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[Assistant] And they had only their flashlights, so they're navigating these piles of trash, just debris that's cluttering the floor, and they're only using flashlights like it's pitch black. And they step back.


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[Assistant] To the sheriff step back and like steps back and just sweeps his light across the room just to get a full. Scope. Feel.


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[Assistant] And he bumped into something heavy as he backed up behind him.


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[Assistant] And so he jumped, he thought it was a person standing behind him, it felt like that. And he shines the light.


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[Assistant] So Schechter wrote quote, the body was hanging upside down by its feet. Its front had been split completely open so that its trunk was little more than a dark gaping hole.


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[Assistant] The carcass had been decapitated as though someone had sliced the head off for a trophy, and they had been butchered like ma heifer or a dressed out deer. Oh, so like an animal. My god.


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[Assistant] Horrified by the sight of what he knew at this point was the body of Bernice Worden. Oh god.


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[Assistant] So he stumbles out of the house and it's, uh, snow is outside and he just drops to his knees and begins vomiting. Uh, yeah, I would think so. And this is like, he's like new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A moment later, the captain followed, equally horrified, like they were both, and he's like seasoned the captain. Yeah.


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[Assistant] And there's obviously crime scene photos of this, and they are- Oh god. Brutal. Some of the most horrible, you'll see. I mean, this is what he did to that woman is-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's just somebody's grandma, somebody's mom, running a great business in town. That's so scary. Yeah. And just so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like animalistic. Oh, it's such, he treated her like a deer that he was dressing. That he had hunted, yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's horrifying. So they radioed the station to report what they found and then they had to go back inside to start securing the scene. And how do you secure that scene? How? Now back inside the summer kitchen, it was even worse than they thought. What is a summer kitchen?


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[Assistant] I think it's like a sun porch, I'm pretty sure. Like something like that, I imagine. Not positive, but it's a farmhouse, so that's what I see it as. I'm going to Google it.


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[Assistant] Headless body was hanging by the ankles from a crudely handmade crossbar secured to the ceiling strung up as one would butcher an animal.


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[Assistant] And soon other officers arrived from the police and sheriff's department, as well as state troopers and the men from the county crime lab.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and most of the men at the farm that night, like we said, like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of them are seasoned law enforcement professionals and see, they've seen some shit at this point. But none of them.


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[Assistant] We're ready for what they encountered in this house. How could you ever be ready for that?


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[Assistant] And what's wild is Bernice Warden's body was only the beginning of it. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So with only flashlights and kerosene lamps to light their way. Again, remember this is in the middle of the night, like this is nighttime, barely moonlight coming in. This is the most ghoulish scene I could possibly imagine. And there was no electricity at that farm? I don't think so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Holy shit, that makes it even fucking scarier. And they just made their way through the door in the summer kitchen and found that the interior of the home was even worse. By the way, a summer kitchen is a small outdoor building that you can use like in the warmer weather.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Interesting, I'm glad you looked that up. Me too. Uhm, cause I always pictured it as like a sun porch, but. It's sort of like it's like that. But like it's a different building.


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[Assistant] I think it can be attached to the house. I don't know. It's very confusing. Either way.


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[Assistant] Every inch of the floor seemed to be covered in just debris. Boxes, empty bottles, old newspapers, magazines, like trash, debris, moldy magazines, just all kinds of shit.


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[Assistant] There were also things that were just like, even straight, like everything was just kind of gross, but like things that are like weird too, like.


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[Assistant] There was a coffee can full of wads of chewed gum. Ew.


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[Assistant] What, what is the meaning of that? And that's where it kinda comes into the like, are you?


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[Assistant] You know, like something's going on mentally. Oh, he's not sane. Like there's no way this man is in his proper mind. Like it's just...


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[Assistant] And I think he maybe had moments of clarity. And he himself kind of says he has moments of clarity. But he will say,


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[Assistant] He doesn't, like, and we'll see eventually that the investigators do believe parts of what he's saying eventually because they're like, I really do think he blacks out sometimes. Yeah. Because he would say he would like get these urges to go like rob a grave. Cause we'll get into that, don't worry. But, and he'd get these urges and he said he would try to pray it away. And sometimes it would work.


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[Assistant] And then you can remember who he was brought up by. That's what he learned, yea.


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[Assistant] He said, but sometimes it wouldn't work and I would wake up and I'd be in the middle of digging into a grave. And he said, and that happened a few times and I would just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put the stuff back and I'd leave and go home. Wow.


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[Assistant] And so they were like, I think that he, like, which is by no means justification for anything, but I don't think he's.


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[Assistant] I don't think he's sane. He's not all there. Some stuff is very wrong here. He's a very sick man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To a place like this? No. And have these kind of artifacts being found in your house without something being desperately wrong. Definitely. Like, there's something wrong. Definitely. So there was like the coffee can of, you know, chewed up gum. There was a shelf that just had a bunch of yellowing and cracked dentures all over it. Ew. And then there was a sink full of sand. That's weird. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wonder if that was like for like preserving. I don't know. Things.


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[Assistant] But either way, so this was already like, what the fuck is going on? Then they stumbled on the real horrors. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] So they sweep their lights around the room some more and one of the officers spotted what appeared to be a very odd shaped soup bowl that was sitting on a table.


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[Assistant] And when he got closer and looked at it, he said, oh, that's the sawed off top of a human skull. That's a skull cap that he's using as a bowl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also found several complete skeletons in the house, including two that had been stuck on Ed's bedposts, quote, as decorations. What? And those are from the grave robbing? Yeah, full skeletons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elsewhere in the house they found five heads, full human heads, flesh and all, wrapped in plastic bags. Nine death masks made of human skinned heads.


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[Assistant] Several bracelets and belts made out of skin and hair and quote, preserved female organs. Okay.


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[Assistant] Hours later, more men arrive at the farm and they bring like a large generator and some lights now because they want to be able to see what the fuck is going on at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or they have to be able to. Yeah, they have to, unfortunately. Uhm, and it somehow became more nightmarish in there.


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[Assistant] Because remember, he's being fueled, we talked about this in part one, by fantasies, like wild fantasies.


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[Assistant] And also Nazi crime literature. Right. Cause remember we talked about that in the first part. He's being fueled by a lot of fucked up shit here. Like nightmare stuff. And so he had fashioned his own lamps and other items from human skin. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in one drawer, officers found nine shriveled vulvas.


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[Assistant] Oh my god. One had been painted silver and trimmed with red ribbon and another had been covered in salt.


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[Assistant] There was also a jar full of noses and an old Quaker oats container that held various pieces of human head and face skin. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] You would never be the same. Like how do you just go back to your house after working this scene and eat dinner with your family?


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[Assistant] I do, I'm like, I wonder so much for these investigators. Truly. I'm like.


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[Assistant] Talking about it, you can picture it in your mind, and you're sitting there going, oh my god, like, it can turn your stomach just even thinking about it.


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[Assistant] Imagine seeing that. No, and then just having to go about your daily life after that. Yeah.


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[Assistant] I mean you think about how scary it is when you're in like a, like a haunt.


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[Assistant] Backing up to get a better view and backing into Bernice Warden's body. Like in a farm in the middle of nowhere. Yes. In one of the worst possible positions you could ever find a human body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They finally made their way, this is when they made their way into Ed's bedroom and found the skeletons attached to the bedposts. And probably horrible other things. And as Schechter wrote, uh, wild as it seemed, some of Gein's loathsome creations were obviously meant to be worn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were several pairs of pants and leggings made from human skin.


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[Assistant] As well as quote, a garment fashioned from the upper torso of a middle-aged woman, which could be donned as a kind of vest.


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[Assistant] The most disturbing to the investigators were the nine human masks.


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[Assistant] Which appeared to have been carefully removed from each skull and left on display.


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[Assistant] That's so scary. A bunch of them were dried and almost mummified.


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[Assistant] Others looked like he had tried to keep them fresh because he had rubbed oil on them.


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[Assistant] And some still had lipstick and makeup on. Oh god. Because they had like lips and their cheeks had rouge. Like these are real human people that once lived. Oh my god, that's like, there's not even words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Horrifically, like seeing like a picture of somebody, you know what I mean? Like, I...


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[Assistant] Which again, like, I'm doing that in my, can I need a quick little side note, just to take us away from this for a second, because like, you know what, why not, just to travel, because I also want to know if anybody else feels this way. I wish I had this ability. I have this thing where if I have an image in my head, or a visual in my head that I don't like, and I want to stop thinking about it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just, in my mind, like a dry erase board.


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[Assistant] Or like an Etch-a-Sketch almost, like just wipe it away.


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[Assistant] And I visually see the image get wiped away. That's really interesting. With an eraser, and then I can pretend it doesn't exist. Bitch just has the paint tool in her brain. It's not there anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's gone. I don't have that. And I can just like, I can like literally like, like uhm, kind of compress it into a different part where I don't.


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[Assistant] I'm not gonna, it's not gonna pop into my head anymore. Unless I call it back.


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[Assistant] The more I think about, like, wanting to get rid of an image in my head like that, the more it stays. I think that's common, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know when I started being able to do this, but I- That's interesting. It's helpful. I mean, it's a coping mechanism for sure. It's a, it's a helpful thing to have because like those kind of things, I, I just can't. Yeah, luckily I can't remember that one particular, thank God, because that ruined me for a long time. It's gone. Anytime like it gets brought up, I just go whoop whoop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow, we even, we took a minute away, but I was still there. Yeah, right? Like that was just, oof. This is a gnarly one. Um, yeah, so.


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[Assistant] Oh, uhm, when he took it off the hook on the back of the door, he discovered that inside of the folds of this robe,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was a brown. Made of horse skin. Yea, like a horse hide robe, I guess.


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[Assistant] It was, there was a brown paper bag and it had something inside of it. This was like folded into the robe. Okay.


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[Assistant] So he looks into the bag and he just kind of like shines the light in there and he said he saw what looked like a mass of long human hair connected to what looked like skin.


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[Assistant] So he reached inside and he grabbed what it was by the hair and pulled out whatever was in the bag and it was revealed to be the desiccated head of Mary Hogan. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] Now a large team of men work through the night and well into the next morning going room by room excavating what


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[Assistant] Yeah, just emotionally, physically, spiritually.


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[Assistant] No, they just kind of like, that's when they go to the crime lab too, to like, you know, all the testing on it and make sure, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So early the next morning, they finally made their way to the boarded off section on the first floor of the house. And that's early the next morning, they finally got to that boarded off section, totally boarded off. And that's Augusta's room, right? So they pried the boards off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they opened the door into what have, it must have felt like to them, and they described it this way, that like,


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[Assistant] It felt like a portal. Like, cause it was just like...


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[Assistant] Because unlike the rest of the house, which is a fucking nightmare. Right. Augusta Gein's parlor and bedroom, it was like her bedroom in a little living room, which was always called the parlor. Yeah. Back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pristine condition. Right cause she was super clean. She was super clean. There was a thick layer of dust covering everything obviously.


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[Assistant] They said that you would have thought that he had just organized the space before they got there, like it was brand new, like never touch. And they didn't know it at the time, but they were the first people to step into that room since Augusta's passing. Wow. He had boarded that thing up exactly how she left it and never opened it up. It was just preserved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So creepy. And they said they walked in and it was just like, what the fuck is this? That's where the Norman Bates of it all comes. Yeah. Like the preserving mama kind of thing. Especially that being the backdrop to what you've just been through. That it's like. It's fucked up. These people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are going through this house, like we just talked about, seeing the worst shit you could ever conjure up in your darkest imagination. And then to pry that thing open, they probably thought they were going to go into something even


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even gnarlier in the dark sense like that. They were like, oh shit, like what are we going to find in here? And then they opened that up and it must have been so fucking unsettling because you're just like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So elsewhere, one of the lead criminologists had set up a workstation and started photographing and cataloging all the just gruesome items that were found in the house. It's also really fun to me, side little trick, that it's like the fifties to hear like a criminologist. It is, I was just thinking that. I don't know, I'm just like wow, wicked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so he started photographing to Bernice Warden's body while it's, and he had to photograph it while it's still hung from the ceiling. Oh, that's horrific. Uhm, and then he went on to the other organs which were found all around. Uhm, her heart was found in a plastic bag sitting in front of Ed's stove.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her entrails were later discovered wrapped in an old newspaper and folded inside an old suit.


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[Assistant] It took some time, but eventually they found Bernice's head.


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[Assistant] There's no rhyme or reason to any of this, but everything is just everywhere. Why is it in between two mattresses in a prolapse? Like what was the thought process? Which I know we're never going to understand that thought process.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nobody's gonna understand that, but it's just like when you look at it at face value, you're just like, what? Why did you put her head there? But obviously, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finding her, her head was discarded of very callously in a burlap sack shoved between two dirty mattresses, like what the fuck? That's bad enough, but when they took it out of the sack,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The technician realized, quote, what Ed had done was take two ten-penny nails, bend them into hooks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Connect them with a two foot length of twine and stick one nail into each of Bernice Warden's ears. This way, the head could be hung in his bedroom as a trophy or wall ornament. Like you would hang a deer head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nice to you, like, kind enough to you. Yea, she was kind to, like, she was totally fine with him. Even then, even though he was annoying her, she still, everybody was like, she was nice to him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's beyond. I can't. Like, you're never the same after somebody is murdered, I can't imagine. Like, knowing somebody that was murdered and especially having it be like your mom or loved one. But like this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just mutilated, desecrated afterwards. We're sitting here saying, and it's still valid, how do the detectives move on in the crime scene? For sure. Analysts, but her son to know that this happened to her? Knowing that, I can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then to just have to like, raise his kids still? Yeah, it's like, what do you do? What do you tell them? You know? Like, how do you cope? I don't know. But...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, 12 hours after Frank Warden had stopped in to check on his mother, law enforcement officials and crime scene technicians had finally finished just the first pass at the crime scene. Uhm, there would be more evidence to collect as they went back, but for now,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sheriff and his deputies wanted to talk to Ed Gein. Yeah. Did they?


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[Assistant] Honestly, nothing he would ever say could really explain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What they saw in that house. Even a portion of it. Yeaah, so it was like, I don't really know what we're gonna get here, but- Where do you start?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, after his arrest in the Hills driveway, Ed was taken to the nearby town of Watoma, where he was locked in a jail cell in the back of a county courthouse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the sheriff entered the courthouse hoping that Ed would have made a full confession by the time he got there. But what he found out was that Ed really hadn't said much of anything since they picked him up. He was pretty quiet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, still very haunted by what he'd just seen at Ed Gein's farm, Shelly entered the cell and immediately grabbed Ed and started slamming him against the concrete wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three deputies tried to separate the men and they ended up being able to before any real damage was done.


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[Assistant] But if the sheriff was trying to, which I imagine he was trying to like scare or knock a confession out of him, it didn't do much because he got even quieter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something every once in a while, nothing relevant, but like, he was talkative a little bit. But after this, he just shut right down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, after what Shlee has just been through and all of them had just been through the house and seeing the monstrous things of this man, like taking Bernice Warden's head out of that burlap sack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wharton's is an institution. The tavern is a place everybody goes. They've seen these women their whole lives. Like to see what was done to them and to bump into Bernice Wharton's body hanging from a ceiling like that and completely gutted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't say I blame him for throwing this man against a wall. I can't say that either. The rage he must have felt, the exhaustion, the stress, the trauma and the rage that he was probably feeling walking in there and seeing this little shit just sitting there being like, I'm not saying anything. Every horrid emotion you could ever feel wrapped up into one. Oh, I can't. It just exploded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's being quiet, Ed won't say a damn thing. And in the meantime, the coroner, Dr. F. Eigenberger, began his examination of Bernice Warden's body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and he was detailing, I mean, considerable mutilation that had occurred post-mortem thankfully, but still occurred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, it all happened postmortem and it had been done very methodically and with a lot of precision. It wasn't like hacking away and like, you know, ragged cuts and stuff. He was very, it was like a hunter. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, from the report, this is what it says. Uh, first that the entirety of Bernice Warden's vulva and surrounding areas were removed and kept in a box. Uh huh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the body cavities had been completely eviscerated together with most of the diaphragm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] inspection of the trunk and extremities revealed how the body had been hoisted by the heels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a deep cut above, this is going to be rough because I'm talking about how he did it, so like just know that. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a deep cut above the Achilles tendon of the right leg and a pointed crossbar made of a rough wooden stick covered by bark had been forced underneath the tendon. Oh my. The other side of the crossbar had been tied to a cord which was tightly fastened to a cut of the leg above the heel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This cut had severed the Achilles tendon and had necessitated the tying with the cord to hold the body securely to the crossbar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The length of the crossbar was estimated as about three feet. Both wrists had been tied with longer hemp rope to the corresponding ends of the crossbar attached to the feet, thus holding the arms firmly when the body had been suspended by the heels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thoracic and abdominal viscera had been separately kept, wrapped in newspaper and hidden in a bundle of old clothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These viscera consisted of both lungs and the trachea, the aorta,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the base of the abdominal bifurcation, the esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines with mesentery and omentum at the, at the, to the lower rectum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And block, with this, were removed the spleen, pancreas, adrenals, kidneys, with the ureters, upper half of urine bladder, and internal genital organs, excuse me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Separately removed had been the heart without the pericardium and it was put in a plastic bag and her liver was also separate. Okay. That's a lot of work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. It's a lot of work. That took him a long time to methodically do that. They weren't just torn out like this. And why?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the most significant findings that were discovered during the examination, um, especially of her head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Based on his examination, he concluded that the gunshot was the sole cause of death and it was fired from a short distance away and she likely had died within seconds to minutes after being struck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the coroner's report included no unexpected or shocking revelations after they had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Looked at the crime scene because they had found all of these body parts everywhere and organs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in the original notes on the examination, those, like, uh, the person that was transcribing his notes for him was his wife, who was also his secretary, the coroner. Yeah. And she had jotted down, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just kinda like her thoughts on the report as well, which was strange. Like she wrote sex slayer and the battered beauty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the back of the notes. Strange. And Schachter notes what makes the phrase so arresting is its utter incongruity in the context of the postmodern report.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Given the number of law enforcement officers out at the Gein farm, like some having come from far away as Chicago. Wow. Uh, the local press and residents knew something fucking massive had happened there, but they had no idea the details yet. The first news accounts started trickling out slowly on the afternoon of November 17th, which is like mere hours after they left the farm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it was just saying that Bernice Warden had been, you know, abducted, she had disappeared, and that she had been murdered, and her body had been discovered on the Gein property. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no mention of the state of her remains or any of the other fucking horrific shit they found on that farm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That would come though. Once the details were released, the town of Plainfield, and honestly the entire state of Wisconsin at that point, was horrified by what they were hearing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone started referring to the home as the murder factory and like the den of death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the rumors went rampant, even somehow making a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unthinkably horrific situation more horrific?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, I don't think you guys need to do that. No, you don't. It's pretty bad on its own. In their first press conference on the story, Weshara County, uh, County District Attorney fielded questions from the press, but they really didn't have a lot to say when it came to like motive. They were like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think there's real, like, tangible motive here. Like, there's a lot of scary shit, and I don't really know if we're gonna understand why this happened. This person is just simply disturbed. Yeaah. They were able to, uh, match the, uh, fingerprints on the Marlin rifle used in the shooting of Bernice Warden to Ed Gein, so they immediately were able to match him to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and what they said was he probably picked up the gun from the rack and shot her as she looked out the window. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what the District Attorney, Earl Kylene, told reporters. Uhm, and he had actually been present for Ed's interrogation, so he offered a little bit of insight into Gein's psychology, from his point of view, District Attorney.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Didn't really do a lot to explain what they found, but according to, uh, according to what Ed said, he said quote, he was in a daze when he butchered Mrs. Warden, similar to the blackouts that occurred while he robbed graves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he did admit to shooting Bernice and mutilating her body, but he could not recall the killing or the mutilation that followed. He said that he quote, only remembered dragging her body from the store. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So during the initial interrogation, Ed had admitted it was possible he had killed others. Possibly.


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[Assistant] But then he dropped another strange bomb, cause he said the additional human remains that they found in their house...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he would just leave whatever he didn't want in the grave and cover them up, and according to him he left them in apple pie order.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No. Yep, he's like, I just took what I want, put everything back, left it in apple pie order. No. Yep.


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[Assistant] That's terrifying. No, he didn't just open Graves willy-nilly. Apple pie order. Yeah, apple pie order. That'll change apple pie for you. Yeah. Thinking of Ed Gein saying it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way he knew which graves to go to, cause he didn't just like willy nilly open graves, uh, he would read the recent obituaries in the newspaper and he would find the bodies of newly dead middle aged women are older.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like Mama Augusta? Uh huh. And in fact, many of the women, he knew them when they were alive. Interacted with them and shit.


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[Assistant] And now he kept their skull caps as bowls and their skin as lampshades in their heads and bags. And did he admit that like he was going after people that looked like his mom or reminded him of his mom? He admitted it, but he didn't see


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think he himself connected the deep psychology behind that, but he was like, oh yea, she looked like my mother. Or like I wanted, like he admits that like, he basically wanted


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To keep his mother around, and that's why he made that like skin suit of like a middle-aged woman. Yeah. Cause wearing it made him feel like his mother was still there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's how deeply, deeply fucked up this guy is. Like he is, there's levels and levels. We will never get to the bottom of what's happening with him. That's okay. And they of course asked him because there was all these rumors of cannibalism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That had gone around out of nowhere. Those are the ones that like making a truly horrific situation more horrific. Yea, I mean he's eating out of skull bowls. He is, so it's not a far-fetched thing to ask. They asked him, did you intend to eat your murder victims? And Ed said no, and so Kylene said on that point he still has a lapse of memory. So he didn't know if he had or not?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he at first, like at first he was like, no, I don't think so. But then I think they push further and he was like...


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[Assistant] Like, he might have. He doesn't remember, I guess. Uhm, but even though that...


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[Assistant] Like that's what happens. So there's no confirmation in that moment of like whether he was or not. Cause at first he said no, then he just kind of didn't give an answer. But Kylene went in front of reporters and was like, it appears to be cannibalism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's unclear why he felt confident enough to claim that as motive for the crimes, cause then he's using it as like, that's the motive to eat people. And it's like, I feel like that's a jump.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, like put out for decoration. Yeah, that's the thing. And it's like, maybe they, and I'll give it to them. Maybe they just couldn't. Figure automotive. What else are you going to come up with?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's really no boundaries in this case, so it's like, is that really crazy to think about? And as the news spread,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All over the country, locals in and around Plainfield struggled with the idea that this man that they had hired to fix their roofs and babysit their children was a grave robbing murderer and now potential cannibal. With a house full of the most horrific things you could possibly imagine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was an editorial published days after the news all broke and it was Ed Marola of the Plainfield Sun who stated that he wouldn't believe the rumors of grave robbing until those graves had been opened and found empty. He said people are still stunned by the greater crime, the killing of Mrs. Warden, to think much about grave robbing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but he also noted that people around town were kind of relieved by the arrest, of course, because they had been pretty, like, jittery is how they put it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Since the disappearance of Mary Hogan. Right. So they were happy that like there wasn't a killer running around the streets anymore. You know? Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But after his confession, investigators took Ed with a gaggle of reporters to the farm and had him give them a step by step.


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[Assistant] They're just weird because everyone's like, everyone there was like, he looks so small and shy and just like a country dude with a deer hunting cap on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause they were just walking them around and everybody there was like, even the reporters were like, it's weird. He's just like this mild-mannered little guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a deer hunting cap, like he looks like any old guy walking down the street.


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[Assistant] There may be a thread to pull for another case to possibly connect Ed Gein to the abduction of Evelyn Hartley.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The body parts that were found, one of them appeared to have been from a younger woman, but not a middle-aged woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there were clippings of Hartley's case found among Ed Gein's things, like clippings of the investigation. And that's weird. Lieutenant Vern Weber, who was the chief of detectives of the La Crosse PD, did a press conference where he spoke about this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that would be like a pretty big discrepancy, like he'd be walking around flopping around with those shoes. There was apparently a denim jacket left at the scene that had a stripe left on the back of it, like a harness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was worn with that jacket on, like almost like a painter would use or a logger or something like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ed was a handyman, and he was a sometimes logger, and he would wear a harness to get up into trees. Uhm, so they were like, that could be his, but they never really reconciled that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Correctly, like they were never even sure to prove if it was him or not, it just was one of those things that like it could be, it kinda does fit with it.


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[Assistant] Weber also had to spill some more details about what was found in the farmhouse. He told reporters, according to Schechter, there were ten women's heads, some with eyes and some without, and that a few of them, quote, were complete with skulls and some were just skin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gein had told them that he cured the heads in a brining solution.


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[Assistant] Weber also said he saw with his own eyes a chair made out of human skin, and he mentioned that Gein had told him he prayed himself out of a lot of his urges, but would sometimes come to, and he'd be in the middle of digging up a grave or something, and that, that was when he would stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, he also was very adamant that he never ate human flesh. So he told Detective Weber I never ate human flesh. Okay.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and Weber said he believed him. Okay. He did say that he didn't believe the motive was cannibalism. I don't think there was a motive. I don't either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Gein claimed to him that when he was younger, he wanted to be a doctor. He had dreams of becoming a doctor and so his grave robbing was a matter of scientific curiosity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To most people in Plainfield, Ed was known as the not too bright, but pretty harmless.


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[Assistant] Reporters seemed eager to track down literally anything that had any other view of Ed besides like,


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[Assistant] So, uh, just a few days after, uh, Bernice Warden's body was discovered, reporters published an interview with a Plainfield local named Adeline Watkins, who claimed that she had carried on a 20 year affair with Ed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She said, so she said everything that the papers are saying about him couldn't be true, not the guy that she knows. She said he was so nice about doing things I wanted to do that sometimes I felt I was taking advantage of him. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She claimed that she and Gein had gone on regular dates weekly for two decades and shared a love of books, among other things.


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[Assistant] She said, we never read the same ones, but we like to talk about them anyway. And she said, Eddie liked books about lions and tigers in Africa and India. I never read that kind of book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And their relationship, according to her, came to an end in 1955 when she said no to his proposal of marriage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She said, that night he proposed to me. Not in so many words, but I knew what he meant. Which I was like, mmm.


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[Assistant] And she said it was very important for her to make clear to the press that she didn't refuse to marry him because of anything to do with him. She said, I turned him down, but not because there was anything wrong with him. It was something wrong with me. I guess I was afraid I wouldn't be able to live up to what he expected of me. Huh. Is there any truth to this? So everybody was just kind of like, huh? Like what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a day later, Adeline gave another interview to the Plainfield Sun where she described the relationship


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[Assistant] In a little different terms, like suddenly it switched a little. He wasn't like the perfect guy, wasn't like this whole thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now she's being scrutinized, of course. People are like, wait a second. And suddenly the story fell apart and was determined to be completely fabricated. She just made that up. She just made that shit up. Why would you ever want to be like, yeah, I dated that guy. She wasn't just severely plain. She was severely fucked up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She, uh, so what they said later was she had quote, fallen victim to the wiles of the big city press. The city papers were hungry for human interest news, so they played up the innocent, innocent enough relations to spin the story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The truth is, his relationship with Adeline Watkins was super casual if they had even met at all. Yea. Like, they might not have ever met, I believe that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and she would go on later to claim that the stories reported about her and Ed in the papers were completely false.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone has spun this story, like the cannibalism rumors are coming out, making it worse. Ed's claiming he never tasted human flesh. That was not something he did.


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[Assistant] The rumor mill is going crazy. Now we have people coming out of the woodwork saying that they were in a 20 plus affair with him.


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[Assistant] When the man never left his fucking farmhouse. Except to like babysit and do odd jobs. And then we're just like brought in that house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've discovered the hidden Augusta room that has been preserved. We found the most horrific shit in the world in there. We have found Mary Hogan's head, but now they need to prove that he murdered her and not that he just somehow procured her head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously they believe he did, but they need to find proof of it. They have the proof of the Bernice Warden murder. Right. But that's where I'm going to leave you for now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Yep. Some of y'all are just gonna go to work now. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. That's crazy. I'm sorry about that.


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[Assistant] But we'll be back for part three. It's a story. It's certainly a story. It's true. It's unfortunately true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They end it with me, like, the last comment's me, you can tell they're just done. Yeah. And they don't reply. We feel like at least one person like reach out and I know more about them than they do about me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, another comment that we got was, why does the guy running the computer look like Stuart from the Big Bang Theory?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I'm going to guess they're talking about me. And I've heard this, there's like three guys that I've been most often compared to. One of them is Stuart from Big Bang, which I didn't even know who he was. I didn't watch Big Bang, but that's him. I could see it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, with wardrobe. That's a set from Big Bang Theory. No. Mine's a glamour shot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're listening to this, I'll post this on social so you can see.


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[Assistant] They're just dumb. I've heard this a few times. All these I've heard a few times. So I guess, I guess I can't argue with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the comments, some could call it bullying, but the, he's calling him my, I mean his dad, so the ultimate bully is in the room right now. It's worse than anybody online.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, but the one I get by far the most is, uh, this guy, Mike White. Yeah. Actor and director. That one's crazy. Mike White. Yeah. Uh, Brian, that one I think you could be offended by.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you don't know this, he was, he's most known I think for Jack Black's roommate in the School of Rock.


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[Assistant] A friend of a friend of mine moved to LA, and I'd only met this guy a couple of times, this comic friend of mine, and he saw this guy, Mike White, in a restaurant, and thought it was me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's like, oh cool, cool. And then, and I think he finally realized, he's like, you're Brian Bates, right? Yea. And he's like, no. And he was offended.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so we've already talked about this in some of the podcast people you look like. Uh, John Candy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, and then the other one that you, we haven't talked about before but, uh, you tell me, Luke Combs? If you don't know him, country singer Luke Combs?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so do you, do you have anyone that people have told you that you look like?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so we asked people to, to share a few. So this is, this guy's from Reno911, Thomas, uhm. Yea. Forgot his last name right there. You know what, I think I have heard him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was one Aaron Paul, I think, submission, but a few for the, uh,


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[Assistant] I was going to say, yeaah. The viewer actually, uh, or listener actually picked this one out. Yeaah. But, uh. They did very good. Yeaah. Yeaah. He did that one so. That was good. Yeaah. That's the stand ups I felt.


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[Assistant] I felt very bloated. This is my favorite one. Someone sent me this. This is a guy from 1862.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he did not have a good ending. He, uh, he was, he, during the, it's not on here but I read about this, the, uh, Dakota Indians asked him for some food and he was like, just go eat grass. He was not very helpful to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the Dakota wars broke out and he died on the first day and they found him with grass stuffed in his mouth and in some other areas of his body. So they remembered that. So he started the US, he started the war. I don't know if he started it, but they remembered him when it broke out, they were like, let's find that guy. Let's find the guy that told us to eat grass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get the swoosh? Get the swoosh and the next picture you don't have the swoosh?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've read about this and not. The article said that there's a one in 135 chance that we have a doppelganger, which to me makes, that seems pretty low. Yeah. But then they did a study and said for all eight major facial features, uh, it's one in a trillion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. Alright, so, so yeaah, 1 out of 135 is what they said. Do the order up there, whatever the, of the show? Yeaah. Alright, and then, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a 2015 study by researchers in Australia. One in a hundred- I hate study stuff, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that, yeaah, that study didn't say what the eight facial features was. Speaking of studies, uh, so we all watched three identical strangers, documentary,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it's a nature versus nurture basically documentary. It's, uh, these, uh, first two brothers meet, realize they're twins. Guy goes to college at the beginning. Everyone thinks he's someone else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then they're like, all yelling his name, and then, uh, one of them who knows the guy, like, oh my gosh, calls that other guy, they go and meet. So for a while- That night. Yeah. So for a while- I don't think you went back to college.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause they were speeding the guys like, I'm going to go meet my twin brother. They meet. Uh, so then a newspaper does a story about how they finally met and a third twin brother, a triplet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean I was five, I was born in 79. Okay. I don't, I mean I did watch Donahue or something with my grandparents, but I don't remember that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then their parents who are from obviously three different families, they're like, what's, like, why did we not know? And they go and meet with the adoption agency and they're like, well, we split them up because we didn't, uh, adopting triplets would be so hard and we thought it'd be easier to, which I don't know. That makes sense to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, one of the dads said I would have taken all three and they did leave trying to seek a lawsuit against this adoption agency.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Adoption HD, none of the law firms would take the case because they were, people from their firm were trying to adopt from this, this place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, uh, then they find out later on that it was part of a study. Some researcher was doing a study on separating twins at birth to see how they would act as they grow older, nature versus nurture. So it was a big, big conspiracy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The main researcher's dead, right? Yea. I think he would probably still argue...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no way those kids were going to get adopted altogether. So we were doing them a favor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's funny how one of the guys is no longer alive, but the other two now, they don't look that much alike anymore. I mean, they still do, but there's a little bit, but no ways like when they were younger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know a bunch of twins. Now the, the, uh, the article that says that twins are more prevalent in the world now, one, because people are having children older, and just, even if it's natural,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're more likely to have twins or triplets. And then the other reason is because people have an older fertility treatments are a big reason why a lot of people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Octomile looked her up, her kids are now 11 and doing alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, she, uhm, she got kind of criticized when all that happened, but they're doing alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was trying to increase her chances of having kids and so they all came out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, but she wasn't playing on eight. She didn't think they'd all make it. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I don't, I don't think so. You thought she was going for the record?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, that's the record. There was one in Australia that had nine, but one of them died at birth, so eight's the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They always look the same throughout the progression. Their body types stay the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I just, that, that's true. I know twins, when they're little, their parents dress them alike and they look alike. But then I know a lot of twins who even as adults look very similar. Usually, cause genetics is the same, I guess, as far as your metabolism, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, one of them had a little bit shorter hair and then I noticed he let it grow out pretty quick. Who? One of the triplets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of them died in 1979, age 32, motor self accident. And the other one died recently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're just big. But do you think they kept track of other twins that were gaining weight? Like, uh oh, the Jones boys are gaining on us. They just didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't weigh that much, he probably weighed 500-600 pounds, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, uh, who are we talking about? Yeah, they're not good. Go to the topics again. Like the, uh, Scarlett Johansson? Yeah, she has a twin brother. She has a twin brother. You knew that? I knew it. No. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well like I looked up the tallest twins ever and one of them, they're like both like 7'6 or something, one of them went to play at UCLA and the other one went to the University of Denver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but also the people that are, that like got it right away and are getting the posters, I got to see the poster yesterday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fucking sick. They're really cool. You have to sign all those? Yeah, I'm gonna sign all those. She just-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tell, ghost, Sheena, books, ghost. It's important, you know? Alright, now onto the show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I today am going to be talking about the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I will tell you off of the top is a very, very tragic tale. Oh no. And it is unsolved. Oh no. But there was some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, like activity as recently as, actually as recently as like this past year. Really? But I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. And then there was before that as recent as 2022. So. Oh shoot. And I'll tell you right up off of the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It all starts on the evening of February 4th, 1972 when middle school friends Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Webber left their homes. They were dropped off at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa, California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they ended up leaving the ice arena at some point in time and it's believed that they tried to hitch a ride somewhere else.


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[Assistant] And they were identifiable only by the jewelry that Maureen had been wearing the night that she left the house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time the remains of both of those girls were found, actually three other young women from the Santa Rosa area had gone missing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Officials would link Sterling and Weber's murders to three other women discovered in 1972, and then three others that occurred in the year that followed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All believed probably to have been killed by the same man or men. They're not quite certain if it was one person who did this or if it was multiple. Oh, that's even scarier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders, as they're informally known, they're one of California's most perplexing cold cases in the state's history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In addition to the eight women who are believed to be victims of this same killer or killers,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are also several others who disappeared under very similar circumstances and actually could be potential victims.


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[Assistant] There's been many many theories that we'll get into as we go through this.


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[Assistant] But let's start a little bit backwards now and go to the afternoon of March 4th, 1972.


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[Assistant] This was when 19 year old Kim Allen had finished her shift at, I think it's Larkspur Natural Foods. It's like a small grocery store about three miles outside of San Rafael.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That night, Kim, after she finished her shift there, was going to be heading to class at the Santa Rosa Junior College. And that was about 45 minutes away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because of the 70s of it all, her plan was to hitchhike to get to class.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was something she did a lot, like, it was pretty normal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a little after 5pm, she caught a ride with two men headed in the direction of Santa Rosa, but they were actually only going a few miles down the road. They were like, we can give you, we can get you a little bit of time off your commute here, but like we're not going super far.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later, those two men would tell investigators that they dropped Kim off at the San Rafael exit from Highway 101.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where they saw her continue hitchhiking as they made their way into town.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The next day, unfortunately, two high school students were taking a shortcut through the woods near Bennett Valley Road, not far from where Kim was last seen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So these two students ran to get help and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department got to the scene just a few minutes later. They responded really quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All they really had found at the scene was a wire around the woman's neck that appeared to be the cause of death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So based on his cursory examination of the scene, Sonoma County Coroner Andrew Johnson concluded the young woman was quote, apparently tortured to death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He told reporters, and this is horrible, this is a quote, it took her at least half an hour to die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Horrific to think about. Whoever did this, did it slowly and methodically, this one specific murder, slowly and methodically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fact that she was like slowly choked was not the only thing she had gone through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The coroner also found evidence of sexual assault indicated by semen found on the body, as well as an oily substance that would later be identified as a kind of lubricant common in machine shops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you would think that would be something to go off of, like the fact that they found semen, but it just gets crazier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only other evidence collected at the scene was a single gold earring, the match for which was never recovered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It could have been caused by the killer when he slipped and fell while dumping the body. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, that's so chilling. It really is, like picturing that in your head. Given the size of the hole and the angle at which the killer would have fallen, they had reason to believe he quote, may have broken his leg or sustained an injury serious enough to require medical treatment. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So investigators released a description of the woman to the press, which prompted a flurry of activity at the sheriff's office. There were tons of people with missing loved ones showing up fearing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That this woman might be their person and looking for answers. Which really tells you like what was going on in California at this time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just the fact that there were so many people with missing loved ones. Seriously. And they were all thinking this could be theirs. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] But finally on March 9th, Kim's roommates made a tentative identification.


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[Assistant] In talking with friends and family, sheriff's detectives learned that Kim was last seen leaving work on the evening of March 4th, wearing a three quarter length coat and an aluminum frame backpack.


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[Assistant] She was also carrying a medium-sized wooden soy barrel with Chinese characters on it.


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[Assistant] But none of those things were discovered with her body or ever found.


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[Assistant] Quickly reached a dead end after exhausting just the few leads that they'd been given from her friends and family.


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[Assistant] So the sheriff's department actually reached out to University of California criminologist Peter Barnett for assistance. But unfortunately, while Barnett was able to provide some insight into the type of person who would commit this kind of crime,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His assistants didn't really bring them any closer to identifying a suspect.


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[Assistant] So after about a month, investigators had run down every single lead they had, and the case looked as though it had gone cold.


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[Assistant] In late April, Lieutenant Charles Kinsbaugh told reporters that the investigation quote, had become a matter of routine.


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[Assistant] I tend to believe that it was multiple. At least two people.


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[Assistant] There are theories, and I wonder if you'll agree with me who it possibly could have been. Possibly, I'm not positive.


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[Assistant] You just wonder how more people didn't see stuff, cause I don't think these people were as careful as they thought they were, but then...


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[Assistant] So although they struggled to find evidence in the case, evidence actually did seem to find its way to investigators. And this is weird.


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[Assistant] About three weeks after her body was discovered in San Rafael, someone dropped Kim's checkbook into a mailbox in Kentfield about 50 miles away. Huh.


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[Assistant] Then, at the end of March, there did appear to be a break in the case when police arrested 38-year-old Mechanic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Robert, uh, Bouchon I believe it is for kidnapping and assaulting a hitchhiker. Interesting. He had picked up a hitchhiker and held her at knife point while he bound her wrists and took her back to his apartment where he forced her to spend the night. The young woman was actually able to escape the next morning and she called police at which time Bouchon was arrested.


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[Assistant] But although he was eventually tried and convicted of that particular kidnapping, investigators actually determined he was not responsible for Kim's murder.


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[Assistant] Really? I couldn't find the key piece that, that got him away from, like that got him off of it, but they deemed him, like they cleared him. That's interesting. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Hmm, and I don't think it was him who did this because, as we'll see.


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[Assistant] Hitchhiking really started during the depression of the 20s and 30s. People were just doing it out of necessity. But by the mid 20th century, people, it actually like fell out of popularity.


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[Assistant] Revived the practice. I think they were looking for adventure and freedom. And obviously they didn't realize the inherent danger in getting into a car with a stranger. When you're young, you think you're invincible. We've all been there.


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[Assistant] Wanted to keep Kim's memory alive and protect other kids.


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[Assistant] But despite the growing public concerns around hitchhiking, obviously people kept doing it. People do it today. I was going to say they still do it. You know, but unfortunately it created a very easy unsuspecting pipeline for countless violent predators.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the issue did come up again in April when another Santa Rosa Junior College student went missing less than two months after Kim.


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[Assistant] On April 25th, a little after 9am, Jeanette Kamahili left her home in Kotadi, California, telling her roommate she was just headed for class, but she never showed up to class, and she never came back home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her roommate later told reporters, this was completely out of character for Jeanette. She always communicated where she was going and she just was not the kind of girl to just run away and go somewhere else.


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[Assistant] Exactly, not at all. So when Jeanette still hadn't returned by midnight, her roommate did call the sheriff's office to report her missing.


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[Assistant] And a few days later, after the news of Jeanette's disappearance had begun to circulate,


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[Assistant] One of her friends called the sheriff's department with some information. The friend claimed that on the day Jeanette disappeared,


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[Assistant] He actually saw her hitchhiking on the off ramp from Highway 101, not far from where Kim Allen was last seen.


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[Assistant] The friend was about to pull up and offered Jeanette a ride, but before he could, the vehicle in front of him, which he described as a 1950s pickup, fitted with a homemade wooden camper, pulled over, and Jeanette got in the passenger side.


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[Assistant] The friend described the driver as a white man in his 20s or 30s, but he was unable to make out any other distinct features.


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[Assistant] And unfortunately, Jeanette's remains were never found and it's possible that she's still alive somewhere, but she is generally considered a victim of the hitchhiker killer.


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[Assistant] Because of that last sighting of her and the proximity of where she was last seen and where Kim Ellen was last seen and as we know.


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[Assistant] Of course, I can't imagine. And I should have said this in the beginning, it is a bummer. There's not a ton of personal information, like details about these women's lives. I tried my best to find anything I could, but there's just not a ton about them.


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[Assistant] But like the Allen case, investigators searching for Jeanette.


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[Assistant] Had nothing to go on and again, the case quickly went cold.


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[Assistant] As months passed and there were no new attacks on hitchhikers, law enforcement in Santa Rosa actually started to feel relieved, and they were thinking that the Allen and Kamahelei cases were possibly just random crimes.


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[Assistant] But then, on December 14th, 1972, a couple walking their dog found the nude body of a teenage girl at the bottom of a steep embankment on a road on the edge of Santa Rosa.


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[Assistant] Like the Kim Allen case, there was no clothing, no personal effects at the scene.


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[Assistant] I think we said it in the Willie Picton case. There was one victim who had her toenails painted red. And you just think of somebody taking the time to do that in life.


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[Assistant] But due to the cold weather, this body was also frozen when it was discovered, making the exact time of death pretty impossible to determine. But the coroner estimated she had been there for about a week or two.


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[Assistant] Within a few days, investigators were able to use dental records to positively identify the body as that of 13 year old. Oh, stop. 13 year old Lori Cursa, a local junior high student who had run away from home on November 11th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just like the other victims, Lori was last seen hitchhiking in the Santa Rosa area on November 20th or 21st.


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[Assistant] After completing the autopsy, the pathologist estimated that Lori had died sometime between December 1st and December 8th.


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[Assistant] Thirteen year old girl, like, that's a baby. Thirteen. Just out there, like, on the fuckin' mean streets by herself. Ugh, that kills me. It breaks your heart.


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[Assistant] Truly brutalized. Brutalized. Like that second and last and second vertebrae is like, you were saying like up in your neck.


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[Assistant] Oh my gosh. They were dislocated. So you can only imagine what happened there. That's a lot of trauma.


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[Assistant] Yeah, like severely, severely. I can't get over the 13. I mean, oh geez. It's horrible.


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[Assistant] Now unlike Kim Allen, there was no sign of sexual assault and nothing to specifically indicate actually that Lori had been murdered.


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[Assistant] In fact, at the time of the discovery, detectives theorized that she might have actually sustained that fatal spine injury by jumping or falling over the embankment.


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[Assistant] So according to those who knew her, Lori had a very quote unquote chaotic home life and she hitchhiked very frequently while running away from home. This was not the first time she'd run away.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, other than those statements from her friends, there was little evidence or leads to guide the investigation. So as a result, the sheriff's office turned to the public for help and a local newspaper offered a $500 reward for information leading to an arrest.


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[Assistant] The request actually prompted a flurry of tips from the public that


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[Assistant] Turned a case of suspicious circumstances to one of murder.


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[Assistant] Because one caller claimed to have seen a quote, white van with an off color door sometime between December 3rd and December 9th near the area where Lori's body was found. And the man said he was on his way home from work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, uh, sir, is this the first time you're telling authorities about this? Did you just watch this?


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[Assistant] But a short time later, other witnesses came forward with similar tips and several callers claimed to have seen Lori with a quote, bushy haired Caucasian man sitting in a truck parked near the area where her body was found.


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[Assistant] So based on these tips, investigators theorize that Lori had been out walking.


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[Assistant] And was approached by the men in the van who then pushed her into the back of the van and unfortunately stripped her clothes off.


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[Assistant] And in an attempt to escape, investigators believe she likely jumped from the moving vehicle.


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[Assistant] Landing at the bottom of the embankment and injuring her neck in the fall, which caused her death.


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[Assistant] And they felt like this would account for the fact that she had been discovered nude but had not been sexually assaulted and suffered no other signs of physical trauma.


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[Assistant] That makes sense. It does make sense. Cause at first you thought she just fell down an embankment.


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[Assistant] But then fell down an embankment, possibly. And that's why there was no other.


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[Assistant] So on December 26, 1972, just one day after the press announced a reward for information leading to an arrest in the hitchhiker murders, two Santa Rosa teenagers discovered two sets of skeletal remains at the foot of an embankment about 60 feet from the road.


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[Assistant] The remains were those of two teenage girls, however significant decomposition, decomposition, excuse me, made identifying them next to impossible.


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[Assistant] Neither appeared to have been wearing any clothes or carrying any personal items, and the only evidence at the scene was one earring.


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[Assistant] A few days later, investigators used dental records to identify the remains as those of 12-year-old Maureen Sterling.


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[Assistant] And her friend. 12 years old. 12 year old Maureen Sterling. And her 13 year old friend Yvonne Weber. And I mentioned them at the beginning.


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[Assistant] Shit. Eleven months earlier. They had been missing almost a year at this point.


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[Assistant] On February 4th, the girls' mothers had dropped them off around 730 at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena.


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[Assistant] So the girl's disappearance was reported to the Santa Rosa police and the sheriff's office, who they


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[Assistant] Even though Yvonne Weber's stepfather told reporters it was obvious that these girls were not runaways, but because the remains when they were found had been reduced to bones, the coroner wasn't able to determine the cause of death.


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[Assistant] Oh, that's awful. I know. Especially, like, these are little girls. These are literal girls.


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[Assistant] Children. But although they couldn't say with certainty that either girl had been murdered, the state in which the remains had been found was definitely suspicious and the deaths were investigated as homicides.


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[Assistant] Also, both girls were known to have hitchhiked from time to time, and a friend reported seeing them get into a car at the side of the road near the ice arena the last night they were seen, around 9pm.


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[Assistant] So now there was a presumed link between the deaths of Maureen, Yvonne, Kim Allen, and Laurie Corsa.


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[Assistant] So the district attorney told reporters, although there is no direct evidence of a homicide, we're going to make a total and complete investigation and it will be handled as if it were a homicide case.


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[Assistant] So they didn't handle it fantastic from the beginning when they did go missing, but at least they came around, I guess.


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[Assistant] But investigators started combing through leads and information collected by a juvenile officer, uh, uh, both, at the time that both girls went missing and also started talking with Maureen and Yvonne's friends and family. In time, they would sift through every lead and talk to every witness they could find. They actually even did polygraph tests on four teenagers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they passed them and after a few months they were no closer to finding Maureen and Yvonne's killers or those responsible for the other deaths than they were when the bodies were discovered.


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[Assistant] Over the course of a year now, someone had murdered at least four young female hitchhikers, with one missing and presumed dead, and somehow they had left zero evidence. None.


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[Assistant] Literally nothing. In the cases of Kim, Jeanette, Laurie, Maureen, and Yvonne, there was a very frustrating lack of clues, and again, almost nothing seemed certain.


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[Assistant] But there was one thing Santa Rosa detectives had come to believe strongly. There was a serial killer.


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[Assistant] Or two, operating in Sonoma County and he'd already killed five girls.


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[Assistant] Like the other investigations, detectives on the Sterling and Weber case quickly exhausted the few leads that they had. And the most promising lead was provided by one of the girls' school friends that involved Maureen and Yvonne having met a man from Russian River about an hour away. The friend believed that they had hitched a ride to go meet this guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while the rewards offered for information had prompted a surprising number of calls and tips,


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[Assistant] And I can't imagine being one of the family members being like, do you have anything solid to tell me about my young child's death? And them just having nothing. Like, nothing. Damn. By March, Leeds had started to dry up.


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[Assistant] Someone had been killing college girls in Northern California, putting everyone on high alert and distracting from these missing hitchhikers.


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[Assistant] In April 1973, law enforcement officials arrested one Edmund Kemper for the murders of several women.


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[Assistant] But it fucked with our case that we're talking about right now because for a time the Kemper case dominated the news and all the resources of Northern California investigators. I didn't even think about the time period there.


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[Assistant] And those who weren't occupied with the Kemper case were consumed with the growing number of drug arrests and busts involving the farms and manufacturing operations.


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[Assistant] That would eventually become a prominent part of the Northern California landscape.


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[Assistant] And with the growing problems of drugs and violent crime in Northern California, the last thing Santa Rosa detectives wanted was another murdered hitchhiker.


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[Assistant] On July 31st, the nude body of an unidentified young woman was discovered by a dirt bike rider.


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[Assistant] Down in an embankment, huh? On Franz Valley Road, about four feet actually from where the remains of Maureen Sterling.


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[Assistant] Speculated that the killer was quote unquote playing games and taunting officials to catch him by disposing of the body in the same spot where his earlier victims were found.


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[Assistant] But just like most of the other cases, there was virtually no evidence discovered at the scene and sadly no clues as to the girl's identity.


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[Assistant] And also the brush and soil leading down to the embankment didn't appear to have been disturbed.


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[Assistant] Leading investigators to assume that the girl had actually been thrown over the embankment.


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[Assistant] Quote, either by a very large man or by two men because it cleared tall brush.


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[Assistant] Because of her exposure to the elements and the effects of decomposition,


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[Assistant] The examiner wasn't able to determine whether or not she'd been sexually assaulted, but the only physical trauma on the body, and this is fucking weird.


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[Assistant] Was a small wound on her right ear as though somebody had tried to pierce her ear.


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[Assistant] What? And that sticks out to me because three of the seven bodies found in connection with this case were found with one earring beside them that was theirs but the match was missing.


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[Assistant] It's not like they're collecting one. Yeah, they're like collecting one of the earrings. And it's like...


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[Assistant] Had she recently tried to pierce her ears and given up? Maybe?


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[Assistant] I don't think so either. But perhaps more bewildering though was the cause of death with this woman, which was identified as strychnine poisoning. Strychnine? Yea, is it strychnine or strychnine? Strychnine. I thought it was strychnine too, but when I looked it up it said neen. Ooo. Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But isn't that weird? Yeaah. All of a sudden, now we're like, switching?


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[Assistant] But it took almost two weeks and eventually the body was identified as that of a 15 year old girl, Carolyn Davis. She was a runaway from Anderson, a small town about 200 miles north of Santa Rosa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But around mid July, Carolyn told her grandmother that she planned to hitchhike down south to visit some friends in Modesto. So her grandmother actually gave her granddaughter


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A ride to downtown, uh, Garberville where she was going to catch a ride.


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[Assistant] And that was the last time she was seen hitchhiking a ride at the Highway 101 onramp.


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[Assistant] The discovery of yet another murdered hitchhiker all but confirmed the presence of a serial killer.


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[Assistant] Now, unfortunately, despite their best efforts, no further evidence surfaced and leads were sparse. Investigators thought that they'd caught a break in the case in October when Joaquin Cordona, a 22 year old Santa Rosa bartender, was arrested for a similar sexual assault and made statements linking himself to the Hitchhiker murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the following day he was given a polygraph exam to determine his guilt and he passed.


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[Assistant] Which effectively ruled him out as a suspect at that point in time. But we all know. Hot dog. Trench code.


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[Assistant] But after six months with no leads, investigators became even more frustrated when in late December,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another body of a young woman was discovered in the Frans Valley on December 28th.


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[Assistant] The nude hog-tied body of the young woman was discovered half submerged under a log by two teenagers boating down the creek, and the coroner estimated she'd been dead about a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unlike the previous bodies, which were left in a fairly accessible location, this location was very difficult to reach, obviously.


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[Assistant] Given that she'd been found half submerged, there was no way to know whether her killer had actually put her in this location where she was found.


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[Assistant] Or if she had been put in the creek and drifted down to where she was found.


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[Assistant] A preliminary autopsy showed that she had been strangled. Strangled.


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[Assistant] In this one, these are all so, so sad, but this one is also, it just hits you in a different way. It took about two weeks, but eventually the body was identified from fingerprints as Teresa Walsh, a 23 year old single mother from Humboldt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she was hitching back home for Christmas to be with her two, I think her two year old son.


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[Assistant] The fact that she's a mother is so sad and her baby was only two, I believe.


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[Assistant] We're gonna know their, their mother. And that, the fact that that family had to spend Christmas without their daughter, without their mother, their sister, like.


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[Assistant] Now unfortunately, the analysis of the rope proved useless because according to the FBI, the rope was too common to be able to trace it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because this isn't even one of those cases, like obviously we cover cases sometimes that are unsolved, but it's like, clearly this person did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And obviously when we post, I want to hear your guys' theories, like what do you think?


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[Assistant] So by January 1974, the reward for information leading to an arrest had actually reached about $6500, which in 2024 would be $41,000. Damn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it did little to encourage new leads or information.


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[Assistant] Weeks turned into months and the story slipped from the front pages to the back and eventually it just stopped appearing in the press altogether.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow. And by the end of the year investigators had no new information. They were no closer to catching the killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because no one has ever been arrested for the murders and there's never been a strong suspect, it's obviously impossible to say who is and isn't a victim of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or whether the seven previously identified young women were even killed by the same person or people.


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[Assistant] It was right at the end of 1973. It was like the last couple weeks of 1973.


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[Assistant] Now other cases like that of Ed Kemper illustrated how killers and violent predators frequently victimized hitchhikers, since they were typically willing to get into a stranger's car without hesitation. And really that's exactly why it's entirely possible that there are other victims to the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders who, because of lack of evidence or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just the passage of time can't officially be linked to the case. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In July 1979, hikers in, I think it's Rankin Valley, discovered the skeletal remains of a young woman in a duffel bag, about 100 yards from where Laurie Curse's body was discovered in late 1972.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The victim was described as being somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21 and uh, five foot three inches tall with red hair and wearing hard contact lenses.


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[Assistant] Both of her arms were fractured, and she's actually believed to have died sometime between 1973 and 1975.


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[Assistant] And they arrived at that based actually on the fact that she wore those hard contact lenses. They had recently been pushed out of favor and uh, phased out, excuse me, in favor of soft plastic lenses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But other than the contact lenses, the clothesline uses bindings and the remnants of the bag itself. There was no evidence at the scene.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she still remains unidentified to this day. Wow. Initially, investigators suspected that the remains could have been those of Jeanette Commaheeley, who's one of the only victims who's believed to be linked to the Hitchhiker murders that has actually never been found.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But once the race of this body was established to be white, Jeanette was ruled out because she was Polynesian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the circumstances and location in which the body was discovered, this specific Jane Doe is assumed to be connected to the other victims. It was just that they found her much later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then in December of 1978, 15-year-old Carrie Graham and 14-year-old Francine Trimble, two teenagers from Forestville, California,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They told friends that they were planning to hitchhike to Santa Rosa to attend a party.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were last seen hitchhiking a ride at a gas station in Forestville.


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[Assistant] Francine told her mom that they were just going to go Christmas shopping, but when they didn't return, her mom became very concerned and filed a missing persons report.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It took six months to find them, but six months later, the badly decomposed remains of the two teenage girls were discovered in a wooded area of Willets, which is a rural town about 80 miles, uh, north of Santa Rosa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only evidence found at the scene was one earring shaped like a bird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The earrings have something to do with this. If these girls had earrings in, one was taken as a trophy. Always.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 100%. Has or had. In 2015 the remains were identified actually using modern methods and were confirmed to be the remains of Graham and Trimble. And the earring was identified by Francine's sister as jewelry that she herself had given Francine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unfortunately, given how little evidence was collected in these cases and the already tenuous connection between the victims, the list of other potential victims is very long and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Although there have always been serial killers operating across the United States, obviously that's, we're here talking about them all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The concept of the serial killer didn't enter the public consciousness until the 1970s. So this was a very new concept while this was all happening. And that was when law enforcement agencies started working with mental health professionals to better understand the profiles of these psychotic killers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Americans went from being pretty unaware of dangerous predators to then being thrust into a world where they were seemingly surrounded by these deranged killers.


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[Assistant] And especially in California, this was a period of time where some of the nation's most notorious serial killers were caught. Yeah. Bondi, Ed Kemper, Charles Manson, excuse me. This is all to say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it came to who could be responsible for the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders, Bay Area and Northern California residents had serial killers on the brain, which may have heavily influenced their theories. But I do still think serial killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But officially, I could definitely not, but officially there had never been a strong suspect for the killings. And like I was just saying, investigators can't even conclusively say that all these victims were even killed by the same person. So of course that has led to a great deal of speculation, mostly from amateur sleuths like ourselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Among these are the Zodiac Killer, Arthur Lee Allen, who is actually also one of the prime Zodiac suspects, Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi, and Angelo Buono are my top suspects for this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who's to say that it didn't start earlier and they just didn't ever admit to these ones again because a lot of these are younger girls?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And look at that, Maureen and Yvonne, 12 and 13, friends hitchhiking together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think. And then also think, they drove around in a van, didn't they?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, well we'll go to our next one. And I don't personally feel strongly about this one, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he's a horrible human. The sheriff's statement about the zodiac immediately received a great deal of attention from the press and the sheriff's office was flooded with phone calls and requests for comment, which the sheriff happily provided.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it came to identifying a suspect or even putting together a profile, things were incredibly complicated though. The killer or killers as we know left very little evidence at the scene.


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[Assistant] While some of the victims were seen getting into cars with men, no one ever managed to get a good, like a really good look at the drivers. And further complicating matters was that as far as they could tell, investigators never found the murder sites. These were just where the bodies were found.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In total, sheriff's detectives and investigators with the Santa Rosa police investigated over 300 possible suspects, but none were ever very seriously considered to be viable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Could have been a victim of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.


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[Assistant] Bundy confessed to killing, obviously as we know, at least 27 women and girls and was known to have spent time in the Santa Rosa area in the early 1970s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Robert Keppel, one of the detectives who helped capture and interview Bundy in the 70s said, Bundy's definitely a good suspect. The killings in Santa Rosa would fit his methods. He spent time in the area and I'm sure he started killing well before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually he was completely ruled out because according to a spokesperson from the sheriff's office, and this is a quote,


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[Assistant] All of Bundy's girl's heads were crushed. We didn't have anything like that. Okay.


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[Assistant] Is somewhat true, he was a blunt force kinda guy. Yeah, not necessarily a strangler.


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[Assistant] Now, while theories about high-profile killers are most likely the result of their temporary spotlight in the public eye, there have been at least two suspects who were decidedly more compelling. In the mid-1980s, Sonoma County Coroner Tom Siebe gave an interview with the Press Democrat, in which he indicated the most likely suspect to have already passed away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't give the reporter a name. This is interesting. But he described the individual as a quote, middle-aged married man who died in a car accident in the mid 1970s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was referring to 41 year old Santa Rosa Junior College creative writing teacher, Frederick Manali, I believe it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And remember, two of our victims were students at the Santa Rosa Junior College. Okay.