This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Nonfarm pay rolls, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, climbed by seasonally adjusted one hundred and forty three thousand for the month. That was down from December, which was about three hundred and seven thousandth So the unemployment rate right now down a little bit.
It's down to four percent.
I fell into this article this morning. It's actually out of Vanity Fair, and it's about a squatter. I think we all have had stories, or we have family members that have had stories of renters, or you know, somebody who knows somebody of somebody who won't leave, or somebody who created a disaster while they were there, resulting in thousands of dollars of damage. And it's even more cruel
when it's an emotional squatter. And that's what got me into this story about this woman who pretended to be a local in the Malibu area and kind of snowed over a guy who was battling cancer at the time, ended up taking this polite, wonderful was seemingly wonderful woman in just for a bit, and she ended up taking on a campaign of psychological terror against him, landed him in a medical facility while she was changing the locks.
I mean, the signs were there, but it is a slow slide into being the manipulated when it comes to people who are criminal and endearing at the same time.
We'll talk more a little bit later about the smell the aroma that reminds you of Los Angeles, and there's some pretty diametrically imposed views of what smells remind people of LA But Patrese Miller is not a name that
you would recognize, but you might remember the case. She lived in Downeyville, lived alone with a couple of cats in a little rental house in Downeyville in the middle of this small mountain town, kept to herself, known for orchids and house plants, got around with the aidable walking sticks.
This is northern northern California, way northern.
Yeh. Yeah.
And last November, a friend who was regularly delivering groceries to Patrese noticed that Patrice hadn't checked in lately, so she called the Sheriff's office and just said, Hey, I'm worried about Patrice. She hasn't been She hasn't been in contact with us. Could you do a welfare visit? Deputy shows up, notice a garden hose draped across the front steps, and the water was on, so it was spraying in all directions from a bunch of punctures in the hose.
It looked like bite marks.
So he looks in through a small window, sweeps his flashlight across the interior and he sees blood streaks and paw prints. He draws his gun, opens the door and inside a gruesome scene. Patrese Miller's body was on the kitchen floor, mangled by claw marks and bite wounds and partially eaten. The cabinets had been torn up, garbage food littered all over the floor.
Said they figured out whatever did that, where.
They got it?
Some Stephen King s right there.
A kitchen window appeared to be the point of entry had been broken. The security bars had been pried off and were still hanging by a single bolt. A survey by the deputy led him to figure out that a bear had probably found her in bed and dragged her across the house. In fact, they found a pile of bear scat out in the living room m Now, originally they.
Thought it's not very nice to poop right in the living room.
You're not supposed to poop.
What are you eat?
Sierra County officials believe that well Done Miller died of natural causes maybe, and that a bear broke into the house and found her and grabbed the body and scavenged the place. But they did a full autopsy a couple weeks later and didn't put it out publicly until six months after the incident. Said that she had suffered crushing injuries and that the bear was the one responsible for actually causing the death. That it didn't stumble upon her dead, it made her dead.
This is a big milestone for California. This is the first documented human fatality caused by a black bear in state history. And usually it's the brown bears that are the dangerous ones, are the ones that are more volatile and aggressive. Now I've noticed this in my area where we have an interface with animals that are in the foothills, whether it be bears or bobcats, or deer or coyotes or skunks or what have you. They've become very familiar
in recent years with humans. They no longer are scared. They are so they are so used to us that they are not keeping their distance and we are not keeping ours. This woman, by the way, had a nickname for this bear. She called him Big Bastard. This bear apparently had been stalking the home for months. They're usually skittish around humans. Black bears are. They will go after dumpsters. They'll break into your cars for food. This is the warning you get from Bob the park ranger every time
you go anywhere to camp or what have you. Hey, lock your stuff up, lock your food up. Don't keep stuff in your car. Don't keep food in your car.
The thing is, like you said, she had a nickname for this bear because it was a pretty common sight around there. She had easy meals where I mean, she had cultivated this vegetable garden.
She had a compost pile.
She wasn't very diligent when it came to disposing of her trash. All these things that they tell you you're supposed to do if you live in bear country.
Well, the thing is is, if you've lived in Downyville for a period of time, this hasn't been a problem. Sure the bears are there, but they keep their distance. Locals say in fact, they always have kept their distance. That this is the first time and their history of living there that they can remember that the bears are making their rounds. They're all over, they're not afraid, and they're getting closer and closer.
Black bears have.
The population of black bears has grown significantly since the eighties. They said it was about ten to fifteen thousand bears in California back in nineteen eighty two when they did a survey, but now it's about sixty five thousand. Forty five percent of them are believed to live in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, where you've got not just abundant food for the natural life cycle, but all of the people that live there now provide the you know, a
new source of food. I mean, the people aren't the food well generally, but they do the trash. Everything that the people bring with them can be food items.
I've talked about having bears in my backyard and someone along the line at some point said, well, do you have a gun to shoot it? And I said, listen, if I shot a bear in my backyard, I would be killed. At the town square.
You'd be ruined.
I would be ruined. And killed. And in fact, this woman reported the bear to Fish in Wildlife. The department offered her a permit, which is a last resort option the state grants to people to shoot a problem animal before it kills you. Essentially, she declined that she didn't want the bear hurt, She just wanted it removed.
Well, now we know what happened, you're supposed to make sure that.
Well, what are you supposed to do? You've got to I mean where I live, they will come and they will take care of your animal situation and they will not kill it, but they will tranquilize it and relocate that animal. Right So, I don't know. If it's Downyville, the resources are slim there. They don't have anyone they can dispatch right away. But saying here's a permit, shoot the d could you imagine if I called a bearon that was like top tap tap on my window.
Hey, I've got a bear.
It's gotten way too close, And the state was like, well, here's a permit to shoot it. Shannon, how do you think that go over?
Like I said, I think you'd be ruined. And I don't mean by.
The how did I acquire a gun? Who would give me said gun, nobody. How would I learn to operate it? Do you think that I would be able to hit the bear? The bear would probably take the gun from me and shoot me with it. He'd slap it out of your hands. He'd be like, what the hell are you doing? It would make bastard, that's what he calls me.
All right, squatter story. When we come back.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on Demand from KFI AM six forty.
We were talking about this La Times article about the sense that remind them of la and somebody wrote, magnificent magnolia's in wistful wisteria.
That was the first thing, huh wysteria.
Yeah, okay, I will say one of the things that well, let's get into some of them.
We'll talk about it.
You mentioned this because you know, smell is one of the most powerful senses. When I think of California, I think of three distinctive smells. A nice when I'm out by the desert in the dry area, that right, obviously, the ocean if I'm going down p ch and Mexican food, love love, the smell of the distinct California.
That's true.
That does waft. It is a wafter. I it is a wafter. You know, you there's certain points in time too, Right, you get out of a game and you smell the bacon rapt bacon wrap hot dog.
That's that has come up many times. Yeah, in fact, let's play that one.
When I think of the smell of La, I think of hot.
Dog yap and yeah, you know, it's kind of hard to get a smell in LA. That's the other thing. There's so much going on in La. Every part and parcels accounted for, you know, I mean, like every there's not a lot of open space northern California. You can pick up smells because at least not every piece of land is accounted for. There's some space for things to actually bloom and to spread. Here, it's kind of like everything's up against each other, so the smells don't really last very long.
That was also interesting that people talked a lot about citrus.
I'm from Riverside, so the smell that I associate that with is the citrus in the string. Yeah, all the orange and lemon, grapefruit. Of course they're disappearing by the boat loads now, but we're talking downtown in LA. It would be piss and I don't know, miss I.
Don't think you can say piss on the radio. Guys, Well, the as we just said, she and I both did.
As you drive out the one twenty six, for example, they still have a bunch of citrus orchards.
As you're going out towards Vena. It used to all be citrus.
We all learned about it in that Angelina Joelee movie, which one the one where her son I think, goes missing, and it's like the nineteen twenties and everything's citrus ortured all Los Angeles.
I went to Las Felix to have lunch with a friend of mine and I opened the car door and literally smell like which is one of the reasons I Vega.
Yeah, because that smells.
Vegas just smells like bad decisions and STDs the other mutually exclusive.
Another very common pot people said when they're.
Yeah, definitely, definitely on the freeway, there's.
A there's got to be a warehouse or something. When I drive home, there's one specific place on the freeway, especially if it's a warmer day, like anywhere above seventy degrees for a good quarter mile, it's just overwhelming the smell of pot.
I have a question about that with pot.
Didn't pot?
I mean, I don't know because Pot's changed so much, but driving while high sounds damn near impossible.
I just it doesn't seem comfortable.
It doesn't seem that's good. Doesn't seem comfortable.
You gotta be somewhat in control of your sense.
It's also, isn't the pot just the point of pot just to relax, yeah, and not be hyper aware of things like.
Traffic people seems like an oxymor turn signals things.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on Demand from KFI Am six forty.
My wife was at the story yesterday and took this giant picture of just all of this gaudy flowers, over priced carnations, the giant three foot tall balloons that spell out the word love, and she just I told please, no.
I told my husband for years, I feel this is gonna kind of piss people off here.
Get it.
If you enjoy Valentine's Day, you celebrate that. Good for you. But I told him long ago, it's a sign of a lack of intelligence to buy me something for Valentine's Day, Wow, because everything costs so much more, whether it's going out to dinner. Everything's a price fixed menu. You're basically a schmuck. They've got ya, they fooled you. You're basically a schmuck. If you buy into that, if you want to make me dinner, that's awesome. I love that. That's very cool.
You know, you just go to the rafts, pick up some pasta, whatever, make me dinner.
Cool.
That's awesome, it's lovely, it's thoughtful. But the whole idea of making a big deal of spending more than you would use usually spend on a normal Tuesday for a bouquet of flowers or dinner out, that's just silly. That's just silly. You're just throwing money, pissing money into the wind. To use the word of the day, piss. Oh, but you know what I mean. You're just you're you're you're urinating into the breeze. A card is cool, but just
don't over It's just I don't know. I don't like overspending for the sake of Hallmark holiday like the man has gotten you. If you're celebrating the phony holidays, Okay, your wife knows that you love her on a Thursday in April, why do you have to overspend for ugly carnations.
We're doing stupid balloon that says love. We're doing a nice dinner, but we're doing it on Thursday instead of Friday.
Exactly.
There's that idea as well, do it the day before the day after. Okay, I'm not yelling at you. You don't have that, no, but I do think it's beautiful if it's you, do you. I love that for you. But moron, no, I don't think you're more. I just I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it's necessary.
The reminder that today is Friday.
That means we're going to do what you learned this week on The Gary and Shannon Show later in the show. So you can always leave us a talkback message when you're listening on the app. Open it up. There's a little white microphone button. Hit that button and you can leave us about a thirty second message and tell us what it is that you learned this week on The Gary and Channon Show.
You make me sound like a horrible no, no, no, you did that by yourself.
All right.
We are going to have to go into the next segment with this story as well, but we can start it now. This was an article, and it's very topical. Right. Squatters have been in the news, they've been in documentaries, they've been on podcasts. We rarely hear all of the details of how this happens because these squatters are very manipulative and they use your emotions to do so. There was a guy sixty five years old, Alden Marin is his name, and lived in the Malibu area, and it
was September of twenty twenty one. He's taking a walk on the beach at Point Doom like he usually does. And if you know the area, you know that it's one of those areas where you need a key to get to the beach where you can take the white the walk at Point Doom. So everyone who's there usually you know that they're supposed to be there. It's it's a status symbol to have a key to the beach, and you know, make whatever of that that you will.
But anyway, when you see somebody on the beach, you know they're probably they probably live there, or they're supposed to be there. On this night in September twenty twenty one, Alden sixty five meets this woman. She's eccentric, she's energetic, she's this middle aged woman. She's got a British accent, shoulder length, frizzy brown hair, blue eyes, and she introduces herself as Ellie Mae McNulty, an actor and a screenwriter. Now, as for this guy, he had graduated from Stanford, went
to the Sorbonne. He had a successful wine business, and he was battling stage four melanoma for three years. At this point when he meets her, he had gone through the diagnosis, which is heart wrenching. He had gone through the chemotherapy. He welcomed this conversation with this strange, affable woman. He sees her a couple more times over the next month. They end up going to an art exhibition together because
he's an artist, she appreciates art. And she says, after about a month of them with these casual meetings up that she's looking for a place to stay because she's waiting for her home to be finished. He invites her to stay at his two bedroom condo for a few days until her new place is ready to go, which was to be imminent.
It's funny that he had the assumption, I mean, you said this a minute ago. Because she was there, she must belong there, and he assumed that she had a beach key or was a friend with someone who did have a beach key, because she was there, and he thought it would be kind of cool to have a roommate for a couple of days, especially somebody that was interesting and quirky.
Soon enough, the mask came off, she unleashed a campaign, they say, of psychological terror, landed him in a medical facility at the same time she was changing the locks to his place. They said it started about a month after she moved in that a couple days quickly became a month. With this house that everyone knows somebody that
has had this, so it's easy to accept. Right, You've got a friend whose house is getting rebuilt, or there was some sort of damage to the house, or they needed to plumb the house or something where you offer you can stay with us for a couple days or whatever usually ends up being longer. You know how contractors work, So it's not out of the realm of possibility that her house would take a little bit longer, and in fact that's what it did, but just at the alleged house,
I should say. But about a month after she moved in, her demeanor, they say changed dramatically. They meaning this guy's sister. She became berating Alden, ridiculing his medical problems, that she would take videos of him on her cell phone, threatening to use him as leverage to stay longer. She relegated to a room in the downstowns Downstown downstairs area of
his own home. That he couldn't even go to the kitchen or other areas without dealing with this woman's verbal abuse, and then couldn't get her to leave.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six.
Forty authorities in Alaska searching this hour for a commercial passenger playing the went missing of the Bearing Sea just before it was supposed to land. This cessna is operated by a regional carrier called Bearing Air. Nine passengers and a pilot on board when its position was lost yesterday afternoon, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety. So you've got Coastguard, air Force, and National Guard all involved in an air and land search for this airplane.
We're talking about Alden Marin, guy who lived in Malibu, sixty five years old, going through a treatment for stage four melanoma, meets a woman on the beach there, which is private for just homeowners in the area. Yeah, middle aged, eccentric woman British accent. Ellie Mae McNulty is her name. They have commonalities. They both shared a passion for yoga meditations. Her home is being worked on, he allows her to stay in his home for a couple days. He's got
a two bedroom condo there in Malibu. They say a couple of days of novelty turned into a weekek. Then two weeks and the excuses of why her new rental wasn't yet available started to pile up. And Mindy is Alden's sister, and Mindy says that she felt the red flags right away. Something was off, and her brother said, no, she's okay. She helps out around here, she makes breakfast,
she makes sure I'm okay. But the sister, as we're one to do, starts searching for this woman on the internet and seems to believe that this woman fancies herself a bit of a filmmaker or something. Her social media is peppered with photos of her with Hollywood players David Lynch, Al Pacino, Jim Carrey, and she talks about her membership and the Screen Actors Guild. Just months before she meets the brother Alden. She had instagrammed a screenshot of a
New York Times review that noted her exceptional acting. But this was from a play that had been stage in nineteen ninety eight, about twenty five years before the meeting.
And like you said, Alden's sister, Mindy was the one who sniffed this out early on, or at least knew something was a little amiss about this woman.
We told you before the break that the mass came off in about a month into the stay when her behavior abruptly changed. Suddenly she was telling Alden what to do in his own home. He did not like conflicts, so he started to just play into it. She even got access to his credit cards after he left them out. She used them for household expenses and food for the house. His sister says, he was scared of this woman. At
one point. She never paid any rent. She was pressured to leave at one point, and she said she was waiting for an inheritance from her grandmother before she could pay for a new apartment. And the sister gets involved in this situation and she becomes more combative. McNulty does, how dare you talk to me about that, and they soon realized that the law is on this crazy woman's side.
Listen, there's a lot I had to deal with. Our fa family had to deal with a squatter as well, and this is it.
It's very tenant friendly. In the state of California.
Law mandates that somebody who occupies a room in your house, even if they're not paying, and even if there's no agreed upon contract, they are considered for these types of purposes, They're considered a tenant at will. And there's the thing is there's no description in state law about what constitutes tenancy, even informal tenancy, so there's no real way. Is she there for two weeks and she becomes a tenant? Does it that take ninety days? There's just no hard and
fast rule. So while he is in the hospital, Alden is in the hospital because again he's dealing with cancer, she apparently tried to change the locks, which is another right that has afforded tenants in the state of California.
This is a long story. The vanity faarraticle gets into this woman's past. I don't think her past is really relevant. Frankly, what's relevant is that this guy had such a breakdown over this woman. He had to be hospitalized, and the sister began to search legal records involving this woman. She found more than ten cases alone, stretching back almost two decades, the most recent all in that Point Doom area in Malibu.
That's how she was able to gain access to that beach. Probably, But they say that successful, smart people continue to get fleeced in California because they have no idea these laws exist. And these very people like McNulty pray. They know the laws, they know them backwards and forwards, and they will prey on you and they will seek you out, especially well to do people who are just nice people.
So one of the options is, and I know that people have done this in the past. It was something that we actually looked into, was if you can convince I mean, we own the property, if I could convince the tenant to leave the house at any point.
Yeah, I can change the locks, right.
But but you got to convince them to get out of the house. And the thing is they know you're sniffing around to get them out.
That's dangerous. You don't know if they're armed, what you're dealing with.
The miss Yeah, I feel I don't know.
If they're on meth or and they've been up for four weeks.
You don't know if they're a Chiefs fan.
You don't know if they're gonna eat your face.
What you learned this week on the Gary and Shannon Sho'll leave us a quick talkback message on the iHeart app. Also, if you miss any part of the show, go back and check out the podcast. Every single day we do a live podcast and then post the results.
My sister texted me yesterday and she got like the she got me to she got my bad mood text because she texted me when I was dealing with my root canal. And she says to me, yesterday, do I understand this correctly? Do you and Gary have a podcast now now? I was so incensed and annoyed by this that I didn't respond for several hours, and I wrote back, yes, dork, we've done a live podcast for nothew Well, I mean come on now and she and then she wrote loll okay.
I thought it was something separate from your radio show, and I wanted to write back, we did this for four hours. Who wants more of this? Who wants extra?
Well, if you do want extra, just type in Gary and Shannon wherever you find your favorite podcast swamp on.
No, but you know what I mean, like extra, I agree? Do you want extra?
Well, I'm curious about the people who have agreed to be in the same room with us on Sunday afternoon, Like, that's a lot, that's that's a lot.
I think there's coercion at play. I feel like some people thought they had to say yes no, like Deborah Mark. Do you think she actually wants to go no? Deborah Mark, By the way, I ran through season one of Downto Nabbey within forty eight hours based on your recommendation. I did. I did. It was the only thing that made me happy. Yes, oh my god, so thank you. I was like, I loved deb Re Mark all day long because it was very nice. It's a lovely.
Show, it really is, and it just gets better and it makes.
Me want tea. They have tea all the time and a cucumber sandwich.
And don't you want to be friends with those people that work for the family.
Yes, I love their love, but not the family. No, some of the families. Some of the families, but that's the mom.
Oh yeah, well, you'll need our help on Sunday you've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app