Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis, code
Speaker 4: named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here and
Speaker 4: that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: It's the top of the week, which means it is
Speaker 4: time for some news that's particularly strange. We are going
Speaker 4: to learn some new details in a longstanding murder case.
Speaker 4: Actually we're going to do that several times. We're going
Speaker 4: to talk about how last week was, in a weird way,
Speaker 4: a big week for serial killers. We're going to have
Speaker 4: to mention a little bit about AI in Hollywood, of course,
Speaker 4: and shout out to our our pal who is a
Speaker 4: glass blower who wrote to us and said, hey, I'm
Speaker 4: the one guy in the audience.
Speaker 3: Who didn't know what mad libs are.
Speaker 4: So you know, we never will we make those call
Speaker 4: outs and ask ask for those kind of communicates. It's
Speaker 4: always amazing when we hear back, and we like to
Speaker 4: follow up on things. That's what. That's what a lot
Speaker 4: of this week's Strange News segment is going to be
Speaker 4: about following up on things that may have not hit
Speaker 4: the headlines quite yet. Before we do any of that,
Speaker 4: our first story today is for for the TikTokers in
Speaker 4: the audience. Alexis called this a tic topical story. Was
Speaker 4: that yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, r yes, yes all.
Speaker 3: Right, gang gang gang gang Noel? What's on ice cream
Speaker 3: is so good? Yes? Yes, yes, stop pa balloon and.
Speaker 2: Not casting a spell that I am unaware of its effect.
Speaker 5: You know, we say that about lots of media, media,
Speaker 5: ritualistic kind of media.
Speaker 3: Basically, Okay, I will say this to lead off.
Speaker 5: This is a phenomenon that I found out about from
Speaker 5: the guys over Internet today who linked to several incredible
Speaker 5: articles about this, this phenomenon known as NPC streaming. But
Speaker 5: I told my kid about it, who is an official,
Speaker 5: you know, actual facts gen z, and she was not
Speaker 5: aware of this, and the moment that I told her
Speaker 5: about it, she started seeing it everywhere. I don't know
Speaker 5: what's going on the Internet and algorithms and all of that,
Speaker 5: or if it's just a coincidence, or it's one of
Speaker 5: those things where if you start looking for something, then
Speaker 5: you're more likely to find it. But essentially, you know,
Speaker 5: we think of TikTok videos that go viral as these
Speaker 5: very short form pieces of content. But like many platforms
Speaker 5: that involve streaming video, TikTok also has a live feature.
Speaker 5: And this live feature is being used in a very
Speaker 5: bizarre and dare I say interesting way by a handful
Speaker 5: of users, and it's starting to really pick up some steam.
Speaker 5: So those little nonsense blurbs that I was spouting off
Speaker 5: just a few minutes ago, yeah, that's basically what it is.
Speaker 5: You'll have an individual who is streaming, you know, two
Speaker 5: users who are watching the stream, and on first look,
Speaker 5: it seems as though this person is some sort of
Speaker 5: glitching robot or like I don't know, some kind of
Speaker 5: hologram that is experiencing a technical malfunction by just kind
Speaker 5: of blurting out these little non sequitor, seemingly nonsensical phrases
Speaker 5: like Ganggang ice cream, so good, pop pop pop pop
Speaker 5: balloon and yes, yes yes, And then there are others.
Speaker 5: This is what is being referred to, as I said,
Speaker 5: as NPC streaming NPC for all the gamers out there,
Speaker 5: refers to non player characters, and we've seen plenty of
Speaker 5: memes surrounding things like I got an arrow in the
Speaker 5: knee or whatever, like they're lesser characters and video games.
Speaker 5: By being lesser than say main characters or more story
Speaker 5: driving characters and games, they have a pretty finite number
Speaker 5: of things that they can react to, and if you
Speaker 5: hang out with them long and other games, you're going
Speaker 5: to hear them repeating these things and it kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, oftentimes too hilarious results.
Speaker 4: Oh fun, fun theory about the MPC you mentioned in Skyrim,
Speaker 4: you know, where there's a soldier, it's like I used
Speaker 4: to be out having adventures, but then I took an
Speaker 4: arrow to the knee. And you're right, they say that
Speaker 4: pretty often. Apparently that is a clever bit of in
Speaker 4: the window or euphemism, taking arrow to the knee, as
Speaker 4: in like getting down on one knee and proposing settling
Speaker 4: down and starting a family. Interesting, that's that's kind of weird,
Speaker 4: you know, just Skyrim's so deep with MPCs, but you're
Speaker 4: you're nailing the description here well.
Speaker 5: And it also reminds me of the thing that I
Speaker 5: think we talked about recently, the idea of touching grace
Speaker 5: and elden Ring referring to this notion of hey, everybody,
Speaker 5: make sure you're not just like, hold up and what's
Speaker 5: it called, you know, poop socking and playing this game
Speaker 5: and never going outside and touching grass, touch grass, Well.
Speaker 3: I get it. It's definitely you know, it definitely can
Speaker 3: be triggering. We've talked about poop socking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, anyway, one of the most prominent users in
Speaker 5: the TikTok world that is doing these is a user
Speaker 5: by the name of Pinky Doll, who is Canadian, a
Speaker 5: twenty seven year old resident of Montreal named Feta sign
Speaker 5: On or Sinan, who spoke to The New York Times
Speaker 5: about this and said, Okay, you know, initially you might
Speaker 5: come across as something like, what is this weirdo gen
Speaker 5: z nonsense. Well, what it is is a cash cow.
Speaker 5: Apparently Pinky Doll is making anywhere between two thousand and
Speaker 5: three thousand dollars per stream because these people who are
Speaker 5: doing these these NPC live streams are reacting to little
Speaker 5: rewards that can be handed out by users in the
Speaker 5: form of stickers.
Speaker 3: I think is what they're called virtual.
Speaker 5: Coins is another way that was referred to in a
Speaker 5: Mashable article by Mira Naviaka. It's essentially a token that
Speaker 5: amounts to actual money, but each one of these is
Speaker 5: only worth about point zero one CeNSE. That's right, Matt,
Speaker 5: point zero one CeNSE. I saw you make a face.
Speaker 5: But somehow you're getting enough of these or at least,
Speaker 5: you know, the most popular practitioners of this money making
Speaker 5: device to earn about two thousand to three thousand dollars
Speaker 5: per stream. There are other users, one called not to
Speaker 5: Echo not not too a Coco I think it's pronounced.
Speaker 5: With around one point five million followers. This user is
Speaker 5: actually given credit for, you know, kicking off this trend.
Speaker 5: And again I'm always crediting the dudes over Internet. Today,
Speaker 5: they have really thoughtful commentary on a lot of these
Speaker 5: bizarro kind of Internet culture things that pop up, and
Speaker 5: they pointed out that this is the kind of thing
Speaker 5: that doesn't really reach us, I guess normies in this situation,
Speaker 5: or at least people that are outside of the TikTok
Speaker 5: bubble until it crosses this kind of barrier, you know,
Speaker 5: into you know, something more like being discussed on Twitter
Speaker 5: or Instagram or one of the platforms that we old
Speaker 5: you know, still mess with. And now it's actually gained
Speaker 5: so much steam because of its bizarre nature that people
Speaker 5: had so many questions that the New York Times is
Speaker 5: writing about it. And yet somehow my kid, who is
Speaker 5: not a mega TikTok user but definitely very much it's
Speaker 5: in you know, her wheelhouse and her friend group. She
Speaker 5: didn't even know about it. So yeah, it's essentially, you know,
Speaker 5: you're reacting so like, you know, an ice cream whatever
Speaker 5: emog or let's call it a virtual coin yields a
Speaker 5: reaction of ice cream so good. And there's one that's
Speaker 5: that creates the responsive of Ganggang. And here's another thing
Speaker 5: that's interesting that the Internet Today guys also pointed out
Speaker 5: utter credit where credit is due, and I ran this
Speaker 5: by my kid and she agrees.
Speaker 3: Usually there's another thing at play in these videos.
Speaker 5: In Pinky Dolls streams, or at least one in particular
Speaker 5: that got some attention. She's using a hair straightener in
Speaker 5: the background to pop single kernels of popcorn. So if
Speaker 5: you put a single kernel of popcorn between a hair straightener,
Speaker 5: you know, one of those flat dooly bops, it'll eventually pop,
Speaker 5: and it creates this extra thing to pay attention to
Speaker 5: and wait for the result of while you're watching all
Speaker 5: of this sensory overload reaction to these different you know emotes. Again,
Speaker 5: I probably using terminology incorrectly, forgive me, but again, each
Speaker 5: one of those does amounts to an amount of money.
Speaker 5: And if someone is doing enough of these to earn
Speaker 5: two thousand to three thousand dollars a stream, and they
Speaker 5: only are worth about point zero one sense, I'm impressed
Speaker 5: a by that amount of money, and also be that
Speaker 5: they keep track of these. It's just a constant barrage
Speaker 5: of these. You've ever been on alive and you see
Speaker 5: the little heart's popping up, it's the same you know
Speaker 5: on an Instagram live, only it's multiple different ones of
Speaker 5: these that were that elicit a different reaction all the
Speaker 5: while while waiting for the little popcorn kernel to pop,
Speaker 5: at which point Pinky Doll takes it and puts it
Speaker 5: in a little bowl.
Speaker 3: There's other ones too.
Speaker 5: My kid was saying, there's ones where they'll like gradually
Speaker 5: be peeling an egg in the background, or you know,
Speaker 5: doing something with Plato's It's all about these kind of
Speaker 5: things that are meant to feed kind of add types
Speaker 5: of impulses.
Speaker 3: I guess it's, you know, sensory overload.
Speaker 5: And Ben, you're always referring to the dopa mean casino,
Speaker 5: and this is an actual monetized version of the dopamine casino.
Speaker 5: Because every time that thing lights up and the person
Speaker 5: you know that's streaming makes one of those sounds, it
Speaker 5: lights up some little sector of your brain. And maybe
Speaker 5: at first you're just passively watching it, you know, and
Speaker 5: just like out of morbid curiosity, and then maybe you
Speaker 5: get to a point where you're like, oh, well, maybe
Speaker 5: I'll try this myself, and then it could very well
Speaker 5: become maybe not an addiction person, well, well let's just
Speaker 5: call it could become some form of addiction. I mean,
Speaker 5: dopamine release is equivalent to a hit of a drug
Speaker 5: of some kind, you know. And there have been studies recently,
Speaker 5: even before this particular phenomenon that have cautioned that a
Speaker 5: lot of this kind of thing is a casino for kids.
Speaker 4: Sure, I mean, at the very least, it's weaponizing habituation. Actually,
Speaker 4: it is the same reason that slot machines work, even
Speaker 4: when you know the math is against you. In the
Speaker 4: house will always win. I like it's weird, because says
Speaker 4: talking with Robert Evans a while back about AI generated
Speaker 4: children's books, which are a huge, huge drift. And the
Speaker 4: problem here no seems to be similar in that ostensibly
Speaker 4: this does not seem dangerous, right, This seems like a silly,
Speaker 4: fun diversion. I do input A, I get output B.
Speaker 4: I get a little chuckle, little spark in a happy
Speaker 4: part of my brain. But with that habituation, with that eternal,
Speaker 4: like that growing, escalating feedback loop of stimulus response, then
Speaker 4: the danger is that it can assume an ever greater
Speaker 4: priority in the mind, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 4: we see other examples of this with kids from before
Speaker 4: the days of the internet, kids calling uh nine hundred
Speaker 4: numbers and racking up thousands of dollars on the phone
Speaker 4: bill before their parents find out. And that sounds silly,
Speaker 4: but I I know someone who that happened to. They
Speaker 4: were like eight years old and they started calling an
Speaker 4: insult joke line. So they were paying like ninety nine
Speaker 4: cents a dollar ninety nine a minute to call and
Speaker 4: have some guy say like, oh hey, freckle face. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't even live. It was just recorded stuff, so
Speaker 4: this can happen. And the problem is that without making
Speaker 4: us all sound curmudgeonally, the problem is that when people
Speaker 4: realized there might be a danger to it, the ship
Speaker 4: is often already sailed. Right. That's why people sometimes are
Speaker 4: homeless and live in internet cafes. No one identified the
Speaker 4: need to. As much as I don't like the phrase touchgrass.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 5: And one last thing, you know, well, just just another thing.
Speaker 3: I know you've got something to say here as well.
Speaker 5: It occurs to me too that this kind of reward
Speaker 5: based streaming really has its origins in adult content, you know,
Speaker 5: websites like chatter Baits and only fans. You know, where
Speaker 5: you are in fact reacting to someone doing like sex acts.
Speaker 5: And the more you know, you you give, you know,
Speaker 5: these rewards, they'll do kind of what you ask them
Speaker 5: to do. Or there might be ones where there are
Speaker 5: specific buttons for certain things. And I've even seen ones
Speaker 5: like I think Chatterbaits in particular, where your clicks are
Speaker 5: connected to a device of some kind. You know, let's
Speaker 5: just keep it relatively family friendly. But the fact that
Speaker 5: this is, you know, TikTok is a platform that's very
Speaker 5: much geared towards children and to your point, bend this
Speaker 5: can on the surface seem innocuous. The more you dig
Speaker 5: into this, there are versions of this that do sort
Speaker 5: of start to really lean a little bit towards the fetishistic,
Speaker 5: you know, and the NPC idea is that you're controlling
Speaker 5: this person. There there is a a an act of
Speaker 5: control that is inherent in these types of exchanges.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting to me. Uh, there's a Guardian article
Speaker 2: about this, and there's a quote in here from someone
Speaker 2: named Christine Tran from the University of Toronto. This person's
Speaker 2: a doctoral researcher of Internet culture and digital labor, and
Speaker 2: Christine's making the point that this NPC streaming thing is
Speaker 2: kind of the granddaughter of I don't know how the
Speaker 2: right way to put this, but Christine puts it as
Speaker 2: cam girl influencing as this is like it's a spinoff,
Speaker 2: and it reminds me of some of the ASMR video
Speaker 2: content that that became really popular ten years ago. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: for a while there where where a really popular ASMR
Speaker 2: streamer may also have, you know, an explicit version of
Speaker 2: those videos that exist somewhere online, like an only fans
Speaker 2: account or something like that and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: know this, but Pinky Doll and Cherry Crush, at least
Speaker 2: according to The Guardian, maintain OnlyFans accounts with explicit content.
Speaker 2: So it does make sense that this is like the
Speaker 2: I don't know the PG version of people who also
Speaker 2: make that kind of content.
Speaker 5: Well, and it's also interesting too because like kids, kids
Speaker 5: these days are totally aware of pornography. How could they
Speaker 5: not be, you know, I mean, it's just part and
Speaker 5: parcel of life on the Internet. And I can only
Speaker 5: imagine the kinds of things that my kid may or
Speaker 5: may not have seen that I will never be aware of.
Speaker 5: And there's nothing I can do about it. And maybe,
Speaker 5: you know, listeners will come out and you know, call
Speaker 5: me the task on that and say, well, do something
Speaker 5: about it, bro, like put some blocks on. But you
Speaker 5: can't man the genies out of the bottle. There's too
Speaker 5: many things that are so niche that no filter is
Speaker 5: gonna change that.
Speaker 3: And like, you know, and I trust my kid, you know.
Speaker 5: To put to relatively do a relatively good job of
Speaker 5: policing her own Internet use. And maybe that's naive, maybe
Speaker 5: that's me being foolish, but I don't think so and again,
Speaker 5: I just think it's that we've gotten to a point
Speaker 5: where what are you going to do?
Speaker 3: These kids live on the internet. That that's just how
Speaker 3: life has become.
Speaker 5: God, we went through a whole year of enforced life
Speaker 5: on the internet, you know, through the pandemic and all
Speaker 5: of that. You can't just take that away from them.
Speaker 5: That's like taking away air, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: literally like taking away something that they need to survive socially.
Speaker 5: You know, without it, they would just wither and wouldn't
Speaker 5: know how to exist. And maybe that's sad, but it
Speaker 5: is what it is.
Speaker 4: Agreed well said. I mean, there's there's also I mean,
Speaker 4: there's so much more to explore in this way.
Speaker 3: But I'm really.
Speaker 4: Grateful that you're you're bringing the light here, especially for
Speaker 4: those of us in the crowd who adamantly refuse to
Speaker 4: participate in TikTok.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's not for us, guys.
Speaker 5: You know, if something like hits or like crosses that
Speaker 5: barrier like we were talking about, I'll become aware of it.
Speaker 5: I do think it's a fascinating phenomenon and a fascinating
Speaker 5: bell weather of culture, but it's not for us. It's
Speaker 5: just it's it's it's outside of my you know, comprehension.
Speaker 5: And I mean i'd like funny videos. I like, you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of weird, niche humor and stuff, but I
Speaker 5: just feel like this stuff is not is not for
Speaker 5: us or our demographic. But it's interesting to find out
Speaker 5: about it secondhand. And then I'm lucky that I have
Speaker 5: a kid.
Speaker 3: Who's kind of entrenched in the stuff and I can
Speaker 3: sort of run these things past.
Speaker 5: But she thinks it's bizarre, and she made screenshots of
Speaker 5: some choice ones because it's not just Binkie Doll, it's
Speaker 5: dozens of them. And now if you look at like
Speaker 5: live streams on TikTok, it's like almost all of them.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's crazy how many people are doing this
Speaker 5: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Should the three of us become NPCs guys?
Speaker 4: And no, god, well my main character energy Oh no.
Speaker 5: To that point though, Matt, you know, there were some
Speaker 5: funny video that were circulating maybe a year or two
Speaker 5: ago of people cosplaying as NPCs, where it'd be like
Speaker 5: a video of like a woman kind of walking around
Speaker 5: in circles in a loop and then slowly entering a
Speaker 5: grocery store, you know, like in this very you know,
Speaker 5: intentional kind of NPC way, because you know, and again
Speaker 5: NPC characters, they're not giving them the most tech, they're
Speaker 5: not giving them the most like you know, dialogue.
Speaker 3: They're not.
Speaker 5: They're they're kind of a lesser element of a game usually,
Speaker 5: So it's sort of the joke is that they're they're
Speaker 5: always the most robotic and kind of uncanny, valley creepy
Speaker 5: elements of games. So it's sort of easy to rag
Speaker 5: on it. And there were some really funny ones. And
Speaker 5: I'm sure you know your mem has a really great
Speaker 5: page about this phenomenon, just beyond this whole TikTok thing.
Speaker 5: But uh, I think, yeah, it's something to keep an
Speaker 5: eye on, as we often say, and and and usually do.
Speaker 3: But let's take a quick.
Speaker 5: Break and hear a word from our sponsor and then
Speaker 5: come back with some more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we have returned. This is kind of a multi
Speaker 4: level story and hopefully it is one that brings closure
Speaker 4: to many many people. So for several years now, we
Speaker 4: have been doing an unfortunately recurring series on serial killers
Speaker 4: on the loose, murderers who through one means or another,
Speaker 4: got away with their crimes or were never held account
Speaker 4: for their actions. In many cases, a lot of these
Speaker 4: monsters die, or they are arrested for another crime, or
Speaker 4: in some cases they just ghost. The most famous of
Speaker 4: these is probably Jack the Ripper in the West. Jack
Speaker 4: the Ripper is not the killer with the highest amount
Speaker 4: of victims, but he is probably the most well known.
Speaker 4: When people think of serial killers, you know, they think
Speaker 4: of a couple of like top like a top ten list.
Speaker 4: Jack the Ripper will inevitably be on that list. And
Speaker 4: I want to give a special shout out to my
Speaker 4: pal David Murphy over on Instagram, who hipped me to
Speaker 4: the first part of our serial killer exploration. Today, according
Speaker 4: to an author named Sarah Bax Horton, Jack the Ripper's
Speaker 4: identity may now be revealed by newly discovered medical records.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Even a case from the nineteenth century can have new developments.
Speaker 4: That's what we mean when we say we keep an
Speaker 4: eye on things. Horton has a very interesting story. She's
Speaker 4: a former police volunteer and her great great grandfather was
Speaker 4: also a law enforcement He was a policeman deeply involved
Speaker 4: in the original Ripper investigation, and she found some pretty
Speaker 4: i won't say water tight yet, but found some incredibly
Speaker 4: compelling evidence that appears to match contemporaneous witness descriptions of
Speaker 4: Jack the Ripper. I want to give a special shout
Speaker 4: out as well to Dalia Alberge over at the Telegraph. Dahlia,
Speaker 4: I hope we're pronouncing your name correctly. So who does
Speaker 4: she think it is? We can tell you right now.
Speaker 4: She thinks it's a guy named Higham Hyamsam hyams He
Speaker 4: lived in the area at the center of the murders.
Speaker 4: He knew how to use bladed implements. He was epileptic,
Speaker 4: he was an alcoholic, He was in and out of asylums,
Speaker 4: and he received a traumatic brain injury that may have
Speaker 4: altered his personality further and prevented him from holding down
Speaker 4: a regular job for the time. He was quite abusive
Speaker 4: toward his wife, quite paranoid. He was even arrested because
Speaker 4: at one point he attacked his spouse and his mother
Speaker 4: with what police described as a chopper. So I imagine that's
Speaker 4: we could think of a meat cleaver, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? So this guy, how does she put this together?
Speaker 4: So we know the witness descriptions, and we have in
Speaker 4: fact talked about them many years ago. On this show,
Speaker 4: Jack the Ripper appeared to be a man in his
Speaker 4: mid thirties with a stiff arm and an irregular gate
Speaker 4: with preternaturally bent knees. Horton discovered that medical notes about Hyam's,
Speaker 4: who was thirty five and eighteen eighty eight. These records
Speaker 4: show that he had an injury that left him unable
Speaker 4: to bend or extend his left arm. He also had
Speaker 4: an irregular walk and he couldn't straighten out his knees.
Speaker 4: We also know that he had a very severe of
Speaker 4: epilepsy and he had regular, not uncommon seizures. These notes,
Speaker 4: which Horton gathers from all kinds of infirmaries and asylums,
Speaker 4: show that you can literally map the decline the mental
Speaker 4: decline of Higham Higham's with the escalation of Jack the
Speaker 4: Ripper's killing period from when Hyams breaks his left arm
Speaker 4: in February of eighteen eighty eight to his permanent committal
Speaker 4: to asylum in September of eighteen eighty nine. He was
Speaker 4: also known to be particularly violent after his epileptic fits,
Speaker 4: which might explain the intervals between the murders. Let's pause
Speaker 4: here real quick, Yeah, what do you guys think so far, Again,
Speaker 4: this is not proven, but does it seem like it
Speaker 4: might holdsome saund I.
Speaker 5: Think so, especially like the detail about, you know, explaining
Speaker 5: the interval between crimes. That always I think is a question,
Speaker 5: right whenever you know an mo is determined, you know,
Speaker 5: for example, with the Zodiac killer and the lag between crimes,
Speaker 5: like a big question around that was is it the
Speaker 5: right person? Was it someone who felt the police were
Speaker 5: onto them and then decided to kind of cool down,
Speaker 5: because usually those cool down periods are not that long.
Speaker 5: And then there as a result of like you know,
Speaker 5: the timing that maybe it would take between a drug
Speaker 5: addict who needs another fix.
Speaker 4: Yeah, serial killers are you know, per the FBI, part
Speaker 4: of their they're partially defined by those intervals between their
Speaker 4: heinous acts. I let's talk a little more too about
Speaker 4: the timeline here. So as the Telegraph shows us, and
Speaker 4: as Barton argues, Jack, the Rippers murders stopped at the
Speaker 4: end of eighteen eighty eight, that's right around the time
Speaker 4: that Higham's was picked up by law enforcement as a
Speaker 4: quote and lunatic, and in eighteen eighty nine he was
Speaker 4: locked up permanently in the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in
Speaker 4: North London and he was there until he died in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirteen. After he got put away, Jack the Ripper
Speaker 4: never struck again. Now that's a correlation, right, but it
Speaker 4: may not. It may simply be a coincidence. We know
Speaker 4: that there were many other people who were locked up
Speaker 4: in asylums in that period, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: This was not an uncommon thing, and there is still,
Speaker 4: Like there's so many theories revolving around specific suspects, you know,
Speaker 4: like Walter sick Art comes up a lot. The fantastic
Speaker 4: graphic novel and fantastic film adaptation of Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, what what from hell?
Speaker 3: From hell?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Then they go deep into the conspiracy theory regarding royal
Speaker 4: involvement and cover ups. What was interesting here, guys, is
Speaker 4: that Higham Hyams has been on this list before. People
Speaker 4: had brought his name up, but they got into a
Speaker 4: filo from Byzantium situation. This is the part I find
Speaker 4: the hardest to believe. There was more than one Higham
Speaker 4: Higham's they won died at the time, Like, how common
Speaker 4: was the name back then, Higham Highams? It sounds made up.
Speaker 4: It sounds like bad improv.
Speaker 3: Is it of a Jewish origin? Is that a stereotypical question?
Speaker 3: I'm sorry? Is that weird?
Speaker 5: I only asked because it perhaps maybe is more of
Speaker 5: a common name, you know, in that set than perhaps
Speaker 5: what we might think of as traditional Londoners.
Speaker 4: I see. And that's if they identify the right one,
Speaker 4: because again they kept getting confused because there was more
Speaker 4: than one Higham Higham's in play. Barton, in fact, in
Speaker 4: her investigation, found five different dudes all named Higham Higham's,
Speaker 4: and she had to sift through this confusion, this noise
Speaker 4: to figure out what was going on. So our next question,
Speaker 4: why wasn't that Why didn't people know about this earlier? Right,
Speaker 4: it's been you know, a little bit of time since
Speaker 4: the Jack the Ripper murders and since the killer got away.
Speaker 4: But if we look at classifications, that's where we see
Speaker 4: the explanation. Because to protect confidentiality of relatives and survivors,
Speaker 4: two of the Hatch Asylum files on patients were closed
Speaker 4: the public view until like twenty fifteen, so you wouldn't
Speaker 4: have been able to learn this beforehand.
Speaker 2: I just have to make the point. You're just going
Speaker 2: back to how difficult it must have been to sift
Speaker 2: through those five people, right, Because if you go right
Speaker 2: now today to something like the White Pages or any
Speaker 2: of these other purported you know, information gathering sites that
Speaker 2: have personal information on everybody, like instant Checkmate or something, sure,
Speaker 2: if you look up your own information, and I challenge
Speaker 2: everybody to do this, look up your own information, and
Speaker 2: there's a ton of stuff, probably in all likelihood, associated
Speaker 2: with your name or a phone number you have or
Speaker 2: an address that you've lived at one at one point
Speaker 2: in your life. There's other stuff associated with your person
Speaker 2: that has nothing to do with you, which I can
Speaker 2: only imagine with the number of records we have today,
Speaker 2: and it's very difficult to get true answers from a
Speaker 2: service like that, if you are trying to go back
Speaker 2: to the eighteen eighties, I mean, my god, that must
Speaker 2: have been incredibly difficult work.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you get to that point, you're looking
Speaker 4: at handwritten records often right, and someone with a weird
Speaker 4: style on their cursive s might throw off your whole case.
Speaker 2: In records that someone decided they were important enough to keep.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, or there are just so many variables that
Speaker 4: can happen between the time a record is made and
Speaker 4: the time someone decides to look back at it. It
Speaker 4: is inevitable and quite frightening that there are answers to
Speaker 4: lots of crimes that are locked away in archive somewhere,
Speaker 4: and not necessarily as a result of malicious intent. Humans
Speaker 4: are just information hoarders. They make a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: and we want to hear your thoughts on the Jack
Speaker 4: the Ripper investigation. We also want to point out that
Speaker 4: Miss Bax Horton does have a book coming out on
Speaker 4: this if you are interested in learning more. It is
Speaker 4: called One Armed Jack, Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 4: It will be coming out this summer. In full disclosure,
Speaker 4: we have not read it, but I think we should
Speaker 4: check it out. And that's not the only big serial
Speaker 4: killer news this week. We have something that is incredibly
Speaker 4: important to us and incredibly important to many many people. Again,
Speaker 4: we want to focus on the possibility of justice, the
Speaker 4: possibility of closure. Guys, remember we had in our in
Speaker 4: one of our serial Killers on the Loose episodes, we
Speaker 4: talked about what is sometimes called the Long Island serial killer,
Speaker 4: the unidentified assailant in the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Quite
Speaker 4: recently between nineteen ninety six and two thousand eleven, they
Speaker 4: found someone. They finally found someone and arrested them. And
Speaker 4: you guys remember this case, right, This is the one
Speaker 4: where the guy seemed very organized, seemed to taunt people,
Speaker 4: seemed to seem to know how to play law enforcement
Speaker 4: a little bit, if we're being honest with red herrings,
Speaker 4: misleading and just absolutely brutal, monstrous crimes.
Speaker 2: If someone hunting sex workers. I think I remember seeing
Speaker 2: it known as the Gilgo Beach killer, like when we
Speaker 2: covered that episode, it was like an aka.
Speaker 4: Yeah, gilg Beach serial killings. Also the killer is called
Speaker 4: LISK or Long Island serial Killer. And they kept finding
Speaker 4: more victims and for a long time, law enforcement and
Speaker 4: families and relatives, everyone was at a loss. This person
Speaker 4: seemed to have disappeared, but as of July fourteenth, a
Speaker 4: Long Island architect named Rex Huerman has been arrested and
Speaker 4: charged with the murders of three of the eleven victims
Speaker 4: in the Gilgo Beach serial killings. They say they found
Speaker 4: him because they matched DNA from a pizza he ate
Speaker 4: to genetic material found on one of the victim's remains.
Speaker 3: Well not to make light.
Speaker 5: But I can't help but think of an episod of
Speaker 5: The Sopranos where Aj and some of his delinquent friends
Speaker 5: mess up vandalize the school and they link him to
Speaker 5: the crime because of a pizza that they leave behind
Speaker 5: that is a custom job that it's only made by
Speaker 5: for AJ.
Speaker 4: Sorry, no, no, it's a good point. They got Golden
Speaker 4: State via what a coffee cup? I think the t
Speaker 4: in the trash. And of course, to be fair, we
Speaker 4: should tell you that usually when law enforcement gets to
Speaker 4: the point that they're going through someone's trash for genetic material,
Speaker 4: they already have several powerful indicators. They're not just your
Speaker 4: local law enforcement is not just sitting around waiting for
Speaker 4: you to dump your casse role or something like that,
Speaker 4: unless they are. And if they are waiting, that's because
Speaker 4: they think you did some bad badge and they might
Speaker 4: be right. So this guy, obviously he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 4: Another caveat, we have to add. Investigators for a long
Speaker 4: time have said that it is highly unlikely that one
Speaker 4: person would be responsible for the total eleven murders considered
Speaker 4: considered to be the Gilgo Beach murders. We don't know
Speaker 4: a ton right now about the investigations, ins and outs,
Speaker 4: the nuts and bolts of it. But we do know
Speaker 4: he was identified as a suspect at least as far
Speaker 4: back as March twenty twenty two. They linked him to
Speaker 4: a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing in the
Speaker 4: night one of the victims disappeared. And there's a lot
Speaker 4: of news that's still coming out. There's much more that's
Speaker 4: going to come to light. It does appear were being
Speaker 4: absolutely objective. It does appear not law enforcement is convinced
Speaker 4: this man is a serial killer, even if he is
Speaker 4: not responsible for all eleven murders. And the more matting
Speaker 4: about this little off air two, like, the more you
Speaker 4: learn about this guy, the worse he seems. He had
Speaker 4: a double life. Burner phones. A story came out today
Speaker 4: on the local ABC affiliate where a former escort named
Speaker 4: Nikki Brass talks about having a date with him and
Speaker 4: the vibe was very dangerous.
Speaker 2: Like he was obsessed with this case, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: He asked her on the date if she had heard
Speaker 4: about the Go Go Beach Murdersike.
Speaker 2: You realize what we're doing right now, right, maybe let's
Speaker 2: not talk about that.
Speaker 4: Apparently he had a big smile, glossed over eyes, you know,
Speaker 4: the double Z rose. That's the way Stephen King describes it.
Speaker 4: He also on his burner phones would search for stuff
Speaker 4: about the suspects. He would search for stuff about the case.
Speaker 4: He also had depictions of sexual abuse of children, a
Speaker 4: lot of sadism. This is a bad, bad dude. We're
Speaker 4: going to keep an eye on this one as well,
Speaker 4: and we will update as the case continues. But before
Speaker 4: we go, what do you guys think? I mean, it
Speaker 4: seems like did some of this It.
Speaker 2: Seems that way from the reporting right. As always, we
Speaker 2: have to remain you know, vigilant in that until stuff
Speaker 2: is proven in a court of law, it might not
Speaker 2: be what it purports to be or might not be
Speaker 2: connected in the way we think. But it looks bad
Speaker 2: and it reminds me a lot of BTK. Actually, the
Speaker 2: whole double life thing, like a father, a husband, kind
Speaker 2: of just living this whole other life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Dennis Radar, who also would have gotten away if
Speaker 4: he hadn't been addicted and needed the attention and taunted
Speaker 4: law enforcement. We're gonna this is dark, dark stuff, But
Speaker 4: it is important to understand these investigations continue long after
Speaker 4: the headlines disappear. We want to hear your takes for
Speaker 4: we want to hear your thoughts on this both Jack
Speaker 4: the Ripper and the Gilgo Beach killings one eight three
Speaker 4: three std WYTK. You can also find us. We read
Speaker 4: every email we get where we are Conspiracy adiheartradio dot Com.
Speaker 4: We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 4: and we're going to be back with an unexpected lead
Speaker 4: in another murder investigation. Matt, I don't know much about
Speaker 4: this one. I can't wait to learn more.
Speaker 3: Shame, and we've returned.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read an ABC News article at the
Speaker 2: top here and then go over some important information we
Speaker 2: need to know before discussing further. That makes sense, guys.
Speaker 2: The headline that you may have seen already is magazine
Speaker 2: articles on Tupac Shakur's death among items seized from home
Speaker 2: in murder investigation. Guys, the investigation into Tupac Shakor's murder
Speaker 2: is moving forward actively. When police literally went into a
Speaker 2: home and began removing evidence from that home, and it
Speaker 2: happened this past Monday, as we're recording this on Monday,
Speaker 2: July seventeenth. First of all, before we even get into
Speaker 2: the details here. How nuts is it that, again, after
Speaker 2: all this time, after all these years, since was that
Speaker 2: was nineteen ninety six, there is in insane a house
Speaker 2: actively being rated. What do you think?
Speaker 5: And you can't help but think about, you know, the
Speaker 5: fictional version of this, or like this person who's been
Speaker 5: keeping this secret and hoarding magazine articles and you know,
Speaker 5: like researching their own misdeeds and stuff. You know what
Speaker 5: I mean, like going into a serial killer's layer and
Speaker 5: there's articles with the red stringing up on the wall
Speaker 5: and stuff. You know, that's just where my mind goes immediately.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, we just talked about the serial killer
Speaker 2: who was like obsessing over his own work right at
Speaker 2: a dinner.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a very it's a very specific and
Speaker 4: sickening kind of cognitive masturbation, is it not that that
Speaker 4: self obsession? And and Matt you know, I'm I'm really
Speaker 4: interested in this too, because we have to logically assume
Speaker 4: that this being one of the most famous murders right
Speaker 4: in that time, this would have also been something that
Speaker 4: fascinated many people who are absolutely not involved in any
Speaker 4: way with those events or may not even like hip hop.
Speaker 4: For some reason like, it's it's not damning that someone
Speaker 4: has magazines about Tupac by itself. You know. That's like
Speaker 4: someone having a book about Princess Diana.
Speaker 2: Doesn't exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: And I didn't realize Matt that the actual shooter is
Speaker 5: long thought to have been killed himself and another driveler alert.
Speaker 2: Geez man, I'm just getting just kidding good. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 2: literally two years after Tupac was killed. It is believed
Speaker 2: this is one of the best working theories. Okay, this
Speaker 2: is the way I think that's the best way to
Speaker 2: phrase it, is that Tubac himself after leaving that boxing
Speaker 2: match with sug Night in nineteen ninety six. Let me
Speaker 2: get the actual date. September seventh, nineteen ninety six, he
Speaker 2: was out in his car and he got shot while
Speaker 2: he was sitting in a car by another vehicle that
Speaker 2: drove by right and fired into his vehicle where he was.
Speaker 2: He went to the hospital and then died six days later.
Speaker 2: One of the best working theories is that his death
Speaker 2: was directly linked to basically a gang war or gang
Speaker 2: violence that was occurring between Tupac, other members of his group,
Speaker 2: and some members of the Crips gang because I believe
Speaker 2: correct me, I'm wrong here, guys, but I believe Tupac
Speaker 2: was associated with the Blood's gang at least in some way.
Speaker 2: I don't know all the details, but there's this guy
Speaker 2: named Orlando Baby Lane Anderson who was supposedly the shooter,
Speaker 2: or at least thought to potentially be the shooter, who
Speaker 2: was in the vehicle that drove by when Tupac was
Speaker 2: killed or shot. So let's talk about the new evidence
Speaker 2: in why this house was searched. In twenty eighteen, there
Speaker 2: was a Netflix series created by Kyle Long. It's called
Speaker 2: Unsolved Colin the Tupac and Biggie Murders. There are ten
Speaker 2: episodes of this series. It's on Netflix right now. You
Speaker 2: can watch it if you'd like. And there is a
Speaker 2: book from twenty nineteen titled Compton Street Legend by a
Speaker 2: man named Dwayne Keith Davis who's also known as Keith
Speaker 2: D or k e ff E D. Maybe that's not
Speaker 2: how you say it. And the other writer of that
Speaker 2: book is use of Jaw. Also sounds like a pen
Speaker 2: name to me. But Keith d says that he's one
Speaker 2: of the only two living eyewitnesses of this crime at
Speaker 2: least according to his book and statements that he's made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, isn't that that confluence of the book and
Speaker 4: the docu saries you mentioned, isn't that part of what
Speaker 4: spurred the new lag of investigation exactly.
Speaker 2: It is strange that we're now four years removed even
Speaker 2: from that book, and there's action being taken. To me,
Speaker 2: that's a bit odd. I guess that means that the
Speaker 2: investigation caught fire again at some point and someone somewhere
Speaker 2: in the department said, hey, we need to actually chase
Speaker 2: down some of these leads, some of these statements that
Speaker 2: are made within both that book and in this series.
Speaker 2: And there's an interview. According to Davis, he was driving
Speaker 2: the vehicle that's associated with the shooting of Tupac Shakor,
Speaker 2: that's drive by, and he describes hearing the gunshots from
Speaker 2: behind him. Basically an open window in the person's city,
Speaker 2: seated behind him as the one who was firing, is
Speaker 2: what he's saying.
Speaker 4: Do we do any more details about this residence in Vegas?
Speaker 4: It's weird because they specifically went to this house. It
Speaker 4: wasn't something they found in an unrelated investigation. Right, whatever
Speaker 4: it was sent them to Henderson Nevada.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly. I don't have a ton of information
Speaker 2: I've got. The latest stuff I found was from ABC.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Josh Markolin, Alex Stone, and Meredith Deliso Dealiso.
Speaker 2: It was the one that I'm reading right now is
Speaker 2: from July nineteenth, so yesterday as we record this, And
Speaker 2: here's a quote from that article. In addition to the
Speaker 2: magazine articles on TUPAC, items retrieved from the home included computers,
Speaker 2: hard drives, and pictures from the nineteen nineties that apparently
Speaker 2: show individuals who might have been connected to people directly
Speaker 2: or indirectly involved in the drive by shooting. This is
Speaker 2: according to an official there with the police. There were
Speaker 2: also copies of the book Compton Street Legend. Again, a
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff doesn't seem connected in any way
Speaker 2: to an actual investigation, unless you're talking about those hard
Speaker 2: drives and pictures that might have you know, someone writing
Speaker 2: about the incident. Maybe, but somehow I doubt it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, or.
Speaker 4: Like if the book is annotated, Yeah, someone has been
Speaker 4: dumb enough to write specifics in the margins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the house was in Henderson, Nevada. We don't know
Speaker 2: a lot of other information Besides, it was a court
Speaker 2: authorized search. It was Las Vegas Metro PD who was there,
Speaker 2: and a SWAT team associated with that department.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's really all I've got, guys.
Speaker 4: So I'm reading these sources, man, and it looks like
Speaker 4: they conducted the search, but there have been no arrest made.
Speaker 4: And it also sounds like they went for shock and
Speaker 4: awe with his search, like Bullhorn's light swat hold nine.
Speaker 4: That's a lot to do if there's not a substance
Speaker 4: to takeaway.
Speaker 2: Well, it isn't in a rest or is it kind
Speaker 2: of putting on a show because you know, perhaps you
Speaker 2: even know for sure that the person who perpetrated this
Speaker 2: crime is not there and you can't hold that person accountable.
Speaker 2: But because this is such a high profile case, you
Speaker 2: want to make a show of the fact that you're
Speaker 2: you know, even looking into it.
Speaker 4: Again, Yeah, there's some theater to it. I mean, logically,
Speaker 4: swat makes sense too, because if they like someone for this,
Speaker 4: then they would logically assume that person is armed, right,
Speaker 4: they were certainly armed one night in the nineties.
Speaker 3: This I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the theatrical aspect does make sense, and that's that's
Speaker 4: what I'm saying like it does feel that there is
Speaker 4: some performative peace to this. So maybe maybe you're right.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's a maybe it's a shaking the Bush's approach,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Maybe they feel like they've
Speaker 4: got the suspect treed and they're trying to get closer,
Speaker 4: get in touch. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were other people in that vehicle besides Davis,
Speaker 2: who you know has written the confession in the book
Speaker 2: and then talked about it in that documentary, and Orlando Anderson,
Speaker 2: you know, who is deceased. There's other people in that car,
Speaker 2: so maybe they're going after one of them. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: the point.
Speaker 4: I don't know that makes sense again, right, it's all
Speaker 4: about connecting people until you find the person who pulled
Speaker 4: the trigger and the person who ordered it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And there's still there's just still so many questions about this,
Speaker 4: so many allegations of corruption and law enforcement, you name it.
Speaker 4: There's still a lot of directions this could go in.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: Something I didn't even think about, guys, is that the
Speaker 2: actions they're taking may actually have something to do with
Speaker 2: the death of Christopher Wallace, A Notori's big Maybe maybe
Speaker 2: that's kind of what this is about, rather than going
Speaker 2: after somebody they knows deceased in the death of Tupac.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that that assassination happened shortly after the murder
Speaker 4: of Tupac Shakor Christopher Wallace has killed a March ninth,
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety.
Speaker 5: Seven, and those a long thought to have been related hits,
Speaker 5: you know, retaliatory.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, exactly, and that one's in LA And they
Speaker 4: were both so young, man, It's.
Speaker 3: Isn't it weird? You know, we were kids when this
Speaker 3: stuff happened.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's the same with like Kurt Cobain, for example, And
Speaker 5: in my mind, I always think of Kurt Cobain as
Speaker 5: being this like older guy, you know, and now we're
Speaker 5: all in our thirties looking back, and these guys were
Speaker 5: in their twenties, and we just it's this time is weird.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 4: There's one important point that we always need to bring
Speaker 4: up in these conversations. And I hate to have to
Speaker 4: make it because it does sound somewhat like a just
Speaker 4: thing to say, but it's true. What if law enforcement
Speaker 4: treated the murder of everyone in the country the way
Speaker 4: they treat the murder of celebrities like that's you know,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about this, like, let's say God forbid in
Speaker 4: US recording in us in the audience today. What if
Speaker 4: you lost someone close to you, wouldn't you hope that
Speaker 4: police continue investigating years and decades after If that's what
Speaker 4: it takes to find the person responsible, I just I
Speaker 4: don't know how to fix it.
Speaker 2: Man. Well, the problem is the reward for solving Tupac's
Speaker 2: murder is a book or three movie about you where
Speaker 2: some star plays you the you know, the reward for
Speaker 2: that is massive on the level of the investigator, and
Speaker 2: once you retire, you've got a full retirement plan. Now,
Speaker 2: if you solve the murder, yeah, yeah, if you solve
Speaker 2: the murder of you know, someone like us, a random person,
Speaker 2: you don't really get anything besides hey, good job, detective.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's it.
Speaker 5: One more red case off the board, as they say
Speaker 5: and cop shows.
Speaker 4: So we got to change the reward somehow, yeah, or
Speaker 4: convince people not to murder each other. Let's start with
Speaker 4: the rewards.
Speaker 1: The rewards feels like both.
Speaker 4: Are ambitious steps, but the rewards feels a little bit
Speaker 4: less out of reach.
Speaker 2: Feels that way to me too. All right, Well, that's
Speaker 2: it for this. There will be updates right at some
Speaker 2: point from Las Vegas or from Henderson, Nevada. But we'll
Speaker 2: keep an ear out. You do two and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll come back with more if we get it.
Speaker 4: And we may be getting new leads from you folks again.
Speaker 4: You are our favorite part of this show and we
Speaker 4: get so many fantastic and disturbing stories from your fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist, So join up. We want you to contact
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Speaker 3: Any number of.
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Speaker 3: That's right.
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