Welcome to episode 7! This week Taylor brings the tragic love story of Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas - she also says "Posh" and "Velvet" approx 98324 times. Farz takes a spin on the 'relationship' podcast part of our show and talks about two friends who were both marginally bad guys but when they put their heads together and purchased a horrifying murder van, they became the Toolbox Killers. Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
Welcome to episode 7! This week Taylor brings the tragic love story of Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas - she also says "Posh" and "Velvet" approx 98324 times. Farz takes a spin on the 'relationship' podcast part of our show and talks about two friends who were both marginally bad guys but when they put their heads together and purchased a horrifying murder van, they became the Toolbox Killers.
Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
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Some sources:
Oscar Wilde’s Stirring Love Letters to Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
The Importance of Being Oscar (BBC)
History.com - Oscar Wilde Trial
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
0:20
welcome to Doom to fail the podcast where we switch up the premise of the show unexpectedly as is what I'll be
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doing later today I'm far is joined here by my co-host Taylor hi Taylor hello how are you doing
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today I'm good how are you I'm well are we recording at the normal time we are
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it is morning it's very bright in your office that's delightful I am at at work
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this week I was like 8 30 meetings are really rough for me because I don't like the mornings like
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the mornings are I hate them I will never wake up early but I do get up early for this so I guess it's just
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perspective and I did not change the timing on this at all or the day or anything so
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kudos to me um congratulations thank you so let's go ahead and start by discussing what you
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would like to be drinking today or will be drinking cool so I'll I know for your story I don't know what
1:18
it is yet but for your story we'll be reminding everybody to hydrate and just drinking water so make sure to have
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heavier water I have my water in my coffee for as fast as water in his diet coke so we're ready to go and then for
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my story that I'll jump into first is I have a quote from one of our one of our
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subjects or participants or whatever and it is alcohol taken in sufficient quantities May produce all the effects
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of drunkenness so who would have thought a posh chickens and drinks is what we're uh is
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the drink in general because today I'm going to talk about Oscar Wilde and his boyfriend Lord Alfred Douglas who goes
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by the name bozie so hopefully about their story I do not know very much about Oscar Wilde so if you ask me about
2:05
movies that he was in I probably won't know them well he was in no movies because he's a playwright from the 1800s
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I mean like movies about him obviously okay great yeah I knew I knew that much
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at least um we'll get to it I think there's some
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that you might recognize if maybe you haven't read or seen so we'll get there I did I did a lot of research this week
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just like watching movies like you said and listening to some podcasts I have I
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watched a documentary called The Importance of Being Oscar from the BBC I watched the film wild it's from
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things from the 90s about Oscar Wilde Stephen Fry plays him and Jude Law
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actually plays Lord Alfred Douglas and this is the second movie that we've brought up where Jude Law plays like the
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young gay lover of an older man which also did in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil oh okay so that was Jude
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Law's kind of genre you know 20 years ago or so and I also listened to a great Oxford lecture that
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I found it's by a woman named Dr sauce Altis her name's SOS I have no idea how
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to pronounce that but Oxford University Records their lectures you can listen to them as a podcast so
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the audio was pretty terrible because I think it was like just a microphone like pinned to her while she was
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actually doing her class and one of the episodes I think she had like a broach on or something you could like hear it
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hitting the throat and someone was coughing the entire time so you're like oh my God go home do not call for this
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entire lecture but still it was delightful and it was I learned a lot so so how many movies in books and podcasts
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in total were part of your research I watched two movies and listened to you
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about five hours of a podcast thorough thank you very thorough yes
3:57
it's been it's been a very a very Posh week for me I know you
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listen to Oxford lectures like it's I mean you're like elevating us a little bit yeah it's been difficult not to
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speak in an English accent to my family and friends so I will try to not do that as well here but I've been listening to
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it a lot you don't wanna you don't want to try to do the whole section your section in a British accent
4:22
[Music] I think I'm ready for that maybe next time
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appeals to me the way that the Eleanor Roosevelt story did when we talk about living a full life and really living the
4:36
[ __ ] out of your life in the story you know Oscar Wilde lived a rich life I say
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the word velvet a lot he it reminds me of this idea of like
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waking up late because I hate the mornings and being an artist and throwing a fit and writing all your feelings and then eating a great meal
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and staying up late drinking and talking and smoking and then yelling out art and the meaning of life and then doing it
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all again so just like this idea that you're just like in this world of just like artists and art and you're writing
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and you're writing poetry and you're writing these plays and things like that and it seems like you know really fun to
5:10
be able to choose what you want to do even though like you did have obviously working as a writer and I also feel like
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I have context to what this looks like because we're in like the late 1800s and like the Victorian era and I know what
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that looks like like that's kind of an aesthetic that I like I want to paint all my walls black and like you know
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have that um have that look you know going on in my own home so something that I can
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really see and I feel like that I couldn't really see everything in the Taj Mahal story because I just like
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don't know what day-to-day life is like was like then but I feel like I know what day-to-day life was for this
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so I feel like it's easier for me to talk about if that makes sense I keep picturing Hogwarts yeah libraries with
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like Rich Oak and stuff like that exactly that you can totally picture Hogwarts or doing this so it's very Posh
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everything I'm talking about is very very Posh so I'm going to talk about the people some of the stories they told some of
6:03
the things that they wrote and then the bad things that happened to them so there are a couple of bad things do
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happen to people in this story so Oscar Wilde was born and this is actually where I thought maybe I could flip into
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an Irish accent but I'm not maybe I maybe won't but his name was Oscar fenegal oh fluttery Wills Wilde oh I
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don't know it's a lot it's very Irish he was born in Dublin on the 16th of October 1854. his parents were super
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interested in keeping him educated he had a like a tutor until he was
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you know pretty grown and then he went to Trinity College in Dublin and then he
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went to Oxford so to cut to the Chase and kind of spoil the story
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another quote from Oscar Wilde is the two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford and
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when Society sent me to prison so it's a big turning point in his life when he gets to go go over to England go
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to Oxford he's a little bit of an outcast in the UK because he's Irish but he gets along and he's fine while in
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school at Oxford and Trinity College he's already Making Waves as a poet so he was known for being lavish and like
7:09
the right way a lot of velvet decorating his rooms with peacock feathers he held lavish parties he dated a woman who
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ended up leaving him for Bram Stoker which is which is fun that's pretty I mean if you're gonna get
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left for anyone that's okay I could live with that I know so kind of
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delightful and so he's like here's what I'm thinking and this is just me you're trying to learn
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in seven hours this week where people study their whole lives but he's like my my impression of Oscar Wilde is that he
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is half Posh so he's so this time when he's in college and the rest of his life he's going to be part of like the
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poshest the most fancy part of the British society and that's what all his plays are about his play is in poetry
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are funny and Posh people thought they were funny too so it was like making fun of them without them knowing and I think
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that is the key to like ingraining yourself into like a really rich Posh group he can get in and use their things
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and go to their summer houses and take the clever things but leave the boring ones and I think that's kind of
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something that he was able to do does that make sense yeah yeah like you're kind of describing
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Philip Seymour Hoffman and the oh God I forgot his name Truman uh Truman Capote movie that he
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did where he just kind of can find his way to mingle in different High culture and counterculture groups
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and fit in wherever he wants to yeah I would I would just say I would say that Oscar Wilde's a little more
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like personable than German Capote but yes it's like the same idea that makes sense and you know I I definitely feel
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this way too like I have a couple I know people in my life who are like very You Know Rich and you know went to Harvard
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and you know all that and I don't really fit them with them you can tell that I don't fit in with them even though I like try to and I'm not like any worse
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than they are I just isn't the same and I feel like I can tell when someone's like a real old money that like we're
9:06
different yeah yeah I would imagine if we were to hang out with the Kennedys we'd stick it
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out exactly they'd know yeah so exactly but he's he's in there he's already you
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know writing and he's making money and he kind of already
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becomes a caricature of himself there's a lot of cartoons like comics of him like drawings and the papers and things
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which is I don't I guess because they weren't like publishing photographs so
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in the paper so they used to draw people but a lot of like exaggerated cartoons of him he had this like long brown hair
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he was very tall and he had this like his full lips and his long face and so he's easy to draw you know into like uh
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characterize are you looking him up yeah I am okay good
9:57
it looks like Snape a little bit wow you're real going full Hogwarts I like it so there's a Tiffany
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pair the new the new Hogwarts game was just released yesterday
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um it's called or sorry the Harry Potter game it's called Hogwarts Legacy and I've been watching the gameplay and I'm
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like um I'm definitely gonna get it um it just hasn't dropped for Xbox one yet so I don't know I'll probably cut this
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out because it's totally relevant to anything but that's why I'm thinking about Harry Potter so much no totally yeah I heard about it too I heard that
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was coming out so I hope it's fun it sounds fun so yeah so you can continue to think accounts like Snape a little
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Kinder I imagine okay Kinder eyes than Snape's eyes but looks a little bit like stay with that hair and there's already
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you know a play that's written that's sort of a satire of him and he gets invited to come to America to promote it
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so he's like part of the Zeitgeist so he's he travels to America to promote this play and then ends up going back to
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back to the UK and just continues to be a writer okay anyway during this time
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after college while he's like in his 20s he marries a woman named Constance Lloyd in 1884. and they have two sons and he
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continues to like write and hang out so it sounds like him and Constance loved each other you know they had their two
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kids they took good care of them um they took good care of each other unfortunately
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the problem with their marriage was that Oscar Wilde is gay he was gay he wasn't
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um going to be you know happy in a marriage because to a woman because he was a gay man and so he started but she
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knew right like she knew that she was the beard no she knew she like she found out later
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obviously but immediately I don't think that she knew that wasn't like the deal right okay yeah it wasn't like let's get
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married and you know you can do whatever you want it was like let's get married because I love you and let's have a family and then he just couldn't
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continue that yep that's rough yeah so a couple friends of his one friend that
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will mentioned briefly is a friend named Robbie Ross and he was played by Michael Sheen in the movie in the Wild movie and
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he did a great job and this was his first physical relationship with a man so he's someone who will be in his life
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kind of on and off forever but he did he does have a couple of relationships with men sort of to start but Robbie Ross was
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his first and he was a Canadian man who was in the UK he inherited a lot of money and so just was able to like kind
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of hang out and and be a part of Oscar Wilde's life so I know I did an agenda at the beginning of
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this where whatever laid out what we were going to talk about but I want to talk about Oscar's work and him as like a man in
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this time and in general so some of the things that are famous that you may have heard of is The Importance of Being
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Earnest have you seen that toward that is that a a book or no no I haven't
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um a book is the Portrait of Dorian Gray do you remember that one that I do yeah okay so um there's that he did a couple
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other I mean he did a ton of stuff but some of the other famous ones are lady woodiners fan Salome and a woman of no
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importance those are some of the big ones the Portrait of Dorian Gray if you you know read through it with a
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you know a lens you can see it as like a a homosexual love story between an older
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man and a younger man so in The Portrait of Dorian Gray This Man paints a painting of Dorian Gray and the painting
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continues to get older and more decrypt as Dorian does you know bad things in
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lives his life but he doesn't get older so that's the basic of that story so some of the themes from Oscar Wilde's
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work and this is what I was getting from that lecture that Oxford lecture is not judging people because the theme of the
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time was judging Fallen women everyone loved that you know this woman is pregnant out of wedlock this woman you
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know is leaving her husband and people loved to see those kind of like melodramatic tragedies on stage and he
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really wanted to flip it and say you know judgments are a form of control I think we've talked about that before
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with like marriage being a form of control and things like that so judging women in or anyone in that way is a way
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of controlling them and so he wants to challenge that in his work so in his work one thing you're the characters do
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that they're allowed to do is change and a big tenet of Oscar Wilde's life is you
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can be something different in each moment and that's okay and people don't let people judge you
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because you're constantly changing and constantly evolving and one of his things that he also said was the most
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fundamental human right is to be an individual so that means there's no truth to who you are because you're
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always changing but that's also a good thing that's part of the tenant it's very cool I like them yeah I want to
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think about Oscar Wilde is like he's like Indulgence he's you know writing this plays he gets kind of fat he spends
14:45
his money on fancy things so that's fun good for him and this is a time where
14:51
being gay is illegal so like we talked about before
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there's always been gay people and it goes you know in and out of legality but right now it's actually illegal to be
15:02
gay in the UK and in a more if I was talking about this for like days and days I would talk more about there's
15:08
like these like young men sex workers called rent boys and it's exactly what
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you sound like you know you can you know get do that in in the movie Wild one of them is played by Orlando Bloom
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he's in there for like four seconds it was his first movie but he just kind of like Winks it at Oscar Wilde and like walks away so it's a little like
15:27
flirtation thing quite cute um so their secret places where gay men to get
15:33
together if you want to know if you want to be a gay man it's easy because it's plenty it's available it's just like not
15:39
you know technically allowed and so that means a lot of challenges for Oscar Wilde and people at this time a lot of
15:46
persecution a lot of stigma and he you know used his writing to start to
15:52
challenge some of those societal norms and um express love like in different ways
15:59
so that's a little bit about his writing about like who he is as a person so we're still in Hogwarts he looks like Snape
16:05
very Lush very Posh so just to kind of um tie up constants so poor Constance
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she does die later in the story so we won't come back to her but she but their
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relationship isn't the one that was doomed to fail like even though it was like that's what I'm talking about in the story but like of course that was
16:23
never gonna work out because he was gay they never got divorced but she did end up passing away really young she was
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only 40. she probably had Ms but they didn't know what that was then so she just had you know a lot of pain and they
16:35
did all these surgeries to figure it out like surgery in 1890 was like open it up and
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around and like see what's going on in there so it wasn't great and she died from complications of one of those
16:46
surgeries um unfortunately when she was pretty young because she was 40 and I'm 40 so I'm saying that's young to die so this
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is like we're still like mid 1800s right late 1800s this whole thing is like the
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late 1800s yeah yeah so surgery is still basically Butchery yeah like no one's
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washing their hands there's you know blood everywhere yeah exactly the guy's probably also a butcher
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does that too it's in the back yeah it's a barber yeah that sounds like a
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terrible way to go so poor thing but here's the relationship that was doomed to fail so this is his Oscar Wilde Oscar
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Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas who goes by Bose and bozie is a
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nicknaming out when he was a kid and it's from his mom calling him Boise because he was a boy and it turned into
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like Bosey and he was like his mom's Golden Child which I get because I call
17:39
miles My Greatest Story my favorite boy and like stuff like that all the time so I get it I don't know if that's fair so
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in 1891 Wilde meets him and Boise himself was born in 1870 so time to do
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some math when they meet in 1891 um bozie is 21 and Oscar is 37. so this
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is something that I looked up how to tactfully addressed because I know that we like those age gaps are a big thing
18:05
that we talk about a lot so there's a thing that wild talks about that there's a great love between an older man and a
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younger man that's like ancient like Plato and Shakespeare was talking about it so that's like a big thing that he
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you know talks about love between you know different types of people and so I'm not going to get into that any more
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than that it's not illegal so fine so the age it feels different for some
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reason I know I think so too but I'm like I don't know why and I don't know why either I might just make us [ __ ] I don't
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know maybe yeah it's a male relationship thing or it
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could be the time in which the relationship I don't know maybe we are [ __ ] yeah I
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think I don't know it could be that I really don't know but that's that that's what it is what it is it's not illegal the age Gap but you know being gay is
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illegal at this time so there's you know that happening with the relationship so when they meet it's very
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passionate Bose introduces him to the idea of rent boys so like they like you know see other people they like go to
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sex parties and kind of giving in to your kind of sexual desire and Boise's from a very Posh line of you know minor
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royalty and his dad's is the Marquess of Queensbury which is a very fancy name for your dad to have and his family
19:26
history includes lots of people dying by Suicide and lots of people converting to Catholicism so they're like not mentally
19:32
stable in in his family and so right now Boise is the Golden Boy around town
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their fair is very passionate there's lots of love letters and poems um both he's a writer as well but not as
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good he's just like a rich guy who's a writer so he's in there and it sounds
19:50
like Oscar was more involved in the relationship and bossy loves him but it's also like never really going to commit to him
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meanwhile so they kind of like they kind of live together in like a Country House in different places and you know Oscar
20:01
is still married but he doesn't expenses all the time with Bosie and bozi's Dad the Marquess of Queensbury and Marcus's
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m-a-r-q-u-e-s-s which is a British nobleman ranking above an Earl and below
20:15
a Duke I still don't know what that means I know whatever so he's like minor minor
20:23
whatever and so the Marquess of Queensbury is pissed that there that he sees his son in this relationship with
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Oscar Wilde and he's suspicious that they're more than friends and he's just like really really mad and so he's
20:37
kind of following us on around yelling at him telling him that he cannot be in this relationship everyone's denying it
20:42
and yelling and then he goes he tries to get into this club to like Heckle Oscar Wilde and bozie because he knows that
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they're there and he doesn't get let in but he leaves a calling card so he you know like calling card is like
20:54
you know your name and then you leave a note or whatever so this is spelled spelled incorrectly but he writes on his
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calling card for Oscar Wilde posing somdomite so we spell sound am I wrong
21:06
but essentially he's saying like give this to the gay man in there it's Oscar Wilde I know he's gay and giving it to
21:13
the guards and instead of wild being like this man is a crazy person who cares he sues him for
21:20
libel so Oscar Wilde sues his boyfriend's dad for libel for calling him gay publicly so he really didn't
21:27
need to do that but he like you know they ended up going to trial so it goes to trial on April 3rd 1895 and he is
21:36
framed with an older man who Grooms younger men and eventually wild drops
21:41
his libel claim because they're like what are you talking about we have all these Witnesses like so many people know
21:48
you're gay so they're yeah it's only it's only a libel or slander if it's not true right so why put yourself out there
21:56
that seems like a real uh it's a bad move yeah it was a bad move yeah he didn't need to do that so he
22:03
did that and then you know he has to he loses all of his money because he has to like pay all his court fees and all
22:09
these things and his friends are like you should leave like just leave the UK leave for a few years go to Paris like
22:15
whatever like just get out of here for a little bit but he doesn't want to he wants to say his sons are there like he doesn't want
22:21
to leave yet and he was like I made my bed like I need to I need to stay here so
22:27
now everyone knows that he's now everyone not just the people in the know know that he is gay and so he gets
22:35
charged with gross indecency which is part of the criminal law Amendment Act of 1885 which is an act to make further
22:42
provision for the protection of women and girls the suppression of Brothers brothels and other purposes so it's
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basically like the don't be gay or anything that people would think as I don't know
22:54
sleazy law yeah yeah and and it's you know he's still you know he's always
23:00
possible love him you know but they also are the ones who are like making these laws so it's pretty you know hypocritical for them to be like you
23:06
know you're gonna like you have to you know be charged for this even though we like adore you and
23:12
don't really care so he does get charged he sentenced to two years of
23:18
hard labor so he goes to like a hard labor prison and it's awful and he you
23:24
know goes there and wise in prison his mom passes away all the sad stuff happens he's not allowed to write
23:32
um like plays or poetry or anything but he can write letters so he writes this like really really long letter to Bosey
23:38
called de profundus which is from the depths and it's half a love letter to him and half a letter to the way that he
23:44
lived his entire life so it's a little bit of like it's like its own kind of Novella and it's saying that gets published after after he dies that's
23:51
awful you know especially going to prison for for being gay like that's not not okay and even though we had all of
23:58
that it is also worth noting that you know he inspired people to think differently about love
24:03
kind of ongoing he became kind of a caricature of a gay man which probably isn't what he wanted but at least you
24:09
know he's sort of at the Forefront of getting it out there at this time and you know what I was thinking was I know
24:15
that none of this is actually true but in theory jail is supposed to be rehabilitative
24:22
right so was the Assumption two years is how long it takes to not be gay anymore
24:27
or like was he was it just supposed to be like a constant recurring theme of just throwing someone in jail for being
24:32
gay yeah I don't know if they were like thinking about like conversion therapy you know I think they
24:38
were just like two years of hard labor for that I don't think there was like a on staff
24:43
psychiatrist I doubt there was a doctor you know like it was just not great so
24:49
he does go out of prison and he goes to Italy and finds bozie there they spend a
24:55
few months together but Oscar's very weak and I don't think posie wants to deal with it like he just doesn't want
25:01
to take care of him in the movie they haven't seen even before this where Oscar is like just has the flu and bozie doesn't want to take care of him because
25:06
he's kind of a kind of a bride and he'll kill him yeah he's a kid exactly so
25:12
they they break up Oscar kind of lives in Paris for the rest of his life he dies on November 30th 1900 at the age of
25:20
46. so he dies of meningitis and he's buried in Paris bozie actually lives
25:26
until 1945. so he lives for you know 45 more years he converts to Catholicism
25:32
gets married and has a kid he just kind of sucks like he I think he's just kind of doing whatever
25:37
yeah you know so can I throw out a casting idea for Rosie yeah Ryan Felipe
25:46
yeah yeah totally is that I mean my favorite is just like Jude Law in the 90s actually right they do kind of look
25:52
the same so yes it would have been that big of a difference that's exactly right I think they I think people got them confused all the time
25:58
but maybe they're I know Ryan Felipe and Reese Witherspoon's son is like 20 now
26:03
maybe he can do it there you go if they do it again and then just to so that that's the sad
26:09
story that's Oscar and the man he loved and the Man's father who sent him to jail and all these things
26:16
um some news homosexuality was decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967.
26:22
so no longer legal and in 2017 Oscar Wilde was among an estimated 50 000 men
26:30
who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offenses under the policing and crime Act of
26:36
2017. so they that law essentially put 50 000 men in
26:41
jail and you know 100 years later they all get pardoned because it's no longer criminal you said 67 yeah 1967. that's
26:51
yeah so that's a little bit ahead of the curve so the U.S The Stonewall Uprising happened in 69.
26:58
it's good for them that's it that's it that's all I got hey
27:03
so question for you it like having done the research you did and the reading that you did if you were to point to a
27:10
specific thing to look at or read or whatever to basically get the condensed
27:16
version of Oscar Wilde that's like a human as a philosopher I think maybe even
27:21
um what would you what would you point to I already know the story of Dorian Gray just curious like if there's anything else out there I mean I would
27:27
honestly watch the movie The Wild movie um it's on Amazon you could rent it the
27:33
one with Jude Law it's pretty good and it's w-i-l-d-e and I'll put a link in
27:38
the thing but I thought I did a great job I'm sorry just kind of and Stephen Fry the actor did a great job playing
27:43
him he really looks like him you just like kind of get this idea that he's like this like big presence you know around town and did
27:50
you see the like unfortunate there are also you know in the movie and in real life there were other men who
27:56
loved Oscar like that like Robbie Ross who would have just been you know in
28:02
love with him his whole life but he fell for the like Golden Boy around town and
28:08
that was his downfall and one of the um the pictures of them together the it links to an article it
28:15
says Lord Alfred Douglas the man who destroyed Oscar Wilde so not a good way to be remembered I guess
28:22
no no he didn't it was like I I don't even know if it was really his fault
28:27
much as it was his dad's fault for like bringing it up and like making it a big thing and they could have just had like
28:32
a rocky passionate love affair their whole lives but it had Unfortunately they got the court involved and I don't
28:38
know why um Oscar Wilde would be like that's libel why you'd even like stir the pot
28:44
like that yeah just let it die yeah just be like okay that guy's not C spelled it wrong like he doesn't know he's talking
28:50
about and then move on rather than you know going to court and having you know
28:55
Maids be like he's always sneaking dudes up to his room things like that you're like why why bring it up but apparently
29:03
uh Alfred Douglas was also quote unquote a virulent virulent racist
29:09
it doesn't come up with a movie but Color Me surprised because probably that makes sense
29:16
um great awesome well thank you for sharing I am I'm gonna I'm gonna give that movie
29:22
a whirl I I've always heard the name Oscar Wilde because I consume a lot of
29:27
the media that he had some influence on um it never got deep into like who he was as a person but he sounds pretty
29:33
fascinating as a philosopher in particular yeah um so I'm going to segue into the true
29:41
Prime side of the equation for today like I said my drink today is watered has absolutely nothing to do with the
29:48
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
29:53
weekend in the next hydrating um so that's the idea uh so this whole
29:59
time we've been looking at relationships that were doomed to fail and knowingly or not I've kind of couched that and
30:05
actually you kind of have to Taylor within the framework of romantic relationships
30:12
but there are probably thousands of stories of friendships that were also doomed to fail friendships that probably
30:17
should have been avoided all along it's funny as we discussed the premise of the show and how sometimes the universe puts
30:23
two people together at the exact same time and I started researching the researching this particular episode and
30:29
framed it more as being put together the exact wrong time like a pairing that you should have the the universe could have
30:36
avoided and done without yeah ooh okay I know I'm getting I'm getting again like the premise is like a little bit
30:42
Shifty but it's still kind of like yeah you really really put these two together like instead of the beginning we have we
30:47
have very it's very loose premise exactly we're just telling stories where is he going over here thanks for coming
30:53
okay um so one thing that I thought of when I was
30:59
looking into like this thing that I'm going to talk about today was it seems that in non-romantic relationships in
31:05
particular that end in tragedy there's at the very least either a power imbalance between the parties or
31:10
feedback loop that leads to a tragedy and a lot of times a power imbalance with these kinds of friendships are
31:16
based on one's mental acuity versus the others because then I can't remember the
31:23
I should have done the research on this before I started talking um what's the book where the guy hugs a
31:30
bunny too hard and then yeah um it's not groups of Wrath is it groups
31:35
of Wrath no it's um a hug Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men
31:45
like there's a great example of you know two individuals with slightly different mental acuity and it was obviously I was
31:52
like that's what I started thinking about and when I started going through the research of this I thought about the
31:58
probably the single most impactful friendship gone wrong from our childhood Taylor in real life not Of Mice and Men
32:07
but in real life can you think of what I'm thinking about the most impactful one of our generation the most
32:14
impeccable friendship of Our Generation gone wrong gone wrong oh my God I have no idea can you give me
32:20
a hint Colorado oh so um are you gonna do common
32:27
I'm not doing Columbine but that's that's the story that came to mind so yeah yeah that's exactly what I thought
32:33
of when I was talking about like man two people should definitely not have gotten together in any capacity without a
32:38
Columbine and yeah okay so for those that don't know this is combine is about Eric Harris and Dylan kleibel there were
32:45
two friends who became acquaintances in high school and in 1999 they ended up um injuring 24
32:52
people and killing 13 including later themselves so total death count was 15.
32:58
um and this is kind of the situation that kicked off Mass school shootings in
33:03
general I remember I'm sorry to interrupt but I was I was in Reno at
33:09
like a student council conference you know and it was like 500 like good kids you know
33:14
talking about how we get everybody to be involved and whatever and we had just had like three days of like you know
33:20
meeting new people and doing all these things and and um I remember getting on the bus to go
33:25
back to Las Vegas to home and someone telling us that it happened and it was just like such a stark contrast to what
33:30
I had just experienced of like this like you know all the all the kids trying to get everybody involved and excited and
33:36
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
33:42
need more obviously thank you [ __ ] You America so that that's actually why I thought it was like cow should as the
33:48
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
33:54
were when candy was shot anyways but that was kind of my first thought and it took me back to a particularly awful
34:00
story I remember reading about like years ago and I think it's still considered obscuring the pantheon
34:07
Pantheon of True Crime like I don't hear this story told very often it is well
34:12
let's get into it maybe you already know it I'm nervous I'm thinking about the toolbox Killers
34:19
Lawrence gross yes I know a little bit I feel like I don't know if that kind of makes
34:25
me want to throw up so I'm excited okay so you're yeah again you're a PhD in
34:30
True Crime so I'm not surprised um I do I do want to differentiate this from the toy box killer which sounds
34:38
delightful by comparison like you're forced to be locked in an FAO Schwartz before they kill you this is not bad
34:45
this is toolbox so that's not a thing though
34:50
with the FAO Schwarz why because they're bankrupt
34:56
this thing that'd be a weird way a weird a weird thing yeah
35:01
there might be that might have to be the reboot of those Saw movies
35:06
um like I said look I almost feel like there are some true crime stories that though they're incredibly interesting
35:13
compelling are just too much for mainstream consumption and yeah drug appeal
35:19
that's essentially this the toolbox Killers like I'm not going to go super
35:24
into the weeds and details on the gross stuff because it's just too gross so
35:31
loading that at the top totally and don't yeah I mean I feel like I I know some of the gross stuff
35:37
um I'm sure that you'll talk about some of it as well but it's gross I will go mildly into the ground it's like real
35:43
bad okay it's real real bad like I was thinking about like how certain situations have like and certain folks
35:51
within this genre have an IT Factor you know Bundy being considered normally good looking Gacy being in a clown
35:57
involved in politics BTK had a normal family these two are just garbage humans they
36:05
have none of that if you look up a picture of Lauren spitticker in particular he looks like Pennywise the Clown
36:11
it's terrifying like he's I'm gonna look it up in an incognito window so it's not like in my search history the method
36:17
call I should have been doing that this whole time yeah
36:23
you see it like his foreign
36:28
like it's just creepy creepy looking dude yeah let's get into our two main
36:36
characters and note the red flags along the way I'll start with what I'm gonna say is the main antagonist of the story
36:43
which is Lauren Spinnaker he actually died fairly recently he actually died in 2019
36:49
um so we will get to how that ended up happening but Lawrence was born in 1940 to a couple who gave him up to an
36:55
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
37:02
over the course of 17 years he went from Pennsylvania to Florida to Ohio to California so setting up Roots was
37:08
obviously a challenge like if you're a kid growing up like that that's you you're gonna have like very shallow
37:14
human connections because you'll never have the opportunity to build deeper ones right or I mean it also depends on
37:21
who you are you know like like my husband if I was in the military and he moved around and like he has friends from every place
37:27
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
37:34
threatened to meet people yeah if it's if you as a parent understand that you have to make that like a point that your
37:41
kids are socialized then I'm sure it's different than if you're this guy this is only he got this so right uh once he
37:48
turned 17 he seemed like he kind of fell into a life of crime but there was still kind of cute 1950s crimes like he was
37:55
arrested for auto theft evading arrest and I mean this last one is less Dennis
38:00
the Menace 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 but
38:06
you know still I mean he got hit by a 1950s car he probably wasn't doing great
38:12
um he spent two years in reformed school and he kind of just drifted in and out of different facilities for various
38:17
different crimes until he was about 21 years old at 21 Lawrence's mental acuity
38:22
comes into play he is said to be manipulative and was
38:28
found to have an IQ of 138 do you know what that means Taylor I don't know what that means
38:33
yeah I didn't know what it meant either okay it's like my blood pressure like I don't know what that means just saying
38:39
diabolic yeah just am I gonna die or not for context the IQ classifications
38:45
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
38:55
is considered Superior 130 138 and above is considered very
39:01
Superior so like I said there's different scoring methodologies for this but just generally speaking a quote-unquote
39:08
genius is someone with an IQ of around 140 or so is that is that true like what
39:15
if you're a bad test taker or if you're a good test taker or how do they test you I I don't know how test taking or
39:22
your ability to be good at that I've never taken an IQ test I don't know if it's like if you need to know
39:29
something or is it just like how you logically reach conclusions to things right because I don't think they ask you
39:37
like who was president in 1912 I think it's like a Kaplan course to study for
39:43
it right I think it's I'm sorry I'm just I don't want to know how do you take an IQ test
39:50
I feel like this is test that IQ Mensa the equity test oohs when you can do in
39:56
five minutes who knows there's a free at qtest.net yeah I feel like you need to go into a
40:04
space with people like lab coats watching you do it for it to be like legit
40:09
um so Einstein was 160. yeah yeah so I was gonna yeah I was gonna bring that up
40:14
so for example again a genius is somebody with an IQ of around 140 or above Lawrence was a 138. I looked it up
40:22
Elon Musk was a 155 and like you said Einstein was once is a 160. he was
40:28
closer to Elon Musk than he was to riq for context Snoop Dogg is 147. seriously
40:35
yeah but I don't believe that about Elon Musk I think he made that up
40:40
I mean I don't know if you I want to see some receipts for Elon musk's I mean the guy you're Einstein IQ started three
40:46
companies and ran I mean kind of and then spun off the planet with his
40:51
ego I think it's just like not having any empathy anyway um continue I'm so sorry well anyway let's take a huge test later
40:59
well everybody unless they're bad or wildly different if one of us is really smart and one of us is not let's just
41:05
not share it exactly exactly it's gonna be the same we will not be sharing our IQs later I think I think if I had to
41:12
guess you're probably a 119 which is
41:17
just shy of superior it's very average and I think I'm
41:23
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 okay
41:29
report back maybe so I bring all this up because I mentioned that I think he's the main antagonist and I think being
41:35
basically a professional criminal criminal with that level of intelligence has to put you in a rare category based
41:42
on people you would normally interact with let's leave let's leave Lawrence there and move on to his partner in
41:47
crime Roy Norris so Roy was eight years Lawrence's Junior so there you go there's a little bit of that obvious
41:53
power imbalance in addition to the fact that was crazy smart and Roy wasn't there was
42:01
also the age Gap uh he ended up in foster homes quite a bit mostly due to his mom being a drug addict uh this guy
42:07
was kind of [ __ ] from birth it sounds like there's a lot of stories around his abuse and what people did to him and uh
42:13
he didn't have an easy life growing up but again like also you know I was
42:19
reading it I was also thinking like it's the 50s like how do you interpret that like isn't
42:24
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
42:29
good but I'm saying like did he have it worse than a lot of people or was his particularly hard to gauge that I think
42:35
yeah totally one thing that was interesting was that at one point in his youth uh Roy did try to attempt suicide
42:41
oh yeah like he just strikes being as someone like a kid with no mentors or anyone to look up to
42:48
um I don't really see him as like an obvious deviant just yet like mostly just like a lost kid you know
42:55
I would say that changed the older he got uh he unlike Lawrence who was like
43:02
involved in stupid petty theft like stealing cars and [ __ ] Roy's dabbling in
43:09
the criminal underworld came about through sexual crimes that he was committing or trying to commit so around
43:16
the age of 21 uh he was caught trying to break into a woman's house for refusing
43:22
to let him in it sounded kind of like a date gone wrong for that he was arrested he was
43:27
diagnosed as having a schizoid personality disorder again not to harp on this too much but think about that on
43:33
the one hand you have Lawrence who is basically Beethoven levels of intelligence Beethoven I looked up was 135 to 140. on the other hand given
43:41
obviously mentally ill man in Roy who's diagnosis as schizoid Personality yeah
43:46
totally after Roy's release he attacks a female student in San Diego strikes from the
43:52
head and then beats her repeatedly so his escalation is ramping pretty quickly from trying to break into a woman's
43:58
house to like this level of aggression and violence still when he's arrested he goes to the
44:04
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
44:10
justice system worked in the 1950s and 60s but this guy's crimes veered so heavily towards sexual
44:16
violence and they keep putting him in psych wards yeah is that a mental illness
44:23
yes probably in some way but also is very violent so she probably shouldn't be on other people right yeah I mean I
44:31
don't know I was I don't know I'm thinking well it's definitely abhorrent Behavior so
44:36
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
44:43
definitely shouldn't be around other people staying on brand for Roy he is eventually released from that situation
44:50
and then he rapes a woman in Redondo Beach which is
44:55
actually reported to police and that'll come up again because that is a really
45:01
really critical moment and why everything else here happens that happens I will say this like
45:06
I am changing I'm not using the word rape very much deliberately in
45:13
this because I just don't want to say it like 300 times uh so just note that I'm
45:18
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
45:24
over again and I just don't want to do that to you or the listeners or myself again so I'm just not gonna
45:30
go into detail we can assume there was a lot of sexual crime yeah exactly exactly
45:36
so let's get into the overlap between these two deviants
45:42
so how do they come together so let's going back to Lawrence in 1974 Lawrence stole a stake again it's kind he's kind
45:49
of Dennis the Menace like what a stupid crime anyways so the grocery store
45:54
employee who was going way above and beyond uh confronted Lawrence and
46:00
Lawrence ended up stabbing the guy okay I've never heard you that let him take it take the stake like who cares who
46:05
cares yeah the guy lived but Lawrence was arrested obviously and he was sent to a prison in San Luis Obispo
46:12
all these places that I'm listing I'm like I have so many amazing memories of it is
46:18
so beautiful there Redondo Beach is one of my favorite places in the world and
46:24
it's just like you think about what was going on with these guys and it just tints everything you know this weird
46:30
shade and then going back to Roy's rape
46:35
accusation in Redondo Beach in 1976 he was arrested for that and then he also
46:40
landed in San Luis Obispo so now you have the two coming together right you have you have
46:46
the incredibly smart manipulative Lawrence the incredibly you know
46:51
mentally ill and sexually violent Roy coming together yeah I was I was thinking about this I
46:58
was like how do you compare this like what is it like with that kind of kids then when two people kind of come together I thought about like Michael
47:04
Jordan Scottie Pippen or jobs and was yeah I think that's kind of what this is and like yeah the opposite way I think
47:11
we're gonna change the world let's make it worse yeah or less invent computers
47:17
or let's be the best and yeah totally yeah so so the two hung out in like
47:22
seemingly different crowds Roy was more with like the hardened criminal types the biker types and Lawrence kind of
47:27
kept to himself and hung out with the older inmates not for any like it just seems like
47:33
that's just where he gravitated towards it wasn't because like he couldn't hang out apparently Lawrence would save Roy
47:39
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
47:45
regardless they bonded while they were in prison mostly because of this situation where Lawrence was saving
47:50
Royce from getting his ass kicked they bonded and decided to get together once they were released and when they bonded
47:56
over again it was just gross sexual stuff that don't need to talk about yeah
48:02
but that was basically it that's like they just like were like sharing fantasies with each other
48:09
Lawrence ends up getting released in 1978 and then he moves to Los Angeles and again given what I said about the
48:15
guy earlier like he's doing pretty well for himself he got like a really really good job he was making a thousand dollars a week
48:22
in 1978 which I can't do the conversion but that sounds like a billion dollars
48:27
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 it's 1978 yeah
48:35
in 1978 money to today oh my God forty five hundred dollars
48:41
a week yeah that's so much money
48:47
yeah he's crushing it yeah [ __ ] yeah he was a skilled laborer uh he
48:53
socialized normally like people knew him so I didn't say any write any of this in
48:58
the outline but he would like donate to the Salvation Army he'd go buy food and give it out to the homeless
49:04
people in downtown L.A like he he was being a normal dude despite the fact that he looks like Pennywise Roy's
49:11
released a few months after this and he goes right back to being a piece of [ __ ] committing more sexual assaults while
49:17
living with his mother for whatever reason Lawrence writes to
49:22
Roy and the two mate plans to meet up and they did and this is where they
49:28
start putting together their plan to play out the scenarios they discussed while they were in jail together
49:33
they acted like this was like a startup like they started like pulling their
49:39
money together like it was that's why I brought like the Wozniak jobs things I was like they had this like light bulb
49:45
moment but it was just like so counter good like I don't
49:53
buying materials I'll get into this like they like right they're like
50:00
planning to do something like like a party or something fun but they're planning to commit crimes they ended up
50:06
converting eventually they they did the van life thing before van life was a thing oh my God yeah it was anyways
50:14
we'll we'll go into it yeah they ended up buying a van
50:20
obviously and I started Wonder like is this where the Trope comes from like did these guys actually invent that truth
50:28
I don't know but it had to have been close to the beginning of that right I mean how long have events even been
50:33
around totally that's funny so yeah let's let's get into what they ended up doing after they put together
50:39
this you know LLC of theirs I'm joking there was no LLC obviously so they
50:44
haven't been coming the road to that yeah exactly so they have their van they have a plan and they have each other's support they
50:52
start going through with this plan this all gets like I said super gratuitous and I just
50:58
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 go
51:06
into the details of well part of the details of I'm actually not going to go into details of that one
51:12
either that much but the overarching premise was the same they'd see a girl walking on the beach like it's just the
51:19
most like innocent safe place how many times I mean you've we've how many times have you you go to
51:25
Manhattan Beach you go to Redondo it's just beautiful and everybody's just having a good time in the sun it's like
51:32
the safest place you would hope to be and anyways that's what they would do the cereal walking always near the beach
51:39
or on the beach approach her tell her they have marijuana or beer and then they can give her a ride they adopt a
51:44
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 Mo do they
51:52
always kill them no no they didn't so there's several women or girls who would either get away
51:58
or they would release for whatever reason yeah it was it was a little bit uh it seems like just something got into
52:06
them with the ones that they ended up killing but none of them had good experiences like none of them were like they got away like not emotionally
52:12
scarred of course no no yeah we'll get into one of those women actually later
52:17
because she becomes really really relevant so the list that I'm gonna go off of are the ones that we know they
52:23
killed there's actually one more that they think they killed because there was pictures of her alive in the San Gabriel
52:29
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
52:36
um one the first one was 16 year old Lynn Shaffer the second one was 18 year
52:41
old Andrea Joy Hall the third one third and fourth were uh Jackie Doris Gilliam
52:46
who's 15 and Jacqueline Leah lamp who was 13. they spent two days torturing those two
52:54
girls I didn't mention this but the reason they were called the toolbox Killers is because the back of the van
52:59
like I mentioned like I said I was going to talk about later was converted into like a workshop that also had a bet in
53:04
it and part of the torture method came from devices they kept in the toolbox
53:11
and like that comes up big time with Jackie and
53:16
Jacqueline um and it will come up again with the next one the next one was Shirley Lynette Ledford who was 16 when she was
53:23
abducted while hitchhiking home from a Halloween party again the hitchhiking thing the van it's just like so
53:31
I mean now hopefully we know a little bit better yeah you know but I feel like
53:37
then this is the story we hear a thousand times like a woman was hitchhiking got into a van and get
53:43
murdered it happened it seems like it happened all the time and maybe it happened one percent of the time but
53:49
yeah people were doing it all the time which is really crazy I think about that that was like oh I'll
53:56
just hitchhike home yeah for my Halloween party when I was so when I was living in Hill Country I
54:02
um would constantly see hitchhikers for whatever reason and there's a part of me Taylor that was
54:08
like just stop just stop like get the story like just figure out what is going on like get the story of what's
54:13
happening and you can get murdered on both sides picking someone up and being picked up I would be murdered I I I'm
54:19
definitely on that side of that equation Shirley is the one that I'll actually
54:24
talk about because it's I mean they're all bad but it's the worst one for context the audio recording of what
54:31
happened to her is now used by the FBI to desensitize agents
54:37
yeah no no yeah we're harping a lot on that audio recording it is
54:44
really really bad did you listen to it you can't listen to it you can't find it but there's transcripts of it that are
54:50
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
54:56
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
55:04
very very dramatic impacts on everybody who listened to it wow so
55:10
um the so like I said like like if you wanted to you can look up like you can't
55:15
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
55:20
the recording that sounds horrible I think I know what the answer to this is Taylor you might actually know what this
55:26
is because you sort of are familiar with this with this crime do you know what an old crayon is
55:33
it's part of your Anatomy oh no okay so it's part of your elbow so it is
55:40
the it's this part I'm pointing nobody can see this because it's audio medium but it's an elbow put your elbow well
55:46
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
55:53
um hinged from the forearm that ties to the top right so obviously it's a place
55:59
where a lot of bone comes together a lot of cartilage comes together is it your funny bone
56:05
no your funny bones above that you're funny actually actually your funny bone the top part of your fun the your funny
56:11
bone is where the top part of your old Cranium actually connects to the upper arm okay I don't know why this makes you
56:18
want to throw up but just like talking about it is making me camera nauseous
56:23
aren't you glad we're doing this at any of your time Shirley's autopsy reveal that that part
56:29
of her Anatomy was basically sawdust my God so in the audio recording the
56:35
sound of a sledgehammer repeatedly hitting something can be heard there were 25 distinct sounds of that
56:42
happening with a ton of screaming and everything else that came with it and the assumption is that that's where that
56:48
injury came from it was one of a lot of injuries but
56:53
that's the bulk of what you would hear if you ever were able to hear the audio recording is this sounds oh God it's
57:00
like I'm like thinking about it okay it's so awful pause they recorded it
57:06
recorded it and kept it just the audio or the recorded video no no I mean this is 78 there's probably
57:13
no capacity for video recording in a van right so you know just audio no they're in the van yeah
57:19
it seems hard to wheel the sledgehammer in a van I mean they really I mean it's why you
57:25
never really want it you don't get in advance don't get Advance yeah totally 100 yeah that that detail is the only
57:32
one that I really am going to discuss because it was just it just shows how terrible and brutal it was later on Roy
57:39
himself would describe the tape by saying if you ever heard that tape there's just no possible way that you'd
57:45
not begin crying and trembling I doubt you could listen to more than 60 seconds of it there
57:53
proud of it oh my God yeah like you like it wasn't like a um oh man you can't can
58:00
you believe how crazy this was like what a wild Friday that was like you know he's kind of bragging about it yeah so thanks
58:09
one interesting note that might have contributed to why her death was particularly awful is it Lawrence she
58:18
was rejected by Lauren so she worked at some Diner that Lawrence would frequent and she asked around and she said no
58:27
and they actually they actually think that's also why she ended up getting in the van because she was like oh I know
58:32
this guy I see him all the time right so there was like a trust element there but she didn't know that he felt the way he
58:38
felt towards her like what do you want what was his intention was obviously yeah she didn't expect to get murdered
58:44
yeah you should be able to say no to people and not give not fear for your
58:49
safety yeah exactly so after Shirley's death and her body was discovered she
58:55
was the only one whose body was discovered by the way everybody else was um like lost the mountains Roy
59:02
he's a real social butterfly he rekindled a friendship with another guy he met in jail named Joseph Jackson
59:09
and Joseph seemed to have way more Humanity in him than Roy himself Roy went on to tell Joseph what he and
59:16
Lawrence had been up to she's like yeah Woody doesn't casually mention it like always do this weekend
59:22
it's just have you been cornered by someone who thinks what they're telling you is amazing and you can't get away from them
59:28
sure I'll tell you what so everything I can't think of a specific example but oh I I
59:33
know exactly what my example is every conference I go to there's some crypto
59:39
bro who shows up who's gonna revolutionize democracy through the blockchain and they just find you
59:46
and start telling you everything about nfts and crypto and blockchain you're
59:52
like your eyes are [ __ ] blazing over and they won't every every conference University across the board yeah
59:59
that's my health so please anybody crypto Bros
1:00:04
never talked to me about crypto I don't care like our aged out of it I think I actually hit that age where it's like I
1:00:10
don't need to learn anything more like I don't need web 3.0 like web 2 is good I
1:00:15
got it I'm I'm sorry hold it on that side so yeah anyways Joseph probably said they're just kind of nodding along
1:00:21
to how cool Roy's story was and then immediately went to the police good on
1:00:26
him he's the reason all this happened like there's a reason why like the downfall happened because the police had
1:00:33
no they these are all missing people for the most part except for the last one surely
1:00:39
and stupidly enough Roy gave such detail that police were able to triangulate him
1:00:45
just from what Joseph reiterated from that the stories that he told for example he mentioned that one time they
1:00:51
had maced a woman while trying to get her into their minivan and then Joseph recounted that exact
1:00:57
story verbatim and the police looked up there was a report saying yeah this woman showed up saying there was a
1:01:03
silver minivan there's two guys in it and they maced me and tried to drag me into it did Joseph get some sort of
1:01:09
presidential Medal of Honor yeah unfortunately Joseph Jackson's not
1:01:16
an easy name to Google yeah so the man good for him good for him that's great yeah like roybas like
1:01:23
we give him all the details that he needed to incriminate himself that story the one of the maze woman she her name
1:01:29
is Robin robek and she was she reported all this like I said to the police but
1:01:35
she couldn't identify the people at the time so the case kind of just went away after Joseph described what happened the
1:01:41
missing girls the abductions the police went back to Robin with photos of Roy and Lawrence and she immediately
1:01:48
identified them like he wasn't like just those two obviously it was like a photo lineup of like a dozen but she immediately picked out those two
1:01:55
wow police are actually doing really good work here so they're starting to survey Roy and they saw him dealing
1:02:01
marijuana which was a parole violation form that he was picked up on Lawrence was also picked up but he was more blunt
1:02:07
it was for the assault on Robin mm-hmm police searched their uh searched
1:02:13
Lawrence's apartment and Roy's bedroom in his mom's house and they find
1:02:19
basically what you would expect just tons of photos of victims of potential victims of random girls walking down the
1:02:25
the beach jewelry of the victims uh they also found that audio recording I
1:02:31
mentioned earlier they said they also found acidic material which apparently Lawrence intended on using on the next
1:02:37
victim so thank God that stopped oh my God yeah
1:02:43
uh Roy was having a pretty hard time with this he was having a hard time with being arrested he actually waved his
1:02:49
Miranda rights just to show how intelligent he is and then he ultimately
1:02:55
confessed to police his argument being mostly like hey it wasn't me it was Lawrence all the all
1:03:01
along you know it was like the the prisoner's dilemma story basically just rehashed in this situation which again
1:03:09
like I said I always kind of couched Lawrence as the antagonist but like he's not like Roy's not like some innocent bystander
1:03:16
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
1:03:21
exactly and uh Roy was ultimately given a ten thousand dollar bail whereas Lawrence was outright denied bill which
1:03:28
I don't even understand why Roy was given that option seems incredibly generous yeah
1:03:34
although I mean again going for conversion conversion rates it might have been unattainable amounts of money for him anyways
1:03:40
um Roy would eventually testify against Lawrence in return for the prosecution not seeking the death penalty obviously
1:03:48
um Roy ends up getting 45 years to life and then he became eligible for parole in 2010 but he actually
1:03:55
this is on later on in his prison life he didn't actually go to his parole hearing which deferred it out another 10
1:04:01
years by the time the next 10 years came he was dead so didn't really matter not that he would have gotten released
1:04:07
anyways right uh Lawrence is incredible he just keeps on criming
1:04:13
so he hired two inmates while he was in jail who to go kill Robin because
1:04:19
they're about to get released soon to prevent her from testifying so isn't that just what what Alec Murdoch did too
1:04:25
oh tried to kill someone from jail oh man it didn't it wasn't that part of
1:04:31
history that he tried to fire Hitman to kill someone who knows it was somebody it was
1:04:37
somebody else who tried to hire someone while in jail to kill the prosecution it was one
1:04:43
of the idiots that I covered it wasn't it wasn't the day Bell guy what was the other oh it was Scott Drew Peterson was
1:04:49
it oh oh yeah okay that's so weird that is not gonna work it never works
1:04:56
for our less listeners who are incarcerated there is you're constantly surveillance there are no Hitmen they're
1:05:03
not Nowhere Man um obviously he got caught for that he ended up going to trial for the murders
1:05:10
in 1981 um having short sort of pled guilty he he didn't reply when the judge asked him
1:05:16
if he pleads guilty or not so in that situation it's just deferred that you're pleading and not guilty and so that's
1:05:23
what the judge entered his defense obviously tried to exclude the audio recording of Shirley's death and the
1:05:29
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
1:05:35
out like that is the level of insane that we're talking about apparently when the tape was played the
1:05:42
entire court Reuben observers in the courtroom were reduced to tears except for Lawrence and again I mentioned
1:05:49
the impact this tape has had on people as an aside one of the main investigators in the crime committed
1:05:55
suicide after this trial and he wrote a 10-page suicide note that specifically
1:06:01
referenced the tape and the murders as haunting him oh no give me murders how
1:06:06
many how many people do they go it would have been five well it's five that we know of because
1:06:12
they confess to it there's another there's another one where the girl is at
1:06:18
the dump site in the San Gabriel mountains with pictures of her there and they didn't confess to that one so like
1:06:24
we don't know what happened to this one but she's still missing got it Lawrence interestingly took the stand in
1:06:29
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
1:06:36
obviously found guilty and obviously sentenced to death Lawrence is just like when you talk he's
1:06:43
just a piece of work he continued being a pain in the ass from prison he was actually declared What's called the
1:06:48
vexatious litigant at one point which I love like that is someone who just will
1:06:54
not stop filing privileged lawsuits for no reason it's like there was one story
1:06:59
about how he filed up for this lawsuit because he was served like a broken cookie and he called that cruel and
1:07:04
unusual punishment like he was just really fun [ __ ] yeah being in the ass yeah so once you're labeled the
1:07:11
vexatious lit again you have to get permission from a judge or a lawyer to
1:07:18
actually submit any more litigation so like that's like his right to file complaints
1:07:24
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
1:07:31
old which is like a pretty ripe old age um and he was still on death row at the time Roy also died shortly thereafter he died
1:07:38
in 2020 he was 70 uh he would have been 71 or 72 at this
1:07:43
point seven eight year age Gap um and that's kind of it like these were
1:07:49
two guys who came together who the universe put together who in my mind I think that Lawrence would
1:07:56
have just been a normal dude probably like yeah his crimes weren't that bad until they met like he was just
1:08:02
and he had a clear job like he was doing normal [ __ ] but I don't know why can't I
1:08:08
brought the worst out but also the reason I placed him as the antagonist is because Roy kind of planted the seeds
1:08:15
and then Lawrence had the intellect to come completely run with it if it wasn't for
1:08:22
Lawrence Ray would have just been like running just finding women and hitting them over the head with a baseball bat
1:08:27
like you know like there'd be no like system if it wasn't for Lawrence's
1:08:33
abilities but right so like separately they might have done
1:08:38
other things but together that was really the thing yeah exactly exactly it's awful it's all around awful hey the
1:08:45
story I think 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
1:08:52
literally skipped over like 95 of the details of what happened to these people and uh there's a reason for it if you
1:08:58
want to read more read more but it's not going to make you feel good no it's gonna make you feel terrible oh my God
1:09:04
yeah those poor babies do I see a picture of the van not great it looks
1:09:10
like exactly what you think it would look like yeah yeah yuck
1:09:16
it sounds like also about some of the pictures I'm looking at are from like movies about it some like the 70s and
1:09:22
80s I guess um it does look very saw you know it
1:09:28
the these stories of what they would do when they got up to the San Gabriel mountains because I've been up I mean
1:09:35
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
1:09:42
hundreds of little offshoot roads that you could go down that would take you places where nobody's ever gonna find
1:09:48
you yeah and it's just you with these two lunatics in a van that had its
1:09:55
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
1:10:01
soft like it is yeah close to that universities you can get and some of the some of the [ __ ] they did was just like
1:10:08
yeah tools for like other things yes I know they did like fixing things no I meant
1:10:16
other things like like torturing people no no I mean but like also they're like oh I need a screwdriver and then like
1:10:22
would like use it even though they had just like murder someone with it they just take the pieces of hair then like
1:10:28
blood that's on it exactly and then like fix a chair yeah yeah I'm sure I mean
1:10:33
they seem handy enough to build this mobile kill van
1:10:39
that's terrible so so I you know going back to like the entire premise of like what goes on it I I think they tell you
1:10:46
this if you do rehab that like you're not supposed to date somebody else in rehab right yes because there's a
1:10:54
underlying component in your brain that's gonna maybe go backwards with each other yeah
1:11:00
and this is a little bit of that too like if you make buddies with somebody while you're incarcerated you maybe just
1:11:07
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
1:11:13
like find other people go to the coffee shop go to the dog park and just like socialize with others I think like yeah
1:11:19
that's kind of the red flag here is like just there's no need to come back together like yeah just that part of
1:11:25
your life behind yeah yeah that part of life happened it must have been magical but we can leave that in San Luis
1:11:32
obispo's prison when it does happen I feel like that the moment when they're like oh you have all these terrible
1:11:38
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
1:11:46
yeah remind me of Leonard Lake in Charleston like it's just like garbage wrapped in skin just showing
1:11:54
it's just there's such trash and they bought over the things that nobody should Bond over
1:12:00
yeah totally So my aunt who will never listen to this one time told my mom a story and I don't
1:12:06
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
1:12:13
by someone who came over and just shot him and I think it was Charles ing yeah I know that story it was he was a
1:12:19
radio DJ or something and he put an ad in the paper and somebody just showed up and shot him and
1:12:26
left and that's even confess to that mm-hmm
1:12:31
wow that's crazy I know um wow well that's awful
1:12:37
yeah do you have any do you have any um ending banter that you want to go into
1:12:42
um thank you to everyone who's listening please give us reviews that's super
1:12:48
helpful I made an email address so I have Doom to failpod gmail.com if anybody wants to email us about anything
1:12:53
and we're going to work on maybe a newsletter just getting an out to more people is going to be really the thing
1:12:59
to to keep this going I think that's our next step yeah yeah and thank you for
1:13:05
taking point on that obviously my last two weeks have been chaotic two weeks ago I had no electricity for a week and
1:13:12
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
1:13:19
um yeah everybody watch watch wild the movie and there's some
1:13:24
toolbox clear movies maybe watch it maybe don't I'm not watching it yeah I might not do
1:13:30
it I like I like the Saw movies but I like them because they're like ridiculous and not 100 accurate in real
1:13:37
yeah like it didn't really happen yeah so um well thank you Taylor hopefully you
1:13:43
have a great weekend and thank you too and uh safe travels for work the next
1:13:48
week or two and yeah I guess I'll see you next week cool thanks all bye
1:13:55
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