20. Mystery Theme: Waffle House Massacres
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Hi everyone, welcome back to Binged. Now, since the word binge is as associated with food as it is nowadays with media, we're going back to our word roots this morning and opening the griddle for this episode's pair of stories. If you live in the South, if you live in one of the Southern U.S. states, I don't have to explain to you what the Waffle House is.

You know, the Waffle House is as iconic for you as In-N-Out is for Californians or White Castle for New Yorkers and Midwesterners.

People travel far and wide to eat the Waffle House. When celebrities from in and out land visit the South, they sometimes post pics on social media of themselves crowded into booths over mountainous plates of food at the Waffle House. It's a cultural institution. But one feature of the Waffle House that the chain might not want to play up is a

is that it's seemingly a magnet for violence, especially in recent years.

Videos of late night Waffle House brawls have gone so viral that even Saturday Night Live just did a sketch lampooning this phenomenon. Even celebrities have found themselves in Waffle House melees. TMZ broke the story and dropped the surveillance cam video in 2008 when Kid Rock got into a two-fisted free-for-all at a Waffle House in Atlanta.

But maybe the chain isn't so ashamed of its rough and tumble reputation. After all, it mentions the Kid Rock Brawl on its own website. Maybe the Waffle House is just the modern day equivalent of a Western saloon.

And although it doesn't serve alcohol, it's open 24 hours a day. And for many inebriated souls, it's the go-to place after the bars close. It's like the eerie warm glow of those yellow block-lettered signs is a mothlight for booze-crossed eyes and aggro impulses. Sadly, however, late-night drunken brawls aren't the worst kind of violence the Waffle House has seen.

If you'll notice, the title of our episode is Waffle House Massacres, plural. And that's because there's been more than one massacre at a Waffle House, if you can believe it. The first Waffle House restaurant opened in Georgia in 1955, co-founded by Joe Rogers, a short order cook, and Tom Forkner, a realtor.

Other locations soon followed, and by the late 1960s, Waffle House had become a fast-growing chain, with 27 locations and counting across at least eight states, including Florida. The Waffle House in Davie, Florida opened in the mid-1970s.

and by the 21st century, after nearly three decades of continuous operation, it was showing its age. The tiles of its panel ceilings were yellow stained with decades of tobacco. The decor was as dated as the sounds on the jukebox, which included such original in-house numbers as, I'm going back to the Waffle House, there are raisins in my toast, and grill operator.

Situated adjacent to a Shoney's restaurant, which was the kind of place you could catch an early bird special at the buffet if you were over 65, the Davey Waffle House served all kinds. Senior citizens from the area condominiums, students at nearby colleges like Nova Southeastern University, Florida Atlantic University, and Broward Community College, tourists staying at the comfort suites next door,

and even truck drivers as this Waffle House was just off State Road 84, 595, the Florida Turnpike, and Interstate 95. The Davey Waffle House had operated pretty much continuously since its opening in the 70s. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, closing only for hurricanes and other unforeseen events.

Unforeseen events like the one that occurred on the morning of March 11th, 2002. The overnight crew that morning consisted of Willie, the cook, and two waitresses, Christina and Barbara. The dining room was empty. It was 4 a.m., the deadest hour of the day. And the three employees were preparing the restaurant for the breakfast rush.

Barbara Nunn was doing double duty as both a cook as well as a waitress at the Davey Waffle House that morning. Barbara was 38 years old and rebuilding her life after some dark times. She had moved to South Florida from Iowa just in June of the previous year.

She came to South Florida to start fresh with her two children after spending many years of her life in prison on a second-degree murder conviction. In 1983, when Barbara was only 19, she had an argument with her boyfriend while they were home in their apartment.

That argument came to an end when she took a butcher knife and drove it into her boyfriend's chest. And he died. She told the court during her trial that her boyfriend was abusive and beat her on several occasions. When she was pregnant, he even kicked her in the stomach. The jury and judge weren't sympathetic though. She was handed a 50-year prison sentence.

In 1991, Barbara was paroled to a work release program, but freedom was rocky for her. She ended up returning to prison in 1997 on a theft charge and got paroled again two years later. Now in South Florida, she had redefined herself as a mother and a hard worker.

Time had softened some of her edges and matured her, and her kids were everything to her. So she was grateful to her Waffle House job, and the regular customers there adored her. She had successfully turned her life around. Willy Absolu, the cook at the restaurant that morning, was 29 years old. And like Barbara, he also had two children. But unlike Barbara, he'd left them behind with his wife, back home, back home in Haiti,

which he'd fled for the greener grass and more abundant opportunities that America promised. And once he was here, it didn't take long for him to get settled. He was earning a modest living, working two jobs, one during the day as a barber and the other as a cook at Waffle House. He sent most of his earnings after expenses back home to Haiti for his wife and two children.

so they could have comforts he wasn't able to provide living among the economic squalor of his home country. In fact, just earlier that night, Willie had called his family back home to let them know more money would be on the way soon.

And the youngest of the three employees was waitress Christina De La Rosa. She was just 17 years old and also a parent, a mother to a six-month-old baby named Kyle. She also had her share of difficulties in life. She struggled with substance addiction, but she'd recently gotten clean and had been staying clean so she could be the best and most present mother she could be for her precious son.

All three of these workers shared commonalities and struggles. And working together at the Waffle House gave them a space where they could forget their troubles while they served up delicious hash browns, breakfast meats, scrambled eggs, and of course, waffles. That morning, as they readied the restaurant for the breakfast rush, they cleaned the grill, washed the dishes, wiped down the tables, and made sure the bathrooms were clean and fully stocked with toiletries.

It was about four in the morning, like I said, when the front door opened. In walked two men with familiar faces. One was a man named Jimmy Mickle, who used to work at the Davey Waffle House as a cook until about three months earlier and was now a regular customer. The other was Gerard Hosian, or Chip, as everybody called him.

He was Jimmy's roommate, and they also both worked at the same nightclub where Jimmy was the doorman. Barbara sometimes went to this nightclub and Jimmy and Chip would let her in for free. Chip was more or less Jimmy's sidekick. He did pretty much whatever Jimmy told him to do and followed Jimmy around wherever he went. The two men slid into a booth by the window and ordered breakfast. One waffle, two Cokes, and a coffee.

and remained the only ones in the dining room while the rest of the town continued to sleep before the work week began. When they finished breakfast, Jimmy walked outside to Chip's truck while Chip approached the counter to pay the bill, which was totaled $6.15 before tip. Now, before he handed the check to Christina, Chip turned around to look outside toward Jimmy in the parking lot.

And as Christina reached out to take the check from Chip, he suddenly turned around and stuck a gun in her face. "'Please,' the 17-year-old waitress pleaded. "'I have a six-month-old baby. "'Am I going to be able to see him again?'

Chip nodded and assured her that she would. Just then, Jimmy came back inside with a bolt cutter. He walked at a quick pace toward the restrooms, hugging the wall the entire way, never saying anything to Chip, nor vice versa. Chip ordered the three employees into the kitchen at gunpoint. They filed in one by one, and that's when they saw Jimmy Mickle using the bolt cutter to cut the padlock on the storage area.

Now, at this point, all five of them, the three employees and the two men, walked outside. Are we going to be okay? Barbara asked. Jimmy didn't respond. Chip then directed the three employees at gunpoint to get inside the back freezer. Once the door closed behind them, Barbara Nunn knew they were going to die. Jimmy began cutting the padlocks to various cash drawers using his bolt cutter.

Chip Hosian returned to the freezer a short time after stealing the employees inside and demanded each of the workers give him their cell phones, but none of them had any on them. So he then shut the door again, once again closing them inside. Christina was scared. I'm so cold, she said to Barbara. Am I going to see my son again? A minute or so later, Chip came back and commanded them to put their money on the shelf.

barbara had about 40 on her christina had about 150 and willie the cook had nothing they put their money on the shelf like chip asked he took the money pocketed it and then slammed the door shut again barbara's feeling of dread grew more intense they're gonna kill us she told her co-workers

Willie assured them that wasn't going to happen. Don't worry, he said as he put his arms around the two frightened women. Everything will be okay. They're not going to hurt you. But Barbara knew it in her bones. I can identify them, she said. I know their names. They're going to kill us. I mean, these two men were regulars.

Mere seconds later, before they could devise any kind of plan or strategy, the freezer door swung open. It was Chip. "'Turn around and get down on your knees,' he told the three workers, "'and put your hands on your heads.'

"You don't have to do this," Barbara pleaded, facing Chip while the other two employees complied. Chip again shouted at Barbara to turn around, but she continued begging him not to kill them. He barked at her to turn around once again before he then raised his gun toward Barbara and, as she turned to dodge it, fired a round into the back of her head. She went down instantly.

He then pointed the gun at Willie, who stretched his arm out in front of him in a vain attempt to shield himself from the oncoming bullet. Chip fired and it passed through Willie's arm as he was trying to defend himself and then entered his neck. Chip fired once again into Willie's head. His body went slack. By this point, Christina was screaming and scrambling across the floor trying to hide beneath a rack, but she couldn't escape.

Chip Hosian shot her twice, once in her neck and once in her head. He then walked away. Once the two men were satisfied all three witnesses were dead and they got all the money in the restaurant, Jimmy Mickle and Chip Hosian left, leaving three motionless employees on the floor of the kitchen. But then something miraculous happened.

Barbara opened her eyes and started moving. She realized she wasn't dead, or at least not yet. Willie's legs were on top of her, so she kicked them aside, and while she barely had the strength to crawl out of the freezer, she still managed it. With blood leaking from her head, she stumbled out of the restaurant and staggered over to the gas station across the parking lot, pleading with the night attendant for his help.

Together, they phoned 911, and then Barbara called her sister and her mother. Police and paramedics soon arrived, and as the helicopter was being arranged and medics were tending to her head wound in the meantime, Barbara gave police a taped statement from inside an ambulance. She told them...

It was Jimmy Mickle, a former employee of their Waffle House, and his friend, whose name she couldn't remember in that moment. Her head was still ringing from the bullet that was fired into it. Then the helicopter arrived and airlifted Barbara to Memorial Regional Hospital. While she was being treated, Barbara was shown a photo lineup, and she identified Jimmy Mickle and Chip Hosian as the two men responsible.

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Meanwhile, Chip went to a convenience store and used the stolen cash to buy a pair of money orders for $411.56 each, while a surveillance camera captured him in a video that would later be used as evidence at his trial. A few hours later, he and Jimmy went to Walmart to buy new shoes so they could throw out the ones they'd worn at the Waffle House during their crime. Surely, Jimmy and Chip thought they'd be getting away with what they had done.

They believed all three employees were dead. So imagine Jimmy's surprise when, as he was relaxing at home that night, the cops busted into his trailer and arrested him for first-degree murder.

And then Chip's surprise the next morning when he was found hiding out at his parents' home 140 miles away on the opposite coast of Florida and taken away in handcuffs in front of his two small children who lived with his parents. Bullet casings collected from inside the Waffle House freezer and the bullets recovered from the victims were matched to a handgun found inside Chip Hosian's truck. And two of the locks that were cut were

were also found inside his truck. Both men confessed upon being taken into custody after being advised that one of their victims had lived and had identified them. But each of the two men told a different story. In his statement to detectives, Jimmy Mickle claimed it was all his roommate Chip's idea. He said he'd woken up at 3 a.m. that morning and then Chip told him he was hungry and wanted a waffle.

So together they went to the Waffle House, Jimmy claimed. And when they finished eating, Chip went to pay while Jimmy went outside. But then when he returned to the restaurant, Jimmy claimed he saw his friend pointing a gun at the waitress, directing the employees into the kitchen. That's when Chip ordered him, he claimed, to get the bolt cutters from his truck.

When he was back inside, he said he heard some loud thumps, but he didn't think it was gunfire. He said he thought it was heavy boxes being moved. He said he then went back inside, cut the padlocks to the manager's office and cash drawers, and put the money in a white plastic bag that Chip held open for him.

And once all the money was in the bag, they returned to their trailer. It was on the drive back, Jimmy told detectives, when he and Chip were talking about the problem of the employees knowing who they were, that Chip told him he had, quote, taken care of those employees. Jimmy claimed he was absolutely shocked and didn't know what to do. That he'd only gone along with Chip's robbery to, quote, be cool.

So that was Jimmy's statement. But in Chip's version of events, it was Jimmy who masterminded the Waffle House massacre. And it was Jimmy who told him that they couldn't leave any witnesses. In effect, giving Chip the directive to commit a triple homicide. And Chip's version squared with what Barbara Nunn, who was now recovering from her gunshot wound, told detectives.

Interestingly, neither of the two men had criminal records, but both were deeply in debt, had multiple evictions apiece, and lawsuits for non-payment of child support and credit card debt. Both men were charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and armed robbery each. Most of Jimmy or Chip's loved ones couldn't believe it. Jimmy's mother insisted he doesn't have a violent bone in him.

And Chip Hojin's ex-wife, while admitting he had a bad temper, never imagined he would do something like this, participate in a would-be triple murder. Though Jimmy's ex-wife knew he had a violent side to him, a scary side, she was so frightened of him that she had taken out a restraining order. At Jimmy's trial, Barbara testified that she believed Jimmy was the mastermind of the robbery and double murder.

And the judge acknowledged this to Jimmy in his sentencing, telling him that Chip had just done his bidding and done as directed by him. He reminded Jimmy how he kept telling Chip, no witnesses, no witnesses, no witnesses, making it clear he wanted these three people dead. But Jimmy never admitted to this and he never expressed any remorse for what he'd done.

The judge handed him down the maximum sentence, five consecutive life terms. But Chip, Chip received an even harsher sentence for his role in the crime. He was sentenced to death. Barbara Nunn recovered and eventually moved back to Iowa where she was from.

After the gunshot wound to the head, which fractured her skull, she was plagued by chronic headaches and she suffered partial loss of her vision, hearing, and sense of smell. In 2018, Chip Hojan returned to court for resentencing due to a change in Florida's death penalty laws.

Namely, the jury in Chip's trial did not unanimously recommend the death penalty. Three of the 12 jurors voted against it, and the change in law now requires a unanimous recommendation. So a new sentencing hearing was ordered. Not that Chip Hosian even wanted it. He wrote a letter to the judge explaining he'd grown accustomed to death row and wanted to stay there. But the hearing was required by law.

Barbara Nunn, 16 years after being shot in the head by this man, returned to Florida to yet again testify against Chip to make sure the original verdict he received in 2003 at his original trial was upheld. It was not an easy thing for Barbara to do. At the first trial, Chip's attorneys presented her criminal history in an attempt to discredit her, re-victimizing her in the process.

But the resentencing hearing resulted in the verdict being upheld. This time, the jury was unanimous in their recommendation. The real hero in all of this is definitely Barbara Nunn. She's a survivor in every sense of the word. Now, I'd love to tell you all that this was the only multiple murder that ever went down at a Waffle House. But the unfortunate truth is, it's not.

In fact, it's not even the deadliest multiple murder at a Waffle House.

This dubious distinction came to be on April 22nd, 2018, in the early morning hours at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee, less than three weeks, ironically, before CrimeCon, the annual true crime convention. It was 3.19 in the morning. Really, it was still the night of the Saturday before it. And outside a Waffle House in the neighborhood of Antioch on Nashville's south side,

A deeply disturbed man named Travis Rain King was sitting in his truck in the parking lot, biding his time. The dining room was crowded with people who spilled out of the bars seeking carbs and grease to chase a night of liquor. Rain King sat and watched the people inside. And after about four minutes, Rain King exited his truck completely naked, except for a green jacket, toting an AR-15 style rifle.

As he walked toward the restaurant, he passed two stunned people in the parking lot. He raised his rifle and fired at both of those people. They dropped to the ground and died. He didn't even know their names, and they didn't know his. For him, it was like a video game. Like, nothing. For them, it was a highly concentrated jolt of shock, terror, worry, and the onset of the realization they were losing consciousness.

That would be the last thing they would ever experience.

Travis Reinking then walked inside the restaurant. He continued firing at every human figure he saw. He hit two people. One of them, Tareen C. Sanderland, the Waffle House cook, died instantly. The other one, a 21-year-old customer named Diebony Groves, died hours later at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which was where four additional people inside the restaurant would be treated for gunshot wounds.

Those in the packed dining area who weren't hit by bullets were hit by shards of glass as bullets hit the restaurant's windows and shattered them. 29-year-old James Shaw Jr. had been eating at the Waffle House that morning when Rain King first began shooting. Luckily for him, he was in the restroom when he first heard what sounded like firecrackers, followed by screams and commotion that made it clear what he was hearing wasn't firecrackers.

he opened the door and lingered behind the wall. He was able to see the reflection of the gunman in the restaurant's front windows and waited for an opportunity to step in. And as the gunman moved closer to him, James bravely darted from the bathroom area, rushed the shooter, managing to get the rifle out of the man's hands, tossing it over the counter before the man then fled. Totally nude at this point as his jacket had flown off him in the exit.

The two people shot in the parking lot were rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but they could not be saved. They were identified as 20-year-old Joe R. Perez and 23-year-old Akilah DaSilva.

Two additional gunshot victims, Shanita Waggoner, 21, of Nashville, and Sherita Henderson, 24, of Antioch, were treated for their injuries and survived. Police were able to quickly identify the gunman as he'd left his vehicle behind in the parking lot. His jacket was recovered and it contained two magazines of ammo.

So everyone in the restaurant that morning who survived owed a debt of gratitude to James Shaw because this gunman clearly intended to inflict a lot more devastation than he was able to pull off.

An all-out manhunt was launched to find Travis Reinking. His face was plastered all over the news. A police helicopter circled the Antioch neighborhood but were unable to spot him. A tracker dog followed the suspect's scent only a short distance from the restaurant before losing the trail.

A few hours after the shooting, Metro Nashville police tweeted, "A man believed to be Travis Rain King was last seen in a wood line near Discovery at Mountain View Apartments on Mountain Springs Drive near the Waffle House. This man was seen wearing black pants and no shirt." It was quickly learned that Travis Rain King was no stranger to law enforcement.

Nine months earlier, he had been arrested near the White House by the Secret Service for unlawful entry. He had crossed a security barrier and later revealed that he'd wanted to meet with the president. I'm a sovereign citizen, he explained to the officer, and I have a right to inspect the grounds.

In the state of Illinois where he lived, his firearms authorization was revoked and four guns, including an AR-15 style rifle, like the one he brought to the Waffle House, were seized from him. Those guns were later returned to Jeffrey Reinking, Travis's father, with the explicit understanding that they were not to be returned to Travis. But Jeffrey did not obey this. He later returned these weapons to Travis.

So it was obvious that even without the AR-15 he left behind at Waffle House, Travis Rain King was still armed and very dangerous. Rain King tragically was severely mentally ill. He was schizophrenic and suffered from paranoia and delusions. He was obsessed with Taylor Swift and frequently wrote her letters. When he worked as a crane operator, one of many jobs he was unable to hold down, he told his coworkers he was going to marry Taylor Swift.

He also wrote to Oprah Winfrey asking for her help in determining if Taylor Swift was really communicating directly to him through the internet or if this was all a delusion. He told Oprah he'd gone to a Taylor Swift concert and that the singer had mouthed the word hello to him in the middle of a song.

And then he admitted in the letter to Oprah that while he briefly lived in Colorado, he drove from there to a home he believed Taylor Swift occupied in Los Angeles. But when he got there, the home was under construction and no one was inside of it.

But then he seemed to also have a bit of a grudge towards the star as he alleged in his letter to Oprah that Taylor Swift had stolen what he described as valuable intellectual property from him, though he never explicitly stated what that intellectual property was.

This letter was returned to sender and at least one letter to Taylor Swift was never sent and was found inside a safe in Reinking's apartment. Before the Waffle House massacre in 2016, Reinking threatened suicide and complained that Taylor Swift was stalking him and hacking his phone.

When police responded to his threats of suicide, he told them Swift had hacked into his bank account and his Netflix account and asked him to meet her at the Dairy Queen. When he got there, he told police Taylor Swift then ran off. After living in Colorado in 2017, Reinking moved back to Illinois and lived in an apartment that was above his father's crane rental business.

In June of that year, an employee of his father's crane business called the sheriff's office after Rankin appeared in the office wearing a pink dress and brandishing a rifle yelling, is this what you effing want? And not long after, he dove into a public pool while wearing a woman's pink house coat. And while he was swimming, he took off the coat and swam around in his underwear. After exiting the pool, Travis then yelled at the lifeguards, I'm a man, before whipping out his genitalia to prove it.

So all this and his father, Jeffrey, still somehow saw it as reasonable to return the seized guns to his son. And shortly after this, Travis Reinking moved to Nashville. And it wasn't long before he had trouble there too. When he went into a car dealership and somehow managed to steal a BMW from the car lot, leading police on a chase. After he eluded them, they were able to use the vehicle's GPS to track it to Reinking's apartment complex and recover it.

But because they didn't know his identity, they didn't arrest him at the time. Then, just a few days later, he shot up the Antioch Waffle House, which immediately landed him on the most wanted list at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

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Let's get back into the episode. Late Sunday evening, the same day of the shooting, a man contacted police after finding an empty laptop bag which contained an ID card with Rain King's name on it. This was in a neighboring county and it indicated that Rain King was probably hiding out in this area. But they didn't find him there and didn't know if the laptop bag had been dropped off before or after the shooting.

Then the next morning, a construction worker observed a man resembling Rain King wearing a backpack entering a wooded area about a mile from the Antioch Waffle House. Police swarmed the area and discovered Rain King there.

who immediately laid down flat on the ground and surrendered. After he was taken into custody, the backpack he had been wearing was searched and was found to contain a bottle of water, sunscreen, a Bible, bars of silver, and a .45 caliber handgun and ammo. Because of Travis Reinking's severe mental illness and untreated schizophrenia, he was found by a judge to be incompetent to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric institution for further evaluation.

After being treated for a few months, he was then deemed competent for trial. The Nashville Attorney General, Glenn Funk, had been on record opposing the death penalty, so he did not seek the death penalty against Travis Reinking, who pled not guilty to all 16 counts against him, which included murder and assault with a deadly weapon. On the day of his trial, he then changed that plea to "not guilty by reason of insanity."

The jury deliberated for five hours and ultimately delivered a verdict of guilty on all counts. Rankin was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. But you know who I think is equally, if not even more responsible for the bloodbath at the Nashville Waffle House that night? Jeffrey Rankin, Travis's father. This could have been avoidable if Jeffrey had not given his severely delusional son's seized, prohibited firearms back to him.

and if Travis had gotten the help he needed. But returning four firearms, including an AR-15 style assault rifle, to someone who had exhibited the kind of behavior and disregard for the laws of society that Travis had was criminally irresponsible. And a jury agreed. Jeffrey Rankin was charged with illegal delivery of a firearm to a person who had been treated for mental illness within the past five years.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Now, before we end, I wanted to tell you something. While researching these cases, I came across a article called 10 Disturbing Waffle House Deaths. And I learned that there have been multiple other murders at Waffle House restaurants.

Like the murder-suicide that took place outside a Waffle House in Raleigh, North Carolina a week before Christmas 2018. A man named Jason Griffith found his wife with her lover and her mother leaving the Waffle House when he shot all three of them, drove home, and then took his own life.

His wife survived, but the other two victims didn't. Then in April 2019, a generous soul named Craig Brewer entered a Waffle House in Gainesville, Florida at around 3 in the morning. See, 3 in the morning. We're learning is a risky time to show up at a Waffle House. Craig Brewer entered the Waffle House and began walking from table to table, handing out $20 bills and picking up people's tabs. And this wasn't the first time he'd done this. This was a thing he liked to do.

But one diner didn't appreciate Brewer's generosity. She argued with him and threatened to spit in his face. Then the woman's companion, a man named Ezekiel Hicks, got up from the table, went to his car, fetched his Glock 9mm pistol, and went back inside, popping off several rounds into Craig Brewer's head, killing him.

Miraculously, although these two men didn't know each other, they had a cousin in common, a woman named Deborah Jenkins, who was shocked when she learned that one cousin killed her other cousin. Ezekiel Hicks was convicted for manslaughter and carrying a concealed weapon and sentenced to 25 years in prison. And after this, in Biloxi, Mississippi in 2015, Thanksgiving night around 1:00 AM, a Waffle House customer named Johnny Max Mount lit a cigarette while sitting in his booth.

When the hostess, 52-year-old Julie Brightwell, told him that smoking wasn't permitted inside their restaurant, he pulled a 9mm handgun from underneath his shirt and shot the hostess in the head.

He was scheduled to stand trial in 2022, but that trial has seemingly been delayed as there's been no news about this case since November 2021. But so many of these Waffle House murders have the late night, early morning hours in common. It's always after midnight, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. I'm starting to feel like Waffle House at 3 in the morning is like the Bermuda Triangle of late night dining experiences. So,

Maybe stay away from the waffle houses in the wee hours. These are cautionary tells. I don't know. Well, that'll do for this week's Binged. Oh, what's that you say? What's the theme for this pair of episodes? Is it breakfast chains, waffles, restaurant massacres? You know, I'm going to keep that a secret. You'll find out when you tune in next week and discover what the common thread between this week's and next week's stories are. I'll see you then.