The Boston Strangler | Boston’s Darkest True Crime Mystery (Ep 226)

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foreign you left me on such a cliffhanger last week that I had to be with you in person to find out the rest hello everyone hi uh I actually flew to Sabrina this time so but I was on the East Coast your long stint of being on the east coast is done back here we recorded an episode technically The Boston Strangler and Boston Common were not supposed to be they were scheduled for like a week after work later but you had done research my audio cursed didn't work I've had so many issues yeah and it

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was also the episode where we talked about all of our big life events so I'm gonna write us three talk about it but real quick we do need to say because just to like dwell on this for a moment we have been having so many technical difficulties they're back and they're back for me yes but therefore for me as well yeah because yeah you suffer from my technical difficulties we haven't had this many issues since year one of our recording the podcast it doesn't make any sense basically what happened was we were recording two episodes back to back we recorded we clicked stop that one's fine totally fine we clicked record again and ever since I've had so many issues you guys have heard it I sound underwater sometimes that in this case we have to redo an entire episode entire episode like a two hour long there's just a lot of things that have been happening over the past month and I've talked to just about every customer service person and Tech person that you can um I've kind of like three or four companies yeah so and no one seems to know it's a mystery there's a vault of

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my recording stuff is possessed but luckily I'm hooked into all of your stuff so possessed right now knock on freaking wood it works when we're together but not for so far it has me solo me solo I don't know why I really like that anyway that's all to say we're haunted you are hunting we already know that therefore we're all haunted but this is two girls one ghost two

Sabrina's life updates

girls two girls one guest and we are your ghostesses that is Corinne hello I am Sabrina and like Karen said we've had so many life events Korean you're married we'll do the rundown let's do you first yes but yours also happened before mine you had a wild okay yes so I was on the East Coast for my cousin's wedding and then I was driving up to your wedding in Vermont on Thursday my sister was due June 5th but before you could even get to Vermont yeah May a few days before 25th the day before I was supposed to

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drive up to corin's little Noemi my niece My adorable sweet cute niece was born brought into this world she's so adorable and it was it was amazing because I was always planning to be on the East Coast for a couple weeks in anticipation of well both weddings and then also in anticipation of Noemi being born and it worked out even better because I got to have three like full weeks with her it was so perfectly timed so you got to do everything all together you had a cousin's wedding yeah yeah it was like cousin's wedding no whammy my wedding no Emmy yes but then when people say it back to me sometimes I get confused and I don't know which one I say anymore it's interchangeable I think yes it depends on like your inflection how you're feeling where you're from yeah yeah because when you're like all Jazzy and you're like kind of being a little rebellious maybe it's like oh Aunt Sabrina's coming yeah but it's like when you're there to just be

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a perfect caretaker and you come with all of your gifts yeah and you're there to to be the Night Nurse your aunt Auntie Sabrina Auntie Briny Auntie Briny so cute she's a little doll she literally looks fake yeah yeah she's so cute she's and she's just like incredible I would just stay awake with her on my chest yeah oh a little like sleeping baby with her little Coos and her little poos little cousin poos yeah but admits all of that excitement was

Corinne's wedding recap

even more excitement it was the wedding of the century I got married I'm a wife a wife for life I'm an old maid I'm off the market and we now speak like this everyone can unfollow me on social media we are old women I shed a tear from my last relationship with Bigfoot it's gone but it hasn't

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given up I spoke to him last night what did he tell you did you Channel him that's so intense I wish I was filming your face you were no but like right here because you're you're whatever this like your water line yes it like flipped open almost like you your eyes got so big butt had to come say what he had to say oh my gosh that was great for me you would win the competition I think thank you we did not have Bigfoot at the wedding but what we did do was get married at this amazing resort called Basin Harbor it's on Lake Champlain and it was very perfect for me and Brian because I grew up on Lake Champlain boating just around there and across the lake at that part of the lake you are so close to New York yeah some of our friends quite literally canoed over there and had beers and picnics and I thought they died and I thought they died I was very emotional I was like number one rule of

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being on the leg you have to tell people how long you're gone for so I was panicked but it was a great time but Brian's family has the cabin over in the Adirondack so we got basically buried right between where I grew up and where he would summer sometimes and it was just really really lovely and all of our vendors were incredible everyone was incredible it was so well planned thank you that's all thank you we had a welcome party and we hired the tender bellies so I went to I didn't know that you went to high school in high school with yeah I mean one of them was great above me and then a few people were a few points about that it was it was like all scattered but they're extremely talented yeah Friday was awesome and then Saturday also all of I told you this already but I'm gonna like compliment you and everyone else at the wedding our vendors so many of them came up and were like this is the best group of people we've ever served everyone is so cool and normal and I was like what are you normally sing yeah weddings I

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will say they're like you know on this journey of like trying to feed my inner child and heal her and have fun and enjoy life more I had so much fun at your wedding good I'm to the point where I was laughing so hard that I peed my pants yeah and I showed you you didn't believe me and I was like look it was fully full P you like actually you actually peed your pants I was laughing so I was expecting like a little a little dribble like it was almost like a few shorts to get you need to go change it so this was like at the after party and people have seen the video Chris and I are running around yeah we had a colossal bonfire outside of the Red Mill Tavern which was a bar so I had already changed stuff in there too so I had my like little shorts on and then the um the shirts that I embroidered on campfire stories that everyone was watching me like diligently work on for like three weeks which like I know you don't have time time and it was really really hard work but you could start a

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massive side everyone kept saying that so many people got DMS too from the shirts being like where did you buy those and my cousin Mallory was super jazzed about me the idea of me making a business and I was like I will never do this yeah so someone else has an embroidery machine and wants to start doing well maybe I yeah hold on maybe I'll get an embroidery machine if I have a machine doing the embroidery piece yeah then you can I'm super down to Thrift a bunches yeah it was great I was into it and it was so many people were talking

Wedding details and vendors

about how wonderful and I was just really happy that because obviously like weddings it takes a lot of money and time for people to get to places especially in Vermont it's not just easy to travel to it also takes a lot of money and time to plan it it does but I was just very happy that everyone felt so good about the wedding that people are already like planning annual trips back to that location and people extended their stay on either end like you did too and it just made me feel really good about it and everyone kept

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saying it was like healing and like adult summer camp and it felt really good because Brian and I were like okay it's our wedding but we also just want it to feel like all of us are basically an adult adult summer camp we're living on a commune it's not really about us the only part about us is like you watch us for 30 minutes and then we pay for you for your whole about you and Brian as a couple is that not only are you surrounded by good people but you brought together good people yeah you are good people that speak too good it does say a lot of traffic yeah yeah everyone was amazing and it was like perfectly Blended everyone on Brian's side and yeah in our side our side we're getting married we are it was awesome and you weren't the only one who peed there were two other people who peed their pants it was just such a fun time everyone you couldn't step away from the fun yeah you really couldn't talk about the beautiful sleeves for your dress on Friday night oh yeah my mom

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so a few years ago she almost trashed her wedding dress by pouring fake blood on it to wear it for Halloween and I was like hold on wait a minute let's pause on that and she's like that's true that's true he might want to use this so we chopped off well Kim chopped off our friend slash seamstress chopped off my the 80s puff sleeves and Lace sleeves for my mom's so cool 80s wedding dress and I wore them Friday night yeah to the welcome party so there's pictures on our Instagram people can see yeah you looked stunning the entire year I also wore I never took a picture of it but when I got engaged my mom I cried so hard when she did this like that day when she came she gave me this charm it's this little gold heart with a tiny tiny little speck of a diamond in it and it was the very first piece of jewelry my dad ever gave her and she gave it to me so I wore it on I like looped it to this bracelet and wore it and that made me feel really

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good to have that too

Antique bell collectibles

yeah and we oh my okay my actual favorite part of well it's not my actual my favorite part of like I have two favorite parts of like the actual planning process and one was collecting antique bells for like a year we collected by we I mean me collected antique bells and also like brass candlesticks but the antique bells to put on some of the rows of the front of the ceremony and so then when when we kissed and we like walked and broke down the glass oh yes yes because Brian's Jewish the glass match was like and then the bells and it was so cool to actually hear all of the Bells because I almost Heard the Bells more than I heard people cheering and they loved hearing all of the bells that made me it was super happy and I liked thrifting them because now those are our keepsakes like some people of wedding China we're gonna have antique Bells I love that what was your

Vermont wedding gifts

second favorite part the creamy truck okay ice cream that's the best thing about so I've been to Vermont many times in my life I've never been to your

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family home I've never been with you but in the years of my life that I've known you I haven't been back to Vermont and you talk so much about it that I had this image of your neighborhood and your like upbringing and stuff that I imagine this like tiny small street with like a bunch of little storefronts and that's where the creamies were like was it right no it's so math like where we went to get creamy and I know there's multiple locations yeah but like it was the middle of nowhere and I was like wait it's Vermont is such a big small town yeah that everyone knows each other because you stopped at cookie love and you brought me and Brian chocolate chip cookies on the way from Burlington to and I got to virgins Brian a wonderful oh my God wonderful wedding present Brian was like oh and me and my parents were dying laughing Sabrina comes and she goes Brian I got you a gift what's most but it's also for you and hands us two chocolate chip cookies and then a

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present for Brian and he opens it up and it it says they're boxers SAS crotch on the boxers has he worn them yet no I think I'm probably gonna they might be like my bedtime pajamas but what made it even better was that you got it locally at a store which doesn't make any sense why they would have that in like downtown virgins it felt very serendipitous that you stopped in a store got the Bigfoot SAS crotch boxers and then traveled another 10 minutes to the lake where champ is often seen but

Boat entrance and photos

we didn't see him well we don't know yet you haven't gotten all your photos oh what if Champions are photographers could not have been better did you know that they were a couple their husband and wife I did you tell me oh yeah I'm obsessed with them my favorite thing so tell them about the vote oh so after the ceremony we walked down I've already posted so many pictures but

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I like literally want to like post like a play-by-play like here here's a photo and here's where we did yeah but we walked down from up top by the main launch that like overlooks the lake in the bay or the little Marina and we walked down towards the front of the water to the dock which is where cocktail hour was but Brian and I turned left as everyone else turned right and we got on an old vintage Chris Craft boat and we went off and went over to the Cliffs of New York with our photographers and took photos over there had like you know a 20 30 minute break to just be together it was kind of photos but it was also mostly us just sitting in the boat like relaxing together being taken around and then we were driven to cocktail hour on the bow and the guy who's driving the boat he's like we're gonna go past cocktail hour it's like great and then he's like I'll drop you off the boat goes so fast past the dock we're waving everyone's cheering we're like whoa and then he goes okay we'll do it again I was like we have to pass everyone again wait well we all were like again again oh did you

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we all wanted to like we wanted you to come back around oh because I was a crowd one I was mortified I was like they everyone has to stare at me again and then he went really slow the second time and I was like but it was it was super fun it was very beautiful what I loved is about your photographers is that the woman was in the boat on the ground taking photos of you guys and then the other photographer was all the second boat yeah taking pictures yeah yeah she was huddled down Peter they're

Venue highlights and food

so great and then also I have to give props to Basin Harbor because they were just an incredible venue like it was just so perfect like a three day long wedding with all these events it was incredible but one of the things that they did that I didn't realize they were doing that was so lovely was when we got off the boat two of the people that were working the wedding were there with all of the hors d'oeuvres and two signature drinks for both of us and just stood with us for like 10 minutes letting us drink and eat and try all of our stuff before they knew we would go and inevitably not be able to eat or try

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anything as we're talking to everyone yeah yeah that's really so I was really happy about that I was like oh I actually do you get to try all the food the food was so good that was very surprising not that it was like it was delicious but it was like it was way better than wedding food normally is I was shocked by it it was delicious yes I don't even think of this event as my wedding I think of it as like we just got yeah it was described to us too as Dirty Dancing set on like champlaining and we were like was that sign us up it

Wedding ghosts and afterparty

was beautiful it was wonderful it was a stunning stunning event you planned its what and we met Phantoms okay you know what I was just gonna say it's so funny because you in our history of podcasting have been seen by Phantoms or met Phantoms for like one person but the fact that even at your wedding that still was true that you ran into Phantoms more than I did I thought and we were in two more people than you did we were in the same place

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there were two people well one person was working well so I am invisible no you were running around in the photo booth taking feet pics I was doing that taking pics of your feet in front of the sunset you were busy I was working and I was lounging at the bar so that was the difference it was easier to capture me you were so cute you're quick I was like Bigfoot and you were like I was like a lethargic little I don't even know Jeff the muggers you're like a little tokolosh running around like tickling people's toes and and I was yeah I was Jeff the monk who's being like do you see me hello hello hello give me my snacks but yeah yes Sarah is the Phantom that I met at my hair appointment she didn't actually work the wedding but she was like oh my God and we talked and I saw her twice and then the person who actually did our hair was just collecting ghost stories from all of us probably to repeat that

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you guys are at some good alien story she did yeah you know there you literally were sitting there honestly I was like oh wait oh I do remember yeah it wasn't even like it was like a friend of a friend I think yeah experienced it but it was similar to something happen and then like men in black kind of yeah yeah Kelsey had some great ghost stories and then two people who worked at Basin Harbor one who was working I think at the check-in desk and then another person who was working in the bar are also to Phantoms so you met the person who was working at the bar because she also came with the after party okay your dad introduced me to the woman at the bar and she did not seem to know who I was and then later she really knew who you were so but then she also knew who you were at the after party but and then I'm gonna blame maybe my dad was just awkward maybe but then also remember you like grabbed me at the after party and you're like like she wanted to take a picture with us the picture is on my phone oh here's the thing we all were consuming Libations at that point and I

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I don't know if she did too but I can only assume that she also had a few drinks because she was everyone's favorite bartender people were screaming and chanting her name as she walked into the after party she also came up with the wasn't she the one that came up with the old fashioned yeah pouring the old-fashioned signature drink into the into the maple creamies yeah people were reporting their ideas yeah so it was it was fantastic and then the second evening you were locked away in a little Mary Shelly s fashion writing yeah in your cottage and I went and partied again at the Red Mill she was so cute I don't remember about nine women are so happy you were happy to be adorable Brian said one of people's highlights out on the lake trampoline was when I gave out Awards I hosted an award ceremony everyone loved that and I asked what had prompted it and he said nothing you just stood up and started doing it your own internal monologue there we go but that's okay yeah but anyway I had

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about 30 s'mores and ate two dinners and then I had energy to go out again and that's when I met the The Other Woman but you were yeah I was like oh Sabrina's gonna be so upset that she missed you and also I was not in a great condition so apologies to you if you're listening I'm sure I was probably the stinkiest person I could have ever been no I feel like it okay I think in summary if we were to do like a two second a 20 second recap Karen is beautiful Korean I wish I could live in that weekend so many or bring together the most wonderful happy people Bigfoot and champ did not show up that's great yeah those are the highlights I peed my pants and I started my foot business I wish you had the strips right now of all of your photos I can't show it it's I'm gonna sell it oh okay that's right Honestly though here's the thing that I joke about so much but I think I'm gonna start a poll and it'll be anonymous well here's the thing you joke about it so much that it's gonna become true and people aren't going to be surprised because it's like not because I'm slowly becoming not a joke but it's like okay here's my you're

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manifesting it it's like not a joke anymore because if it were a joke we wouldn't be able to repeat the joke so many times because then it wouldn't be funny this is us just prepping cat oh buying the tree it's I know it's under my car come here get in my car it's us prepping people for what's to come and let me tell you the poses I'm very smart you're very flexible it took me a long time until I saw the photos again it took me a long time to realize that it was both your feet and your face in the same frame because I assumed you got someone else to come below and do these odd you know interesting Cirque du soleil-esque poses but part of the it was all you appeal no but but yeah it's so flexible the spread your toes too I can I'm gonna interlock my toes together I've done that for one of them I think I'm afraid that I start this business and no one wants to talk people will especially if you do like we were just talking about on an

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encounters that we recorded feet and ears you capture double yeah because the fee business is oversaturated a bit so I need it but funny spin find a spin do the thing that I buy my ears oh we're losing our minds all right it's gonna it's gonna happen though anyway your wedding was amazing and incredible and thank you our podcast is haunted which is why we are retelling the wedding recap and you've never heard the first one and baby me okay

Introduction to Boston history

part two part two part two part two so last week we covered the beginnings of colonial Boston two centuries of life and death a lot of executions there were pirates there were ghosts ghosts there are accused witches yeah there was moist stew this time if you don't know what those are you want to go back to you want to go back but this time we're just going to move a few steps away from Boston

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Common okay to another location in Beacon Hill and the surrounding areas of Boston which Beacon Hills where you live for a few years yeah in different apartments because for the people of the 1960s there was a whole new type of danger brought to the Boston residents and that was a Strangler was on the loose this is a Content warning there is a lot of murder and a lot of sexual assault you know what's that's very tragic and I don't know why what the cat there was a car coming and the cat just ran but then it like ducked fine your car and used it as safety so get in I I don't know a ton about the Boston Strangler but for some reason my mind Associates The Boston Strangler with Jack the Ripper so I always think it's like a more Victorian era yeah murderer but they're actually comparing a lot to each other

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they're these really salacious stories where it's like if you're a woman you're in danger and it's one person coming after all of these women and it's like this very scary thing yeah that happened for a long time and while there are many reports spoiler alert that the Boston Strangler was found I'm going to present some of the reasons why some people suspect that perhaps who we think the Boston Strangler is and was might be part of the Boston Strangler but it could be Boston stranglers copycats copycats multiple people okay A Series of Unfortunate Events all right

The final Strangler victim

so on January 4th 1964 Mary Sullivan a 19 year old woman was in her Beacon Hill apartment just a few blocks from Boston Common on Charles Street this was literally a few blocks from where the moist stew had been for quite a long time she had just moved there a few days earlier from Cape Cod she was super excited to start her life she had two roommates she um was working as a

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secretary so she was brand new to the area and everything looked great and lovely beautiful area of Boston it is still an extremely beautiful stunning yeah she was alone in the apartment her two other roommates were gone for the evening when she heard a knock on the door so Mary opened it and there was a man a man who hid his true identity he gained her trust and he entered her home oh oh so like it wasn't just a knock on the door pushed inside he in almost every single case he was let in oh it's like a vampire Mary was attacked she was raped she was strangled with two of her scarves and her stocking her stocking was tied in a bow oh and there was a happy New Year card found between her feet so it was a very taunting move to the police so my question is how do they know that he was let in well because I'll I'll tell you okay yeah the killer gained many nicknames over the course of

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his Killing Spree the Phantom friend the silk stalking Strangler and we know him as the Boston Strangler so Mary Sullivan she had a maroon blanket draped over her she all of the victims were nude and for Mary she had this maroon blanket draped over her and on the blanket there were seminal fluids that were left behind by the perpetrator and this was super huge because Mary was at the time they thought she was the 12th victim she was actually the 13th and final victim thank God but there was no evidence in any of the other cases there were a few items here and there left behind but no Dean they were like cigarette butts like stuff like that there was no DNA there were no clues or indications of who was there and for the most part this person kind of came and went unseen there were a few witnesses that we'll talk about later but this was really huge and DNA evidence wouldn't be widely used for another 20 years after this because this

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happened in the 60s right and we didn't really start using DNA in cases until the 80s and really until recent more recent times was it do we have the technology to really run all of these tests what's fascinating to me is well I don't know actually if this is what happened but the fact that there was seminal DNA Left Behind like they collected it they they took multiple samples no I think four samples that they would be able to test it like that no they're I don't know I don't know if there was yeah I'm not sure interesting if it was just part of the DNA or if it was or that part of the evidence collections standards or if it was this could be coming like there's murmurs keep these things because we don't know what's to come but anyway this was she was Mary was the final victim and we now have DNA evidence and that DNA evidence sat for many more decades Mary's younger sister Diane was 17 at the time when Mary passed and Diane would be haunted by this crime for decades to come she would dream of Mary

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every night and when she when Diane got older she had a child and her son has been very very involved in trying to solve the Boston strangler's identity over the past few years despite never obviously meeting his his Aunt Mary oh Mary was the 13th and final victim all of the victims were murdered by The Boston Strangler between June of 1962 and January of 1964. so women feared for their lives for 18 or so months it was horrendous 13 women 13 women that that

Early Strangler murders

is no that are known right that are known there could be more the terror began a year and a half earlier from Mary's death on June 14th of 1962 the very first victim of this string of Horrors was Anna slusser's she was age 55 she was found strangled in her home with a coat belt on the kitchen floor of her apartment the bathrobe belt

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this coat belt was tied at the end which would become the signature move so it was either like a bow or some sort of tie and he would use what was in their own apartment so he wouldn't bring items with him he would simply yeah grab items that were there which is why he was called The Silk Stocking Strangler yeah two weeks later on June 28th Mary Mullen was found dead in her home she would be the Boston strangler's oldest victim it wasn't clear if she was a victim of the same killer who took Anna's life because Mary she died of a heart attack during her assault which is she was so scared so horrible so she actually wasn't strangled and so they didn't make this connection until years later that she was likely also a victim of the Boston Strangler I also feel like early on in like strings of attacks like this I feel like it takes two to three to really attach or choose a serial killer on our

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hands yeah right right and also yeah like for the for the killer themselves we've heard from many other reports of different serial killers that sometimes they do kind of like they're a little shaky and whatnot and what they do and then after a few it becomes a bit more of a standard so she was 85 years old so the first victim was 55 Anna and then Mary was 85. two days after Mary's death Ben Helen Blake 65 and Nina Nicola 68 were both found deceased on June 30th and this basically sent everyone into a panic they became very aware that there was a phantom Strangler on the loose that this was a Serial perpetrator it's it's wild how so there are 13 victims in 18 months but four of them happened in the first like yes month yes

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and this kind of happened a lot so it would be a bunch of people in this short period of time and then there would be months of silence and then he'd strike again and murder a few people and then a few months of Silence it was quite bizarre and none of the people were related to each other that were victims either so there wasn't it wasn't like two roommates or anything like that it was always a single one-off event in succession and some of them in the same day it's heartbreaking a pattern was beginning to emerge and an unidentified man would enter the home of an unmarried or older white woman they believed at this time and he would then attack assault sexually and strangle the women to death using an article of their own clothing it was believed that middle-aged and elderly women were the only targets at this point in time which we know to not be true later on but in the case of Helen Blake and presumably others some of the drawers of their desks and of their bureaus would be ransacked basically so he would whoever this

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perpetrator was he would go through all of their belongings he'd go through their jewelry drawer he would line up items to like look at all their watches and it was weird because he'd like leave some things messy but then kind of organize and order some other things so it was very weird and you know things would be moved from the bureaus down to the center of the carpet and it was very clear that the crime was quick and then he lingered and spent time there it just it feels very erratic I mean yeah and then also like you said he didn't bring any of his own things there so he did rummage through their homes to find stockings or whatever it was yeah it's quite disturbing it really is I'm glad I haven't eaten yet because I feel like I would probably throw up this thing is super repulsive I'm very sorry this is like the darkest two parter Boston Horrors and honestly the the truth is if I

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covered any other things in Boston they'd probably be equally as horrific like there's a lot of dark history yeah what Disturbed people even more is that there were no signs of break-ins so it appeared that these women allowed the man into their home and so everyone's like why how and how did he continue to be granted entry into these homes because everyone was now in a panic being alerted that there was someone on the loose who was killing people so who would open a door to anyone if they were yes afraid right women began carrying pepper and ammonia with them they are pepper spray and ammonia with them they packed hot pins in their bags and they purchased tear gas guns and Boston police told women to lock all of their doors and windows and to never let anyone in unless they positively id'd the person so basically unless you're expecting someone don't let them in unless they identify themselves don't let them in so now we can assume that somehow this man was identifying himself because people were

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not opening the door so the future victims still thought that this was someone who was supposed to be let in so it was a bit of a mystery but we kind of figure out after how he did it okay the murders continued reporter Loretta

Journalist investigation

McLaughlin went to her editor at the record American and urged them to let her investigate she was given permission I don't think easily I think she really had to fight for it McLaughlin and Gene Cole another fellow journalist began their work as a team McLaughlin an experienced investigative journalist covering medical stories and Cole who was known for her expose on nursing homes in the Massachusetts area so they were both trying to make a name for themselves and had a little bit of experience in investigations the fact that back in the 1960s there was a investigation and an expose on nursing homes but we still know to this day that that has not hasn't really changed changed and that's not to say that all nursing homes are bad but there is a lot

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of there's a lot of bad a lot of there is a lot of bad a lot of manipulation and just taking advantage of people in their elderly ages regardless of if it's from nursing homes like it's so sad yeah even yeah in in-home care you know like it's it's hard to or even scandalous people scammers and like showing up to like people's homes and pretending to be grandchildren asking for money did you watch one of the recent episodes of ghosts where the ghost gets scammed by the Nigerian prince no oh I I haven't I'm not caught up oh oh they get they succumb to the email scam the classic email scam it's a funny episode okay okay so these two journalists they begin to conduct an investigation and they begin to construct their evidence and the timeline of events and also let me back up for a second if anyone saw I think it's on Disney plus there is a series it's fictionalized but it's based on these two women and it's from their perspectives and all of their involvement in the investigations and I

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believe it's on Disney plus I think it's called The Boston Strangler I didn't watch it plus that feels like I know off-brand I'm pretty sure it is on August 19th 75 year old oh Eda sorry I just had an idea for Disney oh instead of Disney plus it should be dark Disney and that's like a whole like Disney at dark Disney at dark it's like Nick at night it's Nick at night back but like creepy okay so on August 19th 75 year old Ida erga was another victim she was the next victim and so we're gonna put a photo if you're watching on YouTube and this photo is of McLaughlin and Cole on-site at Ida's murder so they went on site to investigate and collect all of the evidence I really love old photography yeah it is incredible and they're they're in their heels and their loafers and their dresses and going to investigate like gruesome and grizzly murderer I love women me too a day later Jane Sullivan aged 67 was

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the next victim but then there was a break September came and there were no murders so it was all June through August September nothing October nothing November crickets this gave police time to mobilize creating new procedures and better communication between six different tasks Force task forces that were now created to help find this killer because again there were so many like local little hubs of police and these were happening all over it was like you can Hill it was Fenway it was Cambridge it was all over the place but just as these investigators were starting to get their footing the killer

Shifting victim demographics

struck again only this time this Phantom Strangler murdered Sophie Clark she was a 20 year old black student at Carnegie Institute of Medical Technology she was assaulted she was strangled with a pair of stockings in the foyer of her apartment on December 5th and so now we know that it was not just older white women it was any woman and this was so scary to know that regardless of your age and

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regardless of your race you could be the next victim and if he was willing to expand like that who's to say that he wouldn't expand to just all people yeah so everyone was super panicked not that they weren't panicked before but now there was a much larger demographic of people who were extra concerned for their own safety New

Police mismanagement and press

Year's Eve 23 year old Patricia Bessette was killed investigative journalist McLaughlin and Cole had been working on an investigative series which began publishing in January of 1963 so right after all of these murders these two women they put a magnifying glass on the entire investigation they were super meticulous in their work they would reconstruct all of the crimes they would describe the scene they were trying to get they would try to get into the psyche of The Killers try to profile him they were dissecting police investigations their voices were heard aloudly because they were screaming they were trying so hard to tell everyone

39:00

what was going on and to warn women of yeah what was happening and to give them the details to help them protect themselves they also exposed the Boston Police Department for their mismanagement of these cases providing false information to press and their lack of communication and cooperation with other law enforcement agencies so they were like okay here's all of this horrific information and also the people who are supposed to be protecting you are doing a lot of things wrong and we're gonna tell you about it it's also I feel like during this time like a lot of these policemen it's all men you know investigating these cases and I love that they're these two women who are like doing everything they can to collect everything yes and investigate themselves and that's also putting themselves in the direct in in even more danger yeah than oh my gosh absolutely yeah yeah it was so easy for people to dismiss them and unfortunately for them it did eventually happen yeah while we can all imagine all the good

40:00

that came from the exposure that these two women were doing it also it did Money the waters a little bit because these detailed reports were so detailed it went into extreme detail about each victim telling things like what they did for work what their normal day in the life was what their Hobbies were they would write about the murders the timelines the time they were killed what was found with them what was on them what they looked like their cause of death the clothing that they were wearing the items in their home so many details and so this gave the public one it warned women appropriately for what to expect and what they expect is the wrong wrong word to look out for yes exactly but at the same time they enabled anyone who wanted to give a false confession to have all of the details but they also I sounds like and I think this is one of the major issues with True Crime these days is the focus and emphasis is on the murderer the

41:00

perpetrator then on instead of on the victim and based on what he was saying it sounds like it talks a lot about these women and their stories prior to being fired and attacked it reminds me a lot of what Sarah Turney is doing now for True Crime I was watching a tick tock that she'd posted the other day where she it was like a funny little one where she threw some audio and it was like her giggling every time she changes the name of a case from the murderer's name to the victim's name like the case of uh because you learn the victim like why give more of a voice to the killer the killer Yeah Yeah so basically they were that's that was their intention and that was their thought these women but unfortunately it would potentially lead to some misdirection and false confessions and like diverting the police's attention to people that weren't actually the perpetrator and so that was scary yeah it became clear that from these reports and other articles written by fellow investigators that this murderer was what a lot of people

42:00

thought at the time was a single person not a duo or a group and that they targeted women who were put together established respected and self-sufficient although I will say there was one group of people who were saying that and then there was a lot of other people that were saying this has to be more than one killer this perpetrator was sexually assault people they would leave this part of the attack quote particularly incomplete at a lot of the scenes so despite the seminal fluid being collected and in the last case it would seem that that was a small piece of whatever was motivating this person so it was a little bit confusing because it seemed sexually motivated but the sexual piece of it wasn't completed always was it or did they just not have like didn't leave the evidence behind of it perhaps yeah he also like I was saying spent a lot of time post-mortem just exploring their home so that was also an interesting thing and it's not like he

43:00

was necessarily stealing stuff at least from what I was reading so he was just rummaging through everything and observing and probably fantasizing grossly about what these people's lives were like gross McLaughlin was actually the person who gave the killer the moniker The Boston Strangler and Cole and McLaughlin were not driven by a desire to leak gruesome details or bother police but rather to warn the women of Boston they were also female journalists who were fighting to have their work respected and for a really long time both of these women everything that they would publish it would come with a headline that said girl reporter says and then whatever they were reporting on so you know how like mic drop is usually like a like a I just said something like that blew your mind I want to like throw this mic throw Mike throw like for like yes it is so infuriating and they had never made headline news before basically like everything that they wrote wrote in it like nothing was front page it was all yeah girl does this girl says this and it was ridiculous and so

44:00

the they put so much energy and time and thought and Care into releasing all of this information they actually published 29 articles in just one month about everything and this did help the trajectory of their career they were taken seriously after that but the fact that they that it took this yeah taken seriously it's disgusting it reminds me of and I think I've said this on the podcast before but when my mom bought her current home on the contract it says Aurora Diana Rosa an unmarried woman it does yeah maybe you did say this before what in the world does it say that for men no an unmarried man nope I know disgusting okay yep so despite publishing 29 articles with wildly accurate information and exposing some of the Boston places misdoings uh they were basically prohibited from sharing and writing

45:00

anything else because it did begin to hurt the investigation with just giving too much information to copycat Killers to people who want to have false confessions so it was just too great of detail to leak to the public right so they wanted only the real killer to know what happened which is common that they like leave certain details out of the press in order to use it to know that they've caught the real yes yeah true

Escalation and task force

things escalated in 1963 with the attack and murder of Mary Brown aged 69 on March 6th 1963 Mary was attacked by this killer and this time a new weapon was introduced she was stabbed multiple times though she did die of strangulation so that's why we know or it was suspected that this was still attributed to the Boston Strangler two months later on May 6th Beverly Simons age 23 she was attacked in the same way

46:00

she had in a similar fashion clothes around her neck but she died of stabbing so it's either someone replicating like copying and doing their own thing or it's the killer evolving and escalating things yeah yes exactly that's exactly what I wrote I was like I I don't know exactly if these two people can be attributed to the Boston Strangler and what we have no way of knowing because there was only evidence DNA evidence for one person so even if he had been which he wasn't convicted of Mary Sullivan the 13th victim's murder he wouldn't have been able to be tried for the other 12. basically Evelyn Corbin age 58 would be murdered on September 8th Joanne Graf age 23 would be killed November 23rd and then in January 4th 1964 the final victim Mary Sullivan she was 19 right yeah she was the youngest so the oldest was 85 of the

47:00

youngest was 19. despite the Assembly of a major task force known as the Strangler Bureau the police spent 18 months chasing down this Phantom Strangler though launching this task force did help centralize the resources and help different bureaus work together so there was some good I guess from the police learning how to interact with one another that helped for future crime but for 10 months there were no new murders and the killings appeared to have stopped on October 27 1964 police were

Albert DeSalvo arrested

called to the home of a woman who had just been raped a man posed as a police detective gained entry to her home assaulted her and then apologized to her and he left based on her description of this man police then arrested this man that they found nearby Albert de Salvo who was working as a handyman because I don't know where this is going but I just don't think this is the Boston triangler interesting because a lot of people don't but it's kind of convoluted so Albert desalvo he was the son of an

48:00

abusive alcoholic fisherman he began torturing animals at a young age and it escalated to other crimes eventually he was sent to a reformed school and a juvenile detention center at age 17 he joined the army a few months later he was dishonorably discharged he then re-enlisted a few years later and was discharged but geez not before marrying a Woman arm guard Beck who he met during his military stint in Germany so when they caught him for the rape of this woman he was initially committed to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation and with the publication of his photo and news of his arrest many other women came forward to say that he had also attacked them too in a similar manner so no one was saying he was the Boston Strangler yet he was just a serial rapist yeah around the same time we had the quote-unquote Green Man Who Would sexually assault his victims usually while wearing green desalvo admitted to being the green man

49:00

so he confessed he said he broke into over 400 homes and assaulted over 300 women in four different states it just yeah four years before in March of 1960 desalvo had been arrested for breaking into a home where he admitted to being quote the measuring man who was another person on the loose this reminds me so much of Joseph D'Angelo who was the original Night Stalker the Golden State killer the hysteria rapist like or not Easter wait yes yeah yes he had so many different monikers and he was all over the place and he was doing different types of crimes with the same Mo he was like three or four different people all at once yeah and similarly he was a police officer then yeah let go and then became an officer somewhere else right like he similar patterns scary yeah scary scary okay so upper de Salvo is now saying he's also the measuring man which was a nickname given to a Serial Predator who was going door

50:00

to door throughout Cambridge Massachusetts and pretending to be a modeling Scout and once he got inside he would use a tape measure to get the model measurements and he would grope people uh and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail he served 11 and then he was released in 1962 for the measuring Man incident and then that fast forward a few years he's now the Green Man and getting caught for being the Green Man and 1962 is when Boston Strangler started killing yeah okay so timeline wise people could he was associated with him he had just gotten out of jail

Confession and skepticism

basically okay this was a man who had a pattern of burglarizing and sexual assaults but he had no pattern of murder yet that we knew of so it surprised police when while a waiting for trial for the green man attacks none of them murder desalvo told a fellow inmate at Bridgewater that key was the one who committed all those murders that he was the Boston Strangler 300 Suspects on the

51:00

Boston police's radar as potential suspects for the Boston Strangler desalvo was not on that list so they had no idea he wasn't had he not confessed he was not even in the top 300 suspects which is odd because he had so many crimes well so then now I yes that is confounding to me but then also who are these other 300 suspects how did they put that list together I'm very excited about that well if there's I can imagine that it would be I don't know if easy is the right word to use but if you have 13 different victims if you put their all the men around them there you try to find a connection yeah it's like where did they work who were their ex-boyfriends who were their fathers who was their landlord like you can easily put together like 15 men around someone who could potentially kill them and unfortunately I think this is the scariest part about serial killers and or I mean murder is terrifying and awful in any regard but most times it is

52:00

crimes of passion and you it is an attack by someone you know and for these it does feel very very random it does it's all bizarre too and there's some other stuff too that like even even the green man thing there's like some suspicions that like perhaps he wasn't even the green man he was just a guy that like loved to falsely confess to things and wanted the attention and that was more what he was into but but it's all convoluted and I honestly think that he was a Strangler so you do I kind of I kind of do okay I don't know okay well we can discuss afterwards okay I my current take right now is no no yeah I'm a 50 50. so you honestly it's it's so confusing okay so the inmate who he told he was the Boston Strangler to immediately alerted authorities and desalvo confessed to the police describing details about the victim's apartments that had never been published and confirming the name of a victim whose photo he was shown a photo that

53:00

also had not been published so everyone's like it must be him right but here's an interesting twist his cellmate who he confessed to was George Nasser who was convicted twice for murder he was sentenced to life in prison in 1948 for the murder of Dominic kermall but then was paroled in 1962 so he got out right around the 10th The Boston Strangler situation started happening and then four years later he was sentenced to death which was later rolled back to life in prison for murdering Irvin Hilton so that's two men Two Men and between his sentencing was the time that all of the string The Boston Strangler murders happened I am sure that you could probably apply that to so many other people who refused from true yeah

Eyewitness accounts

so desalvo wasn't in jail at the time that the Boston Strangler murders occurred neither was George Nassar he was out on the street both of them were survivors of the Boston Strangler because there were some survivors also did not ID de Salvo as their attacker

54:00

nor the number of eyewitnesses so Kenneth Rowe he was an eyewitness he was an engineering student who lived on the floor above Joanne Graf who was a victim he spoke to the Strangler or we didn't know it was a Strangler at the time he spoke to a stranger who was looking for Joanne just before she was killed so it can be assumed that that man who didn't actually know where she lived and was in her unit her apartment building was the person who killed her moments later which then indicates that he did know her or had been watching for long enough to know her name yeah Kenneth was showed a picture of desalvo after jasala had admitted to the crime or confessed his dark features and prominent nose would be memorable because these were things that you would assume I mean here's a picture of him right here too we'll show it earlier in the video okay um so he was he was a guy that you would recognize right like he wasn't super super

55:00

ordinary like he had some features that were that did stick out it's so funny because before you said that I was like he's pretty ordinary looking but you would know like you would be able to say like he has thin lips and a like large downturned nose and he's got like slicked back dark hair you know it's hard because yeah I would love to think that but I feel like you know most of my interactions with people that I don't know especially if they're ordinary if like someone asked me like if I was on you know outside of an apartment someone was like Hey like is so-and-so there and I said no like I'd move on with my day if they asked me like hey is so and so there I want to hurt them then yeah I would like yeah but if they give off no indication of having or no energy off put off of them that makes me feel weird like I don't know but if a few hours later you find out that someone was murdered right down the hallway from you wouldn't you remember within a few hours likely what that person looked like but

56:00

isn't our memory the least reliable it is you're right I don't know I just yeah okay well Kenneth was showed a picture he didn't recognize him okay Jules Benz ran Martin's Tavern next to where Joanne Graf's apartment was and Jules saw a stranger lurking around that day came that stranger the guy came into the tavern kind of like ducked in nervously was behaving in a way that Jules thought someone was looking for him someone would be after him so Jules took note of this guy so despite Kenneth publishing no not going on right then Jules was like I'm I'm watching this guy like something's weird and suspicious about him the description of this man was exactly the same as Kenneth's so the person the same day looking for Joanne was the same person that was in The Tavern and Kenneth is the one who killed two men no no sorry Kenneth is just an eyewitness okay okay yes we're gonna

57:00

clear Kenneth's name right now so sorry Kenneth and Jules are the two eyewitnesses who okay they both did not ID de Salva okay Eileen O'Neill saw a

The painter and George Nassar

man in Mary Sullivan's bathroom Mary Sullivan is the 13th victim the final person who died in Beacon Hill she saw a man up in Mary Sullivan's bathroom window right before the time of her death she also could not ID de Salvo as this man and you still you still think El Salvo is the Strangler well okay we're gonna get to I don't know I kind of think he's guilty of like uh well okay Marcela luika lived in the apartment the same apartment complex as Sophie Clark who was killed and a man calling himself quote Mr Thompson who said he was a painter had come to paint her house and was asking to gain entry so this is now what we how we suspect he gained entry was because with all the other crimes he was a model Scout with a measuring tape he

58:00

was a painter he was there he was a police officer so he was posing as other people to gain entry and some people say that he also had a knife on him to game gain entry it feels like whatever disguise they were using was more for anyone else who possibly could have seen him yeah because if some man showed up at my door regardless of the time like I can't imagine painters were just knocking on your door randomly being like hey I'm here to paint your place if you and like you'd be like yeah come on in true I'd be like who the [ __ ] are you I didn't ask I already say that I'm like what yeah and let me call someone first actually I don't answer I just hide yeah I lay down on the floor and don't forget for 10 minutes which apparently is a millennial thing yeah yeah okay so Marcella she said that this man who came to her home as a painter that she did not let in was five foot nine he had honey colored hair and oval face and was likely around age 25 so this is totally

59:00

not at all what this guy looks like she told him this guy the painter Mr Thompson that her husband was asleep in the apartment and so this man left without trying to get in as we know he did gain access to an apartment in that building moments later and it was Sophie Clark's and then she was killed so this is what's confusing to me because Kenneth said he hurt like the man had asked about Joanna right Joanne Joanne and that indicates that the Boston translator was watching and had pre-planned and premeditated which person he was going to attack but then this version of events or story of events like indicates that he randomly chose well we don't know necessarily because what if he was watching that whole apartment complex and he knew that there were a few people that he could potentially write murder because there were some people he killed on the same day too so like he could have been planning on on multiple or you know in an unfortunate

1:00:00

series of events perhaps he was leaving and then he saw Sophie walking into her apartment and took the risk not knowing if anyone else was in there right so there's another Survivor so Marcella survived by basically saying that someone else was in her apartment which was not true a man was in her apartment already Gertrude Gruen is another person who survived she was actually strangled but she fought so hard that in this I'm sure everyone fought so hard but whatever happened in this one moment he just decided to flee and to not continue so he left her alive Marcella and Gertrude were brought in to identify de Salvo and these women went to the prison visiting room they were posing as visitors and they waited for desalvo to be brought out before bringing out de Salvo Gertrude watched George Nasser the guy who said that de Salvo confessed to him in prison of of these George is the one

1:01:00

who killed the two men and George killed the two men yes George Nasser desalvo's prison buddy he enters the room and walks over to a social worker he glances angrily over in the direction of Gertrude and she becomes extremely upset very frightened and feels that this man George Nasser feels extremely familiar to her Des Salvo comes out moments later into the visiting room she doesn't recognize him she doesn't have the same visceral reaction at all she's never seen this man she's seen George she broke down crying and when she was finally able to speak again she said when they showed her de salvo's picture like when the police showed her desalva's picture weeks before she thought that there was some similarities some similar features so she thought perhaps maybe it could be him but now that she had seen him in person she did not think so but seeing George Nasser was in entirely familiar she said quote the first man who entered George Nasser I realized how shocked I was when I saw him to see this man his eyes his hair

1:02:00

his hands the whole expression of him my deep feelings are that he had very great similarities to the man who was in my apartment do you have a picture of him I like feel that in my soul like oh that hurts so much like he had to be attacked like that this is him so he doesn't look that like he and desalvo have something similarities yeah there are different men with dark hair yeah and larger kind of longer faces and yeah oval faces Marcella experienced something similar to a Gertrude did when she saw the two men seeing desalvo she immediately eliminated him but seeing Nassar made her heart jump she said this was him only now he had dark hair oh so was he wearing a disguise did he dye his hair what was the situation especially because some people said that he had some like light Sandy hair right and now he had dark hair care okay another notable piece of evidence are cigarettes

Contradictory evidence

found at a few of the scenes a Salem cigarette which apparently was like

1:03:00

somewhat rare this was not like a cigarette that everyone just smoked and these Salem cigarette butts were in Sophie Clark's bathroom toilet and also next to Mary's bed but there was no I don't think they were collected as like DNA evidence right but desalvo didn't smoke I think George Nasser did I'm not positive but we just know that desalvo at least in his regular life and maybe not his alter ego of the murderer didn't smoke but that's not to say he didn't smoke when he was killing right because that could be his like I mean one of many Terrible Things police began to speculate that perhaps Nassar was pinning these murders on De Salvo perhaps he fed him some of the information that was told back to them maybe he was taking advantage of him or there were theories that they too together were the Boston stranglers they basically had done together somehow were in the same cell as each other but didn't they meet after the fact well there's two camps so it's either like they were already doing this together and then they just so happened to be cell mates at Bridgewater or that they

1:04:00

met at Bridgewater and then now they're conspiring together to get and split the ten thousand dollar reward for turning in the Boston Strangler interesting because well also especially if Del Santo de Santo de Salvo de Salvo making up words especially if Del Salvo why am I saying Salvo just yeah yeah okay especially if desalvo is maybe taking ownership for other crimes and what's his name George Nasser knows this he could be like hey will you take the fall off of this as well right right yeah it is interesting because so many people didn't believe that de Salvo did it at all and George Nasser seemed like much more of an aggressive it's weird because it's like there's all these crimes that in the appeared to be de salvos there's no DNA evidence for him being the green man but he was id'd by many people when his picture was posted but as we're seeing right now with him versus George Nasser like they look

1:05:00

pretty similar too so it could be something weird and he's into confessing to these things but forensic psychiatrist Dr Ames Roby served as a defense witness and claimed that de Salvo was diagnosed with schizophrenia Dr roby's professional opinion was that he wasn't the Strangler de Salvo just merely wanted attention and was struggling with mental illness FBI profiler and criminologist Robert Kessler believed that there was more than one killer based on the changing Mo and the various other details it seemed like it didn't really fit the psychological profile of just one person there were too many variables too many variances in the crimes so there had to be at least two people working together if not a larger Group which we know isn't necessarily true especially with golden state killer case like yeah there can be variations of crimes and still be the same person right but like we're saying that now having witnessed what the Golden State

1:06:00

killer had done yeah with all of the evidence coming out three four years ago but even if we were having this conversation when we first started the podcast when the Golden State killer wasn't caught we probably would have been like it's definitely different people I just know yeah so also when

Legal proceedings and death

desalvo confessed and confirmed all the details and id'd that photo of the victim that had never been seen when that was looked at more closely it appeared that some of the details he had were actually wrong in the beginning and only when he spent more time with the police and being interviewed did he start giving correct information so he was basically being fed the correct details right or he was making inferences too based on what he knew from reading about the Articles like course correcting to Magic yes and I did read too that the woman he id'd on the photograph I believe her a different photo of her was published so he could have just recognized simply her as a human being not necessarily the exact same photo or he was fed something yeah

1:07:00

so people started to speculate that maybe he wasn't the killer attorney F Lee Bailey who was also the attorney later on for O.J Simpson was introduced to desalvo through George Nasser he argued for desalva he represented him he argued for de Salvo in the Green Man trials because he wasn't tried for for Boston Strangler right like he was on trial for a green man and just said that he was also the Boston Strangler yeah so he was tried for the Green Man trials and his attorney F Lee Bailey what he was trying to do was to get the jury to get to basically get him the insanity plea and to have him sent to a hospital because he had already pled guilty so it was more for just like what the charges would be and what his yeah yeah exactly yeah so he was like help him understand why he does this why he assaults these women he's ill he had a horrible and violent childhood and he also tried to convince the jury without actually saying anything just inferring that

1:08:00

desalva was also the Boston Strangler to kind of help with the case of insanity referencing the crimes multiple times and calling them quote 13 acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body okay so it's not even the Boston Strangler case and he's his attorney is basically saying he's saying he's the Boston Strangler yes yes cool okay de Salvo is sentenced to life in prison for the Green Man assaults and robbery yeah the jury didn't find it convincing that a man who was so out of his mind and because that was possessed and Ill would still have the presence of mind to wear gloves during the attacks of the green man yeah and thought in that to be super weary of leaving behind evidence yeah because obviously he was he was thinking about things so he again was never ever tried for the crimes as The Boston Strangler he went to jail as the Green Man until his death he was killed not long after by someone in prison it's

1:09:00

speculated that desalvo admitted to these crimes because he believed either that he would get a cushy life at a mental hospital or by iding himself as a serial killer he'd become world famous which would surely bring in money deals which would then help support his wife and children that he left by Mind by being in jail so he was like I'm already in jail I may as well make them some money and set them up isn't it like the Bundy case where his dad was not allowed to keep any of the money he made off of like writing up a oh probably I think it went all to the victims families uh as it freaking should because there was a son I don't know when the Son of Sam Law was put into well I didn't realize that it extended to someone's family members because the Son of Sam Law is basically like you I think they profit specifically okay yeah yeah because this was before so like de Salvo doing this was before the Son of Sam yeah thaw came in into consideration or or was enacted because basically before as we saw with like with the clown guy I was yes uh

1:10:00

just Kong guy because that clown guy that clown guy he he would like sell all his paintings and whatnot so now it was like you cannot profit if you are convicted yep felon like off of your own story basically and the deaths and the crimes that you have John Wayne Gacy thank you okay his wife never thought he was capable of being the Strangler so many of his friends like so many people did not think he was capable of being the Strangler in fact many people didn't think he was the Green Man either they were like oh yeah he's probably the like maybe he's the measuring man but really they were like he's a Serial burglar we don't think he's doing all these other things but oftentimes those closest to I mean I think we all have a little bit of a blind a Blinder on to people we love and who are close to us and we don't want to believe that they could do these right things I mean another case in Boston that was horrific that happened

1:11:00

what 10 15 years ago was the Craig's List killer and his girlfriend who he lived with could not believe that it was him but then when she finally was convinced she had the police help her get to the airport she like refused to go back to their apartment as she should yeah seven

DNA evidence confirms match

years after being convicted Albert desalvo was stabbed to death in a prison infirmary and Walpole prison in 1973. shortly after recanting his confession and hoping to clear his name for the murders so he turned around and said I actually I did not do any of this on July 11 2013 the mystery and uncertainty about to salvo's involvement became a little bit less uncertain because police had recovered a water bottle from the construction site where Albert desalvo's Nephew worked and they ran the DNA so they were first trying to figure out could de Salvo now that we have the technology to to run this DNA can we run this DNA basically against his family family because desalva was already dead

1:12:00

at this point the Boston the Boston police crime lab ran this DNA against the six samples of DNA collected from Mary Sullivan's apartment and preserved from that time and this was their first step towards trying to figure out if it was de Salvo so the very first thing they did was to make sure the Y chromosomes and the DNA sample were a familiar match and if they were they would then be able to probably take this well their plan was to take it to a judge and exhume de salva's body and then test it against him they couldn't they knew they wouldn't the court order would probably be granted by the judge if they were just like can we take dig up his body and test it against the DNA evidence yes so they had to have more reason so that's why they followed his nephew to the job site and took a water bottle away that he had checked out so there was a match with this evidence a judge granted the police permission to exhume de salvo's body test the DNA directly against the DNA found at Mary's apartment on that blanket they used DNA from his femur and his teeth because he

1:13:00

was bones yeah it came back as a 99.9 match so this means that 99.9 of other men can be ruled out as the perpetrator and that desalvo could not be ruled out from considerations it doesn't mean it was him but there's an extremely high chance that it was so it most likely from my perspective he 99.9 killed Mary mm-hmm but that does not mean he killed all these we have no idea he killed all the others because while yes that follows a

Skepticism and legal issues

similar patterns yeah what if he was a copycat killer what if that's the first time he ever actually like killed someone right and he left that he left behind evidence and he did it in the way that the Boston triangler did because he didn't have any other knowledge or understanding of how to do it right and he also completed some of the acts that the Boston Strangler hadn't with other people or left it behind yeah yeah right

1:14:00

nobody who knew desalvo believed he was the killer so his wife his family his friends his lawyer his prison psychiatrist and even the police would fall to the floor laughing when people would suggest that it was de Salvo when he was alive he was just a small town Thief he could not be this conniving and skilled murderer yet here was the proof DNA evident that more likely than not 99.9 chance that he killed Mary and I was trying to like I am not a forensic psychologist and I I'm not a DNA specialist but I was trying to research like what is the likelihood of the point one yes and I couldn't really find anything it was all coming up with like 23andMe and ancestors I almost feel like they have to say 99.9 because there has to be room for some type of error whether it's like the machine the cross-contamination whatever it may be but otherwise it's pretty conclusive yeah but it does make me wonder too what is the chance so like if we say 99.9 does that mean if there

1:15:00

are let's say 99 000 well I'm not I'm bad like are we doing math because I don't know if this is gonna set up okay let's say that there's around 99 000 let's say that there's 100 000 men right does that mean that 99 1900 of them are excused and 100 of them left over in Boston could be him or is this DNA evidence really specific to it would have to be people living in Boston around the time or in Boston around this time who have like these specific markers and these specific things like how specific is this point one it has to be very very specific because if you think it's not it's not about location it's not about place it is literally about chromosomes and DNA makeup and the I don't think any like that's why DNA is such a reliable source in crimes because it's so unique so that's what I was looking for that I wanted knowledge of

1:16:00

which is like okay in in Boston like in a specific location if someone gets a 99.9 like what is the likelihood that there's even one other person in the vicinity that could also get a 99.9 that none that's what I was trying to point I was like with their other like if you had a twin brother I don't know identical twin it would have to be and even yeah I don't know I don't know yeah it's also I mean it's interesting because the friends and family saying that they could not believe that he was this conniving manipulative Mastermind their mind would be able to convince everyone true yeah they are not exactly and it yeah I think it was just so confusing with all the different you said this in the beginning that people aren't aren't reliable Witnesses yeah and that is true but at the same time it was very confusing to have so many unreliable Witnesses say that they saw the same thing and it not

1:17:00

be de Salvo so it's like well aren't they reliable if they're all saying they saw this one specific person especially George Nassar that all of their reports are generally the same and it doesn't match to Salvo or does a little bit but not completely I don't know I don't know this is a very yeah I still it's confusing despite no now I'm 50 50. I was before it's not de Salvo but now I'm 55 DNA evidence yeah it is yeah for marrying like yeah definitely yeah yeah I remember when I said Mary sister Diane had a son who was very interested in in solving this case so he was very excited and had a lot of relief come to him and his mom and peace with knowing that desalva had done this to Mary yeah um or or that they just knew there's closure there's there was closure there was closure yes sorry I'm struggling with my words and it's sounding awful what I'm saying but interestingly enough despite his years of research de Salvo was not on his main

1:18:00

suspect list either he had a lot of other people that he thought it could be so de Salvo it was like a surprise for everyone wait I'm surprised though that his that Kate his name's Casey yeah Casey that he didn't have de Salvo on the list especially because desalvo had already been well he was on I think he was on A-list but he wasn't not nearly in the like top session like so he wasn't convinced he was not okay Salvo yeah and there were other people that I think he thought it could be more I don't know who that is probably George Nasser let's be real and then it's also I think George died a few years ago you can't I mean this is the problem with guilty until proven innocent if you release the suspect list of all you know all 30 names or 300 names that were on the suspect list are you then condemning innocent men right and also the suspect list doesn't necessarily mean that there's a reason for them to be on the suspect list other than that they just knew or were around the vicinity of the person like if

1:19:00

someone died in this backyard that we had nothing to do with like fell out of the hot air balloon yeah we would be on the list yeah because we were here yeah also I realized that because I just wanted to correct myself here because moments ago 20 minutes ago I said that it was Ted Bundy's dad who wrote a book it was Jeffrey Dahmer's and he was sued and wasn't allowed to keep any of the profits honestly good call because I feel like when I feel like it's one thing if you're the like BTK I can't remember his name either but that doesn't really matter right I can imagine like his daughter wrote a book and so if you're you're equally a victim if you're a family member but it's one thing if you're a family member who's a child or a wife or someone who's a victim in that way it's another if you're a neglected parent who's trying to I think that was the yeah yeah okay so while there's been no official conviction of De Salvo and he was dead

1:20:00

for 30 years by the time this DNA was tested the lawyer for desalvo's family says that this DNA evidence collected from the water bottle was obtained illegally and so the ID collected from De salvo's body that was exhumed as The Boston Strangler cannot be said with certainty it is not something we can we're supposed to be saying but it is that's stupid I get that and yeah I get it from a legal standpoint right but from a from a rule following standpoint yes but then at the same time it must have been legally approved if the judge used that evidence as a to give approval to exhume his body right there must be some type of loophole there must be yeah but also someone who knows law I'm insane Boston or Massachusetts police they don't have the shiniest reputation do any no but I think that they've been

1:21:00

exposed a lot for different things okay four two this is also probably like Whitey Bulger area era too where everyone's in everyone's pocket but I was just gonna say like for any Organization for any for Humanity for any species there's good and there's bad yeah like you know the police do a lot of great things as well as a lot of bad things and there are stories on both sides of that oh yeah like yeah not to say that all of them are bad and at all no no good I just but I can imagine and like the judges I mean there's so much there's so much corruption everywhere yeah even like a whole thing with like the priests and everything in Boston like that whole situation like there definitely were some judges some lawyers and some people that were high up in like government and law that I cannot see why this would be pushed through yes so while we don't know for certain if he committed the other 12 murders but I think sometimes

1:22:00

we can assume but then other times we get confused we do know that atricious

Haunted locations

crimes like these often leave a week of sadness behind and with that comes Paranormal Activity yes one of the Boston stranglers very last victims Patricia Bessette lived at 515 Park Drive hundreds of young people just like Patricia have also lived in this apartment after her murder because it's a dorm oh this is part of Boston University so if you go to BU or you plan to snow it's here and your child could be living there well just to say like we've said this many times lots of places are haunted yeah it does lots of people die at home all the time yeah yeah and they're I feel like anywhere in Boston if you end up there's going to be some there's going to be a chance of a haunting but it is crazy just imagining how many students probably just go to BU and get assigned to this dorm and have no idea what happened in their dorm room

1:23:00

that's what yeah that's what freaks me out a little bit so as part of BU at the time of Patricia's death it was housing only theology students but now I think it's accessible to any undergrad people who walk by the building feel uneasy and people who've lived in the building report hearing Footsteps in the middle of the night and some of the students fear that this could be the spirit of the Boston Strangler coming to find one more victim it's also like footsteps that's like I feel like urban legend to make things a bit together and honestly I will say all of the Paranormal stuff that's happening that's attributed to is this the Boston Strangler very likely it's probably not yes here's the other thing to go into more of a spiral yes it's scary to it's terrifying to be like oh I you could be living in a dorm and not know what happened like the death that and the murder that happened in that place but then to go one step further we have a history of murder taking land from others yep of just complete violence and

1:24:00

atrociousness that has happened probably on that very same spot especially Boston with all the history that it has like right there's just players and layers of disturbing things that we don't think about on a daily basis that have happened on the soil beneath we literally talked about that in part one too it's like oh you walk through the park it's it's uh horrible what happened in this vicinity in this air yes okay so we don't know if 515 Park Drive is actually the Boston Strangler probably isn't there were murmurs of potentially Paranormal Activity happening also in the apartment of the last victim Mary Sullivan who was murdered in her second story apartment just steps away from Boston Common on the first story is a restaurant which you've been to I have I I could bring a lot of people there maybe not we just probably walk by it a thousand times but maybe we didn't eat there but it's called Paramount or the Paramount it's very popular it's like a

1:25:00

classic Diner breakfast it's also open for lunch it's for dinner as well that was like a weird English sentence that I said but the Paramount opened in 1937 so it was there and operating when Mary Sullivan was murdered just above like the ceiling separates where she was killed and all of the restaurant workers right below which is also like how daring was this person well we know it was de Salvo for Mary's like yeah for Mary How brave brave is like a horrible word to use too but just like the fact that he went somewhere that attracted a lot of people that probably had a ton of people on the first floor and still risked being caught by murdering someone who's just above on a busy Street yeah it wasn't like deep in a neighborhood somewhere right the heat I mean clearly he had no regard about anything else that was going on yeah just wanted to hurt true so this

Paranormal investigation

apartment it is a rental it's a one bed

1:26:00

one bath about 500 square feet with a beautiful bay window and likely nightly nightmares just before being murdered in jail when desalvo was in jail for the being the Green Man desalvo spent time in the Old Salem jail which you have been to and covered and covered in early days of the podcast yeah so you can check out that episode whatever it is so old sound jail which is now turned into an apartment complex in Salem Massachusetts um was where he spent a little bit of time and residents of this building who are now living in apartments sometimes report a threatening Buzz around them and have suspected that this could be de salva's Spirit there are cold spots throughout the building items move on their own Shadows Dart across walls lights turn on and off there's a spirit of an old prison guard that has been seen here many times yeah he's carrying his clipboard and he's roaming the halls and now the jail has housed many more people than the Boston Strangler this

1:27:00

was also a prison for many suspected witches during the Salem Witch Trials also during the Civil War had multiple people in there so there's a lot of negative energy permeating these walls there's a lot of Haunting past and desperate prisoners so I can't imagine that it's all de Salvo doing this uh but I'm sure his ghost would take credit for all of it exactly this is so this is so like yes this is an accurate way this is not I can't even what's the English yes okay that's his Mo that's is Mo unsurprisingly there are Phantom noises that echo through this building chains rattling loud screams agonizing cries and many women weeping you know what's really interesting I'm having a moment of like whoa how time works is so wild because when we covered this back in 20 what 17 it had just been turned into Apartments just turned into your apartment no stories from residents like they were being sold and so now

1:28:00

it's it's so fascinating to like here there are what people are from people who've lived there okay so we don't technically know if desalvo killed all 13 women just as we don't know for certain if his spirit is bringing the negative paranormal energy to these very haunted locations but we do know that the case of the Boston Strangler has stuck with people for decades and researchers and paranormal enthusiasts are still looking for answers was there more than one killer and will de Salvo come through an EVP session many people are trying and that is the very condensed version of The Boston Strangler and some suspected hauntings wow it's devastating yeah and heartbreaking and I have such sorrow and heartbreak for all these you know the fam families for the victims for the lack of answers and I think ultimately that is why so many of us are intrigued by true crime or even like ghost stories

1:29:00

it's this inability to have conclusions or conclusive answers that makes us want answers more yeah and yeah why are you talking about it it is interesting because it's like when there is no conclusion when it is a mystery we are obsessed with it and then as soon as we have an answer we move on to the next thing that doesn't have any an answer right with all of these crime cases like it's really the things that have big missing gaps or pieces or we don't know who the Killer is yeah or the all of the Paranormal that's why we do the entire show it's like we don't have answers or reasons it's all speculation it's also like we're gonna go zoom out a little bit like we're all looking for a purpose in life and I I think most people spend their whole lives looking for that like it's like constantly chasing an answer that I think is zoomed in version true crime or searching for answers on these

1:30:00

life events that we observe is like the smaller version of that on Grands yeah we're just constantly trying to

Listener stories and conclusion

understand I wonder if we said how introspective I've spent a lot of time inside here I'm a thinker not a speaker I think you're both for us sometimes but yeah I mean it's it is a morbid Fascination that a lot of people have and yes there has been I think a period of time where we've maybe used it for entertainment but at the core it comes down to wanting to understand something so that we can either have closure or so that we can I don't know there's just like a once we have an answer we understand it a little bit more yeah like aliens and UFOs and all of that goodness abduct me please it's basically

1:31:00

the message I'm saying okay what even are we I do have is this you this is me well I didn't write it but I have a listener story from our listener Lisette saw a really nice message that I will read on the podcast that will say it says at the end oh okay in June of 2000 I was invited to go with my aunt Tia my uncle Tio and Grandma to Boston for my cousin's college graduate abuela yes I had just graduated high school and was so excited for this travel opportunity I hadn't seen my cousin in years so I was I was excited to visit him too and I was so proud of his achievements he is like a brother to me while there he took all of us over to Boston to absorb the rich history and I didn't have any paranormal experiences until uh-oh we visited the Museum of Fine Arts Boston oh I've actually never been really yeah I've been to a lot of the other museums maybe you'll go after this my family had been at the museum for a little over an

1:32:00

hour and we had just passed the ancient Egypt display of mummies coffins weapons and pottery to name a few it was pretty uneventful paranormal wise as we left that area and traveled towards another exhibit Tia stopped dead in her tracks she had been fine the entire visit and was filing and enjoying the artifacts and paintings I had been walking just a few steps ahead of her and when I did not hear her following I turned and I saw an expression I will never forget her face had turned instantly bright cherry red her mouth was slightly a gape and she was holding her breath worried I scurried back to her and held her hand her hand was so hot oh I asked if she was okay and she did not respond immediately I called for my uncle my eyes were tearing up because I thought she was having a heart attack or a stroke oh my gosh that is very scary my uncle came over and said mija don't worry your tia has this happen every once in a while it's just a mild possession

1:33:00

shocked I turned to my Tia and asked again are you okay she replied there is something evil I can't go over there her eyes welled up but she did not SOB the tears fell on her cheeks and she brushed them away immediately as if embarrassed she turned to the left and walked towards the gift store to sit down I asked my cousin what was that all about I'm so worried is she really okay and my cousin said something that shocked me she feels things and sees things sometimes she hears things too and I was like oh what this is the first time I've ever heard of it was just trying to freaking brush this off being like yeah it just happens sometimes ignore her yeah one other cousin was trying to brush it up oh yeah yeah I'm like uh no Tia is very psychic but I feel like if it is your Norm then like yeah it's like don't worry I think they're just trying to reassure with that meanwhile my aunt was sitting with my uncle who was reading a book from the shop as if it was nothing I then saw the color return to her face

1:34:00

and she looks peaceful again just with a little bit of worry she didn't look up she kept her Gaze on the floor and seemed like she was just focusing on breathing I was so intrigued with what had just happened that I wanted to investigate I was walking with my grandma into the Hall my aunt said that she could not enter I asked my grandma what this is all about and she said yeah your aunt is crazy she says she can feel the other worldly presences Sometimes good sometimes bad I don't believe it but I did I didn't feel anything at first when I entered the hall but I felt a slight chill as I turned the corner the hall was long and narrow it had Furniture pieces and some artwork I particularly felt something cold around a bed frame and a painting I've never had personal experiences but I do think there is some energy or Spirit presence out there the hall started to feeling claustrophobic so I left I went back to my aunt asked her how she was feeling and she said much better I asked her about her ability to feel hear and see things and she said she's had

1:35:00

the ability since her childhood in Nicaragua she said most of the time the spirits are harmless and just passing by so I don't pay them any mind but this one this man he is evil ah he has done terrible things my gosh really bad things and he's just hanging out in the museum where all these people are I was speechless do you know what he did I asked she said yes but it was a long time ago a really long time ago poor women she didn't want to talk about it anymore so I let it go I asked her over 10 years later about that incident she remembered she told me the same thing and said that sometimes though not common she picks up something evil thanks for reading I really appreciate the friendly format and insight into both of your lives it truly feels like listening to friends stay safe and spooky and see you on the other side best wishes Lisette she then says you

1:36:00

don't need to read this on the podcast but I do think it's but we did P.S Sabrina I used to feel like no one saw me either my mom always said love yourself when you do the light will shine I was always introverted and shy self-love goes a long way cheers for your accomplishments it's okay to Pat yourself on the back and it's okay to fail just be you are wonderful Corinne you are too that's nice I know that's why I'm reading it oh did I say it was bad no no I just I'm like but you don't have to read about me like this is just so beautiful for you um you both make me laugh on my boring LA traffic car ride home from my work at the hospital seriously thank you both and I just think that is a very beautiful message that I have always needed to hear and I've been focusing on and trying to do a lot this year but I also think everyone listening all of you

1:37:00

whoever's listening you are beautiful you are important love yourself you is kind you do smart you is important you shine and I think one thing that I've really I want to talk about her story in a second but one thing that I have spent a lot of time loving about myself in the past year is something that I felt like I had been made to believe was wrong with me is that I Shine by letting other people shine sometimes like I'm really good at lifting other people up and making people shine which makes me shine and I don't need to be like center of attention to shine and you don't need to be no you can Shine by doing things that people don't realize you're doing but you also can't prioritize other people's shine no yes so you're letting yourself you're right but I was I think I was led to believe I'm not saying this in the right way but I think I was led to believe that my

1:38:00

lack of desire to participate in a ton of social events or you know ability to like turn on charm and stuff meant I was not doing something correct but actually I shine in those events because I like yes I don't like those because I am really good at making room for other people which is why I get so drained in those events yeah because I help other people shine which that means well that's why I don't feel so comfortable with you too because you do open the space up like it's you're a very comforting person to be around thank you because your energy is like I feel like people probably tell you like their deep dark secrets right because like you want you're you are safe thank you anyway I feel like I'm not wording that properly but but basically I have learned to that just because someone shines in a

1:39:00

different way does not mean and you don't shine in that way does not mean you don't shine you shine yes absolutely perfectly said yeah get to know yourself might be surprised by how cool you are you are I already knew you were the coolest which is why I made you my best friend and business partner for the past five years so I think everyone else knows already but we're glad that you're learning now too oh gosh okay you thought nothing about me Lisette the story I know this is it's odd because it's like it could be so many things like it's all those poor women like was it some of the witch trial stuff was it a Strangler stuff the Strangler stuff yeah we have no idea it could be so many different things was it attached to Something in the museum that it's like this evil man who did some terrible things to women in ancient Egypt or wherever you know in the world is from right I know yeah because that's another thing

1:40:00

it doesn't necessarily need to be Boston it could just be that person's sauce some atrocities somewhere yeah and it's now just stuck to this some piece I also think about I just think art is so fascinating we've talked about this before in you know episodes about like the crying boy and the um what's the one I did recently I forget the English man no the one that was that um Zach Bagan has like a specialized why am I blinking oh my gosh it's like the little girl isn't it isn't it a series it's a series yeah I cannot remember anyway just about this this idea that art kind of takes on a life of its own and artists pour their emotion and psyches and and stories into the art that I almost imagine like there's this person from however many years ago who created

1:41:00

this piece of art that is now maybe in a museum that holds his sins and his confessions this makes me feel art therapy differently but honestly that could be was one of those things where like when you think of art therapy as like healing pieces of yourself but what if sometimes you accidentally just chip off these pieces of yourself to horcrux it's a horcrux and it's stuck in to this and then ah here's the lesson just don't be a terrible person and yeah your art won't become bizarre and give yourself Grace yeah as well because we can all we can all have a comeback story yeah for the comeback kids thank you to all of you yes you can follow us on social media you can write and review on iTunes you can check out our website for Merch if you want to represent the podcast and also follow us for any future live show information also most importantly if you have any ghost stories of your own email us at

1:42:00

two girls one ghostpodcast gmail.com I don't know why I wanted to whisper two girls we have campfire stories watches on YouTube therapy um therapy therapy is good therapy is great love yourself I did say there will be but I think I said it to mumble that it sounded like therapy yeah but in the YouTube video there will be photos that Korean reference throughout the episode and we're with each other so if you want to see us interact and look at each other hey here it is here it is and we uh recently brought back the sponsors page on our website too so if you're looking for those codes we made them a little bit easier you made them access so that's all you do don't do it from a web browser not from your mobile phone well now people are going to look at it from their mobile phone I'm not a web designer and I did what I could you did great yes we love you all we love Christina who edits this podcast thank you so much for all your hard work and thank you for all of your hard work by

1:43:00

suffering because you're listening to us just kidding no we're great we love each other we love ourselves Eternal suffering over here at two girls one ghost yay thank you to all of you we love you and we will see you on the other side