Ep. 269: christopher porco took an axe

[00:00:03] Speaker A: All right, so here we are. Let's. Let's just recap where we are and what I'm about to do. Based on what you normally do, right, listeners, you'll know if you're new, this is what happens. But if you're not new, you'll know this. Every week, Corey and I tend to swap around our opening sections, right? Corey delivers an opening. I delivers an opening. Corrigans, openings. As the show has matured, as the years have gone by, Corey will talk of injustice. Corey will talk about generational injustice, wrong handed down to others who don't deserve it simply by accident. Of birth wrongs that echo throughout history like ripples in a pond. Privilege and inequality and suffering and how it builds and maintains and strengthens the systems that we are all in some way, shape or form, trapped within. Those are the kinds of things Cory, [00:01:12] Speaker B: we'll talk about, right? [00:01:13] Speaker A: You do, don't you? Let's face it. [00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds like me. Yeah. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Now, me, I like to talk about murders. [00:01:22] Speaker B: You do. You also like, you know, you like some head science, you know, things like that. You like. You know, what the fuck is wrong with our bodies kind of situation. [00:01:31] Speaker A: I do enjoy. I do enjoy wondering what the fuck is wrong with the. The internal systems as opposed to the external systems. What happens when the systems inside us go wrong? And you know what? There's a little Susan of that in what I have in store for us today. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Ooh. [00:01:50] Speaker A: But make no mistake. Make no mistake. Today I come to you with a tale of brutality. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [00:01:59] Speaker A: And unusual and uncanny. And a tale of survival, but at the cost the. Which I am certain you will never have heard. It's like before. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Yeah. [00:02:19] Speaker A: I guarantee you this. Domestic criminal justice. Justice denied. Lives changed, blood spilt. Why don't I begin? Has I. Has the scene been set? Has your appetite. Has your appetite been whetted? Listener, are you along for the ride? Buckle the fuck up on this one and come with me. Come with me because it's. It's 2004. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Graduated from high school, did you? Mm, yeah. [00:03:00] Speaker A: Good year? [00:03:01] Speaker B: Was fine. It's the 2000s. [00:03:03] Speaker A: I was in 2004. It was a very good year. But not in the quiet, safe suburb of Delmar in Bethlehem. Albany, Upstate New York. [00:03:23] Speaker B: Boy, that is a lot of, like. That's British levels of, like, neighborhood there. So it's a community called Del Mar. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Yep. [00:03:34] Speaker B: In upstate New York. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Yep. [00:03:36] Speaker B: The town of Bethlehem. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Bethlehem. Bethlehem Township is what I have. [00:03:44] Speaker B: Bethlehem Township, Okay. [00:03:45] Speaker A: You've been there. Is it a place you visited no, [00:03:48] Speaker B: Upstate New York is most of New York. Just a fun fact. And it is huge. And a good chunk of it is like six hours from me because New York is a much bigger state than people give it credit for. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Yes, of course. [00:04:03] Speaker B: I, I'm not entirely sure where in New York that is. [00:04:07] Speaker A: Very. Well, it's not important because one of the reasons I suspect you might not have heard much about Bethlehem is because it isn't the kind of place where much bad ever goes on. It's a safe place. It's. It's a kind of place that you might find built on respectability, you know? [00:04:27] Speaker B: Of course. Yep. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Courts and civil service, government offices, routine. It's a cut and dry white collar kind of town where not the fuck much seems to happen. [00:04:43] Speaker B: Right, sure. Yep. [00:04:46] Speaker A: So why don't we spend a little time visiting the house. The estate, in fact. A two story residential property on a very quiet street where you might find the doors are unlocked. Everyone knows what everyone's car looks like. Everyone knows the comings and goings people might take in your bins. [00:05:09] Speaker B: Just quick question. So when you say estate. [00:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:14] Speaker B: Over there, what does that mean? [00:05:16] Speaker A: Well, housing. Estate. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Okay. So not how we would use estate. [00:05:22] Speaker A: Oh, not like a ranch. [00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, like thinking like a, a house on like a huge plot of land, you know, Very, very. We're talking, we're talking about a neighborhood. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah. This is a two story. This is a two story property. It's on a quiet street. [00:05:38] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Just want to get that, you know, picture down. [00:05:42] Speaker A: But it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Yeah, it's that kind of place. And I'd like to introduce you to 52 year old Peter Porco, possibly Porso. P O R C O. What do you think? [00:05:59] Speaker B: Porco? I mean, I would, I would say it's Porco. There's no little, little whatchama giver underneath the sea. [00:06:06] Speaker A: Nah, there's not. There's not. And much like many others in his town, he is an appellate division law Kirk. He is a senior legal support within the court system in New York and working in the courthouse in Albany. All right? And by all accounts, he is a man of complete honesty and routine and reliability. Okay, so why is it then, why is it that one Monday morning in December 2004 he didn't show up for work? Oh. So unusual, in fact was this event that his colleagues instantly sent somebody to check in on him. [00:07:03] Speaker B: This is. I. I wish I were this kind of person because while I'm a very routine person, I'm also a Wanders out the door without telling anybody person. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Oh. [00:07:11] Speaker B: And I often think, like, if something were to happen to me, it would take so long for someone to figure it out, you know? This morning I left and my husband texted me like 45 minutes later, just said, where are you? It's like I went to Zumba, buddy. [00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm not so much that guy anymore. But I did have a habit of absconding, often for days at a time. [00:07:37] Speaker B: One time, I've never done that, but [00:07:40] Speaker A: I told Laura once I was going for a quick drink after work. I came back three days later, we trashed an Airbnb. I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud of it. I'm. Listen. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Golly, [00:07:51] Speaker A: I'm a different guy. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Well, certainly nobody from work would have come and checked on you than if you were the guy who went out for a drink and came back three days later. I, I'm less that, but I do think like, you know, if you wanted to get the jump on it, like, hey, you know, you want to find out quickly the person's missing it, you might wait all day to tell someone that I was gone. [00:08:16] Speaker A: Well, not, not in Peter's case. Right, because they set the alarm that very morning and it was easy enough to try and pick up the trail. Because Peter had been married for 30 years, he had two sons, he lived in the most comfortable surroundings, this two story home. No enemies, no fucking skeletons in his closet, no controversy. There was absolutely no reason why anyone might want to do him a harm or an injustice. [00:08:50] Speaker B: Sure. [00:08:52] Speaker A: So let's talk about his wife, shall we? Let's talk about Joan Porco. [00:08:58] Speaker B: Oh, just imagine, you know, you spend your whole life doodling names in your, in your notebooks, your diaries, like Mrs. So and so, and then you end up Mrs. Porco. [00:09:11] Speaker A: Unfortunately, you're saddled with a Porco now, Gene. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Sorry, did someone just say unlock the door? [00:09:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Pete just got back from the gym. [00:09:21] Speaker B: Oh, he's not locked out though, is he? [00:09:23] Speaker A: No, no, he's locking us. He's locking the door. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha. Go on. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Joan had a career. Just one of the most noble careers. She was a children's speech pathologist. I say was. Don't read into that. She was a children's speech pathologist. She dedicated her whole professional life around the care of vulnerable kids and allowing and enabling them to communicate properly so that they can engage and interact with the rest of the world. Right. Lovely, beautiful, beautiful. [00:09:56] Speaker B: Sounds like a gem. [00:09:58] Speaker A: So why don't we talk about their sons sure. We have Jonathan Porco, 23. Served on a nuclear submarine. Oh, in the Navy. Right. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah. A job and a story which puts him very far away from Bethlehem in November 2004. [00:10:23] Speaker B: So that's what he was doing at that time? He was on a submarine somewhere. Yep. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Cleared immediately. Nothing to do with this. [00:10:31] Speaker B: All right. [00:10:33] Speaker A: However, Christopher Porco, a 21. He was a student at the University of Rochester, maybe 90 miles west of Albany. [00:10:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:48] Speaker A: And what transpires next? He is not cleared. [00:10:56] Speaker B: Okay. So we've already. They have gone to his house, and they're like, he's not there. And we. They've already determined there's, like, some kind of foul play with this. [00:11:07] Speaker A: You don't know how foul this play gets. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Oh, no. All right. Okay, let's. Let's go on. [00:11:19] Speaker A: So let's unpack. What's going on here? Right. [00:11:22] Speaker B: Do we know what they, like, found when they went to his house or anything like that? Like. Oh, okay, there's. All right, sorry. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Let's talk about Christopher. Right. Let's talk about Chris. [00:11:34] Speaker B: I'm trying to, like. I'm trying to get you into, like, a Dateline way of presenting this story, you know? Oh, like you've got your own way. I'm sorry. I'm trying to. To lead it. Go ahead. [00:11:45] Speaker A: What's wrong with my way? [00:11:47] Speaker B: There's nothing wrong with your way. I. [00:11:49] Speaker A: Stop trying to make it a dateline. Wait. [00:11:50] Speaker B: I know. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Enjoy my way. [00:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Enjoy me for what I am stuck [00:11:53] Speaker B: in my way is the problem here. And I'm gonna let you. I'm gonna let you unveil this the way you do it. [00:11:58] Speaker A: I'm Mock Loris. [00:12:06] Speaker B: We'll get there. [00:12:07] Speaker A: More on which to come. But anyway, look, all right. Dressing all over the shop here. Chris. Chris Porco seems like a bad seed, right? Bad character. He had withdrawn from the University of Rochester after the 2023 fall semester because his grades. [00:12:31] Speaker B: 2003. [00:12:32] Speaker A: 2003. Yep. Sorry, what did I say? [00:12:35] Speaker B: 2023. [00:12:36] Speaker A: My bad. He flunked. Is that a word you use, flunked? [00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:42] Speaker A: Look at me. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if they still used. I haven't been in School in 20 years, but I would say flunk. [00:12:48] Speaker A: But he flunked, dude. A shitty grades in 2003. Told some shit to his parents, a web of deceit. Told his parents it was because a professor had quotes. Lost his final exam, complete lie. Blamed administrative errors, worse because just he was a fucking useless piece of shit. So what he did was he enrolled himself at a community College in Hudson Valley. Sure. Okay. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Reapplied to Rochester because he'd forward. Forged. Sorry. Forged transcripts from the community college to try and get back into Union. [00:13:29] Speaker B: It's impressive. In 2003. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Told his parents that the lost exam had been found. The school was covering his tuition fees to compensate for the misunderstanding. All horseshit. [00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah. How is he going to pull that off? [00:13:49] Speaker A: We'll get there. [00:13:50] Speaker B: Okay. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Can you hear that noise? [00:13:52] Speaker B: I can hear that noise. [00:13:54] Speaker A: I've told Peter how to make protein shakes. Son of a. Is using all of my gym supplements. [00:14:02] Speaker B: Amazing. You've created a monster. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Have I have? You should see him, he's ripped. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Anyways, [00:14:11] Speaker A: he's covering himself with a tissue of ever more flimsy lies towards his [00:14:18] Speaker B: mum and dad, which is like. We've been talking about this with love Trapped, right? [00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:24] Speaker B: When people get themselves into these spots, it's like they have. It gets more and more extreme and eventually [00:14:34] Speaker A: in the corner, the further you get trapped in the corner, there's only one way out and that is something spectacular and violent. It gets worse with Chris, all right, because to fund the lifestyle that he has become used to, including paying for his tuition, he bought a brand new Jeep Wrangler, which he used, which he got by forging his father's signature on loans on credit card applications. This kid secured around 30 grand in really high interest loans, right? [00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Of course. [00:15:10] Speaker A: He got himself a 31 grand loan purportedly for tuition. He got a 17 grand car loan and opened himself up a $16,000 line of credit. And he told. Told his school friends the most ridiculous tales about having wealthy family real estate holdings, vacation homes, constructing. He built. He'd kind of built a false life, really. A false identity entirely. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Sounds exhausting. [00:15:48] Speaker A: So where do you go from this? [00:15:50] Speaker B: Right? [00:15:51] Speaker A: Where do you go from this? How do you maintain this life? Well, in Chris's case, you stage a couple of burglaries at your parents home, right? [00:16:02] Speaker B: A couple of burglaries? [00:16:04] Speaker A: Oh yeah. At least two. At least two. At least 2 burglaries. He smashed into his parents home, stole laptops, flipped them on ebay just to get some disposable income. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Nice. [00:16:18] Speaker A: He even stiffed the ebay customers that he was supposed to be selling the laptops to. [00:16:25] Speaker B: Good grief. [00:16:26] Speaker A: You're getting a picture of this guy? [00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And his family otherwise is like. You've got like dad who is so normal that like he misses work in the morning and people immediately panic. You've got a brother who's on a submarine somewhere yes. And you got this kid. How does. How does this happen? [00:16:47] Speaker A: This clip? This kid who seems to be doing his goddamn level best to make a cluster of his own life. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. This kid was clearly not the favorite. Or he was. [00:16:59] Speaker A: When it comes. When it comes to selling items on ebay. When customers complained, what did Christopher do? He posed as his own brother. He sent emails to customers stating his brother had died. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Of course. Yeah. [00:17:15] Speaker A: And was unable to send the items. Hey, there's some love trapped similarities here. [00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right on there. Come on. Yeah. Posing. [00:17:24] Speaker A: There's no way out. I'll be raising him anyway. So he's faked his brother's death. He's stolen, he's burglarized, he's committed colossal amounts of fraud. He's lied, he's dropped out of college, he's bought cars. The man is scum, okay? [00:17:52] Speaker B: It's got a lot going on there. [00:17:54] Speaker A: He's faked his. Very much living and serving in the military. BT Dubs. Mm. His brother's death to dodge and swerve small claims disputes on ebay. [00:18:08] Speaker B: It's wild. [00:18:09] Speaker A: And at this point, his mother and father, Peter and Joan, they. They. They email Chris about his failing grades and they write things like, you. You just left. And this is a quote, by the way. This. I took this from Wikipedia. This is a quote. You just left. And we can't believe our eyes as I look at your interim grade reports. You know what they say? Three strikes and you're out. You got to explain yourself. The header of the email was failing grades. You've done it again. [00:18:38] Speaker B: Oh, yikes. Yeah, that is rough. Listen, kid, you're a up. Is what that. That subject line? [00:18:47] Speaker A: A complete and utter up. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:51] Speaker A: So this takes us to autumn, or as I believe you Americans call it fall. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Fall. [00:18:56] Speaker A: Is that true? [00:18:57] Speaker B: We call it both of those things? Yes. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Do you? [00:18:59] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:00] Speaker A: Pick one. Why not pick one? [00:19:02] Speaker B: I don't. I don't know. I didn't make the words. [00:19:05] Speaker A: If I walk around here saying it's fall, I would be looked at as though I was a mutant. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Huh. Weird. Anyway, well, you can call it either one of those things here, and nobody will judge you. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Mark fall of 24. [00:19:18] Speaker B: All right, that's what it would say on our transcripts. It would say fall, not autumn. [00:19:22] Speaker A: Peter Porco, he discovers the forgeries. He discovers forgeries through his bank notifications. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that comes around. Yeah. They don't just, like, never contact the [00:19:37] Speaker A: person in so many of these stories. I'm just thinking how the do you hope to extricate yourself from this, right? How do you think this is gonna go away? What is the end game for this that doesn't involve you looking at fucking jail time, Right? [00:19:58] Speaker B: Like, do you think somehow you're going to like you're gonna win the lottery or somehow you're gonna con your way into like a really high paying job? [00:20:07] Speaker A: Because otherwise this is what gamblers always say. I'm gonna win it back, I'm gonna [00:20:10] Speaker B: win it back, I'll win it back. Right? But he's not gambling, he's just taking it. He's not doing anything to like then recoup what he is spending here. There's, there's doesn't seem to be another half of the plan. [00:20:25] Speaker A: So we've reached the point where Peter has confronted Chris, okay. In a series of what become more and more heated discourse, heated emails. He's threatening to report fraud to the authorities. He's threatening to go to the police on his son, which you have to suspect. He's wondering if it's for his own good. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:20:50] Speaker A: If you keep going like this, there is only one there, there may be two or three ways out of this. And none of them, none of them are what I want for my son. Right. Peter Porco, a man who works, as we've said, in the court system, he knows exactly what financial fraud means. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:12] Speaker A: And he is now confronting eye to eye the possibility of knocking on his own fucking son. [00:21:21] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:21] Speaker A: For his own good. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Right? [00:21:25] Speaker A: So we're gonna move forward. And this Corrigan and this listener is where it gets fucked. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Oh, boy. I mean it wasn't great on already, we. We'll say that much. [00:21:41] Speaker A: This is where it gets in. The night of the 14th to the 15th of November, 2004. Right. The Porco home was entered around about 2.14am okay. No forced entry. Mm. No smash windows, no alarms. Using a spare key. Yeah. Okay. [00:22:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:15] Speaker A: Starting to put some pieces together. [00:22:18] Speaker B: People who do murders are just very dumb is all. [00:22:22] Speaker A: Spare key kept under a flower pot by the front door. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Okay, that's also a little bit on them. Yeah. [00:22:29] Speaker A: You know. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Correct. It wasn't his spare key. It was kept in the place. Everyone kept their spare key in 2004. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. [00:22:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:38] Speaker A: According to CBS, Corey, the burglar alarm was deactivated using the family's master security code. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Okay, that is a little harder to explain through happenstance. [00:22:52] Speaker A: In what law enforcement believe is an attempt to conceal this. The keypad was subsequently smashed up to [00:23:01] Speaker B: try and hide when you have no idea how technology works. I'll just Break it. [00:23:06] Speaker A: I'll break it. Yeah. Because you see, what the intruder did not fucking realize was that all activity on alarm pads like this is locked on a completely separate box in the basement. Smashing the keypad changed. Fuck. [00:23:18] Speaker B: All right, but still, if it were that easy, then burglars would just walk into houses and smash the keypads. [00:23:25] Speaker A: But still, there's no forced entry anywhere in the house. No locks are jimmied, no windows are broken. You wouldn't call. This is a quote here from a Detective Bowdish. The house wasn't what we'd call tossed. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:44] Speaker A: The drawers weren't pulled out. They weren't dumped in the dining room. Was Joan's purse and its contents all undisturbed? This was not a robbery. How did you rate my detective bow dish there? [00:23:59] Speaker B: That was. It was very John Wayne. It had. It had a, like, distinct John Wayne ish to it. I was. [00:24:04] Speaker A: How would you know? [00:24:05] Speaker B: You gave like a wasn't instead of a wasn't. That, I think, is, you know, I'll [00:24:10] Speaker A: take another run at it if you want to give me another. If you want to give me some notes. [00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, let's try to, you know, make that the vowels smaller and. Let's hear it. [00:24:19] Speaker A: The house wasn't what we'd call tossed. The. The drawers weren't pulled out. They weren't dumped. In the dining room was Joan's purse and its contents all undisturbed? [00:24:30] Speaker B: That probably sounds more like what the. What the person sounds like than John Wayne. Realistically. This is another. I'm just. I'm always fascinated by this, and I bring these things up every time you talk about a murder, because I do watch so much Dateline that it fascinates me that people who do these murders never do any research. And so the. Or at least no research that they don't then have in their browser history and get busted for. But, like, yeah, there was a show that I used to watch religiously when I lived in Oregon, which made me very paranoid, but it was called To Catch a Thief, I think. And it was like these two guys who had done jail time for robbing houses. And what they would do is they would. On a random day, like, obviously, the people who, like, they went to his house knew this was going to happen, but they didn't know when they would go to these people's house, and they would rob the house while the people were out and about, and they would, you know, just do this. Exactly how they would have gotten. Gotten through there and gotten away with it. And every time the people were like. We really thought that we, like, would have stopped you with our alarm and our fence and blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, one of the things that they always did was, like, you just pull shit out of everywhere. You know, every, like, dresser is. [00:25:50] Speaker A: Toss the place. Yeah. [00:25:51] Speaker B: You said, you know, like, everything is all over the place. You know what? Every. They're going to look under every cushion, under everything. If you're trying to stage. Yeah. Stage a robbery, you have to take some things with you, and you have to toss the house. You can't just go in and be like, you know, this is. You know, I just didn't. Didn't like what I saw and leave asking this. [00:26:17] Speaker A: You ready for this to get worse? [00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm ready. [00:26:21] Speaker A: We know this was not a robbery. We also know Chris had robbed the house twice before. [00:26:25] Speaker B: Sure. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:28] Speaker B: So the cops already knew this. They were like, yeah, he does this. [00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:26:31] Speaker B: This is just. [00:26:32] Speaker A: It's just funny. It's just Chris. Just Chris things. [00:26:36] Speaker B: It actually would have given away that it was him if he had tossed the place, have been like, Chris. [00:26:41] Speaker A: But what if I said. Once again, according to cbs, the investigators now believe that the intruder then seized a fire axe. [00:26:53] Speaker B: Oh, it took me a second to. I was. Like, a fire axe. What is that? I was thinking, like an axe on fire. Not like an axe you use in a fire situation. Okay. Grabbed a fire axe. [00:27:05] Speaker A: He took a fire ax. He took an axe from the garage. Sorry. For those of you all who are in America. The garage. [00:27:13] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:27:15] Speaker A: And crept upstairs and commenced attacking both of his parents. [00:27:22] Speaker B: I knew this was gonna have an axe. I could just tell when he said it was gonna be brutal. I was like, there's gonna be axe murders. [00:27:27] Speaker A: Oh, I'm not even started yet. [00:27:29] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:31] Speaker A: This was premeditated to. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Telephone lines outside the house had been cut. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Sure. [00:27:39] Speaker A: In potentially an attempt to make this look like something external, you know? [00:27:44] Speaker B: Sure. Right. [00:27:46] Speaker A: And the axe was, of course, the family's own. It was a hatchet, which was stored in their garage. Ergo, the intruder knew it was there. At this point, I'll ask you to just take this in. In silence for a little. [00:28:00] Speaker B: Okay. [00:28:00] Speaker A: Because this is where it gets. [00:28:02] Speaker B: All right, I'm ready. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Peter Porco. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Tell me to be silent and then say that. Okay. Peter Porco. [00:28:13] Speaker A: Peter Porco. That's all, folks. He sustained 16 serious blows from the ax, including one that penetrated his skull and another that removed part of his jaw. Okay. Joan was discovered lying in the bed next to Peter with the most severe Head trauma. She survived losing one of her eyes, losing part of her skull and suffering life changing severe facial disfigurement. A portion of her brain was exposed to the elements. [00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:09] Speaker A: The axe was found right there in the bedroom. The bed was soaked entirely in blood. It gets worse. [00:29:25] Speaker B: How? [00:29:28] Speaker A: This is the part that ever since this case, pathologists, crime scene analysts. This is gonna fuck you up. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Oh, God. Okay. [00:29:42] Speaker A: Because despite Peter's utterly fucking catastrophic injuries for several hours after the attack, whether it's a symptom of some kind of synaptic damage or some kind of fucking psychological shock trauma response, not only did he survive for several hours after the attack, after waking up, he continued to carry out his morning routine. [00:30:21] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:30:22] Speaker A: Before finally succumbing to his injuries and dying. [00:30:27] Speaker B: So he, I mean, well, the phones were cut, but theoretically he could have gotten help. [00:30:34] Speaker A: But something went horribly, went into autopilot that morning. That fucking morning. He wrote a check for his son, Christopher. He wrote a check for Chris. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Wow. [00:30:49] Speaker A: He made himself a packed lunch. [00:30:52] Speaker B: Wow. [00:30:53] Speaker A: He loaded the fucking dishwasher in the kitchen. [00:30:57] Speaker B: My God. [00:30:58] Speaker A: He got dressed, walked downstairs, made himself fucking cereal. Went out to get the paper. His jaw was hanging off. [00:31:10] Speaker B: Oh, if someone had just seen him, just. Oh, man. [00:31:17] Speaker A: As he went out to collect the morning paper, the door fucking swung closed behind him. So he picked up the spare key out the flower pot and let himself back in. [00:31:26] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:31:28] Speaker A: All while having had 16 fucking absolute twattings across the fucking skull with a fire hatchet. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Wow. Wow, that is wild. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Is that not the most fucked up thing you've ever fucking hid? [00:31:47] Speaker B: Because, like, you know, there was the story we told many years ago of the guy who managed to survive, like basically being decapitated. Right. You know, and he was like holding his head onto his neck and things like that. [00:32:01] Speaker A: I believe the term is occipital and Atlantic occipital dislocation. That's the term. [00:32:09] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll go with you on that. But regardless, it's like, you know, he had been through about the worst trauma that you can imagine in. And it's like, you know, choking on his blood as he's holding his head on and all these kinds of things. But at the end of the day, he understood the trouble he was in and got himself to help the idea of this guy something. [00:32:33] Speaker A: He's on autopilot. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, I. Are there theories? I mean, maybe. [00:32:40] Speaker A: Yes, there are. [00:32:41] Speaker B: Great. Cuz this is wild. [00:32:44] Speaker A: The medical, forensic, medical experts are of the mind that severe damage to the outer layer of the brain, Neocortex had sustained damage enough to just render higher consciousness completely destroyed. You know, the term isn't. Isn't helpful at all. But this guy was a zombie, right? [00:33:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:09] Speaker A: His body was running on instinct. I'm fucking hitting my mic here. My watch. I apologize. I'm animated. [00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:20] Speaker A: It was almost as though he was engaging in routine without context, routine without awareness. [00:33:26] Speaker B: Like, I wonder if he weren't such a routine person, if this might have played out differently. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Who knows? Who knows? But in every, every. Every real meaningful sense. Making cereal, get in the post, getting dressed. He was doing that already dead. [00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah. That's crazy. [00:33:46] Speaker A: Obviously, as you can imagine, left blood trails everywhere. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:50] Speaker A: Not just from where he'd been attacked, but shuffled to the front door, to the kitchen, to the hallway, up the stairs. He had left a kind of a map of his last minutes across his own home. And he was discovered at the base of his stairs, face upwards, legs kind of dangling off the landing, to quote Grunge magazine, covered in blood, saturated in blood, suffering tremendous catastrophic injuries. At autopsy, coroner's physician noted there were, quote, no injuries there that are instantly or rapidly fatal. Right, which is why he walked. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:37] Speaker A: Packed his bag, wrote that check, got dressed, died. [00:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Basically everything required him to, like, bleed out, more or less. It's just a matter of waiting for that to occur. [00:34:51] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. [00:34:52] Speaker B: And meanwhile, his wife is also alive upstairs, but just, I assume, very passed out. [00:35:00] Speaker A: Well, why don't we talk about Jonah Lowell? [00:35:02] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:04] Speaker A: It gets worse. [00:35:07] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:10] Speaker B: All right, go on. [00:35:12] Speaker A: So 36 Broccoli Drive, right. About 11:35am People are concerned Peter hadn't showed up for work. People like, hey, Peter's usually here by now. Pizza, you know? Right. Pizza. Stand up guy. So a state court officer arrived at his address after the alarm was raised by his colleagues, found the front door, a little bit of jar, spare key still in the lock, drops of blood on the front steps, and called the police immediately. Right. And this is a quote from cbs. The first responder, a guy by Dennis Wood, stated, quote, I have never seen anybody able, with this massive facial and head trauma and still be alive and actually able to communicate like she was not. Joan was conscious. [00:36:10] Speaker B: Wow. Geez Louise. [00:36:14] Speaker A: Joan was conscious. Chris, you suck, man. [00:36:18] Speaker B: Right? Like two people with an axe. 16 plus times on these. Sleep and asleep, and they both survive. Come the fuck on. [00:36:34] Speaker A: Oh, and there's more also. [00:36:36] Speaker B: This is why the Villisca axe murder guy used the back of the axe and not the front of the ax. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Blunt force trauma, baby. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Blunt force trauma. So you can slice people up but never, never crack all the way through. [00:36:48] Speaker A: What if I told you that it gets up? It gets more up. Sure. Because this is. This is. This is the kind of the legal crux of everything here, right? The. A Detective Bowdish, okay. [00:37:04] Speaker B: He's your John Wayne from before. [00:37:06] Speaker A: Okay. He was among the very first on the scene. We know he knew the family. We know he'd met them two years earlier when they reported a burglary by their son. He knows about the family history. And as the paramedic team were able to stabilize Joan, Bowdish approached her. And I'm gonna quote directly from him now to an interview he gave to 48 hours some years ago. Right? [00:37:33] Speaker B: Okay. [00:37:34] Speaker A: And I'm gonna do the voice because I'm a trained dramatist, and that's my fucking right. [00:37:38] Speaker B: Hit it. [00:37:39] Speaker A: And I said to her, can you hear me? And she nodded her head yes. I then started feeling that this woman knows what's going on. I said, did a family member do this to you? And she nodded her head up and down clearly, yes. Now everybody in the room is standing there at this point. I've got witnesses. And I said to her, did Jonathan do this to you? And she clearly shook her head back and forth. No. At this point, I knew she could hear me. I knew she understood the answers to the questions. And I said to her, did Christopher do this to you? And she then shook her head up and down. She nodded. Yes, he did, bruh. Paramedics watched. Watched her fucking nod her head in response to those detective questions. She was then rushed to the Albany Medical center, put in a medically induced coma, and underwent 12 fucking hours of surgery. [00:38:47] Speaker B: Good Lord. [00:38:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Seems pretty cut and dry case. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I just. All of the other bad plan. I, I again, I don't see how this was going to undo the other bad plan. You know what I mean? Like where. [00:39:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's make this worse. [00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah. If we kill them, that's gonna fix it. My. My thought process, you know, from everything else would be. He thought there'd be insurance, but, like, when it's clearly you who did it there, you're not gonna get insurance. [00:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:32] Speaker B: So. [00:39:32] Speaker A: Well, despite Joan's positive id, right? Chris had an alibi. He claimed he'd been sofa surfing at his dormitory lounge at his university on the night of the 14th, about a day after Joan identified Chris as the attacker, detectives started knocking on doors, and his. His roommates were having nothing of it, you know, one of his roommates, according to cbs stated it just so happened some guys were up and we stayed up until 3:30. It's not like maybe he was there and we overlooked him. He simply wasn't there. So no one had his back. No one was trying to fucking shield him, you know? [00:40:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:13] Speaker A: Something else. Surveillance captures had the yellow Jeep that he bought fraudulently from his dad's money in the university car park at half ten on the very same night that very same Jeep came through the. The throughway toll outside Rochester a quarter to 11. [00:40:38] Speaker B: Oh my God. It's all stupid. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Bright yellow Jeep wrangler, right? [00:40:44] Speaker B: Couldn't even like borrow someone. Like he likes to steal things. He couldn't, you know, taken one of the roommate's cars or something like that. Be like a little more inconspicuous than a bright yellow Jeep that he basically stole. Come on, man. [00:40:59] Speaker A: He was made going through the toll booth towards his parents house at 2am and he was made coming back by 8:30am the next morning. [00:41:08] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:41:10] Speaker A: Full DNA profile of Chris from the toll tickets. The. I mentioned earlier on that the alarm system was disarmed using the master code. Three people knew that code. Corry. Three people knew that code, right? Peter, Joan and. Anyone. Anyone. Chris. [00:41:31] Speaker B: So dumb. That's so dumb. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Interestingly. Interestingly, Chris had also worked in the past part time for a vet. A veterinarian. And his boss, a guy with them of John Kearney, testified that he'd been trained in cleaning up after animal surgery. Which explained maybe why little to no blood. No blood, I believe like on him in the Jeep at all. [00:41:58] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. Because clearly he left plenty at the scene. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Plenty. Plenty. [00:42:05] Speaker B: Just on top of the many ways this is so dumb. Like wouldn't you check to see that they were dead? Like you know, just feels like a basic thing you'd do, you know, give your 40 wax and then be like mom, can you still hear me? Like, you know, it's just so insane. I can't wrap my head around any of this. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Even after all of this, right? You might not. You. You might. You might not believe that you would even hear me say this. [00:42:43] Speaker B: Uh huh. [00:42:44] Speaker A: It gets. [00:42:47] Speaker B: Come on. [00:42:47] Speaker A: Worse. [00:42:49] Speaker B: All right, hit me. [00:42:51] Speaker A: We're gonna wrap up here, right? The trial began in 2006 in Orange county because of all of the media coverage in Albany. [00:42:59] Speaker B: Orange County. What? [00:43:02] Speaker A: Orange county is all I got. What if I told you Chris didn't testify? [00:43:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:43:08] Speaker A: What if I told you he showed a complete lack of external emotion throughout the entire trial? [00:43:15] Speaker B: What if I said that feels on brand. [00:43:18] Speaker A: What if I said that his brother Jonathan testified against him for the prosecution? [00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I can see why he'd do that. [00:43:32] Speaker A: What if I said he described his relationship with his brother as icy and strained? What if I said that Joan sat beside her son throughout the entire fucking affair? [00:43:53] Speaker B: The one that tried to kill her, [00:43:55] Speaker A: the one who had her fucking lost her eye and had her face mashed up to fuck. She sat beside her son throughout the entire thing. She testified for the offense. She scraped together 250 grand for bed. Baal, girl. [00:44:11] Speaker B: What? [00:44:12] Speaker A: According to forensic. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Brain damage. [00:44:14] Speaker A: According to forensic files. Now they walked together into court with their arms linked. [00:44:21] Speaker B: Okay, well, now I'm starting to see how he ended up this way. [00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:26] Speaker B: Again, much like Love Trapped, where you spend this entire time being like, how did this broad end up like this? How did she end up like this? And then as soon as they start talking to and about her parents, you're like, oh, yeah. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Joan later wrote a letter to an Albany Times Union, which I guess is a newspaper, and quote, I. The quote from the letter was to search for Peter's real killer or killers so that he can rest in peace and my sons and I can live in safety. [00:45:00] Speaker B: She's like, full on pretending what happened didn't happen. It's not even that. She's like. I thought maybe she was like, gonna. Like she was presenting it as like, there's an understandable reason for this or like trying to get him an insanity plea or something like that. But she's just going, oh, he didn't do it. [00:45:24] Speaker A: Oh, girl, you'd be glad to know it didn't work even slightly. [00:45:29] Speaker B: Of course, not even slightly. [00:45:31] Speaker A: In 2006, October 10, 2006, Chris was convicted of second degree murder and second degree attempted murder. Right now, he is languishing in jail and is eligible for parole in 2052. Every single appeal, and they have been plenty, every single appeal has failed. Appellate Division, New York Court of Appeals, U.S. supreme Court. No one has given him the fucking time of day. [00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's going to be a tough one to. To have like a. Because, I mean, when it comes to appeals and stuff like that, you need new evidence. Right? Like, that's kind of the whole thing is there has to be some sort of compelling evidence that something was left out, that someone wasn't represented properly, that, you know, there's DNA from somebody else here or whatever. And it sounds from every possible angle that like, he couldn't. He couldn't have left more evidence. He did it if he had actively tried to. [00:46:36] Speaker A: It's as though he simply did not give a fuck about trying to cover his tracks. [00:46:40] Speaker B: Right. And this is, this is so the unfortunate thing is that because clearly they're pretending he didn't do it, we don't get to, like, know anything about his thought process because he has to pretend he's innocent of. Of the charges. So we don't get to know what the plan was supposed to be. And I am so curious as to where he thought that was gonna go. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Well, it's made its way into pop culture. There was a lifetime movie in 2013 called the Romeo Killer, the Chris Porco Story. [00:47:13] Speaker B: Romeo. [00:47:14] Speaker A: Right. Knows why he sued to try and block the film's release. Failed. [00:47:21] Speaker B: Sure. [00:47:22] Speaker A: There was a motion to vacate conviction in 2023 on the grounds of ineffective counsel. [00:47:29] Speaker B: There you go. [00:47:31] Speaker A: And after his conviction. This is beautiful. After his conviction, Christopher told interviewers, and this is according to all that's interesting. Christopher told interviewers the real killer was still out there. His precise words. At this point, I have little confidence that they will ever be caught. [00:47:54] Speaker B: Sake, Chris, give it up. I mean, although, hey, listen, there is a podcast. [00:48:05] Speaker A: Chris, I've been speaking about you for 49 minutes, mate, and I know all I need to know. [00:48:11] Speaker B: Pretty sure this, maybe this is one for you to. To check out, one that Kristen and I are very into. Oh, it's not on this app. I'm going to have to find the name of it later. But it's a story of this. This British guy who has been in jail for like the past 30 years. And it was like very much kind of a cut and dry sort of like, oh, he, he killed his like, sister or whatever or something of that nature situation. And then this podcast went back and like, looked through all the evidence and all this kind of stuff and he like, very clearly didn't do it. And the motives of every. The people who did it, which were like, his cousins, is like, very clear. But the British courts won't allow for an appeal. And so he's just like stuck because even though there's like a ton, a mountain of evidence that his cousins did [00:49:05] Speaker A: it, it's happened a few times in the UK lately. Does Andrew, you've probably mean anything to you. [00:49:12] Speaker B: What was it? [00:49:13] Speaker A: Andrew Malkinson? [00:49:15] Speaker B: I don't think it was that one. [00:49:17] Speaker A: Spent decades in prison for rape. Did not do it. [00:49:20] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, well, and it's like the really frustrating part is the like, because obviously there's plenty of people in jail who did not do the thing that they're accused of. It's the being refused a retrial. That is really like the galling element of this. That they've just been like, no, no, we're not gonna. We're not gonna do that. That said, I think it's pretty clear that he did this. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Well, you say that, but I think the best way to wrap us up on this one would be in the words of Joan Porso herself by now widowed, one eyed. [00:49:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:00] Speaker A: Disfigured as fuck. [00:50:02] Speaker B: Yep. [00:50:03] Speaker A: And has never once stopped publicly asserting her son's innocence. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:50:16] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:50:18] Speaker A: Look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:50:21] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:50:25] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal recently. [00:50:28] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:50:32] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. [00:50:36] Speaker B: I'm fucking. [00:50:37] Speaker A: I'm gonna leg it. [00:50:38] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:50:40] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. [00:50:44] Speaker B: I'll be raising hell, my dear, if you ever, ever. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Try. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Take us in. And I found the podcast, so I'll tell you what it is. [00:51:12] Speaker A: No, actually, you can take us in. [00:51:14] Speaker B: I found the podcast. [00:51:16] Speaker A: Podcast? [00:51:17] Speaker B: The podcast I was just talking about. [00:51:19] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:51:22] Speaker B: It's called in the Dark. It's the sixth season of in the Dark. The season is called Blood Relatives. What? [00:51:31] Speaker A: Welcome to Jack of all Graves. Right, okay. [00:51:34] Speaker B: You don't want me just busting through the door like the Kool Aid man, huh? [00:51:38] Speaker A: If you're in America. Sorry about that. It's just the way it is. I love you anyway. [00:51:46] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. [00:51:48] Speaker A: If you've been in the UK for the past seven days, how the fuck have you been coping? How's it been? I mentioned to Corrie last week about the temperatures we were getting last week and her response was. Mark, those are over here temperatures. Yeah, that isn't. That isn't fucking right. Does anyone have any. Any tips? Does anyone have any little kind of domestic hacks? [00:52:17] Speaker B: The Brits don't want those from us over yours. No, it's just this has been the fight on Blue sky all week is the Brits are really mad at the Americans for suggesting ways that they could help themselves through the heat wave. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Yeah. You also probably put like ice bullets in your guns, aren't they? Probably make like. [00:52:36] Speaker B: Obviously. Yeah. It's brought out the guys Shoot each other brigade for sure. Like, what did I call them? [00:52:44] Speaker A: Ice blocks. Cold blocks. [00:52:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you were like. Yeah, you tried to describe that. You were using, like, the, like. Now I can't even think of the word for ice packs, but you called them. Yeah, like, cold blocks or something like that, or cooler blocks. Because you were like. Because you would put them in a cooler and I was like, you mean ice ties? But, yeah, your brain is fried from. From the heat. So. [00:53:13] Speaker A: So words are so fright. [00:53:15] Speaker B: Words are gone. [00:53:16] Speaker A: But I gotta tell you, I got to tell you, compared to 2018, I think I've done okay this time. Yeah. [00:53:24] Speaker B: This is such a cliche, though. This is what. The other thing that people keep talking about is like, oh, every Brit's gonna do the. Well, it's. It's Nothing compared to 2018, which here we do that with blizzards. Well, it's Nothing compared to 1972 or whatever. [00:53:40] Speaker A: 2018 was awful. [00:53:41] Speaker B: And. [00:53:42] Speaker A: And. And, you know, the physical sensations of the 2026 heat wave have been awful. And there's more to come, by the way. We're back up. [00:53:49] Speaker B: Of course, it's only June, so this is just the beginning, but I made [00:53:54] Speaker A: a little decision this time that I didn't do last time, and I am. Oh, it worked. I. I don't need some of that Dark Web Valium this week. Right. [00:54:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:07] Speaker A: And just between me and you, Corey, don't tell anyone else. Fucking did a great job. Well, hey, that claim with anxiety kind [00:54:16] Speaker B: of just dropped right off. [00:54:19] Speaker A: Drop right off. Walking around in my vest and in my short shorts, you know? [00:54:26] Speaker B: Do you have short shorts? [00:54:28] Speaker A: I make short shorts. I just. Whatever shorts I make are short shorts. Just roll those out, yank them up. [00:54:34] Speaker B: Because you're normally a long shorts guy, is why I asked. [00:54:36] Speaker A: I am. I am. Take some of my T shirts that are kind of currently out of circulation. Tear those sleeves off, you know? [00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:44] Speaker A: Make the old. The old metal vest, you know what I'm saying? [00:54:47] Speaker B: A tank top, if you will. [00:54:49] Speaker A: It's a metal vest. And just. [00:54:54] Speaker B: And you're surviving. [00:54:55] Speaker A: Kind of lean in. [00:54:56] Speaker B: I'm. [00:54:56] Speaker A: I'm leaning in. And now it's broken. The. The. The sickness has abated just for a little while, and. And life. Life feels great. Life feels good. I'm a happ. [00:55:06] Speaker B: Can I. Can I mention the podcast now before I lose the. The train of thought? [00:55:10] Speaker A: You can. [00:55:11] Speaker B: We're getting further away from the context. [00:55:15] Speaker A: This is one of those, isn't it? It's one of those episodes. [00:55:18] Speaker B: It is one of the. It's hot can you believe it? [00:55:20] Speaker A: The sun. The sun hacked the out of his mum and dad, killed the dad with the ax. And the mum was all like, oh, it's not him, sweetie. [00:55:31] Speaker B: That's fine. In The Dark Season 6 Blood Relatives it's about Jeremy Bamber. Have you heard of him? [00:55:38] Speaker A: No. [00:55:39] Speaker B: Jeremy Bamber, he is the one who is in jail. Has been in jail since 1985 after five of his family members were shot in an English country manner. Like rich people shit. But yeah, over the. At the beginning of this, you're like, he clearly did it. And he's like a little bit of a asshole. Kind of an edge. Lordy guy. He's been in jail for 40 years, whatever. And so, like, you really feel like he did it. And then by the end of this, it becomes very clear that his cousins, who financially benefited from it, did it for the financial benefit from it. But yeah, Britain will not retry the case despite all of the evidence that has been uncovered. So this guy is just sitting in jail while his cousins enjoy the spoils of having murdered his family. [00:56:30] Speaker A: Justice. [00:56:32] Speaker B: Check it out. It's an interesting podcast. Highly recommend it. It just also will make you scream a little bit. So, Mark. [00:56:45] Speaker A: Anyways, sorry, my mind wanders a little bit. I mean, what. What do you say about. What do the prison abolitionists say about people like this? What do the prison abolitionists say about Christopher Porco hacks his parents to death in bed with an axe? What? What? [00:57:02] Speaker B: Create a world in which people don't do that and in which there are support systems for folks who go through this. We had a whole episode where she talked about the entire process. [00:57:14] Speaker A: I know, I know, I know. I was there and I remember it and it stuck and I really enjoyed it. And it was so enlightening and so fascinating to me. I. It. It changed not a whit of my opinion. [00:57:29] Speaker B: It's. I mean, is what it is. But yeah, there's a. There's plenty to be done to avoid these kinds of things. And also, besides simply releasing people into the world to do harm and damage, it's about what prison is. Right? I mean, I know. [00:57:46] Speaker A: I get. [00:57:47] Speaker B: There are other kinds of institution besides prison where we torture people for all time, where we could be doing things that are meant to create wholeness in people. [00:58:00] Speaker A: Other types of institution. Other types of institution, yes, go on. [00:58:08] Speaker B: Well, like, we can create institutions in which people are rehabilitated and in which they are not imprisoned in that sense of the word of. You know, you're stuck in a cell where you get three Hots and a cot and no socialization and things like that. And instead you can put people into positions in which they are able to live a full life while, you know, being rehabilitated, given counseling services, all those kinds of things. That is not the same thing as prison. All institutions are not. [00:58:40] Speaker A: Prisons become prison by a different name. [00:58:43] Speaker B: Not if you don't treat it like a prison. A prison is a specific institution. [00:58:49] Speaker A: I know, I know, I know, I know all this. I know all this. I know. [00:58:53] Speaker B: It's like saying, like, ugh, if you're in a hospital, is it not a prison? No, it's not a prison. [00:58:59] Speaker A: I know all this. [00:59:00] Speaker B: Corey, someday it'll click for you. [00:59:05] Speaker A: Of all of the topics we've covered, this has been the one that has left me with so many thoughts. [00:59:10] Speaker B: I mean, the thing that I always think about in terms of this one, because it does keep coming up, is that you don't have to fully know how it's going to work to be a prison abolitionist. Right? If you believe in the core concept that we do not need a place where we punish people till death or whatever, you know, we, we that is sole purpose is to remove from society and punish and that you think we could do something different than that, then you're a prison abolitionist. If you believe the best possible thing that we can do for people and for society is to fuck these people forever and say, you know, rights do not exist for someone who does a thing regardless of whether they did or not, you know, if they are judged by the courts to have done so, this is how we deal with it. If you're okay with that, then you're not a prison abolitionist. If you think that's not the best way to do it, you're a prison abolitionist. [01:00:14] Speaker A: But even if, even if we can [01:00:18] Speaker B: create utopia, which is not what they say, okay? [01:00:23] Speaker A: But even if we can remove the social, economic, political circumstances which drive people to commit the crimes which normally would see them incarcerated, even if we can create that society, sometimes people do bad shit for no reason. [01:00:43] Speaker B: However, even though that is the case is the only solution to that. Lock them away in a place that makes them worse and in which their rights are stripped. [01:00:53] Speaker A: You know, is it not, Is it not? Is it, Is it not a public protection angle? [01:00:58] Speaker B: Why does it have to be in a cell where they have no opportunities afforded to them to be in any way rehabilitated or to have all of their stripe, their rights ripped away from them? Like, the thing is, it's that small thinking, right? Is that like the way That I have conceived of crime and punishment my entire life is that the purpose is punishment. You do wrong and the only justice is for you to suffer. And sometimes people get caught up in that web that don't deserve it. But the only thing we can do in life is to make sure these people suffer. What if that wasn't how we conceived of the purpose of. Of removing someone from society? If we said it's fine if then that person lives a full life within the confines of some other kind of institution or something like that, but in a place that was not a prison, in a place that allowed them the fullness of their human rights and allowed them rehabilitation or allowed them to work or craft or, you know, do other things. And yeah, it sucks that someone might murder someone and still be happy, sure. But at the end of the day, that's a better society than the one in which we lock people up, you know, and that's it. And we just try to forget they exist. Especially knowing that a good chunk of the people that that happens to are not guys like this one. [01:02:20] Speaker A: Does that disregard the family of the victim? [01:02:23] Speaker B: Only if you conceive of the only justice being punishment. If we change the mindset around that which is proven to be better for families. You know, we've struggled with psychological research about this. [01:02:37] Speaker A: I want, I want to see your perspective on this. I want to see our guests perspective on this. But I simply cannot see it. [01:02:47] Speaker B: Think about. And again, this is a thing I see on Dateline and stuff like that all the time. But the people who come out like families who have had someone murdered and things like that, who tend to come out feeling better about the situation are those that forgive, whatever that means, right. And death penalty and things like that. And like seeing someone in prison forever usually leaves people feeling miserable. They don't feel good just because the person is in jail. Thinking, rethinking that whole idea that somehow it makes things better for the family if they know they're suffering, which is not borne out by evidence, means that we would think about a way that the families benefit from this too, which she talked about, that it's like we want to create a sort of restorative justice that makes it so that it thinks about both the family and the person who committed the crime, that it's not one against the other or things like that. You know, it's a matter of considering the fullness of the situation and, and saying, you know, does it cause more or less harm to incarcerate this? We find families tend to do better when they're a part of a system of restorative justice than when they simply see someone in the chair or whatever. It's an. It's a way of thinking that has been, you know, instilled in us our entire lives. And I know that, like, I. In my heart, like, I want to, like, be the kind of person who thinks, you know, oh, I don't want someone punished. But at the same time, of course, I feel good when it's like, I. I hate when someone, like, just kills themselves and doesn't have to suffer for what they did or things like that. [01:04:33] Speaker A: Sure, sure, sure. [01:04:34] Speaker B: But my worst instinct is not what laws should be based off of. Like, what I think of on my worst day is not what we should build our society off of. [01:04:45] Speaker A: I am keenly, keenly aware of the difference between justice and revenge. [01:04:49] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah, Right. And I can absolutely distinguish the one from the other. [01:04:55] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:56] Speaker A: But there is a crossover between the two of them sometimes I feel. [01:05:00] Speaker B: Mm. [01:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:03] Speaker B: I don't think it's a thing that. Yeah, we'll probably be discussing for years to come and probably, like, reading other things on it, especially from families and stuff like that, and from other systems that do things differently would help, you know, Cheryl did an amazing job summarizing as much of it as she could in two hours. [01:05:22] Speaker A: One of the most charismatic and engaging and magnetic guests I can ever remember us having. I fucking. I adored the time she spent with us. [01:05:31] Speaker B: Yes. And even she pointed out she was, like, the person that you really, like, want to look at, like, on Blue sky and stuff like that is prison culture is their name on that. So maybe following them would help and stuff like that. But, yeah, there's a lot of things written on all of this that I think would probably fill in those gaps because people are constantly thinking about those. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Well, what is also an Instagram called Prison Connect. [01:05:55] Speaker B: Okay. [01:05:56] Speaker A: Which is milfs and Hollies. [01:06:00] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [01:06:01] Speaker A: Who are looking for contacts and letters and. And, you know, outside world attention from males. [01:06:10] Speaker B: So how many of you hit up so far? [01:06:13] Speaker A: None yet. [01:06:15] Speaker B: I'm just waiting for that special lady. [01:06:19] Speaker A: I can. I can change them. [01:06:24] Speaker B: You're waiting for that. That special Casey Anthony type that you can fix? [01:06:29] Speaker A: There's gonna be one. There's definitely gonna be one. That's. That's. That just takes all the boxes, you know? [01:06:38] Speaker B: Oh, well, I can't wait to meet her. Instagram, I guess. Mark, I know you don't like to talk about work, but can we just, like, quickly talk about one thing? You did reference A little earlier. [01:06:54] Speaker A: All right. [01:06:58] Speaker B: Mark messaged the group chat the other day with a like a YouTube thumbnail, I assume, right? Or like some sort of thumbnail. [01:07:10] Speaker A: I found myself in one of our venues just doing like a 7, 8 minute YouTuber esque piece to camera about some of our equipment and its benefits. And hey, maybe talk about this, maybe talk about that. And it was all great. But here's the thing, right? To get a thumbnail for this piece, I got AIED, right. [01:07:38] Speaker B: It's so weird. [01:07:40] Speaker A: I got AI'd. And if maybe from like 30ft away and if you squint. [01:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:48] Speaker A: It's like, oh yeah, that's a photo of our boy. [01:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:52] Speaker A: But the closer you get, what did Alphonse call it? [01:07:58] Speaker B: More Cloris, Mark. [01:08:00] Speaker A: More glorious. [01:08:04] Speaker B: It's so weird because it really is. It's just that like on the surface you're like, yeah, that's Mark. And then it's just like everything is like just slightly off. Like it's, you're smoothed out. Your face is like rounder. The teeth, I think the teeth is really the thing that like throws it off completely. And like the shape of your mouth is wrong. And it's like this guy, this guy looks like a real nice guy, you know, he looks like a sweetheart. But that is not Mark Lewis. It makes me feel like I have Cap Gras delusion. [01:08:38] Speaker A: It is. Yeah, it is. [01:08:39] Speaker B: He has been replaced. [01:08:41] Speaker A: It is just deep into the uncanny valley. It's like I, I know this guy. [01:08:46] Speaker B: Yeah, the ears are very small too. Oh, like me sized ears. [01:08:50] Speaker A: I did get my one Finding Nemo sticky outy ear. It did get my lucky ear. [01:08:56] Speaker B: It's like, yeah, just a little bit more than the other, but there it's very small. And if you look at this too, like the tattoos are in the right place, but they aren't of anything. [01:09:06] Speaker A: It just gibberish. [01:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. [01:09:09] Speaker A: It was a very strange feeling. Very strange feeling to find myself AI'd. It's not, it's not. You know, obviously everybody about with it in the early days. [01:09:16] Speaker B: Right. [01:09:18] Speaker A: But to have been professionally AIed. Yeah, he's kind of, he, he's, he's the guy I'd meet in like the mirror dimension. [01:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [01:09:30] Speaker A: We would fight. [01:09:31] Speaker B: It's other daddy over there. Like. Yeah, it's very, very weird. But also like it really is, it's just, just off enough that neither Kio nor Richard's wife Jen could tell that it was not you. Like Kia was like, oh, that's nice. Look at what Mark's doing. It's not Mark I haven't seen. You just saw him two weeks ago. [01:09:58] Speaker A: In Jen's defense, I haven't seen her in a bit. Yeah, but Keo, dude, come on. [01:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, because it's been two weeks, buddy. You know that's not Mark. [01:10:09] Speaker A: Too many cucamelons. So could you ferment cucamelons and make like cucumlon? [01:10:17] Speaker B: Oh, my God, don't even get started. Keo has been talking about nothing but his ferments for the past several days. He just made like a flatbread and he was like, oh, and if you try this one, it's got some of my ferments on it. I don't. I'm not even gonna bring this up with the cucumbellans. [01:10:35] Speaker A: Okay. [01:10:37] Speaker B: Also, Mark, another thing I would like to. To bring broach is there is some, you know, alleged, not entirely confirmed, but leaked documents from the Titan submersible trial. [01:10:52] Speaker A: Beautiful. [01:10:52] Speaker B: That have come out. [01:10:54] Speaker A: As you know, that story is the gift that just keeps on giving, isn't it? [01:10:58] Speaker B: Every time you think that you've, like, oh, yep, that's it. We've. We've fully cracked it. We've got it all. No, there's so much more every time. So one of my Blue sky friends also is like, really into this story and they wrote this little thread that I'm going to read to you. All right? So according to a leaked transcript from the Oceangate case, purportedly not fully confirmed yet, the sub sank way faster than expected. They dropped ballast and kept sinking. So they dropped ballast, of course, to lighten the ship, to make it go back up, right? [01:11:38] Speaker A: Sure, sure, sure. [01:11:38] Speaker B: So they drop ballast, but kept sinking. Hearing crackling aft, they then struggled a while to drop the outer frame, which they eventually did, too. Not much help. For security, Stockton had stuck sonic monitors around the inside of the hole to listen for very quiet material cracks. We know this from the documentaries, right? That for whatever reason, the system that he set up was an auditory one. So when the ship hears cracks, you know, then there's going to be some things that light up, right? So these he rigged up with, lads. If it hears something red, otherwise green. When topside asks the sub what the monitors are showing, the sub replies, all red. Meaning this thing is lit up like a Christmas tree. It's hearing. [01:12:32] Speaker A: You are fucked. [01:12:34] Speaker B: You're fucked. The last message they receive is more working the problem procedures, followed by more, quote, more aft sounds. That's what they said to the boat. So for at least 20 minutes they were in a sub they feared was about to implode, which was sinking faster than they could control. While all around them the hole was creaking and crackling with all 70 green security lights turned red. In summary, the scariest version possible is what happened. [01:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we. In the early days, of course, people were clinging on to the fact that it was instant, Instantaneous. [01:13:18] Speaker B: Right. Like that's been the narrative the whole time is like they would have never [01:13:21] Speaker A: met a creaky creek. But bang, that's it. Suddenly your fish paste and you've got no clue what has happened. Does that not seem to be the actual case, Corrigan? [01:13:30] Speaker B: It seems that is not the case. If this is legit, it seems that they were extremely aware and probably, I mean, 20 minutes sitting there with it crackling and all that kind of stuff. You're just waiting to die. You know, you're not going back up. You've released all the ballast. You've released the frame. You're not getting any lighter than this. You're not. You're not going home. There's nothing that can be done. [01:13:56] Speaker A: What do you do in that, that last crying? [01:13:58] Speaker B: I don't. [01:13:59] Speaker A: Do you get your out. What do you do? [01:14:02] Speaker B: One last go on the way. [01:14:05] Speaker A: Just wiggle it about. I don't know. What. What do you do? [01:14:07] Speaker B: I mean, I think about this because, you know, I'm terrified of flying. And so I. I do think about this a lot in terms of, like, what would I do if the plane were crashing? Right. Because it's like, I don't. I mean, I don't know if I really want to spend the last few minutes just screaming. But obviously you're scared. You do what you're gonna do. But I'm like, is there anything I could do to just like, you know, like, turn on some ghost and like sing along or something like that? To like just be like, this is happening. All right. It is what it is. [01:14:39] Speaker A: I wonder, is there like a kind of a Buddhist or a Tai chi? Right? [01:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:44] Speaker A: Some kind of art whereby you can just render yourself completely numb and unconscious almost. [01:14:50] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [01:14:52] Speaker A: That would be ideal pressure point technique just to end your awareness. [01:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I would be very on board for learning whatever technique that is because, yeah, it's a thing that stresses me out all the time, but you would not find me in this kind of situation. There is simply no way that this could happen to me. As we discussed a couple weeks ago, where I just. I got in a too small elevator and was like, I have made a huge mistake. So there's that that's our Titan update. Is that it was a much scarier situation than we've all been talking about. [01:15:30] Speaker A: It's a good one for the past. It's a good new story. [01:15:31] Speaker B: Three years. Just a bad news, good news story. [01:15:35] Speaker A: Listen, let me tell you about a book I've just finished. [01:15:37] Speaker B: Okay. [01:15:40] Speaker A: Where do you stand on Josh Malamon? [01:15:43] Speaker B: I've only read Goblin so far. I have Daphne, but I have not read it yet. But I really liked Goblin. [01:15:51] Speaker A: Okay. So I'm very, very, very close to finishing the tote bag of horror Ryan has gifted me from across the globe. Right. I've got. I've got three tomes left. [01:16:03] Speaker B: Wow. [01:16:04] Speaker A: Trust me when I say there were like 15, 20 bucks in that bag. [01:16:07] Speaker B: That is impressive. [01:16:09] Speaker A: And I've got three left. I've been chipping away at them over a year, and the last one I did was Incidents around the House by Josh Mallion. [01:16:16] Speaker B: Right. Mm. [01:16:17] Speaker A: And like you, I am a Malamon skeptic. [01:16:21] Speaker B: I'm not a skeptic. [01:16:23] Speaker A: Well, Goblin did nothing for me. Right. [01:16:25] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [01:16:27] Speaker A: Pearl did nothing for me. [01:16:30] Speaker B: Okay. [01:16:31] Speaker A: This hit in the very, very finest way. [01:16:38] Speaker B: Nice. [01:16:39] Speaker A: It has dread. It is rooted in a reality that so many children can understand. The. The. The. The bedrock of the relationship between the mom and dad is shaking, falling to pieces, which is a terror for a child in itself. [01:16:57] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. [01:16:58] Speaker A: And this child is starting to have experiences of an entity in their home which she comes to know as the other mommy. The other mommy is intent. There'll be no spoilers here. But the other mommy is intent on getting into her heart and taking her over maybe, and occupying her body. But the thing is, other people see this entity too. Other people see the other. Interesting. And it becomes. It becomes less a story about, you know, this child's things that go bump in the night, pull up the bed clothes and terrified. And they'll go away. It becomes a very real phenomenon. Others see it and how the do you deal with something like that? And the book is brilliant. Brilliant. [01:17:46] Speaker B: Amazing. [01:17:46] Speaker A: Right? Brilliant. And it's shortly to be a movie this October. [01:17:51] Speaker B: Right. Oh, interesting. Okay, so I gotta read it before then. [01:17:55] Speaker A: Do read it before then. Shortly to be a movie this October, but I'm gonna mention the director's name. [01:18:02] Speaker B: Oh, [01:18:04] Speaker A: it's Rob Savage. [01:18:07] Speaker B: Oh, come on, man. All right, now there's someone I'm a skeptic of. [01:18:21] Speaker A: I was so jazzed that this was gonna be a movie. Right. Because the. The. The beautiful, beautifully articulate way that Malamon embodies other mommy is greater face Kind of shifts its topography. And she is, you know, she's almost a friend and you want to give in, but she gets nasty and she's horrible. And the world around this girl is falling down while she tries her best to stay stoic and optimistic. The, the, the, the potential for this film is incredible. Directed by Rob Savage. [01:19:02] Speaker B: Yep. Who's two for three on Stinkers at this point? [01:19:05] Speaker A: We'll see the entire thing through a doorbell cam, maybe. [01:19:09] Speaker B: Right. Have you in. In that bag of book goodies did Ryan give you when the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy? [01:19:24] Speaker A: I do not believe so, unless it's one of the three left. [01:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the. One of the three left. I would recommend it. It kind of. It seems like it has similar vibes to that one, and I absolutely loved it. But it is very much kind of like a home turmoil turned physical reality type thing. And there's a, you know, a child who's being. Who sort of, as the book goes, sort of, I guess, manifests in a sense almost or is being chased by this wolf figure. But it very much does real damage to actual people. [01:20:01] Speaker A: You know, I don't have any real tolerance for books where the gribbli is parental trauma. [01:20:08] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. In this it is. But also it really fucking people up. [01:20:14] Speaker A: Exactly. Those are griblies too. [01:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:16] Speaker A: But the gribblies is this mad cunt that's coming at me out my closet. That's the real gribbly. [01:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And I felt like this one was really like one of the better ones that I've read. Like that where you're like, yeah, yeah, it's trauma, but also. Jesus Christ. This is extremely violent and really relentless in it. [01:20:34] Speaker A: No incidents around the house. Fantastic. And just like everyone apart from the young protagonist, the young girl who sees other mommy, just immediately, their brain has changed forever. They cannot comprehend what they have just viewed. It's fantastic. Fantastic. I could not. [01:20:51] Speaker B: I gotta get to that one for sure. [01:20:53] Speaker A: So great. So great. So great. [01:20:55] Speaker B: Love books. Reading a lot of books. [01:20:57] Speaker A: Oh, my book era. I'm still in it, man. I'm about to start book seven of the Expanse. I've taken a little break. Right. I've taken a little palette cleanser. As a longtime Batman guy, there's a big gap in my Batman lore knowledge around an arc called the Court of Owls. And I see, and I see it get mentioned all the time. And it's a big part of what Batman is now and Batman's Law. So I'm catching up on my Batman lore. So I'm going to do a couple of Batman graphic novels and then I'm going straight back into the expanse and it's going to be great times. The reading era. The reading era is going. No way. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. [01:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I, you know, I have like, I wouldn't say phases in terms of reading because I'm pretty consistent all the time. You know, I read basically every year somewhere in the vicinity of, you know, 40 to 50 books essentially. So like I'm always pretty much in my book era, but like the form that takes shifts. And so, you know, before I was reading like you know, last year and things like that, a lot of audiobooks and playing video games. And then this year I've been like full paper all the time. You know, just. I've done a couple of audiobooks here and there. The Silence Lambs. Silence of the Lambs for book club and things like that. But largely I've just been at the library constantly taking out paper books and like basically either when I wake up in the morning, I used to just like watch Good Morning America instead. I usually will just like read for like an hour when I wake up or when I get home from the gym before I start working. I'll spend like an hour sitting there reading. And it is, it's so nice just getting through stuff that way. [01:22:48] Speaker A: Listen, I gotta warn you. I gotta warn everyone. I gotta warn my family. I gotta warn my job. When GTA comes out, I'm gone. I'm fucking gone. I'm gone. My work, my friends, my family, my fitness. Sorry, you jack of all graves. All of our listeners. Fucking good fucking bye. [01:23:14] Speaker B: Good thing that's never coming out. I'm not gonna worry about it. [01:23:20] Speaker A: Pre orders alive and I've. [01:23:23] Speaker B: Hey, you can order your empty carton of game. [01:23:26] Speaker A: Don't tell anyone, but I've already booked the week of release off work. I'm not work. I'm not working for the entire week that is coming out. [01:23:33] Speaker B: Man, that is wild. [01:23:35] Speaker A: Yeah, big deal. It's a big deal. [01:23:39] Speaker B: If you say so. I don't think I've ever. I mean there's a lot of video games that I love but I just. Yeah, nothing that's like I need a week off to. To sit and play this game. I would get bored very quickly. [01:23:54] Speaker A: Nah, you wouldn't. [01:23:55] Speaker B: And dizzy amongst other things. Video gaming for too long makes me dizzy. [01:24:00] Speaker A: God damn much to do in so much detail. [01:24:04] Speaker B: Well, we will definitely be. Let's playing it for sure. [01:24:06] Speaker A: Always. Yes. Yes, yes. That much I can absolutely promise you. We're gonna, let's play like we've never let's play before. We're gonna do live. We're gonna live stream GTA 6 for pretty much as long as my Internet connection can handle it. [01:24:22] Speaker B: So prepare yourselves for that. [01:24:24] Speaker A: Yes. [01:24:25] Speaker B: Other GTA fans or those who just want to gawk as this occurs. Yes. [01:24:31] Speaker A: I'll even, I'll even get my PlayStation camera set up so you can. [01:24:33] Speaker B: Oh, that's always a fun time. [01:24:36] Speaker A: Stupid face in the corner of the screen. [01:24:38] Speaker B: So won't get jump scares this time, but it'll still. [01:24:41] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. [01:24:44] Speaker B: Well, Mark, to close out, shall we talk about what we've watched? [01:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we can do. Oh, the watch alongs are great. [01:24:55] Speaker B: They really are. We've been watching through the Evil Dead movies in preparation for Evil Dead Burn, which comes out the 7th. July 7th. [01:25:05] Speaker A: I think it's the 10th. I have before the 7th. Yes. [01:25:08] Speaker B: Okay, July 10th. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Much to my surprise, I've stuck to two consecutive Saturdays of watch alongs. We did the Evil Dead last Saturday. We did evil dead 2 yesterday and is that wrong? Yeah, we did Evil Dead two weeks ago, Evil Dead two last week and army of Darkness last night. [01:25:28] Speaker B: Yes. [01:25:28] Speaker A: And to catch us up, we're having a double bill of the two most [01:25:34] Speaker B: meaning diabolical double bill, the two most [01:25:38] Speaker A: mean spirited bastards of the Evil Dead series. Yes. This coming Saturday we're gonna go an hour earlier. So 8 o' clock my time, 3 o' clock your time. If you're on the Eastern. Yes. Coast. Come along for one or both, you know what I mean? Show, show some, show some love and see what Evil Dead with tooth and claw is really, really all about. [01:26:03] Speaker B: To be clear, That's Evil Dead 2013 and Evil Dead Rise. [01:26:08] Speaker A: Correct. [01:26:08] Speaker B: That we will be watching. Both are only 90 minutes. They're, they're quick but they're, they're gritty [01:26:15] Speaker A: and so yeah, Burn is by all accounts the longest of all of the Evil Dead so far. Coming in at an hour and 50 or thereabouts. [01:26:23] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, that's, you know, by 20 minutes. The longest of them. They're all, they're all pretty quick. So yeah, we'll see how, we'll see what they do with that extra time. But yeah, we're going to be doing two of them. So join our discord if you want to chat about it because we've been having a great time. I think it's just, you know, fresh eyes within the posse in anticipation. Just has really made it so everybody's really enjoying and appreciating fresh eyes perspectives. [01:26:50] Speaker A: Just the sharpest, funniest. I, I, I'm not a smoke blowing kind of guy, right? But every single watch along someone will come out with a perspective or a line or a quip that in my wildest dreams with a team of writers around me, I would never have been able to come up with. We have the smartest fans and the smartest listeners around and that includes you. Whether you engage in the watch alongs or on the Discord or, or whatever, the fact that you're listening to us makes you a better person than others that you can see around you right now. So just enjoy that and bask in it. All right? [01:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, really good point. Also, you are jiggling your mic around like crazy right now. Something tonight is causing much jiggling with that. But anyway, jiggle this. Wow. Okay. Anyways, what we watched this week, aside from of course the army of darkness and whatnot. Oh also by the way, just on that note too, afterwards we had book club, talked about Silence of the Lambs and it was a blast as usual. Just, well, none of us had either and Alfie being a sort of completionist had to start with Red Dragon and that is now like and Dan read it as well and that is apparently something that's like necessary. So that's on my list now too. Silence of Lambs is great. [01:28:25] Speaker A: Briefly, incredibly, without going into too much detail, how does the written characteristic of characterization of Hannah Balch did from the. [01:28:33] Speaker B: Not different at all. It's exactly the same. It's really quite incredible. [01:28:36] Speaker A: Fine, fine, fine, fine. [01:28:38] Speaker B: It's reading the book. You're like oh wow. They, they just adapted this straight. They were like this is perfect. Let's just do it exactly like this. [01:28:47] Speaker A: Got it right first time. [01:28:48] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. No need to fix it. It ain't broke. So definitely recommend that. But shout out to everybody in the book club because it was so much fun talking about it together and getting real excited and giving more Rex. I'll be reading Red Dragonet sometime soon. [01:29:07] Speaker A: We've got a good bunch, Corey. You know, we got, we got regular turn up to our watch along. We got regular turns up to our book club, we got regular listeners, we got regular people who interact with us on our Discord which is getting more and more busy by the week, by the way. [01:29:22] Speaker B: Indeed. Yeah. So if you're, if you haven't joined that get on board. [01:29:27] Speaker A: So much better than cordially. I cordially invite you to our Discord. The quality of the discussion there really is, is taking on a life of its own at the minute, and I'm delighted to be a part of it here. [01:29:39] Speaker B: Here. Now, Mark, you know what? I do not recommend [01:29:45] Speaker A: intravenous morphine. [01:29:49] Speaker B: Depends on the situation, I think. [01:29:51] Speaker A: But go on [01:29:54] Speaker B: Cape Fear, the series show on Apple. Yeah. Good Lord. On paper, you got Patrick Wilson. Great to look at, obviously. You got Javier Bardem, you got Amy Adams. You know, a lot. Lot that should be going right here. And this is one of the. The worst shows I have ever watched. I. I keep on watching because I want to see how they're going to, like, get out of this mess. But I mean, obviously. So we're looking at, like, triple remake here, right? Based on a book initially. Then it was a movie with Robert Mitchum, and then it became a movie with Robert De Niro and now this series. And they each kind of have their own flavor to them. The original is my favorite. The original movie, I should say, because Robert Mitchum is the scariest bastard on earth. And. But like, so the basic. Do you know the premise of Cape Fear? [01:30:53] Speaker A: I've seen the Scorsese version. Yes. [01:30:56] Speaker B: Okay. Right. So, you know, lawyer locks up a guy, he gets out and terrorizes his family is essentially the idea. Right. The man. Max. Katie, in this one, there's two lawyers, Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson. And Amy Adams was his defense attorney and Patrick Wilson was the prosecutor. And now they are married. And there is like this, like, Javier Bardem having a great time is being, like, the scariest bastard on earth throughout this. This show, however, there's, like, an inkling that he may be innocent throughout this whole thing, which is a weird turn. [01:31:42] Speaker A: And then there's also swing, isn't it? That's not necessarily. [01:31:45] Speaker B: And then there's, like, other adjacent people and mysteries who come into this besides this. So what you have is, like a show that, like, isn't about, like, oh, this guy coming out and, like, terrorizing the lawyer who did this to him or whatever. Instead, you're like, I don't know who is a bad guy and what they're trying to accomplish. I don't understand what anyone's motives in this show are or what the mystery is that we're trying to solve here. It's just so all over the place. And it's extremely stylized, which, what I will say is it's very pretty to look at. The color is really saturated, a lot of interesting angles and things like that. But it's got, like, this very intense score that's like, you know, an orchestral score that I'm sure is supposed to sort of be based off the original. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the De Niro version has an incredible score. [01:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. And it's. It's very much doing that, but, like, all the time. So, like, I think one of the most egregious moments of this is, like, there's a scene where the obnoxious daughter is at soccer practice, and she's just, like, standing in the net, and it's like. And it's like, no, nothing's happening. She's literally at soccer practice. I don't understand why it's like this. So it's, like, just stylized to death, like, for the sake of doing it, instead of it feeling, like, really focused. And it's just very dumb. Every plot line in it, you're like, come on. No human would make that choice. None of this makes sense. I don't understand anything going on. And so, yeah, we've watched four episodes of it. Each time, it's been like, do you want to watch Cape Fear? Yeah, I guess there's four more. And it's weekly, so I just want to know, like, I just want to know where they go with it, because it's so nonsensical that I'm. I just. I just have to know. So I don't recommend. Don't start it. Don't be like me. And be very watching. [01:33:52] Speaker A: Gradually, Peter and I keep chipping away at Spider Noir, which continues watching. That, too, continues to delight. We're about halfway through. What Nicolas Cage has done here with Spider Noir is lulled you into a false sense of security with the first episode or two. Right. [01:34:11] Speaker B: Okay. [01:34:11] Speaker A: Where he delivers a performance which is, by his standards, pretty pedestrian. [01:34:17] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Subdued. [01:34:19] Speaker A: By episode three and four, the guy is batshit again. The guy is just making the most incredible choices with his dialogue and his physicality. [01:34:29] Speaker B: Yeah. I did notice that with one of the ones that Kia was watching yesterday. I was like, boy, he sounds different than the one that I watched. [01:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:34:36] Speaker B: Something's happened here. [01:34:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep, yep. Because he knows by then you're gonna carry on watching anyway, so he can just do whatever the he wants. [01:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:42] Speaker A: It's a great show. It's a great show. It. It puts characters that you think you know in contexts that you. That surprise you. You know, it's got people you think you recognize and characters you think you know where their arc is going, but it. Wrong foots you. And it. It's. It's. Spider Noir is a testament to how mature the superhero genre has become that now we are able to do this right. Which, you know, you. Spider noir Simply doesn't exist 15 years ago, you know. Yeah, it's one of the great. All right. Marvel doesn't hit like it used to. Right. Let's, let's be real. But these niche corners of that genre still have the ability to surprise and delight. And I think in 2026, it's these that interest me more than the big, [01:35:34] Speaker B: you know, tent poles. [01:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Who cares really? But, but, but the tiny corners of the universe, that's what really, really interests me there today. [01:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I'm still like just in a fatigue mode where I'm like, eventually I will like get back into watching this kind of stuff. But like anything superhero feels exhausting to even think about for me. I did finish the boys finally. [01:36:01] Speaker A: Okay. [01:36:01] Speaker B: So there was that, which I quite enjoyed and it was good to get back into, into that little world. But I don't know. I'm gonna go see Spider man with Mac when it comes out, so. [01:36:11] Speaker A: Oh, that I cannot wait for all of the stuff that I'm excited about, superhero wise, has all to do with Spider Man. I love Spider Man. [01:36:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of taking over everything. [01:36:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But the, the, the very idea, right. The very notion, the very suggestion that I might sit down somewhere and watch Supergirl is just hilarious to me. [01:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't, I mean, I've heard, well, kind of like mid to good reviews of it. I haven't heard anyone say it's bad or anything like that, but just going to a movie theater and watching that feels unlikely. [01:36:45] Speaker A: Like, just, just try, try this out for Seismi. Try this out loud. One ticket for Supergirl, please. Sound like an idiot. [01:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm not, not super interested. But you know, more power to her. She seems like a nice gal and people do seem to be enjoying it fine. And of course, all the weird misogynists who are review bombing it because they hate women or whatever. [01:37:13] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. I tell you, the one that's going to surprise us this year, the one that's going to do real well, do real business, is Clayface. That's the one that's going to really hit this year. [01:37:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:37:25] Speaker A: If I personally have to go and see it 10,000 times. Right. Clayface is going to do great this year. [01:37:31] Speaker B: Who is it? Who's directing that one? [01:37:34] Speaker A: So fantastic question. [01:37:36] Speaker B: I feel like this is a big part of why it's like a, you know, whole horror movie is whoever it is that's directing it But I cannot for the life of me remember who that is. [01:37:48] Speaker A: The trailer is outstanding. Well, the trailer. It's Dark Man. The trailer is Dark man. [01:37:53] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. It 100% is like. I don't know. Again, it's hard for me to get excited about anything that is vaguely superhero adjacent at this point. But I'm sure I will go see it when it comes out. [01:38:04] Speaker A: Well, it's James Watkins who did the remake of Speak no Evil. [01:38:09] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I liked. I liked that better than I liked the original one. [01:38:13] Speaker A: I like them both. But yeah, that's that. That, you know, that's that. Good auspices there. [01:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. I'm into it. What else you watch, Marco? [01:38:27] Speaker A: Ah, man. [01:38:28] Speaker B: I can tell you if you want. [01:38:30] Speaker A: I know, I know, but I'm just trying to contextualize it. Why do I get these urges? You know? Why do I get these feelings that I cannot deny? Why sometimes do I have to go places? And it was so rewarding when I got there. I mean, I had to. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the Valium. Maybe it was. Maybe it was the Interzone state of mind. [01:39:01] Speaker B: Sure. [01:39:02] Speaker A: But I found myself alongside William S. Burrows in Interzone with David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. [01:39:15] Speaker B: Yes. [01:39:17] Speaker A: Is it a film? [01:39:18] Speaker B: You know, I know the name, but I. Yeah. I've never. Never seen it or read. [01:39:30] Speaker A: Listener. To try and describe what I'm doing right now. I'm just gazing off into the corner of the room to try and articulate where my feelings are here. Basically, where my feelings are. Are that there are none. Okay. [01:39:44] Speaker B: Okay. [01:39:45] Speaker A: Naked Lunch is as emotionally detached a film as you will ever see. [01:39:52] Speaker B: Okay. [01:39:53] Speaker A: Which is. Which is of course, by design. [01:39:56] Speaker B: Sure. [01:39:59] Speaker A: Ostensibly, the plot has. Peter Weller developing an addiction to the dust that he uses to exterminate cockroaches. As an exterminator. Right. [01:40:17] Speaker B: Okay. [01:40:19] Speaker A: Which isn't unusual. Lots of people are on the bug powder dust. [01:40:22] Speaker B: Sure. [01:40:24] Speaker A: Now, through the use. Oh, God. I'm going to try and put this together. But through the use of this bug powder dust. Peter Weller makes contact with a subterranean kind of organization who receive intel and orders from a country known as Interzone. An organization known as Interzone, which is a kind of a Persian imagine, like souk bars and marketplaces and. And men in. In kind of headdresses and masks. And he is employed by Interzone to write reports about Interzone. Right. Okay, but Corrigan. Every Interzone agent has their own typewriter which is unique to them. Which they have a personality with because all of the typewriters are insects, you see. [01:41:30] Speaker B: Oh, huh. Sure. Of course. Why not? [01:41:35] Speaker A: And the typewriters talk to you and they form relationships with you and they find it quite sexual when you type on them. Corrigan. As you'd imagine, because you know where we are. [01:41:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. [01:41:49] Speaker A: And I think one of the typewriters grows a. Oh. [01:41:53] Speaker B: Oh, no. You know, [01:41:56] Speaker A: and then there's another in the. In the marketplaces of Interzone, they sell dried. Huge, gigantic dried centipedes, which is known only as the black meat, which is in itself a narcotic. [01:42:15] Speaker B: Sounds like there's too many bugs in this movie for me. [01:42:17] Speaker A: It's Bug City. Tell you who is in it that you'll enjoy is Rob Scheider of Jaws. [01:42:23] Speaker B: Roy Scheider. [01:42:24] Speaker A: Roy Scheider of Jaws. He's in it in what must be one of his last roles. [01:42:29] Speaker B: When did this come out? [01:42:31] Speaker A: Oh, God, 98.99, I think. [01:42:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think he died in like 04 or something like that. So, yeah, near in the end there. [01:42:41] Speaker A: So it's all. Everything is a plot to get to him. To get to Roy Scheider. He is selling his own powder, the black meat powder, which you mix with the bug dust and you shoot it up. You know, it's all very druggy, okay? And his reports to Interzone land him in to Annexia, which is another shady part of America. Okay, Fuck off. Who cares? [01:43:11] Speaker B: Okay? [01:43:11] Speaker A: What? Yeah. [01:43:12] Speaker B: Sounds like a lot. A lot of lore. [01:43:14] Speaker A: It's a. But it isn't though. It's. It's not law. It's just. It's. It's hallucinatory, okay? You know, none of it. None of it is in the least bit reliable because the second. The second Peter Weller hits that bug powder dust, forget believing a thing about what is going on, okay? But what it has, Corrigan, what it does have is that again, one of the things that I will, to my dying day, love about Cronenberg is his emotional detachment. He is emotionally so far above or below his subject matter, he doesn't care what you're seeing. He doesn't want you to engage with what you're seeing. He wants you to engage with your own reactions to what you're seeing. So you're not going to get involved in the film because he does not want you involved in the film. He wants you involved in making sense of what you are seeing on a. On a. On an artistic. On an intellectual, on a personal level. And what you're seeing is some of the most outlandish you will ever see. Julian Sands is in it, for example. [01:44:19] Speaker B: Oh. [01:44:21] Speaker A: Who at one point becomes a giant cockroach. Themes of homosexuality are discussed. Peter Weller's character is gay. And a lot of the men he meets in Interzone find their way through positions of political intrigue, through, you know, sex parties and sexual escapades. Come. Come home with us. You must come home with us. Bill. I don't know about. Well, that's my RoboCop impression. And he being. Eating centipedes and snorting bug powder dust and just having a fucking whale of a time. Shoots his wife in the head by mistake. It's fucking. It's a four and a half star film. Right. If you don't, you know if you're gonna like it or not, right? [01:45:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems that way. [01:45:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:45:10] Speaker B: You gotta tell out the gate what you're getting into. [01:45:12] Speaker A: It's a fictionalized account of how William H. Burrows came to write Naked Lunch. [01:45:17] Speaker B: Okay. Because I was gonna say, like, isn't the book like a. Like almost like a memoir or like something of that nature? [01:45:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is a fictionalized version of how that book came into existence. [01:45:27] Speaker B: Okay, got it. [01:45:29] Speaker A: And it's great. [01:45:32] Speaker B: Well noted. It probably is not my speed, but I'm sure there's plenty of people listening in there, real on board with us. [01:45:38] Speaker A: I'd. You'd hate it. [01:45:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we figured out my, like, Cronenberg things. It's always the ones that are like, not as, like, body horror and things like that. It's always like the weird off brand. [01:45:50] Speaker A: Let me tell you, Peter. Well, I'm on. He ain't just RoboCop. [01:45:55] Speaker B: I love Peter Weller. I mean, considering, you know, Buckaroo Banzai was my favorite movie as a child. Always got a soft spot. [01:46:01] Speaker A: And he spends all of Naked Lunch as detached as the viewer. The most. The most, you know, unseemly weird is going on right in front of his eyes. He's having conversations with his typewriter. He's. He's watching Julian Sands as a centipede invade the skin of a gay guy while he. Him to death. [01:46:24] Speaker B: Oh, no. [01:46:25] Speaker A: He. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:46:27] Speaker B: He. He. [01:46:28] Speaker A: He takes his orders, he writes his reports. And it's all with this bemused detachment, you know? And he looks at. He looks a million bucks. Hey, listen, straight guy here. But I'd. Peter Weller in Naked Lunch. God damn, he looks good. His cheekbones are sharp and he's hat. He looks. Oh, man, he looks good. I had the time of my life it was so Good to revisit this film. Hell, this is. This is how it should be done. This is. This is. This is Cronenberg up there with Lynch. This is Cronenberg up there with all of the best. John Carpenter. This is. This is peak. Cronenberg Naked Lunch. I love it. [01:47:11] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah. Well, I will not be watching it. But friends. There you go. [01:47:16] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:47:19] Speaker B: I watched Psycho Killer this week. [01:47:23] Speaker A: Ah, I see what you did there. Psycho Killer. I know, I've seen it. Don't remember it. [01:47:29] Speaker B: You have not seen it. You did say you were like, oh, do you want to watch Psycho Killer? And I was like it. Like nobody liked this movie so I think we watched something else instead. And then I was like grading or whatever, so I was like, I'll put it on because I don't want to like be super distracted or whatever. That's a terrible movie. Extremely well shot though. The cinematographer has done like a whole bunch of other things that I was like, oh, like that's a. That also has beautiful cinematography. I don't know how they got this guy. He shot a different movie than everybody else made in this. [01:48:03] Speaker A: That's good. I enjoy it. [01:48:05] Speaker B: And the, the lead actress is also really good too. And you just feel bad for her because everybody in it talks like some sort of automaton. Like just complete flat affect, every character throughout this movie. But it's not like a choice, it's just bad acting and it's like. It. The premise has to do with this like killer. It starts out and you think it's gonna be a slasher kind of situation, right? And you know this killer kills the leads, the lead actress's cop husband in front of her on the road and he's like all jacked up on a bajillion drugs that are all in the back of his car and stuff like that. And he drives off, this long haired killer. But he talks with like a, like a bane voice. He's got like a like little. The thing is, it's never shown that he's doing anything. [01:48:54] Speaker A: You were merely born in the dark. [01:48:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's never shown that he's doing anything to his voice. It's actually kind of implied that his voice just sounds like this, which is really goofy. But it then becomes like a movie about like Satanists and he's like part of like a satanic cult. But like kind of what we were talking about before we started this. Like, as we know, Satanists are like cosplayers. They're not. They don't believe in Satan. Right. Like that's not what it is. So they do these things. [01:49:25] Speaker A: What, so you don't believe in Satan? No. So what do you call someone who believes in Satan? A Christian. [01:49:30] Speaker B: Exactly right. And so you know, they're like doing like rituals and things like that, but it's for shits and giggles, you know, orgies, things of that nature. But he's like a true believer and you know, so then it becomes this like kind of thing where he's like, he's doing for Satan and then it becomes like a weird like terrorism story where he's like gonna blow up like a, a power plant or something like that for Satan. It's like a completely different movie at this point. Completely incoherent all the way through. [01:50:09] Speaker A: Just makes absolutely terrible. [01:50:11] Speaker B: It's so bad. And like the whole movie. Here's one of the things, and I know that Alfie would think this too. I, I don't know if he's seen it or not, but it kind of goes along with the like the like ghosts and stuff in movies that are there to scare you, the audience, but not the person in the, in the movie that this whole movie he's walking around and we never see him from the front and as such, like nobody ever catches him or anything doing these things. But like everyone else would see him from the front. He's very easily identifiable. He's always walking out of places where he's done a murder like in broad daylight, covered in blood. But because we can't see his face, nobody can identify him. It's just mind boggling, this entire movie. So Psycho Killer is another do not recommend from me this week. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Just dumb. That and Kate Fear dumb stuff. [01:51:12] Speaker A: I mean, have gone, please. [01:51:15] Speaker B: Oh, I was just gonna say I did rewatch the crazies the 2010 version the other day. [01:51:20] Speaker A: Remember enjoying it. Timothy Oliphant. [01:51:23] Speaker B: Timothy Oliphant. Yes indeed. Radha Mitchell. Yeah, it's a. Listen. That's just a fun scary ride all the way through, you know, paranoia, kind of zombie people who aren't exactly zombies. I was reading reviews of this one. It was funny because it's not a movie that I really think a ton about the politics of when I'm watching and people like it's. It's like a very libertarian movie. You know, the government cover up. They're really doing terrible things to us and they're trying to put us in camps and blah blah, blah. Like oh yeah, no, I guess I can see that. Especially since the original was like a Vietnam kind of allegory type thing. It's a very different vibe, but it is fun to watch. You know, just these people moving through this, like, this pandemic that they don't know what it is, and it's taking over people, and you can't trust people. You know, when they start acting weird, are they just a little stressed out or are they turning and. Yeah, it's just. I think the crazies is a fun time, and it has some really memorable deaths in it as well. So that was a win this week, revisiting that one while I was cleaning out my closets. [01:52:38] Speaker A: All right, look, to wrap us up, right, I have one request, and I fucking mean this. [01:52:45] Speaker B: Ooh. [01:52:46] Speaker A: Right. [01:52:47] Speaker B: Okay. [01:52:48] Speaker A: And the last time I made this request, you ignored me. [01:52:52] Speaker B: Oh, is it about Vietnam? [01:52:54] Speaker A: No. Okay, if I. [01:52:56] Speaker B: That's like. I didn't ignore you. Okay, go on. [01:52:59] Speaker A: If I wake up tomorrow morning and I see more glorious as the thumbnail on this fucking episode. Right. [01:53:05] Speaker B: No. [01:53:06] Speaker A: Right. [01:53:07] Speaker B: You knew what I was gonna do. [01:53:09] Speaker A: You do that. And this. This is the final. [01:53:14] Speaker B: What are you gonna do? You live 3,500 miles from me. [01:53:17] Speaker A: I won't be recording another joker. I can tell you that much. Right. I'm looking in your eyes and I can see what you're planning. [01:53:28] Speaker B: God damn it. [01:53:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Got. You got. Yeah. Consent withdrawn. [01:53:34] Speaker B: Damn it. All right, well, then, friends, I guess we shall see you next week. You know, Fourth of July. Have a safe one. Don't blow anything up. I mean, unless you want to. Just don't blow, like yourself up on the 4th of July. [01:53:56] Speaker A: Double watch along Evil Dead. Double watch along Evil Dead. Right. Next week. [01:54:00] Speaker B: Yes, on the 4th of July. So, you know, take a. Take a little time away from the barbecue. Come settle inside with a cold one and watch some violence with us and then go hit the fireworks. It's a perfect day. Yeah. Can't think of anything better. [01:54:15] Speaker A: All right. We love you guys. Stay spooky. [01:54:18] Speaker B: Bye.