Gilded Trash
Ride shotgun with Comedian Scott Reed and Creator AlannaB as they travel the country in search of ...what? When they figure it out, you'll be the first to know!
Gilded Trash
Perhaps Yinz May Be Able to Help Solve a Mystery
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ever wondered how a new set of microphones and a love for quirky snacks can set the stage for an in-depth exploration of true crime? We kick off this episode with some laughs about our orange Tic Tacs and Grandma Utz chips, leading into a discussion about the staggering popularity of true crime podcasts. With over 24,000 shows dedicated to the genre, we reminisce about our early fascination with "Law and Order" and the rebellious thrill of uncovering dark mysteries. You'll also get a taste of the social media frenzy surrounding series like "Making a Murderer" and "Tiger King," and surprising insights into cities leading the true crime Google search charts.
Curious about how true crime storytelling has evolved over centuries? We dig into its rich history, from the 17th-century pamphlets aimed at the elite to the ballads sung for the common folk, aiming to understand the minds of criminals. Our journey doesn't stop there—we traverse through the golden era of "True Detective" magazines right up to the groundbreaking "Serial" podcast, which sparked our own adventures in murder tourism. Imagine mapping out real-life crime scenes during our travels, adding a unique twist to our explorations.
The conversation takes a serious turn as we address the heavy topics of police corruption, mishandled cases, and the frustrating use of junk science in true crime shows. From the unresolved Denise Johnson case to the systemic issues plaguing law enforcement, we emphasize the dire need for accountability. We also shed light on the eerie unsolved murder of Deanna Horner in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, raising questions about the events leading to her tragic death. To lighten the mood, we tease our upcoming paranormal-themed episode, filled with ghost stories and family traditions just in time for Halloween. Don't miss out on this rollercoaster of an episode that promises intrigue, laughter, and a touch of the supernatural.
Website is live
Send us your weird
All right, let's start it.
Speaker 2Yeah, we're recording. Okay, I like it. These brand new mics.
Speaker 1I know they sound great. Brand new mics. I feel like I want to do like the sweaty ball.
Speaker 2I can't even remember what he says.
Speaker 1I know I should have prepared for that one.
Speaker 2Yeah, I know you hit me with that out of nowhere All right, let's get ready.
Speaker 1We're being serious now.
Speaker 2We are being serious.
Speaker 1Welcome to Gilded Trash Podcast, episode three, tres leches.
Speaker 2Tres leches.
Speaker 1Is that a thing I feel like I heard of that? If you listened to last week's episode, then you know we talked about some comedy. One of the questions I forgot to ask you, though, is assuming you get booked on a big show.
Speaker 2Right, maybe one day.
Speaker 1What's on your rider?
Speaker 2Well, we should preface that a little bit by saying too, is that we were watching an episode of Kill Tony and they were talking, they were making fun of Cam Patterson's rider because it was like candy and goofy shit Kool-Aid, that was a big one, but what would be on my rider? Orange Tic Tacs, three packs, three packs Orange Tic Tacs.
Speaker 1See, that's something that I wouldn't even have thought of for myself. I mean, I'm never going to get booked on a show because I don't want to be on a show. But let's say that I'm I don't know a guest on a podcast and I get a ride. I don't even know if they have this.
Speaker 2Anything you need a ride for.
Speaker 1No, I wouldn't have thought of Tic Tacs. I clearly need one now because I'm scratchy-throated, but I don't even know what's on mine If it's Sunday.
Speaker 2I need four TVs set up for the football to see the Steelers game, in case I would be in that. Oh, diet 50-50. One jug of Gallagher's diet 50-50.
Speaker 1It has to be Gallagher's, I don't even know. Yeah, I don't want it.
Speaker 2If it's not, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1I mean otherwise known as an Arnold Palmer. I see I can't say it Right, so I call it an Arnie Palmy all the time, arnie Palmy.
Speaker 2Arnold Palmer alert. Arnold Palmer alert.
Speaker 1But Gallagher's calls it 50-50, which is okay, cool, and they have a diet version, which is really good. But I try to stay away from chemicals as much as humanly possible. My rider would be fresh brewed tea, home brewed, since 1959.
Speaker 2Right here in Johnstown Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1We're not sponsored by anybody yet.
Speaker 2No, I support him that much.
Speaker 1He's practicing, okay, so what are we talking about this week? Oh wait, tic Tacs. That's the only thing on your rider.
Speaker 2No that and 50-50. Tic Tacs Caligars. Eat your beef. Grandma Udds barbecue chips. That's the only thing on your rider. No that and 50-50. Tic Tacs, gallaghers.
Speaker 1Grandma Utz barbecue chips in a two-ounce bag, and there is a huge difference between Grandma Utz and. Utz, and if you don't know that and you accidentally show up with the wrong bag to a party, oh you pissed no remember I did that, no, no.
Speaker 2So here's what happened is they switched it on you. All my life I heard about Annie and G cause she moved away. Mom is the one to blame because she had it wrong fucking. Lori yeah, she had it wrong. She uh told me grandma uts, but it was just regular uts or something. Apparently you know what I mean. It was just regular uts or something. Apparently you know what I mean. It was some kind of mistake like that. So those are the things I don't make mistakes. I don't make snack mistakes.
Speaker 1You're serious about that too. It was my first time meeting Aunt Angie from Chicago and I brought her the wrong tips. However, why don't we talk about this leak?
Speaker 2The art of true crime.
Speaker 1The art. I would like to refer to it as the phenomenal. Yeah, the phenomenal Phenomenal. So you know true crime's a thing.
Speaker 2Let's start off. Everybody listens to true crime. Matter of fact, 57% of Americans consume true crime. So two times.
Speaker 1And the other 43 are children under the age of.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean you take that into account? I mean that is a percentage. I'm just throwing this out there. We'll say two thirds of adults, yeah, that's a lot. I mean I would say that is a percentage.
Speaker 1I'm just throwing this out there. We'll say two-thirds of adults.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a lot. I would say that that's probably what that number is close to. So two times more women than men dream about murdering their husbands. Or well, I keep saying listen, but it's well, we're talking, I mean first off. So did you know there's 24,000 true crime podcast.
Speaker 1I did not know that 24,000. So I mean that's why I didn't want to get into the true crime genre Right Like off the bat. It's saturated, it's saturated, and we'd be really good at it though.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think we would. And I think, yeah, I mean, and we have a passion for it, like a lot of them don't. But so you have 24,000 true crime podcasts. Then you have every streaming service has their own specials that they do on it, right. You have news magazines like Dateline 2020 that do nothing but profile true crime. Right, you have the ID channel. You have Oxygen. I mean there are 24-hour networks that are dedicated to nothing but truth. If you want to consume true crime, it's literally probably the most popular genre of damn near anything. Most popular genre of damn near anything. For example, one of the most popular podcasts on Apple and Spotify a quarter of them are true crime podcasts. Wow, so I mean, that gives you when you cause, when you think about all the different subjects that are. I mean, my God, there's podcasts about everything. So the thing that a quarter of the most popular ones are true crime that tells you how big the genre is.
Speaker 1Right. No, I love that you brought up the ID channel though, because it's such a dichotomy and it's a little bit embarrassing. But my favorite time of year when the kids were still home Was cooking and baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Listening to the ID channel while I was cooking and baking in the kitchen, I loved it, like, but it's a weird thing because, like, fair point.
True Crime Consumption Trends and Anarchy
Speaker 2Like you said, what we we had. True crime is the background noise of our life our life. Yes, because whenever we want some noise in the background. We're cooking, like you said, or, yeah, cleaning, or what it could be anything and you just want something to win for background driving, which we'll get to. Yeah, um, we true, true drunk. Yeah yeah, we consume as much true crime as we do comedy, and that's a lot.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean it's probably 50, 50 in our lives. One or two game shows sprinkled in and that's about all we got.
Speaker 2So here's a little trivia question for you when do you think what was the most popular? So they asked during the survey they did a really good study, like um, it wasn't a government, but it was like a few researchers.
Speaker 1You know what I mean.
Speaker 2It was like a legitimate company that studies stuff. Okay, it wasn't like I'm not saying, it wasn't just like Bob's true crime thing on the internet.
Speaker 1What's the one you always tell me about? 508 or something?
Speaker 2538.
Speaker 1538. That's serious. I'm serious about my true crime stats that would be good, I would love to see the numbers so they asked them they asked them.
Speaker 2They said where do you consume the majority of your true crime? And they gave them every option. And what do you consume the majority of your true crime? And they gave them every option. And what do you think? The number one answer was, as a matter of fact, 62% of the people that listen to true crime. This is their number one source.
Speaker 1Where do they get it from?
Speaker 2Yeah, it can be a streaming service. It could be a podcast. Yeah, it can be a streaming service, it could be a podcast. It could be. Where do they consume the majority of their true crime stuff, whether it be shows, podcasts, what platform? Given that Apple's the biggest streaming platform, I'm going to have to say Apple. It's actually Netflix, Whoa okay. So 62% of the people in the survey said that that was the number one source of where they watch or consume the most true crime. Right, right After that was YouTube.
Speaker 1Right, which makes sense. What was that one, the Netflix true crime thing that blew up? It was like something, a murder.
Speaker 2The making a murder.
Speaker 1Making a murder.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was I. I mean it caused a lot of and, honestly, like I don't want to speak on it, because we didn't follow up watching not at all. I wasn't following seasons, so like I have no idea where the case is. What's even really going on?
Speaker 1and I don't know if it was because I'm a little bit probably behind in technology, not like I mean from like what I catch on to like what the trends are right, but when that was out I feel like it was probably around. It was like a amalgamation of, like social media blowing up and Netflix blowing up, so people had the ability to kind of chat in real time about what they were seeing on that.
Speaker 2Right, it's one of those things that was like one of the first big ones on Netflix. But I'm just thinking like I don't know what was going on at that time, Like you were just saying. But, like you know, Tiger King was so big because it hit like right at the beginning.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2So I was wondering if maybe there was some kind of event tied in there that may have even Right who's did that even more than it already was. Right Right, here's a fun, fun one for you. What three cities had more Google searches for true crime than the rest? What do you think those top three cities were? And I have no idea what the correlation was, and even the study questioned it as far as like. Why is it these three cities were? And I have no idea what the correlation was, and even the study questioned it as far as like. Why is it these three cities? Because there was no relation between that and the number of unsolved crimes. They look for that.
Speaker 1So I kind of feel like Orlando's on the list.
Speaker 2They are not. I'll tell you what the top three were. Are you ready for this? Atlanta, okay. Cleveland, for this Atlanta Okay, cleveland Okay. And Minneapolis they were the top three states that had the most true crime related Google searches, that's crazy. Yeah, very.
Crime Narratives Through History
Speaker 1And, like I said, they questioned why those three you know were above and above my you know I'm a stats person, so like my brain's going to like all the like, how my brain's already trying to put together the recipe of how that is or why that is.
Speaker 2Right, you can make a lot of assumptions.
Speaker 1One of the assumptions that I'm going to make for Atlanta is that there's a lot of production companies down there, so there's a good chance that there's a lot of people that are doing podcasts out of Atlanta that are doing Does it correlate to the amount of true crime podcasts that exist? Right, yeah, I'm not sure In what'd you say. The other two were Cleveland, cleveland and Minneapolis, and Minneapolis, I think it's because it's cold up there and they got shit all to do in the winter.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's exactly. They got shit all to do, folks, shit all to do, yeah.
Speaker 1So well, so real quickly, I want to just run down through a little bit of a timeline um, yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 2What was your introduction to true crime?
Speaker 1so I will just overall in history, where what I'm getting at like my introduction to true crime it was fucking law and order. I mean, that's not even true crime, like I don't even know when, because when I was younger I was more into music and I was really into like anarchy. I was, I was into it, man, you got a shirt with an A. No, but I wrote it on all my book covers. Oh yeah, you were cool. Yeah, yeah you little anarchist.
Speaker 2I thought it was something evil. Anarchy yeah.
Speaker 1Because it was anarchist. Right, which looks an awful lot like Christ and Satanist.
Speaker 2And Satanist. Yeah, it looks like Christ and Satanist and since I grew up in a religious household, I was like I don't know what this is and he is just bad. I don't know what this is, but I don't want a part of it.
Speaker 1It's a baddest.
Speaker 2It's got something to do with the devil.
Speaker 1No devil. No, I was. I really thought I was. I thought I was going to be an anarchist, but um, no, like so when I was younger there. So first of all, my parents didn't feel that it was appropriate to talk about those type of things in front of children like they didn't want you to be exposed to like death and murder.
Speaker 1Exactly matter of fact, um the first funeral I went to I was probably like 17, 18. I went to no like relatives funerals when I was younger Probably not even my grandparents and they died when I was like really young, like five and six, maybe my dad's people Crime wasn't even on my mind Like it wasn't.
Speaker 2You didn't have crime on my mind.
Speaker 1I was kind of really naive, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2I thought maybe there was a girl that got kidnapped at your high school.
Speaker 1No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was thinking about getting out of Johnstown when I was in high school. Well, no the reason.
Speaker 2I brought that up is because as you know my introduction to it was really the Debbie Klein case, right, right so from Waynesboro, pennsylvania, because my grandma, both my grandmas, my mom, it happened in what the late 70s?
Speaker 1Right, like your mom would have been like young and she was my mom. Yeah, my mom was a teenager and this girl have been like and she was my mom.
Speaker 2Yeah, my mom was a teenager and this girl was I believe she was still a teenager she was, I think she was like 19 or so. She was working, she was out of school she was a nurse right?
Speaker 1well, I think she was working like a cna or something.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm with you like a orderly, you know type of deal candy striper.
Speaker 1No, so let's see. Candy striper, that was a real thing. Back in what is candy striping.
Speaker 2Does it involve fruit striping? Fruit stripe gum? Because if it does, I do. They just walk around. That's what they're in charge of. Like that's some fruit stripe here. It'll break your day for 4.2 seconds I don't know.
Speaker 1I don't know where the, the fruit, the. I don't know why it was called that and it's kind of weird so I don't like to talk about it. Candy striper.
Speaker 2Yeah, but I don't know. So I don't know if she was a candy striper, what she did with that. She worked at the hospital and where she got kidnapped because they found her car or whatever, was close to where my mom's house was. It was like less than a mile, maybe right around a mile from there.
Speaker 1Less than I think? Yeah, I think less than.
Speaker 1And so, like it was a big deal like for her growing up, so she well then they wrote a book about it and the book was called Missing Person, and everybody in Waynesboro had ten copies of this book Right no-transcript because I think when we think of true crime, we jump straight to like maybe I don't even know like the first show or kind of the ID channel inception was like the first real other than Dateline in 2020 and those shows which came on once a week or whatever. Oh, I mean, we pack all the eighties in there. Most of us think of, like you know, unsolved mysteries, america's most wanted, but this shit actually started in like the 17, 1800s. So think so to all my Bridgerton fans. Think about lady whistle down. Right, she's talking about things you know, drama in the elite class. Well, in order to entertain people with money back in the day, they would create these little pamphlets about true crime and sell them on the little street corners. Oh, that's fun.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, here's a hello good sir. Did you hear about Betsy? Someone's murdering virgins down at the corner store?
Speaker 1Ooh, I wonder how the Jack the Ripper pamphlet read.
Speaker 2Right Watch out hookers.
Speaker 1Good day ladies, there's the Ripper pamphlet read Right, watch out hookers. Good day, ladies. There's a Ripper on the loose. There's a Ripper on the loose. So, um, so that was so, that was. The pamphlets were only were geared towards the people with money, right? So, of course, for every, you know, there's always the flip side of the coin. So, for the poor people, for the poor people, there were ballads created, and they were ballads. Yeah, narco corrido, it is in order to understand the crime from the criminal's perspective, right, right. So what do you hear all the time? What was their motive? So they created these ballads to understand the criminal's motive. I want to hear some of these. I know Like I want to go back and dig now.
Speaker 2Betsy was a stupid bitch with a shudder in the head. She nagged me every morning from the time I got out of bed.
Speaker 1That's exactly it.
Speaker 2That's exactly it, and they'd be like fun, like that, though They'd be like hey, oh, and there's dancing kids in the street.
Speaker 1Wait, didn't we find that there was a serial killer who recorded one of those vinyls one time about shooting his wife?
Speaker 2I mean we had.
Speaker 1I do vaguely kind of remember something like that, but I don't, yeah, but so they would take the lyrics from the ballads and print them up and hang them around town so that everybody could learn the songs of the oh whoa the criminal.
Speaker 2Oh, whoa the criminal and my. I shot my wife in the eye. I feel like a lot of them would be about murdering their wife back then Because those guys were really abusive. They were very abusive back then.
Exploring True Crime Podcast Evolution
Speaker 1But then, is it even a crime? They beat their women incessantly. If it's swept under the rug, is it even a crime? Well, I mean, so then, like you got, that's like the 1700s. In 1807, henry Tufts was one of the first people to write an extensive biography about being a criminal. He was in Henry Tufts. Yeah, he was an American.
Speaker 2Did he form Tufts University?
Speaker 1I think he formed Tufts Law, tufts Law, tufts Law, tough love, tough love. So I have no idea who henry tufts is anyway, and I really don't care, because then you jump the whole way fast forward to 1965, when little truman capote, when he um wrote in cold blood.
Speaker 2I have a question about truman capote is that who the truman show?
Speaker 1is based on no.
Speaker 2I've always thought that, though I think it's a secret message. I don't know what the Truman Capote story is, but I think it has something to do with the Truman.
Speaker 1Show no, but Capote is like.
Speaker 2What was the name of that?
Speaker 1In Cold Blood. It was about that there's two guys that like went and murdered that whole family in the midwest. I mean, I've seen the movie, I've read the book and I still don't know, because all my crimes just kind of run together. It's like a melting pot of crimes in this brain. But um, he's often the one who they give credit to for the modern fascination with true crime because he wrote that book.
Speaker 2You know something you just said that really made me think about something, and that's so. You just said about all the crimes running together. What if you're a homicide detective? You're like, oh shit, that wasn't this case.
Speaker 1Oh my.
Speaker 2God, you know what I mean. Like you thought you're like oh, that wasn't I'm so sure you know.
Speaker 1like you thought so you're like oh, that wasn't.
Speaker 2I'm so sure that happens too, like that's your whole life right like how do you not?
Speaker 1uh, what do I want to say?
Speaker 2how do they not bleed together?
Speaker 1right like anything, like anything that you do repetitively you're interviewing a witness and you like ask a question, but it's meant for the other case, so you're not even getting anywhere, like that has to happen, especially when you're fucking tired. So and then, well, in between the 1800s and old Henry tough or Harry tough or whatever his name is, and 65 with Truman Capote, there was magazines were popular, right, and they were called True Detective magazines, which I think is awesome because I love when things come full circle and you don't realize it till later, right. So the show True Detective, which we love, like now, I feel like they called it that. I could be wrong, I'm making a grand assumption here, but I feel like they called it that because of the old True Detective magazines.
Speaker 2I don't know. Yeah, I mean that would make sense for that Right. I started watching that again. It's really good. True Detective Season 1 is one of the greatest pieces of television that I've ever witnessed. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are riveting.
Speaker 1If you haven't seen it already, if you've never seen it it is. It's really good. It's really freaky and creepy and good it's. Yeah, it's good, but I think I like the latest version with Jodie Foster the best. That was probably my favoritest.
Speaker 2Interesting.
Speaker 1I think it was.
Speaker 2Yeah, the other two seasons aren't even in contention, though.
Speaker 1No, I don't even remember who was in it, to be honest with you. Who was in the second one? Vince Vaughn.
Speaker 2Colin Farrell. Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1Speaking of Vince Vaughn, that show we're watching right now is really effing. Good on it, bad monkey.
Speaker 2That's good yeah that's our tv recommendations for the week but anywho.
Speaker 1So back to what we were talking about. So then you fast forward to the rise of television we mentioned earlier. You've got your unsolved mysteries, america's most wanted, and all that, and then, all of a sudden, you've got streaming, and then podcasts come along. And then here we are, in this crazy, crazy world. I mean, you can literally get your crime any way anywhere. So fast forward to a podcast, right, and I think I I heard about podcasts. I thought it sounded like a cool concept, but I thought it was a bunch of nerds just sitting around talking about tech shit. Regardless of all that, one of my girls at work thank you, carrie um recommended a couple of podcasts. So we started out listening to Serial.
Speaker 2Yeah, which that's the first time we took on a case. That's the first time, that was our first.
Speaker 1We cut our first case and I think, if you're like over the age of, let me do it. Let me think about this for a second If you're over the age of 27-ish, maybe you probably cut your true crime teeth on Serial Podcast. Yeah, I mean, it was the first big it like blew up. Yeah, it blew up.
Speaker 2Probably to this day, the most of all time, the biggest true crime podcast of all time.
Speaker 1Well, and at the time we were still working in Frederick, maryland, and so we're just like weird groupies about states and cities and stuff. So the fact that Baltimore is so close to Frederick, and. It was accessible. That's what I want to say.
Speaker 2Well, I think that also kind of started our. It wasn't the first murder tourism thing, but the roots were there.
Speaker 1Yeah, the roots were there because we were like oh, we can go check this out.
Speaker 2So what I meant there when I'm talking about murder tourism is we like to when we visit a place we like to murder somebody in the state.
Speaker 2We like to find a case that we're interested in took place where we're going Right and I think think the first, the first case that we really worked, though. The first case we really worked counter clock seasons one and two in the outer banks because we vacationed there. So we we drove all the spots yes, we were able to map it out there. Plus, there's not a lot of roads in the outer banks, right highway and then there's lots of little streets and stuff. But like it's very navigable navigable, yeah, in terms of like you're not just in a town that could go anywhere. It's a pretty.
Speaker 1The boundaries are defined right, and so the landmarks are really easy to find. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2They're like it's right across from Ted's Diner. All you gotta do is find it and you look, there's the apartment building, matter of fact. So much so that in that case we discovered some things that when they say things in podcasts, you don't always understand it fully, like when they say it's close to the police station. Right, that girl's house was close to the police station.
Speaker 1When they say that they didn't say.
Speaker 2It's like almost touching it, right? You know, like the feelings are almost touching each other, right Like Right. No, you're right, I love it.
Speaker 1You don't get that unless you go each other, right, right, no, you're right.
Speaker 2I love it. You don't get that unless you go see it.
Speaker 1Right Because, especially if you've never been there. Right Because perspective is everything. So if you don't have the perspective of the way that the town's laid out, Now, we had been to the Outer Banks before, so we kind of knew how it was laid out. But still in the moment you're just glossing over the information to get a slight visual to get you through the story. But when you deep dive it and you're looking at a map and you're like, oh, that's right here.
Speaker 2And you're like. It took her 19 minutes to get from here to here to this far Like what happened. Yeah, you know it gives you that kind of insight that you can't necessarily discern from just listening to somebody tell a story.
Speaker 1So if you ever get a chance to do some murder, tourism.
Speaker 2But now we do that everywhere.
Speaker 1Yeah, we do it everywhere. We're going to Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2We're like, oh, what's our murder today?
Speaker 1Yeah, we want to listen. We find a podcast, we see if we can scope a spot, or whatever the case may be, like go out, you know.
Speaker 2I really like it when there's food, when people, when there's a food in the story. We worked at a diner. We got to go there. They were at a bar.
Speaker 1Right, speaking of working at a diner.
Speaker 2You get to go through and see that stuff.
Speaker 1Yeah, remember Denise Johnson worked at a diner. No, stacey Stanton worked in a diner. No, stacey Stanton worked in a diner. And what did that diner turn into?
Speaker 2Well, it turned into like an event space and my brother had his wedding reception there, which we didn't know until after the fact. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1When we were researching, we're like wait a second this is where that was Right, like we were in this building. Yeah, for a fully different reason, we discovered that that was really that was part of our murder tourism, because we were down there. You know, yeah, that's how we found that that's when we coined the frame murder tourism, because we found somebody that sounds so, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2Lots of people love true crime. Lots of people love to see. There's a reason that the Lizzie Borden house is like a Absolutely, absolutely. People want to see where stuff happens.
Speaker 1For all different kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2We're not going there to be like Ooh, somebody got murdered here.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Somebody got murdered here, here, yeah, somebody got murdered here. But we go because we want to, you know, attach ourselves to the story in some way.
Speaker 1Oh, but we totally skipped from Serial to Counter Clock and forgot what was in the middle Up and Vanish. So Serial was the first case counter clock and forgot what was in the middle Up and Vanished. So Serial was the first case that we sunk our teeth into. But Up and Vanished was the first one that I think we were like really like this could be something. And because in Serial they already had their guy in jail who they thought there was Right.
Speaker 2That was about disproving something that they thought Exactly.
Speaker 1Right, that was about disproving something that they thought Exactly, exactly, that's a different.
Speaker 2That's a different than a whodunit.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Absolutely. At that point, well, it is still a whodunit. But the main focus of that was just disproving the state's theory.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Which is different.
Speaker 1Right, and so that's another crazy thing because, again, everybody that we've talked to about doing a podcast, everybody that you know we've researched on the internet, they're all like find your niche, however you want to say it. Niche, in that case, like you could literally just do specifically one specific genre, and I'm going to tell you which one I would do later. Um, but what I the reason why I want to bring up of them vanished. Everybody knows what I mean. Everybody who listens to true crime knows up and vanished, cause it's one of the top ones.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And, and part of that is because of how well produced it is.
Speaker 2Obviously Right and I think that's a good time to maybe say here like we need a producer. No, no, half the battle with a good true crime podcast. There's a million stories, there's a million ways to tell them, but a lot of, so much of it comes down to just the production value, the narrator's voice. The narrator's voice and the story cohesion, like how well they've mapped it out.
Speaker 2And that comes down to production. So it's production and podcast host voice. Because if you've got a crappy voice that you don't want to listen to, you tune in and you're like I am not listening to this guy for six episodes and you know me, I'm impartial too.
Speaker 1What do I do? I like women better, so it's weird, because you are a total sexist when it comes to music and comedy. You and podcasting and podcasting, but but in a different direction. Yeah, so for music and comedy you prefer men. You think your favorites are men.
Speaker 2Right, right. By far Not that I dislike women you don't dislike. I just tend to not like as high of ratio Exactly as I do men. Like as high of ratio of them as I do men.
Speaker 1However, when it comes to listening to a podcast, you love the female voice more.
Speaker 2Correct. Shout out Delia.
Speaker 1DeAmber, exactly, yeah, she's my favorite voice.
Speaker 2Yeah, definitely, delia is my favorite podcast voice yeah, just the way she talks all that Well, counter Clock this is also a good time for this Counter Clock is. Seasons one and two are probably my favorite podcast of all time.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Like a true crime podcast. Agree my favorite story, my favorite voice, my favorite, because the way she puts the stories together is really good too, and those stories are so good. It's like one cliffhanger, one cliffhanger, one cliffhanger.
Speaker 1Although Doug Wag Jr was a pretty good story.
Speaker 2Doug Wag Jr was pretty good, that's the latest season. Pretty pretty pretty good, but it did get for me. It got a little bit lost in the middle.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But yeah.
Police Corruption and True Crime
Speaker 1But just on the true crime podcast front. All up, though, and the reason why I bought a brought up uh, pain, lindsey, and yeah and up and vanished is because there's a lot of work that goes into it and there's a lot of um, if you're like me, who's like I? I can talk to people, but, like reaching out to someone to get them to talk to me is painstaking.
Speaker 2I've I've reached. People put boots on the ground and they knock on doors, they make phone calls, all of it, and it's a lot of just it.
Speaker 1Like you said, it's a lot and you like become a counselor for people Like you're taking on everybody's energy, which I'm not. I have to learn how to protect my own energy before I take on anybody else's, and I want to. I want to take on a case, and we'll get to that too. However, the reason why I'm talking about it is because Up and Vanished, dropped on August 7th of 2016. Where were you? And February 23rd of 2017, they had a person of interest, finally, and Tara had been missing for years.
Speaker 2Right, well, yeah, I mean, that's how many. We don't have numbers, but how many? Well, I do have numbers on one thing how many crimes have been solved because of podcasts? Because it just brings attention to it. Like I said, they don't solve it, but the more people that are talking about it, the more people that are you know, the more that you might reach somebody that does have that one piece of information.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2That they finally come forward with, or whatever that blows it all wide open right and so the show unsolved mysteries turns out a lot of those are solved. Now I love it because so 260 it was the number that they gave that they solved over the years. Nice, so I that doesn't sound like a huge, huge number, but that's 260. Now they're not necessarily numbers.
Speaker 1That's 260 families who know what happened, or whatever.
Speaker 2Right, that's exactly.
Speaker 1For whatever reason.
Speaker 2That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2That, to me, is amazing, that is amazing.
Speaker 1If they had won, that would be worth it. Yeah, absolutely, because it's interesting as shit, right.
Speaker 2How else would?
Speaker 1I have done. Richard Church was after me. I mean, richard Church was. It's funny, because we actually never released that episode. We that wasn't an actual episode. We talked about books under the bed, which we'll talk about next episode. In spooky, that was yeah. We talked about Debbie Klein.
Speaker 2I think maybe we have a release. We'll release a little like outtakes episode of that.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2In addition to this, where we talk, where I talk about those things, yeah, for sure, to provide context.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, so, but, and also in the Denise Johnson case, there's a new person in interest after all these years.
Speaker 2Yeah, so, and even after many seasons of Counter Clock, we're probably that probably came out. I'm going to say 2017-ish, I'm going to say 2019. So it's five. Let's just say five years ago, five, six years ago it was released. It took that, this just happened, that they have a new suspect this summer, like you know, just a few months ago, right? So, like, even it took that long for the podcast to work, it's now. I'm not saying that had to do with it, but it did have a lot to do with it because she's been drumming up. That's the thing you start. A lot of these cases go cold. Nobody talks about them again because nobody's asking about them, right, nobody's thinking about them.
Speaker 1Right, and that's the thing is like, and yeah, so I mean that's actually a really good time to bring up what some of the cases that I would like to do, right, yeah, if I had to pick a niche would be where there's clearly some type of corruption within the police force. That's my passion. I want to take the motherfuckers down. I want to take them down. But I found, like I did find recently.
Speaker 1I went down a rabbit hole of this guy who was a cop in like Morgantown, west Virginia, and one of his fiancés was allegedly committed suicide and then come to find out that he was like, like now he's in jail for stalking, but that whole police force had a bunch of crazy shit. And the whole reason why I even saw it is because the current sheriff tried to break out. No, he did bust out. Remember, he busted out that lady's window in the van. He only got his position because he was replacing the guy that went to jail for stalking, who had, like, been let go from other police stations for being stalkerific or whatever he was doing, and the new guy also had issues with. So there's this whole thing where, if you do something, that's, let's say, gray area or and you're crossing the line, you get to retire silently and you get to go to another police force and work, and it's. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. So anyways.
Speaker 2But how many? I think that's a good time to talk about how many times that's going to be a clip. I think it's a good time to talk about how many times that's going to be a clip. I think it's a good time to talk about. That's a good time. That's a good time to talk about. That's a good time to talk about it.
Speaker 1Oh my god, but he's practicing for his show later tonight. Open mic.
Speaker 2I don't do that on stage. I don't think I should. Police corruption how many times do we see maybe not police corruption, but we see police negligence? I mean, that's Dateline's whole gig. They got 34 seasons of it. The police messed up the crime, Right Messed up the investigation.
Speaker 1The investigation right.
Speaker 2Through either focusing on the wrong person and too much time went by, they didn't get the evidence they should have collected or deliberate cover-up, because sometimes it's deliberate cover-up just in the sense of they fucked up at first and then they do, just don't want to cover up that they didn't do a good investigation right so it gets all out of line. Um they get people to false confess listen.
Speaker 1This is why I had to stop watching some of this shit, because my stomach just turns when I see it like it just turns.
Speaker 2It makes me so angry like that one we watched, and the prosecutors too, because they get that's a lot of the twos. These prosecutors have so much power in these towns that they're able to just keep pushing. Like what was that one we were? There was one that we were watching where they came up with all the evidence in the world that this guy, barbie, oh, bambi, bennett, oh, hey, girl, I hope you're doing good with your podcast.
Speaker 1um, bandit, yeah, I can't say it. Bambi bennett sherman, yeah. So they tried to pin the murder of her mom and stepdad on her and her fiance or boyfriend at the time and that little, fucking, smarmy little asshole from Conway, south Carolina I can't think of his name, he's a fucking DA or whatever he, after they had evidence and a confession from the person who actually did it, he said well, I still think they was connected to it somehow.
Speaker 2Right, I think they were connected, I think they set it up with him to do it. We saw that in another case too, where a girl was kidnapped or something and they proved that this guy didn't do it.
Speaker 1But they were like, well, where like a girl was kidnapped or something and they proved that this guy didn't do it, but they were like, well, he must have let him in. They doubled down on that shit. When they're wrong, doubled down on it.
Speaker 2Oh, it makes me angry, Just be like listen.
Speaker 1We got it wrong, we got it wrong.
Speaker 2I don't know why that's so hard for them to say in a lot of these cases.
Speaker 1I know.
Speaker 2Just be like we fucked. People fuck up at their job all the time. I the most prestigious profession Doctors. Sometimes things go wrong and they have to say, listen, I messed up or whatever. Yeah, Police should be held to the same standard of admitting when they're wrong and repercussions for when they do things that are egregiously out of Right. The normal protocol.
Speaker 1People make mistakes. But I admitted it, and I always. But I'm I'm big on admitting your mistakes. I like to proactively admit my mistakes so that nobody can come after me afterwards and say catch me in a, in some shit like that. I love to admit my mistakes, but cops, they will fucking double down, triple down, quadruple down, they'll plant evidence to double down. Because down, quadruple down, they'll plant evidence to double down.
Speaker 2Because, oh, in the case that you were just yeah, so Bambi no but before that you brought it up because you were talking about the police corruption.
Speaker 1Oh, the police corruption in the case of that video that I saw on TikTok but then also in. So we don't know if it's police corruption yet.
Speaker 2Right, we're using police corruption loosely.
Speaker 1We just mean police corruption, but the good old boy system which I talk about all the time and hate. So one of the cases which anybody who is on Facebook or TikTok or whatever at all right now will be familiar with Justice for Micah, which I have to say very slowly like that, because otherwise it sounds like a construction company Justice for Micah.
Speaker 2Justice for Micah. Let us handle all your home remodeling needs. Yeah, justice for Micah yeah.
True Crime Filler and Junk Science
Speaker 1So it's not a construction company. It's for Micah Miller, who allegedly offed herself at the river down in South Carolina, somewhere between Myrtle Beach and Little River. Yeah, it was a town on the Saucas. Yeah, so Cassidy, somewhere between.
Speaker 2Myrtle Beach and.
Speaker 1Little River yeah, so so.
Speaker 2Cassidy.
Speaker 1But again. So in this instance it's a megachurch involved in the alleged corruption, but there's been enough people down there protesting that you know. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and gets on social media and acts like a cook, it's probably a JP Miller. Oh, just kidding, I don't know anything about the case. I don't know. I don't know the recipe. And the other one, which is kind of critical to like this, has so many ties. I love when it has juicy, juicy ties is um. So there was a case that happened in January of 2011. A young teacher was found stabbed to death in her apartment in Philadelphia. Her name is Ellen Greenberg and her fiance at the time, sam Goldberg. Um, so you're going to notice the trend here that I'm not going to call out, but I'm just saying when the facts speak for themselves my heart breaks for Ellen Greenberg's parents by the way.
Speaker 2I mean it's one of the weirdest suicides and I say suicides in quotation marks for those that aren't watching.
Speaker 1Right. Because it's like shmoo-a-shide, if you're on one of those fucking triggers, it is bizarre Like I just don't.
Speaker 2First off, how do you stab yourself 27 times?
Speaker 1Not only how do you stab yourself 27 times, but how do you stab yourself 27 times. But how do you stab yourself in the neck, sever your spinal cord and then proceed to stab yourself.
Speaker 2Proceed to continue to stab yourself.
Speaker 1I'm not buying it, you're the beast.
Speaker 2You're like Michael Myers in Halloween or something if you're doing that I'm not buying it.
Speaker 1So it was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner and the police and so obviously once that happened, there was, they never considered it a crime scene, never, not once. Which pisses me off, because nothing Now you lost your evidence. It's all gone.
Speaker 2That's not necessarily police corruption, that's police negligence.
Speaker 1And now Sam Goldberg is living as a producer in New York, and I'm not saying he did it.
Speaker 2Right, it could be any number of things.
Speaker 1I'm not saying he did it, but if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, but here is why this one is jumping off the page to me. Well, so, first of all, thank God or Yahweh, I guess in this case, her parents were able to get the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to. They're going to take a look at it to switch it from murder or suicide to murder, which they should fucking do. But I don't know what they're going to do, because this case sat on Josh Shapiro's desk for four years, when he was the attorney general for Pennsylvania, and so then I'm not sure who uncovered it. Kudos to you, podcaster. So whenever Kamala Harris was considering Shapiro to be her running mate, he recused himself from this case.
Speaker 2And it was one of the things that they, because of his connection to this case, this was probably one of the things that they just were like eh, I think we're going to go with this white guy.
Speaker 1Yeah, which I'm kind of frustrated because I voted for him. And now I don't trust him one bit because even if he does not know Sam Goldberg's family, even if he doesn't know, what reason would he have to let that lay on his desk for four years and not touch it, pass it off, give it to anybody and maybe he has a reason. Maybe he has a reason. But I thought you were telling me to tone down my anger. Josh, fucking Shapiro, I'm so mad. I'm so mad. Like, why do you hold onto a case for four years? Like what good does that do anybody? How much like what else is going on in Philadelphia other than petty crime that you couldn't just look at this? I don't know. I don't follow Philadelphia. We've been to Philly several times and I actually like it. It's pretty cool there.
Speaker 1Great food, great food. So I do have a little list of cases that I would like to potentially look into at some point, but before we do that, let's go down the path right quickly, of what we hate about true crime shows.
Speaker 2I'm glad you brought this up, because I forgot all about this. First off, I'm going to put it out here. We know and I'm talking to every true crime show, movie, documentary, podcast, web series, anything. Stop telling me what luminol is and what it does. I know how it works they spray it on the thing shows you bodily fluids. We all know how it works.
Speaker 1We know that bleach could be a false positive.
Speaker 2Every single piece of true crime produced has a thing where they tell you what luminol is. They over-explain themselves for filler of their time.
Speaker 1Yes, that's exactly it. We get it. We get that. You have to have 26 minutes of content in a 30 minute show, Right? Tell me something else Useless.
Speaker 2Tell me that he went tell me that the victim like going to the store and buying lemons.
Speaker 1Exactly.
Speaker 2I'd rather hear that than learn how.
Speaker 1Cause baby wants a 12 lemon centerpiece. I don't know what it is, but I want to know, so I don't give a fuck what Lumen, always first of all. I want to know, so I don't give a fuck what Luminol is, first of all because studies have shown that it's not always accurate, right? So yeah, remember, I just got done saying bleach can be a false positive.
Speaker 2I thought that it could throw the results.
Speaker 1Okay, so then that makes it not always accurate. If the results can be thrown, I'm just saying stop using filler. Or if you're going to use filler, give us something sexy that we can bite our teeth into, or something that we can think about.
Speaker 2We know. We've all seen every law and order. We've all watched all the CSIs.
Speaker 1We know that you have to put DNA into the code of state of aches.
Speaker 2We know how that works. We know what you're looking for. We understand the fingerprint procedure. We understand blood tests.
Speaker 1We now know that dental impressions may not be.
Speaker 2They're not accurate.
Speaker 1Junk science. That's what it's referred to. Bite mark analysis yeah.
Speaker 2Bite mark analysis is junk science. Hair follicle investigation is junk science.
Speaker 1Lie detector test. Lie detector test is junk science.
Speaker 2There's another big one too, that it's like what?
Speaker 1Handwriting samples.
Speaker 2Handwriting samples.
Speaker 1Junk science.
Speaker 2There was another one that was really junk signs. Maybe it was the bite mark thing, because that guy. I feel like it's something about the guy with the bite mark, the bite mark guy. Well, that was the there's a whole series, documentary series about the cases that they had to reverse, because this what he was talking about cause this fucking yay, who was selling snake oil to prosecutors? He's on there preaching about how it's not junk science, but it clearly is.
Speaker 2Right All scientists agree that it's trash, and here we'll get a trash. We know that something is trash science it's trash science.
Speaker 1Well, and it had me convinced, in the West Memphis Three case too, the bite works. Yeah, remember the one stepdad, the goofy one.
Speaker 2Oh, Snaggletooth.
Speaker 1Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, I mean he might have just been doing that to punish the kids. That's the other thing.
Speaker 2Let's talk about that right here, because in every true crime case there's there's always like a red herring of a guy who's like way too interested but he ends up not being right right right, people are just weirdos right necessarily kill people some people want to just be attached to tragedy and mystery and cases for it. You hear them talk about it, people that want to be so, they want to help the police Right and they interject themselves, but sometimes it's the killer. We've seen ones where it's the killer.
Speaker 1Hello Dexter, he was working for the police.
Speaker 2But there was that one where that guy was hanging out down at the police bar. He ended up being the serial killer. Yeah, Like but he was just trying to interject himself into the case. I don't know why they do that. If I committed a series of murders, I'm obviously not going to be like well, you guys working on over there.
Speaker 1I know, but like if you're that mentally unstable to do a murder?
Speaker 2do you think like you're probably, cause I'm? It's probably working on your mind and if you can't get to what the facts are the real facts it might drive you even more insane too. With some of this is like this was a serial killer specifically, but they want to be involved in that. That's a part of the element of it for them, right want to be hear the news reports see the investigation right only how many of them have interacted with the police in some way or another, or the reporter right, that's oh right right and that's what this was is.
Speaker 2This guy was hanging out down like talking to the hey, what's up, guys, how's that serial killer case going? And meanwhile he's the serial killer. They caught on, though, they caught on, they got it Right.
Speaker 1They caught on after about the seventh one All right alright, so let's wrap it up with a couple cases that you may or may not know of, but feel free to interject your thoughts, opinions and feelings, so detective these cases are keeping me up late at night with this heartburn.
Speaker 2I can't even take it on these bodies.
Speaker 1Oh my Atlanta, what was that? Oh, you were just making. I thought that you were impersonating an actual guy on like ID channel or something.
Speaker 2Angry, disgruntled detective.
Speaker 1We can talk about that real quick though.
Speaker 2What.
Speaker 1We forgot how many amazing voices there are in true crime. We talked about loving the podcast, my favorite, yes.
Speaker 2Robert Stack. Yes, he's the greatest mystery voice of all time. Yes, he'll scare the shit out of you. Yes, but he's also like engaging, like you want to hear what he's got to say, and he's like, and it's just like, it's scary and soothing all at the same time although you know what I've learned.
Speaker 2You know his voice is very similar william shatner yeah, yeah and it's weird because if you and here's how you know they're very similar Turn it here's a little test for you kids out there Make it the latest Tik TOK thing, so you get William Shatner on the unexplained on one TV and Robert stack on unsolved mysteries on another TV. If you turn both of them down to like a low volume level, to where you can't necessarily like the you know, just out of reach, to like where you fully know who it is, just one notch below that you cannot tell them apart. Like the spots in their voice that are like the warmest and the deepest, like match up almost perfectly. And because the reason I know this is because I like to have the TV on late at night while I'm sleeping. Sometimes I wake up and it's the unexplained, it's down low and I can't tell without looking at the TV what show it is.
Speaker 1As long as it's not Jerry Seinfeld's motherfucking voice for me, I'm fine.
Speaker 2I've also had Robert Stack be involved in Nightmare, so that's a big one.
Speaker 1I had to implement a rule when we first started dating that he was not allowed to watch Jerry Seinfeld at night the Seinfeld show because I couldn't. If I heard his voice in the middle of the night, I would wake up and just be angry.
Speaker 2What's the deal with murder?
Speaker 1But yeah, and Keith Morrison's voice? You can't not bring up Keith Morrison's voice, which was the best voice ever until Hader ruined it. Bill Hader ruined it for me I mean, I love that impression, I do, I do Keith.
Speaker 2Morrison's the best Dateline guy hands down.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2He trumps Murph.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Andrea.
Speaker 1Yeah and oh.
Speaker 2Mankiewicz he does?
Speaker 1Mankiewicz sounds like an ex-cop.
Speaker 2He does the Mankiewicz. He's dead. He's worked every case. I love it. I don't know why all my cops are near. I guess because of Law and Order.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was my first impression.
Speaker 2and Columbo, this is my first impression of detectives with suits and trench coats and stuff like that.
Speaker 1What was that one that my mom used to watch? Oh, Heat of the Night. Was that a show In?
Speaker 2the heat of the night.
Speaker 1I think it was a show, but I was a show, but I don't know. I don't remember anything about it. But yeah, so, okay. So we live in the johnstown, pennsylvania area and there's a couple cold cases over the years. Some of them are in the early 70s. I think I talked at one time when we were talking about my Uncle Mike, that Miami Mike, miami Mike yeah, call back, dude, I love it. So Miami Mike was found in a hotel room with a self-inflicted shotgun wound. But I've heard rumors that that may have not been the case. But I don't. My family's weird. They don't like to talk about shit. So that may never get reopened. So whoever did it if they did do it is going to get away with it. That's all I'm going to say there. But most of the cases either happened, like I said, in the seventies or there's been a rash of recent murders, but they're all. So those ones are all drug related. Right, we've got a lot of.
Speaker 2Can we just be honest the drug related ones are not as fun.
Speaker 1They're not fun. You know why it happens.
Speaker 2It's not crazy when it's business. It's almost like not as good.
Speaker 1Right, it's like when, when it's like when a company takes over another company, you don't really care about that too much. That's kind of like the drug business like if they're like off murdering because of drugs, I really don't care.
Speaker 2That's the place to do the mafia right, they're just killing each other, doing it like I don't it's the price to do in business. Yes, right when you're conducting business, and murder is a part of it.
Speaker 1when your business is murder, I don't care about it, just so everybody knows we don't condone, I don't condone murder, I mean, I do in certain cases.
Speaker 2Well, certain ones.
Unsolved Murder Mystery in Johnstown
Speaker 1Anyways. So, but in the 90s. So like these three cases that I'm going to bring up, 95, 96, 96. So the case in 95, there is like no information. I'm pretty sure her kids at least one of her children, is now since passed away.
Speaker 1But Catherine Bitter, she was in her early 20s. She already had a kid, at least maybe two or three, and she was living out in the Beaverdale area, which is Cambria County, pennsylvania, but it's outside of Johnstown, it's rural. She was the last seen with her boyfriend. From what I read, I don't know that anybody thought that it was her boyfriend and maybe he was cleared. I'm not a hundo on that. Like I said, there's not a whole lot of information out there, but then, like when you go into Facebook to kind of look it up, there's people commenting on it who lived around that time back in the day and one of the things that I that jumped off the page to me was that she was fed to the pigs at one of the farms out there. Yeah, so I mean I don't know if that you know like that was just literally a rumor that was going around about what happened to her, because she's never been found.
Speaker 2It seems to be like when it's unsolved, people make up. You can only take a lot of that stuff that you can't solve, because it's like the telephone game, it's like these aren't people connected, I just heard this from somebody who heard it from this person and we know that people are full of shit.
Speaker 1And one of the other rumors that I read was that there was like an underground wine cellar out there somewhere that a farmer owned the land. So if anybody knows more about that and wants to deep dive it, you know, hit me up. Um, it's alanna at gildedtrashcom, but in the meantime there's relatively no information on that one, so I can't do anything about it. Um, the next one that jumps off the page to me um 1996, it was January, 27 year old, Deanna Horner, uh, was found with 27 blows to her head, which I find odd.
Speaker 2Can I ask one question?
Speaker 1Yes, just right off the top.
Speaker 2Yes, Is she? Is her family? Is she a descendant of the people who named horner's town?
Speaker 1horner's town. Well, so her husband I think his name is ed horner, I don't, I don't even know if she wouldn't be.
Speaker 2That wasn't her baby, that was her, right.
Speaker 1So that was her husband's name, right? Um, I think I wrote it down somewhere, maybe I didn't, but so her husband. So here's the thing is, this girl was 27 in johnstown, pennsylvania, in 1995, and I'm not saying that there weren't business people in their 20s and the 90s. I mean I graduated in 1993, right, so she's 27. I don't know what her maiden name is, so maybe that plays into it. But what I don't know is why these young 20-somethings had money, her and her husband. Now he had some money in real estate. Yeah, I don't think. As far as I can tell, they didn't come from families with money, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2Okay, so there's a question as to what they might have been involved in Right. Maybe not. I don't want to put that out there. We're just throwing questions. Right, I'm just asking questions.
Speaker 1And so she was found and there's a couple of things about this. She was found and there's a couple things about this. So, first of all, her husband's business partner, Richard Allen Smith, was the last person to allegedly have seen her, and he was acquitted, so he was charged.
Speaker 2He got charged and beat the charges. He was acquitted, which, again, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I don't know the evidence, so I can't do it.
Speaker 1It doesn't mean he didn't do it. It just means that they fucking probably if he did do it, they didn't have enough and they jumped the gun on it and tried to get it solved too quickly, which happens a lot too. Right, but if he did do it and there's nothing they can do about it.
Speaker 1I'd be impressed to look into that one. What's that? Well, there's more the rumors, but I want to talk. So she's like I said, I don't know that it's related, but 27-year-old and 27 blows to the head, like I thought that was kind of weird. Yeah, so where they found her was?
Speaker 1They referred to it as an abandoned house, and I want to talk about that because the house was owned by Dr Chandra Vora and if you're from the Johnstown area, you know who Dr Vora is, because she's like a local legend and I don't mean that in a good way and it's not bad either. It's actually kind of sad. I don't know how much of this is true, but I was told growing up that she was an actual medical doctor in India and moved to the United States and at some point and I don't know if it was when she lost her husband or what went off the deep end. So she became the bag lady and she pushed a cart and I don't know, she might even still be around. I don't know if she's still alive, but she would push a cart through town and collect cans and whatever, go ahead.
Speaker 2I was going to say she was collecting, looking for gilded trash.
Speaker 1Yes, she was, but I don't know if she had the wherewithal to think about it. I don't know.
Speaker 2Like a lot of people, she went from doctor to bag lady. That's the point.
Speaker 1Right, and a lot of people say that you know she was crazy. A lot of people said that she wasn't crazy, that it was a life choice. I don't know.
Speaker 2That's crazy though, because, like, I mean, I could certainly see. I mean this is such a weird thing, but every town obviously has a person that pushes a shopping counter.
Speaker 1Like every small town I should say has, like has a couple of homeless people that are known to the locals in cities.
Speaker 2They're transients and they don't but when it's local homeless when it's local, homeless people know who they are.
Speaker 1It's like a stray dog. They get fed.
Speaker 2Betty the bad guy or Johnny the can man? You know, and they like they have a thing that they do and everybody there's always like an air of mystery.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Backstory yeah, they're always like a superhero, right. That's exactly it, and there's like where did they live before? What did they do? Right how did they get here Right? How did they become the caped avenger, you know?
Speaker 1So, um, so she, so Deanna, was found in Dr Vora's house, which they have listed as abandoned. And and again, like, I don't know if it was technically abandoned, because I think that it was just she would come and go as she pleased and didn't really have an attachment to personal things like that, but I mean she knew it was her house. I don't know if it was taken to my knowledge it wasn't like up for tax sale or anything like that. So that's where Deanna was found, in Dr Vora's house, which they had listed as abandoned. So I don't know how, like what, the backstory on that is, Her husband's business partner was acquitted.
Speaker 1But at the end of the day, here's some of the rumors involved with this one that the prosecuting attorney, when Richard Allen Smith was being indicted, had a cocaine addiction. So remember I said these are young people, they have a construction company, they have real estate holdings, right? But there's also a lot of rumors of mafia connections. So I'm going to say the guy's name because he was listed. I love the mafia connection. Yeah, that's fun. I'm a little afraid I feel like I'm saying Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice right now. Um, but I'm saying this guy's name because it was listed in the paper Um, but allegedly some. There was a hit man from Florida named John Charney who was contracted by her husband to come up here and kill her.
Speaker 2That's interesting because that's I mean on multiple levels.
Speaker 1Yeah. So when I was looking into that, allegedly this John Charney guy was a cocaine runner and has ties to some local families who own businesses. That I'm not going to say out loud, but if I get, murdered.
Speaker 2There's some ties between some businesses, some cocaine dealings and some people.
Speaker 1If I get murdered? Here's a couple things. If you get murdered, make sure it wasn't Anna Friese first, because if it was Anna Friese, scott did it Actually. Now, if it's Anna Friese, it could be anybody, because I said it out loud and they're going to frame you. Oh my God, don't frame Scott, wait a minute.
Speaker 2This is like Scott Peterson.
Speaker 1That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2They've seen the body where he was fishing. They put it there. I'm not going down there, right? No, we don't know, scott.
Speaker 1Peterson. We don't know if Scott Peterson did it or not. I just snorted on that one. Okay, so those were the rumors around that one, and allegedly this guy was running a plane, flying a plane back and forth to Florida bringing back cocaine back and forth. Sounds good, man. I know there's a lot of juicy. It has all the elements and every single one of them could be a red herring and it could have just been Richard Allen Smith.
Speaker 2Right, that's the thing about so many of these is like and it could have just been Richard Allen Smith. Right, that's the thing about so many of these is like there's all this stuff going on, but just because you see things, that's what you have to remember.
Speaker 1Just because there's smoke doesn't mean there's fire, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2That's true, If there is smoke, sometimes there is fire. But like especially in some of these cases, the clues and stuff are so convoluted. And like you said, red red herrings, they have you going on wild goose chases, right, because you're spending so much time running down this lead and then it turns out to be nothing right and this sounds like one of them cases it sounds like something juicy that somebody could sink their teeth into if they're so inclined to do a podcast that's cold case or unsolved or whatever.
Speaker 1I'm not saying I'm going to be that person. There's a couple that are probably nearer and dearer to my heart that I would like to go down but for fear of being murdered by local drug dealers I'm not going to. Robert T Williams rest in peace. But the case that really, really, really pulls at my heartstrings for a lot of reason and it touches on all that. It touches on local corruption, it touches on um you know rumors, it touches on all kinds of things is Bethann Bowden chats or Bowden shots. I'm sorry, guys, it's one of the two Um, but so she was 36 years old when she was murdered in um january of 1996. She was a nurse, so beth ann was a nurse at lee hospital at the time. It's no longer, I don't even. There's a lee campus still down there, but I don't think it's functional as lee hospital. It probably has a new name at this point I I don't know.
Speaker 2Everybody knows how hospitals change hands every four to five years in small towns.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly, so at the time it was Lee Hospital and they were looking to merge or be acquired. I think they were. I think they were so, um no, I don't know. I don't know what happened. I wasn't there, but so so Bethann lived up in the Summer Hill slash, new Germany area of Cambria County, which is a nice little quiet, what's that it sounds very nice. Like.
Speaker 2I think it sounds nicer than it probably really is.
Speaker 1So what's that? One town, that that one guy, you know that guy that was in the movies? Yeah, charles fucking Bronson. Charles fucking.
Speaker 2Bronson, charles fucking Bronson.
Speaker 1Yeah, he was from Ehrenfeld Ehrenfeld.
Speaker 2Which is right there. It's all the same.
Speaker 1Yeah, like so, ehrenfeld, new Germany, summerhill, it's all the same. They're all different sides of the river and and stuff. Exactly All tiny little coal mining towns in Cambria County, pennsylvania.
Speaker 2Charles fucking Bronson.
Speaker 1So Bethann had four kids at the time Eleven, nine, eight and I think four. So the youngest one was at home with her. That day, and I think it was a Friday morning. The eleven, nine and eight year olds were at school and they came home from school their dad was still at work and they found their mom with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. The four year old was, or I can't remember if the baby was two or four, but the child was unharmed. Her ring was missing, which was a two carat worth roughly $2,500. I mean, she was in her home, her husband was at work, the kids were at school, but she was also a nurse.
Speaker 1We're talking daytime early Friday and the thing of it is like when you're a nurse and I could be wrong. Maybe she worked the same Monday through Friday schedule, but I've worked in hospitals.
Speaker 2Yeah, she probably rotated. Right, so you'd have to, you'd almost you would have to know somewhat of her comings and goings. You wouldn't necessarily have to write a book.
Speaker 1Right, exactly.
Speaker 2You would have to pay a little bit of attention. So it was Her husband worked during the day, though, right, right, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I'm 99.9% positive that they were able to clear him, and I don't think anybody's I don't think anybody's ever thought that he was a suspect at all Right.
Speaker 2I mean some people that are able to rule out quick, like you said, if he, if eight people saw him at work, it's a done deal, right, right.
True Crime Enthusiasts Discuss Golden State
Speaker 1Right. So, um, the kids the three older kids came home and found their it was a .40 caliber Glock. That was never recovered A .40 caliber. You said yeah, yeah, and so nobody was ever charged, like they don't want to charge anyone because they want to have the evidence. There's the rumor behind this one, the juicy tidbit, and I've heard it over the years from multiple people. This has been the rumor since day one. As a matter of fact, I went to a business college and one of my professors there was actually friends with Bethian, and I think even she had mentioned this, and I won't say her name because I don't want her to get in trouble at the hospital or in a insurance case or for something that would, and at the same time Lee Hospital was being acquired or merging or whatever the case may be, which would have looked bad from a business perspective.
Speaker 2Right, I mean, I guess it depends on what it is.
Speaker 1So I think if there were any cases that I were going to deep dive, it would definitely be that one, because, well, a lot of the players are still in the game. That's what I'm saying. If it was, I mean, the hospital thing could be a red herring, but, um, there's, some of the players are still around, I mean so we're ready, ering's got a bed and she's got four children that deserve to know what and why.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1So angry, so angry, so, anyways, that wraps up my diatribe on all the things bad in crime that happens, but yet I still listen to crime kids right, I don't ever like, I don't have my heart on setting on solving a case or anything like that but tell me you don't want to dig your teeth into that juicy little thing there I do, but we talked about this in the last episode when we were setting it up like what are we going to do next week?
Speaker 1we set it up and we talked about how much work it is to do a true crime. We were just talking about it, that little tidbit on Bethann, that is bits and pieces that I've written down over the years of going down Facebook rabbit holes and looking up names and stuff like that. Like, obviously I'm not going to say who where I saw what but yeah, it's good, you become Pat Nussbaum's wife.
Speaker 1Right and I'm very conducive to both pills and suicide. So I don't think I want to go down that rabbit hole. I don't want to get into that. No, she didn't commit. I don't think she committed suicide she yeah.
Speaker 2But I mean, that's the thing she was taking so many pills to stay up, pills to go to sleep, right, because she became so obsessed with the Golden State Killer case.
Speaker 1Right, she was writing a book Right.
Speaker 2Right, and she became so involved in it.
Speaker 1But I mean to be fair. The Golden State was like the golden goose. The Golden State killer case is the. It's the get of the century.
Speaker 2Well, not only that, but it's the amalgamation of all the true crime podcasts, everything that created the ability for that case to be solved yeah was because of true crime yeah people working on it, and that was decades, decades after the crimes had stopped because the last crimes were like the 80s decades. After the crimes had stopped, civilian sleuths kept working, kept that they did the dna right, and even that took civilians to root through all the genealogy to get to actually catching.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2And that's amazing, like that's amazing.
Speaker 1But look at how much it takes to get it when it's not a gimme.
Speaker 2Look at the amount. So, just by comparison, how many documentaries were there about that case? How many people working on books, podcasts, all of it? There was probably millions of man hours involved between the actual case, the detectives and stuff that worked it, millions of man hours into catching this guy.
Speaker 1Right, that's amazing to think about, right. So yeah, and I just don't right, and we don't have millions of man hours or a production team or or any of that we're both very skilled researchers. We could do it, but we've got other things going on right now is the point, and if we had nothing else going on and we both have full-time jobs and you have a part-time job, so if none of that.
Speaker 2Research in cases is tough. We need a crack squad team. Is that what you said, like a crack squad, a crack team?
Speaker 1a crack team.
Speaker 2Where did they come up with that Anyway?
Speaker 1you know, I guess, I don't know. I don't know no, it's been around since the 18th, but why didn't?
Speaker 2crack dealers use that. We got a crack team specialist out here on the corner today, boy but um. So what I'm saying is, if you're a super skilled researcher and you or you have a technical skills, production skills and you want to join, have a technical skills, production skills and you want to join together and form a super team, we could spend a little bit of time working on some cases.
Speaker 1Right, exactly Like we have the resources to do it, we just don't have the time.
Speaker 2A set amount of time Exactly, but we wouldn't be able to. It wouldn't be able to be our life.
Speaker 1Right for sure.
Speaker 2So what I'm saying is if you're already working on something, that's fine.
Speaker 1You know what I mean, because I want my husband to continue his comedy adventures.
Speaker 2I would love to be introduced like that, though They'd be like he's out of here solving murders and telling jokes, folks.
Speaker 1What are?
Speaker 2we talking about next week, next podcast. Oh, you gave me the willies. No, next podcast.
Speaker 1Oh, you gave me the wellies. Are you so excited?
Speaker 2I'm so excited, we're talking paranormal.
Speaker 1It's Octember, babies, we're talking paranormal.
Speaker 2Paranormal. Paranormal Ghost, ghost, ghost fans. We might talk about goblins. We just recently. We might talk about goblins. We just recently found out about some goblins.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2God Goblins are on the table. I could do a million hours of this next discussion that we're going to do next week. We could talk 25 hours, because we both come from families who have a long history of loving paranormals.
Speaker 1Yeah for sure. Oh God, we might have to split it into decades. It might be two episodes. It might be two episodes. I mean, what better to lead into Halloween season than two episodes of talking about everything? You kidding me, you kidding me right now I do want to get into it, but we won't. We used to take the kids ghost hunting. That was fun.
Speaker 2We've been ghost hunting since before there was ghost hunters.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Long before there was ever ghost hunters. Yes, and my grandma was ghost hunting back before there was. Even they didn't even use the word ghost Stop it, spirit, I love it.
Speaker 1Alright, so we won't go down that rabbit hole. But in closing, do you have any parting words for our friends and family? Today, our trash can fam.
Speaker 2From a great detective who once lived, named PJ Long Tooth Hollingsworth, or it might have been Inspector Gadget, I'm not sure, but they said that one man's trash is another man's clue to solving a murder. Always remember that, oh my God.
Speaker 1Until next time, folks, peace.
