Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 20: 20/20

Summary

Podcast Summary: Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 20: 20/20

Introduction In Episode 20 of "Rewind with Karen & Georgia," originally part of the "My Favorite Murder" network hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, the duo takes listeners on a reflective journey revisiting their early episodes. Released on November 20, 2024, this episode titled "20/20" delves into past discussions, highlighting how their perspectives and storytelling have evolved since the podcast's inception in January 2016.

Revisiting the Past Karen and Georgia begin by expressing a mix of trepidation and excitement about revisiting their inaugural episodes. Karen likens the experience to having a personal, candid phone call released online, where their past thoughts and feelings are open to public scrutiny. Georgia adds, “The older I get, the more I realize that young people's thoughts and emotions are so much stronger and more, like, adamant than they are when you're older” (02:19).

Discussion on Brock Turner's Case One of the primary focuses of this episode is Brock Turner's high-profile case, where he was convicted of sexual assault but received a controversial sentence. The hosts express their frustration with the judicial system's handling of the case, particularly criticizing Judge Aaron Persky for his lenient sentencing despite unanimous jury conviction. Georgia emphasizes the severity of the judge’s comments, stating, “He didn’t have any feeling toward how you affect other people” (05:19). They highlight the victim’s powerful impact statement, praising its emotional depth and clarity, which resonated widely and sparked significant public discourse.

The Night Stalker: Richard Ramirez A substantial portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring the notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker. Karen provides a comprehensive overview of Ramirez's heinous crimes, detailing his spree of murders, sexual assaults, and burglaries across Southern California in the mid-1980s. She recounts how Ramirez's violent history and psychological trauma, including a traumatic incident in his youth, contributed to his descent into serial killing.

Georgia reflects on the community's reaction during Ramirez's capture, marveling at the collective effort to apprehend him. She notes, “You can't imagine the unity and desperation of the people trying to catch him” (49:59). Karen shares personal anecdotes, including a family friend’s involvement in the investigation and the intense neighborhood response in Boyle Heights, where Ramirez was ultimately cornered and subdued by vigilant citizens.

Impact of Ramirez's Crimes The hosts discuss the broader implications of Ramirez's actions on society and law enforcement. They highlight how his ability to evade capture by frequently changing locations and methods underscored the challenges faced by authorities in tracking serial offenders. Karen remarks on the advancements in forensic technology since Ramirez’s time, suggesting that modern methods might have expedited his apprehension.

A notable moment includes Ramirez's chilling courtroom demeanor and his audacious statements upon conviction, where he proclaimed, “I am beyond good and evil” (53:05). Karen and Georgia analyze how his personality and actions instilled fear and prompted essential conversations about mental health, criminal profiling, and community safety.

The Bain Family Murders Transitioning from serial crimes to high-stakes family tragedies, the episode delves into the Bain family murders in New Zealand. Georgia narrates the harrowing case of David Bain, who was initially convicted for the brutal killings of his family members but later acquitted after significant legal scrutiny revealed procedural errors and reasonable doubt. The hosts explore the complexities surrounding the trial, including allegations of incest and potential police misconduct.

Karen points out inconsistencies in David’s account, such as unexplained injuries and questionable evidence handling, questioning the integrity of the prosecution’s case. Georgia shares insights from listener interactions, highlighting the passionate and divided opinions within New Zealand regarding Bain’s guilt. She states, “I've listened to intelligent people argue through their teeth for completely different sides” (72:28), underscoring the case's controversial nature.

Reflections and Conclusions As the episode draws to a close, Karen and Georgia reflect on the importance of revisiting past cases to understand their lasting impact on audiences and the hosts themselves. They acknowledge the growth in their investigative and empathetic approaches, appreciating how these stories have shaped their perspectives on justice and compassion.

Karen encourages listeners to engage with documentaries like the Netflix series "Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer," praising its in-depth portrayal and firsthand accounts from those involved in the case. Georgia concurs, emphasizing the value of hearing survivors and survivors' statements to foster a deeper understanding of such traumatic events.

Notable Quotes

• “You know what it is? It's like if somebody recorded you... that's an approximation of what it's like to look back.” – Karen Kilgariff (02:00)
• “I'm really surprised. We would have never thought that this guy was capable of that. But I would never say that it's not true.” – Georgia Hardstark (06:24)
• “If you kill somebody else now that he's free, maybe he won't...” – Karen Kilgariff (78:48)
• “Stay sexy and don't get murdered.” – Georgia Hardstark (86:20)

Final Thoughts "Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 20: 20/20" serves as a poignant reminder of the podcast's roots in true crime storytelling, blending dark subject matter with the hosts' characteristic humor and candid reflections. By revisiting pivotal cases like Brock Turner's and Richard Ramirez's, alongside international tragedies such as the Bain family murders, Karen and Georgia offer listeners a comprehensive look at their journey and the enduring relevance of these complex narratives.

Stay Connected For those intrigued by these discussions, Karen and Georgia invite listeners to continue exploring their extensive library of episodes, each delving into various facets of true crime with humor and heart. As always, the hosts encourage ratings, reviews, and subscriptions to support the continuation of their compelling storytelling.

Transcript

[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

On lady to Lady Podcast.

[Karen Kilgariff]

New episodes every Wednesday on Lady to Lady Podcast. Lady to lady to lady to lady to Lady Podcast. Check out lady to lady new episodes every Wednesday on the exactly right network. My savior.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is our newest Wednesday episode where we go back and listen to the beginning of this show and we chat about everything that we said then and how it's different now and what we're doing and why all of it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It makes us sweaty, but we're doing it for you guys.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's not pleasant.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I kind of love it. I don't hate it. I love it. It's hard. It's important. I'm glad we're doing it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You know what it is? It's like if somebody recorded you, if you chose to record yourself on a phone call, a long phone call, where you said a lot of stuff that you really felt and meant, and then someone released that on the Internet and people were like, actually, you were wrong to think this or feel this. That's an approximation of what it's like to look back.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The older I get, the more I realize that young people's thoughts and emotions and feelings are so much stronger and more, like, adamant than they are when you're older. And usually they're wrong, too. So that's what we're doing today.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And we're not that young.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, I mean, we were. I was 36. Yeah, I think I just turned 36 in this fucking episode. Oh, my God. Today we're revisiting episode 20 from Thursday, June 9th, the day after my birthday. 2016. We called it 2020.

[Karen Kilgariff]

2020. That's easy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Classic.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That was an easy one. So now it's time to get in the spirit of giving, grab a friend, listen along. It's time to all become day one listeners.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, let's listen to the intro of episode 20. Test, test, test test.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Podcast. Positive podcast. POS podcast.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Three times fast.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Podcast. Podcast. Podcast.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There you go. Hi. This is my favorite murder that Scared.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The Shit out of me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What did me talking.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Hi, this is.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hi.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is my favorite murder starring Georgia.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Stark, Karen Kilgareff, AKA Kill Har.

[Karen Kilgariff]

One of the lamest things we've done so far. Give ourselves a nickname.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Did you see someone in the Facebook group Nada A photo of the Die Hard poster and put your face on one guy and my face on another guy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I did see that. It's turning into like a ego navel gazing kind of like did you see the picture where we. The thing we talked about about ourselves got made into a thing about ourselves.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know, but people like it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They like to play along with us.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We wouldn't talk about it if they weren't doing it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's fun times. And there's. And it's just. There's just thousands of them. It's the best.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We're fueled by their. Is it projected narcissism onto us?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, that's our narcissism.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, let's talk about how last week we talked about judges and their misogyny.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Built in misogyny and sexism.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That I think at one point I actually said it's not happening as much these days.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. And I think we conjured. Speaking of narcissism. I think we conjured.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think we're the center of the universe.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think we're the center of the universe about this new fucking huge controversial thing about this dick lick Brock Turner, who like cool, he got, he, he got convicted of three counts of sexual. Aggravated sexual assault. I'm not even going to say, like clearly he was guilty. He got.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was guilty.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He is guilty.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was unanimously voted guilty by a jury of his peers. And yet, and yet the old judge said, hey, let's not fuck up his great swimming career and said six months in county.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then his dad had the nerve to say like, well, it was 20 minutes of his life. Is he going to get.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You know what his dad said? So. Well, the brilliant thing. And everyone's seen this like we're basically recapping what's been happening on social media. But the victim of this stood up in court and read this letter to him that is one of. Not just moving and amazing as a first person account, the clarity in it and the. I'll let you know what's actually happening. And we're not just gonna hear from these lawyers. I'll fucking tell you myself. Right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

And it's not just like how much you hurt me. It's like here are the repercussions of your actions and decisions Whether or not.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You admit to them, we all know you did because there's the proof. You can pretend you didn't do it like a fucking psycho all you want.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Ye. So it's not pretending he didn't do it. He's saying that it wasn't what people thought it was.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And he probably believes that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, he needs to believe it because when the wall finally comes down that he's like, I'm a rapist. Well then what happens then? And I'm sure everything in his life has been built around you. Get whatever you want, little baby Brock.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And then some of his friends. There's a band called. What's it called? Good English.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's not even talk about it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, the thing is, I just don't see a time in my life where I would defend a friend of mine. And I'm thinking of multiple friends who are good people would say, no, he, it wasn't rape, right? I wouldn't ever say that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I would say, especially as a woman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And that girl is. The girl in the band is a woman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I would say, I'm really surprised. We would have never thought that this guy was capable of that. But I would never say that it's not true. And it's. And she's full of shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Especially after a jury unanimously voted him guilty of rape because he.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You can see the evidence. So we were just gonna look it up to talk about it. And I found this article in the cut that the judge, this piece of shit Judge Aaron Persky. Perskay Persky, who's like thankfully getting a lot of shit and will probably be disbarred. There's an article published. Tracy Kaplan writes that this isn't the first controversial sexual assault case the judge has presided over. So here's the fucking story. In 2007, a 17 year old girl alleged that she was gang raped by at least nine members of the De Anza college basketball team at a house party while she was severely intoxicated. Three soccer players discovered the rape in progress. Broke it up. Thank fucking God for some people. And they said they discovered her unconscious and covered in vomit and called it clearly non consensual. District Attorney Dolores Carr ultimately decided not to move forward with the case, which was met with criticism. In 2011, the case was brought to civil trial and the victim sued for 7.5 million in damages. The judge Persky presided. He ruled before lunch that no can show the jury seven photos of the women whom the court is calling Jane Doe partying about a year or so after the alleged gang rape, she was partying afterwards. And they could show photos. And the photo. She is scantily clad. She's scantily clad.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm sorry, so what? Yeah, so what?

[Georgia Hardstark]

They said that the photos are a direct contradiction. Quote of the plaintiff claims that she is socially isolated and socially reticent.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But that doesn't. And especially. Not especially. But photos post rape, right? She's fucking. It doesn't matter what she does.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She could be spiraling out of control. She could be doing anything. Who the fuck was?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or she could be a slut. It doesn't fucking matter.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It doesn't matter. And here's the other thing. Cause we were talking about this at work today. The bottom line is this. You know in your gut, you know what feels right. And you know it feels wrong. And if you are so narcissistic and selfish that you're gonna take what you want no matter. You don't have any feeling toward how you affect other people or you don't care, then you. But ultimately that's your truth. That you have to live in and sit in. And if you say, have to be on drugs or drunk so that you have to ignore those. Whatever. But at the end of the day, you cannot parse out and argue things like this when what we're talking about is basic human decency.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I know that for a lot of people, I think there's a lot of gray area with rape that people get that people have a hard time dealing with. But. So even if this chick had ever fucked any of these nine guys, it's. They still. It's still rape if she's intoxicated and can't give consent. Like it's such a. It's to that extreme that even if she fucked these guys.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, yeah, because if she had fucked them, that would have been her choice.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's what the. In that letter, one of my favorite parts of Brock Turner's victim, she said, how can I be promiscuous if I did not choose to do it? If I wasn't even awake? How was that promiscuous? That's. I'm unconscious.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And that's the. That's the part that people want to argue. They want. They want to deflect away from the truth of the actual action, which is you took a person who was not there and fucked their body.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's disgusting. You have a problem. That girl doesn't have a problem. Except for the fact that you decided to do that to her.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, it's just so, like, I think about people I've dated and been with, and none of them would want a fucking unconscious body.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No. That means there's something wrong with you. That's predatory, that's sociopathic.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I don't care how drunk I get drunk. And I do stupid things, but they're not out of character. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, no. A lot of people do. There's a whole aspect to this that I think they can't talk about, which is the way she tells that story. She is blackout. She goes from dancing and feeling kind of drunk to waking up behind a dumpster. I think there's a roofie element that they can't talk about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's a theory that I have.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe the defendant kind of got that thrown out or something.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well. That they couldn't prove it or it had already gone through her body so that they can't include it. That would be prejudicial. So they can't. And she's probably not even going to go there because it's like, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Because even If I drank 11 beers in a row, that doesn't mean I want you to rape me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Don't be a fucking lunatic. And it's not. And also, if the woman is saying that, that is her truth. It's not up to you. It's not your final choice. Totally random guy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or rapist guy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or to defend that. That's not her truth anymore. You can't do that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Just fuck off. Not you, Georgia. Not. It makes me so mad because it's just so. When people try to parse out things like this of, like, she's half responsible if she was drunk. Fuck you. Yeah, these are. I mean, there was a girl that did an amazing tweet today that these people who are trying to blame this victim's rape on her drunkenness are the same ones that threw temper tantrums when U2's album was downloaded without their consent on their computer. It's the same. It's that thing of like, how dare you? If this happened to you, you would never be saying it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I saw a meme that said, well, she was drunk. What did you expect? What did she expect? And the answer was a fucking hangover.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You didn't expect to get raped. You expected a hangover.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. The idea that that should be part of the equation and too bad for you, is insanity. That's why we talk about women and the people who like that fucking judge Was a lacrosse player at. He was a lacrosse player at Stanford.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What are you gonna do with swimming? How on earth do you think. Why, what about this girl?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, that's just like. That's boys club bullshit.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's what that is. Swimming. It's gonna ruin.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like saying someone's life is more important than another total. I mean, this goes back to everything we talk about. So it's just, it's another frustration. But. But here's what I will say. I really do love. If you get down into the. If you read a comment section, you're always going to be disappointed in humanity. But Ashley Bamfield, I think her name is the CNN anchor. She had a whole show.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Did you see that?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, but she read the letter on her show. It took 40 minutes and people were tweeting about it the whole time. And it was all these people that were like, journalists. It's all these, you know, those blue dot people on Twitter that were like, this is incredible. This is unbelievable television journalism. There were people that worked on the show that were saying, it is uncomfortably silent in this studio right now. Everyone was just like. Because that letter. That's the other thing I was going to say. Not only is it. Is it an amazing, clear, well spoken like, here's actually my side if you want to hear it. It's brilliantly written.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's incredibly written. And I love the fact that she was like, there needs. It's not just something you read and you need to see the emotional, the person reading it, the face. And even if it's not the real one of what happened, you know, hearing the inflections and hearing a woman read that I think is really important too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

For sure. Yeah. So I think that at the end of the day, when everything kind of like the dust settles, it's going to be an incredibly important piece of action that a woman took for herself.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I agree.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That is. That's precedent setting. It's amazing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, it's. I mean, we were also talking last week about victim statement and victim impact statements, including the family, you know, finally being able to read their impact statement to the murder of their child and how. And forgiving them and how insane that must feel. Did you see that? Someone's dad jumped across the table and attacked and during his victim statement to the serial killer and fucking attacked him and had to be like restrained and at Grim Sleeper. No, some other one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, doesn't surprise me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, good for him. I hope the cops, like waited a beat before they grabbed him. Is that terrible?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I Mean, how do you control, you know? No, it's. Yeah, yeah. Heavy, heavy. This duty. Heavy duty.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Heavy duty.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But still, I don't know. I like it, I like it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You guys be witnesses.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And also, you know what? Watch your fucking drink. If you're going to drink, you have to have one friend who's a little bit smarter and more down to earth than you, for sure. I'm speaking as a 20 year old Karen Kilgareff, who never paid attention to anything. But also, keep your hand over your drink. Drink out of bottles, don't make it easy for people. I mean, like, it's never your fault, but at the same time, just please be careful. It's lot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's a fucking ton.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is a lot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is a heavy one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is. And also we're telling people what to do who are probably all our age. They're like at home looking at their baby like, you guys move it along. We got this part covered.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Move it along to the murder part. That's what they're hoping for.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, we hear you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We get it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We're back. I do think it's interesting with. I wish I could go back and tell Karen and Georgia in 2016 that Chanel Miller really wins this fight, in my opinion. Writes a beautiful book, gets to speak for herself, really galvanizes a lot of young women who know how she feels and have been through what she's been through or similar or can relate in some way. Just I think that separate from the rest of the nastiness is like, that's a person who really took that situation and like, made it her own.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Yeah. I think it really motivated people to think in a different way and maybe awaken people's understanding of, you know, what happens in these cases and, you know, open some people up to an empathy they didn't have or an understanding they didn't have before.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. Like the just knowing that a judge would be that concerned for the perpetrator of this horrible rape.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It just like. And that that judge had a history of doing that. That that was. And these kinds of things where it's like you have to talk about it and you have to make noise about it so that it can change. And now, of course, in 2024, it's like, it seems preposterous and horrifying and, you know, people are so good at being kind of like telling these stories and trying to make change.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think that changed the course of a lot of people's lives and a lot of the way people think.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And understand sexual assault and rape. And that is just an incredible feat. Is that all right, well, let's get into Karen's story where she tells us just a classic horrible one. The one and only night stalker. Blinds.com is kicking off the savings early with Black Friday mega deals all month long. A blinds.com design expert can help you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Make the perfect selection on your schedule.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We can even handle everything from measure to your whole home install for just one low cost. With over 25 million windows covered, Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. Get up to 45% off site wide and a free professional measure right [e-mail].

[Karen Kilgariff]

Rules and restrictions may apply.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Are you first or am I first?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think I'm first this week.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right. So, Karen.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, today. Hi, Georgia. It's the part for the murder. Skippers this. Today is June 6th.

[Georgia Hardstark]

7Th.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Today is June 7th.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Birthday. Birthday is tomorrow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, girl. It's George's birthday tomorrow. Everybody tell her happy birthday on Facebook.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank you. Started cross stitching you as a belated birthday present because I. Fuck. It was your birthday while we were recording and I didn't even know it was my secret. You're such a dick. I started stitching you. Cross stitching you. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered. But I realized halfway through I got stay sexy. And I realized I'm a terrible cross.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Stitcher and now I want it even more.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It looks like shit. And I showed it to Vince and I'm like, does this look terrible? Because you know, you can be really self critical. And he's like, I just think you need a little more practice. Like you very sweetly said, that looks terrible.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I want it so bad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'll show it to you. It looks insane.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Put it on a pillow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay. I stitched it while I watched a murder show.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Now I have to have it. It's like a child's Christmas art project.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's literally like a child's art project.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Love it. So because it's June 7th, it's a special holiday. Three years ago on this day, the night stalker Richard Ramirez died in prison.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, shit. Was it only three years ago?

[Karen Kilgariff]

2013.

[Georgia Hardstark]

God. It seems like.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, June 7, 2013. Which is three years ago.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The math is right. He died. His liver basically shut down. He had a couple bad things going on. He had like blood cancer and something else. But before he died, he turned bright green. They said like a highlighter pen. Like he looked crazy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What is that? Your liver. Just can't find.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's your liver because he was a crazy drug addict. He was bad, bad drugs. So, yeah, he was basically just kind of shutting down altogether. So I saw that there was an article about that in the news somewhere. So I was like, you know what? That's the one. My friend Adrienne, when we very first started this, I told the story about it and she was like, gotta be Nightstalker. So I was like, it's finally time to tell the story of Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Give it to me.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Not to be confused with the original Night Stalker. Eron's the Easter era rapist, slash the Golden State Killer, who could still be out there. This is Richard Ramirez, who in the. Basically in the summer or I guess like early spring of 1985, started a insanity berserker. Killing and molesting and raping spree that started in Southern California, went up to the San Francisco barrier, came on back down, and then ends in my. It's my favorite ending to one of these stories. It's the best. And I remember seeing it on the news. When they caught him, it was the people of Boyle Heights rose up, girl.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. So I'll just try to do this, encapsulate. So he was born in 1960 in El Paso, Texas. The youngest of seven children in the. Basically, the barrio, is what. I don't. Is that a politically correct way to say it?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I would if. Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a bad part of town in El Paso. Yeah, his parents were. His father was a railway worker. But he was illegal, so he probably didn't make great money. And so he also, early on, got hit in the head with a swing and got knocked out for a while. I think they said like an hour.

[Georgia Hardstark]

If your kid gets hit in the head, send him back.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And then there was a thing I was looking at, and it was like Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer. Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Fred west, who's that British lunatic who, like, killed. Raped all those girls. Killed his own children. All had head injuries as children.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Dude.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So, you know, keep your eye out. You know who else did? Karen Kilgara. Shut up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What happened?

[Karen Kilgariff]

My mom tripped over my high chair when I was like six months old. I had stitches in the front of my head.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Smash.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And then later on, I don't think this is. This was my own private pain. But during swimming lessons, I tried to do a front forward somersault, jump off the side of the pool and just smacked my head.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit. Super hard.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I just. Nobody saw it. And so I just held the side of the pool and kind of like, quietly cried to myself until I felt better and then kept on swimming because swimming above all. Right. When you're a kid.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally. You probably had a concussion.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You probably did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I probably did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Remember how we couldn't remember our concussions. One episode. There's one of them.

[Karen Kilgariff]

There it is. Okay, so here's the bad part. Ricky being the youngest, was kind of like. He was basically a juvenile delinquent. Robbed a bunch of shit, did stuff, got sent to juvie. And his older cousin, uh. Oh, his older cousin Mike came back from Vietnam, and he had been a green beret in Vietnam. And it's as bad as you think, Mike. Ricky hung around with Mike, and Mike was like, here's all the shit I did to women in Vietnam. Here's what we did to the enemy. Here's this. Here's that. Filling his head with all this terrible shit. Showed him pictures, mutilations and torture. Horrible, like, Polaroid pictures. And Mike was married. And the two of them would hang out. Ricky and Mike would hang out and smoke pot, talk about Satan worship. And Mike's wife finally was like, I don't want you hanging out with him anymore. And you guys just sit around or whatever. Well, Mike went ahead and shot and killed his wife in front of Richard Ramirez.

[Georgia Hardstark]

How old was Richard at this point?

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was a teenager. I believe he was 15.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I don't have the exact age written down. He was a teenager. They say that the trauma from that is basically fueled much of the rest of his life.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I'm sure by that time he was so desensitized to murder and torture and that even, like, without that happening, I feel like he would have been fucked.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was. Yeah, he was definitely already kind of a sad case. And then that was like, imagine that level of trauma, seeing someone shot. They said that he had blood on him. That's how close he was. So bad news. He was also inspired by the Hillside stranglers.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's weird to feel sympathy for him. You know what I mean?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like, well, yeah, because if you don't hit your head and you don't have a fucked up cousin named Mike. Could Richard Ramirez have just been a guy that then went on to live in El Paso and work at a mattress store?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Did he? Because, I don't know, stuff like that is like, after. If you become. I mean, obviously, we've talked about this a ton. It's a mental disorder. You can't just kill people. It's a psychopathy or whatever. But it's sad to think that he had to start his life like that. It's awful. Right now, last podcast on the left is doing a Hillside Strangler series and it's awesome.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And the lead detective on the Hillside Strangler. So Richard Ramirez loved hearing about the Hillside Stranglers. He ended up moving to LA after that happened and like kind of bumming around there. So when the Hillside Stranglers cases, he had heard about them. I don't know if he was living in LA while it was happening or whatever, but he was very inspired and he really liked that story. He got really fascinated by it. And it turned out that a detective named Frank Salerno was the lead detective on the Hillside Stranglers case. And then he also was the lead detective on the Night Stalker case. And Frank Salerno said that the experience he had going through the Hillside Strangle and all the mistakes that he made and they all made and that he learned from is the reason that they were able to catch the Night Stalker as quickly as they did. It didn't go on for years and years and years because he learned so much from being on that other huge high profile case.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So anyway, it basically starts February 25, 1985. A six year old Monte Bellow girl is taken from a bus bench near school while waiting for her older sister. She was carried away in a zippered garment bag. What? Sexually assaulted and dropped off in Silver Lake. What? So this is one of his earliest crimes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then A month later, March 11, a nine year old Monterey park boy is kidnapped from his home at night, sexually assaulted, left in a lesion park near Silver Lake.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, we're like five minutes from those places.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's right. And this is the nightmare sauce of someone comes into your house and takes a child.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's beyond fucked up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can we comment on how weird it is that it that he doesn't discriminate sex with sex?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. And I mean that's a, that's a. One of the things is they had a very hard time establishing an MO with him because it was all ages, all sexes, all races. Like there was no pattern, there was no connection.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So maybe they didn't put it all together as one person.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right, exactly. March 17, Dale Akazaki, 34, is killed and her roommate Maria Hernandez is wounded in an attack in their Rosemary condominium. And two miles from that apartment. Silence. 30 of Monterey park is pulled from her car near her home and shot. She dies the next day.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Jesus. I mean you think that like in your car you're good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. No. Well, lock your goddamn door.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Lock your fucking door to quit showing off.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry. It's victim blaming. March 20, an Eagle Rock girl is kidnapped and sexually molested by a man who breaks into her family's home at night. Again. So this is. He's getting that taste for, you know, he puts on all black and he goes fucking sneaking around. And what they say is a lot of these. I mean, this was 1985. Such an innocent time. People left their doors ajar at night. It was. Yeah. Bad news. So he was basically going around trying doors.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Jesus.

[Karen Kilgariff]

March 27, Vincent Cesara, 64, is a retired investment counselor and he's beaten to death. And his wife Maxine, who is 44, is stabbed to death by an attacker who enters their ranch style Whittier home through an open door. Oh, shit. God damn it. I always try to scroll on my computer by touching the thing and it zips me back up to the top. Okay, we'll edit that part out. And we're back in open door. Their bodies are found by a business acquaintance. Actually, I got two different stories on this. I got a business acquaintance. This is an LA Times article. But actually there's another article that I read that their son found them. No.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I wonder what their relationship was like. He was 20 years older than her.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was 20 years older. I bet he had money. If they lived in Whittier. Whittier's like real pristine. It's a bunch of white Christians kind of living out in the Valley. That's where Nixon went to college.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They were a fun couple.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I bet they were fun times.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But here's the gross part that we'll have to uncomfortably transition into. He mutilated her body. She had a T shape carved into her breast and. Ready? No, this one's bad. No, he gouged out her eyes and took them with him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No boobies and eyes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean problems. What we're saying is problems.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Leave the boobies in the eyes alone.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Please.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Please.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No matter what the devil tells you to do.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He's joking. He was like being facetious and you took it seriously. Fucking idiot.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The devil's joking, you mean? Is that what you're saying? Remember that the devil has a very wry sense of humor and so sometimes he's just being sarcastic.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He's basically George Burns just. Okay, sorry, go on.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The autopsy revealed that those mutilations were post mortem.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's the good news.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I should have. I buried the lead on that one.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I figured because I just Couldn't handle it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, it's too much. This was a house where he left footprints in the flower beds. And the police photographed them and made a cast. And that was the only evidence that they had at the time. And they found bullets at the scene. Matched those to previous attacks. And that's when the police started putting together they have a serial killer, that there's someone, you know, going around doing some shit. Yeah. This one says that Vincent and Maxine's bodies were discovered in their Whittier home by their son Peter. I hate that because, like, the thing that I was reading seemed very reliable. And then I was starting to get the more you read because there's so much about the Night Stalker. There was conflicting reports.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I just picture the eyeballess, Mom.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, like, it's bad enough, but that's nightmare. Like that special horror movie. That's like the third scare in the horror movie where it's like the worst one. Totally not having eyes is bad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally, Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Mabel Bell on May 29th. So then, let's see. That was so later that month. This was like two weeks later. Mabel Bell, age 84.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, honey.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And her invalid sister, Florence Lang, age 81. Ladies are beaten in their Monrovia home. And they live in a house down a long, narrow, winding road. And they're found four days later by a gardener. Oh, and they weren't dead, But Mabel died.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They weren't dead four days later.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, sorry. Maybe Florence was dead, but Mabel was still alive. No, but she only lived two more months. This is rough because this was why this guy was so frightening. He didn't give a fuck. I mean, he raped old women, he raped children. He was just. He was on one.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Crazy. Yeah. Right off the bat. Just to be berserk.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. June 27th. Patti Elaine Higgins, who is 32, had her throat slashed in her Arcadia home. And also for people that don't know the Los Angeles area, all these areas are just low key suburban outlying.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And they're not. They're not like, close. It's not like these are all random little cities that are not like connected in any way.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They're just so weird.

[Karen Kilgariff]

All around the San Gabriel Valley.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Which is surprising that they were able to connect them because it sounds like it'd be all different districts.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, they kept finding this Avia shoe print in places. That was one of the things.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's Avia. You know that brand? Yeah, no, Avia.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's kind of. It looks kind of reeboky, like the symbol is partial Reebok, but extra lines.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So are people freaking out at this point? Like, does everyone know about it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, yeah, we heard about it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Do you remember it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I was 15.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, dude. He. Okay. This was crazy because it was like. He was on tour, like, it was like a nightmare because you heard about it down in LA or whatever and you're like, oh, those poor people.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then he popped up to the Bay Area. People were losing their shit. It was crazy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was like. It was basically kind of like watching a storm come where you're just like. And it truly was that thing of like, we could be next.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was nuts. Okay, so it was only like four days later, two miles away from the Higgins home, Mary Louise Cannon, who was 77, who had already fought off two bouts of cancer, was murdered. Her throat was slashed. That was in Arcadia. July 7, Joyce Nelson, who was 61, was beaten to death in Monterey Park. And July 11, Monterey park has a neighborhood watch meeting. And 600 people go to it because people are freaking out. They're just like, but the police are like, we're sorry, we don't have a suspect. So they have these tiny pieces of evidence, but no suspect at all. On July 20, Chain A, Rong Cavanaugh, who is 32 years old, is slain in his Sun Valley home. And his wife is beaten and raped. And their eight year old son is beaten, and he steals $30,000 in jewels, in cash from the house.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit. What are you doing in Sun Valley?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know, right? Hiding your shit. Yeah, you'd have to. But a witness sees the suspect flee in a maroon colored Pontiac Grand Prix that has a damaged right front fender.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So now they have. At least they have that. So then on July 20, Max Needing, who was 68, and his wife Leila Ellen, who was 66, were shot to death in Glendale.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's so close to here. August 6th, Christopher Peterson is 38. His wife Virginia is 27. And they're both shot in the head in their Northridge home and survived.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Survive.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's just so wild and hopeful that you can survive a fucking head shooting.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know. It happens in the show. I survived all the time. And it's people in a very normal voice being like, I heard this loud noise and my head hurt really bad. You're just like, how are you telling me this story?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, sorry.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like, I make money off of I survived. I'm really not. I'm not sponsored. I swear to God should be. I actually should be. So on August 8, my sister's birthday, Elias Abawath, 35, is shot to death in his Diamond Bar home. Which is fancy, right? Isn't Diamond Bar where they have all the horses?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay. I've never been there. I've lived here my whole life. And I'm just in, like, Sun Valley.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, you know what it is? No Jews allowed in Diamond Bar. That's what it is.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Not surprised.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay, so he's 35. That's so young. He's shot to death. His wife is beaten. His Two children, ages 3 and 3 months, not harmed.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thank God. So later in the day, they say that they have linked, that this attack on the Abawaths is the final link. That they are all the same suspect from all of these attacks. And this is the first public revelation that there's a serial killer loose in Southern California.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They took that many bodies.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. And also because it was so random. Like, Sun Valley and Diamond Bar are two very different Cities.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So, August 10th, reports of crimes made by citizens to LAPD Communications are up 15%. Everyone's on edge. They're freaking out. So people are calling in. There's increased sales at gun shops. Of course. Everyone's freaking out.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Staying in a hotel forever, right? Indefinitely.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So then the Board of Supervisors offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of more than that, bro. But you know what?

[Georgia Hardstark]

You know what? Up that shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's get that money out there. So now they link back to the shooting of Silon you in Monterey park from March 17th. They're like, it's this one, too. The gun, the ballistics evidence that they have links that in. Then on August 17th, a man named Peter Pan was 66. Yeah. Was shot and killed in his bed in his San Francisco home. And his wife Barbara, who's 64, is shot and beaten, but she survives.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Her name, Wendy. Was that the most insensitive thing I've ever said in my life?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No. We have to do it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And their dog was also the nanny. That's the part I love in Peter Pan where it's like, so the dog takes care of the children.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And then he locks them out and they go missing. Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They all do drugs and fly off the roof.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Good job, dad.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So August 22, the cops in San Francisco announced that the slaying of Peter Pan and his wife is the night soccer. And that's when NorCal goes apeshit. I still remember. I can't remember. Like, I just remember Watching it on the news with my family. We watched so much news every night.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, news was a nightly occurrence. You know how we all avoid it now. No, that's not what you did.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You watched it as a family and went through it. But I remember that Dianne Feinstein was on. They were making official announcements. It was all breaking news. It was like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Remember when news was like from 6 to 7 and then there was going to be a 10 to 11 and that was it for news. It wasn't like how it is now, Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, that was. We had to watch it then. Like, my parents would turn off, you know, something we wanted to watch. And they'd be like, no, no, no, it's time for the news. Entertainment Tonight is what we'd want to watch. And they'd be like, it's time for the news. Because you wouldn't get it otherwise.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, right after Jeopardy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, exactly. So sorry, I lost my spot. They. Oh. So they say that the evidence that they have that's linking it are the ballistics, also messages that he scrawled on the walls and a distinctive but undisclosed piece of evidence that the killer left behind in the homes of his victims. But then Diane, San Francisco at the time San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein gets on the News offering a $10,000 reward for any information for the capture of the Night Stalker. Unfortunately, she gives away that. That distinctive piece of proof they have is his shoe print. And so that night.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Shut up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Richard Ramirez walks onto the Golden Gate Bridge and throws his shoes over.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So no longer is that going to be a piece of.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He did that really helps anything?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yep.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit. I bet everyone who had those shoes did that, though. Just like 49 guys on the Golden Gate Bridge, they were like, oh, shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

49 peeping toms that are like, why did I ever buy Avias? All right, so August 25th, a man named Bill Carnes, who was 27, is critically injured by being shot in the head while sleeping in his Mission Vao home. So now the Night Stalker's back down.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He's in Orange county now.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Is that where Mission video is?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, Mission is Orange county.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And his 29 fiance. Hey, sorry. His 29 year old fiance. I believe her name was Inez. I don't. I. My saved document and my original document are both on here. And some has some information and some has other. Here we go.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So Bill Carnes fiance, Inez, is raped. But as the Night Stalker runs out of the house and gets into the stolen car that he has stolen from San Francisco down to. Back down to Orange County. She sees him leave in a 1976 orange Toyota station wagon.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Why are you getting an orange car? Night stalker.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Not smart. Yeah. How about black? Brown? Go for your brown. Cause it's the 80s, probably, and you'd blend in, right? Brown or like a kind of a shimmery blue.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Was every single car on the road.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So she sees that as she, like, crawled up to the window and saw that, and so was able to tell the police that that's the car the guy had. Good girl. So now Los Angeles City council's offering a $25,000 reward. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, you are.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And then Governor Duke Majin announces the state is going to add 10 grand onto that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's more like it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So when they find the stolen Toyota, they pick up. There's a new laser examining device that they use. And they pick up a single fingerprint on the rear view mirror.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Amazing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He took off his gloves, readjusted that mirror, and they found one fingerprint in the whole car.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Checking to see if he had anything in his teeth. And he fucking.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And he. You know what he had in his teeth?

[Georgia Hardstark]

What?

[Karen Kilgariff]

The most rotten teeth of all time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Really?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, his mouth was filled with them. Oh, you've never seen his teeth?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He never had any dental work done his entire life. And all he ever ate was candy and drank coke. The first time he ever went to the dentist was when he was in jail.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy trash mouth crazy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The mouth on this guy is nutso.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Ugh.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's horrifying. And a lot of his suspects, the thing all the women who were attacked, who lived, said was the worst breath I've ever smelled.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What a weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Insult to injury.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, just make it as upsetting as it possibly can be. So they use that fingerprint and they find in a computer system that was very new. It had, like, just gone online that there was a guy who had, like, very, I think, misdemeanors like burglary, shit, named Richard Ramirez. So they got their guy. So they put out an all points bulletin for the arrest of Richard Ramirez. And they have the. Have you ever seen the picture that the police sketch artist drew of him? Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It looks just like him, right? Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But it's also one of the scariest things ever.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm looking it up right now. Go on.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, so they put out. There's the picture that the cop drew, but then they have a mugshot of him in real life, and that goes on the front page of all the papers in Los Angeles. So meanwhile, Ramirez has no idea that that's happened because he was in Phoenix visiting his brother. And so the cops stake out the bus station because they think he's going to try to leave town now that his picture went up and he was already gone. Stake out the bus station. He was already gone. He was coming back. He passed the cops in the bus station.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And just kept it cool and walked out of the bus station downtown, walked into Boyle Heights, went over to a liquor store, walked up. There was a newspaper, you know, stand thing right on the outside. He picks up the newspaper and sees the picture of himself on the front of the newspaper. Inside the store, a woman looks and starts yelling, el matan. El Matan. Which in Spanish, I'm giving out a French accent because I took French in high school. In Spanish, I guess that means the bully. And he hears that, and he starts running. So this I love so much. He starts running. So he goes over to. So he runs, and he tries to carjack a woman. So he runs up, he punches her in the stomach, and he tries to pull her out of the car. The husband of this woman hears this going on, grabs a pipe, runs out. Richard Ramirez is in the car. He hits him over the head.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck. Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so Ramirez runs out of that car and starts running. A man named Jose Bergeron, who was the neighbor, had run over, but he was an older man at the time. Now he's in his 80s. At the time, he was in his 50s. And he ran over to defend. To defend her. And Richard Ramirez had said, don't get any closer or I'll shoot you. But the guy says, I didn't see a gun. So I went. So he basically opened the car door, and then the husband came out and hit him in the head. He starts running. Jose Bergwan, however you say it, calls for his two sons and says, run after him. So these two boys start running. They ran for two miles?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They chase him down.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

As they start running, everyone in the neighborhood sees it and starts running, too.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck. Can you fucking imagine?

[Karen Kilgariff]

There's 200 people running up the street.

[Georgia Hardstark]

How did I never know this?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was. I think I remember seeing this. Now, I could have seen a reenactment in a. In a. I'm sure I saw a reenactment, but I feel like I remember seeing the helicopter shot on the news. Of all the people in the street in Boyle Heights, because basically this whole fucking neighborhood was like, we got the fucking Night Stalker. These two boys. It was Jamie, and I can't Remember the other brother's name? Burgoyne. B U R G O I N Along with like four or five other dudes. They pin him to the ground, they have him on the curb and everyone just starts beating the shit out of him. They had called the cops. I think Jose called the cops when they started running. So the cops got there mid beat down so that Richard Ramirez was going, it's me, it's me. And the cops saved him from this crowd of people.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's my favorite.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's incredible in the world.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Isn't that awesome? I think he tried to. At one point, he ran through her backyard. They have a picture of a guy who tried to hit him with. He was pruning the tree in his yard, and the guy tried to like, stab him with these pruning sheets, these huge pruning shears, but he missed. And so they had all these. It's the best. You can look it on the line. There's pictures of all these people who are from Boyle Heights who got these awards. They get awards from the city. They get awards from the cops.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's awesome. And it's totally just people like, nope, not in our fucking neighborhood. He thought he could go and just blend in and just be like, oh, whatever.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's my favorite.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So. And when they brought him down to their local precinct, 500 people were outside chanting like they wanted to kill him. They wanted him stronger.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just like, send him out.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. I mean, this is a man who, like, totally just story after story, it only got scarier. And he became like, he was like this phantom where no one could figure out who he was, where he was. And he was everywhere, you know, he was just driving around. Changing City.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Jesus. My parents did a really good job of keeping this shit from me. Cause I don't fucking remember any of this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You don't?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

How old were you, though?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Was it 87?

[Karen Kilgariff]

85.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I was 5.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Aw.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And little baby Georgia. And Mission viejo. That's like 15 minutes, 10 minutes from Irvine, where I grew up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Marty. Good job.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Good job, Marty.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well done, Janet.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They were going through their divorce, so I was busy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, that's good. You probably were getting him a lot of extra toys. Yeah, probably at the time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I was just going to see this really quick. Oh. One of the cops said it seemed like alert citizens were reporting the suspect every step of the way. So basically, as they ran up the street, every house was calling the cops.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can you imagine what it would have been like if they had, like, now if they had fucking cell phones, I bet you it would be half as many people chasing him and half. And the other half would be filming him.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Filming it. Yeah. We'd be able to post this and just be like, here, here's what happened.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You guys put your phone away and participate.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So at the end of. So the cops come in and there is a super. If you wanna look it up. Very scary picture of him in the cop car. Cause his whole head is wrapped. So instead of having like his rockstar hair or whatever he has, he looks like a gray alien. He is so scary looking in the backseat. He had pretty serious head injuries. They were beating the shit out of him. Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He actually says, I'm lucky the cops caught me because these people were going to kill him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

At the end. The last victim that was confirmed of the night stalker was nine year old ME Leung, whose body was found in a San Francisco hotel basement in 1984. She wasn't linked to him until 2009.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

When they found. They got DNA and. Yeah, horrible.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So he had actually done that while he was in the city, but they didn't know.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. I wonder how many other like. Go ahead.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry. Well, he was arrested on August 31, 1985, but he didn't. The jury selection didn't begin until July of 1988.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Because they did so many delays and continuances and all that shit. His. He did everything he could to make sure that they didn't start this thing on time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They basically finally convicted him of 14 homicides and all the other felonies and attacks on September 20, 1989. It was four years after his arrest.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And during the trial, there was a juror named Phyllis Singletary who didn't show up one day and she had been shot in her home. And then all the jurors were freaking out that he had had. He was having the jury killed. It was a domestic violence thing and her, I think, boyfriend murdered her.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Son of a bitch.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. So that was just to add to the freak out.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally. Oh, are you kidding? What if you were on that jury?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, could you imagine?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Scary enough because they said all the jurors said the stuff that they saw, the evidence that they saw and the pictures they had to look at, none of them were sleeping.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I bet the man himself, he's such a creep, having to sit like. Can you imagine from where you and I are sitting right now that that's a fucking night stalker?

[Karen Kilgariff]

And he was doing things I Mean, there's tons of famous pictures. He was doing things like putting his hand up and he had a pentagram on his hand, which in the 80s, people, that was the whole satanic panic time where it was like, this guy is Satan. People freaked out about that shit. It was very scary. He also, they found out about a plot that Ramirez had to somehow sneak a gun into the courtroom and kill the prosecutor. So then they put in. Sorry. Eventually he was sentenced to death for 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. And when they, at the end of the trial when he was convicted, he said, no big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I'll see you in Disneyland. And when they sentenced him, he said, he grinned when they said it was like, I think it's something like 14 death sentences. He said his official statement was, you maggots make me sick. Hypocrites one and all. We're all expendable for a cause. And no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world, which kill in the name of God and country and for whatever else they deem appropriate. You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's pretty fucking poetic. Like for someone who's insane and has a head injury and isn't probably educated, that's fucking pretty powerful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's powerful, but it also being somebody who is in the 12 step program, I would like to mention that addicts have a real sense of grandiosity about themselves. And so this is a person who is pretending that because he is a psychotic, uncontrollable murderer that somehow makes him magical and special, when in fact it just makes him an animal.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cause that's really what he was.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know, and you're right. And I think people probably. It wasn't just him who was thinking of him as grandiose. It was everyone. Because it was such a. You know, it was so terrifying. And he was able single handedly to put this whole city into a panic. The whole hate. He believed it. And I think probably everyone else did too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, and he looked the part. Everything, it was kind of. It was on the level of Ted Bundy in how he looked evil, but then he was also sexy. There was a rockstar element. So then it kicked up all that stuff of like women being like, I'm in love with him. He actually married a woman while he was in jail who does not. He is not a rock star. Doesn't look like a rock star type of gal herself. It's very fascinating. And she was, like, also a virgin, which I kind of am fascinated by.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I feel like the fact that he was able to get. It's like the same thing with Ted Bundy where it's like, how can you be so prolific? How can you kill so many people in such a short time and get away with it? It's almost like you are on another level.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He was on, I think, another level in that way of you can't track chaos. And he really was. He wasn't sticking into a neighborhood. He wasn't. There was no. They couldn't get. Because he would just switch the city.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And he also switched his. The type there was. They couldn't follow any of it. You know, it was just like, oh, there's just another body and another body and another body.

[Georgia Hardstark]

In the same way. Ted Bundy, because of his charm, they couldn't figure him out. Maybe those were those two things that he was switching cities and that this guy was charming. Are what were able to make those people get away with so much.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. Well. And also, I think the people's sense of, oh, who would and wouldn't do things was very different back then. It was very uneducated. But I'm still reading that Ted Bundy book right now. Fucking Ann Rule Heard the news that the man was named Ted at the. At those lake murders where the two women disappeared in one day. That it was a man named Ted and that he had a gold color. A gold metallic bug, Volkswagen bug. And she knew that his name was Ted and he had a gold metallic bug. And she told people, but she still didn't think it was him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She still didn't think it was him.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, no. She was like, there's no way it could be him. But she did tell a cop that she knew because she worked with them. And she was like, just so you know, I'll give you this name, but it can't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Did they follow up on him?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Um, like a little bit. But he had then moved to Colorado, I think by the time those two were being, like, really looked into. Okay, so anyway, that's the Night Stalker. I'm sure there's so much more online about him. Cause, you know, like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, but there's always gonna be more.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's amazing when it's a classic like him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, happy birthday. To his death.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Happy Death Day, Rich.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Happy death Day, you piece of shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You total lunatic.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, this Story ends on such an incredible note. Again, fucking shout out to Boyle Heights and the people of Boyle Heights.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like, Boyle Heights.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Unbelievable.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry. I got so excited because I just was like, if you watch the Netflix documentary Night Stalker, the Hunt for a Serial Killer, you have to watch it because the people who chased him down are in that documentary. They get to tell the story themselves. And it is so great. It's so satisfying. The individuals who are on camera, some of them are survivors and victims, which is incredible. Listening to them and they're seeing that, like, a person being able to tell that story with, like, strength and spirit. And it's an amazing piece of work, in my opinion. But the people who are like, we saw him and we heard that that's who it was, and we knew we had to get him. Like, it's just. It's the beauty of, like, humanity where it's like, you're not allowed to hurt people like this. And we're gonna do something, right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

We're not minding our own business. This is. You can't. We can't do this, and you can't come into our neighborhood. Speaking of neighborhoods, when I was, like, rereading some of the details of this, I real. I, like, looked it up. Cause I was like, uh. Oh. And it turns out that Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, and the Hillside Stranglers both attacked people, like, in my immediate neighborhood that I now live in.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So that's. We didn't. We didn't catch him. It was Boyle Heights.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, Boyle Heights got him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Also, I think, though, the way Los Angeles is, I think in any neighborhood, you could probably say that because there's been so many insane serial killers down here.

[Georgia Hardstark]

If I was like, I live on this block in Duluth, and that's. And there's two people, like, that would be wild. But la. No. No, that's not. Yeah, yeah, that's not.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That LA is. We've had some bad ones.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, sure. We sure have. It's a great place to go if you're a bad person.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So there's no major updates in this case, obviously, except for that I love to brag that my cousin Martin was a cop who picked up one of the fingerprints that eventually led to his identification in San Francisco. I'm very proud. I'm also very angry that he waited until, like, he said it at Thanksgiving, as if it was no big deal one year where I was like, you've had this information since it happened. That's insane.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Make a T shirt. You should be wearing that T shirt. That Says that all the time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Come on, you stopped that guy. You helped stop him. But anyway, the only update is just watch that Netflix documentary because it's so good, and it just gives you all the color and the first hand accounts that you need to hear. And that cop, Gil, I can't remember his last name, but he was in. He worked both of those cases, Hillside Strangler and the Night Stalker. He's in there a lot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay, so now let's listen to George's story about the Bain family murders.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, so my favorite murder. All right. This is one that people keep wanting us to do, and I didn't know about it until we started doing this show, which I love. Finding new ones out, that is. Again, all right, this is the Bane family murders.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I don't know this one. I don't think so.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, you guys in New Zealand. I feel I hear everyone from New Zealand cheering right now because they're like.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Finally, we have severely underserved Australia, New Zealand, that whole area.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can I tell you, I was. I met some girls who were from Australia and I was like, well, Australia's better. And they're like, why? And I'm like, you have better serial killers. And they thought. I think they looked at me like I was fucking like. I don't think that they were on the same level as me.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They're not one of us. No.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Because they're like, oh. And they kind of looked at each other and like, yeah, we got good serial killers.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Anyways, anyways, nice to meet you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love my cats. Okay, so on the morning of June 20, 1994, that might have been my bat Mitzvah day, actually. Oh, really? What day? I was Bat Mitzvah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What was your main Bat Mitzvah gift?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, well, the one I remember the most that I loved the most was a Ren and Stimpy poster.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God, that's so Jewish.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know, I know. Yeah. Fucking love running swimpies.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They're pretty great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, so David Bain, who was 22 at 7:00am about, he called 111, which I'm assuming is 911 in here.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I was gonna say 999.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I was like, yeah, yeah, it's 999. I get it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Uh huh. I think I'm slowly losing my mind.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think you are too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It'll be fun though, because I'll do it on this podcast.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Because last week you asked, why didn't they ask this murder victim if she had had sex with her wife?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. And I was pissed about it too. It's like this is really bad police work that you wouldn't ask a dead person why.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Anyhow, I love that. Because it's like that's such an obvious brain malfunction.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think I had very low blood sugar. All right, go ahead.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fair enough. So at 7am he calls the operator and he says, they're all dead. They're all dead. When the police arrive, they found five members of the Bain family. They had all been shot to death. The father, Robin, who was 58. The wife, Margaret, who was 50. The daughters, Arawa, who was 19, and Lynette, who was 18. I might be saying these two girls names wrong. I'm sorry.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Lynette sounds right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, it's L A, N I E T. Oh, Jesus. Lynne and Arawaz are a R A, W, A, A, R, A.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry, do you mean Arya Stark? What, From Game of Thrones?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

All right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And their son, Steven, who is 14. And there was evidence of a violent struggle involving Steven, who was partially strangled as well as shot. So David's story is that he got up at his usual time, he put on his running shoes, and he was a paper boy at 20. So he went on his regular paper run with the dog. He arrived back around 6. 42, entered the front door, went to his room. He went downstairs to the bathroom where he washed his hands, which were black from newsprint. He put his clothes in the washing machine, including the sweatshirt he wore, and then went back upstairs and noticed bullets and the trigger lock on the floor. And he went into his mom's room to find her dead. Then visited the other rooms where he heard Lynette gurgling and then found his father dead in the lounge. And he was devastated. And ring emergency. And the defense, who ended up trying this case proposed that Robin, the father, killed the other family members before he switched on the computer and typed a message that said basically that David was the only one who deserved to be here and then killed himself. But then that's what looked like a murder suicide, right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Looked like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, it looks like a murder suicide. So David Bain was examined by a doctor on the morning and found to have some recent injuries. He reported that he noticed recent bruising to the right temple and bruising of his eye, and it looked pretty new. And he and David had no way to explain this. He didn't even try to explain this like he fell off his bike or anything. So the only suspects were David, the oldest son, and the father. Okay, so they found a lens from the glasses that David had been Wearing on the floor of Steven's room, like kind of underneath him. And there was bloody gloves found in Steven's room and he. And why is the father using gloves if he's going to kill himself? Right, Yep. So four days later, David Bain was charged with five counts of murder. So his what actually happened later? That. And this is from Crime Co NZ. The story is that David wakes up around 5am, gets dressed and pulls out a 22 rifle. He unlocks the trigger, attaches a silencer and loads 10 round magazine. Puts on his white gloves, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was wearing his mother's glasses because his are being repaired. He goes into his sister's room where that is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm sorry, that's so scary. That like just gave me a weird chill.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Which part? That his mother. He was wearing his mother's glasses.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He's a 20 year old guy wearing white gloves with his. A rifle with a silencer and women's glasses.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

There's something very creepy about that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, like. Cause also. Sorry, what year was it?

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was 94.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So they're probably those ones where the like very large, the big round.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They're serial killer glasses.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. That's crazy. He goes into his sister Lynette's room where he shoots her twice in the head as she's sleeping. Goes into his mother's room, shoots her in the forehead. In the room off his mother's room, he finds Steven asleep. He puts the rifle to Steven's head, but Steven wakes up and pushes it away. As it goes off, there's a struggle with Steven bleeding from the scalp wound as he fights for his life. David twists Steven's T shirt to strangle him. And as he lies on the floor, David finishes him off with a bullet to the head. And then during the struggle, his glasses fell off. He picks up his glasses and brings them back into his room and puts them on his desk. But there's still a lens in the other room. Right. So he goes downstairs where his sister Arawa has heard the shots and she's praying for help.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Honey, no.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Why didn't you run?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Phone for help? Don't pray for help.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He shoots her. He shoots at her and he can't see anything cause he's not wearing his glasses. Shoots at her again, finally gets her, then he goes back upstairs where he hears Lynette gurgling and he shoots her again in the top of the head. And this is a really good cause. I'm just gonna get to this. He gets convicted of Murdering his family. A few years later, the conviction is overturned. He's now out. He was proven. He wasn't proven guilty. He's not proven innocent. He was proven not guilty because of reasonable doubt.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Why?

[Georgia Hardstark]

And the reason, you know that people don't think he's innocent is that he tried to get money for his time that he was locked up. And the only way you can get money is if you're proven innocent. And he wasn't. So he shoots her and kills her. He hears the other sister gurgling. But remember on his. In his account of what happened, he said that he heard his sister gurgling when he got home from the newspaper delivery, Right? So if he heard her and she was already alive, still alive, gurgling, then how did she die? Because she got a second shot and that killed her. The first shot didn't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, right, yeah, yeah. He's still there. When the second shot happened.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She was dying and the second shot happened.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He didn't track that correctly.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, he did not.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He should have put that down on a piece of paper.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He did.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He should have worked it out on scratch paper totally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then burn the scratch paper and.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then rinse the ashes down the sink.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All of it. He did not think this true. So he throws his bloody clothing in the washing machine, turns it on.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Just burn it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And they found the father's blood on the washing machine. Like a handprint of this kid's foot. He turns on the computer and he types the suicide message from his father. And what the suicide message was, sorry, you're the only one who deserved to stay. Wow. Then he hides behind the curtain with the rifle and waits for his father to come in to pray, which is a daily routine. He kneel. David shoots him in the head and then calls 911. Okay, here's the fucking craziest part to me. Two weeks after the murder, after the police have completed their inquiries and handed over and handed the house back over to the family trustees, the house was burnt to the ground on purpose by the Bain family and the New Zealand fire service. And part of the reason that he got off and wasn't put in jail the second time was because the fucking cops. And it's like a known thing. I'm not just blaming cops bungled this so fucking hard. They didn't test the dad's hand for any gun residue, gunpowder, just shit like that. That they just didn't do correctly. They didn't. So what is it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

That was in New Zealand, Right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So they probably hadn't had had, like a. All. A whole family murdered before.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think it was a rural area where they live, too. Yeah. So what they say is that the reason that they. That there was doubt and thoughts that the father had done it and had done a murder suicide was that the daughter Lynette, had returned home. The reason she came home from college that week was to confront her parents with her that her father had been molesting her and that they had had an incent. An incest. Incestual relationship over several years. So he killed his family because of that? That's what the offering was. Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But sorry, who was making that? Who was saying that?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, there are people, including both of their friends because they were close in age, that said that they heard that. But when they were called to trial, that says something about how they seemed confused about it. So it was never proven.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But that also could have been the defense. Defense attorney making it seem like they didn't know what they were talking about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. It seemed like it came from a couple places, but I don't think it was ever proven, which is another thing that the. And everyone. So I went on our. My favorite murder email and kind of just looked up Bain to see if anyone had emailed us about them. And actually, a lot of people have. Someone named Alexander. He told me here. I'm gonna read his email. The thing is, here in New Zealand, people on both sides of the camp are so passionate and sure about who they think killed everyone. Robin or David. I've listened to intelligent people argue through their teeth for the completely different sides. And during David's recital, I remember getting our history teacher in high school to spend the whole lesson explaining why David was innocent. I've heard more heated arguments about David Bain than I have about religion or politics.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Because people knew him. So, like, these are people that knew either the dad or the son.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, these are people. I think everyone in New Zealand has an opinion. Okay. These random facts, all of this, as well as a clear amount of sexual and physical abuse happening within the Bain family, which I looked up, and I couldn't find a ton of. I didn't find a lot of that clear evidence, combined with rumors of cops planting evidence on the scene to frame David or the fact that if Robin had killed himself, he'd have come to have pulled the shotgun trigger with his toe because the gun was really big, made for a pretty fucking intense story. David Bain became kind of a meme in New Zealand because on TV and all the shots of him getting escorted by the cops Et cetera. He's always wearing really ugly sweaters. And this I saw a lot people are calling them Cosby sweaters and shit. So basically there's a part in the middle of the call. Okay, this is really interesting. So basically in the 911 call, he says, they're dead, they're all dead. And basically there's a part in the middle of the call where David more or less gasps or mumbles or murmurs. It's a second long. And you wouldn't think it was anything more than just him being out of breath. But the prosecutor argued that David actually whispers something here. You can actually do tests online where you can listen to the gasp whisper and write what you think might be saying. If he's saying anything at all. What the prosecutors are claiming he said was that David quietly whispers to himself, I shot the prick. So here's a theory that I had never heard before until I read this email that Robin killed his entire family. David came home and found that and killed Robin because of that. Ooh.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So kind of everybody's guilty.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes. So this guy says, did David discover Robin had killed everyone and in a fit of revenge he shot his prick of a father himself?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, because that doesn't prove. That doesn't explain why the sunglass lens or the glasses lens is underneath the thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, he said that he lost. He left the glasses in there like the week prior, something like that. He had an excuse for that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They were under the bed or under.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The brother, I think they were. I looked at crime scene photos and they were like a mist. They were like underneath some clothing and stuff. So it wasn't necessarily his body. Yeah. And then, let's see, I will say.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This just if this was just like I had to decide right this second.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

When you go, when you are, first of all, 20 year old newspaper delivery boy, red flag, totally lived at home still, what the fuck are you doing? Secondly, when you come home from a newspaper route, and maybe he was riding a bike all over hills and dales, I don't know. But you would work it out. Like, I get washing your hands because you have black shit all over your hands. But going down to the washing machine and stripping down and washing all your.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Clothes and turning the washing machine on immediately. Doesn't make any sense.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, it sure doesn't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Also, I read another thing that was saying that he, in his explanation of what happened to the cops, he said he saw his mother and his sister, like two people. But on the 911 call, he says they're Dead. They're all dead.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, so he was trying to make it seem like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No. How did he know they were all dead if in his. It's another one of his. He fucked up by saying that they're all dead and he had only seen two of the bodies, so how did he know they were all dead?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cool.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And then I kind of interpreted the dad's. If the dad had done it. I kind of interpreted his. His, you know, his. His computer message saying, you're the only one who deserves to still be here. I was like, maybe. Maybe he's killing them, thinking that he's doing them a favor and he thinks his son is a piece of. And he's like, that you're the only one who still describes. Deserves to be on this shitty planet.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, like he means it in the negative.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Not like you're the only good enough person to not get killed. Maybe you're the only one who's not good.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, that's crazy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But doesn't it seem very like classic narcissist, where you would write a fake letter talking about how great you were?

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's. Yeah. To me it's too much.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. That the dad would be like, I'm gonna murder everybody. We've all been in this house together doing God knows what terrible shit. I pick you as my favorite. Everybody else is going down to me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's too much. It's too stupid that the son would write that. Like he should have written some. I think he would have known to write something more.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, but he was a 20 year old paperboy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, but it sounds like he planned this whole murder out because he also did a thing where he made sure his whole family. He like, called a family meeting the night before. Just kind of. It seems like what people are explaining that as is that he was trying to make sure everyone was in the house that night and the next day.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. I don't think there's any way he didn't do it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Also because. Sorry, did you say any of the accusations about incest or molestation were proven?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, they couldn't be proven. But it's brought up a lot. There's a couple people who can corroborate, but they never did in court, so who knows how reliable those are.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But also, that's like, it's the perfect thing. It's the perfect, like, ingredient to add into this for confusion.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally. But I don't think he said it, so it doesn't make any. You know, it's not like he's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, that wasn't his story.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It wasn't his story.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He was also never like, my dad is an. I can't believe he killed my whole family. Which you think you would be saying, yeah. Or, I can't believe my dad did this. I would never think my dad would. Was capable of this. Or anything along those lines. He never did that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or do you use that to justify why he. Why he killed his dad? His dad killed the family, but he killed the dad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. No, there's. Yeah. Because you think that I. Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He would be painting himself as a hero.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Exactly.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds. Yeah. So I. There's like a. I can't believe there's a huge argument about whether or not this kid did it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's fascinating.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, you know what? You know how they'll find out?

[Georgia Hardstark]

How?

[Karen Kilgariff]

If you kill somebody else now that he's free?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he won't. Maybe he was 20 and fucking just trying.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was like he was going through a reggae phase. Except for murder.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe he was really into hacky sack for a short period of time and.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Then he grew some white dreads. Went naturally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Except for murder.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, I'm ready to be an accountant.

[Georgia Hardstark]

He seems like a celebrity. Like a celebrity, too. Like a local celebrity.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, because, I mean, what's better to talk about than something that has everything? Murder, incest.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's real ugly.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You can't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Gloves, ladies, glasses, Cosby sweaters.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cosby sweaters.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean. And I can attest to this. I saw some photos.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm. This is to me. Staircase level.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Fascinating.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is very staircase. Oh, speaking of, I went to a party over the weekend. Remember Erin Dewey Lennox, who had her. We talked about how she had her prom photo on the stair on the staircase. Yes, because she was friends with that family.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She sent me straight over the weekend. She said in that episode, you said that I believed the eagle. The owl theory. And she's like. And I fucking don't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I was like, I'm so sorry.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I love it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So she doesn't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I thought she was gonna be like, anne, I have the blowpoke. Here it is. No, no. Oh, that's amazing. Okay, that makes me feel better because the owl theory is absolute fucking insanity and is not real.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And she is friends with a sister who has, like, alienated herself from the rest of the family, who believes he didn't do it. I hope I'm not. I hope she's okay with me.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, we did. You Just said every single name she has.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know. She's a very funny comedian and everyone should go to her shows.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And also, she probably would have told you if she was mad about the owl theory. She would have told you she was mad about the name thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe I'll text her after this and be like, we could. Cool.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's call this episode. It's going to be edited so much that it's going to be 11 minutes long.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, totally. It's. Now, if you're not listening to an episode that's at least an hour and 20 minutes, you're listening to the. Wrong. You're listening to a very edited.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You're listening to. Yeah, a reject episode.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Oh, I also met a girl who. Okay, I'm just gonna make this short.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Her photos. Stalking photos were found at the BTK crime scene.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What? What? What? What?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Her name is Taryn Southern. She's a fucking YouTube star. She's a sweet angel, awesome person. And she was like, casually. We were, like, chatting and I. You know, the murder podcast got mentioned and she's like, oh, I have a weird. I have a story. It's not that big of a deal. And she's like, he was. She went to the church where he was a security guard and he had pictures of her. Yeah. Yeah. She was like 16, and they had to call her at college and they were like, are you still alive? Oh, I know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I was like, how is this. You just. You just won my life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You might as well just said to me, like, I met fucking Julia Roberts.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, that's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And did she lose her shit?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I don't know if she lost her shit. She's like, I never spoke to him. He wasn't like a creepy. He chaperoned the prom. Oh, no. So there were photos of her, like, from prom.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, but so she was like, one of his favorites.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I guess not favorite enough. Thank God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. For real?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's crazy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, wait.

[Karen Kilgariff]

When they told her she was in college, so she was like, 16 when the pictures were taken, but then, like 18 or older.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God. That's crazy. Wait, has he been put to death yet or is he on death row?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I don't think he's been put to death, has he?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I don't think so.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We'll edit it out if he has. So if you're listening to this, guys.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is not dead. This is one of the more professional podcasts that you are going to hear on itunes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You're welcome.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, look, we want to Be professional for you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's what we're all about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. This is who we are. It's what we do.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm proud that this episode. I didn't say the word, like, 900 times.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You know what? I want to stop doing that. I noticed halfway through. And you'll notice that my voice isn't doing. I have vocal fry a lot.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or like, I talk like this where I, like, you know, I'll be telling a story and I'll.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, I was doing that the whole time last episode.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Why do I do that?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, we lay down a lot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's true.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's true. We are. Georgia is often just flat on her back.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I really am. If I didn't have to sit up to look at my computer. Usually I print my notes so I can, like, hold them over my face.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I wouldn't get up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I've read a couple of the negative. A couple of the negative. Of course I have to read those, but. Well, no, it's just things like that of like, it's two Valley girls making jokes about murders or whatever where I'm like, I get that. I hear that we are on the.

[Georgia Hardstark]

First pass from California and we make fun of murder. But that's not all it is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And we have kind of Valley girl speech impediments.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We totally. We've lived in our life for a very long time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But we're also not afraid to lecture you on how bad we think rape is.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We might really have to edit the.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Top of that all together.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Should we just start over right now?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, thanks for listening. This is. I'm George and this is Karen. Hey, Karen. How was your week?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God, what a great week. Fun.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Positive.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Super positive.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Everything is. I like everything.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's a good thing. Everything has been solved.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Things are great and nothing's bad. Yay. Boo.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Um, let's end this two ways.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Cause people have been asking for this one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, we missed that. Okay, so we're gonna end it by saying, guys, stay sexy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Don't get murdered. Also, Elvis, do you want a cookie?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, what else?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thanks for listening, you guys. What? And Elvis, cookie.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And can we get the final statement?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Cookie. Thanks for listening. Rate. Review. Subscribe. I will.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Bye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Bye.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Are there updates for this story?

[Georgia Hardstark]

A little bit. This is one of those cases that I think still come on those lists of the biggest mystery, what actually happened. It's kind of become this folklore almost in New Zealand. But, you know, it's been 30 years since the Bane family murders. As I stated in the episode, David Bane was convicted of the five murders of his family members. However, after proving a number of errors in his trial, David's convictions were overturned and he was released after serving almost 13 years in prison. Oh, wow. And a clarification, since it wasn't totally clear in the episode, David was ordered a retrial, which happened in 2009, but a second jury ended up acquitting him on all five murder charges. So it's been overturned. He's been released and acquitted. So it kind of. Someone had to know what they were doing and, like, know what was going on and that you'd think he maybe actually didn't do it well.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And if that's the case and he. So he's wrongfully imprisoned and his whole family is dead. And, I mean, that's. What a nightmare. And how horrible.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is. This is like an episode where I feel like every fucking thing I'm saying sounds the tritest thing I've ever said in my life.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, that's all. That's all you can say?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So now he's in his 50s and he lives with his wife and children under a new name.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And so to end this. This episode is the first time we end with both SSDGM and Elvis saying goodbye.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Monumental.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It took us 20 episodes to kind of work out the kinks. We're starting to get this thing on its feet. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Get a tagline.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We're starting to tell full stories. We're starting to do all our homework. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so 2020, as everyone knows who loves the show, 2020, it's a perfect title.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sure.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But there could be other ones. Georgia said Child's Art Project, which is her describing the cross stitch that she started for me. She was giving me. What, did you just not give it to me?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think it's still in here somewhere, like halfway done. I definitely didn't finish it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, thanks.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I got really into cross stitching. Turns out when you cross stitch, you can be really good at cross stitching or you can have cats and you. But you can't have both. So I learned that lesson, you know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And then the other title could be Swimming above all, which Karen talks about doing a somersault off the side of a pool, hitting your head, and then going back to swimming afterwards. Because swimming above all. I like that one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I truly have never hurt my head that badly. And then I was just like, just power through it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It doesn't matter. Head injury.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Just keep. Keep going, keep going.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And that's what we have done for the past eight and a half years.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This has been like a head injury.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Just keep going, keep going. All right, well, thanks, everybody, for listening. You know, be here every Wednesday with us while we kind of muck through our old episodes, our old victories and mistakes. They really. They contain multitudes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This is like a bog, and we're, like, digging out the bog. Bodies.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, there's bodies, but then there's also a beautiful golden chalice.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Treasures in the bog. Okay, Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye, Elvis.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Do you want a cookie?