Hi, and welcome back to give us mark me. I'm Megan, and you are joining us for a case that's not John when Gacy, Thank the Lord, she's christ. Oh finally, I'm so happy I don't have to hear about him anymore. We were literally that meme that I put up on the Instagram. Oh yeah, like Melissa McCarthy and I was about to call her Shania Twain not my icon. What is her name? Sandra? Like, oh my god, Megan, get it together. Listen. It's hard
when you get two icons mixed together. Mean girls absolutely fair. I just want to know, like, is it just does that song like make every woman fairl Like it's just you know, you just the Let's Go Girls just just something to us. We're just like yeah, I feel like it's like a mixture of nostalgia and then a mixture of like I need this in my life right now, because I feel like every woman has had that experience of their mother playing this song in the car and your mother going Pharaoh for it.
Probably yes, And then on top of that, then as an adult, you're just like, yes, let's go girls. Between that and man, I feel like a woman, I love it. Yeah, So your Brad Pitt. That don't impresent me much. That's just iconic though, So your Brad Pitt. Can you imagine Brad Pitt when he heard that, What did I do to you? Girly? It's not what you did to me, it's what you did too. Who is he married with Jenna Aniston? Oh my god, I'm so sorry Cale put on my dish. Sure it's
like gurgling in the think I thought that was your fridge again. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that it was the fridge that time, because my fridge does it need My fridge needs fixing, you guys, and um, Megan thought it was a demon In my head, I thought it was the sex demon from our Haunted Items episode. I mean, it very well could be, but my fridge does just like randomly go. You've probably
heard it in the background of episodes like John Wayne Gacy Part three. Definitely, there's like a couple of parts in it where you were talking, so I couldn't like edit it. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, guys, that's my fridge. It's just not doing so hot right now. It adds to the mystique of the podcast. I think you're like, what is that is it the fridge or is it a special sexy sex demon. I mean, I hope it's this best. I hope it's a special se I want
to say special and sexy at the same time. And it was like the spexy demon. Hmmm, we wear glasses. So Megan has a my little episode for us today. Very excited about it and we will try not be as giddy as last time. I Can had an episode for us. If you haven't checked it out, yeah do because it's a fun episode. It was the overtired stage where you're like just giddy. Yes, I love that stage. And that's when like I get the human version of the zoom meanes
o the zoom means the Zoomies are so cute. I knew remember when Waffles used to get him when we'd be recording and you could just hear him like on the landing outside, like going from the door to door. Oh, by the way, just so you all know and update on Waffles, because if you've been around for a while, you know that Waffles is a cat that me and Nile fend during the pandemic and we had to bottle feed him
and stuff. And then when we moved to Malta. We couldn't take him with us because he didn't have passport and stuff when we were moving into an apartment that we had never actually seen, and we didn't want to put him through the stress of like a flight and moving and keeping him inside in an apartment all day long and possibly not being home all the time with him, that kind of thing. There are a lot of different reasons. So he is with niles mom right now, Nile's parents, and he has grown into
the biggest, most beautiful boy. But guess what His name is not Waffles anymore. No, she didn't change his They renamed him. Yeah, when I guess Paul so close? Oh no, Hank. They changed Waffles for her. Well, when you see him, you think like Hank the tank because he's so big. What are they feeding him? To be honest, he was always a big eater, like I just don't know if you remember, like he always had like a big ron belly. He did, Yes, he did. He fit in with me and you. It's fine.
He liked his food. This food. We like our food. Oh my, I'm self conscious, no bad thing, which I know, I know. I always have to have a snake after I finished recording. It's like a reward or something. Really, I like go straight to bed because I'm like, oh my fuck. No, I'll have like a chocolate or something and then be like deuces, I'm out. Anyway, Shall we dive in
to the case? Jump in? Oh she's doing it? Oh she rev Nive just did like that diving motion that she done for the last episode two and she rebbed up like she she went back and like rebbed up and up red. I'm already. So today's case is on John Jamealski, also known as the Syracuse Dungeon Master. Oh my, okay, is it? Is it Dungeons and Dragons? No? Oh no, okay, I thought it
was going to be something You're like, that's okay. I do want to say that this case was one of the more difficult to cover, and not because there are a lot of like weird things about it. But what we'll see and what is really irritating is these were a group of women that were let in by a police force that they trusted time and time again. I mean at this stage, what now? Yeah, it's not surprising, but it doesn't get less frustrating. No, I'll try not be too harsh on
them. No, you can be harsh. It's fine. We both know I will be. And so a massive, massive trigger warning for a sexual assault great. John Jamelski was born May ninth, nineteen thirty five, in Fayetteville, New York. He grew up in the de Witt area, a small town just outside of Syracuse in New York, New York, New York, New York. Every time I hear like just the two words new York, I think of Madagascar, the movie. John was an only child, and he was a bit of a loner, not interested in sports or any
extracurriculars. Relatable. We have an extracurricular true craodcast is an extracurricular Well yeah, but yeah, not into sports and loner. Yeah. Also, can I just tell everybody something? Sure? I see fat an earthquake? Oh my god, I forgot that. I was sitting in this very chair. Oh here we go, a dramatic retelling. So here. I was a gray, gloomy day outside, sitting in this very chair, at this very desk, working in my nine to five job, just doing my usual.
You don't think anything's going to happen. When all of a sudden, I felt a very slight tremor, the tiniest earthquake ever to exist. And I messaged my friend because you know, it's work, you're on slack, and I said, oh, my god, I think my apartment has just been hit by a crane again, because it hadn't happened. It has happened one time because they're constructing a new building right beside me, and it was the middle of a storm and they decided they were going to continue and tried to
construct with the crane. So just hid into the side of it anyway. And she said, no, no, we felt that too. That was just an earthquake. I was like, oh, just just an earthquake. Just an earthquake. You're telling me I survived a fucking earthquake. It was a Level four earthquake. And what am I going to do? I just I just sit here and go back to my city, little job, do
my city little emails, what what what? I've never survived an earthquake before, so like state of shock would kick in, you know, being like on my word, I believe. I went out to my balcony and like stared at the water to see if it was like doing anything crazy. I called my mom, and my mom was like, oh my god, Megan, you need to get somewhere high. Well, Malta is a flat country, mother, where am I gonna go? And can I just I love the fact that you were like, yeah, my building just got hit with
a crane. You're like, um, do you know in American pie you're one is like this one time at bank camp. If you're like this one time in Malta, well yeah, that's that's it. How people going to say that's the moring Like, now it's not the time, Megan. We're talking about earthquakes and that's show bid. Okay, okay, where were we to the story? He mostly underperformed in school, and at one stage it
had gained the nickname germs Jamanski. That's unfortunate. Well, it was because you were so unsociable and apparently would regularly wear the same clothes every day that had grown to be old and reportedly a bit smelly. Did they not know about like, well, did they have washing machines? Then? In nineteen thirty five yea or nineteen forty odd? I feel like yes, I feel then I thought, you know, is it a matter of money? Do
they just not have a lot of money? Is this like not a wealthy family, and I don't know their financial situation when John was a child, but as they got older. Definitely John's parents who were not poor. Okay, well, like they could have just washed his clothes now. And also, is it just an American thing nicknames? I feel like you don't really over here in Ireland, we don't really give kids nicknames as a mean thing. Not as a mean thing. We definitely have a lot of nicknames.
Oh, the town has a lot of like people with nicknames, but it's so much so that you almost don't know their real names. Yeah, but it's not as like an insult of thing to like bully them. No, we got bullied in other ways. They got creative. They got creative. It's great. I feel like we're getting very slide tracked again. Today. We are sorry. I'll stop continue. That's my fridge. That's the sex demon. It's the sex demon trying to get out of my freezer. I
put her in there to cool off. But I think the thing with wearing the old clothes and the smelly clothes, I think was more of a John thing. Really, there was nothing much to be said about his childhood, although he would tell you very different as he grew up and would reminisce on his childhood as you do, or you'd meet new people and you talk about your time in school and stuff. He would often say that he was a very popular teenager and that he had dated some of New York's most beautiful women,
including a winner of the Miss New York Beauty pageant. Bro, you were called germ, and you know what, in our positions as professional bullies, we're allowed to bully him today. Yeah. No, he was culled Germ. Okay, Like, come on, you're fooling. Not a single soul. John literally was the guy to be like, oh, I have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school. I did lose my virginity with a girl from Canada, Okay. Her name is Maple, her name is Pam. No, he met this girl from Canada, okay, and
her name was Maple syrop. She sounds like a sweet girl. Her favorite food is pancakes. Although he was a weird teen didn't quote make any waves unquote by one of his school I was going to say friends, but he didn't have They just went to school. No, he did not know what
those were. He did grow up into an adult to be what people called gregarious, and he was somebody that you could like hold a conversation with him about anything, Like you could mention cockroaches are gross, and he'd be like yeah, and then he'd take a second and he would go into a big, long, interesting conversation about how cockroaches are gross but you know, good for the ecosystem. He was clever, like he knew how to like converse
with everybody about anything. I feel like after his school experience, he took a lot of time to try and get better at being social, like he studied it. I think he wanted to try almost be a social butterfly. Once John graduated from high school, he attended Marsfield State College and earned a degree in watchmaking in nineteen fifty five, which he was just following in his father's footsteps because his dad was a watchmaker and he was also a clock collector.
In nineteen to fifty nine, John met and married Dorothy Richmond, a school teacher. They'd go on to have three sons together. They stayed in the DeWitt area, living in a nice, modest bungalow, and the boys all seemed to be pretty well socialized. They seemed like a relatively normal churchgoing family, and they were there. They were a religious family as well, So keep this in mind, Sunday Best and all that jazz. At this point, John had been working at a grocery chain named Acme I think Acme
for twenty years until they started to close in the area. He went on then to take jobs as a handyman, watch repairer, really anything that he could and physically do. Yeah, he was doing it and that would give him some work. Frugality was a trademark of John's. He collected bottles and cans and he would like literally go out on the roads with a bag looking for bottles and hands so that he could sell them back to like m Yeah, like some of the show centers. Yeah, some of them like them,
Like it's like twenty center ball or something like that. John would go to the local library and ask the librarians to keep all of the newspapers so that he could cut out the food coupons. Were they a struggling family, No, and we'll get into that now in a few minutes. I don't think they were wealthy at this point. But this is something that John always was. He was always so super frugal, thrifty, he calls it.
If he went to the library and the librarians had forgotten to keep any of the newspapers or anything, he would like march them down and be like, look what you've done, and he would share at them and yell at them and be really aggressive. God, he was horrible to them, to the point where they were scared, like they made sure they kept the newspapers and stuff for him. Imagine yelling at a library worker. And it is said that he was known to argue over the sake of assent. The frugality wasn't
particularly needed, though, John Jamalski was not a poor man. A few years earlier, John had convinced his dad to invest some money into stocks and bonds. Then when John's dad passed away, John inherited all of it, the money, stocks, expensive clocks, everything. And it said that the clocks that he inherited were to a value of about for dyk, my lord. And was he the only child? Yes, okay, the mother was still alive. Yeah, why didn't she get any of it? I assume
that she must have gotten something, Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. So with the money that John had received from his dad, he invested in real estate in different states, like in Nevada and California. I mean, that's clever. Absolutely. Even though this would have been going for a while financially, John made the decision to sell some of the land surrounding his bungalow to a real estate developer. His own house at this point had become something of
an isore, and new million dollar homes popped up around him. So he's in this little bungalow like the houses. You can still go see it on Google Maps. It's a tiny little bungalow and there's like million dollars beautiful homes. Yes, so it's not that it's an isore of a house. It's that these million dollars beautiful houses were built right beside this tiny little bungalow, and so it looks not like an iore compared to the others. It's not
even that such. John was a hoarder. Oh okay, he probably had like twenty five thousand rocking chairs out in the garden and ship just fifty million gnomes. Well, yes, so he had like multiple vehicles. He had fridges like big appliances and stuff like that out in the front yard and the backyard like it was just completely covered, and like it's one thing. If
he's like, if it's a junkyard, that's fine. This is your home, house that your children live in, that your wife lives in, amongst these million dollar homes, and you're gonna be like, I'm just going to place this giant fridge from the twenties right beside the pickup truck that I bought,
that's from the thirties, that's beside the fourth garden gnome. So obviously, as I said, he used his own yard as storage for the bigger items he would hoard, inciding complaints from his neighbors that were largely ignored by him until he ended up being brought to court. I don't give no fucks. I don't give enough. So the county brought John to court over the state of really the outside of his house, and he ended up building a
all fence around the property instead to shield it from their eyes. Feel like it would have just been easier, John, to just clear your front your front garden. But okay, and actually I don't even fully think so. I saw like one source saying this and another source saying this, So I think it was actually a neighbor when John didn't do anything about it was like, you know what, I am going to build my own fence on my perimeter so I don't have to see into your garden. I think that's what
happened. It's the fact that when you buy a house worth like that much, like valued at that much, you do expect a certain standard. Yeah, and so like, imagine you buy this million dollar home and you move in and you're like, oh my god, our dream home to start our family. And you look out your window and like there's just all this junk out in his yard. You're like, I did not spend a million dollars on this goddamhouse to look out at that. I was promised views when he
got a view. And his wife is probably a lovely woman, Yes, absolutely, she really really did seem like a very good woman. And obviously the sun's all turned out really really well. I always find this so bizarre, though, Do you find that when it's someone like John Wayne Gacy, like this giant ass asshole, and then he had such lovely wives, because you know, you have like a bad boy. Told me no, Megan,
no, not that bad. Even with this, at this point, John was on the road to being if he was not one already a millionaire. Yeah. In nineteen eighty five, John's wife, Dorothy was diagnosed with cancer, and she eventually became ed ridden to her illness. M that's so sad. I know. This is when John seems to have a bit of a mental breakdown due to Dorothy being so sick. Can I ask if you know if a loved one got sick, what would be your first thought,
like your significant other? Oh, it was to look after them, not to have an absolute hissy fit that like, and make it about you. Mmmmmm I agree. Well, John's first thought was how am I going to have sex? That is, it is a selfish, ugly thing to think about. Well, that's what John was thinking. In the mid nineteen eighties, a young girl named Gina was brought into the house. John claimed that
he had met her at the Salvation Army. M. A friend of John's noticed that Gina attended family events and such like picnics and stuff, but he wasn't sure if John was in a sexual relationship with her or not. Okay, he was like, can't priv it, but seems sus to me exactly. She left the house not long after. She didn't stay for very long. Okay. One of John's sons admitted that his mother, Dorothy, did once confide in him that she believed John was having an affair with Gina.
That's so horrible because she's just trying to get over cancer and survive cancer, and you're right here writing some Gina bitch that you met at the Salvation Army. If that's even true, hardly. Apparently it was during this time that John seemed to be going through a bit of a midlife crisis. Quote, he lost so much weight you could see his rib cage. Said his son. John started to wear his hair in a ponytail, and he dressed more like a teenager in designer jeans and shoes. Was he wearing ed Hardy?
No? Eighties not time for ed Hardy yet, No, it wasn't his time to shine bright? By God? Did they shine them? Tops? A design masterpiece? Truly? Yep Chanel Who when I grew up, I don't want to own a channel bag. I want to own an ed Hardy top. When I grew up, I say, it's the twenty eight year
old woman with a child. So this is when the son helped his father actually build the framework for an underground room attached to the basement, and you were not asking questions about that, I mean, midlife crisis, you know, I would still be like, what's this room going to be used? I can take a wild guess, a wild wild guest, John, You're not going that crazier, are you? Twenty four feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet high. It was divided into two smaller rooms.
Oh my god. Ye. To enter the underground room, there was a door from the basement and you kind of went from what I believe, down some stairs and then you would have to like crawl through on your hands and knees, like a bit of it I guess would be the slope for going down, and then you would open like a small square door which was almost at the top of the room. So if you can imagine like a small square door, but it's up on the top of your wall, like or
in the middle of your wall. Ye have to scream kidnapping at all? No, you would have to turn around then and like climbing down some stairs. Yeah, that at all doesn't make a matter. He's planning on kidnapping two women. Nope, nope, No, it's probably just going to use it to grip some hash because he's having a my life crisis, not at all about time murder people. He's got a ponytail, so it's the ponytail.
So a friend of John's actually helped pour the concrete for this bunker, and he did question John about it if somebody did and I know, and John said that it it's just going to be like a little weekend hangout spot for some parties. What kind of parties are you throwing down there? Your wife is dying of cancer, you jackass. Yeah, let's reduce the parties
to a minimum while your wife is bedridden in the same house. And even his step granddaughters, so his son's partners kids, yeah, okay, would come and they would have sleepovers there, like they weren't afraid of it, like it was like a fun thing. What age can I just like, roughly, what age would have these grandchildren been, because I am sorry, at any age if my grandfather, well, my grandfather was a raging alcoholic,
so I definitely wouldn't have anyway. But if he wasn't and it was just a normal grandfather and he was like, hey, I built this room in the basement of the house, do you want to go have a sleepover there. I'd be like, oh, hell's not. I don't know how old they were. This was something that I read in like one source, and I it was a newspaper source, so I don't know that's all I read. But yeah, no, absolutely, I wouldn't be letting them in
there at all. However, this is where the nightmare began. Fantastic. We're just gonna take a very quick ad break here. Hey guys, Megan here, I just wanted to tell you about the season of That So Fucked Up Presents that I was lucky enough to be a part of with host Ashley Richards. Every season actually covers a different variety of cases, and this time
we covered the world's most gruesome gals. Head on over to That's So Fucked Up on any of your listening platforms to hear all about Katherine Knight, Carla Hamoka, are more. Here's a sneak peek. Are you ready for the gnarliest part of the story. Nope, Okay, here we go. She then went on to skin him and did this so precisely that his skin wasn't one piece. I am fucking nauseous. So welcome back from the break. Myself and leave also had to take a break because we have been recording for
over an hour of which you'll probably see twenty minute twenty minutes. We're so bad we get side tracked. It's because since recording, since we started recording the podcast, we don't FaceTime as much. Yes, and so I think then it's like giddiness of not having talked to you in a while, even though I was talking to you earlier, but that was not like you know, so I know, I know hatch up time, and it's like, no, we're actually supposed to be recording a dead serious podcast. That's the
night Drew Crime just too annoying us. Girls, you haven't spoken in approximately twelve hours, not even because we spoke at like six pm. It's no ten. We were sitting to record at eight. Yeah, so like we literally talked to each other two hours prior to recording this. But yet here I am being like, we know faith time that much anymore, and we
are professionals. Let's go. In October nineteen eighty eight, John Schmadski got in his tan color in nineteen seventy five Mercury Comments and went, you were just gonna say out his tann on. Yeah, yeah, I don't know why. My brain was just like, he's putting on tan. I mean he is having a mid life crisis, Yes he is. I can I can imagine him going to a tanning tanning bed, tanning salon. So he got into his tan color nineteen seventy five Mercury comment and went what he called
cruising. Why did again? Why did they call it weird ship? Why are they always calling it cruising? He's like the fourth person to be like and cruising, no Rolin talking. You're just being a goddamn fucking creep who's looking to attack some per in an unbeknownst victim. And that's exactly what he did when he came across a fourteen year old Native American girl who I will only name as Kirsten to protect her privacy. He found her out walking on
the street one night when she was out with her friends. John pulled up beside her, and after only a few minutes, he managed to talk her into getting into his car. How did they do it? I think the whole stranger danger thing is a more recent thing. Maybe like back in the day they were more trusting of others. I feel John says that at that point it was obvious the two were going to have sex. Was it okay with the fourteen year old who was drunk? She'd been out drinking with her
friends. Okay, John, you're just a predator, okay, right. He brought her to his mother's home, which was supposedly the house next door to his home. There, John changed Kirsten and threw her into a small shed that held pumping equipment at the back of the home. Like he changed her, put a chain around her ankle, like almost right away. Quote the first day there was a chain and I put it around her ankle and I found a place to hook it. She didn't like that. You don't
say, I can't imagine why. No, can't imagine why. Nope. The young girl woke up naked and cold in the shed, not remembering how she got there. John told her that she had to have sex with him every day and that his bosses are keeping her there. And this is a common theme that we'll see from John Trip my God. For nearly three years, personal was subject to endless sexual abuse every single day. Three years.
This poor girl, fourteen years old, Jesus. John would make her keep a log of everything she did in the day, so he would give them like a diary or a calendar, and she would have to put the letter t for brushing teeth, s for sex b if they had a bath or a shower. The rape was an everyday thing. They didn't get to brush their teeth every day. They would be washed with a garden hose maybe once
every two weeks. About eleven months after being kept in the shed, John decided to move Kursten elsewhere, a tiny two room bunker four feet underground that he had dug in his own backyard. As we had spoken about previously. What you mean that wasn't for a party space? Weird, right, my odd so unexpected. It was very minimally furnished with a crudely made toilet which was literally a bucket, and what looked to be you know those like walking
canes, like a zimmer frame. It looks to be like a zimmer frame over the book, like that they could like hold themselves over it. A bathtub which was not connected to anything. He fed a garden hose through like event I believe or something, and that's what he would use to share them with. And a piece of foam padding to be used as a mattress. And this was a very thin piece of phone padding that he put over like crates that you would see in burs to hold. Like he couldn't even get
the mattresses. No, no, And this is all control I think for John. Like he controlled when they brushed their teeth, he would control when they ate, he would control everything. It was like about having the ultimate control. He would bring Kurston one meal a day. She did say that she could request what she wanted, so if it was like a burger or something, she would get that. But it was once a day. Yes, still not enough, like as if like the fact that she can request
it is so good of him. And that's what he wanted her to believe. He wanted that, He wanted her to believe that he was just as much a victim of circumstance as she was. If you caught earlier when I said bosses, John would say that there were these bosses and he was part of a bigger group of people that wanted to sell Kirsten and these other women turn them into slaves. Yeah, it's a royal case of I don't want to do this, I'm being forced to do this by my bosses. Yeah.
Now, to keep a really tight grip on control over Kirsten. He would tell her constantly that he would kill her family if she ever tried anything, and she believed him, which of course you would, Oh, absolutely sure, Why wouldn't she. She's four like she was fourteen. The sexual assaults, among other activities that they would do, were all recorded by John, so he would actually set it up to record. Probably told her it was so his bosses could watch. That is exactly what he told her.
John forced Kurston to write letters and once even sent an audio tape back to her family, and he sent them with pictures he had taken of her to make it seem like she was absolutely fine. When Kirston was seventeen, John decided randomly to let her out. He brought her to California for a week's
stay in a cabin in Lake Tahoe. Once they got back to Syracuse, he asked his twenty nine year old son to pretend to be a chauffeur, and him and his son dropped her blindfolded at a Syracuse airport, where she was able to call her mother and finally be reunited with her family. What did he just get fed up of her or something or got too old. I don't think it's the age, which we'll see in a bit, but
I don't know. I don't know, and we'll find out later that John has this thing where he thinks he's done nothing wrong because he didn't actually kill anybody. That's not how that works. No, and after speaking with her family, Kirsten decided to not go to the police about her experience. And the reason for this is because John actually seemed to know a lot about her
family, like her whole family's names, where they lived, everything. He knew everything, and she was like, we don't know how Yeah, she was like, that's so weird. Like, so I don't want to go to the police, because what if he comes for you guys? He scared her and he had threatened to yes, he had threatened to kill them as
well. He might be thinking as well, why this Sun had been present in the car and had just not said anything and was just like, okay, fine, I'll drive you in this blindfolded girl to an airport, all right. Well, John had told him that the girl had The girl's parents had requested for John to basically imprison her so that she could lose weight, and now she's lost enough weight, so he was bringing her back. He was sending her back home, and the sun bought that. I guess you
don't ever think that your dad is that much of a monster. And his dad was kind of like eccentric. The older he got, the more eccentric he God, I know, and I suppose in a sense as well, you'd rather believe that than believe that he was doing anything bad. So it's like, I'll just accept this because the other things the easiest. Yeah, if I have to accept anything else, it's so difficult that just know,
I'll just accept this. On the thirty first of March nineteen ninety five, John found and abducted a fourteen year old Latin American girl who will just call Michelle. She had supposedly run away from home. John asked her if she would deliver a package for him, and that he would pay her very very well for this. She agreed and got in the car with him, where
she was instructed to lie down so as not to ruin this surprise. However, John drove directly into his garage and the young girl was brought out to the bunker, where she too would suffer sexual abuse at the hands of John Jamelski. It's reported that Michelle told investigators that she was as mean as she could be to John, kicking, fighting, and even spitting at him, but this didn't deter him To get her to comply, John showed her pictures
of her family and made threats against them. He would regularly take pictures of her as she lay scared in the dungeon. After fifteen months of abuse, she was blindfolded and left outside her mother's place. Again for fear of retaliation. This girl and her family decided not to contact the police, and another reason for them not going to the police was that John would regularly slowly drive by the house and make sure that he was seen as a way to intimidate
her. I mean good. So her family wouldn't have known what he looked like, but she wouldn't. She'd remember the car. Yeah, she knew what he looked like. She know he looked like, and she knew what car he drove because she got into it. Obviously. Yeah, she didn't know his name. One thing that John never did was tell any of his victims' real name. He would often use biblical names, and he would also something that I had left at but I believe he would make Kirsten read the
Bible to him. Did they ever find out how he was getting like information of their families? So I was reading like forums and stuff on this because I was curious too, And I believe from the likes of they had the White Pages, which is like the Yellow Pages. Yeah, so I think addresses and phone numbers were listed at the time. And then if the family had ever gone on the news to talk about the disappearance of the child, to be like, if you've seen my daughter, please like tell police,
and like we just want our her back. And exactly so he knew the child who to take photos of. John's third victim, a fifty three year old Vietnamese woman. So this time the woman is fifty three, She's not a teenager. Normally, who's my criminal minds coming through? Normally they sit like stick with the same age, like in and around the same ages and kind of they all look the same and or like look similar. Can I
put a very creepy thought into your brain? John was a hoarder, as some might say a collector, was just collect so if you think about it, exactly so he has and as we go through it, like they're all of his victims are of different ethnicities and different ages. Most of them he's collecting women of different cultures and different age so it's like he has a variety.
Yeah, which is so sick to say and so creepy. And can I just say that book The Collector, which was then turned into a movie, that book, I feel like so many serial killers and just creeps in general, like really seemed to use that book as something. It almost taught them, not taught, but gave them the idea exactly. Because the whole book is centered around like this, and I haven't read it. I don't know, I've just read things about it because it's also involved in a different
case I've been researching for a while. But this guy, I think he collects butterflies and then he sees like this beautiful woman and he falls in love with her, and he basically kidnaps her and keeps her till the point that she dies. And I think the book kind of ends on like a, oh, well, I'm going to have to get another one. So he was collecting butterflies and then he collected her in the same way. Yeah,
So this woman was abducted on August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven. Like all of his previous victims, this woman was reported missing by loved ones. The sexual abuse continued, and at this stage John was actually relying on viagra and other medications to assist him physically in abusing the women. So he's getting up an age, struggling more to kind of have sexual relations, if you want to call them that. Yeah, because he still had the drive to
abuse these women, but he couldn't physically keep up. To his regret, there was a big language barrier, as this woman did not have a very high level of English. John would later go on to say that this woman would sing to him in Vietnamese. Quote, she had the most beautiful a cappella voice with no accompaniment accompaniment. I can't say this word accompany ement whatsoever. It was reported that John hit this woman so hard he actually permanently injured
her ear. Oh my god. On the twenty thirty of May ninety eight, John dropped this woman off at a bus station with fifty dollars. This woman actually did go to the police, but she was ignored, like it's easier to intimidate fourteen year olds. Of course they're going to say no, I'm not going to go to police with this. He's going to kill my family, and what if he actually does kill my family? In the wise words of Schmidt from New Girlali, she reportedly mistakenly believed that she had been
held in Rochester, which is decently far from de Witt. I think it's like a thirty or nineteen minute drive. You don't know how long he was driving her around. Well, he dropped her off at a bus station, and if she doesn't have a high level of English, and then also the bus station, if it is the same now as it was back then. I remember being on a bus for to get to it, you know, a town twenty minutes over when I was in Boston, and it took like
two hours. Yeah, because they go around the whole place and stop at every stop. Yeah. So like if, like you said, if she hasn't got good English or anything like that, of course she's going to be
like confused, confused as to where she was hell captive. In a magazine article that I read about this, They're a detective actually said that the difficulties in communicating her immigrant status and the fact that she was alive meant the police brushed her off because they told her kidnapped women don't usually come back alive. That shouldn't be a reason to not listen to her. Oh sorry, you survived, so you know it mustn't have been that bad. But you're still
an immigrant, so there's still that. Yeah. Sorry, we're just not going to be able to help you. So you're not from a wealthy family, so I can't do it. Don't particularly care that much. And I'd like to remind you that during all of this, Dorothy is lying in the bed in the house, extremely sick, dying. Basically, your wife is dying, but you're concerned with fucking collecting children and women, You sick pervert. She died in nineteen ninety nine, and their son said that this is
the only time he'd ever seen his dad cry. That is so sad, I know, for the kids, for her, like it was an untimely death. My heart goes out to them. Yeah. I always find it really sad when like it's like, no, I've never seen my dad crying. I've seen my dad cry all the time, my baby. Yeah. No, Paul goes on like he's like a fucking barrier, but really he's just like a giant little marshmallow. Yeah, I love your dad so much.
I remember going to visit you after you just had Anna, and like I walked in the door and he was like, what's your d want? Like immediately handed me alcohol, and he like handed me alcohol as well, and I was like, I have to walk home with my baby. It's like two pm on like a Wednesday. We're big fans of Paul in this household. On May eleventh, two thousand and one, Jennifer was abducted.
She was twenty six years old and a mother. While she was walking from one friend's house to another one night, John offered her a lift home and she agreed. The next thing she knew, she was chained in John's bunker again. John raped her every single day. Jennifer did also try to fight John off, but he burned her on the back with a cigar, leaving a wound that would eventually turn into an abscess. Jesus. At this point, there was a TV in the bunker and Jennifer would watch the news stories
of her family searching for her. Oh God, that's awful. Yeah. It was at this point that John decided to let Jennifer send a letter home saying that she was in a rehab center, and so the searches were called off. John would tell Jennifer that his bosses were selling her on the internet as a sex slave and that he was trying to save her. After nearly three months, John let Jennifer go, dropping her at her mother's place.
Jennifer did go to the police, and she told them that this man because she didn't know his real name, because he doesn't tell his name, drove in nineteen seventy four Mercury comment. But this led to a dead end, as John drove in nineteen seventy five model. When they checked for a nineteen seventy four version, they found one person that had it and it wasn't them.
And I think she might have gotten the color a little bit confused, which you you know obviously, but would they not I know, she's say in nineteen seventy four, but would you not be like, okay, common sense here, Like she was blindfolded, she didn't see much of it.
It was probably dark when she was abducted, So would maybe we should check for nineteen seventy three comments in nineteen seventy five comments and see that leads us, because maybe she's just maybe she just got a little bit confused because she has been in a bunker for thirty months. No, they didn't. A detective did say that they investigated all leads that they could at the time, but they all led nowhere. Now for the final victim. This was a
sixteen year old black girl who we will call Mica. One night in October two thousand and two, John managed to talk Mika into getting into his car on the premise of making money. He brought her back to his disgusting home, where she was forced into the dungeon. He told her that vicious dogs would rip her to pieces if she ever tried to escape. The sexual abuse continued, and John told her that there were other people that wanted to rape
her. Two. I'd like to point out that this is something John told every one of his victims, and I think I mentioned this early in the episode him that he was not the only one. That there were others, members of the police force, his bosses. He said this was everywhere and that they were keeping an eye on things. Miko was clever and she somehow managed to build a sort of a bond with John. She was afforded luxuries
the other women didn't have. She would have some access to parts of the house, and John would take her on outings out for food and to play billiards. Even once brought her out for a karaoke night. So she was clever because she knew, if I go along with this, I'll survive much
longer because keep him sweet. So it's a real case of if I go along with what he wants, there's a higher risk of me surviving because she doesn't know that he's done this before, that he's let other women go exactly, So she doesn't know that other women have been let go, So she thinks to herself, like, if I do this, I have a higher chance of surviving it. I do remember, as he would play videos or
audio recordings of women screaming just to air them. There was graffiti all over the walls of this place, like, I'm sure that she knew that there had been other women, but she doesn't know that they've survived exactly. So John had obviously a certain amount of trust in her, but he still boarded up the windows of his home from the inside so that she could never escape, even when he did let her into the other parts of the house, So he trusted her more than the others, but he still wasn't dumb.
The daily rapes continued, and like the other victims, these were also recorded. On April eighth, two thousand and three, John took Mika with him
to the Bottle Redemption Center. He visited every week to sell the bottles that he collected, and I believe he would sell them for like a five cents each, not that that's relevant, but while John spoke with a friend who worked there, he asked if Mica could use the phone to call a church that she hadn't interest in, because this is something that they also bonded over.
John was a very religious man and Mika, you know, she did pray every day and she was religious too, so it's something that she used as a method to kind of connect with him. So when she said, I want to call a church and ask them about their times and if I can maybe go to a mass and stuff, He's like, you know what, She's been on outings with me before and she hasn't tried anything, so
and I'm right here, what can she do? Went through the suffering of it all, and she was just like, I'm just gonna bide my time and I'm gonna let him trust me, and I'm gonna let him fall into that false, false sense of security with me. And when I feel like I have it, then I'm going to go ahead and try and make my move. And she was so smart because instead of calling a church, Mika actually called her sister. She couldn't say much, obviously, but her sister
did ask probing questions like you know who you with? Where are you? You know? Are you there against your will? And Mika whispered down the phone to her I'm with a rapist. Mika then hung up the phone and left the store with John to go to a pet store a couple of doors down. Her sister dialed you know the number too? I think it's sixty seven, but real callback yeah, and informed the employee, who answered that this girl was being held against her will. The employee then contacted her boss,
who was due for a visit from Jameelski in the pet store. So the boss owned the bottle redemption center and the pet store. And the boss is actually, you know, the friend who had noticed Gina before. Okay, so they were like friendly, you know. Once John and Mika came and went, the man called to the police, and within minutes, sixty seven year old John Jamelski was arrested and right here, we're going to take
a quick ad break and we're back in the room. Even after his arrest, John Schamatski couldn't understand why everybody was making such a big fuss over him. His lawyers actually had to take a few days to convince him that what he had done was wrong. He thought, like, genuinely, like he said this in a televised interview, that he would get away with like community service or a fine or something. I'll just get a fine for kidnapping what four women? Five women? When you hear what he has to say.
In the same interview, he's asked about chaining the victims up, and he said, quote, people wear ankle bracelets all day long, sweetie, but it's not the same thing, you dumb ass bitch. The interviewer literally looks at him and he's like, it's not jewelry, John, to which John replies with, it didn't hurt them. Half an hour, an hour after I took them off, they were fine, Okay. I love how Like the interviewer is like, you didn't put jewelry on them? Like, how
do you respond to that, do you know what? You're interviewing this serial rapist who kidnapped women for like months and years at a time, and he's like, people wear anklip bracelets, Like it's fine, No, it's not, John, How are you dumb? Obviously he is. Obviously. Investigators made their way into the dungeon, which was called damp and moldy and covered in graffiti. To enter the dungeon, which I went through before, you actually had to go through a small tunnel that was about eight feet long,
and you'd get through it by being on your hands and knees. Then once you reached the entrance to the dungeon and opened it, you needed to walk down a short ladder through graffiti included hate ready to rook us, So bring on the pain and what I find most chilling piece to all who enter here. And he had like he had crosses up on the walls in that place. Oh yes, such a holy sanct may. A police badge was found in the home and John did use this badge to prove to the victims that
he was working for the police. And it was a real one, like it was one that he had found that had gotten lost, like somebody had lost eight years before because he was a hoarder. Videos were recovered of the recorded assaults. In one video, John can be seen dancing with one of his victims as she pleaded with the bosses to let her go, quickly saying quote be quick to them as they review her case, and John echoing it with his own be quick, knowing for a fact it would only ever be
him who would see this video. These tapes, along with the diary recordings of the victims, where they had been forced to write down everything that they had done. If you remember, the s for sext for brush, teeth, be for bathed, were pretty damning evidence. He ended up taking a plea deal and agreed to plead guilty, so the victims did not need to go through a long trial process, thankfully. I know. When John showed in court to enter his guilty plea, he cried to the court about how
sorry he was and about he was sorry about how it affected everyone. No, John, you're not, because you just literally not too long ago, said in an interview that you didn't actually hurt them. It's funny because that interview was actually twenty four hours after his court appearance. Of course, so he's like not helping. Fucking swear to god, I did nothing. The judge told him, quote, you are a sick coward, You're an evil man. You're a kidnapper and a rapist, and your reign of terror is
over. Yes whoo, as I go on to say, Actually, However, in the same interview as before, John confesses that he didn't say everything he wanted to say in court because as lawyers stopped him. The lawyer has been like, please, John, don't make it worse. You're already going to busy for a long time. Let's not make a death row. He wanted to finish his speech off with quote two number three, God bless you and have mercy on you, and have him help you increase your vocabulary because
if you remember, victim number three was the Vietnamese woman. Two number three. I didn't bother learn your names, because who cares. I just assaulted you for many, many months. John goes on to say that he did not hit her and that he did not rape her. He said he was sorry for having sex with a minor and that there were times when the girls wanted to leave, but most of the time they were fine with it. As part of his plea deal. All of his belongings were to be sold
and divided between the victims. The house was part of this deal, and really, like I thought this was really nice. It was actually bought by the last victim's brother. Oh that's kind of like it's a real case of I'll have it so that like nothing bad happened there anymore. Yeah, exactly, he said. He said it was to give the victims like a sense of closure, and I just thought it was so sweet. John was recently up for parole in twenty twenty. At this point, he had been in
prison for eighteen years. Now, I don't ever think that there was any point that he was actually going to get paroled. I think they just have to do it. They have to go through the roster, they have to go through the process. Yeah. Now, straight away, as the interviewer for this meeting asked about how the women came to be locked in the dungeon, John replied with quote, I had a bunker, and people knew I
had a bunker. We partied a lot out there, and I was approached every now and then by someone who said it would be it would be a good idea for a friend of theirs that a runaway to be there rather than out on the streets, and that they came and as a tradeoff we had sex. And during those years that nobody was in there, I would encourage
them to go back to their families as soon as they could. And the only time the bunker was used was for a few parties and stuff, and then someone else would come in, and a third one, and then a fourth one, and obviously there was a fifth one, but in between them there was nobody there, you know. So I'm just going to go through like a very quick rundown of what happened in this Pearl thing because I found the document. So the questioner I'm just gonna Q A and A is John.
Q is the questionnaire. Q. What do you think about your behavior? Sir? Some of your victims were teenage young girls? A. What do I feel about something? Something? Something? Teenage girls? So with something something something. This meeting was being held over the internet, so John couldn't hear very well, Yeah, yeah, Q about your behavior because some of them were young teenage girls. What do you think about that? Ay? They are very promiscuous. Q. I'm asking you do you take responsibility
for your behavior? A yes, yes, yeah. Q. Did you take advantage of these young girls because you were much older than them? Ay, they were very manipulating. But I should not have taken part in any of this that I did with them. Q. Do you think you caused harm to your victims? Ay? Oh yeah, I probably inadvertently. Probably, yes, yes, I could have talked them into returning to their families sooner. But when it did happen, you know, they gathered their stuff
together, we jumped in the car. I drove them to their families. You know. Sometimes their families would come out and help them carry their stuff into the house. And then on a lot of occasions, I would return. If I was in the neighborhood, I'd called up on the phone and say, Hey, you know, I'm going to be in the neighborhood. I'll stop by and we'll hang and we'll hang out for a little while. This is with all five of them, well all four of them. I
didn't get a chance with the last one. But if they had anything against me, they would have called the cops and had a swat team hiding in the bushes and hey, this guy he graped me, it's coming over, arrest him and nothing like that ever happened. It's not that big a place. We were running into each other on the street, in the club, at the supermarket, which that turns rest on a different planet. Yeah, he really is. That's why he didn't get rolled. He is one percent.
I'm not sorry, No he's not. And then Q, how did you get arrested? A pardon me? Q? How did you get arrested? A? Oh, the one girl and I, as a matter of fact, I opened up a joint bank account with her and me because we would go to the casinos and stuff. She would win money and she carried it in her back pocket, and I said, you have got to have a bank account. So she knew my social Security number, she knew everything.
We had a joint checking account, and I said, you know, I'm going to give you little bits of money here and there and whatever, but you know, you have to keep it safe. And so anyway, we had opened that up, and some of her family was very good with me. I mean we would meet, you know, occasionally in different places, you know, with her sisters. She had a very large family.
But she had one sister that everybody says, you know, she's a she's a b I tc H. I'm sorry, but everybody thought that she hated me from day one. And she was following us around and she knew where we were, and she called the sheriff and said, I want this man arrested with my little sister. Okay, yeah, oh yes, he is completely on his own planet. When John was asked about the conditions in the dungeon, John said, yeah, there was a foam mattress. It was
a very comfortable mattress. I slept on it. They were made to use a bucket as a toilet. There was a tube with a shower. There were bubble bats with scented towels or scented candles, and there was a shower for privacy, all of that stuff, you know. And I went into
its own separate septic tank. But for people relieving people selves, there was the thing the toilet from our camper that my family used for decades and our valued guests, you know, used in the camper for decades, and this is what they have to use, and myself too, because I didn't want that stuff in the septic system. So I mean that, And then the interviewer just goes, thank you, sir, like shut up, just shut up. The interviewer is just like, you're talking absolutely porshit. So yeah.
At one point the interviewer a yeah. He literally cuts John off at one point and goes, thanks for appearing, John. Actually I believe it was a woman she said thanks for appearing John. It's the fact that he's
not even sorry. When he went to prison, he had done like a sex offender like rehabilitation course that they offer in the prison, and he didn't really get anything out of it. He actually got kicked out of it because his attendance went to zero and his excuse was, well, everybody else stopped going, so I stopped going. And when he was approached, like, you know, do you want to do this again? We're standing up again, he said no, So he didn't want to read. He didn't.
He still doesn't think he has done anything or anything. Yeah, he's like, what do I need repilitation for? Exactly? So, of course his prole was denied and he will likely die in prison. Good hope he does. He deserves to those women deserved to have him spend the rest of his life in prison, like they deserved to feel safe. Yeah, no,
and ten percent I feel so sorry for them. At one point, during the interview, the interview asked like, would you still be doing this if he hadn't been caught, and he said, no, I don't think I would because I was taking viagra towards the end. It would have ended because I don't have the same physical urges that I had before. But no, you're supposed to say no because I don't want to be a monster anymore, not because you know, I just don't have sex with them anymore. So
it's not as fun, not as thrilling. Yeah, But like he says that, he says that it would have ended because he didn't have the same physical urges that he had before. But then at this in the same breath, is like, Oh, I took these women in to like rehabilitate them because like they were going down the wrong path in life and I was trying to help and they just gave me sex. Then what's with the sexual urges?
Yeah, because his whole thing was like when he was speaking to like detectives and the Jodge and everything, he was like, Oh, I took these women in, they offered me sex for room and board, Like that's what was happening. It's on them basically, Yeah, And He's like, there were yeah, there were times when they couldn't leave and yet they had chains, but like you know, it was it was fine. No, John, No, it wasn't fine. Anyway. That is the end of
our story. Um. I hope he never gets to see daylight again here. That was a really interesting case actually, and it was fun that nobody died. Yeah, that was like every time when I was researching, every time he was like letting somebody go, I was like, you can, like let it side. Yeah. Yeah, And even though these women had to survive something absolutely horrific and horrible, at least they did survive, and I believe they got the help that they needed eventually. The police department wasn't
creation at the beginning. M hm, when are they ever? Um a common thing? But yeah, no, at least like they were all alive in the end. And for a play to that woman for calling her sister, Yeah, honestly, like super smart, like really amazing, really really amazing. We're just gonna cut it off right now because recording for a while. So really hope you enjoyed this SIG episode. If you did, and you haven't already done, so check out our previous episodes. You can get
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super duper helpful, and we love getting messages from you guys. Yeah, it really cheers up our day, makes us feel like we're not just wasting our time doing this podcast and that people are actually enjoying it and listen. Okay, twenty twenty two, don't know why, couldn't possibly tell you why, but it was a hard year. Yeah, here is to twenty twenty three, when we will actually like if there's still a few weeks to go. But I'm just telling you guys, it's comedy our year. Okay,
I'm feel it, M feel it. Hype us up, hYP us up to all your friends. Oh my god, yes, word of it. All right, we have a great day, you guys, have a fantastic day, and we will see y'all next week. I love you, Clauncha. It's the genesee Qua Siswa is a cistua or sistua. I also, I was like, they're saying sister, but like sista, no, I think it's a friend. Oh Cista all right, sister? Oh are you excited to see your sisters when I go home for quiz mois uh the hub for quiz Mos