By all accounts Diane Schuler was the perfect PTA type mom. Anyone who knew Diane always wondered how she found the time to do everything she did. Diane was the main source of income in her family, but she still found the time to be super mom, outdoing herself for all of the holidays, and her children; Bryan (5) and Erin (2) never had so much as a hair out of place.
So, what happened on July 26th of 2009, when Diane drove directly into oncoming traffic for 1.7 miles with her 2 children in the car, as well as her brothers 3 small children? What would the toxicology show? It would go against everything, that those close to her thought that they knew. My main source for this episode is the HBO documentary "There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane". And, WHAT was wrong with Aunt Diane?
If you’re interested in receiving bonus episodes, early release dates, an everything scary sticker and ‘thank you’ as well as a shout out on our regular feed! Please join at Patreon//everythingscarypod571
By all accounts Diane Schuler was the perfect PTA type mom. Anyone who knew Diane always wondered how she found the time to do everything she did. Diane was the main source of income in her family, but she still found the time to be super mom, outdoing herself for all of the holidays, and her children; Bryan (5) and Erin (2) never had so much as a hair out of place.
So, what happened on July 26th of 2009, when Diane drove directly into oncoming traffic for 1.7 miles with her 2 children in the car, as well as her brothers 3 small children? What would the toxicology show? It would go against everything, that those close to her thought that they knew. My main source for this episode is the HBO documentary "There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane". And, WHAT was wrong with Aunt Diane?
If you’re interested in receiving bonus episodes, early release dates, an everything scary sticker and ‘thank you’ as well as a shout out on our regular feed! Please join at Patreon//everythingscarypod571
Welcome to Everything Scary. My name is Lynn and I'm here with my co-host local celebrity, sorry, sorry, international celebrity. Thank you, matt McClain.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello.
Speaker 1:Every Tuesday we release a new episode, mostly true crime, but we've also been known to cover a pandemic, a haunting, a super mad, super strong chimpanzee. We'll cover anything and everything scary. Please rate us five stars and join us on Instagram at Everything Scary Pod. Here we go.
Speaker 2:Hi, hey, what's up? Yeah, globals are coming in, I think so Nice. Producer Lynn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right Okay let me just put my cursor over top to make sure we're still All right. All right Things are happening.
Speaker 2:So I saw that you posted on social media that we have hit a pretty big milestone.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So let us hear that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we finally. Well, now we're surpassed, but yeah, we hit 100,000 downloads that now is a download, because I don't download unless I'm flying.
Speaker 2:I don't download podcasts. Right, I just listen to them, Right? So if I'm in the only podcast that Everything Scary I listen to is when you do this the solo ones. But if I listen, does that count as a download? Is download just a term, or do they mean literal? People have hit the button and that is a good question. We're not a honey percentage, we're not a honey on that one.
Speaker 1:But you know, even my mom was proud and she is not super supportive of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, even my mom was proud. She fucking hates us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she hates us. So we just recorded the tale of Zach Bowen and Addy Hall for the Patreon.
Speaker 2:Fucking Just. You want to talk about just a tragic fall around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you did not see that story going where it went.
Speaker 2:No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1:I've been a little jaded by it ever since I read the book. But if you guys want to hear that, we just recorded a new Patreon episode and it was a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I mean, you know what you're getting into when you're doing a story, right?
Speaker 1:I do think you forget halfway through a lot of the times though.
Speaker 2:I would say, yeah, that's a good call, because I'm like, okay, yeah, we're just, you know, we're having fun.
Speaker 1:We're New Orleans Like people are drinking, yeah, but Crazy, so many strippers.
Speaker 1:So many we call them dancers, but that's fine, that's right. Now we're going to go a different route. It's a different way of telling a story than I ever have done it before. It was a documentary that I watched a couple of years ago and it's always stuck with me. It's an HBO documentary and it's called there's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane. I'm going to go through the episode with you. There's going to be some random things that I looked up on the side that weren't in the documentary, but I need to know your theory, and I would love to hear what other people think too because, it is so wild All right, I like it.
Speaker 1:We went for my mom's birthday today and I was telling it to my dad and he was like, wow, like that is really confusing, yeah, so let's go. This one is.
Speaker 2:Happy birthday to your mom, by the way. Thank you. Where did you go? What did you do? We just went to her house.
Speaker 1:It was just we just stopped by, gave her a present. The kids destroyed her house.
Speaker 2:Nice. Yeah, that was that You're like hey, mom, also, we're all kind of hungry, so if you could just whip us up, solve that degree.
Speaker 1:I brought cookies for all of the kids to decorate and I got them at Zayers. They were on clearance because they were Valentine's Day cookies, oh I love that. And they came with icing and all the little beads and stuff to put on, except it was red icing, so it was like Red dye.
Speaker 2:My kids go from.
Speaker 1:They were literally like a frat house, let out at the end of the night, like Jake was just like he was bowl, running into me, like he bent over and just with his head he kept running into my stomach over and over again. I was like please make this stop. But anyways, we're here now, there with my husband.
Speaker 2:That's his problem, that's his problem.
Speaker 1:So we're going to cover this story. I wanted to start off by telling you a bit about like our main character kind of thing. Her name is Diane Shuler. She was born on November 13th of 1972. She was the youngest of four kids, with three older brothers. When Diane was nine, her mother had started an affair with the family neighbor and she decided that she wanted to start a new life with him. Though she was able to maintain some sort of a relationship with her three sons, diane was firm in her stance that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with this woman who was responsible for breaking up her family. In some ways, a lot of people who are close to Diane kind of felt like this event was what kind of shaped her in her adulthood as becoming a mother and whatnot. Because as a mother and a wife, it was well known that if Diane liked you, you knew it, but if she didn't like you, you also knew it.
Speaker 2:Ooh, she's freaky out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Friends would also say that in school Diane was a class clown and that people just loved to be around her, Because if you hung up with Diane, you knew you would be laughing all night.
Speaker 2:Oh nice. I don't know if I've ever heard of a funny Diane.
Speaker 1:Got a load of Diane right have you ever heard someone?
Speaker 2:say you know who really made me laugh last night. Nobody's ever said Diane Barbara.
Speaker 1:So Diane met her husband Daniel at a friend's wedding and the two hit it off. Diane had not really put too much thought into being a relationship before Daniel, and then when they met, this was it for her. She kind of knew that he was her person and he would be her first and only love. They would marry and eight years later they would welcome their first baby, a boy who they named Brian. And three years later they would welcome a little girl who they named Aaron.
Speaker 2:All right, I was a little worried there with the Diane and what was his name.
Speaker 1:His name is Daniel. Oh, you thought they were going to do a D thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a go your way.
Speaker 1:That was like the darling. You don't remember that story. The darling Routier.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, and then they were all Devon Diane.
Speaker 1:You don't remember any of it? There is no do you even know where you are right now?
Speaker 2:No, I do not.
Speaker 1:So the couple had purchased a modest home in West Babylon, New York.
Speaker 2:Wicked name, so biblical.
Speaker 1:So Daniel would say that it had a decent sized backyard. It was big enough for their small family to enjoy. And one common thing that was said about Diane as a mother was people who knew her always said that they didn't know how she found the time for everything. She was the breadwinner of the family, bringing in Jesus.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I dropped my pen. Can I pick it up? Yes, you can Imagine. I was like nah, that's right. You must sit here and listen and not take any notes.
Speaker 1:No pens for you. Yeah, fucked it up once you know you have one chance.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so she was bringing in $100,000.
Speaker 1:She was bringing in $100,000 a year as a director of credit and billing and collections at Cable Vision, Nice. Not that Dan didn't work, he worked in security and he worked overnight. So their schedules were opposite each other. But whenever there was any kind of special event, like she was that mom. You know that goes hard for like Christmas.
Speaker 2:It's a big sale. You're doing the yeah Right.
Speaker 1:Blown up things out on the front yard, like she would always go around telling people like get in the spirit.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's great Friends would say that Brian and Aaron, the two little kids, were always looking their absolute best, like they were meticulously cared for. There wasn't a hair out of place. They would even say that Diane was the perfect PTA mom. No, her kids were five and two, so I'm not totally sure if that's just a way that people used to describe her as the type of mom that she was, or if she was actually on the PTA, or literally on the PTA.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know, but either way she was pretty, you know, tightly wound when it came to certain things, I noticed you haven't signed up for homeroom mom yet, yep.
Speaker 1:Can you get you signed?
Speaker 2:up there.
Speaker 1:So you know she loved being this over the top like boystress mom, doing all the things that she did. She never took a day. So those close to Diane would state in the documentary that well, some parents might, you know, choose to have a drink or two and then drive with their kids in the car. Diane would have been that first person to chastise Like even one drink, you know what I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:She would tell that person, like you know you shouldn't be doing that with your car. Like she was very vocal about her opinions and her opinions where, if you have precious cargo, don't do it at all, Because there's a real Diane.
Speaker 2:that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1:So Diane was known to have a very strong opinion and if she felt like you were in the wrong, she was not against vocalizing that opinion, which would make the horrific events of what took place on Sunday, july 26th of 2009, that much more harder to comprehend. For the third summer in a row, diane and Dan had taken their children to Hunter Lake Campground in Parksville, new York, for just some nice relaxing time together at a camp and get away from the hustle and bustle, and they also had their three nieces join them, as they had the year before, and they had had a great time. Their nieces were eight year old Emma, seven year old Allie and five year old Kate. Those were Diane's brother Warren and his wife Jackie's children Gotcha. On that morning, dan had woken up first and took the dog out. He then started the coffee and he woke up his wife, diane, and they began to clean up the campsite and get ready to leave.
Speaker 1:The owner of the campsite is named Anne Scott and she actually recalls seeing the family leave that morning. So Diane was in his truck with his dog and Diane was in a 2003 Maroon Ford Aero Star minivan Nice that she had borrowed from her brother in order to transport all of the children. Anne recalled hearing the children in the back of the car screaming and laughing like happily, and she poked her head in to ask if they all had a good time, to which they all responded that they had and they couldn't wait to return. The night before, on Saturday, diane had made all five children pose together on a giant rock. I will post that picture to our Instagram because it really is like. It's one of those ones like, as a mom, you're like nailed it, they're all looking at the camera.
Speaker 2:Standard photo yeah.
Speaker 1:On the rock right before somebody fell and cried. So, as planned, after leaving the campground, diane soon made a stop at McDonald's at 9.56 am, where they had gone inside to eat something and they were. The employees at the store were later interviewed, including the one that had served them, and they said that nothing seemed off. Diane showed no signs of being off or being intoxicated. They ate and they got back on track to go home.
Speaker 1:A short while later, at 10.46 am in Liberty, new York, diane pulled into a Sonoco gas station. She pulled right up to the pump, did not get gas. She instead went inside and it was later determined that she had asked the worker if they had any over the counter pain medication. They told her that they didn't and she went back out to the van and they pulled off. This will turn out to be very important. Okay, what I should mention is that we see her on the security footage make her way in, talk to the employee and leave. There's no indication from this video that she is struggling with walking or anything. Really, she doesn't look hammered.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:And then employee also said that she seemed perfectly fine. At 11.37 am Diane called the mother to the three girls that were in the car. She had told her that they hid a bit of traffic and that they would be a little bit later than originally anticipated. But the girls should be back in time to make it to their play practice. So the girls were starring in a play that they would be performing. Okay, diane even mentioned to Jackie to get her two tickets to attend the play. She said that Erin, her little girl, would sit on her lap. Daniel, her husband, would be working, so she would only need seats for her and her little guy, brian. So at this time too she was clearly thinking and thinking ahead as well.
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Speaker 1:So what happened then? At 12pm, which is only 23 minutes after she made that call, the police now said they were seeing Diane's vehicle and it was driving very quickly and tailing cars, flashing its lights, honking its horn.
Speaker 1:Get out of the way. Yeah, it was trying to get other vehicles to move out of its way and one of the witnesses said that she was moving in and out of lanes but it wasn't swerving. It was like she was moving in and out with precision, like calculated to get up and move spots Exactly. Yeah, so she wasn't swerving, she was moving in and out of the lanes with precision. And when they looked to see who was driving, it was Diane, but it wasn't like she was like drunkenly dozing. She wasn't distracted by her phone or the radio or even the kids. She had her hands at 10 and two and she was glaring at the road ahead of her.
Speaker 2:In the zone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but she seemed to have zero consideration for the cars around her. At one point she even moved so quickly from the right lane to the center lane that it caused the vehicle that she had cut off to swerve, narrowly, avoiding hitting her. And this same witness said that she aggressively changed lanes and you could see the heads of the children in the back of the van sway.
Speaker 2:She's pulling into the lane.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Other witnesses said that she was cutting them off using the shoulder. She was going up along the shoulder to cut people off, so what could have so drastically changed in such a short period of time? As they were approaching a roadside rest stop? A different witness said that Diane took the exit as well as them but instead of heading all the way to like where the gas and the food and everything is, she kind of veered off to where the truck stop is, and they said that when they looked they noticed that she had gotten out and she had her hands on her knees and looked as though she was getting violently sick.
Speaker 2:Painting oh okay, I get you. So you're standing here is like kind of bending over, throwing up.
Speaker 1:So you know they kept driving. They were going to go for food and gas and they couldn't say for sure that she was getting sick, but that was the stance that she took when she got out. At 12.30 pm the same witness left the rest stop and looked over to the truck stop to see if she was still there, and she was not. So at 12.55, it was determined that Diane, or someone who had her phone, had tried to make a call out of her phone, but it dialed the wrong number.
Speaker 2:Who.
Speaker 1:There was a two and a half minute long call to Jackie Hance, so the girl's mother, where she said that Diane was now standing strange. This call is ended after two and a half minutes and Diane's brother the father of the girls called back. Diane said that her vision was foggy and she felt disoriented. Warren said that she did not sound at all like herself and that he could hear all the kids crying in the background.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Jesus and at some point in the call Diane called him by her husband's name. He would tell her to stay where she was and he would come to her. His oldest daughter, emma, would get on the phone and she sounded very scared and that's where the title of the documentary came from, because Emma would say to her parents there's something wrong with Aunt Diane. She would say that Aunt Diane can't see and that her head hurts. Warren told Emma to read him a sign so that he could figure out where they were.
Speaker 2:And Emma, you could think him.
Speaker 1:It was a scary town, so they're on the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Speaker 2:Oh shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I asked around. I'm sure I'll get an answer here. It's a toll bridge, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, new York, I think.
Speaker 1:So I did talk to a few people from New York and, as of, I think, 2016, it's gone toll free. They do the 407 here.
Speaker 2:They scan your plate. Yeah, an easy pass, or whatever, or you have your little transponder thingy.
Speaker 1:But before that. So this is 2009,. I'm not sure. So I don't know if she actually had to speak with somebody. I'm sure it would have come up in the documentary if she had spoken with somebody.
Speaker 2:Now I know that back in the day like I've seen unmanned toll booths where you throw your change into the basket, it counts it and it lifts the arm up. So, maybe it was kind of like half and half, like maybe she did the cash in it, but are you with that alert?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like cash in, or is it just like muscle memory?
Speaker 1:almost.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's a good point, but at one, 10 PM, another three missed out calls would be made from Diane's phone, and then at one, 15, her brother would try again to reach his sister and his children, but this would go to voicemail. So after that last phone call where Emma spoke to her father, diane's cell phone was then left on the side of the Tappan Zee bridge right after they had went through the toll. A stranger would find it sitting on the guide rail, which obviously meant that all communications between the outside world and anyone in the van had ceased, and also, because the cell phone was now left behind and the van was a 2003 model, they were unaware of the next steps that she made. They did find it strange that she had gotten off the highway at all, because Diane had made this trip many times and it was not typical of her to deviate from the regular route that she would have taken. However, for whatever reason, on this day she did, and that was when she entered the Tetonic Parkway, and she entered by getting onto the exit ramp.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, geez. Yeah you can't do that.
Speaker 1:Diane proceeded to drive 1.7 miles or 2.7 kilometers, going 70 miles per hour or 113 kilometers per hour.
Speaker 2:In the wrong way. In the wrong direction.
Speaker 1:Oh wow. And she was headed south in the north band lane, naturally after speaking with Diane and Emma Warren was beside himself, but he thought Diane was experiencing maybe some kind of a medical episode. So he called Diane's husband, who got in his car and began looking for his wife and the car full of kids. Meanwhile, 911 was called and they were trying to trace Diane's cell phone, which of course didn't render any helpful results. At around 1.30 pm, calls started flooding into 911 with reports of a red van in the fast lane going the wrong way in traffic. And then, devastatingly, at 1.35, the inevitable call came in saying that there had been a terrible accident and that there were multiple fatalities.
Speaker 1:Diane's van had hit a Chevrolet trailblazer that was carrying three men head on. That caused the trailblazer to go into the middle lane, hitting a red vehicle. In the red vehicle the passengers survived. However, the three men in the trailblazer, who were 81 year old Michael Bostardi, his 49 year old son, guy Bostardi, and their family friend, 74 year old Dan Longo, were all sadly killed on impact. They were on their way to Guy's sister's home for a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. Upon impact, the van holding Diane and the children became airborne, rotating in the air and landing in the grassy median where the van started fire. Witnesses to the accident ran over to help and when they got there, one of them smashed the passenger window to reach in and unlock the door. Diane fell out of the van at their feet.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:And then they had to go in and find the children. There was a large smashed bottle of absolute vodka in the wheel. Well of the, or not the wheel, well the floor of the driver.
Speaker 1:The two men opened the door and they said that they had to step over her body to get to the children out of the burning vehicle. The kids were stacked one on top of the other and these two men one worked on getting the children out and was handing them to the other men. When paramedics arrived, they found five year old Brian. He was underneath all the children and he seemed to be injured badly, but he was awake and he was crying, so he was the first to be taken into the ambulance. Another one of Warren and Jackie's daughters would survive the initial crash but would sadly succumb to her injuries later on. This would be the worst car accident on the Tautonic Parkway since 1934, when a bus crashed and killed 20 people. Wow, of course traffic was at a standstill and there were still people trying to take pictures of the vehicle, and one of the first responders would say that they put up sheets to try and preserve their dignity and that that was all that they could do for them because quote there was no one left to help.
Speaker 2:I hate people Like taking photos of that like jeez, well, you look at, like even Kobe Bryant's wife, like she just won not just, but like won millions of dollars from like the police department, because they were the police, were taking photos and showing it around. You're kidding.
Speaker 1:Like, yeah, that's disgusting, people suck. You know, normally when it's a chaotic scene like this, there are a bunch of people involved and I try to just keep things as clear and concise as possible. If I start just saying random names of people who are going to be in the story just for a minute or two, it just it's hard to follow.
Speaker 1:So I usually just leave out people's names, but in this case the two men who didn't know each other, from Adam, who came together in that moment and then they just ran towards the vehicle.
Speaker 2:Oh, those were random guys. Oh, I thought they were.
Speaker 1:Didn't know each other, the one guy. So they ran together towards the van that was fully engulfed to try and save these children. Their names were Kevin Martz and Edward Blakey and I think they deserve their names said because they just went against their instinct to do what that's superhero?
Speaker 2:Right, that's legit. That's burning car kids. That's the hallmark of a legitimate hero.
Speaker 1:And that's the Edward. He broke my heart when I because I had to watch it multiple times to like be able to get all the stand. But he said that like he just kept saying to one of the little girls like please wake up, Jesus, please let her wake up. And he said afterwards he just went to the top of the hill and he just broke down crying and then he came out and he tried to save the men that were in the other vehicle but there was no say.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so five days after the funeral, diane's autopsy results would come back and at a press conference on August 4th of 2000. And then on August 4th of 2009,. It would show that Diane had a blood alcohol content of 0.19%.
Speaker 2:Is that drunk?
Speaker 1:0.08 is legal, so think about it this way. So 0.1, it means all of your blood is alcohol. And she had 0.26 in her stomach, so she had not digested another 0.07%. That's almost like.
Speaker 2:Princess Diana's limo driver. It was the same story. There was the footage of him in the hotel and they were like he doesn't look drunk, and then they tested. I think that was it.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing, okay.
Speaker 1:So, little Brian. He survived. He would have broken bones and, due to a head injury, he would have ocular motor nerve palsy which would affect the movement of his right eye, and he would have to do eye exercises, you know, for a really long time. But she was at 0.19. The fluid in her eye would measure at 0.21. And her stomach contents were 0.26. So she hadn't even absorbed all the alcohol. She also had a THC level of 113 nanograms per milliliter.
Speaker 1:So what that means is that she would have had to smoke marijuana 15 minutes to an hour before the accident I messaged you about, because it's 2009,. Do we think that it's smoked? And, yeah, I think that would really be, unless somebody's making weed brandies and she's eating that in the car. Yeah, it's smoked. And medicinal marijuana was not even made legal in New York until 2014. So it couldn't have even been. However, it was obtained, it was obtained illegally. So with a BAC, what Diane had at that stage of inebriation? You would have started to lose understanding, you would start to lose your, you'd have severe motor impairment loss of consciousness, memory loss or blackout, and of course, the consumption of weed would enhance these effects.
Speaker 1:So, considering all these things that I told you about Diane, like who she was as a person, this would seem horribly out of character for her right. Well, her husband, daniel, and her sister-in-law who was Daniel's brother's wife, so not the mother of the children, so Daniel's brother's wife, her name is Jay they both truly believe that not in a million years would Diane drunk and high with the children in the car. It went against everything everyone knew about her. In the documentary, daniel starts off by saying that she never drank and she really didn't even drink to relax. But then, when it's brought up to him that there's a broken bottle of absolute vodka in the car, he kind of backpedals and says like well, diane packed the van like I wasn't aware that it was in there. But, like you know, sometimes down by like the fire this was Jay. Her sister-in-law said sometimes down by the fire, they would have like a pina colada or something, and so they would pack the pina colada's rum. It's not vodka.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right, right, but I mean, that's neither here nor there. Well, I mean, and you know, addicts are wonderful at one thing, and that is lying about their addiction.
Speaker 1:But that's a thing like. What kind of gets me is. It seems like she was fine until she wasn't, though. You know what I mean. Like it got to the point where she could no longer see, she couldn't do anything and, as I mentioned, she's got this big, giant bottle of vodka. These kids aren't going to see her chugging a giant bottle and smoking weed Like I don't.
Speaker 1:I my mom tonight my God bless her Cause I was like, yeah, mom, she had this giant bottle of alcohol in the car and, like she's going to be chugging, she goes. Yeah, it takes a lot of practice to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Amazing Mom. What?
Speaker 1:My dad's like she can do a 40, but a 60.
Speaker 2:That's right. No spring chicken anymore.
Speaker 1:So you know, and then Daniel would say in in this thing that she would never smoke weed, ever, ever. And then it kind of came down to like, well, every now and then, just like roll up, she would like maybe smoke a little bit of weed, but it was like once in a blue moon. So you know, we're not really exactly sure where she stood, Like her blood was frigging a lot of alcohol.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm assuming, when people are saying they didn't realize she was drunk, she wasn't drinking at that time, so then is she slamming it in a really short amount of time.
Speaker 1:I just don't know, I don't know. And so, like her husband is saying, like this is not the legacy we want her to leave, like, so Jay and her husband are like determined they're going to spend thousands of dollars and they're going to get it figured out. There's something medically wrong that went wrong here.
Speaker 2:That's what I thought, Like my whole thing. I was thinking like I think it's diabetes, or if you don't regulate your sugar, you mere symptoms of being drunk.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, if your blood sugar goes low when you're diabetic, I'll tell you a story about my sister, because she's a juvenile diabetic and so when she was in high school and she was like trying to lose weight, so what she was doing was she was eating pickles, because you don't gain any weight from pickles and she was drinking juice. So she would eat pickles and drink juice. So she was trying to regulate her, but she wasn't getting any carbohydrates, she wasn't getting anything that she actually needed.
Speaker 2:Like apple juice or pickle juice.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:You just mean juice. I think juice was sugar and I don't think it was sugar. Yeah, okay, sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:She was a nightmare. To be rude, she smelled like garlic all the time. No, but she. So she fell low and, like you didn't really know, haley was low until it was like, oh, something's really wrong, right. And so she got up one day and, like she was just being a nuisance, like the teacher was like, and she's very timid, like she's very, you know, kept to herself. And the teacher was like Haley, what are you doing? And Haley just walks up she's got this smug look on her face and she walks up to the board and she just starts with the chalk, writes a B list, ball bird. It had no fucking rhyme or reason. She's like she didn't even know. She did it until afterwards. The friend's like, yeah, you made a fucking B list. The friend's classroom, like she does the craziest things, like I wouldn't say it's exactly mimicking a drunk, but like like a slow, like a sloth in a drunk person, like kind of mesh together.
Speaker 3:Yes, the symptoms.
Speaker 1:She came over to my house once and she was supposed to watch my kids and I was like test your blood sugar before I go, like I wanted to make sure she was acting so weird. And then she went to her purse and she's like going to get her monitor. She's like going around in her purse for like 14 minutes. I'm like, what are you doing in your purse over there? She's like, why are you yelling at?
Speaker 2:me. Why are you yelling at me?
Speaker 1:So, yes, it can, but that being said, that it's not going to give you the alcohol.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of booze. That's a lot of booze.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of booze. So over 10 drinks, that's what it was that she was at, and she still had more in her stomach that hadn't been digested. So it was like recent. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Are she hooping it?
Speaker 1:No, no, that do you mean putting it in her bum?
Speaker 2:Well, but checking is the thing no it's not. Yes, it is. They would, yes, and tan with tampons too. You soak vodka. You soak a tampon in vodka, don't you get toxic shock syndrome. I've never done it. Oh, okay, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, so who has done it?
Speaker 2:that you know I don't know, it might be one of those urban myths from high school. Can you call them?
Speaker 1:So you know, Can you call them, get them on the pod right now, please.
Speaker 1:So they didn't want you know their family member to be the one that killed all these people that, like if Diane seriously had some sort of a medical episode, they wanted to figure it out. So they decided to do their own investigation. And not only did this go completely who Diane was when she drank and smoke all this weed, with alcohol levels that were what they were Like. I said it would have been over 10 drinks and she was openly. She must have been openly smoking weed in front of the children, right.
Speaker 2:I would think you would have to be like you can't really. I mean, the smoke is a pretty stinky thing.
Speaker 1:Right, and like wouldn't Emma have mentioned that to her father?
Speaker 2:She's smoking weed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and little Brian, he survived, and they have asked him multiple times like what was going on with your mom, and he was, like mommy just said her head hurt and she couldn't see. So, remember, she did go into Sonoko looking for those pain pills, though. So then they started to wonder, you know, because she'd even spoken with Jackie at 1137. Like, do you think that this the girl's moms, if they thought that there was any chance that she was inebriated to this point, like she would have said something.
Speaker 1:So she didn't think that there was anything wrong with their conversation, and then it was 23 minutes later that she started this insane aggressive driving. So her husband and her sister-in-law yeah, you're slamming that bottle.
Speaker 2:You must have been Right straight up, hooch Wow.
Speaker 1:To me I feel like 23 minutes is like even if she got off the phone and just slammed a bottle right then and there it wouldn't even take, like it would be slowly, gradually starting to feel the effects. But like I don't know, it just seems such a short period of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should do an experiment.
Speaker 1:Fine, let's go Go get the vodka.
Speaker 2:I am sure there's a giant bottle of Kirkland vodka around here somewhere.
Speaker 1:There's no such thing as Kirkland vodka.
Speaker 2:Have you never had Kirkland vodka You're wearing a Kirkland signature sweater right now. Damn right. Got a support for Dame. Is there one down here? No, they don't, that's gone.
Speaker 1:Your parents took one of them. Oh, is this one here?
Speaker 2:No, it's something else, never mind.
Speaker 1:Kirkland vodka.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's huge too. It's like this big and it's. It tastes like what's puff, daddy's Srirac, it's like a triple distilled or something.
Speaker 1:I only drink wine. I don't know anything about vodka.
Speaker 2:Me neither really.
Speaker 1:When I was listening to a different podcast on this case, they were saying that you can't smell vodka. But you can. If you sweat it out, you can smell it.
Speaker 2:You can definitely smell vodka on your breath, I would think so they said that that was the thing.
Speaker 1:Robin Williams, apparently, was a big vodka guy and so he wouldn't drink it, because or he would drink it and then people wouldn't know, because he they couldn't smell it on his breath, but then he would start to sweat when he did like all of his big animated routines, and then they could smell it in his sweat.
Speaker 2:What the yeah? Wow weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So they decided that they were gonna hire this private investigator who continually was asking them for tens of thousands of dollars. He wanted to take all of the autopsy results, have everything retested and make sure everything was correct. You know, that's a pretty fucking important job, like if you're an autopsy person and you, we shouldn't have to retest those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like the enemy, like you're the medical Examiner, like that's a big yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, but when the documentarians of this, the HBO special, they were trying to call this private investigator and he was saying that if they wanted that information, if they wanted those test results that he had had done After he had charged the husband and sister-in-law like, I think, thirty five thousand dollars, he told them that it would be a ballpark of about twenty to twenty five thousand dollars for him to get those results for them.
Speaker 2:And they were like this is a documentary, like it's not yeah, we don't have that kind of money, so I have a turn three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and he was like well, to be perfectly honest, then it's just it's not really worth my time. Like I have clients that walk in and they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a day. So like to me to go back into the archives and find, like these results, like it's not worth my time and I'm thinking like isn't that what their money went towards? Yeah, they have those results yeah right.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but what did they spend money on that? Yeah, like just you having it the peace of mind that you had it, keep it now. So they did bring in Warnersh Spitz, which is he did yeah do you know who that is?
Speaker 2:no friends account. Is your friends account?
Speaker 1:Pathologist friends, but he was when we did the West Memphis three. He was like one of the ones that was remember. We did the West Memphis six.
Speaker 2:Yes, the.
Speaker 3:That was a big one, sad man.
Speaker 1:That was a big one, but he basically confirmed with the autopsy report said and like he tried to be really nice but I Mean they were like it was so funny because they were like because they got her medical records Okay and like one thing first of all I don't think the husband knew Everything about her that he thought he knew about her because like she was getting ambien like the sleeping medication.
Speaker 1:She was getting perspiration for that regularly and he's like, oh, I don't know yet. But then she had an abscess. Which an abscess is? A big fucking deal. It's an infection right yeah, and if you don't get it treated, it's not just gonna go away, like it. There's a lot of things that can happen, like if it breaks off, it can go. You're like I think it's like three times more likely to have a hard episode if you have an abscess. It's not treated, it can break off. It can go to your brain, like mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I did make a list of the different things that it can cause.
Speaker 2:That'll go over to be fun. Another fun list. Time now for everything scary segment. What are we learning about today, lynn?
Speaker 1:But all that to say that he was like maybe if she had a stroke or some sort of an episode, maybe she thought the vodka was water and she just chug, chug, chug, but worse but it was like no, yeah, it's a reach cousin.
Speaker 2:Where's the vodka?
Speaker 1:pot where the pot come from. That's what I was thinking. Oh, maybe yeah, maybe if she saw this bottle and was like oh, I can't see properly because I'm having some sort of a brain episode, Let me chug this water right, but then there's fucking weed in there too.
Speaker 2:So let me like this Harma cigarette. Wait, a second Is this?
Speaker 1:incense. Let me taste it.
Speaker 1:I am feeling groovy, you know it's like the sage, and plus this van oh no so Daniel and Jay would go through the medical records, like I said, and they got all of these things that her husband didn't seem to know, a lot of daughter, and even like the stuff about her mom Leaving the family. Her husband didn't know that like that's kind of odd and her friends knew it. But like he said that, like she would kind of clam up a little bit when the thing about her mom came up. So you just didn't push it anymore.
Speaker 1:But it's like they were together for 13 years. You don't think that, like at some point, you'd be like so, like that, what? Where's mom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the only part of dating that's worthwhile is talking shit about your family. There's somebody that you love and care about right, what else? Is dating about.
Speaker 1:Nothing. Wow, this is awkward turtle. Yeah, like I don't know. Like maybe that abscess was gonna rupture, maybe that's what she had to stop for these pain meds. I.
Speaker 2:Don't know.
Speaker 1:I. I know that if I have and I've had a car full of screaming kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not fucking stopping, unless a limb's about to fall off. Like get me from point A to point B.
Speaker 2:Yes, fucking quick as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean. Like so if she was stopping, I have to think that maybe she was in a pretty great deal of pain. So here's like the things that I kind of went through like how could she have drank that much in such a short period of time? Was she a closeted alcoholic? Like maybe she'd actually just been drinking all day, but it went undetected because she was a seasoned drinker or Opposite.
Speaker 2:Maybe she cuz she doesn't drink. Maybe she didn't drink that much.
Speaker 1:Maybe she didn't consume, I don't think your blood alcohol is gonna lie the is that how it works? No, the effect that it has on you could be Enhanced if you're not used to it, but your blood alcohol is the same regardless.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, so tolerance level does not come into.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, that's, that's a medical measurement.
Speaker 2:So if I which I can't, but let's say I can handle my alcohol, if I have two beers, it's gonna show up and I could be so stone sober but could blow over.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean your height and weight and all that kind of stuff. Go into it too right, like it's not, if it's against you, and then, like an 80 pound woman, an An 80 year old woman, like they're gonna be, your blood alcohol is gonna be different because your body's metabolizing.
Speaker 2:They're 80 pounds and 80 years old really cool and she's drinking I.
Speaker 1:Was actually just thinking of my grandma, cuz it's her birthday.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. And she drinks wine. She's got a game seven pounds in a couple of days.
Speaker 1:So she's 90 and 90, 90 90, 90, those beauty numbers, baby, yeah. So I mean you know it could make sense that she was a seasoned drinker. Her husband didn't know about a lot of stuff about her, so maybe that was just also something. But like I was just, she's a breadwinner, she's fucking making crafts, she's doing all that kind of stuff like oh yeah, super PTA mom super PTA mom.
Speaker 1:So maybe there's that. Maybe he just didn't know as much about her as he thought he did. But Maybe, as she was driving, she began to feel immense pain and decided to like take a swig of alcohol in order to push through the pain. Maybe she'd stop for those meds. But you know, wouldn't this children have seen her drinking this giant bottle like that's one that I can't get past.
Speaker 2:But Maybe she had her McDonald's cup and poured some say we don't know that she was drinking from the bottle directly from the bottle. Yeah, so the cup only ended up by her feet after the accident, so not necessarily was there the whole time she could have. Like you said, they have filled up her cup and just Been taking swigs out of the McDonald's. Yeah.
Speaker 1:My god. But then of course, there's the weed. In order for the weed to be in her, that would have to be premeditated right. Like this isn't something like my tooth just started to hurt. Let me smoke this pot that I'd already purchased. Like it's not kind of like it's in the truck, because they went camping, and like her friends and her husband.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of steps, there's a lot of steps to rolling up a joint and smoking it. Yes, and I know because I'm a huge pot have you ever smoked the joints?
Speaker 1:I've eaten edibles.
Speaker 2:But have you ever smoked a joint?
Speaker 1:Oh, when I was a teenager I did. I threw up a bunch from smoking joints nice. I bet you people loved hanging out with you because I would always bar and you want to hit this? Yeah, sure, remember the one of the last times my girlfriend that I had been friends with my entire life. She came over and we went up to the corner of my backyard and we, like, smoked a joint.
Speaker 1:Then we came back downstairs and I was just lying on the couch and I felt so nauseous and she just kept talking to me and I was like she keeps talking to me, I'm gonna bar your voice, is making any ass, but yeah, so, and then there's kind of what a lot of the witnesses thought was Diane suicidal, and and if she was, there wasn't a single other person in her life that had even the slightest idea about it.
Speaker 1:And like, would she have taken down the children with her? Like that's fucking, that's a whole other level of like Mental illness to make you take down a car full of children. So maybe if she was in that pain and out of a little bit of vodka to a McDonald's cup and then didn't realize it until it was too late and she drank way more than she intended, like Mm-hmm. It just seems to have gone against everything that everyone knew about her as a human being.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I Don't know. I think that I Think sometimes we tend to discount just somebody, just having enough and just snapping really, and just Stress on the levee is too hard. You know, you got to keep it up with the Joneses.
Speaker 1:You're trying to keep up everything and then you just yeah, to me one of the things that's like I'm sure you've tied one off like you've had a good run at some alcohol before right.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, but like and you know I I've never driven under the influence, I don't plan on it, but I would think that you, the drunkest I've ever been to be driving into oncoming traffic and having all those cars and this kid screaming and crying in the back, to have people honking their horns and swirping out of the way. Like aren't you gonna have that like snapback to reality for a quick second at one point and be like holy shit, what the fuck am I doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I don't think I've ever been so drunk that I'm just blindly putting myself completely at risk, Like I've never just walked into traffic.
Speaker 2:And you know there are stories of people that does happen, that are sober, that go into oncoming traffic and it's just. People just get confused sometimes and maybe it was a bunch of factors, maybe it wasn't just one thing that happened to Diane.
Speaker 1:I don't know, man. I just find it to be such a interesting, sad, tragic case. It seemed like, you know, 23 minutes before this all happened she was able to have a coherent, normal conversation and then she killed eight people.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was a calculated plan. That's sick, though really. Yeah, I mean, it could be anything People are fucked.
Speaker 1:There's nothing that's like off limits right now, because it's all so fucking weird.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Anyways, that's kind of.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:It's a really, really scary case.
Speaker 2:What's on HBO? What happened? What is it Something wrong?
Speaker 1:It's called there's Something Wrong with Diane, and you can watch it on YouTube for free.
Speaker 2:Jack Butts yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, for me I can fully go against what her husband and her sister are saying. Right, like they're like there's absolutely no way she would never do this 1000%. I don't fucking know her from the hole in the ground so I can say maybe she would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't know her either, apparently.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but the odd tops. He doesn't lie, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Now I know that if you take Ambien and you stay awake on it, You're again just talking about the effects, though we're talking alcohol and THC in her system.
Speaker 1:Right Now, I will tell you there's a syndrome that's called auto brewery syndrome. It's like a yeast or a bacteria in your system that kind of grow out of control and it ends up fermenting.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so we all have fermenting organisms, but this is a rare condition where it grows out of control and it actually not only do you mimic the symptoms of being drunk, but it does produce an alcohol in your blood system.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have heard of this disease actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's very rare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they burp all the time.
Speaker 1:That's hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just some weird little drunk person burping Burp yeah.
Speaker 2:Cheat date.
Speaker 1:So you know. Then it takes the carbohydrates to come into your body and, of course, as you can imagine, the syndrome goes undiagnosed, right, because it's like you get somebody coming up to you and and you're like oh yeah. Okay, garf.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's like a long played out disease. Played out, I don't mean that word, but I mean it's long drawn out, so like the 23 minutes I mean she would have had that forever.
Speaker 1:And again. Then we still come back to the THC, Like you love. Coming back to the weed, Well, you can't discount it right, Because if it was just one or the other, maybe not even one or the other, but just the alcohol you could be like maybe she did have a stroke, maybe she did have this auto brewery syndrome, maybe this did happen, like who fucking knows. But when you have two different things that don't lie in an autopsy, the end result is probably the same, so now it's just Daniel and Brian.
Speaker 1:When this documentary came out, which was 2011,. Jay, the sister-in-law, was taking care of Brian three to four days a week and weekends.
Speaker 2:Wait.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what. Three to four days a week and weekends, isn't that all of?
Speaker 2:it, isn't it? I'm like, is that not?
Speaker 1:24-70? Am I crazy? Is that it?
Speaker 2:all the time.
Speaker 1:Hold on the math. I'm just gonna do the math real quick here. Yeah, it's pretty much all the time Like I mean. But Jay says that he she also feels right now that Daniel's really mad at Diane she and this was again 12, 13 years ago but she said that he didn't want to have kids. He wanted to have kids. You know, he's here by himself taking care of a kid and it's actually really really fucking sad to watch.
Speaker 2:Pretty self-esteem. It's a really self-esteem thing. It's a really self-esteem thing. The kids are gonna fucking see that that's an awful thing to say. Yeah, but it's an awful thing to think what he'll say.
Speaker 1:And he's so cute too, like now of course he has to wear these little glasses and he has to do these exercises, and he's just so fucking cute, like he really is. And then, like at the end of the, they're just showing them like walking into, like a forest, and like they're so awkward with each other, like the dad kind of goes to grab his hand and then Brian goes to grab his hand. It's like they're not, they don't, I don't know. It was making me really sad and kind of sappy to watch. You know, jay said too that Brian tries to grieve and he'll say that he misses his sister and he misses his mom. And instead of talking to him about it, daniel will be like okay, well, I miss him too. Like I don't know what you want from me.
Speaker 2:Oh, what a piece of shit. It is not a competition, yeah.
Speaker 1:My.
Speaker 2:God, the poor kid yeah.
Speaker 1:So the parents of the three nieces naturally fucking devastated. That was their entire lives. They did take legal action against Dianza State. I didn't find the outcome, but they were suing Daniel. It's just more sadness to add on top of it really In your family fight yeah. One great thing is that Jackie, the mother, did get pregnant again in 2011, and she gave birth to a little girl named Casey.
Speaker 2:Oh nice.
Speaker 1:Who looks so much like her older sisters. It's crazy Really, yeah. And the mom still will leave on social media beautiful heart to this day. Every time one of the girl's birthdays passes. It's just these big, beautiful messages. And they run a foundation called the Emma Allison and Kate Hans Family Foundation. This foundation is designed to enhance self-esteem, increase body positivity, awareness, improve problem solving and help build healthy relationship skills for women and girls of all ages. Wow, that's like everything I know.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. What a fucking organization that is Wow.
Speaker 1:Also, because of this accident, the governor of New York at the time, david Patterson, introduced the Child Passengers Protection Act, which makes it a felony to drive under the influence if there were children under the age of 16 in the car. So it's a felony now, right, which it probably should just be anyway. It's not at all.
Speaker 2:We don't have misdemeanors or felonies here, do we I? Don't think so? I don't think so either. It's just like crime, yeah, crime.
Speaker 1:Crime. So that's the horribly tragic and very confusing story of Diane Shuler and the inspiration for the HBO documentary there's something wrong with Aunt Diane. Wow, bizarre. I know what do you think? Because I was like when I was talking to my parents today about it, I'm like Matt's going to be like nope, she was drunk. Nope, black and white, she had alcohol in her system. She's drunk. Well, she was Well.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think, yo, that's exactly what. I think, yeah, you're 100% correct. I think she was probably a closet alcoholic. You think so right, kept everything. And then, yeah, that's what. And I think that maybe she just snapped, maybe the pressures of life got to her.
Speaker 1:God, I think it would be so hard to be a closet alcoholic, don't you? Hmm, especially doing everything being in people's faces, driving would be like how, how, like when?
Speaker 2:like these functional 24 seven alcoholics, like how do they get anywhere? Like I'm drinking, I am fucking useless. Like I I tried to park my parents golf cart when I was drunk, like in the driveway of the trailer park and I was like 18 turns into a three point turn. I was like all right, you know what, it's not for me.
Speaker 1:That's funny, ok, well, I would love to hear what anybody else has to say, because I can't draw any real conclusions from this story. I don't know. I don't know what to think. Do you think?
Speaker 2:she should have been framed conspiracies or any any of that in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know a lot of people are like I'm going to frame a 36 year old lover coming from camp. And then I'm going to make myself the what is it when you get all of her estate?
Speaker 2:which is not going to work. Yeah, but it's not going to work. You're going to lose to the sister-in-law.
Speaker 1:And you had to spend all that money on booze.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And all those fake autopsy reports.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't really know, and all that change that you may or may not have used for the toll, we don't know yet.
Speaker 1:The problem is, we need to figure this out, folks. Yes, all right, guys, let me know what you think. Okay, bye.