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Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. Say what you just did, I just. OK, we're about to start. We always kind of have a moment where we stare at each other through zoom before, like a pause, a deep pause.

And right in the middle of it, I sniffed my armpit, lands over my head and just took a big old with just curiosity. What do you think? Do you think you're sick or anything? Can you tell by armpits smell like you're sick?

No, I think so. I can. I'm sick in that. I love bad smells, but now I smell. I'm a I'm an eight. I feel yeah. I feel like the body odor portion of my quarantine is definitely faded. Oh that's good.

The nervous sweat stopped in like July. Yeah. Then that dispair sweat has started back up, which smells like maple syrup for some reason. My despair is delicious. Delicious.

I've always been a fan, but now more than ever, my own despair.

I love the smell of my own despair. What a great narrative that is. That's so great. Hey, this is do we always say this is my favorite? Nope, we didn't. This is my I think we do. Then we know this is my favorite murder. Maybe you did that. Østergaard Stark, thank you. That's Karen Kilgariff. Thank you. Got that out of the way. Get it out. Do you want to hear what my therapist said to me today that made me cry so fucking lately?

You've always been brave, but you are just too scared for a while to know it, to know.

And I was just like, what? And I kind of was like, put my hand. I'm just like, what? She's like, say it with me. I've always been for everyone, everyone right now listening. Let's all say it together. I've always, always been brave. I was just too scared to do it. Amazing cheese. It was basically her saying the part of you that scared is smaller now than the part of you that's brave.

So now the brave part of you can take over. That's beautiful. And then I was like, peace out. I don't need you anymore.

That's how brave. You're still scared. You're still got this tiny bit there. They're tiny, tiny bit. But I don't forget that tiny bit of fear. I've been doing the twice a week therapy now for two weeks. Oh, report back. Well, I always was like, oh, I'm I'm not that bad that I need it more than once a week. But then I realized it's not about that. It's like you're able to get into it deeper, that's all.

That's right. So we've been getting into some stuff deeper and like keep focusing on it instead of just like what happened last week, stories. I mean, it's helping so much. Yeah. You can kind of get a consistent consensus or like, discussion going, right. Totally. And also, I think that commentary that you said you felt inside, which is I'm not that bad or any kind of that like that might be a little bit perfectionistic or a little bit self abusive or self-denying, maybe just like no one can see you.

No one's watching you, no one can hear you. You get to go to therapy just like you're going to the dentist. That's how much shame you should have about it, because it's like taking care of those emotional cavities and you're the only one that suffers when you don't do it. I mean, maybe you make other people suffer, but it's not a contest.

Yeah. And anyone you have in your head, that's like they don't have to go to therapy. It's not true. They do need to go to therapy. So funny that people are always like, you know, oh, you need you know, when people they tell people their lives are going to therapy and people that don't understand it say like, oh, what's wrong with you? But I just did the same thing to going twice. It's like, what's wrong with me that I have to go.

It's not it's not nothing actually. I'm fucking better than you people person not going to talking shit to me. I'm double fucking better than you.

And now here's the big reveal. You're the person talking shit to you.

Oh, that's you. Tomorrow you'll hear these things. Sounds like my mom. Speaking of perfectionism, I want to recommend and therapy and all the shit. I want to recommend a podcast that late in the early hours of the morning, whatever that means, murdering. I tagged me and it talk to listen to in on Instagram and I'm obsessed and she's like my friend now too. OK, so the podcast is called The Cure for Chronic Pain, which immediately you're like, well, I don't have chronic pain or whatever, but, you know, it's the thing that you always talk about, which is that, like, the body holds the score.

And then also she says the issues are the issues are in your tissues. You know, like when you got shit going on, it sticks in your body. So it's really just like a therapy podcast. And her name is Nicole Sacks s. And so there's a toxic perfectionism episode. And I always was like, I'm not a perfectionist because I don't do anything right. So I'm not a. Yeah, well, I was thinking, let's say no, but I think that's also part of that that's part of the perfectionism, which is I'm less than therefore, you know, it's like always turning away from that work or that kind of like it's almost like I don't deserve to get better gas behind or to call myself a perfectionist.

That means I think I'm great. No. And I think today's society women are kind of I think, like so many women are raised to be a perfectionist or you're like worthless, you know. Yes. So fuck is with the shit that we keep getting shown where it's like, oh, are you do you not weigh ninety seven pounds better by A, B, C and E, it's like that's all we ever get there.

They'll never, never go away.

Whatever stupid goal weight is your goal weight your goal face your goal, lack of fucking wrinkles, your goal, whatever. Meanwhile, all those voices are kind of parallel going, therefore no one will ever love. Therefore you can't have A, B, C, right. It's it's such a fucking setup and it's such a scam. Yeah. So I really love this episode. And also it's an episode about anger, which was really fun to put into use and then just get like angry.

It was a good episode about anger as well. It's just it's good stuff. It's like good shit that you need to hear from this woman who's like your best friend, you know, and then it turns out her wife is a total murderer now. So now we're like friends and say the name of the podcast to get a name is called The Cure for Chronic Pain. And her name is Nicole Sachs.

That's what I would assume. Yeah. Really good stuff. Love it. That's very cool. Yeah, because if I saw the name of that podcast, I wouldn't I would say, right. I don't have sciatica, so I guess I don't need to listen to that. Exactly. It's like it's more but it's more of a like a self-help pack. So we should we should maybe pitch to Nicole. Can we make it the cure for chronic P capital P again, perfectionism, insecurity, asshole ism and narcissism, narcissism.

There you go.

The pain you cause yourself. Done. Let's change everything. I like that. That's great. Yeah. What do you got. What's going on with you.

Oh let's see. Well I started the new Netflix series from Ryan Murphy, Richard starring the great Sarah Paulson, starring the fucking unbelievable Judy Davis, the great Cynthia Nixon. The cast is unbelievable.

I know the wardrobe girl is like the head of wardrobe. Jesus, the fucking production design on this thing. Give her a high five. She's incredibly so. Sarah is like the wardrobe person on that. Her name's only cats and food on Instagram and she posts gorgeous photos. It's like a dream job.

Yeah, well, and she does an unbelievable job on this. It's we watched the the problem is that we binged like four in a row. So this happens to me and this is just my personal experience with most mine. Ryan Murphy projects he does a thing where he catches you with the design and you're all like my eyes and then someone, you know, someone's skin falls off for some reason. And you're caught in the design and they're like, I want to look a little, oh, you're like one nighters covering the room now.

Yeah, there's so there's all this. It's very macabre, but it start it eases you into it with this kind of like I love the forties. This is great. Yeah. It's great though. It's cool. It's you can't be it can't be a little.

No it's almost more of an omeje.

There's a real Hitchcock feeling, you know, it's very Hitchcock. It's it's really interesting. But I turned to my friend who is watching with and said who's quarantining with me and said, that is the same woman who played Marcia Clark. It's crazy. Like, what can't she do? She is so talented. So that woman. Yeah, she's so good. Have you heard of any heard of or watched the show love from yours.

Have you watched it all the way through. It's the fucking best. Oh fuck. OK, I didn't know you watched it. Sorry Stephen. We might. OK, this is amazing. This is amazing because I was trying to think of what I've been watching lately, my friend Alison Fields, who is a hilarious genius. She goes, are you by chance watching love fraud? And I knew just the way she was asking me. I had to go and watch it immediately.

Yeah, it it it has everything. Everything every male bounty hunter who smokes and fucking wants revenge. You want her to be your grandma like I mean, she's the best all these scorned women who are like, well let's fucking go after him like all of them figuring out what a piece of shit this guy is trying to save the future with. Ben from his fucking grasp, because what he the way he comes in, he always picks these women who are divorced who maybe think it's that they're on the sunset.

Right. Or possibility of ever finding love. The manipulation is so disgusting and so painful. And he comes in and like within three weeks is like he has to marry you. You're the one man. What's your dream to open a crab restaurant? Then we'll do that right here to take out a loan right now for your crab restaurant. And we're going to do it together and I'm going to take care of you. It's again, it goes back to I feel like all of our society is starting to slowly slot into like you're one of four things.

You're a straight up fucking psychopath who's just here to do damage and get what you get as many votes as you can. Yeah. And then there's the victims of those people and then there's the people who learn from that and then become like the Avengers of those people. It's what he does to woman after woman after woman from state to state is so crazy, evil creed even to his own family.

He does it. And these poor women who are just like they feel broken because they were scammed by this fucking dude. But it's like everyone was. And I feel like when they start to meet each other and be like, well, I think you're really cool. And you did too. So maybe I'm not a total like maybe I'm not a ding dong for getting scammed by him because all these women are bad ass. So it's his fault. It's the manipulation of the one thing everybody wants, man or woman, which is I belong, I am seen and I'm appreciated for who I actually am.

And he snakes right in to people who are giving up hope on that perhaps and going, no, girl, I see it and I'm into it. And they go, Oh wow, it's because he's no prize.

So it's not like they're going. This could never happen to me because it's John Stamos.

Right. I just saw that commercial that he's famous is the one you go to. I do. Well, he seems commercial. Yeah. I think the year it's funny, the girl that that's in it is so funny. But yeah, it's just that idea where they're like, well he's on my level like Prince I could get this guy.

It's not like yeah but then so evil. Did you watch the last episode. So I don't, I don't because I'm like I'm just going to tell you like I'm two away and I tell you that they he allows them, he gets the answer's no, you can't.

OK, I can't even I felt like I was going to record. Is it a spoiler. Admit it is. I didn't think it was but it is. So I'm not saying. But it just the last half hour we watch of the last episode we watched three fucking times. Oh, please don't tell me anything. It's a study on fucking sociopathy in being a weasel and weaseling out. It is like you got to watch it so you know what to look for.

Great. I will.

And great job for the people who put this together, because it's unlike any documentary along these lines that I've seen, it combines the best of all. Kind of I feel like this is what's happening now is everyone's fine tuning, true crime documentaries. It's the same thing over and over. They're starting to go, what would people actually like to see? And then like this story, I hope it's another season with another brand new. Did I hope because it's common.

It's pretty great.

It's a pretty genius idea for a show. Yeah. Because they deserve to go to jail. OK, just also wait, here's a spoiler. But this part, a woman's dream was to open a crab restaurant in Wichita, Kansas. That alone is dreaming the impossible dream. She finds a man who says, I want to make that dream come true for you because it's important to me, just like it is for you. They do it.

The restaurant is actually successful. Yeah. Which is hard to fucking do anyway. Yeah. Anywhere, much less a seafood restaurant in the literals center of the country.

But her husband did her fucking husband. Oh, that comes after. It's like I felt so bad for him. And then all twists and turns. Sorry I'm, I'm doing to you what I just yelled at George did not do to me but I just it's so clear in opening the crab restaurant was this was the the last scene of the second episode that was a cliffhanger. And you just ruined it when it was like Crab Kings opening in downtown Wichita.

I was just like, these people are out of their minds. That crab that far inland. Are you crazy?

Crabs can travel anywhere nowadays and people want to they want what's improvs. They deserve crabs.

In Wichita, she launched a fucking restaurant, succeeded and he ripped her off. That's what an asshole. But you got to feel good for her. And she'll find she'll find another way to watch that show.

You watch. What else, Soga, should we yeah, let's talk about Mirch for a hot minute, coming up soon. We have a new spooky Elvis design that's basically Elvis looking like a zombie cat, right?

Yep. And and the logo itself for the design itself glows in the dark black sweatshirt. Yeah. The glowing cat face. It's very death metal of us. Yeah. Which is so us because we're I mean me. I'm so funky. I love death.

You are hip and down with the funky kid's lucky death metal children. Death metal. Have you seen the Twitter black metal cats. Oh my God. It's just like photos of mostly Maine Coon cats who look all serious and like death metal quotes underneath them. It's fucking beautiful mixture. It's called that. That's good. What else?

I mean, I'm just mostly in this house, you know, wiping down surfaces and trying to get things done. But like, I'll be like, oh, it's Saturday. I better put my story together for the episode on Tuesday and then it's Thursday. And I don't know what what how time passed at all. No, I chose mine. I had it done. And then this morning I was like, this is I'm doing something else goodbye. And like a whole different fucking thing.

Full Baltes over the past, like, you know, 18 hours, I've been immersed in this, like, crazy story. That's all I can think about. And also the world is burning.

It is quite a time. It's not letting up. We all know this. Figure out a way to join hands with your brothers and sisters and the people that you care about because, fuck, we're going to have to figure out how to, like, be as human beings. Yeah. Aside from just like the weird feeling when you go to the store, like we went to the store to get some supplies for our corn team. And of course, there was a guy there that was like acting weird and making conversation about getting in line.

And his mask was pretty much below your nose is people nose and mouth its nose and mouth. And then the second I was like, you can go ahead of me. He's like, I got the sense that he I was like, you go ahead of me. You you can get away from me. Oh, that's so nice of you. And then the girl I don't know why this woman did this because I don't think she was using her full sensory sure thing to go don't start a fight with this guy is questionable.

OK, so he got in line behind her and did the thing where you moved up right behind her instead of staying back five, which is annoying when there isn't a fucking global pandemic in the air.

Yes. You don't want people that close to you anyway, right. So she turned around and was like, you need to stand back and did a bit of a thing, which she was waiting for.

And immediately his voice goes up to octave or two volume notches. And he's like talking about how everybody these days is so angry and attack. And I was just like, I mean, it's I'm not saying she was wrong.

She she's not your space. Yeah. And she needed to do that. Except we see the videos. We see these trolls. They're not OK. Yeah. Or they're mentally unbalanced in a way where they are looking for a fight because they that's there's something going on. Yeah. It's like you you can't treat everybody like they're just a standard citizen like you and they're deciding. Right. To be rationally deciding our next step and our next step and our next.

Some people are fucking not doing that. They're not. But anyway, if we just we we got in the car and we're like, why did we go to Stordahl? Yeah. Yeah, everything feels hopeless. There's one thing we can do which is vote fucking. That's right. That's really if you are feeling like you are flailing in the wind and you have no control over your life and the world, voting is definitely something that can make you feel a little more in control and also getting involved in local politics.

I've been very inspired by my younger comedy friends who have gotten since the Black Lives Matter movement really started this summer, have gotten super into local politics and and sending messages about like how to effect change on a local level, which really does affect, you know, policies like around you. I think it's that part two is like it's very inspiring. There's so much real. Yeah, there's call banks and back in LA, are there leaflets? I don't know.

Probably find out. Find out what you can just give money to, which is a great way to like feel like if you're being affected. That's right. That's right. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, it's difficult and it's easy to kind of get unplug and say unplug. It really helps my one. Less than one month off of Twitter really, really helped my sense of what the world is actually made up. Yeah, for sure. Even my two week Instagram, almost two week Instagram break, it really did reset my brain a little bit.

It's necessary, but also. Don't you know, we're not we're not saying ignore what's going on in the world, whatever you got to you guys now, you're murdering us, right? We can't tell you to ignore what's going on.

The world's you. You won't, and we won't either.

But don't lose faith and don't lose hope and. Right. You know, and if you feel hopeless, then figure out who else you know feels hopeless and help them. That's right. Yeah. That's the way to combat that when you kind of are bottom of the barrel because you then call your grandma, call your dad, call someone that would love to hear from you, that you can just buy just a simple communication, make their day a little bit better.

It doesn't always have to be the grandest action. Sometimes it's truly person to person connection to say, I'm so happy that you're still around and you make me happy and you make this all easier.

I need to do that. I need to call my cousins. OK, you're you're hot San Francisco cousins.

Do you think my cousins in San Francisco are hot? Remember, I just remember being backstage at the San Francisco show and you were like, these are my cousins. And it was just the hottest group of people. I was just like, what's up? Everybody got the good Chatzky jeans over there. Danny Chatzky. Yeah, like gorgeous children. They just all look great.

They really do. Catch HBO, Max's new limited series, the murders at White House Farm, now streaming based on the shocking true story. In 1985, five family members were murdered at their isolated farm. The initial evidence pointed towards a murder suicide committed by one of the family members. However, one detective refused to accept this, diving deeper into the evidence and unraveling the mysterious layers of the murders at White House Farm screaming September 24th only on HBO Maczka.

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're going. A credible lead to the war after only one year.

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. His first this week, it is me. It is, you can say, are you ready for me to begin?

I am ready.

Sorry, I'm just going to really quick before I start, say the one reason I'm so excited to be back on Twitter and it's just for a scam and a laugh and a and a holy shit. My friend Carrie O'Donnell, the funniest from co-host of Sex Unique podcast. He retweeted the like what what did it end up being 20 foot giant skeleton that they were selling at Home Depot over the weekend?

Yeah, it's amazing. George and Danielle and Katrina. And it's just like, hey, who likes Halloween? And it is a it's a it's a giant skeleton that looks like it could go above your house, does a one story house.

It's huge. I mean, that they trying to say, I love how pleased to go out with that thing. I something about that and I'm sorry, I don't know what it is, if it's like because my cousins listen to so much Iron Maiden growing up or if it's just like there's something about like an avenging giant skeleton where I'm like, oh yes, here we go.

Well, just the fact that, like, your neighbors are going to fucking hate you and it's like, good, I want suburbia, I want to suburbia fuckin giant skeleton. Just like to piss people off. Guys, if you like stuff like this, seek out giant decorative giant Home Depot skeleton, which now aren't available there anymore. But they're being sold on eBay for four times the price.

My God, what did you get one note. What if we all band together and surprise you, all of us murdering us by one for you, put it in your backyard. You wake up in the morning.

It's coming over the hill, that hill in your backyard. Yes. You could do that, like year round.

I mean, I do have a birthday coming up in a year.

Yeah, you do have a Christmas coming up, though. I do have a Christmas coming up. And I love I like Jack Skellington enjoy a nightmare before Christmas. So speaking of nightmares, my story this week is suggested by a listener named Chelsea Dickinson. She was listening to the episode where I talked about Synanon that called. And so she recommended the story of the Elan School. Have you heard of them now? I'd never heard of it. I knew nothing about it.

It's unbelievable. And it's linked to the murder of Martha Moxley. Shut up.

Yeah, it's you'll see. OK, it's so crazy. So thank you, Chelsea, because that was such a good suggestion. And she had watched. I believe what I interpreted from her tweet to me was that she had watched there's a twenty seventeen documentary on Amazon Prime right now called The Last Stop, and it's a documentary about this school and its history. And I have I have not seen it. I didn't look, I took a picture of her recommendation and only right before when I went to make sure I got her name right, did I actually look at the full tweet.

And at the end I was like, oh, this whole time I could watch that document, I could just be copying this down like my usual trick of like as the documentary rolls.

I'm just writing down the facts, the documentary tells me.

But I'm definitely going to watch it tonight because this story is nuts. Unbelievable. So if you don't know, is was Martha Moxley, these murders your first story on this podcast?

I don't think it's why was it like you're I think JonBenet was my first, but I think it was definitely like first time at first. First month I attorney for five or ten. OK, so if you so go listen to that if you would like. Also you could listen to me death.

I think it was so long ago, we were so new. I mean I actually really cringe when I think of people listening to the first year of this show. You know, in the first oh, the first episode was around Halloween. In the very first ten minutes, we talk about a dude getting decapitated on the fucking five freeway by our houses.

That's right. But it happened. OK, so just to give you a background, and this is really one of the this is a classic true crime story.

It is a young, blonde, rich girl from the suburbs, some intensely rich suburbs, privilege and fucking, you know, narcissism and fucking Kennedys are involved.

Like it's definitely like it has all of the kind of over-the-top tabloid elements. It also is intensely sad, but it also is a great example of all of the true crime stories we're presented with first and foremost, which is a blonde girl being murdered. So this happened. It was the evening of October 30th. Nineteen seventy five. It was in Belle Haven, Connecticut, which is a suburb of Greenwich and incredibly wealthy. 18 year old Martha Moxley is out with her friends on Mischief Night, which is there how they celebrate the night before Halloween where teenagers go around and have that in California.

I didn't know at that time, Vince in Michigan, they do it. Do they really? Actually, I never heard that he lived right outside of Detroit. And the fucking police officers base or the fire department basically said, say to everyone on Mischief Night, you're you're on your own. Really? That's like the purge. Yeah. It's fucked up shit. Yeah. It's really we don't have it in California here.

Yeah. No. Well, and also growing up in way out in the country, our version of Halloween was very different than the city kids version.

We were like literally in the back of a truck with straw all freezing Pelak since we were just wearing jackets with our costumes underneath.

No one really knew what we were ever. But sometimes we get full sized candy bars because we were the only kids in the neighborhood. So essentially this is teenagers running around their city, ding dong, ditching, you know, kicking Jackel lanterns t peeing houses and trees and throwing eggs at people and cars and whatever. So Martha is out with her friends doing that. And the next morning, Martha's body is found under a tree in her family's back yard.

She has been bludgeoned to death with a six iron golf club and then stabbed with that broken club. And there is also evidence that she's been sexually assaulted. So that golf club is traced back to the Skakel family. And there's two brothers in that family that still live at home, Thomas, the older brother, who was essentially like the good looking one, and his younger brother, Michael Skakel. Thomas was last the last person seen with Martha that night.

Other kids report that they saw the two of them, quote unquote, falling together behind a fence near the Skakel family pool around nine 30 p.m. But Thomas maintains he was watching TV at the time of the murder. His alibi is corroborated and there's no hard evidence linking him. And the other way, no charges are filed and the case goes cold. So just to give you a bit of a background, the Skakel family are related to the Kennedys.

It's the father, Rushton, Walter Skakel. His sister is Ethel Kennedy, who was married to Robert F. Kennedy. But the mother and and Ronald Skakel dies from brain cancer when the boys are young. And the younger brother, Michael, takes this death the hardest. He starts drinking when he's, like, abusing alcohol and he's 13 years old. He starts flunking out of schools. He's always acting out. And then three years after the murder of Martha Moxley in 1978, Michael Skakel gets a DUI in New York.

So to avoid jail time, his family sends him to a juvenile rehabilitation school in Portland, Maine, called Elan School. So, Alan is a French word, meaning energy or enthusiasm. And if you looked at a pamphlet for the Allen school, it's very 70s, minimal and with beautiful kind of like lowercase printing. It's between a lawn and school. There's a picture of a tree. And it's basically the pamphlets talking about how we take your troubled children and make them into responsible adults.

And they kind of give this idea that it's this because it's, you know, up in the remote, this remote, very woodsy part of Maine. Yeah. That they're skiing and horseback riding. And it's basically like a boarding school, but for troubled children. Right. But sounds amazing. Send me there immediately. Yeah.

And it's forty four thousand dollars a year in the 70s, which today to me, I, I, I would guess.

Sorry I didn't maybe. Stephen, would you do it for me. I didn't do that. I'm going to go I'm going to go to a hundred and six thousand dollars.

OK, today it is two hundred and fifty seven thousand five hundred and seventy six dollars right in the middle to 50 that we did that.

So me and you or it's like you're over here and I'm over here and like together together we make it happen.

OK, so think about this there. These people are sending their troubled teens to a boarding school that costs them two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for one year for one per kid.

OK, so here's a little background on a lawn school. So it starts as a drug rehab center in nineteen seventy. And it's the brainchild of child psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Davidson and a millionaire and entrepreneur named Joe Ritchie. And basically, it sits on thirty three acres of land, the. Used to be hunting ground in a very small and remote town of Portland, Maine, in nineteen seventy four, it's converted from a drug rehab center to an accredited private alternative school for troubled youth, ages 12 to 18.

It's billed as a correctional school where misguided kids can be rehabilitated, using some of Dr. Davidson's, quote, behavior modification programs, along with Joe Ritchie's personal spins up Nexium. So they use toxic tactics like hard menial labor and humiliation to break teenagers down and rebuild them into, quote, upstanding citizens. Oh, my God.

So they actually end up doing interviews on like 60 Minutes and they on different news programs talking about this radical therapy that's used at the school and how it yields amazing results. Some of the imagery is extreme with the kids yelling at each other and screaming at each other, performing menial chores like scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush. But Joe asserts that while these tactics seem extreme, ultimately they're all beneficial. And for over four decades, people believe him for decades.

You see, like these privileged kids who have never fucking wiped a sink off after brushing their teeth in their lives to go and experience what it's like to not have help. Yes, mommy and daddy and their fucking nannies and shit like, yeah, I could see that.

And there's definitely people who in later articles, like in the early 2000s when this came back to the fore, people came forward and said, look, it was horrible. It also saved my life because I was really fucking up. There's definitely a section of the alumni who say it put me on a better path.

And even like, I don't want to have to go back there, so I'm going to do the bare minimum of behaving. And then you become a better person. Probably. Hopefully, right.

The only problem is that these these tactics, they it's built on essentially childrens self policing and group policing. So it's not the adults or the administration that are in there deciding who's getting in trouble and why. It's children who are trying to get themselves out of bad positions and into power positions, who are reporting each other. So it essentially becomes a private for profit Lord of the Rings. Oh, my God. OK, so so let's do a little on Joe Ritchie's background, because he's really he's really the guy behind all this.

He's an Italian American from Port Chester, New York. He comes from a broken home raised by his grandparents. He's charismatic as a kid, but underneath his friendly appearance, he's narcissistic, manipulative and insatiably greedy. He has a he gets caught stealing a lot. He also likes to shoot animals. He starts sleeping with his middle school science teacher when he's 12 years old.

What the fuck? In nineteen sixty one at age 15, he gets into a car wreck and is given painkillers while recovering from his injuries and develops an opioid addiction that soon turns to a heroin addiction. Can I just say he didn't start sleeping with his science teacher when he was 12. His science teacher started molesting him when he was twelve.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I think the the the merit idea behind that is the story is pointing out either sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, which have to do with power in all forms, whether it's money, sex or whatever. So, yes, you're right. He could have absolutely been a victim to his middle school science teacher for sure. Good point. But then he goes on and at age 15 becomes a heroin addict because of this terrible car accident in nineteen sixty seven. So that's about six years later.

He's arrested for robbing a mail truck. So now he's in the full on like life of having to get drugs and get money for drugs.

He's able to talk himself out of jail time and instead he goes to rehab to kick his opioid addiction. And while he's there, he notices something. And that's that rehab is a cash cow. So in nineteen sixty nine, it's like two years after he gets out of rehab, he starts his own rehab facility called Survival Inc, and he makes a small fortune off of it.

Fuck. Yeah. So his his whole goal is to grow his own wealth. So then he decides to buy Scarboro Downs, which is a horse racetrack in Scarborough, Maine, and he rules it with an iron fist. His employees accuse him of being physically, emotionally and abusive and sexually harassing. He is really scary. No one ever challenges him. They also all believe he has mafia ties, which could be racist because he's Italian and he's running a horse track.

But, you know, or maybe it's true. During the late 60s, early 70s, the FBI publicly suggest that Joe Ritchie has ties to the Patriarca crime family and Joe sues them for defamation and wins 15 million dollars so they can go, God.

He's quite something. He really is. The FBI can't fully make the link between him and the in the Mafia. But on more than one occasion, people have crossed Jerry to turn up dead under mysterious circumstances. In 1970, Joe Meet's child psychiatrist, Dr. Gerald Davidson, who specializes in, quote, behavior modification programs for kids who get caught abusing drugs or committing crime. And being an astute businessman, Joe sees this as an opportunity to do two things to make a ton of money off of a school and to wield power over helpless individuals.

So later that year, he opens the Illinois school, charging the yearly tuition of forty four thousand dollars, a student, which is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today's money. And within the first year, the enrolment enrollment grows from four students to over a hundred. Oh, my gosh. So now here's the the details that a lot of people didn't know about for a really long time. If you go a lot of times that the states had or different cities had it set up, where if you were a kid that got arrested for doing something bad, the judge, instead of sending you to juvie, could send you to Illinois school kickback.

Yeah, I think so. I think yes, it was like funding. It was all doing favors for each other. Yeah. But if your parents decided that you were you are too much trouble and you needed to go to law school, what would happen is that in the middle of the night, a quote unquote teen escort company would show up, break down the door of your bedroom, grab you, subdue you, which sometimes included like throwing a bag over your head or putting you in handcuffs and throwing you into the back of a van.

They wouldn't talk to you. They wouldn't explain what was going on. And then you would just be driven to Poland, Maine, home or wherever fucking you were taken from.

And these are wealthy families. So they probably were like, I'm getting kidnapped for ransom for all they fucking now. Yes, the girls thought they were being kidnapped, raped and murdered. I mean, these kids were in absolute terror.

And and part of the thing was that the people that took them never spoke to them and to explain anything, then they finally get to this tiny remote school that's way out in the middle of the woods in Maine so that Poland, Maine is up is remote itself, and then the school is away from everything. And in this set in the middle of the woods, it's it is absolutely. This is a horror movie, like all the way around. So once the van arrives to the school, the new kid is walked inside and it's kind of like they call it an old hunting lodge or an old trapping lodge.

But it's really run down. It's basically the main building, which isn't that big. And then these kind of old trailers all around it. Oh, yeah. And it's really like scary that kids, a lot of the survivors talk about when they first pull up and they realize how bad it's about to be. So the students are immediately informed they can forget about trying to run away because in those thirty three acres of forest surrounding, there are big guards waiting for kids to run through the forest so they can go grab them and take them back.

And during the nineteen seventy nine interview with NBC News, Joe Ritchie even says that, quote, Adilson, the first thing you learn is that you're not going to get out of here no matter how many times you run away. We will go and get you. So then the kid is forced to strip down and shower in front of staffers. They're given a new set of nondescript clothing. So most of the kids, you know, have like whatever shirt with their favorite band on the front of it or something.

They're it's just they're just replaced with, like, super plain clothes, because the whole idea is to erase any personal expression or individual personality. The new students are told they are non strength's. So it's a strength and a non strength. Non strengths are the new kids. They're the ones that have no they have no power. They're not allowed to do anything. And if they break any of the rules of the school, they get a demerit. So let's talk about the rules and this list of rules I got from a blog called Suzuki's Thoughts.

Dot blogspot, dot com. Oh, shoot. I didn't give the I didn't give the source. Sorry, because this this blog is the first, like, organized thing I read about this school. And it was exhaustively reported by this person. I believe their name is Suzuki Nafie, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. And it it just walked. You through like what it was like to be at the school, but also I got information, there's Wikipedia and Murder Pedia and The New York Times, there was a couple articles around the time of Michael Skakel trial in the early 2000s.

There's also an article in Bussel Dotcom, but mostly it's information that people have learned from a Reddit forum that got started called I Am a Survivor of Elan School. Wow. Yeah. So all this all the people that went there, like found began to find this Reddit forum and started telling firsthand stories and supporting each other and remembering and, you know, it was like a whole thing, essentially.

OK, so and then, of course, the documentary, The Last Stop from twenty seventeen if you want to watch. Going to watch the shit out of that. Right. OK, so here's here's the rules that are listed on Suzuki's thoughts. Dot blogspot, dot com. Go, go to that if you want to read more because there's so much detailed information. Here's the rules. This is what's against the rules at this school. Talking to quietly, talking too loudly, talking to someone without authorization, talking to a non strength while being a non strength, talking too much, not talking enough sex, which includes talking to or looking at someone of the opposite gender, avoiding looking at someone of the opposite gender, being attracted to someone looking outside, looking at the floor, having negative body language, reacting to insults, slouching, yawning, reading, writing, drawing, not falling as not falling asleep at bedtime, sleeping for too long the morning laughing at a joke made by someone of a higher rank because it's all ranking systems, doing bad in academics, being tired, speaking without permission, eating after designated meal times, not eating, going outside without permission, rolling your eyes, attempting to run away, swearing without permission, smiling without permission, not smiling enough, making any sort of physical contact, wearing clothes with image which just means any kind of self-expression, having bad thoughts, showing or voicing any dissent.

So I mind fuck. Yeah, they're completely set up to fail.

Now all the other kids have already been at the school. They know the rules and they're there to enforce the rules on the new kids. But everyone is set up to fail. So no student ever got through a day at a lunch without getting in trouble for something.

So the new non strengths that come in are assigned to a big brother, a higher ranking student who is serves a sort of a guide for this new student. And the idea that the student then relaxes because there's someone they can talk to. But the big brother's job is actually to keep watch over these non strengths, make sure they don't ask too many questions and make sure they don't try to run away.

Right. Because if they do, they'll get in trouble. Yeah. And there are stories of big brothers who trick their non-striking into planning to run away together, only to be rewarded when they rat out that kid. Whoo hoo! And get them caught.

Yeah, that's what I would think is there's so much treachery going on. Like if someone else is in trouble and you're not in trouble. So, yeah.

Don't just anyone the entire setup is better you than me, which so it's essentially like a children's version of the Stanford prison experiment. But that that never stops. Oh, it's really a nightmare. So we'll just go. Here's a typical day at the school. The students are woken up at eight a.m. They have to bathe and get dressed, clean their rooms, undergo an inspection, and then they spend the rest of the day doing odd jobs, menial jobs and forced labor around campus meal times average from five to eight minutes long.

Sometimes they're cut down to one to four minutes. Eating outside of meal times is will get you a punishment. So they basically eat as fast as they can and hope that no one gets in trouble while they're eating. Because if there's bad enough trouble, they call general meeting. And that means everyone has to get up and run into this other room. And they so it's a let me explain let me explain this to you. It's so crazy. Yeah.

But before I'll just say for the rest, if that doesn't happen, then they do their manual labor all day. Then from seven p.m. to 11:00 p.m. they have school now. School has no teachers, there's no curriculum. They're never tested on anything. You basically go into a room, you take a book and you copy out of it for four hours after a full day of manual labor, hard core manual labor. And then you give yourself grades and basically.

This is a sleep deprivation tactic. They're underfed and they're they're not sleeping, which makes it easier for them to be broken mentally and then retrained, quote unquote, into better people. So after school ends at 11 o'clock, the students are sent to bed in military style group barracks. And there are guards in their rooms called night owls. They stand in the rooms and also out in the hallways, making sure everyone's asleep, that no one's breaking rules basically just and that no one's trying to escape in the daytime.

Now, night owls are called expediters, and this is the thing I'm talking about, where the kids are used against each other. So expediters are students. They're posted in every room and every hallway around the school, and they carry clipboards with notebooks on them and they write down every, quote unquote, guilt that they see or suspect a student of doing so. Guilt is when you break the rules. If the expediter doesn't have enough infractions written down about his classmates in his notebook, at the end of the day, they are severely punished.

So the setup is they have to accuse and attack their their students so that they don't get it. Just like you are saying, this is some fucking straight up Nazi youth shit right here. It's horrifying when someone's caught violating one of the rules. That's called a guilt. I said that a guilt is punished with an L.E. that stands for learning experience that can range from grunt work. Like I'm saying, scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush or urinals with a toothbrush to any to something more severe, like time in a jacket, or they get sent to what's called the corner.

That's the school's name for solitary confinement. And some students sent to the corner are left there for days, weeks, even months.

No children in solitary confinement, in solitary confinement and sometimes in straitjackets. Yeah.

Oh, so fucking hard. It's like and also it's like rebellious kids in the seventies, which basically meant you smoked pot. You know, it's like not even like you're dangerous or anything to other people. Correct.

The and it was a it was a kind of a whiplash thing from they say from the the cultural rebellion, the sixties of the late sixties, where all of a sudden it was like, did your kid go become a hippie and start smoking pot will end that now. And this is the way we're going to solve that for. Yeah. So a lot of those people, those parents that were watching the Cultural Revolution of the late 60s happen and freaking out were like, I have to like nip this in the bud now and then just go trust this school that they never go to themselves and never find out if it's properly accredited or because they know that it's a lot of times you're like you're saying these kids are kind of the extreme versions where they already got sent to fancy boarding school.

Now they need something that's actually going to work.

So having gone to rehab before myself, I'm recognizing a few things. But man, that was a fucking cakewalk compared to this. And then my mom went through this. There is this like movement in the nineties or eighties called Tough Love that everyone got. That was eighties. Remember that? So my mom joined that tough love or it was like it basically was like be like a fucking disciplinarian, you know, military person to your parent, to your children, and they'll behave.

I think that theory may work if you're starting young and that's you're consistently that way. But I don't think you can go in the middle. I don't know. I mean, like maybe there's people who are like, tough love save my life. But it doesn't seem if you if you're suddenly pulling this out. Yeah, it's worrisome to me. I mean, I get the idea of, like, having had relatives with drug problems and stuff that idea that you have to stop enabling.

Yeah. The difference between not enabling and cutting off entirely. And, you know, it's tough. I mean, I don't I don't know. I mean, if it was effective, people would still be talking about it and doing it right. It would be like, oh, this was the really good, healthy way to solve these problems. But I think that idea and this was, you know, when my mom started working in hospitals in the sixties, she worked at a place called Langley Porter in San Francisco.

And they had a psych ward that that parents and this is earlier, you know, sixty five and on. I believe parents would send their kids if they caught them smoking pot, would send them to a mental hospital. My mom saw it all the time and there were kids mixed in there with people who really did have serious mental illnesses. And some of them were just like, yeah, I'm just kind of the rebel that like, this is my solution.

She saw that a lot and said it was really horrifying. So it was a time where, like, there were desperate people. Trying to do the right thing sometimes. Then there was some some people who are just like here, fine, just say this will work or try this. OK, so the most thing that happened a lot at this school that that was actually kind of featured. It was a thing called a general meeting. So this was when a kid needed to be punished.

A general meeting is called. All the kids in the school are are required to run to one hall and I'll be there together. A broomstick is laid down on the ground in front of the kid that's being punished, separating him from the rest of the group.

And then all the other kids are expected to run up to the broomstick. You're not allowed to go past it and scream the worst things you can think of screaming at this kid about what a fucking loser they are and they're fucking asshole. And you're doing whatever they can do. They can say and scream anything they want. But the kids who are running up to the broomstick to yell at the kid being punished if they don't do it with enough enthusiasm, angrily enough, you know, whatever, they'll get punished.

So it's your chance to basically prove you're doing what everybody wants you to do by attacking the other kids.

This is hitting me really hard. How can I ask you this? How old what's the age range of kids?

12 to 18 is the age 12. That's Micah, my fucking nephew. Like it's Norra. It's it's all right. And your high to high school. Here's the problem is you the general meeting sound terrible. There's a worse thing, and that's called the ring. So if the administration sees that you get punished at a general meeting for breaking the rules being bad, but they think that you didn't suffer enough or that you didn't get it or that you need more punishment, the student is sent to the ring.

They're forced to put on boxing gloves and fight their fellow students one after the other with no breaks. So they have to box. Yeah, they box somebody that, you know, and then that kid gets taken out and another one gets put in and the kid basically just it's it's student on student violence. And this kid just gets the shit beaten out of them, basically. Yeah. Extreme public physical abuse. It's incredibly damaging physically, emotionally, mentally.

And in one case, it was fatal.

When Phil Williams was just nine years old, his father beat his mother with a pipe and leaves her in a vegetative state. So his father goes to prison and Phil and his sister are placed in foster care. Phil begins to experience fits of rage, and by the time he's 15, he's deemed a problem child and he's sent to a law school. Once he's at the school, he acts up even more, mouthing off to staff and being uncooperative in their system.

So on December twenty seventh, nineteen eighty two, Phil is forced to enter the ring. The kids take turns mercilessly beating Phil and his injuries are so severe that he ends up dead. The Illinois administrators inform Phil's family that his cause of death was, quote, a brain aneurysm. No charges are filed. Part of the reason these abuses went unreported for so long and these stories didn't get out for so long was that the kids were entirely cut off from their families or anyone that could help them.

They also many of them had been sent there by their families. And they were told repeatedly, you know, your family is the one that wants you here. Give it up. They're not there. There's nowhere to go back to type of verbal abuse.

When they finally would move up in the pecking order and earn the privilege of getting to communicate with their family, they were forced to send an apology letter saying that they were bad and to say and that this school was teaching them to be better people. And if you moved up in the ranks again, you might even get a phone call. But again, both types of those communications were heavily monitored by expediters and administration. So any complaints, crying criticism of the school?

The letter would be thrown away, the phone call would be disconnected, and that student, of course, would be punished. So there were a few kids who did actually escape this school, even though they were way the fuck out in the middle of the nowhere. So, for example, in nineteen seventy nine, a sixteen year old boy slips past the guards in the middle of the night and he runs fifteen miles through the woods. He finally finds refuge in an apartment complex, but he is found by police officer Lieutenant Ashburn, who knows that he's required to return the student back to L.A. But when he sees the bruises on the boy's body and sees the fear in his eyes, he decides instead to take him to a truck stop so that he can hitchhike home.

Wow. So basically, like, I'm going to help you get out of here, but don't like the. Met each other, I would assume there's another story that's that's that's in these blogs and these different things that I was reading that I'm just remembering from a person writing it out. And it's basically a kid earns the privilege to call home. And while he's talking to his mother, his mother hears how robotic his voice is, saying, I'm sorry, I'm bad.

This school is good type of thing. And she knows something is wrong. So she convinces her husband to drive up to the school. They make a surprise visit and say, I want to see my son. Right now. They're shocked at the the state of the school that it's not some beautiful place, that they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on, that it's like this really kind of shady, weird place in the middle of the woods. And then when their son is brought in, of course, the boy knows and is told repeatedly, don't you fucking say a word, because when they leave, you're done for and they don't want you anyway.

So just say the party line and you'll be OK. Well, he they bring the boy in and again, he's there saying to his mom, it's all great. He's just like basically trying not to get the shit beat them. And then he he they tell him, say, OK, that's it, say goodbye. And he goes back and goes back to his chores going, that was my one chance to fucking get out of here and I can't get out of here.

And he's so upset and he can't be upset. He can't cry, he can't do anything. And all of a sudden administrators come in and yank him out and pull them outside and fuck and throw him into his parents car. His mom, after they had that meeting, his mom was like, I don't know what the fuck's going on here, but give me my son right now or I'll call the police and he fucking pickup. He got pulled out of there.

But there were students that were not so lucky. And this is this was a turning point. In March of nineteen ninety three, seventeen year old Dawn Marie Birnbaum manages to run away from Elan School and she makes it all the way to Pennsylvania. And there on March twenty, first she hitches a ride with a trucker named James Robert Cruise, who rapes and strangles her and leaves her body in a snowbank on the side of the highway. No, he's caught five months later after the FBI traces his trucking route and links him not just to Don Birnbaum murder, but the murder of eight other victims.

So she essentially escaped and then got caught by a fucking serial killer.

But when Dawn Birnbaum escape and murder, when that story hits the press, people start to seriously question what the fuck is going on at this school, because if these tactics are so effective, why are kids risking their lives to get away? Holy shit. So the stories of horrific conditions all along prompt investigations of abuse allegations to Maine authorities. In nineteen seventy five, Illinois state officials pull eleven kids out of the school alleging abuse in nineteen seventy nine. A district in Massachusetts bans sending kids to this school because of the mistreatment that they keep hearing about.

But what they find out is none of the practices at this school are technically illegal. So no criminal charges can ever be filed. And often the accusations are discredited because the people who are making them are, quote unquote, troubled teens. They're known liars. They're cheaters, they're criminals. They're girls that got pregnant and ran away. And their parents are sending them to, like, turn turn our life around. So they're it's the ultimate trap for powerless, voiceless teenagers.

So also, there's a lot of them that may have in in modern times been diagnosed with mental disorders, autism.

Even so, they're actually not built to follow directions in this militaristic way and can express what's happening to them either in that kind of every man for himself way. They're just constantly victims. They're just constantly fucking up.

Hi, I'm Alvin, and I'm Frank, and we host a podcast called Affirmative Murder, it's a play on affirmative action. Get it? No, that's why comedy subjective. Each week we talk to two crime stories involving people in marginalized communities. That's right, Frank. John Wayne Gacy Monch names Blayse at Affirmative Mierda. We like to focus on the darker side of true crime. Pun intended. Catch us every Monday for some true crime with a dash of comedy and you can find affirmative murder or any of your favorite podcast apps.

One, two, three. I mean, shit. What the hell? Gregorio's. So Joe Ritchie runs to the press after Don Birnbaum escape and murder, he runs to the press to try to balance back out their reputation at that school. He convinces several newspapers to write up glowing reviews, highlight the success rate and feature positive statements from psychiatrists. That works for a little while, but in nineteen ninety one, Joe can see the writing on the wall.

It's still going on in nineteen ninety one. Last we left off it was like seventy nine. Yeah. Notes keeps on going on tonight.

There's one and passed back. It's ok so ok. But here's how we bring the Martha Moxley case back is OK because in nineteen ninety one private investigators reopen a seemingly unrelated cold case from Greenwich, Connecticut, which is the murder of Martha Moxley that had been basically untouched for 16 years until William Kennedy Smith is tried for a completely separate rape case. Right. And then even though he's acquitted of that rape case, a rumor starts that he was at the Skakel house on the night of Martha Moxley murder.

And that rumor and the fervor with which people want that tracked down basically a private investigation firm called the Sutton Associates start digging back into the deep into the evidence of the case. And they find that although William Kennedy Smith was, in fact, not at that house on the night of the murder, that both Thomas and Michael Skakel stories have changed several times over the years. So this the Moxley case gets more and more attention and there's more and more pressure to have it solved until finally on January 9th, 2000, Michael Skakel is arrested for the murder of Martha Moxley.

He was 15 at the time of the murder. A judge decides he'll be tried as an adult. The backbone of the case against him comes from testimonies of former classmates at Elan School.

Oh, I fucking remember that. That's crazy. Yes, right. OK, so one former, because I think when I remember this case and kind of seeing bits and pieces here and there, you're just thinking it's people that went to school with him that heard him talk about it at a boarding school, a random boarding school, of course. Right. Everyone's talking about whatever. Yeah, right. So what actually is happening is a former student testifies, Michael bragged to the other kids that he assaulted and killed Martha Moxley, but that he was, quote, going to get away with murder because he's, quote, a Kennedy.

More students come forward about Michael's time at Illan. The public hears more and more details about just how horrible conditions at the school really were. Because Michael's case is so high profile, the bad press for the Elan School is more than Joe Ritchie can handle. And all of this is coming up at right at the dawn of the Internet age, where information is being shared faster and more like it. You know, in bulk, basically, instead of just one story coming out, one person talking to one newspaper, and then I think a local newspaper.

So only those people see it. It's now you can read it from all over the fucking country. Yeah.

In an attempt to steer attention away from these things happening at Elan School, Joe actually comes to Michael Skakel defense telling them that he had never confessed to murdering Martha while he was at Ellen, that that was an absurd rumor. But to the voices of Ellen, survivors drown out Joe Richie's attempt to clear his school's name.

How creepy is it that he is going to defend a possible probable murderer to hide his own bad deeds? That's how badly he needs to hide.

Right. So, OK, so Michael Skakel trial begins May 7th, 2002. His defense attorneys use his time at Elan School to gain sympathy with the jury, stating that it was a hellhole. Two of Skakel former classmates from Elan provide testimony describing some of the abuses that they all suffered every day. One of those former classmates, a man named Michael Wiggins, testifies that Michael was thrown into the ring so that kids could beat a confession about of the murder out of him.

Oh, my God. Another former classmate, Sara Peterson, tells the court that Michael was forced to wear a sign that said, quote, Confront me about the murder of Martha Moxley for six weeks. And he was subject to a general meeting where one hundred kids screamed at him about the murder.

So he basically had every single punishment possible at that school, according to his ex classmates.

Just so creepy that like, how did they know about that, about Martha Moxley and him being tied to it? Well, what they're saying in the beginning here, and I'm not sure what the actual timeline is, but they're saying that when he got there that he was bragging to people about it. So he may have not gotten the situation that he was in. He may have had a big brother that he kind of confessed to, then used it against him because that was part of what they did, was kind of got info out of you.

You are also supposed to write down guilt, collateral and and confess your own collateral. That was the thing that they asked for. Yeah. Collateral. Exactly. They asked for it all the time. Collateral not sleeping and not eating at all the same mind control shit that that we are seeing in the video that's happening here. It's standard cult shit how they break you. OK, so on June 7th, 2000 to Michael Skakel is found guilty of Martha Moxley murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

So two years before that, in June of 2000, Joe Ricci is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. And although he did begin chemotherapy six months after his death, six months after his diagnosis, he dies at fifty four years old. So he the Illinois school is left to his second wife, Sharon Terry, and she attempts to repair all the damage that's been done to the school's reputation by eliminating the use of the ring.

But all the other corporal punishments are kept, including the general meetings.

All of that is the Nazis being like, you know, what we're going to stop doing is imprisoning communists, but every bit and that's going to make our reputation are going to fix it. We're going to fix the public image in twenty five, a Reddit forum on the school strategy.

And this is where it comes together. It's a forum that's called I Am a Survivor of a long school. And they in it, the survivors share their stories in gruesome detail, supporting each other as they inform the public in even greater detail about the atrocities that they endured. In 2007, the New York State Education Department, which used to send special education students to Illinois, regular school files, a scathing report of the school. They stopped sending kids there and they withdraw.

Their funding to the school part is just fucking broken.

Yeah, it's all of it's horrible. Soon, enrollment numbers start to dwindle until there's barely any kids left. And finally, the state of Maine that actually renewed their accreditation against the wishes of Maine's residents who are all against it. Vote, vote, vote. Yeah. Finally, the bad press can no longer be ignored. They can't get around it. On April 1st, 2011, the Illinois school is finally closed for good.

It's gone. But the effect on its students caused irreparable damage since nineteen seventy five, at least thirty nine of Illinois students have taken their own lives. For those who survive, the mental trauma made it hard for them to maintain relationships, keep jobs. Some committed violent crimes. To this day, no administrator, no staff member or teachers ever faced any criminal charges or legal protection or legal repercussions for the abuse they took part in at Wolanski.

Where are the fucking grown ups? Right.

It great question even. And there is also a ton of sexual assault allegations against these staff members. Lots of them were not teachers. They were like friends of Jerry Cheese. There's that those are the personal stories. And they're it's horrible. And of course, if there's the abuses of power that are going on in every other way, it is not a surprise to hear that lots of children were raped at the school.

Of course, you're fucking it's like it's like a predator's playground. It's just that's. Oh, my God. It's it's really horrifying. So even worse, the business of adolescent abuse under the guise of rehabilitation still goes on to this day. Schools for juvenile delinquents or otherwise troubled kids are not often regulated, leaving the kids who need love and understanding the most subjected to physical and mental abuse that skirts the line of legality. For example, in 2006, a 14 year old boy named Martin Lee Anderson died at a similar behavioral school in Florida after sustaining beatings being made to breathe ammonia and forced to run in circles and hundred degree heat.

Six of the school's administrators were charged with neglect, negligent homicide, but they were all acquitted. So it continues to this day because it is this line of what is legal and what is allowed and what isn't.

And the parent and the parents, the fucking the guardians of these children are basically saying do what needs to be done. So they're kind of. Complicit, complicit, well, complicit in their will, and they're trusting that like the pamphlet is the full story as opposed to I mean, I bet it happens less these days because you can go online and actually look people's names up and see what comes up there. And hopefully there are people that do that.

But I think the thing the real problem is the kids who don't have anybody on their side doing that for them.

There's tons of kids like the idea that kids in the foster care system are being sent. Places like this, there's no one to call home to. I mean, that is so egregious and it's like the ultimate manipulation of voiceless people. And in March of twenty sixteen, Maine State Police launched an investigation into the 1982 death of 15 year old Phil Williams at Elan School. But due to insufficient evidence, no criminal charges are ever filed. And that is the nightmare story of the Oakland school.

That was one of the most intense fucking stories on this podcast ever.

Yeah, and I've never heard of it. I feel like I've seen clips from a documentary about, like, tough love like yours, say, schools, where it's like there's pictures to on Suzuki's blogs. But Thorp's blogspot, they have pictures from a documentary. And I don't know if it's the one that's on Amazon Prime or if it's just out there, people walking around wearing big, long signs that say, like, my name is this and I am a minute manipulative and I do this and I have done this.

And it's like this big humiliating thing. There's lots of dunce caps. There's there's lots of just like there's tons of proof that this is the way they they did it. And there's definitely in that TWA's I believe it's 2002 article from The New York Times. There are people who definitely seem to feel very strongly to say, hey, look, you know, some people can't deal with it or, you know, they have that kind of stance. But I think that's that stance of the Gen-X and older where it's abuse is inevitable.

Abuse is your fault. You just have to take it. You need to learn your lesson. Too bad. And it's luckily it's a thing that's changing these days.

But but I also think that there's this idea that they're going to boot camp, which is OK, like some of these kids need discipline. My brother was a fucking wild kid, 18, joined the Marines and is now a fucking amazing father and husband and as a computer programmer.

And he's a great guy. He's you would never, never think that. You'd never even suspect. I mean. Yeah, you would never know. And now he fuckin makes his bed perfectly every morning because he was a Marine. It's like, yeah, it totally changed his life and that can absolutely happen. And tough love works. You're right for some fucking people, but this depravity is not the same fucking thing.

Right, because there have to be people on the inside of setups like that that give a shit and are trained that are there. Yes. That that there has to be there has to be, you know, restrictions in place because that is the ultimate exploitation of people who are. I just think that that's the place where you can fuck around the least and that there should be people. But it's just like the foster care system where tons of people are needed, there's not enough staff, there's not enough oversight, and we don't put enough funding and enough money into helping children who need help the most.

Right?

Totally. Yeah. A hundred percent. Wow. I'm wondering if I have a heavy hitter, too. I'm wondering if maybe I should go next week. And you take this shit where we're almost at two, I know that was incredible. I'm totally fine doing that. I'm fine with that. And that was amazing. I want at one point to stop and be like, take your fucking time, because I don't think I'm going to go this week, never like on a roll.

So I don't want to say that was because I was I was like, I get this done, so let's do it. Good. That was so good. That was so powerful. Mine is it is a stand alone episode, the big deal. So I think the hell yes, I'm in a party, so I'm going to party till between now and then. Did you I didn't want to mention this because it's so ridiculous, but did you see Paris Hilton just put out an interview?

Yes. And actually, you know, let's talk about this for one sec, OK? I didn't want to make it about Paris Hilton, first and foremost. Yes. But I do think it's really impressive because recently there was a story that came out, if you don't mind me commandeering this point, please. Just made, please. Paris Hilton just started talking about she went to a boarding school in Utah that was very abusive. And there were already a couple people talking about it.

And then they were being accused of being liars or whatever. And Paris Hilton came. Right. And it was like, oh, no, no, this is real. And they're all like together it's supporting it and talking about how they were totally abused at this boarding school. I mean, I believe it. And it's so sad because there's just like wanting you to be like, oh, poor little rich girl, you know, had to clean toilets or whatever.

But, you know, there was actual abuse and actual sexual abuse and sexual abuse. There was nobody who would believe you because they told your parents that you are a liar and are going to try to get out of this. And you complain on the phone and they'd say, you need you know, we need to have tough love and not let her come back, you know?

So there's no there was. It's just you have no you have no, I'm not authority. You have no autonomy. You have no rights as a as a young person. And you it's the thing of, oh, you broke a trust, therefore you're just thrown to the wind. Right. It's that idea. And I think there are definitely definitely people like my sister who are in that are teachers who work long and hard at being teachers, who care about kids who are quote unquote problem teens or that work really hard and like, say, an Outward Bound style program, like, fine, we'll take you out of your environment.

We're going to get you to, like, wash dishes and get involved. And we were not going to take your shit and we're not going to spoil your night, ignore you. We're going to care about you into whatever. That definitely is a real thing.

That's what I had. Yeah, that's what I got. Which is great. Yeah. Yeah. Which is meaningful. Yeah. But then there are these cases where when it goes the other way and it's put into the hands of people who don't care about kids or their futures. Oh it's the ugliest thing. And why isn't it regulated.

Why, why isn't it regulated.

Because there's enough money to be thrown around. That's fucking why. It's always, it's always the money. It's bad, bad, bad as chases. OK, but you know what's good? What? I don't know.

We're going to have to and find out. Don't you think we probably should let the people tell us.

This is from chulo flow c h ello. Underline underscore fellow w first chair trumpet at my university. Oh I play trumpet, which is typically a male dominated instrument. So I'm used to having a bunch of guys in my section and have had mostly male principal players in all of the ensembles I've been in. We do auditions for seating each semester at my university and this semester I won first chair principal in the top ensemble at my university. This is a big deal because the last time there was a female first chair trumpet player, it was it was twenty fifteen and I was still in high school.

I've wanted to be the top chair for so long now, but I always was afraid to say it out loud for fear that I would get made fun of or laughed at. Um, I worked my ass off during quarantine and took that time to shed, which means practicing hard core. And it definitely played off. Sorry, it definitely paid off. I still feel imposter syndrome during rehearsals, but I'm working through it and gradually becoming more confident. The best part is that I get to play one of the best known trumpet solos with that ensemble this semester, which is promenade from pictures at an exhibition by a Mussorgsky.

Yeah, my favorite songs. So that's my favorite team.

All my fellow female brass musicians keypad you sorry I love. Keep your hard work pays off even if it doesn't feel like it.

That's so left field and beautiful and hell yes.

And there are other younger girls looking at you, watching you. And so if you have imposter syndrome just fucking you're doing it for them. Also know that every other. Person in your section in your school in the world has imposter syndrome. People start there's a weird thing right now that it's like it's very female imposters. Sorry, everybody has it. It's just dudes don't talk about their feelings and they don't talk about stuff. And that's it. It's a natural reaction.

When your fear gets triggered, it makes you try to go. It tries to make you go home. So imposter syndrome is just one of the many ways that it tries to convince you that you shouldn't be there and shouldn't risk. And all you have to do, like my therapist said, is be braver than you are scared and just work toward that and you're already doing it.

Low flow to be as beautiful as an ex cello player. I fucking hi5 you as a flute player who wanted to be a trumpet player. My heart is deeply touched. So awesome. I can join USCA band. OK, this is from Blue State Girl on Instagram. I've been thinking about my fucking right now for a few months. In twenty sixteen I had a miscarriage with my first pregnancy and felt like I would never get over it. I was so broken from it I didn't even try to get pregnant again.

Last year my friend and I at work began praying for me to get pregnant, but my anxiety was still in the way. You talk about mental health so often and thanks to that and my friend encouraging me, I finally decided to not only get medicine, but to try therapy again. Having had bad experiences in the past, my new therapist turned out to be amazing. A month after starting therapy, I got pregnant and in June, at the age of forty one, my miracle baby was born perfect and healthy.

He's been the biggest joy of my life and is the one good thing Twenty Twenty has given me. Yeah, congratulations.

Wow, that's quite a journey. Lustick girl let's sing. Let's take her out. I love you did it. And she's like fucking stories and and it's so important to talk about your miscarriage. Yeah. It's so normal and it but it feels so personal and private but yeah.

There's so many women out there. Yeah.

There's so many women and they're now you know now blue state girl knows and a lot of other people going through experiences that are on par emotionally with that know that you can take a hit, you can get knocked all the way down, you can not want to stand back up. And then eventually you can want to stand back up, you can stand back up and you can try again with them. That is life. That's life resilience. And but if you get knocked down and you don't want to get back up for four years, that's fine.

Yeah, it's totally fine. I love that. And you can come back and then you can have a little tiny baby.

Hello, June baby.

A little a little baby that has that you have to cover their fingernails because they'll cut their own clothes to put a man on their will little their little paws.

Sometimes they have weird little scabby stuff on their forehead that says they're new to the air. They're used to being in the fluid and their nails get so long, so long in their new parents are scared to trim them to do it while they're sleeping.

Those both of those, I think, encompass the full range of female experience, a totally brass instruments, imposter syndrome, miscarriages, having a baby at forty one, you know, appreciating that, but not forgetting the others and encompassing your life and the quarantine. Amen. Amen. Love it.

Thank you all so much for participating with us. Thank you guys.

This is what a what a great outlet that we all have in this podcast. And I am so fucking grateful for it. I've been thinking a lot lately about the people we've met at Meet and greets in the past because I just everyone smile. Just give myself a little jolt of like it'll we'll get to do it again. But remember the remember the two girls that brought their grandma who was mad she was missing bingo. I mean, like just small details like that of like true joy.

Or just remember, like the group of friends came around the corner wearing shirts that said a thing, but they were all standing in the world order and there's screaming loud and I mean, like the girl who made it meatloaf, cupcakes with mashed potatoes, frosting.

Oh, how many times we stood backstage eating cupcakes before going on stage, like, what am I doing?

I get high on sugar and go out there and scream at each other.

I mean, what a joke. What a I feel like the luckiest lady in my whole brass section of life under are first chair in life.

I was chair of podcasts and you guys voted for us. Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. So. You know, till next week, stay sexy and don't get murdered by Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

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