MrBallen brilliantly captures the chilling moral ambiguity behind a discovery that saved millions but risked a single child's life. It is a powerful reminder that scientific progress often carries a heavy ethical price.
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Ep. 579 | The Mystery Behind the Spots - MrBallenAdded:
On a bright afternoon in April of 1795, 37-year-old James Fipps Senior squinted in the sun as he carefully trimmed a hedge trying to shape an overgrown bush into a perfect sphere. James was a gardener and he tended to the estate of one of the most prominent men in Berkeley, England, a physician named Dr. Edward Jenner, who was a leading crusader against what was then the world's most feared disease, smallox.
James did not always like his job. The days were long, the weather was often bad, and his hands were always covered in cuts and sores. But working on Dr. Jenner's estate was never dull. His boss treated an unending parade of people suffering from hundreds of small, painful sores from their tongues to their toes. These sores were how smallox got its nickname, the speckled monster.
But no matter what Dr. Jenner did to help. Nearly a third of the smallox patients died while most of the survivors ended up with scars all over their faces. And today, Dr. Jenner was doing something particularly strange. He was deliberately exposing healthy people to the deadly disease.
As James trimmed the hedge, he could look through the window into Dr. Jenner's office. The dark woodpaneled walls were lined with cabinets full of medical supplies, and the silver-haired physician stood in the center of the room using a mortar and pestle to grind up scabs he'd collected from other patients smallox sores. One by one, people went into the office and allowed Dr. Jenner to blow these scabs into their noses, sending the virus deep inside of their bodies. The doctor called this process varilation.
Dr. Jenner had told James that it was better to make patients sick with a mild case of small pox like this rather than for them to get a much worse case naturally. After all, once a patient got small pox, they could never get it again. James had nodded like he understood, but inside he thought it was pretty odd for healthy people to come to the doctor to get sick. Sometimes people died from the smallox infection that Dr. Jenner gave them. So James winced every time he saw the doctor blow through his straw, knowing that the patient would soon return covered in the ugly smallox rash. Most alarming though, James knew that one day his 8-year-old son, James Jr., would have to go through the same ordeal. Dr. Jenner would insist, but James hoped that day was still years away. Until then, he decided to just put the frightening thought out of his mind.
He stepped back again to check the shape of the hedge. It still looked a bit like an egg, so he leaned back in and kept on trimming.
A few days later, James squatted beside the flower beds that lined the front of Dr. Jenner's vast, ornate home. He dug a small hole, placed a tulip bulb inside, and buried it. He moved 6 in down, and began to dig a second hole. But then he heard footsteps coming up the walkway.
James turned to see a local cattle farmer named Joseph Merritt heading towards the porch. James was surprised to see him because Joseph had come by for Dr. Jenner's clinic just a few days ago. Joseph should have been stuck at home with smallox right now, but instead he looked perfectly healthy. The smallox virus that Dr. Jenner blew into his nose must not have made him sick. James lifted up a dirty hand to wave and Joseph nodded at him before knocking on the front door and heading inside. James went back to planting tulip bulbs, but he kept thinking about Joseph. He'd never seen a person get varilated and not get sick afterwards. James tried to mind his business and focus on his work, but he just couldn't shake his curiosity.
So, as he moved further down the flower bed, he peakedked through a window into Dr. Jenner's clinic. Joseph sat on a wooden exam table, and to James' horror, the doctor was blowing a straw into Joseph's nose. He was exposing Joseph to smallpox again. James kept looking through the glass wondering how Joseph had managed to avoid catching smallpox the first time. And also James thought, you know, how sick was Joseph going to get now that he had received a double dose.
About a year later, in May 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner was enjoying a quiet morning in his sun room, sipping an after breakfast cup of tea when he heard a knock at his door. A few moments later, one of his servants came into the sun room and told him that a messenger had come from a nearby village. There was a pox outbreak at one of the villagers farms and they needed Dr. Jenner's help. Dr. Jenner thanked the servant and immediately went to get dressed. He put on a blue coat with gold buttons and pulled his shoulderlength silver hair into a low ponytail. Then he packed his traveling medical kit with supplies, walked outside to a stable, and got on one of his horses. Dr. Jenner was the only practicing physician within 400 square miles, so he was used to traveling long distances for his patients. Luckily, this particular village was not too far away. He rode through the countryside for about half an hour, and when he spotted the farm he was looking for, he pulled on his horse's reins and slowed to a stop. Dr. Jenner got off his horse, tied the animal to a fence post, and walked towards a small house on the farm. But before he made it to the front door, it swung open, revealing a scruffy looking man in workclo. The farmer beckoned Dr. Jenner inside into a small sitting room.
There, Dr. Jenner saw a young woman sitting on the couch cradling her right hand. She was very pretty with long brown hair and light eyes, but she looked like she was on the verge of tears. Dr. Jenner sat next to her and asked for her name. With a shaky voice, she said her name was Sarah Nelms. Then she held out her right hand and showed Dr. Jenner the big pusfilled sore between her thumb and pointed finger.
She explained that the previous morning she'd been out picking roses when a thorn scratched her hand. Then this morning, Sarah had woken up with this huge sore right where the scratch had been. Now she felt exhausted and feverish, and her hand was throbbing.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks and through sobs, she told the doctor that she was certain she had small pox. Dr. Jenner nodded sympathetically and then gently took Sarah's hand. Her sword did look like a smallox spot, but Dr. Jenner knew that Sarah did not have small pox because the disease didn't start on people's hands. It started in their mouths, then spread across their faces and down their limbs. So, he reassured the girl that she didn't have smallox, but he did have a hunch about what was making her sick. Dr. Jenner turned to the farmer and asked him to point out the barn where Sarah worked. He needed to see it for himself.
Moments later, the farmer led Dr. Jenner into a wooden barn where about 30 dairy cows were eating and resting. A few of the animals turned to look at the men, and Dr. Jenner approached one of them and leaned down to look at its udder and he saw exactly what he was expecting.
The cow's udder was covered in a bumpy, scabby rash. It had dozens of soores just like the one on Sarah's hand. Dr. Jenner walked around the barn and found that every single cow had a similar rash. Dr. Jenner was not a veterinarian, but he knew that this disease was a relative of small pox called cowpox and it could be spread from livestock to humans.
Dr. Dr. Jenner and the farmer went back into the house where Sarah was waiting and the doctor told her that he had good and bad news. The bad news was that she had cowpox. This meant she was going to have to quarantine herself so she wouldn't spread it to anyone else. And the sore in her hand was likely going to get worse before it got better. But the good news was that cowpox was far less deadly than smallox. So even though it would take a few weeks for her hand to heal, Sarah was very likely going to be okay.
Sarah let out a small laugh of relief and let Dr. Jenner clean and dress her wound. When he was finished, the doctor shook the farmer's hand, went back out to his horse, and began his journey home. But as he rode through the countryside, an idea began to form inside of Dr. Jenner's mind. A really exciting idea. He thought about Sarah's case of cowpox that she undoubtedly got from working with those poor, sick animals. It occurred to him that he had treated many, many milkmaids on many different farms for cowpox. However, he couldn't actually think of a single milkmaid who ever got sick with smallpox. And that reminded him of Joseph, the cattle farmer from a year ago, the one who did not get sick after his small pox varilation. Just like Sarah, Joseph worked with cows every day. And Dr. Jenner just could not make Joseph sick with smallpox no matter how hard he tried. This raised a question for Dr. Jenner, one that he needed to answer right away. He pressed his right leg into his horse's side, and the animal sped up from a trot to a gallop to an allout run. Dr. Jenner held on tight, anxious to get back home.
Sitting in his office chair that same afternoon, the doctor rifled through a cabinet full of local medical records.
He found the file for Joseph Merritt, the cattle farmer he tried to varilate last year. And in Joseph's medical history, Dr. Dr. Jenner found the answer to his burning question. Way back in 1770, so 26 years earlier, Joseph had been treated for cowpox. Then 2 and 1/2 decades later, Dr. Jenner tried to varilate him against smallpox twice, and it didn't work. It was like Joseph was already immune to smallox even though he'd never had it before. So Dr. Jenner wondered, "What if Joseph's previous cowpox infection was what had made him immune to smallox? And what if the doctor could use this information to help other people? Dr. Jenner might be able to deliberately expose people to cowpox, a painful but ultimately non-fatal disease, to make them immune to small pox, a far more dangerous illness. The doctor's mind spun a mile a minute. If this idea worked, physicians could save patients from smallpox without accidentally killing them. They could stop the world's deadliest disease in its tracks. But Dr. Dr. Jenner knew he was getting ahead of himself. First, he had to prove that his cowpox theory was right, and the only way to do that would be to experiment on a patient who had never had cowpox or small pox. And because pretty much every adult that Dr. Jenner treated had suffered from one pox or the other already, he was going to have to experiment on a child.
On May 14th, 1796, James Fipp, Senior, held his son's hand as they walked towards Dr. Jenner's estate. They passed the hedges James had trimmed and the tulips he planted. But James was not thinking about his work. He was thinking about the fact that his son was about to become a human science experiment. A few days earlier, Dr. Jenner had asked James if he'd be willing to let him test his theory on Junior. The doctor believed cowpox made people immune to smallox, so he wanted to infect Junior with cowpox, then try to infect him with small pox.
If Junior didn't get sick, it would prove the doctor's theory was correct.
But if Junior did contract smallox, it would prove Dr. Jenner wrong, and the little boy would face a 30% chance of death. At first, James said, "No way."
Dr. Jenner's theory was mostly based on the fact that one cattle farmer, Joseph Merritt, couldn't catch smallpox. That wasn't exactly foolproof evidence.
Plus, Joseph was an adult. Junior was a child, and children were almost always more susceptible to disease. James knew if he agreed, he was going to be putting his son in mortal danger. But still, James also knew that Dr. Jenner was one of the best physicians in the country, and he did trust him. But also there was just the harsh reality that at this time a lot of people were getting smallpox and when they got it a lot of them died and so maybe putting his son in danger now was ultimately saving his life. So James ultimately agreed to the plan. He led his son up to the front door, knocked and a moment later a servant showed them to the doctor's office.
Inside James saw Dr. Jenner sitting next to a young brunette woman with a bandaged right hand. Dr. Jenner stood up to say hello, then leaned down and told Junior that the woman's name was Sarah and she was going to be helping with the procedure. She had actually come out of her quarantine just for this. Junior glanced at his father nervously and James gave him an encouraging nod. While Junior sat on the exam table, Dr. Jenner unwrapped Sarah's bandage, revealing the cowpox sore underneath. Then the doctor grabbed a scalpel from one of the cabinets and asked Junior to hold out his arm and stay still. Dr. Jenner held Junior's wrist while he brought the scalpel towards the outside of the boy's upper arm. James put a reassuring hand on his son's shoulder and Junior drew in a sharp breath as the doctor pressed the scalpel down and dragged it about an inch across his skin. Dr. Jenner made one more cut beneath the first one, then did the same thing on Junior's other arm. Then Dr. Jenner turned to Sarah and used the same scalpel to poke a hole in the top of her cowpox sore. Yellow pus began to leak out the top, and right away, Dr. Jenner got a small spatula to gather some of it up. Junior squirmed, but James tightened his grip on his son's shoulders to keep him still as the doctor wiped the pus directly into the cuts on both of Junior's arms. Junior looked completely grossed out, and James did, too. But James was also glad that at least this part of the experiment was over. He let go of his son's shoulders and they headed back home.
9 days later, James felt like he'd made the worst decision of his life. His son had been stuck in bed for over a week with chills, bodyaches, and nausea. And James knew the worst was yet to come.
Even if his son recovered from cowpox, which was feeling like a big if, he still had to be exposed to smallpox.
Late that evening, James brought a spoonful of stew to Junior's lips. But his son refused to eat. He was too nauseous. A voice in the back of James' mind told him that he had put his son through all this suffering for nothing.
But he shook off that nagging thought, then grabbed an extra blanket to keep his boy warm. Then he told his son to call for him if he needed anything at all. Then James blew out the candle on Junior's bedside table, went to his own room, and got into bed. And he laid there awake, worrying about his son until eventually he drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up the next morning, James jumped out of bed and immediately went to check on his son. And to his surprise, his son was awake and smiling.
Junior said he was finally starting to feel better. In fact, he was even hungry for breakfast. James was so relieved.
But he did know the biggest danger was still to come.
A little over a month later, on July 1st, 1796, James brought his son back to Dr. Jenner's office for the second part of the experiment.
Junior sat on the exam table looking like he wanted to sprint out the door while Dr. Jenner took a jar of reddish powder out of one of his cupboards. It was a container of groundup scabs from smallox patients. James looked on uneasily as Dr. Jenner sprinkled some of the scabs into the straw and told Junior to hold the straw inside one of his nostrils. Then once it was in place, Dr. Jenner blew the contaminated red dust into Junior's nose. Over the next several days, James kept a very close eye on his son. He was terrified that he would start developing a fever or the awful smallpox sores. One morning, four or five days after their visit to Dr. Jenner, Junior woke up with a scratchy throat, and James feared that his worst nightmare had come true. He imagined all these smallpox sores popping up inside of his son's throat, spreading across his face and down his arms and legs. He felt so stupid and guilty. He couldn't believe he'd put his child in this kind of danger.
But then, Junior drank some water, and suddenly his voice went back to normal.
And with a smile on his face, he asked his dad, "When can I go play outside again?" James let out a long sigh of relief and said, "Soon, but not yet."
Over the next week or so, Junior continued to just sail along without ever getting sick. And finally, James was satisfied that his son was perfectly fine, and he did let Junior back outside to play. Dr. Jenner's experiment had worked. And though James and his son had no way of knowing it, they had just helped revolutionize medicine forever.
It turned out that Dr. Jenner's theory was correct. Cowpox and smallpox were so closely related that contracting one disease made people immune to the other.
Dr. Jenner wrote a report about Junior's remarkable immunity to smallpox. And he named his new technique vaccination after the Latin word for cow. And the name stuck because Dr. Jenner had invented the world's first vaccine.
But as incredible as this discovery was, Dr. Jenner's report was met with mixed reactions. It took years for other doctors to endorse smallox vaccination and even longer for the public to embrace it. But Dr. Jenner believed in his new method so much that he devoted the rest of his life to vaccinating patients and teaching other doctors how to do the same. Over the next century, Dr. Dr. Jenner's smallox vaccine saved millions of lives every year. Then in 1967, almost two centuries after James Fipps Jr. took part in Dr. Jenner's experiment, the World Health Organization began a campaign to permanently eliminate smallox. And by 1980, they did it. A disease that caused countless deaths and immeasurable suffering was literally wiped off the face of the earth. And it all began with a sick milkmaid, a gardener's son, and a very creative doctor.
When 23-year-old Jury Kibuishi walked into a room, you couldn't help but notice her. Just 5' 3 in tall, beautiful, and outgoing, Jury, whose Americanized name was Julie, had a freewheeling personality and instinctive kindness that just drew people to her.
From the flowers that she often pinned in her dark hair to her dramatic eyeliner and colorful painted fingernails, Julie looked like what she was, creative and unconventional.
Despite their much more proper and low-key appearance, Julie's Japanese-born parents had always encouraged their daughter's artistic pursuits. And when Julie, a lifelong resident of Irvine, California, was high school-aged, she was accepted into the prestigious Orange County School for the Arts. This was a highly selective charter school that catered to students who were especially interested in the visual and performing arts. But Julie's parents had also stressed the importance to all four of their children of getting excellent grades. So even as Julie spent 5 years studying dance and becoming a gifted and passionate performer, she also applied herself with just as much energy to her college preparatory courses. Julie's goal after high school was to dance and to eventually get a degree in fashion design. She found just the program she wanted at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, one of the top transfer community colleges in the country, and just a 30-inut drive from Irvine, California, where Julie lived with her parents. At Orange Coast, Julie could get her associates degree and start work in fashion right away.
and then if she wanted to, she could transfer to a 4-year college. She would also have time to take dance classes and keep performing. Located 37 mi south of Los Angeles, Costa Mesa is a busy commercial city about a mile from the Pacific coast. Not nearly as expensive as Los Angeles, Costa Mesa was a magnet for aspiring actors and artists and writers who hoped to make their way into some aspect of show business, whether it was movies, the stage, dancing, or script writing. Julie loved the creative energy at Orange Coast and she also loved all the different types of people who are drawn to a community college from older students with day jobs to younger students like herself. One of these students was 26-year-old Samuel her, an Army veteran whose military service included 15 months in a remote and dangerous outpost in Afghanistan. 5' 10 in tall and 200 lb, Sam had movie star good looks and an outgoing personality. An only child of older parents, Sam's father had served in the Marines. And like his father, Sam had also found purpose, meaning, and self-discipline during his time in the military. Sam's fellow soldiers described him as courageous and funny.
The women he served with described him as very professional and chivalous. In 2010, after his army enlistment ended, Sam had also enrolled in Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. This was the first step in his plan to earn the college degree that he needed in order to reenter the military as an officer.
Although Julie and Sam came from very different backgrounds, as soon as they met each other in an anthropology class, they totally hit it off. Not in a romantic sense. Each of them had serious long-distance relationships with other people, but as friends. Both of them were very close with their families.
They enjoyed socializing, and they both had the same outgoing personalities and the same slightly goofy sense of humor and fun. They also both liked tattoos.
Julie had seven of them, and Sam had ink on both arms, as well as a huge heart inscribed with mom and dad tattooed on his chest. But on a deeper level, Sam and Julie were also both very serious about getting good grades in college and ultimately achieving their long-term career goals. So, as soon as Julie realized that her classmate Sam was struggling in their anthropology class, she offered to help tutor him. One evening, when Sam's parents stopped by their son's apartment and met Julie, who was there helping Sam with his homework, they were both struck by the easy friendship between their son and Julie.
And when Julie would go on to describe Sam to her parents, she would say they were just friends. One of the nice things for both of them about being in a strictly platonic relationship was being able to talk to one another about their romantic partners. Julie was in an online relationship with a Marine Corpal named Mark, who was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, and Sam was engaged to a German woman named Katarina, whom he had met while he was in the service. Sam also felt comfortable opening up to Julie about his combat experience in Afghanistan and the night terrors that he had brought home with him. As their friendship grew, Julie began spending more time with Sam outside of just tutoring. And one thing they both like to do together was spend time with the group of young people who often gathered in the evenings and on the weekends outside of the large apartment complex where Sam lived. For Sam, the Camden Martineique Apartments, which is where he lived, were the perfect location. It was less than a half mile from Orange Coast College and only a 30inut drive from where his parents lived in Anaheim Hills. The rent wasn't cheap, but Sam had always been very careful with money, and he had saved $62,000 in combat pay that he had earned while he was serving in Afghanistan. Among the big group of young people who hung out together at the apartment's pool and outdoor patios, there was one couple in particular that Julie and Sam got to know pretty well.
26-year-old actor Daniel Wnjak and his fianceé 23-year-old actress Rachel Buffett. Like a lot of actors, Dan and Rachel struggled to make ends meet even as they dreamed of breaking into the Los Angeles acting scene. Rachel, who was small with delicate features and long blonde hair, still looked the part of the Disney princess she once played at Disneyland when she was a teenager. Dan, who was a big guy, had an easy smile, thick dark hair, good looks, and a booming voice that helped him land lead roles in the community theaters where he and Rachel often starred opposite one another. Usually dressed in khaki shorts or pants and Hawaiian shirts with bright prints, Dan never felt more at home or more genuinely himself than when he was on stage. In the spring of 2010, when Julie and Sam met Dan and Rachel, Rachel was busy planning the couple's wedding.
After a 2-year long engagement, the big date was finally just weeks away, May 28th. And afterward, the couple would go to Mexico for their honeymoon. On Friday, May 21st, just a week before Dan and Rachel were going to get married, Julie had a date with her older brother, Taka, at a Thai restaurant in Long Beach to talk about his wedding. Taka also had a surprise for his younger sister. He and his fianceé wanted Julie to be a bridesmaid at their wedding. And that night at dinner, Taka handed Julie the tiara that she would be wearing on Taka's big day. Julie was thrilled, but she was also feeling a little distracted and worried. Throughout that afternoon and evening, Julie had started to receive a series of very strange text messages from her friend Sam. He sounded upset and he told her he needed to talk to someone. In what she thought must be a bad attempt at humor, he wrote, "No sex. Can you come over tonight at around midnight? Just talk. Don't tell anyone.
Going out for a little now. Some bad family stuff." Julie was puzzled. Like her, Sam seemed to get along with his mother and father really well. In fact, she thought he was supposed to be visiting with them in Anaheim that weekend. Julie told her brother about these weird messages she was getting.
Taka asked her if this was normal for Sam, and she said no, but Sam had been through a lot. Noticing her brother looking concerned, Julie looked up from her phone and smiled at him and said, "Don't worry, you'd like Sam." After dinner, Julie said goodbye to her brother and laughing, she put the tiara on just before stepping out into the clear 60°ree evening. She could feel the light breeze from the ocean as she climbed into her car to make the 35-minute drive south from Long Beach to the Camden Martineique Apartments where Sam was. The following morning, Julie's mother, June, looked down the bedroom hallway of their house and noticed the door to her daughter's bedroom was open.
Peeking inside, she saw Julie was not in there, and she realized in that moment that her daughter had not come home the night before. June immediately called and texted Julie, but received no answer. When she called her son, Taka, to see if maybe Julie had stayed the night with him and his fianceé, June's worry deepened to alarm. Taka said, "No, Julie was not with them." And he told his mother about the very strange text messages that Julie had received from her friend Sam. Feeling very concerned, Taka and his mother began scrolling through their texts and contacts to see if they could find Sam's number.
Meanwhile, about 20 miles away in Anaheim, Sam's parents had also begun worrying about their child. Sam was supposed to visit them that morning, but he hadn't shown up yet. Sam had always been good about letting his parents know if his plans had changed or if he was running late, but by midday, they still had not gotten a call or text from him.
By late afternoon, Sam's father, Steve, who was an athletic-l looking man with thick white hair who often went to the gym with his son. He hopped into his car and drove up to Costa Mesa to make sure Sam was okay. Once Steve arrived at the Camden Martineique Apartments, it was getting dark. He walked up the stairs to apartment D10 and knocked on the door. When he didn't hear an answer, Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out the spare apartment key that Sam had given him. He unlocked the door and he stepped inside.
Turning on the light, Steve saw immediately that there was no one in the kitchen or living room and also no sign of any disturbance. As he headed toward the bedroom, he hoped he'd find his son laid up in bed with a bad cold. Instead, as he pushed open the door to the bedroom and flipped on the wall light, it was like he had discovered a chamber of horrors. Kneeling next to the bed with her upper body lying stomach down on top of the mattress was the body of a young woman. Her jeans, which were cut or torn, had been pulled down almost to her knees. On the back of her sweater, scrolled in black magic marker were the words, "All yours, f you." Although one side of the woman's face was visible, she was totally unrecognizable. Her features were covered in blood and gore, and all Steve could really see was just this massive wound above and behind her ear. It looked like the back of her head had been blown off. And just above that crater of bone, blood, and brain tissue, Steve saw a tiara tangled in a mass of blood soaked hair. Shocked, Steve backed away from the gruesome scene. And after quickly checking the other rooms and finding no one else in the apartment, he pulled out his phone and he dialed 911.
Near the doorway to the bedroom, police found a colorful shoulder bag. It contained a cell phone and a wallet with a driver's license. The victim sprawled on the bed and the floor was 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi. When they were informed by police that their daughter was dead, Julie's parents were devastated. June Hibuishi kept telling the officers they must have made a mistake. The evening before, she and her daughter had been cooking together in the kitchen. When it had been time for Julie to go see her brother at the restaurant, she had changed her clothes, given her mom a quick hug, said goodbye, and stepped out the door. It was impossible to June and her husband that this daughter, who was so kind and so full of life, could now just be dead. As for the Costa Mesa detectives, who arrived on the scene moments after receiving Steve Hurd's frantic 911 call, every piece of evidence they discovered inside of that apartment pointed to Steve's son, Sam.
Sam knew the victim. And from the words written on the back of Julie's sweater and the position of her body that suggested sexual assault, she may have been caught up in a love triangle gone wrong or been the victim of a domestic dispute with Sam. Most damning of all was the long string of strange text messages that Sam had sent Julie the night before begging her to come see him immediately. And even though Sam said quote no sex in one of his text messages, just the mention of sex seemed to indicate that it was possible that these two were in fact romantically involved despite what they told people.
And then there was Sam's military background and his combat experience in Afghanistan and the possibility that Sam, like many combat veterans, was affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. Maybe Sam had just snapped and killed Julie during an episode of combat related psychosis. The cause of death appeared to be a single gunshot wound to Julie's head. And as a trained combat soldier, Sam would have known how to use a firearm. 24 hours later, when Sam still had not been located or heard from, the Costa Mesa police had found yet another reason to suspect he was their killer. After digging into Sam's background, detectives were stunned to discover that back in 2002, when Sam was 18 years old, he had been arrested and charged in connection with the murder of another teenager. Although Sam was eventually acquitted and cleared of all charges, he had been a serious suspect and he had spent the better part of a year behind bars. The police wasted no time. They issued an all points bulletin with Sam's picture and physical description plastered across the top of it. Meanwhile, however bad things looked for Sam, Steve her could not believe that his son killed Julie. Sam had been acquitted of all criminal charges related to that 2002 murder. And even after the trauma and stigma of spending months in jail, Sam had gone on to rebuild his life and reputation. He always had a steady job from that point forward. But it was when he enlisted in the army that he found his true sense of meaning and purpose. So while police launched a massive manhunt for the man they considered armed and dangerous, Sam's father started to do his own digging. If Sam was on the run, he would need money. And Steve shared a bank account with his son. Sure enough, when Steve accessed the shared account, he saw that every day since his disappearance, Sam had used his ATM card to make a series of large cash withdrawals. The trail led south to a bank of ATMs in Long Beach. The police had also tracked Sam's ATM card, and unlike Steve, they had access to the video surveillance at the ATMs. Looking at the camera footage, detectives expected to see the face of Sam her.
Instead, the person seen using Sam's card was a teenage boy carrying a skateboard and wearing sunglasses and a hoodie. When the same ATM card was used to place a pizza order at a nearby pizza joint called Echo, police were able to get the address of the house where the pizza would be delivered. They staked out that address thinking that maybe Sam was hiding inside of the house. But when police, guns drawn, entered the house right alongside the pizza delivery person, the only people they found inside were the teenager they'd seen on the ATM surveillance tape and his mother. A terrified 16-year-old Wesley Freighic told police that he had been given the ATM card by a man he knew who was working for a bail bonds agent. The man had told Wesley that the card belonged to a client who had posted bond, but then disappeared without paying the agent. According to Wesley, this man who had given him the ATM card was someone his mom knew through the community acting that she did. Wesley said he was a good guy and he trusted him when this guy outlined the plan with the ATM card. Wesley would make withdrawals every day of up to $400 and turn the money over to the man who would wait in his parked car some distance from each ATM machine. As payment for doing this, Wesley would be allowed to use this ATM card to order pizza for himself. The name of this mystery man was instantly familiar to police.
26-year-old actor Daniel Wnjak. Daniel and his fianceé Rachel, who were both friends with Sam and Julie, had been among the residents of the apartment complex that police had interviewed the day after Julie's body had been discovered. And in the course of that routine interview with them, Dan had told police that he and Rachel had last seen Sam on the afternoon of Friday, May 21st, which was the night Julie had dinner with her brother before going to see Sam. Daniel told police that he, Rachel, and Sam had chatted briefly that night, and then Sam had left the apartment complex with a man in a black hat who Dan did not recognize. After determining that the 16-year-old Wesley had no personal connection to Samur, police decided to turn their attention back to Dan. The bail bondsman story just sounded like a total fabrication.
They now suspected that Daniel might be helping Sam get money and that Dan might even be hiding or covering for his friend. But tracking down Dan for a second interview turned out to be much more difficult than the police expected.
When they finally reached Dan on his cell phone and asked him to come into the Costa Mesa police station for another interview, Dan was evasive. He wanted to help, but he was busy. It was the final week of the play 9, in which he and Rachel had starring roles. They were also just days away from getting married. And when they weren't rehearsing or on stage, they were busy with lastminute wedding plans.
Frustrated, detectives decided not to wait any longer. On the evening of May 25th, just three days after Julie's murder, detectives crashed Dan's bachelor party, they found Dan dressed in his trademark khaki pants and Hawaiian shirt at a suburban Japanese restaurant named Tsunami in Huntington Beach. Guns drawn, police entered through both the front and back doors.
That way, no one could get out of the restaurant without being seen. At about 10 p.m. in front of his stunned group of friends, police snapped handcuffs on Dan and charged him with accessory to murder. Dan was completely shocked and the color in his face just completely drained. But once Dan was inside the police station, his demeanor changed. He suddenly seemed somewhat composed and told police that he wanted to tell them what his real connection to Samur was.
Sitting in a plastic chair in the corner of the small interrogation room, Dan took a deep breath and then came clean.
He told police that the whole bail bondsman thing that the 16-year-old kid was involved in was indeed a fabrication. It was a cover for a credit card scam that he and Sam were in on together. The way it worked was Wesley, the 16-year-old, would make a series of large cash withdrawals using Sam's bank cards, and then Sam would put in a claim with his bank, saying he never authorized the withdrawals. This, of course, allowed Sam and Daniel to keep the cash Wesley had taken out, as well as the reimbursement money they would get from the bank. Wesley did not realize this was going on. He thought this was all legit, and he really was working for Daniel, who was working with a Veil Bondsman. and Wesley thought he was just getting some free pizza out of it. His mother was also unaware of the scam. The police proceeded to ask Daniel the same questions they had asked before when they spoke to him at the apartment, and Daniel gave the same answers. The last time he saw Sam was on that Friday afternoon, shortly before he saw him walk off with some guy in a black hat.
And then that night, Daniel and his fianceé Rachel had been at their theater performing in their musical called Nine.
But then something odd happened. About 30 minutes into this interrogation, Daniel suddenly completely changed his story. The police were so caught off guard that they really didn't even interrupt. They just let him speak. One minute, Daniel was talking about this credit card fraud scam. And then the next minute, without missing a beat, Dan told detectives that, well, in fact, Friday afternoon had not been the last time he had seen Sam. In his new version of events, Dan told police that in the very early hours of Saturday, May 22nd, Sam had knocked on the door of Dan and Rachel's apartment. When Dan got out of bed and walked through his darkened living room and opened the door, he saw his friend standing in the doorway looking totally frantic and disheveled.
Sam immediately told Dan that something horrible had just happened and that the two of them were in trouble and they needed to get the f out of there as soon as possible. Dan, who thought this must have something to do with their credit card scam, immediately stepped back into his apartment and being careful not to wake up Rachel, put on his clothes. A few minutes later, he and Sam were driving Sam's car south to the Long Beach Town Center Mall where Sam had asked to be dropped off. And it was during that drive that Daniel heard exactly what the horrible thing was that had just happened. And it had nothing to do with a credit card scam. Sam went on to tell Dan that Julie was in his apartment and that he had killed her.
Dan told police Sam's exact words. I shot somebody. It was a fit of rage. I was doing some heavy drugs. I'm not happy about it, but she had it coming.
The two detectives looked at each other.
This was exactly the break in the case that they had been hoping for. Daniel's story had just confirmed their own reconstruction of the crime. Now, they hoped that Dan could help them locate their killer, Sam. According to Dan, he had no idea where Sam was or where he was going. And that before they parted ways, before Sam got out at that mall, he had threatened Dan and told him that if he went to police and ratted him out, that Sam would come back and kill him or he'd come back and he would kill his fianceé Rachel. And so, when police had questioned Dan and Rachel the day after the murder had been discovered, Dan had panicked and lied to police in order to protect himself and his fianceé. He told police there was no man in a black hat, that he had made that up. At this point in the interrogation, Daniel was a wreck and he just repeatedly apologized to police for misleading them. But despite Dan's sincerity, the police were now concerned that he might be hiding even more information about Sam. And so they decided to apply some pressure. At 11:43 p.m., about 1 hour into this interrogation, police asked Dan if he would give them permission to take a DNA swab. That way, they could confirm that Dan was never present at the actual crime scene. Right away, Dan agreed. At this point, he was extremely eager to do anything he could to remove himself from the suspect list. As soon as the detective finished taking the swab out of Dan's mouth, the video camera inside of the interrogation room captures Dan's very obvious sense of relief. It was clear as he started to check his pockets and put his cup of coffee down on the floor that Dan thought this whole thing was over. The interview was over. He had done the swab and now he could leave.
But just seconds later, as the detective who had taken the DNA swab peeled off his gloves, the other detective asked Dan where exactly in Sam's apartment were police investigators likely to find Dan's DNA. Since Dan was a regular visitor in Sam's apartment if they were going to use his DNA to rule him out as a suspect, they needed to know what Dan had already touched. And this question seemed to startle Dan. The camera footage showed him running his hands through his thick black hair. And for the first time, Dan looks kind of nervous, but he does tell police that they are likely to find his DNA in both the bathroom and perhaps out on the patio. Those the two places he would go inside of Sam's apartment. After Dan says this, one of the detectives asks Dan point blank, "Did you see Julie's body inside of Sam's apartment?" Dan practically shouted that he had not, that all he knew about the murder was what Sam had told him in the car on the way to the mall that night. But the detectives, noticing that Daniel was really starting to fall apart and act nervous, they decided to ramp up the pressure by bluffing. Leaning forward towards Dan, who is now leaning back in his chair, one of the detectives asked Dan, "So, if you claim you were only in Sam's bathroom and patio, then why did we find your DNA inside of Sam's bedroom near Julie's body?" Now, keep in mind, they had no way of knowing if his DNA was inside of that apartment. They wouldn't have known for weeks. But Dan didn't know that. He thinks what they're telling him is factual. And as soon as they said this to him, Daniel changed his story again. Looking totally defeated, Dan slumped down in his chair and he said, "Okay, okay, I'll tell you.
This is what really happened." According to Dan, when Sam arrived at his apartment in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 22nd, and told Dan they needed to get the f out of there, before they got in the car and drove away, Sam had told Daniel what he had done and then took Daniel up to his apartment and actually showed him Julie's body. At this point in the interview, the cameras show Dan back on his feet, pacing across the small windowless room. He's agitated and he's running his fingers through his hair. And for the next three hours, the two detectives pressed for more details about exactly what Dan had seen in Sam's bedroom. By 2 a.m. on Thursday, May 27th, Dan had been talking, yelling, and sometimes whispering to police for four straight hours. He was exhausted, and since he was getting married in now less than 48 hours, he was desperate to just wrap this up so he could go. So, at 2:17 a.m., Daniel, who had been caught completely between a rock and a hard place, between trying to protect his friend or telling the cops everything he knew, seemed to crack. "Yes," he finally shouted at detectives. "Yes, I saw her goddamn body. Is that what you want to hear? I saw two gunshots in her head."
Both detectives suddenly went completely still and looked at each other. They also looked up at the camera that was recording the interview and playing it live in an adjoining room where a third detective was watching it. All three detectives were thinking the exact same thing. Dan Wnjak had just given them a critical new piece of information based on what would stretch into a 14-hour interrogation of Daniel Wnjak and an investigation into the new evidence police would uncover based on what he told them. This is the reconstruction of what happened to 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi and how police were finally able to locate their prime suspect, Sam Her. Back on the evening of Friday, May 21st, about half an hour after Julie had left that Thai restaurant in Newport Beach, where she was having dinner with her older brother, Taka, Julie pulled into the parking lot next to the Camden Martineique Apartments, where she had agreed to meet her friend Sam her.
Although she was still wearing the sparkly tiara that her brother had just given her, Julie's mood had turned serious. Before heading into Sam's apartment, she scrolled one more time through the dozens of text messages he had sent her starting that afternoon.
They all seemed so strange and out of character for Sam. But she knew Sam dealt with some very serious night terrors from his time in Afghanistan.
And for all she knew, he could be having some sort of breakdown right now that was Afghanistan related. So believing Sam really just needed a friend right now, she put her phone away, got out of her car, and made her way over to the stairs that would take her up to his apartment. When she reached the floor his apartment was on, she saw Daniel standing outside of it. It turned out Dan had become worried about Sam, too, when Sam had not been responding to his knocks on his door. Dan told Julie he did have a spare key and thought, you know, maybe the two of them should just go inside and see what was going on.
Grateful for the company, Julie waited a minute after Dan had unlocked the door and walked inside. Then she followed Dan into the apartment. There was no sign of Sam, but a few seconds later, Julie, who was standing in the front area of the apartment. She heard a terrified sounding Dan call out from Sam's bedroom in the back of the apartment. She asked what was going on, and Dan just called out, "You'd better come in here. There's something in his bed that you need to see." And so Julie began walking towards the bedroom. Several hours earlier, Daniel had called Sam and asked him to go with him to one of the small community theaters where Dan often performed. It was called the Liberty Theater and was located about 30 minutes north of their apartment complex. Daniel needed help moving a heavy piece of set furniture that was wanted by another local community theater. Sam agreed and the two met outside in the parking lot of their apartment building. Then they hopped into Sam's car and they headed north. Once they arrived, Dan led Sam through the empty theater. And when they were backstage, they climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor. And then once they were up there, Dan pointed out a dusty wooden ladder that led up to the attic. So up they went, and as soon as they were up there, Dan quickly walked over to this big piece of furniture and signaled to Sam that that was it. That was the piece they were going to move.
Sam nodded and moved past Daniel and took up a spot next to him, kind of crouching down to get a good grip underneath this big piece of furniture.
Little did Sam know that his friend Daniel, who was now standing behind him, could not have cared less about moving furniture. Instead, Dan was quietly pulling out a 38 caliber semi-automatic pistol. And then once it was out, he aimed the pistol carefully at the back of Sam's head and then he pulled the trigger. For a moment, all Dan could hear was the echo of the shot reverberating around the attic. And then Sam, who was still alive, turned to look up at his friend. Sam whispered, "I need help. I need help. Something hit me. I think I've been electrocuted." Looking directly into Sam Hur's eyes, Dan raised the pistol and pulled the trigger a second time. Except the weapon didn't fire. It jammed. So, while Sam is laying there staring up at Daniel with a look of horror on his face, Daniel calmly pulled the slide back of the pistol. He cleared the jammed round out of the gun.
He reloaded the gun and then placed the gun up against Sam's temple and pulled the trigger again. This time, the gun did fire and this time Sam would die.
Then Dan, stepping carefully to avoid the blood that was spreading out across the floor, bent over Sam's body and removed his phone and rifling through his friend's wallet, Dan pulled out Sam's passport and Sam's ATM and credit cards. Flipping Sam's phone open, Dan began to send what would be a long string of text messages to Julie. Each one was carefully scripted to draw her to Sam's apartment later that night and to look to an outsider as though Sam was in the midst of a personal crisis and that he and Julie were somehow romantically involved. Leaving Sam's body where it had fallen, Dan climbed back down the wooden ladder, down the flight of stairs to the ground level, left the empty theater, and got into Sam's car. But before going back to his apartment, Dan picked up the 16-year-old Wesley Fryic and they made their first withdrawal using Sam's ATM card. Once he had returned to the Camden Martineique Apartments, Dan had just enough time to shower, change his clothes, and send Julie yet another round of strange text messages from Sam's phone. I need to talk to you. Can you come here around midnight? Please come alone. Please. A little while later, when Dan arrived at the Hungry Artist Theater for the final showing of the play he was in called Nine, this was not the same theater where hours earlier he had killed Sam.
His fellow actors would report that Dan showed no sign of any stage jitters.
Instead, he gave what some of his colleagues described as the best performance of his life, playing opposite his beautiful bride to be, Rachel Buffett. After the performance, Dan stood for a moment backstage by himself and checked Sam's phone. Once he saw that Julie had agreed to meet Sam at midnight, Dan smiled. Then he stepped back into the group of friends who were all congratulating him on his great performance. Then he and Rachel headed home where Dan would shower yet again.
He would have sex with Rachel. And then he would tell her he was stepping outside just to go for a little walk. In reality, he was making his way over to Sam's apartment to wait for Julie. At midnight, Julie arrived. And then when they both went inside and Dan went into the back bedroom and called out for Julie, Dan did in fact have something he wanted Julie to look at in the bed, but not because there was anything for her to actually see. Once Julie had walked into the bedroom and put her bag down and stood in front of the bed, not seeing anything on it, Daniel reached around her and pointed at the center of the bed and told her she needed to look closer to see what he was talking about.
And so confused, Julie leaned forward, looking at the center of the bed where there was nothing. And as she did that, Dan pulled out the same pistol he'd used to kill Sam earlier in the day, and he aimed it at Julie, and he fired two shots into Julie's head, hitting her just below the tiara that was now tangled in her blood soaked hair. Moving quickly, Dan arranged the scene as he would any other stage set. Using scissors he had brought with him, Dan cut through the waistband of Julie's jeans, pulling them down around her hips to make it look like she had been sexually assaulted. Then he took a black magic marker and wrote all yours f you on the back of her sweater. Satisfied that he had created the perfect frame job that would have police chasing down Sam her as Julie's murderer. And knowing police would never find Sam, Dan backed away from Julie's mangled and bleeding body and returned to his own apartment where he showered yet again. The next day, Dan returned to the Liberty Theater where he had killed Sam. This time, he brought an axe and that same pair of scissors with him. Returning to the attic, Dan used the scissors to cut off Sam's clothes, and he used the axe to dismember Sam's body. Dan left Sam's naked and headless body upstairs in the theater, but using plastic bags he had picked up at a nearby cafe, Dan packed up Sam's head and hands and one arm and stuffed them into a backpack. Then Dan left the theater, drove to the Elorado Nature Center 3 miles away. And there he scattered Sam's remains in shallow openings he found or dug near the bases of trees and under bushes. Then Dan, who was so far behind on his rent, he would soon be evicted from the Camden Martinique Apartments and who desperately needed money to pay for his upcoming honeymoon, headed for the ATMs, where he would meet Wesley Freighic and collect another $400 installment of Sam Hur's combat pay. It is possible that Daniel might have gotten away with the brutal murders of Sam and Julie. But in those early morning hours of May 27th in the Costa Mesa Police Station, at about 2:00 a.m., when Dan was asked by detectives what specifically he had seen when he looked at Julie's body sprawled out on Sam's bed, Daniel Wnjak delivered exactly the wrong line. I saw two gunshots in her head. All three of the police officers who were listening to that interview knew that anyone who was just looking at Julie's body like Dan claimed he was doing, they would only have been able to tell there was a single wound. It would not have looked like two distinct gunshot wounds. So, the only way Daniel could have known that there were two gunshots in Julie's head was if he had fired those shots himself. So when he still kept denying any involvement, the police told Dan they knew he was lying and they put him into a jail cell. They reminded him he was under arrest for being an accessory to murder and the only way he'd be leaving is when he told them everything he really knew about Julie's murder. And then the following afternoon at about 1:15 p.m. Dan would further implicate himself during a conversation he had from the jail with his fianceé Rachel Buffett. By then Rachel knew Dan had been arrested. She had also found out from Dan's brother, Tim, that Dan had given Tim a backpack filled with bloody clothes and a 38 caliber pistol, Sam's passport, phone, wallet, and two spent shell casings. Instead of destroying the bag as Dan had told him to, Tim had just thrown the backpack over the fence behind their parents' house. When Rachel told Dan on the phone in a call that was recorded by police that she was going to tell the detectives what she knew, including the existence of this backpack, Dan whispered into the receiver, "Then I'm doomed." 30 minutes after this phone call with Rachel, Daniel would signal to police that he was ready to confess to what he did. The cameras show him sitting at a small table in the interrogation room, elbows on the table, head resting in his hands.
Yes, he had murdered Sam because he wanted that $62,000 in combat pay that Sam had saved from his deployment to Afghanistan. And yes, he had murdered Julie just as a decoy, a way to mislead police into thinking that Sam had disappeared because Sam was not a war hero, but rather a killer who had gone on the run after murdering Julie in a fit of rage or jealousy. When asked by police he did it, Daniel told them, "I'm crazy. It was always all about the money. Following Dan's confession, police searched the Liberty Theater and found Sam's badly decomposed partial remains. The only way to recognize the torso as belonging to Sam, was the heart tattooed on his chest that was inscribed with the words mom and dad. On May 29th, the day Samur would have turned 27 years old, police found his head, hands, and one of his arms scattered throughout El Dorado Nature Center. More than 5 years later, on December 16th, 2015, Daniel Wnjak was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. At the penalty hearing in September 2016, Daniel was sentenced to death. 3 years later, a separate jury found Dan Wnjak's ex- fiance, Rachel Buffett, to be an accessory after the fact after further investigation revealed that she had lied to police to cover up her possible involvement in the crime and to protect her then fiance, Daniel Wnjak. As for the families of the victims, June Kibuishi wonders if she had taught her children, especially Julie, to be too kind. And for Steve Hur, the thought of his son's final moments will haunt him for the rest of his life. On July 18th, 2019, 28-year-old Andrew Harper scrolled a little note inside of a card. Then he folded the card up. He slipped it into its envelope, and he handed that envelope off to a nearby friend. And this friend, after getting this envelope and Andrew's directions for what to do with it, he left Andrew's room and began walking down the hall all the way towards the other side of the Arlington House. The Ardington House, where they were staying, is this beautiful mansion built in the 1700s that sits on about 30 acres of gardens and parklands, and it's located about an hour west of London in the English countryside. Once Andrew's friend, with this letter in hand, had walked all the way across the mansion and had found the room he was looking for, he gently knocked on the door, and then after being led inside, he made his way right over to 28-year-old Lissy Beckett, and he handed her the envelope.
Lissey and Andrew had grown up in the same town of Wallingford, which is a small rural town about 10 miles away from where they were, the Arlington House. And from the time Lissy and Andrew had met each other, when they were 15 years old, they had become totally inseparable. It was truly love at first sight. And now, 13 years later, they were finally getting married. And so, Lissy, after getting this envelope, she saw the writing on the outside of it and knew it was from her fiance. And so, she smiled. She opens up this letter and she reads what's inside. And it just said, "Life is slippery. Here, take my hand." While on the surface this little note seemed like nothing more than a romantic gesture from Andrew, in reality those seven words contained in that card were a great representation of who Andrew really was. He was a protector.
Ever since Lissy could remember, Andrew had always been so concerned with her safety. And for that matter, anybody around Andrew, Andrew was just worried about and wanted to make sure everybody was taken care of. And as Andrew got older and grew to be this massive 6'5 inch tall man, his natural inclination to protect other people only became more pronounced. While Andrew was known for being incredibly charming and friendly and approachable at a moment's notice, he could flip the switch and literally step in and use his big frame to protect anybody that needed protecting, no questions asked. And so it came as no shock to Lissy or really anybody who knew Andrew when Andrew at the age of 19 became a special constable or volunteer police officer for the Tims Valley Police Department. This police department was the same one that oversaw Wallingford where he and Lissy had grown up and also the surrounding areas. And just a year after becoming a special constable, Andrew had done such an amazing job that he was hired on by the Tims Valley Police Department to be a regular constable, so a full-fledged police officer. And over the following years that he was a regular constable, Andrew's hard work and dedication would quickly make him one of the most wellrespected and well-liked police officers on the force. In fact, just a few weeks before he sent off that letter to Lissy on the day of their wedding, Andrew had been promoted. He had been assigned to the road policing unit within the Tims Valley Police Department. And what that meant was, in addition to a host of new responsibilities on a day-to-day basis, Andrew would now become one of the police officers who would immediately respond to any emergency call that came in. He was basically a front lines police officer now. And so, of course, this meant Andrew's job just became a lot more dangerous. But for Andrew, that didn't matter at all because to him, the most important thing was protecting people in need. And so, this promotion just gave him a bigger opportunity to do that. And so, Lissy, after reading this little note that Andrew had just sent her, she set it down on the table. And now, with a big grin on her face, she finished getting ready. And then that afternoon she and Andrew would walk down the aisle and they would say, "I do." in front of their families and their closest friends. And then that evening after the newlyweds had had their first dance as a married couple, they would tell each other that this was the happiest day of their lives. 28 days later on August 15th, Andrew along with his partner who also was named Andrew.
His name was Andrew Shaw. They were conducting a surveillance operation in a town called Reading. Reading is a town about 30 minutes south of Wallingford.
Just after 11 p.m., the men finally decided it was time to shut down their operation and head back home. Their shift had actually ended 4 hours earlier, but being hardworking and diligent police officers, they had worked overtime because they knew it would help their unit. But now, at 11 p.m., they were totally exhausted. And so as they're kind of yawning and packing up their things, Shaw, who was driving, would fire up the engine of the unmarked BMW car they were in. And then once it was on, he would pull away from the curb and they would start heading north. At the same time, a very distressed man who lived not far from where Andrew and Shaw had just been doing surveillance, he called 999 and he told the dispatcher that just a few moments ago, this gray sedan had pulled up his driveway and stopped right outside of his property. Now, this man's property was off of a road called Admore Lane, which was this winding one-lane country road that had very little traffic and there was not that many properties off of it. And so for anybody to pull on to this man's property would have caught his attention, let alone a car pulling onto his property in the middle of the night. And so as soon as the man had seen these headlights coming up his driveway, he had gone to the window and watched, wondering, you know, what is this person doing? Had they turned onto the wrong property? You know, are they going to turn around and leave? But to his horror, once this car had stopped right outside of his house, three masked men who were carrying weapons of some kind got out of the vehicle. And so at that point, the man had frantically dialed 999. And as he's trying to describe the situation to the dispatcher, he suddenly tells the dispatcher as he's looking out the window that he thinks these men are here to steal his quad bike. His quad bike was parked right outside of his detached garage and he saw them walking towards it. And so he tells the dispatcher, who's already told him that police are on the way. He tells the dispatcher, "I can't wait any longer. I'm going out to confront them and stop them from stealing my bike." The dispatcher yells at him not to and says, "They have weapons. Stay in your house." But this guy's not listening. And so he runs to his front door. He opens the front door up. But by the time he's looking outside, the gray car, the three masked men, they're all gone. And so too is his quad bike. And so he goes back in the house. He's talking to the dispatcher.
And the dispatcher says, "Look, just stay at your house. The police are on the way. They will intercept that car.
They'll get your quad bike back." And so seconds later, a call went out over the radio to Tims Valley Police to go and intercept this gray car on Admore Lane.
So whoever was closest, go over there.
But be advised, the occupants of this car are three masked men that are armed and dangerous. Now, Andrew and Shaw, when they heard this call, they would have known that they were not the only officers that could have taken this call. And they also would have known that they've been off the clock now for like 4 and 1/2 hours. There was no expectation that they would continue to work and go take this call. But they didn't care at all when that call came across. The only thing they thought about was do your job. And so Shaw, he whips the car around and he speeds towards Admore Lane and he pulls off of the main road called the A4. He gets on to Admore Lane and he starts driving north. Now, as soon as they turned onto that road, their vehicle effectively blocked the way for anybody coming the other direction. And so, at this point, they're expecting this gray car full of these masked men to be coming in their direction, and they are now blocking the way. And so, Andrew and Shaw, as soon as they get on that road, they know a close quarters confrontation is almost guaranteed. But when you listen to the dash cam footage from the front of their vehicle that picked up the voices of Andrew and Shaw as they turn onto this road, there is no nerves. There's no fear. There's no hesitation. They are calm as can be. This is what they have trained for. They were ready. And so Shaw, he's making his way up this winding road. It's totally pitch black.
The trees are practically on top of the road. It's like a tunnel of trees. And so they're driving along this road. And then all of the sudden up in the distance, you can see on the dash cam footage, you see headlights bombing toward them. They're way off in the distance. And then all of a sudden, that car, these headlights, they come flooring out right in front of them. And both cars come to a screeching stop. You can hear the screeching of the brakes on the dash cam footage. And so this car in front of them comes to a full stop. And Shaw, he stops, but then he moves up just a little bit closer before fully stopping the car. And so now the two cars are only maybe 10 or 15 ft apart.
At this point, it's important to understand that the vehicle that Shaw and Andrew were in was an unmarked car, and they had intentionally not put on their blue lights as they're cruising up this road because they didn't want the suspects to see the blue lights in the distance and turn around and get away.
And so now they've come face to face.
And so Andrew and Shaw, they're looking at this vehicle. And they can see that one, it's a gray sedan, so it matches the description of the car they're looking for. And two, behind this gray sedan is what looks like a quad bike that they are towing. And so they know this is the car they were looking for.
It's on Admore Lane. This is going to be it. And so Shaw, he flips on the blue lights. And Andrew, who's in the passenger seat, he opens the door and begins yelling at the occupants to stay where they are. But they don't listen because now the masked men in the gray car, they know they've been caught.
There's police right in front of them.
And so suddenly one of the masked men in the back seat of this car, he leaps out of the vehicle and he runs around to the back of the gray car and he unhooks the quad bike. And then the gray car, without even waiting for this third masked man to get back inside, it just begins driving forward on the left side of Shaw and Andrew, basically trying to drive around them despite the fact there's nowhere to drive. It's a ditch on either side of the road. But obviously these guys are desperate and willing to do anything to get away. And so this gray car has driven down into this ditch before Andrew and Shaw could do anything. And then the third masked man who's realizing he's being left behind, he starts running around the right side of the police car. So he's trying to go around the other way. And amazingly, as soon as the third masked man made it around to the back of the police car, the gray car somehow managed to pop out of the ditch and got back onto the road and it starts driving away from Shaw and Andrew. And as they're driving away, the third masked man is just on the road running after them. And so Andrew seeing an opportunity to potentially grab this third masked man that was out on foot. He jumps out of the police car. He turns and starts running down the road after the suspects. And so Shaw, he doesn't have enough space on this road to turn around and drive after them. And so all he could do was put the car into reverse and then look over his shoulder and start driving in reverse after them. And so as Shaw is driving backwards down this road, he can see out of his rear window Andrew who is chasing the third masked man who is chasing the gray car.
And so we can see all this happening out his back window. And then something totally strange that just defied logic happened. The third masked man suddenly leaps as if he's trying to jump into the moving car. And at the same time, Andrew, who's closed the distance on him, kind of lunges for the third masked man. And then just as suddenly as these two maneuvers have happened, both men just vanish. And then the gray car just drives away and disappears. And so Shaw, he's watching this happening and he has no idea what he's just witnessed. He's thinking, "Where did Andrew go? Where'd the third masked man go? What's happened?" But he still can only drive in reverse. And so he's just driving and driving. And then finally, he reaches a point in the road that's just wide enough that he's able to turn the car around. And as he's doing that, you hear over dispatch that someone is asking Shaw, "What's going on? Where are you?"
And all Shaw is able to say is, "My partner Andrew has gotten out of the vehicle and I lost him. I I don't know where he is." And so after Shaw has turned the vehicle around, he begins driving now facing the proper direction.
And as he's driving down this creepy dark road, you don't see anything. It's eerily quiet. Andrew's nowhere to be found. The car is nowhere to be found.
The third mass man, there's no one. And so Shaw is just driving down the road hoping that as he makes one turn or the next, he's going to see his partner just kind of running on the road somewhere.
But he doesn't. But as he's driving along, what Shaw didn't realize was that there were things in the road that belonged to Andrew. They were kind of small, so he didn't see them. But the footage would later reveal that it was almost like there was this trail of Andrew's things kind of littered all over the road. There was his wallet.
Then there was his badge. Then there was his license and other ID cards. And then there was his glove. And then there was this piece of plastic that looked like it belonged on Andrew's vest. And then a little farther down the road cuz Shaw is still driving and scanning for his partner and scanning for anything. And there's just nothing. As he's driving along, he would in real time notice something of Andrews. And it was Andrew's stab vest that he wore over his chest. And so he stops the vehicle and he gets out and again he's on this totally pitch black road where it's weirdly quiet and he's walking up and he grabs the vest. He comes back into his vehicle and he puts it down inside of his car. And at this point over the radio, people are asking Shaw, you know, what's going on? Where are you? And you hear in Shaw's voice a bit of panic as he's like, I've found Andrew's stab vest. It was on the side of the road.
And he can't make sense of that. He has no idea why it's there. And dispatch, they don't know what to make of that.
And so Shaw just continued driving down this road, thinking to himself, "What's happening here?" Meanwhile, less than a mile away at the end of Admore Lane where it joined up with A4, which is where Andrew and Shaw had originally come in, two other Tims Valley police cars had arrived at that intersection.
They had gone there specifically to try to intercept this gray car as they fled.
And so they're sitting at this intersection and they're looking up Add Lane and they see headlights bombing towards them. It's the gray car and the gray car comes speeding out onto A4. It makes a hard turn and it speeds away from these two police cars. And so one of these two police cars that were waiting out on the A4. One of them takes off following the gray car, but the other police car, they stay right there because unbelievably they had just spotted Andrew. It would turn out when Shaw first put the BMW into reverse and he began going in reverse towards his partner who was chasing the third masked man who was chasing the gray car. When he was doing that and he was watching out his back window and he saw the third masked man jump and then disappear and then Andrew disappeared. That was not a figment of his imagination. That really happened. The third masked man had attempted to jump into the moving vehicle and he had been successful. As for Andrew, why he suddenly vanished?
The reason for that is truly horrific.
The three masked men were 18-year-old Henry Long and 17-year-olds Albert Bowers and Jesse Cole. All three of them, prior to this night, had fairly extensive criminal records, and they proudly referred to themselves as career thieves, which basically just meant they spent all day and all night stealing from people. And so that night they had gone out with the intention of stealing that man's quad bike. It's unclear how they knew he had a quad bike, but they definitely showed up prepared because they knew they would have to get onto his property and very quickly tow that bike out of there before the homeowner could stop them. And so they had attached this long, very thick rope to the back of their gray car. It was basically like this big loop of rope, almost like a lasso. And so when they pulled up onto that man's property, they backed up to the quad bike and they looped that stretch of rope over the handlebars of this quad bike. And then all three of them piled back into the gray car and they sped off with the quad bike in tow. But when they were on Admore Lane and came face to face with Andrew and Shaw and realized those are police officers and were caught, the third masked man aka Jesse Cole, he hopped out of the gray car. He ran around to the back and he unhooked the loop of rope from this quad bike, ditching the quad bike by the side of the road so that it would be easier for the gray car to make their getaway. And so once it was free, the gray car kind of took off without Jesse. And so Jesse ran around the cop car. But Jesse would get back up to the side of the gray car and he would leap into the window. And as soon as he was inside and Henry, who was driving, he knew he was inside. So they're all good. Henry hit the gas. And who was standing with both feet inside of that loop of rope dangling off the back of the gray car when the gray car suddenly accelerated? Andrew Harper.
Andrew was swept off of his feet as the rope grabbed onto his legs. And so his head came back and smashed into the ground. And then he was dragged for 91 seconds at an average speed of 42 1/2 mph down Admore Lane. It was only after he had been dragged for over a mile, whipping violently side to side, smashing not only into the ground, but into trees and fence posts and shrubs, just getting destroyed on this road that finally when they pulled off of Admore Lane and got onto A4, that turn swung Andrew around and he smashed into a curb that dislodged him from the rope and sent him careening into traffic. At that point, one of those two police cars took off after the gray car in pursuit. But the other car, they saw Andrew as he was thrown off the back of the gray car and launched onto A4. Now, initially, they actually thought that the suspects were just hauling a dead deer behind them because it looked like a bloody deer carcass was dangling behind the car. But when they ran up to see what it was, they saw it was their colleague. It was Andrew. And so immediately they tried to save his life, but Andrew's injuries were catastrophic. He had been destroyed. And so Andrew Harper would die at 11:45 p.m. on the side of the A4, about 20 minutes after he and his partner had so selflessly agreed to go after this car despite the fact they didn't have to. The three killers were arrested about 1 hour after Andrew had died. A police helicopter had spotted their car parked amongst some buildings about four miles away from where Andrew was found. During their trial, the three teens would say they had no idea that Andrew was attached to that tow rope as they sped down Admore Lane. This is despite the fact that the prosecution, they went out and recreated the exact scene that played out on Admore Lane.
They used the same car. They used the same tow rope. And they used a very lifelike dummy that was the same size as Andrew Harper. It was 6'5, 200 lb. And they strapped it on the back of the car.
And they drove the same mile stretch to see what it would be like to drive with Andrew attached to the back. And these experts that went through this recreation over and over and over again, they said the same thing. It was nearly impossible to drive the car because as soon as the dummy would start to shift one way or the other, it would tug and pull on this little gray car. And so handling this car would have been a nightmare. Not to mention the fact that the sound of Andrew grinding against the cement and smashing into trees and posts would have been extremely loud. And so the prosecution attested that there was absolutely no way that those three teens wouldn't have known that there was a person connected to the back of their car. Also, the prosecution said that all along Admore Lane, they found blood on both sides of the road, high up into bushes and on trees, indicating that as Henry had driven along with Andrew behind him, he must have been swerving violently side to side, most likely, at least according to the prosecution, to try to dislodge the person that was stuck on the back of his car. But the three teens never changed their story.
They also never once said they regretted what they did, they showed absolutely no remorse. And when the verdict was read, and these three teens were not found guilty of murder. They were found guilty of manslaughter, but everybody knew that was significantly better because the sentences were so much shorter. When that verdict came back, these three teens were punching the air and cheering and laughing, just making a complete spectacle out of it. And then after being led out of the courthouse with the devastated family of Andrew Harper basically watching them, they were smirking and smiling at the cameras and waving and just treating the whole thing like it was one big joke. Still to this day, none of them have apologized or expressed any regret or remorse about what happened. In fact, two of the killers, Jesse and Albert, they've come out publicly and said they're going to write a book about this crime, about killing Andrew Harper. And there's no indication that this book is being written because they feel bad. It's almost certainly being written because it's an opportunity to make money.
Following the verdict, Andrew's wife, Lissy, who was totally devastated, not only by the loss of her husband, but also by what she viewed as total injustice with regards to the fact that these three killers had not been convicted of murder. She would go on to lobby for years to pass a brand new law called Harper's Law that would give an automatic life sentence to any criminal that killed an emergency worker while they were committing a crime. Meaning, this law would not differentiate between whether it was manslaughter or murder.
If you killed an emergency worker while committing a crime, you're going to jail for life. And this year, Harper's law was passed. However, it will have no effect on the sentences of Andrew Harper's killers. Henry, would be sentenced to 16 years in prison, and the other two, Albert and Jesse, would be sentenced to 13 years in prison each.
All three of them will be eligible for parole by the time they are 28 years old, which is the same age that Andrew was when they killed him.
June of 2018, 18-year-old straight A student Tyler Turner graduated from his high school in central California. In the fall of that year, he was scheduled to go to the University of California, Merke with a full scholarship. He planned to study biochemical engineering because he was born with cerebral palsy and wanted to help other people with the condition. In August of that year, one of Tyler's friends said they wanted to go skydiving to celebrate their birthday. Tyler was nervous about it, but he had never done it before and figured, "You know what? It'll be fun.
I'll do it." His mother, Francine, who was very close with her son, was very nervous about her son jumping out of a plane. And so she asked if she could tag along to provide moral support and maybe take some pictures. And he said that was fine. So on the 6th of the month, Tyler and his mother hopped in the car and drove over an hour north to the Lodi Parachute Center where they met up with Tyler's other three friends. They were all very nervous, but very excited. So, the group went inside the main building and Tyler went up to the counter and he paid $100 for a single tandem jump from 13,000 ft. A tandem jump is when two people jump together under one parachute. And so, most commonly, you're going to have the instructor who's got the parachute on his or her back and then on their chest harnessed at four different points is going to be their student or whoever they're jumping with and they don't have a parachute. They're just tethered to the instructor who has the parachute. And so in this case, Tyler would be strapped on to his instructor. And so the advantage for Tyler as a first-time jumper is that he would not need to do anything once they're in freef fall. The instructor would be 100% in control of keeping them steady in the air, of pulling the parachute, of dealing with any malfunctions, of flying the canopy, and of landing. It's all done by the instructor. After paying, Tyler and his mother walked over and met his instructor, the guy he'd be strapped onto. It was a 25-year-old man named Young Quan who told him he had jumped over 700 times. And so Young told Tyler that he needed to watch a safety video before they did anything else. And so Tyler and his mother walked into the room. They sat down, the TV turned on, and a very simple safety video came on.
And partway through it, another instructor walked in and just turned it off and told Tyler and his mother, "Eh, you've seen enough. You guys can go."
Francine was a little bit alarmed at this behavior because it seemed odd to skip over safety when you're jumping out of a plane for the first time, but she figured, "You know what? They must know what they're doing. I'm sure it's fine."
Just before 10:00 a.m., Yang helped Tyler get into his tandem jump harness that would allow him to connect onto Yong's chest. And then afterward, Tyler walked over to his mom, gave her a big hug, told her he loved her, and then he departed his mother and walked his way over to the staging area where he and the other jumpers, that included his friends, were waiting for the plane to start. so they could actually board.
While they waited, Tyler was really nervous and his instructor picked up on it. And so to put Tyler at ease, he began filming Tyler and interviewing him about his upcoming jump to kind of make light of the whole situation. And it seemed to work.
>> My name is Tyler Turner.
>> What are you doing here?
>> I am going to jump out of a plane.
>> It's your first time.
>> First time indeed. That's my mom over there. Hello.
>> Very loving mom offering me in my life.
Hope more that she'll help me with more of my life cuz I want to make it. Okay, we're going to make it.
>> After they recorded this video, the plane was ready to go. So, it was time to start boarding. And so Tyler and his instructor walked over, but Tyler stopped on the tarmac. He took a knee and prayed. And then he stood back up.
He turned to his mother. He waved one more time. And then he boarded the plane. After a little while, the plane took off. And then after a little while longer, it was up at 13,000 ft flying in circular patterns. And that's when Francine started looking up, looking for her son. And at some point, she started seeing jumpers come out of the plane.
and they were so far away she couldn't possibly make out who was who. And so as the jumpers began pulling their parachutes and all the different colored parachutes are lighting up the sky, she was trying to remember what color her son's parachute was, but she couldn't remember. And so she asked the other people that were watching that were relatives or friends of the people up there if they knew what color her son's parachute was, but nobody knew. As they got lower and lower, and you could actually start to make out who the jumpers were, she didn't see her son.
And that's because her son's parachute never opened. And unfortunately, his instructor, Yang, was not able to fix the malfunction or fire off the reserve.
And so, they both crashed into the ground, killing them both instantly.
Tyler's family sued the owner of the parachute facility after they discovered Tyler's instructor, Yong, was not even certified to be an instructor, and so would not have received any of the required training on how to handle parachute malfunctions. And the owner knew about it. Investigators also discovered that 20 people had died skydiving at this facility under the same owner. A ridiculously high number of fatalities that most people involved are attributing to the owner's general disregard for safety. And ultimately, a judge agreed with that sentiment and awarded the Turner family $40 million from the owner of this facility.
In 1962, Chelino Sanchez was born into a poor family in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. When he was just 15 years old, one of his sisters was assaulted by a very rich and powerful man in their town. And so, he never got punished for it. 2 years later, when Chelina was 17, he saw this man at a party and he walked up to him and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. After the murder, Chelino fled to Tijana before ultimately crossing the US border into Los Angeles where he stayed with his aunt. He worked odd jobs like picking vegetables and selling cars before he ultimately went into business with his brother who was back in Mexico. And he worked with him to smuggle Mexicans into the US. But that operation stopped in 1984 when his brother was murdered in Tijuana. To commemorate his brother, Chelino, who always loved music, wrote a song about him. And he formatted the song in the typical Mexican ballad style called Credo. But his lyrics were graphic and gritty, something nobody else did when they wrote a Crito. Chelino spoke honestly and openly not only about how his brother was killed, but also the struggles of living around drug trafficking and violence in Mexico.
Shortly after writing the song, Chelino wound up in jail in Tijana, Mexico. And while he was there, he would sing the song he wrote about his brother. And other inmates heard it and loved it.
They had never heard a Crito song like that. And so they asked Chelino if he would write songs about them and their exploits. Soon, Chelino was being commissioned by all these inmates in this prison to write their songs in exchange for money and for favors. When Chelino got out of prison, his unique songwriting abilities had spread beyond the prison walls to other criminals and drug traffickers and kingpins in Mexico.
And before long, Chelino was being approached by those people to write their songs. His Critos pioneered a new subgenre of music called narco for their ties to the narcotics industry. Some people today compare the style and lyrics of the narco curedo to gangster rap. By 1987, Chelino's music was not just being shared amongst his paying clients. It had spread into Los Angeles and all over Mexico and was becoming very popular even though it wasn't being played on the radio because radios thought his lyrics were too graphic. And so it was spreading largely because of word of mouth and because Chelino himself would go to car washes and street corners and he would sell his cassettes to anybody who would take them. By 1991, Chelino was so famous that he actually went on tour. And everywhere he went, the venue would be completely sold out. But given what his narco were about, largely about drug trafficking and the people that are involved in that ecosystem, the people that would actually come to his performances were often rough and dangerous people or were at least tied to rough and dangerous people. In 1992, when Chelina was performing in California, while he was on stage, this 33-year-old guy rushed onto stage with him and drew a gun on him. And Chelino, who was always carrying a weapon himself, drew his pistol and fired at this guy first. And then what ensued was this crazy gunfight on stage, practically point blank, between Chelino and this guy. And they both managed to shoot each other. Chelino got shot in the lung, and this guy got shot in the mouth. they would both survive. But eight audience members also got shot and one of them actually died. This made international headlines and by all accounts should have devastated Chelino's career. But in fact, it had the opposite effect. It made him 10 times more famous because Chelino, he was representing narco music. And so in being the face of that, he kind of represented drug trafficking and criminals and outlaws all over Mexico and in the United States. And so he was kind of representing a very tough group of people. And so for him to have stood his ground on stage and shot first at this guy coming to attack him, it made him look brave. It made him look like a warrior. It validated him as the right person to be the face of Narco. But Chelino also understood that this probably was not the last time that someone was going to try to hurt him.
that in virtue of being the face of narco culture, there's bound to be people that are very violent that don't like him and they might come after him too. And so he actually told his inner circle that he thought his days were numbered, that at some point someone was going to kill him. 4 months after the shootout, Chelino was back home in Sinaloa, Mexico, performing at a concert that his friends had told him he shouldn't do because he had lots of enemies in his hometown. But Chelino really wanted to do it. He got into the venue. He got on stage. His band was getting ready. Thousands of people were coming into the audience and before the show started, somebody handed him a note. And so Chelino takes the note.
He's smiling. He's kind of looking around at the crowd. Then he looks down at the note and he reads it. And right away his expression completely changes.
He looks distressed. He rubs his brow.
He frowns. He kind of looks up at the crowd like he's looking for someone. And then he just goes blank in the face. And he's looking out like he's looking past the crowd. And it's this long period of time where he's just blank staring into the audience. And then all of a sudden, he just snaps out of it, takes the note, puts it in his pocket, picks up the microphone, and proceeds to give one of his best live performances to date.
After the concert was over, Chelino made a special effort to say bye to everybody in his band, and he said bye to some people in the crowd. And then finally, after this kind of long drawn out goodbye, he walked out the back door.
Shortly after, he was kidnapped, tied up, and then shot in the back of the head, execution style. It would turn out that note he received on stage was from his killers who we don't know exactly who they are still to this day, but the note said after this performance, "We're going to kill you." And so that was the reason Chelino was so distressed because whoever it was, he obviously understood it was a credible threat. But instead of panicking, he just decided he would give an amazing performance and then face his destiny. And so when he went outside, he knew he was going to get murdered. And he did. Here is the moment Chelina was handed that note on stage, informing him he had been marked for death.
Despite the fact that today there is already tons of shocking content on the internet, there is still something truly insane about Wu Yong Ning's videos. In 2017, Woo was a 26-year-old climbing enthusiast who was dubbed China's first roof topper. A roof topper is someone who usually illegally climbs onto rooftops, cranes, smoke stacks, big antennas, skyscrapers, or any other really high dangerous location. Almost always, these daredevils are going to these incredibly dangerous locations in order to capture footage of themselves so they can post it to the internet in hopes that it goes viral and they become famous and make a bunch of money. But because there are so many people competing for the internet's attention, roof toppers really need to push the envelope if they want to stand out and make it big. And Wu Yong Ning did just that. And the internet rewarded him with millions of followers and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most roof toppers would go to the tops of these incredible locations and then take selfies of themselves standing there posing at the top. Woo would do that, but he also did a couple other things that nobody else was doing that kind of became his trademarks. The first one was he would dangle over the edge of the building or the crane or the antenna that he was holding on to and he would do pull-ups, but he would keep doing them until he reached muscle failure and then would barely be able to pull himself back up to safety. Another trademark move is he would go to the top of these huge buildings and he would get right on the edge and he would do a handstand and then he would pull one arm back. So, he's doing a onearmed handstand, and then he would tilt his body as far as he could over the edge until he couldn't do it any farther, and he'd let himself come back over to safety. And then perhaps the most difficult to watch trademark was when Woo would basically run up to the edge of buildings and stop just short. And he wouldn't just run to the edge, he would use a self-balancing scooter and go as fast as he could right to the edge of the building and stop just short. and over and over again he'd go right to the edge and stop where he's literally an inch away from tumbling off the edge or he'd line himself up where he knew exactly how far he was from the edge and he would do these really aggressive somersaults forward and he would stop with his legs dangling off the edge of the building. And of course, all of these trademark moves were done without any safety equipment and most times Woo did these stunts without anybody there to potentially pull him back up if he gets stuck. About threequarters of the way through 2017, Woo had posted over 500 videos and live streaming clips to various social media sites, and he was starting to make some real money off of it. On one video sharing site alone, he had made over $80,000 just from donations that had come in. And so, it was clear this was becoming a career. But as the money and the fame were coming into Woo, he started to realize that in order for him to stay on top and keep earning at this level, he would need to continuously outperform his last big stunt. And already he was brushing up against death on virtually every video he took. In early November of that year, Woo heard about a competition that was offering $15,000 to its winner. The details of this competition are hazy at best, but from the sounds of it, it was a viral video competition. Make the most viral video and you win the prize. This competition served as motivation for Woo to finally attempt his craziest stunt yet. He figured if he had the footage of this particular stunt, he was sure to win this competition. And with the prize money, he could pay for his wedding and cover his mother's medical expenses. And so on November 8th, Woo traveled to the Huayen International Center in central China. This massive 62-story skyscraper would be the tallest building Woo had ever performed a stunt on. The public was only able to get up to the 44th floor and so Woo had to take the elevator up to somewhere between the 40th and 44th floor at which point he climbed out of a window and free climbed his way all the way up to the top. So 20 additional floors just climbing the side of a skyscraper. Once he got to the rooftop, he set up his tripod and his camera and he turned on his live stream.
And then he walked around and he began preparing himself for the stunt. Live stream viewers that tuned in would see Woo sitting on the edge of the skyscraper and he's meticulously wiping down the edge of this building. It's the area he'll be grabbing onto to perform his stunt, which was going to be his trademark pull-ups. And so after several minutes of Woo cleaning this ledge, he begins to lower himself where his arms are still tucked up over the ledge. So he's not hanging. He's got his arms kind of anchored on the top. He's like testing the edge of this lip. And he kind of feels around and he can tell that it's not a good grip. it's not good enough for him to go down to a full extension. And so he pulls himself back up and he goes back to wiping down the edge. And from the looks of it, it seems like Woo is actually pretty nervous about the stunt. And normally when you watch Woo's videos, he doesn't seem nervous at all. Even leading up to his stunt, but this one just seemed different. And so after again wiping down this ledge as much as he possibly could, he gets himself ready, lowers himself onto his arms, he lets his legs drop over the edge of the building, and then he goes to full extension. And from there, he does two complete pull-ups.
And then after the second pull-up, he begins to try to pull himself back up to safety. But he's fatigued and he can't quite get himself up over the edge. He starts to use his feet to try to use the glass to push himself back up, but he can't get a grip. And for the next 15 seconds, Woo is desperately trying to get himself up and over this ledge. He's trying to muscle himself up, but it's obvious he's completely fatigued. I mean, he did free climb almost 20 stories to get up there. And so, it makes sense his arms would be tired, but there's nobody up there to help pull him up. And so, after a while, he goes back to full extension because he can't do anything. And he looks down as if he's sizing up if he can survive this fall, which he obviously can't. And then the camera picks up a sort of whimpering sound that appears to come from Woo. And then he loses his grip and he falls to his death. Here is a segment of his final video right before he fell.
Anna Mallayia was born November 4th, 1983 to very poor and alcoholic parents in the Ukraine. In the winter of 1986, when Oxana was only three years old in a drunken stouper, her parents forgot about her outside in the cold of winter.
And because she was locked out, instinctively she crawled towards the nearest source of warmth, which was the family's kennel where a whole bunch of dogs were sleeping. And incredibly, once she crawled inside of this kennel, not only did the dogs allow her to sleep there that night, but they kind of embraced her as one of their own. The next day, Oxana did not go back in the house, and her parents seemingly did not notice her absence. And over the next five years, Oxana would stay with this family of dogs, essentially living like she was part of their pack, which meant over those five very formative years from ages 3 to 8 years old. Oxana had almost no interaction with humans. Oxana rapidly learned how to behave like a dog and began only walking on all fours. She would bark instead of try to speak, and she would eat raw meat. By the early 90s, Oxana no longer identified as a human. She identified as a dog. And it was in the early 90s when a passerby happened to see Oxana running around on all fours in the back of her house in the woods. And they called the police wondering what was wrong with this person. The police show up and Oxana's dog family runs out and starts barking at the police to protect Oxana. And Oxana would start barking ferociously to protect herself from being captured. But eventually the police would use meat to lure the rest of the dogs away so they could retrieve the child. When she was taken into custody, doctors saw that she not only had forgotten how to walk on two legs, she also couldn't speak. And doctors were concerned that because she had had almost no exposure to human language for all those formative early years that she might not actually have the capacity to speak anymore. Oxana was taken to an orphanage where she would eventually learn how to walk on two legs. And amazingly, she would learn how to speak. But despite these incredible gains she made towards re-entering society, her experience living with the dogs had really left a mark on her.
Although she could speak, she could only speak in monotone with no rhythm and no intonation. And it was actually difficult to follow what she was saying because of that. A psychologist did an assessment of Oxana and determined that her mental capacity was only that of a six-year-old despite being a young adult at the time of this assessment. By the time she was 22 years old and had more or less re-entered society, she finally was able to have a boyfriend and he didn't know much about her past. But when she decided to show him how easy it was for her to run around and bark like a dog, it apparently scared him and he broke up with her and did not see her again. Today, Oxana lives on a farm taking care of animals and she was recently interviewed on a Ukrainian talk show where she says she no longer wants to live like or act like a dog. She just wants to be a person. Here is some footage of Oxana Mallaya acting like a dog.
After being apart for many years, identical twin sisters Ursula and Sabina Ericson were finally reunited on May 15th, 2008. Within 24 hours of their long- awaited reunion, the 41-year-old Swedish sisters boarded a ferry for Liverpool, England. They arrived in Liverpool at 8:30 in the morning on Saturday, May 17th, and their first stop was going to the St. An's police station where Sabina would tell them that she's very concerned for the safety of her kids back in Ireland. The police would say, "Okay, we'll follow up." And they got in touch with their counterparts in Dublin, Ireland, who went over to the house, and everything was fine. So the women leave the police station on foot and they make their way over to a bus stop and they ultimately board a bus bound for London at about 11:30 in the morning. So they get in the bus and they start moving and the driver asks them to take their luggage and put it in the luggage hold. But the women aggressively refuse to give up their luggage and in fact they start clutching their luggage against their chest. So, the driver starts to feel really uncomfortable about having these two women on the bus and ultimately decides to just pull over at a service station outside of the city and tell them to get off the bus. They get off and the driver ends up calling the police and telling them, "There's something weird going on with these two women. I don't know what's inside their bags, but you might want to come check it out." As it happened, there was already a police officer at the service station who came right over to the women and started talking to them as the bus driver took off. During their conversation, the police officer felt like these two women were not a threat to anybody and it was just a big misunderstanding and they let them go.
So, the officer leaves and these two women who don't have a car start walking down the highway on foot. Shortly thereafter, a security camera on the highway picks up the two women walking down the median of this very busy highway. And at some point, they try to cross the street. And it's obvious as you're watching this video that they're not going to make it. There's so many cars. And immediately Sabina gets hit by a car. Now, Sabina was only grazed by the car, so she was okay. And she and her sister went back to the median of this highway. But enough motorists saw this happen that they called the police.
And it just so happened that the responding patrol car that was in the area was being shadowed by a film crew that was filming for a TV show called Traffic Cops. So this patrol car shows up with cameras rolling and they're able to get the sisters from the median over to the shoulder on the other side of the road and they're talking to them like what's going on? What are you doing here? And on camera everything seems totally fine. Like there is no major issues here. These women were just stranded and were making some bad decisions walking down a highway on foot. Then all of a sudden Ursula turns away from the officers and tries to run into traffic and there are cars whizzing by. They have not stopped traffic and one of the officers manages to grab her arm but only gets her jacket which she's able to wrigle out of before launching into traffic. Literally leaping into traffic and gets hit by a huge truck going 60 m an hour and gets thrown down the road. Literally a second later as everyone's like, "What is going on?"
Sabina yells, "They're going to steal your organs." And she leaps into traffic and gets hit by another car.
Immediately, police run in the road.
They stop traffic and they go up to Ursula who was the first to get hit and they see her legs are definitely broken but she's alive. As for Sabina, she was totally unconscious and they didn't know if she was going to make it. When the paramedics finally show up, Ursula, who has the broken legs, fights to sit up and they're trying to tell her like, "Lay down. You're hurt. You have shattered legs. You're lucky to be alive. Lay down." She's not listening.
In fact, she's violently trying to sit up and she starts spitting at the paramedics and the police and screaming obscenities at them like they're trying to hurt her and they're like, "We're the police. We're the paramedics. We're trying to help you." At the same time, Sabina regains consciousness. And even though paramedics and police are trying to keep her laying on the ground, she begins fighting her way up and is pushing the police off of her and finally stands up and literally squares off with one of the police officers and decks her in the face before running down the road. Police would have to run down the road after her and literally surround her as she's got her fists up like she's going to fight anybody that touches her and they would have to tackle her to the ground and put her in handcuffs just to keep her from hurting herself. Both sisters would be transported to the hospital and when they got there they both apparently were acting normal again. Ursula because of her broken legs would be admitted to the hospital and apparently she would stay normal and would eventually make a recovery and would be released. There were no charges pressed against her. As for Sabina, the doctors checked her out and she didn't appear to have any injuries, so they released her and she was brought to the police station to be charged for punching the police officer in the face. That day, Sabina would plead guilty to her charges and would be sentenced to one day in custody that she served that night. The next day, she was released. So, Sabina leaves the police station on foot and later that night, she's walking down the road when she sees two men walking towards her who were named Glenn and Peter. She stops them and she says, "Hey, I'm looking for a bed and breakfast. Are there any good ones nearby?" And Glenn would say, "You know, it's funny. I own a bed and breakfast. You can stay at mine."
Initially, Sabina seemed hesitant, like perhaps this was a trap. But ultimately, she agrees, and the three of them go back to Glenn's B&B. Once they got there, Sabina apparently was constantly looking out all of the windows, acting very paranoid. And then at one point, she offers the men a cigarette, and the men accept, and she hands them their cigarette, and she's about to light their cigarettes when she suddenly snatches them out of their mouths and says, "Oh, these might be poisoned." And she throws them in the trash. Just before midnight, Peter leaves and Glenn and Sabina go to sleep in their respective rooms. The next day, Glenn gets up to make tea and food for Sabina, who's downstairs in the kitchen. But Glenn realizes he's out of tea bags. So, he goes outside and he hollers to his neighbor Frank and says, "Hey, can I borrow some tea bags?" Frank gives him the tea bags. Glenn goes back inside.
About a minute later, Frank recalls seeing Glenn stagger out of the B&B, clutching his stomach, screaming, "She stabbed me." And apparently his last words were, "Frank, take care of my dog." before he ultimately died. Frank immediately calls the police and Sabina immediately leaves the B&B and takes off running. She gets to a highway and she's running along the side of this highway and a motorist named Josh sees Sabina running and she's clutching a hammer that she's repeatedly hitting herself in the head with as she's running. Josh drives well past her and gets out to try to intercept her. But as she's running past him, she pulls a roof tile out of her pocket and throws it and hits Josh in the head. She runs past Josh, who's now clutching his head and can't stop her. She gets to this bridge that overlooks another road and she leaps off. It's 40 ft to the ground. And when she hits the ground, she breaks both ankles and fractures her skull, but she lives and narrowly escapes being hit by another car. Eventually, police and paramedics are called who transfer Sabina to a hospital where she once again is acting totally normal. Nothing like the crazy person that killed Glenn or was throwing roof tiles just hours earlier. Sabina would ultimately be arrested for murdering Glenn, and she would plead guilty to manslaughter. But she gave absolutely no explanation of why any of this happened. It was like she didn't understand and was a different person. Now, the defense claimed that although Sabina certainly killed Glenn, she should have diminished responsibility because she was suffering from a condition known as folly ad. It's a French term that means madness of two.
And basically, it only presents itself in identical twins where one twin has a psychotic break and they transmit their insanity to the other twin. And amazingly, the prosecution accepted this claim and they only gave Sabina 5 years for her crimes. Sabina would serve her 5-year sentence and was released in 2011 and to this day is a free woman. Here are some highlights from that film crew that captured Ursula and Sabina acting totally crazy on the side of the highway.
In June of 2011, law student Lauren Giddings was only one test away from completing her dream and becoming a public defender. Even though she had a ton of studying still to do, she had taken off the first week in June to go to her sister's wedding, where she was the maid of honor. Right before she left the wedding to go back to school, she joked with her family that she was going to be locking herself in the library and just studying 24/7 and that nobody should get in touch with her. But when she got back to campus, none of her classmates that she studied with saw her at the library. And in fact, when they didn't see her for a couple of days, they started reaching out to her and texting her and calling her to see if she was okay. But she never picked up.
She never wrote back. And so, no one knew what was going on with her. One of Lauren's classmates would reach out to Lauren's sister and would ask her, "Hey, have you talked to your sister at all?
Cuz we haven't seen her." And Lauren's sister would write back and say, "Oh, no. Everything is just fine. Lauren told us before she left the wedding that she was going to be locking herself away and just studying 24/7, so I'm sure everything is just fine." But this classmate wasn't convinced because this felt very uncharacteristic of Lauren to not study at the library and then not to pick up any phone calls or text messages. So she would call the police and say, "Hey, can you please go check on Lauren's apartment because I think something's wrong." So a police officer goes over to Lauren's apartment and knocks on the door. Lauren doesn't answer. They try the door. It's locked.
The officer goes outside and looks around the outside of her apartment.
There's no broken windows. There's no obvious signs of a break-in. And so the officer leaves and says, "I can't do anything else unless you guys file a missing person report." So a couple of days go by and there's still no word from Lauren. And at this point, Lauren's family is now concerned. And they do file a missing person's report. So the police go back to Lauren's apartment.
They try knocking. She doesn't come to the door. The door is still locked. So they get the owner of the apartment building to open up her door. And when they go inside, Lauren's not in there.
And at first, it doesn't seem like anything is wrong until they notice her cell phone, her keys, her purse, and her laptop are all still in there. This made the police think there could be something sinister happening here. And so, they went to Lauren's friends and family, and they asked, "Does she have any enemies? Does she have any reason to be fearful for her life?" Initially, they said, "No, no one would want to harm Lauren. Everybody loves Lauren."
But Lauren's sister would say to the police that there was actually one comment Lauren made a year ago that now seemed a little bit more relevant.
Lauren had just got back from a vacation and she noticed there were things in her apartment that seemed like they had been moved, like someone else had been here, but no one was supposed to be in her apartment. And so she told her sister and the two of them talked about it a little bit, but it was quickly forgotten about because there wasn't a reasonable explanation and Lauren was so busy with school she didn't pursue it. After police have done a thorough investigation of the inside of Lauren's apartment, they move outside of her apartment and begin scanning the exterior of the building and they make a huge discovery. An officer who was looking in the dumpster noticed this big black trash bag that looked out of place. And when he tried to move it, it was very heavy and when they opened it, they found a human torso and it was Lawrence. Right before this discovery was made, a news crew had shown up outside the apartment building and was trying to interview people that lived in the apartment complex because they had been tipped off that somebody who was living here had been missing for over a week and now police were getting involved. They saw what looked like a resident of the building looking visibly shaken up watching the police doing their investigation and they went over to interview him. It would turn out his name was Steven McDaniel and he was Lauren's neighbor and he was a classmate of hers in law school. The interviewer asked Stephen, "What was your last interaction with Lauren?" And Steven became really focused on how he had not seen her in the last week. And in fact, speaking on behalf of my other classmates, no one's seen her. She must have just vanished. As they're doing this interview, right on the other side of a bush, this police officer discovers Lauren's torso. And the news kind of gets out to the interviewer, they've found a body. And the interviewer says out loud to Steven, "It looks like they found a body." And Steven just completely changes and he goes, "A body?" And then he goes completely silent to the point where the interviewer says, "Are you okay?" And he just stands there looking completely distant before walking away from the interviewer, sitting down with his back turned and hyperventilates before the interview ends. Once this case went from missing person to homicide, the police started searching all the rooms on Lauren's floor. And Steven's room is right next to Lawrence, so he was the first room they searched. Apparently, as they began searching his room, he was standing just outside the door and sweating profusely and drank over 10 bottles of water. In his apartment, they found a key to Lauren's apartment. And what he would do is whenever she was gone, he would sneak into her room and download her hard drive, as well as steal little souvenirs like small articles of clothing and other things that he would hoard in his apartment.
When they went on Steven's computer and checked his browser history, basically the only things he did on the internet were look at Lauren's Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. But the creepiest thing they found was this camera that was literally duct taped to this long pole. And on the camera were all these surveillance videos of Lauren because what he would do is he would go outside and he would hoist up this camera and he would film her through her windows in the middle of the night. Steven was quickly charged with Lauren's murder, to which he plead guilty, and he would openly confess to the details of how she died in court. Most times, he used this surveillance footage to confirm she was not in her apartment so he could sneak in and steal from her. But on the day she was murdered, he would use that camera technique to confirm she was home. And shortly after confirming she was in fact home and asleep, he put on a mask and used his key to get into her apartment and walked right into her room, which woke her up. According to Steven, she apparently sat up and said, "You need to leave." At this point, he jumps on the bed, and in their struggle, his mask would come off, and Lauren would recognize it's clearly Steven, and she would plead with him by name to stop, but he didn't stop, and he would strangle her to death. Afterwards, he dragged her into the bathroom and began cutting her up into fairly small pieces.
Some of those pieces got flushed down the toilet. The others were put in bags, and only one of those bags was ever discovered, and that was the one of her torso. Steven was ultimately given a life sentence. Here is a highlight of Steven's interview when it's revealed that they've discovered Lauren's body.
>> I no one has seen her since Saturday. I haven't seen anything. I mean, you always hear noise outside, but it's just people walking by pretty much.
I We just don't know where she is, man.
>> What about um in the like the parking lot area? I know they've been doing a lot of I think that's where they have recovered the body or whatever they recovered from there. Howdy.
>> Had you heard Had you seen anything there?
>> Had you seen anything there?
>> I >> I mean, we don't know if this is the same person. You know what I mean? Like, they took out a body there earlier. We don't know if it's the same person or not. So, that's why we're trying to ask people if they know who lived there.
>> Are you okay, sir?
>> I think I need to sit down.
>> Okay.
Heat. Heat.
Salt wind curls around your face.
Shadows bend in the harbor's grace. Your voice drifts like a midnight tide, pulling me where the dark can.
You were standing in the hallway like laughing like everything felt right. I was there but just out of you. Close enough but never you.
Every word you said I kept inside. Built a world where you were mine. You looked at me like just a friend. Didn't know where my heart had been.
I try to hide in my smile. Stay quiet all this while.
You never knew the way I felt. Every night I fought myself.
So, that's going to do it, guys. Let me know what you thought of these three stories in the comments and I will pin the best comment at the top of the comments section. If you enjoyed today's story and you haven't done this already, please ask the like button if you can borrow their car and then return it to them with the gas gauge on empty. Also, please subscribe to this channel and turn on
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