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[Assistant] A journey in the pronunciation department, but yeah, here's the thing to our Swedish listeners. Um, Tobias Forge, if you're listening, that includes you. But of course I meticulously went through


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[Assistant] And I tried my damnedest on each of these pronunciations. Can confirm. Yep. I said them out loud several times. I listened to several versions of the pronunciation. With no warning.


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[Assistant] It's, we, we have a very, like, obviously everybody thinks of the Salem witch trials. Yeah. Which, again, wild.


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[Assistant] In the US, not a scarier or more...


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[Assistant] Cited example of mass hysteria and scapegoating than the Salem witch trials in 1692 to 1693.


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[Assistant] Dived into. Dived into. Dived. Dove. Dove it. Dove into. Oh no.


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[Assistant] But either way, while countries with high rates of accusations and executions like Germany and England tend to kind of be the thing that people focus on when they think about Western interest in witch hunts, they were definitely not the only European countries where supposed and alleged witches were pursued with much vigor. Evidently.


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[Assistant] In the Swedish parish of Torsjörker, I believe that's how you say it.


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[Assistant] Uh, for example, years of hysteria over witchcraft and black magic led to a massive trial known as the Torschacher


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[Assistant] Unbelievable amount of people were executed in one single day. Oh, in one day? One day. Damn. And we'll get to it.


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[Assistant] Let's talk about fear of witchcraft in Europe at the time, because it really is a wild thing to peek through. Fear of witchcraft is lame. So, throughout the early modern period of 1350 to 1500, so this is way back. I like that it said early modern period of 1350.


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[Assistant] European's understanding of witchcraft and sorcery was a little different to what it would become.


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[Assistant] In the centuries that came after. Witchcraft was considered a crime and could result in the death penalty. But accusations of sorcery were seldom taken literally. And executions of supposed witches were very uncommon.


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[Assistant] Uh, this is not to suggest that, you know, Swedish people, or Europeans for that matter, didn't take the subject seriously, but they just kind of adhered to the Catholic Church's position, and the Catholic Church's position at the time was that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Belief in or practice of witchcraft or black magic was the product of devil induced delusions and was considered heresy. Oh!


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[Assistant] So, the biggest change to how Europeans understood witchcraft came around 1486, and that was with the publication of a truly wild book called The Malleus Maleficarum.


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[Assistant] They basically said that sorcery and witchcraft were a direct result of satanic influence. So the church is saying it's heresy. Can't believe in that shit.


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[Assistant] But he's saying, oh no no no, Satan himself has induced you to do this.


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[Assistant] And he was, and so this person, this Heinrich here, Kramer,


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[Assistant] Was saying that it presented a very real threat to God-fearing people everywhere.


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[Assistant] And in response to that threat, Kramer advocated that the use of


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[Assistant] Like, mind-bending torture. Physical, psychological, emotional torture.


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[Assistant] Now when it was first written, Malleus there was received actually very poorly by the church. They did not like it. They labeled it zealotry.


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[Assistant] They said, this guy's like over the top. Wow. Like we're looking at it as pretty black and white here. He's like, he's going wild. He's really intense. And they vehemently contested Kramer's interpretation of religious texts, which in the book, Malleus Maleficarum,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He uses a lot of different, uh, like,


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[Assistant] You know, he looks at the Bible, he looks at religious texts and he interprets them his own way.


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[Assistant] So although the Catholic doctrine stated that witchcraft and sorcery were a kind of mental illness that was influenced by the devil, those who fell under Satan's influence according to the church could be saved. Okay. So you didn't have to die like you, you could be saved.


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[Assistant] Damn. Kramer's assertion, though, was that a person was a witch and remained a witch once he or she had been accused. Okay. So that's to say that unlike the church, Kramer insisted a person could not be saved from Satan's influence. The only way to solve the problem? Kill the witch. At the end. Well, that makes sense that he believes that because


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[Assistant] A ton. I mean it's a staggering amount of misogyny and profound sexism influenced in this text. That checks. Kramer was


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[Assistant] So misogynistic and sexy. It's unbelievable when you read it. And don't you worry, I'm going to give you a few little excerpts from the text because I read the whole thing.


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[Assistant] There you go. Uh, but according to Kramer, women were far more likely to be witches than men because quote, their flesh is lecherous and their minds feeble.


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[Assistant] What a cunt. So basically they're like, they're, they're lustful and stupid.


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[Assistant] Uhm, Kramer was actually obsessed with the purity of women, and that they should be pure.


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[Assistant] But things that are inherently evil and very inferior to men. But like, have to make them sure. That's very much a modern day serial killer's view, you're right, of women.


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[Assistant] It's wild. It's interesting how those two things like really correlate. But he said because they're so evil inherently and so stupid.


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[Assistant] Uh, because many of the suggested techniques...


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[Assistant] So the result of this popularity was that the public, so those outside of the church, developed extreme and very dangerous and outlandish beliefs about witches that would shape


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Centuries of witch hunts to come. So this is a very powerful book. Did anybody even know who this man was before he wrote this? He just came right on the scene and was like, just like, listen to me. Fuck women and witches. Let's go. I love that everybody fell at their, fell at his feet.


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[Assistant] So would you like to hear a few things from this book? No, but I know that it's necessary. So there's a section that is titled, What sort of women are found to be above all other superstitious and witches? Me. Don't you want to know?


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[Assistant] The answer is any woman who is unfaithful, which remember, that could be like she opened her eyes after blinking and a man happened to be in the room. But the next is that she's ambitious.


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[Assistant] Unfaithful was like looking at another man even? Well back then you could be considered adulterous by just like showing an ankle. That's so wild. Like there was very, the borders there were big. But the next was an ambitious woman.


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[Assistant] Oh, you're fucked. Oops. And the last is if they are lustful. Lame.


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[Assistant] So, she breathes near any other men, she has ambitions, and she fucks. That's like, essentially, witch, witch, witch. What's his name? It literally, uh, Heinrich Kramer. Like, Heinrich, we're here for a good time, not a long time. It literally says in the book, quote,


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[Assistant] It follows that those among ambitious women are more deeply infected who are more hot to satisfy their filthy lust, and such are alteresses


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[Assistant] Fornicatrices and the concubines of the great.


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[Assistant] The concubines of the great. I've never been more flattered. There is also a section called that witches deserve the heaviest punishment above all the criminals in the world.


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[Assistant] Basically they want to confiscate all the witches' things and then decapitate her. That's what they think the punishment should be. Oh my god. Take all her shit and then decapitate her. And worse than any other criminal in the world. Any criminal murderer, child rapist, everything. Like the worst of the worst. It was said that witches couldn't cry. That was the belief.


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[Assistant] Bitch I cry all the time. So interrogators were encouraged to do any manner of fucked up things to force the accused to cry. So then what if they cried? Basically do the worst you can imagine to get them to cry because if they don't then they're a witch. Forget shock. I was just gonna say they're in shock. And that shock can happen.


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[Assistant] Or other reasons why someone wouldn't cry under severe torture, because human beings do have different ways of expressing emotion.


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[Assistant] Now lawfully, they were told that when they go to a witch's home, to uhm, an alleged witch, to pick her up after she's been accused, they were told to physically pick up an accused witch at their home and put her on a plank or in a basket to carry her out of the home. A basket? Without allowing her feet to touch the ground.


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[Assistant] If she was allowed to touch the ground, she would be given powers by the devil through her feet, I guess. Oh, cause hell. Which, these dudes had, this dude had weird ginks, I think.


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[Assistant] And if they kept her from touching the ground, then she would have to confess because she would lose her powers. And they said in this book that a lot of time before being burned alive.


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[Assistant] Witches would ask to just touch the ground one last time.


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[Assistant] And that wasn't because they were about to die a horrifically painful and senseless death, but they said it's because they wanted their powers to kill everyone with lightning. No. Everything I just said is in that.


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[Assistant] And they were like, nah, you wanna kill everyone with lightning with your feet.


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[Assistant] Like it would be hilarious if this wasn't real and if they didn't use it. Exactly. Like when you think about the words themselves, you're like, that's fucking hilarious. And then you think the power behind those words and you're like, oh fuck, people took this as true. Like.


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[Assistant] There was a belief that the devil gave witches powers to deal with torture without crying or confessing the truth. So again, if she stayed quiet, shock, or doesn't confess, then she is being helped by the devil.


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[Assistant] Well and then if she confesses though, it's because God has compelled via a holy angel to force the devil to desert her. So either way she's a witch, just one side says that the devil's still helping her and the second one says that apparently the devil deserted her.


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[Assistant] You're not really rooting for your guy here. Why would God compel a holy angel to force the devil to desert her?


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[Assistant] Uh, when they were taken, according to this book, they are to be stripped completely. Uhm, and that is to look for, obviously, witch marks. Like, that's a thing we hear from the Salem witch trials. But also, to look for the limbs of unbaptized children hidden in their clothes.


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[Assistant] Well, if they found anything that they believed to be a witch's mark, or they found any instrument of witchcraft during the stripping, uhm, he literally wrote that they would gather up some quote, honest men, zealous for the face.


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[Assistant] They said you have to try to look disturbed as you torture this woman.


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[Assistant] Or do that and promise her imprisonment but then later burn her unexpectedly. Take her out of her cell and just burn her.


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[Assistant] Or the judge could promise her her life, and then at the last second go, oops, a new judge is stepping in to take my place, and the new judge would say, you're, you're gonna die. This is just like psychological physics.


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[Assistant] It says the accused should be frequently exposed to torture, beginning with quote, the more gentle of them.


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[Assistant] And a notary is to be present for the torture and write down how she was tortured and her answers to each level of torture.


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[Assistant] Then if she confesses under torture, they bring her directly to another room and ask her again so that she doesn't quote confess only under the great stress of torture.


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[Assistant] If she doesn't confess after torture, then other quote engines of torture should be brought in by the judge, and she will be told that she will have to endure those if she does not confess. It says quote, if then she is not induced by terror to confess,


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[Assistant] The torture must be continued on the second and third day, but not repeated at the present time unless there should be some fresh indication of its probable success.


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[Assistant] And he said they need to be shaved in parts where they hide their devil's mask. Yep. This guy is fucked on every level.


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[Assistant] Now rule of thumb for judges, uh, don't use the same old torture.


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[Assistant] So you either don't cry and you're with the devil, or you cry and they go, that's fake. You just can't win. You wiped your eyes with spit.


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[Assistant] You cannot let the accused see the judge before he sees her, because this is a method of bewitching him.


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[Assistant] Okay, in fact, he says what you should do is bring the accused into the trial backwards all the time.


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[Assistant] Uh, oh, and the judge should always wear salt around his neck. Consecrated salt, that's holy, obviously. Uhm, oh, and also they should strap holy relics and shit to their naked bodies. But it's the witches that are weird. For sure.


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[Assistant] So they would shave their heads as well? Everything, yea. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] Uh, that's when everyone else is gathered together at holy mass to await their savior. So usually a confession can be tortured out of the accused then, you know, when no one else is around. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Uh, if she endures all torture you can come up with while drinking brewskis at a local tavern, then the judge is allowed to bring her somewhere else.


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[Assistant] Where she will be fed and given drink and treated okay for a minute.


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[Assistant] Uhm, then the judge comes in and speaks nicely to her, telling her to confess to him in confidence, and he will promise under God to be merciful.


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[Assistant] So he's not lying when he tells her he'll be merciful. He's not saying I'll be merciful to you.


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[Assistant] He's saying, I'll be merciful. And that means to him or the state.


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[Assistant] Wow. Uh, they would subject a wish, a wish to purgation, I believe is how you say it. What is that? Uh, that is forcibly inducing bowel movements for cleansing purposes. So they would give her some kind of laxative to completely clear her out. Why? Cleansing.


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[Assistant] If you don't get burned by that hot iron bar that you have to carry a mile, then you're innocent. So let's give it to Heinrich and see if he gets burned.


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[Assistant] When they donk you that you were innocent, but you were dead, you drowned, and if you exploded, then you were guilty.


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[Assistant] And we talk about witchprickers, which we'll get to, and they also fucked with those too.


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[Assistant] So, while the Malleus Maleficarum may have proven profoundly influential when it came to


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[Assistant] Kind of getting the idea in Europeans' minds of what a witch is. It wouldn't have been over what they wanted you to think a witch is. It wouldn't have been anywhere near as influential had it not been for the Protestant Reformation in 1517.


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[Assistant] These denominations posed a direct threat to the consolidated power of the Catholic Church.


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[Assistant] Across Europe. I'm sure a lot of people know about this. I remember that. Large destabilizing effect on the people of Europe.


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[Assistant] Sweden was a very religious nation, so the Church of Sweden largely rejected the ideas of Reformation at the time.


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[Assistant] They lumped the movement in with supposed, you know, heretics, their beliefs, and you know, they're basically like pagan ancestry kind of stuff.


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[Assistant] He addressed witchcraft directly in his Opus, I think it's Vitae? Vitae? Vitae? I think it is Opus Vitae. History of the Northern Peoples, in which, quote, he demonizes pagan beliefs as well as Lutheran beliefs conquering Sweden.


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[Assistant] Uhm, Gothas followed Kramer's lead by interpreting witchcraft not as a metaphor or some kind of vague threat.


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[Assistant] Uh, but as a real and actual danger in the lives of Swedish people.


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[Assistant] For example, among a lot of the, one of the many claims in the history of the Northern peoples was that Blokula, a supposed gathering place for witches on the Sabbath in Swedish folklore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wasn't folklore at all, but was in fact a real place and thing where witches flew to perform a Sabbath and cavort with the devil.


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[Assistant] Now I looked up what Belocula is, it is an island, it's an actual island, in the Kalmar Strait, and it's referred now to, now, by its name Bloyjongfrin, which means the blue maiden.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it's known as a gathering place for, you know, you can go and visit it, like tourists can go see it now. Uhm, but it was known in folklore as a gathering place for witches for hundreds of years. And there's something called the Trojaborg Labyrinth on this island.


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[Assistant] And if you look it up, it's cool. It's a series of stones in the form of a maze, like a labyrinth. And it's said to be created by witches over hundreds of years of rituals. Well that's cool.


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[Assistant] And it's like a, it's a labyrinth that like bends in on itself, like snakes back in on itself. Tell me what it's called again? The Trojaborg Labyrinth. T-R-O-G-A-B-O-R-G.


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[Assistant] Uh, most people believe it's from pagan times and probably was created during fertility rituals and stuff like that, like, you know, earth rituals.


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[Assistant] Very cool shit. This is really beautiful. It's a national park now and if you're visiting, just like you know, it is very much advised not to take any rocks from that Trojoborg labyrinth.


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[Assistant] But people are stupid and apparently get a shit ton of bad luck if they do tempt fate and they end up coming back to return them. Don't mess with shit like that. So don't take shit like from that stuff.


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[Assistant] Uh, as a text, Gothus's history of the northern peoples was not really intended just to address witchcraft or sorcery.


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[Assistant] Directly, it's just kinda one short passage in that text. It's about a lot of other things. But along with the larger issues of heresy that are in the book,


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[Assistant] It did have a big influence on the subsequent books that dealt with directly with witchcraft, in Laurentius Polinus Gothus' Ethicae Christiani.


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[Assistant] And Ericus Yohannes Priets' Magica in Contrix, for example. Both authors echo the sentiment and ideas of history of the Northern peoples by talking about witchcraft as a very real and present threat.


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[Assistant] In fact, in the ma- I think it's majean contracts, I'm pretty sure that's how you say it.


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[Assistant] It draws heavily on Kramer and Gothess' ideas and it identifies maleficarum, idolatry, and devil worship as types of heresy.


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[Assistant] And that all of those should be punished by death. And that's it.


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[Assistant] And he also echoes Kramer's belief that women were far more likely to be seduced into sorcery.


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[Assistant] Uh, Maleficarum, by the way, I think, I think you mentioned that altogether it loosely translates malice, maleficarum to hammer of witches. Yeah. Maleficarum, um, Maleficium.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is loosely defined as an act of witchcraft performed with the intention of causing damage or injury, the resultant harm.


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[Assistant] So they would say that maleficium was something that witches did.


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[Assistant] Now, it's also worth noting that although Christianity had firmly taken root across Europe by the 17th century,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And completely replaced older belief systems that had been labeled pagan heresy at that time.


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[Assistant] That doesn't mean the old ways had been forgotten entirely. Pre-Christian beliefs in magic and, you know, a magical realm and, you know, fae, all that stuff, they had just kind of transformed from the real world belief of that into kind of folklore that was viewed through


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The now Christian lens as like malevolent and menacing. Okay.


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[Assistant] So it turned. Yeah. It turned from being this magical thing that


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[Assistant] That people actually believed was real and to like, no, this means bad stuff.


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[Assistant] Now although this is incredibly complicated, obviously, one of the most obvious forms of this transformation can be seen in the folktales that had women who were once benevolent, like healers, and you know, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only physical, spiritual, and psychological threats, but one that is female.


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[Assistant] So by the mid-17th century, the Catholic Church, which again, had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wild hysteria presented in the Malleus Maleficarum. And that was because it was after the Reformation. And they needed to get back that power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and they were also starting to get into the other texts that we mentioned, about like, gothists and, you know, priestess texts. Uhm, to be clear, the church had again, for centuries, pursued heretics with vigor, obviously. Uhm, and they'd use such people as scapegoats, that was a thing. Uhm, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By embracing this new propaganda of Kramer and others like him,


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[Assistant] Good way to do that is just kill everyone. Yeah, didn't, I don't think it really, it's not a great way to go. Now for a period of roughly three centuries beginning with the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum and ending in about 1750, witch hunts and trials across Europe


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, as was the case here in Colonial New England, the witch trials served to restore whatever power the church had lost to new belief systems. But it also gave everybody a new scapegoat in the form of anyone who resisted or defied papal authority. Right. Now in Sweden, as in other countries, the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole idea of the heretic or witch was often projected on those who were kind of still connected to that pre-Christian culture. You know, people who practice herbalism.


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[Assistant] And according to Jenny Tiderman Osterberg from the Swedish Witch Trials, How to Confront Dark Heritage in Smithsonian Magazine,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And connected to the earth and very...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the thing. And twisted it this way. To make it evil. Yeaah. And it was all really to help people, not to hurt anybody. Exactly. And at this, at that time, as far as the church at that time was concerned, only God and those who acted on His behalf. Cause remember, at that time they could choose who acted on His behalf.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and doctors had the ability to cure sickness. So anyone else who tried to do that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only God and doctors and a few priests that decided that they were a direct connected God. They were the only ones who were allowed to heal. That's it.


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[Assistant] And if some woman said, hey, I know how to heal this person and I would love to make their life better by healing them with these things that I grew in my garden, then you're a piece of shit. You're directly challenging the authority of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The man upstairs. These men at that time who were pissed that you came up with a better cure than they ever could. Yep. And so they just kill you.


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[Assistant] It's because they're not doing it. And then they don't want people to rely on women too much. Exactly. It was a wild time.


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[Assistant] Now, we're gonna talk about the Great Noise. Okay. In Sweden, the worst of the witch trials fell between 1668 and 1676 in a period known as the Great Noise. Wow, so not-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Too far before. Right before the Salem one. And in Swedish, it is det stå over sendet.


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[Assistant] I tried, guys. That's 12 over Sunday.


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[Assistant] Fjabud, which was Scandinavian summer farms. Okay. I think it's Fjabud. That one was tough. Fjabud, I believe. I tried. Uh, Scandinavian summer farms. That's how you say them. Farms. But much like the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, the great noise began with the thoughtless accusation of a child.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A young shepherd girl named Gertrude Sven's daughter and her friend Mats Nielsen were tending to a herd and they got in some kind of argument.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, they were young. Gertrude was like 12. So they were kids.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so they were like too focused on their own little squabble and they didn't notice when some of the goats straight away from the herd wandered out into the sandbar in the Dollar River and were like stuck out there. Oh no. Now they were too frightened to go on the, or excuse me, the boy, Matz, was too frightened to go out on the sandbar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he refused to help. Okay. And Gertrude had to wrangle the goats on her own. She did it herself. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later, when they returned to the village, Mats feared that he was going to be made fun of if anyone found out that he was too scared to go out there and recapture the goats. So he decided to undermine Gertrude by telling villagers that he watched her wrangle up the goats because she walked on water.


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[Assistant] So his shitty little ego couldn't handle just being like, I didn't want to go in the water and she went in.


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[Assistant] He's saying this to villagers, and Pastor Lars Elvius hears this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he called Gertrude to the church and began questioning her. Oh my god. And she's 12. And like questioning her. So like, who knows? I mean, what we've seen in the Malleus Maleficarum there, who knows? They were going by it at this point. Uhm, so under duress.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gertrude told the pastor that sh- when she lived in Lily Hardell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A maid by the name of Marette Jean's daughter from a neighboring farm took her and 12 other children to Blocula.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, there were also these assholes, I mentioned it before, called witch-prickers, by the way, uhm, and just speaking of a devil's mark.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, they would be brought in to stab the accused all over their body to see if there was a place where they didn't bleed. Fantastic. Uhm, that was where they claimed that the witch's mark was, in the place that it didn't bleed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, a firm believer in Satan's ability to seduce women into practicing black magic, Elvius, our pastor here, put the twelve-year-old Gertrude on trial for witchcraft.


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[Assistant] 13 kids just had the absolute shit kicked out of them. In public.


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[Assistant] Because she was tortured into naming them. Oh. Yep.


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[Assistant] The maid, though, Morett John's daughter, was less fortunate.


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[Assistant] Based on these false accusations, which again, were born out of Matt Nielsen's childish lies to save his own little ego, the maid was arrested and executed for being a witch.


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[Assistant] And this is what kicked off the great noise. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now, the incident involving Gertrude Sven's daughter not only illustrates the way that witch hunts spread like fucking wildfire.


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[Assistant] But also how the influence of earlier works like Malleus Maleficarum were still fueling hysteria centuries after it was published. In this case, as well as a bunch of others that followed this, a child


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[Assistant] Typically acting out of guilt or shame or boredom made some outrageous accusation. Something that was usually completely impossible like walking on water. Yea, we're looking at you Ann Putnam. And then rather exactly Ann fucking Putnam. We don't forget you. Never.


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[Assistant] It would be, it would be this, and it would just be looked at as like, yep, this is obviously real. Yep, that's for realsies. Nobody questioned it. And this was in part due to the fear of witches spread by the church, but it was also due to Kramer's assertion that once a person is accused of witchcraft, you remain a witch until you can prove that you are not.


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[Assistant] Which you cannot do. This of course put the accused in an impossible position.


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[Assistant] Now at the trial outside Harjah Daylin, Gertrude Sven's daughter accused 19 more village women of witchcraft under torturous interrogation. Gertrude, the 12 year old? Yea. She was being tortured again.


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[Assistant] Uh, yeaah. And then those nineteen village women who were being tortured and interrogated, they accused more women of witchcraft. Because it was like you had to. You had to. They tricked you into it.


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[Assistant] And the trend began spreading to other villages. And now, conscious of how such hysteria could divide communities, the Swedish government responded to the growing rate of accusations by establishing a commission.


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[Assistant] And this commission was priests and government officials, and they were used to address the fears of witches and sorcery.


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[Assistant] According to Titterman, uh, Osterberg, who we mentioned before, the Smithsonian Magazine article. Right. The purpose of the commission was to relieve the public's sense of responsibility for dealing with the problem.


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[Assistant] And they were gonna do this by sending government and church officials, quote, to the most witch-infested areas to free the nation from the fury of Satan.


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[Assistant] Okay. But this only increased the witch hysteria. No way. Spreading to all other parts. I couldn't imagine that. And the trials became a national catastrophe.


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[Assistant] Fucked up, but they were at least trying to make some kind of due process happen here so people weren't just being like...


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[Assistant] Must confirm the sentence. Indisputable evidence was required, which meant a confession.


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[Assistant] The entire village was caught in this frenzy in 1673.


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[Assistant] Because a woman named Kirsten Lahr's daughter was pulled out of her home in front of her children after being accused of witchcraft by local children.


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[Assistant] Siderman Osterberg says, given the rate at which the hysteria had grown in such a small period, it's pretty possible that Lara's daughter and many of the other women in the village expected this to happen, to be honest. But obviously it was unbelievably traumatizing for her and for her children.


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[Assistant] Uh, Kirsten Lahr's daughter's trial before the commission lasted four days. And during this trial, this four day trial, 54 local children and a handful of other locals suspected of witchcraft accused her of sorcery and of participating in black mass at Blockula.


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[Assistant] My god. Now according to one local boy, he said that Kirsten fed him food that turned out to be a live snake and he could feel it moving around in his stomach. And he said, so he says that, that alone is like,


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[Assistant] An angel appeared to me later that day and told me the only way to rid myself of the snake was to go to the Paris priest, priest, confess my sins.


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[Assistant] And I did that, and then what's awesome is I regurgitated the snake after that, so the angel was right, but this bitch, she gave me the snake. Lies.


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[Assistant] During the trial, the boy's story was confirmed by his parents and two other adults. Fuck y'all. This is real fucking life. I did not make that up. That is a real...


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[Assistant] What? Yeaah. What? Yeaah. The other children in the village told similarly just wild stories. Like insane. Yeaah. And they were talking about consorting with serpents, renouncing God, turning their backs on the altar, and this was all Kirsten's fault. Uh, Kirsten, uh,


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[Assistant] She'd already been accused. There's no way to undo it once you've been accused. The toothpaste cannot go back in the tube. At the end of a four day trial, Kirsten was found guilty and sentenced to death by beheading.


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[Assistant] Now, among the many problems with Sweden's witch hunting commissions was that it put


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[Assistant] Like we've already mentioned a billion problems, but one of the off-shoot problems of this commission was that it put an impossible burden even on the, like, just random men that they put on these commissions, because they made them responsible for quelling the growing fears and anxieties of everyone in the village.


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[Assistant] But everyone's getting accused. But that's the thing. So they specifically were being told to root out and eradicate witches by the church. And in that way,


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[Assistant] They were being responsible for proving and dealing with something that was impossible to prove and deal with.


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[Assistant] But then their failure to meet the demands of the state and their neighbors meant that even the best on the commission were ineffective, and at worst, they would then be accused of witchcraft themselves.


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[Assistant] So this was a horrible cycle which pulleds.


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[Assistant] So it's like, and this is not to say that the men on these commissions were great or anything, I'm just saying like, there's so many layers to who got affected by this and who got pulled into this. Like these kids, these kids are not inherently evil kids. No, they're being pushed into it. They're being terrified into this. Like this is all,


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[Assistant] Everyone is working off of fear. And it's fear that's being trickled down by this giant authority that's looming over them.


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[Assistant] And that's, and it's like, look what's happening. Even the, cause I'm even going to give it to these men on the commission. Some of them.


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[Assistant] We're not inherently evil, like before this, but they were just, this was their job. It's an impossible thing for anybody to be involved in. So fucked up. And then they're being told, well, if you don't do this, you're going to be beheaded. And it's like, what the fuck? Like, how does anybody act in this way? I just want to launch myself into the sun. Everyone's just getting pitted.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and that's just to say, like, you know, it was just chaos. It was chaos. Sure mayhem. With zero...


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[Assistant] Men and women, because there were women who were accusing these witches who were just trying to stay out of the, you know? And they're just, they're trying not to get flogged. It's everyone. It's scary. Everyone is basing it out of fear, and then there's those random evil pieces of shit.


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[Assistant] That are in here, just having a fucking party. Because this is what they couldn't wait for. And it's hard to distinguish between everybody, to be quite honest.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so it's scary. Now, this was particularly true in the small village of Torsjökar, which is what we, this is all about. In Sweden's Ångermanland, it is actually spelled Angermanland. I think that's more fun personally. But I think you say it Ångermanland. This whole place sounds like Angermanland. The Ångermanland.


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[Assistant] It does actually. Everyone is an angry man. It really does. In the land. Uh, it's Sweden's Ångermanland province in the northern part of the country. Okay. Uh, in 1674, the commission contracted Laurentius Christoffri Horneas. Another? Wasn't there already a Horneas?


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[Assistant] First mistake. That's always good. Who claimed they could, and it gets worse. Cause he recruited this local boy group that was like...


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[Assistant] We can actually identify those marked by the devil just by looking at their face.


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[Assistant] Good. How? Horneus was like, this seems legit. He was like, this checks. What's kind of interesting though is that he


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[Assistant] So over time, such people, those who capitalized on the hysteria, like we talked about, there were the bad people who were capitalizing on this. There's always the bad people capitalizing. They did become common. But while it may appear that as though these individuals sought to benefit from this unspeakable horror going around them,


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[Assistant] Again, it was more likely that most of them, not the little boys, but some, most of them were trying not to be accused themselves. So it was basically align yourself with the witch hunters or align yourself with the witch. Fuck.


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[Assistant] Also, speaking of witch trials again, go read Slewfoot. It's really good. Uh, by, uh, by Brom.


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[Assistant] That's really good. Vroom. So, either way, whatever their motivations, these boys, which they referred to as Viscosa,


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[Assistant] He was a true believer in the teachings of the church and saw himself as a soldier in this battle against the devil.


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[Assistant] And in a very short amount of time, Horneus had rounded up 71 people in a small parish. 65 of those were women. 65 out of the 71.


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[Assistant] Uh, many of them were elderly or poor. And the accused were all identified by two boys.


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[Assistant] What the fuuuck? This is what's funny though, because one of the boys identified...


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[Assistant] Fuck you, your wife was- I would- I'd be like, no, no, no. No, no, no. He said what he said. He said what he said. He said, Britta, get out there.


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[Assistant] So the trial began October 15th, 1674 in Torschacher. That's like hard to say. It is. Uhm, with Judge Johann Andersen-Humbreyes presiding over all 71 cases.


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[Assistant] Which included residents of Torschacher, Dahl, and E. Tirlanus.


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[Assistant] Uh, all 71 had been accused of practicing witchcraft and abducting children.


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[Assistant] Who were then forced to participate in whatever was happening at Blockula. Okay.


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[Assistant] At the time, the population total for all three villages was 675 people.


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[Assistant] So the accused accounted for more than 10% of everyone over the age of 15 in the entire parish. In this one day.


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[Assistant] So as in every other case of witch hunting, the accused at Torschacher had already been accused almost all by children and so stood no chance of proving themselves innocent. That's it. You're accused.


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[Assistant] And not only that, you're accused because two little shits stood outside of a church and said, you, marked by the devil.


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[Assistant] In one case, one of the accused confessed to having made a bjara, which is a magical ball of yarn. And I was like, that sounds delightful. I like that. They said they made it by dripping her blood onto the yarn and asking Satan to give it life. Okay. It's just weird how like they wrap it.


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[Assistant] They don't even like give a shit, it's not even real. Uh, in another case, a girl of only 11 or 12 years old was forced to testify that her own mother had brought her to Blocula.


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[Assistant] Oh, that is so fucked on another level. And she said when she was there, she watched the women chop up and boil children in a cauldron. Honey.


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[Assistant] Now, another young boy accused his neighbor of kidnapping him and taking him to Blockula, where he watched her eat, drink, and dance in Blockula and lying with the evil one under the table and kneeling before Satan. Sounds pretty rad.


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[Assistant] Uh, many of the children who testified at the trials in Torschacher


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[Assistant] I'll deal with the church sentence. That's what they thought they were gonna get. They had no idea it was gonna go this far.


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[Assistant] Obviously those doubts were very misplaced because by the end of the trial, all 71 were convicted and sentenced to die. 71.


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[Assistant] On June 1st, 1675, the accused along with a bunch of people from the villages,


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[Assistant] And they had no idea. They thought they were just like, let's get em. They can deal with the church sentence. Right. And their mom's probably told them that. Their mom was probably like, I can deal with it, just, you know, whatever it takes to get this done and I'll get home to you.


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[Assistant] And then they're like, no, we're going to cut off her head and burn her body at the stake. Oh my god. Yep. It's horrific.


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[Assistant] So from the church after they learned of their sentences.


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[Assistant] They were all led up to a spot in the mountains known as Hacksburgate, which is Witch Mountain.


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[Assistant] Uh, where three pyres had been built to accommodate this unusually large group. Uhm, in many cases the prisoners fainted or became too weak to carry on because they were so upset. And family members were forced to carry them to their execution.


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[Assistant] Oh my god. The executions were overseen by the parish mayor and carried out by two or three executioners who worked all day beheading each of these people. How are you ever the same after that? Seventy-one. Pete, what is 71 divided by three? Or two even? 71 divided by three.


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[Assistant] Or more if it was only two executioners, cause it's two or three. 71 divided by two.


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[Assistant] And they would do these beheadings in the location below the pyres where the pyres were built because they wanted to ensure that the blood flow wouldn't extinguish the flames. Oh.


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[Assistant] Once the head had been cut off, the body was carried to the pyre. A family member had to do this, by the way. Carry your beheaded body over to the pyre. Uh, where you would be thrown on there and burned. That's... yep.


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[Assistant] And after this was all done, after all the executions. I just have to say it again, sorry, this is real. This is real, like this isn't a horror story. Like you keep having to tell yourself over and over again, this fucking happened. The amount of times I like cognitively like dissonanced myself away from this, and then had to come back and be like, oh no, this is not a fiction story.


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[Assistant] This r- this is real. This happened to people's ancestors. This happened. That's so fucked. Like there's listeners.


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[Assistant] That have Swedish ancestry that could be tied to either side of this. Wow. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So when this was all done, the executions were concluded, the clothing of the accused, which also had been stripped before they were executed, uhm, they were returned to the family. And then the family was instructed to go home. Sorry, what was returned to the family? Their clothing. Oh, okay. And so they would say, here's their clothes.


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[Assistant] Just go home, I guess. See you guys on Sunday for Mass.


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[Assistant] But then you don't know, am I gonna come out of mass on Sunday and some little shit is gonna point at me and say I'm... Jesus.


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[Assistant] Cause did these, so were there subsequent ones afterwards? There was, but this is one of the main, like, this is, this is a wild one.


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[Assistant] It's just, I, I, and there are some sources that you can read records that say that a couple of individuals might have been spared that day because of, uh, they might have been pregnant.


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[Assistant] Uh, but if they were spared that day, then they were waited to give birth and the same fate befell them. So that's somehow that's like worse because you knew what was coming. Yeah, it's all, it's all bad. Now the trials and executions at Torschacher proved to be something of a turning point.


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[Assistant] Uhm, there were trials, but it changed after this. Uhm, especially in Sweden in particular. Uhm, it proved if nothing else that when it came to accusations of witchcraft and sorcery, no one, not even children, were safe.


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[Assistant] And later that year after the executions at Hacksburgit.


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[Assistant] By the following year, 1676, public opinion on witches and accusations of witchcraft shifted a bit. This was a turning point. There were other things after this, but this was a big turning point.


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[Assistant] By the time the hysteria had reached Stockholm that year, it had all but-


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[Assistant] And she was of course deemed guilty and burned alive at the stake for it.


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[Assistant] I don't know how old she was. Okay, so I thought I missed her. No, that's okay. But she was, she was just a neighbor.


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[Assistant] And a short time later, it was learned that Johan had lied when he accused Matt's daughter. And when that was learned, he was executed.


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[Assistant] So suddenly, according to Jenny Tiderman Osterberg, uh, a majority began to question the truthfulness of child witnesses, several of whom later confessed that they had lied. And were they executed? I don't know how that, but- I'm like, are we just gonna


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[Assistant] And in the months and years that followed, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery suddenly became increasingly rare. I bet. And when they were leveled, they were pretty quickly shut down, either by neighbors or authorities. Cause they were like, we're not doing this again. And with that, the great noise came to a rather...


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[Assistant] Unceremonious end in Sweden, uh, after having led to the death of nearly 300 people in the end, mostly women.


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[Assistant] But it's more likely that it's a very, uh, much higher number, I'm sure. Right, like, uhm. Some people just weren't documented. Now, in the decades that followed The Big Noise, there were attempts to obviously accuse and try witches.


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[Assistant] But they never really gained any attraction, and in some cases were just completely shut down by authorities.


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[Assistant] Uhm, a county in central Sweden accused an entire group of local women of witchcraft, so priesthood, hoping the case would be brought to trial.


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[Assistant] And instead, the authorities went out of their way to silence him and the accusations. And they said that it brought embarrassment to their government that he even accused them of this.


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[Assistant] Now, uhm, as Titterman Osterberg wrote, in heritage discourse, the histories of marginalized peoples were as oppressed as the peoples themselves, because heritage is so often forged and preserved power and maintained precedence. The story of the women in the Swedish witch trials serves as an example. So Torsjöker


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[Assistant] Has not tried to hide this brutal history of witch hunting. Uhm, they've actually just tried to kinda like rebrand it a little bit as like they're a destination for like those with an interest in history. But they don't hide it.


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[Assistant] They're like, this happened. They might like not give you, like, I don't think they're out there being like, let me tell you all the gory details, but like they don't, they don't hide from it. They're like, this happened and you can come here and learn about it. You have to recognize it. They actually have a memorial.


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[Assistant] So those executed, that's been erected in the village and it was erected in 1975. Wow. Like the one in Salem. Yeah.


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[Assistant] I don't know when that one was erected. You can visit Torschacher, know that they know what happened there and that they have.


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[Assistant] They have, you know, done all they can do to get past it, but it is.


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[Assistant] Unthinkable that this is real. It's unthinkable. Truly, I'm like...


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[Assistant] Because I know some people when they see witch trials, they're like, oh, okay, whatever, like what? But when you read about it...


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[Assistant] That is the story of some of the European witch trial madness and the Malleus Maleficarum and the Torshiker witch trials. Fun!


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[Assistant] Except not at all. Sweden learned. So good for Sweden. That's good. Good job, Sweden. You've done well since, you know.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so I guess there's no better way to go into a case than that. Yeaah, what better way? Uhm, this, I have like a bummer one today, obviously.


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[Assistant] And it's, it's interesting. I was reading like articles to try to find my next couple of cases and I saw a book pop up and I was like, whoa, that looks interesting. And that's how I discovered


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[Assistant] And I think that automatically is just really fucking sweet. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] Her mother Jean told reporters in 2000, she had such promise, such a free spirit, she wanted to be a forest ranger. It was the end of the 1970s and she was non-materialistic, she just wanted to improve society. Aww Nancy. It was almost like Nancy was born a couple years too late.


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[Assistant] Reminded most people of the hippie subculture that had recently kind of been left behind.


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[Assistant] Now most people were going on to a period that was, you know, maybe a bit more self-centered and definitely a whole lot more materialistic.


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[Assistant] But Nancy's family always encouraged her interests and respected the kind of hippie-esque culture that she felt so close to. That's a good family. It is, they just supported her and loved her for who she was and she had a lot to offer. Her mother later said, I didn't even worry when she was hitchhiking.


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[Assistant] Because her family and her mother included knew she had a close-knit group of girlfriends and just friends in general who could very much hold their own in a potential conflict.


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[Assistant] Now one of those girls was 26 year old Vicky Durian. Vicky was known to her friends as Bright Star. Stop it. Like immediately I was like, I love Vicky. I was just gonna say, like I just wanna be around these people. Right? And so Vicky being also known as Bright Star, you can see why she and Nancy hit it off immediately.


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[Assistant] They both had very free spirits, they were open people, friendly people.


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[Assistant] Vicky was born and raised in actually a very rural area, Wellman, Iowa. It was a town where there were only about a thousand people. Whoa. Yeah.


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[Assistant] But like Nancy, Vicki had a strong sense of empathy and compassion. She really liked helping people. What a duo. I know.


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[Assistant] After high school she became a licensed practical nurse, so she was also like, like a multi-faceted chica there. Oh yeaah.


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[Assistant] And it seemed like a natural fit for somebody with her skills and personality.


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[Assistant] Now even though she had a well established career and she was very much professionally trained, Vicky still identified, it seemed even more so as like a free spirited person who wanted to get out and experience the world. Yes. I love it. It starts off so beautifully. Now Vicky and Nancy's friend,


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[Assistant] Liz John-Drow told reporters Brightstar was a loving person. She was real open to everybody, even if they weren't like her. Aww, I love that.


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[Assistant] So Liz actually had met Vicky outside of a food co-op in Tucson in the late 70s and the two of them became really fast friends because Vicky let then teenage Liz stay at her apartment when she had nowhere else to go.


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[Assistant] Now, it was through Vicky that Liz eventually met Nancy, and then the three girls bonded together over their increasingly uncommon interest of the hippie lifestyle. Which is crazy, that like-


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[Assistant] Even though, even like at the end of the 70s, it was pretty much done. Yeah, like that, it changed over.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I think there's like a lot more music festivals now that kinda try to like borrow from the ones back in the day. Yeah. But yeah, so they were, there were a couple of hippies and they loved hitchhiking. Okay. It was just a good way to get around.


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[Assistant] Now as we all know, it was obviously wildly popular in the 70s to hitchhike. In the early 70s. But by the end of the decade, most of the general public kind of realized how dangerous it could be, like accepting a ride from a stranger. That's so sad. Which I think the reason a lot of people started to realize it is because


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[Assistant] Now, but listen, even with that awareness, there were still people who felt like the benefits, like we were just saying, outweighed the risks and they were comfortable taking rides from strangers.


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[Assistant] Liz would later tell reporters, hitchhiking is a cheap, easy, free way to travel. We could get off anywhere we wanted. No worries about gas or cars. You meet people who are just interested in hearing about your travels. We were no strings attached people.


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[Assistant] So in June of 1980, Vicki traveled from Wisconsin where she had recently moved for work to her family home in Wellman because she was attending her brother's graduation.


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[Assistant] And Nancy planned to meet Vicky at Vicky's parents house in Iowa after the grad party was over.


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[Assistant] Otherwise known as a rainbow gathering. This sounds adorable. Oh, it's, it's just so pure. Like I could see myself wanting to go to this when I, if I like lived back then. You would have been all over this. 100%.


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[Assistant] Now the rainbow family was started in 1971.


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[Assistant] It's like, very interesting reading about it because you're like, who exactly started this? Like, what happened? There's a couple people that started it, but they're like, we're pretty informally led. So, they were started by an informally connected group of mostly young people with pretty progressive ideals.


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[Assistant] And they're known for organizing really large gatherings that are just supposed to celebrate the spirit of the counterculture movement from the 70s.


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[Assistant] They don't really have any specific agenda. There's not really any organizing principles. They're mostly understood by the public as a well-intended group who quote, are out to seek a little earnest spiritual fulfillment, learn a thing or two and have a good time in the process. That seems wonderful. Like who the fuck doesn't want to go to that? Now their annual gatherings were pretty free form. They included events and activities that drew from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Spirituality, like new age spirituality and the back to nature movement.


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[Assistant] And they also incorporated cultural elements of the 1960s, like music and sexual freedom. Oh, lots of stuff going on. It's fucking awesome. Yeah. It's like very Woodstock, it sounds like. Yeah. You know?


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[Assistant] Mostly well intended it seems. Their annual convergence on very, very rural locations.


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[Assistant] Essentially, they were worried about the largely progressive counterculture attendees coming up against the largely conservative locals, who really resented public nudity, the flagrant drug use,


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[Assistant] And what they felt was a general disregard for authority.


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[Assistant] Luckily, the troublemakers seem to be pretty few and far between, and most attendees overall were like Vicky, Nancy, and Liz. Just free-spirited people trying to keep up the ideals of hippie culture alive in a very different world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But still, in the weeks before this gathering was set to begin in Marlinton, West Virginia, the Secretary of State, James Manchin,


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[Assistant] This bunch of derelict misfits. I mean that was a choice having it in West Virginia, I will say.


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[Assistant] Derelict misfits? I mean, I think they're just trying to vibe.


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[Assistant] That's what I think. It sounds like they're not doing anything. Like let them hang. Let them what? Let them hang. Let them just do their thing. Yea. It'll end and then they go home. And then that's it. Who cares? Now his suit was unsuccessful at keeping the Rainbow family from coming to West Virginia. I figured.


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[Assistant] Now when Liz, Nancy, and Vicki left from the Durian's house on June 20th, their plan was to hitchhike to the gathering, which was going to be held in, I looked this up so I'm going to do my best, West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest. Wow. Yeah.


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[Assistant] And then when they got there, they were going to meet up with Nancy's sister Cathy, who was also going to be going to the festival.


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[Assistant] Kathy's plan was to drive herself down a few days later.


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[Assistant] However, their plan changed just a few days later when they reached Richmond, Virginia on the 24th of June.


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[Assistant] The day before the three friends were picked up in South Carolina by the driver of a commercial bus and Liz later told reporters,


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[Assistant] It was raining, and as I stared out the window, something told me not to go to the rainbow gathering. Ooh.


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[Assistant] She just had like a premonition. Ooh, always listen to your gut, man.


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[Assistant] So going home seemed like the right thing to do anyways, even despite her feeling.


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[Assistant] Seems like there was a lot of convergence of signs there that she was like, you know.


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[Assistant] Just kind of like kept the feeling to herself and was like, it's about me, like, not about them kind of thing.


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[Assistant] And the last thing Vicki and Nancy said to Liz was, be careful.


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[Assistant] And then they proceeded on their way to West Virginia to the Rainbow Gathering.


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[Assistant] Now, around 9pm on June 25th, so just one day after Vicki and Nancy parted ways with Liz, a student walking back to his lean-to in Briery Knob near Droop Mountain Park,


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[Assistant] They were nearly 40 miles from the rainbow family gathering.


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[Assistant] But police immediately believed that these two women had attended the gathering.


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[Assistant] Due to one of them wearing a shirt with a rainbow motif similar to emblems used by participants of the gathering.


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[Assistant] Now, other than that, neither woman had any identification or other clues about their identities.


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[Assistant] So, the news of the two murders, excuse me, came as a shock to some, but not all attendees at the Rainbow Family Gathering.


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[Assistant] One of the organizers of the gathering, Tony Crow, told reporters about an unrelated instance. He said, quote, there were 11 shots fired into the site. It looks like some of the locals have gone a little gun crazy.


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[Assistant] So basically people were targeting this event. And like the site where the gathering was actually taking place, that's what had happened. People shot into it.


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[Assistant] It's a really bad thing that it should happen, but I know that those two sisters who have passed on to another realm would be very unhappy if they saw that it affected the energy of this gathering.


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[Assistant] She and some friends traveled to West Virginia to meet up with her sister.


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[Assistant] That week I heard two girls were killed in the country, but there were no photos. I was a little worried, but someone said the victims were American Indians.


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[Assistant] Now, when Kathy still hadn't been able to locate her sister after several days, she just figured that Nancy had found something that interested her more, so she left the area.


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[Assistant] Cause again, like very free spirited people. I was going to say, that's the thing.


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[Assistant] I mean, this is like, in your wildest nightmares, you couldn't imagine that this happened to your sister.


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[Assistant] Right, so Cathy and her friends drove back to New York on July 5th.


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[Assistant] But when she got home, some friends had received a copy of the Pocahontas Times.


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[Assistant] Kathy wasn't sure the girl in the photo was her sister. There definitely was a resemblance, but she couldn't be sure.


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[Assistant] So she drove back down to West Virginia to see if the girl in the photo really was her sister.


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[Assistant] I wonder if it's one of those things where she was pretty sure, but like again, her brain didn't want to be like, no, that's definitely her. So as she made her way back to West Virginia, investigators continued to struggle to make


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the post-mortem exams were just as unhelpful. The cause of death was gunshots. This is horrible.


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[Assistant] Local authorities felt confident that the killer was local quote, because of the rural area in which the bodies were found.


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[Assistant] And they were also pretty certain that the girls had been killed in one location and then dumped where they'd been found because there was no blood pooling around the exit wounds. Okay.


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[Assistant] Now, Kathy reached Pocahontas County on July 8th and immediately went to the local police, who took her to see the bodies. She later recalled, quote,


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[Assistant] I can't imagine having to identify a family member, let alone like your sister.


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[Assistant] After just seeing what you saw, like that's your sister and her friend who you probably knew. And you're showing up at your mom's house.


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[Assistant] And to think too that like, you were at the gathering and you, like you had no idea. Yeah. It's awful. Ugh.


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[Assistant] So a couple days after Nancy and Vicki were identified, the state police held a conference, a press conference, to announce the identification.


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[Assistant] And actually sometime later, Nancy's backpack was found about 50 miles from where the two bodies were discovered.


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[Assistant] And this is strange, nothing appeared to be missing, but strangely a confederate flag was found among the possessions. And like neither one of them would have had that, Vicki or Nancy. That's strange.


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[Assistant] And when Liz was asked about it, she said she didn't remember Vicki or Nancy being in possession of one.


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[Assistant] And she elaborated that it would have been very odd given who they were and what they believed in. Yeah, that seems to go against. So it seems like whoever did this to them left that there as like a fuck you. Wow. Mhm.


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[Assistant] Now as far as motives went though, there was no evidence that either had been sexually assaulted, so that was ruled out as well. And in fact, aside from the murders, there had actually been no reports of violence in the area, so investigators had no suspects. What the fuck? Like nothing.


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[Assistant] Now the biggest and most unexpected information revealed during the press conference was that


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[Assistant] In addition to the murders, Vicki and Nancy's friend Liz, who had been traveling with them, was still missing. Ah.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, while Liz was able to fill in the timeline between when they left Iowa and got to Richmond, there really wasn't much else she could do.


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[Assistant] Or provide beyond hitchhiking from one destination to the other.


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[Assistant] Right now, I don't think I'll do it again. It's kinda scary. I guess not all the good rides make up for the one bad one. Exactly. Which like, what a haunting statement. I know.


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[Assistant] So local authorities investigated the case for two years, but they kept hitting dead end after dead end after dead end. They weren't able to turn up any leads, any additional evidence, nothing.


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[Assistant] Of course, they had some theories due to the remote location in which the bodies were found, I think I said this earlier. They definitely suspected that a local was responsible, but who and why completely eluded them.


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[Assistant] And then their investigation was further hindered by the fact that


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[Assistant] Most local residents were pretty tight lipped when it came to talking to law enforcement.


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[Assistant] But, the first break in the case finally came in July of 1982, when Vicki's family reported that they had received several anonymous calls from a man who seemed to know something about Vicki's murder.


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[Assistant] Whoever was calling refused to identify himself, but claimed the local police, excuse me, quote,


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[Assistant] And this caller said, as somebody who had a daughter himself, he was really sympathetic to the family suffering.


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[Assistant] And that led them to 36 year old West Virginia tractor salesman and farmer and father, Jacob Beard.


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[Assistant] Now in 1982, Jacob Beard, he was actually already pretty well known to the police due to a few charges of animal cruelty he was facing at the time.


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[Assistant] And he was facing those charges at the time that he was making the call. The fuck? To Vicky's family.


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[Assistant] Trigger warning here, I'm just going to quickly tell you what those charges were about. So if you want to skip forward, I would do that now.


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[Assistant] According to the charges, he had killed his girl- his former girlfriend's cat and left it in her bed for her to find.


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[Assistant] And he had also been accused of trying to kill her dog, but luckily the dog was able to be saved.


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[Assistant] Because the charges were still pending, the county prosecutor actually offered to dismiss those animal cruelty charges.


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[Assistant] In exchange for Jacob Beard's cooperation in the case.


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[Assistant] Desperate to get this solved. Now, but if it was found that he was directly responsible for the deaths, immunity would be off the table. Wow.


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[Assistant] Okay, yeaah. So according to Jacob Beard, he had left for work about 5.15 that night, the night that Vicki and um, Nancy were killed. Then he said he went home to eat something for dinner and then headed off to a school board meeting with his wife.


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[Assistant] He told authorities that he and his wife were returning from that meeting around 9pm that night when they saw three local residents, Christine Cook, Palmer Adkinson, and William McCoy.


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[Assistant] Entering into the woods near Droop Mountain Park with two women he said resembled Vicki and Nancy. Oh.


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[Assistant] Now, he also claimed that there was actually a third victim from the Rainbow family.


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[Assistant] And disposed of the body by putting it into his corn chopper.


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[Assistant] Whaaat? So this is like a very fantastical tale if this is all true. Oof.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so the police arrested the men that Jacob claimed were responsible for the murders, but after two months of investigation, they determined his story was a hoax. What? And all three men were released from custody.


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[Assistant] Came up with this entire story and named random people involved? Supposedly. Wow. Maybe. It gets hairy. Oh, okay.


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[Assistant] So the shift in focus away from those suspects coincided with suspicions falling on two new suspects, 42-year-old Gerald Lee Brown and 20-year-old Bobby Lee Morrison.


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[Assistant] Now, according to Morrison, he had been out driving around with Gerald Lee Brown, excuse me, on the night of June 24th, and he said they picked up Nancy and Vicki who were hitchhiking. And then he claimed the four of them spent some time drinking,


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[Assistant] He passed out in Gerald Brown's van, and when he woke up, Morrison claimed he witnessed Brown shoot both women, and then he said he helped Brown move the bodies out to Briery Knob before returning to town.


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[Assistant] Ones when it comes to de-investigation, I think that I have ever personally researched. Like, it's wild.


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[Assistant] Now, both men were arrested in April 1983. Bail was set at $100,000 for Brown and $50,000 for Morrison. And in a press conference, prosecutor J. Stephen Hunter told reporters he, quote,


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[Assistant] While the arrest of Morrison and Brown seemed like a pretty positive turn of events in the case, a lot of people in town were pretty confused or weary about how investigators actually became suspicious of those two in the first place.


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[Assistant] What the lead was that led them to Morrison and Brown. Because there wasn't one.


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[Assistant] In all reality, Morrison himself went to the police out of nowhere.


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[Assistant] To report himself and Brown as the men responsible for Vicki and Nancy's murders. What? So strange. Okay.


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[Assistant] But a few weeks later, during the, I can never say this, preliminary hearing, Morrison recanted his initial confession and told the judge and prosecutor,


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[Assistant] Back again. The fuck? Morrison claimed that Beard told him, quote, something would happen to his family if he didn't make the statement. Jesus. And that was the only reason he made up the story about picking up the hitchhikers in the first place. Wow.


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[Assistant] So under those circumstances, the prosecutor had to drop those charges against Morrison and Brown, and the case went cold again.


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[Assistant] This is a whirlwind and this is barely even the beginning. It didn't take long before investigators had a new suspect though. On March 1st, 1984,


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[Assistant] While being interviewed by a special agent from the Wisconsin Department of Justice for unrelated crimes, I feel like they should shorten their name.


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[Assistant] That sounds right to me. He's pretty terrible, so I don't actually care how to pronounce his name.


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[Assistant] Franklin himself was a fucking deplorable monster. He was a member of the American Nazi party, a member of the KKK.


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[Assistant] An avowed white supremacist and a serial killer.


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[Assistant] Uh, he mainly targeted black men and interracial couples. And he would eventually be convicted of killing eight people.


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[Assistant] He confessed to over 20 murders, but they were never able to completely pin them down. Wow. So this would be out of his victim profile.


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[Assistant] It would be, but when you hear his quote unquote motive or at least what he says it is, not necessarily.


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[Assistant] And he was disgusted when neither woman objected to the idea of dating a black man. There it is. He said one of them said she had and the other said if the opportunity arose that she would.


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[Assistant] That he decided to quote, waste both of them right there. Geez. He's a disgusting human. My gosh.


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[Assistant] In a prison interview, he said, it only took one shot for the first one. Then I just turned real quick over the seat and shot the other one. Okay. Later. That's awful.


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[Assistant] But later he said he regretted killing Nancy because according to him it was Vicky that was the one who had an interracial relationship before.


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[Assistant] And he said when he asked Nancy if she would consider it, she said she would, but he said he still wished he didn't kill her.


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[Assistant] What the fuck? I don't even know if he did this, like I don't really know what my opinion is because it gets so convoluted along the way.


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[Assistant] But I'm like, either way, like, you're a fucking asshole. Yea, you're disgusting. So Franklin's confession would seem to have brought the mystery to an end.


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[Assistant] But there were more than a few unanswered questions, and a lot of people suspected he wasn't telling the truth.


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[Assistant] Because after his initial confession, he refused to discuss the murders with law enforcement again.


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[Assistant] And while he may have confessed to these murders, he actually seemed to have very few details about the crime. And some of them- He has stuff wrong. Right, exactly.


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[Assistant] For one thing, you probably noticed, he said he only shot each girl one time before dragging their bodies out to the woods.


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[Assistant] When, like I said earlier, the technician who had performed the examinations, the postmortem examinations,


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[Assistant] And then in addition to that, it was believed that a high powered rifle was the murder weapon. That's what I didn't get. A gun like that would be very awkward to use in the close confines of a car.


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[Assistant] There was also the fact that he had a history, a history of making supposedly false confessions. Oh, there you go. So they were like, ehh, I don't know about this.


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[Assistant] I'm like, you monstrous. Like truly. Monstrous. To try to take credit for this kind of stuff, it's like, my goodness. And by the time he was executed by lethal injection in 2013, like not that long ago, he had confessed to more than 20 murders across the country.


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[Assistant] And Urban League President Vernon Johnson in 1980. Oh, so he was just like taking credit for everything. They were never able, I guess, to prove that he like didn't.


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[Assistant] Now, given the questionable validity of his claims, authorities in West Virginia declined to prosecute.


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[Assistant] Saying that the confession quote, lacked the requisite guarantees of trustworthiness.


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[Assistant] Now in the context of West Virginia law, the confession fell into the category, I thought this was interesting,


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[Assistant] Of what's known as a statement against interest or a statement that is so contrary to the declarants interests that it's unlikely to be true.


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[Assistant] Now, because they're mostly determined to be false, a statement against interest is typically not admissible in court. Oh, okay. And without any more corroborating evidence, West Virginia prosecutors were like, yeah, he's not a viable suspect. This would be a supreme waste of time. That's basically how they felt. Now, I don't know. I'm not sure what I think about it.


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[Assistant] Because when you think about the fact that a confederate flag was left with their belongings. Oh yeah, but I mean, he's not the only. And that's what I was just going to say, like that seems like something he probably would have done.


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[Assistant] To me, I don't, just from hearing that, I would say no.


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[Assistant] Yeah, the fact that he didn't know how many times each was shot. And that it was a high powered rifle, that would be very difficult to do in a car. In a car, right. And uhm, the map he drew was not, it was like all right, but they were like, I don't know, you could have got that from reading different sources about this case.


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[Assistant] Don't buy it. Yeah, well, you're not the only one, and law enforcement officials were not the only ones who considered this confession self-serving wildly inconsistent with the details, all of the above.


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[Assistant] A lot of people, including actually Nancy's own family, found these claims hard to believe.


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[Assistant] And like many investigators, Nancy's sister Cathy believes Franklin had picked up a few details from magazines or news reports.


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[Assistant] Which would account for the lack of specificity in his claims.


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[Assistant] That's the thing. And actually, at the time he was arrested, he supposedly, I couldn't like totally pin this down, but...


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[Assistant] I read in a couple sources that he was said to have a magazine in his possession.


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[Assistant] An anonymous source from the prosecutor's office told reporters, his story has evolved over the years. When he, when he began the scenario, he really knew none of the details. He did not know how many times the women had been shot. He did not know what areas of, areas of the body the wounds were sustained and he could not accurately describe his route before and after the murders. So bullshit. Now, after the quick collapse of his confession,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The investigation into Vicki and Nancy's murders went inactive yet again.


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[Assistant] Getting, you know, the occasional review every so often, but other than that, remaining mostly cold.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't until late 1991 when a new group of investigators decided to give the case a second look. Now in that review, this is so interesting.


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[Assistant] Regarding a local woman named Alice Roberts who had contacted them and they had never followed up with her initial


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[Assistant] Get into a blue van belonging to a man named Richie Fowler.


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[Assistant] Winters Peewee Walton and William McCoy.


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[Assistant] William McCoy had previously been arrested. I was just going to say, that brings a belt.


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[Assistant] So around the same time, investigators were also contacted by an inmate named Keith Culliner, I believe is how you say his last name.


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[Assistant] He was serving a 10 year prison sentence for forgery, and he said that he was willing to trade information about the murders in exchange for better prison conditions. Just gonna pause there.


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[Assistant] But he claimed that he had actually been at Gerald Brown's home several months after the murders. And while he was there, he overheard Gerald Brown confess that he, Richie Fowler, and two other men had been responsible for the murders and that quote, everyone should just keep their mouth shut. Whoa.


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[Assistant] So that's pretty interesting. Geez, this is like set of people number four. The amount, it got so confusing at the end because there's going to be even more players and a bunch of them have the same last name or like one has a last name that's somebody else's first name. I was getting really confused.


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[Assistant] After investigating Pam's tips as well as Keith's, investigators learned of more eyewitness accounts.


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[Assistant] Now one tipper claimed they actually saw three of the men hosing out the back of the van on the same night. That's chilling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now based on the, and remember, they had said they didn't believe that they had been killed there. They believed that they had been killed elsewhere and dumped there. So that's interesting that they maybe were hosing the van out, allegedly. Now based on the tips,


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[Assistant] Arrest warrants were actually issued for a man named Richard Lewis who also eventually was brought onto the equation.


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[Assistant] Gerald Brown, Pee Wee Walton and Arnold Cutlip. All of them denied any involvement.


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[Assistant] So they were held on a hundred thousand dollars bond, all of them. Now in his statement to the press, prosecutor Walt Wayford refused to speculate on any kind of motive, but he said,


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[Assistant] The arrests to date are the result of an intensive investigation conducted by Sheriff Jerry Dale and Sergeant Robert A. Alkyer. They worked a lot of long and hard hours.


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[Assistant] Now, Sheriff Dale was also pretty vague about what led investigators to these four men who had been arrested, and all he really said to the public was, people got older and became less intimidated and frightened about the subjects who were responsible for the murders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which like, sure, okay. He declined to add any additional details, but to me it sounds like they probably, uhm, Shoulda listened. Shoulda listened to the original tip from six years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. You know, but like, okay. Maybe just call her back. Just call her back. Just call her back. She reached out for a reason.


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[Assistant] Jacob Beard, yet again, and William McCoy.


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[Assistant] Now all three of them had been suspected of some involvement at some point, as we all know at this point, in the previous decade. How many men were involved in this? Geez. I think seven total. Wow.


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[Assistant] One resident told reporters, a couple of those are very surprising. And then there's a couple of people that's not so surprising.


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[Assistant] Now, within a few weeks of the arrest, people in town were talking, and they had their own theories about the motive of the killers. Most people agreed that it was anger surrounding this supposed hippie invasion of the Rainbow family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the prosecutor's office had yet to make any formal statement as to what they believed was the motive.


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[Assistant] Gerald Brown's defense attorney, Paul Dech, was suspicious though when it came to the evidence that led to the arrests. And he told reporters, it's a bunch of police officers who are on a witch hunt. They've got people held on paperwork that wouldn't hold an assault and battery case. Whoa. So it was shaky grounds here that they were holding them on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Arnold Cutlip's lawyer, Martin Safer, agreed saying they're going to have to flesh out the allegations of the warrant if they can. Eek. So he was like, I don't know.


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[Assistant] Now, Dutch Safer and many others in town actually suspected that the prosecutor's office didn't really have any new information about the case.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things did not appear to be going smoothly for the prosecutor's office. The charges against Pee Wee Walton had been dropped for lack of evidence. William McCoy was already serving a sentence in Nevada for an unrelated crime. Jacob Beard was living in Florida at this point and fighting extradition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was right to be discouraged by the time the grand jury did review the evidence and considered the accusations of, uh, police misconduct.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the charges were dropped. And in the weeks that followed they kept on trying.


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[Assistant] New indictments were issued against Jacob Beard, Richard Fowler, William McCoy, and Arnold Cutlip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was facing first degree murder charges for obviously the murders of Vicki and Nancy. From the moment the trial began, the prosecution's case seemed pretty flimsy.


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[Assistant] They relied on hearsay testimony from some of the men that had previously been charged alongside Jacob Beard


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[Assistant] Jacob Beard attempted to convince one or both of them to have sex with him.


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[Assistant] And when they turned down his advances, he shot them both and dumped their bodies in the woods. That was their theory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their quote unquote evidence against him included one statement from that previous inmate that we talked about, Keith.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Statements from Johnny Lewis and Pee Wee Walton that implicated Jacob Beard as the killer.


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[Assistant] And actually one investigator previously stated that Johnny Lewis, quote, could be talked into saying anything. Wow. Lewis only, this is like sad that they went after him if he had nothing to do with this, he only had an education up to the third grade and he didn't even know who the president was at the time he was being interrogated.


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[Assistant] The same investigator, I don't, I, I don't know if I think he did.


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[Assistant] He actually, I think the direct quote was that he was so scared he felt like he was going to pee.


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[Assistant] Which is like heartbreaking again if he had nothing to do with this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But both of those men had been beaten previously into confessing. So, yeah, I don't really know how we're going to believe their testimony either way. Not great. Now, Jacob Beard's defense attorney, Stephen Framer,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, claimed his client's innocence. But he, and he noted that the cases, or excuse me, the state's case relied almost entirely on testimony from known liars and accusations from two men who had only recently been given immunity in exchange for their testimony against Jacob Beard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, not great. Not great. The defense also made several motions to introduce evidence that maybe wouldn't necessarily prove innocence, but at the very least would have cast doubt on these charges against Jacob Beard. And that evidence included, uh, Joseph, I guess, Paul Franklin's confessions from years earlier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, this is who we have testifying against him?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The center of this chaos. But got like completely lost in this bullshit trial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're not even doing it properly, like they're beating people to confess, you really feel good about that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did read that his timecard was handwritten.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that could easily be changed. Alright. And I just will say that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only person who has testified here who can tell you where Jake Beard was between the hours of 3.15 and 8pm that day is Jake Beard. Implying that the accused can't be trusted. Which is fair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though most of his key witnesses had actually been the accused at one point or the other. Legitimately no one can be trusted here. None.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now on June 4th, 1993, the jury deliberated for six hours before returning with a guilty verdict on both counts of first degree murder. And Jacob Beard was sentenced to life in prison


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For Nancy and Vicki's friends and family was instead completely suspicious and most people were still skeptical about all the details involved.