
On the afternoon of July 18, 1984, James Huberty left his apartment in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California, and drove one block over to the nearby McDonalds. After walking through the door of the restaurant, Huberty raised his Uzi semi-automatic 9mm and began indiscriminately shooting at patrons, employees, and anyone else who happened to cross into his line of sight.
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Elena
Leviticus is this summer's horror discovery of immense power that critics are hailing as haunting and heartbreaking.
Ash
You see anything that looks like me, don't go near it.
Elena
When a curse is inflicted on two
Ash
teenage boys, they must escape a violent
Elena
entity that takes the form of the
Ash
person they desire most, each other.
Elena
Critics are raving that it is a
Ash
bone chilling horror that's biblically scary. It's gonna kill him. Leviticus.
Elena
Rated r and Peter's June 19th.
Ash
And get tickets now. Cape Fear is a new series now Streaming on Apple TV. This 10 episode mystery thriller is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, Academy Award nominee Amy Adams, and Emmy nominee Patrick Wilson. When convicted murderer Max Cady is released from prison, he begins infiltrating the family of the married attorneys who helped put him behind bars. Every good detective needs a partner to support them on important cases. Think of a State Farm agent like your sidekick, there to help you along the way in your search for coverage. State Farm can help you choose the coverage you need, whether it's for your home, car, boat, or even rv. With so many options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you so you can get back to solving all of life's bigger cases. Go to statefarm.com or use the award winning app to connect with a local agent and get a quote like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
Elena
And I'm Elena and this is Polin Morbid.
Ash
Oh, my God.
Elena
Pollen is destroying everybody's lives over here.
Ash
Is pollen eating your insides alive?
Elena
Yeah. Is pollen. Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by pollen.
Ash
Everybody shoots hands in the air.
Elena
Pollen is rough right now. We had an air quality alert yesterday that was like, hey, you should probably stay inside.
Ash
I'm getting murdered by pollen.
Elena
Like, it's bad.
Ash
It's really, really bad. I've never had allergies this bad in my. I've never had allergies, period. Really. And I do be having not only allergies, but guess what? I have asthma.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
All of a sudden, the doctor said, honey, you have asthma. And I said, I haven't had asthma since I was a child. I thought it went away.
Elena
They said, no.
Ash
He said, it doesn't quite work like that. So Alena's taking one for the team and she took the up for me because I'm hacking up a lung.
Elena
I'm out of breath. Yeah. There was no way I was. I was going to make her Talk for an entire hour or so, however long this will be.
Ash
Honestly, you guys wouldn't have wanted to hear it.
Elena
Yeah, we don't need her hacking all over, you know, I don't want to.
Ash
I don't want to hack on you and what you're going through with pollen already.
Elena
Yeah. You know, but I do have something for you. Yeah.
Ash
Because it's my birthday today. If you're listening, yay. It's. It's like in a couple days, if from now. But if you're listening, when this comes
Elena
out, it'll be Ash's birthday.
Ash
So we have a sale for you on the Morbid Merch Store, which is at Sirius. Um, let me actually give you the actual website. Okay. So it's literally just SiriusXM store. And then there's another one for if you don't live in this country, and that's in our Instagram bio. Yeah. But the. If you use the code Ash sale, a S H sale, then you can get 25% off your order. Yay.
Elena
Do it.
Ash
It's really fun. We have a couple new things in the store. We have the candle, which smells so fucking good.
Elena
It does. We picked the scent specifically. We did.
Ash
We have the horned H hoodie, which
Elena
I'm really excited about.
Ash
We have the Nicholas shirt. If you're a Nicholas supporter.
Elena
I love the Nicholas shirt.
Ash
I've also seen a lot of you coming around on Nicholas.
Elena
I have, too. And it warms my heart. Yeah, it really does. And this shirt is how you can show your support.
Ash
Show your support for. For good old Saint Nick. Yeah. Who is not Saint Nick, but he's our Nick.
Elena
He's our Saint Nick.
Ash
We need to post one. That video from when we unpacked the printer.
Elena
Oh, yeah.
Ash
Because I think we can speed it up a little bit. And I think Nicholas visited us.
Elena
Yeah. I think Nicholas was helping me put away stuff from the printer that I was unboxing. And he was like, you have more room in this box. Let me push this stuff down for you. Because I was sitting there just watching as all of the packing stuff was being slowly pushed down.
Ash
And it was all like, obviously things rustle when you put them back in a box. So at first we were like, okay, maybe it's just that. But then it continued for three minutes.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And like, there was like one specific part in the video where it just like. Yeah.
Elena
Just pushes down.
Ash
Really pushes down, like aggressively. So I'm gonna post the sped up version of that.
Elena
It was a little strange. Yeah, a little strange.
Ash
Paranormal. If you will.
Elena
But, yeah, use that code. Ash sale.
Ash
Hell yeah.
Elena
25 off.
Ash
That's a good deal.
Elena
It's pretty sick. So if you are waiting, it's almost
Ash
like I'm turning 25.
Elena
Almost. But you're not.
Ash
I'm not. I'm not. Look at her now. She's calling me old.
Elena
I was going to say, you've had fun with mine. Now Ash is. Ash is the big three zero. Everybody spied my 20s.
Ash
I am having a funeral for my 20s.
Elena
Honestly, 30s are when things get awesome.
Ash
I'm so ready to leave my 20s in the dust. A lot of great things happened, like in the later years of my twenties, but like the early to mid of my twenties, quite mid.
Elena
Quite bit quite bad, if you will. Oh, well, we have today. This was Ash's case at first. So I got the pleasure of reading this and going, oh.
Ash
I said, here, I did half of
Elena
this and I said, oh, my.
Ash
I'll give you the other half.
Elena
Yeah. So I read through this and said, oh, my.
Ash
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Elena
We're covering the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre today.
Ash
This is a really, really brutal case.
Elena
Yeah. I would like to give a big, big trigger warning right off the bat. Um, I'm not going to. This isn't going to be gruesome in the sense of me explaining everyone's injuries or anything like that. This is a mass shooting that can be very triggering for people. I completely understand if this episode is one you say, hey, I'll see you on Thursday. Totally, totally get it. But again, I'm not gonna get crazy with my descriptions, but this is rough.
Ash
It is.
Elena
And it's scary and it's horrific and he's a monster and it's a really rough one. So I just. I need you to know that right out the bat, right out the gate, that this is rough and it's a mass shooting. So again, if that is something that you are like, this is just not one of the ones that I can do.
Ash
We totally get it. We understand.
Elena
Yeah, we totally get it. So, like, we'll see you Thursday if that's the case.
Ash
Yeah, we'll miss you.
Elena
We get it. But it is a story that needs to be told because one, these people lost their lives. Yep. These innocent people who were just going to McDonald's.
Ash
Well, there was just so many warning signs in this case from the time that Jim. Who is the Jim, the mass murderer, Jim Huberty. Just so many signs from the time that he was a small child. Like, he should have received Help?
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Like, I don't know exactly what help or what it would have done, but he needed something. He needed something.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And also, coincidentally, it's Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, so this is kind of a.
Elena
This kind of fits really perfect in this because. Yeah, there were several times that people around him said, yeah, it was so crazy. He, like, said he was going to kill everybody and he couldn't wait to, you know, shoot things into people's flesh. And. Yeah, he's a weird guy.
Ash
They constantly talked about, like, destroying people's bodies. Like, I don't know.
Elena
Some. Sometimes it's okay to reach out and say, yeah, hey, this person is speaking in a way that makes me think he might hurt someone. It's okay. Like, you can do it anonymously.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
This was in the, you know, this was in the 80s, you know, growing up in the 70s and stuff. Things were a little different, for sure. Like, it was not people they were not out here getting help for, especially men's mental health.
Ash
No. He grew up, like, in the Midwest, which obviously, like, is a totally different culture.
Elena
There were factors here that for sure, we can look back with the hindsight of 2026 and say, why didn't anybody do anything? And things were different. So we do have to use those lenses to look at it.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
But now in 2026, if someone around you is making these kind of statements or acting these kind of call someone, it's. So you see something, say something. It's like you can. You can do it anonymously, but, like, just whenever you can try to, because
Ash
you can avoid catastrophes like this. And also, like, that person needs help.
Elena
Yeah. Like, he needed to be this man needed to be. He's like a. He's like a bad person at his core.
Ash
Well, that's the thing. He's like.
Elena
He's like a mentally ill man at his core.
Ash
He's also racist. He's also. He beats his own children. Like, he's an abuser.
Elena
He beats his wife. Like, he's a. At his core, Jim, puberty is an evil piece of shit. Yeah. And that's the thing that I think we all need to realize is you can be two things. Two things can be true at once. Absolutely. He can be mentally ill, and he can also be a really bad person. Not everybody who's mentally ill is a really great person and they just suffer from this thing. Of course, there are plenty of people who are really good people who are kind and good people and suffer from mental illness and do things they normally wouldn't have done and don't want to do that is 100% often the case, to be honest. But there is also cases when somebody is violently mentally ill and should and does need extensive help, but is also just a really bad person at their core and would have done something bad regardless of the mental illness. Possibly. So Jim Huberty, to me, falls into that category. He's just a bad person. I agree with you. He's not nice. He's violent to children, he's violent to women. He's violent to men. He's violent to. He's horrible and he says horrible things. He.
Ash
He's just not.
Elena
Nobody wanted to be around him. Like, he just. Yeah. And he seemed like he was that way from pretty young. So. Yeah. So that is. That is definitely one of those situations here. And again, this is a tough one, but we're going to get into it.
Ash
All right, so everybody mark your timers.
Elena
Yep, here we are. On the evening of July 15, 1984, James Huberty and his wife Aetna were sitting on the couch watch tv when James, who was better known as Jim, casually mentioned that he thought he was experiencing symptoms of mental illness. Aetna had long suspected that something was going on with Jim. He had violent mood swings. He couldn't regulate his emotions at all. He had a crazy, explosive temper. He was very violent. He was also racist. And that was the first time she'd ever heard him acknowledge his struggles pretty directly.
Ash
I do wonder what all of a sudden made him realize that something was off, because like we said in the beginning, for so much of his life, it was like, that. I'm like, what?
Elena
He was tipping point for me. He was on the rails for his whole life. So I don't know what made him
Ash
just go, I think I need help.
Elena
I wonder if he knew. I mean, I think he did at this point. I think he said, I'm going to do something real bad.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
If I. And. And maybe there was a small part of him that was like, I should probably try to stop myself. And I wonder if he also was looking at this as okay if they accept me, because he does call for help. If they accept this and they help me, then. Then that's how it's supposed to be.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
But if they decide not, then they are proving everything that I believe about the government, about society, about human beings.
Ash
You're spot on.
Elena
And then they deserve it. I think that's exactly what his. And unfortunately, and this is another. This mental health help back then. Pretty bad. Pretty bad. And Even now, we always need to get better. So this is a good little thing about that. So, yeah. So Edna became even more hopeful a few days later when she noticed him on the phone with a local mental health center. So she was like, what are you doing? And he said he had called to make an appointment and at the time there was no one available to take his call, which already you're like, not good. What do you mean?
Ash
You know he called during lunch. On purpose.
Elena
Yeah, exactly. But the receptionist at the center took his information and said someone would get back to him within a few hours. Now, when he spoke to the receptionist, he was polite, he was calm, he sounded composed. So there was no reason for them to suspect this is back then, that he was in crisis. Now, we know now that someone in crisis is not always screaming and yelling and crying. They are not always saying something crazy or quote, unquote crazy that you think is going to, like, really cause some damage. I think now we're a lot more well versed on the idea that somebody in crisis is not always the typical crisis that you're thinking in your mind. But according to them, he didn't say anything to indicate that he was. So the call was logged as non crisis, non crisis. Calls were returned in the order they received, typically within 48 hours. Unfortunately, the receptionist also misheard his name when he gave his last name, and she wrote it down as Schuberty. Now, even more unfortunate, by the time his message came up in the queue to be returned, it was too late. James Huberty had already killed 21 people and was killed by the San Diego police sniper's bullet. So James Huberty's shocking killing spree and violent death was definitely just the period on a life filled with a lot of chaos and a lot of thing, a lot of, like we were saying, times when someone should have stepped in warning signs. He was born Oct. 11, 1942, in Canton, Ohio. He was the second of two children born to Earl and Eichel. Just a few years later, when he was three years old, Jim contracted polio. Yeah. And had to wear leather and metal braces for a long period of time. I mean, thanks to the braces, he was able to walk again. But they caused him to have a different walk than he might have had before. And according to one of his primary school teachers, that alone was enough to make him the target for bullies. And the other children made fun of him and were just.
Ash
Kids suck. Yeah.
Elena
Like, get it together and teach your kids not to be assholes.
Ash
How are you making fun of somebody with polio.
Elena
Thank God. If I ever found out my kids were making fun of someone for the way they walked, we'd have a talk. When Jim was 7 years old, his father bought a 155 acre farm in Mount Eaton that was about 20 miles away from can. And he moved the. Almost the whole family.
Ash
I should say almost.
Elena
Jim's mother was pretty resistant to the idea from the start and just refused to move with her family, which is wild. Instead she packed her bags, headed west and joined a Pentecostal missionary group, abandoning her entire family. Yeah. Great. So obviously this was extremely hard on Jim and his sister Ruth. And he would like, like his father would just find him like crying on like at various times all over the property. Yeah, just all over the property.
Ash
Which is really like, obviously you can feel bad for the kid version of him. That's awful.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
You had your mom for seven years of your life and then she's like,
Elena
she just abandoned you, cuz she's like, I don't feel like moving. Oh, okay, cool. No, at school, Jim was taunted and mistreated by, you know, his, By Pierce. From everything from his appearance, the way he walked, to the fact that his mother abandoned him.
Ash
Like, imagine people making fun of you because you're. You were abandoned as a child. What about that is funny?
Elena
I don't know. My brain can't wrap around it. It really literally can't.
Ash
What's the. And also just like what's the joke?
Elena
That's what is the joke?
Ash
Lol. Your mom left and it's like, yeah, okay, that's funny.
Elena
What is the joke? Like, I don't understand what the. Like it's so weird. So up. So he was unable to make friends a lot of the time. He spent a lot of his time alone or with the family dog. Just developing a really sullen and angry temperament.
Ash
Yeah, I feel like for children to be alone and isolated for too long,
Elena
being mistreated by their peers at the
Ash
same time is just truly a recipe for disaster.
Elena
Especially when nothing else is being done.
Ash
And then you have like abandonment from a mom. Can a kid up?
Elena
Yeah, obviously.
Ash
So just lots of little ingredients happening now.
Elena
When he reached junior high, he started to develop a strong interest in guns and shooting. And he would spend the rest of his life obsessively cultivating his own collection.
Ash
The word obsessive, it's like that doesn't
Elena
even begin to describe it.
Ash
He was. Yeah, he was a gun.
Elena
Yeah, he literally was. Now years later, his former co workers in Ohio would Describe him to a reporter as fanatical. That's not a good way to be with one supervisor saying he had a lot of guns. And he always said that he wanted to kill a lot of people.
Ash
If somebody is always saying that they want to kill a lot of people, you have a problem.
Elena
Because, like, also, what was your response to that?
Ash
Okay, Jim, like, also, this whole case had me wondering, does any place that he works have an HR department?
Elena
I. I don't know if HR departments back then were just, like, chilling. Yeah, I don't know what they were doing. But it's like if he's at work saying he has a lot of guns and he really wants to kill a
Ash
lot of people, you gotta call someone.
Elena
You gotta call someone. But at the time, he was just a lonely. Like, again, this was years later that that was being happening. But we're staying in the past here, because at the time, he was just a lonely boy who had found a way to pass the time. And in a rural place like Mount Eaton, guns and shooting were not exactly uncommon. It's not like this was a weird fixation.
Ash
Hunting was like a big deal. I mean, he lives on a farm now.
Elena
Throughout his high school years, he kind of kept a low profile. He didn't join any teams or clubs. He had, like, a few friendships. Maybe. He really just spent most of his time at home enthusiastically pursuing his hobby of guns. By the time he was in his late teens, he had become something of like an. He was like an amateur gunsmith, really. He learned how to make and load his own ammunition, alter his weapons, making small improvements to things like grip and sights.
Ash
Scary when you know what the outcome is for sure.
Elena
Now, after graduating from high school, he enrolled at Malone College, a small Quaker school in Canton, and he studied sociology there before dropping out two years later and moving to Pennsylvania, where he went to the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. After graduating in 1963, he found work as a mortician's apprentice at a local funeral home. And during that time, he became a licensed embalmer and mortician. His former employer, Don Williams, said, I told him he was in the wrong business. He was a good embalmer, but he just didn't relate to people.
Ash
Yeah, you don't say.
Elena
It turned out that at least on some level, Jim agreed, because within a year of being licensed in Ohio, he'd quit the mortuary business altogether and taken a job as an assembly line worker at a local factory. Changing careers wasn't the only big change in his life. At the Time, though, he'd also started dating Aetna markland, and in 1965, they got married at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio.
Ash
I just wonder, like, what their meet cute was.
Elena
I wonder what she saw in him. Right? Because no one liked him. Nobody liked him. He was very miserable all the time.
Ash
And I also just wonder, like, did they get through their first date without him mentioning that he wanted to kill a lot of people?
Elena
That's the thing. I'm like, he seems like he is just you. You see any of the people talking about him, and everyone's like, he was just a miserable person to be around, not because he was sad. All the. Was mean and said, like, horrible, scary, horrible, and would talk about killing people. He liked to talk about the different bullets and the, like, damage they inflicted on human flesh.
Ash
Like, nobody wants to talk about that.
Elena
What is it about him? I. I figured this is the kind of guy that would stay alone forever.
Ash
I know.
Elena
But, no. From the moment he first met Jim, the pastor who married the couple, David Lombardi, actually had reservations about the relationship and the marriage completely. He said he had real inner conflicts. By the time he was dating Aetna, he was atheistic and blamed God for taking his mother away from him. I'd like to point out that him being, like, leaning towards being atheist has literally nothing to do with, like, inner conflicts of this magnitude.
Ash
Yeah, I think. I think that's important to point out.
Elena
Like, you know what I mean? I think he has a lot of inner conflicts, but I don't think him being an atheist is one of them. I think that's. I'm like, okay, that's just the thing. Yeah. He also said that Jim was halfway intelligent, but when you dealt with him, you always felt a little uneasy about the way he harbored something inside. He was pent up. He was a loner, and he had kind of an explosive personality. Those are definitely his inner conflicts.
Ash
And that's what everyone said, specifically, explosive.
Elena
Even after marriage and buying a house, his interpersonal skills never got much better than when he was a kid and he was still struggling to control his explosive anger. Small conflicts at work usually escalated really quickly, with Jim taking out way more offense at some, you know, light things like teasing or perceived slights. Like, I don't like teasing either.
Ash
I hate teasing.
Elena
But, like, you can't explode and go off the handle at people. No.
Ash
And sometimes people are just trying to, like, have a good time. Like, I don't think they were necessarily, like, bullying him, you know?
Elena
No. And the best thing to do in those situations is to tell someone, like, hey, I don't really love. Yeah. Community. I really love being teased like that. It kind of like sets something off and they'll be like, oh, all right. Yeah, that's a trick. That's how you get to know people to tell you. And also that's how you teach people how to treat you. Yeah.
Ash
Because you.
Elena
That's what you have to do. Exploding in anger at someone because they do something like that won't get you anywhere. They're not going to learn anything except while you're an.
Ash
Yeah, I don't want to.
Elena
And it's like, if you just. I hate teasing. So there's been times where I've had to say to people, hey, like, I actually don't love that.
Ash
Like, don't poke me.
Elena
And they're like, oh, sorry. And then they know how to treat you. Yeah, teach them. Teach them, everybody.
Ash
It's true.
Elena
But even people who attempted friendly conversation or like small talk found him to be very unpleasant and all described him as hostile. His gun obsession got way worse as well. He covered his entire home in guns. His coworker, Jim, as Lanes recalled, no matter where he was sitting or standing in the house, he could reach over and get a gun.
Ash
To me, that's too much.
Elena
That's scary to me.
Ash
My personal opinion, I think that's too much.
Elena
My personal thing is, like, I don't have anything against guns. Like, if you are somebody who responsibly uses a gun. Oh, awesome. Like, good for you, man. Like, I really don't have a problem with it. If you are responsible with it, I fully support it.
Ash
Having.
Elena
I don't understand having that many. Yeah, but that's. I. That's just something I don't understand. I'm not saying you're a bad person for it. I just mean I don't get it.
Ash
Well, I also think, especially in this case, because later on he does go on to have two children. Guns should not just be accessible in
Elena
the home like that. You should not be able to reach anywhere and get a gun if you have, like, kids in the house. It's just not safe.
Ash
So dangerous.
Elena
It's just not safe. We've seen it. And again, Jim could also usually be found sitting by the front door of his house, door open, with a shotgun across his lap, like he was waiting.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
And that's not responsible. That's not being a responsible gun owner. It was precisely that type of bizarre, threatening behavior that he was constantly exhibiting that convinced his co worker, Jim, as Lanes that he did not want to get to know him outside of work. He said it was little things like that just showed me there was something wrong with him, which is very astute. In 1972, Aetna gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, who was followed by a second daughter two years later. If anyone expected fatherhood to change or soften Jim Huberty, they were going to be sorely disappointed. Not only was he unwilling to change his increasingly confrontational and reckless behavior because he saw no need to set the safety on any of his guns, even with toddlers in the house.
Ash
That's the kind of thing I'm saying is. It's like he was a very irresponsible gun owner.
Elena
Yeah. Just an asshole. Like, he literally didn't care about his kids. But he also seemed mostly uninterested in parenting altogether, which. Like, why did you have kids then?
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
Years later, after the couple moved to San Diego, many of the neighbors would recall that while Jim seemed to have a general dislike for most people, he seemed to loathe children, which, like, what's wrong?
Ash
How do you not like kids?
Elena
You don't have to be around them if you don't want to.
Ash
Like, I get it. Some kids are annoying, for sure. Like, I usually only like the ones related to me.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
But, like, kids are adorable. Come on.
Elena
I. Here's the thing. If people make a choice not to have kids, more power to you. Yeah. Fully. Like, hell. Yeah.
Ash
Well, if you're making that choice, clearly
Elena
that's the right choice for you, because that's the choice. You're being a responsible human, and you're saying, you know what? I don't want that.
Ash
Right.
Elena
You don't need to have that or want that. Good for you. In fact, I applaud you. But when people make it their entire personality that they hate children, that's weird. That's weird because it's like, you don't need to have them. Yeah.
Ash
It's not a requirement.
Elena
So just don't.
Ash
I do.
Elena
Like, it's okay.
Ash
I will say, I think back then, it did feel like more of, like, a requirement. Like, it was like you got married and then you had to have kids.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And I think a lot of people feel, like, weird societal pressure.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Like, I'm sure Aetna did, you know?
Elena
Yeah. For sure. So.
Ash
But still, like, maybe not with Jim, babe.
Elena
Maybe not. Like, Jim. Jim doesn't seem like he's. He's great here. No. And again, like, him. Listen, like, loathing children. I'm like get over something.
Ash
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Elena
A former neighbor of his told the New York Times. Everybody talks about that here. He was always yelling at kids.
Ash
That would have pissed me off.
Elena
Now, when it came to the children in his neighborhood, Jim's frustration and anger was limited to yelling and calling them names, you know, nor normal adult behavior.
Ash
Look at him.
Elena
Just within his limits with his own children. On the other hand, he was known to have been verbally, emotionally and physically violent on one occasion just a week or two before the shooting spree. This is horrendous.
Ash
This is really awful.
Elena
By the way, the Huberties neighbor Wanda was surprised when Jim's older daughter showed up at her door with welts all over her face. And when she asked what happened, the girl replied her daddy had slapped her around. That's so sad, Jim Huberty.
Ash
And to just like say that so
Elena
openly, casually, like, that's clearly.
Ash
He didn't, he didn't give a. Because he's willing to send his daughter.
Elena
Yeah, he doesn't care.
Ash
And he knows she's gonna say what
Elena
happened and she's saying it like, isn't this just something that happened?
Ash
Yeah, that's what dads do, right?
Elena
Yeah. That's horrific.
Ash
So sad.
Elena
In the winter of 1971, their house caught fire. While they were all out of the house at that time, Jim was storing large containers of gunpowder in the basement. And when the fire reached that area of the house, it just went up in a huge giant fireball.
Ash
Like a legitimate explosion.
Elena
Yeah, like down to the foundation. But they actually bounced back pretty quick. And they bought a three, like a big three story home on the lot next to where their old house was. And then on the now vacant lot, they built a six unit apartment building that would eventually provide them extra income.
Ash
Imagine Jim Huberty being your landlord.
Elena
No thank you.
Ash
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure he didn't really handle anything.
Elena
Probably not. According to one author, any success that they experienced during this time was probably certainly Aetna's hard work. For most, if not all, of their marriage, she did literally everything. She managed the household, the children. She dealt with the world outside of the home because he couldn't. In the morning, he would. She would get her husband and children out of bed, lay out their clothes, pack their lunches, and get them to their various locations.
Ash
She had three children.
Elena
Yeah. And she was always going out of her way to limit Jim's interactions with the people around them. Terrified that any conversation or miscommunication would escalate into, like, physical violence or him exploding. Which gives. In this sense. I feel so horrible, because Edna obviously felt terrified. Like, this was her lot.
Ash
Well, on the other hand.
Elena
And she was just trying to limit his exposure to other people.
Ash
Exactly. And I'm sure a part of her was probably terrified to leave him.
Elena
Oh, she was probably horrified.
Ash
I'm not condoning the fact that she didn't, because obviously he's beating her and their children. Like, that's awful. But she's probably so scared. He has a zillion guns.
Elena
That's the thing. It's like.
Ash
And he's gonna see that as, like, another slight. Who's to say he's not gonna go after you and your babies?
Elena
And again, it's easy for us to sit here from a place where we have, like, loving, safe partners.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
And say, you know, like, I would get out of that house. I don't know what that feels like.
Ash
No.
Elena
And I. And I can't sit here and claim that I do or feel like I would be the superwoman that knew what to do when our entire house is covered in insane amounts of guns to
Ash
the point where she will explode if there's a fire.
Elena
Explosive. And hurting all of us and threatening all of that. Like, I don't. That's living hell. And, like, I can't fathom that.
Ash
It wasn't easy for a woman in the 70s to break out on her own with two children.
Elena
No.
Ash
You couldn't even get a credit card.
Elena
Exactly. So it's like. That's horrific. It really is. Like, it's horrific. Oh, I hate it. It's so sad. But, yeah. She was always just trying to keep him from getting in trouble, essentially. And behind closed doors, though, he had no trouble taking out his anger on the entire family. She said. And this is so sad. It is. She said, quote, generally it was just one hit. But there were other times that he would beat them all relentlessly. He even threatened one of his daughters with a butcher knife once, literally.
Ash
And they're kids, like young kids. And I mean, I don't even care if your daughter's 35 years old and you threaten her with a butcher knife. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Elena
There's. He's a horrific monster. He really is. For just about anyone who knew, or even those who had just met him, Jim Huberty's rage and extremely unpleasant demeanor were definitely the primary problems. But just beneath that were other more subtle signs of emotional distress that generally went overlooked because again, that's the same thing. We're saying he's just a bad person. He's just a nasty, mean, violent, bad person who is severely mentally unwell.
Ash
Right on top of all.
Elena
And it's like he's probably one of the scariest types of people you can imagine. Oh yeah, because this isn't a kind hearted person who has a mental health crisis. This is a bad monster who is currently suffering really severely with mental health problems. It's like that is the worst combination I can think of.
Ash
Absolutely, truly.
Elena
Which makes me feel for his children and his wife even more because living with that is unthinkable because you just
Ash
never know what you're gonna get and
Elena
you just know it's all bad.
Ash
It's gotta be dark as hell.
Elena
Like there's no way of getting beneath this mental health crisis because underneath is a bad person. So there's no like light at the end of the tunnel with him. It's just really sad. But as early as the mid-1970s, Aetna started encouraging her husband to seek mental health like help, which like kudos to
Ash
seems like she was the only person that did that.
Elena
She was trying and in one instance Jim told her God and Jesus Christ were consulting him about the government and
Ash
President Carter, which is really, really, which
Elena
shows you right there he's mentally unwell. In another instance, Jim told a co worker he, and this is really sad, he'd killed one of his dogs for speaking to him. And he went on to explain that the dog hadn't spoken him verbally, but had communicated through his eyes in a way that Jim understood and didn't appreciate.
Ash
I can't imagine my co worker looking at me and telling me that like, that's chill you to your spine.
Elena
Scary. Now to Jim, everybody was always out to get him in one way or another. And in time he became consumed by his desire to get back at anyone who slighted him. If he received bad customer service somewhere, he would make harassing phone calls or picket the business. If a neighbor did something he didn't like, he would set up an elaborate scheme that took weeks of planning to get revenge on them. And while he knew he couldn't take out his anger on the neighborhood children physically only because he would get in trouble, that didn't stop him from enrolling his daughters in karate classes. Not for their own betterment. No. But so that he could direct them to assault the other children that lived around them, which, like, if you take
Ash
karate, you know, is the exact opposite of what they're teaching you.
Elena
They do an entire oath in the beginning that says that they will not use it for that. Right. So you're like. And you're directing your children to be your little agents of chaos, to go
Ash
beat children you don't like.
Elena
Beat children because you don't like them. Like, that's beyond.
Ash
Well. And then you're making your children pariahs like it's. You're continuing this awful, awful, toxic cycle.
Elena
Things in his life took a serious downturn in 1982 when, after 13 years of employment, he was laid off from his job at the factory. Just about everyone who knew him has acknowledged that this is where his life started really spiraling out of control, and he had done nothing to manage the stress. I mean, yeah, this is for sure where he spiraled. He was already. Nothing good was coming out of this guy. Like that was. He was not. He was not killing it.
Ash
No.
Elena
Now rapidly running out of money and sensing her husband was on the verge of a breakdown, Aetna put the couple's property on the market and gently approached Jim about what to do. Jim was too consumed with paranoia to be much of a help, and instead he spent most of his time focused on his belief that the factory closing was just evidence of a larger conspiracy to ruin him. And he was determined to get even with everyone telling one former co worker he was going to kill himself and, quote, take everyone with him. Guys, you gotta call someone.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
Like he is literally spelling it out for people around him. What is everyone doing?
Ash
That's the thing.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Is it's like he is like, you just. He is spelling it out. It's.
Elena
Yeah. He's yelling it there to everyone. Those paranoid delusions got even worse when a deal for both properties fell through, and Jim and Aetna ended up selling their properties at a loss house. To Jim, this was just further evidence of the conspiracy. So he sued his realtor now, when everything fell apart for them in Ohio, Jim decided it was evidence of his long standing belief that the entire country was in fact, on the verge of collapse. Rather than relocate to any other city or state, he picked up his entire family in the spring of 1983 and moved them to Tijuana. When they left Ohio, he really didn't bother to bring much of their furniture or personal belongings. Instead of, he just filled the car with his massive gun collection and a stock, a huge stock of ammunition.
Ash
Those poor children. Poor children, to be uprooted from your already insanely dark and chaotic life and then packed up in a car with
Elena
a bunch of guns, filled with guns,
Ash
moved to Mexico where, like, you don't know anybody.
Elena
They don't speak the language, they don't speak English. None of them speak any of the language.
Ash
And then your father is this terrifying man who, like, nobody wants to be around. So you're even more isolated.
Elena
Yeah. And it's getting worse and worse. His delusions, his paranoia. So there's no shortage of, you know, irrational motives for moving the entire family to Mexico in his mind. Of course. Ultimately, though, they only lasted three months before moving back to the US because remember, he's also violently racist.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
So. And they settled in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego. Once they settled into their two bedroom apartment, it didn't take long for the old problems and bad habits to just crop right back up. Several neighbors recalled hearing Jim yelling at Aetna, the girls on multiple occasions. The one neighbor who lived next door told a reporter he'd never heard the couple so much as argue.
Ash
I think he just didn't want to get.
Elena
I was like, what? While their new neighbors initially tried to be friendly and welcoming, they became decidedly less friendly when Jim made his dislike of minorities known to everyone within earshot. Reporter Carlos Mezca said he was very anti immigrant. He hated immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants. So that's where we're sitting.
Ash
You're a terrible person.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And also, why move into immigrant communities if you hate immigrants? Why are you infiltrating their safe space?
Elena
Yeah, you're infiltrating their place.
Ash
Like you can go. I mean, you up and moved your family to Tijuana, first of all, when you're a racist piece of shit. So, like, make that make sense.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And then you move to San Ysidro, right?
Elena
Yeah. San Ysidro.
Ash
That's a very well known Mexican community. Like, Mexican community.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
What are you doing?
Elena
So go move somewhere where you'll. You can spout Your nastiness to other angry white people.
Ash
Yeah, or like what do you. Or go yourself.
Elena
Yeah, or go yourself. You choose. But like, why are you infiltrating their community and knowing about them? Right. Like what the. Jim never felt settled in California. If he ever felt settled his entire life. Edna said, in his mind, everything in Ohio was done right, and he could not adjust to the way things were done in California. So he was unemployed, surrounded by people he disliked because of his extreme racism, and the entire landscape was foreign to him. And in the past, he probably wouldn't have had any trouble finding a job as a welder. But a recent car accident had left him shaky, and that ruled out any work like that.
Ash
And I'm sure led to even greater conspiracy.
Elena
Exactly. Then one day he saw a newspaper ad for a federally funded job training program. It offered grants to low income individuals interested in training to be a security guard. So the course was several weeks long, and Jim excelled at every aspect, especially the target shooting.
Ash
He did. That's crazy.
Elena
Yeah. He was placed in the expert category. Once he'd finished the training, he was granted a two year registration as a trained security guard in the state of California. And he set about looking for work. In comparison to the training as a security guard, finding actual work was exponentially harder for him. On paper, he was an ideal candidate, but as soon as he sat down in front of potential employers, things would
Ash
change quickly because he can't speak to people.
Elena
Just a few days after completing the training course, he got an interview with Bernstein. Security Services owner Rudy Bernstein recalled. He told me how well he handled himself and how he would only work for top security firms. But he was put off by his arrogance, bad attitude and obvious lies. Yeah. After he left the interview, Bernstein took measures to ensure that the candidate was not going to get the job. He wrote NO in bold 4 inch letters on Jim's application and then traced over it again with a darker marker to make it clear.
Ash
Really making sure that took me out
Elena
when I heard that Jim did manage to find work with another security firm nearby in Chula Vista. Working the undesirable 8pm to 2am shift.
Ash
That's pretty brutal.
Elena
This guy with lack of sleep is probably not a great mix either.
Ash
More than just by himself at a post.
Elena
And when he wasn't working, sleeping or ranting, he was shopping, buying new guns, gun parts, military uniforms, you know.
Ash
So scary.
Elena
Despite their very limited income, Jim spent money freely. But whenever Aetna needed to spend money on essential items or something for their children, Jim would explode. In anger. On one occasion, when Edna told her husband one of the girls needed braces, he burst into the girl's bedroom waving around an Uzi, oh, my God. And shouted, why spend money on the girl's teeth? She'll be dead anyway.
Ash
Like, what the. That's also just plainly telling your wife that you're going to kill.
Elena
I'm going to kill all of you.
Ash
That's so.
Elena
And this poor, scary. These poor kids.
Ash
Well, think of, like, how old you are when you got your first braces. Like, you're a young teenager.
Elena
Like, and you're literally. Your dad is literally bursting into your room with an Uzi, shouting about how you're going to be dead anyways, so why do you need braces?
Ash
I so hope that these girls are doing okay now and, like, received the help they need because they.
Elena
Their childhood was some of the worst I can imagine.
Ash
I can't even.
Elena
While things at home were deteriorating fast, things at work weren't going very well for Jim either. His credentials and training made him a good candidate for the job, but his bosses at the security company were like, yeah, I don't know if this guy can actually do the job because he's wild.
Ash
He also, like, might just shoot somebody because he wants to.
Elena
He was edgy. He constantly seemed paranoid and jumpy. His attitude was terrible. He was exploding at people. He was just being Jim Huberty. Yeah.
Ash
Not somebody that you want on your property with a gun.
Elena
No. On July 10, 1984, he was fired from the security job after his boss determined he was, quote, too nervous for the work. Although he reacted to his firing about as well as anyone would expect, losing his job also seemed to be like a little bit of a wake up call for Jim. After his job loss, he started speaking a little more openly about his mental health and wondering out loud whether he should seek help from a professional. Which is what led him to place a call to the mental health center on July 17. But when Jim didn't get the call back in a few hours, he became irrationally angry and stormed out of the apartment. By that time, Aetna had become frightened for Jim's safety and the safety of others, and she started frantically calling mental health centers in the area, trying to locate the one Jim had called that day. She intended to tell the receptionist that, contrary to what he told them, he was, in fact, seriously suicidal or dangerous, homicidal even, and hoping that would be enough to get him an appointment immediately. Unfortunately, because the receptionist wrote his name down wrong, when Aetna did eventually land on the right mental health center. The person on the other end looked over the call log and told her they hadn't had any calls from someone named Huberty. Which I'm also, like, you didn't see Schuberty? And say, maybe they wrote it down wrong. Like, come on, come on, guys. Now, the next morning, July 18, Jim and Aetna were due in traffic court related to just, like, a minor infraction. According to the clerk on duty that day. He was. Jim was pleasant and waited patiently until his name was called, never becoming agitated or angry.
Ash
Interesting.
Elena
In fact, Jim even successfully managed to win the sympathy of the clerk, who, feeling sorry that the Huberties had to wait so long, canceled the fine altogether.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
After leaving the courthouse, Jim and Aetna took the kids to the zoo, where they spent a few hours walking the paths, looking at the animals. To Edna, Jim seemed uncharacteristically calm.
Ash
That's so scary.
Elena
Yeah. But every now and then, he would make a comment that she said she found disturbing. At one point, they stopped to watch the animals and. And apropos of nothing, Jim just said, well, society had its chance, and then walked away.
Ash
Oh, my God.
Elena
That would horrify me.
Ash
Honestly, I don't even know, like, what they would be able to do, but you have to call the police if your husband ever fucking says that to you.
Elena
Like, that's.
Ash
I suppose society had its chance.
Elena
Like, I don't even know. That's so scary.
Ash
And the fact that he was weirdly calm, that must have been really scary for his family. Sad that they couldn't even actually enjoy the fact that he was calm. And they.
Elena
Because they were probably. What does this mean?
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
The family arrived home in the early afternoon, and Aetna made lunch for the girls. When she finished cleaning up the kitchen, she went into the bedroom to lay down for a little while. A few minutes later, Jim entered the bedroom wearing a full camouflage outfit and carrying a large bundle wrapped in a black and white checkered outfit. And he said, I want to kiss you goodbye.
Ash
Oh, God.
Elena
When he stood up to leave the room, Aetna asked where he was going. And he replied, I'm going hunting. I'm going hunting, people.
Ash
Did she call someone? We're gonna move forward. Okay.
Elena
From the balcony of the apartment, one of their daughters watched as her father loaded this bundle into the car, then pulled out the parking lot, drove the 200 or so yards down the street, where he pulled into the parking lot of the post office just across from the McDonald's. This was only 200 yards away from his house.
Ash
See it? Probably.
Elena
The restaurant was very popular in the neighborhood and was a place parents frequently bought their children to play. So that afternoon there were about 50 people inside. It was about 4pm when John Arnold clocked in for a shift at McDonald's. He was standing at the register, but he didn't see Jim Huberty come through the door. All he remembers was hearing his co worker Guillermo Flores yell, hey, John, that guy's gonna shoot you.
Ash
Oh my God.
Elena
Arnold turned around and saw Huberty pointing a shotgun in his direction. He said he was pointing that gun right at me. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Then he brought it down and started messing with it. When Jim lowered the gun, John relaxed a little, thinking like, was this just a prank? Like, what is this?
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
But it wasn't the guy. The gun had just jammed. Hubert. He fiddled with the shotgun briefly before finally clearing the jam and firing it into the ceiling. The noise got everyone's attention, which is when Jim pulled out his 9 millimeter semi automatic Uzi from the bundle he was carrying and fired at 22 year old manager Neva Kane, hitting her several times before she dropped to the ground.
Ash
Oh my God.
Elena
Employee Albert Leo said, I saw him come in and tell everyone to get to the floor. Then he just started shooting at everyone. The people who tried to get out to run out of the McDonald's. He started shooting at them, waving his gun around furiously. He shouted, I'm going to kill you all. He then referred to everyone in the restaurant as dirty swine, telling them he'd killed many in Vietnam and he was going to kill a thousand more. Jesus. He had not served in Vietnam. Yeah. He tried to enlist but was deemed unfit for service. I wonder why. But in that moment, none of that matters.
Ash
No.
Elena
After killing Neva Kane Hubert, he turned and began firing through the windows at the people across the street at the donut shop. 12 year old Joshua Coleman and his friends David Flores and Omar Hernandez had gone to the shop to get ice cream that afternoon and were walking out just as he started shooting in their direction. Flores was killed immediately walking out with his ice cream.
Ash
A 12 year old with his friends.
Elena
Yeah. Omar Hernandez was shot multiple times and ended up dying on the ground. Joshua Coleman was hit in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Coleman was panicked and terrified that if he moved, the shooter would realize he was still alive and fire at him again. So he stayed completely still, struggling to breathe. He was shot in the chest. He later said, I needed air and I couldn't get Enough. I had to take short, quick breaths.
Ash
Oh, God.
Elena
Inside the McDonald's, Jim turned his gun on the families in the play area, firing indiscriminately into the crowd as parents just grabbed their children and huddled under the stone tables.
Ash
This is nightmare is not even the correct word.
Elena
Keith Thomas later recalled. We got under the table and I got shot in both arms. He was a kid.
Ash
Oh, my God.
Elena
That afternoon, Keith had gone out to a late lunch with his best friend, Mateo Herrera, and Mateo's father, Ronald. With the two boys squeezed beneath the table, Ronald, the father, shielded them both with his own body. But in the end, it wasn't enough. Mateo was shot and killed, and Keith was shot seven times. Oh, my God. But Keith credits Ronald with saving his life that day.
Ash
Seven times.
Elena
And that's like his best friend's father saved him with his own body.
Ash
That's the thing. The heroes that come out of these stories.
Elena
Oh, it, like, shatters your heart.
Ash
People that literally shield others with their own.
Elena
No one should have to do this.
Ash
No, it's. There should not be such thing as a human shield.
Elena
No. The first call came into San Diego 911 a few minutes after the shooting started when someone dragged one of the victims, a young girl, off the sidewalk and into the post office across the street. Officer Miguel Rosario said the call came in, if I can remember, as some type of disturbance where a little girl had been shot. I had no clue what I was about to enter into.
Ash
God.
Elena
Communication here is awful.
Ash
From start to finish in this story,
Elena
at that time, there were two McDonald's restaurants in San Ysidro, one on the west side and one on the east side. Because there was some confusion around where the incident was taking place, Rosario was dispatched to the wrong location and didn't receive the correction until he was about a block away from the east side McDonald's. As a result, emergency services were delayed by anywhere between three and five minutes as the officer had to backtrack and make his way to the right location.
Ash
Three and five minutes is huge. Huge. Oh, my God.
Elena
Inside the restaurant, everything was chaos. The alarms. This is, for some reason this detail sent me. The alarms on, the fryers and other heating elements were all going off because the food was getting burned because it's.
Ash
It's just madness.
Elena
So now people are crying, screaming and moaning in pain, and there's fryer alarms going off and, like, other heating element things just being like. Like, just crazy. And then on top of that, whatever wasn't being drowned out by the alarms was covered up. Over. Are you ready? The pop music blaring out of the portable stereo that Huberty had brought with him. No. Every now and then, he would fiddle with the radio, changing the station to find a song he liked, and then he would start firing wildly across the restaurant again.
Ash
Oh, my God. I never got to that detail. No, I thought you were gonna say the pop music, like, over the McDonald's.
Elena
No, he brought his own and would
Ash
change it to a song, Change the stereotype.
Elena
He didn't like a song.
Ash
That just made me, like, physically ill.
Elena
Like, that is beyond evil. An outside local reporter, Carlos Emezca, happened to be coming out of the post office when the shooting started, making him the first reporter on the scene. Oh, my God, he said later, before I could even realize it, I heard the whistles of shots going by my head. I hit the ground so hard that I thought I'd been shot because I had blood on my face and hands. I'd actually hit my nose on the pavement.
Ash
Oh, my gosh.
Elena
As Carlos scrambled for cover behind the cars, Miguel Rosarios finally arrived, pulling his patrol car into the parking lot of the post office. And remember, he was the one that was sent to the wrong location. And it's just him at that point, Rosario still hadn't been informed of exactly what was going on, so he thought it might have been a robbery or other public disturbance. He later said, walking to the post office is when I first realized something was very wrong. People were hiding behind cars. They were looking towards the McDonald's. So he looked in the direction of the restaurant just in time to see Jim Huberty raise the Uzi in his direction and fire. Oh, my God. He was able to dive behind a truck to avoid being hit. The COVID gave him just enough time to radio for backup and tell them,
Ash
hey, get here now. Get the fuck over here to the correct McDonald's.
Elena
His call went out at 4:10pm 10 minutes into the assault.
Ash
And you have to think about 10, literally, honestly, set a timer for 10 minutes. That is such a long time in this kind of situation, because you hear
Elena
10 minutes and you go, 10 minutes. Like, oh, I'll be there in 10 minutes. It's no big deal. Like, that sounds like whatever. Sit for 10 minutes.
Ash
10 minutes. I set a timer at night for my mouthwash for one minute. And it's like an entire one minute is so long. Like, it's crazy.
Elena
I set a timer for two minutes every time the girls brush, brush their teeth. And even I'm like, oh, my God, are you supposed to be brushing for this long. That's a long time. So 10 minutes in this. 10 minutes sitting there is a long time. 10 minutes in this kind of absolute nightmare scenario.
Ash
And this man has got. I don't even know how many guns you said.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And how much ammunition. It's like he knows how to make his own ammunition. So it probably is.
Elena
Oh, he had hundreds. He was able to get off hundreds of rounds.
Ash
Hundreds of rounds in a McDonald's where families went to play with their kids.
Elena
And he knew that.
Ash
I so wish that in a. In a strange way, because we already know. I wish that he hadn't been killed. And I wish that he was sitting in prison to this day. Me too.
Elena
Just rotted. Tortured. Yeah.
Ash
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Elena
Now. Later, after everyone had learned the full details of the massacre, several people did question why no one inside the restaurant, which I'm like, guys, like I this that makes me crazy. People were questioning why no one in the restaurant had done anything to try to stop him.
Ash
What are you going to do? He has a million guns.
Elena
And that's the thing. Because they're all like, well, any attempt would have been better than nothing.
Ash
You're gonna get killed.
Elena
Exactly. And Albert Leos somebody who was there, which it's like, how will we listen to the people that were experiencing it?
Ash
Right?
Elena
Because we can all sit here on our ass in our comfy safe home. Why didn't you try to bum rush him? Why didn't you try to do that? You don't know what the fuck you would do. You don't know what your flight and fight or flight is gonna do in that moment. No, you weren't in there watching kids get shot, parents trying to save their kids.
Ash
And like so many people don't realize that a lot of people's fight orf flight response is free.
Elena
Exactly. And it's not anyone's fault.
Ash
No, it's just what your body biology.
Elena
It's just the way it is. But Albert Leo said there was just no way when you have someone who's armed the way he was, it's not like in the movies where someone can jump on him. There's just no way. No, no.
Ash
Like semi automatic and automatic rifles.
Elena
Like Jim Huberty had come prepared that afternoon. He carried an Uzi semi automatic, which also an automatic or a semi automatic. You're not getting a moment between these shots.
Ash
No.
Elena
Like, he's able to just mow down.
Ash
It's like Call of Duty. Like
Elena
something out of a horrible, horrible action flick. Isn't it?
Ash
What they do, they use that in wars. Those. In wars.
Elena
I have no idea. Actually, I'm not even gonna try. But it's like.
Ash
But they use that for like mass carnage.
Elena
Any kind of like automatic weapon is horrifying.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
Like, it just is for like, you know, but. So he was carrying an uzi semi automatic, a 9 millimeter handgun and a Remington pump action shotgun. Whenever one gun ran out of bullets, he would simply pull another out and start firing again.
Ash
And you also have to think he's an expert. Like, he's.
Elena
So he's a gun. He can reload quick. He can fix jams.
Ash
Because I'm sure so many people, like, would take this moment to say, or back then, like, oh, he took a minute to reload. Yeah, he probably.
Elena
It was probably seconds. Yeah. He's done this his whole life. It's the only thing he's been obsessed with. And no, again, no one knew how long they might have between breaks when he would stop to reload. So no one wanted to take the chance to go rush at him and start another shooting spree.
Ash
You could get yourself killed because also,
Elena
you're not even getting yourself killed. And I'm sure these people are thinking this. He's not shooting one shot at a time. It's not just going to be you going down. You standing up and rushing at him could take out everyone around you. Right. And so they're probably thinking in that scenario, like, is it worth me getting up and having him mow down a whole group of kids behind me?
Ash
That's the thing. There's kids everywhere in this room.
Elena
Yeah. This is awful. It's an awful situation. I can't imagine being in it now. Once crime scene technicians had processed the scene later, they determined that Huberty had managed to fire, like I said, hundreds of rounds in all directions. Directions. And when he wasn't blindly firing, ranting, or listening to music, he would walk through the restaurant shooting people, several of whom were already dead, just shooting them more. And when the noise became too much, he would shout at everyone, demanding that parents keep their children Quiet because they were making him anxious.
Ash
What? Like, how do you expect anybody to calm their child in this situation? What the dude?
Elena
Maria Riveria was one of those parents hiding under the tables, trying to keep her children quiet. She told them the bullets were just little pieces of ice flying out of the broken ice machine. But she didn't think that they believed her.
Ash
No.
Elena
She later said, he came to our table and kicked me, and I had to pretend I was dead. Oh, my God. He thought we were dead because there was a lot of blood around us. In the end, Maria's arm was grazed by a bullet, and one of her daughters was shot in the leg. But all three did survive.
Ash
And also in that kid, like, that is such a mom right there in that situation to come up with something even remotely comforting instead of like, this man is killing everybody around us. It's the ice machine. Like, yeah, props to that mom.
Elena
That's being a mom.
Ash
That's next level.
Elena
Now, after about. Are you ready? 40 minutes of terror truly is shocking. Almost an hour.
Ash
It's shocking that anybody made it out of death alive.
Elena
Yeah. Some people decided to try to make a run for the emergency exit, hoping that they could reach the door before he spotted them. Cashier Wendy Flanagan recalled the girl that was at the cash register with me, Maggie. She saw that I was not running, and she went behind me, and she was pushing me the whole way as I ran. I imagined I was running through rain. She said. I felt like I was running through rain. And I heard bing, bing, bing. Because I believe now he was shooting with the machine gun.
Ash
Oh, my God.
Elena
And he was shooting at us, and the bullets were ricocheting all over. And when Maggie. And then Maggie got really heavy, and she was keeping me from running, so she slipped from my arm, and I ran down the stairs into a closet. And she never came. Like, oh, Wendy, you need to think.
Ash
These are, like young girls working these registers.
Elena
Wendy managed to reach the emergency exit on her own, but when she hit the door, she discovered it had been locked by the management, who feared the employees might see steal food if they had an unmonitored exit.
Ash
You gotta be kidding me.
Elena
I hope some came out of this.
Ash
You gotta be kidding me.
Elena
So, thinking fast, Wendy turned and ran through the door that led to a small supply room at the bottom of a short flight of stairs where several others were also hiding.
Ash
Okay.
Elena
Outside the supply room, they could hear their co worker, Albert Leos, get shot five or six times, including two serious wounds in his arm and leg. Huberty only stopped shooting Lios when he ran out of ammunition and had to return to the counter where he'd left his supply. In that moment, Lios used the opportunity to drag himself to the supply room door. And then he dragged himself down the flight of stairs where the other people were hiding. Despite how seriously he was injured, he knew if he made any noise, he was going to give away their position. So he bit down on a rolled up rag and used shoelaces as tourniquets on his arms and legs. Wow. Now, having spent nearly an hour trapped in the restaurant with this absolute maniac, the remaining survivors couldn't understand why, after having shot through the windows and killing people outside on the street, the police hadn't shown up to stop him.
Ash
Yeah, like, where are they?
Elena
This must have been like, because sitting there and having this happen for so long, you're like, where are they? Yeah, like, where are the people that are supposed to save us? Like, I don't understand this. Throughout the late 1970s and early 80s, Americans had watched their local police departments become much more militarized as well, and heavily armed with military grade weapons, supposedly to prevent or stop incidents like this, something like this. And yet there they were, trapped inside with Huberty. And there was no sign of law enforcement to be seen, at least as far as they knew. Right. In reality, though, which. This is the reality, there was a heavy presence outside police presence. But their attempts to intervene kept getting hindered by several factors. For one thing, the windows were covered with a tinted film, making it difficult for anyone outside to see in.
Ash
Oh, man.
Elena
That visibility was further hampered by the fact that after Huberty fired through the windows, the double paned glass didn't shatter. It just cracked into like a spiderweb pattern, making it almost impossible to see inside. Also challenging was their physical location, although it surely wasn't planned that way. The McDonald's was all glass on three sides and Huberty could see through all of them.
Ash
Right.
Elena
So anytime one of the officers tried to get close to the building, he would see them and unleash a torrent of semi automatic gunfire at them. This not only put the responding officers at risk, but everyone else who was still pinned down outside the restaurant when the shooting started.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
Eventually, the SDPD called in fire trucks to position around the perimeter to block the pedestrians. This allowed them to remove the wounded from the scene. But the trucks, like, outside the scene, but trucks took heavy damage because he was just firing into them.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
And at least one fireman was shot in the process. Now, after an hour, the San Diego police SWAT team had arrived at the scene. And I was like an hour, an hour. You brought the SWAT team in after an hour.
Ash
The SWAT team should be called. Should have been called immediately.
Elena
They took up their positions with sniper Chuck Foster atop the room of the post office across the restaurant. The roof, excuse me, of the post office. He later said, I got up on top of the room along with my spotter Barry Bennett, at about 5:02pm. I was like, what? Because this all started around 4:00pm he said, Once I got up onto the post office roof, I could look down upon the McDonald's. I could see a few bodies lying inside the restaurant. I could see a few times when the shooter was firing out towards the street, towards the fire trucks. The shooter within the McDonald's had a lot of advantages where he was at.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
As soon as he was in position on the roof, Foster had the same problems that the officer on the ground had. The windows were both tinted heavily cracked. He just couldn't see anything. Under those conditions, there was a high likelihood that if he took a shot, Foster could have missed or hit one of the people inside. Yeah. Also, the officers outside the restaurant knew very little about what was actually happening inside the restaurant. And they thought that if there was more than one shooter, which they thought there was, considering how many shots were being fired, they said taking one out might prompt the other one to kill everyone else inside.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
Because they also didn't know if this was like a hostage situation. And they were like, if we kill one, that might negate any hope that we have of getting anyone else out.
Ash
Right. This is an impossible situation.
Elena
It is now. After about 15 more minutes of holding in position, Chuck Foster finally saw Huberty walk to the front of the restaurant and hop up on the counter. From his position, it looked like Jim was reloading his guns. But Foster could only see him from the waist down and didn't have a clear shot. He later said it was impossible to see inside the McDonald's through those windows. I didn't get a chance to see him at all until just before shooting him.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
The only reason I could see inside was because his gunshots shattered a double door of safety glass. Chuck saw Huberty get off the counter and take a few steps towards the front doors, which had been blown out entirely. Worried that he might not get another chance, he drew in a deep breath. And as soon as Jim appeared through the broken glass of the front door, he fired a single shot that ripped right through Huberty's heart, killing him instantly.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
At 5:17pm After a full 77 minutes of carnage and complete terror, the massacre inside The San Ysidro McDonald's had finally come to an end.
Ash
77 minutes.
Elena
77 minutes.
Ash
That has to be one of the longest shootings.
Elena
I can't imagine this. In that time, Jim huberty had murdered 21 people, many of them children, and injured nearly two dozen others. And those who managed to survive this whole thing, having escaped with their lives, would suffer from profound post traumatic stress disorder.
Ash
Absolutely. For decades, probably for the rest of their lives.
Elena
Oh, I can't even imagine.
Ash
And also, there are children suffering PTSD
Elena
from this, like, who are gonna have to grow up with this. Like, truly.
Ash
That's why, like, this time of year, when I think about, like, fireworks and that kind of thing and just. Yeah, obviously, like, it's a thing that happens, but I just feel for people who are triggered by that, because that has got to send you into such a catastrophic state.
Elena
That sound. Yeah, yeah.
Ash
Like, that's. I can't imagine surviving this and then hearing.
Elena
And then hearing fireworks. Especially when, like, I think it's so annoying. And I don't care how I come.
Ash
I feel. I know exactly what you're gonna say. And I feel the same.
Elena
For the 4th of July. Cut the shit.
Ash
All done.
Elena
Cut the shit. Because when people start doing them on random weeknights at like, 11pm, you're an asshole. You're an asshole. And that's just how I feel. Like, literally care. I'm like that. I just think you're an asshole if you do that. Like, truly. And especially when people start it weeks earlier or they do it for weeks after the 4th of July, there's a designated day.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
And you do. I realize the world is not, like, fully, you know, a safe space for everyone and can't cater to everyone's, you know, triggers or whatever the hell anybody wants to say, but there are certain things we can do that are just really easy to do. Yeah. And it's like, do your fireworks on the 4th of July.
Ash
Come on.
Elena
And honestly, you just don't need to do them.
Ash
Think about this this year. Like, just think about. Really?
Elena
This year. Yeah, just think about this. And thinking about somebody who lived through this. And then two weeks after 4th of July, someone decides to, out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, shoot off fireworks a couple of houses down. Not only, like, and what that would
Ash
do to someone, because also, you have to think of how many people at this point in life and where we are have lived through this, this.
Elena
So way more people have Lived through this.
Ash
And, like, you really do need to take that into consideration.
Elena
Consideration. Yeah. Which I feel like it's worth.
Ash
It's worth saying.
Elena
I feel like a lot of our listeners are just.
Ash
I know. I'm sure we pissed off a couple people.
Elena
I'm sure we got a couple people that are pissed off, but it's really worth saying it's just the way it is. But I think most of our listeners right now, I think you guys listening are the kind of people that are considerate and think of those things and also don't do that stuff. I'm sure, you know, you're always going to get people. But just if you are one of those people that loves to shoot off fireworks a few weeks after the 4th of July, just think about this.
Ash
Yeah. Think. Take a second guess.
Elena
If you decide to do it anyway, that's. That's on you. But, like, think of doing anyway. That kind of sucks. And, like, I feel like we're not
Ash
as close as I thought we were,
Elena
but, like, let's be friends and just. Yeah. All agree not to do that. Yeah. Now, once Huberty was dead, the survivors came running out of the building in all directions, not towards police or any other members of law enforcement, just away from the fucking building as fast as they could. It was only after they'd managed to wrangle the survivors and get the wounded to the hospital that the STBD finally started to understand the scope of what happened here. Because, remember, they still don't know what the fuck was going on.
Ash
They're like, is there still a hostage?
Elena
Miguel Rosario recalled, Nobody knew that this guy was in there by himself and just arbitrarily shooting people, because why would your mind even think that? Well, and especially at this time.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
It wasn't from outside the restaurant. All they knew was that someone was shooting inside. So they naturally thought it was a robbery or a hostage situation. And that was really the most shocking element of the story. Although they've become obviously, tragically common now, which is horrific and shame on all of us for it. In 1984, mass shootings were exceedingly rare. So much so, in fact, that law enforcement didn't recognize it when it happened in San Ysidro. Jim Huberty hadn't gone to McDonald's to rob anyone or make some kind of political statement, even by taking hostages. He'd gone there for the sole purpose of killing as many people as humanly possible before being taken out by the police. And he did exactly that.
Ash
He sure did.
Elena
Police officers and crime scene technicians worked through the night to process the scene and identify the bodies. According to the coroner, 13 of the victims died immediately upon being shot, while the rest likely died within a few minutes of being struck down. Because so many of the victims were children and didn't have identification on them, staff members from the coroner's office were forced to use photographs of the victims from the shoulders up to show the mass of people who'd assembled outside the office looking for their loved ones. By the following day, they'd managed to identify all of the victims. I'm going to read them out. Elsa Herlinda borboa Fierro was 19. Neva Denise Cain was 22. Michelle Deanne Carncross was 18. Maria Elena Colmanero Silva was 19. Gloria Lopez Gonzalez, 22. Blythe Reagan Herrera, 31. Mateo Herrera, 11. Pauline Aquino Lopez, 21. Margarita Padilla, 18. Claudia Perez, 9.
Ash
9.
Elena
Ada Velasquez Victoria was 69. Jose Ruben Lozano Perez was 19. Carlos Reyes was 8 months.
Ash
Oh, my God.
Elena
Jacqueline Wright Reyes was 18. Victor Maximilian Rivera was 25. Aris Delzy Vuelvas Vargas was 31. Hugo Luis Velazquez. Excuse me. Was 45. Lawrence Herman Versluze was 62. David Flores Delgado was 11. Omar Alonzo Hernandez was 11. And Miguel Victoria Yoa was 74 years old.
Ash
Such, like a vast range of ages there.
Elena
Like people eight months to 74.
Ash
Eight months. Like literally just starting your time on this earth and like 69 and 74 and you make it that long in your life and this is the one that ends your life. Yeah, like, that's just so cruel.
Elena
And to be looking at people crying and begging for their lives and just indiscriminately shoot them. Seeing parents trying to shield their crying children and shoot them anyways. You're shooting babies, you're doing Nothing.
Ash
You're shooting 11 and 12 year olds, you're shooting parents.
Elena
Jim Huberty had nothing inside of him.
Ash
He was an empty vessel, like, truly an empty vessel.
Elena
Like, he was just nothing would have made him stop. It really wouldn't. When the news broke, it shocked everyone from one end of the country to the other, although it has unfortunately been surpassed in number by others since. At the time, the San Ysidro massacre was the worst mass shooting in American history. And most people found it impossible to understand how such a thing could happen. Which I wish we could say now that that's the same thing that happens now that everyone can't imagine this happening. However, those who knew Jim Huberty weren't nearly as surprised A former neighbor told a reporter, he came across to me as cold. He looked like your average guy, except for his facial expressions. I never saw a smile on him. Now, another person who wasn't entirely surprised by the shooting was Jim's wife, Edna.
Ash
I wonder if they, like, heard it from their apartment.
Elena
That's what I wonder.
Ash
They had to have.
Elena
Yeah. But while being very well aware of Jim's long struggle with his poor mental health, his inability to manage his rage, and the full extent of his decomposition in the day before the accident, Aetna would go on to unsuccessfully sue the McDonald's corporation a few years later.
Ash
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Elena
Alleging that her deceased husband had been consuming copious amounts of McDonald's chicken nuggets in the days, weeks and months leading up to the shooting.
Ash
To blame this atrocity on chicken nuggets, on over consumption of chicken nuggets when, you know, is diabolical.
Elena
And especially, you know who that man was. You know? Right well, who that man was always
Ash
in that way, copious amounts of chicken nuggets or not.
Elena
Yeah, that's all.
Ash
That's all I'm gonna say.
Elena
We've already given you, like, how we feel about, like, Edna not leaving or whatever. Like, we've said, we've sympathized. We've sympathized with. And I will continue to sympathize and empathize with her.
Ash
Not on this.
Elena
On this. No. No, babe. I'm not empathizing with you. You're not blaming it on chicken nuggets. You're gonna have to excuse me on this one. I'm not empathizing with the chicken nuggets.
Ash
I can't imagine being a surviving victim or the victim of the family member of a victim and hearing that this woman blamed it on chicken nuggets, saying
Elena
the chicken nuggets made him do this.
Ash
No, you have to be kidding me.
Elena
She said that it contributed to his disordered mind.
Ash
It didn't.
Elena
He was already there. He had already said a million times to a million different people that he was going to kill a lot.
Ash
He had been that way from childhood,
Elena
and that is no fault of hers. But don't blame it on chicken nuggets.
Ash
That's wild.
Elena
Because that really trivializes it.
Ash
It really does.
Elena
And it makes it not his fault. Suddenly.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
And that's wild to do.
Ash
It absolutely is.
Elena
Now, while most people wondered what had caused him to go on such a shocking rampage, the public was equally frustrated with local law enforcement. And everyone wanted to know why and how he Was able to continue killing people for well over an hour before police intervened. That was a long time.
Ash
77 minutes.
Elena
And for them to only get SWAT there, like, an hour late, that's that. I don't get. I don't either. I'll never understand that. To throw a sniper on a roof an hour later.
Ash
No.
Elena
What are you doing? Like, what are you doing?
Ash
He could have been stopped earlier.
Elena
In truth, it seems there were several important factors that obviously definitely hindered them from getting to him sooner. But the initial error in dispatching in the presence of a single officer to the heavy tinting on the glass, to the spidering on the glass, all these things contributed to this allowing being allowed to go on for far too long. But still, the event did go on to influence police procedure with regards to incidents of mass shootings and other acts of terrorism, changing everything from the language used in communication between agencies, because no one labeled this a mass shooting at first, to the surveillance tools used, and even the scale and scope of weapons carried by all officers. Now, in the wake of the massacre, the community struggled over what to do with the building. I know some wanted it torn down completely, while others thought it should remain. In the end, the building was demolished and a permanent memorial was installed in 1990. I think this was the best thing to do.
Ash
I think that's what I would have preferred, too.
Elena
The memorial consists of 21 hexagonal white marble pillars, each bearing the name of a victim. In his statement to the press at the unveiling of the memorial, designer Roberto Valdez said the 21 hexagons represent each person that died. And they are different heights representing the variety of ages and races of the people involved in the massacre. They are bonded together in the hopes that the community in a tragedy like this will stick together like they did. Wow.
Ash
That's really beautiful. That gave me chills.
Elena
Yeah. I think that was the best thing they could have done for that location. And what that was.
Ash
I mean, what can you do other than that? Yeah.
Elena
It's a horrific story. It is. But again, I think it's one that needs to be told. One, to make sure those people are remembered.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
And two, to really hammer in that mental health care and treatment for mental health is. We can't ever get too good with it, man.
Ash
And we're nowhere near it. We need to keep improving.
Elena
We're nowhere near it. So it's like, we need to keep improving. And also, people need to say. When people are saying stuff, I know it's hard sometimes. Of course, I realize that people are like, I don't want to sound like a crazy person calling and say this. I don't want to get. When he's life ruined. I don't want to do this.
Ash
Like, people are saying the things that Jim Huberty was saying. There's no such thing as overreacting to somebody's life.
Elena
Just anonymously say, hey, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know if he was serious, but he said this really concerning thing.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
You could be saving a lot of people.
Ash
You absolutely could.
Elena
If you ever get a chance to. Please do that.
Ash
Please do, honestly. All right.
Elena
We need a fun. We need the funnest effects.
Ash
I'm really looking for a good one. Wow. This one. I don't know if I would call it fun, but it's something. People once used corn cobs instead of toilet paper because they were soft, easy to hold. And there were a lot of them.
Elena
I love the fact there were a lot of them.
Ash
There were a lot of them.
Elena
There was so much corn, you could use it to wipe your butt.
Ash
It has the juice. I have to go now.
Elena
That's crazy.
Ash
I have to go now.
Elena
That is a pretty fun fact.
Ash
I have never heard that in my life, and I'm not quite sure if I'm better for it.
Elena
I feel like we're all better for it, to be honest.
Ash
That's a crazy one.
Elena
I think we are. All right, guys.
Ash
Be kind to each other.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Think about fireworks this year.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And if somebody says something to you that is so dark and chilling that it rots you to your core, tell someone.
Elena
That's a great way of explaining.
Ash
And we hope you keep listening.
Elena
We hope you keep it weird, but
Ash
not so weird that you get rotted to your core and you don't.
Elena
Don't say anything. Yeah. Bye. Bye.
Ash
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Morbid Podcast: The San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre
Hosts: Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart
Date: June 8, 2026
Ash and Alaina deliver a deeply researched, compassionate, and heavy recounting of the 1984 San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre, a mass shooting carried out by James (Jim) Huberty. This episode explores warning signs missed throughout Huberty’s life, failures in mental health support, the tragic details of the attack, the systemic aftermath, and the lingering trauma for survivors and the community. Woven into the narrative are reflections on mental health—especially men’s mental health—societal responsibilities, and survivor support, plus personal reactions and darkly humorous asides characteristic of Morbid.
“You can be two things. Two things can be true at once. Absolutely. He can be mentally ill, and he can also be a really bad person.” – Elena, 09:00
“He’s not nice. He’s violent to children, he’s violent to women. He’s horrible…” – Elena, 09:20
“Every now and then, he would fiddle with the radio, changing the station to find a song he liked, and then he would start firing wildly across the restaurant again.” – Elena, 52:46
“As soon as Jim appeared through the broken glass of the front door, he fired a single shot that ripped right through Huberty’s heart, killing him instantly.” – Elena, 69:17
“Sometimes it’s okay to reach out and say, yeah, hey, this person is speaking in a way that makes me think he might hurt someone. It’s okay. You can do it anonymously.” — Elena (07:53)
“He always said that he wanted to kill a lot of people… If somebody is always saying that they want to kill a lot of people, you have a problem.” — Elena & Ash (17:08)
“Why didn’t you try to bum rush him? … You don’t know what the fuck you would do. You don’t know what your fight or flight is gonna do in that moment.” — Elena (59:04)
“The alarms on, the fryers... were going off because the food was getting burned... whatever wasn’t being drowned out by the alarms was covered up. Over. Are you ready? The pop music blaring out of the portable stereo that Huberty had brought with him.” — Elena (52:14)
“Mental health care and treatment for mental health is—we can’t ever get too good with it, man.” — Elena (81:37)
“If somebody says something to you that is so dark and chilling that it rots you to your core, tell someone.” — Ash (83:27)
To offer brief relief after the heavy topic, Ash shares that “people once used corn cobs instead of toilet paper...” before closing with warmth, reflection, and a reminder to keep it weird—but not so weird that you ignore serious warning signs.