Last week, Taylor's best friend from college had a baby. 20 years ago, he had a van that was carpeted in the back and only had two seats, when he picked her up from work for the first time, he was very clear not to get into any weird van, but specifically to get into his. Does that make sense? This story will very clearly spell out why you should never get into a van (or car) of someone you don't know. Honestly, don't hitchhike unless you are in a very quaint part of Europe. This is the story of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, The Toolbox Killers. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Last week, Taylor's best friend from college had a baby. 20 years ago, he had a van that was carpeted in the back and only had two seats, when he picked her up from work for the first time, he was very clear not to get into any weird van, but specifically to get into his.
Does that make sense? This story will very clearly spell out why you should never get into a van (or car) of someone you don't know. Honestly, don't hitchhike unless you are in a very quaint part of Europe.
This is the story of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, The Toolbox Killers.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod
Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
hey everyone this is Taylor and today we'll be relasing our episode on the
toolbox Killers um it's the classic don't get into someone's car and also
don't don't blame the victim because I would definitely help someone if they needed help I can't remember if this is
like a Ted buy situation but I don't know I kind of would help someone and definitely definitely get killed like in
the um Silence of the lamps um and but I think this is just generally don't hit
hike I think we're past that as as a people as a culture I think we did that in like the 1970s when cars were first
like taking us across the country and we were really excited about it and then we could like leave and all this freedom
and you didn't have a phone but now have someone tracking your location at all times and don't hit shik that's my best
advice um hope you enjoy and I will see you on the next one as a reminder we are
re-releasing all of our episodes so you can always listen to them in full if you go back but I'm just dividing them in
half for you all so that's where we are right now enjoy thank you in a matter of the people of State of California versus
orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your
[Music]
country um so I'm going to segue into
the True Crime side of the equation for today like I said my drink today is water has absolutely nothing to do with
the story it has to do with the fact that I was at a work conference all last week in Florida and I just need to spend
this weekend in the next hydrating um so that's the idea uh so this whole time
we've been looking at relationships that were doomed to fail and knowingly or not I've kind of couched that and actually
you kind of have to Taylor with within the framework of romantic relationships
MH but there are probably thousands of stories of friendships that were also Doom to fail friendships that probably
should have been avoided all along it's funny as we discussed the premise of the show and how sometimes the universe puts
two people together at the exact same time and then I started researching the researching this particular episode and
framed it more as being put together at the exact wrong time like a pairing that you should have the the universe could
have avoided and done without yeah okay yeah I know I'm getting I'm getting again like the premise is like a little
bit Shifty but it's still kind of like H you really should put these two together like you said at the beginning we have
we have very very loose premise exactly we're just telling stories we're easy
going over here thanks for coming okay yeah um so one thing that I thought of when I
was looking into like this thing that I'm going to talk about today was it seems that in non-romantic relationships
in particular that end in tragedy there's at the very least either a power imbalance between the parties or
feedback loop that leads to the tragedy and a lot of times a power imbalance with these kinds of friendships are
based on one's mental acuity versus the others as then I can't remember the see
I should have done the research on this before I started talking um what's the book where the guy hugs the bunny too
hard and then the friend yeah um is it is it's not Grapes of Wrath is it Grapes of Wrath no it's um
bunny wait hug of Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men like there's an a great example of
you know two individuals with slightly different mental acuity and it was obviously like that's where I started
thinking about and when I started going through the research of this I thought about the probably the single most
impactful friendship gone wrong from our childhood Taylor MH in real life not of
M and men but in real real life can you think of what I'm thinking about the most impactful one of our generation the
most impactful friendship of Our Generation gone wrong gone wrong oh my
God I have no idea can you give me a hint Colorado oh the um are you gonna do
Coline I'm not doing Coline but that's that's the story that came to mind so yeah that's exactly what I thought of
when I was thinking about like man two people should definitely not have gotten together in any capacity I a combine and
yeah okay so for those that don't know this is combine is about Eric Harris and Dylan cable they were two friends who
became acquaint acquaintances in high school and in 1999 they ended up um
injuring 24 people and killing 13 including later themselves so total death count was 15 um and this is kind
of the situation that kicked off Mass school shootings in general I remember
I'm sorry to interrupt but I was I was in Reno at like a student council
conference you know and it was like 500 like good kids you know talking about how we get everybody to be involved and
whatever and we had just had like three days of like you know meeting new people and doing all these things and and um I
remember getting on the bus to go back to Las Vegas to home and someone telling us that had happened and it was just like such a STK contrast to what I had
just experienced of like this like you know all the all the kids trying to get everybody involved and excited and then
you know at the same time someone was killing people in a school where you are supposed to feel safe but
you don't anymore obviously thank you [ __ ] You America so that's actually why I thought it was like I cow as the most
impactful because there's certain things that happen in our youth where you're like I remember where I was it's like when people talk about where they were
when candy was shot anyways but that that was kind of my first thought and it took me back to a particularly awful
story I remember reading about like years ago and I think is still considered obscure in the pantheon
Pantheon of True Crime like I don't hear this story told very often it is well
let's get into it maybe you already know it I nervous I'm thinking about the
toolbox killers lawren sper and Roy Norris gross yes I know a little bit I
feel like I don't know that that kind of makes me want to throw up so I'm excited okay so you're yeah again you're a PhD
in True Crime so I'm not surprised um I do I do want to differentiate this from the toy box killer which
sounds delightful by comparison like you're forced to be locked in an FAO shorts before they kill you this is not
bad this is tool box so that's not a thing though what with the FAO Schwarz why
because they're bankrupt saying that'd be a weird way a
weird a weird thing yeah do that might be that might have to be
the RO reboot of those Saw movies oh my God like I said like I almost feel like
there are some true crime stories that though they're incredibly interesting and compelling or just too much for
mainstream consumption and appeal that's essentially this the
toolbox Killers like I'm not going to go super into the weeds and details on the
gross stuff because it's just too gross so noting that at the top totally and
don't yeah I feel like I I know some of the gross stuff um I'm sure that you'll talk about some of it as well but it's
gross I will go mildly into the it's like real bad it's real real bad like
and I was thinking about like how certain situations have like and certain folks within this genre have an IT
Factor you know Bundy being considered normal and good-looking gayy being a clown involved in politics BTK had a
normal family these two are just garbage humans they have none of that if you
look up a picture of Lawrence B in particular he looks like Penny wise the clown it's terrifying like he's I'm
going to look it up in an incognito window so it's not like in my search history that's good call I should have been doing that this whole
time o yeah you see it like his forehead he does look like Penny wise right his
like really like pointy and it's got a huge forehead like it's just creepy
creepy looking dude yeah let's get into our two main characters and note the red
flags along the way I'll start with what I'm going to say is the main antagonist
of the story which is Lawrence Bier he actually died fairly recently he actually died in 2019 um so we we'll get
to how that ended up happening but Lawrence was born in 1940 to a couple who gave him up to an orphanage he was
adopted as an infant and his family moved around quite a bit I don't have the years but I do know over the course
of 17 years he went from Pennsylvania to Florida to Ohio to California so setting
up Roots was obviously a challenge like if you're a kid growing up like that that's you're you're G to have like very
shallow human connections because you'll never had the opportunity to build deeper ones right or I mean also depends
on who you are you know like like my husband I was in the military and he moved around and like he has friends
from every place that he lived that he still talks to because his parents are making friends with everybody and his parents were like made it really made a
mission of the thre them to meet people yeah yeah if if it's if you as a parent understand that you have to make that
like a point that your kids are socialized then I'm sure it's different than if you're this guy it doesn't sound
like he got this so uh once he turned 17 he seemed like he kind of fell into a
life of crime but they were still kind of cute 1950s crimes like he was arrested for auto theft evading
arrest and I mean this last one is less Dennis the meny uh there was a hit and run as well oh that's bad yeah that's we
don't know if the person died or not but what you know still I mean he got hit by 1950s car he probably wasn't doing
great um he spent two years in a reform school and he kind of just drifted in and out of different facilities for
various different crimes until he was about 21 years old at 21 Lawrence's mental acuity comes into the play he is
said to be manipulative and was found to have an IQ of 138 do you know what that
means Taylor I don't know what that means yeah I didn't know what it meant either for the record okay it's like my
blood pressure like I don't know what that means just syic diabolic like yeah just am I going to die or not for
context the IQ classifications there's like various versions of this but like just generally speaking 90 to 109 on an
IQ test is average okay 120 to 129 is considered
Superior 130 130 and above is considered very
Superior so like I said there's different scoring methodologies for this but just generally speaking a quote
unquote genius is someone with an IQ of around 140 or so is that is that true
like what if you're a bad test taker or what if you're a good test taker or how do they test you I I don't know how test
taking or your ability to be good at that it I have never taken an IQ test I
don't know if it's like if I do you need to know something or is it just like how you logically reach conclusions to
things right because it's I don't think they ask you like who was president in
1912 I think they there like like a Kaplan course to study for it right I think
it's I'm sorry I'm just I want to know how do you take an IQ test they're like this is test that IQ
Mensa the most accurate IQ test oh one you can do in five minutes who knows
there a free IQ test.net yeah I feel like you need to go into a space with people in like lab
codes watching you do it it for it to be like legit um so Einstein was 160 yeah
yeah so I was going to yeah I was going to bring that up so for example again a genius is somebody with an IQ of around
140 or above Lawrence was a 138 I looked it up Elon Musk was a 155 and like you
said Einstein was a is a 160 he was closer to Elon Musk than he was to riq
for context s dog is 147 seriously yeah
but I don't believe that about Elon Musk I think he made that up I mean I don't know if he I want to see some receipts
for Elon musk's I mean the guy Einstein IQ started three companies and ran them
I mean kind of and and then spun off the planet with his E I think it's just like not having any empathy anyway um
continue I'm so sorry well anyway let's take a q test later we let unless they're bad or
widely different if one of us is really smart and one of us is not let's just not share it exactly exactly it's got to
be the same we will not be sharing our IQ later I think I think if I had to guess you're probably a one 19 which is
just shy of superior it's very average and I think
I'm probably like I'm probably right next to that maybe like a 117 116 all right we'll take it we'll figure
it out report back maybe so I bring all this up because I mentioned that I think
he's the main antagonist and I think being basically a professional criminal criminal with that level of intelligence
has to put you in a rare category based on the people you normally interact with let's leave let's leave Lawrence there
and move on to his partner in crime Roy Norris so Roy was eight years Lawrence is Junior so there you go there's a
little bit of that obvious power and balance in addition to the fact that Lawrence was crazy smart and Roy wasn't
there was also the age Gap uh he ended up in foster homes quite a bit mostly due to his mom being a drug addict
this guy was kind of [ __ ] from birth it sounds like there was a lot of stories around his abuse and what people did to him and uh he didn't have an easy
life growing up but again like also you know I was reading it and I was also
thinking like it's the 50s like how do you interpret that like isn't this standard that your dad comes home and
just beats the entire family like I don't right I mean I'm not saying it's good but I'm saying like did he have it
worse than a lot of people or was his particularly bad hard to gauge that I think yeah totally one thing that was
interesting was that at one point in his youth uh Roy did try to attempt suicide oh yeah like he just strikes me as
someone like a kid with no mentors or anyone to look up to um I don't really see him as like an obvious deviant just
yet like most mostly just like a lost kid you know I would say that changed the older
he got uh he unlike Lawrence who was
like involved in stupid petty theft like cealing cars and [ __ ] Roy's dabbling in
the criminal underworld came about through sexual crimes that he was committing or trying to commit so
around the age of 21 uh he was caught trying to break into a woman's house for
refusing to let him in it sounded kind of like a date gone wrong for that he was arrested he was diagnosed as having
a schizoid personality disorder again not to harp on this too much but think about that on the one hand you have
Lawrence who is basically Beethoven levels of intelligence Bas when I looked him up was 135 to 140 on the other hand
you have an obviously mentally ill man in Roy who diagnosis as a schizoid Personality yeah
totally after Roy's release he attacks a female student in San Diego strikes her in the head and then beats her
repeatedly uh so his escalation is ramping pretty quickly from trying to break into a woman's house to like this
level of aggression and violence still when he is arrested he goes to the psych ward for mental
illness which I don't know how I feel about this I don't know how mental illness or the criminal justice system
worked in the 1950s and 60s but this guy's crimes bearded so heavily towards sexual violence and they keep putting
him in Psych wordss yeah I don't is that a mental
illness yes probably in some way but also he's very violent so he should probably shouldn't be around other
people right yeah I mean I don't know I was I was thinking well it's definitely
abhorent Behavior so maybe that's a signal of Mental Illness but he's yeah
definitely put him in jail he shouldn't be around others right yeah definitely shouldn't be around other people staying
on brand for Roy he is eventually released from that situation and then he rapes a woman in
Rondo Beach which is actually reported to police and that'll come up again
because that is a really really critical moment in why everything else here happens that happens I will say this
like I am changing I'm not using the word rape very much
deliberately in this because I just don't want to say it like 300 times uh so just note that I'm I don't know I
don't get triggered by much but I did get kind of upset at like how many times this comes up over and over again and so
I just don't want to do that to you or the listeners or myself again so I'm just not going to go into detail we can
assume there was a lot of sexual crime yeah exactly exactly so let's get into the overlap between
these two deviants so how did they come together so let's going back to Laurence
in 1974 Lawrence stole a stake again it's kind he's kind of Dennis the Menace
like what a what a stupid crime anyways so the grocery store employee who was
going way above and beyond uh confronted Lawrence and Lawrence ended up stabbing
the guy oh God never do that let him take it take the Stak like who cares who cares yeah the guy lived but Lawrence
was arrested obviously and he was sent to a prison at St Louis abiso all these places that I'm listing
I'm like I have so many amazing memories of and it's so weird so beautiful there
Redondo Beach is one of my favorite places in the world and it's just like you think about what was going on with
these guys it just ttin tints everything in know this weird
shade and then going back to Roy's rape accusation in beach in 1976 he was
arrested for that and then he also landed in San Louis abiso so now you have the two coming together right you
have you have the incredibly smart manipulative Lawrence the incredibly you
know mentally ill and sexually violent Roy coming together yeah I was I was thinking about
this I was like how do you compare this like what is it like with that kind of kisman when two people kind of come
together I thought about like Michael Jordan Scotty Pippen or jobs and B like that's kind of what this is in like a
toally opposite way like we're going to change the world let's make it worse or
or let's invent computers or let's be the best and yeah totally yeah and so so
the two hung out in like seemingly different crowds Roy was more with like the hardened criminal types the biker
types and lawren kind of kept to himself and hung out with the older inmates not for any like it just seems
like that's just where he gravitated towards it wasn't because like he couldn't hang out apparently Lawrence
would save Roy multiple times from getting beaten up and jumped like he wasn't like soft in any way like he just
didn't hang out with that crowd regardless they bonded while they were in prison mostly because of this
situation where Lawrence was saving Royce from getting his ass kicked they bonded and decided to get together once
they were released and would they bonded over again it was just gross sexual
stuff that don't need to talk about yeah but that was basically it that's like they just like were like sharing
fantasies with each other Lawrence ends up getting released in 1978 and then he
moves to Los Angeles and again given what I said about the guy earlier like he's doing pretty well for himself he
got like a really really good job he was making $1,000 a week in 1978 which I
don't I can't do the conversion but that sounds like a billion dollars in today's money I think I think you're right I think it's a billion dollars it's
exactly a billion dollars are you doing the conversion yeah is 1978 in 19 78 money to today oh my God
$4,500 a week yeah that's so much
money yeah he's crushing it yeah [ __ ] yeah he was a skilled laborer uh he
socialized normally like people knew him so I didn't say any right any of this in
the outline but he would like donate to the Salvation Army he' go buy food and give it out to the homeless people in
Downtown LA like he he was being a normal dudee despite the fact that he looks like Pennywise Roy's released a
few months after this and he goes right back to being a piece of [ __ ] committing more sexual assaults while living with
his mother for whatever reason Lawrence writes to Roy and the two mate plans to
meet up and they did and this is where they start putting together their plan
to play out the scenarios they discussed while they were in jail together they acted like this was like a
start up like they started like pulling their money together like it was that's why I brought like the wnc jobs thing I
was I was just like they had this like light bulb moment but it was just like so counter good like I don't yeah
they pull money together they're like buying materials I'll get into this like they
like right they're like planning to do something like like a party something
fun but they're planning to commit crimes they ended up converting a van they they did the van life thing before
van life was a thing oh my God yeah it was anyways we'll we'll we'll go into
it yeah they ended up buying a a van obviously and I started wondering like
is this where the Trope comes from like did these guys actually invent that Trope we I don't know but it's had to
have been close to the beginning of that right I mean how long have Vans even been around totally that's funny so yeah
let's let's get into what they ended up doing after they put together this you know LLC of theirs I'm joking there was
no LLC obviously so they have their van proba the road to that yeah exactly so they have their van they have a plan and
they have each other's support they start going through with this plan this
all gets like I said super gratuitous and I just don't want to say the word rape 300 times so I'm going to gloss
over a lot except one particular murder I will will go into the details of
well part of the details of I'm actually not going to go into details of that one either that much but the overarching
premise was the same they'd see a girl walking on the beach like it's just the most like
innocent safe place how many times I mean you we've how many times you you go
to Manhattan Beach you go to Rondo like it's just beautiful and everybody's just having a good time in the sun it's like
the safest place you would hope to be and anyways that's what the would do they'd see a girl walking always near
the beach or on the beach approach her tell her they have marijuana or beer and they can give her a ride they abduct
abduct her and they typically drive her up to the San Gabriel mountains where they do what they do and kill her there
that's it that's their entire emo do they always kill them no no they didn't
so there's several women or girls who would either get away or they would release for whatever reason yeah it was
it was a little bit uh it seems like just something got into them with the ones that they ended up killing but none
of them had good experiences like none of them were like got away like not emotionally scarred of course no no
course yeah we'll get into one of those women actually later because she becomes really really relevant so the list that
I'm going to go off of the ones that we know they killed there's actually one more that they think they killed because
there was pictures of her alive in the San Gabriel mountains but they actually these guys never talked about that one
so they don't know what happened to her so she's just always been missing um one the first one was 16-year-old Lynn
schaer the second one was 18-year-old Andrea Joy Hall the third one third and
fourth were uh Jackie Doris Gilliam who was 15 and Jacqueline Leah lamp who was
13 they spent two days torturing those two girls I didn't mention this but the
reason they were called the toolbox Killers is because the back of the van like I metion like I said I was going to
talk about later was converted into like a workshop that also had a bed in it and
part of the torture method came from devices they kept in the toolbox and like that comes up big time
with Jackie and Jacqueline um and it will come up again with the next one the next one was surely Lynette leadford who
was 16 when she was abducted while hitchhiking home from a Halloween party again the hitchhiking thing the van it's
just like so it's like a mov I mean now hopefully we know a little bit better
yeah you know but I feel like then this is the story we hear a thousand times like a woman was hitchhiking got into a
van and gets murdered it happened it seems like it happened all the time and maybe it happened 1% of the time but
yeah people were doing it all the time which is really crazy I to think about that that was like I'll just H I'll just
hitch hi home yeah from a Halloween party I when I was so when I was living in Hill Country I um would constantly
see hitchhikers for whatever reason and there was a part of me Taylor that I was like just stop just stop like get the
story like just figure out what is going on like get the story of what's happening and you can get murdered on both sides picking someone up and being
picked up I would be murdered I I I I'm definitely on that side of that equation shirely is the one that I'll
actually talk about because it's I mean they're all bad but it's the worst one for context the audio recording of what
happened to her is now used by the FBI to desensitize agents oh yeah no yeah
we're going to be harping a lot on that audio recording it is really really bad did you listen to
it you can't listen to it you can't find it but there's transs of it that are that are circulating and there's also like up 10,000 reports of people who
actually have listened to it and what the outcomes of them listening to it was which again like that audio recording is going to keep coming up over and over
again because it had it had it sounds like very very dramatic imp impacts on
everybody who listened to it wow so um the so like I said like like if you
wanted to you can look up like you can't look up the audio recording but you can look up the transcript of it I'll expand
on one part of what was happening during the recording that sounds horrible I
think I know what the answer to this is Taylor you you might actually know what this is because you sort of are familiar with this with this crime do you know
what an old cranon is it's part of your Anatomy oh no
okay so it's part of your elbow so it is the it's this part I'm pointing nobody
can see this because it's audio medium I mean it's an elbow PR your elbow everybody put your elbows in the air so
yeah so it is it is the bottom part it's the part that like is is um hinged from
the forearm that ties to the top right so obviously it's a place where a lot of
bone comes together a lot of cartilage comes together is it your funny bone no your funny Bone's above that
your funny actually actually your funny bone the top part of your funny the your funny bone is where the top part of your
old cranon actually connects to the upper arm okay I don't know why it this makes me want to throw up but just
talking about it is making me kind of nauseous but keep going aren't you glad we're doing this at a your
time Shirley's autopsy revealed that that part of her Anatomy was basically
sawdust oh my God so in the audio recording the sound of a sledgehammer
repeatedly hitting something can be heard there were 25 distinct sounds of
that happening with a ton of screaming and everything else that came with it and the assumption is that that's where
that injury came from it was one of a lot of injuries but
that's the bulk of what you would hear if you ever were able to hear the audio recording is it
sounds God it's like I'm like thinking about it it's so awful pause they recorded it and they
recorded it and kept it just the audio or they recorded a video no I mean this
is 78 there was probably no capacity for video recording in a van right so no just audio in they're in the van yeah it
seems hard to wield a sledgehammer in event I mean they really I mean it's why
you have to really want it you don't get Advance don't get Advance yeah totally 100% yeah that that detail is the only
one that I really am going to discuss because it was just it just shows how terrible and brutal it was later on Roy
himself would describe the tape by saying if you ever heard that tape there's just no possible way that you'd
not begin crying and trembling I doubt you could listen to more than 60 seconds of it but he but he's saying but he's
saying it like he's proud of it oh my God yeah like he like it wasn't like a
um oh man you can't can you believe how crazy this was like what a what a wild Friday that was like know he's he's kind
of he ragged him about it yeah so
nice uh one interesting note that might have contributed to why her death was
particularly awful is that Lawrence she was rejected by Lawrence so she worked
at at some Diner that Lawrence would frequent and he asked her out and she
said no and they actually think they actually think that's also why she ended up getting in the van because she was
like oh I know this guy I see him all the time right so there was like trust element there but she didn't know that
he felt the way he felt towards her like what he want what his intention was obviously yeah she didn't expect to get
murdered yeah you should be able to say no to people and not get not fear for
your safety yeah exactly so after Shirley's death and her body was
discovered she was the only one whose body was discovered by the way every everybody else was um like lost the
mountains Roy he's a real social butterfly he rekindled a friend ship with another guy
he met in jail named Joseph Jackson and Joseph seemed to have way more Humanity in him than Roy himself
Roy went on to tell Joseph what he and Lawrence had been up to like just like what you just casually mentioning it
like oh what you do this weekend it's just it's just have you ever been cornered by someone who thinks what they're telling you is amazing and you
can't get away from them sure I'll tell you what so every I can't
think of a specific example but oh I I I know exactly what my is every conference I go to there's some crypto bro who
shows up who's going to revolutionize democracy through the blockchain and they just find you and start telling you
everything about nfts and crypto and blockchain you're like your eyes are just [ __ ] glazing over and they won't
every every conference Universal across the board yeah that's my hell so please
anybody crypto Bros never talk to me about crypto I don't care like I
aged out of it I think I actually hit that age where it's like I don't need to learn anything more like I don't need I don't need web 3.0 like web 2 is good I
I got it I'm gold on that side so yeah anyways Joseph probably sad there're
just kind of not nodding along to how cool Roy's story was and then immediately went to the police good on
him he's the reason all this happened like's the reason why like the downfall
happened because the police had no they these were all missing people for the most part except for the last one surely
and stupidly enough Roy gave such detail that police were able to triangulate him
just from what Joseph reiterated from that the stories that he told for example he mentioned that one time they
had bed a woman while trying to get her into their Minivan and then Joseph recounted that exact story verbatim and
the police looked up there report saying yeah this woman showed up saying there was a silver minivan there was two guys
in it it and they mased me and tried to drag me into it did Joseph get some sort of presidential Medal of Honor I don't
know I hope he was for whatever we something yeah unfortunately Joseph Jackson's not an easy name to Google
true yeah so but man good for him good for him that's great yeah like Roy Bas like Roy gave him all the details that
that he needed to incriminate himself that story the one of the mace woman she her name is Robin robc and she was she
reported all this like I said to the police but she just couldn't identify the people at the time so the case kind
of just went away after Joseph described what happened the missing girls the abductions the police went back to Robin
with photos of Roy and Lawrence and she immediately identified them like it wasn't like just those two obviously it
was like a photo lineup of like a dozen but she immediately picked out those two
wow police are actually doing really good work here so they're starting to survey Roy and they saw him dealing
marijuana which was a parole violation form that he was picked up on Lawrence was also picked up but it was more blunt
it was for the assault on Robin mm police searched their uh search
Lawrence's apartment and Roy's bedroom in his mom's house and they find
basically what you would expect just tons of photos of victims of potential victims of random girls walking down the
the beach jewelry of the victims uh they also found that audio recording I
mentioned earlier they said they also found acidic material which apparently Lawrence
intended on using on the next victim so thank God that stopped oh my God yeah uh
Roy was having a pretty hard time with this he was having a hard time with being arrested he actually waved his
Miranda rights just to show how intelligent he is and then he ultimately
confessed to police his argument being mostly like hey it wasn't me it was Lawrence all the all along you know just
like the the the prison dilemma story basically rehashed in this situation
which again like I said I always kind of couch Lawrence as the antagonist but like he's not like Roy's not like some
innocent bystander to any of this stuff no I mean he was there and he didn't tell he didn't tell anyone exactly like
the other guy did exactly and uh Roy was ultimately given a $10,000 bail whereas
Lawrence was outright denied bail which I don't even understand why Roy was given that option seems incredibly
generous yeah although again going for convers conversion rates it might have
been unattainable amounts of money for him anyways um Roy would eventually testify against Lawrence in return for
the prosecution not seeking the death penalty obviously um Roy ends up getting
45 years to life and then he became eligible for parole in 2010 but he
actually this is later on in his prison life he didn't actually go to his parole hearing which deferred it out another 10
years by the time the next 10 years came he was dead so didn't didn't really matter not that he would have gotten
released anyways right uh Lawrence is incredible he just keeps on
criming so he hired two inmates while he was in jail who to go kill Robin because
they were about to get released soon to prevent her from testifying so that isn't that just what what Alec Murdoch
did too or tried to kill someone from jail oh man it didn't it wasn't that
part of his story that he tried to fire a Hitman to kill someone I'm trying to no it was it was somebody
it was somebody else who tried to hire someone while in jail to kill the prosecution it was one of the idiots
that I covered it wasn't it wasn't the Dell guy what was the other oh Scott Drew Peterson was it oh H yeah okay gosh
that's so ridiculous that is not gonna work it never works for our listeners
who are incarcerated there is you are constantly survey surveying there are no Hit Men there are none there's no Hit
Men um obviously he got caught for that he ended up going to trial for the murders
in 1981 um having sort sort of pled guilty he he didn't reply when the judge
asked him if he pleads guilty or not so in that situation it's just deferred that you're pleading in not guilty and
so that's what the judge entered his defense obviously tried to exclude the audio recording of Shirley's death and
the judge actually told the jury because they would play this tape in court they told the jury for those of you who do not know what hell is like you will find
out like that is the level of insanity that we're talking about apparently when
the tape was played the entire courtroom and observers in the courtroom were reduced to tears except for Lawrence and
again I mentioned the impact this tape is hat on people as in aside one of the
main investigators in the crime committed suicide after this trial oh my God and he wrote a 10 page suicide note
that specifically referenced the tape and the murders as haunting him oh no
how many murders how many how many people did they kill it would have been five well it's five that we know of
because they confess to it there's another there's other one where the girl is at the dump site in the San Gabriel
mountains with pictures of her there and they didn't confess to that one so like we don't know what happened to this one she's still missing got it Lawrence
interestingly took the stand in his own defense but it seems like that was mostly for his own entertainment value rather than any realistic hope of
talking his way out of this he was obviously found guilty and obviously sentenced to death Lawrence is just like
when you he's just a piece of work he continued being a pain in the ass from prison he was actually declared What's
called the ve vexatious litigant at one point which I love like that is someone
who just will not stop filing frivolous lawsuits for no reason so like there was
one story about how he filed a fous lawsuit because he was served like a broken cookie and he called that cool
and unusual punishment like he was just an [ __ ] in the ass yeah so like once
you're labeled a vexatious litigant you have to get permission from a judge or a
lawyer to actually submit any more litigation so like that's like his right
to file complaints was basically taken away from him because he was so annoying because he was so annoying like I said
like he ended up dying in 2019 he was 79 years old which is like a pretty ripe old age um and he was still on death row
the time Roy also died shortly thereafter he died in 2020 he was
70 uh he would have been 71 or 72 at this point they have 7even eighty year age G um and that's kind of it like
these were two guys who came together who the universe put together who in my
mind I think that Lawrence would have just been a normal dude probably like yeah his crimes weren't that bad until
they met like he was just and he had a great job like he was doing normal [ __ ]
but I don't know Roy kind of brought the worst out but also the reason I placed
him as the antagonist is because Roy kind of planted the seeds and then
Lawrence had the intellect to completely run with it if it wasn't for Lawrence
Roy would have just been like running just finding women and hitting them over the head with a baseball bat like you
know like there' be no like system if it wasn't for Lawrence's um abilities but
right so like separately they might have done other things but together that was
really the thing yeah exactly exactly it's awful it's all around awful hate the story I think like again this is one
of those ones that you just don't hear about very often because it's just so bad and I've literally skipped over like
95% of the details of what happened to these people and there's a reason for it if you want to read more read more but
it's not going to make you feel good no it's going to make you feel terrible oh my my God yeah those poor babies oh I
see a picture of the van not great it looks like exactly what you think it would look like yeah yeah yuck it's a it
sounds like also some of the pictures I'm looking at from like movies about it from like the 70s and 80s I guess um it
does look very saw you know yeah it the the stories of what they would do
when they got up to the San Gabriel mountains I've been up there I mean you've been up there right like yeah
it's not it's not that far from LA it's desolate it is desolate there's like
hundreds of little offshoot roads that you could go down that would take you places where nobody's ever going to find
you yeah and it's just you with these two lunatics in a van that had its
entire back stripped out there's a bed put in there and it's turned into like a a workshop like it's just yeah it is saw
like it is as close that univers you can get and some of some some of the [ __ ] they did was just like yeah do you think
they used their tools for like other things yes I know they did like fixing things no I meant other things like like
torturing people no no I mean but like also they're like oh I need a screwdriver and then like would like use it even though they had just like
murdered someone with it they just take the pieces of hair then like blood that's on it and then start using and
fix a chair yeah yeah I'm sure I mean they seem handy enough to build this
mobile kill van H well that's terrible so so you know going back to like the
entire premise of like what goes on I I think they tell you this if you do rehab
that like you're not supposed to date somebody else in rehab right because
there's a underlying component in your brain that's going to maybe go backwards with each other yeah and this is a
little bit of that too like if you make Buddies with somebody while you're incarcerated you maybe just like you
know what like leave that relationship where it is that while you're in jail and then move on with your life and do
something different like find other people go to the coffee shop go to the dog park and just like socialize with others I think like that's kind of the
red flag here is like just there's no need to come back together like that part of your life yeah that part of life
happened it must have been magical but we can leave that in St Louis AB bisbo's
prison when it does yeah like that the moment when they're like oh you have all these terrible thoughts too that was
like the no turning back point you know they're like oh I found someone who's just like me in yeah it reminded me of
Leonard Lake and Charles in like it's just like just garbage wrapped in skin
just showing it's just they're such trash and they bond over the things that
nobody should Bond over yeah totally So my aunt who will never listen to this
one time told my mom a story and I don't have the details but she said that in San Francisco in the 70s one of her
friends was a gay man and he was killed by someone who came over and just shot him and I think it was Charles ining
yeah I know that story it was he was a radio DJ or something and he put an ad
in the paper and somebody just showed up and shot him and left and that's confess to
that ter wow that's crazy I know um wow well that's awful yeah do you
have any do you have any um ending banter that you want to go into
um thank you to everyone who's listening please give us reviews that's super helpful I made an email address so I
have Doom toil pod gmail.com if anybody wants to email us about anything and we're going to work on maybe a
newsletter just getting it out to more people is going to be really the thing to to keep this going I think that's our
next step yeah yeah and thank you for taking point on that obviously my last
two weeks have been chaotic two weeks ago I had no electricity for a week and then last week I was on the road so
thanks for taking point on that stuff yeah totally I'm glad you're back and um
yeah everybody watch watch wild the movie and there's some toolbox clear
movies maybe watch it maybe don't I'm not watching it yeah I might not do it I
like I like the Saw movies but I like them because they're like ridicul ul and not 100% accurate in real yeah it didn't
really happen yeah so um well thank you Taylor hopefully have a great weekend
and you too and uh safe travels for work the next week or two and yeah I guess
I'll see you next week cool thanks all bye
bye