EP40: Beautiful Becky: Bound and Burned (with Alexis Linkletter, host of The First Degree and Unraveled)
01:27:17 Share

Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether

Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.

Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia podcast. I'm your co-host, Hank Sinatra, here with my co-host. Investigators later. We have a couple of special guests in studio today. First of all, we're in studio. That's special in and of itself. Yes, it is. I think this is the first video we're doing in the loft. Yeah, in our studio. Yeah, pretty fucking cool. Yeah, we have a little decorating to do.

But no, I'm pleased to be here. Yeah. Well, you were supposed to decorate. I did everything. I told you what I wanted to do and you weren't a fan. Yeah. She doesn't think you can hang. Anyway. So listen, we have cash money in the building. He's draped out in a pink Barbie style blanket. He will be snoring and possibly farting or whatever. I don't know. It's going to, he's a dog. So dogs do what dogs do.

Well, we have a real special guest. Not that Cash is not a real special guest. I understand. He's kind of a regular at this point. Okay. Always special though. Alexis Linklater. Yes. Co-host of The First Degree. Yeah. And host of Unraveled, Long Island Serial Killer, true crime bombshell. Oh yeah. Right? I'll take it. Expert in the field. And I am surrounded by people who know what they're talking about and I don't. And it's, it is what it is. I have to say you are getting very knowledgeable. Yes.

about true crime and theories and you are you're doing great yeah but alexis is the expert in the room yeah she is the expert in the room besides cash thank you she doesn't speak english yeah guys are sweet yeah um i'll take it my self-esteem was a little low so this is a boost so we're gassing you up yeah i needed it i'm gonna cut you down i can also take it

If you'll notice, the ladies have headphones on and I don't have headphones on. They didn't fit your head. Yeah, because my head is... They don't make one in your size. ...has just gotten too big. And not in an ego sense, just like I literally can't wear hats. I don't know if you know that. Also in an ego sense.

I mean, let's be honest. We were building each other up here. Jeez. It's well-deserved. My head is actually my cranium, my skull, my physical skull is huge. It looks proportionate though. I'm huge, but my skull is also huge. And I don't work out my head at all. What about your neck? No. The neck...

It's just natural thickness? Yeah, I don't do anything for my neck. If you were not jacked, would you look like a grapefruit on a toothpick? Yeah, I'd look terrible. Oh, wow. On the other hand, if I had like a size seven head, I would look like that thing from Beetlejuice. You know what I mean? Pinhead. Which hopefully is inky. Right in there. Yeah. Mr. Shrunken Head with jacked shoulders. I have a big head. Don't feel bad. What size is your head? Large.

I'm not sure. I haven't measured it. I don't wear hats. Do you wear hats? No. Why would I set myself up for that kind of mockery? No, if it's not going to fit, why would I bother? When I played softball, I could not put on a batting helmet that like my friends were wearing. Yeah. Because my head was too big. Listen, we're all big headed fucks in this room. All right, let's move on. We need big brains. Huge brains.

So Alexis, what we do here, first of all, if this is your first time listening, welcome to Psychopedia. If this is your 47th time listening, welcome home. We love you and we're so happy to have you here listening to us. I still can't believe people listen to this podcast. It's so wonderful. Yeah. So what we do here, Alexis, is Investigator Slater is going to eloquently describe in intricate detail the most horrendous case you've ever heard of.

Maybe not you. I should have thought before I said that, but it's probably pretty bad. I'm going to say silly things along the way and you're probably going to contribute great insight and knowledge. Why was that so funny?

You said you should have thought before you said it. You guys having this natural synergy. I'm here for this. You guys are really friends. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I like this. I've known her forever. I love this.

My eye makeup is running. I am here for this. You know, we told you, but I'm very close with her husband. I love this. And I always knew you. Like, I knew you existed, obviously. But we never, like, talked and sat down. So it's like, imagine getting to know somebody you've known for 20 years. Yeah. Right. It's fucking, it's pretty good. It's great. And the people are digging it. I love this. I'm digging it. Yeah. I want more. All right. Listen, if you're digging what we're doing here...

and you just feel like you need a little bit more, you can go over to patreon.com slash psychopedia pod to sign up for the semen demon level, which there you get episodes of unhinged every week where I am in the driver's seat and you are just trying to hold on for dear life to whatever's happening. So am I, by the way. I,

I don't know what's going on. Yeah, but that's your comfort zone. Flying by the seat of your pants is your comfort zone. Wait, so which one of you is the semen demon? All of us. All of them. It came from a... It was a pop quiz. Which case was that? Was that... It was the... I now pronounce you husband and daughter. Steven Lytle? Lytle, but I mean still. Lytle. Very good. In one of the pop quizzes, it was something that he did to like make himself more youthful and one of the choices was like he started wearing leather and got a semen demon tattoo on his back. But that wasn't even it. Okay.

Okay, it was a wrong answer. Was it? He did not get that. I made it up. She made it up. And that... Seemed even smart. Yeah. It's witty. And then we have the little freaks over at Psychopedia too. And you guys have a new episode to listen to that you haven't heard yet, if you're not over there, with Grace O'Malley about Rockterrio, the dark doomsday dong cult. Right? Yes. Yes.

I think we named it something different, but that's good enough. Dark Doomsday Don Cult. The guy had a big penis and he let everyone know about it and made it a huge problem for everybody. He sure did. He sure did. Especially me. It's, I think, our first cult case, actually. Oh, yeah. Which is a big deal because in true crime, obviously, exploring cults is a very popular avenue to take. And it's amazing. It's taken us so many episodes to arrive. Some people make it their whole personality.

We just, we delved right in and dipped back out. It's a very, very difficult case. Absolutely.

as evidenced by the comments that our patrons are leaving. And these are seasoned true crime fans and seasoned psychopedia fans. And the comments suggest that this case really hit. Wow. They said it was worse than hell is a place in Tokyo, the Junko Furuta case, which I, not that I disagree with it, I just don't feel the same way. Junko Furuta fucked me up. Yeah, I know it did. Horrible case. Yeah, terrible. So tragic. It was pretty bad. It started off awful. The woman in the woods and whatever. It's, yeah, go listen to it.

So without further There it is Do you see? We're going to get into this case That's Jay-Z by the way I don't know if you knew that I picked up on that You did? That's how good it was? You knew exactly what it was right away? Yeah Absolutely Wow Whoa It's uncanny Yeah

In the grand theater of life, none of us takes our seats in the audience with the expectation of becoming the star of a deadly drama. I do. The notion that we might one day find ourselves cast as a lead role in a horrific real-life crime story seldom crosses our minds or we'd likely never leave our homes.

The morning sun may rise with the promise of another ordinary day, but fate can conspire to rewrite that narrative, plunging us into a harrowing tale we never envisioned being a part of. It is in these unexpected moments when the unthinkable arrives, unannounced and uninvited, that we are reminded of the fragility of our existence and the mercurial nature of the world we inhabit. Damn, that's some poetic shit.

No one, regardless of their station in life or their plans for the day, is immune to the unforeseen darkness that can descend upon us in the blink of an eye. The line between safety and peril can dissipate in an instant, making each one of us vulnerable to the whims of fate and to the insatiable appetite of a lurking predator. In many ways, the victim of today's case is you. It's you. Oh, it's her? It's me.

It's the nice person who gave you a seat on the subway or the cashier at Target who told you to have a nice day. Or, as you will soon hear, it's the sociable young woman who went out with her friends one night and vanished forever. Today, we are talking about the shocking disappearance and heinous murder and mutilation of a 24-year-old Long Island woman named Rebecca Koster.

Alexis, I know in the past, because I've read interviews that you have beautifully given, that you've mentioned that Long Island is a true crime capital, right? Yeah. Why? I'm not sure. Is it the water? I think it's just sort of right on the outskirts of Manhattan. You know, it's sort of isolated, is surrounded by water and all these sides, which is what an island is, right? I'm aware of that. But there is something just...

about Long Island. And all the cases that do occur here, they're all screaming to have movies and TV shows made about them. They always have this quality that's kind of inexplicable. That's how I feel. Yeah. Would you say Long Island is rural? I would. You would. It is rural. Well, where we are, parts of Long Island are rural.

Oh my gosh. Some are a little more dense, but I would say parts of Long Island are rural, yeah. It's like an exploding outward rurality. Rurality is a good word. From Queens out. It's not quite rural. Okay. But Long Island does have some rural-ass parts. Yes, it does. Yeah, like where we are right now. Listen, if you say that one more time, did I live on a farm? No one said that. Only you have said that. Literally no one said that. Rural...

I just can't accept it. All right, let's get into the case, guys. I don't want to argue about that. No, I'm just kidding. We're good. We're good. We're good. I live in the country. Let's go.

Rebecca Becky Koster was born on June 12th, 1985 and grew up on Falcon Avenue in Medford, Long Island with her mother, Barbara Miller Ross, her stepfather, Larry Ross, and her brother, Damian. Medford is a relatively safe working class hamlet, about 10 square miles in size, comprising about 25,000 people and located in Suffolk County, which is where both Tank and I live. Do you remember what happened in Medford with me? No.

When the girl was getting beat up in the car and I saved her. Oh, that was in Medford? Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize that. Yeah. On 112. You're a hero. I'm not a hero, ma'am. You sure are. Medford is about 25 minutes away from the closest beach and an hour and a half away from New York City to provide some context for our non-New York listeners. I love it.

From the moment Becky was born, she was the apple of her mother's eye. Barbara, who for many years was a single mother, spent her life working to give Becky and her brother everything they needed to thrive. The pair were more than just mother and daughter. They were truly best friends. Obsessed with butterflies, roses, and the color pink. Relatable.

Becky was perpetually vibrant and full of life and was almost always smiling and lighting up the room with her big, beautiful eyes and ear-to-ear smile. In her young adult life, Becky, who was truly beautiful inside and out, was no stranger to male attention and was constantly being hit on by men whenever she went out. According to one of her friends, girls wanted to hate Becky for this because she was an absolute showstopper, but it was impossible to hate Becky because she was kind, compassionate,

And humble. I hear Matt Rife is like that. Yeah? The comedian? I don't know him. He like blew up over the past year. He sold like 600,000 tickets on a world tour in 24 hours. He was playing to 50 people. Is he a showstopper? He's handsome, yeah. I'm wondering the same. But he's like, everyone, they're like, fuck this guy. You know, he came up out of nowhere. He's handsome. He's in shape. And then like beyond all of it, he's apparently like the nicest person. Yeah, you can't hate him. I feel like that's like Taylor Swift.

Like you want to hate Taylor Swift, but then you hear she's giving her truck drivers like $100,000 bonuses. You're right. Who's going to talk shit on her? Yeah, nobody. You can't. I won't. She's the people's pop star. Not me publicly. No. Publicly. I don't want Swifties coming after me. No. Swifties are fierce. Yes.

So Becky was also a bit quirky too and always wanted to spread laughter and bring the fun, which just made her that much more lovable. Her playful and idiosyncratic tendencies stood out as being silly and ridiculous, always eliciting a laugh from the people in her circle, which was her goal.

Pop quiz. Alexis, this is the part of the episode which I pepper throughout every episode. I pepper in the pop quizzes, the PQs. And it's a way to keep Tank on his toes and it's a way to bring a little bit of levity and to see how much insight you have into the case at this point, which is we just started. So it's just a, this is just like a fluffer. Love it. Just to get us going. Lord knows I need to be kept on my toes. Yes, you do.

What is an example of something silly and ridiculous that Becky once did while out with her friends at a bar? A. Change her name to Beyonce Knowles in all of her friends' cell phones. B. Stuff bologna into her purse to randomly snack on throughout the night. C. Pretend to be an undercover Secret Service agent and speak into her collar like there was a wire there. I'm going Beyonce because I'm a Beyonce fan. You're a huge Beyonce fan. Um...

I think C, because I don't know. I think that would be a fun thing to do. There's no way somebody carries bologna in their purse out. Au contraire. Because Becky Costner carried bologna around. Becky bologna? Yeah. Carried bologna around? She's a bologna pony. She was very funny. So apparently she would take a few slices of bologna out of her refrigerator, stuff it into her bag, and then go out partying with her friends and randomly pick

pull out pieces of this processed meat to snack on. It's high in protein, at the very least. After graduating from Patchogue Medford High School, Becky went on to become a certified nurse's aide and landed a job in the cardiology department at the same hospital where her mother, Barbara, used to work as a nurse. By age 24, Becky made a career shift from the hospital and became an at-home health aide for a 16-year-old boy with developmental disabilities who faced challenges performing daily activities.

So Becky would go over before school, help him to get on the bus, be there when he got home, help him get off the bus, and then help him with whatever care he needed. And she loved her job. She took it very seriously, which I think also just provides

A little more insight into the type of person she was. She's a hero. Yeah. She really sounds like one. Yeah. I'm being serious. Becky had a very close-knit family, a wonderful circle of friends, and a boyfriend named Dan Mayer who was 28 years old and who had been in a relationship with her for about two months. Any relation to Oscar? No relation to Oscar. Or John Mayer? Got him. Well, Oscar Mayer Bologna.

But his name's Mayer. It's close. Close enough. It is close. It's spelled the same. Yeah. Pronounced different. Those who were closest to Becky, I'm just going to keep you guys moving. Just keep going, please. Believed that despite their relatively short time together, Becky and Dan shared a very strong bond. He was very smitten with her. They enjoyed each other's company while going out for drinks and dancing. They had mutual friends. It was a short relationship at this point, but a solid one.

But Becky's most profound relationship was definitely with her mother, which I alluded to earlier. They spoke every single day. They lived together. And Becky would always be sure to call or text Barbara at the end of a night out to let her know that she'd gotten home safely. That's a good kid.

Which is why when Barbara hadn't heard from Becky following a night out in December of 2009, she knew there was a problem. I feel like also your maternal Spidey tingle. Something kicks in. Absolutely. The second something goes awry. As we know, Spidey tingles are not a thing. Your Spidey senses might start tingling.

Spidey tingle is a thing. Thank you, Alexis. I'm a spidey tingler. Maybe men feel it different. Yes. It's not a real thing. It sure is. Maybe it is. Maybe not for you. Maybe you don't feel it at all. Maybe I don't have that sensation. Maybe. Maybe it's a girl thing. I don't know that all men use the same...

parts of their brains that we use. No offense. So it doesn't tingle for you, but it tingles for us. I feel it right now. We use the whole thing. That's why. I had to use all my brain for that one.

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. On the evening of Thursday, December 3rd, 2009, Barbara was scheduled to work the night shift at the hospital, specifically between the hours of 7.45 p.m. and 8.15 a.m. the following morning. Mom still worked at the hospital? Yes. Okay. Before heading out to work, Barbara had a conversation with Becky, during which Becky shared her plans for the night, mentioning that she intended to go out to a couple of bars with her best friend, Nicole Longo, along with some of their other mutual friends. And Becky ultimately

also mentioned that she was going to meet up with her boyfriend, Dan Oscar Mayer, later on as well. Dan Oscar Mayer, wiener. As always, Barbara reminded Becky to text her when she got home. That evening, Becky ventured out to two bars in the town of Holbrook, which is about five minutes away from where she lived in Medford. The second bar they visited was called Butcher Boys Bar and Grill, where Becky, along with Dan and their friends, remained until 3.20 a.m.,

Butcher Boys Bar and Grill? Yeah. That's a real place? Evidently so. Also very late. Sounds mean. Very late. He's very tired by that point. I mean. 3.20. Oh. Well, she's 24. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But even at, I mean, I guess, I think I was always an old lady in a 12-year-old body. Yeah. Because. I struggled to stay up like past midnight.

midnight that's late as hell midnight's late i get up at five every morning to work on these cases so for me bedtime is like she has crippling anxiety so she just wakes up then she can't go back to bed thank you for that tank that's my joke about people that wake up at five yeah how do you wake up early oh i don't know i just wake up at five i can't go back to bed the fear yeah you have anxiety sir it's fear of being alive and dropping the ball i just like to be productive

Yes. Call it that. Okay. Call it tingles. After leaving Butcher Boys at the end of a long night and late night out, Dan dropped Becky off at home, walked her to the front door, pulled his car out of the driveway, and left.

As promised, Becky then sent Barbara, her mother, a text message to indicate that she'd gotten home safely, that she was going to bed, and that she loved her. Sometime after 6 a.m., Becky's stepfather, Larry, received a phone call from the mother of the boy that Becky looked after professionally, informing him that Becky had not arrived for work that morning. Larry noticed Becky's car was in the driveway and he could hear her alarm going off, but he was in a hurry to get out to work himself. So he called her and told her that she was going to bed.

So he sent a text message to Barbara, who was still working at the hospital, informing her that Becky had not shown up for work and asking her to give Becky a little kick in the butt to get her moving. Who's Larry? Is that her dad? Her stepdad. Her stepdad. Okay. Yeah, he doesn't want to go in there. He'd get screamed at probably. Probably. And he was late for work as well. I hear an alarm clock. I'm not going in there. Please figure it out. You never want to mess with your stepdaughter either. It's like, I'm going to give some boundaries. I get scared when I even have to knock on

on the door. Yeah. Barbara immediately called Becky and left that typical pissed off parent voicemail reminding Becky that she had responsibilities and she needed to wake up and get to work. 15 minutes later, with no response from Becky, Barbara called her again, but this time her call went directly to voicemail. So now it's 8.15 a.m. and Becky was a full two hours late for work, which was completely uncharacteristic behavior.

But Barbara knew that she'd stayed out very late the night before, having gotten Becky's check-in text at around 3 a.m. So Barbara started to urgently and pissed-offedly text Becky, Nice word. wake up, WTF, get to work. That was the text she sent? Verbatim. Finally, following the end of Barbara's night shift, she headed straight home, thinking that she was going to crucify Becky for staying out too late and perhaps being too hungover to get to work on time.

When Barbara's shift finally ended, she raced home to see what was going on, and she was expecting to see Becky racing around or to have some excuses lined up. But everything appeared calm and typical. Becky's car was in the driveway, and the interior of the house exhibited its usual undisturbed and familiar appearance. So if everything seemed so normal, why was Becky not at work as expected?

So Barbara's thinking that perhaps Becky just is calling out today. Maybe she stayed out way too late. So Barbara headed to bed herself, having worked the night shift, and she figured when I wake up, I'm going to deal with Becky. So now we're at the point when she wakes up and she's ready to deal with Becky, but Becky's door is still closed and there's still no sign of her.

So Barbara's starting now to move from that place of being pissed to being worried. I was just thinking, like, how do you not go in there when you get home? But she's a 24-year-old woman. Right. And her car is on the driveway, so she thinks she's just passed out. Yeah. Barbara then proceeded to enter Becky's bedroom and immediately saw Becky's work uniform neatly placed over her chair, along with her purse, wallet, and ID. Her phone was gone, which was strange. But more notably, so was Becky.

Without delay, Barbara phoned Nicole, Becky's best friend, who she'd gone out with the night before, to inquire about Becky's whereabouts. Nicole explained that she left the bar earlier than Becky, but that her understanding was Becky got home with Dan and everything was fine.

At 7.30 p.m. on Friday, December 4th, so this is now the day after the night that Becky went out, a daunting 16 hours passed since Becky's puzzling disappearance, casting a deep sense of concern over Barbara and her husband, Larry. So they decided to contact the Suffolk County PD.

The responding police officer conducted an exhaustive interview with Barbara while she made relentless attempts to contact her daughter through repeated phone calls and text messages. At the same time, Becky's friends diligently monitored her social media accounts and tracked her cell phone's location within a one-mile radius on a mapping app. And what they observed on the phone app left them baffled.

Becky's phone would briefly appear on the screen before promptly disappearing, only to reappear two minutes later and then vanish again. It seemed as though her phone was being consistently powered on and off, leading it to seemingly hop between various locations all within the town of Port Jefferson, situated 20 minutes away from Medford. As each ping indicated a new location, they promptly notified detectives who dispatched officers to conduct a search each time.

By this point, Barbara, accompanied by Becky's friends as well, and also a full-blown search party at this point, took to the streets and they began knocking on doors and distributing flyers with Becky's picture on it in a relentless effort to find her.

Additionally, Barbara assigned a few of Becky's friends to keep watch outside of Dan's house, driven by a growing suspicion that Dan might have some involvement in her daughter's disappearance. After all, he was the last known person to have been with Becky, and there's a common belief, though it's not always accurate, that the last person seen with the missing individual may possess vital information about their whereabouts. It's a little bit of like a standard notion. Well,

And also that it's always the boyfriend. And that it's always the husband. Exactly. Yeah. But you did say he dropped her off and walked her to the door. Did you just make that up? No. This is what Dan's story was. Oh, okay. And this is what her friends believed to have happened. And Becky's car was on the driveway. So it seemed like she was home. Yeah. Right. But still, she's gone. So something's not adding up. Right. Right.

Sadly, amidst the ebb and flow of daily life, countless individuals vanish into the enigmatic void of the unknown. This is not an unknown phenomena. You're writing her ass off. Honestly, it's true, though. Pop quiz in this vein. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Database, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, how many people go missing annually?

A, 250,000. B, 600,000. C, 800,000. I hate when the first one is like so high. D, 1.1 million. Oh my God. How many people go missing per year? Annually. How many people go missing per year? Let's say the low one, 250. 250, okay, tank. C.

800. Yeah. You're both wrong. Of course. But it's interesting right in between. Yeah. More than... 600,000? Yeah. 600,000 people go missing annually. That's a lot. Yeah. It is. This phenomenon has been called the nation's silent mass disaster. Mm. Accurately.

Every day people file reports on approximately 1,740 missing Americans, both children and adults. And this does not account for U.S. citizens who have vanished in other countries, individuals who disappeared but were not reported as being missing, or homeless adults and their children. But does that question, if someone has a parent who is deteriorating mentally, dementia or something like that, and they disappear,

and they're walking around in the neighborhood. Does that count? It does count for people who turn up. Okay. If that's what you're... Wait, how many people turn up? About 70% of all reported missing persons are found or voluntarily returned within 48 to 72 hours. So in this case, it was plausible that Becky voluntarily disappeared herself, a point that investigators had to consider.

Well, at 24, you're allowed to be missing. Yes. You're allowed to be voluntarily missing. You sure are. Voluntarily. You're allowed to disappear. If you don't like the people in your life, you're allowed to peace out. Yeah. I might do that. Just kidding. It's not a terrible option. I need a co-host. Don't go anywhere. I'll come back every six days. Just put a little air tag in his pocket. Good idea. Keep track of him. No, I got a wife and kids. I got to take care of business here. Yeah. Can't disappear. No. So Becky is missing. But suddenly...

Out of the blue, on Sunday, December 6th, which was three days after she had gone missing, a text message alert popped up on Barbara's phone. It was Becky. And the message said, Mom.

Dan has me tied up in a basement. He thinks I'm messing with someone else. Not sure where I'm at. Doesn't know I have my phone. Oh my God. Please help. That is horrifying. Fuck that. I am sick just thinking about it. So I just got my son a cell phone for his 10th birthday, which was like a big lift because... I can't believe you have a 10-year-old son. You look like you're in high school. Oh my girl. Yeah.

Can we make a soundbite? Let's start with that. Thank you. Yeah, he just turned 10. He's been gunning for a phone for two years. I finally gave in because all of his friends have it. Whatever.

And then I figured also, since he is like branching out a little bit that for me to be able to know where he is. Anyway, my point is, is that when I was researching this case, I could not help but put myself in Barbara's shoes and getting a text message like that. The text message, yes, punctuates what was most likely definitely a horrific 72 hour span from like, you don't know where your kid is. Yeah. Then all of a sudden you get a text and it's your worst nightmare come true.

Well, and I'm sure you go through the range of emotions where you're just angry at them and then you're worried and then you're reasoning like, I'm sorry, I won't be mad. Come home. It's the whole roller coaster. And then to land there with a text message like that is just your worst nightmare. At least it wasn't like a fake text message, which is what I thought you were going to say. Like, hey, mom, I just didn't want to be home anymore. Like, what was that guy's name? Israel Keys. Terrifying. Terrifying. This guy's got my eyelids propped open.

A fishing line. Okay. Even for me, I can't go there right now. That's so hard. Scary guy. Israel Keys. Oh, Mizreal Keys? Mizreal Keys, yeah. He's spooky. What?

The worst. We did a two-parter on him. Probably could have made it a four-parter because of the kill kits and just, oh, there's so many complex layers to his psyche, which I know having researched you, Alexis, that that's something that interests you, just exploring all the dark facets of human nature, which is what interests me with respect to true crime. It's never about the gory or crime and obviously zero times ever about the, you know,

feeling anything but empathy towards the victims. But it's that exploration of the human psyche that just gets me. Like how to avoid, like how to avoid in his real keys was my initial interest because that man is so terrifying and his victims were all at random, which makes me even scarier, you know? Yes, absolutely. The fact that he froze the girl, you know what I'm about to say. Oh yeah. Yeah. Unthought her and then... Next level, next level. Yeah, unhinged.

So Barbara immediately texted back saying, dial 911 with like exclamation points. They will find you. She also promptly informed the Suffolk County PD, which swiftly dispatched officers to Dan's residence.

And it seems logical for Dan to be the potential culprit as who else could have persuasively enticed Becky out of her home at 3.30 in the morning, leaving behind her purse with no signs of a struggle and without her stepfather hearing any commotion whatsoever. Yeah.

But when law enforcement arrived at Dan's residence in full force and conducted a very thorough search from top to bottom, they could not find a single trace of Becky anywhere within his house. After the bewildered police left Dan's house, he did a very perplexing thing following their exit. Pop quiz. Goodness. What perplexing thing did Dan do? A, book a one-way ticket to Canada. B,

B, rent a storage unit. C, change his name on Facebook to Dan the Killer. I'm going to go with go to Canada. Okay. Dan the Killer. That would be really bold. I think it's C. You think it's Dan the Killer? Yeah. Yeah, you're right, Tanya. What? Yeah. Why would he do that? Because he's an idiot. No. Here's the deal.

He was cleared. That's the most unlikely choice. So he was properly pissed off. Yeah. And he was lashing out. Yeah. At his Facebook friends? I mean, I feel like that's misplaced anger. Listen, social media and me, we're not really friends. I avoided it like a plague prior to starting Psychopedia. Now I love it because I love our little psychos on the page.

But prior to that, when I was just a mom fucking struggling every day of my life, looking at all these Pinterest moms and whatever, hated social media. Yeah, it's depressing. And people do weird shit like this on social media. They try to polarize. They try to jar you. They try to get a reaction. And it's ludicrous. Yeah. While his high school football coach is like, what the fuck? Dan the Killer. Why is he? Obviously, that was a

A move on his part to try and... Right. It wasn't a great look. No. Imagine Barbara, his girlfriend's mom. Like, why would you do that? Like, you're hurting so many more people. And you're also drawing a lot more attention to yourself. Like, even if you're not the killer, you're maybe a piece of shit. Yeah. That's a weird move. That was a weird move. But in his defense, if I may, he was innocent and he was being twerky.

tormented. He was innocent for real? He was innocent up until this point. He was innocent for real. And remember Barbara had, which I understand, Barbara had friends of Becky's staking out his place. The police ripped it apart, you know, so you could probably like insulted. He was insulted. But then on the other hand, right? Like cooperate. This is a, you know, a disappearance. Yeah. This is serious. This is your girlfriend. Yeah. Don't get petty. They were just dating for a little while. I see both sides.

About three hours after Barbara received that first text message from Becky and following the search of Dan's home, Barbara received a second text message from Becky that said, my phone is about to die and my mouth is taped. Can't talk. I think this is Comac.

Tank, are you from Comac? Yeah. We're both from Comac? Yeah. Oh my God. This case is literally on our doorstep. How did I not hear about this? I don't know. I know. Honestly, admittedly, same. You know about this case? Never heard of it. And then when you're saying Port Jeff, I'm like, we were having dinner in Port Jeff last night. I mean, all these places are just where kind of we are right now. Yeah. And I always... Never heard of this. ...throw myself into these cases and feel so much of what everyone's going through, but

When it takes place, like literally in my town, I mean, this case is in my brain, in my heart. And it wasn't like it was in like 1964. This is like... Relatively recently. I could have driven past that house selling fence. Absolutely.

you could have sold Fence to them. Nicole Longo does sound familiar, I'll be honest with you. I went to school at Smithtown with a few Longos. Yeah, many Longos ago. So with a continued sense of urgency and determination, Barbara and her team piled into their vehicles and embarked on a journey to Comac, which is roughly 20 minutes away from Medford, to explore the area, given that's where Becky was claiming to be held.

But despite their relentless efforts, their desperate search yielded nothing but an unsettling emptiness. For reference, it's now December 7th, 2009, and the detective had come to a harrowing conclusion. The text messages being sent to Barbara from Becky's phone were likely not being written by Becky. That's the worst.

It was at this juncture that one of the primary detectives involved in this case, Detective Philip Frendo, in collaboration with his fellow investigators, opted to expand the scope of the investigation by retracing their steps to the fateful night when Becky first went missing. So at this point, it was all forward momentum. It was all looking at Dan. It was all taking leads from her friends, monitoring social media, looking at her phone. Now they realize something's really going on here and they're taking it back.

Very confused, but I'm sure it'll get figured out. Because she said Dan has me and then you said Dan is innocent. Yep. So these texts are probably not coming from her. Yeah.

It couldn't be. The police are like, well, Dan doesn't have her. So obviously someone is trying to set Dan up and deflect away from their own wrongdoing. Correct. Yeah, she is. This is fun. But how terrible for Becky's family, you know, and I'm sure the police were under so much pressure. Yeah. Like all hands on deck, figure this out. When you research this case,

It talks a lot about the psychological torment that her family was put through and that really, in addition to obviously Becky being the primary victim here, her family was victimized tremendously throughout this process. It's horrible. He toyed with them. Yeah. Disgusting. So the Suffolk County PD initiated an inquiry into all individuals that Becky had interacted with during her visit to the two bars that she went to that night with a particular emphasis on the second establishment, Texarkana.

Technicians gathered DNA samples from Becky's friends, family, while also collecting her toothbrush and dental records for analysis. While questioning the friends that Becky had gone out with the night of her disappearance, detectives learned a crucial piece of information. Becky had been talking to an unknown male at the second bar, Butcher Boys, the night she went missing.

This man was described as African-American, well-dressed with a long-sleeved sweater vest, an overall nicely groomed and well-put-together individual. That's how he was described by the people who saw him talking to Becky that night at the bar. Sounds like they're describing him as handsome. You know what they're describing him as? Really put-together and ordinary. Nothing stood out. Right.

sure enough, CCTV footage of the bar that night, albeit grainy, indeed confirmed the existence and appearance of said man. Wow. How do you look? He,

He looked preppy. Nice. And put together. Preppy. And well-groomed. They're the scariest. Yeah, man. It's the Pinterest people. Like, listen, if you're going to be a psycho killer scary man, be disheveled. Yeah. Like, don't come all clean and, like, buttoned up. That's not cool. That's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Deceptive. Yep. Rude. Rude.

In the surveillance footage, you can see Becky speaking with this man at the bar, sitting on chairs close to the counter. Then you see the unmistakable glow of a cell phone screen light up as Becky handed her phone over to this man, signaling to law enforcement that he likely entered his phone number into her phone. As such, investigators pulled Becky's phone records to examine the outgoing and incoming calls that night. That's why she was turning her phone on and off, to save the battery.

Maybe. All I could think about this whole time is the fact that three days later, she's like, my battery's about to die. And my battery's dead at like four o'clock. It was popping up in poor Jeff, right? So if you work through the scenarios, if somebody else does have her phone, maybe they're curious as to what's happening. Maybe they're seeing like...

are people noticing if she's missing yet? Like maybe a perpetrator would turn it on and off because they don't want to trace it. But they're also curious as to like the status of this person maybe being missing. Yeah. And they're using it to send outgoing text messages. To deflect. But it is interesting if they are doing that, how they figured out that this boyfriend she has and then pivoting the blame onto him. That's kind of interesting. It's like, where did he get that information? Maybe he went through her texts.

Maybe she told him. The guy, the individual who has her? Whoever that may be. So he did. Ooh. This individual, this perpetrator, went through her phones and got a handle on who she texts, her social network, that she has a boyfriend, that she's close with her mother, that she frequently texts her mother. So he knew to text Barbara and to mention Dan. After she... She was gone for three days by the time he started texting. I thought he did that at the bar. So scary. Right.

So scary. He does have a vest on. So sure enough, Becky had taken three incoming phone calls from a prepaid burner phone with a 617 Boston area code the night of her disappearance. One at 4 a.m. that Becky did not pick up. Another at 410 a.m. that lasted for 17 minutes. And the third call at 427, which lasted for 20 seconds.

And just like we discussed in the Long Island serial killer case, which Alexis is quite literally the expert on, burner phones without service make calls extremely difficult for investigators to track. And that is why it is a very handy tool for a perpetrator to use. And I could see the first phone call doesn't get picked up. She doesn't know the number. Second phone call gets picked up. They chatted up. They talked. They decide, hey, let's fucking, let's do something. Yeah. And then 20 seconds. Hey, I'm outside. Come on. Let's go.

Nailed it. Interesting. That's exactly the breakdown of what happened. I mean... Super smart. Presumably. But this is the conclusion that law enforcement... Presumably intelligent. But honestly, that is... You know, if you think about sort of a rapport of how a night unfolds, you know, that's sort of...

The song and dance, right? Like from A to Z. Yeah. Now, after obtaining court orders to probe deeper into that phone number, the Suffolk County Police Department then obtained cell site data, which revealed that Becky was home in Medford when she connected with those calls and that the unknown prepaid phone with the Boston area code was located in an area northwest of Becky's house. Port Jeff is northwest of Becky's house. Naturally, after...

As Tank has pointed out, investigators assumed that the first call made to Becky went unanswered because she didn't recognize the number. The second one she picked up, they hashed out their plans. The third one was this perpetrator saying, I'm outside. So scary. Now put this on ice for a minute. We're going to circle back and thaw it out momentarily. But for now. You love circling back, by the way. Yeah, you got to circle back. You circle back a lot? Yeah, we do like rewinds.

I think a rewind is different than a circle back. Well, sometimes you circle back. We do say sometimes we're going to revisit this soon. Yes. See? We're going to revisit this soon. Or we'll tell you more about this later. That's a circle back. I have no skin in this game. I'm busting balls 100%. I do not care. No, I know. This feels good. Put this on ice. Yes? Yes. We will circle back. I cannot wait to thaw this out. For now, we need to pivot because at this point... So many buzzwords.

You gotta pivot. Let's circle the wagons. Check back in. I'm just having fun. I see that. Just new boof goofing. It's like Coke Zero hit hard. Yeah, it's definitely in his bloodstream. Yeah.

At this point in the investigation, the collective focus of the media and of residents in the northeast of the U.S. were forced to split their focus with another mysterious crime that happened to occur across the Long Island Sound in Connecticut just one day after Becky had gone missing. Wow. And on that day, which was December 4th, at precisely 7.23 p.m., which was less than 24 hours, technically, after Becky had gone missing back in New York...

A brush fire was discovered by a motorist named Russell Morrison in a rural field on the left-hand side of the road near the intersection of Jeremy Hill Road and Route 201 in North Stonington, Connecticut. Stonington. Fuck. It's fine. It's 85 miles from Rebecca's home in Medford.

But that was a separate crime, right? Separate incident. It would be really hard to connect because it seems unconnected. Exactly. 85 miles away, a different state across the sound. Yeah. A fire. There's no fire with Becky's case. Well, Jeff, people are really good at the ferry. Yeah, they are.

Now, this motorist, Russell... Are you mad that I'm cracking this case? No, I am so impressed. You know I get very impressed when you're on it and you're on it. Russell happened to be an assistant fire chief, so he went back to his car to grab a fire extinguisher to put the flames out before they could spread. Seeing something beneath the flames, Russell had the wherewithal to direct the fire extinguisher to the top of the flames in order to preserve, to the extent possible, whatever might be at the base of the fire.

Then, after the arrival of the resident state trooper and North Stonington Fire Department, it was determined that what they initially thought was a brush fire in a field had actually been a human being on fire. Oh, my God. Emerald pyre.

The victim was, of course, pronounced dead at the scene by responding EMS personnel, and the area was secured by responding state troopers, followed by the arrival of the Connecticut State Police Eastern District Major Crime Squad, who immediately initiated a crime investigation into this incident. Off the bat, it was determined that the charred human remains belonged to a female and that an accelerant, gasoline, had been used to start the fire, which was actually discovered by a canine dog.

The decedent was then transported to the office of the chief state's medical examiner, where a post-mortem examination was conducted by Dr. Ira J. Canfor the following morning on December 5th.

The medical examiner has conducted this particular ME over 4,000 autopsies over the course of his 30-year career. So he certainly earned his stripes and was prepared to conduct a thorough autopsy on a very complex, very damaged set of remains. The body appeared to be wrapped in several layers of bloodstained sheets, a thick blue blanket, and black garbage bags.

After meticulously removing the layers upon layers of burned materials surrounding the body, also these materials melted into the flesh by this point, Dr. Canfor was able to determine that the remains belonged to a young female, potentially of Asian or Latina heritage, or alternatively someone of African American ethnicity with a fair complexion. Additionally, several extremely disturbing discoveries were made during the autopsy of this Jane Doe.

All of her fingers and toes, as well as her nose and ears, had been callously hacked off. Oh my God. The victim's hair was shaved entirely off her head, and large, seemingly random chunks of her skin and flesh were carved out of her body. Additionally, the victim's entire body was wrapped in silver duct tape. Clearly, the killer worked to ensure, or attempt to ensure, that the body would remain unidentifiable.

Now, the Suffolk County PD in New York had placed a nationwide media alert known as a BOLO, which is an acronym for Be On The Lookout, following Becky's disappearance in New York, which the Connecticut PD reviewed. It was then that they realized that the 24-year-old missing woman in Long Island, New York, was

matched the description of the Jane Doe who turned up in a brush fire on the side of the road in Connecticut. Oh, that just gave me the chills. Their Jane Doe in Connecticut was possibly of Latina descent, possessed specific distinguishing features described in the bolo, such as a tongue ring, a nose ring, unique ear piercings, and tattoos located on her right outer ankle and back. Was that where he cut out? Yes. Oh,

All of this aligned with the evidence, or rather, the removal of evidence presented before them on the burned corpse. Because the chunks of missing flesh on the body, as well as the hacked off nose and ears, aligned with where Becky had tattoos and piercings. God, that's horrific. It's heartbreaking. But left in situ was the victim's tongue piercing, which was that of a pink butterfly.

Additionally, all of the victim's teeth had been left intact. We're talking about the charred remains, which enabled the medical examiner to use the dental records previously collected by the Suffolk County PD from Becky's home to make a positive identification of the body. And of course, unsurprisingly, crushingly, it was a match for 24-year-old Rebecca Koster.

Now, Alexis, I know that you've examined and discussed issues with forensic science because I've read articles about you because I sweat you. And the dangers of using or misusing junk science in the legal system. My understanding is that examining dental records is not the same thing as analyzing bite marks with respect to forensic evidence. Also, my understanding is that even though bite mark...

science or examining bite marks has been discredited, it's still used in courts. How is that possible? Well, I think there's no oversight as far as what can be introduced as expert testimony in courts. I mean, still they're introducing, they can make up anything, you know. It's like pay to play. Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot of variables when it comes to a

bite impression, but a direct comparison with dental records, you have the teeth, right? So you can compare, you know, an x-ray, which is a lot more conclusive. But yeah, I mean, there are several expert sciences, forensic sciences that are still used in court that are highly suspect. Yeah. And there's no oversight. There's no way really a judge is, it's at the judge's disposal as to whether or not an

an expert testimony can be admitted. You know, it's interesting. It is interesting. And judges have way more power than we realize in that way. So they can decide before it's presented in court whether they will allow it or do they hear the testimony and then say, strike that? So a defense lawyer will basically come up with a strategy and say, listen, I want to submit this expert to testify for my client's

Right. To whatever evidence it is they're talking about, whether that be, you know, sniffer dogs or footprints or cell phone data dumping, whatever it is. And the judge is it's at their disposal as to whether or not it's valid. Right.

and scientifically sound. And a judge can't really make that call, but they do. And they're authorized to. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. And it's basically all based on precedent, right? Because it's been allowed in the past, judges will say, well, it's been allowed in the past, so I'm going to allow it. That is the worst justification for something. Yeah, and it's really hard to change. We've always done it this way. Well, you know what? We used to do things... Not even we've always done it this way. We did it this way once.

Right. And we're going to do it this way again. And the only way around it is for the opposing lawyer to fight it. That's the only way to get around the admission of junk science. A counter expert. You just have to really poke holes in it and argue really well. But like those lawyers often aren't versed in...

That sort of thing. So they just don't really fight it. But it's the opposing lawyer's job. And they're the only ones who can change it. Right. You got to get yourself a good lawyer, people. Yep. Now, part of an ME's job is to determine cause of death as well as manner of death.

What is the difference between cause of death and manner of death?

With respect to manner of death, the ME in this case concluded it to be homicide. Oh, okay. Right. Police, of course, notified Becky's mother.

A job that I cannot imagine. Barbara, that her daughter's remains had been discovered and that her death had been ruled a homicide. We'll go on to hear a little bit more about Barbara in a little bit. But at this stage, she held a beautiful memorial service for Becky at the St. James Funeral Home before burying her in a pink coffin surrounded by roses at Washington Memorial Park Cemetery in Mount Sinai, Long Island. A little too close to home, honestly. St. James, we're in St. James right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, this is a very... Local story. Local and just relevant. I said that in the intro, right? Like the victim is you. The victim is me. It's just so...

scarily relatable. Absolutely. Girl that just went out at a bar that we probably have been to and don't even remember. You know what I mean? Yeah. Now, in terms of trying to find the perpetrator responsible for Becky's death, while the forensic team had the almost impossible task of trying to obtain evidence from the charred and mutilated remains...

Amazingly, however, forensic technicians were able to identify and recover two latent fingerprints, a left thumbprint and a right thumbprint, off the sticky part of the duct tape that had been wrapped around Becky's body. Crazy. Now, there are three types of fingerprints that can be found and analyzed during forensic analysis, latent, patent, and plastic.

So, patent fingerprints, also known as visible fingerprints, are those that are readily visible to the naked eye because they're left behind in a substance that contrasts with the color of the ridges of the finger. So, these fingerprints are typically left in substances like blood, ink, grease, dirt. Latent fingerprints are invisible to the naked eye and require some form of development, such as dusting with powder or using chemical treatments to make them visible.

And the last one, plastic fingerprints are three-dimensional impressions left in a soft or malleable material such as clay or putty. And they retain the actual physical characteristics of the fingers and are visible without further enhancement. Just a little forensic detour. While it was a huge win to have found two latent prints on the duct tape, Connecticut law enforcement was unable to link the prints to anyone in their database.

However, when Suffolk County PD ran the prints through their database on December 11th, they got a hit. The man whose fingerprints were found on the duct tape wrapped around the remains of Becky Koster belonged to a 30-year-old man named Evans Ganthier.

Evan Scantier lived in Port Jefferson, an area located, as I've mentioned, 20 minutes northwest of Becky's home in Medford. If you recall, this is the same direction from which the three mysterious phone calls to Becky had been made on the night of her disappearance.

Evan Scantier was born on January 20th, 1980, was 5'11", African-American, and once attended St. Anthony's High School on Long Island in South Huntington. That's why he wore a sweater vest. That's exactly why. It's a private school. Yes, it is. I drive by it every time I go to the mall. He also graduated from Dowling College in Oakdale, New York in 2007 with a degree in psychology. Pup, quack.

All right. Who took two courses at Dowling College the summer of 2006 during the same time in which Evans Ganthier would have been a student there? Oh, my God. A, Amy Schumer. B, Lindsay Lohan.

C, Investigator Slater. Investigator Slater. I was going to say B. Really? No. Oh, yes. So I had to take some English courses as a prereq for my master's and I was at Dowling exactly when he was. Weird. No, I never met him to my recollection. Imagine I did though. Yeah. I mean, this case is so close to home. It's insane. It really is.

When law enforcement ran Evans-Ganthier's social security number, they discovered that Evans had two separate businesses matching the address on his license. It's like a doubleheader. You're getting another pop quiz. This also happens. Like I sometimes come in really hot with them. I'm ready. I'm feeling good about this. What were those two businesses? A, Doggy Daycare and At Home Chef Services. B, Carpentry and Psychic Readings.

C, adult services and kids parties. B, carpentry and psychic readings. Okay, Tink. So it's either, what was the first one again? Doggy daycare and at-home chef services. Maybe I'm leaning towards A. C.

Adult services and kids parties? Yeah. Correct. Ew! I know. I was hoping that wasn't the case. Horrible. Well, you also got to hope that she didn't make that up. Yeah. That would be like a red herring she's setting up. But the fact that it's adult services... I was like, there's no way. That's stranger than fiction. How could that be? True crime often is. Secrets Adult Entertainment Services was one of his businesses. Was he a stripper? Which appeared to be... It was...

an escort service and Happy Time Entertainment, which was a kid's party business. That juxtaposition is so dark. I hate that. It's...

So dark. Horrific. Especially knowing what he's capable of. Exactly. Imagine the phone rings, you're like, secret time, happy time. Yeah, it's so bad. It's just so bad. It also turns out that Evans Ganthier had five prior arrests for misdemeanors, one of which included a domestic disturbance incident with his ex-girlfriend, during which he was alleged to have been pimping her out while simultaneously running a business that included taking photographs of women in his garage in Port Jeff.

Remember the blue blanket that Becky's body was wrapped in that I mentioned? Well, it turned out to have been a photo backdrop. Like a seamless. Yeah. Ew. Yep. I hate him.

Furthermore, investigators tracked Evan's cell phone use on the night of Becky's disappearance and discovered that his location aligned with Becky's location. So when she was at her home in Medford on the night of her disappearance, so was he. When she traveled northwest towards his home in Port Jeff, so did he. Needless to say, on December 14th, 2009, 10 days after Becky's initial disappearance, the Suffolk County Police Department issued an arrest warrant for Evan Scantier.

Police located him in the Bronx where he'd been staying with his girlfriend and cuffed him without incident. Imagine that being your boyfriend. Imagine that. I went there too. So traumatic. Upon his arrest, Evans waived his Miranda rights and provided oral and written statements to Detective Frendo wherein he admitted to being with Becky on the night in question. He even admitted that he had indeed gone back to her home in Medford before driving the both of them back to his home in Port Jeff

He claims this all happened and Becky consented to all of this. Then, according to Evans, during the drive from Medford to Port Jeff, Becky began spontaneously gagging while frothing at the mouth in the front seat of his car. He speculated that it may have been a drug overdose.

She allegedly gasped for air and couldn't breathe. And when they got back to Evan's home, which is where they were heading, when she got out of the car in his garage, she inadvertently tripped over a set of dumbbells on the floor and suffered a fatal impact as her head struck the concrete floor.

Then, according to Evans, he panicked and decided to cut off all of her identifiable features, wrap her mutilated corpse in a photo backdrop with duct tape wrapped around it, board the ferry from Port Jefferson to Connecticut. With, oh, with her in the car. Yes. Oh my God. I was thinking about, I was like, how did he get her on the ferry? Yes. And then burn her remains on the side of a dark country road. Slight overreaction, bro.

He also confessed to having sent Barbara the text messages from Becky's phone, falsely implicating Dan in her disappearance and leading them all to believe that Becky had still been alive when in fact she was long gone by that point. That sucks. God. Now, while Evans confessed to sending the text messages and confessed to desecrating Becky's corpse and transporting it across state lines...

He reminded investigators that they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered Becky. And at this stage, he was right. So her death was reclassified from homicide to pending further study, since there was no confirmed homicide at this point, coupled with the fact that in 2009, New York did not have strict penalties against concealing a human corpse,

Evans was released. Don't they also have laws about doing stuff to a body after it's dead? Yes. Desecrating remains. So Amanda Lynn's law, which makes concealing, altering, or destroying a human corpse with the intention of preventing its recovery, examination, or disclosure, a classy felony was not put into effect until 2015. Wow.

Wow. So up until 2015, you could just find a body and do whatever you wanted to do. It was preposterous. Yeah. I think there were penalties, but it wasn't a felony like it is now. Was it a misdemeanor? I mean, at least the law caught up, but really? Yeah. Insane. I mean, some states may have had something. It varies by state, right? This was New York. Yeah, exactly. Now,

Now, the Suffolk County PD, to their credit, burned the midnight oil on this case to ensure that justice prevailed and to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Evans Ganthier was guilty and subsequently held accountable. They reviewed CCTV footage from the Port Jeff Ferry and from the areas in Connecticut they were able to track using cell site data and

And lo and behold, a very calm and collected Evans Ganthier was seen on CCTV footage entering a grocery store in Port Jefferson where he purchased, as proven by a copy of his receipt found on the register, duct tape and rubber gloves. Yeah. Then CCTV showed him calmly boarding the one hour and 15 minute ferry ride.

Evan's demeanor on the CCTV footage showing him boarding the ferry did not reflect a panic or frazzled man, as he implied during questioning by law enforcement. Instead, he appeared composed, collected, calm, demonstrating control over his actions and displaying a deliberate and calculated behavior. Like a true crime fanatic on Wilde.

She was the girl who listened to too much true crime and then was like, I want to see what it feels like to kill somebody. Yes, exactly right. She said she was like out shopping in the grocery store. Oh, you see CCTV footage of her in South Korea. Right after killing somebody. Literally just bopping along the sidewalk. Like just killed somebody minutes prior. And dismembered her. Yeah. Really brutalized her. Now a search warrant was executed for Evan Ganthier's home in Port Jeff, at which point investigators found, you tell me,

Pop quiz. Pop quiz? I got to get this one right. I got to get this one right. You're not going to. I know. Then give it to Alexis. She's into it. Okay. A, whips, chains, and Vaseline in the basement. This is what they found. Right. Okay. Whips, chains, Vaseline. B, a freshly painted garage floor. Three, six pairs of worn panties in his bedroom.

D, all of the above. I like that. All of the above. No, no, no. She said A, B, 3, B. Great, C. I'm going all of the above. All of the above.

They all sound reasonable to me for this sick fuck. Yeah. Excuse me. Excuse my cursing. Can I curse? That's welcome here. Yeah. We get really. I'm going to say D, D, D, D. D. You? Sure. You're going with an all of the above? We have a guest. Hmm. Alexis, my new wonderful friend. I meant C. Wrong? I have to tell you. Garage floor. She's such a. Garage floor. Panties. Good. Yes. No. Wait, what's wrong? Garage floor. Garage floor. Freshly painted garage floor. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

God, I was close. That was 8.1, right? I said all, I said three out of four and one was close. I got so proud of you. I'm sorry. Is it fun for you to watch how I like actually get proud? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did she get it right though? Her second shot. Okay. Yeah. You didn't either though. Yeah. I'm the worst. No, I don't. For as smart as he is and he is very,

Very smart. He's a big brain. Look at this head. Look at the size of the cranium. Heed. Heed, move. Stop it. Get that noggin out of the way of the television. It's like a grapefruit on a toothpick. How did we not ever do that? Heed. So I married an ax murderer. I don't know how she has ever seen it and knows. One word, I said. Because my twin sister and I

She is petrified of true crime. She can't go near it. Is she an identical twin? Fraternal. But still, twins are interesting. I can't wait to delve into this more. We could not be any more opposite, yet we are the same. Yes. I love that. Twinning. Going back to So I Married an Axe Murderer really quick. All the time. All the time we say, heed, move. So when you say, I'm just amazed that you know it. I'm not amazed. This happens a lot. I love this. Yeah.

Okay, getting back to the case. There was a recently painted large square patch on the garage floor, presumably in the area where Becky had stumbled, hit her head, and died. There was also a set of dumbbells discovered as well. And we remember his account of what happened, right? Additionally, a pool of Becky's blood was found on the floor beneath the passenger seat in Evan's car, suggesting that she had been killed in the car.

Evans was likely telling the truth when he indicated that Becky had been gagging and frothing at the mouth, except it wasn't a sudden onset of a health condition or a drug overdose that caused her to suddenly gasp for air and trip on a dumbbell and hit her head on the floor and die. Rather, she was likely gagging and frothing as a result of bleeding to death following stab wounds to her liver and neck. Oh, I forgot that. I forgot to mention that. Yeah. Yeah.

With all of this information, the medical examiner re-examined Becky's body to look for signs of a fractured skull or blunt force trauma to the head that could have been

corroborated what he was saying. Unsurprisingly, however, he did not find anything to support Evans' version of events. Therefore, Dr. Canfor issued a final ruling on Becky's cause of death, which read, multiple sharp force injuries slash homicide. On February 8th, 2009... That's why there was blood in her stomach. Yes, exactly right. Two months after Becky's disappearance, Evans Ganthier was officially charged with second-degree murder.

In New York State, second-degree murder is intentional murder during the actual act, also sometimes referred to as a crime of passion. When Evans entered the courtroom for his trial, he blew kisses to his family and came across as smug, confident, and crucially lacking signs of remorse or regret.

Evan's defense attorney, William Kehoe, stuck to Evan's bullshit story that Becky got sick in his car, started gasping for air, foamed at the mouth, got out of the car, tripped on a dumbbell, hit her head and died. Sounds like something my six-year-old son would make up. When you back into it, like when you understand the symptoms that her body displayed or the signs that her body displayed, the trauma that she endured, the fact that he thinks that his rendition of events would be believable by anyone other than a second grader is ludicrous.

William Cahill, though, if you Google his name and see what cases he's been involved in as a defense attorney, he's a fascinating career. Really? Yeah. And he's still very much around. Well, you know who's going to be researching him after this. Take a little look. It's really interesting. Yeah. The assistant district attorney, Janet Albertson, however, argued that Evans was a sociopathic person.

predator. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing who knew exactly how to come across as safe and innocuous in order to pounce on an innocent young woman. But Albertson really had nothing to argue or present in the way of a motive. Did Evans target Becky that night at the bar with the intention of killing her?

Did he snap after she perhaps rejected his sexual advances? And why hadn't he just taken Becky to the hospital rather than back to his house if she was having some kind of medical episode in his car? He only lived one mile away from a hospital. But regardless of a precise motive, one thing was clear.

Evans somehow got Becky into his car, had a knife on him, and used it to kill her in his car before mutilating her body and attempting to destroy her remains. And none of that was an accident.

Even without a stated motive, it did not take the jury long to render their verdict. After a four-week trial, the jury deliberated for just five and a half hours and found 30-year-old Evans Ganthier guilty of second-degree murder. State Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambrose imposed the maximum sentence of 25 years to life at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York, which is a high-level security facility.

Evan Scantier will be eligible for parole on February 4th, 2035. He has never accepted responsibility for what he did, which will make rehabilitation challenging, if not impossible. Yeah.

I read an interview, Alexis, that you did in April 2022 with the Scientific Inquirer. And you talked about one and done killers, which obviously Evans Ganthier was a one and done killer. But you described this type of killer as being a predator and having a specific MO for that one kill. So it's impossible to know if Evans Ganthier is a one and done killer because he was caught right after this one kill.

But does the fact that he lacked a clear motive indicate that he would likely have killed again and that he may not have been a one and done? I think sometimes when they muse about motives and they say they don't have a clear motive, I mean, this seems pretty sexual. Maybe he was rejected. It seems like he hates women. And this was a frustrated scenario that ended in violence against women. So...

A lack of motive is kind of also just textbook, right? Like we just had Natalie Holloway's killer admit to what happened with her. And he's like, oh, I was hoping to have sex with her. And she kicked me off of her. And then I beat her to death. You know, it's like, I think something like that is still a motive. It's like sexual frustration, the hatred of women, being a piece of shit, you know, like being a dangerous asshole.

And there's a sexual component there. Yeah. You're looking for motives that could apply to like normal. Something deeper. Yeah. Like these motives are definitely real. I mean, hatred of women is,

We talk about this all the time. The incel community can fuck themselves. Nobody owes you their vagina, dude. Sorry. Just get over it. Move on. Find somebody else. Or just wait. You know what I mean? Be a normal person. What's so interesting is that this perpetrator has a girlfriend, right? So oftentimes it's not even about like, I can't get women. It's just this moment. I want this woman and whatever they trigger in this man.

to cause them to be violent, whatever rejection. And it's hard to know, like, do they remind them of their mother? Is it a woman who rejected them in middle school? Who fucking knows? Want to hear something wild? Yeah. I lived in California for a year. I worked at this restaurant. And there was a guy who came in. It was four people, a guy and his wife or girlfriend, and then another couple. And this guy...

I mean, he fucking hated me. Like, legitimately asked to, like, that I wouldn't work at his table anymore. Wrote a note to the server afterwards, like, I don't ever want to see that guy again. I was like, I have no idea what I could... I know I didn't do anything to him, but I, like, my presence, my existence triggered something in him. And it was, like, unsettling. Yeah. To know that somebody could hate me that much knowing nothing about me. People can trigger you, like...

I saw some dumb TikTok video being like, sometimes a beautiful woman can trigger another woman. You know, it's just all these things, whatever insecurities someone might have, whether you're a man or a woman, if something in you activates an insecurity in them, that's a trigger. And, you know, people throw that word around a lot. Yeah. But in this particular situation, he might have gone home with hundreds of women. But for whatever reason, he...

wanted to kill her. He was angry at her. It was obviously displaced. He didn't know this girl. She's innocent. But this happens and it's why strangers hurt each other all the time. Whether it's men. I mean, this guy obviously had some insecurity that you brought out.

and bubbled over you know for him it's very scary and that's why stranger on stranger crime is terrifying you don't know how to anticipate it i was aware enough in life to know that at that point rather than dive into it and go well why don't you you know what's the problem like i i knew what the problem was it was him yeah i was just gonna say that it's a him problem all of this shit like people learn how to manage you need to not be emotionally volatile in the world it's hard

It is hard, but it's not that hard. It's not hard for people who I think have some familiarity with it. But if you're just completely unprepared for life and you get hit sideways by something. Yeah. And if you're unwell. Yeah.

I'm saying all of that. Yeah, like you're just going through life and then all of a sudden everything's fine. It's not great. Your wife is, you know, whatever. She's okay. Your job is like whatever. Your kids are kind of a pain in the ass. You're just going, going, going. You're in pain enough to feel it but not enough to actually do anything about it. And then you just one day snap. Yeah, a lot of these things are a perfect storm. You know, he could have had weeks of...

just bad luck. He could have had unresolved childhood trauma. He could have been wasted. He could have not taken his meds. It could have been like 50 things that come to a head. Then he meets a woman who just hits all of his triggers.

And she is just living her life, not ever was supposed to come in the crosshairs of this person who was unresolved and unwell. And it's terrible. It's, you know, she was innocent. This is the most terrifying element of this case. Yeah. Is that there didn't seem to be a rhyme or a reason. She was just like randomly linked up with this guy, shared her phone number, and then wound up

burning across the Long Island Sound. Yeah, that's crazy. This is, again, circling back to the intro. Yeah. The victim is you. The victim is me. The victim is anyone. Because it's so random in cases like this. It reminds me of Natalie Holloway. Like, we just got answers in that case, and she was just like...

chilling on her senior trip and like met a guy who seemed cute and nice and he does you know he's not a toad you're like i'm 18 i could make out with that guy on my senior trip should have been not a big deal evans wore a sweater vest yeah he was like a who doesn't trust somebody in a sweater vest that we're asleep that knows the saint anthony's song if there is one there probably is

Since Evans' arrest, Becky's mother, Barbara, has been very vocal about her daughter's death and has sat down for many interviews and documentaries. In each one, she refers to Evans as it rather than him or he because she feels that he doesn't warrant a human pronoun since he is, in fact, a demon. This is her language. She said, quote, "'I wish nothing but misery and suffering for that vile, disgusting creature.'"

And I completely understand Barbara's position, and she has every right in the world to refer to him in any way that she deems acceptable. But we have to be careful when we refer to murderers as monsters or demons because it indirectly absolves them of responsibility for what they did, somehow suggesting that they're not of this realm, that they're not made of flesh and bone and blood, that they're not capable of wielding a moral compass. They're humans, right?

That's the scariest part. Not that monsters are out there, but... Right. Now, again, Barbara has every right to refer to her daughter's murderer in absolutely any way she sees fit. She has my full support and love in this situation. It's just a general stance that I take. Yeah, and I also think that calling them monsters means that it kind of suggests that you might be able to spot one on the street, but he was a preppy sweater vest wearing kind of guy. And...

A lot of killers look approachable, look friendly, look like the guy next door. That's the biggest tool in their toolkit. Retrospect, you're like, of course Jeffrey Dahmer was a killer. Well, hindsight's 20-20. Sure. Now, incredibly, there are actually some people who have the audacity to place blame for this horrific crime on the victim herself.

Becky. Some individuals have shamed and blamed Becky for acting irresponsibly on the night of her murder and staying out so late, allowing a stranger to put his phone number into her phone, getting into the car with a stranger, and potentially taking steps to cheat on her boyfriend. Some have insinuated, disgustingly, that Becky got what she deserved. Oh, fuck those people. Excuse me.

How dare you? Victim blaming is not only unjust, but it's fundamentally unjust.

Well, every person who's doing that has done the shit that they're blaming Becky for. Like, everybody... But it's not them, so they're safe. So, yeah, what they did wasn't bad. Just what she did was bad. Yeah, yeah. And it's probably men. Well, actually, I've seen a lot of women victim-blaming. More than men, actually, recently. Yeah. It's been kind of mind-blowing. But, like, the internalized misogyny with that, I don't even know how to explain it. Like, women blaming women for just...

doing shit growing up. Yeah. Growing up and experiencing things. 24, I mean, you're just figuring your shit out. Yes. You're like, I call it morality testing, right? Like, even if you had a boyfriend, you're allowed to be like, maybe I don't like my boyfriend. Maybe I'm going, like, maybe I'm unhappy. Like, maybe I'm going to do something I'm not supposed to do. Maybe I've been good my whole life. Like, you're allowed to morality test and see what feels good for you or bad and see if you're in the right relationship or not. And like, it's heartbreaking to see that shit. And,

And it's just, it's a harmful mindset that shifts the responsibility away from the perpetrator and then wrongly places it onto the victim. And then it just perpetuates the cycle of violence and injustice. It's usually women. It's usually women victim blaming. Listen, women have a right to live their lives as they choose, free from ridicule, shaming, and fear from being harmed or subjected to violence because of it. You can stay out late. You can have a tongue ring. You

You can party. But you can't do all three. Right. I mean, but that's what the haters are saying. Yeah. Right? Doing those things is never a justification for receiving unwelcome or dangerous male attention or any attention. And it's crucial to remember that the only person responsible for any act of violence is the one who commits it. Yeah. End of. 100%. End of. Full stop. Yes. Story. There's a Lifetime series. I'm sure you've heard of it, Alexis. Yes.

It's called hashtag text me when you get home. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And each episode follows the case of an innocent woman who's been abducted, harmed, or even killed while she was out. And text me when you get home became a viral hashtag.

like a worldwide movement following the 2021 death of another young girl, sadly, named Sarah Everard. She was kidnapped, raped, and burned as well in South London, England, walking home from a friend's house. And the hashtag sparked awareness around the vulnerability that women feel and experience when they're out in public alone. This is not episodic. This is epidemic. Yeah.

So I'm going to leave off by telling you some of what Barbara said during her impact statement. She said, I cry every day for my daughter, sometimes for hours at a time. And then in court, she turned to Evans and she said, I had to hear how you destroyed my Becky. No mother should ever see her daughter like that. I hate you. I hate you with every cell of my being. And I hope that everything you did to Becky is done to you.

In the tapestry of life, the threads of fate weave a complex and unpredictable pattern. We often go about our days believing ourselves to be shielded from the dark and sinister aspects of the world as if tragedy and evil could never touch us.

Yet, the truth is that anyone, at any time, can become a victim of a heinous crime. The cold hand of fate may choose you, it may choose me. Sadly, it chose Becky on that frigid December night, and while she may be lost, she will never be forgotten. It was beautiful. I want to thank the soul of Ernest Hemingway for taking over Investigate a Serious Body for this episode. You're really good at this. I was, like, very moved. Thank you. She's good, right? Very good. Yeah. It's my best.

You're very good at this. Thank you. And, you know, your empathy is evident. And, you know, I do think your sort of mystified nature by like evil shines through too, really. I mean, you encapsulate it very well in the way you talk about this. Thank you. I think we have that in common because I know that you stand in solidarity with victims and your goal and what you do is to shed light on victims and their rights and what they've been through and to ideally, you know,

things from happening in the future. So if you make 500 podcast episodes and prevent one death, like your major winning. Yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. Alexis, I, we got you a little something. Yeah, we, I totally know what's in that bag. You're lying. Because we were absolutely, it's a little heavy. What is it?

Tank, it's not like you're going to be able to live. Is this a joke? No, it's just a little something to thank you. On my shoulder. You guys are so sweet. Is there a dumbbell in here? Feels like it. I could not wait to have you on today. It's a kettlebell. Okay, so that's from Cash to your beautiful pity. Oh my God, it's from Bosley. This is for our dog. You're so sweet. So it's a dog toy for our listeners. You guys are so sweet. This has been so fun. The two things are...

Heavy-ish. A candle? Okay, so it's pink and it has a flower, which were Becky's favorite things. So it's something for you to remember and honor as you look at it. And it smells really nice. Thank you so much. You're so sweet. And there's one more really, really heavy thing. I'm sorry about this. You may have to leave it in. So I thought it was a bookend. What is this? Is

This is beautiful. A skull? A decorative object? Yes. So it's not a bookend, even though it looks like one. It could be. But it's a skull, and our logo is a skull. So this way, because we will always remember having you on, and I hope that this will help you to remember your... Thank you. This is so thoughtful. I should have... I wanted to go to the St. James General Store and buy an ornament for Christmas for them. And you said that was unnecessary, but it was unnecessary. I'm going to do it next time. Directed to her. I had...

I literally did not even know what was in that bag. I'll send something. Don't be silly. Your presence is the present. Thank you. This is so thoughtful. My presence is the present. I've honestly had the best time. And thank you guys so much for including me. Thank you for being here. You are a force in the true crime world. It feels really good to be like with locals. Yeah. Like we're all from this place. Talk about a local case. I know. I know. It just really means a lot. Thank you. Thank you. You're so sweet. Thank you so much for joining us. You guys are the best.

What was the girl's name on Patreon? If you're still here, Meg or something like that. Oh, if you made it this far, Meg. If you made it this far, Meg, shout out to you. Because we always say, if you made it this far, like, what are you doing? You're a real one. Yeah, you're a real one. So double goes for us because you guys will never understand how tough it was to shoot this podcast. It was great. Tons of fun. We got to have lots of quality time. Let me tell you something. You two could have made it unnoticed.

a nightmare for us. Oh, no. And you didn't. You made it very easy to just be completely unprofessional and stumble through this. You guys are fantastic. We're great. We're fun. Yeah. Like, I don't want this to end. No, me either. I'm having a great time. Yeah. We get it. Well, we'll continue it after the cameras and the after party. Yes. Yeah. You're welcome to the after party. Like SNL. Perfect. Thank you for listening. We'll see you guys next week. And what she said. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, guys. I thought you were going to say bye. Bye. Bye. Nice.