[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm guessing that that might have had something to do with it, or maybe that's for...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Cuba Road is known to be a haunted road which leads to this cemetery. It intersects with this other road called Rainbow Road which leads to this secluded house which apparently back in the day was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This prominent, like Scrooge McDuck's house, Richie Richard's house, it was a symbol of this wealth that you would never ever in your wildest dreams get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the rumor is now that at one point it was actually like an insane asylum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That does, uh, that does play into the WGA strike. So maybe, uh, our old lady on the, uh, Cuba road is the, uh, the OG of, uh, fair practices and fair pay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My whole interpretation of ghosts is we, we tend to think that every ghost is going to be evil because we have like ghostbusters, we think the exorcist, that's just how they're portrayed on screen, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like, I don't know how my anatomy and like this, I don't know how this ties into the science of, uh, whether I'm a male or not, but okay, let me just go with this because it's high school. We want to be cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember it was me, my best friend growing up, Chris Ryerson, so shout out to Chris Ryerson, who is a teacher in Barrington now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was texting him last night and I came in. Do you remember when we drove Cuba road with?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, shout out to, I think it was our friends, Lauren, Jackie, and Kana. And I think we were trying to impress them to show them like how brave we were on Cuba Road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's taking me back the more I speak out loud about it. It's, it's funny how memories work. They're pretty dormant in our brain, but the moment you bring it up, you're like, oh wow, like the whole flash of memories come back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and it was, uh, our other friend, Pat, who was also in the car. So Pat, Pat's the friend who, you know, you had the asshole friend who, but they're your asshole, so it's okay. Oh yeah, that was Pat. And I'm leaving his last name out because he's a college basketball coach, so I don't want to get him in any trouble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're driving down Cuba, like, alright, we're gonna do this thing, like, guys, we gotta play it cool, we gotta be cool. I didn't know how to, I don't know how to play it cool now, like, let alone at the age of 16, 17, 18, like, what am I doing? But whatever, they do it on TV, how hard can it be? So we're driving down Cuba Road, and right away,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is something we always heard about. There's these little white and green orbs of light that this isn't just reflecting from our headlights or anything. These things are like following us. They're like kind of surrounding the car. And there's no street lights on Cuba Road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And all it took was one of the girls to say, Oh my God, do you see that? And then all of a sudden, once we wish they said that and we saw that we couldn't unsee it. And then all of a sudden in my mind, I'm like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, shout out to my mom, my mom who is the real superhero and with Mother's Day coming up, uh, aka Superheroes Day, uh, she for sure is that, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I swear I saw a car turn into the cemetery. That's weird. People are here at night and we go down there. There's no car. Now,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, okay, you all saw that, right? Like, yeah, there was a car. I'm like, yeah, we saw like some car pull into the cemetery, which one, that's I think a red flag when we're there at eight o'clock. It's pitch black on this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think maybe, I don't think it's an unincorporated road, but it certainly felt that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so we get to the cemetery, we don't see anything, but we still see the orbs of light. And uhm, this is before you could just get on your smartphone and Google stuff. We couldn't film anything because we didn't have that capability unless I took my dad's like JVC video camera and made a mini movie out of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For some reason today we didn't bring the camera gear because we didn't think we needed it. And uhm, and then Pat being Pat was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's like, he gets out of the car, and we're like, Chris and I are looking at each other like, we're gonna, you know, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're gonna have to go with him, but we also can't leave everybody here. So we're trying to figure out what's going on. He takes two steps out of the car and it was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before Jordan Peele even had the idea for this, basically we should just pack on, nope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As much as people want to say there's no such thing as ghosts, like, you can't definitively prove that there are or there aren't. Uh, that's my interpretation of it. Unless you can conclusively prove, just like we can prove 2 plus 2 equals 4, that you can prove there are or are not ghosts,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm open to all possibilities. That's always how my brains worked. So that's my thinking. I'm like, look, first of all,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hell that's no fury like a worried Korean mom wondering where her son is on a Saturday night, let alone if she knew we were on some haunted road in Barrington doing whatever, whatever we're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're like, alright, well we're here, I'm looking at my watch, I'm like, okay, it's 10.30, I got another hour before I gotta get everybody home and meet my curfew. Cause I legitimately was that kid who would get grounded and wouldn't be able to go out the next weekend if I was there like a minute later than my curfew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, oh, I heard there's an insane asylum on Rainbow Road. Okay, alright, so we drive down there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I swear I heard police lights. I'm like, okay, like maybe the police are shutting it down because too many people go there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they just want to usher people out or maybe people who actually live there on Cuba Road were like, man, fuck these guys that are trying to look around all the time. It's like, I'm just trying to live our life here. Like maybe there's nothing wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like, we're like looking around, looking around, I swear we heard, I swear we saw police lights and sirens, we get down further, there's nothing there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like, I'm not exaggerating, I'm pretty sure I did speak in that sort of tone, but also not trying to show that I was that scared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're turning right, we don't see it, we're, we're in like pitch black, and now I'm going from scared to kind of being like pissed. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, like, it was enough to do Q, but you had, you had to just take it too far. Now we gotta go here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We look down the other side and we do see just this iron gate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, okay, I think we, oh no, I think we found it. And it's this really ominous and dark, long driveway right out of a Tim Burton movie. Uh, except not as welcoming. It's like, Tim Burton movies, as creepy as they are, they're like, you're still like, I want to go there. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You shall not go and you shall not pass was basically the, uh, the thing here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pat once again is like, Oh my God, is that it? Like we should hop the fence. We should do this. I'm like, where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we, we see that and like, so we all like actually make a choice like, okay, let's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's all get out of the, if someone's gonna get out of the car, we all get out of the car. We all, it's like all for one, one for all. We gotta be, let's do this. So we get pretty close to this like iron gate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I swear, like, I saw, we saw, like, headlights coming towards us. Like, oh no, no, no, like, this could be a ghost car, this could be this. So we never got, uh, too far into exploring what the house could be or what it isn't. There are legends that say some people have hopped the gate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they actually get into the abandoned rooms of the house and they make it down to the basement where apparently...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no way to confirm this or deny it, so I'm just gonna state that this is what I've heard, so I'm not saying this is a fact to anybody listening, but apparently if you make it to the basement of the supposed, abandoned, insane asylum,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's like bloody pentagrams painted on the floor and stuff like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then I remember the mob backstory of Chicago because John Dillinger and Al Capone used to always come up to the North suburbs to escape Chicago a little bit for a little R&R or whatever. But it's also very possible that they could have used this abandoned place to hide some of the dead bodies. 100%.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So once we saw the headlines, we're just all like, okay guys, we gotta go, like, cause if the cops get us, like, we're all screwed and we were all like athletes and we all had stuff to do and like, if we all got in trouble, that actually would be pretty dire consequences for school and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly. So that was my personal tale of Cuba and Rainbow Road and that we went a couple other times and the other times weren't as intense as the first time because you're going in


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't know what to expect. Yeah. You've heard people tell you stories, but I swear those orbs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone I've taught you that's been there, they say the same thing. The orbs like surround your car and they follow you. They're not just light refractions and I'm not an expert in physics or anything, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's a belief that these are the spirits of Cuba Road kind of being guardians. And, uh, I would hope that they're just nice ghosts and they're hoping that you're not going to kill anybody else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uh, it's up there with my favorite line deliveries of all time. It's up there with Back to the Future 3 when Marty McFly just has his realization about being called Chicken and he just looks at Mad Dog Tanning and goes, he's an asshole!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's like, it's up there with an on-car with that in terms of such iconic line delivery. So, so that was my personal tale of Cuba Road and Rainbow Road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be a 17, 18 year old kid who's, you know, just, first of all, trying to figure out who the fuck he is as a person, which I really haven't figured out. I mean, it's really in recent years I figured that out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A thing out on my facebook last night telling my hometown friends if they had any.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This first one is from Kristen Koenig, so shout out to you Kristen Koenig, who actually helped, she actually planned our 20 year reunion last year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So shout out to you Kristen for doing that. I don't know why you got tasked with such a thankless job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then she also mentioned that there is also an urban legend that if you stop on the train tracks and honk your horns three times, a ghost train will come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We never found the train track and we did look another time, but we never found that. And uh, maybe I sh- probably should've just gone there during the daytime to get a geogra- to get to geography.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And our other friend, uh, parentheses flashlight guy, wasn't close enough to have done it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To this day, they still get quiet and uncomfortable when we talk about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, so it's, it's fun to, first of all, hear people from people that I haven't, uh, heard from in a long time. And some of the others share with me that they heard those same urban legends and nothing really happened. But for every one of those, there's those other stories, like from the two Christens. I didn't even put that together until now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a wild, wild thing and I think that sort of stuff is fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, but also, I'm glad I'm in the comfort of my own home and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, uh, it's a big enigma and I hope, I kinda hope that they make a movie out of it. Maybe I can make that movie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was thinking it could be, uh, you ever seen the Curacao movie Rashomon?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Rashomon in the Nutshell is basically a singular event, but from different perspectives and how our perspectives can, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah. So I figured because there's so many different stories and different interpretations, I think that's how you structure the movie. It's just maybe these different tales, almost, and all it gets juxtaposed, almost Pulp Fiction style, culminating into like Cuba Road and what this singular thing happening there and what everybody thinks they saw or didn't see. Oh, that would be so cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we can, uh, compliment that with a morbid episode with a deeper dive in the key road. Yeaah. You know what I mean? So it's just cross promoting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my cousin Natalie is like the head of marketing for Lou Malnati's pizza, so we'll get some deep dish pizzas, uh, uh, thrown our way as well. So I just, I would love to host you two in my hometown and be cool to just do like a little side quest with the morbid girls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Great. Sarah, you need to be writing for like every movie and TV show. The writing of that is so good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Illinois, they're a little more stealth about it. It's a cuba road. Like, yeah, it doesn't sound too threatening. Like the hatchet. And I'm like, whoa. I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then it's a little, little possible like spirit possession too, saying like, you know, you feel that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As people know, that was pretty scary as every Wednesday. This, uh, we got a, we got a really fun list of, uh, movies coming out. So just, it's going to be a long first season, but we got other seasons planned as well. So just, uh, stay tuned and I'll be doing some more of those mini deep dives on Instagram, which, uh, look for that on my Instagram.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also, Ash and Elaine are always very gracious about sharing it on their Instagram stories as well. So if you don't see it on mine, you'll see it on theirs, but at some point you'll see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Five years. Five years dot com. I'm holding my hand up to signify five. Should we high five? Ready? High.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ow. Fuck. Oh man. Okay. Death. Destruction. You know when they're like not yours so then they stab you further. This is it. It's five years. We're blinding Ash right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what it said. Yeaah. I heard it all the way from here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeaah, somehow she got the stomach bug and she kept it to herself, so I appreciate that. That's cause you weren't anywhere near me. Yeaah, thank goodness. Love you so much. I love you so much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leave me alone with my neurovirus. Hopefully, you know, we're getting out of that season, I hope, so let's, let's all just stop giving each other the stomach bug and shit. Yeah, be careful. Because GI bugs are really, uh, they're really having a moment right now. Yeah, ask Beachdream on TikTok.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Science. Science. Science. With morbid and beach gym. Yes, you have to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. Yea, use soap and water, that'll get rid of the GI buggies, but other than that, they're sticking around because, oof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oof, yeaah. They're hard to get gone. No, you said hopefully they're leaving. I hope so. Let's all knock on wood together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have been wanting to do H.H. Holmes for five years. It's true. But I knew it was a big long one, similar to Jack the Ripper. I knew that it needed like real attention paid to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, cause it's just got so much extra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like a liar. He lied right to everyone's face holes all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yea, he was a liar, and I think we're gonna get right into it. I don't know how many parts this is gonna be. Many. So just strap in. I think it's at least gonna be three. Buckle up, brothers. Could be four. I'll let you know probably in the next episode for sure how many parts it will be, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, strap in. This is our big five year series that we wanted to give to H.H. Holmes because he's a piece of shit. And you know, the story is wild. Yeah. So, let's start.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the beginning. That's a good place to go. It always is. In the late 1800s, Herman Webster Mudgett. Herman Webster Mudgett? Take that in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] H.H. Holmes' real name is Herman Webster Mudgett. So he could have been H.M. Mudgett. Yea. Wow. H.W. Mudgett.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is where we need to begin because it's like, alright, so H.H. Holmes, objectively, is a cool name. Like, H.H. Holmes flows, it's a very like, smooth name, you would probably trust an H.H. Holmes if you didn't know this H.H. Holmes, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Herman Webster Mudgett? Doesn't sound as scary. No. Or maybe sounds scarier. Actually, I should say. It sounds scarier. It just sounds kinda lame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you know, Holmes, we're gonna, we're gonna refer to him as Holmes because that's what he went by for most of his name, that's what people knew him by, that's what his crimes are really under.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we'll call him Herman for part of this, like in the beginning, but you'll know who we're talking about. Uhm, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] AKA HH Holmes. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some people, most people, all people believe that it could be well over 200 people that he has killed. You believe?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I believe he's way up there. Yeah. I think he's more than 28. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, well the full extent of his crimes and the number of lives that he did take is probably something that we may never know to the nth degree. You know, like, I don't think we're gonna be able to find every single person. I would love to believe we could.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it was really his ability to kill without conscience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or hesitation, really for financial gain most of the times. Sometimes he did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he just liked to do it. But most of the time it was for financial gain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It feels like a horror novel. It doesn't feel like real life. When you read the actual facts of this, you're like, that's not real. But it is. It's wild. And in truth,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He wasn't really like a genius, he wasn't as calculating as he's really made out to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was just a man who learned pretty early on in life that being a confident liar can get you a long way in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unfortunately. Sad but true. Especially if you can create enough chaos and confusion to make it absolutely impossible to actually tell the difference between fact and fiction. You ever seen The Great Gatsby? There you go. If you can spin a tale so wild.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That people can't tell if it's real, fake, what is, what isn't, there's nuggets of truth here, there, and everywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He can, he got a long way with it. Yeah. And when we go through this, you're gonna see, damn, he went a long way with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's, they, it's weird that like, I think a lot of people, a lot of people know the name H.H. Holmes. They know the Murder Castle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they know like the things about it that we've all been told, but when you dig into it and you realize like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was not just a monster, he was such a piece of shit. Like he was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was a piece of shit in every aspect of his life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like, he was just such a shitbag. It's wild. And he was such a fucking liar. Such a liar. He had no qualms about hurting everybody along the way in various ways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like emotionally, financially, physically, anything. He didn't care, he didn't care. Full blown sociopath? I think he is full blown. Full blown. And all he gave a shit about was money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it doesn't work out in the very end. In the very end it doesn't. It might work out along the way, but in the end it doesn't. It can't be your only.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that makes him a Taurus. Oh, there you go. Wow. I didn't see that for him. I'm gonna double check, though. Uh, but according to H.H. Holmes himself,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His early years in New Hampshire were, quote, no different from those of any other country bred boy, and I was well trained by loving and religious parents.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know about that. His parents were Methodists. They were very strict disciplinarians. His father Levi was a house painter and would later go on to serve as the town's postmaster. And his mother stayed at home. She was a housemaker. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To have any, like, dark ways about them by neighbors or anything like that, according to Adam Seltzer's book, H. H. Holmes, this true story of the white city devil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, neighbors remembered the Mudgeots as, quote, very upright, God-fearing citizens living in a quiet, secluded section of the country with no trace or taint of immorality or vice in the family history for at least three generations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love that they were like, now we can't tell you about that fourth generation, they could be heathens of the highest order, but for three generations these people did the damn thing and they seemed okay. Okay. Like we can vouch for three generations, we're not going back to that fourth. I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's weird because you get little- again with the- there's a lot of parts of this story where you hear Holmes himself tell forty different-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With his parents that seemed to set off anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But him saying like, you know, they were good people, I didn't really have anything wrong with them, that is probably true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Remember it was the 1800s, so I'm pretty sure they were strict disciplinarians, meant they beat the shit out of their kids when they got in trouble. And that was just normal back then, so I think it was one of those things that it was like, oh yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Herman himself, I'm gonna call him Herman for now, wrote an autobiography from prison later called Holmes' Own Story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he wrote it in 1895 and he starts the book like this. This will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of theater kid this guy is. Uh oh. Quote.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come with me, if you will, to a tiny, quiet New England village nestling among the picturesquely rugged hills of New Hampshire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This little hamlet has for a century been known as Gilmanton. Here in the year 1861, I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Herman W. Mudgett, the author of these pages, was born.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, wow, okay, girl, calm down. Like, I. Twas I. The author of these pages.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like we said, the Mudgeots were a well-liked family. Holmes' childhood seems fairly unremarkable for the time period especially. His mother remembered him as, quote, a good little child, very pretty and loving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As most moms remember their children being, like very pretty and loving. But not everyone remembered him as being so pretty or so loving as he began to get older. According to Ira Penick, a cobbler in Gilmanton, he said quote,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Penick told reporters that there were a lot of times when he was around the shop that he would see money go missing when he had been around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or when Herman would claim that he'd sent payment for a service, he would just pocket the money himself. That's fake as fuck. And in fact, of the many stories that people got after he was arrested finally,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which we will get to in the ultimate episode at the end. Uhm, a lot of people said that he was generally polite and pretty, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fine. Like, no one was like, wow, he was so popular, cool, or, oh, he was so weird and odd, and like, we hated him. It was just like, ugh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was fine, I guess, like whatever, but they always mentioned him possessing a very unhealthy preoccupation or obsession with money. That was always the thing, people were like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he was fine, he was polite, I guess, like he wasn't super offensive, but like, my god, that guy was obsessed with money. And it's like when everyone in your life, that is the one-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, like common thread that everybody can touch upon, that's bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But by most accounts, he did struggle a little to develop healthy interpersonal skills as a child, which to me would be a red flag now considering his adult activities, but at the time, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But according to one of his neighbors, as a boy, he was quote, a boy easily influenced and did not appear to be well grounded and firm principles, not withstanding his excellent home training and instruction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he just couldn't stand in his own convictions. And honestly didn't seem to hold any real moral strongholds of his own. And that's not good. That's a red flag to me. But other neighbors remembered him spending a lot of time by himself, kinda being a little bit of a loner sometimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, that alone to me isn't a huge issue, but add it into everything else later and it's definitely another red flag that you're like, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what was he doing off by himself? That's the thing, and being secretive, it's like, uuuh. Killing animals? And also of note, many who knew him as a boy later said that he would never make eye contact when addressing children or adults.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would not look you in the eye. You wouldn't look anyone in the eye.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To me, I was like, oh, that's, that's a little sketchy, but then if you read a little further into this, you see that a couple of medical professionals did diagnose him at one point with stravidmus, which is technically like cross-eyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, okay. Now, this can make it nearly impossible to maintain eye contact physically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure he was on, like, he was objectively untrustworthy and objectively a criminal. So like, even if he could look you in the eye, I'm sure he wouldn't. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He never showed a real direction and he seemed to kind of float around without a real purpose for a while. Same. And it was really a bit later that he finally settled on medicine as his thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the stories recounted to reporters after he was arrested, uhm, are definitely influenced by what he did and what he was charged with and what he was found to have done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it is like a little biased when you look at it later, and people are seeing hindsight in full 2020 now, remember?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now these things are never super red flags until they add up and you-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On with today's understanding of psych- the psychology of con artists or killers, it's pretty on par. Lines up, yeaah. Those line up. So it's not like everybody's just making shit up, this is who he was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now one interesting story that's often told was that when he was a young boy,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He always had like a fear of the local doctor's office, which is pretty common in kids, and especially I'm sure in the 1800s, the local doctor's office was a scary fucking nightmare den. They just have all their like huge


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this guy, uhm, his name was Dr. Nahum White, I believe his last name was, or his full name was. And he was a known, uhm, like he was very into dissection. He was an anatomist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was very good at his job, he was very respected, but he took dissection to another level sometimes. Okay. So he had things in his office that would have been a little morbid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Forcibly into one of the rooms in the office and showed him a skeleton.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fascinated him. Okay. And he said that was the beginning of his fascination with medicine and anatomy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure it scared the shit out of him. I don't know if that was the beginning of his real, like, fascination with medicine. I think he's trying to use that as like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But during his teen years, he graduated high school at 16.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he started working a number of odd jobs and finally he ended up teaching at a local school for a little while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was during this time where he was teaching that he fell in love with Clara Lovering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clara was a girl from a prominent family in nearby Loudon, New Hampshire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now interestingly, people who knew Herman early in life said that he had been obsessed with getting married very early.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and he took this as like, well I'm a landowner now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess this girl that he proposed to was like visiting the country from New York or something, like was staying and boarding at Ira Penick's for the like some period of time. And so Ira Penick was like, yeah, you can't marry this girl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's going back to New York and like, I'm supposed to be taking care of her and like, you can't just like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but he was undaunted though, don't worry about it, he wasn't gonna, that wasn't the end of his romanticism, but uhm, he tried again when he met Clara Lovering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, Clara was very well liked, very respected, people thought she was sweet and kind, and really didn't have a bad thing to say about her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A neighbor once said about her, quote, she was a very pretty little woman when she was first married and was very devoted to her husband. She was of a modest and retiring disposition. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That sounds great for 1800s. Like, that's Victorian, like, you go girl, I think. She was an, she was an it girl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no you don't. And he basically threatened this boy's life if he didn't back off. And that worked apparently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause a lot of people throughout his life were like, I think that guy's gonna murder people. Like they just like, thought it. Like he didn't even need to do anything violent, he did later. But even before he was like, actively outwardly violent, it's like people were like, I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Funny little tidbit from there. The air worries about him and- It does worry about it, but it worked for Clara, this whole threatening the guy that was hitting on her thing. I mean-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the two eloped in Alton, New Hampshire in July of 1878 and they were both 17 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now on par with Herman's secrecy and general oddness, it was several months before his family or Clara's family even knew that they were married. Wow. Uh, when they found out, cause they just got married in front of like a justice of the peace. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they found out they were, uh, not happy on either side. Apparently Herman's mother...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which feels like a stark turn from the sweet family neighbors, remember? And from Herman being like, yeah, my family is so kind and wonderful. I'm like, your mom didn't think this girl could find much worse than you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, that's his mom saying that. That's his mom. Oh shit. So that's what I mean when I say like, imagine if you found out that your mom said that about you. Yeah. And she was like, and I guess she said like, oh, she's gonna have to support you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's pretty, and he loves money, but he can't get it himself, so he's gonna take yours. Yikes. It's like damn, your own mom knew? That's rough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then later, if you research a bit deeper into their family, it seems there was this weird, strange jealousy that his mother and his sister Helen actually had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whenever he found a girl that he liked. I don't like that. There was something strange afoot there. I'm sure of it. I just don't know why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think there's a TLC show about it. It's always been a weird vibe to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When like, it immediately makes me question when like, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like that's why I love my mother-in-law, like she was never ever like that. No, mine neither. Like it's, in fact she always is like, you know, thank you for making him so happy kind of thing, like she's just always like so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind and like supportive of it and she always has been? Yea. It's always a little off putting to me when like mother-in-laws or future mother-in-laws are like, I'll fucking kill you and it's like, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But my personal thought about that is that like, I want to love the person, and I think we've talked about this before, that like I want to love the person my kids love. Of course. Whoever they are. As long as they're a good person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like you wanna make sure they're, like if they're a shit person, obviously, then no. But if like they've done nothing and you're just going into it being like I'm gonna fuck your world up, like that's a bad way to go into any relationships. And again, you can't. You can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They weren't, I think they were both just like, I would like you guys to have like a decent life, so we gotta get you on track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, Claire's family took matters into their own hands and set Herman up with a job as a clerk at the grocery store, at a grocery store in East Concord. And it was a grocery store where Claire's family owned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, a lot of Clara's family members worked there too. And they said if he, while working with him, they got to know him better. Yeah, that's probably why they did that. Yeah, and it was smart. Because they said, one thing about him was that if he even got the slightest compliment...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About anything, it would blow his head up wildly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh. Like a very much like a narcissistic kind of vibe to it. I'm not diagnosing him, don't worry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, but he loved to be complimented, okay? And would obsess over it, and it would just make him be like, ugh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, you know, whatever. By all accounts at this time, the couple seemed fine, they seemed happy. In fact, people said he was seemingly, in the beginning, very smitten with Clara. Uhm, people said he would walk like miles to see her after work and then walk miles back to work. I hate saying aww. I know, because in the beginning it looks like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was intentions of possibly living, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A life with a clean, you know, but I think the intention was probably fleeting to the point of being like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, couldn't even, couldn't even blink without, like, it was that quick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In his teens, he had been, like I said, very aimless, didn't really know what he was doing, but they said when, when he got married and when he became a father, it did seem to awaken some kind of like, I gotta get my shit together kind of thing. That's good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and Holmes' position as a store clerk...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Didn't really give him an opportunity to like, rise up the ranks in his opinion, like enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he s- so, and it really was only meant to be a stepping stone, because I think it was Clara's uncle who had owned the store, and he was like, I was just trying to give you this to get, like, a leg up. Yeah. You know, so like, calm down. Save some money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you learned a little bit about business, you know, and working with people and finances and all this stuff. Just about being in the working world. Just being a human, you know, but he, Holmes quickly, Herman I should say, at this point he's Herman, but he quickly grew pretty tired of this work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He thought, quote, that he thought he was, quote, altogether too bright for the life of a country storekeeper.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He thought he could make a lot of money fast. He became imbued with the idea of becoming a doctor


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you use the talk of the immense fortunes that physicians had made in a short time, especially if they invented some patent medicine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He became obsessed with creating some kind of patented medicine. I remember that part of the story. Now despite his penchant for get rich quick schemes, like he was that kind of guy, like you know those kind of people. Tommy Haverford. Exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did seem at this time that he was becoming very serious about becoming a doctor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, which wasn't a get rich quick scheme, he was gonna have to go through a lot of training, obviously. And spend a lot of money. Exactly. So he did quit his job at the general store and he started studying with Dr. Nahum Wright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Great. Loved amputations, loved a like very morbid dissection, like he was just, and he again, he was a very good doctor by all accounts, he was very respected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Held many esteemed positions, like, not bad things to say about this doctor at all. He just, at the time, was seen as someone who took it to a different level. Now, maybe it wouldn't be, but back then it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but he started working with him. He was studying underneath him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's funny because he came full circle back to that office with the skeleton that scared the shit out of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and it's like, I wonder if his, like, extreme dissections and extreme, like, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by 1881, he took a job teaching at the Potter District School in Gilmanton, which remember he had taught before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and this was like a small class of like 15 students. So he didn't have a ton that he had to do for that job, so it allowed him a lot of time to study on the side. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, Clara and Robert were living with her parents in Loudon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was essentially raising him as a single parent. He was kind of absent from that child's life. Maybe that's a better thing. Maybe it was better for him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the distance between her and Herman at the time was just getting bigger and bigger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and in the spring of 1882, Combs left, Herman left Gilmanton for Burlington, Vermont. And he started studying medicine at the University of Vermont. So he was even further away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now it should be noted that medical schools at the time were regarded pretty dubiously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, if you listen to our Birkin Hair series, you remember talk of resurrection men, resurrectionists, or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How could I forget? Med students themselves were basically known to grave rob for their anatomy lessons. It was almost one of those things where like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could show how committed you were by being like, I dug my own corpse for anatomy today. Fantastic. Corpses were not easy to come by legally at the time, and pre-doctors got a doctor. So, they're gonna do what they gotta do at the time. They got a doctor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I found in one of the sources that we will list in the show notes, I found this epitaph of a nine year old girl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Named Ruth Sprague from 191846 who died in Hoosick Falls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This just kind of shows what people thought of physicians at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It reads, Her body dissected by fiendish men, her bones anatomized, her soul we trust has risen to God, where few physicians rise. Oh shit, they said physicians going to who?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the time, that's the only way they had just discovered that you can't properly teach physicians without dissecting corpses. It's just the way it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To this day we do that, because you have to. Right. In order to learn about the human body, you gotta open the human body up. It's just the way it is. Hands on, baby. There you go. Like, fortunately now,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's all legal. It's all very, you know, much more ethical, much more all of that good stuff. Back then, nothing was legal or ethical or anything of the, or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of like these, you know, early med students in the 1800s doing a dissection. And we can like blur out the thing if you want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they are- Exactly, just so you know. It's really not gruesome, to be honest. No. But all of them are in three-piece suits.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't imagine eviscerating in a three piece suit. I don't think you are meant to. Like that is a wild, but how fucking dapper is that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So very few peers or college faculty really seem to have even remembered Herman much from this time period, but those that did said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who Holmes actually boarded with for nearly his entire stay in Burlington, because they, med students would stay at boarding homes, like people would keep them in there. It's like Top Chef. There you go. Uh, she's exactly like that. Uh, she's like Project Runway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She remembered Herman saying that he was married. He was still married to Claire at this time. Don't you forget it. Technically. But he was, quote, always flirting with a number of young girls in Burlington. What a piece of poop. And he actually paid particular attention to Brew's daughter, which she did not like. Oh no, and they're living together? Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mrs. Brew also said that, uhm, Herman would wake up early every morning and leave the house for what he said were long walks for his health. Gotta get those steps in. But yeaah, it's like he put on his Apple Watch and he was out there. Herman on a hawk. Trying to get that, trying to close those rings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe. On a hawker walk. But he also would have wine with an elderly widow every day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, according to Mrs. Brew, uhm, Herman was fine, generally pleasant, besides being a, like, super flirt. Okay. Uhm, but she said, when aroused, and meaning aroused, like uhm, I was like, I was gonna say, I feel like I need to like quickly be like, she doesn't mean sexually aroused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this led Herman to literally beat the shit out of him. Oh no. A huge physical altercation arose between them like they-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Issues, I think so. No, during this time, um, Herman was very focused on getting through med school as quickly as possible. He wanted to start making that bank. And that's like not the way you want to do it. Not like quick. And this was seemingly at the cost of literally everything in his life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, well, most people knew he was married to a woman in New Hampshire. He never really spoke about Clara to anyone. She never visited him. Instead, he just spent his time studying, or he would kinda just pursue subjects that he didn't think were covered well enough in school. Which you would think would make him smarter, but it didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mrs. Brew said, quote, he always pictured himself as at the top notch of his profession. I rather thought he had a very high idea of his ability, that he was self-conceited.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, a know-it-all is not my fave. A know-it-all is the worst kind of person ever. They really are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like chemistry, but it was one of the hardest subjects to me. It's very difficult. I never understood chemistry, ever. It's very interesting to me, but it is fucking hard. Like that was one of the subjects I struggled with the most. It is interesting. Biology, I got you. But like, chemistry, it's hard. And organic chemistry, phew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, loved chemistry. Not a great foreshadowing into his future. Uh, Mrs. Bruce said he was just always fucking around with liquids and concoctions in his room at the boarding house. Don't love that. With, like, with what little free time he had, he actually got a tutor to help him in chemistry because he was so focused on it. Okay. Dr. J. O. Lindsley.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he quickly turned his room at the boarding house into like a laboratory essentially. Uhm, tons of bottles and all kinds of test tubes and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fluids and unlabeled shit and like just, it was starting to get wily up in there. And it scared the shit out of Mrs. Brew. It would scare me too. She was like, it was starting to get a little too much for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's wild, the amount of people that are in the same boat as you. Yeah. And it was, honestly, it was a foreshadowing to who I would marry because I love me a tall, a tall skeleton of a man. That's what I love. I love that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she said, and he was all the time experimenting with liquids in his room. And while she kind of looked at it as he was just very committed to med school, it's probably more likely that he just wanted to get as much experience with chemistry because he wanted to patent that medicine to become fucking rich right away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He knew that was the subject he- that's why he got the tutor, that's everything, it wasn't-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, they're not doing enough at school and I'm just really committed to my education. It's like no, I need to make a medicine. Right. So I can get a million zillion dollars. Fast track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was always telling everyone at the boarding house that he knew what he was doing with the chemicals. Everyone needs to chill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I don't blame everybody for being scared shitless. I'd be scared that it was just gonna explode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also said that when he left, finally, that they found about three pounds of shingle nails hidden away in his closet. I'm sorry, Hwa. And they never understood what he had them for. That's probably for the better. Probably. We probably don't want to know why he had those. What are shingle nails? Like, big nails. I think like roofing nails. What the fuck? Oh, like, shingling nails? Really heavy-duty nails.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, very determined to get this done as fast as possible, and he was kind of overextending himself in all directions to get this done. He was constantly taking on extra work, but then one day, this took.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A very dark turn. Ro-ro. Cause again, he's doing all this extracurricular work on top of all his work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the darkest, one might say, was when Mrs. Brew did her daily house cleaning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of these times she was sweeping upstairs and noticed a strong odor coming from Herman's bedroom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So she starts investigating the smell and she's coming over to his bed and she's like, why does it smell over here? What the fuck is this? So she sweeps her broom under the bed and something comes flying out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she was fucking horrified to discover that when she swept out the object under the bed that was creating the stench, it was, quote,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A real baby. A human baby. Oh my god. Less than a year old. Who had obviously died. Was obviously being used for dissection and he took it home. But you can't be doing that. You can't just take it home. Cause it was on a board so it was obviously being...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At all. Normal in any stretch of any imagination. Or legal. Nope, not at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She fuckin' lost it, obviously. Immediately confronted Fred Engels, because that was his roommate. Oh, yep. And she was like, where the fuck did this come from? And Fred was like, uh, so he said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Brought the body in during the night and had started to dissect it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like when you see those stupid warnings on like things that are like, hey, don't eat this, like, very...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He quote, did not think that the university here offered enough advantages for such a brilliant and promising young man. That's what he thought. Woof. And that's basically what he told her. Get out of here. Yeah. And he was also, he was also apparently disappointed with the limited number of chemistry courses offered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So just a few months later, he followed through with the plan and he enrolled at the University of Medicine, uh, Medicine at the University of Michigan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bye girls! Don't come back! Oh, and throughout this entire thing, Clara has been supporting him financially. By the way. Clara, sweetie. And also raising their son. Sweetie, no. Like literally, his whole life is being supported by Clara. Herman? I don't know her. Herman, fuck off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Herman relocates to Ann Arbor in 1882 and, uh, despite his mom and his sister not being happy about it, Clara and the baby went with him this time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His mom and sister Helen never liked Clara because of that weird jealousy thing, and they would frequently encourage him to end the relationship. Kind. Meanwhile, Clara's doing everything for him, but okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Laura Young, who ran the general store after Herman left, she was, uhm, Clara's cousin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She said, quote, When Herman went to Ann Arbor to study, Mrs. Mudgett and Helen thought it was outrageous for Clara to go with him. His sister Helen made the statement long before Herman left that he was not going to live with her any longer and she must support herself. The sister used to say that Clara was not bright enough, not refined enough for Herman. Bet you guys regret that, huh?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause your brother turned out to be one of the most disgusting con men and serial killers in history. Also, outrageous. What is that? Yeah, Helen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clara's not bright enough or refined enough for your fucking monster of a brother. Yeah, Clara takes several seats. You wanna walk that statement back, Helen and Mama Mudgett? Like, really? That's a whole bunch of wild right there. Yeah, that's one of those you wish you could take back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but they did not have a good marriage. Uhm, even before the couple left for Michigan, Herman had said to Laura Young, Clara's cousin,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Quote, being married would likely prevent him from rising as far in the world as he would have, he would have otherwise. And that he thought that he and Clara would not get on together very well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the other boarders there said that they remembered Clara very fondly. They said she was, quote, a very pleasant woman and willing to make any sacrifice that she might help Holmes along in his course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they saw her as very sweet, very kind, and that she would do fucking anything for him. Aww. Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also said the couple fought a lot and that Clara, quote, was sometimes seen around the rooming house with black eyes. Oh my god. Ding ding ding, he officially crossed over into monster territory. What?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So not only is he just like a lazy asshole piece of shit, he's an abusive piece of shit too, so we have violence. Fuck you, Herman. Now Clara struggled to keep the family afloat by herself for nearly two years, and the relationship was just crumbling steadily.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And finally, just months before Herman graduated from the University of Michigan, she decided she had fucking enough abuse and she packed up the few stuff that she had and took her son back to New Hampshire. I'm so happy that she was able to do that on her own volition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And later in letters, she claimed that in the decade that followed her going to New Hampshire, she quote, had known very little of her husband. Wow. Uhm, they actually remained married until he was executed. Oh shit! They never got divorced. That's right, he never divorced her, but married several more times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, upon returning to Gilmanton, Clara and Robert lived with, uhm, actually Herman's parents for a little bit until she was, yeaah. How was that? I know, until she was able to find work as a dressmaker and she relocated herself away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and once she was away from, you know, the mudgets. I was gonna say that situation. Yeah, she focused only on Robert. She didn't think a fucking thought about what the fuck Herman was doing. She didn't give a shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and actually Clara's cousin Laura Young said even after he deserted her, she never chased after him as many women would. I think however that if Clara had followed Herman after he left her, because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the thing, he had left her to go away and kind of abandoned her while he was in school and took all her money. And she just didn't stick around and wait. But it was her who left at the end, like she really got out of there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she said, I think however that if Clara had followed Herman after he left her and went west, that we never would have heard of her again. I think that he would have killed her as soon as she commenced to be in his way, for she would have never countenanced his action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's cheating on her, he's just like a piece of shit. I have no doubt he would've killed her. She's very lucky to be ridded of that piece of dead weight. So good for her. Sarah lost like, 100 pounds. There you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While in Burlington, you're like, I don't know how much he weighs, but however much he weighs, that's how much he lost. He lost a few stones. Exactly. While in Burlington, Herman was a rigidly devout student of chemistry, obviously, like we said, but in Michigan,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He now shifted away from chemistry a little bit and back to anatomy. And he really liked dissecting bodies. I don't love that. Uhm, in fact, one of his fellow students, John Madden, said quote, He seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in the uncanny things of the dissecting room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what a, I mean, when you look at it now, hindsight is 20-20, and you're like, ooh, yeah, that's fucked up, but like- Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dissection is interesting, I can't really like say it's not, but the fact that he's a murderer makes that weird. I've never dissected anything. No, it's definitely interesting if you're doing it for the right purpose. Yeah, for like biology and shit. Yeah, but he also was quoted, that, um, John Madden fellow student was quoted as saying,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Holmes talked a great deal about what he had done in the dissecting room with what appeared to me at the time unnecessary gusto and told me that the professor of anatomy at the time was to permit him to take the body of an infant home with him for dissection during the spring vacation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So see, it happened again, where he asked to take home an infant. Why is it an infant that he wants? I don't know, but it's weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I mean that makes absolute logical sense, like logistically that does make sense. Yeah, but events are also very hard to dissect. I would think. Like it's not an easy evisceration or dissection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're tiny. You know, like it's all tiny and it's upsetting. It's more upsetting than any human dissection has an element of sadness to it, but it's like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A baby is a whole different level. And I would think that you would want to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To learn on a full grown body, because you're gonna, I would think, learn more. Exactly, well there's just a certain thing, I mean at least you would think he would try it out. I don't know though, it's just a strange thing, a strange quirk of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What he wanted, which was chemistry so he could patent a medication. And he was looking at anatomy because I think he was starting to feel some type of way. And I think he was only focusing on the things that he wanted for different reasons and not for a medical degree to become a doctor to help people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. We'll get there. He graduates. Okay. And he does, like, he works as a doctor for a little bit. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. But he's really a fraudster. Yeah. And always. Um, one teacher even voted against him graduating. Really? So he graduated by the skin of his fucking teeth. Shit. He was not good at medicine. He was not...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was not very adept at it. And one student described him hilariously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, as quote, he was distinctly what might be termed dumb. He was slow to grasp ideas and not ready at all in reasoning. Okay. Which is funny to hear considering he's an actual piece of shit. So yeah, you're dumb. Exactly. And he like thinks he's so fucking smart. Oh, he thinks he is the gift.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, this is also hilarious and disgusting, but another said he was below mediocre. Um, another student also said that he smelled strange and that he had a nickname. Do you want to know what his nickname was? Of course I want to know. His nickname was Smegma.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's just google it and look at the first definition that comes up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This gave me joy, because it's like, the great H.H. Holmes, the like, infamous, like, criminal of the century, was called Smegma. That's so nasty. By his peers in med school. So this little bitch is nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing but a foreskin smelling below average student.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who couldn't even keep his first wife. That's really fuckin' gross. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Herman was forced to find his own fucking job and support himself while he finished the degree. I'm still really affected. So he now founded his own job with William Herdman, who was an anatomy instructor with the university, and he worked as his assistant. He was responsible to like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe he had plans to murder and defraud on like a galactic scale later. But I think it was more that this was kind of the training along with the whole chemistry obsession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is all the stuff that just kind of like slowly put the pieces together for him to become that later. I don't know if he had all that in mind quite yet. I don't think he really had the foresight. Probably came over time. But it was also at this time that he claims he and his classmates first came up with the idea of faking a death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had to defend himself before the medical faculty after being charged with breach of promise. Breach of promise? He got himself a breach notice. Which is not a fun notice to get. Cause they're usually bullshit. Usually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he married, this one I think was real though. So he married, he's married to Clara. He's married to Clara, hasn't divorced her, hasn't legally separated from her in any way. Fantastic. Married until he was executed, remember that. Well he's staying now at a boarding house and the person who owns this house is a widow who also was a hairstylist. Hey! By the name Mrs. Fitch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's definitely what it was. To make her sleep with him, he was like, I will marry you. Of course. I'll make you an honest woman. Back in these days, that's fucking serious. That's serious business. You can't be married to someone else and promise marriage to another just to get them into bed. That's not just like distasteful and bad. That's like, woo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Mrs. Fitch found a letter he was writing to his actual wife, Clara, at the time, who he was still talking to and corresponding with and kind of like stringing along a bit. And she ran to the medical faculty and was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he denied it all and his professor, Professor Herman, who he was assisting under, the anatomy assistant, he came to his defense and he vouched for him saying he thought he was truthful. He was like, he's an upstanding guy. I've never had a problem with him. I didn't, you know, I don't believe that this is real.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well Holmes got off on the charges, and poor Mrs. Fitch was left to look like a liar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he graduates, he's able to graduate, on fucking graduation day, he shakes Professor Herman's hand, er, excuse me, Professor, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His name was not Professor Herrmann. Aww, no, not Herrmann. It was Herdman, excuse me. Oh. So I was close. It's like you heard with purge. You heard, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, but you heard with her. Uh, but he shakes Professor Herdman's hand and says, Doctor, those things are true that that woman said about me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then on the day of graduation was like, haha fucker. That is such a dick move because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He relocated to Mower's Forks. Yea girl, you did that. Not sure if I said that. You did. It's a tiny hamlet in upstate New York. It had previously been part of a larger town of Champlain. Oh, okay. So once there, he opened a small tree nursery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, he got weird with it like Matthew Hoffman did. Yeah, he got a little weird with it. Not as weird as Matthew Hoffman did, I will say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause he just kind of abandoned it a few months. It wasn't profitable, so he just abandoned it. Okay. But like what a weird little direction to take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and he does that to everything in his life that doesn't serve him, how he wants it to, he just abandons it. Good. At one point he hired a primary school teacher named Minnie Everett for French lessons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for her to say that time will reveal, like it hasn't happened yet, but something's, something's in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He also aggressively refused to leave her alone after this for some time, so he was a stalker as well. Fantastic. Uh, yeaah, he's a little bitch. But after this failure...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Holmes petitioned the local school trustees to hire him on and he was put in charge of the primary school. Like he was able to get a lot of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so smallpox scare broke out in this town. Oof. And people were urging residents to get vaccinated against smallpox. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He saw this as an opportunity. So he somehow got his hands, probably by stealing, on a load of vaccines and he loaded up a wagon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But back in his medical office, he started setting up a laboratory because he was really trying to get that patented medicine. He was gonna get rich from it. And to help him with this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was said to have brought in, to stay with him for a while, his six year old son Robert. No, no, no, no, no. And he quote, and put him to work in the laboratory putting up in, putting up in bottles the liquid which Herman manufactured.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like, you're a murderer. Minnie knows. But, what's weird about him...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is he somewhat of an anomaly in the sense that he was a get-rich-quick guy and he was a con man, but he also


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Didn't shy away from hard work. Like he would work for his cons. Because he was a money motivator.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like he's very strange in that way. Like he doesn't have that like, like cut and dry, get rich quick personality. Right. It's strange. But it should be said that while he claimed the boy in his company was his son, there is a lot of speculation


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it said that after he left his teaching position in New York, that he had, quote, went home, went to Massachusetts, but returned in a short time accompanied by a small boy who disappeared shortly after his arrival. Holmes saying he had gone home. It doesn't appear that any investigation


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and it's like, I don't, I think this might have been a boy that he took.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope so too. Like that's honestly, I'm hoping that, but I don't know. I can't be sure. Cause he's such a piece of shit. Right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was also in New York that there were rumors about his, um, inappropriate behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With women. Uuuh. Uhm, inappropriate, like, he was a pig.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And on several occasions, he was known to have treated out of town women for what's only referred to as organic trouble in his office. What is organic trouble? Not sure. And there were rumors that they were all, like, that these women were treated and then disappeared because they were from a house of ill repute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was never any confirmation of this, no identities that we can, like, hang our hats on. But that probably happened. It probably happened, and there were reports of Herman paying, quote, violent attention to a young woman named Alan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What? Who eventually left town and was never heard from again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hopefully she actually did leave town. Yeah, and actually there were rumors around this New York town that Holmes had actually married her, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They said that, like, there was rumors that he had married her, but then there was rumors that she left town, but the ones that everybody kinda sits on is that she probably met a sinister end at his hands. It kinda sounds that way. And they just couldn't prove it. But she was never found again. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's definitely he did something. Especially if he had already killed that boy. Yea, something happened here. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I mean when I say there's definitely more over the ones he confessed to and are confirmed. Right. And I think a lot of people think that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was never like mean outwardly to people, he didn't do like, you know, he was a little weird, but like not like super strange or eccentric, like there was just something about it, as like Minnie said, there was just something that was gonna be revealed. Can't put your finger on it. We just didn't know what was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Women in the village began sharing stories of his, you know, unwanted advances.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So on one occasion, his landlord confronted him and was like, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You haven't paid your rent, and I've tried to get you to pay your rent for like fucking months. Oh shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the tears would appear in the doctor's eyes and trickle down his cheeks, but he never said a word in reply.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he would just sit there and let people be like, you're a fucking scoundrel, you're a swindler, you're a piece of shit, like you're just like, you're a deadbeat blah blah blah, and he would just sit there and cry. And never say anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's very strange. Right? And also like, sad, but like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, he's, no, cause I think it's fake. It's fake as fuck. Those tears are crocodile tears, my friend. He would cry because he knew it was gonna disarm anybody around him to see this mustachioed gentleman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he took similar approaches with his medical office landlord because he always had an excuse for not paying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at one point he produced a letter that supposedly was sent from someone in Gilmanton, where he was from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, open that email attachment, it's definitely not a scam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, Herman's reputation in this New York village continued to decline towards the end of his residency in the village, and not long before leaving, he was involved in a scheme


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was an older soldier, a veteran living in town, who had for several months been dealing with like an unknown illness. It was like a shuddering cough, a lot of pain, and the doctors kept trying to tell him it was malaria. But this soldier said no, that's not it. He refused to believe this diagnosis and he believed


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That it was being caused by an injury he had received during the war


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said he'd gotten shot, there was a bullet lodged in his lungs, in his like, the area of his ribs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he said it's pressing his ribs against my lungs and it's making it hard for me to breathe. I know that's what it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But ultimately he was dying, so it really didn't matter to him personally what was going on, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the injury was the result of him serving in the war in the military, his widow when he passed away was going to be granted his full pension.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, what a fucking, like, future to face. So for that reason, he asked, uhm, Herman's landlord, Edward Steele, to be present for his autopsy. Which I'm like, oh my god. Imagine having to ask that. But this, but Edward Steele couldn't come to the autopsy, so it was conducted without him there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, his cause of death was labeled as malaria.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Edward Steele felt horrible and he was desperate to make sure this widow got the full pension, so he asked Herman


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To help out of the goodness of my heart. Which I don't have. This widow. To make sure he had this man's dying wish.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have evidence that can help this, but I will only give it to you if you say that my rent is paid in full. What a fucking jackass. And he said, if you don't do that, I'm going to keep the evidence of the autopsy and the widow won't get the full pension and I don't give a shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my god. And the evidence he had? He had the actual ribs. He had evidence that they were pressing against them. The man was correct. Correct. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He kept those broken ribs because Edward Steele looked at him and was like, go fuck yourself. Yeah, you asshole. I'll figure out another way to get her her pension. And you know what? He did. Thank goodness. He got that widow his pension, and Holmes? Herman there? Herman fucking Mudgett? He kept those two broken ribs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one knows what he did with them, but he kept those fucking ribs. What a crazy person. Like, what? That's so weird, like what? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So shortly after he had done this, you know, extorted false evidence for payment of his rent, he tried to leave this village without saying anything to anyone or paying any of his debts. He was just going to leave all of it behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Although his landlord literally found him loading the wagon and being like, hi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like you just, the last anyone heard from him from this village was a letter sent from Tilton, New Hampshire saying he had business to attend in New Hampshire and he would be in touch to settle his debts at a future date. Doubt it. Ding ding ding, he never did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, after leaving, Holmes returned to New Hampshire briefly and just tried to take full custody of Robert.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow. Just, why not? No. You know, I haven't been part of his life for six years, but why not? No. Uh, and again, Clara and he were technically still married, so he never actually lost custody of him. Right. He just abandoned them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's unclear what actually happened here, but Clara ended up taking their son to her father's house and he left the state. So like she was like, no, good try. She's like, you're a murderous piece of shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We can't have our son. But he definitely tried to. And without a job now, or any source of income.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, uhm, quote, starvation was staring me in the face. Doubt it. And he sold his horses in Tilton and he boarded a train for Pennsylvania.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he left New Hampshire for the last time, he wanted to leave behind everything. Meaning he wanted to leave behind Herman Webster Mudget.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was now going to be known formally as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. H. H. Holmes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, sounds like H.H. Holmes is, uh, I don't know how, I mean, I think he just made it, he thought it sounded good. There's all kinds of speculation that he used Sherlock Holmes as his inspiration, but that wasn't published until a year after. Oh, so incorrect. So it wasn't it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You pressed an incorrect key. So I think it was just, it was a name he came up with, I guess. Okay. It was unfortunately a good one. Uh, so he homes now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Arrived in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which is a town just outside of Philadelphia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that was great. A lot isn't really known about this time period. There is some evidence that suggests that just days after having arrived, he walked into the police precinct and told officers there that he was, quote,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know if that actually happened, that is a report. Police officers did say that happened, so who knows what that was about. Uhm, they took pity on him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they let him stay in the station while they tried to find him some work and they ended up finding him work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did get a job working at this hospital, you just don't know how. This is the story he tells, uh, I wouldn't believe shit that comes out of his face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That for years afterwards, even now sometimes, I see their faces in my sleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good. The patients at this psychiatric hospital. I'm glad he was haunted. Now, after just a few months in Norristown, he actually abandoned that job at the state hospital, cause that's what he does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And found a new position at a pharmacy in Philadelphia, which is much more his speed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, as would become his MO, this job also didn't last long, and there was some mysterious shit that happened before he left it. Rub-Rub.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He abandoned the job and Philadelphia completely after a local boy died after taking some medicine purchased from homes at the pharmacy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, he claimed he had nothing to do with the medicine, nothing to do with the boy's death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it definitely put a black mark on his already questionable reputation, and they're really...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had talked about it a little in college. It's coming back. And Holmes now is ready to do it. Okay. Cause now he's like, I've tried this working thing for a minute or two. Too hard. And it's hard. So let's just scam insurance. Money please. Now I quit money. So according to him,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He apparently contacted an old college friend, which imagine how hard that was back in the day. Yeah, you had to really want to contact someone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Either way, he was also, his friend was in dire straits financially as well, and they decided that they would get one more friend involved and this other friend was going to be the one to increase his life insurance to $40,000 at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he would do this by telling the insurance company that he dealt with some kind of life altering experience that made him concerned for his family's well-being. So he wanted to up the amount.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel like you might need to get a little more specific than that. I guess back then insurance was just like, sure thing buddy. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, he would then later, this man, the plan was to send his wife and child somewhere out west near California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's not the case, which is weird. And then he was going to have claimed to have killed himself in the note, this friend. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a weird thought. I know it is weird. Right? And that's what they banked on was like they could control who he wrote down in his policy. Right. Now me thinking the dismemberment detail was to make sure he didn't have to show bodies. Apparently that wasn't right. They had to show bodies. Regardless. Three bodies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which meant they were gonna have to procure three imposter dead bodies, including a child. And put them in a pickle jar? Yeah, and like, I was like, you would have to dismember them? Yeah. That's a lot. So he went to Minion, so, at this time, so this is what they wanted to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plan the whole thing out. So, Holmes had went to Minneapolis and Chicago during this time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And put them into barrels, which he stored in a room at the McCoy Hotel in Chicago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is when he says, oh okay, well that's, I just said like, oh no, and I just buried those bodies in my basement. Like, not a big deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This story, people believe, was possibly concocted and changed a bit to help him explain why there were a lot of bones found buried in his Chicago place. Oh, good. They were probably the result of something even more sinister.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just what we don't know, but he wanted to make it look like, well, I purchased bodies legally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is, you're making this story up so that we don't question those bones in the basement, but in reality, if they had questioned those bones in the basement, which they didn't in time to identify them or figure something out, we probably would have figured out that those were missing people, probably. Hundo P. Guarantee you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damn. So he leaves Philadelphia in the spring of 1886 after definitely murdering people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is where shit really starts to get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's an upsetting end to this episode. That's it, bye. Just kidding. Uh, but yeah, stay tuned for part two, and uhm, he gets worse and worse, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fantastic. This is a pretty gnarly one. That makes me nervous because my tum already hurts. I know, you're having tummy trouble. I know. What's going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's funny to me, it's like, it's very concerning to Elena. She's like, I don't like this. Yea, I hate it. It's so funny to me because that's been me for like the past, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I might still fall asleep early. Maybe, but maybe I'll feel better about it. Also, you're not giving yourself enough credit. You have two brand new puppies. That's true, I think that's definitely having to do with it. They're doing great, by the way. Yeah, but like you learned how to, or not you, like your youngest learned how to sleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then you were sleeping for a minute and your body was probably getting used to that and then you were like, oh, you know, it's a good idea. Let's fuck this up entirely. Let's fuck up my sleep. And that's probably what happened. So you're probably, people get tired sometimes. I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Listen, all you Capricorns out there, you might feel this sudden, uh, feeling that you've never felt before called tired. It sucks. Lay down. All my Capricorns can attest like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What about a 20 minute nap? That's like super good for productivity. Maybe you should start doing that during the day. Maybe it's time for you to develop a nap time, Oldie. Maybe you gotta have a nap time. Maybe it's time for your nap. It's time for my nap everybody. I'll wake you up with some oatmeal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was some cream of wheat. Some cream of wheat. I used to live with this lady that loved cream of wheat. You know, it's a real, it's a real food.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel like with a case like this and any case in general where somebody loses like a teenager in their life, that's horrible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, and it's also like, why not look further into those footprints?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, like, you would, like, they know Chris's size and clearly, like, if they're, they're like, no, that wasn't Chris's size, then who the fuck, who did that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like they didn't have the evidence, he didn't admit it to them, but they were like, this fucker did it. Wow. He must have been like, I can't imagine being like, oh yeah, like that was definitely my fellow classmate that tortured that boy to death. He for sure did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think that's what we're talking about. I think we're talking about one kid that went home after killing the other and putting him in a river. It's like, I think we're talking about different things here, Marissa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just like, wanted to break through your closet for funsies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I- and then there's just like no info on if you paralyzed a boy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope Joe Clark's parents got it together at some point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, that's great, love meeting everybody, excellent cities, having the best time. But I'm also like, I'd quite like to go back to my bed, go to my shower and cook myself a meal in my own kitchen. It is not delivered to me in some sort of plastic carton in my bedroom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think that's true. I like the Boston accent. Yesterday we were at the venue and the lovely old security guard, he like walked me back to the hotel. And I was like, that's so sweet. And he had like a proper like, I am from Boston and I'm not going to try do it because I'm terrible at accents.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An excellent game, I think is what that is. Uhm, it was like one of those really old school PC games, probably a bit similar to what you're describing, but you were a taxi driver in space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, that's epic. That's way better than Oregon Trail. And it gets better. So people get in to the back, your potential customers, and they would be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've always thought maybe it's because of, uhm, The Little Mermaid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perfectly matched. Hell yes. Over on the red-handed feet now, we will take you. Witchy, old and timey, 1875.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey weirdos! It's me, it's Elena. What's going on? How's your day? I hope it's awesome. That's all I wanted to say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I'm just kidding. This is a message because I think a couple of episodes ago we talked about how we are going back to the OG way of doing things. We're doing two episodes a week, two big old honkin' delicious juicy episodes with one listener tale a month just as a little cherry little glitter on top of a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Crazy month. And we're going to keep doing that, but I think we were also debating what days would be best for this new two episode a week cadence because we figured


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, from Wednesday to Monday is a long wait for us and for you. Too much. We'd all be sad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We don't want that. So we finally came up with a good cadence. We're gonna drop episodes on Monday and Thursday from here on out. So Mondays, Thursdays. That's when they'll come out on Wondery+. Then a week later, you will get them Monday and Thursday for everybody else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what we're going to do. You deserve consistency. We want to give it to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know we didn't do that in the first like three years, we were like, willy-nilly, whenever you get episodes, here it is, but you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're in that consistency train and we want to stay on that. And yeah, I think this is going to work for everybody. It just feels better. We don't want that big chunk of time between episodes. You don't either. Um, so yeah, that's what we're going to do. Mondays, Thursdays, new episodes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're excited about it. It lets us really put more time and effort into these episodes, which is what they deserve and what you deserve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we fucking love you and I can't wait to see you every Monday and Thursday. I know I won't see you. I realize that I won't even hear you, but it feels like I will and you will hear me. So we're all in this together. We're best friends. Thanks guys. Mondays, Thursdays, whoop whoop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was beautiful. It was elegant. You're, you probably saw a picture. It looks like the last supper, but awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's also, it's Judas. I know it's Judas Brutus is the Caesar one. I, you know, Judas Brutus, they're all betraying people, you know? I like Caesar dressing. Am I right? Yeah. That's my hot take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stop copying me. Oh yeaah, I got yelled at. I accidentally, cause I don't look at any, like, I usually don't see any comments because I'm just like, uh, I don't go on the internet anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm out and I happen to be on Instagram and I got one of those like banner notifications and it was somebody on a morbid post being like, Hey, has anyone else noticed how fucking annoying Elena is that she just repeats all the funny things that Ash says in a like different voice?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like- They said, has anyone else noticed? Yeah, has anyone else noticed how annoying Elaine is? And I was like, why are you here? I was like, what did that get you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You fuckin' putz. Like I got, like whatever, it's like pit us against each other. It's not gonna work. Do you think Ash is gonna like you for that? Like Ash is, like, we ride at dawn for each other. Literally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a great movie, but is that the town? But yea, yea, it is the town. Hey, look at me. Yea, so I just, you know, I just was like, wow, okay, uhm, you need to, uhm, you need to sign out of the