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powered by shopify sign up for a one pound per month trial period at shopify.co.uk slash glass box all lowercase. Go to shopify.co.uk slash glassbox to take your business to the next level today. shopify.co.uk slash glassbox. Every town has a dark side. This is Andrew Fitzgerald from the Everytown Podcast, where every single week we dive into insane and mysterious true crime stories, most of which you've never heard of.
Stories like the bizarre disappearance of Tyler Davis in Columbus, Ohio, a 29-year-old father trying to find his way back to his hotel when he disappeared and was never heard from again. and Elizabeth Shove from Lugov, South Carolina, who was abducted from her driveway by a madman and taken to his underground bunker in the woods.
We give you all the details you're interested in hearing about without any fluff or fillers, because ain't nobody got time for that. We cover everything from psychopaths to poltergeists, so go check out the Everytown podcast, because Everytown... no matter how nice it may seem, has a dark side. Welcome to a bonus episode of Lisk, Long Island's serial killer.
A lot of the work of the List podcast involves cultivating research and culling a sometimes daunting amount of information, new and old, about the case. A large part of this research involves collaborating with trusted sources. One person who's been especially helpful to the List podcast is the anonymous author of the website gilgocase.com.
He has spent countless hours tracking, organizing, and citing information about the Lisk case. He is also the longtime lead moderator of the Lisk subreddit board, one of the largest online forums about Lisk. Recently, he went on the record with our senior producer, Shannon McGarvey, to discuss his website, his thoughts on the case, and his work as an online researcher within the true crime community. I hope you enjoy this episode.
First of all, thanks for speaking with me today. Let's just start from the top and introduce yourself and tell me what you do. I run googlebase.com. If you're not familiar with it, it's a website devoted to the Long Island serial killer case to help educate people and keep attention on the case. I try to be as objective as possible and include sources for everything.
It's just the facts, no rumors, no misinformation. And if you want to research the case, it should be a good starting point for you. I also run the Long Island Serial Killer subreddit. How did you get involved with... the true crime subreddit community, not just Lisk, but just in general. Years ago, I was reading about the Golden State Killer case on Reddit, and it was discussed on a lot of the true crime subreddits pretty often, but the threads would come and go.
and I thought it deserved its own dedicated forum. And so many years later, it's up to about 50,000 members now. I'm still involved in the Golden State Killer community, but a lot more in the background. I'm the head moderator. And I'm not posting much these days, mostly keeping the place running behind the scenes. It's really nothing glamorous. It's a boring job, but somebody's got to do it. Yeah, unpaid and usually unthanked, but that's okay. I'm happy with the spot.
So why do you do it? What do you hope that it achieves? You know, I mean, if it's boring and unglamorous, you know, why do you do it? I wouldn't say it's boring. It's definitely interesting, but it's not glamorous.
I run these forums because it gives people a safe place to discuss the case, and myself included. People are free to share their opinions, theories, clarify information without worrying about... saying the wrong thing you know it's a community and people are all there to discuss the same topic some people have tips and they might look up the case and be drawn to the forum and they want to know
if they should submit a tip and the answer is always yes. I've directed so many people to submit their tips and I usually remove these posts and message them privately because a lot of that information shouldn't be shared online. reason to keep the forums going is victims and family members of the victims join and you know they deserve a safe place to discuss the case too and i've actually had messages from
for victims and family members of some of these crimes. The final reason is keep attention on the case. The more and more eyes on the case, the more people talking about it, the more it's on people's minds and not forgotten about. I love that. So you're not just a moderator. You're also a web sleuth in your own right. What is your history with web sleuthing and how did you become interested?
in true crime i'd say i became interested in true crime really early i i loved watching cops as a kid unsolved mysteries forensic files i remember being about five years old I was singing that cops theme song about bad boys. I think I love a good mystery and more importantly seeing a resolution. I really enjoy understanding how the pieces fit together. You want to see that resolution but...
You want to see it for the family as well, you know, and the victims. They all deserve closure. So I think it's just a human nature to want to see that. Let's go back to Golden State Killer because... With the List case, we get a lot of questions related to Golden State Killer, even though they're obviously different cases.
That said, can you speak to some of the parallels between Golden State Killer and LISC? There are definitely some similarities between the Golden State Killer and Long Island Serial Killer. I think there's a lot more differences with the cases as well. I think that's where they really stand out from each other. Golden State Killer is targeting middle class people in their suburban homes.
And these are people who would be instantly missed. So there's a huge difference there. Long Island Circular is targeting vulnerable people. He's targeting people that might not be reported missing or might not be noticed that they're missing, might not have families that care about them. That's probably his hope in targeting these people, I would assume. I think that last part that you said is accurate. That's part of why sex workers are targeted, because the killer thinks...
that surely no one will be missing these people, no families that care about them. And unfortunately, in some cases, that is true. But in the case of the Gilgal Four, that couldn't be farther. from the truth. And that's the thing. I think that's like the common misconception is that, you know, people don't care about these women, but in fact they do. You know, it would probably seem that way to the, to the killer when he's picking these victims.
But you're right, it couldn't be farther from the truth. Yes. And I think that that sort of sums up what you were trying to say perfectly. You talked about how the Golden State Killers MO changed over time, right? Can we talk about the M.O. of serial killers? People often wonder if a serial killer's M.O. can change. Just from looking at the crimes of the Golden State Killer, you can see an evolution.
in his crimes and he's starting off in the mid 70s with home invasion burglaries and he moves up to sexual assault then he starts attacking couples where there's the husband or boyfriend present and By 1979 or so, he's murdering people. Overall, the trend shows a clear escalation in his MO. Going back earlier, the Zodiac Killer in 1969 sent a letter.
He said, I shall no longer announce to anyone when I commit my murders. They shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, and a few fake accidents. Who knows if he really did change his routine, but it was over 50 years ago. He's saying, my MO is going to change and you're not going to know from here on out. I think that's an interesting early example of how a serial killer's MO could change. That's actually really interesting and quite terrifying because it just shows this level of...
premeditation and anticipating that law enforcement are going to be looking for patterns to try to solve these crimes, to try to link them together. And the serial killer is going to be smarter. and is going to make it look like an accident or make it look like a routine robbery or whatever to throw law enforcement off, which is just, it shows such a high level of planning and just evil.
That's taking him at face value, but maybe this is just more trickery. He said he was going to bomb police stations. He said he was going to shoot kids getting off a bus. He never did these things, but he's always writing these letters full of these threats. Is this just another one of those kind of letters, just messing with the investigators? Or did he follow through with his plan of changing his MO? Sounds like an agent of chaos. It's just a way to potentially just distract from these crimes.
or potential crimes. It really goes to show how serial murder sometimes is seemingly senseless and habitual, and then sometimes it's just incredibly premeditated and planned. It's terrifying. Have you ever heard about the woman who woke up in a cold sweat like she just had a nightmare, but she knew what she saw while she was sleeping was more than just a bad dream?
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So why not add it to yours? Stream Morning Cup of Murder everywhere you listen to podcasts. And remember, stay safe. So back to the Lisk case. There are literally thousands of cold cases out there. So what is it about LISC? What kept you here? Yeah, that's a good question. So there are countless cold cases out there to research.
I think with the Long Island serial killer case, I was initially drawn into the mystery of it all. It is a huge mystery. It's intriguing to some degree, and I'd like to understand it. But then you read Lost Girls. really humanizes these victims. Robert Coker did an amazing job at showing you the human side of these girls and understanding their stories and where they came from. You want to see a resolution.
You want to understand it for yourself and you want to find the answers for these girls and their families. I think it's human nature to want to see that. What compelled you to make Gilgocase.com? Let's talk about the genesis of that and your work on this website. Everything that you sort of hope comes of it.
Or whatever. You know, let's just talk about Gilgocase.com. I met Gilgocase.com for a few reasons. It initially started as my notes, just to help myself remember all the details of this case, because there's so much going on. There's so many people involved. It is a huge case, so I want it to be organized. And then a friend of mine who was involved in the Golden State Killer case, another web sleuth, she wrote two books about the case.
And she run three websites about it. And, you know, they're all different and they're all useful. And the main one would be GoldenStateKiller.com. It was a phenomenal resource. It was very organized. And I loved it. So I thought I could do something similar with this case. And I intended it to just be a resource for other sleuths to stay organized. I realized that there were a lot of people visiting the website.
I knew I had an obligation to make it the best I could. And if you think about it, this case is really difficult for people to learn about. There's not really one comprehensive source. Personally, I learned about it from Lost Girls. the book, Wikipedia, podcasts, the eight or so documentaries and shows about the case, Reddit, web sleuths, Facebook groups. There's so many places and information is spread out.
And I wanted to make something where someone could go and not learn everything about the case. Because there's way too much for one person to cover. But, you know, it's just the facts. the important details. You can go there and get a good foundation of what is going on in this case. Educating the public and web sleuths is important, but one of my main goals is to hopefully reach someone who's not
reading all of these forums. Maybe someone out there who knows Peach's family or a friend who knew a girl who disappeared, but then they see the tattoo and they can put two and two together. Robert Coker once wrote in Lost Girls, a missing girl is only missing to the people who notice. And those people might not be reading all of these forums. They might not even know about the case. So I'm hoping...
The website keeps growing and can reach a wider audience and someone who knows something sees it. I think that's beautiful and totally true. And you've done an excellent job with Gilgocase.com. I've used it countless times, and I know that other people have also used it. And your original intention or purpose for GoGoCase to help other web sleuths.
stay organized has 100% come to fruition and helped me stay organized several times. So thank you so much for your hard work on that and your continued work. to to be a resource an invaluable resource to the community um and speaking of the community let's now talk about you know
the national and worldwide community of web sleuthers and researchers. Who are they? You know, what do they look like? Web sleuths come from all walks of life. I don't think there's a... single answer that could describe this diverse group of people you know most people remain anonymous but you know you learn details about people talking to them and I think a good example
of how diverse web sleuths are is if you go on the web sleuths forum, they have a list of their verified insiders. These are people who are experts in a certain field or case and they've gotten their credentials verified. And scrolling through this list, there's got to be over 100 or 200, I don't know. You name a field, there's a web sleuth there. Tons of healthcare workers. There's journalists.
lawyers, private investigators, cops, the list goes on and on. So I think it's pretty clear that web sleuths have a diverse background and a lot of experience in different fields and they can each... contribute something unique to different cases so speaking of that can you think of an example where web sleuthers or online researchers whatever you want to call them have
done work that have helped to solve a case. Web sleuths or online researchers have solved cases whether they consider themselves web sleuths or not. The first case that I know about goes back to the late 80s. This guy Todd Matthews is credited as being the first web sleuth as far as I know. He...
identified a Jane Doe that was known as Tent Girl. This is, you know, pre-internet, most of this case. And he was in libraries, looking at public records, and eventually he moved on the internet to continue his research. He identified her, I believe it was 1998, and since then there's been a lot of does have been identified by web sleuths. This one referred to as the Grateful Doe.
It's a victim or a doe that was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. And they made a whole forum on Reddit for this case. And eventually they identified this person. And since then, I've seen a lot of other does get solved on. I wouldn't say it happens all the time, but it happens enough to where you can say that the work is very important. An interesting case I saw recently, there was a hit and run.
and they had some very blurry video of the license plate. You couldn't make out a single letter but they very ingeniously stacked up all of the frames and aligned them. And they used some, I believe, software involved in astronomy photography to, I don't know, I don't know how it works, but they were able to extract some useful information and identify the license plate.
Very smart people involved in that. I mean, that's, that's amazing. And I don't doubt it. I mean, I've seen, I've heard of cases, even, you know, the web sleuth that we reference this season. you know, in the season of LISC, had no real professional training and did the work of, did geoforensic work. And, you know, they're just... your average person with an interest in true crime, doing the Lord's work, honestly. So do you consider yourself...
a web sleuth or an online researcher? And if so, what type of work do you do? What is your process? I guess I consider myself a web sleuth, but I think online researcher might be more accurate. I do a lot of research, and I would love to solve the case, but I don't expect to. My work is mostly aimed at combining all of the information I can into one resource to help others.
research the case. I look at a lot of databases like Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, criminal record websites, background checks. A lot of the work involves missing and unidentified people websites like Charlie Project. GoNetwork, and NamUs. Some of the work involves freedom of information requests, and a researcher I know does a tremendous amount of these.
basically writing to an agency and saying, I would like this record. And legally they have to comply a lot of the time, but not always. And he doesn't cover a lot of information. He goes by Murder Inc. He has a website on WordPress and a huge amount of research there. And a lot of it he's gotten through FOIL requests. I think a lot of people assume that the work of a web sleuth or online researcher. is solitary. So that said, do you work with...
anyone or do you collaborate with other online researchers and what does that look like? How does collaboration look? As an online researcher, there is a degree of collaboration, at least with how I work. Sometimes you can get caught in your head and think you're really onto something, and it really helps to bounce ideas off of other people you trust who know the case well and see their opinion on it. Otherwise, you can get caught in your head.
Sometimes it really helps to have a second opinion on something. And sometimes you do have something good and you doubt it. I think you're just talking about checks and balances. Sometimes it's good to bounce ideas off of people. It's easy to get in your own head, sort of get a little myopic when you're in the weeds of research. So it's great to have somebody in your pocket.
so to speak, where you can say, hey, I'm going down this rabbit hole. Should I quit? Is this crazy? Because some of the elements of the Long Island serial killer case are, quite frankly, crazy you know so I mean I think it's important to have stuff like that yeah yeah you're right sometimes you you feel like you're going down a rabbit hole and you know what's at the end of the tunnel
Some researchers I know and work with come to me with some really interesting ideas for research I would have never thought of. And sometimes we find some interesting things going down these obscure avenues. So it's definitely a team effort. a large degree of collaboration. Let's talk about the solvability of LISC. Do you, you know, on one hand, I think, you know, like, why do we do this work? I think the LISC case is definitely solvable.
Obviously, I haven't seen what the investigators have, but Golden State Killer was solved after so many decades. And granted, they had his DNA. You know who knows what they have in this case if they have his DNA if I think it's only a matter of time But there's other ways it could be solved identifying one of the does Jane or John does could be
to provide so many leads. You know, when you think about Valerie Mack's case, they said they identified her and they'd release her name later. So a week later, they released her name. I can only assume that's because they were following up any potential leads they could from knowing her identity. Where she's from, who she knew, where was she last seen? What if the killer made a mistake early?
and valerie mack could have led them right to him so there's other does that could maybe provide leads fire island jane doe peaches etc So maybe they could be the key to cracking the case. An early mistake. The does could be identified via genetic genealogy like Valerie Mack. Maybe some web sleuth makes a match.
I'm sure everyone's combed through all of the missing person databases, but maybe there's something out there waiting to be discovered still. Or someone who knows something comes forward, whether it's about... one of the victims or they have a suspicion about who the killer could be. There's a lot of possibilities. I'm really hopeful that it's going to be solved one day. I don't think there's one specific key.
Just hoping one of these potential avenues is the right way. Why do you think the dough work is so important? I mean, there's obvious reasons, and then I think there's not so obvious reasons. So can you touch on those? I think identifying the dose is so important for a few reasons. Number one, it would bring some closure to families, hopefully, having some answers.
being able to bury their loved ones. These victims deserve to have their names back. They're real people and they do matter. They matter to someone. They definitely deserve to have their names back. And finally, knowing their identification could bring new leads, whether it's where they lived, who were they last seen with, what were they doing before they died.
Someone could have some information. That's great. So last question, unless you have anything else to add, what advice would you give to aspiring web sleuths? Don't make a huge website. I'm making a joke. For any aspiring web sleuths out there, I have some advice. I would say to follow the evidence and stick to the facts.
Leave no stone unturned, but try to base your theories off of what the facts are instead of looking for facts to fill in a theory. Try to avoid misinformation and rumors. You can investigate these avenues, but don't... confuse them for facts. And most importantly, if you have something good or you're not sure about it, send it to law enforcement. The police, the...
detectives, FBI agents, they know how to handle this information. You can only go so far researching online. Eventually it has to be given to law enforcement. As far as what not to do, I think a big thing is don't make public accusations. In the Golden State Killer case, I saw dozens, probably hundreds of accusations made publicly against people, and none of these people were Joseph D'Angelo, the killer. So a lot of people...
how the awful accusation made it them. It's okay to look into people's backgrounds, but, you know, keep it private. And if it's something good, send it to law enforcement. Coming up on the next bonus episode of LISC, Long Island Serial Killer. Give us a little bit of background about Oak Beach itself. When I drive through there, I think to myself, wow, a lot can happen here without the rest of the world knowing.
Our senior producer, Shannon McGarvey, sits down with radio personality, author, New York State and Long Island Politico, Frank McKay. Frank has been covering the List case for years and has always been an outspoken critic of Long Island political powers. and what he sees as a massive cover-up for the Lisk murders. It'll be an interesting episode you won't want to miss.