Kids Who Kill Their Parents

[00:00:00] Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari. And I'm Ed Voccola. And it is going to be Mother's Day around here before we know it. And I hope that you have all made plans to treat Mom right this year, and I sincerely hope that those plans don't involve murdering her.

[00:00:30] But if they do, you've come to the right place. Oh no! This is the show for you. Because we are going to celebrate Mother's Day the only way we know how, by taking a look at children who killed their parents. Is this going to be a special no comedy episode? No, no, no. Well, maybe. I mean, isn't every episode a no comedy episode? In many ways. From familiar names like Lizzie Borden to more obscure cases that inspired plays and songs and paintings

[00:00:57] to ancient punishments that make us wonder if the Romans really were okay. This episode is going to bring the family together in ways that Hallmark can only dream of. There's a hot snowman in this? That was a hot big Hallmark movie last year, right? Hot snowman? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. A physically, sexually hot snowman. Oh yeah, a hot snowman otherwise is a puddle. Yeah. We're also going to talk about my sweet, sweet baby boy who I love very much and who loves me very much and who would never, ever, ever, ever even think of killing me. But then again, that's what they all say.

[00:01:27] What are we? Scared. When are we? All the time. Join us. Join us. Join us. Now it is time for. Time for. Scared all the time. Before we start, I just want to take a quick second to say if you like the show, please go to patreon.com slash scared all the time to check out everything we have on offer over there. We've got a monthly live stream that we do. We've got button of the month club. We've got early release. We've got ad free, all kinds of stuff.

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[00:02:25] So Felix turned one recently, which means he's been alive for an entire year. And he's only 17 more years away from being tried as an adult. Yeah, yeah. We're counting. In the murder of you and Anna. Counting down the days. A year, though. A year of life for a baby is honestly incredible to me, though, because for my first, let's say, 11 months, I wasn't sure we were going to make it to the year mark. I was doing my best.

[00:02:54] But raising a kid is, as everyone tells you, it turns out, is they're right. It's one of the hardest things to do. There's a million ways to screw up. You don't really know if you do screw up until they pull a gun on you in 17 years. Damn. Okay. I think there are other ways to find out. There's like other metrics. That's true. There's probably some in-betweens, you know, a failed grade here or there. Sure. A vulgar gesture.

[00:03:19] But there aren't really any second chances if you screw up something foundational and need a do-over. But I guess I thought it might be nice to start this episode because, Ed, you've been watching this entire process of me raising a baby. You've seen the look in my eyes. Yeah. How do you feel it's going? Seems fine. Okay. It seems like you have. Unremarkable. I have friends who I don't even know if they like their kids. You're always like down on the ground with it. Him.

[00:03:49] Him. And, you know, like singing little fucking songs and like playing and all that shit and kind of getting down on his level where I have other friends who are like, put on a business suit, you little baby. It's time to be the boss baby, baby. Yeah. Yeah. I think like you're doing better than most or at least some people I know who would just seem like the kids more of an accessory than something you're trying to impart knowledge to or like build its tactile skills and shit. So I think you're going to be fine. Nice.

[00:04:19] Those other kids will be successful but kill their parents. The only thing I have a problem with is that he's still not getting the hang of podcasting. He's not good at podcasting. And I feel like, honestly, babies should be better than most people at podcasting because it's the stupidest thing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But lots of things for me feel very different after Felix than before Felix.

[00:04:42] One of the biggest things that is very relevant to this show is that there are things that didn't scare me before that are terrifying to me now. Yeah, how do you feel about a common one for me I hear from people is especially this is surprising because you love horror movies. Yes. And maybe this is where you were going with it. But I have a common thing that like I have friends who had kids older than us who were like, oh, I don't like love.

[00:05:08] Like I can't watch things where like kids go missing or kids get hurt anymore in like horror movies as I see like my kid in that. Yeah, it is. I mean, yes and no. Like I in 2012, the first short film I ever made this short film called The Sleepover. There's like a 10 year old who gets killed by a Michael Myers type figure on screen. It's like kind of violent. And we screened it at DreamWorks because a friend of ours worked there and they had she had produced it and they had like screening room screening room.

[00:05:37] And they did like screenings of things that people had made who work there. And we showed it. And this woman stood up in the back because we did a little Q&A afterwards. And this woman was like, how could you? Like she was so upset that we'd killed this kid on camera. And and I tried to give a polite answer about like, well, you know, it's very tongue in cheek. And it's really dealing with like how, you know, when I was growing up, everything felt scary and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of it, I was like rolling my eyes. I was like this dumb, you know, get her out of here.

[00:06:08] I kind of get it a little more now. I get that. But that come up and talk to me after. Like don't hijack the room to to be like, how dare you? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, no, you got a problem to come up to me after the show and be like, hey, this is, you know, this bothered me. But, you know, I don't think everyone in this room agrees with you. And also you're being a bitch right now. And I think she I think she connected it maybe to a there had been a school shooting as there unfortunately every day often is in the news. And I was like, come on, you know how movies are made.

[00:06:35] You know that when we made this, there was we just made it. And we happened to screen it a week later after this thing, whatever. But, no, it does. I mean, I we talked our episode. Our last episode was about mummies and Lee Cronin's The Mummy that just came out. That trailer, I do have a hard time watching because it is about the mummy of a child. And it's a really fucked up looking mummy. So, yeah, the dead little daughter fucks me up for the Lee Cronin one.

[00:07:05] But, I mean, generally, I still I'm not going to stop watching horror movies. I'm not going to be like so upset I have to turn something off. But there's certain things that I think I'm probably less interested in seeing now than than I was. I mean, think certainly I get more emotional about things with kids. You know, it is now like if I see an ad for like a cancer drug, you know, and it's like, you know, middle age people running around with their kids or whatever.

[00:07:33] Oh, that's how that's gonna be like a St. Jude's. Well, the St. Jude's, obviously. Yeah, everyone should feel bad. But, you know, just more standard stuff. I do get a little more choked up a little a little more easily now. But I think that even more than fearing the things that you see in the movies that are scary elements of, you know, kids getting hurt or something.

[00:07:55] I think I am even more afraid now of the other thing you often see in horror movies, which is kids who are little psychos and kill people. Oh, my God. The Good Son. The Good Son. Have you ever seen The Good Son? Holy shit. I really like The Good. I think The Good Son is a pretty underrated movie. I don't think a lot of people know. If you've never seen The Good Son, it's Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood. Yeah. And Macaulay Culkin, it was they were he was attempting to like transition out of being. Yeah. A little Kevin McAllister. Kevin McAllister.

[00:08:24] And he plays basically a sort of little devil. Well, it's not supernatural, but he plays a violent, fucked up psycho kid. And it's a slow burn thriller. And it's pretty good. I forget who made it. I'm sure someone who a woman stood up in that screening and said, what have you done? What have you done? Yeah. Before having a kid, I was never worried about raising a little Michael Myers. But now that I have a kid, it does cross my mind from time to time because I feel like it could.

[00:08:50] So, you know, I feel like in discussing how we relate to the fear at the beginning of the episode, Ed, I feel like this fear is probably less relevant for you. I'd have a lot of things that I'm not interested in would have to happen for this to be a genuine fear for me. Do you worry that if Felix ever tried to kill me, you might be next? No, I'd probably just tell him, come on, man. I'm your dad now. No, I certainly wouldn't be your dad now. I wouldn't even be his lawyer.

[00:09:18] I, yeah, I think I'm not worried about him coming for me next. Are you, did you ever try to kill your parents? No. Okay, that's good. That's good. I just thought I'd check. Didn't even cross my mind. I just thought I'd check. Didn't even know it was an option back then. I mean, it really, it's not really an option, but, you know, it doesn't stop some people from trying. And I think that there are certain stereotypes we have that I certainly had going into this show about what an episode about kids who kill their parents would be like. Probably not super funny. Yes. We'll do our best. Yes. Yes and no.

[00:09:48] In my head, I was like, oh yeah, kids who kill their parents. I think of The Omen. I think of Sinister. I think of The Good Side. You go to movies. You don't go to the news. Right. You think of like creepy children who do something fucked up and then it's still fucked up, but it's sort of this, it's a bizarre story. Yeah. A kid who like silently cut their parents throat for no reason and then stared at the wall for three days, you know? Yeah. Those stories don't really exist.

[00:10:14] I imagine the operative sentence, the part of that sentence is for no reason. I imagine that when you look into the reason the kid does it, you're like, boo, not a lot to have fun with here. No, no. But I'm sure you chose ones that aren't that. Yeah, no, no, no, no. There's tons of cases that range the spectrum. And of course, killing your parents is a terrible, awful thing. That's why we're covering it on this show. It's something that is very scary.

[00:10:40] And we'll touch on the reality of it a little to ground the whole thing. But don't worry. This is not going to be a terrible, awful slog. Yeah. You guys can turn to a proper true crime podcast for that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So let's start with the basics. If Lil Felix were to stab me, shoot me, hit me with a car, drop me off a bridge. At this age? It's like he'd be in Mensa, I think.

[00:11:04] However, however he would choose to dispose of me now or eventually, he would be committing parricide, which is the legal term for killing one or both of your parents. Okay. It comes from the Latin parricida, which means relative killer. And it works as an umbrella term that covers killing both or just patricide, which is killing your father or matricide, which is killing your mother. Or your mattress.

[00:11:28] According to the Department of Justice and forensic psychologist Kathleen Hyde of the University of South Florida, she's basically the world's leading expert on this subject and has devoted her entire, I'm sure, very depressing career to understanding why this happens. Yeah, that's a tough first date. What do you do? Oh, yeah. I study. Well, you see, sometimes severely disturbed children will murder their family members, particularly their parents. Yeah. I mean, has a thing in this is. Are you turned on yet?

[00:11:59] Well, I only say first date because I don't know if like that's a tough job to bring home with you. Yes. So I imagine it's a tough life to have. But also, do you have kids if you're like my whole thing is they could go wrong? That's a good question. I did not check to see if she has children because, Ed, it doesn't matter if a woman has children. We need to ask that question. Well, I just was. It is relevant to the discussion. It's in this particular. Yeah. I mean, I don't. If I never found out, that's also fine.

[00:12:27] Well, I just wonder, you know, if you were like, I am an expert on motorcycle accidents, something where you're like, I have intimate knowledge of how this can go wrong. Am I going to let my kid buy a motorcycle? Even knowing it's probably not going to go wrong and it's fun and it's whatever. I might still be like, I'm the preeminent mind on motorcycle accidents. Listen to me on this one thing. Well, Kathleen, if you're listening, I think you know what to do. I'm sure she's already been killed by her kids. Hit the Gmail. Scared all the time. Podcast at Gmail dot com.

[00:12:57] Her kids found all of her like work stuff and was like, guys, this is an option. Well, it's possible because children, according to the statistics that she has developed, children murder their parents roughly 300 times per year. Stop it. In the United States. In the United States alone? In the United States alone, which is about six times a week. Six times a week, a kid murders one of their parents.

[00:13:24] Kids are murdering more parents than we get payments for this show every year. I know it's true. And it feels like a lot, by the way. It feels like entirely too much for that to be a real statistic, but it is. Kathleen tells us that those six murders a week are committed by one of four types of killer kid. There's the severely abused child. Those are the most fun stories. Snaps after years of torment. Oh, yeah.

[00:13:52] There's the severely mentally ill child driven by psychosis or hallucinations. Okay. There's the dangerously antisocial child who kills for money or to remove an obstacle and the enraged parasite offender. Wait, what? Why would they be? Why is it for money or obstacles? Like where does the like lonely kid? Well, I think. How are those the two things? I think. Not like bullying. No, I think I think in this case antisocial is referring to like antisocial psychological disorders.

[00:14:21] Like like like a psychopath. Okay. Got you. So they're just like, oh, I want this and I don't think of you as a person. So I'll kill you. Understood. Got you. And then there's the enraged parasite offender who kills in a state of overwhelming fury. That was me yesterday. Yeah. Ed had a bad day yesterday and luckily there were there was a support group around me to talk me down. As he said, we jingled the keys. Yeah. You have to treat me like a toddler a little bit. Yeah.

[00:14:48] Well, relatively rare as a percentage of total homicides because this is less than 2% per year. This is America. Yeah. The demographics are remarkably consistent for parasite across the decades of data that we have. It won't shock you to know that 85 to 90% of the offenders are male and about 55% of the victims are fathers. 45% of the victims are mothers, which seems pretty even on the surface.

[00:15:15] But in reality, it's not looking good for the moms because when it comes to general homicide rates, women only represent about 27 to 30% of victims, which means when it comes to parasite, they actually face a higher relative risk of being killed by their children than anyone else. Sure. If you end up in heaven and you're like, how'd you get here? And it's like, I was killed. Yeah. So I'm assuming there's like Kelshi in heaven everywhere now is prediction markets.

[00:15:45] They have full market penetration, I believe. Yeah. So the over under that you were killed by your kids is like shittier odds up there or whatever. Like you get paid out less. If you're a lady showing up in heaven. Yes. Who has been murdered. I don't gamble. We don't even take gambling money for the advertisers. No, I know that's true. That's true. I'm sure they're crawling over themselves to advertise on this show. Well, we say no, thank you. We're saying no. We say get out of here. We don't do crypto and we don't do gambling stuff. So yeah.

[00:16:13] Also, I discovered that kids who kill their mothers, those cases are more often heavily associated with concurrent cases of schizophrenia in the children. So if you have a schizophrenic child, they're more likely to kill the mother than the father. They thought that was their dad. They thought it was. They thought. Yeah. They thought the dad was telling them to kill the mom. And maybe he was. It's also worth noting for dummies like me that a large percentage of these parasites are committed

[00:16:42] by grown children, which again was not something I thought about when I started writing this episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. I was thinking about killer kids, not killer grown children committing murders. But that's basically what this is. So yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't you're you know, you hear hooves. You think courses, not zebras. Yes. So according to a study I found, quote, the slaying of a father typically involves a perpetrator under the age of 30, which is still pretty old. Yeah.

[00:17:11] Whereas matricidal offenders tend to be between the ages of 20 and 50. Oh, that's really quite late. Yeah. And it's also a wide range. It's a little too wide of a range, I feel, to say they typically tend to be between the ages of it's like birth and death. Yeah, they're alive. Twenty five percent of patricides to the father killing were committed by adolescents under the age of 18, while the percentage of under 18 year olds who killed their mothers is 15 percent.

[00:17:41] So there are creepy children out there, actual children killing their parents. But the statistics on that makes it seem pretty few and far between. It's mostly grown children committing these crimes, which is makes it sort of better and worse to talk about because it's not as I guess it's not as creepy or weird or like that. Like it'll happen to you where it's like, oh, I had a bad one. Yeah.

[00:18:08] It's more like they've had enough lived experience to to have built up this hatred and not just like, oh, no, I knew on a new in the crib. Yeah. It's going to be a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a dark subject, but it is one of the oldest crimes documented in almost every every civilization on the planet. There's no there's no fucking world in which this happens. And even people in a different cave aren't talking about it.

[00:18:36] That's why they're documenting this. They're like, oh, did you hear about Oogblog? Whatever the hell a caveman's name would be. Oogblog was killed by Booga and Ooga, his two kids. Would you believe they were both under 18? They were under 18. What's 18? 18. Back then, it just meant you were a village elder, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, everyone basically agreed throughout time. This is one of the worst things you can do in many cultures is considered more than a crime.

[00:19:05] It's really like a violation of the cosmic order. And I think that's important. I think that we do have a few so sticky that it's engraved in the social contract. Killing your parents. You don't kill your kid. You don't kill. Doing the bad thing to kids. Yeah. Like there's certain things where it's like, you know, the law shouldn't be the only thing stopping us from doing something. It's like insider trading. Yeah.

[00:19:31] The great mythological matricide belongs to Orestes, son of Agamemnon. And if you're as rusty... First person to be arrested for doing it. Is that how we got arrested? From what? From Orestes. From Orestes. Actually, kind of. Not arrested, but some of the legal system was invented to deal with this crime. So get this. Okay. So Orestes, son of Agamemnon. If you are rusty on your Greek mythology, don't worry. We are too. Here's the quick version.

[00:20:00] Agamemnon, warrior, goes off to fight the Trojan War. While he's gone, his wife, Clytemnestra, takes a lover. And they murder Agamemnon when he comes home. So mom's got a new boo. Knives out when he gets back. Years later, Orestes, the son, kills the mother to avenge the father. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Open and shut case. Unfortunately, the Furies, who were sort of the ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance and retribution,

[00:20:28] are not pleased by Orestes. They don't care that Clytemnestra killed first. Killing your mother, they felt was killing your mother. And the universe says, no, no, that is going to be punished. Why can't you be more like Oedipus? Exactly, right? He, look, we had a good thing going with that guy. Yeah, it was weird. It was difficult to explain. Were they different? They were different. They were different. After, but they were alive. So the Furies pissed off. They show up and pursue Orestes to the brink of madness.

[00:20:57] But here's where it gets really interesting. The situation becomes so dire that the goddess Athena has to literally invent the jury trial to resolve the crisis. So this was the first case that was ever mythologically, historically tried by a jury of Orestes peers where Athena convened people and said, was this a just action or not?

[00:21:23] Yeah, we're taking this to the public opinion and you're fucking losing a hundred times out of a hundred. Yeah, so Parasite is sort of the reason we invented courts. That's pretty fun. Sort of. Yeah, even if mythological courts. Mythologically, yeah. So in court, an article on Medium tells us that the outcome of the trial was ambiguous. Orestes was acquitted. The vote was tied and Athena had to cast the final vote. She has this quote, mercy can coexist with justice.

[00:21:51] And in that spirit, she turns the Furies into the Humanities or the Kindly Ones who become the protectors of Athens. And through, I don't really understand the mythological significance of this, but through her act of that, vengeance is absorbed into the civic order and stability through the law supplants the blood feud and retaliation. It's fucking cool. Orestes engaged in. I love all that shit. We don't have that here. We're only 200 years old. No, no. No 250 this year.

[00:22:21] Our oldest mythological crimes involve like Paul Bunyan. Yeah, that's true. Every once in a while, we like to bring you a new podcast that has caught our attention and caught our ears. And this week, that podcast is True Crime Couple. This is a true crime show with a bit of a twist. Okay. That even the worst cops in the world should be able to ascertain from the title of the show.

[00:22:50] That's right. This show is hosted by a real-life married couple, Kay and John. Sounds almost like our show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Each episode, Kay dives deep into chilling cases, researching every detail and weaving it all together into a gripping whodunit that keeps listeners guessing until the very end.

[00:23:10] As a history teacher, she is able to layer in really fascinating historical context for each of these stories, connecting crimes of the past to the times and places in which they unfolded. Alongside her is her Ed, John. Okay. Who listens along with you, the listener, reacting in real time and asking the questions you're thinking. Now, I don't know if John knows as much about ancient Greece or comic books as Ed does. But, you know.

[00:23:40] Probably does. He's a good hang. Yeah. He's a good hang. Maybe not. He's married. That's, well, that's true. Anyway, the result, the chemistry that results from this combination is a storytelling experience that is immersive, engaging, and unlike anything else in true crime podcasting. And don't take our word for it with thousands of five-star reviews and even praise from the families of the victims whose stories they're covering. Oh, shit. Kind of wild, right? That's huge.

[00:24:08] Their podcast has built a community of listeners who value both sensitivity and suspense. Hence, whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast, like a Chris type, or just love a well-told story like me, you'll find yourself hooked by Kay's storytelling and John's reactions. So press play and join them as they uncover the darker side of society one story at a time. And you can find True Crime Couple anywhere you get your podcasts. The Romans, though. So the Greeks.

[00:24:37] Yeah, they're older. Hellenistic. The Greeks figured all this out. They said, trial by jury. We're going to figure out how to make this fair. The Romans, they took a little stricter tack. Well, the interesting thing about Romans is they took everything from the Greeks. They love the Greeks, but they just kind of gave it new names. It's like, oh, you're going to have Mars. We'll have a whatever. You know what I mean? But they also, there's anything I know about the Romans. They're obsessed with bureaucracy. Everything's like a triplicate and a fucking whatever.

[00:25:06] And so maybe that's where we're going with this. Well, we're going to a punishment for Parasite that is triply worse than... Oh, okay. I just meant like, I thought we're going to go more law-based stuff. No, no, no. Oh, no, no. Because in the world of the Romans, fuck Athena. Mercy and justice could not be further apart when it comes to Parasite. They developed a punishment for Parasite that is one of the wildest executions I have ever heard.

[00:25:35] It's called poena quelli, the penalty of the sack. Ed, do you have any guesses of what the penalty of the sack might be? Is it boo box based? Is it like you're going in with a bunch of scorpions? It kind of is. Yeah. It kind of is. Because we have the words of Modestinus, a well-known Roman jurist from the 3rd century CE, who wrote, quote, The penalty of Parasite, as prescribed by our ancestors, is that the culprit... Culprit's a great word. We don't use culprits so much anymore. The culprit...

[00:26:04] Which means we don't arrest anyone anymore. The culprit shall be beaten with rods, stained with his blood, and then shall be sewed up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and the bag cast into the depth of the sea. Where are you going to find someone strong enough to lift this bag? That is to say if the sea is near at hand. Otherwise, it shall be thrown to the wild beasts, according to the constitution of the divine Hadrian.

[00:26:30] So, the boo box, but a more fabric-based container. Also, it seems like the damage is done before the sack even comes. With the beating with the rods and such? Yeah, they're just putting, like, a crippled person in a coma into a bag with animals who are like, What did we do? Why are we going in the ocean? Well, there is actually some symbolism to... Well, before we get into the symbolism, I will say the caveat here is that there's no archaeological evidence that's ever happened.

[00:26:59] And this is a thing where I learned during medieval history class where it was, like, the Iron Maiden and all these wacky shit. It was, like, there's less evidence that these items were used and more evidence that if you committed a crime in, like, medieval England or whatever, the chances of you getting away with it is 100% because you just, like, left. Right. And it was, like, so they had to come up with stuff that sounded so scary that it would be a deterrent.

[00:27:27] So, people were like, Well, I was thinking about stealing this gold, but I don't want to end up with whatever the fuck that is. Yeah, but once you have the idea for the Iron Maiden, how long before someone goes in the Iron Maiden? Well, you gotta do. Someone's going in. You gotta do one. Yeah, yeah. So that people know it's, like, a possibility. You gotta juice up someone in there. But I think some of those, like, very salacious sounding, like, truly insane punishments may very well have just been, like, a deterrent. A boogeyman? Like we always say in the show, everything's a boogeyman.

[00:27:55] I mean, it would be pretty obvious if you were an archaeologist and you found... The bones of apes and cocks. Yeah, I would say a pile of bones of apes, dogs, roosters, and a guy all, you know, piled together somewhere. Well, ocean. Well, right. We don't know where in the sea they would have been thrown. If it was a bog, we would know for sure.

[00:28:13] The quote from Modestinus comes from a law history book published in 1932, and that history book cites a digest ordered by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century over 200 years after Modestinus lived. So you could only imagine how many translations they would have gone through. Yeah, games of telephone. Yeah, but we do have much firmer ground to stand on when it comes to the punishment of the sack minus the animals.

[00:28:43] Okay. With a lot less sack to make. A lot less sack, easier to throw. I feel like once the animals are in and you got to get that thing into the sea, you're talking about dozens of people. And again, again, based on the beating of the person, the sack's not squirming at that point. You're just getting rid of a dead body. That's true. Where like apes are going to be like pushing and going crazy.

[00:29:07] Cicero, the great Roman lawyer and politician, actually explained the symbolism of the sack while defending a man on trial for killing his father in 80 BC.

[00:29:20] Cicero is the name of the guy who was still loyal to Maximus and Gladiator. So Ed wasn't completely off by having a Cicero-Gladiator connection in his head. So speaking of the- Claudius, I think was the son. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:50] Yeah, I think that was Joaquin's character. That might have been the first Joaquin performance I ever saw. He'd been a lot of stuff, but to me too, he's probably my, that's my touchstone Joaquin performance. Yeah, because he's really good in that movie. He's a fucking gross creep in that. And I was like, well, maybe in, who knows? Yeah. There's always something to it's like, if you're really good at roles like that, is there part of you that is that? We've talked about that on the show before, I think. And I generally feel that yes, but I also generally feel that everybody has a little bit of everything.

[00:30:20] Okay. And so it's just sort of what you allow yourself to tap into. Okay, sure. Well, yeah, you've directed actors. I haven't directed actors. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I also think there's a certain, there is a certain quality of acting where there are some actors who are very good at, I mean, I think Joaquin is one of those people where he's just, he's really good at feeling and portraying emotion.

[00:30:40] It doesn't, I don't know that it necessarily has to be something, I don't know what his process is, but the actors who are really good at blending in, you know, who are really good at playing lots of different types of roles. Like his role in, in her is so different than his role in, you were never really here or, you know, his role, he's been in comedies. He's been in all that stuff. Yeah. He works. He's really good. Anyway, Cicero in the sack. Okay.

[00:31:08] Speaking of this, this quote is him speaking about the inventors of the punishment. He said, quote, do they not seem to have cut the parasite off and separated him from the whole realm of nature, depriving him at a stroke of sky, sun, water, and earth, and thus ensuring that he who had killed the man who gave him life should be himself denied the elements from which it is said all life derives. Hmm. Hmm.

[00:31:36] For what is so free as air to the living, earth to the dead, the sea to those tossed by the waves, or the land to those cast to the shores? Yet these men live while they can without being able to draw breath from the open air. They die without earth touching their bones. They are tossed by the waves without ever being cleansed, and in the end, they are cast ashore without being granted even on the rocks a resting place in death. Yeah, people were just good at saying shit back then. Holy shit. Yeah.

[00:32:05] I mean, that would be, that was like something that. Those are closing arguments. Closing arguments in trial. It's one of the best speeches I've ever heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was like a Tuesday for Cicero. I'm sure. But no, that's him explaining, though, the symbolism of why you put someone in the sack and toss them into the sea because it's like the ultimate death in a way. Yeah, and there's a lot of that shit back then where it is a lot of like, we need to get someone in the ground.

[00:32:33] We need to put like, make sure there's coins on their eyes to pay the fairy men. There's like a lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding death. So to deny people any of those traditional things that people thought were necessary to move on to the next life is also into his very first sentence where it's like, have we not cut off the fucking patricide? But it is kind of to the medieval thing where it's like, we just make this so fucking horrible. And then I give you a significance like this attributed to it that we're just going to like stop this crime.

[00:33:00] Like we're just going to like this crime will go away or we'd be like drastically reduced. Yeah. And I think it's also one of those things where it's like, it feels like parents made it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, you can't, you can't kill us, man. Put the, put the knife down. Put the knife down. You can't kill me. You're going in the sack. You don't want me in a sack? Is that what you want? You want to be a little sack boy? I don't think so. You're a fucking sack boy, dude? The Romans maintained the punishment of the sack in various forms for centuries.

[00:33:26] And it was supposedly revived in medieval Germany and France for use up through the 1700s. But I could not find much to back that up. Maybe it was. I suspect that by the 1700s, it probably was more of a boogeyman style thing than like a common occurrence. But that didn't stop Middle Ages Europe from having their own absolutely insane punishments. For Parasite. Well, I told you, medieval, it just gets out of hand.

[00:33:54] Because I feel like medieval, and I don't have enough memory of the classes and shit, and I definitely don't know enough of anything. But it does feel like a time period where building upon Hellenistic Greek culture that the Romans did and then adding bureaucracy and adding order to that seemed to have gone away in medieval times. Yes. Like they, maybe because it wasn't an empire anymore.

[00:34:19] And so there wasn't like rules in order to keep the, you know, the, like every, everywhere is Rome. So the way to do that is to make sure that we have, like, we can franchise this. Yeah. In the medieval, it was just like, I think there's ghosts in her bones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like. Quick, suck them out. Yeah, yeah. Like it was no, and it was like no one can fucking read except for like the clergy. And so, yeah, I'm assuming we're about to get into like a real shit time period of stuff.

[00:34:47] Well, this case is also super interesting and the punishment is violent. But also I don't, I could see Cicero in my mind speaking almost like Perry Mason to like people in a courtroom where in medieval times I imagine it's just like, like a fucking jester guy who's like, hasn't he interrupted the life of his father? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, they're wearing like onion sacks. Yeah. Giant masks. And like. Yeah.

[00:35:17] Like most people are like, well, sack is the only thing I have to wear. Why do we keep using sacks? And so like, I feel like there's like a level of like, like people are popping boils on their face and stuff for whatever this court trial is.

[00:35:30] Whatever terrible punishments the Middle Ages invented, they carried on through Renaissance Italy because we have one of the, I think, most vicious punishments and also interesting parasite cases in history smack in the middle of Renaissance Italy. This story caught my eye because it has pretty much everything you'd ever want out of a parasite case. It's got good. A monstrous father, a beautiful daughter, a scheming Pope and a public execution. All right.

[00:36:00] We'll make you laugh, cry and pray. And cringe. In 1598 in Rome, a 21 year old noble woman named Beatrice Sensi was imprisoned by her father with the crazy fun name of Count Francesco Sensi. Okay. In a remote family fortress called La Petrella de Salto. The Sensi family had a long and storied past. They were descendants of ancient Roman nobility who had been feuding with popes since the 11th century.

[00:36:27] So these guys were like a multi-generational thorn in the Catholic Church's side. Okay. One of the Sensis literally kidnapped Pope Gregory VII during mass. Got your ass. Which doesn't, that's a whole other long thing. And I didn't want to research it because this episode got long enough, but. It's like heat where it's like, the Pope is insured by the Vatican. This is not your Pope. Exactly. Exactly. It was somewhere between a prank and that, I think, was sort of what happened.

[00:36:57] By the 1500s, the Sensi family's power had faded and the reputation of them rested almost entirely on Francesco, who, according to almost every surviving account, was a complete lunatic monster. Atlas Obscura tells us everyone in Rome knew his reputation. He starved his servants until he was ordered by the papal courts to feed them. Don't love that.

[00:37:22] He took a mistress while married to his second wife, Lucrezia, and then beat her until she performed sexual acts against her will. Don't love that. Leading to a conviction for, quote, unnatural vice. Which, in Renaissance Italy, to be essentially convicted of rape was, you really had to be. I mean, there's, I can't even imagine the number of like, you're fucking making this so hard on us, man. Yeah, yeah. Most of- Like, we have to, we actually have to bring you in. Yeah.

[00:37:50] And most appallingly, he confessed to molesting young boys in three separate court cases. You know his lawyer was like, what are you doing? I know, man. We're here on like a tax evasion thing. What are you fucking doing, bud? Others, at the time, in the same area, were burnt alive for less than what this guy- Yeah, but like, if you've been a thorn in the fucking, in the Catholic church side for a century, you got money. Yes.

[00:38:20] I mean, his name is Count. Yes. He fucking robs popes at will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, this is a, this is no different than anyone rich today. He always just escaped with fines and a few months in jail and got away with pretty much every horrible crime under the sun. Fines are dumb, dude. Fines are, unless they're enough to cripple the person being fined. And that's the thing, right? It's like so much for the very wealthy, which this person would have been then and today.

[00:38:44] Well, eventually, Francesco's own daughter, Beatrice, reported him to the authorities for a variety of horrible crimes against her that you can, I'm sure, imagine what they had involved. And nothing happened except someone ratted her out and told Francesco that she had gone to the cops, forgot what he did to her. Nazi youth. He punished Beatrice and Lucretia by sending them to this family fortress in the countryside.

[00:39:11] And it was there that Beatrice and Lucretia and Beatrice's brother, Giacomo, hatched a plan to finally fucking get rid of this guy. That was on him. A very dumb move. It's like, I'm going to send you somewhere where you guys can patch a plan. Yeah, no one's keeping an eye on you. You all hate me. You have a whole house to yourself to home alone up as much as you want. So when I walk in the door next time, I'm going to hit with a log. Yeah.

[00:39:34] In September 1598, during one of Francesco's stays at the fortress, the family drugged him with opium. Sick. Then two accomplices, one of them who had become Beatrice's lover, bludgeoned him to death with a hammer and threw his body off a balcony to make it look like an accident. Those are very different injuries? It didn't work. Yeah, okay. It didn't work. Even the forensics of the 1500s. Yeah, CSI Italy.

[00:40:04] So you're telling me he landed on a rock that said craftsman was written on it? Yeah. Like even, even, even. He's got the word craftsman across his fucking head. Even, even Renaissance CSI. They didn't have trouble with this one. The hammer wounds didn't look like fall wounds. And as Atlas Obscura put it, quote, investigators were quick to notice that a man who dies on his balcony doesn't usually bleed out in bed. Oh, and they moved the body after. Yeah, they moved the body. Okay, Jesus. Okay. So the papal police managed to torture confessions out of the entire family.

[00:40:33] Not how confessions work. Thank God that's changed a little bit, except for international law. And well, and even certain police stations in the United States, I feel like are pretty well known to be beating shit out of people. We don't regularly produce phone books anymore. So what are they using? We also don't have papal police anymore. No, but that's a show I'd watch. Yeah, dude. The costumes would be great. Interestingly, this is one of the most interesting parts.

[00:40:56] The people of Rome were so sick of Francesco's shit that they considered Beatrice and her family heroes for what they'd done. No, this is like when we did the Christmas thing where like Dickens, like everyone knew who Scrooge was. Yes. And everyone was like, this fucking rules. Like we, this guy sucks. Yes. And you fucking called him out for being a piece of shit in Scrooge. Yes.

[00:41:19] So unfortunately for Beatrice and her brother and mother, Pope Clement VIII didn't see things the same way. Dude, he's been a thorn in your side. What do you, I guess he was just paying him. Well, it's interesting, right? Because the family had been the thorn in the side of the popes for all these centuries, but it doesn't really seem like that necessarily extended to the second wife and daughter and brother.

[00:41:44] You know, it was, it was certainly the, there was a lineage of this misbehavior, but one of the reasons that Pope Clement was already maybe a little bit pissed off was that he had just dealt with another case of a son murdering his mother. And as you said, wanted to essentially create a boogeyman to nip this in the bud so that they would stop with all the parasites happening around town.

[00:42:07] Or if other sources are to be believed, he just had his eyes on Francesco's fortune and decided that murdering the rest of the family would be the best way to take that fortune and bring it into the loving arms of the Catholic church. Yeah, dude, because fortunes were something you can take back then. Oh, yes. So he ordered the family executed, but did so in the face of the church. Yeah, that's like an insane. Well, they were. Yeah, they were. The church was in control. Yeah, I know.

[00:42:36] That's why I told you no one can read once they took fucking power. But it is, it is wild to think that the church was really for a long time in charge of everything. Yeah, but it's also wild that the Pope was like, hey, murder a whole family today. Yeah. That's what Jesus would have done? No. I don't know about all that, dude. So the family didn't get the sack, but on September 11th. Oh, so they're cheap too. Great. Thanks, Catholic church. They didn't get the sack, but on September 11th, 1599, Giacomo was drawn through the streets.

[00:43:04] His flesh torn with hot pinchers. His head smashed with a sledgehammer. Oh, that's, it wasn't a long trip for him. His body quartered. Then Beatrice and her stepmother were beheaded with a small axe on a bridge over the Tiber River. The crowd was so large that some spectators fell into the river and drowned trying to get a better view of the violence. There's nothing else going on. So I get it. But also, I thought the crowd would be on their side, not pumped about watching them die because the public opinion was this guy sucked. Yeah.

[00:43:34] I mean, I think, I think it may have been a combined, you know, it was like when- It's a riot situation. Yeah. A riot. But there's also this public execution. I'm sure at least some people were like, the fuck is that? Oh my God, his head's missing now with a sledgehammer. And some people were mad and everyone else was too busy falling in the river and drowning. So there was one other family member, Beatrice's 12-year-old brother, Bernardo, who was too young and he was spared execution.

[00:44:01] Unfortunately, he was forced to watch the entire rest of the execution before being sentenced to life as a galley slave. Well, yeah, you got to nip that in the bud too. It's like, we just made a terrorist. So we better throw him in the fucking chain gang. Yeah. Because he's going to come for all of us when he gets older if we don't. But then, in the wake of all of this, Beatrice Sensi became a folk hero. And this I never knew. I'd never heard her story before. For Luigi, dude. Percy Shelley wrote a play about her.

[00:44:30] Stendhal and Dickens both wrote about her. See, Dickens again. He knows to like, you know, folk heroes are important. Yeah. Yeah. We're making some now. We certainly are. And there's a famous portrait of her that hung in Rome for centuries. Although, it turns out that it's not really her. It's not what she looked like. But they say that it's her. I mean, look, many of the paintings depicting the American Revolution have the American flag in it. And it straight up wasn't made yet. So it's like, of course, they're going to put whatever.

[00:45:00] You know what I mean? Nobody knows. Yeah. According to legend, her ghost still walks the bridge where she was executed on the anniversary of her death. Which, again, was September 11th. Was it really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a... Okay. While we're on the topic of historical parasites, I would be remiss not to mention Mary Blandy. She was a wealthy, educated woman who engaged in a torrid love affair with a penniless Scott named William Henry Cranston. This is a...

[00:45:29] This... Oof. We got some Moulin Rouge shit happening here. Sounds like most of the women in LA. Am I right? Not with us. I've been penniless for a long time. There's hope for you. I've been not in any affair, torrid or otherwise. There's hope for you yet, Ed. Okay. There's hope for you yet. The Blandys initially approved of this match, apparently. They even allowed William Cranston, or I assume it's Cranston, but there's a really unnecessary you in there. So... Okay.

[00:45:55] They allowed this penniless bum to live in their house until they discovered he was still married to a different woman back in Scotland. Sure. He wrote a letter asking her to disavow the marriage, which went as well as you might imagine, and she got really pissed off and then talked to the Blandys, and the Blandys tossed him out of their home. Unfortunately, Mary continued to see him... Well, unfortunately for the rest of the family, Mary continued to see him behind her father's back.

[00:46:25] And from here, two different stories emerge. One was that Mary and William were pissed off that the family hated them, that they weren't going to receive a dowry from mom and dad, and decided to find a different way to get the money. Okay. The other, which Mary claimed to be true, is that William came to her with a white powder that he said was a love potion.

[00:46:47] All she had to do was sprinkle it in her father's food until he fell under its spell and blessed their union, which is exactly what Mary did. And her father fell pretty quickly to the floor, dead from arsenic poisoning. Oh my God. The rest of the family suspected Mary, and the servants even admitted to seeing this strange powder all over the pots and pans in the kitchen. Okay.

[00:47:11] Cranston fled to France and eventually died there, and Mary tried to flee with him, but she was apprehended, tried, and convicted. The damning evidence in the trial was that some of the white powder the cook had preserved after seeing Mary trying to dispose of it was able to be tested in court. Now- What year was this? This was- What, they tested in like a street urchin? Does this kid die? Well, it was, this is what it was. This- They didn't have like test strips. They didn't.

[00:47:39] What they did was, rather unscientific, they heated the powder and smelled the vapors, which everyone agreed was clearly arsenic vapors. Sure, okay. It wasn't until 40 years later that chemists actually developed a toxicology test to chemically test for arsenic, but it didn't really matter in this case because Mary was convicted and sent to the gallows. Her last words were reportedly the words- I thought it was a love potion. Of an upstanding woman.

[00:48:05] She asked the hangman not to hang her too high, quote, for the sake of decency, because she was wearing a skirt. Oh. So- She wears something underneath it then. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I mean, you're probably going to piss and shit everywhere. Yeah. So put on a diaper if you want to be so polite about it, but otherwise- Anyway, hung. Hanged. Hunged. She was hanged. She was hunged. Hanged. She was hanged dead by the neck for the love potion death of her father. Got you.

[00:48:40] That brings us to one of the most infamous parasite cases of all time. You know we couldn't not touch it on this episode. The Borden family murders of 1892. Is that axe-wielding lady? Yes. I think all of our listeners have probably heard of this case to one extent or another. They certainly know the rhyme, which Ed will recite now. So, uh, get- I don't- I don't- I definitely don't know it, so- Yes, you do.

[00:49:09] Everybody- everybody give me your heads. You don't- It's a rhyme, so I guess- It's a rhyme that starts with Lizzie Borden. I don't know this at all. Like, this is literally not even- there's no synapses firing for me. In the chat, I would like to know if Ed should know this or not. If everybody thinks this is something Ed should know, please let us know in the chat. And it starts with Lizzie Borden. I'm shocked- And it rhymes. And it rhymes. Lizzie Borden, the Fisherman Gordon. It's this.

[00:49:39] Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. Okay. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Oh. You've never heard this rhyme before? No. It kind of feels like when he saw what she had done, that she would have to give him 41 because you can't leave witnesses. You're reading more into this than was intended. Oh, well, watch what happens when someone sees something when they're 40 for the first time. It's like you showed someone Star Wars right now. They're like, I don't see the appeal. The 40 isn't their ages. 40 is how many times-

[00:50:08] No, I'm saying like, I don't take it for granted because I saw it when I was four or whatever. And now I'm like, oh, it's great. You're saying now that you're 40. I'm 40 and I'm hearing it for the first time. I'm like, I can nitpick. This is a real who's on first with the number 40. I mean, look, 40 days, 40 nights. Have you heard of it? I have. A terrible movie. So this rhyme is catchy and I think most people know it, but it is inaccurate. The rhyme really only gets one thing right. The sequence of the murders.

[00:50:38] Abby Borden, Lizzie's stepmother, not her mother. That's a 40. 40 whacks of an axe. You don't have the energy to get to the next person. Well, that's one of the things that's inaccurate about the rhyme. And it was her stepmother who died first. So it gets that right. Her father, Andrew, died second. Cha-ching. Nice. Andrew died clay. Andrew, what's his name? Andy. Andy. Andrew Borden. Oh, okay. Abby Borden and Andrew Borden are the parents here. Okay. There were only 29 total blows, not 81. Mm-hmm.

[00:51:05] And whoever did it used a hatchet, not an axe. Eh, that's interchangeable a little bit. Small, but somewhat important detail we'll get to in a little bit. Because it wouldn't rhyme. They don't even mention the instrument in the rhyme, do they? Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her... Hatchet doesn't fit. Yeah. It does mess up the... Took a hatchet. And hit her mom in the head. Gave her 40 hatchets. See what I'm saying? This all falls apart. I don't know why you're so committed to it. I don't know why you have a tattoo of this rhyme on your body. Yeah, let me... Guys, I just got this done.

[00:51:35] Just got it done. Because he thought everyone's going to know what this is when they see it. To his surprise, I didn't know what it was. Even... Well, not weirder, but the big, big thing that the rhyme leaves out completely, because it really isn't interested in accuracy, is that the murders... This is one of the weirdest parts of the case. The murders of Mr. and Mrs. Borden happened almost 90 minutes apart in the same house, and no one saw or heard anything. Wait, there were other people in the house? Yes. That's...

[00:52:04] So she knocked her parents out. Like, she drugged them and then did it. Well, Ed, we're going to solve this mystery once and for all. Is it not solved? Is it an unsolved case? Sort of, depending on who you ask. It's unclear. It's unclear. I will say this. To this day, there is a lot of debate as about what happened in this house. Okay. We'll start here. We're going to step back and set the scene. And also, I should say, if you are listening to this and you're a big Lizzie Borden head, you're probably going to be screaming at the podcast because this is the most surface level.

[00:52:34] It's a really detailed, complicated case that, as with a lot of the things we've covered on this show, touches a lot of parts of life at the time. And people can and have written books and, you know, all kinds of stuff. They know you're talking to me. Yeah. So you have to, like, kind of dumb it down a bit. So we'll set the scene here. It's August 4th, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. It is a sweltering, miserable New England mill town where half the country's cotton cloth is produced. Yeah, we've both been there. That's where we used to get our film developed. Yeah.

[00:53:04] Well, back then, they were just making cotton at the hands of underpaid immigrant workers. And the money being made in the town is being hoarded by a small group of Yankee families who live on a literal hill overlooking the factories. Don't love it. It's not a fun place to be in August, Fall River, Massachusetts, or ever, really, at the time. But August is particularly hot and humid, the kind of weather that just might cause someone to snap and kill their parents with an ax.

[00:53:34] Okay. The scene of the crime, the Borden house at 92 2nd Street, is not what you would expect from one of the wealthiest families in town. Andrew Borden was worth somewhere north of $300,000 in 1892 dollars. Oh, I don't even want to know what that is today. It's about $10 million today. Well, you know what? He spent most of that money on insulation. That's why no one heard him getting axed to death. This guy didn't pay for anything. This guy was so cheap that the house didn't have running water. He just was, he was like sort of,

[00:54:03] at least the way that he's portrayed. It's that Getty shit, man. It's like, it's like they have like a pay phone in their house. It's the penny pinching that you often found in the rich. Not everybody, but I think there was a belief among the rich then. And sometimes I think you even see it now of you become rich by not spending money. I had a fight with a friend recently who's from a very, very, very wealthy family. And luckily I have enough of those, but then I can know exactly what I'm talking about. But it's straight up fighting, fighting the table of poor people like us

[00:54:33] about like, I didn't have, I didn't eat any of the edamame. Yeah. So like, I am not, like this is the amount that we're, I'm putting on my card. Yeah. And I was like, dude, what are you talking about? Generally, I would say, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're a younger person, if you feel like you don't really know yourself or how to make friends or whatever, my, one of my pieces of advice is, sometimes you're going to pay for a drink, you didn't drink. It happens. It happens. And honestly,

[00:55:02] if you're out with a group of people, I mean, look, not everybody knows what everybody makes, but if you're doing okay, if you have a roof over your head and you're out with your friends, just fucking split the bill, man. It's some, yeah. You don't, you don't need to, you don't need to talk about each and every little last item. Like, it's fine. And none of the rest of us did. Just the person from the multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire family. Yeah. So anyway, Andrew definitely would have been that guy. He didn't really seem to have a lot of friends in town. People thought it was kind of weird that he didn't live on the hill.

[00:55:31] Now he theoretically lived down where he lived because he wanted to be more among the people, but then it also seemed like he never really left his house. He didn't want to go up the hill. He didn't want to go up the hill. We talked about in the elevator episode where like the rich all lived on the first floor until elevators were invented. Yeah. Then they became like penthouses. He was probably being a stubborn prick and just being like, hey, everybody move down here. It's better down here. This is where the rich people live. All of the mill smoke is going up the hill. So I'm below the mill smoke. The house was also weirdly narrow

[00:56:00] and dark and cramped. There were no hallways in this house, at least on the first floor. The rooms just all connected to other rooms in ways that it was basically impossible to have any privacy. So it was like a railroad apartment. Kind of. Like a New York railroad apartment. Yeah. In an attempt to create some space, Andrew had actually nailed shut the door connecting the front and back of the second floor. So basically the family essentially lived in like two separate halves of the house that could only be accessed through different staircases.

[00:56:30] Okay. Once you were in one of those halves, you really just could hear and see everybody all the time. Okay. Andrew's daughters, Lizzie and Emma, were both grown, unmarried, and entirely financially dependent on him. They'd been at odds with him for years, mostly over money and their stepmother, Abby, who they believe was angling to get her hands on Andrew's estate, which I'm sure she was. I'm sure she was. Yeah. They refused to... I would be. They refused to eat meals with Abby and they referred to her as Mrs. Borden instead of mother. Sick.

[00:56:59] To top it all off... But she took his name. She did, yeah. Okay. To top it all off, in the days before the murders, nearly everyone in the household had been violently ill. Nearly everyone because Lizzie was miraculously untouched by this mystery. Well, she has the ill of violence. She's ill with violence. In fact, mentally ill. Lizzie was feeling so good the day before the murder that she'd actually gone to a local pharmacy. And Ed, you know what she tried to purchase there? Arsenic. Prussic acid, a.k.a. hydrogen cyanide, a.k.a.

[00:57:29] deadly poison. And she did this by telling the pharmacist that she needed it to clean a seal skin cape to which the pharmacist said, get out of here. You don't use this deadly poison ever to clean seal skin capes. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know why we have it. It was sent here by accident. I'm not selling you prussic acid. So the morning of August 4th, Abby and Andrew, mom and dad, Mrs. Borden and dad. But you think she got them all sick first so she can get out of the house to check out the prussic acid thing? I think, and some people think, she was already

[00:57:59] trying to poison everybody. That's what I'm saying. It didn't go well. Yeah. And then she went to go buy more and was rejected by the pharmacist. Because he's like, you've already sold your crazy shit all week. He's like, I sold you three gallons of this last week. Yeah. How many seal skin capes do you have? How many capes are we wearing, period? Period. Anyone. The morning of August 4th, Abby and Andrew eat breakfast around 7 a.m. with a house guest of theirs named John Morse who leaves the house a little bit after. A little after 9 a.m., Andrew leaves

[00:58:29] with some letters that Lizzie asks him to mail. So Lizzie sends her dad out of the house with letters. Around 9.30, with the maid cleaning the home's windows in the backyard, Abby Borden is killed on the second floor in the guest room by 19 hatchet blows to the back of her head. That's a crime of passion. Around 11 a.m., Andrew returns home and the maid lets him in. Lizzie visits Andrew briefly in the dining room telling him that

[00:58:59] Abby had received a message and left the house. Andrew lies down in the sitting room, says, I'm going to take a load off. The maid goes to rest in the attic. Shortly thereafter, Andrew Borden is murdered on the sitting room sofa with 10 blows to the face and head. At 11.10 a.m., Lizzie discovers her father's body and sends the maid to get help from a doctor down the street. Where's all the sisters and brothers? So one of the sisters, there aren't brothers, there's no brothers,

[00:59:28] John Morse was the house guest, he was out of the house, he comes back in the middle of this, or not in the middle of this, he comes back after the murders have taken place and the sister, I forget where she is, but she was somewhere else. Lizzie was home, she discovers dad's body, word spreads fast and the cops arrive really quickly, although one of the reasons this investigation was botched was because most of the cops were at the annual station picnic on the beach, so the B squad,

[00:59:57] just whoever was minding the station was all that was left to come to the scene of the crime. People who weren't invited to the beach. Yeah, the people who weren't invited to the beach to be at the picnic were the ones who came to investigate the crime scene. Single people. Abby's body wasn't discovered until the middle of this investigation when somebody basically was like, where's Abby? Lizzie weirdly says, yeah, where is she? She could be dead somewhere else in the house. That's not a quote, but that was essentially she was like,

[01:00:27] oh yeah, she could be dead too. We have to find her. Yeah, I never go upstairs for any reason. Yeah. So then they find the body upstairs of mom. The police at first suspected robbery because the family is wealthy, but nothing was missing. And the deeper they looked, the less sense the whole case made. If Lizzie did it, she had to kill Abby upstairs in broad daylight, avoid getting drenched in blood, hang around the house for over an hour without arousing suspicion,

[01:00:56] then do the whole thing again to Andrew while acting normal enough around the maid and anybody else that nobody immediately clocked her as someone who had just murdered her parents with an axe. That's interesting. The no blood thing is really interesting. If she didn't do it, then you need a killer who knew the layout of this weird house, knew Abby would be alone, knew Andrew was resting on the sofa after he returned and either hid inside for 90 minutes between the murders or slipped in and out

[01:01:26] twice without being seen in the middle of the day. How did they get the 90 minute window? Because no one saw the first one and I don't know about forensics. I think they were able to determine about how long mom had been dead. They had enough forensic science at the time to estimate a time of death. I'm sure it wasn't precise. Gotcha. So it's not impossible that there was this other mystery killer but there's really no one left who could have done it because Emma, the sister, was out of town. John Morris

[01:01:55] had left the house. The maid was outside washing windows when Abby was likely killed and upstairs resting when Andrew was attacked. Lizzie's really the only one who was home. Who was home. And she didn't say I saw a guy running here. No. What she did do was team up with Emma to offer a $5,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the killer. Emma's her sister? Yeah, Emma was the sister. Who, by the way, now just inherited all the money? Well, yeah. The board and sisters both would have

[01:02:25] inherited the money from the parents dying which is one of the reasons that eyes turned to Lizzie pretty quickly. When they interrogated her, an article in American Heritage tells us she had a little trouble keeping her story straight. She first claimed she was in the barn loft at the time of her father's death looking for iron to make sinkers for a fishing expedition. Okay. Then she claimed later that she was in the loft eating pears which is weirdly specific but they're very similar shape to sinkers. I guess.

[01:02:55] So she could have had, you know what I mean? The shapes remain consistent. That's true. She was surrounded by things of pear shape. This is a shape-based alibi. Yeah, yeah. People pointed out and this isn't the strongest argument against it but it was already in the 90s that day and there's no air conditioning there's no fans so no one could quite understand why Lizzie would choose to spend any time in the loft other than it would be the furthest place from killing her parents. And if she's making sinkers is she like smelting metal

[01:03:24] with high heats? Well, she said she went up there to find the iron to make them. Okay, alright. Yeah, I didn't know if she was like I was hot out I decided to do some blacksmithing so I couldn't with all the banging and this shit I couldn't hear them. my leather blacksmithing smithing outfit. She also testified that her stepmother had been called away by a messenger on the morning of the murders but there was just nobody to corroborate that story and no other evidence that that ever happened ever came to light. So with little else to go on the cops settled on Lizzie

[01:03:53] as their main suspect both from her inconsistent account of where she was and what she was doing to her openly acrimonious relationship with both of her parents. She was the only person present with motive when the crimes occurred. So And it seems like her big hang up with the stepmom is that she's angling for the money. Yes. So Her trial begins June 1893 and from all accounts was a complete circus. So the investigation was shoddily done and the investigation

[01:04:23] and then the trial was sort of the OJ trial of its time. She hired Cicero? She should have. This from National Geographic quote speculative, sensational, even fictitious accounts of the crime in the subsequent trial were common as reporters from as far away as San Francisco competed with each other for compelling coverage of the double murder. Their stories sold out nationwide and turned Miss Lizzie as they called her into a household name. What year was this? This was 1893. Oh, this was late.

[01:04:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was pushing up against the 1900s. Wow, wow, wow. For some reason I thought this was like a lot older. Well, we covered a lot of lot older stories. Yeah, but just in general like I thought Lizzie Borden like 30 years ago people could have been alive who knew her. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what's so crazy about it. Yeah, there's stories that the papers were all over this. Miss Lizzie became a household name. Public interest in the crime was so intense that the Boston Globe paid what at the time was a fortune $500 for a story

[01:05:22] that painted Lizzie as a disgruntled daughter whose conservative father had disowned her after she became pregnant out of wedlock. It was completely made up. And funny little side note to that the author of the story Edgar Allen Poe No, no. Although that would have been great. I mean the whole thing was shady. The Boston Globe first of all shouldn't be paying anyone anything for news. They paid this author a ton of money. Then when it came out that it was fake the author feared legal repercussions and fled to Canada

[01:05:52] but didn't make it because he fell to his death while boarding a train. Oh my God. So who was it? Cursed all around. Just some guy. Oh I thought you were going to like tell me. Okay. I don't know. It was Edgar R. Murrow. I don't know. Edward. Edward. Sorry. A friend of mine just met Edgar Wright so I've got Edgar's on the brain. Sure. The prosecution relied entirely on circumstantial evidence because there was no real physical evidence. Yeah. There was no murder weapon conclusively

[01:06:21] tied to Lizzie. Which is crazy. They did find and this is where the axe and hatchet becomes kind of important. They found a hatchet which had clearly been hidden. It was covered in blood and clump of hair in the basement along with a bucket of bloody rags but there was no blood on Lizzie's clothes though it was worth I think she could have changed. It was worth noting that she was seen burning a dress in the stove days after the murders claiming that it had been stained with paint but even still

[01:06:51] and this is something I couldn't find anybody I'm sure someone has written about this but I couldn't find anything about it while I was researching the episode. It seems to me that the maid would have been like oh yeah Lizzie did change clothes that morning you know like if she's burning a dress that's covered in blood that means it would have gotten covered in blood in the first murder and then she took it off and hit it back on to do the second murder no took it off hit it put on something else and then burn the bloody dress. Yes but she had a 90 minute

[01:07:21] window where she'd be wearing a bloody dress if she didn't well I'm saying she could have taken it off immediately and hidden it but then you have to put it back on like how you'd bring one of your dad's big shirts to do finger painting as a kid like you'd have like my dirty shirt no I know but that's what I'm saying that's one of the things that's weird to me is that clearly she wasn't wearing bloody clothes at any point during the day and the only way she could have done that would have been to completely change her outfit halfway through the day which it seems like somebody would have noticed yeah somebody would have said oh yeah

[01:07:50] she started the day wearing a dress we never saw again and the bloody rags would be like probably cleaning your skin and body off not the floor of the scene right so but the fact that 90 minute window no one knew that but the maid does have the ability to say I've been working for them a while and usually when things get messy they give it to me to wash in a bucket they don't usually make it a habit of burning dirty clothes true true true true the judge and this is this is something

[01:08:19] that legal scholars it was funny I found people still debating the legality of this or if it was the right choice or not the judge excluded testimony about the prussic acid purchase they would say unrelated unrelated no one here died from that exactly that was more or less the argument but there was a lot of people who feel like it was the judge clearly siding with the wealthy Borden family and kind of doing them a favor yeah but I don't know that's the crazy thing right kind of with the last story too

[01:08:49] where it's like do you side with the family or do you try and get justice for the family how are you doing them a favor by not finding justice doing Lizzie a favor you know that he felt some people think that the judge felt that there's no way Lizzie could have done this I mean some of the stuff you said it definitely makes you wonder like it's difficult to pin it very conclusively conclusively on her we'll get to that more in just a second but most importantly in Lizzie's favor the jury was drawn from the small agricultural towns

[01:09:18] outside of Fall River composed almost entirely of Protestant men who just couldn't believe that this well-bred church-going charity organizing you know I didn't mention this earlier but Lizzie was like she was a well-known person in town she went to church she was a good girl you know she was like sure she wasn't the girl from the previous story who was chained to a fucking radiator or whatever no no yeah okay and the Protestant men just couldn't believe that a woman would have committed

[01:09:48] such a heinous violent act like killing her parents yeah especially so savagely so she was acquitted and lived the rest of her life in Fall River she bought a grand house she named Maplecroft with seven bedrooms and six fireplaces so she spent daddy's money oh yeah you gotta spend it quick yep society turned their back on her and she spent the rest of her days traveling and collecting art until she died of pneumonia on June 1st 1927 at age 66 okay interestingly her sister Emma from whom she

[01:10:17] became estranged fell and broke her hip the same day and died nine years later nine days later I'm sorry oh so same day that broke her hip the day she died or the day of the events of her parents no the day Lizzie died her sister broke her hip and then died nine days later I mean I don't know what the significance of that is other than maybe she pushed her no no no it's just sort of they both died at the same time basically okay final destination a little bit yeah the board and house still stands today it's a haunted bed and breakfast you can go sleep in the room

[01:10:47] where the murder well at least where the murder of Abby they must have added some more doors at this point it's not that like open floor plan so I've never been there but yes I don't think it's a some doors were described as nailed shut yeah that would get the doors were nailed shut yeah in the 130 years since the murders dozens of books and articles have been written examining the case from all sides some double down on Lizzie's innocence others kind of

[01:11:16] retry her and find her guilty I kind of lean towards she did it I do think the big question remains why because of something that you actually said earlier this was a crime of passion well based on the like wow no one does it that way unless it's exactly and that's one of the things that people have you don't usually give yourself a 90 minute cool your head down period between crimes of passion either like that's a huge cool down period to be like you know usually if it's like if you took 90 minutes after

[01:11:46] you feel bad about it and so usually those people like cover the bodies out of like shame and so they're not covered there's a huge gap well the prosecutors when they tried the case honed in on just greed is the motive right just wanted the parents out of the way didn't like them then just poisoned them wanted the money exactly that's something that seems as we all know from listening to true crime podcasts if you're finding bodies that have been bludgeoned in the front and or back of the head dozens of times with an axe

[01:12:16] that even if you hated your stepmom and your dad was cheap but the goal was to get them out of the way poison makes a lot more sense obliterating both of their faces suggests that something much more fucked up was going on and in my mind I think that is doubly true because she tried and failed to buy the poison and it didn't seem to dissuade her like and the fact that the sister they became estranged

[01:12:45] after which could be like they weren't 100% in agreement that like we should definitely kill our parents yes but the fact that the sister never ratted on her if the sister knew of anything tells me that maybe they were like abused kids or whatever and it was like the estrangement might come from we were joking when I said we should kill our parents and you actually did it and so like I'm not on board with that like I never want to see you again I didn't realize I was living with a fucking literally a monster but I'm not gonna rat you out because good riddance to

[01:13:15] fucking bad people yeah I mean that's just me thinking out loud but American Heritage that article that I or the magazine news article I quoted earlier they wrote a very long form piece about all of this that I think is really interesting and I will I know we don't usually do trigger warnings on this show I will say this is probably if you do have trouble with any kind of sexual abuse content this doesn't get

[01:13:45] particularly graphic or anything but just a heads up according to American Heritage quote in the 19th century the connection between sexual abuse and homicide was simply not part of the public consciousness a rare example came to light in Boston in 1867 when 17 year old Alice Christina Abbott poisoned her stepfather according to the correspondent for the New York Times she claimed he had quote improper connection with her which is a crazy euphemism from the time

[01:14:15] she was 13 she had told others about it but most believed that quote something was the matter with her head and when her stepfather threatened to put her in a reform school as she revealed the abuse she killed him her case came before the Suffolk County Grand Jury in August of 1867 and that body committed her to the Taunton Lunatic Asylum Taunton Taunton baby back in the news wow shit everyone was giving linguiça yeah they the Tauntonites put her in the lunatic asylum with no further investigation you know what

[01:14:44] some ways that's probably horrible because the conditions of places like that were horrible also might be a little bit of yeah we heard what he did and we're not gonna hang you for this but you can't be around no more yeah well might be a little bit of like a mercy the article goes on to say that buried in the records of the Magdalene Asylum a home for quote fallen women in Philadelphia at the turn of the century are other reports of women seeking refuge from their fathers the administrators of the home told these women to work hard and pray hard little other

[01:15:14] recourse was available so while no one was putting forward this theory that the Borden sisters were abused at the time of the murders American heritage lists the following conditions under which we now know incest is most likely to occur quote a father may turn on his children when the mother is unavailable and his sense of entitlement is strong or when he has sustained an important loss children between the ages of four and nine are particularly vulnerable because they are trusting deferential to authority and eager

[01:15:44] to please and they cannot always distinguish between proper and improper actions the likelihood of incest can also increase if there is a strong sanction against extramarital sexual activity and in the Borden case all of these boxes were checked two years prior to Lizzie's birth her mother bore and buried another daughter baby Alice the first Mrs. Borden died two years after Lizzie was born in the interim she suffered from a condition described on her death certificate as uterine congestion which is one of the

[01:16:14] unspecific female complaints that plagued Victorian wives this coupled with the death of one child and the birth of another might have made Mrs. Borden sexually unresponsive to her husband and although there was a subculture of prostitution in Fall River Mr. Borden being such an intensely private and rigid man not to mention cheap might have been reluctant to turn to it and American Heritage theorizes that as provider and patriarch he may also have expected his needs to be met in his own home that is an insane

[01:16:44] fucking thing to think it is and the article goes into detail on a number of other ways that this theory historically fits if you have the stomach for it I do think it's a really really fascinating read and I think it's a really strong theory for what happened here is that this was just something that was not discussed it was something that the sisters either one or both of them it was happening to or they knew and it was either happening from one or both of the parents or one or both of them I mean I'm I'm already on board with this theory just because of our I mean I kind of came to that conclusion previously

[01:17:14] yeah so it makes sense to me yeah I think I think it makes a lot of sense especially in hindsight removed from how the town felt about these people and everything and it's also we're not covering them here because I feel like there's way too much of it but it's similar to the Menendez brothers case sure that was a they were abused right that I mean some people will tell you that that was just part of their defense but it does seem like something something was was a stinky in that house something was going on okay to some degree but yeah we will end

[01:17:43] on a story though that proves that not every axe murdering kid is motivated by terrible incest and abuse one of the worst cases I've ever heard really does seem to have been motivated by pure greed and at the hands of a sociopath we touched on this wouldn't it be a psychopath because he killed somebody or is that different I don't know the difference the difference it's not on you to tell me the difference I'm just saying I thought like a psychopath adds violence and a sociopath doesn't have emotions

[01:18:14] Chris decided to quickly look it up interesting psychopaths are often considered genetically driven calculated and charming whereas sociopaths are typically shaped by environment trauma and act more impulsively and erratically oh who knew we touched on this case once before actually in sudden death our episode that almost killed you my friend yeah I think it was in a segment where I was trying to explain how depictions of traumatic brain damage always really freak me out I live in my head

[01:18:44] most of the time yeah I think you probably mentioned that and the idea of my brain misfiring and not realizing that I'm dying as I just continue about on autopilot until I collapse is one of the most genuinely upsetting things I can imagine and that is what happened to a man named unfortunately Peter Porco oh I think I remember this was he like sleeping or something yes okay alright I also have to imagine that spider pig's secret identity is Peter Porco

[01:19:13] right it has to be no he's Peter Porker it's Peter Porker okay I was close it's Peter Porker but I think this is how you got into your hatred of fucking Porco Rossi or whatever it might have been in that episode yeah sorry folks if you're just catching up with us I hate the pig in Porco Rossi the namesake of the classic animated film Porco Rossi I cannot stand the way that pig looks

[01:19:44] episode on him but his existence is up there on my fear tier so fuck that pig but that's neither here nor there what's important to know about Peter Porco is that on November 15th 2004 he was a 52 year old law clerk at the New York State Appellate Division and his wife Joan was a children's speech pathologist and they were both attacked in their bed in Del Mar New York by someone wielding a fireman's axe from their own garage

[01:20:13] Peter suffered somewhere between 10 and 30 blows to the face jaw hands arms and forearms the wounds on his hands and arms suggest that at some point during the attack he tried to defend himself one blow split his skull another took a piece of his jaw but not a single one of those injuries alone was enough to kill him yeah but this is the shit movies and TV it's like you can't just fucking hit guys with bats yeah we're not that's the last thing we're doing that day is like when you watch guys get like beat up for like

[01:20:42] where's the money yeah it's like other than the show rectified I think it's like the only show to ever that I've seen that shows like this is what happens when someone gets like beat up by four people they're in a coma for fucking six months casino shows it pretty oh yeah you're right casino but I haven't seen casino in 25 years what are you doing re-watching Goodfellas that's a well switch it out for casino casino might actually be the better movie that's neither here nor there meanwhile Joan was struck three times with the three-foot

[01:21:12] fireman's axe which was discovered next to her in the bedroom she was barely conscious when paramedics reached her her forehead had been completely caved in her jaw was almost severed from her face and one of her eyes had been lost the paramedics that arrived on the scene reported that the injuries were so extreme that they were unable to find where her mouth should be in order to deliver oxygen to her but somewhere in the time between the attack and the paramedics arriving Peter Porco woke up or part of

[01:21:42] her husband yes who was also in the same bed yes okay part of him did he got out of bed and began his morning routine he walked to the bathroom he tried to load the dishwasher this is a man who has already been beaten as well not just beaten but his face had been caved in with an axe sure yeah so this is a lot going on here he woke up he got out of bed he walked to the bathroom he tried to load the dishwasher he packed his lunch he wrote a check to pay one of his son's Christopher's parking tickets

[01:22:11] he walked outside to get the newspaper realized he'd locked himself out found the spare key let himself back inside and that was where he lost so much blood that he just collapsed in the foyer and died amazing that this guy did more with what should be mortal injuries than I would do feeling perfect if I woke up feeling the best I've ever felt I'm doing a third of the number of things he just did we know this because when Peter's body was discovered crumpled in the foyer investigators were able to

[01:22:41] follow the literal trail of blood splashed and dripping around the entire house oh my god retracing each step of the dead man's mourning despite an unbelievable amount of damage to his head and face an autopsy showed that Peter had only sustained damage to the part of his brain responsible for higher order functions such as perception decision making and language but the brain stem that deep ancient reptilian part of the brain that controls

[01:23:11] automatic functions was completely intact so the fact that it was functioning allowed him to go about things like breathing and daily habits wow these were habits that were ingrained at a level of almost breathing of what he did every morning when he woke up but it does seem that his brain went all right time to get going those kids not gonna pay for these parking tickets apparently at no point did he call the police at no point is there any indication that he got upset or was worried he still

[01:23:40] woke up in a bed with a dead ish person right didn't seem to didn't seem to notice okay the paramedics as they tried to figure out where joan's mouth was gave way to detective christopher bowdish who began asking joan the mom the wife yes or no questions because from what he could see she was going to die and probably die very soon i hope they established pretty quickly what how many blinks was yes he asked if a family member had done this to her and joan nodded

[01:24:10] he asked if it was their son jonathan the older son and joan motion no but when she asked if it was christopher joan nodded yes wow christopher porco was 21 years old and tensions had begun to emerge between him and his parents leading up to the attack according to an article named the porco axe murders christopher christopher had stolen various expensive items from his parents house on at least two different occasions drug addict november 8th 2002 he staged a burglary in

[01:24:40] which he stole two laptops and a camera drug addict on july 21st 2003 he broke in again and stole another laptop drug addict i will say while we're piling the crimes of christopher porco well i'm just piling the reasons we don't know there's no evidence that he was a drug addict there's no evidence to the contrary he's got 30 hewlett packers in his back pocket at this point one month before the attack on his parents his ebay account had been frozen as he was flagged as

[01:25:09] a fraudulent seller taking customers money and not shipping items which ed i feel like you can attest to is maybe one of the worst crimes committed i can't even in this i i would send a christopher porco to anyone who did that to me in june 2003 christopher porco was working at a veterinary clinic which he also burglarized and the items taken and this is one of the reasons i think he wasn't a drug addict he didn't take any drugs he took a mobile phone a camera and computers well he doesn't take fucking horse drugs well i guess that's true

[01:25:39] he's into other kinds of drugs maybe maybe some of the items taken from the veterinary clinic were later discovered in a safe in his room by detectives after the murder who'd he steal that safe from great question just weeks before the attack christopher had been caught forging his father's signature on a $31,000 loan drug addict faking his transcripts from community college to get re-amitted to rochester university where his parents thought he was going to school interesting move i can't know and lying about

[01:26:09] basically everything to do with his education and finances it does seem like i didn't put all of this into the episode but from the research it does seem like i mean maybe there was drugs involved but it seems like more what was going on was just a psychopathic need for money and lying like he just lied and lied and lied stole as much as he could told everybody at school that like he was rich and then he was traveling and all this stuff like seemed like he was basically lying to everybody and then stealing whatever money he could to make it seem like

[01:26:39] the lies were true okay and no one really seems to know why other than there was just something very wrong with his brain okay sure um he had an excuse if he wanted to say drugs because he was doing a lot of shit that people who have a crippling addiction to drugs do his father had confronted him via email two weeks before the murder confronted him via email is the like that's the correct like that's you can't you shouldn't be able to use the word confront true if like it could sit

[01:27:08] it could go to go on a spam that's true that's well and you know this kid was opening it up on a stolen laptop so dad wrote quote and this is actually kind of heartbreaking he said I want you to know if you abuse my credit again in regards to the $31,000 uh forgery yeah I will be forced to file forgery affidavits and then he added we may be disappointed with you but your mother and I still love you and care about your future and you will remember one of the last things he did while his head was busted open was write a check to pay his sons

[01:27:38] fucking brutal it's you know it's like Felix get your shit together now because I mean the thing that's the heartbreaking thing especially when it comes to drugs later is you know Randy Newman has songs about it and stuff but it's like you know a lot of the people we see on the streets is you know Los Angeles or Pennsylvania or Philly where you're the streets where you stomped around like those are all people's kids yeah you know those are all somebody's kids that they wrote checks for or put up with insane behavior from for sure I mean and that's one of the tragedies of children

[01:28:08] killing their parents is that lots of parents are doing everything they can to help their kid and are not necessarily aware that something is that egregiously wrong I mean sometimes if it's not like a retaliation for something then you have to go like oh man that those potentially kind-hearted people have been murdered the other the other really sad ones that I didn't get into at all are the the cases of schizophrenics who often kill their mothers because a lot of times they're living with the mother because the mother

[01:28:38] is like no no no like he's my son where I'm gonna take care of him not gonna send him to a facility yeah and that's how those murders often happen Christopher for his part claimed he had nothing to do with this he was 200 miles away at Rochester at school taking classes he said there was no forensic evidence linking him to the scene no one had filed a stolen axe no one filed a stolen axe there was no blood in his extremely distinctive yellow jeep which comes into play in a moment okay

[01:29:07] and much like the lizzie borden case and I don't know why really there would be parallels here but no bloody clothing ever found and the thing about blood is I think it's like gets it gets everywhere and like little little little people get put to prison because they were like we found the smallest splatter on like a truck cloth on the seat and so it seems like something if you're fucking smashing and faces bleed well there's photos of this crime scene I'm never gonna look at them we're not putting them on

[01:29:37] the screen I don't want to see them but I mean the ones with the bodies removed I think are almost even more dramatic because you can see just oh this is objectively a crime scene yeah yeah yeah like if whoever did this got blood on their clothes yeah that is just wild because like whoever did this there should have been like a looney tune style like silhouette on the wall that was blank from where the blood went on them and not the wall like yeah and so that's the thing and I guess it's I

[01:30:06] guess you for things like this you it could still he could still have killed his parents via proxy you know some other drug addict well or bloody clothes are just easier to dispose of maybe than I think you know it only takes fire turns out yeah his defense attorneys floated a crazy alternative theory involving his father's distant relative Frank Porco who was a former captain in the Bonanno crime family okay whose nickname coincidentally

[01:30:36] was the fireman because of his use of axes no oh the theory I don't know why his nickname was fireman but the theory here was that the murders were committed as a warning to Frank to not snitch on anyone while he was behind bars and that the fireman's axe was used to be like it's you're the fireman fireman it's a stretch it's a stretch it's a stretch also and there was no evidence that the cops

[01:31:05] or anybody was trying to get Frank to snitch on anyone this was also 2003 well after the mob was basically non-existent sure wow that's crazy that guy's sitting in prison going how'd you bring me into this I know he's like Jesus Christ my brother's dead I was known as the fireman because of arson I was known as the fireman because I threw a yearly picnic for the community Jesus none of that mattered though because the

[01:31:35] prosecution turned up security footage taken from toll booths showing Christopher's again wildly distinctive this was Long Island Delmar New York which I think is Long Island this place had toll booths and toll booth cameras and those toll booth cameras had footage of Christopher's again wildly distinctive yellow jeep passing through them on a timeline that fit the crime

[01:32:05] oh so he wasn't in Rochester or whatever he was actually driving in the direction of his parents house on a timeline that would have delivered him to his parents house when they were killed okay investigators also found his easy pass which I don't maybe what are you doing well no get this he had the foresight to take so the easy pass if you don't drive anywhere that has easy passes is like a you put it on your windshield and it just scans when you go through the toll so you pay for the toll digitally yeah but it obviously keeps a record of your car

[01:32:35] and when you were there they found his easy pass not on the windshield where a normal person would keep it but under the seat where you would put it if you didn't want to be scanned and registered going through a toll booth I guess he knew enough to know that that would blow up his spot but didn't stop to think that they might have cameras yeah for people who just don't pay yeah otherwise no one would ever pay um he paid with cash and so he did go and okay so he still paid the toll he did pay the toll in his mind he wouldn't

[01:33:05] think that they're gonna take a picture of my license I guess yeah one of the other most damning things pointing to evidence that a family member committed the crime here is that the night of the attacks the home security system which the porcos kept armed had been deactivated by someone using the master code so someone who knew the code to the family alarm sure turned it off and then two and a half hours later the phone lines were cut oh jesus okay so there's no one else who would have known the

[01:33:35] code I guess theoretically someone else might have known how to cut the phone lines I don't even was the 90s this was 2003 2003 that's still like not as easy maybe to find like how to do that like it's like a go buy like the anarchist cookbook or something like I don't even know yeah I wouldn't know how to cut someone I don't even know what that line would be the real cherry on top of all of this is that when they asked Joan as we mentioned earlier if Christopher did this she nodded but the thing that I think puts this story as the

[01:34:04] climax of our Mother's Day special is that that was the only time Joan indicated that Christopher did this and in fact she recovered to this day claims to have no memory of the incident and that Christopher is innocent and had absolutely nothing to do with the crime but he lied a million times about where he was and why he was there and it's so I mean he even if you hadn't you know somehow shook your head yeah this guy

[01:34:34] still might end up found guilty by a jury because of how fucking suspicious he was in being at that place at that time lying about being there well he was and he was found guilty by the jury they were not swayed without her yeah yeah even without well and in trial she didn't testify against him it was there was I think they allowed the testimony of the detective saying that she nodded I watched something maybe it was an unsolved mystery it was something where like there is a law like you can essentially if you find someone who's like fucking dead

[01:35:04] like that counts like whatever it is like counts for what killing them no like whatever they say is like on the record type of thing the person who finds the body yeah like I forgot what it was fuck it was like some true crime thing I was watching where it was like the guy was like I need you to speak to me because like if you die on the way to the hospital like this could this is all admissible in court oh that type of thing it's like it's like the detective or the cop on scene it might not be

[01:35:33] for you and me if we found someone dying but there is like a thing I think from something I was watching that I was pretty surprised by where it was like that is officially like on the record as long as they were conscious I see enough to say it and then if they died or even if they changed I don't know I guess in this case change your mind but it's not like I think I heard it's like admissible it's like hearsay or I don't know like if someone I guess more specifically if someone accuses someone of who did this to them that is enough rights to go arrest

[01:36:03] that person gotcha because they then die or what have you but it wasn't like I don't know something where I'm forgetting it all right now but I remember being surprised when watching the thing that I was like oh it's like a fun little loophole but like I don't know one of is a loophole I mean it's like a nice piece of the law yeah it seems like but I guess it's a loophole in the sense that you could just be like it was Tommy Gillespie and it was like even if it wasn't they still have to yeah I mean you're a witness so if you're a witness to your own to your own crime yeah to your own murder

[01:36:32] and you can give testimony and then you die then yeah but if Tommy Gillespie is like who's Tommy Gillespie just a name I made up oh okay but I'm saying if that guy is like Tommy Gillespie the new producer that I didn't know about I'm just saying I didn't know I didn't do anything and like even if he's found you know innocent it still has to like upend that person's life if a person just hallucinated a name yeah no true true true I mean in this case there was enough evidence that Christopher was found guilty on all counts he's currently serving a 50 year sentence for the crimes

[01:37:00] he maintains his innocence and his mother maintains his innocence and they are working to try to get him out on appeal I think he may have just finished all of his appeals or something I was reading in the research but yeah we're ending on story of the ultimate mother who is ride or die for her fucked up son like dude it's wild and you know I guess allegedly we don't because he was convicted so we're he was yeah he was convicted but it's also it's a story of heartbreak too because that email from the dad like it's not like the other ones where

[01:37:30] it was like it seemed like a clear cut motivation and this guy's motivation for money still is kind of unclear like why he was needing all that yeah just sell your fucking banana mobile well that's part of why he was being classified by some people as some sort of a sociopath or a psychopath in the sense that like he just he didn't see stealing or hurting people or lying as obstacles obstacles to getting money it was just like well I need money and this is easier than working like I'll cheat people on eBay

[01:37:59] I will steal from my parents yeah and really the ultimate mystery of the whole thing that is like the most haunting part is that we will never know if his mother really has no memory of the event or if she knows exactly who it was and just can't bring herself to and in that lucid moment yeah said the truth but then yeah forgot it or knows it and just won't admit to it ever again that is so heartbreaking and crazy and wild and that sucks that this story

[01:38:28] is in here because because well only to say that like the other ones are so like hey man don't fuck your kids yeah and you have a pretty good shot at living yeah where this one it's like do everything right and still potentially be killed by your kids it does seem like that's tougher it does seem like they did do everything right I mean again I'm sure there's some people all families are fucked up yeah yeah yeah there's probably who knows what going on it is a very brutal way

[01:38:57] to murder your parents just for money if nothing was going on but he you know part of the reason that it's never come up that there was any other motive was because at no point during the trial I mean did he try and use that as a defense yeah yeah yeah so you know we'll never really know what happened there but god bless Joan Porco for standing by her kid if that isn't love and R.I.P. god bless to the pops R.I.P. god bless to Peter Porco and honestly R.I.P. god bless to everyone

[01:39:27] in this episode who didn't make it there's a lot of parents who didn't make it didn't make it a lot of kids who didn't make it either it turns out yeah they're getting quartered to the streets and shit but with that Ed that brings us to our fear tier for this episode so where do kids zero I have no chill I mean I am certainly afraid of like teenagers killing me in the streets but not ones that I made mm-hmm mm-hmm for you it's too soon to tell but it should be kind of high I no I put it as a one Felix is awesome I don't know

[01:39:56] it's he's awesome until you get a phone call where it was like we need to talk about Kevin he's yeah until he's in the Smith's Grove Sanitarium he's lighting fires black his eyes he's peeing his bed whatever the three serial killer traits are wetting the bed hurting animals hurting animals and starting fires starting fires yeah well if he does even one of those things well I guess wetting the bed is sort of like I'm I think everyone as long as there's no Venn diagram with the other two yeah yeah yeah well no I'm not I'm not worried about getting killed

[01:40:25] by my child I think I'm going to have an awesome relationship with my kid and I hope genuinely if you're listening to this I hope you have a good Mother's Day I hope that you have a great relationship with your parents and if you don't that's okay too a lot of people don't have great relationships with their parents and just don't kill them yeah that you know there's other there's other ways to deal with you can hurt them more sometimes by just not picking up the phone yeah there you go I think Ed that's a great note to end on so alright guys

[01:40:55] that's it for this week so go check out patreon.com backslash scared all the time check out all the tiers we have available over there check out all the bonus material check out the bonus shows the live shows the button of the month club sign up our patrons keep this show alive so thank you to those who are already signed up in the meantime like share and subscribe everywhere that you can we are on YouTube now hit us up on Instagram hit us up on Spotify leave comments it's all good

[01:41:24] we love you guys until next time I'm Chris Killari and I'm covered up because Chris just coughed like a really gross cough and I'm not sick and the show is scared all the time and we will see you next time bye bye scared all the time is co-produced by Chris Killari and Ed Ficola written by Chris Killari edited by Ed Ficola additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel our theme song is the track scared by Perpetual Stew and Mr. Disclaimer is and just a reminder you can now support

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