Of the Law and Order franchises. SVU is considered especially watchable.
We are the amateur detectives who kind of investigate the vicious felonies.
These episodes are based on. These are our stories.
Done done, Hello, and welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Kara Klink, and I'm Elisa Tragger, and we're pumped here.
We do SVU and then we.
Talk true crime and you know up top, we catch up a little bit and we pretend we don't see each other almost every day. And this will be our third intro in a road talking about Halloween.
I'm eating Halloween candy right now, baby at nine am.
You lucky bitch, You lucky bitch.
I really had a not I mean, I went to Rosie's Halloween parade.
That was very She was thrilled. Her teacher goes, did you see her trying to go into the crowd. I go, she has a friend, Like, I didn't catch that. That's so cute. She went to go say hi to you, and the teacher thought that Rosie was just like greeting the fans like she thought that Rosie was just like heading to the talking to her people.
I was having the time of my life.
I mean, Rosie as a zebra was great, but I did have a favorite child, and she did win her grades costume contest. And then I love the Dunkin Donuts Munchkin Box girl. Yeah that was she was the star for me. She was the star. The Medusa was nice, the Jack Skellington brought it, but I was really feeling the Munchkins Box.
Yeah, it was really cute. They like parade around. Everybody watches they do go by grade.
It was cute. Well I remember our first grade.
You know what was so interesting seeing this Halloween in La It was in the eighties and like, yeah, my whole childhood.
It was like fuck, like what my cold? I don't want it to cover my costume.
Yeah, and then it was like how to be warm in the costume and these kids were sweating, swearhoods off, like children were struggling and it's such a different experience, totally totally.
Mom, I don't want to wear a coat. It's gonna ruin the whole look.
And like here it's like Rosie had kids that are class, like, go did they not dress up?
She goes, no, he's sonic.
He just got too hot, like you know, like people just it's it was boiling and I like was out in the sun for like five hours because I was the chair of the Harvest Festival as an insane person. And then I went straight to trick or treating and I went to a street that was so wild. It's like a classic La street that people love to go to. And it was too crowded. I'll never go there again. Could barely walk on the sidewalks. The kids had to like you know, wait in line to get into certain
houses because the stairwalls were like flooded with children. I just I'm not doing that shit again. I'm gonna go my neighborhood. My neighborhood has good stuff, and I shouldn't have gone to another neighborhood.
Yeah, you just can't say no.
You have an ultimate fomo and you needed to go to the main street.
And now you learned. I learned.
I learned, and I'll never go back again. But she got to see a bunch of her friends, and you know, it was cute.
We ran into people. We knew it was cute, but it was part of the hood. I don't know.
I grew up as your trigger treat where you live, like even the planned and the curfews, and we're actually doing it on a Sunday like that that's future shit.
That's like not a part of my hate.
Yeah, Like I feel like there are people that are like, oh, we did our neighborhood does something on the weekend, or.
Like I don't know, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean not to insult anyone.
Even thinking about kids, like trigger treating in an apartment building is so funny to me.
Like in New York.
Yeah, I asked one girl in the class. I asked her mom because I love her. Mom talked to her and I was like, are you where are you guys going trigger treating? Because they live around the corner from us. She goes, I'm not taking her trigger treating. I was like what.
She was like, she hasn't asked about it. I'm not taking her.
I was like, Okay, that's amazing way she hasn't asked about it. Because this woman has like two older children, like I think maybe even like twenties or like late late teens, and then this and then this four year old. So I think she's kind of like I'm done. If she asks me, I'll take her. But if she doesn't mention it, I'm not doing this.
No. I actually so I went to a show called Witches and that was really fun. I was devastated to miss. But then I got home and I watched Alvira and you really can tell why RuPaul loves it. You really can watching it. It camp It's He's all I think about. I'm like, oh my god, RuPaul probably cackled at this. Yeah, oh she loved this.
You know. But Elvira Mistress of the Dark really ahead of its time.
I think I've actually talked about the Vira movie on this podcast before.
I yeah, I know, I have yay.
I totally remember being like it's ahead of its time because she just keeps getting assaulted and harassed for the moment the movie starts till the end, Like most of the movie is her shutting down dudes that are trying to rape her and then getting like she shows up to a town and people in pitchforks are like, you're a whore, and it's like all of your boyfriends are trying to assault her.
But yeah, so it's really kind of it.
It's so funny because it's like I have just this like general remembrance of like youth being like, oh, well, Vira, she has her tits out, she's a slut. Oh Dolly Parton, she has her tits out, she's a slut. Monica Lewinsky,
like she fucked the president. She's a slut. Like that's like what was going on in my like household, I think because of my Republican dad, And like when I now that I look back at all that stuff, I'm like, oh yeah, these were like icons and all, and I had completely the wrong idea like revisionist history.
Yeah as a teen, Like I just know so many people that are so cool now that we're teen Republicans.
Yeah, or I.
Remember you think I was grade sitting next to my friend who I still keep in such within fourth grade we are our desks were across from each other, and I remember her being like, I don't know, el Clinton's just so ugly.
I'm a Bob Dole girl.
And I was like, Bob Dole's pretty ugly too, Like I remember this conversation like it was Yester. Now I'm a Bob Dole girl. Is such a wild thing to hear from a fourth grader.
She was just like, oh, because it's our parent.
It's like you don't even know how you're being brainwashed. Like there are comedians who are obviously like so liberal ahead of everything, and they were teen Republicans and I know it. One of my best friends was when she got to college, wrote an article about like George Bush. It's like, eh, and that's why the Republicans hate college because then you learn, Yeah, they would prefer you not doing that because yeah, and.
Urban cities because that's where you meet like people with different opinions and backgrounds.
And yeah.
It's just so funny how they don't get that it's a self owned for them to be like, oh, college, that's where you turn liberal and gay. And it's like wait, what, like you mean the place to learn makes them against you, Like isn't that a little inclination to.
Maybe you're dumb? I don't know. I don't want to alienate it anybody. JK.
We I don't think we have Republican listeners. No, they came, they left a bad review.
They left. You know, we had them, but they were gone. They're gone now.
I think message almost if you are a Republican who is just okay putting up with this bash, Oh well, all of the Catholic apologists that message us, I have a new puzzle piece to add to the Catholic puzzle of mistrust. And there's name dropping as well. So really, this is bait for anyone that's annoyed all.
Our ones to our people. If you're still hate listening, get ready.
So I got an email from my agent and it just said, Hey, Jane Fonda and Julia Louis Dreyfus are hosting an event about up to have a healthy California. And I'm known to care about the environment.
JK.
I mean, I'm not against it, but I don't you know. I'm not on the front lines of environmentalism by any means. But I am a starfucker. So I did go. I went to the environment meeting. I thought it was going to be in a theater. I thought I was just gonna sit with a friend and watch from a distance. It was in a boardroom. I set two feet away from fucking Elaine Bennis like it was wild, and you could tell she didn't really want to be there, but
Jane Fonda roped her into it. She was like, you know, I told Jane I'd get involved as she needed, and so here I am, but like I'm being more direct. It was more like lighthearted. But but I love that.
It's like it's like a conference room. It's like a breakout in the Santa fe room. Like they're just like so few people and they're like, all right, let's get down to brass tacks, the gangs all here, Liza ideas.
They really did.
We're like, okay, any questions and then but this happens. This happened when we went to see friend Liebowitz at the theater at the Ace, like where people with their questions want to seem smarter than friendly, they want to prove something.
They just want to be heard and seen.
And that happened even in a not even of course, in a room of celebrities.
You know, it was stars studded.
Connie Britton's there, we have there were some svu Alum so we had a Sophia Bush and a Rosanna Arquette there, so that was quite thrilling. But whatever, So all these celebs are there and then people that are affected, and basically why the celebs were meeting was next year. So basically there are just oil rigs across the street from schools and children and it's so Aaron Brockovich. These kids are getting bloody lungs, coughs, cancers, like they can't breathe,
awful issues. And a law was passed that the oil rigs would have to, you know, change their shit up, become better for the environment and for kids safety.
And this is what happened last year. What does it call?
Is it a referend that the big oil is coming back? And it's kind of what they did with the Uber stuff. But if Big Oil wins, we can never bring this up into the laws again. And basically they've made all the oil rigs and oil places like safer in white neighborhoods.
This is environmental racism.
And basically they have tons of money, and so the celebs need to be vocal and you guys, so it's like California versus Big Oil. It's happening in October twenty twenty four, and it's important. And then we found out so one of the good questions was, so who owns the land these oil rigs are on? And we learned that the oil rigs, some of them are owned by the archdiocese, like that the Catholic bar are some of the biggest landowners ever and they own all of these things that are children.
With oil poisons.
Love thy neighbor, so fuck And this is kind of like the NFL, Like there's better helmets, but they're using worse helmets because of a fun deal instead of protecting their players. And this is the same thing, like you can make this safer, you just don't want to. And they call these communities that live around they call them sacrifice zones. They this is like, I don't know, it sucks that Aaron Brockovic is the only thing I can
think of. I'm so uneducated, But listen, Jane Fonda opened my eyes to this oil rigs situation, and we'll see what happens October twenty twenty four. But if you see it, if you see me on the front lines.
She's gonna be linking arms with Jane Fonda and fucking Sophia Bush.
Say, who all was there?
I don't know, is it root? Because we weren't even allowed to take photos. They like they were like no cameras allowed. And then there was like art in the lobby that I liked, and before I could take a picture of it, someone like ran up to me and was like no photos.
Oh, I think it's like I think, yeah, a photo is like different, Like I think you just mentioned who's also helping against oil, you know.
I think it's like a compliment to mention who was there?
I would love that And me and my friend noticed not very many men showed out.
Oh weird, weird word weird ed. Begley Junior was there, so that was exciting.
This guy, he has the most annoying name and he I can't pull. I mean, he's working, so it's fine. The guy from American Housewife, Like what the fuck? His name is so hard and I'm a fan of his. I mean, I've been watching Deandrik Bader. That's a crazy name. Yeah, I guess I don't know what he's yeah, Deandrich Bater, how do you know? I feel like I've been watching him for decades and every time I'm like, who is what is that man's name? Is that?
He is truly one of those people that I don't think he'll ever be like a super huge star, like obviously a household name since his name's a little hard, but like when his memoriam runs at the Oscars in fifty years or whatever, I will cry because he will be like one of those actors. And I'm like, he's in everything, Like he's in everything, that guy.
Yeah, so two hundred and thirty six credits because I obviously went to look because I keep having to look.
For two hundred and thirty six. He's not even that old. That's huge.
Yeah, I think he does tons of voices and yeah he's in office space. That's where it hit me. But he was just in the Blackening. Oh, he was in sixteen episodes of Better Things. So Pamela Adline was there.
He takes the daughter to go get her abortion and Better Things.
Oh my god, I don't even know if I remember that. I should rewatch Better Things.
So great, he like takes her they drink a cold coke in the car afterwards because she's like, nothing's better than a cold coke and a bottle.
It's a great scene. Oh my god.
Yeah, Pamela was there, and a hat, glasses, the whole thing. Lily Tomlin was there, MICHAELA. Watkins, Judy Greer, Rosario Dawson. I mean it was a tiny conference room and then I was like and then there was people that like work within the environment in politics and government and like important and then I do wonder how many like people like me were there where I was like, I was like, I'll go look at Jane Fonda and Julia Louis dreyfe as. Sure,
let's see. But now I ad I'm upset. I mean, there's like a young woman there that truly was had to be a witness protection program because she went against Big Oil. It's really and like the uber thing passed last year, Like their commercials are deceitful. There's lies, and they have hundreds of millions of dollars they can spend like no one can go against them. And they make it so confusing where regular people are being tricked because they're trying to trick you on the other side doesn't
have money. I mean, I truly sound like a nineteen year old who just took her first sociology class. And I apologize. I'm just like, you have you heard of big oil? They have money.
Listen, another industry tree that needs to not be stopped is our industry, the industry of us touring and being on the road. I just want to take a second to move away from big Oil and talk about how we are going to be in New York City on December sixteenth. I believe there's like a handful of tickets left to the six o'clock show. We've added a nine o'clock show. Guys, get out and get those ticks. The
holiday season. We want to spend time with you. It's at City Winery, a beautiful venue, so it's going to be a six o'clock show, a nine o'clock show. You know, we meet people afterwards, we do we sell merch, so that's tour specific, so come see us. Then the next night we'll be in Philly on the seventeenth. We'll also be in Sacramento on the thirteenth. Sacramento. When we came last year, you guys made us feel like beatles. You were the loudest crowd that cheered when we came out.
You were the best. Please come back. We're doing a different episode and then that'll be it for twenty twenty three, and then we'll see you on Well you'll see Lisa to celebrate the Insurrection on January sixth at the at the Wet City Comedy Festival. And then our podcast will be on January seventh, and that's in Seattle, so if you live in the Pacific Northwest, Baby get your little booty to Seattle and come see us on the seventh and that's that all that.
And then this is actually November eighteenth, so just this weekend, I'll be in San Diego, so come on down. That'll be my last date of the year. So An and Diago.
Yeah, listen.
I also was going to say I watched the Jewel documentary about Jewel pods, not Jewel the singer.
I was telling somebody about this other day and I go, oh, there's like a Jewel documentary. My friend goes, I'd watch that, and I go it's about the bape and she goes, oh, that's not what I was thinking.
Well, the person I was with that I made that little error was like, oh, that sucks for Jewel the singer. I go, well, no, because that's who you thought of. So she's still the prominent person in your mind, do you know what I mean? But Jewel Impacts are owned by the same people I know, but I.
Didn't know that Plume. Listen.
Basically, Jewel treated their product like a tech product, but it's nick a team and so they got children addicted to it and uh oh uh oh, yeah, you can have mango flavor and fun, colorful advertisements if you're in the space of addictive products. But they were like, we're the iPhone of stuff, and so that was kind of the main gist of that. If you're interested or you liked me, you know my quick little summary, let's get.
This party started really quickly. Those dos.
No, speaking of docs, what we never talked about was Lisa talked on this podcast about the quiz Daddy documentary that she watched on HBO Max, and a couple of our listeners noticed right after that episode aired that doc is gone.
And that's not like weird they take stuff down. There's not a mention of.
It, like you know, sometimes you'll look it up, it'll it'll linko pop up, you click on it and it's like no longer available at Hbmax.
It is gone.
There is no mention of it. I went on Twitter. There's like no mentions of it on Twitter. Maybe one mention of it, Like it's weird, Like what happened. If you have any inside scoop on what happened to the quiz Daddy documentary, let.
Us know, well, it was like a propaganda against the CEO, and like I wonder if he was able to fight back in some way.
I don't know.
I don't know why they took it off, but how lucky that I got to see it. Well, I also got something else taken down.
Not that I got quiz Daddy documentary, it is amazing, but this I think I did. Okay, So Lisa and I were talking in another forum about awe fetishes and we were like, we went we were googling the top fetishes and Lisa went to this one on Huffington Post and it was listing all these pelias, you know, like people that are turned on by bugs and whatever.
And one of them was like a felia that was like traction.
Two of them, yeah, track was like from like like one was like if you're a tracted to thirteen to sixteen year olds, you're a this aphelia, and if you're attracted to six to ten year olds, you're a dysphelia, but not pedophilia. Like they were just like, no, that's head of yeah, Like one of them is like you're fetish basically. One of them was like your fetish is adolescence, and it's like that's not a fetish, that's pedophilia.
That's a crime. And you can't like and it was just on the list.
So Lisa like wrote, wrote in you didn't leave a comment, you like wrote in a message to the huff Power or something.
Yeah.
And then I was talking about it on stage last night at my weekly stand up show in Los Angeles, and I was like, oh, Lisa and I were talking about this, and there's so many crazy things, and I go, oh, how about this one where they think it's like adolescence.
And I clicked on the article for HuffPo.
It's gone. It's taken down. Lisa Tragger is the Aaron Brockovich of the Internet. It has been taken down.
But you're forgetting the silliest part, which is it was from twenty thirteen. Yes, Lisa's like they could have just edited it out, like it's from twenty thirteen that we've found there probably got this message and we're like, oh fuck, Like, oh, I wonder if I can find it on like the way back machine or something.
Oh my god. But so crazy because.
The link is like it still comes up in Google Search, but when you click on it's like it's been taken down for editorial reasons or something. And you know, we're just doing the Lord's work and getting normalized, the normalization of pedophilia. We're trying to combat it, but uh, let's suddenly do so much.
I get involved, I get involved. We yeah, I did get environment, big oil, and big pedophilia.
We're coming for you. Well.
I also wanted to quickly mention when I got called a bitch at the airport before eight am, because I got involved in something I shouldn't have. But I was still pretty relaxed and calm about it. And then the guy turned around and went, you bitch. Couldn't believe it.
I was there.
It was wild, like a seven forty eight am bitch.
I was like, I mean, maybe annoying, but like a bitch you and Lisa goes, I'm a bitch, but I can read.
It was awesome because the guy was like not doing what he was supposed to be doing based on signage.
Anyway, let's get today's episode started. We've got a good one for you.
He actually looks like a dad that was on the first season of Wife Swap. But that's neither here nor there. That's not a reference for all. Okay, listen, we're starting. We're starting, We're starting, all right.
All right, Oh, I just did a podcast the other day where I had to do a Matthew McConaughey imitation, and I know you like my imitation, so I did, I did do it?
I do.
I think that is your secret talent is impressious, especially of the elderly like rich, of the elderly rich. Yes, yes, that's that's grandmother. If anyone has seen us live, they fucking know. Yeah, that's why you got to come to the live shows.
Guys. I'm whipping out impressions at those live shows.
All right, So we're doing today Solitary, Season eleven, episode three, to be confused with Solitaire, which is fun, which is fun. Solitary way less fun, as we find out in this episode. This episode came out October of two thousand and nine. It's autumnal and.
And you know what, I'm going to do something that I've never done. I'm going to bring up silence to the lambs.
Ooh, how did he get such a nice cage with like classical music?
How did he get such good digs?
I think those were concessions he was given for helping Clarice. Like for helping Clarice, he gets the music. The clear cage is because like he cannot have bars. He will kill someone like he's too smart, so he gets the clear cage, like because he's like terrifying. But then I believe, if I remember correctly, the music is something he gets because he's helping an FBI agent. She's like giving him
little crumbs. That's so funny because my friend Alice, who is like a film profet, like she teaches film in Philadelphia, she was just sent me yesterday an article about Jonathan Demi and how like the production designer when he first told her his idea for Silence of the Lambs, was like,
are you crazy? Like you want to make a movie about a man who skins women and wears their like kills women and wears their skin, and it swept all the OSCAR categories And no movie has done that since, Like no movie has I think one director, picture, actor, actress, and screenplay.
Wow. Yeah, pretty crazy. I remember, I think I've.
Talked about it all the podcast, but I couldn't stay up late enough to watch the Oscars that year. And when I woke up, my dad woke me up for school, and the first thing I said was.
Did Silence of the Lambs win? Like I was like, why am I so obsessed with this movie.
It actually really disturbed me when I was a kid, and I probably watched it too young. Okay, so back to s view a different kind of disturbing. We open on a young douche yammering on his phone on a business call, and I can tell he's a douche because he's wearing like a purply buttoned down and it's unbuttoned way too far under his blazer. He's holding a bouquet of like hot pink hydrangs. It looks like maybe, and
he tells a person on the phone. He's like, I promise, Lily, i'd celebrate our seven month anniversary.
I can't do work right now.
And it's like, you know, we all know seven months is an extremely important relationship milestone. And he's like, she's a chick, you know how it is, And like, as he's letting himself in, he tells the guy it's after ten. I'm already late, and she's going to kill me. It's like, yeah, to after ten on an anniversary night.
It's like you might as well not be doing anything, so the time doesn't matter.
It's the it's the three hours that matters.
You know.
That he was supposed to be there. Yeah, three hours.
Oh I thought for some reason you met, Like ten o'clock is too late at night, and like even if this was in the afternoon, it would.
Be a problem. But I get what you're saying. Yeah, Like I feel like I don't know.
He's like got to get home from my anniversary thing and it's like it's almost time to end the night.
Like I don't know, but he's definitely a low level trader at bear Sterns or something.
Yes, if does that, I have no idea. Yes, that's the vibe.
And they do, and they did before they went completely bankrupt. So he lets himself into the apartment and there's like some slow jam music playing, and he sees clothes and heels on the ground like a sexy, you know, little scavenger hunt. And he's like, all right, I gotta go, don't call me and hangs up the phone.
And this guy's ready to bone. He starts unbuttoning his shirt.
He calls out to his girlfriend and he goes ready to party with the Parkster and yeah, this man's name is Parker and I do hate him. And he goes, big guy's been aching for you all day. Referring to the little parkst I guess his penis. And when he gets into the bedroom, the music like intensifies and the camera starts doing these wild smash cuts, like to the bed, there's blood on the pillow, to the mirror smashed and there's blood on it. The window it's open, and there's
a bloody handprint on the window frame. Like it is a lot of like wild like with the camera. And then the guy's panics and he starts he starts panicking.
He calls nine one one. He's like, something's happened to my girlfriend.
Cut to camera flashes photographing the bloody handprints, and the cops are on the scene.
They're giving the low down. Lily Milton twenty three.
She lives there with her boyfriend Parker Hubbard aka the Parkstir. Benson and Stabler are checking shit out, like it looks like she was alive when he took her down the fire escape, because like there's a blood trail. And when then when Parker here's fire escape, he goes, oh, it's got to be that PERV.
And they're like, who are you talking about?
And he's like this guy from downstairs, he lives below us, and he's been peeping on us and the whole last month, he's been spying on us while we have sex.
Lily called the cops. They didn't do anything, and.
Live is like, no, they're probably out looking for him, and it's like, no, Olivia, cops are not all as good as you like. They're just not looking. And He's like, how can it be that hard to find him? The guy lives downstairs. Oh so that's when we find out he lives downstairs.
I jumped the gun.
So at first we think it's just a peeping tom but now we find out it's a neighbor. They knock on the downstairs apartment door and who comes to the door but an actor named Stephen Ray. He's an Irish actor. He's from Belfast, from Northern Ireland, I guess. And I recognize him from The Crying Game and he got nominated for that for an Oscar for that That's mostly where I know him from. But when I look at his IMDb, he's been in a ton of stuff. B for Vendetta, interview with a Vampires.
Where I know him from because I was like, how do I know him? Fever Fandetta did make a big impact on me.
You know, I was just I saw that on Delta the other day, and I go, I should watch this. People talk about it all the time and I've never seen it.
Well, it might be one of those things that was really prolific to me as like a junior high high schooler that maybe now will be like, yeah, capitalism's bad, you know what I now?
It feels like yeah, now it feels like a Barbie speech about feminism.
I got it. Yeah, well, I don't know, I don't know.
I hopefully maybe not, but I remember it rocked my world. Also, like the ending was like Arlington Roade esque in terms of like it taught me what suspense, shock, surprise.
You know what I mean? Mighty on the next Delta, I'm gonna watch it. Maybe we'll do it together. Yeah, yeah, I got to watch it. But he's also But it is.
Kind of like when I went to the Incubis concert. Obviously they're so good. It was like so great I've been I've had a resurgence. But the lyrics, like I understand why I liked it in high school. You know, the lyrics are like I don't want to talk to you anymore.
Stuff like that, leave me alone. Live your life.
It might pass you by, like those are you know, so I understand why at fifteen I was really connected.
But the other just reminds me the other day when Ed was putting Rosie to bed, she goes, Dad, Viva la vita, live your life?
Just right? What is she talking about?
But that that's so funny that like Crying Game like was a huge movie when I was a kid because it was so like, you know, just the whole I mean, it was before anybody talked about trans identity and stuff like that, and it was just like have you seen the Crying Game?
Have you seen the Crying Game?
Like it was just such a like buzzy movie when I was a kid, And like I remember being like, I'm not allowed it's NC seventeen or like I didn't think I was allowed to see it or whatever. But he is, you know, that is a popular movie for him as well. But he's in a ton of BBC stuff, like Across the Pond and because that's where he lives. So now Stabler goes to introduce Olivia and himself. But
this guy goes Elliott Stabler. He knows exactly who he is, and he goes then he goes and they say, lightning never strikes twice, and Stabler's like, you know, the memory is not memorying for him. He's like, do we know each other? And he goes, how could you forget the last time we met? You put me in jail for nineteen years? Cut to a signature Stabler squint, and then
it's the credits. So now we're at the precinct and Stabler's talking about how in nineteen eighty nine he was just a uniform cop when Callum Donovan, who is Stephen character, and some pals were robbing a bank and they literally ran into Stabler. So it was like a lucky break for him, and you know, lives like you don't even
look old enough to shave in this photo. But I guess even though he was this like young new cop, he got promoted quickly because the higher ups were impressed by this bust that he didn't even really make.
He just kind of was in the right place at the right time.
So then Craigan goes, so you made your bones on his back, and Craigan should have a coffee table book. Like the things that Craigan says, like his little one liner sayings is they're so copy and like, so what he made your bones on his back?
Like I don't even know what they mean half the time.
So they ask, oh, does he have any sex crimes on his record? No, the robbery is this guy's only crime and he only got out a year ago. Live thinks it's possible that he came out with a different mo like to almost twenty years in prison, like that can change a person. And apparently though there's no evidence of him in the apartment, but his prints are all over the fire escape. The blood trail goes down to the street and then stops at the curb. He must
have put her in a car. Doesn't have a car registered to him, but he could have barred one or stolen one. His apartment is totally clean, like no blood or anything there. And Craig's like, why don't you get in there and dance with your old pal and get him to talk and give up where he stashed the girl. He says, that's a stabler. So now Stabler goes in and is like, where's the girl? And the guy's like, I don't know, and he's like, I've only seen her in the stairwell and the only reason I'm on the
fire escape is to get to the roof. He likes the outdoors where he can breathe, and Stabler's running this his like fantasy game on the guy like, nah.
You like looking at her, you like putting your hands in your pants. You haven't had a woman in so long.
And then one day, you know whatever, he's doing his little storytelling time, and then Donovan is not budging. He's like, I didn't do any of this shit that Stabler is implying, like stop. And then meanwhile liv is talking to the Parkstar and he's pissed because he pays thirty five hundred dollars for that apartment a month, and Donovan assaults them and he lives like did he assault you? And he's like with cigarette smoke, the apartment reeks and Lily is allergic.
They called the landlord and the landlord wants him out too, because it's a rent control place. And now we're back to Donovan and Stabler and he's lived in that apartment since he was ten.
It's a family apartment.
I was wondering how, you know, coming out of prison, he lived in like a nice apartment building, but it's his family's apartment since he was ten, and he goes, and now some Johnny come lately wants to tell me I can't light up at home. He goes, I go to the roof to be nice. But she's a nut. And then we cut to she's a saint. Parkster says. She teaches underprivileged kids, or she reads books on tape
to the blind. She just started medical school and this guy threatened to cut her throat if she didn't stop running her mouth. And then Donovan's like, I didn't even hold the knife in my hand, it was on my belt. Words or words, you know whatever. He tells Stabler. When he was in prison, he lost his mom. He says he sat in a cage for twenty years, and he goes, I go to work every day. I visit my po I pissed in a cup. I'm not giving anyone an
excuse to put me back inside. I didn't touch the girl, and he says, sure, she was a pain in the ass.
And then right as he says that, who comes breezing into the room.
But one of my all time fucking favorites, Jessica Walter as defense attorney Petro gil Martin, I've thought.
In you immediately the moment I god screen and I went, oh, this is gonna be a big moment for Kara.
I think, up until recently when I started this podcast, my Instagram bio was a quote of hers from Arrested Development.
And I just love her so much.
And she passed away a couple of years ago, I think, and I love her and she's so fucking funny on Arrested Development. She's like a masterclass in comedy anyway. She gets to be a little bit funny here but not super super a comedic part. And she goes, so after he goes, she's a pain in the ass. She breezes it and goes, and so are you cal what happened? She's there to represent him. She wants to talk to her client alone because she says, he's like, how did
you know I was here? And she goes, Virginia called me when you missed your date. So we'll get to that later. And she's like, Stabler, I want to talk to my client alone. Go do some squats in the hallway, and then Stabler Lee. We see one of my favorites who's controversial. No, people don't like her, but I really like her. It's Eada, which I believe is executive Ada
or something. Sonya Paxton played by Christine Latti. She's holding a coffee cup that is probably three quarters vodka, because the next episode after this is Hammered, where she does get busted for drinking on the job, and she's asking questions immediately like the ballbuster she is, She's like, what about the boyfriend? He's clear. Lily was last seen at five Parker was at work till ten.
And you know why I remember, isn't she the one that like won an Emmy or Golden Globe? But she was in the bathroom and then had to like run on stage or something. Yes, I was in the toilet. Yeah, that's how I remember her. Famous Lottie. Yeah, yeah, Christine Latti, I really love her. She's in a show called Evil that Jared and I watch that has a lot of
former SVU people on it, and she's really great. And so she's like, guys, you have no evidence, you have nothing tying this guy, Like we're not you know, we need more than this. Just then Jessica Walter like wraps on the glass and goes charge him or come say goodbye. So she goes next time you want to talk to
him you call me. And then Donovan, who has been working with a pretty wild accent the whole time, goes, if you want to find me, you can find me at wake like he says wyke like print porky pig, and it really made me laugh. Suddenly Parker comes flying out of nowhere the boyfriend and starts screaming at Donovan like where's Lily.
He goes to throw a punch. Donovan gets on his knees and goes not resisting, not resisting, and the Parkster still manages to kick him in the gut before the cops get a handle on him. And then she says, all right, I'll let this one slide, but if he touches my client one more time, he's doing time. So next we're at a construction site in Bayo and I guess where Donovan wakes and they just are standing there
staring at him and watching him work from afar. And then the boss comes up with Donovan's time card and is like, here you go.
He clocked out at five.
And they're like, well that works with the timeline, and there he goes, Well he didn't go home.
It was payday. We all went for drinks.
I left at seven, and Donovan was still there drinking, and the boss is like, you know, people can change.
I don't think he's good for this.
And Live is like, well, they don't always change for the better, and the guy in the hard hat's like, all right, lady and just walks away. And then Stabler wants Munch and Finn to stay on Donovan. He's like, I don't want to be out here in the hot sun, and he asks Olivia if he wants to go get a cold one. I didn't realize Stabler was allowed to like Boss, Munch and Finn around, but I guess he does, because they go to get a beer and Munch and Finn now have to stand. They keep talking about how
hot it is in New York at this time. So at the bar, they're talking to the bartender about Donovan and she's like, he didn't do it.
He was here till eight thirty.
And then Stabler clocks at the bartender seems really interested in cal Donovan and she's like, he's like, let's talk, and so she comes over. And this character's name is Betty Jean, and she's played by an actress named Bernadette Quigley. And I just like that name that sounds like a
cartoon character to me. And she's been in two other svus, one Scourge and one in the five one hundredth episode, which I guess as few just called the five hundred episode because it had the right amount of letters in it. Betty Jean or BJ as I will call her, has known cal her entire life. It broke her heart when he went to prison. Then one day he walks into
her bar and it's like no time has passed. She tells them that they've been kind of trying to rekindle things, but that night he kept begging her to go upstairs, but he was hammered and he couldn't get it up or, as she says, he couldn't cut the mustard, and he called her a whore, broke a lamp, and stormed off. So now they think this all works Like he leaves around a thirty, he's home, he gets home, he's drunk, he's pissed off, he sees Lily. It's a perfect storm
to attack her. And then they get, you know, the phone call. At this moment in time, they always get a phone call that's like we're on our way. A body was just found in the water off the coast of Staten Island, and the description matches Lily. When they get there, done done, there's no body because the girl is alive. It's another miracle on the Hudson. The EMS guy cracks, which is a reference to Selly Sullimber or landing a plane on the Hudson, which did happen earlier
the year that this episode came out. So they just see Lily clinging to life in the ambulance with like an oxygen mask, and that's the end of act one. At the top of act two, she's being rushed into the hospital having just been brought back from cardiac arrest.
She's wrapped in a metallic blanket. She's hypothermic.
According to blonde surfer doctor who we have commented on many times, he does not look like he belongs in New York City emergency room. And he's like, they go, is she gonna make it? And he goes, she's not dead until she's warm and dead. What I guess that's like he needed to warm her up quickly, but it seemed like a weird comment. The parkstre comes busting in, Where's Lily, How's she doing?
And they're like, she's.
Alive, but whatever hanging on, and he goes, I have to tweet this to her followers need to know, and it's like, oh no, what is this man's issue? He started a Twitter account called Where's Lily and he already has over to your tenty three hundred friends. Nobody on Twitter is your friend. And also twenty three hundreds is not that many. If he thinks he's like some kind of viral Twitter account in.
A day, in a couple of days, that's a lot without a funny little tweet, that's a lot. Yeah, you're right local, and it's local. So now we've got online.
Lookie Lou's stabler aka Clint Eastwood says he's like such a baby.
I like, LOOKI Lou is that merch? Luky Lou is fun. That's not the first time it's been mentioned in an episode. Yeah, maybe just talking about look Lous all the time. Maybe I want a friendship bracelet. That's what I want, a friendship bracelet with the beads. I want a Lucky Lou, A looky Lou, Yeah, looky Lou, Looky Lou.
Yeah.
Because it's like people that are peeping peeping.
Around crime scenes. So this guy the doc. Okay.
So now the doctor comes out, it's been ten full seconds since he went in, and he's like, okay, we've got her temperature backup, Like it's a total insane thing that the human body temperature could like raise that quickly. And she's conscious but showing signs of post traumatic retrograde amnesia. And Parker's like, what does that mean, It's like memory loss, dumbass. So the active's bargin with parkstore in tow and he goes to her bedside, and this is the first time
we've actually really seen her. And I recognize this woman is Deborah Ann Wall and I know her as the baby vampire Jessica on True Blood. That is like her claim to fame for me. But I looked up other stuff she's done. I think she's done some like you know, CW. Marvel stuff, but I don't. I'm not sure. She has no idea how she got into the Hudson River. She remembers coming home from school. It was seven o'clock, she took a shower. She heard someone in the apartment, a man.
She thinks it was the creep from downstairs, but she's not sure it's all a blur, there was glass breaking, then her head hurt, she passed out. She came to in a car, and then she was in a dark room and it was freezing cold. The door was locked and someone put a bag over her head and she couldn't breathe. And now she's getting upset, and the doctor's like, everybody,
get out of here. And so Craigan's like, all right, we got nothing, like we got her with amnesia, saying maybe it's the downstairs guy.
They go over the timeline and.
They figure out, oh, well, maybe he hid her somewhere like and then after we caught on to him, he went back there and dumped her body. But Munch and Finn had been on him all day, so like when would he have done that? And they're like, well, he works at the docks, a good place to dump a body, and it's like in broad daylight with all his coworkers. I'm confused to how they think that's like an easy like place to dump a body.
It says when the detectives are the worst, when they do not do detectiving, when they have their theory and they're just like trying to find everything for the theory is when they're the worst, Yeah, when they're the most life yeah, or when the craigin makes fun of an addict, like that's always.
Confusing to when they try to just, yeah, force everything into a narrative that they've come up in their heads, so that what they get credit for being the smartest detective.
I don't know.
But she also said she was freezing and it's been boiling in New York City, so maybe she was in some kind of refrigerated storage unit at the docks. Yeah, why wouldn't there be a refrigerated storage unit down at this construction site?
That makes sense.
So now they're down there and there is one, and CSU is checking the fridge.
There's no sign of Lily, no hairs, no fibers or blood. Stable shards showing her stables. Stabler starts showing her pictures do all the workers, and Donovan's like, why don't you just cuff me? And Finn and Munth show up and tells Stabler they've been following Parker's tweet fest and a lot of freaks are saying they saw her like with
aliens and then she was abducted and whatever. But then there's one tweet from a person named Tracy who goes, I saw her around midnight outside my store, arguing with a dude, and I wish I had done something. And then Donovan was in custody at midnight, so maybe Tracy got the time wrong. So cut to a combo with Tracy at copy Quick where she works, which is like a Kinkos situation, and she is a woman who knows her shit.
She is like a I love this character.
Like just like an amazing huge gold plate, necklace, pink lipstick, like tan, just a wild New York character.
And she's like, I did not get the time wrong.
I know when my shift ends, and I saw her and she was going at it, arguing with some guy and it was am midnight. So then they show her a picture of Donovan and she's like, noah, it was this Asian guy kind of like ugly, cute and much much younger. Did I just solve the crime? And she like, I'm obsessed. I want her to have her own crime solving show, and she goes, I even have the receipt, and Stabler goes, you never said she came in here,
and she goes, I didn't. I guess I was caught up with the fight and her being a murder victim, and Stabler's like, she's not dead, and it's like this girl is pure comedy. So she was like, see, look, she came in at eleven forty three and she used terminal five for forty six minutes and her boss has them copy IDs in case terrorists try to use their computers.
Now Stabler looks so confused, because.
Oh my god, could it be you were wrong that this isn't that you like, you know, you had the wrong guy. In the hospital, Lily is asleep with a big bandage on her head, not all the way around, but just a big, you know, big square, and Benson and Stabler come barging in and ask her who's Billy Chang?
And she goes, just some guy I know.
He's also in medical school and has a rap sheet for selling crystal meth. So explain these emails, Billy? Can you stop by?
Billy?
Where are you? You know how everyone's always emailing their drug dealer. Obviously, Stabler has printed up the emails and is showing them. She denies it's even her email address, and he's like, cut the shit, CSU told us that you created this email address on your desktop. Stop and you're not a victim. You weren't abducted, you weren't thrown in the river. You were online at copy Quick scoring drugs. And she's like, you don't even understand, and they're like,
so tell us, make us understand. She goes, I had a bad day at med school. They gave me a gross old lady cadaver, and I was so creeped out. It's like, oh my god, you're not cut out to be a doctor, Like you can't.
She had to like come, She's like, I came home.
I had to shower to get the smell of death off of me, of this disgusting, gross old lady. And then she got pissed that Parker didn't show up because it is ten o'clock when he's trying to come in for their date or after ten, So she emailed Billy to score. He said he didn't have anything, so she trashed her apartment looking for her own stash. I guess went into an absolute mania, banged her head on the mirror.
There was blood everywhere.
She freaked out when she looked at how bad the scene looked, with like blood and broken shit and you know whatever. So she heard Parker come home. He doesn't know about her habit. She heard Parker coming home, took off down the fire escape and went to go find Billy. Meanwhile, she saw what Parker had been posting online with his little Twitter account about her abduction and what was she going to do? She couldn't like say, hey, I flipped out because I couldn't get drugs, so she jumped into
the river. But she's like, but I didn't think it would take you guys so long to find me. And they're like, are you fucking And she's like, look, I almost died, and Stabler gets set off, like he is activated.
Stabler.
He's like, you want pity from us? You were willing to send an innocent man to prison to cover your ass. And then Olivia cuffs her to the bed and Stabler takes off and she's like, where are you going? And he's like to apologize, So he's headed over to Donovan. Now we're at Donovan's place and Stabler finds him on the rooftop and he goes to apologize, and Donovan like stands up and walks towards him and without saying a word, kind of which places with him and pushes Stabler off
of the roof of this big building. We panned down below to see Stabler's lifeless body. It has landed on a shorter building's roof and not the street below, thankfully, but it's not a great situation. It definitely was a many footfall. And if you have been to our live shows, we used to show a compilation of Stabler getting his ass kicked and this was in it. And it is quite a wild moment because you think he could be dead.
Well, yeah, I'm sure when people were watching it live on NBC, they were shocked right before the commercial, you know what I mean. Yeah, splayed out on the on whatever, the ground roof.
Yeah, they're not on a roof, yeah, the other roof, the adjacent roof. So now like scary, yeah, so now, I mean it's like I was scared in Wildlife when he got shot. I was like, oh my god, he's gonna die, even though it's like when you think about it's like they're not killing Elliott Stabler, you know.
Yeah, I guess this is before a Game of Thrones. I'm trying to think if Anaan did shocking things in television like this before Game of Thrones. Uh, yeah, there were definitely like crazy deaths in television. Oh, who shot Jr? That was like a big and who shot mister Burns? Those were a big Yeah.
I feel like a lot of times that's because they're writing a character off because of like the bad behavior,
or they got offered something else or whatever. And I guess because I think in season twelve when he does leave, everybody was kind of shocked at the end of season twelve, So in season eleven, I don't know if anybody had an inkling about that, But anyway, Stabler's eyes are open and the top of AC three he's sitting on his back, still on the roof, and we hear his walkie talkie like buzzing with like ten forty three rem whatever.
He whispers into.
It, he can manages to reach for it, whispers into it ten thirteen officer down. So now we cut to the hospital. We got live Craigan and Sonia surrounding his
hospital bed. He's in a neck brace with like an ice pack on his shoulder, like the kind of ice back I just have in my freezer, And I don't know, it's like feels like your whole body would be pretty fucked on what one little ice pack on the shoulders doing but Sonia's cracking a joke about him taking a nap on the job and they don't know where Donovan is, but they're gonna get him, and.
Stabler tries to come up. Oh.
Stable tries to get up with fully like a possible spinal injury, Like a moron that he is.
He's like, I'm fine.
It's like, okay, truly, you fell from like twenty feet at least, and Craigan makes him sit his ass back down, and Sonya's like, okay, gotta go LMK when you find Donovan, and when you do, don't touch a hair on his head.
I think they're they're scared of Jessica Walter.
At this point, Finn enters and said they've got eyes on his job and his girlfriend's bar and there's no sign of him so far. They dumped his phone and his most frequent call is to Veronique Saint John, and Craigan says that sounds like a porn star. Thanks Craigan, and then Stable remembers no remember when the woman when the attorney showed up, it was because someone named Veronique had called her to say that he didn't show up.
For their date.
So now we get to this Brownstone facility or this like you know, big door into Manhattan and Veronique Saint John is standing there answering questions in her bathrobe in the doorway, and she saw Donovan the night before, but she didn't know the cops were looking for him, and she doesn't ask her clients questions like that. Finn asks if she's a hooker, and she takes huge offense.
She's like, the hell I am.
This is a private group home and mister Donovan's mother is a resident here, so they're like, well, he told Stabler that he lost his mother, and Arone clarifies, She's like, well he did lose her to Alzheimer's. Like she's here, but she thinks he's her husband, Tommy, who died in World War two and really has no concept of reality
and he visits her every night. So they go to the room of the mother and Donovan is in there with his mom and he goes, I'll go quietly, just don't wake her up, and Finn's like, uh, yeah, you threw my friend off a roof, so I'm not going to be quiet for your mom and starts like grabbing him then the mom wakes up and he goes along with the charade that he's his dad and goes, I gotta go, I'm shipping out, and she's like, one more kiss for your best girl, and he does kiss her
on the cheek. It's a really weird scene because it's like she's looking at her son like she's in love with him, and in a romantic way, not in a mother son way. And they cuff Donovan and they take him out. So when they get outside, he immediately tries to run. He's going for suicide by cop, Like he's like, shoot me, what are you waiting for? I killed your partner? And Olivia is like, he's not dead. Lily lied and Elliott was coming to apologize to you. If you had
waited another second, you'd be all good. And he looks, you know, devastated because the truth is sinking in. Here's the other weird thing. Isn't it weird that Lily made up the whole thing about being in a freezing cold place with a bag against on her head and there happens to be a refrigerated area at Donovan's workplace. Seems like a lot of coincidences because she really did truly make up the whole thing. At the precinct, Donovan is in interrogation. Sonya shows up and says, no one.
Talks to this guy will sue her. Yeah, yeah, true. As I wonder if the couple's going to stay together.
We'll see if the Twitter account loses his followers, I think Parker's going to bounce. So At the precinct, Donovan is an interrogation. Sonya shows up and goes, no one talks to him, including you. To Stabler and he's like, bitch, I've been thrown off a roof and I'm not in the mood to be told what to do. So he heads right in there and she goes Stabler and he shuts the door right in her face. And honestly, the
timing is so perfect. I'd love to talk to someone to tell me, like how many times they had to do that. Because he's like, whatever, goes in, she goes Stabler smack right away the door.
It's really funny.
He tells Donovan get up, but Donovan won't get up. He's just sitting there quiet, and so he lifts him up by like the scruff of his neck and his shirts or whatever, and that's when Craigan and Sonya bust in to stop him and they take Donovan out, and he tells Sonya, I don't work for you, and she's like, well, I'm not gonna watch you give this guy the full stabler And he's like, I was just trying to take him essentral booking and stay. Sonya's like, it's not your case.
You're the victim, and she gets all sarcastic, like, oh, just the word victim of fend big strung La. It's stable with the tough guy. He goes, you don't know me. She goes, I read your file. He goes, You've had a heart on for me since the day you walked into this squad. She laughs, and she's like, I have problems with anyone who doesn't play by the rules.
And he's like, your rules. You act like the law is scripture, but you don't give a damn about the law. You just want control.
I know you.
I see perps like you every day who walk in here and got to have control or the world far falls apart and inside their skill.
You slipped in such sharp and fart in this episode. Already, Yeah, what did I say? Falls at fart?
He goes the purpse like you have to have control or the world falls apart, and inside they're scared, weak and damage. And she's like, you could tell while he's saying these words to her, it's like hitting, Like her face is like she's not like tough girl Sonya anymore. And then she slaps Elliott across the face and he like shakes it for a second, a millisecond, and then grins at her, and she looks like a frightened little child, like she's like, I just smacked somebody.
Oh God.
But also the guy has my number, so he walks out. She looks frightened. She's like, oh no, I might lose my job now. At arraignment, Donovan pleads not guilty. Sonya asks for remand Donovan thought he was about to be
arrested for a crime he did not commit. He's not responsible for the crime that he did commit, and they're going for a psychiatric defense, and Sonya says he has no history of mental illness in his prison records, and Jessica Walter's like, yeah, prisons aren't really great at documenting stuff like that. Andy spent the majority of his sentence in solitary confinement, he was isolated with no human contact
and it's made him psychotic. And they were like, he's been out for a year and had no issues, and she says, Jessica Walter goes, he regressed under the thought of reincarceration. So Petrowski is there our dearly departed Joanna Merlin, who has recently passed away and who is a legend
in her own time in the SVU universe. She agrees it sounds like there's issues here that need to be laid out for the jury, but she also agrees to the remand and he begs, he's like, please don't put me back, and his lawyer if the judge can order that he'll be placed in gen Pop. But she's like, that's really not my job or my jurisdiction, Like I
can't really control the Department of Corrections. And he rants about how yeah pass the buck all you you you you all throw people in prison and then walk away. You turn a blind eye to torture, and Sonya's like, oh, were you beaten? Were you waterboarded? And he was like, it's just as bad what they did to him. And then and then whatever they care, they take him out and then Stabler and Sonya kind of have a brief look and then he saunters out of court like real
Lexa daisical. He's halfway down the court steps when Sonya runs after him, and we think there's going to be a big apology, and she goes, Stabler, I've got to talk to you. And then when he stops and talk to her, she goes, I mean, this Donovan defense is bullshit, and he's like, that's what you had to tell me. She's like, I mean, you and I can see through it,
but the jury might buy it on the stand. I want you to really stare down Donovan, make him look you in the eye when he excuses pushing you off of a roof. And then he goes, I got to hand it to you, Sonya. You really know how to get under people's skin. And she goes, oh, right, the little thing that happened yesterday with the slap, can we just call it a truce? And she puts out her hand and he does not shake her hand, but he like smot gives her like a half smile and goes truce.
So now top of act four, back at the precinct, we've got munch on a rant but this time I agree with his rant. He's talking about how humans are social creatures and prolonged isolation warps our humanity. The Brits actually studied it and said that a solitary confinement causes psychosis, and they stopped using it, and when they did, inmate violence actually goes down. Finn's not really buying the argument that solitary equals torture, even though he's like, yeah, if
you treat criminals like actual people, it is better. But I don't know if solitary is torture. And then he's like, why would you not think that? They use it in Iran, They use it in Abu Gray Prisoners of War, like all kinds of places use solitary confinement as one of
their methods of torture. And then Munch goes the mind can survive prison, but we aren't wired to be alone, and then live pipes in and goes, well, when I was in prison, the worst part was never being alone, Like I had no privacy, no quiet, even on the toilet. I would have killed to do a stint in the hole. And it's like, Olivia, you're on the wrong side of this.
Here Munch points out that people prefer free range chickens to chickens that have been kept in cages, and he goes, we treat poultry better than humans, and Stabler's like, he threw me off a roof, and live thinks that this
whole insanity solitary confinement thing is a smoke screen. So now at trial, Jessica Walter asked Donovan why he got put in solitary confinement, and he explains his story because at first I was like, why did you Why were you in solitary for the majority of nineteen years when all you did was rob a bank?
That's like a nonviolent offense, Like what you know, what happened?
So apparently when he got there, the Aryan Brotherhood tried to recruit him. He said, no fucking way, and then they tried to jump him in the shower.
He shived them. One guy never walked again.
So we got put in solitary in nineteen ninety three and then he it wasn't until two thousand and seven
that he was really out of solitary. And there She's like, fucking imagine so fucking insane, like the fact that he's not just like shaking and talking to himself constantly is He's a miracle of science to me, and his lawyer is like, wow, fourteen years in solitary for a fight, and he's like, well, whenever the guards would come to get me, I was paranoid they were coming to kill me, so I would fight back, and then they would just
tack on more time and solitary. So it just kept happening and happening, and then in the end they just left me there. He said, it was like death, except you're still breathing. All you hear is your breath, days, months, years. At first, you sleep twelve to fourteen hours at a time, then you can't sleep anymore. He'd watch his shadow till it came alive and started talking to him. He knew the voices were in his head, but he couldn't shut
them out. And now there's all these they're playing these whispering sound effects on the show and it's really creepy, like it's really scary, and he's like, the voices are telling me, you know, pluck your eyes out, chew off your hands, all this stuff, and he still hears the voices. When he alone, he copes, he says, by working walking for hours on end.
He's afraid to sleep.
He sits on the roof all night because he wants to just hear the sounds of the city, anything that will block out the voices. So when Stabler came onto the roof, he heard the voice again, and the voice was laughing at him and pulling him back into the hole of solitary confinement. And he tells Stabler, you'll never know what it's like to be truly alone, endless days without seeing a face or hearing a voice. You can't
imagine it unless you wind up there yourself. And then we get more squinty Stabler, Like, you know, Sabler squints when he's something's making him think. So now Stabler is at sink sing and he's got a corrections officer who's his pal checking out Donovan Cell, taking him to see Donovan Cell. And he's like, you owe me, and the guy's like, okay, well this is you know, this is the favor consider our debt paid. So Stabler steps into the cell and the guy goes, don't do anything stupid,
and he shuts the door. And the guy who's playing this corrections officer is named Glenn Fleschler, and he's been in the episode Angels. He was in the episode Intent that we covered. He was the shitty lawyer that I think called the girl when she was trying to the social media influencer.
And then he's also in two recent episodes as well. He came onto the scene for me True Detective. Oh wow, is he the guy? Yeah? Yeah, oh wow? Yeah yeah.
And he's also he is the Hasidic jew that Charlotte has sex with in Sex and the City in the episode Secret Sex.
Oh my gosh, Well this guy is prolific.
Yeah, he's been working. No, he has so many credit.
But True Detective, I feel, is like for me, what put him on the map?
Yes, I knew I recognized him when I saw him and then I looked up his sv like past only and but I do remember him as that shitty lawyer.
But yes, True Detective for sure.
That season had me by the neck, Like I was obsessed with that show.
Oh my god, Season one of True Detective change, Like it was a huge moment, so crazy.
I think it was one of the first like.
Mini series in that way that was like you know, scene as like a cinematic.
Yeah, like a movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, people really liked it. But he's in Billions. Oh okay, He's like, I don't either. He's in thirty six episodes. Oh okay, so he's one of the major Billions people. He was in the thing about Pam.
Oh my gosh, I wonder who he plays. I never saw that. I just listened to the Dateline podcast of it.
I didn't either, but I want to wait. I want to listen. I want to know the thing about Pam.
The podcast is so funny because, first of all, it's only six episodes. It's so quick to listen to. But Keith Morrison listening to his voice is amazing, Like to listen to him on a podcast He's like and then Pam like, it's so good. Okay, I'm obsessed. I don't listen.
I haven't listened to anything else, to be honest, on the Dateline podcast since.
But I liked the Pam one a lot. It's unhinged.
So anyway, we have come to believe that now Stabler is putting himself in solitary confinement for some amount of time to understand what it's like, and this man will truly.
Do anything to get away from his wife and kids.
We see him doing sit ups, push ups, then he's sleeping getting food, but whenever they bring him the food, he's like, what time is it? And they won't tell him the time, So that's part of it. Like it is truly wild, how Like I know this is such a small example comparatively, but like the subway in New York, now that they have the counters that tell you how long you have to wait, it makes it like so
much more bearable. Like even if the thing says fifteen minutes till your next train twenty minutes you're next train when you don't know and you're just standing there and you have no idea how much time something is taking. It truly is like nothing moves more slowly than that. And so I think that's what they're trying to illustrate here, Like if someone would just tell him, oh, it's twelve o'clock or whatever, he could figure out, you know, where he is in time. But to just be suspended in
time like that is then there's more working out. This is truly my nightmare, Like I I like, I'm so solitary combinement.
This is my nightmare and being buried alive.
Stabler also starts to hear the little whispers they start putting a little whisper sound effect on. He wakes up, he thinks he hears shit. There's all these like jolt him getting jolted awake, more sit ups, but now he's screaming while he does his situps. He's going crazy and I yeah, he's like going crazy. And then there's like
a cockroach crawling on his food tray. He starts playing with the cockroachs with like a big smile on his face, like it's really gross, and he's really starting to break down, like they just keep showing him jolting awake, talking to himself. The door opens and his friend is there, the true detective guy, and he goes, you, son of a bitch, I said three days, not a week. And the guy goes, it was three days. It took three days for Stabler
to absolutely unravel and adopt a pet cockroach. So imagine these people that are in there for weeks, months, years, Like it's so inhumane.
In my opinion, it is.
I do wonder if it's a little excessive that it was only three days.
Would you really have a pet crockerroach in three days?
I don't know, I don't know what the studies are I'm sure they've done studies on people in isolation for three days and what happens, you know, Like, I'm sure the show is dramatizing it, but like like.
He was in the military, right, yeah, you're you should be.
I don't know.
I just a full pet cockerroach in three days is wild? But you know what, do I know? Maybe we should do that. Maybe this will be a fun thing for Oh my god, Like, I don't think I would last two hours. I really don't. I think I would go crazy in two hours. Like this isn't that unbelievable for me? Because I really, you know, I like don't really do alone time, Like I thrive off being around other people.
So to be by myself for like three full fucking days with just concrete walls around me, I don't know. I can't say I would have survived not having a TV. That's hard.
Yeah.
So now Stabler is walking into Sonya's office, who's just smoking a cigarette in her office in two thousand and nine, I guess that's like right at the cusp of when they started saying that you're not allowed.
To do this anymore. And she's like, where the hell have you been?
And he's like the hole and then he goes, I want to drop the charges, and she goes, don't be a woof stabler. She's like, well, glad you had a fun little trip and found yourself or whatever, but I'm here to put wannabe cop killers away. And if Donovan walks, it's open season on cops for anyone who's served a day in solitary. They're all going to say, oh, it made us crazy. And he's like, well, okay, don't make an example out of him, but cut him a deal. She goes, he'd be out in five and then what
he runs down A cop who pulls him over. Can't take the chance. He threatens to report her for assault. He pulls out the only card he's got on her and he goes, the DA will suspend you. She doesn't even flinch. She goes go ahead, and then he doesn't do anything, and she goes thoughts, so you may have lost your balls in lock up, but I've still got mine.
And I can see why a lot of people hate her, I really can, But for some reason, I like her and I hate the way she spoiler alert dies, So cut to the verdict attempted murder in the first degree.
He's found.
Now here's what I don't understand about it being first degree. First degree is premeditation. Stabler just showed up on that roof and he pushed him. That's not premeditated, No, not at all. It's the cop of it all. Yeah, that's like not that's I don't know. That feels like barely second. I don't know because also it's not there's no deadly weapon. He just you know, it was a push. So anyway, he's found guilty by the jury.
Yeah, Stabler came to his roof. Yeah, yeah, no, no, that is that is weird. I actually am just noticing that. I don't think I noticed when I actually watched. But so they find Donovan guilty.
He slowly puts his head on the table and starts banging his head, and then he starts begging for them to just give him the needle. He's like kill me, Like it's really dramatic and this guy is a great actor, Like it's really really horrible.
They drag him out.
He's just pleading over and over again, please don't do this, Please don't do this. And Stabler looks fucked up over it, like he's so now he's at a bar having a drink and Sonya sidles up next to him and is like, oh hey, Stabler, let me buy you around. And then she tries to toast to a good day for the people and he's like, bitch, not happening. She says she does feel She's like, you don't think I feel sorry
for Donovan, and he goes, good for you. You had a shot to do the right thing and you didn't, and then he walks out, leaving her with her little round of drinks that she's probably gonna drink both of to be honest, So now it sings saying. Stabler opens the slot of Donovan's cell and he's in there and he's been beaten up pretty bad, it looks like, and he's drugged on haldall and he's like, well, who tuned him up? And the guy goes, he did it to himself.
He smashed his head against the wall until we drugged him. And then the guy, the corrections officer, wakes him up to take him to the medical unit and he's like confused and they're like, oh yeah. After he's stable, he gets to go to Gen Pop and Donovan thanks Stabler, but he's like it wasn't me. And then Stabler goes, did the warden see the light? And he goes not
until the DA shined it in his eyes. She would not take no for an answer, So we find out Sonya is the one that arranged for him to get into Gen Pop and he tells Donovan to say goodbye to the hole and he just stares at Stabler and then he gets walked away. And that's dick wolf my Bambino's.
I just want that girl to get years. I am like, she fucked this guy over. I mean, he made the decision, you know, to shove and you know, hopefully five years he can make it out.
But it's like, are you fucking kidding me?
Because she truly could have just said it was a guy. I didn't see his face, like they didn't like ing it was him, Yeah, they didn't like him.
Yeah.
That just makes it feel like it's more like in like terrible, you know, than what her original crime was. But that's that up, and I can't wait to hear what crimes you have to tell me about.
There's so many stay tuned, buckle up, guys. Okay, so there's a few crimes and each of them are like a kind of a piece of each of the episodes,
and none of them actually fit at all. Okay, So the first one is the case of Mary Rogers, and this is connected to like the water of it all the yeah, just the water, okay, So and this is yeah eighteen forty one July twenty eighth, eighteen forty one, guys, two New Yorkers were wandering the Hoboken shoreline near the spring at Sibyl's Cave, which is a popular tourist attraction at the time. Since it is the eighteen hundreds, like, I can't imagine how.
Boring their tourist attractions were.
So they spotted a body bobbing two hundred yards out in the Hudson River, And while they waited on shore for the coroner to arrive, a man approached that, how do you even contact the authorities?
It's the eighteen hundreds.
You're on a dock, Like I know, everything is so hard for me to picture here. But a man approached them and said, oh, I recognized her from her clothing, and that is Mary Cecilia Rogers. Records are heard, but like because it's so old, but they believe she was born in eighteen twenty in Lime, Connecticut. I didn't realize not only lime disease was big in Connecticut.
I didn't realize Lime was a town. Yeah, that's where it comes from. That's where the name comes from. Why that's wild. Yeah, because the town of Connecticut, of Lime, Connecticut, I think, is where like it was first I don't know, discovered or whatever.
It must suck to be. You know, your town is a disease, now that you've caused. Her and her widowed mom moved to Manhattan in the eighteen thirties and they ended up getting some single, working class girl jobs. So Mary was a salesgirl at a tobacco emporium, and then her mother opened a boarding house, and so you know, Mary was working at Anderson's tobacco imporium.
She was super cool.
There was an emerging social scene and young men came by local writers, and even though people came for the tobacco, Mary was a huge attraction. She was known in the press as the beautiful cigar girl. She became a huge celebrity in Manhattan. So she eventually returned home to help her mother, but was still like the center of mail attention.
Everyone was kind of obsessed with her and one person that was super obsessed was a man named Daniel Payne, and he was a cork cutter, and he also was a boarder cut corks who was a border and who got engaged in the summer of eighteen forty one. So Mary and Daniel Payne are engaged in eighteen forty one. He is also the last man to have seen her live.
So the morning of July twenty fifth, Mary left the Rogers boarding house and said she was gonna go visit on Aunt up Town and after that, nobody knows what's happened to her. And so then this a man named Arthur Chromelian who is Mary's ex saw the articles written about her missing and took the fairy to Hoboken to
search for her. And that's when he arrived as the witnesses were there and as they were recovering her body, and so that the timing is wild, very wild, and the cops didn't find him creepy enough, so they just moved on from the investigation.
They were like, ah, this.
Guy seems chill, okay, But so they turned their attention to pain but his alibi checked out and then no more leads came in until September, there was a break in the case. A group a group a group, A group of local boys playing in a field found bundles of bloody clothing in the bushes and their mother alerted the police. And their mother was named uh Fredrika Loss, and she operated a place called the nick Moore House
and Pub. And she revealed to the cops that Mary had checked into the nick Moore House on the night she disappeared with an unknown man. The pair went out and never returned. She also said she heard screams in the night from the woods but didn't think much of it.
Huh okay, I don't understand. I don't get it.
But I also uh, A few bars are doing it now. But I do really like a bar that has a hotel in it. Oh yeah, gold Diggers does that Barvel in Los Felis has like it's a great wine bar, and then right above our like beautiful rooms, like really cool bi Boutiqui rooms. I'm into it. I really love it. But at the gold Digger bar, they like there's signs in the bar that's like need a room, ask a bartender.
So it's more I don't know.
I think people are doing creepy shit, but I'm into Yeah, I'm into it.
Okay.
So she didn't think anything of the screams. And then October seventh, pain. You know, her fiance was really, really sad, and so he went to go to the place where her clothing was found, and he drank a bottle of Laudanam, which is a tincture of opium and alcohol. He overdosed and he was later found a few hundred yards from where Mary's body was found.
The end that he had a note in his.
Pocket and it read, to the world, here I am on the spot. God forgive me for my misfortune in my misspent time.
Huh.
Edgar Allan Poe became obsessed with the case and published The Mystery of Mary Roguette and a sequel, Murders at the Room Morgue. And I don't know, there's a lot of information about how Edgar Allan Poe was just kind of really into this case. But you know, I like the famous famous creep creepiness lover, famous creator of creep.
Yeah.
So, November sixth, eighteen forty two, Frederica Loss was accidentally shot by one of her sons. The next ten days, she was in pain. She was babbling, hallucinating, and she claimed that a young woman was tormenting her. And then she finally made a final confession. She said that Mary came to Hoboken to get an abortion in the company of this young physician, but she died in the operation and lost a ton of blood. And so Loss's sons dumped the body in the river and scattered her clothing.
And in later years it's even suspected that Loss was working as an assistant to the notorious Hoboken abortionist Madame Costello, whoa Right after the mother's death, two of her older sons were briefly charged in connection to the murder, but there was lack of heart evidence or witnesses, and you know, the condition of the mother during the confession, so the case does remain unsolved and no one knows. But wow, a body in the river. Okay, So the next one.
Do you know about this Margo Kidder's disappearance. Yeah, I remember reading about this a long time ago. I don't know the details, but I remember that she was having some thought. I think she was having some mental health issues. But yeah, so this is so Margo Kidder, for those who don't know, was Lois Lane. In the Superman movies and famously for US she was Chadlow's mother, slash abuser, slash lover and then murder victim on that episode Peak, which was a very good episode, and her.
Performance in that episode is killer. It's so good. I don't like. I don't like something she goes.
It requires a prevaricating nature that I did. I despise, Like, she just has a great like line delivery.
Yeah, one of the rich moms, but the yea yeah, Benson's like, so if you're so rich, was there only one bedroom here?
Okay? So her career went from.
So this is I think, quote unquote like the hoax part of it, not the hoax, because something was going on with Margo and with that woman. I mean, that woman in the episode is an addict with some issues. You know, Margo did not affect a fucking other person's life, which the character did.
So a little bit about Margo.
Her career went from stardom to addiction, to bankruptcy and then finally this disappearance. At the height of her fame, she was you know, Superman Blockbusters with Christopher Reeves and was known as the best paid Canadian performer in the US. So she showed up to lax on Saturday night, April twentieth, nineteen ninety six, for a flight to Phoenix on her way to teach an acting class at an Eastern Arizona College.
But her flight was actually not till Sunday, so she wandered the airport for several hours and then at three as she noticed a man named Ted Hall and he was a television reporter from Tennessee, and she saw the cameras and everything, so she asked, oh, are you from the media, and can I hang out with you guys? And she told them she was being stalked by several men hired by her ex husband to kill her, and she would tell that. She told them that he makes Oj Simpson look like Alan Alda.
I love that. I do too, That's a great line.
She pointed to one man and said that's him, that's the guy. But the journalists actually remembered him from the flight from Atlanta, so he realized something was off.
She did not want to call the police.
Instead, she asked for a disguise or just switched jackets because hers was bugged. She eventually left the airport at
four point thirty in the morning. The taxi driver did kick her out because she was broke, and so for two days she wandered for miles on foot and hid from like these phantom stalkers, She approached some people on the street who believed that she was homeless, so they gave her a ride to Glendale and offered to help her find a place to sleep, but all the shelters were full, so they paid thirty three dollars for a room at the Bell Motor Motel at eleven pm Monday.
She appeared at the front desk the next morning, wrapped in a bed sheet and asked for scissors to cut her hair, like things aren't good, and then finally at six pm, the cops got a call from a homeowner when they found her behind a bush. April of nineteen ninety six, she was found in Glendale, California, in this backyard. She was dazed and cowering, and she was taken to a psych ward. There was no evidence of foul play. She was missing for three days and then she was
just really scared, paranoid. It was obvious mental distress. According to the police Sergeant Rick Young. She claimed to have been followed and assaulted, but they did not think a crime took place. No alcohol or drugs were found in her system at the time, so this is a true mental kind of collapse. There was no alcohol or drugs involved. And before this incident in nineteen ninety, she got into a bad car accident and that's what kind of started
off her spiral. She was not able to work, which put her into debt, and she was going through a lot before this breakdown even happened. And then they found out, you know, she had bipolar disorder. She also became addicted to pain pills after the surgery from the car accident,
and she was just in constant pain. She finally had surgery, but then her insurance wouldn't pay for it, and then the production company also rejected the insurance's claims, and so she like wasn't but she did get injured on set in Vancouver. She was filming the Nancy Drew Mysteries or whatever, and so insurance would But it's Canada. What the fuck is Canada's medical system? Knew I thought everyone just gets stuff, so whatever, or maybe because maybe she was a citizen
here or had a visa, it's all America stuff. But it happened in Vancouver, very confusing, But it just seems like every turn people were fucking are over. So she lost her home and went bankrupt, and during the three days she was wandering the street, she was like dirty and penniless, delu and very alone, wrote The Washington Post. Sadly, she did die in twenty eighteen, and the Park Coroner's Office in Montana revealed that the cause was suicide, self
inflicted drug and alcohol use. And a month after she passed, both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain took their own lives. And it really showed that there needs to be more conversations and how it's a really national public health crisis. And I had no idea about Marco Kidder. Yeah, this sounds also like the Anne Hash thing, you know. Yeah, just so sad. So those two cases are just like in connection with the woman in the beginning.
So now we're going to get into.
Sentences, parole, crime, solitary, all of that. So this third case we're going to touch on is about Herman Bell. So basically, two cops were shot in New York City in Harlem in nineteen seventy one. The Black Liberation Party, which is an offshoot of the Black Panther Party took credit for the killings of Joseph A. Pa Gentini and Waverley M.
Jones.
Yet Bell was captured in nineteen seventy three in New Orleans, more than two years after the cops were killed, which is kind of wild. A jury convicted three men, Herman Bell, Anthony Bottam, and Albert Washington. They each got a sentence of twenty five to life. So Herman Bell served four decades in prison starting in nineteen seventy nine, and then was granted parole in March of twenty eighteen. And against all odds, people were hell bent on keeping him in there.
They did not want him out, like cop killers are the worst. Like I don't know, because a lot of these cases, like even Colleen stan we talk about them. I'm like, that man cannot be paroled and he needs to be in jail forever. And then when I read something like this, I go forty years in prison is a lot, I think it's okay, And so it is. It's like really hard because it's not it's not across the board. It's really hard to kind of discuss these things.
So it was the eighth time for him in front of the Pearl Board and the Patrolman's Benevolent Association, and the letter from Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the state Board to reconsider. Deblasio said that murdering a police officer in cold blood is a crime beyond the frontiers of rehabilitation or redemption.
According to The New York Times.
I agree with you in the sense that, like, I don't know how much. I don't know if forty years is enough time.
If you're a member of a person's family and they took them away from you, whatever, Why is a cop more important than a sex worker? You know? Why is a cop more important than another person? Like, that's what I kind of don't It's like, if you're going to just say this is what the cost of murdering a person is, then that's it. Like to say, murdering a cop in blood, murdering a cop is worse.
Than murdering anyone else. I don't know if I really.
No, that's bullshit because actually, as a cop, you put your life in danger.
That is part of your life.
And if that's how we're going to do it, then when cops commit crimes, they should get quadruple the punishment, Like when they abuse their power and sexually assault people, and you know, take like we're about to do another episode where cops did shady shit, like then they should get, you know, quadruple the crime. If you get quadruple the punishment for hurting them, they should get quadruple to punishment for hurting other people.
Oh yeah, and well yeah, and they should also have to pay their own settlements.
Yeah.
I think a lot of them would maybe behave if they didn't, if they is coming out of their own pockets.
Yeah.
I think for these people like the Banilla Benevolent Association and the mayor and stuff like, to them, it's like they're setting them up like you're a hero already and so killing a hero. But it's like there's a complicated everything with cops. There are certainly cop heroes. There are certainly very unherly unhear own cops. Yeah, but I don't I think for them, it's like they're immediately on a pedestal, So killing them is worse than anything.
Yeah.
And when you're just like very young and depending where you grow up from and like the fact of the matter is, murderer is wrong. But if you are part of this liberation and you feel like cops are an agent of.
The system, then it is sol layered.
Yeah, but anyways, even with the pearole, he's gonna be supervised for life. And the parole board concluded that he matured and expressed remorse, and they took in a few factors such as his age, his limited disciplinary history, and network of supporters, and said that the state has prepared
him for his release. Albert Washington, the other person, died in prison in April two thousand and then Anthony Bottom was granted parole at sixty eight years old in twenty twenty and released, you know, in October of twenty twenty. I understand the families of victims being upset, but the language is kind of insane, you know. The president of the association, the Police Benelevents Association, Pat Lynch, said cop
killers should never be returned to society. And it's like, I don't know, I don't know, what about the cops that kill their wives? Can they be returned to society? It's just so fucking annoying. Did we even ever find out what happened to that cops wife who was like boiled to death in the car that he locked her in? What This was like a couple of years ago, a CoP's wife was found in the back of a police
car and was like a hot day. He put her in there and she boiled because you can't get out and it was hot as fuck.
And I don't think anything ever happened.
Miami police officer, Yeah, twenty twenty dies after she gets trapped for hours in the back of his work vehicle. Cause of death had not been released. Really feels like we know what happened.
But he's acting like she got in the back of the car or something like that. He came home from work, went to bed. Yeah, and she didn't know where she was.
Sure.
Yeah, it's it's unknown why she went inside her husband's vehicle without her cell phone.
This is according to CNN. Yeah, and I don't know. I don't think there. It sounds like there's not even gonna be an investigation into it from what I'm looking at. Nope, that was it. Nothing about it since October of three years ago. Wow, all right, So that's what I mean. It's just like, obviously, a life is a life. These cops had full families, people who loved them, like absolutely, but the language of all these people is such bullshit.
It's like their lives don't matter.
Ranking people in society, yeah, like ranking people as more important than other people is not.
Yeah.
Yeah, it makes me be like you have released all of the cop killers, you know what I mean. It's just like the language actually does the opposite. According to CBS News in September twenty twenty, it said that sixteen cop killers in New York have gone free in three years, you know, in this time. But then an adjoint statement from the Release Aging People in Prisons Campaign, very specific
name exactly what they're doing. The Parole Preparation Project and the Brooklyn Defender's Officer and Legal Aid Society and Support of the Parole Board's decision released this, and really I like what they said. The purpose of parole is to evaluate people for release based on who they are today, not to extend sentences into perpetuity.
And I like that.
Okay, this final case that I'm going to touch on is again about like parole. I don't know why none of the crimes on the wikier were about solitary confinement in all honesty. But here's another This is very interesting. Do you know about this about Norman Mahler and Jack rabbit. Okay, I think you're gonna be enticed. It's kind of wild. So. Jack Henry Abbott is a best selling author and convicted killer who was paroled in nineteen eighty one with the
support of novelist Norman Mailer. So six weeks later after he was paroled, he killed a waiter in cold blood and then was sentenced to fifteen years to life for manslaughter, and while in prison, he did take his own life with a bedsheet and a shoelace at his maximum security prison in two thousand and two. His lawyer, Michael Kuzma, has doubts that he took his own life because he had been voicing fears for his safety in recent weeks, but a note was found, even if the contents had
not been released, so we're not really sure. This case drew a lot of national headlines and spurred a debate about whether the parole system was too lenient, and also brought a ton of criticism to Norman Mahler, who was obsessed with Abbot and just focused on his literary gifts and not the capacity for violence because he's a fucking idiot, even though he went to Harvard wrote novels essays, nonfiction journalism biographies won Politzer Prizes National Book of WS and
of course was married six times.
One of those wives.
In nineteen sixty he stabbed in the abdomen after a party. So Norman Mailer go, fuck yourself, Like this is classic when men are like, I don't know. He was like so nice and chill, and it's like you could tell from a mile away this.
Is a psychopath.
But anyways, but to be able to go to Harvard and still not under like, it's just something about people who think they're intelligent or like BookSmart or literary, or like the gifts are above everything else, Like you are blinded to true humanity.
I think.
So Abbot was in prison to begin with for just like writing bad checks. But then he murdered another inmate and that is what extended his sentence and put him into solitary and stuff like that. So Abbot began sending Mailer letters from prison in the late seventies, and with
the help of Mailer like who wrote an intro. He published all these letters in a book called In the Belly of the Beast in nineteen eighty one, and in the intro, Mailer wrote that the boldness of the juvenile delinquent grows into the audacity of the self made intellectual, which is wishful.
Hope honestly likes a bad boy. Norman Mahler likes a bad boy.
Yeah, and so like, you know, he was just hoping it's not crime and punishment, but crime punishment and redemption and that talent, I guess redeems you in some way.
And we see that time and time again.
I mean, people are still happily listening to r Kelly, you know what I mean, because whenever someone is bad, it's like, well, innocent until proven guilty, and then when they're proven guilty, their stance doesn't change. Like he R Kelly's in prison. Why are you still listening to him? But okay, so, yeah, he just thought that the act of writing can transform a violent person into just a
philosopher of violence. But like, honey, it's not just a theory, you know what I mean, Like, if someone lives by these princess that they're writing, it's not just an idea or philosophy. And this person, you know, Abbott has been since the age of twelve, spent all but nine and a half months in prison, and fifteen of those years
were in solitary confinement. Mailer wrote to the Utah Board of Corrections that mister Abbott has the making of a powerful and important American writer and promised him a job as a research assistant at one hundred and fifty dollars a week. And when he was released, he was treated like a literary celebrity.
You know.
He was on Good Morning America, Good Reviews, Fancy Dinners, People Magazine, interviews, SOHO News, he was doing assignments for the New York Review of Books in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
He signed with an agent.
People loved the book, and they compared his jail time to like political prisoners, which is not the same and in two weeks, because that's the whole thing. They're like comparing so much of him to like Russian authors and stuff like that, Like and I don't know.
People that were persecuted, but it's like this guy real bad checks.
Like it's like Teresa Judye, I'm sorry you have to go to jail, but you guys did do mail fraud, like you did steal money, Like I'm not paid taxes or whatever.
Yeah, I mean them being like, oh, they've been through a lot it's like, no, no, your parents are criminals. You still got to keep your house many people do not, and your kids, and you got to like stagger or set like your time.
Yeah.
I just obviously you can have a hard time within your family and struggle, but to try to get like empathy from others when you're a slumlord, go fuck yourself. So two weeks later, after all these dinners and all this fun and all this attention, he stabbed Richard Aden twenty two, an aspiring actor and playwright, to death outside of an East Village restaurant where he worked as a waiter. There was a month long manhunt, and he was found
in Louisiana. Again, Louisiana. Why are people all fleeing to Louisiana?
I wonder.
January nineteen eighty two, he was convicted of first degree manslaughter.
Wildly.
Mailer did say he felt a very large responsibility. He said, never thought Abbot was close to killing and that's why I have to sit in judgment on myself.
I just was not sensitive to that fact.
Okay, classic dude stuff, and oh my god, so wild the trial was happening for this, you know, murder. Abbot represented himself at one point and told Adam's widow, ricci Aden that her husband's life was in quote, not worth a dime. They just let the psycho represent himself at the civil trial.
Oh my god.
And yet this is what I mean with this, like upper crust people, it's like, oh, well, I think you're good. I see your humanity, so you must be you know what I mean? Like this dude is clearly fucked up, but so is Norman Mailer. Yeah, And the even wilder is that Abbot knew the whole time that Mailer's view of him was wrong and he was not the person
his literary mentor made him out to be. He wrote to Mailer in one of the letters in the seventies, my life is not a saga, and I resent your using the term like that.
I do not feel heroic. And that's that.
I do think there is something to be said for like looking into this guy Abbott's like past, like he's in jail from twelve years old, Like nine and a half months of his life have ever been spent in freedom? Like I do think that's a little bit one of the what the episode is talking about. It's fucked up that Norman Mayler was like, I'm gonna bestow you with
my privilege and decide that you're the chosen one. But at the same time, like this guy seems like he's a product of the incarceration system and like being in jail for most of his fucking life and then he just randomly murders waiters and has no value for their lives, you know.
Like no, And this New York Times article talks about like usually, you know, even with herman, it's like you you leave jail and you're going to parole meetings and a halfway how like you're being supervised, there's check ins. This guy just went into hanging out with the glitterati
of the literary Manhattan community being celebrated. So I don't I don't even understand how he didn't have parole meetings to go to, how he wasn't being monitored, that he just got to be on the news and celebrated and drink champagne.
Like that also fucks with you.
It's like this this admiration and people are obsessed with you, and I'm sure that's like such a hard departure from what he normally know. The good news is in nineteen ninety a Manhattan jury did award seven point five to seven million in damages to Adam's widow, Ricci.
So oh because they gave him parole and then he killed Yeah.
Yeah, and you know, all the money from this book goes to him, to her to like make this oh yeah, because he can't profit off of his crimes.
Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Wow, because I think you heard of the Belly of the Beast, Like I've heard that before.
I think I've heard of that too. Yeah.
So yeah, I mean I think this is like a weird collection of kisses that all kind of fit like little pieces into what we watched, but definitely not as clear cut as a lot of our other episodes.
Yeah, and it did interesting, yes, and it didn't like focus on any specific like stories of solitary confinement.
But we're going to get into that a little bit. And what would sister Peg do?
So let's just jump into our post mortem since we don't have a guest.
All right, post mortem time? What did we look?
I mean, I don't know, I don't really agree with solitary confinement. I don't know what the answer is, like what we're supposed to do with people that are like super violent and can't be around the rest of the population of the jail. But I do just feel like it's making things worse.
Can't they be in cells that are like in a surpal so they can at least like see each other sometimes or pass no have a conversation. Yeah, but the way they can't have them having ideas. You know, we did watch con Air. I finally showed you con Air. Sure, sure, we can't have them hatching up too many plans. You're right, it's it's tough. It's like you know it's wrong, but
you don't have the answer. Yeah, because for death penalty being against it, there is an answer, but I think that's solitary confinement.
So like I don't know, well not, I don't know the people on death row.
I don't necessarily think are are are in solitary Are.
They Maybe I think they could just do zooms or something, but they don't want them to have any technolo like they're trying to punish them, but.
Where they're being punished, but like no outside, no air and not a window.
Like it's too much. I think it's too much.
I think it's too much punishment. I just feel if you're there forever alone. You should get some books, like you should get stuff. They just don't trust them. I don't know. It is fucked. You're right, we don't have the answers. If you have the answer and think this is super simple, let us know. Yeah, maybe I have the people online that have all the answers.
I do appreciate the show having Christopher Maloney do like, you know, solitary confinement cause play and be in there for three days and go absolutely crazy to a pat cockroach.
So when they brought in the cockroach, do you think he was like, yeah, I'm ready. Was he like oh god, damn it, or like I've been waiting for this soulm oh wait, hold on. We have a friend. I watched him do stand up last night and he had a really funny joke. I don't want to ruined the joke, but I want to not give credit, you know what
I mean. But it's Mosha Kasher and he was saying how he has like violent, violent rat traps and he heard a rat get stuck in one of the traps, but it wasn't dead, and so he was just like, fuck, you know, I have to put it out of it. It's misery, Like what I've learned from life, is like you don't let an animal suffer. But then his daughter was like, well, can I come, And so he in his head was like, I guess this is a teachable moment.
Well I'll teach her to like, you know, you gotta put animals out of their misery.
You can't let them be in pain. So they went downstairs.
But like he said that, like, so he took a golf club and hit it on the head, but instead of dying, it became stronger, and then he just had to keep hitting it and it went into like ten fifteen hits. It started pissing itself. The rat is pissing itself. It's like screaming. And then he's and then it hits him that his daughter's in the room and she's five, and so he's like turning around to be like, oh, I'm sorry, I fucked up, like go upstairs, but she was there with like bloodlust.
She was like, yeah, I get him, fucking kill it, kill it.
Like she was just super aggressive, like she was in a colisseum in Rome and just like screaming for this rat's death. And so he thought he traumatized her, but really he found out she could be a sociopath, Like, we don't know.
I just saw them last week, the whole fam at a pizza place, and she's the sweetest little thing.
And that's really wild.
And his joke is just so fun I honestly, last night I went up first on this show. I had a great time, and then I stayed and watched three comics. I was loving it. I was like having the time of my life. Everyone was so funny. I've really one person. I was kind of annoyed that I found him funny, to be honest, but I was into it.
Wow, it was a Halloween miracle. Yeah. And then.
Who had a joke about like why is pepper spray only for women? He's like, I need to protect myself too, and then he goes into like probably a eight minute joke about pepper spray that he's pepper sprayed six people, how to pepper spray, Like how to get away? And then he's like, pepper spray, you gotta run because the first time I got cocky, it was like, yeah, take that pepper spray, bitch, and it goes, but it blows back, it blows back.
Oh my god. That rat story is really terrifying. I know she was just like get it her, daddy, get it, you know.
So and the rat death, Like I hate rats, but I don't like hearing about how this rat was being growing stronger and pissing. No, they should have left the house and let it die slowly on its own, like I don't know the answer, or like get better poison, Like obviously it's not a good trap, like get poison. Yeah, I don't think it needs a metal You don't need to be snapping its like backbone.
But that's what they say is the most humane.
The snap traps are the most humane because it just, at least for mice, it just kills them the quickest.
This was a super rat. It sounds like this rat was on roids. No, the pissing itself is the level where it's.
Like, uh fuck and the five year old, I, oh my god, Okay, we got it.
We gotta move on this week.
You know our segment what would mister Peg Do, where we direct you guys towards like a resource, an organization and articles, something that gives you more information about the episode you saw today. And this episode came out before the death of Khalif Browder, which I considered to be one of the most tragic, unjust tragedies of modern times. He was a black teen from the Bronx who spent three years in jail just never being convicted of a
crime for stealing a backpack. It was not him, and it's just a horrible case of how he was kept in solitary and later his solitary because of things that happened in jail, like what happens in this episode, Like he went in for a crime that wasn't that bad, but then it's like you defend yourself in jail, you fight, and then you get put into solitary.
So this this all happened when I was living in New York. It's horrible.
And there's a great docum series called Time The Khalif Brouder Story. It is on Netflix, and it covers Kalif's entire case, and you know, his tragic death and his uh subsequent mental health issues after being imprisoned, and the
legacy after his death. So if you're interested in learning a little bit more about solitary confinement and Khalif's Prouder story, then please check that out and that will be posted in our stories the day that this episode comes out and saved forever in our what would Sister Peg do?
Highlight? Wow, that is so fucking sad.
Yeah, and next week please join us, we'll be doing Manhattan Vigil Season fourteen, episode five.
We're obsessed with all of you. We love meeting all of you.
Thanks for all our cute Taylor Swift style friendship brace I can't believe she's takes like it's just beaded bracelets, but now they're Taylor Swift bracelets, you know what I mean?
And that's friendship bracelets have been around forever and now it's like their tailor's they're arrows bracelets.
Because now when I just see some of the so I'm like, oh, did you go to Taylor Swift? And it's like, no, they went to That's messed up Live. That's what they fucking did. I'm obsessed with. Yeah, we're just so lucky you guys.
Listen. God, this Khaliff Browner things really gonna ruin my day. I think, I know. No, I'm glad you brought it up. I have to watch this. That's so.
I remember hearing about the backpack and spending three years. I didn't realize.
That he like that. He died.
Yeah, but we will see you guys next week for more lightness and darkness as usual on our podcast, Bye guys.
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