98\. The Cases That Keep Us Up At Night // The Parlor (feat. Psychopedia)
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Welcome to a special episode of Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Now, typically when I do the podcast Heart Starts Pounding, I'm up in the study of the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters, surrounded by books and newspapers, telling you guys about what I've learned that week.

But this week, I wanted to do something a little different. I'm actually going to be down in the parlor of the headquarters where I sometimes have guests over. And today, I want to share one of those conversations I had with you guys. Now, I had my friends Tank and Investigator Slater from the Psychopedia podcast over to talk all things true crime. On their show, Psychopedia, they cover the dark world of some of the most deranged criminals you've ever heard of.

And as a darkly curious person, I wanted to have them over to tell me some of those stories. Now, today's episode is going to look a little bit darker than a standard Herser's Pounding episode. So be warned, Tank and Slater tell me all about the psychology of killers, as well as some cases that still keep them up at night. So I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

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So I just want to thank you for having us on your podcast for the very first time without any previous or prior attempts or takes. Oh yeah. This is first time. First time we're meeting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's so nice to meet you finally. And I just, I feel so familiar with you, even though it's our first time definitely meeting and doing this particular podcast. I know, even though we haven't recorded for two and a half hours, that was unusable prior to this. I will say,

my listeners will appreciate this because most of them know already, but I, when I moved into this new house, I went and got a hundred year old monkey doll from this store called uncommon objects. And it just really spoke to me. It was like in this, like,

little area where there was a bunch of like really old spooky looking monkey dolls and the guy at the store jokingly said that they were haunted but I was I felt this monkey I was like there's no way this monkey's haunted that's no he has too good of energy and I brought him to this place and that's the room I recorded in

This is our haunted piece of- You have a haunted Shrek Buddha. Buddha. Yeah, look at under, oh, whoa, I can't even show you that. No, I'm just not, great. So just to clear everyone up on what happened, we recorded a very long, nice, excellent podcast.

And I flubbed it hard. No, my haunted monkey flubbed it. None of us are to blame. Full responsibility. I am to blame. It's okay. I make memes for a living. Listen, we're all in this together. We are. Okay. Yeah, like it or not. Listen, podcasting is hard. Sometimes you have to like plug the mics in and that's really confusing. Exactly. Apparently so.

It's hard. It is hard. No, but I'm so excited to have you guys on because I think my listeners are really going to respond to this because you guys cover really dark cases. Psychopedia is true crime. You cover a lot of true crime stuff, but you tend to cover really dark cases, like stuff that I don't necessarily touch on Heart Starts Pounding. True crime and comedy. Don't forget me. Of course. Yeah.

Tank's there for the good vibes. This setup of psychopedia is I bring the gravity and Tank brings the levity. Yeah. And she brings the depravity also. Yeah. Thank you. That was such a kind thing. Depravity and gravity and I bring the levity and that's it. Yeah. Is there criteria for what makes a psychopedia episode? Like when you're looking through cases, do you have like a, yeah, any criteria? Yeah.

Gut instinct. I know that sounds silly, but sometimes some of the editors that we work with will ask for like advanced notice on the cases that we're going to do. And a lot of times I don't have it because I won't choose the case until we're getting close to recording because I kind of go with what I'm feeling. I have my finger on the pulse of our listeners and kind of their feedback. Sometimes it's a case that's breaking the headlines right now. And I will absolutely investigate the hell out of it. Like,

no sleep for three days around the clock, you know, so we can crank it out. Other times I'm feeling like an old timey case. I like the old timey cases myself. The first case we ever covered was about a priest in Germany who was horrifically depraved. But that case I think took place in like the early 1900s. Yeah. Father Hans Schmidt. Yeah.

But Slater, you said that your family kind of has like a history in the true crime space kind of. Yeah. So my family has a law firm or many locations around the country. The one that I work out of is here on Long Island. And her brother is a serial killer. Don't forget to mention that. Oh, yeah. My brother is not a serial killer. That's my father. He is. Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry. That's a good episode. Yeah.

And I work as an investigator by profession for the law firm. So I'm in this space professionally, but I work exclusively with survivors of sexual abuse who are adults now, but who suffered sexual abuse when they were children.

Um, so that's, that's the nine to five, that's the day to day. But my passion just in general is, is investigating and unraveling all the layers of complexity with the human psyche. I always feel compelled to understand the background of a killer. I don't excuse what they go on to do. I don't give them a pass.

But everybody wound up where they are because they came from somewhere. Usually very, very rare to become across a case where there is a killer who had like a very stable upbringing, you know, a combination of nature and nurture. And she really gets into the nurture. Yeah. For me, it's fascinating to understand what leads somebody to the level of depravity

that lands them on an episode of psychopedia. And again, it doesn't excuse them. I don't empathize or I shouldn't say I don't empathize because I empathize with these people with the kids, with who they were as children.

when they suffered whatever they suffered that sort of led them down a path to absolute horror. And then there's always, it's funny because there's always a switch in energy during the episode where we're like, damn, this kid had a rough upbringing. It feels so bad for him. And then at some point, inevitably, we're both like, ah, this guy sucks. Yeah, it is like, I mean. Yeah, that's actually, that's interesting. When do you feel like, because I think about that too, right? You hear the stories of serial killers and they're often very sad, right?

Like there's a lot of trauma that goes into building up these people. But at a certain point,

they're responsible for what's going on. - Absolutely. - 100%. - They can't excuse them and they can't be mixing in society. They can't be a threat to anybody out there. So they have to be put away. There's no question about that. - We don't get into at what point they cross over from vulnerable, empathized, child you can empathize with to serial killer. It's usually when they start doing the killing

Where we're like, okay, like this, these guys, these people just need to be locked away. Their circumstances contributed. There's a lot of traumatic brain injuries that she experienced.

illustrates during these cases, which I think is fascinating because the TBI slash CTE repeatedly, especially in utero, leads to some of the most depraved serial killers that we've ever covered. Yeah, we've done a few cases where the killer was literally, or the mother was abused while she was pregnant with

the one, you know, soon to be killer. Jamie Osuna. Jamie Osuna. The Brazilian Dexter case that we did. Pedro Rodrigo Filo. Oh, wow. So they can actually tell when a child has had a brain injury in utero. Yeah. In these cases, they could. Wow. One of the perpetrators was born with an indentation in his head. You could visibly see it. Because the father kicked the mother that hard in the stomach. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't want to say he never had a chance or he came into the world, you know, but he came into the world with, you know, the card stacked against him for sure. He wasn't starting with an A. He wasn't starting right with an A. But again, it's typically never just one thing that's going to lead to, you know, the level of depravity that we explore. It's typically a combination of things. It could be a TBI, like Tank was saying. It could be a very, very abusive relationship.

- And the most important factor is that at some point they decide to let these things overtake them and they start killing. That's like, you can have all the different, you know, he was neglectful mother, abused by his father, beaten up as a kid, whatever, TBI. At some point they all say,

I'm going to let this thing run wild. Yeah. Did you watch the new... That reminds me of the new Netflix documentary that just came out, Into the Fire, The Lost Daughter. No, I've been hearing about it. You're going to be all over this. It's a fantastic documentary. It is about a person who... I guess he's a serial killer. It's not ever really discussed if he's a serial killer, but he has killed and assaulted multiple people. So he's a...

really bad guy. In a serial fashion. Three or more. In a serial fashion. With an offender. With a cool down period in between the killings. Oh my God. Oh yeah. I'm so proud of you. There was a cool down period. There was like a nine year period in between, which is, that's interesting that there has to be a cool down period. There has to be a cool down period and three or more victims for it to be considered a serial killer. So I guess you, there's probably more victims out there in the documentary we really focus on too, but, um,

They don't... It's about this man who's probably a serial killer, but they really don't get into his backstory. It's all from the perspective of the mom looking for her daughter that he killed. That he was...

he had adopted when she was born. So he adopted this girl. She goes missing when she's 14 and everyone's trying to figure out what happened, but he's kind of this like background character for like a while in the documentary. But one thing he says when we start looking at the police recordings of his interrogations is he's talking about this darkness, like he'll draw pictures of himself and there's always this really stark

dark, scraggly ball in front of his chest. And he's like, that's the darkness. And I was able to put that away for a long time, but eventually it overcame me. Because I think you were saying about people letting things overtake them.

And yeah, I don't know if it's, if it's somebody letting it happen or it happens because it's so powerful. Maybe they're not addressing it. They're not taking the steps they need to overcome it. Plus it's probably like exhausting for them to try and keep this thing. I don't make excuses for anybody, whether or not you kill somebody and you feel like you were possessed to do so. We both obviously believe that

You need to go away. You need to like be somewhere where you can't hurt other people. Sorry that you feel out of control, but like you got to go away. But it's also on the same token, like this person just had this thing inside them that was driving them more than anything. This itch that they have to scratch, so to speak. Right. Yeah. But you have also covered cases where someone will kill someone out of...

I don't want to say like a justifiable reason, but it's- Yeah, for sure. Yeah, where it's not like a serial need to do this. Brazilian Dexter. Well, that, right. That was like a- Yeah, you keep saying Brazilian Dexter, but for my listeners that don't know what this is, can you explain it? Sure. A Brazilian man by the name of Pedro Rodrigo Filho. I think it's Filho Rodrigo. Filho Rodrigo, excuse me. He- Let's just say Pedro. Pedro. Yeah.

He killed, I mean...

I don't have the number at the top of my mind right now. Not dozens, but not like single digits either. Somewhere. I mean, an extraordinary amount of people that he deemed to be... He was a... He called himself a vigilante killer. So he would go after rapists. He would go after murderers. He was doing, you know, cleansing society in his mind of... Like Dexter. Like Dexter, which is why we named the Brazilian Dexter. So he was, you know...

Do you remember what kind of killer that is? What type of serial killer? Process? Well, that's good that you said that. Try again, though. No. Mission-oriented. Mission-oriented. Okay.

I imagine that's like a rare kind of serial killer, a mission oriented one. Right. So they're they're just the ones who are on a mission to do what they think needs to be done to clear society of what they think is plaguing it. And then it's obviously a very big ethical discussion, because in doing that, he's he's judge, jury and executioner. So he's making the decisions on people. Right. He's carrying out the sentence and he himself is a murderer.

So it gets very tricky, gets very gray. That case was absolutely fascinating. There's another case that we covered. It was a two parter called the Scissor Sisters, which is it's a place in Ireland not that long ago either.

And they attacked, it was sisters, two sisters who attacked, murdered, dismembered, and like discarded the body parts of the man who had been raping their mother and who claimed that he was going to kill their mother. In front of them. In front of them. Like in the motion. He had their mother by the neck. He was dragging her and he said something to the effect of like, now, now it ends. Like now I'm going to take her life once and for all. And,

And these two sisters snapped and they took a box cutter from the kitchen and a knife and they killed him. And the box cutter went through the body completely like a samurai sword. No, I'm just kidding. I was going to say that's deep. It took three episodes to get him to stop perseverating on this. They use the box cutter as one of their weapons. A box cutter pops out, man. Like, yeah.

Oh, yeah. You can kill someone with a box cutter. Yes, but the thing said that there was four-inch wounds on his body. Well, they also used a knife, a kitchen knife. That's news to me. Okay. Maybe re-listen? Yeah. Yeah, someone zoned out during that part. But they were, what would they be called? Like a self-defense killing that wound up being a product killing because they just dismembered the body, which made the intention...

Exactly. So they didn't kill for the pleasure of killing. They killed because the product, it's not that they wanted to do anything with the body. So sometimes a product killer is somebody who wants to say, have sex with the dead body or something. Killing is not what they're after. They're after the body.

Oh, so when you say product, you mean they're after the product of the body corpse. OK. Yeah. Right. So whatever they're going to whatever nefarious plan they have with that dead body, they had to kill to get the body. So they're a product killer versus a process killer. Somebody who enjoys actually murdering at the act of murdering itself is what compels them to murder.

So that would be a process killer. The Scissor Sisters, they didn't have any grand plans with the body, but they had a grand plan in that moment to, if you believe their story, to rescue their mother from what they thought was going to be imminent death. They were also...

Up for days doing drugs and drinking. Oh, because I was going to ask if there was another, you made it sound like there was another side to the story. Always, always. And that's, I think, hopefully what we accomplish when we do psychopedia is we dive into all of these like nuanced aspects of the case. It's never straightforward. She never, she doesn't leave a stone unturned.

Wait, so I'm sorry. I'm like really focusing on the Scissor Sisters because I haven't heard of this case. And that's really interesting. They what did they say they dismembered the body for? Was that to hide it? Yes, that's they panicked. They panicked. They had that. They killed him. And then they stayed up. I think it was like 14 hours or something like that. Dismembering him. Did the sisters go to jail? What was the result? They did. So they had different sentences. Yeah.

Based on the fact that they had different involvement in the actual murder and the cover up, one of the sisters wound up confessing her sentence was lighter than the other sister. But you have again, you have to listen to the two parter because their backstory, everything plays a part so that when you get to that culminating act, you

It doesn't make sense, but you at least have an understanding of what they endured and lived through prior to that. They were both abused. It's contextualized. It's not, she doesn't just come on here and go, so this, this guy was like threatening a woman and her daughters were there and they just killed him. Then they cut his body up and like, man, it was so crazy. They totally river. That's the way to do it. I mean, that's something that like, even with heart starts pounding is, is,

like so important to the show is just adding context. Like, well, even I try to look up laws that had been passed at the time and like culturally what was going on. Like what the, the episode that comes to mind that I did, that's probably the most in line with,

is the Chi John family. I don't know if you've heard of them. They're the South Korean family. They were like a gang. They weren't related. But this group of guys in their 20s, the whole thing almost plays out like a Coen Brothers comedy because they were so dumb, but they were still able to kill people. But they decided that

They were really fed up with the wealth disparity that was going on in Korea in the 90s. They kind of grew up in the Gangnam district, Gangnam style, like that popular song that was like a real thing where all of a sudden wealth exploded and some people got really rich and they would dress in this Gangnam style. And to combat this wealth inequality, they decided that they were going to literally eat the rich. Their plan was...

kill rich people and barbecue them. Like they bought this house in the, uh, Bulgat Mayan district of South Korea and they outfitted the basement to have a barbecue and a jail cell. And it was horrible. And then one of them got a list from his friend of these people that spent a lot of money at this department store. So, and that was like their rich people that they were going to go after. Like that's all the research they did into it.

But in order to commit those crimes, they were going to practice on poor people. So, of course, they get caught before they actually get to killing any rich people. And the only people that they kill are like middle class and poor people.

But it's important to know at the time, there was this influx of these movies coming in from Hong Kong, these gritty noirs that were really influencing the guy who led the group. He wanted to look like he was one of those gang leaders from these gritty noir gangster movies. And then also the wealth inequality that was happening at the time was a huge catalyst for him. And it doesn't excuse any of his behavior, but it really, I think, paints a picture of...

why this happened. Yeah, it informs it. That's all she or she does is just like, there's no justification. There's no moral judgment on, you know, the people who contributed to this thing. It's just like, here are the facts.

Some of them definitely contributed, but they're all relevant in one way or another. There's no like there's just no fat on the script. Yeah. Wait, so I actually want to rewind like back to what you were saying earlier, Slater, with you're an investigator for your family's law firm, because when you said that, I made a note of it to ask you.

what that looks like. Cause I haven't, I'm just not super familiar with that. So what, like, what does that entail? I'm going to, sorry, just real quick. She didn't say it before. I don't know if she's going to say it now. She makes it seem like they're just a little rinky dink law firm that just happens to like do these things. A little Saul Goodman. They handle all of the sexual assault cases for the Catholic church, the prison system, the boy Scouts of America.

It's, it's massive. And the amount of people that they're helping get justice for what happened to them, they, they lobbied to have the statute of limitations lifted so that these people could get justice. Right. The thank you for that. A lot of survivors act in New York. So, okay. Yeah. So yeah,

Like Tank was saying, we go after the institutions. So we're on the side of the good guy. We're on the plaintiff's side. So we represent the plaintiffs or the people who were injured. And we go after typically the big institutions that are responsible and that should have known that this was happening, especially in cases like Tank was saying, the Catholic Church. It's been going on for decades. They just- Centuries. Centuries at that. Yeah. When we say we investigate, so we find that the church system is,

Moves priests around, bounces them around from different, you know, jurisdiction to jurisdiction, if you will, church to church rather than... Parish to parish. Yeah. Listen, I'm from New England. I was actually confirmed when I grew up Catholic and did not really...

I don't know. I didn't really love my experience growing up Catholic, but I remember... Can I tell... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no. What were you saying? Quick joke. Neil Brennan has a great joke about being raised Catholic. He goes, I think the sacraments are baptism, communion, confirmation, atheism. That's the pipeline. And it was the pipeline for everyone that I got confirmed with too, because...

We got confirmed by, I'm going to mess up the name of who he was because I don't remember any of the titles, but he was like not a bishop, but like the step above a bishop.

He was really important within the church, like in that like section of New England, like all of Connecticut. And he came and it was a huge deal. And he remembered everyone's name and he like looked us in the eyes and he was like, you guys are so beautiful. Da da da da da. Made us all feel really special. And afterwards we were kind of buzzing. We were like, maybe Catholicism is really like, maybe we can, I don't know, pursue this in our lives. And then a

A few years later, we found out he wasn't implicated in the sense that he was doing anything to children, but he was the guy responsible for moving a lot of the priests around in New England. He knew exactly what was going on and he would just move

from church to church. And I've never felt so gross in my entire life. Yeah. And it's not obviously to suggest, obviously, I always feel the need to say this though, that every single priest is a pedophile. No, not at all. It's like moving players around.

Um, the ones that we work with, unfortunately, that's, that's what we're up against. Do you guys go after the people who moved the people, the priest around? That's the institution. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so in terms of the investigative work behind that, you know, a lot of times we're just connecting those dots and we're proving, um, how far back it goes and the coverups and who exactly is involved. Um, you know, it's too late oftentimes to go after the individual people criminally, um,

whether the statute of limitation has passed. A lot of them are deceased now because we're going back decades and decades and decades. So that's some of the work we do. I oversee the Boy Scouts of America case at our firm. So we have, you know, 14,000, uh, mostly men, a few women who, who were sexually abused, whether they went with their brothers on like a weekend, you know, camping trip or whatever it may be. But by and large, we, it's mostly male clients. Um,

And you just can't even imagine what these people have survived. And, you know, a lot of the cases that happened a really long time ago

Nobody even had the vocabulary then to explain what was going on. You know, it was such a taboo thing, right? Like if your scout leader was abusing you, by and large, people would believe the scout leader because back in the day, children were not believed. Of course. And of course, these people, these abusers,

were smart in that they knew which children to target. So they would target very vulnerable children, typically from broken homes, you know, without the stability of, say, two parents or a nuclear family. So you also had kids from troubled backgrounds. It's one heartbreaking story.

unfortunately after another. Yeah. The light at the end of that tunnel in terms of my work, because I have a twin sister and she doesn't work at the firm. She's, she's always like, I don't know how you wake up in the morning and do this. Um,

But the light at the end of the tunnel is where I am now because we're helping these survivors to seek justice and ideally to shed light on the pervasive issue of institutional sexual abuse where we're in schools, you know, foster homes, anywhere where you're going to have, you know, adults in authoritative positions and typically children beneath them.

Unfortunately, that's where you're going to see this type of abuse. Oh, I was going to say, do you think it's because people specifically seek out those roles? Yes. Because they know there's going to be children there? When she was talking about targeting kids who they know, it's not that the abuse is bad. The abuse is horrific and unconscionable. But the way they get there with choosing those positions and then picking the kids they know they're less likely to say something

That should be a separate crime in my book. Well, there's also a grooming period almost always, right?

So you're going to have children who come from hardly anything. And now there's this, you know, priest or scout leader or teacher taking them to baseball games, buying them ice cream, you know, oh, you can't afford your Boy Scouts uniform. I'll pay for it for you. So you as a child think, wow, like he's my hero. And you feel like a little indebted to them, too, because they're putting money out for you and then they can use that later to guilt you.

Yeah, that's how they get. I don't even know if they need to, though. Children on the hook. Because it's just another tactic. Yeah. These kids have no frame of reference for what's appropriate and what's not. So yeah, that's like most kids who grew up in an environment that was not good. You just think everyone grows up like that. Right. And the really heartbreaking part with respect to the church cases, and it's not just Catholic Church, by the way, you know, my husband's rabbi was busted on a on a dateline.

Sting by Chris Hansen, actually. So it's not just no way. Wow. OK, we have to talk about that. We had Hansen on Psychopedia and I brought it up thinking he would like not remember because how many hundreds, if not thousands of, you know, perpetrators has he gone after after he remembered? He's like, that was our 75th episode. But there was also some more to that because the guy really wanted the episode killed.

And he's like, you're going to meet me here. Sit down over here. And this is what's going to happen. And Chris was like,

Who do you like? You don't tell me. You're the one that we have on camera. So, yeah, your husband's rabbi showed up to a house on camera, not knowing he was on camera with the intention of like criminal conduct with the money. Yeah, he showed up. So what happened was they busted him in a chat room, which is often how they find these perpetrators. And he was talking to who he believed to be a 15 year old boy.

Of course it wasn't. It was an undercover, you know, agent. He showed up at this person's home. It wasn't, it was like a sting house with a pack of wine coolers. And when he showed up, there was Chris Hansen in the kitchen with his camera crew. And yeah, and that was my husband's rabbi. So it doesn't just happen in the church is my point. But I think probably the hardest thing to see happen, one of the hardest things is just

The loss of faith and religion for children who were raised to believe so strongly in God and higher purpose, higher beings. The betrayal. The betrayal. And a lot of times these abusers would tell the children, this is God's will. You know, God put us together like this for a reason. So go with it because this is God's will. Right. So then they grow up thinking that this is, you know, part of God's plan. It just gets...

so complex and heartbreaking and the downstream effects of that type of rhetoric. I mean, I'm not, I don't want to say that they, they didn't, they never come out of it because survivors are very strong, which is what I've learned. But they carry it with them forever. Yeah. The fracture of the psyche in that is, I mean, shattered. It's not like a couple of pieces that you might be able to put back together. Yeah. Well, it's cause it's like everything you thought you knew. Yeah.

And then to find out actually it was a lie, especially when it comes to, I don't know, believing in God too. And you think that this is what happens to everyone. And then you realize you were just being lied to. And that like ultimately it doesn't have anything to do with your relationship to God. And so I would hope those people could, if they were called to, could pursue it outside of that too. But yeah, it's just about the case we just did with the husband and the wife.

which case i'm sorry i edited like three episodes this morning the one where at like 70 years old it came out that the guy was well that's coming out next week it's just one of the one of my favorite cases we've ever done

Not favorite. That sounds weird. Oh, we know what you mean. We're most gripping. It was just it was a guy who was married to a woman for 50 years. I'll say his name because. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Kaylin's audience are voracious true crime people. Yeah. Dominique Pellico in France and his wife, Giselle, or soon to be ex-wife. And and he was drugging her and having people come rape her.

and videotaping it for like 10 years. And she had no idea. From age, approximately age 60 to 70 years old. Okay, they had three children. They have three children together, seven grandchildren, 50 year marriage. And for the last decade of it, unbeknownst to Giselle. Except for the, she was having some effects of memory loss and whatever. She was having symptoms of something and she didn't know what.

She was having memory loss. She was having gynecological issues. Yeah. And for 10 years, nobody knew what was going on. I, you know, I truly also believe that the medical, you know, industry failed her big time because there were so many red flags of sexual abuse and nobody really took that step. Right.

But for 10 years, he was drugging her on a nightly basis, setting up video cameras, inviting men over who he met online to come over and rape his wife while he videotaped for a decade. And the reason I brought that up is because you mentioned the word betrayal. Maybe it's not my favorite. That's the most devastating betrayal ever.

We've ever covered. It's just beyond, but it also speaks to something else that we often explore in psychopedia, which is that duality of people like that, that like psychopathic ability to show the world a forward facing, you know, persona, but then behind closed doors to be somebody entirely different. Yeah. Jerry Bruto is a serial killer that we covered.

He had a fast food meal with his children and his mother upstairs in his home moments after murdering a woman in the basement beneath them, severing her foot so that he could keep it as a trophy to masturbate to, which he held onto for months.

But that duality, going upstairs like, hey, kids, you got the food? Great. How was your day? How was school? How was this? How was that? And there's a- Honey, do you know how to cook feet? Oh my gosh. In your basement that you're having, you're raping. It's just that duality. It's horrific and fascinating. Well, so I want to ask you this then, because you spend all day-

She's sick.

Do you feel like, I mean, we're probably all sick a little bit in general, but like, what is that like for you? Do you feel like you just have a really high tolerance because like your family's been involved in this for a while and you grew up around it? Or can you just like shut off certain parts of your brain? Sure. I mean, I'm very protective of our staff. So, you know, because I know that, you know, it is difficult.

Um, so we always check in with our staff to see how they're doing. Our office in California has like yoga Wednesday, mental health Thursday, where we're all kind of taking care of each other out in California, our New York office. I don't know why we don't do that. New York is like, get the together. Um, but for me, it all comes down to truly believing that, you know, I'm on the right side of things. And that goes such a long way because, um,

you know, I'm speaking to people. Sometimes I'm the first person that they've ever told their story to. That's a huge responsibility. And, and, you know, I'm grateful to them that they trust me with that. So for me, I like to think I'm on the right side of things. So that's my nine to five sort of mental head state. And then afterwards for psychopedia, um,

I am just, there's no way to put it. I am a true crime nerd. I am fascinated by all of it. I went to school for criminal justice and criminology my whole life. I knew I would do something with this. And I do think it's important to present to people, not just horrific stories, but to represent the victim, to give the victim a voice. So that's something that I'm passionate about in our episodes. So that helps me get through it because I like to shed light on the victim and

And also to expose, like we've been saying, just what goes into a human being that turns like that or that becomes like that. And, you know, to that point, again, we're always saying on psychopedia, I'm always saying,

Perpetrators are not monsters. They're human beings. And the sooner we realize that human beings are capable of this, the sooner we can recognize the signs and ideally treat people and stop it from happening. They don't have fangs and talons. They're not outward-looking demons. They're flesh and blood. They're human beings.

So let's learn about them and then ideally recognize the signs and prevent it from happening. But that also makes it scarier because- It does. And I hate that. I don't want to scare people, but it is an awareness thing. It is what it is. It's the world we live in. This is just the world we live in. And it's actually not very common. I try to get that across as like,

We're kind of morbidly indulging in some really scary stuff on Heart Starts Pounding, whether it's like theme park accidents or killers or just like, I don't know, really...

grotesque, dark history. But at the end of the day, it's not so common that you need to actively fear it all the time. It's just sometimes interesting to take these morbid deep dives. And so it is the world we live in that people can have a head injury when they're 10 and just turn down a certain path. But then it also, when you hear that, for me, it makes me kind of look at everyone I know and be like, what...

Like when you talk about duality, it's like, well, what's going on behind closed doors with. Yeah. And you don't, you don't want to live in fear like that either. You just want to be aware, you know, when you're walking to your car at night, Caitlin, especially, you know, you're aware, right. You're not going to not go out at night and run the errands that you need to run. But when you're walking to your car in the parking lot, you're aware. Yeah. You're just aware of your surroundings. You know where the exits are. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I want to add one thing to what you said before, if I may mansplain. You may mansplain. For a second. Yeah, please. From an outsider's perspective, looking in, um,

How does she not get overwhelmed by it? I think she just does it for the right reasons. She's not, she's not, she doesn't like that this stuff happens. She doesn't think it's cool or fun or whatever, but the way she's programmed, she's been like this since she was like an infant. She came out with and was like, instead of crying. It's interesting because so my dad, like a little background is my dad was a 911 dispatcher.

Same kind of reason. You're on the right side. You're helping. I grew up in a small town. And so he wanted to just kind of be the person that people could call for help. And I remember this was when I was in high school. Like dinnertime, he would come home from work and just stare at his plate of food, like unable to speak some nights. Even though he felt like he was doing it for the right reasons and he loved that he was helping people and

You know, you're helping emergency services get there really fast. Like, you're saving lives. But there were things that happened that affected him so deeply. Like, I don't... Even now...

15 years later, I don't know that he's like fully recovered from some of the calls he got. And he won't even tell me about some of the phone calls he got because they were so intense. So it really does take a mental health toll on people to work in this space. And you do have to take care of yourself, whatever that means for you. I also have my form of release. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've...

I've talked about this on Psycho Media. I've had to go in my backyard and touch grass before. Literally. Literally touch grass. Literally touch grass. We were researching the Gilgo Beach, the Long Island serial killer.

And pulled like, I mean, I think I was up for like 40 hours straight or something insane, like with all this research. And it was just so awful. All these victims in our backyard, quite literally. Yeah, because you guys are in Long Island. We're on Long Island. You were there when it was happening, when he was getting caught. So, well, that's what happened. We had another case scheduled and then it came out that he got arrested. And that was, she just turned it on. But she's good at...

processing what she finds, I think through the writing and through that, 'cause writing is obviously very therapeutic, so I think the information she gets comes out that way. I don't know if you know this,

but it's not a theory, it's like accepted as fact pretty much that the reason that World War II vets had such lower cases of PTSD was because they were on a ship for two months coming home with their fellow soldiers, talking about what happened, processing it, sitting with it, communing with each other over what happened, whereas

in Vietnam, they get sent back, you know, and I would have done the same thing if I was, if I was in Vietnam and they said, Hey, you can see your family in 16 hours. Do you want to do that? Or do you want to do the long way? Like I'm going, I'm going fast, but then you're back in the world like Jerry Brudos. You just murdered somebody downstairs and now you're eating dinner with your family. Like these guys were in and women were in the worst possible scenario. And then it's boom back in. So time is,

And expression, we talk, you know, we talk about what's going on, not during, but after. And it's very apparent to me that she hasn't gotten lost in the case. Once she tells me about the research, she takes her time. She's cries, breaks, you know? Right. Right.

Yeah, I actually hadn't thought about it that way. That's really interesting, both from just like a research perspective and as like people who are victims of something horrible happening and then having to come back. Because you hear stories of like, even like Elizabeth Smart or these people who get kidnapped and are kept away in like a totally controlled different environment for years. And then they get released and they're just back home. Like, how do you...

readjust to anything. I hadn't heard about that with World War II vets, which is interesting. I also, I would wonder how much of it too was just in the 50s and 60s you didn't talk about, hey, I'm having war flashbacks. Yeah.

I don't, I think that, yes, that was definitely part of it culturally, but it also was like, there just wasn't as many occurrences or instances of it. There was also a lot of drugs in Vietnam. That's just one theory, but I know from being in recovery myself, um, being able to speak to someone who understands what you've been through and, and you can tell they know because they speak the same language as you, they use the same words, they make the same facial expressions.

someone trying to tell me that, you know, like a counselor who's never been an addict or an active addict before, they have their place, of course, but not with me. Like I'd have no use for that because I know that you don't know what we're going through. And when it's life and death, the, the herd instinct being tapped into is paramount. Very, very important.

That's interesting. That's why the meetings are so helpful. That's, you know, that's one of the general consensuses of the medical community is that it taps into man's herd instinct, which is

it's not more important than sex or food, but it's up there. Like we wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't know how to work together. Yeah. You need community. You need like a social aspect. We're social people. Definitely. Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. One thing I wanted to ask actually, because I was thinking about that as you were kind of walking me through some of the cases, I was listening to an episode tank where you were saying specifically, which we kind of talked about, like,

you're maybe only one step away from being one of the people in your episodes, maybe as a victim, but also as a perpetrator. Like there are- No, more the perpetrator, yeah. Yeah, there are like times where it could be like, oh my God, I almost fell off a swing when I was 10. Like what would have happened? Like I fell off my bike when I was eight and I hit my head really hard and I scratched up my whole face and I had a concussion. And luckily it wasn't a traumatic brain injury, but if I turned my head just a little bit more, you know, what could have happened? Yeah. Have you ever gone through a case-

And specifically been like, oh, that person could have been me. Was there anyone that you, I don't know, just like almost saw yourself in?

No. Perpetrator wise. There was, that stems mainly from me suffering with intrusive thoughts for a large part of my life. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So like we joke around, we made a video once to sketch where it was like, you know, the perpetrator was a normal guy. He liked to work out. He was bald. You could tell he was in shape, but he didn't skip Pete tonight. He loved Jay-Z. And I'm sitting there like, what?

Yeah, they're describing me. Obviously, it's never that extreme. But what she said before about them not being monsters, they're people that to me is terrifying because I'm one of the people who wants to other them and go, you're a monster.

You're obviously a different breed of human. There's no way. Couldn't be. I often thank my mom publicly on the podcast for not being abusive and overbearing and neglectful because that's a huge part of the puzzle for these people who grow up. Not the only part, but it is common to hear that these men who target women are

had a horrible relationship with their mother. Not just bad, like Robert Pickton. Do you know Robert Pickton? Yeah, I'm familiar. The part in there where he saved up for a pig? A calf. He saved up for a calf and his mom just, he came home one day looking for it, his pet. Was right. And it was strung up in the barn, gutted, bleeding out.

She was just like, I got a good dollar for that. For that. It wasn't. Yeah. Good, good memory. I got a good dollar for that cow. Like you are evil and you're, you're unknowingly creating one of the worst people that's ever going to live. And I think the important thing too, is like, there's never typically one thing you can put your finger on and say, he had an overbearing mother. So he, he obviously turned out to be a killer or this person fell off their swing and they got a TBI. So they are obviously going to be a killer. It's not, it's,

It's not one thing. It's a lot of things that that happened because I don't want somebody thinking, you know, if their kid fell off their scooter, that they're no serial killer on their hands. That's not the takeaway here at all. Yeah, it's a whole mix of things. It's a whole mix of things. I've never identified with a person.

perpetrator, but I, I emphasize with what they've gone through. I'm just always scared. I'm going to. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. But, but I also, I'm, I'm also very conscious and aware of the fact that, you know, when I got into the drunk driving accident, if my foot was depressed a half an inch more in the accelerator and I was a foot and a half over from where I hit the tree, I

I'd be dead. You know, I'd be going 25 miles per hour faster and it would have been more of a direct hit. Like I'm, that's, that fascinates me as much as these people do you just how, how,

how fragile life is. I've also experienced a lot of loss in my life. A lot of people have died that were close to me from a young age. So maybe that feeds into it as well. But it kind of just keeps me on my toes, not in a paranoid way, just like I'm almost constantly appreciative of the fact that I'm still alive right now. I was thinking too, actually earlier today, because when I was

I don't know, just thinking about you saying the thing about the killers. Like, on the flip side, I think there's stories that I'll tell on this show that have really unlikely survivors where people will be put in... So when I was telling you about the Chi-Jong family, the Korean family gang that...

was eating rich people. They kidnapped this one woman who they called Miss Lee for some reason. One of them, I think one of the guys in the group just had a crush on her and was like, you get to live, but you have to live with us and you're going to witness everything that's going to happen, but you get to like stick around. And she, I think she was like 26 at the time. She was pretty young and they had killed her boyfriend.

And she had the wherewithal to one day, they were all out in the back setting off fireworks because they were dumb. One guy blows up his hand and comes in and she's like, I'll come with you to the hospital.

And she had the wherewithal to be like, this is my chance. And she takes him to the hospital. And as he's going into the room with the doctor, he gives her the keys to the car. And he's like, can you just hold on to everything? And she books it out of there. And she knows to not go to the police precinct in the area. She knows that she has to drive all the way back up to Seoul, three hours away to go to the police precinct there because they're going to go to the closest police station and be waiting for her.

And so, yeah. And just in that moment, and she was so the entire time, like scared to do anything, didn't know her place within the group and just saw her opportunity and took it. And I like, that's the stuff that really inspires me that like, we, we do have that inside of us. Like in a, in a moment of panic, we can make the right decision.

and just survive. Like that, I don't know, that stuff really inspires me. We covered the case of Mary Vincent. Yeah. Speaking of just somebody whose ability to survive just is astounding. This was in the 70s. She was hitchhiking and she was picked up by a man named Larry Singleton. With a veiny bulbous nose. With a veiny bulbous nose. Drinking alcohol out of a milk container. God, the detail

you remember. Yeah, you have a good memory. Honestly, his memory is he's like an elephant. It's nuts. Don't they have big, good memories? Yeah, they don't forget. Elephants don't forget. Why? Because I'm huge and I have a gray shirt on right now? Yep, that's the only reason. Because you are literally dressed like an elephant. Exactly. So she was abducted by Larry Singleton and he took her out into the desert and he took a

I guess it was an ax? Hatchet. Hatchet, thank you. And he chopped off both of her arms and then he threw her into a some kind of like a tunnel type of thing. Reservoir, not reservoir, but like You know those cylinder I think it was like a tube of some kinds, but like. You know where you gleam the cube? In a valley no less, like down, down, down, down, down in the desert.

Completely naked because he had sexually assaulted her and all of this. Absolutely the most horrific story you've ever, ever heard. She somehow on the stubs of her arms because they were severed, climbed fully naked out of this tube in a valley in a desert.

climbed out of it, walked however far she had to walk to a street, had the wherewithal to take the dirt and the mud to coagulate her streaming blood out of the wounds. She stopped the bleedings enough and waved down a car that, thank God, stopped for her.

And got her to a hospital and she survived. Holy smokes. And was able to provide a composite sketch, which generally speaking, those are very ineffective with identifying perpetrators. But in this case, a neighbor recognized Larry Singleton from her description to a composite sketch artist and they were able to bust him.

Had he ever done anything like that before? Or was this... He had raped a sex worker in the past. But I think this was the first time, if memory serves me correctly, that he did something that...

outrageously depraved. I mean, sexual assault is outrageously depraved, but chopping off her limbs and discarding her in the desert was just mind-blowing. He definitely thought she was going to die from loss of blood. Absolutely. 100%. Because she didn't, right? This is the thing. The fact that

She survived, but she had this so many survival instincts to kick in to just like pull herself out to keep going to clog her wounds with mud and dirt. Yeah. You start remembering things from your past of like, oh, my God. In seventh grade biology, they said that dirt and mud can like stop the bleeding. And she heard I believe she heard.

What she said was like a voice telling her, if you don't go on to survive and nab this guy, he will do this again. So she also had like...

other people in mind. Like I have to survive. A species survival. Right. To prevent this from happening again. Wow. I mean, have you heard of the third man syndrome? That really makes me think of third man syndrome. That's something that we've covered on the podcast. And ever since I covered it, I have so many people write in to me that they've experienced this. And it's in moments of survival like that, where...

It's life or death. It's a lot of car accidents. I get a lot of people that write in about car accidents and they'll hear a supernatural voice kind of telling them something. And it's not their voice, but a lot of times, yeah, they'll see someone. And a lot of times the person they see comes to them and says that they're an EMT. So like they'll be at a car wreck. An EMT will come up to them and be like, I'm just going to stop the bleeding. And when the actual EMTs show up, the person who was in the accident will tell them about the other EMT.

And no witnesses will have seen this person. Wow. And a lot of times too, it's someone they know. It's someone they know that has already passed away. So it'll be like grandparents, parents that have passed away. And like as the car is still spinning, like I got one story this week from a girl who I'm including it in a Listener Tales episode. But-

Her grandma or grandpa showed up in the car as it was spinning out. She's about to spin off of the side of this bridge. And he goes, duck down underneath the steering wheel and put your head, like tuck your head in because you don't want the engine to come through the car and kill you. And she did that. And when the tow company got there, they were like, we don't know how you survived. Like I've seen accidents like this before. The driver never survives. And she was like, yeah, someone told me to like duck down and do this very specific thing.

And it was crazy. Like no one believed it happened, but I believe it happened. So, but yeah, you were saying when, when she heard the voice, like there is something that kicks in when we're like trying to survive, call it supernatural. I like to call it supernatural. I don't know if your listeners or you guys believe in the supernatural, but I think it's something. Can I tell a spooky story? I think there's probably no better audience. My audience loves nothing more than spooky stories. So,

May 12th or whatever it was of 2002, I was in full-blown like just...

Nightmare. Drinking, drugs, like just all the time. And in such large quantities that it was like, if anybody ever stopped me, it was not, there was no talking my way out of it. So one night I was driving home from work and I went to a bar after work, continued drinking. I was really drunk and I get pulled over by a cop, right? Like maybe less than a half a mile from my house. See the lights go on and I'm like, oh my God.

Oh, my God. So pull over. I roll the window down like this much. That's our trick to not like let people, you know, we think they're not going to smell the alcohol. Sir, do you know what I'm stopping? Yeah. Yeah. No, I do. I do. So he goes, he goes, hey, he walks over. He goes, whoa, how much have you had to drink tonight? Two drinks, two drinks. He's like, he looked at me. He goes, I'm going to ask you one more time. That was not a good start.

Don't start by lying to me. Tell me. And he goes, how much have you had to drink tonight? I go, so much. I don't even know the number, right? So he's like, all right, get out of the car. I'm going to give you a field sobriety test. Gives me the eye thing with the, you know, touch the nose, fail it miserably, follow the pen with the eyes. My head turns drastically. And then he did the walking thing where you have to walk in a straight line. I took one step, almost fell over. And I remember him looking at me

looking down at his foot, shining the flashlight at me, down back at his foot three or four times. And I knew in that moment, I was like, this guy is holding the fate of my life in his hands right now on his shoe. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to let you go. I'm going to follow you home. If I ever, ever see you out here again, no questions asked, you're going to jail. And I was like, yeah, of course, no problem. The spooky part is that

I memorized that cop's number on his car and what he looked like, like very, very detailed. And I knew a lot of cops in the town where I got pulled over from. That car number did not exist and there was no cop that fit that description in the precinct. What? Whoa. Yeah. And I stopped drinking a week later. Was that like the moment that kind of made you stop?

There was so many moments, but to answer your question briefly, no. There was just, it was one of many moments, but it is the moment that I look back on and think, if I had gotten taken in that night, my self-esteem would have gone even lower. I would have been in even worse financial shape, and I may not have ever come out of that. That was like the one lifeline that I needed. Wow. And I haven't drank since a week later, 22 years ago. And he may not have existed.

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- I mean, I gave up on the fact that he didn't exist. I mean, I spent like, I worked at the Blue Hanoi in Huntington for years. I pulled into that parking lot every single day for five years, saw plenty of cop cars, never saw him and never saw that car number. - Wow. - Yeah. - Ghost cop, wow. - Ghost cop. - Supernatural intervention.

Maybe. Third man or second man. Yeah, second man. A little less removed than the third man. But yeah, I don't know. The universe just knowing what you need and giving that to you. I don't know. It could be something spooky.

Could be he retired the next day. Yeah. He was like, I'm retiring tomorrow. I really don't want to bring this guy in. Yeah. I don't want the paperwork. I want to get a good night's sleep tonight. Exactly. That's a wild story. I never even heard that story before. Yeah. It's crazy. Wow. Yeah. It's the same with the people with the EMTs. It's like,

that just the EMT didn't exist. They'll get the name of the person or they'll see like the license plate of the car and it just didn't exist. Yeah. Weird. Thank you so much for coming on. We're so happy to have you here. Us too. Thrilled to be here. Where can everyone find you guys? Our address? Yeah. Where do you live? Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild. Psychopedia, you idiot. You think I'm not going to get to that?

You're doing this for 10 years. Do all your personal stuff. Maybe leave with Psychopedia. It's not an option. Psychopedia podcast, which is a true crime comedy podcast that we do together. And also when you're pumping gas, you can see my face. And every time you see my face on a gas station pump nationwide, let that serve as a reminder.

That's right. Psychopedia exists. Wait, what are you talking about when you're pumping gas? Like, it's your face on the gas? Tank's good news. Yeah. Yeah, your face, though. My face. Whoa. And my voice. Get that bag. Jeez. Yeah. But only listen to our episodes, obviously, after you've listened to all the Heart Starts Pounding episodes. Yeah. At least three times. Totally. My audience is done with my show. They've all binged through the whole thing. I don't have that many episodes out, so they need more stuff. Psychopedia is on...

Instagram. We also have a Patreon as well. Um,

I have an Instagram page, Investigator Slater. Obviously all the pages that Tank just mentioned for himself. Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Exactly. Yeah, wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find Psychopedia. And also we're on YouTube. So if you'd like to watch us, that comes out the same day that Psychopedia is released, which is every Wednesday. And you can see all our cool studio stuff. Yeah, we had a pretty cool studio that we worked hard to build out. So yeah, so come on YouTube or Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast.

Thanks for coming on so much. Thank you so much for having us. And thanks everyone for listening to us. Bye. Bye.