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to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I Am Devin, joined as always by Joe and Steve, and today we're going to talk about another mystery. It's a disappearance. I guess I've been on a disappearance kick lately, like for the last year. Is this like foreshadow and you're about to disappear yourself? Possible? We are going to talk about the appearance of Anna Waters, which happened a long time ago.
It was a long time ago. This was suggested by Morgan listener, probably lots of other people too, but I don't know. Anna disappeared on January sixteenth, nineteen seventy three. She was five years old at the time. Anna's family history is kind of important to the story. So I guess we're going to start there a little bit. And it's kind of a big chunk of the understanding it. Yeah, the theories and what all of the thoughts on it is. So it makes sense. Yeah, So that's kind of where
we're going to start. So it's aid they're very relevant to the story or depending maybe not relevant at all. Yeah, possible, Yeah, but we think it probably is. Yeah, a mystery. Yeah, Anna's mother Michaela Benedict. Is that how you pronounce her name? Because it confuses me every time I look at it. So I looked up a lot of different pronunciations of this. A lot of them are Resilion and they're like michael A La, and I'm I don't think it could be Michelle,
but I think it's Michaela. Okay, because I was really confused every time I read enough, wait, crude. So we'll go with that. Yeah, We're just gonna pick and go. She met Anna's dad, George Waters, in college. George was trying to he was studying to become a doctor, and shortly after they were married, they moved to the San Francisco area so that he could complete his residency. Also part of this family was Michaela's two sons from a
previous maybe marriage, maybe just relationship. I don't really know, uh, the story behind that. I know they were both born in Greece. I don't think I don't think she was married to the man, so I think that George was her first husband. That okay, So that's one of the things that I was going to ask about, because I read somewhere that George was her second husband and that she was married when she met him. It's boss well, okay,
I mean I don't know. I mean i'd never found any clear and frankly, I didn't really look too far into that because I don't think it actually pertains to the story too terribly. You're probably right in probably I just easily confused, and so I was. Unless the previous husband was all embittered about you know, maybe I don't think so. He was also in Greece, so somebody. Yeah, they together had an a in eighteen sixty seven, which was actually the same year that a man named George
Brody maybe came into their lives. I'm and I'm unclear how George and George met. However, they became pretty instant friends. George, Yeah, what's what I've been calling them? And did George did George Brody ever come by the house and meet MICHAELA. I believe, yes, it was a weird relationship. And we'll dive a little bit more intil I've heard about the relationship. But also for the sake of Claire Party, I'm going to call George Waters George and George Brodie Brodie. You
don't want to say George the other George. It's gonna get really confusing into this. This is like that book that I read about a monkey when I was a kid. Was so confusing with the George all the time. Got a coworker name whose name is also Joe, so he's other Joe except for the instances when I am other. I want to just totally get above that and just go with the last name in the first name. So Brody was much older than George. Nobody really knows how
by how much. For certain from photos I've seen of them, I would guess that Brody was at least twenty years older than George. Would you guys agree with that? Yeah? Yeah, there was definitely a generation between them. I was sick of. It was actually a bigger gap. I think it probably was to like about being generous too, I mean, to both of them. I guess, you know, I don't know, it's nothing being friends with somebody's different ages in you. There's not on the face of it. Their friendship was
really weird. You you'll see it as described as a cult of personality often, but basically Brody just became the number one most important thing to George and his life. Brody was super controlling and George was letting him influence every single facet of his life. This was the This was the seventies, though, and there was a lot of that going on. People were looking for Gus, Yes, there was.
That's exactly where I'm going is that there was a lot of people who said, there's this other thing, and these people are going to tell me how to do it, and I will just do what they say. That's why the cult phenomena was so big in the seventies as well. You know, after the after the Manson murders, a lot of actually famous celebrity types are furiously backpeddling away from their relationship with Charlie Manson. A lot of glamorous Hollywood
types were really into Charlie. Yeah, but he wasn't the only GurGur. There was a whole It was kind of a social norm. Yeah. The trick with this one, though, is that Brody only had this kind of relationship with George. He it wasn't like he had a big following or anything.
He just had this one person. So it's a little Yeah, it's a little different, although George at the same time, you know, fairness, he was having some metal issues and so that might have you know, contributed something through this weird relationship and we'll talk about that. Yeah. Shortly after Anna was born, MICHAELA and George divorced, and the number one reason you'll see cited for that was actually his
relationship with Brody. But they divorced, and then Brody and George moved in together into like a really shady part of San Francisco, de Yeah, and into the kind of I think it was a pay by the month hotel room even and it didn't it didn't even have a bathroom in It was shared a bathroom down the hall. And this is interesting to know because George was a working, high paid physician at the time, and so he could
have easily afforded something better than that. It was probably supporting stuff, you know, he was and I don't know that he was necessarily a high paid physician, but he was a well paid physician. I think that by saying he's high paid, you infer that he's got a level of wealth, and he probably actually did because he was working part time at two jobs. The reason that I say he was highly paid. Was because Michaela's book talks about him being very well compensated. I never got that
impression from the stuff I read. But at the very least he could have afforded a nicer place for them to live. He was also totally financially supporting Brodie, but again, they could have afforded a nicer place than this, for sure. Okay, okay, we'll just leave at that. Michaela later met a man named Joseph Ford in nineteen seventy one and they got married three yeah or two, it doesn't really matter. I
would have also divorced you. Frankly, yeah, definitely. Joseph was, by all reports of loving committed father to all of Michaela's children. The family lived in half Moon Bay in California, which is on the coast of California, just south of San Francisco. I've been there town. It's actually I've heard. Yeah, if you go like started San Mateo on the Bay and just go basically due west across the peninsula, you wanted up at half Moon Bay. Yeah, I've heard, it's
really nice. Okay, So backstory done, yeah, yeah, back story done. On January six, Anna had been attending pre K that morning. I don't know if everywhere this is true, but in America, I believe most places you do half day pre k pre kindergarten. Those who don't know what pre K is, pre K was a little pre me. We didn't have pre K when I was a kid. Yeah, people had daycare for a while, and it is a scholastic program. Usually it was at a at the school that her others,
her older brothers were attending. Yeah. The funny The funny thing is that is during the seventies, in the eighties, I believe school districts ran pre K programs, and then of course as funding began to dry up, that was shifted to other programs, sort of like Headstart was one. And now I don't know anybody that has a kid
in pregy. I'm sure that they're putting their kid in some kind of pre kidergarten program, but I don't actually know how those are operating anymore, just because the funding in this country, by state, even it's just city, even it's just so I was, I mean, I was in pre K when it was around still run through Portland Public when I was in school here, So it was
a couple of moons ago ken yesterday anyway. Anyway, anyway, so on a road the bus home, I've seen it reported as at noon, but I've also seen it reported that she got home at one, And I cannot imagine that it was an hour long bus ride from her pre kindergarten class to her home, so I'm not really sure it was mid day. They kind of lived in the sticks up that little road, but it wouldn't have taken an hour. You can't put a four year old on a bus for an hour. Have you ever been
stuck behind a school of us? I could see it taking an hour easily. Anyway. I'm sure I grew up in the boonies, you can, yeah, alright, fine enough. I've seen reporting that some family friends dropped by for a visit earlier that I don't know. It was the seventies. I guess likely adult family friends. So all the friends chatted with her mother and stepfather. Anna went to her room, changed her clothes, and if you really care to see what she was wearing, you can go find a description
of it. And she went outside to play. It was a rainy day, but not so unpleasant that a child couldn't enjoy themselves. Around one thirty on A returned inside to hang up her coat, which I guess was too warm, or maybe it had stopped raining, or I don't really know why. If you've ever warned a raincoat when it's even slightly warm outside, I could see why she wouldn't know, especially those old grubbery ones. Oh yeah, you get his wet wearing the things did you do without them? Yeah?
Then she well, she went right back outside after she returned her coat inside, and then at about to her mom said that she had heard on a singing to the cats outside about for that campaign. At two fifteen, she said she didn't hear on out there anymore. But they did have a family dog that was prone to barking at any kind of intrusion of anybody who it didn't know what it was. It was a younger dog.
It was more of a puppy dog. Oh, excitedly barking instead of warning barking, I think either, but definitely reacting to any presence other than the ones that it was used to. And the reason that I mentioned that is because it wasn't a family dog that had been left over from her marriage to George. Did not know George right, theoretically, I mean theoretically, so since you didn't hear the dog barking, she just didn't really think anything of her not being
able to hear on a singing anymore. So. At t twenty, Michaela went to call on A to come inside, but didn't see her in the backyard anymore. So at that point, Joseph and Michaela started to search for Anna, but at about two five they still hadn't found any sign of her,
and they just called the cops. Which is that point terrible because I mean a lot of parents know this is that you your kid disappears, you know, from your view and from earshot, and you start freaking out and yelling just to find the kid looking at you like what, I followed a bug? It's okay, Like that's what people just expect to be the case. So I can imagine how they'd be like, oh, god, she followed a cat again or something. Yeah, and five minutes later you're like, oh, no,
maybe she didn't. Yeah, so yeah, well looking but you know, and by the way, this is a kind of a rural area. It's nice also, it's a it's a nice quiet area that not a lot of people who were unfamiliar, who didn't just live in the area, drove through or we're in at all. And also, by the way, no scary critters living there. I mean, there's no like bears or mountain lions, not really as far as we know.
One of the first things that the police did was to ring the tsunami siren, which you know, in other places is called a tornado siren or a bomb drill or whatever, you know, a siren that's meant to notify people. I So I read this as well, and I'd also read that the cop who showed up rang the siren on his car. Okay, Now that makes more sense to me because I would think that ringing the local that's kind of a big step to freak the entire community,
like it just that seems above and beyond. Have you lived in a place where those sirens are used frequently?
I've been place the Okay, So there are a lot of there's a very big difference between sounding the tsunami warning like one time, you know, as a local, having lived in a place where they do that, what actual warning sirens sounds like because they just turn it on and it goes forever versus versus just you know, having a go down and then people would just be like what I mean whatever, Um, yeah, I agree, it is totally possible that actually what you know it actually happened.
Was it just seemed an extreme step, That's all I'm getting. Yeah, I mean it was a smaller community, so a five year old wandering away, they just kind of I think they really did think she had just wandered away and if they could just raise a sirens, she would come back.
And I'm trying to think about the irony though, that if they actually blasted this tsunami alert and everything, and like they'll delect for this little to save this a little five year old girl, and time like two or three other five year old kids get like trampled by
all the people evacuating. This is why you don't just randomly layer those horns were off topic already total, that's okay anyway, Uh, if you haven't already guessed, whatever siren was sounded did not bring on a running so they we haven't mentioned this yet, but there was a what's referred to as a creek that was running along the back edge of their property. I don't know it was it sounds like it was a really strong creek at
that time. Yeah, but they all that they decided that that seemed like a thing that was really dangerous, and they decided to converge their search on the creek. Well, if this is January, you know that's the middle of winter. I grew up next to a teeny tiny little creek that in January was torrent So I can I mean and what I know, in a summertime creek was something that I could take three big steps and cross. In the wintertime, I would never even dare to go near it.
So I can see why they would say if it's that kind of scenario, I can see why they would immediately like, oh, yeah, that's that's a problem. Yeah, it was in a flooding stage at that time, and Michaela has said time and time again that she always felt like that creek was a danger to her family. But you know, it was a nice house. I A lot of people want to have would love to have a
creek running through their property. I think it was kind of a love hate relationship with that creek for her, where she thought, I really like having it running through my property, but also I have a five year old and when it floods, she could easily fallen and drowned. And that seems to be exactly what they thought had actually happened to an unsable totally understandable. Yeah, I agree.
They actually thought it was so strong that her bought she could have drowned and washed away, not just drowned. It was only like two or three miles to the ocean and washed down the property. Yeah, exactly. Although it kind of snakes around a little bit, goes under highway once through a culvert, not a bridge, so she would have probably gotten a hung up somewhere, right, And that was the hope. They actually did send divers down. Yeah.
And also by the way it dumps out onto a beach, it doesn't just you know, flow out of a cliff into the aggression rights. Yeah, her body would likely have been found had this happened, But I think so again, that's a little more theories. Like I said, divers were sent down, so it was that's how deep it was that you'd have diverse code down into this creek. They were hanging under ropes, yeah, I would guess, But they
didn't find anything, which was kind of a bumber. They and actually I've seen it, said that this was one of the most extensive searches that's ever happened in California Coast, or something like that. Some neighbors came forward a couple of days later and said that they had actually seen a white paneled truck with two men, one much younger than the other, drive along and normally very otherwise very quiet road. Yeah, that nobody ever really drove on except
for locals. Yeah, if you look at it on the on the area, it's just it's not. It's not a throwaway from one place to another. It goes up and it sort of dead ends into another snaky little road that snakes off in a different direction. It's not a short cut between any two places at all. It's not. It's also not it's not the kind of place you just kind of get lost going. I also, I have a problem with this. You know, it was a couple
of days later. They didn't really know exactly what time they saw this truck, you know, if it was indeed that afternoon, if it was much later that afternoon, if it was earlier that morning, if it was even early on that day, maybe not even the same day, were they sure it was the same day. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. And then the other part of that was they always say two men, one was much older
than the other. But I've never ever seen somebody say like one of them was twenty and the other was sixty. It's always just been like, and we know how freaking subjective that is me today sitting in a truck next to me about two months ago with the full on beard. There one of the massive age difference in appearance, and you could literally have one guy with a beard and one guy without and they're the same age, and you'd
have no idea, especially in a moving vehicle. Yeah, that these kind of details, that's uh, you know, people are grasping. But it looks to me like this is a classic plumber apprentice situation. It was Mario and Luigia. They're the same age. Well I guess they're not. They're brothers. They're close to the the same age. Yeah, but that that mustache makes Mario looks so much older than Luigi. And it
turns out they also had different different fathers, so that helps. Uh, there's more to this story, but I kind of want to dig into that as we dig into theory. Reason is that okay with you guys, So I guess we'll talk about theories. But first let's take a quick break.
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That's simply safe dot com slash sideways. And really, if there's an ogre with a club, just just run away. We're back. So theory number one is a creek, highly unlikely, but I'm gonna I'll have it on here anyway. I guess, like I said, the divers found nothing. There has been official journalistic reporting that says that, yes, this is what happened to her. Realistically, there is no evidence for against this. Yeah, well,
I guess it's I mean theory. I mean, if there had been enough flow and she that she had something, it would have been a fluke. But conceivable. Well, she gets all the way down to the to the ocean without hanging up on something, which would be flucky. But I guess it's conceivable. I don't think it's as flukey as you do. Because she's a five year old girl. She's a little It's not me with my my arms
and legs flailing around as I'm tumbling through water. I am more likely to snag on something than someone that is a quarter of my size because they're much there's much smaller dangly bits, so I could see her bouncing off stuff. It also depends on what she's wearing. So if she was you know, she was in that rain jacket that we've talked about that maybe she was wearing it was super hot. Those things are kind of have big seams and straps and stuff, so that would hang up.
Whereas if she was just in say a T shirt, well, that leaves less stuff to snag on things. I this is, I mean, barring all of the cookiness down the line that we're going to talk about, Like, I kind of think that this might be what happened, because well fits flood stages. Two miles is not a very long time. The trick with this one for me is that there is just as much evidence that this happened as any
of our other theory. But here's the thing about about about water in flood stage it's just picking up lots of crap and flushing it all down stream, and it winds up building up in all kinds of places and what we call strainers, and these are these are just big, huge, like piles of brush and branches and god knows what that the water flows to and end. Then you get pushed up against it, but the pressure won't let you
move and you drown or to have exposure. And so I mean, it's just unlikely that she would have avoided all. But it's only two miles. I mean, what you're talking about is things that happened of the course of miles and miles, those pockets and those whirls and those eddies. It is. But if it's but again, I think that it at flood stage there's less of that those pockets for her to get caught in. But it doesn't matter.
This is the one that I think has got to be the most likely based on everything else that we're going to talk about, just from what I've seen happen to things in water before. It's hard to like hard drives that are neutraly buoyant. Well, she was wearing rain boots. I guess one word as that I guess I would
just assume that those yeah, that something would. It's just it's really a shame that they didn't actually just right after they started searching the creek, that they didn't send somebody down to the beach just you know, waight there immediately see what comes, see what comes popping out? Yeah, I mean yeah, yeah, it's a shame. But that's where we're at. The next theory is the theory m calling the mysterious couple. I've known a lot of those, like
how do these two get together? Because it's just so weird, Like it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you and your wife, Yeah a little bit. Yeah, it was not so strange anyway. The mysterious couple comes from Anna's oldest brother. Okay, Nanda, Yeah, Nanda. I was just gonna say, I've seen it reported that he is was is nine years older than her. But I've seen it reported that it was either of the
brothers that remembered this. But thirty years after her disappearance, one of her older brothers recalled that a month or so prior to Anna's disappearance, the three he had repressed it. Apparently the kids had been walking together and a car pulled up driven by a man and a woman was in the passenger seat. He described the car as a nineteen sixties model Chevrolet I Paula, because we're not supposed to say Chevy anymore. It's Chevy. You can't say Chevy.
It's Chevy America. When did that rule come out? A couple of years ago. Chevy was like, we don't want to be Chevy, we want to be Chevrolet. That's because they were trying to distance themselves from Chevy Chase. Yeah, Ok, the town the actor, because have you seen fletch Yeah, actually it was not very good. There you go. This
is why they wanted to distance themselves. It took them so anyway, it was a Chevrolet and Paula with Washington license plates, not California, which, by the way, that's like a thousand miles north. Yeah, this is a lot of detail to remember thirty years later. The woman had long, dark hair and wore a loose fitting white shirt with embroidery on it. Anna's brother could not describe the man.
Apparently she tried to coax on A. The woman tried to coax on A into the car, and Anna refused, and so they just drove away and I've seen in different recollections, different details about him saying how he felt about the whole thing. I does it feel convenient that it's a thirty year later revelation to anybody? Um, it just it's it smacks strange for me, and as I understand that people do remember things, suddenly I've done it. But it's well, first of all, it's like, you know,
memory is unreliable. You don't know that he actually had this memory. He dreamed it after all this time, or watching the documentary about the Stranger Danger and yeah, or he dredged up an old memory and his mind his memory kind of embroidered it. But it's certainly I don't even know why he bothered to mention it, because it
certainly is useless at this point in time. Correct, Yeah, but I guess that is a it's a theory that they could be involved somehow in her disappearance, like they were the ones that could probably to abduct her or any other you know, cute little girl. They're on a scouting mission. They spotted Anna and thought, hey, yeah, it's a little girl scavenger hunt. So they came by the next month and try it again. Yeah, it seems unlikely, but again just as much evidence for this as any
of her other theories. That there have been theories that Anna is the Sandra Guario State Beach remains, or the Donia Anna County Jane Doe, the Allegheny County Jane Doe nineteen five, or the Newport News City Jane Doe. She knew none of those. The hell out of those corpses, I don't know. I think that, and they just weren't They didn't match. One of them, the beach remains was actually a boy, and the other Jane does were too
old or something. That's and that's I feel really bad for Anna's mother because every time a Jane know is linked, not when they're found, but when they're somebody links into this case, I can only imagine that it just opens the whole bag open again and you got to go through everything all over again to find out, oh no, not it. And I don't know if the police actually
do that out. That's just like Reddit web these are old enough that I have a feeling that this a lot of this or some of this has got to be pret heavy internet slew thing. I think some of it might be like news reporters and what's his name, the friend that was playing p I. Yeah, you know guys like him, who oh hey, I found out about this one. Let's check it out. Like I'm not saying he did it, but people who were trying to be helpful. Well,
the state beach remains that one was the police. They really did think they thought those remains were her because it was a small and that was a jaw bone and part of a skull. Yeah, it was pretty close Moon Bay, but all the other ones, I think they're so far away that you know there's news. I mean, I'm talking like East Coast right. Well, there's there is
this draw for people, I think to constantly. We see this all the time with disappeared missing people, where people then go through Jane and John Doe cases and say, oh, this person kind of matches the description only except for they were three ft shorter and had blue hair instead of our blue eyes instead of brown eyes. But you know, they died twenty years later and this person would have been that age, so there, you know, and there's just there's like a grasping at straws for a little bit.
There's just unfortunately for all the missing kids are out there, that just had enough, Jane does and John does to go around. Yeah that's true, or there are too many. Probably it's probably actually more accurate. Anyway. Our next and final theory, the George squared is that like square dancing or is that like the math problem? Because I remember in high school algebra slash calculus slash trigonomics free slash slashology, there was the George squared problem. So this is that
the last theory. You don't have a theory about the cats murdering or because she was annoying them what they're singing or no, if listen, if anybody's cats were going to kill them because of annoying singing, you'd be in trouble. Yeah, my cats love my singing. No, they talked to you guys. Yeah, they've written us scathing letters about your singing a little backstabbers. Yeah, they're not going to get their extra snacks. Not stabbers anyway. Sorry,
let's go ahead, and okay, let's basically the theory. I call it George squared. It's that George, her father, her biological father, and his weird George George Brody had something to do with her dispearance. And you may be wondering why, other than you know, just a divorce, why we would say that George might kidnap his own daughter. Not unusual, Actually, it's not unheard of. It's actually pretty frequently happens, I think.
But it actually has a lot more to do with Brodie and his relationship with Anna than it has to do with George and his relationship with Anna, which is that And I don't know how many times Brodie actually met on I don't either. It seemed to be kind of obsessed with was, so he had to have met her at least once, apparently, or at least see a picture. Ever, yeah, it may have even just been a picture for all
you know. As as we mentioned a little bit earlier, George would call Brodie several times a day to check in, like he was prettyisi he was pretty much incapable of making a decision without Brodie's input, And I believe I have read reports that it came down to even like what was George going to eat for lunch? Okay, So yeah, I'll wait until we get to that part of the story because some of that information I question fair enough.
As also mentioned, George financially supported Brodie honestly for me when I first started reading this story, and for a lot of people, I think there's a bit of a question. There was a bit of a question of whether Brodie
was even real or not. And the reason for that is because George was diagnosed schizophrenic and that was affecting his behavior a lot, and I think some people just thought, well, maybe Brodie is just a made up guy personality, just some sort of you know, part of his mental illness. And and obviously I think we need to say it now, is that George was not receiving, as far as I can tell, any medical treatment to help him with that condition.
He wasn't, which puts him into that position of as we've talked about before, he becomes prey and just as likely to be hurt or more likely to be hurt than anybody else by his illness. Yeah, I think it's likely that actually Brodie was taking advantage of his illness. But I'll just you know, put that out there, that there was a question Brodie was real. He was a real human photo photos of him, But the relationship there
even like really does seem even like it. Brodie could have just as easily been some sort of manifestation of George's mental illness. This is kind of a what was that movie Edward uh Norton was in Fight Club? Yeah? Fight Club? That that kind of scenari imagine Brad Pitt. Yeah, that's not to say that that's how schizophrenia manifests itself. Um, but George was diagnosed shortly after Anna's birth with schizophrenia. That's kind of sad. But the Jordan Brodie did he
have any like medical expertise, said all or anything like that. No, he didn't. He wasn't a doctor or anything. Yeah, so he didn't have any like psychiatric education or very little is known about Brodyum, but as far as I know, he didn't have any experience in anything. He was he was kind of a freeloader. Yeah, that sounds like there are plenty. But so I assume he's dead by now. Does anybody know We'll talk about that in a second. Actually, I just want to get through what we're what we
were talking about a second ago. I don't I don't know if George was diagnosed with schizophrenia before or after the divorce. I know he was. He was diagnosed because he was behaving erratically and in a manner that was not normal for him, and he actually reportedly displayed a lot of behaviors that did demonstrate him to uh sometimes not always, but sometimes be a danger to himself and others.
But his family didn't want to have him committed to an institution because they wanted him to be able to retain his physicians license. Which which family members? Do you know? I first I thought it was the wife, But then I'm like, now, because like, that doesn't make any sense? Or is it his? I have no idea, to be honest with you, I have no idea. I because she was getting child support from him when when he was gone.
But I mean, but I all, but I also don't think after the divorce, she would have had no authority with which to make medical decisions for him, So it would have had to have been whoever his next of kin would have been. Is my understanding of how those things work. I've I've been really lucky to not ever have to deal with such a hard, tough question. But
I don't know. But at the same time, the idea of like, I couldn't imagine somebody with a good conscious letting him continue to practice medicine knowing that he is not experiencing reality as reality always is, and he was and he was still practicing medicine. Should be clear about that for everybody who's listening. Not only did he retain his doctor's license, he was a practicing position through this
entire thing. Yeah, like I said earlier, like when they moved to the Tenderling, he was working two jobs at two different places. Like who who thinks that's Maybe he didn't have a very bad without treatment. Maybe it was under his maybe he actually was getting medicated. Yeah, I don't really know, I I but like I said, there have been reports that he was kind of a danger
sometimes not always put sometimes, so that's something. Although again sometimes in custody battles to charges like that get made. So maybe he wasn't a danger or I don't think there was a custody battle. I don't think anybody thought that Anna should ever go live with him. I don't even think I think George just walked away. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I mean, despite Brodie's weird obsession that we are just about to talk about, I don't I have
never once read anything about a custody battle. It's been my understanding the entire time that MICHAELA was just automatic was always going to have custody of Anna. That's my understanding of it. That's good, saves a lot on lawyer fees. Yeah, all right, So I guess we should talk about Brody's obsession with Anna because we've been talking around. Yeah, we've
been dancing around this. He was very odd obsession with Anna, and as mentioned, I don't actually know if he ever met her or just saw pictures of her or what, but he said that he thought she was the reincarnation of a woman that he used to live with. I've seen most places I see it say it was a woman that he had a long term relationship with. You, So I would presume some kind of partner relationship. And she definitely born, yes, because she died two months before
Anna was born. Because that's how that stuff works with the eternal wheel, is there a so there's a waiting period then you know, just immediately get repatriated into a new bod. You gotta wait two months out there in the ether for you know, it's not don't you asked me that? Because yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Basically, Brodie had George asked Michaela to legally change Ana's name to if however you pronounce it's not a real thing. It's not a real name, so it doesn't matter. It
has zero meaning whatsoever. The reason that he that Brodie wanted on his name to be changed to that is because it would mean that her name would nu numeral numerals when you can't even say it's not human neurologically. Maybe um add up to his name. And I should also mention here that George Brody is probably a fake name. Yeah, we don't actually, as far as we don't have a social Security number, we don't have crap. We don't know
any thing about him. I don't know. I don't know anything about this actually, to be honest, half of that it did happen, you know, Yeah, I don't. Do you change the name of your kids when my weird friend wants you to change that the kid's middle name, you know, would first name on the first I was supposed to be. I thought that he wanted it to be her middle name. Yeah. See, I I saw every word that it was that I was looking at, and I've also seen it said that
she did change the middle name to ef. I fear how I have no say or maybe or maybe she just told George, yeah, I took care of that. I changed it. Well, and that would be the smartest way if if you know that he is easily riled up and unstable, and the easy answer is just say I took care of it that you know how the county is the papers in the male little show when he's just just tell him, Brody, it's fine, it's in the pipeline,
don't worry about it. Yeah. But on the other hand, that kind of seems enabling behavior, like you're enabling Brodie or you're even enabling your ex husband and father of your child to enable Brodie to continue this weird obsession with your five year old daughter. Well, listen, this was this was not the only cuckoo stuff that was going on,
you guys. I'm sure read the stuff about George was going around to all of her friends his his wise friends are now ex wise friends, saying that she had been unfaithful with to him and I believe it was with Brodie and trying to get them to launch a campaign to get her to write letters of apology to him for doing so. I mean, like it's obvious that this guy was always coming at her with some random off the wall demands slash request just from the little
the few stories that I picked up. Yeah, it was kind of a mess. It's so sad. Illness, you know, all the way around, can really be really everybody. Yeah, yeah, everybody gets everybody. As Joe was asking about earlier, though, Brody died of throat cancer in ninete. We think so. George was actually the one who signed Brodie's death certificate. So he was still a licensed physician then he was.
He was practicing the whole time. Yeah, what was it was he writing prescriptions for medical marijuana or something like that. I don't believe. So it was in California, Yeah, and the death certificate was totally empty other than the date of death. Didn't have a cause of death. Isn't that kind of required? It was throat cancer and it was the date of death, and even that is in question. There's no birthdate, no social security number, no important information,
no identifying anything, no identifying anything. And after Brody passed away, George burned everything, like not the hotel obviously, but like all of the paperwork just didn't happen to be in his apartment. He was in a safety deposit box that he had no access to. Yeah. Yeah, it was like all of Brody's personal effects, everything of all of George, all of George's paper, everything pertaining to Anna that was in the hotel room. All of it just burned. Anybody
know what happened to Brodie's body, buried, cremated? I have no idea. What's another mystery for us Attackle's body. I think it was officially disposed of, ye in a normal okay way? Yeah, Steve, I think you mentioned earlier Doug French, I mean I gave you his name. Yeah, Doug French was not an actual private investigator, but he was a friend of that family revolved. That's we were all private investigators in a way. That's true. He wasn't a licensed
private investigator, because that is the thing. And he did a steak out of the he he followed George around a lot. He was he and the family, I guess, really felt that George and Brodie were probably involved in on his disappearance. So he did a steak out of the shady hotel that George and Brodie shared, and he he said he got a hotel room next to theirs, but it was actually crop the alley. No, he started staking out nowhere and he just watching them, just trying
to follow them around. And then he got a hotel room, but it was my understanding that it was still across an alley, like a small alley. First. Yeah, that's what I mean. He was just following them around. He lived in a van across the street from their their hotel, living in a van in the tenderlow. And what a joy that would be. Yeah, with garbage fair taped in the windows, so you know, that thing was nice and
cool all day long. And then he moved into the apartment across the alley from Yeah, and but it's you know, crappy. It's like film noir crappy hotel rooms where you can hear everything from across the alley. Maybe everything, maybe not. Yeah, after many days of getting no useful information, basically just hearing phone conversations from oh this is once he got once he got the room right in the store to theirs, I thought it was still across the way. But either way,
because his initial stuff said that he could. They kept the blinds down except for say, like the last two or three inches and whatever that equates two millimeters. You can figure it out, and so he could see a little bit through the windows, but that's all he could see was a little bit of their comings and goings.
And then he managed to get a room in the same apartment or the same building, in the same floor, and then somehow finagled his way into the apartment right next door, and that's where a lot of his surveillance, usually standing information comes from. Okay, well, but he never actually took the initiative and just went and broken into their apartment. So, uh, he did something slightly different. Yeah, Basically,
he was getting no good information. He was just hearing Brodie answer the phone and say, well, maybe you shouldn't have tuna for lunch or whatever. Weird decisions stuff was happening, and so finally he decided to bait them, and he sent a letter to George at George's place of work at one of the hospitals he worked at that basically said if you, uh, if you know anything about Hona's disappearance, I beg of you, please come find me, meet meet with me and tell me what you know. Asking for
anything outside yeah, outside of Brodie's control. And so he signed a letter his own name and everything, Yeah, and gave him his phone number, and he gave him a phone number and I don't know the phone number that he was had access to. And George didn't respond to that to Doug, but he went home and told Brodie about it, and Brodie George mumbled, I'm glad that Todd
is dead or something like that. Now, remember this is all with the old school method of listening to the wall to the wall, ear to the wall, or the the empty glass to wall. And he apparently recorded a whole bunch of their conversations. And I remember reading I think it's him that had the blog post, and it's really long, and it's really strangely written and kind of meandering. But he talks about having the relevant bits transcribed. Yet I've not. I've not been able to find the relevant
bits haven't either. And actually, there's one weird thing about this story that I just want to bring up really quickly. There was a Wikipedia page. How does that down? It's been removed so you can see it. Well, we often don't post links to Wikipedia pages, but we will post this link because you have to go through the web archive to get it. But I don't understand why it was removed it's weird. I don't usually have like documentation of things like that. Yeah, I just wasn't able to
find any of that, So I don't really know. There's just like a lot of weird stuff that happens around this case. But I agree, I wasn't able to find any of the transcribed relevant bits or anything like that. One thing I will say is that it's it's reported that George never reached out to michaela about honest disappearance. The only thing he ever said to anybody he was he called his lawyer to see if he could stop
paying child support payments because Anna had disappeared. That was his only reaction to his five year old going missing. And it sounds like he didn't really have a relationship with her, right It doesn't seem like he got visit days and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, So, but if he is also as deeply I'm trying to be gentle about this, If he is as far into it in his mental illness as we all kind of believe he probably was, then she wasn't part of his reality.
So it's kind of understandable that the only time he thinks about it is the once a month when he has to write a check and that's all she is take. It could also be I mean, if he truly believed, as he was going around saying people that his wife was unfaithful to him. If he truly believed that, he might have very well thought Anna was not even his daughter. And so no, it would have been Brodie's daughter. And
that's somehow even weirder. It is weirder. And but yeah, I know, but uh, and you know, that's the thing I really don't get. If he truly believed that Brody had a thing with his wife, why is he living with this guy? Wouldn't why murder the guy is not what you're supposed to do. I don't. I have a lot of questions about his behavior, and I think a lot of it probably does have come down to the
mental illness that he was suffering. But the bigger question I have with this theory is they weren't hiding anyone in their hotel room. Nope, Brody didn't abscond with Anna. It would have been like kidnap and send her away.
But they didn't go on trips to visit anyone. So like, what was the motive behind, but there was there was a significant portion of time that elapsed between when she disappeared and when this friend did his quote unquote steak out of George Squared, plenty of time to get rid of the body or I mean, I get the feeling it was at least six months or a year later.
So if indeed they had taken her, then there was tons of time for her to have been lost in the streets of the tenderloin if anything else, you know, because they obviously we're paying attention to her. I mean, it's just there's tons of times for anything to have happened to that kid, if indeed they were the young man and the old man or older man in the panel van. Yeah, it's well, again, it's really tricky because
there's there's no actual evidence for this right there. We can all agree that there were some weird things going on at that time just with the relationship and blah blah blah, but there's no actual evidence that they had anything to do with it. And then again, I just don't I don't see them. I don't see the motive. I just don't. Well, I can see one motive, which is that if he didn't want to pay child support, then getting rid of on that thing that they would
relieve of that problem. I gotta tell you there's an easier way to solve that problem, and is that is just to not write to check. You can always do that. Is there's a lot of dudes who do that everywhere. The money which is a total, you know, a total lie. But you didn't skip out on it. Yeah, that's good. Boy. Did be dead? Leave town and change your name, and there's all kinds of ways to get away. Become George Brodie. Yeah, Brodie George. Yeah, Brodie George and George Brodie traveling duo. Yeah.
I mean, I think overall, something bad probably happened to Anna, but I don't have a good sense of what that was. I think that I think there's a hundred percent chance of that. Yeah, I think that. Personally. My belief is that she went into the creek and she went into the ocean and she was sucked out into the tide and maybe her remains were never to be found. We know what the ocean does two bodies. There's one more theory. She fell into Neverland or Wonderland and she's there being
very happy, oh with Alice and the rabbit. Well, that's cool for her, that's what happened. I hope that's what happened. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah, I don't, I don't. I'm not gonna buy. I don't buy the creek theory. It's a tiny little creek and it dumps right onto the beach. I don't think her body would have made it across the beach into the ocean, So I don't. I'm buying somebody abducted her for some god
knows what reason. Yeah, although even that doesn't make any sense, because, oh my god, I mean, in a rural area like that, where you're going to stick out like a sore thumb, there's so many better places to go to find an abduct a little kid than that place. Yeah, which is probably why George. The two Georgis make the most sense as suspects. But even though they had and there's no evidence of course. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's impossible. Yeah, it takes us back to the maybe the creek in
so bad after all. Yeah, it's just one of those really frustrating circular cases. Yeah, so now you guys have to deal with it. Yeah, so you're guess. If you want to see that link to the wiki or a couple other links to some research. If you want to get merch, if you want a link to our episode list, the chronological list, if you just want to hang out on our website. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You's got a great color palette. It does, it's really beautiful.
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