I feel like I'm missing out because it seems like everyone is either starting a side hustle or becoming their own boss. And you know what they're hearing a lot? That's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run or grow your business. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're selling books or...
bracelets or donuts or dresses. Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business. Covering all your sales channels from a shopfront-ready POS system to its all-in-one e-commerce platform, Shopify even gets you selling across social media marketplaces like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Full of the industry-leading tools ready to ignite your growth, Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without learning new skills in design or coding. We all have a moment where we revolutionize our business.
My name's Andrew Gold. I'm a British journalist and I only recently turned my podcast, Heretics, into a... thriving business recently and shopify is exactly the kind of thing that takes you from idea and concept into the land of success and entrepreneurship and a whole lot of Ka-ching. Remember that sound from the beginning? That's the sign your business is healthy. It's time to get serious about selling and get Shopify today. This is possibility.
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. Imagine unlocking a version of yourself that's unstoppable, where mental barriers no longer hold you back. Listen to Mentally Stronger with me, Amy Morin, therapist and international best-selling author.
here to guide you on a journey to reaching your greatest potential. Every Monday, I bring you into conversations with some of the most fascinating minds. Experts, authors, entrepreneurs, athletes, and musicians. They don't just share stories. They reveal the mental strategies that propelled them to the top. But here's the real magic. At the end of each episode, I break down their wisdom into practical therapist-approved advice.
In my solo episodes, I dive deep into the techniques that build mental strength. It's like having your own personal therapy session as you discover how to turn these insights into steps you can take right now. This podcast isn't just for those facing mental health challenges. It's for anyone who wants to push their limits, achieve peak performance, and truly thrive. Are you ready to unlock your full potential? Then it's time to become mentally stronger.
Subscribe to Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin, available wherever you love to listen to podcasts. Please make sure you rate and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Also, take a quick moment to find us on social media where we post case updates, behind the scenes photos and exclusive content. Follow us at our handle Atlas Podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. A note to listeners, the following podcast contains content that may not be suitable for all audiences.
Sex trafficking, homicides is a big issue in this country. The FBI at one point had started a database about it. Sex workers in general, they're meeting up with men that they don't know. They become easier targets. But from a medical standpoint, I'm like, the best explanation, this is the only thing where I can say 50% of the time. So we at least have, what's the chance this was hypothermia? I don't know, one in 10,000, one in a million. What's the chance she was strangled? 50%.
50%. Before we move on from Shannon Gilbert's story, there's one more mystery we want to touch on. It began in 2011, as SCPD and the media were really digging into Joe Brewer and his past. At that time, Joe had started talking about a longtime friend that lived with him at Oak Beach, but who had suddenly packed up and left the state. And according to Joe, it just so happened to be around the time that some of the more recent list victims had gone missing. After this, his friend...
well, former friend, had given himself a nickname. My name's Warren, the author of Confessions of the Oak Beach Drifter, by W, hence the W, the pseudonym. I chose to do it that way because my daughter was still going to school and I did not want her being harassed and dealing with the stigma of her father, probably most likely or whatever being.
a serial killer the moniker oak beach drifter came from a new york post article so warren capitalized on that for his book which had already been in the works contrary to what people believe Everybody feels that this was a cash grab book. Bullshit. It was anything but that. I was halfway through my book when I received a phone call from another childhood friend and said,
Have you been watching the news? No, I haven't. I've been real busy. Well, let me tell you what's going down. They found skeletons in the Oak Beach area. And they currently have your ex-roommate Joe Brewer in custody. They're speaking with him. Word on the street is he's blaming you. What's going on? You better be careful. So I was like, wow, I can't believe this.
I can't believe this is happening. So my book was already in the works. I wasn't cashing in on anything. I was already writing my book about my life. And then this happened. And it might be good to understand how he knew Joe and the crazy life he'd led. That way you can understand why the Oak Beach drifter, who we'll call Warren during this, might write a book, which details how he would end up living with Joe in Oak Beach.
Well, I grew up in the Bronx, New York, mixed neighborhood. It ultimately came down to me being the only white kid on the bus, which didn't go over too good. So there was a lot of bullying. A lot of beating. Ultimately, my mother told my father, if my son comes home with another bloody lip and torn shirt, I'm leaving you. Warren's dad knew she was serious, and within weeks, they'd packed up and were headed east out to Long Island.
We moved to West Islop. I'll never forget the day we rode into West Islop. To me, it was so different. And I remember Rod Stewart, Maggie Mae playing in the background. I'll never forget it. And we arrived at the house, and to me it was like a little house on the prairie. It was unbelievable with the white picket fence, and it was a huge change. According to Warren, it was years later that he remembers meeting Brewer.
And he claims they were never super close. Well, I knew Joe from high school. Joe was teasing my friend, you know, being a wise-ass. And he told me... See that kid over there, that's Joe Brew. He's the one that keeps riding my ass. So I said, oh, so you're Joe Brew, huh? He goes, yeah, who are you? And I told him.
We exchanged words, nothing major, but that's how he came under my radar. And I'd run into Joe in bars and stores. It was after high school when a directionless warrant happened upon his future. I had no guidance, and it was from there where I stumbled into the drug scene. It was my very first girlfriend. She was involved with a guy that was into cocaine. And one thing led into the next. He introduced me to his Colombian connection in Queens. And it was smooth sailing from there.
So what you're saying is you started peddling a little bit. Well, yeah, actually a lot. So I was making a $30 profit on each one. It just snowballed after that. But then ultimately he was set up. by his partner on a three kilo deal and went away to prison. So now I'm finding myself like, well, what am I going to do? And one day at the gym,
I noticed somebody that I haven't seen since high school, but much bigger. And I'm like, is that who I think it is? And I walked over and sure it was. He was out of jail. He was involved with an organized crime family. And he said, I got you. I got you. And I went underneath his wing. And that's probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life. Once you're involved in that, you can't get out. You're in.
And I dealt with that for over 20 years. At this point, he's in his mid-20s, married and a new father. However, you'd never guess it from his lifestyle and business, which was hitting the clubs, partying and selling drugs. But now it was for an organized crime family. Party all night, sleep all day. I led the vampire life. It was awesome. It's like people rolling out the red carpet. One of his main hangouts was a hard rock bar or club that helped launch some well-known bands.
I saw Twisted Sister live many times at Hammerheads in West Iceland. We highlight this for the history, less so for the Twisted Sister part, and more because this was also the club that Tina Foglia was last seen at in February of 1982. This possible list victim's dismembered body was discovered in three separate trash bags a few miles northeast of there along the shoulder of a highway. According to her sister, Tina had just started dating a doctor she met at Hammerheads.
But she'd never mentioned his name. It was a party almost every night. I think out of the seven nights out of the week, I think I was home maybe two. And, you know, that is no way to raise your children. I should have been more of a father. I really should have. There were many things Warren saw that told him he needed to get out of this lifestyle. But there's one that really stuck out. There was a bar in Babylon that I frequented. That was pretty much my main spot.
And anybody who wanted to try to kill me or hurt me in any way would have known, OK, that's the spot. And what happened was there was another little crime family that was in the area and they heard about me. Basically, a few days before this, another crime family tried to recruit Warren to sell product for them. He had set up a meeting to entertain the idea, didn't like their vibe, backed out, and they weren't happy about it.
I'm leaving the bar with a friend of mine and a young lady. And all of a sudden I hear, hey, yo! And I turn and there is the guy that initially tried to recruit me with an Uzi in his hand. So I heard you got a problem with us. I said, listen, there's no problem. There was a misunderstanding. He goes, well, I see it as a problem and I'm going to take care of it. So he drew the lever on the Uzi and all I heard was click.
My friend said, run. I ran to my car, got in it, and I took off. So right after that, I said, OK, I need to get myself a pistol. And that was a real close call. So my life kind of flashed before my eyes a little bit because he had me. He definitely had me. And thank God that it got jammed up or else I probably would have been dead.
Things devolved from there and finally his wife had had enough, which was in a sense the beginning of the end. She left me several times, but she always came back. She was addicted to the lifestyle too. As well as the drugs. I mean, we partied all the time. And I think that's what kept us together so long. And then ultimately down the road, she said, I can't do this anymore. That's ultimately when the marriage failed.
It was maybe a year after that. She decided to come at me with a knife and almost stab me in front of our kids. I remember running out the door. As she's trying to literally stab me. And I hear my daughter. My daughter must have been maybe five at the time. Mommy, no, please. That's the only daddy I have. And it was horrible. It was horrible. But I knew it was over.
right then and there. But getting out of the lifestyle of selling drugs and organized crime isn't like a normal job where you just give two weeks notice. To quit, Warren had to find a place off the grid and hidden. And this is when he runs into Joe Brewer. So I told him my situation, and he goes, would you be interested in sharing a house with me in Oak Beach? So it sounded very appetizing.
He said it's in a gated community, which little did I know, it's a steel bar that raises and lowers. And I moved into Joe's. beach house in 2008 i believe and i left in november 2009 And I got to be honest, when I got there, I thought it was kind of creepy. He didn't keep up with the place, and I really didn't see me living there.
I don't care how close it was to the beach. It was literally like 50 yards from the beach. But my girlfriend at the time, she said, no, no, no, no, no. This is going to be our spot. This is awesome. So I decided to do it. to please her and you know the rest is history sir the rest is history 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. Or the violinist who disappeared from the orchestra pit in front of thousands of people in the audience. What about when a mark left behind at a crime scene led investigators to wonder if there were devil-worshipping cultists prowling their rural neighborhood? Well, the Mr. Bolland podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is nothing but these kinds of stories.
Each episode is meticulously crafted to keep you hanging on every word until the final chilling twist. Seriously, the host, Mr. Ballin, has this unique ability to keep listeners balanced on the edge of their life and death with just a dash of excitement like they've never heard before.
Follow Mr. Ball and Podcasts, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Hi, I'm Karina Beemisterfer. host of Morning Cup of Murder, your daily true crime podcast. Yes, you heard me right, daily true crime. Every day, Morning Cup of Murder tells you a straightforward, short-form story about murder, true crime,
cold cases, disappearances, serial killers, cults, and more. And I do that all in under 15 minutes. With over three years of stories and over 20 million downloads, the Morning Cup of Murder podcast has become a staple of so many people's daily routines. So why not add it to yours? Stream Morning Cup of Murder everywhere you listen to podcasts. And remember, stay safe. So what can you tell me about when you were there in 08-09 living with Brewer? What was that like?
It was rough right from the get-go. I had my daughter with me and my girlfriend at the time. I didn't realize this because I was too busy with the move, but they both said, you know what? I feel like I need to take a hot shower the way he's looking at us. And I, you know, duly noted. I kept it in my mind. I didn't want to start no shit on moving day.
But I did start to take notice that he was staring. But it was rough going with him because he's got a certain way about him that doesn't rub well with most people, especially me, because I got a low tolerance for that bullshit. What's he like? What's that attitude you're talking about? Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Joe Brewer. He just got this holier-than-thou attitude that he rises above everyone else.
You know, everybody notices it about him, and that's one of his drawbacks. In that time period you lived with him, what was Joe Brewer's nightlife like? What about girlfriends and friends over and that sort of thing? Joe Brewer's nightlife. Let's see. There were times where he would go out searching for a stripper that he could bring home.
There were times that I would help out at the Stonehenge nightclub, strip club. Every once in a while, they needed a guy to fill in. I would help out. There was one occasion where Joe came in. He said, hey, Warren, you know when he grows up with a... Come home with me for an hour. So I said, let me see what I can do, Joe. And I found one. And she told me after that, like the next time I saw her, don't you ever.
hook me up with that guy ever again he was the creepiest guy i've ever come across and uh Anytime Joe would ask me, I'd say, no, Joe, I can't help you out. But he liked to go to strip clubs to see if he'd get girls to go home with him for a couple hours. During Warren's time at Joe Brewer's Oak Beach house,
We asked if he remembered seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. Well, being that I had the upstairs and he had the downstairs, it was difficult for me to monitor who was coming in and out. Did I hear things? Yes, I heard things. There was one night where I was woken up to loud sounds and please stop, please stop. And I didn't think anything of it. But now in hindsight, after everything that happened, hey, maybe something happened. According to Warren,
He moved out in November of 2009 because his beach hideout, if you will, had been given up or exposed. Joe Brewer talked to the wrong people about, guess who's staying with me? And the next thing you know, I walk out on the deck. one afternoon and i see a black escalade with tinted windows and the window goes down and a man with sunglasses points his index finger in his thumb like he had a gun as if to say you're dead
So my spot was blowing up and I couldn't stay there anymore. I decided I got to make a move here. And I was kind of hoping that my girlfriend at the time was going to say, OK, come stay with me. And that's when she said, I think we need to take a break.
Which when I finally went to Florida, she missed me and she came to stay with me. Then I went back to New York and stayed with her. And then she's like, you know what? Let's get a place in Florida and live happily ever after. And that blew up as well. So everybody out there is like, oh, W is a serial killer. Yes, you know what, Chris, I am a serial killer. I'm going to admit it right now. I'm guilty of murdering at least 21 relationships.
Specifically, we asked Warren about that May 1st, 2010 when Shannon had gone out to see Joe Brewer. And the rumor is that the Oak Beach Drifter might have been there as well. Yeah, but see, this is where things get a little... fucked up, if I may say, because it still bothers me. When I have to read in the paper that I was there that night when I was 1,200 miles away from there and can prove it, that bothered me.
He claims that he never said that. Well, somebody did. It wasn't Shannon. Shannon didn't say it. So he said it. Warren at the time was back in Florida, staying with his parents and recuperating. I was recovering from a knee surgery. I had a torn meniscus and it was being repaired. So, I mean, I'm sure the police probably figured this out. I wasn't there.
But he said that I was, and that bothered me to read that. Why would he say such a blatant lie like that? I know it's to deflect and, you know, removing suspicion from himself and casting it upon me. by saying, oh, what's this investigation with me for? My ex-roommate packed everything he could in his SUV, leaving a lot behind, and just vanished. Which, hey, that looks guilty, right?
Why would I leave so suddenly like that? Well, it had nothing to do with me burying bodies. Had nothing to do with that. Warren did discuss the last time he'd spoken to Joe Brewer. It's been a while. Soon after all this came out. It was, what, two months later? I was back in New York. And I decided to give Joe a call. You know, just to say hey. And he became extremely paranoid.
So I said, he's probably partying again because that will make him paranoid. What are you calling me for? What's going on? I said, listen, I'm in town. I'd like to see you. Why all of a sudden do you want to see me? I said, I thought maybe we could talk. Well, I think this is kind of weird all of a sudden. I think he was implying that I was setting him up. But to make a long story short, we discussed everything that was going on with Oak Beach, Gilgo Beach, everything.
And the last thing he told me before he hung up was, listen, when the shit hits the fan, I have an ace up my sleeve. And then he hung up the phone. So what's that ace, Joe? What is that ace that you have up your sleeve? What did you mean by that? That's the big question. What do you think, Chris? I was just going to say, what do you think, Warren?
Great minds think alike. But yeah, that haunts me as well. What do you mean by you have an ace up your sleeve? If it comes down to where they got you, what are you going to do? Are you going to throw Burke under the bus? What's going on? What are you going to do? Who are you going to pin this on? That's the way I saw it. Do I think that he knows something? Absolutely. I think he knows more than what he's letting us know. Do I think Shannon Gilbert was murdered? No, I don't. I really don't.
I also asked him about life and what it was like after all this came out. My life after Brewers is nowhere near as exciting, I'll tell you that. Every now and then there is some drama. I just had some drama. last weekend actually and it kind of made me smile i'm not going to glorify anything that i did anybody who's in that lifestyle one way or another either you're going to die from it or you're going to end up in prison
And, you know, I did it for over 20 years. I can't believe it. I can't believe I lasted that long. I know those were the rumors about you, but did you hear any rumors about the girls about what happened? I know Long Island's a big place, but still, you know, rumors swirl. I'm going to be honest with you. After all this happened, my oldest son called me and he said, Dad, I got to talk to you about something. I'm like, go ahead. Go ahead, son. Let it go.
He said to me, you will tell me the truth, right? And I said, absolutely. I never lied to you. He said, that girl, Shannon Gilbert? Yeah. He goes, did you ever hang out with her before? I said, no. He goes, are you sure? I said, I'm positive. And he said, well, I remember one night sleeping in the living room and you came up the stairs with a girl and it looked just like her. I said, you're mistaken. I said.
i don't recall ever being with anybody that even looked like her because i'm just telling you he goes i remember it distinctly and i said no i said i never ever hung out with her so you know i had to clear that up with him because he was getting nervous i said no I said no. Never met her personally. So Jack the Ripper is probably the most famous serial killer. Not the most prolific, not the first, as sometimes has been claimed.
But it's unsolved. We don't know who did that. And so it's like a big murder mystery. This is Dr. Kim Rossmo, who you might remember from episode one. He's a Canadian who started his law enforcement career in British Columbia, where he helped catch serial killers. From there, he went on to get his doctorate and out of that pursuit created the methodology of geographic profiling. Today, when he's not doing research at one of the top criminology schools in the U.S.,
He travels the globe training police agencies on better methods of catching bad guys. We love murder mysteries. There's this challenge to try to solve them. And people do that. We've got whole forums on the Internet now of people trying to solve these crimes. There are some really fascinating cases that people try to explore. During our discussion...
Dr. Rossmo ended up expressing an example of what, in part, we hope to accomplish this season. There's one I came across recently regarding some Russian hikers. whose bodies were recovered in bizarre situations, and probably it can all be explained by natural phenomena, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of theories to explain what occurred.
Actually, I've used it as a case example in some training, you know, to try to like get through the bullshit and get through to the actual evidence and the facts. When it comes to LISC, it's hard to know exactly what is actual evidence and fact. in what is simply rumor and distraction. There's a case we use routinely in our training involving a man who disappeared driving home to Los Angeles after doing some filming. He was on the phone.
a cell phone to his wife and then all of a sudden he just disappeared and so what we do is we start off giving the class a five-page article from the la times on it and we tell them that somebody read this article and solved the case not a police officer just some Joe Blow. But the problem is the first two or three pages of the article talk about wild theories, including Martians and CIA and bikers and all the rest of it, which confuses the thinking.
With Lisk, aliens haven't come up, as far as we know. But the point holds. It's easy to chase the crazy. We get it. We're guilty of it. It's fascinating, could make for a great story, but more often than not, it's a distraction. Again, here's Dr. Rossmo talking about the case he uses in training, the one that was solved by someone who read about it in the newspaper. If you actually look at the evidence, it's not super difficult to solve, but the rest of it throws you off.
And that's one of the things you've always got to kind of manage in an investigation, all the noise that will overwhelm the signal. And before we move on. For those of you who would hate it if this case that Dr. Rossmo uses in training wasn't explained, we felt the same way. Oh, I could tell you or I could email it to you and you could try solving it yourself. Yeah, we asked him to explain it.
Well, I'll make you work for it. The guy is driving home in a big SUV type of vehicle and he's not found. So the way I do it in a class, I say, okay, what are the potential theories for this? Do you think he's dead or alive? Well, being alive is a possibility. It's floated. But his life was good. His career was taken off. He was happily married. Okay, if he's dead, what are the possible causes? He'd just die of natural causes or a medical thing.
Well, then why hasn't his body and the vehicle been found? He was murdered. So you have to consider that's a viable one. But you have to consider who would want to murder him. Let's say it was his wife who wanted to kill him. If she hires somebody... You don't know what route he's going to take home. Middle of frigging nowhere in the desert. Plus, you have to get rid of the vehicle. So, you know, anything is possible. So you end up...
back with, none of these make sense, so then they start to examine the assumptions here. Okay, well, if he died in an accident, is there an explanation for no vehicle being found? The guy in San Diego... looked at a map and he noticed the highway went over part of the Los Angeles River aqueduct water system and maybe went into the water. So we actually drove all the way out there.
and looked at the guardrail and found paint of the same color. So he called the sheriff's department. The sheriff's department comes along and dredges and they get not one, but two vehicles that had gone into the water there. including the victim in this case. We did ask Rossmo about this second car that was found, but he didn't have many details other than it was unrelated to the case at hand. All these...
theories that are just problematic. And the article helps us in terms of what we're trying to teach them by laying all these theories right out at the beginning. And that distorts their potential thinking. That's a great little teaching tool. Yeah, it goes over very, very well. Not just for geography, but just for thinking, you know, proper thinking.
Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13 in El Salvador? How the Russian Mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s? Or what about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab? or why the Japanese Yakuza have all those crazy dragon tattoos. I'm Sean Williams. And I'm Danny Golds. And we're the hosts of the Underworld Podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places.
And every week, we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world. We know this stuff because we've been there. We've seen it. And we've got the near misses and embarrassing tales to go with it. We'll mix in reporting with our own experiences in the field. And we'll throw in some bad jokes while we're at it. The Underworld Podcast explores the criminal underworlds that affect all of our lives, whether we know it or not. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Do you find yourself captivated by the inexplicable, entranced by enigmas and tantalized by the unknown? We are Shane and Josh Waters, brothers who will weave you through tales that have mystified us for years. From haunted hotels to inexplicable disappearances. With a gripping narrative, we invite you to join us on a journey into realms of the unexplained.
So, armchair detectives, curious minds, and seekers of the strange, it's time to put on your headphones and dim the lights. Dive into the uncanny world. of the Mystery Inc. podcast and prepare for a journey into the unknown that you'll never forget. And remember, some mysteries are better left unsolved, but not unexplored.
The highly anticipated second season of the hit podcast Proof is finally here. Proof is an investigative true crime podcast co-hosted by Susan Simpson of Undisclosed and Jacinda Davis of Evil Lives Here.
Proof made headlines for its first season in 2022 after proving the innocence of two Georgia men serving life sentences for murdering their friend Brian Bowling when they were just 17 years old. 25 years later, on December 8th, 2022, both men were finally freed based on evidence unearthed by proof.
In the second season of Proof, Murder at the Warehouse, Susan and Jacinda are on the case again, this time traveling the streets of Menteca, California, to uncover who really murdered 18-year-old Rene Ramos.
On June 5, 2000, Ramos' body was found buried under a pile of debris inside the shell of a new Home Depot building. Despite tips hinting at alternate suspects, tips that were ignored until now, Renee's boyfriend, 18-year-old skater Jake Silva, and Tai Lopez, the 33-year-old uncle of one of Jake's close friends, were arrested and convicted of her murder.
Fans of true crime and investigative series won't want to miss this riveting new season. Follow the case as Susan and Jacinda uncover long-overlooked evidence about what really happened to Renee by listening to Proof, Murder at the Warehouse, wherever you get your podcasts.
Serial killers can be really challenging to capture, particularly because they target really vulnerable people. This is Dr. Jackie Sabir. She has a PhD in forensic psychology and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. But she is far from just some highbrow academic. I'm an assistant chief constable in Bedfordshire, and I manage the homicide murder investigation teams there.
And Jackie has been the SIO, that's Senior Investigating Officer for those who don't watch British detective shows, on a number of high-profile cases. And she knows how hard these cases, like lists, can be. One of the really crucial things that we get trained in is the golden hour. So if you come into a homicide, that first sort of 24 hours of gathering your evidence, your forensics, your witnesses, your scenes, your CCTV, all of that really, really important lines of inquiry.
The longer you delay in trying to get that sort of stuff, the more likely you are to lose it. We've lost all of that evidence and trying to retrieve it, trying to recreate all of that. Detectives are on the back foot to start with, and that's what makes these sort of cases so difficult to solve. And because we're fans of crime shows, especially the British variety where they solve tougher cases while sounding brilliant doing it...
We asked Dr. Sabir how the actual detective work is different from these shows, and more so, how they might affect our perception of this reality. So real police work really isn't like the shows. I really wish it was because they have a lot better kit than we do. Kit, meaning equipment or gear. There's a particular show in the UK. I'm sure I've seen it in some of the US where you've got these sort of...
boards that you know you can home in on some cctv and it will suddenly come up with a number plate where the person lives and their dna profile actually the truth of it is you'll have a flip chart a highlighter pen you'll be really tired you will have been Up 36 hours, you're really grumpy, you're hungry and nothing is coming together and it's really frustrating and tiring and that's the reality of it.
But that's okay because you get DNA results within a matter of minutes, which will ID your perp. You'd be lucky if you could drive it across London to a lab in 20 minutes. You know, you'll get a phone call and actually you'll have the lab telling you you're not going to get your DNA for another two weeks. So it's not as quick. But some of the shows really do show...
the passion, the compassion and the professionalism that detectives have. And that's why we do this work, because you love it and you want to get justice for victims. So some of that is right. And some of the real dark nights that you have around, I'm never going to solve this. How am I going to find who's done this?
That's really reflective, but it's certainly never as quick and certainly never as glossy as it appears on the TV. But that's fine because you've got time and a brilliant team fully devoted to this one case. And also... What I quite like about the shows on TV is you're only investigating one case at a time. Actually, in reality, you've got people at court. You've actually got two murders running, potentially. You can be on call, so you'll be...
expecting to be dealing with advice for other cases that are happening very rarely do you get to just concentrate on just the one case it's just life we don't have enough of us you'll have a small team a major investigation team and you will be running up to sort of maybe 10, 15 jobs in any one time. So you take all that and then you add in victims that aren't often reported or found until years after the fact, and you begin to get a picture of why serial killer cases are so difficult to solve.
There is usually an association between the offender and the victim. So police will work outwards from the victim. Grievances between, you know, family members or a drug buy that went sideways. But if we have a stranger on stranger crime, which is virtually all serial murders and rapes and those types of things, let's call them predatory crimes, there is no connection between the offender and the victim. That means the police have to work inwards.
towards the crime from a very large pool of suspects. Here's something else that doesn't bode well for serial killer cases like Lisk. So if we take a look at clearance rates for police investigations. Just to clarify, clearance rates are crimes cleared or solved by way of arrests. So higher clearance rates are a good thing. Clearance rates. They have dropped, and they've dropped dramatically.
since the 1960s and this is a bit of a paradox that no one understands because at the same time since about 1991 homicide rates and many other violent crime rates have dropped. So you would think with less demand, we'd be able to solve more crimes, but that's not what is happening. So why? We have all this technology, we have DNA, we have these great tools and cell phone analysis and video cameras, but we're solving less crime. A couple of years ago, the United States hit a historic low.
where 59% of murders were being solved. Why, with all the technology and the DNA and the dropping crime rates and murder rates, what do you see as the thing of the clearance rates? Why is that? Why are they dropping? No one really knows. There's lots of theories, everything from, well, if I could put my finger on some ideas, and let's call them ideas. Just to point out, this is where a bit of good news comes in. One is lack of cooperation from the community.
Research shows most crimes are solved as a result of the information from the public, which makes sense. They're out there in the community. There's many more of them. And although many of you don't trust the SCPD when it comes to this case, Don't let that distract you from the silver lining here. The public. They are the ones who actually help solve most crimes. Now, often that's the result of an eyewitness or key testimony, which we hope has or will come out regarding LISC.
But there are other ways the public helps move cases along to closure. There's the online sleuthing community specifically. But more generally, simply tuning into a related podcast or series does a little bit to help keep a light on the case. And that can help light a fire under law enforcement or even bring the case to the attention of someone who just might know something that blows it wide open. Coming up on LISC. Most serial killers are boring.
They're not these engaging rich people. And if they're a psychopath, they're particularly boring. Because psychopaths can't engage. There's no empathy. When we looked at profiling or analyzing this guy... The experts in the field tell us that these guys evolved. The first bodies were dismembered. The last four that we found were not dismembered. Why? My belief is that LISC is one killer.
It would just be too big of a coincidence for there to be multiple killers using the same dumping ground in Long Island around the same time. I don't believe that there aren't any coincidences. Coincidences and just strange things happen all of the time. This episode was written, produced, and recorded by myself, Chris Moss, Jonathan Beal, and Shannon McGarvey. Editing and musical composition by Blake Maples. Executive producers are Jonathan Nowzarden, Jonathan Beal, and me, Chris Moss.
Brought to you by Mopac Audio.