This is exactly right. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the podcast, the podcast that you tune into every Thursday morning, afternoon nowadays, maybe Friday, maybe a Friday evening. Sure. Life is life is changing. Your chains are busy.

Who knows what day it is anymore in this season of your life that you know, that that's what the influencers are saying now.

Like the like the lifestyle influencers are calling like the part of your like in this season of my life, where it's like I have to ask you to check out of whatever that entire culture is that you're talking about.

All right. It sounds glorifying these. I'm picturing a lot of felt hats, people speaking that were wearing felt hats at the same time. That's right. The word autumnal comes up a lot, probably even when it's not autumn.

There's a lot of people that pull their sleeves down over their hands to talk.

Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks. No thanks.

That's Karen Kilgariff. Oh, that's Georgia. Hard Start. Hi, how are you. What's going on? I just got back from a nice trip with the fam. And again, in this season of my life, it feels like I can't tell how much time is passing. So I literally one day turn to my sister and what I've been here for three weeks, like, she's like, I don't get there. I was like, no, I can't.

I can't just leave my home and dogs and life. Yeah, but it was really nice. So I got to be up there for Father's Day. A lot of lovely well wishes on Twitter for home gym, which he pretended he didn't care about but then had already looked at by the time I got to his house state dinner.

I know he does OK. He's a he's now a legit Twitter lurker. Like I can't really be myself on Twitter. I know because my dad's there. But if he just doesn't follow you, he likes everyone else.

He's really into Chrissy Teigen and all of the things she makes in her natural kitchen. She's going on, you know, she's legitimately funny.

Yeah, that would be so typical.

Have you been planning this season of my life revolved. What season is it? Winter. It is really winter. It is the winter of my life and existence. And I am in pajamas right now.

If I can stay at home, right? Yeah, I mean, it does feel like a lot of people have decided they're just not, quote unquote, doing quarantine anymore.

While the numbers skyrocket out of. All right. I mean, it's almost like the layers of this seven layer dip of horror.

They just keep coming where it's like, I thought I already had guacamole. Now, here's another one of guacamole horror where people are pretending the pandemic ended because they want it to. I read like some quotes, like there were these gals in Florida who were like 16 of them, went to a bar when they opened. They all got it. And the late the the gal was like, I was just done. I just needed to get out. I was done.

And it's like, well, but the global pandemic isn't so it doesn't care that you're dumb. And also we're all fucking and no one likes it, OK? Like no one like you know what I really was.

I miss missing Vince. I bet, I bet I, I just like when I went down to record just now, I gave him a kiss and I was like, I'll miss you. And then I was like, will you.

OK, let's do your best to miss Venz this in Nice. You know, this will be our first three our my favorite murder just so you can miss him a little bit more to be great. Thank you so much. It's very strange. It's like, well, it was nice in Northern California. They're not doing that up there. They've been very serious since the beginning. I understand that thinking of like, I can't do it anymore or I need to socialize like the people in their 20s.

Like if I was in my twenties and according to my guide, I would have gone insane. I, I, I would have. Absolutely.

So it's not like there's not empathy, but it's also like too bad our dating app still like happening or more than ever.

Or now. More than ever. Now. More than ever. How would I know. I don't know.

I know. You know, I want to ask you. You don't like. I do.

I would love to know. I would I would love to know. I just. Yeah. I could never I couldn't do it even just to be just to peek around and have the gossip. I know. Good.

Come on. Make up a name and and let's now I mean, look, by the end of this I might have to simply because, you know, being cut off from humanity, really it really puts your you know, it helps you put your pride aside when you're like, oh, I have no no pride left. I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday when I got up and I was just like, you can't go another minute without a shower.

I keep looking at my hair and I'll do I have this thing where I pull my bangs back and pull my ponytail. And so does it matter that my hair is a greasy mess? And it was my hair was just like, hmm, it's there's not another moment.

I forgot what a real my sister's real clean, cleaner, clean Nick real.

So she her cleaning is abundant, it's nonstop. It's year round. She did not like she'd always be like you're going to take a shower and be like why we're going to Safeway. Like who cares. Yeah but she was not into it. So that was kind of it was good to be around people and it was good to kind of have that check every day of like, why not put on a little lipstick? It's not, you know, why give up just because there's a pandemic and total social upheaval and the exposure of a of a completely white supremacist system and government and government and people who were our president to be our peers.

And we're like, who are you? Are you, are you.

But now we know. But but but we have to talk about we have to keep it positive, because the best thing that I would have never been able to envision for this season of our lives, I would never I've never been able to know that this was possible. And the the tip talkers and the K poppers made it happen. Yeah. They put in and everyone already knows the story, but I just want to say it anyway. If you if maybe you're out on the tundra and you haven't heard about this for the Tulsa Trump rally, which was such an offense was so gross.

They originally planned it on Juneteenth June 19th of this year, and they did it in Tulsa, which is the day of emancipation that emancipation went through.

And in Tulsa, sorry, you were saying it and then I want to do it for you.

But it's true.

I mean, like, it's the kind of thing where it's almost like these facts of reality, of what this these people do and how offensive it is and how gross it is. It just doesn't land anymore because it's one thing after the other. But I was like, yeah, if there is some kind of serious. Rioting because of this, it's deserved that what kind of fucking bullshit is this that they're like, oh, oh, we're going to go to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the black Wall Street massacre took place on June 18.

And we're gonna have a Trump rally, if that's fucking on purpose. And like a fucking fuck you to black people, then I don't know what is the season of the abyss has happened and turned. Yes. Right now. Slayer song.

Yeah, this is the season of the Abyss.

It was one in my high school boyfriend song. It was a fucking metalhead. And so Slayer's seasons of the investment last year are just me.

But I'm not a girl. I'll just I'll just bust it out on air guitar with Vince or you'll start singing it and I'll bust it out on air guitar, get the seasonality of it right.

Fuck, Slayer, get your felt hat on because we're here. It's here. Oh, get the patches sewn into your sweaters.

It's man here. Make your is slayer, the one that had that s that was a line and then thing think, yeah, that was all over. That was carved into every desk in my high school. My failure was big. Big. Yeah, my high school.

Well, it's funny you mention that because I have a show, the perfect segue. It's funny you mention that. OK, so there's a new did you know there's a new Perry Mason like a remake of Perry Mason. Wait, is it on already? Yeah, it just started this last week because it's the guy from the Americans. That's so awesome that Matthew Rhys. Yes. Do you think it's. I think he's Welsh. Holy crap. Is it good?

OK, first of all, there's no they. I'm going to go ahead and do what they should have done, which is trigger warning. Dead baby. Like full on trigger warning dead. Oh, no. It's very it's it's a really gruesome, dark show.

But right now, oh, well, it takes place in L.A. in the 20s, it's nothing like the old Perry Mason. He's not even a lawyer. He's like a detective. Cool, OK, yeah, it's dark and it's good and it's like noir and a little over the top. And then you remember that it's Perry Mason and that was a little over the top. So it fits. It's not. It's good. I like it. It's like I want to watch all of it and get into a deep, dark depression while I feel like, you know.

Yeah. Like a period piece depression. Yeah.

It's it reminds me of Boardwalk Empire, which I really want to watch again for the outfits, outfits, fucking everything. It's good.

Do you wear the are there shots of L.A. where you're like I know that spot that there are remaking in this is Angel's flight there and angels fly and when they show it with the buildings around it because that's, you know, that's how it used to be.

It's I love it. It's good. Good old noir L.A. stuff. Perry Mason. That's amazing. Oh, and like trigger warning. Enormous surprise.

Dick point. Don't ruin it. You just take a shot when you see the surprise.

Enormous there now is it what is it, a skyscraper or what kind of how big is it. Oh big. I don't want to I don't know. I mean, you know. Do you know what channel it's on HBO US. So we get gritty reboot of Perry ready. I wish I could have been there for that pitch meeting.

People are like, huh, huh. Yeah. It's not what I expected. It, it's. Yeah, it's good.

I should be to the to counter that. I should be talking about Marsella right now because season three is out. I watched one episode when I was at my sister's, but I had to wait till Nora went to bed because I didn't want to see anything bad. And of course I fell asleep four minutes in because they all have Irish accent. It was like it was like meet me old grandmother, lullaby me to sleep or I just always go to sleep at ten thirty.

But um. But I did last night start for true escapism.

There is a television show, it's British but it's on Netflix and it's called one hundred percent hotter and it's like a makeover show. One hundred percent hotter. They get these British people and I think I, I mean not to say that Americans aren't absolutely like this. And you couldn't absolutely cast this show in four minutes in Los Angeles. But there seem to be a lot of people in England who are like decided that they're going to be I. What was that?

What's that girl's name? There's, you know, how they have, like, the page. It's like the page two girls or something from the tabloids. I don't know if that's the right page. No, but basically, like it's like super sexy where, like, you save up all your money to get the humungous implants.

You're like you're like a like Kim Kardashian type. Right. But perfect. But like breaks it all way.

Yes. It's a Bratz doll going way over into the like, performative sexy like Beyonce.

Yeah. And so they take there's a couple of people like that. Then there's a couple of people who just have very strange style. And there's a girl there's a girl who's doing a full on her juku. Look where she has two different color contact lenses in like Hello Kitty stickers on her cheeks and shit.

So they take people with a look with a with a really extreme look. And then they make it's it's the classic, like reality show where then they there's people on the street looking at pictures of them and suspiciously all of the people on the street giving ratings because they're like, I would give this a three out of ten. And the people are shocked. They're like, what, I'm really hot. How could I be a three or whatever? The people on the street that are being interviewed about the ratings, all are wearing scarves, different beautiful scarves or I'm like, sorry, you're cast because this is a scarf commercial.

It's is this sponsored by scarves, et cetera. You know, you know that store scarves, et cetera. Anyway.

Yeah, but it's a good like just put it on them. Here's the thing. It's an amazing makeover show because at the end of the day, who doesn't love a really good haircut and really good makeup and the and also the outfits are amazing. Do they turn them into like like classy, like a classier look? They basically try to take what they want to look like and just make it more like if you're walking down the street, people won't run into a pole because you have stickers on your face.

Yeah. Or because you there's one guy that is like that one like an industrial goth where he has a wig of, like dreads made out of rubber. Oh, no. You know, that kind of thing. And you know that. Oh yeah.

That look. It's pretty extreme, that sounds can they just redo everybody, but what it is, is just awesome makeup, awesome hair, it's just really satisfying the Harajuku Girl when she gets redone because you can tell and everything is like it gets very philosophical when we're all wearing that, we're all wearing different math.

But like the Harajuku girl, she gets all takes all her stuff off. And the makeup woman is like, look at your eyes, what do you do? And then gives her this this makeup where the girl is just like this really beautiful young girl who goes, I never thought I could look like this.

Like it's the cutest thing. Oh, what's it called? One hundred percent hotter. Hotter. And the hair guy is such a legendary hair guy where he himself has my sister's hair from nineteen eighty nine ladies like a spiral perm I think. Amazing hair guy and he gives the best hair cuts. What about the show where I get turned into a club kid. That's what I want. I want the opposite. I feel so fucking boring. Now you want to go back.

I want to go back to when I was 16 and had huge fucking crimped pigtails. Yeah, I can cut your bangs all fucked up. OK, why not. Great. And then I, I would put stickers on my face to let me know was that the drugs telling you to put the stickers on or was that your style choice.

The drugs were the stickers. Oh you're going through the skin with circles absorbing it through the skin. Yeah. Yeah. OK, what else.

Well there's season two of Dirty Jon has started. OK, I haven't done that yet. It's the Betty Broderick story. Yeah. Which you did. I did it. She's the woman down in San Diego. Yes. And it is it's very dirty.

It's very much dirty. John, season one. They have this style about it. That's kind of like it's outfits and it's it has almost a feel to it.

Yes. Because it happened in the eighties. So everyone is real 80s outfits.

The problem that I have is Amanda Peet is playing Betty Broderick and Betty Broderick. One of the main issues going on in that relationship was her husband was leaving her for a younger, hotter region. Right. And no one's leaving a man never, ever like she is. She's Hollywood perfection. Yeah. So I got that. She is a great actress and it's she's playing the intensity and she's really good as a character.

But there's a whole piece of that character that I that should be there. Yeah. And I think I wonder if it's because they didn't want to like in the year twenty twenty put someone in like a fat suit or fat.

But like that's part of the issue and part of the story. Yeah. When there was a mom and you know, wasn't tiny and wasn't real, I don't know, I mean on TV for, you know, they TV to Betty and then and in doing so in my opinion, she doesn't even resemble she doesn't even resemble her.

May not even a little the brown hair I guess she was she was a blonde, the blonde hair. Oh shit. Yeah. But it's good. Definitely. Watch it. It's a good story and it's and you know, it's Christian Slater and Amanda Peet so it's so watchable. Yeah. Guys, unless you hear the amazing music that Steven puts under an ad, we're not this is not us pushing anything.

We are being paid zero dollars by Amanda Peet for talking. Dippy has never worked for us a day in her life.

Not once she called or. Yeah, I've asked her to catch it.

She refuses to watch it here. I'm scared of her.

She was so good. And togetherness. Is that still on? Can you find that anywhere. Remember that show the the Duplass brothers. Oh yeah. I don't know. But she was so good in a show so good and most all things I see her in. Yeah. Bless her heart. I don't know because I don't watch TV alone anymore. There's no like, like neither Vince nor I watch what we want to watch because we're always watching together, you know what I mean.

I'd be careful of that. You get a second TV, we have one. But then it's just like you go downstairs dear. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like yeah it is weird. Yeah. I mean I don't want to be around. They say if you're mad just say what happened to you and just tell me. It's totally fine.

Look, I'm gonna to follow you to the kitchen if you don't admit it. Can I tell you that I have cried more since I turned 40 than I did my entire thirties?

What's going on? Two weeks. Three weeks, I don't know, PMS. And then I also found a new psychiatrist and my meds are getting tweaked a little. Oh, yeah. So that's fun to be like that. Those two weeks of like will they or won't they work at like or what kind of insane side of. Is it going to give me that I that I won't remember is it is a side effect. So I'll be like, I can't stop sweating.

What's wrong with you? Well, then cry it out cause you're at home.

It's been oh what I say. Oh, but you meant for Vince like it's. Yeah. Because you're next to him watching TV on the couch constantly. Yeah.

Oh life. Oh and then the I'm so excited for the the Golden State Killer show. Oh yeah. That one. Karen Kilgariff friend. Best friend of the podcast. Friend of the pod. I'm an insider. I like to say I've been listening since episode one.

That's right.

I haven't seen that trailer yet. I'm to yeah I like it but yes. Yeah I've, I've heard a lot of feedback that people are excited and excited to see it. Are you can you watch yourself. Are you going to do. Oh no, no, no, no. OK, we'll do it for you. Please do.

And then just say nice things. I don't care. Of course I don't care if you don't like it. Only compliments only. I used to say that after my stand up I just like going somewhere with people afterwards I'd be like compliments only. I only want to hear if you thought I was the best one on the show. Yeah. Keep it to yourself. Totally. Yeah. Nobody takes this is a this isn't a fucking critique time unless you're funnier than me.

No critiques, right. Yeah. Should we do exactly right corner. Sure. So our podcast network. Exactly right. Is the thing, isn't that great. We like it and we're adding shows just by I would say every three months, every season and every season these turn there's a new fucking show.

It takes so long.

Guys, guys, guys.

But they're coming. They're coming. They're in the works. We're, you know, they're all great. And the newest.

The newest, for example, the newest. I said no gifts has the great Andrew Machon on it, who is from podcast, but outside the podcast. I recommend it on the show long ago. But Andrew is a great stand up. That's friends with lots of people and knows everybody.

So and my friend, my friend Memory Heart is on bananas this week and she's been friends with Scotty for decades. So they're decades. They're so young. A decade probably. Sure. Sure. Just one. Just one. And she's so funny. So listen to bananas and they.

Oh God, this podcast will kill you if they're talking about what's the disease that it's affects cows. It's called rinderpest. Rinderpest. Yeah. So that's I haven't listen to that one and I'm really looking forward to it because that sounds like the worst thing of all time.

Yeah. Rinderpest, you know, it's not the worst thing of all time is from our our one of our favorite podcasts. Do you need a ride?

Chris Fairbanks has a new stand up special that's coming out called Rescue Cactus, and it's available for rental and digital download. Now on what is it on. Nice one. Thank you. Well, he's a new stand up special. Look up, Chris Fairbanks. He's so funny. It's hilarious. He's hilarious. It's he's I'm sure it's on his Twitter or his Instagram. And we can and we will, you know, we'll put it on our website so that you can find it.

My friend was there. He filmed it in Portland. And so my friend Jason, our stage mother, Jason, who always the danger of a show love him text notes to Steven. He went and watched it and said he it was so great and that at the end he cried.

That's how good it was, because there was like a touching Chris or Jason cried Jason. OK, good. But there was like, you know, there touching. I watched one joke. I watched just a quick clip of one joke. And it's it was one of the best jokes I've heard the masturbator, the masturbating one with the parent. Yeah. Yeah.

He's really he's really legendary. I mean, he's you know, he's the curse is the real deal. And it really is like one of those truly unique comedy voices. I mean, like, you don't get the sense of it on our podcast because we are constantly interrupting each other and and one person's trying to tell a story and then somebody else starts start talking about something else. But when Chris does stand up, you know, I've seen him in like an aside from being on the road and stuff in rooms around Los Angeles, like him destroying a room when he's just up to do a ten minute set, it's one of the most like, thrilling, breathless, amazing things you ever seen because it's very hard thing to do.

People who are good at it make it look so easy. Totally. Yeah. And he's one of those people, so it's. Yeah. If you're looking for a good laugh, I think Chris Fairbanks, he'll help you out with that also. Please check out our merch store where we have our black and white logo pin. It's a really cool enamel pin. It's 10 bucks and all the proceeds are going to the black emotional and mental health collective.

So that's really exciting. And we have some new merch in there. We have a puzzle and some fun stuff to check out. That's on my favorite murder, Dotcom in the store. Yeah, we're very I'm very proud of that puzzle.

There's a puzzle for everybody. That's corn that still believes in the quarantine and the puzzles. It's puzzle season. It is puzzle. Truly puzzle season.

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 roar after 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. OK, this case I'm doing, it's less of a case and more of a it's a disaster story.

OK, and so this is the St. Francis Dam collapse. Oh, shit. Yeah, I, I feel like I started this one. Yeah. Many a time. Yeah.

I can't believe we haven't done this out of L.A.. A live show. Yeah. It's like it's one of these stories and I'm sure you feel the same that I've always kind of heard about in the background. Everyone knows Chinatown is loosely based on the water wars that came before it. And it's always just been this like eerie story that I didn't know that well. But I think being from California and Southern California, you hear little things about it. Yeah, but it's been forgotten kind of in history a little bit, too, because it happened right before the stock market crash and the Great Depression.

So, like, nobody cared. Yeah, sorry. I was going to say that would be an amazing book to a book of all the stories that got buried by huge stories. Yeah. Didn't we just talk about something recently that it was like. But then 9/11 happened and so this story got buried? Yes. Yes. It was a documentary I was watching or something like that. We were like, how could you not know about this? It was I think it was McMillans.

I think it was it was something like that where it was like it wasn't a you know, it wasn't a horrible story or anything like that. It was more of a like how how could this happen then? Just got erased by nine. Right.

Or like or like the hearing was in late September. And so nobody gave a shit at that time. Yeah. Yeah. This is like that. So let me quickly read my sources. I got some info from history dotcom on dotcom. There was a section from the book The Mirage Factory Illusions, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles. And that's why I now does not think that's by Gary Krist. And then there's SCV History Dot com Smithsonian Mag Article by Hadley Meer's Water and Power Dawg.

Some great information and photos from there.

I called down to the DWP. They gave me a little information. They let me come look at their microfiche. It was great. An article on a there's a website called Failure Magazine and I think it's just failures.

Just as there's a web, there's a page about a book called Flood Path, The Deadliest Manmade Disaster of 20th Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles. They all have these fucking names. That's by John Wilkommen. And then did you know there's a song by Frank Black from 2001 called St. Francis Dam Disaster, you know, and there's like unofficial music videos, a video from the disaster and photos from the disaster.

It's called Jesus. Yeah. OK, so St. Francis Dam disaster is the is known as the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century. And it's kind of compared to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in that it kind of led to this movement of safety legislation because so many people lost their lives. So before we can get into the collapse of the actual dam, we kind of need to go over some history, and that is California's water wars. And that will give us some context.

By the end of the eighteen hundreds, Los Angeles was still a relatively small settlement and it got all its water from the L.A. River via a system of reservoirs and these open ditches made that were made there called Xinhua's, and that had been used since the lowest public Darris built them in seventeen eighty one.

But by the early nineteen hundreds, there's a huge population boom in Los Angeles and over half a million residents are now living in L.A. and the city's growing. So does the need for water. But it's we're in a desert, you know, so there's a bunch of drought. City planners wanted Los Angeles to become a major American metropolis, like these people who had money in and stake in the city growing. And but that could only be achieved if there is water, you know.

Yeah. So Creede. Right, right. Gary Oh, you said. And greed. So, yes. And greed. Greed is a big part of it. Yes. I need to make that point. Greed and water. What more does one want? So this dude, Fred Eaton, he's the mayor now and he used to be the superintendent of the Los Angeles Water Company. And so he fucking knocks on the door of the new superintendent of the water company and that and he's like, let's build an aqueduct.

That's how we get water to the city. And that new superintendent is William Mulholland. Oh, I've heard of him. Yeah, you have. So, you know, like Mulholland Drive, everyone knows. So let me do a quick sidebar on William Mulholland. He's got this fancy storied fucking like. So William Mulholland is he's born in Belfast I yeah, and in eighteen fifty five, he's born into a family of modest means and he leaves home at 15 with his brother and they go to America and he ends up in L.A. around eighteen seventy eight at twenty three years old, he's got ten dollars in his pocket.

So he gets a job in L.A. as is on Harro, which is digging those wells in what is now Compton. And he uses his downtime while he's not working a fuckin crazy job with manual labor because he's really interested in engineering.

So he starts studying engineering, geology, hydrology and mathematics, you know, as you do weekend stuff.

Exactly. Casual stuff. It was like the 1857 version of one hundred percent hotter.

And what do you think of this engineer on the street with their scarves?

I'm thirty seven point five. There's no water. Please just give me a water. So he actually becomes a self-taught engineer, which doesn't seem like it should be a thing.

It should not be a thing. Well, that's fucking awesome. What's it called right there? Foreshadowing. Thank you. Yeah.

So for the next 20 years, Mulholland rises through the ranks at the water company. He becomes a foreman. And then it comes to superintendent until 1982, when the city officially forms what becomes known as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. What you and I pay every fuckin month. And he's named the chief engineer, which is super impressive. However, I feel like like maybe as a surgeon or there are certain jobs you don't want. Self-taught.

You want you want a paper degree that says you learned all of it, right? Yeah. And that people who already knew everything taught it to not you taught it to you. That's right. You're like, I got everything. I got all of it, you know, like how do you know that?

Oh, it's me, Bill Mulholland. I know everything OK?

I bet he was really tall. So everyone just listen to everything. Yeah. Yeah, that always happens with tall guys. I think even as a young man, he looked like a grizzly old man and people believe him, you know. Yeah. So he earns a good reputation when its projects are built under budget and ahead of schedule, which I also think is bad, like take your time and use the money and build it right. Like don't make it quick and cheap.

Right.

Yeah, he's he's he's like a sellout engineer because usually engineers are like, no, it has to be right. And that means if we go over budget or over schedule. Right, it still has to be right. He's like, hey guys.

Hey money man. Are you happy then? I'm happy. Exactly. Matter. And one of those projects that he got a good reputation for includes friend of the podcast, The Silver Lake Reservoir in 1996. Oh, would you agree? I think it's a part of the pot. I think it is a friend of the Silver Lake Reservoir. Yeah. So our live show. That's right. So back to the water wars. Mulholland is now tasked to transport water.

They look for water where they can divert it from a certain part of the state and bring it to L.A. And they find that in the lush Owens Valley, which is located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, it's about two hundred miles away. Looks like it's right on the Nevada border. Basically, you over where? Over where no one goes ever exactly where you have to drive through to get to Vegas. And it looks really hot and desert.

Yeah. So meanwhile, though, the United States Reclamation Service, which was responsible for settling the Owens Valley, which is this like lush place where lots of things grow and people are fucking thriving, they they had settled the Owens Valley in the in the late 19th century with farmers and ranchers. And they're like, we're going to use the Owens Lake to build irrigation systems to help these farmers in the area like we're going to grow this area.

Yeah, we have plans. It's our yeah, it's our water. And we're making plans for it. Exactly.

So there's this whole water war over who's going to get that Owens Valley water. I mean, that's a whole book in itself, so I'm not going to do it justice.

Read me the book on page one.

Unfortunately for the farmers and the ranchers and the people who live there, the steward Eaton has extensive political contacts, of course, including the president of the United States. And he and mulhearn aren't above using dubious tactics like bribery and deception. So after these fucking long water wars and by the end of nineteen eighty five, they're able to acquire enough land and water rights and Owens Valley to block the irrigation project and they are going to build their aqueduct. Wow.

And when this canal project goes public, people fucking lose their shit because everyone in L.A. knew that like their livelihood and them staying there and working and building families and more people coming to Los Angeles depended on this water. So finally, there's a front page headline that Los Angeles. Finally has water, people celebrate property and real estate prices the day it's announced double within a day. Well, yeah, people are just squirting hoses straight up into the air.

I use it all. You we got more argument. Exactly. And so in 1987, with a budget of twenty three million dollars, which I looked it up, and that you can't even go that far back, you can only go to 19 13 on this calculator. I didn't, I didn't look for another one, which I just realized I could have done that would that would have been six hundred million dollars in 1913. She's. Yeah, but don't worry.

Mulhearn won't use it all. You know how. Yeah, that's right. He loves to come in under budgets. Right. So construction begins on the aqueduct. In 1987, around four thousand labourers work at top speed. They use new technologies like, for example, a Caterpillar tractor.

Fucking new thing. Wow. They set records for miles tunnelled and pipe cut, which I wrote, which is like, slow down, guys, get this right. Yeah.

And also, how hideously were they abusing those manual laborers that might record that's in the desert.

So they're working under the fuckin blaring sun in the desert. There's no such thing as bottled water, not even Dasani, everyone's least favorite water, not even Dasani. It tastes like plastic disowning.

And it is really I mean, once I started looking into this and like looking at photos and reading about it, it isn't really impressive feat. It's two hundred miles that they were able to take from this lake in Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley. And in 1913, construction of the two hundred it's two hundred and twenty three mile Aqueduct is finished in 1913 at the time of completion. It's the world's longest aqueduct and the largest single water project in the world.

Wow. Yeah. So it's super fucking impressive. It's a self-taught kid from fucking Belfast who made it happen. He becomes this big hero. Well, we're and while we're talking about it, dairy is not Belfast, although it's also in Northern Ireland. And just call it dairy. OK, I got I got a I needed a pick me up the other night when I was watching TV alone and which I know I said I don't do. So I started watching Dairy Girls again.

Yeah. It's just, you know, eating. It's so comforting. The greatest. So the city of Los Angeles is stoked. You know, something like 40000 people come to see the dam get turned on the thing. What am I doing right now? You're doing some bathtub. Exactly. Turner So they turn on the. Oh, yeah. Faucet the faucet. Oh, a big faucet. They open the big faucet. During the opening ceremony, Mulhearn famously says to them, There it is.

Take it about the water. There it is. Take it.

You know, which is like so I think he got a really big head and became really cocky about all the things he could do. And it almost is like he's God like or he's giving them this, like, essential thing.

Yeah, he made it happen. He made it happen to him. And it's true like a lot of people credit him with with Los Angeles becoming what it was because it wouldn't have without the water. And he should also be credited for how bad people have allergies here, because it's the water that then made the non native plants get brought in. And there's all kinds of weird plant combinations here that don't make sense. And you could have no allergies your whole life and you moved to L.A. You're screwed.

Yeah, I have them.

But Damu Mulholland Mulholland, the next time your hay fever favorite Steven that's Mulholland Talk and through your nose.

It was a great order.

He was a great Nazel order, the right word, OK, he becomes a local hero and Los Angeles is able to overcome its drought issues and virtually overnight becomes a boomtown. The San Fernando Valley is transformed from a grain raising community dependent on the rainfall. Essentially for water. It becomes an empire and quickly becomes one of the richest agricultural communities in the nation. Wow.

So a lot of people make a fucking shit ton of money, essentially, because they had this is where they at least I know when I lived in Burbank, like it was all citrus groves, it was like tons and tons of orange and lemon grove.

Yeah. I grew up in Orange County. That's why it's called that. Yeah. But meanwhile, back in Owens Valley and by nineteen twenty four, so much water has been diverted from the area that the actual lake, Owens Lake, is drying up and the agriculture economy is fucked in the valley because they don't have access to the water anymore. Yeah. And a group of pissed off farmers start to protest and one of the things they do is that they use dynamite and blow up parts of the aqueduct, not just to salvage.

It but so they can get the water like they blow up certain parts to get the water to start flowing to their areas. Yeah, and you know, there's all these, like, underhanded things, like they won't you know, Los Angeles County won't give the farmers an adequate payment for their land. So they don't want to sell and they're threatened. And it's just like this. It's it's really shady and underhanded. So there's just all kinds of legal action going on.

And there's it's really that's that's what the water war is. And because of the water wars and the aqueduct controversy and the fact that, you know, he realizes that his aqueduct could be sabotaged really easily and they'd be screwed. So he thinks we need to do is make these kind of these smaller storage systems closer to Los Angeles so that if something happens to Owens Lake or the Owens Valley, Aqueduct will have, you know, these little pockets of water that can sustain us while we fix it.

Hmm.

So, uh, so in the early nineteen twenties, he starts to build major reservoirs closer to L.A. with concrete dams. There's the one where rich people live above and Hollywood in the Hollywood Hills. Oh yeah. Yeah. I went to a rich person's party once and saw that and it's gorgeous. It's just it's like a beautiful reservoir, the Hollywood reservoir with you can walk around it and it's actually like being in nature right in the very middle of Hollywood.

It's crazy, right.

And you can see the Hollywood sign from there, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of right below there. OK, and that's the one that when there was a drought here, what was that like six years ago or something when it was really bad and I would go up there to take my dogs to that dog park, which is now no longer a dog park, sadly. But I would come over that hill and that reservoir would be going down, down in my anxiety and panic was constantly going up based on the water level until a man at the dog park explained to me that that is not drinking water and it's actually not really used that way.

So don't worry about that.

Don't worry about the reservoir. I was like, thanks.

He's like, let me miss. I have been seeing your face. Every time you come here and you look sadder and sadder, do you are freaking out and you don't need to take a deep breath. Here's the bottle of Dasani. Don't worry, it's me, Dan Dasani here to comfort you about the reservoir. It's the season of plenty.

OK, so he built that and then he's like another one we need to build is in the San Francisco Canyon, which is forty. It's a canyon that's forty seven miles away from L.A. and he's going to name it the St. Francis Dam. So it took that long to get to our dam. The reason why it's their construction begins in nineteen twenty four. And in his haste and with he has this kind of Muslim, has this confidence in his abilities so much that he is just like plows through making this dam.

He breaks ground without extensive consultation with geological experts. It's just like here and points to a place and they start building a dam. That's not true but something like that.

And essentially Mulholland, he also keeps raising the height of the dam as they're building it. So it keeps going up by like ten feet of what the plans were. But they don't they don't widen the base of the dam to match that. And so it's super dangerous and it fucks with the structural soundness of the dam. So when the dam is completed in nineteen twenty six, it's able to hold 12 billion gallons of water from the aqueduct. So the water from the truck goes there, there's 12 million gallons of water and it's enough for two years worth of reservoir water in case something happens.

And the main structure reached a height of two hundred and five feet of this concrete, these concrete walls damming this lake and it spans seven hundred feet. And you can look at there's so many photos, which is fascinating before and after the disaster. And it is it's huge. It's like I think it was like the precursor to the Hoover Dam. Oh, wow. So it's a big fucking giant concrete structure.

And the Hoover Dam, I can assure you, it was built by college educated engineers. That's exactly right, Karen.

I mean, this is a guess for sure, but I would bet my arm on it because what in the fuck are you doing? Building something that big, right. With the.

No, I mean, but at the same time, like the aqueduct never fell. None of the other structures fell. It was just.

Yeah, but aren't aqueducts don't they just go flat along the ground? They're just taking the water and running it as opposed to like barriers.

Yeah, no, you're totally right. I realize I'm being highly critical of Bill Mulholland.

I'm not on his side. Seriously, I'm not going to argue for him. This is hubris. I'm seeing it.

And I know where this it is hubris. So over the next few years, cracks and seepage appear in the dam, but inspections show that they're all within normal range for a dam the size of St. Francis. So they're just sealed up and patched. But on the morning of March 12th, nineteen twenty eight, the dam keeper named Tony Harnish figure he discovers a new leak during his morning inspection and this leak worries him because the leak has blood in it.

There's a finger sticking out of the hole. Oh, coming from the.

No, there's a ghost that goes in the fucking dam.

There's a dam goes no, because the water is muddy, which means that the water is eroding the foundation of the dam and bringing up like the muddy water. And so he calls out Mohun Mahoney comes to the dam, he takes a look and he and his assistant are like, nope, looks good to us all is fine.

And they take off and go back to Los Angeles. But Tony, the dam keeper and as well as the powerhouse workers who live in the nearby hydroelectric power plants nearby. And so there are these powerhouse workers who live there and the farmers who live in the small towns in the valley below. They're not convinced. They can just see that something ain't right. And they can also see the mountain above is soaked in water. So workers start joking. See you later.

If the dam don't break, it becomes a joke. And one farmer so wary that he sleeps with his in his barn with the door open. So that same night, why not just get out? You know what? That's a great point.

I really wish they had OK, but at the same time, it's like they almost live in a rural area. You know, it's it's it's so far away from anything, especially with the little metal cars they had. All right. So so on that same night, the night when Mulholland was like, all looks good, it's fine. I'm going back home to eat or an expensive dinner. The concrete begins to shatter. Hmm. No surviving human sees the dam break at about eleven fifty eight pm.

Oh, man. The dam keeper, Tony, who lives in a small cottage right below the dam with his six year old son, Carter, and his girlfriend Leona Johnson are speculated as the first victims. So, Leon, his body is later found fully clothed and wedged between two blocks of concrete near the base of the dam, which suggests that she and Tony may have been inspecting the structure right before it collapsed. Oh, my God. So seconds later, as the water rushes from the dam nearby, power lines are swept away, leaving the whole canyon without power.

And in total darkness, the residents of the San Francisco Canyon are awoken to shaking and rumbling and some mistake it for an earthquake. We're in California, you know. However, within moments, the canyon is filled with twelve point six billion gallons of rushing water.

And I've always pictured when I heard this story in the past, I've always pictured like shanty towns, you know, it's like the 20s. And you think it's just like, you know, tents and stuff. But no, these are you could see the photos. These are communities of houses of homes. Yeah. This is not just kind of, you know, pup tents and shit. Right? It's not. Yeah, it's not like workers cabins that are just nearby.

Exactly. Yeah, I know. These are real home towns. Their towns are actual towns with, with, with infrastructure and with, you know, livelihoods. So at 12 00, three a.m., a wall of water, more than 10 stories high sweeps into the community of 74 people at power. The powerhouse number to an employee, Ray Rising, who lives in that area with his wife and three daughters, remembers being asleep in his wood framed house when he hears a roaring that he said sounds like a cyclone.

The water is so high they can't get out the front door and the house just disintegrates around them. And Ray gets tangled with an oak tree. He swims to the surface and then he gets wrapped with electrical wires. He's able to grab the roof of another house that's floating by and jumps off. He gets onto the roof and he jumps off the roof when it floats by the hillside. So he lands on the hillside.

Oh, by himself, huh? Oh, he's standing there. He's got no clothes on. It's a freezing cold night. There's no light because all the electricity went out and the only other person on the hill with him there is his neighbor, Lilian Curtis Ilar, and she is holding her three year old son.

What happened with Lillian was a few minutes before midnight and woken up in bed and noticed a strange mist and she and her husband instantly knew it was the dam.

I think it was a worry on everyone's mind. And he shoved her husband, shoved their son into her arms, pushed her through the window. And he's like, I'm going back in to save our daughters. But he and his daughters are swept away with the rest of powerhouse, the powerhouse number two community. And the concrete powerhouse itself get swept away, which just tells you how strong, you know, this rushing water was. And so the three lone survivors on this little hillside huddled together and wait for rescue.

Oh, my God. And the you see this two hundred feet tall dam completely collapses.

It's not a hole that's punched in it. There's one structure in the middle that people end up calling the tombstone. But on its right and left, these enormous concrete structures completely crumble. And those big pieces of concrete also start flowing with the rushing water as well. Oh, God, yeah. So from there, the water continues to surge. It's rushing at a rate of 18 miles an hour. And it's causing catastrophic damage to the towns of Castaic, Saugus, Phillimore, Santa Paula and Sadequee.

Wow.

So, you know, when you're driving down the five to get the fuck out of town and you drive past Magic Mountain and all that shit on all these towns. Yeah, yeah. That's where it is. What's that called when you drive down to the five?

Well, I call that if I'm on my way up, that's the first leg of the journey. I'm on my way home. It's the last leg of the journey.

So it takes 45 minutes for the reservoir to empty completely of water.

Got the idea of 10 stories of water is very upsetting to me. It's it's I really don't like it.

Like, are a big fear of mine.

Yeah, and rightfully so. I mean, they're it's horrifying. And it but that idea, because it's like they didn't even have skyscrapers that tall or buildings that I feel I mean I guess they did in like downtown L.A. or whatever, but I'm not there yet.

I don't think it's it's just like so monumental and horrifying. Yeah. And, you know, beyond like it's just that idea of all of a sudden something's happening that you could never imagine.

And in the middle of the night to wake up to that, you know, and to not know what it is or to war, I feel like it's worse to know what it is. Yeah, it's coming your way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the chance of survival is tiny. Also, to see your neighbor naked would be.

I'm just and I know it's not a big deal. Yeah. But it just be like did she just go, hey look, we just lived, who cares. Get over here. And I guess be there wouldn't be an awkward moment if you both if you and your son and your neighbor are the only people in your town that live through something that you'd just be like deep shit. Yeah. You'd have to be in deep shit and be horrifying. It hurts because I think of so many people who woke up and immediately their lives are over.

You know, they're higher. The house disintegrating around you is such a crazy visual because also it's water is so powerful.

Yeah, it's scary, right? You have to think of it like that where it's not like. No, you just swim to the surface. No. And it's carrying so much debris. It's carrying all the houses and all the cars and the concrete from the dam with it and wires. And it's just it's horrifying and it takes 45 minutes for the reservoir to empty.

So this fucking flood is happening for forty five minutes and twelve point four billion gallons of water flood the canyon and the Santa Clara River Valley. Residents who are able to get out of their house in time grab onto whatever they can. It's said that a woman some people see a woman on top of a water tank dressed in eveningwear. I know a woman and her three children hold on to a feather mattress as it's swept away in the flood for two miles.

They hold onto it. A man named William Spring swims a mile with his infant around his neck, holding his infant while his wife had climbed up an orange tree and just stayed there till she was rescued. A man named Cliff Korwin, a Fillmore. He's trying to outdrive the flood in his car when it picks him up, picks his car up, and he had a passenger with my guess. And the passenger was like said, quote, I won't be caught like a rat in a trap and jumps out of the car and is killed.

But Cliff himself stays inside the car until almost completely filled with water. And then he hangs under the hood and he is carried to safety.

Oh, thank God. I know. I'm sorry. That just reminds me of remember the tsunami and audio of the car that did that, driving like this. And then it has to do a three point turn really fast and it just is staying on the edge in the front of the Japanese tsunami.

Yeah, horrifying. So five miles downstream in camp, a group of a hundred and fifty workers for the Edison Company are asleep in their tent camp. So the night watchman, this guy named Locke, he sees the flood coming. He tries to wake up as many people as he can and their tent. And eighty four workers die of the one hundred and fifty workers. And the people who do survive, they survive because they had zipped up their tents and they were able to float, like, what the fuck are the chances?

Oh, that is also that such a zipping up your tent is like, I just don't want this to be happening right now. The works earlier in the night or whatever.

Oh, like you just never have it right. I thought it was like a reaction of, like, unzipping. Oh, no way. Later day. Wow, that's amazing. And as late as self dies and he's considered one of the bigger heroes of the disaster. Yeah.

God, the first official alarm is sounded at one twenty a.m. via the Pacific long distance telephone company. So there's telephone. Operators Louise Skype and she's in Santa Paula and Resell Jones in Sadequee. I don't mean to think of the fact that they were in the flood zone. So they were they were potential victims themselves, but they refused to leave their post and start calling residents in lower areas to warn them to get the fuck out of their house and flee to higher ground there later.

Be nicknamed the Hello Girls.

For some reason that just give me chills right now.

Understood what was happening and tried to call everybody. Yeah. Holy shit, wake up.

Get the fuck. So they probably saved so many lives because they called the people that were like further down. Oh my God. One of those operators, the woman Louise, she calls this dude Thornton Edwards. He's a California Highway Patrol officer and he becomes known as the Paul Revere of Saint Francis of the St. Francis Flood because he goes door to door. He's in his he's on his motorcycle blaring his siren, warns residents to get the fuck out. And then also Deputy Deputy Sheriff Eddie Hearn rides his motorcycle up the Santa Clara River Valley toward the flood with his siren blaring, making people wake up and get the fuck out.

He makes it as far as Fillmore before he runs into the flood and gets swept away. Many residents are able to rush to safety in the hills because of these two and the women operators. And there's a monument to the officers in Santa Paula called the Watchers. Wow. Meanwhile, OK, meanwhile, in the cozy, I'm sure, opulent home of William William Mulholland, the phone starts fucking ringing in the middle of the night. His daughter answers and she brings her dad the phone.

And when he goes to reach for it, he says, quote, Please, God, don't let people be killed. Please, God, don't let people be killed. So, like, she must have been like the dam collapsed and he's immediately like, you know. Yeah, he knows what's knows what's happening. The flood damage is whole towns and farming communities for a fifty four mile stretch before emptying into the Pacific Ocean south of Ventura. Whoa.

Fifty four miles at five thirty a.m. with a wave still two miles wide and traveling at six miles an hour. It's carrying debris and it's also carrying bodies with it. It's thought that at least five hundred people are killed and that could be anywhere between five hundred and a thousand because there's a lot of people who were migrant workers and undocumented. So it's hard to exactly say. And victims are recovered from the ocean as far south as the Mexican border, and many are never found because they just got swept to see it.

The the the wave itself and the like. The river it turned into was two miles wide. I mean, that's like I can't even I can't wrap my head around it.

The B school district in the area lost thirteen of its fifteen pupils, the Ruiz family, a family of farmers in the canyon that had been there since the mid eighteen hundreds. They lose six family members, Rosario and Enrique Ruiz and four of their children, age eight to thirty. And many of those who were hit the hardest were Mexican-American farm workers. And aside from the loss of life, there's also a huge devastation to the land. And these are people's livelihoods.

Over twelve hundred homes are destroyed, orchards are ripped from the ground, livestock are killed in the thousands. And the Red Cross quickly sets up a headquarters near the dam site and then search the muddy debris as high as 20 feet in some places for survivors. And there's actually video that you can see that people took of this silent video of them bringing bodies out of these cars from back then. And so they sort through the rubble. Volunteers wade through all of it to find bodies, more bodies and survivors.

And makeshift morgues are set up, some in the fucking local dance halls and crowds form at the morgue as people look for their loved ones and, you know, they want to search through the night. So actually, Universal City Studios loaned them giant spotlights to use.

Oh, a 10 year old girl is found underbrush still alive. She had been carried ten miles from her home.

Oh, my God. Yeah, she lives. She lived. It said that a baby thought to be dead starts crying at the morgue. She's still alive.

And amoun Amanda say I'm stuck in the mud up to his neck, still alive. And a 12 year old girl is found by her neighbor in a tree and she's naked. Yeah.

So news and aerial photos of the collapsed dam spreads across the nation. People fucking lose their shit. It's a relief fund to set up an telegram's and monetary donations roll in from all over the. Tree and then so the investigation start at least a dozen official inquiry panels by the federal, state, county and city government are immediately set up to investigate the collapse. And eventually there's so much. Of course, the collapse is attributed to four factors, unsuitability of the foundation.

And so actually, they later find out that there had been an ancient Paleolithic landslide on the exact spot where the dam had been built, which there was no way to know that, actually. And then an uplift thing is called an inadequate design. So ultimately, a coroner's inquest determines who's responsible for the disaster. And during the inquest, William Mulholland says and he OK, so he does seem genuinely devastated by he must be what it's he it's all his fault.

He knows it and he takes responsibility. He says, quote, Whether it's it is good or bad, don't blame anyone else. You just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human. I won't try to fashion it on anyone else, which is like, yeah, you're to blame. But it's also like I can't imagine someone these days taking that much responsibility for their obvious mistake.

You know, it's it's very laudable for sure. Yeah.

So the inquest decides that Mulholland and the governmental organizations that oversaw the dam's construction are at fault, but they clear Mulholland of any charges that they do. They're basically like construction and operation of a great dam should never be left the sole judgment of one person, no matter how eminent that person is. So, like, you got to get a second opinion. Essentially, William Holden has been looked upon as Los Angeles's saviour for so long, is now seen as a murderer.

People fucking turn on him. People across the region even put up signs in their windows that read Kill Mulholland. Oh, my God. So he's devastated. He retires from the Bureau of Water Works and Supply in nineteen twenty eight. His reputation is ruined. He retreats into a life of semi isolation. His granddaughter, Katherine, says she remembers him sitting in silence at family gatherings, just lost in his thought. He dies in nineteen thirty five of a stroke at the age of seventy nine.

The victims are compensated for lost lives and land, and by nineteen thirty one, the tragedy is pretty much completely swept under the rug. And in fact, there's a book about California water that doesn't even mention the disaster. Wow. Yeah.

In later years, motorhomes reputation is restored and the Mulholland Dam in the Hollywood Hills, Mulholland Drive, Mulholland Highway and the William Mulholland Memorial Fountain in Los Feliz, that pretty colorful one. Yeah. Are all named in his honor. There are still remains of the St. Francis Dam that are like weathered, broken chunks of gray concrete at the site where the dam was that you can see today. Wow. Isn't that creepy? On a positive note, in response to the disaster, the California legislature creates a dam safety program and soon has some of the strictest oversight laws in the country.

In nineteen twenty nine, the California legislature also passes laws to regulate civil engineering smart and creates the state board of registration for civil engineers. And there is no more self-taught engineers. Good luck. No, no, no, no. Yeah. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second greatest loss of life in California history. Right behind the nineteen six San Francisco earthquake and fire.

Wow, the exact death toll remains unknown. Recent estimates say it's around a thousand. And since original accounts didn't include the number of Mexican-American migrant workers or transients, remains of victims continue to be discovered in that whole fuckin area every few years until the mid nineteen fifties. So they continue to find bodies.

The remains of one victim is found deep underground near Newhall in nineteen ninety two.

Oh my God. And other bodies believed to be victims of the disaster are found in the late 1970s and in nineteen ninety four. And that is the story of the St. Francis Dam disaster.

Wow, amazing. Oh sorry. That's so long. There's just so much fucking information. Well also yeah. You needed kind of the back story, but. That's incredible. Amazing. All right. I it have been so long since I've done a survivor story that I figure it was high time that I needed one personally and emotionally and morally. And I can't go back to my old the old everloving well of I survived stories because now I survived has its own podcast.

They basically have taken all those stories and there's an I Survived podcast. So and now you can just go and hear firsthand the people tell their own stories. I was I was the Band-Aid in between the time where the people from I survived. Understood this was a needed thing. It's happening. You're welcome, America. So go listen to the real firsthand. I survived stories because there's so many there's so many good ones. So when I was looking for this, I was looking for one I'd never heard of before that.

And that wouldn't count as a survival story because there's there's a couple of them that are so unbelievable that they haven't only been on. I survived. Yeah. They've been they've been on like a couple other different kinds of shows. Yeah. This is one I had not heard of. It's the girl in the bunker. It's the survival story of Elizabeth Shoaf.

Have you heard of this one? No, I'm. I'm in. I got it.

Let's do. OK, so sources for this are the state newspaper that's in Columbia, South Carolina, Annie Dotcom, the Inside Dateline blog on MSNBC, Dotcom, L.A. Times, Wikipedia. Did I say that Today.com and the Lifetime movie The Girl in the Bunker. Yes. Starring Henry Thomas. Henry Thomas Elliot for me, too. As an actor. As a kid, adult. It's a recent movie. He plays he plays the bad guy creep and he's really good at it.

It made me really sad how good he was at it because, I mean, he was one of my first great loves. Sure. Is Elliot from E.T.. I was just like, why do I like so much when he was dying? I was dying totally. OK, so it's September six. Twenty six and fourteen year old Elizabeth Shoaf has just gotten off a school bus and she's walking up her driveway. And so her driveway basically runs through this wooded area.

It's a very rural area where she lives. It's outside the unincorporated community of Logoff, which is the population is just over eighty three hundred. Wow. In South Carolina. So she's about halfway up her driveway and she hears a man call out her name and she looks over and there's a man in a sheriff's uniform standing alone in the woods.

Where does any of any uniform? Alone in the woods. No. Yeah. And he's he calls her by name Elizabeth, and he waves her over. And so she's complies because it's it's a person in uniform and she's a fourteen year old girl and she asks what he wants and he explains that he's with the Kershaw County Sheriff's Department and that she's under arrest. And she is totally confused and asks why and is really freaked out. But he's already handcuffing her with her hands behind her back.

He tells her that the sheriff's department has found a bunch of marijuana plants at the house and that she's in a lot of trouble. So she's really freaked out, confused, scared. But she also asked to see her little brother, who's already home. She gets home before her and they're home by themselves after school because their mom works. So the officer starts walking her through the woods and says, that's why I'm I'm I'm taking to him right now.

And but they walk further and further away from the house and she starts to realize that something is really wrong. At one point they are walking along a riverbank and he makes a point of keeping her off of the sand so that her footprints aren't in the sand and his aunt either. And she starts to realize there's something really wrong. So she finally gets up the courage to ask him where they're going. And he stops and tells her, you know, I'm not a policeman.

I'm like 14. Is that that perfect age of of being naive and starting to have an understanding of the world?

Yep. And so you're still here still. So, yeah, my niece is thirteen and she's so young, but she's like but she's kind of, you know, she's definitely getting more mature by the second, but they're still they're babies. They really are like they really are totally. So at this point he puts a collar device around her neck and tells her that it's a bomb and that if she tries to run or get away at any point, he'll detonate it and she'll be dead.

She says she won't and that she'll comply when he asked her if she's a virgin. She's so scared she can only nod. So when Madeline Shoaf calls from work to check on her kids like she usually does every day, Elizabeth's little brother tells her that Elizabeth hasn't come home yet and Madeline doesn't think much of it and says she's going to call back. She'll check back in a little while. So when she calls back a couple hours later and Elizabeth still isn't home, she knows that something's really wrong.

So she leaves work. She tells Bobbie to walk down the driveway to see if for some reason, Elizabeth is down there, like hanging out with her friends. And because she has a friend who lives across the street, when he does, he he sees Elizabeth's friend walking down her driveway to she's looking for Elizabeth as well, because Madeleine called the friend to say, do you know where she is? And so basically they started looking for her. So Madeleine gets home, calls the police.

She waits for over an hour for someone to show up at her house. And when no one shows up, she calls back and finds out only to find out that they had gotten the county wrong and they had sent an officer to another county. So finally, after several hours, an officer shows up only to tell Madeleine that she's overreacting. He says that most teenagers run away for a day or two. No parents ever think their kids, the type who would run away, Elizabeth's probably at a friend's house or off with her boyfriend somewhere.

And Madeleine's trying to convince him, no, this is not her at all. She every day she comes home and takes care of her little brother, makes him food like this is not her at all. And the guy says it's I see this all the time. Don't worry about it. He explains he can't put out an Amber Alert for her because it's too soon. He assures her Elizabeth will come back and he leaves. So we're back in the forest.

After walking for more than an hour, Elizabeth's kidnapper stops at the side of a hill, reaches down to the forest floor and pulls up a perfectly camouflaged door. It's the hatch to a bunker.

Mm hmm. And there's a man made like a homemade ladder made of branches that lead down eight feet down into total darkness. And he makes her walk down into it. Oh, mine follows her. God, it's cold. It's it's pitch black. As her eyes adjust, she sees it's a 15 foot long space that's dug into the forest floor. So it's the floors are dirt, the walls are dirt. It has a six. You know, it's a six foot ceiling.

There's a well, there's a bed, there's a stove with a chimney and and there's a battery operated television. The walls are lined with shelves that are stocked with canned goods, guns, other weapons porn. She said she would later say that it looked like something out of a nightmare. And now this man, Chanes Elizabeth to the wall by her neck and sits her on a manmade bed that he that he is a bed he fashioned out of branches, swimming floats and comforters.

So it's really weird. And Jenky and creepy.

Elizabeth looks over and sees an inflatable doll in the corner. Oh, and she starts to cry but the man tells her there's no point in crying, that she needs to get used to it because this is how it's going to be for her now. He says that he's not going to hurt her and very soon after that, he rapes her. So this man is thirty six year old Vinson Filyaw, and he's an unemployed construction worker whose father died when he was a year old.

So his mother remarries a man with a substance abuse problem. And so Vinson begins his binge drinking at age 14 and he'll go on to be treated for alcohol abuse 10 different times. And this is the drinking problem that ends up getting him fired from his job as a construction worker and will eventually leave him with alcohol induced brain damage.

So he's got he's got a drinking problem. And just a year before Elizabeth ShowOffs kidnapping, he is charged with sexual assault of a 12 year old girl. But when the authorities go to arrest him, he's nowhere to be found. So the authorities assume he left the state, but it turned out he was right under their noses the entire time and their feet.

Mm hmm. OK, so obviously, after a couple of days, the police begin a search with this show. Family keeps going back to them and saying, you have to start looking for our daughter. So they put up they distribute flyers with her picture on it and then they start doing searches and they start walking the forest. And there is a point where they are sitting in the bunker and they can hear the searchers walking above them. No, but the it's so perfectly camouflaged that no one sees it or notices anything about the bunker at all.

So after five days of captivity, Elizabeth has built a bond with her captor. So this girl, she's 14, she's really innocent. She is really sheltered. She is so fucking smart. It's mind blowing. I don't know what she I don't know how she knew any of this stuff, but she knew to that she needed to make sure that this guy knew she was a person. So she would ask him what his interests were and she would pretend to be super into what he was into.

And she talked to him all the time. And she basically slowly won his trust and like establish this bond with him. Wow. So, like, when they hear the searchers, he holds a gun to her head and tells her if she screams, he'll kill her. And when the voices fade, she tells Vincent that she likes him and that she wants to be down there with them and she never would have screamed. So she's basically like establishing this kind of like the I like being here with you.

Like you wanted me to be here with you. I want to be with you and trust her. Yeah, exactly. She soon builds enough trust with him that he lets her leave the bunker so that she can go take a bath and, like, wash dishes in a nearby pond. And so, yeah. So when she's there, she pulls out strands of her own hair and leaves it around the side of the pond so that if they ever have dogs searching in that forest, they'll be able to find her.

She also one time when she goes to the pond, leaves her shoes behind just in case someone might see her or that again, if there's tracker dogs, the are so smart, it's genius. And then, like, when she's he says, where did your shoes go? She's like, I, I must have left them at the pond. I can't find them like. And he believes everything she says because she's so sweet and innocent and like and and playing it so perfectly.

Yeah. The most genius thing. And like of all the genius things she does though in this nightmare situation is building enough trust so that when she asks him if she can play a game on his phone, he lets the whole thing.

Yeah. So she basically waits enough time and and, you know, basically builds the builds the trust enough. And because she had gone to the pond and not run away. Yeah. So she'd done all these things and not done anything to break the trust. She was convincing him that she liked him and that they had this kind of like a relationship.

How long and how long after she had been there that she asked for the phone DAPA. Wow. So are I believe five or six. So she starts playing games on his phone. Now he figures, yeah, she didn't run. He can trust her. And also there's they don't have phone service in the bunker. Right. So it's not like he she can't make a call. So it's safe. Yeah. So she'll use his phone, play a game, give it back.

And that's like a thing that that he starts getting used to her doing so on the eighth night when he's asleep, she climbs up the makeshift ladder and holds the phone. The bunker door and and texts her mother, holy shit, shit, yeah, she writes, it's so genius. She writes, Hi, Mom, I'm in a hole across from Charm Hill where the big trucks go in and out. There's a bomb called police.

Oh, can you imagine being a mother and giving them a fake text, especially after that amount of time where the police haven't helped you? They've argued you. Then it turns out your child is missing. Then everything that happens is like that. Nothing. They're not finding anything. Nothing coming of any of the searches. There's no results of anything. And then suddenly she was actually on her way to a vigil that night. They'd been they'd started holding vigils for her and she was headed out of the house for a vigil.

And she looked at her phone and that text was on her.

She probably I mean, would you think it's a hoax and or like someone messing with her in the beginning? Well, no. She immediately was like, this is Lizzie. The family called her Lizzie. And she knew it was her because that that's it's she knew she knew her daughter. When when she showed the police, they called the police and showed the police. The first officer that came to the house said she might have, like, gone away with her friends.

And now she's trying to establish a lie to come back. And at that point, she was like, are you fucking kidding me? Like what? So but then the sheriff shows up and and also the little brother. This actually happened in the Lifetime movie. I'm not sure if this was what was happening, what happened in real life, but it was a kind of a genius moment in the Lifetime movie because the first cop that says she might be trying to establish like an alibi is going to call back on the phone.

And the little brother goes, yeah, isn't that a bad idea? Because what if she's what if she took the phone and that's going to get her calm and like and the cops are like, oh, I think I'm the one that's the policeman here. And then when the sheriff shows up, he's like, we don't want to call because that could put her in danger. And the little brother just looks the Koplik so they don't respond to the text.

Instead, they run the cell phone number and it comes up registered to a woman. And when they drive out to the address this woman's house, the sheriff recognizes the area. This is where they serve the warrant over a year ago for the child rapist who had fled. So there's they're now starting to put it all together, OK, so they end up searching the property while they continue to question the woman who lives in the house. And it turns out that it's his girlfriend's common law wife and that when they searched the property, they find what they think is a trash like a trash hole.

And she ends up telling them this is a bunker he dug here. And then they find there's like an abandoned car somewhere on their property because it's all in this forested area. And she admits that she had been leaving food for him. She'd going, then going and buying food for him and leaving it in that abandoned car for him to come and pick up. So now they know he's OK.

So he's been hiding out and she had been aiding and abetting him. Exactly. And so now they know he's within walking distance because he's hiding out somewhere else, but near enough to come and get supplies now. So so but what they decide to do is they realize that the theory is that he's a coward. He's not. He's going to run. And this is not he's you know, he's a child molester rapist, but he's not a serial killer, whatever.

So the chances are that if they leak this to the press, that the mother has actually gotten a text and that this girl might be somewhere alive and that they're going to go on a manhunt now that he'll probably run. OK, so that's what happens. They leak the story to the local press. Meanwhile, down in the bunker, when the eleven o'clock news comes on, Elizabeth and Vinson are watching on their weird little TV and he sees the entire report of Elizabeth's mother.

Got a text now that now the cops know that she's being held nearby and now there's a huge manhunt on. Of course, Vincent loses it. He's enraged, he's panicking, he's freaking out and he's screaming at Elizabeth. And she's like, I would never do that to you. She's it's so amazing. She convinces him that she didn't do it. And she basically says, well, couldn't it be the woman that's leaving food for you? How did I know about that?

Oh, he told her that because she's getting the food. Yeah, OK. She knows everything she's like in his life now. And so and basically she convinces him it's not her, that she didn't do it.

And so then he's like he basically goes, well then what should I do? And she said and she says, you should run because they're going to come and catch you and they can't catch you down here. You should definitely run. And so he does. He listens to the 14 year old girl. And he collects what a gamble he could have just fucking killed her in anger, right? But she's so smart she's able to fuck and she's so smart.

And she later on on that and it's a it's called inside datelined. It's this blog on MSNBC, dot com. And so she wrote a thing on there that was really it was so it was so young girl of her where she was like, but she basically said he was really stupid. So she realized after a while that it wasn't like she didn't think he was going to be violent, like she thought all the things he was doing was kind of like out of desperation.

She realized she could outsmart him. And so she just knew basically she got him to do exactly what would get him caught.

So he took he took all his weapons and the pipe bombs that were down there and some night vision goggles. And he told her, I really love you and I really want to marry you. And she was like, yeah, I totally want to marry you, too. And he's like, OK, well, I'm going to run, but then I'm going to I'm going to find a way to come back to you. And she was like, OK, sounds great.

You better go. And he's like, don't leave here until tomorrow morning. And also, while she had been staying there with him the whole time, he was telling her how the whole thing was booby trapped. The whole bunker was booby trap. Oh, my God. And that there were bombs and different things every everywhere, all around. So even if the police did come, you know, if he could make it blow up. So he leaves and then she waits until the next morning and then she comes out of the bunker.

Now, meanwhile, the morning of September 16th, authorities had set up a line search and they were walking the woods to because they knew that she was somewhere in the vicinity. When they hear someone yelling help, they find Elizabeth standing alone outside the bunker. And the officer who got to her first and she was like, be careful. There could be bombs that could be booby trapped as he was, like, running toward her. And he later was quoted as saying, I received credit many times for saving her and I did not.

That child saved herself.

Vincent Filia is found the same day kneeling on the side of Interstate Twenty in Richland County. So he just basically went and gave himself up and got arrested while at his trial.

Moments before his trial happens, he pleads guilty to kidnapping ten counts of first degree criminal sexual assault, two counts of second degree sexual assault, possession of explosives, attempted armed robbery and impersonating a police officer. And he is sentenced to four hundred and twenty one years in prison. And at his sentencing, the judge told Filia, this position requires I be the conscience of the community and the community is outraged by your acts. Many people have difficult paths and they don't commit the heinous crimes you committed.

You have preyed upon helpless victims with violence and in a savage manner.

Good luck to you, sir. Wow. And then on that MSNBC Dateline blog, the great Keith Morrison writes this about his experience interviewing both Elizabeth and Vincent for the two hour Dateline special episode. They interviewed him.

They interviewed both. They interviewed him from jail and they interviewed her. So they did a whole thing about this whole case. And here's what Keith Morrison said. When Vincent snatched Elizabeth, just 14 years old, she had never dated a boy, never once spent even a single night away from home without a family member. She was taken by a wily wolf of a man who had just spent the better part of a year eluding the efforts of law enforcement.

She endured unspeakable horrors, faced what seemed to her certain death, and she prevailed. The contrast, Vincent, to Elizabeth was quite remarkable, where his story was self-serving claims shifting back and forth to suit whatever version he was trying to sell. Elizabeth was open and brutally candid, where his fearsome behavior wilted in the presence of a television crew. Elizabeth seemed to gain strength from telling the experience and having come through it with her dignity and humanity fully intact.

She smiled a smile to light up the room. Every once in a while, a dark tale turns out well, and the worst in human behavior is overcome by the best. Which is why it was quite an honor to tell the story of Elizabeth Suf. And that is the harrowing kidnapping story of Elizabeth Shue from the SUAU.

Good 14 good years old, thought for 18 years old.

Oh. She's so smart and she's unbelievable. Oh, my God. Hell yes, girl, that was great. Great job. Thank you. That's I needed that one.

And then to find that Keith Morrison quote at the end of those guys, those Dateline guys are their legends.

Do you follow Josh Mankiewicz? He's so funny on Twitter. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's my he's my Twitter friend. Friend of the podcast. Friend of the poor, Josh Miklowitz.

He's the greatest. Wow. Great job that was. Yeah. I think we all needed that for sure. Yeah. It's been a while. Speaking of it's been a while. Should we. The fucking hoorays. Oh yeah. This is from a underscore. Gilchrist wanted to drop my fucking right here for y'all. For years my dad and I have been on separate sides of the Colin Kaepernick protest. No matter what I said, he just always felt, quote, It wasn't the right venue.

I don't want to talk about it. I never gave up trying to help him to see, but I figured he was pretty set in his ways. This morning, I got a text from him that said, quote, I was wrong. I was Drew Brees. I didn't get Cap. I do now. I cried and told him I was proud of him. He said, I'm proud of you. So no matter how long it takes, no matter how uphill the battle seems, we must continue to push for our black community.

Pedal to the metal. Love you guys. Hashtag Black Lives Matter. I love that. Well, mine is similar. The subject line is Birmingham says Fuck You and your Confederate Memorial. This is from Shannon P.. Hey, they're murder pals. My fucking horror is that in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, during their protests on Saturday, local deejay Funimation Johnson declared that it was the goal of himself and the crowd gathered there to finally tear down the Confederate Memorial that has been an eyesore in Linn Park for too long.

This memorial has been surrounded by plywood for years because last time folks tried to pull it down. That was the state solution for protecting it, but also hiding it. Kind of the perfect metaphor for American racism. Let's cover it up. Instead of dealing with it, it is needed to go for far too long. After a few hours of protesters pulling away plywood, the city's mayor, Randall Woodson, entered the crowd to speak with Funimation. He said he didn't want anyone to get hurt, so he would like for for them to let him tear it down and promised it would be gone by Tuesday at noon.

They agreed and the crowd dispersed. True to Woodford's word, the memorial was removed Monday night. It's been the source of contention in the state for years. And the state's attorney general, Steve Marshall, said that he would sue if Birmingham tore it down. What a dick would find, said, I don't fucking care paraphrasing and tore it down anyway. What a hero both he and funnymen are. I am so proud of these hometown heroes right now.

Yeah, that is. I love that that's happening everywhere. Yeah. People people are messing around anymore. So important. It's so important for dignity sake. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. That's really good. Those are two nice ones. Please send us your video cameras. You can just comment on our Twitter or Instagram or send them in via the website. The Fan Kulp, the fan Kalt. That was good. Thanks for listening. Thanks for always being our rad friends.

Yeah, I hope everybody's doing good. Stay strong. Stay make sure you log off every once in a while and just go sit by a tree if you possibly can. Please wear your masks. Please tell other people to wear their masks, but most of all stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Good bye Elvis.

You want a cookie? OK, boy, that was right on the.