature.

Yeah. Yeah. And and there's creatures that you that are that have already gotten you, right? Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, get ready. I'll tell you. So Jesse, she has a watch on her wrist that was a gift from her grandmother. So for the first four days, she's using it to track time and track days passing. But on the fourth day it stops. So after that, she just has to track it in her head.

But she knows that's important, too, just to know how many days have passed. And it's the rainy season. So there's not a lot of wild fruit that she can pick and eat. She doesn't have any tools. She can't hunter fish. She knows that there's lots of plants that are poisonous. So she doesn't want to risk trying to eat something and making herself sick. She she eats the candy until the candy is gone. But again, she never she never felt hungry, she said, but she knew she was getting weaker because she was just walking nonstop on either the fifth or sixth day.

She's not sure because the watch was broken. This stream that she's been in now opens up to a bigger river. And this is like now she knows that she's getting closer. But at this point, her wounds have started to fester. And so it's harder for her to walk. So there's some days where she just floats down the river and she does see crocodiles and sometimes.

Yeah, and so she'll be floating down the river and look and they'll be crocodiles. They'll see her and get in. And she said she was just apathetic.

She was just like, well, whatever, and just kept floating and they never attacked her. They never bit her did anything.

Oh yeah. Isn't that crazy.

Like she is like the stingrays are the only ones I have to worry about and she just made it happen by pure chance. That's fucking crazy. Yeah, it really is.

So so here's the super disgusting trigger warning by day ten, the wound in her upper right arm.

Oh, dear. Yeah, it's filled with maggots.

Oh yes, sir. It look, if you want to go on vacation in the jungle, you have to hear this shit. Georgia, I've never wanted to do it. Well, I'll do it.

It's so awful that they're they're big. She looks down and she sees it. She knows it's bad because she knows because like it's kind of out of sight. And then when she looks back, can you imagine you're just like, wow, yeah. That collarbone, I think are the hardest parts for me.

So far. So rough. Yeah. I mean for her to I it's really hard for me sitting the hardest is for you and we know that.

But she went through some stuff too. I guess. So she knows she's also smart enough to know that that's terrible because she could get blood poisoning and she could get her arm amputated if she does survive. So she knows like she has to find help and she has to like she has to keep up the pace on the tenth day, she can barely stand tenth fuckin day on the tenth day, ten days, which is.

So she's the search and rescue has been. Hauled off for almost a week, for five days, so she can barely stand, so she's and she's still trying to make her way down the river. So she goes and she has to rest. So she goes and looks. There's a riverbank. She walks over to it, she sits down. She doesn't even know how long she was there. And she realizes she looks in front of her and realizes she's looking at a boat.

There's a war in front of her. She must have been delirious by then.

And she had a major concussion. Oh, right. A major concussion the entire time. And yeah, she's delirious from from starvation. Delirious from. Yeah, yeah.

From everything.

The plane crash she was in the whole fucking thing. Yeah. So she kind of like comes to realizing there's a chance she's made it because she's looking at a boat and she said she had to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, so she had to go up and touch it to make sure it was real because it was so unbelievable. It's really there. She looks on the boat, she looks around, she doesn't see any people. She consider stealing the boat, but she doesn't want to be a thief.

So instead, she spots a path that's coming up from the riverbank and through the jungle. And so she says it takes her hours to climb up this riverbank. She said the riverbank was about nine feet high. Oh, my God, she's so weak that it took her. She just had to try and try.

And finally she crawled up this bank and she followed the path and it led her to a little hut with a palm leaf roof. And she just gets inside and goes to sleep. And so she says when she's in there, she realizes you're starving to death, you have to eat something and these frogs start coming around. But she recognizes that they're called they're called I think they're called poison arrow frogs. And they're those frogs. They're poisonous.

And they're the ones that that the native people use to put their juices from the frog's belly onto the arrows tips so that when they shoot people, they like hallucinate and go crazy and they're poisonous and they die. Yes. So she she knows that they're that poisonous and she still tries to eat one anyway because she's like she's on the verge. Yeah. But they keep hopping away from her. She isn't. It was just they would come and hop near her and then she'd be like, fine, I'll just eat this.

And then they would hop away and she couldn't, she couldn't catch any dicks. So. So the morning of January 4th, this is eleven days since the crash. She wakes up to the sound of voices outside this hut. And in the documentary, she says it's it sounded like the voices of angels. Oh, so she comes out of the hut and she sees three men standing there.

She said they're all taken aback. She describes the moment like this quote, When they saw me, they were alarmed and stopped talking.

Yeah. Yeah. Was it the maggots? Maggots just pouring out?

So she said they thought I was kind of water goddess, a figure from a local legend who's a hybrid of a water dolphin, which I would imagine is just a dolphin because land dolphin.

Land dolphins. Oh, it's a hippo. Endless cat's skinless cats. Do you mean hairless cats? I did.

Here, yes. Oh, no, it's OK.

But the cats have hair, no skin.

The organs are right under the hair. Oh, God, guys, stop it. I'm trying to talk about maggots.

OK, let's say that dolphins a local legend. It's a hybrid of a dolphin. I think he meant a river delta. Yeah, yeah. And a blonde, white skinned woman. So this was actually a real and she's blonde. She's like a little German descent girl ship, but she's, of course, lived in Peru all her life. She introduces herself to the men in Spanish. She finds out their local lumberman and she says what happened? So they bring her they gather her up and they bring her to the vet, put her on the boat.

They they go eleven hours in the boat to get her back to their village, just to any kind of. Yeah, they get her there. They but they in the meantime they put gasoline in her wounds to kill the maggots and to basically like get, you know, little triage going.

Yes, exactly. But with gasoline, you know, and I'm sure she's like, who cares? It's fine. I can't feel anything.

So when the locals in their village and when the men bring her to the village, the locals see her. Her eyes are so red and bloodshot that all the locals recoil in fear and they accuse the men of bringing a forest demon back. Her village, she's like, I've been through enough. Yeah, it's like, sorry, you really look like a demon.

I mean, they these men convince a local pilot to fly Juliann to the hospital in Pucallpa. So in this again, in the documentary, I'm just talking you through this documentary. It's so good. She goes back and she meets one. The other two men have since died because it's been like 30 years. She goes and gets to meet one of her rescuers and say thank you to him. It's lovely. And also, it's the cutest thing. Werner Herzog, such a good filmmaker, because when he first comes upon, like the group of people where she's like, you know, coming to say hello, there's all these little kids around, of course, it's just like village life.

And the camera swings over to, like, these little kids and then, like, two of them just walk away immediately. And there's this little girl who's probably like eight and she's so cute and she just stands there kind of smiling and the camera just is on her. And then she then she just starts giggling and she can't stop giggling.

And it is so it's so cute. It's just beautiful moments like that. He's so good. A day after her rescue on January 5th, nineteen seventy two, Julian's father gets a call telling him his daughter has been found alive and he goes to the hospital. They're finally reunited. And Juliann says that neither of them were able to speak. They just held each other. Oh, can you imagine?

I mean, he thought they were gone. Yeah. And everything she had been through. And it's like it's over.

And that collarbone still sticking out during the hug the next two days.

Hospital, I'm sorry. So for the next few days, Hans Wilhelm watches the news just in case his wife is found alive. And listen to this. When Julianna recovers, she joins in the search effort by leading the emergency responders back to the crash site to look for her mom. What? Yeah, she goes back in. But on January 12th, nineteen seventy two, Maria's body is found. And there is evidence that suggests that she also may have survived the initial crash, but she was too injured to move or speak and she died out there.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Ninety one people died in the crash of Lonza Flight five or eight, including all six crew members and eighty five passengers. Juliana is the sixth passenger, was the lone survivor.

And there's they start this documentary with this amazing kind of monument that they've built in in I believe it's in Lima, Peru, for all the people who died in Flight five eight. And some of the bodies are buried in this monument when you go to see it. And it shows a map of where it crashed and it shows a map of her trail out of the jungle.

And that monument is called Wings of Hope. And that's why Werner Herzog has documentary that Flight Five Away. It was Lonzo's last flight before the entire company was shut down 11 days after the incident. So pretty much immediately their operating permit was revoked due to their, quote, intentional flight into hazardous weather conditions.

Also met the oh, these aren't motorcycles. Oh, shit. Also one hundred other things. Yes, come on. Yes. After the media blitz settles down, Julieanne returns to normal life. She moves to Germany and goes to the University of Cheal in nineteen eighty and she studies biology and zoology and she actually earns a doctorate. Wow. Yeah. And she ends up marrying another biologist and they move back to Peru. She's researching bats. He's researching wasps.

It's a match made in heaven. He's in the documentary with her. It's OK, you. It's so cute. In nineteen ninety eight she participates in a documentary about the crash called Wings of Hope, directed by Werner Herzog.

And in 2011, Juliann writes a book about her experiences with the crash and her survival entitled When I Fell from the Sky. Just such a good title.

Yeah. When you did a book immediately, you straight up the straight up.

You fell and fell from the sky. And that is the unbelievable survival story of seventeen year old Julianna Capecchi, the sole survivor of Lands Flight five eight.

Oh, my God, dude, that's intense. I love it. The the will to survive that she had to have. Yeah. To to go that long. Yeah. Is incredible. I think everyone has it in them.

I think everyone has it in them. Yeah. I really do. I do. That's all I do.

Yeah. All right. Your faith in humanity is beautiful.

Well but I think that's like it's lizard brain stuff where you just keep fighting like yeah. At that point you'd have to. That's true, it's like own and wait until you can't walk anymore. You might as well keep taking some steps go. And that is our philosophy about life, too.

It's like if you just have one sandal, then walk with you. But first, make sure you don't step on a snake with your bare, but always careful the stingrays will kill you.

That's right. Good job. Thank you.

Should we do some fucking hoorays? Let's do it. OK, you want to go first? Oh, sure. I'd love it.

I'd love to. This is from Casa de Côté on Instagram.

My fucking array is well on our daily walk with masks on because it's the right thing to do. And so people won't silently judge us like Georgia, it says.

And Karen. Uh huh. And we saw one of those heartwarming dog videos you see on social media. But in real life, an elderly woman's dog, I believe it was a border collie walk down her front path to pick up her mail from the mailman. The dog took the mail, walked back up the steps and delivered the mail to her. It was amazing. We usually come home from these walks disappointed in humanity in general. And then it says all caps.

Why are there so many packs of teenagers on skateboards with no masks? Do they not have parents that it was nice to see something so simple and kind? Love one another and be safe.

Stephanie in Redondo Beach. Nice. Stephanie, I won't judge you. Thank you. OK, this one is from Lauren Michel.

It's Lauren Michel. Oh, my fucking hero is that today on my brother's thirty six birthday, we found out that his brain tumor shrunk. The past nine months have been life changing for my family, watching my brother go through brain surgery, then chemo and radiation has been heart wrenching and incredibly emotional for all of us, Scott.

But if anything has but if anything, it has made our our close family even closer. About a month ago, my brother Don, his Michael Jordan jersey while ringing the bell after completing his treatment, and today, while wearing his Chicago Bulls starter jersey from nineteen ninety eight, we received the news that his tumor had shrunk. He's not completely out of the woods yet, but things are looking up. So fucking hurray for the best birthday gift. My brother, his twin oh one.

It was one brother's birthday and they got the good news about the other brother. I got it. So fucking hurray for the best birthday gift my brother, his twin received this year.

Fucking hurray for his amazingly supportive wife, who I'm honored to have for sister in law and fucking hurray for the Jordan era Chicago Bulls who who who have brought crazy luck to my family at this time.

Assess GM and hug your siblings. Lauren Oh, that's beautiful. Lauren Amazing. Yes.

This is from Jess. Danielle and it's not affecting her. Well, it is later, but it says, fun fact. I was named after baby Jessica. The story goes. My older sister was three years old. And after my family watched the story, she kept saying they got baby Jessica out of the well. Now we need to get baby Jessica out of mom's tummy. And then there's one of those images of, you know, thank God, because my father originally wanted me to be named Tranquila Tranquilo, Lenie Tranquilino.

Yeah.

And then there's an emoji of a hand slap to the face. But Jessica Stack, thanks to my sister who wouldn't stop calling me Baby Jessica after that fucking hooray for big sisters who pick better names than my parents do tranquility and tranquility.

It's so soothing and relaxing.

It is. OK, this is this is sent by MFM double seven Motorino James Bond. Since March 16th, I have been at home with both kids nine and 11 full time. So we've been doing really so we've been doing new activities to keep ourselves busy while still at home. One of them is chalking up the driveway. At first it was all of us being that the kids get bored easily.

They left the yard activity and I fell deeper into the activity and then in parentheses, better than doing laundry and dishes. Now I am a chalk legend of the neighborhood. I have created some easy ones.

I had created some easy ones at first, but I have leveled up. I have a lot of neighbors looking forward to the new pieces. Also, I made a new friend while doing this. She is a true muralist. She's come over a couple of times and was extremely generous and made to art pieces. I wish I could upload the photos. She did a really. It's just like I wish I could. But I know, but it's. Yeah, she did a realistic vulture and realistic butterfly.

I have done a tree frog a. Hatching from an egg and a funny shark bird, that's right, a bird with a shark's head, I saw some of it and I couldn't resist. A good thing about this art is every time it rains, I get a new canvas. Thank you, ladies, for what y'all are doing and take care. We will be chalking it up even after this God damn pandemic is over yours.

Cheryl, I love it. So good luck doing so. It's like you're forced into these things now. It's like, yeah, that's awesome that you're doing murals in your driveway. Yeah, I bet it's like so stress relieving. Can you please do us a favor and do a what is it. A river dolphin.

Please, please do a water dolphin or a river dolphin or either. What most sense do you.

My last one is from Jaycee Nicole to my fucking hair is that after four years of working full time and going to college full time, I finally paid off my car. I'm only twenty and I've learned responsibility the hard way. I have to remind myself that even amongst the chaos going on now, I am still capable of accomplishing things. Every week you and Karen remind me that even though we are in a pandemic, it's not a productivity contest. That's right.

Right. I'm proud of myself and I'm proud of everyone who is making it through life right now.

Hell knows I'm OK. This one is from formaldehyde.

That's what so good my fucking her is that I didn't do shit. I didn't leave my house for anything other than groceries. I didn't let my kids flout the common sense rules that are in place for everyone's safety. I stayed home, ate the same boring as food that we've been eating for eight goddamn weeks, watched every episode of Golden Girls for the millionth time, kicked my family's ass in Settlers of Catan and Rummy.

Q Oh I fucking love Rummy. Keeps forgot about that one.

Yeah, it's a good game. Survives a shit show that is e learning for a first grader, a sixth grader and a tenth grader. Oh honey mom. And most importantly, I didn't contribute to the spread of covid-19 stay sexy and stay the fuck at home formaldehyde.

You went across the board and I know we want to say that stay at home is and be safe is for the people who can't stay at home, for the essential workers who have to be at the grocery store, who have to be, you know, the cops and the first responders and the hospital workers and all the people who cannot stay at home while working at Domino's Pizza.

Totally their or the people who have to work in Stuckart right now because they need the fucking money so they have their families to live.

Yes. Let's respect those people and support them. We can exactly like please be like formaldehyde and stay home and don't do shit and play gin rummy.

A mother of three young kids can fucking do it and like, make it interesting. Do as you can do it and we can all do.

Oh, we love you guys. We hope we're helping during these crazy times. And we we got your back and thank you guys for listening to us and letting us still do this and say anything that we get to do. Yes. Thank you for all your support. Yeah. And it's especially these days, it's such a fun thing to look forward to is it's great.

Thank you all so much. And stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Go get my Mimi. Do you want a cookie and. OK, so this is pretty exciting, Apple TV plus's new crime drama is called Defending Jacob, and it follows an assistant D.A. whose life has turned upside down when his son is accused of murder.

So the assistant D.A. is played by Chris Evans and it also stars Michelle Dockery and Jayden Martel. Everyone is so good in it.

It's a limited series and they play a family whose fate hangs in the balance of the legal system.

Right. So Apple asked us to partner with them to create this special content, to give our listeners a chance to put themselves in the barber family's shoes. That's right. And we were lucky enough to sit down with the show's screenwriter, Mark Bombach, as well as the director, Morten Tyldum, who they're both so talented. And we're going to have a little deeper dive into defending Jacob. So enjoy.

OK, we are very excited to be talking to screenwriter Mark Bombach and director Morton told him they have their new show on Apple TV. Plus, it's a crime drama called Defending Jacob. Congratulations, you guys. Thanks for talking to us today.

Our pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. I enjoyed your it's so nice to meet you. Like, I have been a murderer for like a while.

Like, I really. Yeah.

In fact, while working on the show, because I live in New York, I used to drive home on the weekends and very often your podcast would be the thing I listen to as I was driving home.

Oh my goodness. So honor you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you guys got involved in this project? Sure.

This is Mark talking. So I was sent the book that this show is based on really responded to it. And so I dug right in and wrote a pilot script and an outline what I thought those first few episodes could be. And I was talking with the producers and we were talking about who might be a good director to bring in. And Morgan's name came up and I was overjoyed. I thought bringing his Scandinavian sensibility to this and his artistry would be a great fit at all, making stories, which is all about character, which are great.

I don't believe in people are inherently good or inherently evil. We're all kind of existing is weird. Place in between was like, where is our moral compass? What are we willing to do?

I think that's what makes the show so different, is that it's not a typical whodunit. It's kind of it's got those little nuances where, you know, you think to yourself, what would I do in that situation? Not having kids, I I'm like, turn that tournament, which, of course, really happened.

So what do you guys think this sets this apart from the typical whodunit? Is it the morality of it? Is it family?

It's very much about that parent child relationship and putting that to a stress test. And oftentimes we live our lives with little fractures in our relationships, whether it's with our parents or with our spouse. And we can go a very long time that way. And then something like a crime occurs and really puts it to the test for me to rip it all apart.

Well, and that is interesting because we all like to think that we are good people and moral people and that we make the right decision and how you would start rationalizing what you will do that's different than if it was a normal situation, you know what I mean? Like, suddenly it's just like, yeah, I can see hiding that I can see pretending you didn't know that I can see you getting rid of evidence or whatever because it's your family member.

You guys got like an insanely stellar cast for this show. Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaden Martelle. So it's Captain America, Lady Mary and the child hero from it. Like every you know, every person that walks on screen, you're like, whoa, whoa.

We went into this not thinking like, let's get the biggest thing possible. We want to who will be perfect for this? Who do we really would love that. And I think we also wanted to to cast a little bit out of the box and then have to be Chris Evans, which we're now seeing after shooting. A bit of luck. Couldn't be anybody else. You just which is so perfect in the part. And Michelle came on and we both love Michelle and that's not bad.

But also Godless where she was. She has American accent. It's amazing.

Billy Preston and Jaden is just OK. She actually auditioned for the part. And when we saw it, it was like it was so it just jumped out of it. And it was obvious that he has to be jacked up because he kind of has the hardest part. Yes, absolutely. Or top of his performance, because you would never really supposed to figure out what's actually going on inside of this character.

And I think also he has to add that layer of being a teenager and never fully answering your parents questions with anything more than a nod. And he does that so well. It's very fascinating to think about that part where I'm like, am I judging him because I don't like his personality? So I'm attributing like, yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, or is that what's happened? Times where it's these surface things that you're actually putting on somebody that could be completely innocent.

That's the great thing about teenagers as suspects, is that their behavior is dubious, like their drinking. And so what he says or does, especially in Jaden, is just as Martin was saying, uncannily gifted at being enigmatic in a way that feels very plausible and very appropriate for his age. And that's the subjective fear we're trying to instill in the audience, is that you're at the mercy of his performance in the same way his parents are, where you're trying to determine is this just normal, taciturn teenage talk or is this feeling something?

And definitely, I think one thing everyone wants to know is, can you tell us one negative thing about Chris Evans? So we're not so in love with him.

There's got to be what little you do almost look for a chink in the armor because he is really a great person inside and he's blessed with these bizarrely good looks and he's very humble about them. So I think it sounds totally like a cliche, but I really can't think of it. It's really hard.

Well, Mark and Martin, thank you guys so much for talking to us today. This has been so fun. Well, you have to follow at Apple TV on Instagram and Twitter to join the discussion about defending Jacob. Each week, they're going to post a crucial question about that week's episode so you can find out what you and other viewers would actually do in those situations.

And watch defending Jacob on Apple TV plus every Friday.

Thanks, guys. You guys.