KM Classic: The Decapitation of Eddie King w/ Derek Hayes from Monsters Among Us
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody's Zevin here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: I have to apologize there is no new episode of
Speaker 1: Kind of Murdery today. I just got too busy with
Speaker 1: the rest of life. I will be back though on
Speaker 1: June third for the conclusion of the besie Fara story.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, today, please enjoy a Kind of
Speaker 1: Murdery classic entitled The Decapitation of Eddie King, featuring Derek
Speaker 1: Hayes from The Monsters among Us podcasts. I hope you
Speaker 1: like it. I know I loved recording it. Thank you
Speaker 1: once again for listening to Kind of Murdery.
Speaker 2: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 2: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
Speaker 2: we recommend you stop listening now.
Speaker 1: California's rugged and scenic northwestern corner is the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Great Pacific, northwest of the Great the region of
Speaker 1: untained and primitive beauty, and the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 1: has now joined efforts with the also has the highest
Speaker 1: rate of us. There's a lot of evil here, a
Speaker 1: lot of evil. This is kind of Murdery and you're
Speaker 1: entering the Emerald Triangle. Wow, that was nuts. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to kind of Murdery. I'm your host, zevn Odelberg.
Speaker 1: Thank you for deciding to be here today. We will
Speaker 1: be visiting the town of Samoa, California. Now, just across
Speaker 1: Humboldt Bay from Eureka, California, on a narrow peninsula, in
Speaker 1: a tsunami zone and butted up against the sand dunes,
Speaker 1: sit the coastal hamlets of Manila and Samoa, California. Given
Speaker 1: that the Pacific Ocean waters there are frigid fifty two degrees,
Speaker 1: the weather is mostly foggy, windy, rainy, chili, and the
Speaker 1: sands are gray, the irony of their Polynesian paradise names
Speaker 1: is not lost on the fewer than one thousand combined
Speaker 1: residents of both communities. Once upon a time, in the
Speaker 1: decades immediately before and after the dawn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: in the heyday of the redwood timber industry, flush with
Speaker 1: lagger bear and wealth, Samoa was known as Coney Island West. Today,
Speaker 1: modern Samoa is functionally a ghost town. In fact, in Samoa,
Speaker 1: ghost town is much more than just a general designation.
Speaker 1: The place is famously haunted, in particular a street of
Speaker 1: abandoned row houses known as Cadman Court. Enter one of
Speaker 1: these desolate structures at your own risk, and you might
Speaker 1: find the walls splattered with dried black splashes of old blood,
Speaker 1: evidence of clandestine ceremonies performed even now by covens of
Speaker 1: witches from Eureka who descend on Samoa's Cadman Court and
Speaker 1: meet secretly at House Number eighteen, drawing upon its dark
Speaker 1: spiritual energy to perform witchcraft and ritualistic animal sacrifice. Witches
Speaker 1: sacrificing chickens in abandoned ghost town haunted houses seems like
Speaker 1: the perfect segue to introduce my guest today. It's the
Speaker 1: Prince of the Paranormal, the Maestro of Monsters, the King
Speaker 1: of the Things that go bump in the night, mister
Speaker 1: Derrick Hayes from The Monsters among Us Podcasts. Hey Derek,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 3: Heyze Evan, I appreciate it, and I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to steal each and every one of those introductions right there.
Speaker 3: Those were perfect.
Speaker 1: I had fun coming up with it. I was particularly
Speaker 1: proud of the King of the Things that Go bubb.
Speaker 3: The theat That was my favorite one, honestly, And you know,
Speaker 3: I write constantly for the show, and I have such
Speaker 3: a hard time coming up with new phrases and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. I feel myself repeating over and over. So
Speaker 3: congratulations on that. That's a winner.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, so, m au Is. It's known
Speaker 1: by its legion of fans monsters among us, and I'm
Speaker 1: part of that legion, by the way, as are my
Speaker 1: wife and daughter. Now are you on break at the moment?
Speaker 1: Am I right about that?
Speaker 3: We come back today, Actually, I think the new episode
Speaker 3: posted as we're recording this. I think Sarah's upstairs toiling
Speaker 3: away getting that thing posted. And we're coming back with
Speaker 3: a special episode's special episode Tales of the Cloth, which
Speaker 3: is all religious based stories. You have churches, possessions, that
Speaker 3: kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love that stuff, the mythos of it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the angels and the demons and the possessions and just
Speaker 1: kind of the epic proportions.
Speaker 3: I'm the same way, and I think I start the
Speaker 3: show saying something similar. You know, I'm not a religious person,
Speaker 3: but the historical aspect of it and the I don't
Speaker 3: want to say pageantry, that's not the right word, but
Speaker 3: the ritual of everything, it just fascinates me. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of interest there, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of i'll call it magic for lack of a better term,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot of energy, a lot of synergy,
Speaker 3: whatever it is out there, there's there's some sort of
Speaker 3: energy connected to that that even somebody like me that's
Speaker 3: not religious can feel and can appreciate.
Speaker 1: As a huge fan of the paranormal or of true
Speaker 1: crime too, it's something about these stories that have an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of emotional leverage. Yeah, that's what the angels
Speaker 1: and demons and all the history and all the blood
Speaker 1: and all of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, some wild stories too. I mean, if you
Speaker 3: really break it down, there's some wild stories out there.
Speaker 1: Speaking of wild stories, So this season of Kind of
Speaker 1: Murdery is set in the Emerald Triangle, the combination of
Speaker 1: Mendocino Trinity and Humboldt Counties now Humble County, besides being
Speaker 1: the center of the wheat business, is allegedly home to Bigfoot. Derek,
Speaker 1: have you run across many cryptids in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: during your illustrious career.
Speaker 3: You touched on it there, I mean if you were
Speaker 3: going to have a monster from that area, it's obviously Bigfoot.
Speaker 3: Willow Creek is in that area. I can't tell you
Speaker 3: exactly which county it's in, but that's Bigfoot Central essentially.
Speaker 3: If you go to Willow Creek, every corner has a
Speaker 3: statue or a painting of Bigfoot. There's museums, there's bookstores,
Speaker 3: and it's near where the Patterson Gimlin film was shot
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty seven. It was in that same area.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Bigfoot's king in that area for sure. As
Speaker 3: far as anything spooky's concerned.
Speaker 1: Absolutely true. Well, Willow Creek is in fact in Humboldt County,
Speaker 1: as it is Samoa where we are going today. Shall
Speaker 1: we jump into our story of murder in mayhem in Samoa, California.
Speaker 3: I can't wait, all right, can't wait for some murder?
Speaker 1: Well, then you're in luck, because the show's called kind
Speaker 1: of Murdery. And this is the story of the murder
Speaker 1: of Edward King, a small time drug dealer from Eureka,
Speaker 1: who was killed in Samoa, decapitated and buried in the
Speaker 1: sand dunes, but possibly not in that order. And to
Speaker 1: tell you this horribly fascinating tale, I'm going to begin
Speaker 1: by taking us back to Eureka, California, on June twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. Here's what happened. The North Coast Mercantile
Speaker 1: Company at two two five First Street reported to the
Speaker 1: police that six cases of beer had been stolen from
Speaker 1: their warehouse. Later that night, a noise complaints called in
Speaker 1: from a nearby residential neighborhood, where the police find six
Speaker 1: teenagers between the ages of eighteen and nineteen having a
Speaker 1: house party with six cases of beer matching the description
Speaker 1: of those that went missing from the North Coast a
Speaker 1: mercantile case each not a bad showing. Well. The youths
Speaker 1: are arrested for disturbing the piece and then a rained
Speaker 1: on burglary charges related to the stolen beer. You know
Speaker 1: it all sounds relatively harmless, right, maybe good fun adolescent
Speaker 1: high jinks of a group of rascally friends basking in
Speaker 1: the vulnerability of being nineteen peak testosterone levels. Right. Be
Speaker 1: honest with me, Derek, Have you did you ever steal
Speaker 1: booze as a teenager?
Speaker 3: No, sadly, I didn't. I I was very boring as
Speaker 3: a teenager. I worked a lot quite frankly, I think
Speaker 3: I had like three jobs when I was in high
Speaker 3: school at the same time, so I was always super busy.
Speaker 3: I was interested in creating things in that kind. I
Speaker 3: didn't have time for trouble. That changed when I reached college, however,
Speaker 3: But when I was in high school, when I was
Speaker 3: that age, I was a good kid.
Speaker 1: No time to be shotgunning a case of blats with
Speaker 1: your buddies. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that came like two years later, and it was
Speaker 3: probably Stone or Natty Light.
Speaker 1: Perfect, Perfect, I feel better. So of these six beer bandits, right,
Speaker 1: one of them had a much darker path than youthful
Speaker 1: hijinks ahead of him, much darker than a noisy night
Speaker 1: of drunken revelry with the boys. He was nineteen then.
Speaker 1: His name was Freddie L. Kopic And the first part
Speaker 1: of Edward King's murder story is made up of Freddy's facts.
Speaker 1: Now I'm calling them Freddy's facts because at this point
Speaker 1: in human history, Derek, I think we all understand that
Speaker 1: even if no one is lying, and often someone is,
Speaker 1: the facts of a story can vary dramatically depending on
Speaker 1: who's doing the telling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the saying History's written by the victors? I
Speaker 3: mean nobody wants to hear with the people that lost
Speaker 3: their lives has to say about about history, So it
Speaker 3: kind of applies here, I.
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah, I think it does. That's dark right on
Speaker 1: theme for the show. It makes me wonder have you
Speaker 1: ever had because I know on MAAU you have listeners
Speaker 1: call in and tell you their real life paranormal experiences, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So have you ever had two different people call in
Speaker 1: describing the exact same paranormal occurrence with a totally different
Speaker 1: sequence of events or understanding or explanation. Is that something
Speaker 1: like that ever happened?
Speaker 3: Actually, weirdly enough, it happens all the time, and we
Speaker 3: end up with certain themes. We ended up with the
Speaker 3: mirrored men that way. You know, a couple people just
Speaker 3: started calling in and all these stories seem very similar,
Speaker 3: so we just kind of lump them all in, and
Speaker 3: before you knew it, it sort of created this character
Speaker 3: in this world that these entities or whatever these things
Speaker 3: are exist in. And then it happens at a lighter
Speaker 3: scale too. Recently, toward the end of season twelve, I
Speaker 3: had two separate calls where somebody saw a person turn
Speaker 3: into a cat and walk away, and those two calls
Speaker 3: came within, like I don't know, a couple hours of
Speaker 3: each other, from across the country. One was in the
Speaker 3: South somewhere, one was in Michigan.
Speaker 1: So that's intense.
Speaker 3: It does happen. It does happen.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me that Professor McGonagall has a twin sister,
Speaker 1: pretty much, that's a takeaways, that's what we're getting at.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, let's get back to the murder
Speaker 1: of Edward King here. So in November of nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: three years after the beer heist, Edward Leon King was
Speaker 1: a twenty one year old drug dealer based out of Eureka.
Speaker 1: King had a bad reputation as a drug dealer, even
Speaker 1: among other drug dealers. Now, I don't mean a bad
Speaker 1: reputation like Tony Montana, not bad, like he was a
Speaker 1: man to be feared. Edward was the nervous sort. He
Speaker 1: had a bad reputation for adulterating his merchandise and cheating
Speaker 1: his customers where he could. Probably what made him nervous.
Speaker 1: That kind of business practice can get you killed in
Speaker 1: any industry, but especially in narcotics. In fact, seems like
Speaker 1: Edward's lack of honor among thieves or I guess a
Speaker 1: fair deal among dealers, if you will, We're catching up
Speaker 1: to him. Shortly before his murder, his mother said he
Speaker 1: was planning to leave town for fear of violence. It's
Speaker 1: clear now that he didn't leave town quickly enough. Early
Speaker 1: November nineteen seventy one, Edward King left home in his
Speaker 1: car and drove out to Samoa near the dunes. He
Speaker 1: never returned home, but mysteriously his car did. When King
Speaker 1: was reported missing, Sergeant Graham of the Eureka Police spoke
Speaker 1: to Freddie Koppick, our man from the teenage beer heist
Speaker 1: three years earlier, who was now a known associate of
Speaker 1: Kings in the humble drug trade. Kopiic steadfastly denied any
Speaker 1: knowledge of King's whereabouts. Shortly thereafter, King's mother notified police
Speaker 1: of blood on the seat of her son's car, but
Speaker 1: there was no sign of him and no body was
Speaker 1: found then. Almost a year later, in October of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, a headless skeleton, still wearing clothes and jewelry,
Speaker 1: was found buried in a shallow grave in the Samoa
Speaker 1: Sand Dunes. Police suspected it could be the missing man
Speaker 1: Edward King, and when King's sister identified the clothing and
Speaker 1: jewelry as matching what King had been wearing when he
Speaker 1: went missing, they were sure of it. But was it
Speaker 1: really King? Where was his head?
Speaker 3: It's a good question. We mean to interrupt you, but that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, noticably, it's a good question. How do you positively
Speaker 1: identify a body with no head? Right? You know?
Speaker 3: My first thought here is you know, I'm always thinking
Speaker 3: problem solving to kind of come up with solutions. Here
Speaker 3: it almost sounds like he this is the first step
Speaker 3: to fake in your own death. A body with your
Speaker 3: jewelry and your clothing and no head, that would be
Speaker 3: the first I don't know how this ends, but that's
Speaker 3: the first step to faking your death, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Gift your outfit and you're blinging to someone else, a
Speaker 1: transient or somebody, then murder them to get.
Speaker 3: Somebody up if you have to, I mean, wherever you
Speaker 3: find n so you don't even need a body at
Speaker 3: that point.
Speaker 1: A way for him to escape the violence that he
Speaker 1: saw coming. Yeah, faking your own death, it's a tried
Speaker 1: and true classic.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's safer than skip in town.
Speaker 1: Count de Monte Cristo. So, where was that head well.
Speaker 1: On November fourteenth, nineteen seventy one, about eleven months before
Speaker 1: the body was found, twenty two year old Freddy Kopk
Speaker 1: and forty year old Clayton Rumba were driving from Arcada
Speaker 1: to Eureka planning to meet up with King near the
Speaker 1: dunes in Samoa to buy drugs. They were repeat customers
Speaker 1: and King knew them well. According to Koppic, the older
Speaker 1: man Rumba was curious with King for previously cheating him
Speaker 1: out of two dollars by selling him fake LSD. Apparently
Speaker 1: there was nothing on the tabs.
Speaker 3: That's quite quite the grift right there. Depending on the
Speaker 3: person's imagination, you might be able to get.
Speaker 1: Away wait, yeah, right, exactly hey, Or depending on how
Speaker 1: messed up they are in general, maybe it was great
Speaker 1: acid and he was tweaked out or something to even notice.
Speaker 3: That that possibly could have happened to placebo effect.
Speaker 1: Now that real versus fake question, You know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I find so captivating about monsters among
Speaker 1: us is how utterly credible the callers that you choose are.
Speaker 1: But I imagine as you listen to these calls, the
Speaker 1: issue of real versus fake must come up and I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you navigate that, Like, how do you spot
Speaker 1: somebody that's just trying to catch your attention versus somebody
Speaker 1: who really saw what they saw and experienced what they experienced.
Speaker 3: Well, the beauty of the show is that it's in
Speaker 3: the caller'sone voice, the experiencer's own voice, so you can
Speaker 3: hear right away whether or not it's affecting them, And
Speaker 3: it affects everybody different. You know, nerves hit people a
Speaker 3: different way, or you know post traumatic fear, you know,
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress, that kind of thing hits somebody a
Speaker 3: different way. So that's the first telltale right there. I
Speaker 3: can hear it in their voice. And I've done so
Speaker 3: many calls. I've listened to literally ten thousand calls probably
Speaker 3: since I've started doing the show, and now I know,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just instant. I can hear it in
Speaker 3: the first ten seconds what the person's you know, mentality
Speaker 3: is going into this. Some of the other things is
Speaker 3: if they include a lot of detail, then that's usually
Speaker 3: not always, but it could be as signed, especially when
Speaker 3: it comes to like cryptids or Bigfoot. Essentially, you know,
Speaker 3: if every single Bigfoot trope is included in this story.
Speaker 3: I kind of raise red flags there. I'm like, this
Speaker 3: doesn't happen to anybody, and it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: a little more far fetched. But the reality of the
Speaker 3: situation is there's almost no calls that I won't play,
Speaker 3: and I don't go around picking once because they sound
Speaker 3: more real than others. I pick mostly on subject. So
Speaker 3: it's just that the callers that call in are genuine.
Speaker 3: Ninety nine point nine percent of them are genuine. They
Speaker 3: want their story shared, and you know, they just want
Speaker 3: somebody to listen to them. They've had these experiences they
Speaker 3: can't explain and they just want to get it off
Speaker 3: their chest, some you know, some closure on what took place.
Speaker 3: So quite frankly, I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 3: are trying to feel me surprised.
Speaker 1: Probably in fact, they love your show because they feel
Speaker 1: a kinship with what's happening to people. And as you said,
Speaker 1: they need to share and be believed, and you offer
Speaker 1: them that opportunity, and that's that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it happens a lot where somebody will call
Speaker 3: in and say, you know, this happened to me when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, and I've been terrified to talk
Speaker 3: about it my entire entire life. And last week you
Speaker 3: played a call that had the exact same story, you know,
Speaker 3: the exact same thing happened to somebody else, And I
Speaker 3: just want to thank you for you know, sharing that
Speaker 3: and allowing me to feel like I'm not the only
Speaker 3: person on the planet that saw this glowing figure in
Speaker 3: my bedroom or you know, whatever the case might be.
Speaker 3: Early on, I used to joke and now I think
Speaker 3: it's a bit unsensitive, but I used to joke it's
Speaker 3: paranormal therapy. Essentially, That's what it is. You know, people
Speaker 3: come on to either hear about other things that they
Speaker 3: can correlate with their stories, or they point blank share
Speaker 3: it and they want reactions. They want to hear like,
Speaker 3: am I crazy? Is this something that some other people
Speaker 3: have seen? And you know that little verification goes a
Speaker 3: long way to help people feel a little bit more normal, like.
Speaker 1: A little more normal in the paranormal. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I I suppose I don't think that it's insensitive to
Speaker 1: call it paranormal therapy. I mean, I think all of
Speaker 1: us yearn for a connection in the life that we're living,
Speaker 1: in the experiences that we're having a sense of community
Speaker 1: in the way that we perceive reality. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: some veterans talk about part of the reason people believe
Speaker 1: that World War two vets were able to handle PTSD
Speaker 1: better than Vietnam vets was that they all came home
Speaker 1: on a ship, and it took about a month to
Speaker 1: get home, and during that time they were all together
Speaker 1: sharing their trauma and their experiences. And for Vietnam vets,
Speaker 1: they hopped on a plane and twenty four hours later
Speaker 1: they were back in just the regular Bucolic American world,
Speaker 1: and the reality break was just too intense.
Speaker 3: And they were expected just to make that shift that
Speaker 3: nobody can make.
Speaker 1: So I think there's I think there really is something
Speaker 1: therapeutic about the opportunity to share your experience with other
Speaker 1: people who have been there. Not that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: equate war trauma with seeing Bigfoot, but I think the
Speaker 1: point is valid.
Speaker 3: Some witnesses do, though I should point that out that
Speaker 3: some witnesses to them, it's that life and death that
Speaker 3: they thought they were going to die, And I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the ultimate fear of war, is that you're gonna
Speaker 3: lose your life or your loved ones will. So its
Speaker 3: certainly I see what you're saying by not equivalent, But
Speaker 3: to some of these witnesses it might be that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all live in a subjective reality. It's
Speaker 1: impossible to gauge someone else's trauma. Yeah, speaking of trauma,
Speaker 1: let's get back to our murder story. Freddy Koppik and
Speaker 1: Clayton Rumbar are driving out to Samoa to meet up
Speaker 1: with King to buy drugs. Right, and as I had mentioned,
Speaker 1: and Rumba on the drive, he's really working himself into
Speaker 1: a lather over that two dollars in fake acid. Now
Speaker 1: likely this is not the first of many small clues
Speaker 1: that King ought to have heated along the way that
Speaker 1: his dishonest dealing would eventually catch up to him. Now,
Speaker 1: on the drive, Rumbas shows Kopic a twenty two caliber
Speaker 1: pistol and tells him he's going to kill Edward King
Speaker 1: for cheating him out of that two dollars worth of LSD.
Speaker 1: Some folks really hold grudges.
Speaker 3: Huh, Yeah, it's for two dollars.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I guess, adjusted for inflation from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one that two dollars might be like six or
Speaker 1: eight dollars. But yeah, still.
Speaker 3: Probably forty runnestly, but even still at forty dollars, that's wow.
Speaker 1: So they meet up with King, they buy meth amphetamine.
Speaker 1: Then Kopic and Rumbas shoot up, and Kopic lures King
Speaker 1: to their car. King gets inside, Rumbab pulls out the
Speaker 1: twenty two, puts it against the back of King's skull,
Speaker 1: and shoots him in the head execution style. So no
Speaker 1: fake death, no fake death, although, as I pointed out
Speaker 1: at the start, this is Freddy Koppik's story, so we
Speaker 1: may or may not be able to rely on all
Speaker 1: the details. They drag the body out to the sand dunes.
Speaker 1: They bury it then, and this is just bizarre, but
Speaker 1: I guess they were. You know, they had just intervenously
Speaker 1: ingested a huge amount of meth amphetamine, so perhaps we're
Speaker 1: not expecting a lot of logical choices. After burying the body,
Speaker 1: they drive King's car back to his house, not bothering
Speaker 1: or at least failing to clean up the blood on
Speaker 1: the front seat, but was transferred from their clothing since
Speaker 1: they were all in Rumba's car when King was shot
Speaker 1: and blood splattered everywhere. Now, Kopick tells the authorities he
Speaker 1: had previously concealed his knowledge of King's death and the
Speaker 1: whereabouts of the body out of fear for his life
Speaker 1: and the lives of his parents. Rumba had threatened to
Speaker 1: kill them all if Kopick breathed the word of it.
Speaker 1: But upon being arrested for King's murder and subsequently put
Speaker 1: on trial as an accessory to that murder, Kopick's fear
Speaker 1: of Clayton Rumbaugh fades and he lays almost all the
Speaker 1: blame on Rumba. Ultimately, Freddie Kopick is convicted as an
Speaker 1: accessory to Edward King's murder and sentenced to five years
Speaker 1: in prison. Many questions have been answered, and it seems
Speaker 1: the stories of Edward King and Freddi Kopick have by
Speaker 1: and large been told. But there are still a couple
Speaker 1: pointedly mysterious things out there. How after almost a year
Speaker 1: did authorities finally find King's body in the first place?
Speaker 1: Number one? And again, what happened to Edward King's head?
Speaker 1: Copic is certain that the head was on when they
Speaker 1: buried the body.
Speaker 3: It's a classic mistake right there. I mean, I've done
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 1: Ye forget to forget to take the head off. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: I forgot that.
Speaker 3: You got to take off the head.
Speaker 1: I remembered my keys, my glasses, what testicles, spectacles, walllet
Speaker 1: and watch? Got those, but left the head on.
Speaker 3: Shit, did everything but take off the head and wipe
Speaker 3: up the blood. They almost got it.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, So how did they find the body? Where
Speaker 1: was the head? Well, for answers to those questions, we
Speaker 1: turned to the story of Clayton Rumbaugh. What became of
Speaker 1: that now forty one year old Clayton Rumba after that
Speaker 1: fateful night? Well, when Freddy Koppik tells his story prior
Speaker 1: to his trial, the authorities immediately put out a bolo
Speaker 1: on Rumba, who's apparently returned to Oregon. But they quickly
Speaker 1: discover that they're going to have to try Freddy Koppik first,
Speaker 1: because Rumba is already in jail awaiting serious charges other
Speaker 1: charges in Oregon, and the humbled authorities are going to
Speaker 1: have to wait their turn. They can't get their hands
Speaker 1: on Rumba until his Orgon trial concludes. They make the
Speaker 1: rather dubious decision to just go ahead and try Freddy
Speaker 1: Koppik in the meantime, and as I mentioned, he's found
Speaker 1: guilty and given a five year sentence as an accessory
Speaker 1: to the murder of King, which Koppik claims was committed
Speaker 1: by Rumba. So he is an accessory to Rumba's crime.
Speaker 1: So what is the deal with Rumba's organ charges and what,
Speaker 1: if anything, do they have to do with the murder
Speaker 1: of Edward King. Well, the answer is a little bit
Speaker 1: of nothing and a little bit of everything. Fair warning,
Speaker 1: this story is about to take a turn for the
Speaker 1: even grosser. But at least we get to find out
Speaker 1: one how the authorities found King's body and two where
Speaker 1: that darn head went.
Speaker 3: Now, you do a lot of these murder stories. How
Speaker 3: many of them involve a missing head?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. Is this normal? Not as many
Speaker 1: as you think. Although in one of my very first episodes,
Speaker 1: the killer was known as the Torso Killer, not the
Speaker 1: famous Torso Killer out of Cleveland actually, but a different
Speaker 1: Torso Killer.
Speaker 3: Full disclosure, I'm not a big true crime guy, but
Speaker 3: when it comes to serial killers, I'm feeling like, all right,
Speaker 3: that's bordering on paranormal almost. So there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of interest there, But I don't believe so.
Speaker 1: And so maybe it was the same guy then, and
Speaker 1: by the way, thank you for consenting to come out
Speaker 1: the show despite your lukewarm interest at the topic.
Speaker 3: No, no, I mean I love all things creepy, and
Speaker 3: my wife loves true crime, so she's gonna lost them.
Speaker 1: So what do these charges have to do with the story. Well,
Speaker 1: in some ways nothing, and in some ways everything I mentioned.
Speaker 1: This story is about to get even grosser. So hang
Speaker 1: onto your seats, or turn off the show, or whatever
Speaker 1: you need to do. But here we go. Prior to
Speaker 1: being incarcerated in a waiting trial in Organ sometime before
Speaker 1: October nineteen seventy two, when King's body was found, forty
Speaker 1: one year old Rumba is living in a trailer in Wilderville,
Speaker 1: Oregon with his girlfriend, a Miss Smith, and Miss Smith
Speaker 1: is fifteen years old. And here's here, no, and here's
Speaker 1: where it really made my stomach turn. I read many
Speaker 1: articles about this story over many years, from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight to nineteen seventy five and beyond, and not at
Speaker 1: any point in this reporting is any mention made or
Speaker 1: any importance given to the fact that a forty one
Speaker 1: year old man had a fifteen year old girlfriend. I mean,
Speaker 1: they stated as a fact, but nobody states it is
Speaker 1: being problematic. Now, I did some research, and I understand
Speaker 1: at as late as nineteen seventy some news outlets in California,
Speaker 1: not related to this case, but just generally reported that
Speaker 1: the age of consent was sixteen. Still she's fifteen, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the age of consent in California had been
Speaker 1: eighteen since the year nineteen thirteen. In Oregon, the age
Speaker 1: of consent was sixteen until nineteen seventy one, when it
Speaker 1: was raised to eighteen. But again, Rumba's forty one and
Speaker 1: the girl is fifteen, So even in Oregon, this is bad. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Rumba is a pedophile, which no one finds noteworthy. A
Speaker 1: pedophile living in a trailer in Wilderville, Oregon with his
Speaker 1: fifteen year old girlfriend. But that's not germane to the
Speaker 1: story or to his character or anything, according to the reporters,
Speaker 1: which just kind of blew my mind. So around October fourth,
Speaker 1: Smith and Rumba travel from Wilderville, Oregon to Eureka. Rumba
Speaker 1: tells Smith they're going to Eureka because he's been hired
Speaker 1: to kill a man there. Great guy. Now he pays
Speaker 1: a seventy seven year old man named Earl aol Au
Speaker 1: e I'm saying ow. I don't know if I'm saying
Speaker 1: it right, but uh, that's the name. Pays him one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to drive them to Crescent City, a town
Speaker 1: in del Noorth County, about eighty five miles north of Eureka.
Speaker 1: But when they get to Crescent City, Rumba tells the
Speaker 1: seventy seven year old he has to drive them to Eureka.
Speaker 1: And when Earl says, well, that wasn't the deal, Rumba says,
Speaker 1: if you don't drive us to Eureka, I'll kill you.
Speaker 1: I've already killed one man and I'll kill another. So
Speaker 1: Earl drives him to Eureka.
Speaker 3: Good choice, maybe.
Speaker 1: Remember this is the fifteen year old girlfriend, and I
Speaker 1: hate to even call her that, but that's what the
Speaker 1: newspaper says. This is her story. Earl drops them off
Speaker 1: in Eureka. Rumba takes Smith to a house, hands her
Speaker 1: a gun, rings the doorbell like a ding dong dasher,
Speaker 1: and tells Smith to shoot the man who answers the door.
Speaker 1: So he's immediately passing the buck on the hit he's
Speaker 1: been hired to do to his fifteen year old girlfriend. Wow,
Speaker 1: what a guy, I know, right, jeez, please welcome to
Speaker 1: the family, But a woman answers the door and tells
Speaker 1: them the man they're looking for has moved away. Rumba
Speaker 1: back in Eureka, then becomes paranoid that the murder of
Speaker 1: Edward King will be traced to him because his twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber bullet is still in King's skull. So he
Speaker 1: and Smith find their way to the Samoa Dunes, where
Speaker 1: Rumbad digs up King's skeleton and removes the head, which
Speaker 1: he puts in a pillowcase.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say in his rear
Speaker 3: view mirror.
Speaker 1: Trust me, Yeah, like a like an air freshener, like
Speaker 1: one of those Chrisy little Christmas trees.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, who.
Speaker 1: You know, there's probably a market for a miniature severed
Speaker 1: head air fresheners, although I don't know what scent would be.
Speaker 3: Decay, probably right and decay.
Speaker 1: By hook or by crook. They make it back to
Speaker 1: their trailer in Oregon, Rumba with King's skull in the pillowcase,
Speaker 1: and he then hides the skull underneath his bed. Mister,
Speaker 1: this is going to get traced back to me, so
Speaker 1: I got to take the head. Then goes and hides
Speaker 1: the skull under his own bed, although I guess he
Speaker 1: knows where it is that ways, but you.
Speaker 3: Know, unfortunately he knows where it is. And let me
Speaker 3: interject really quick if I may. Yeah, please, this is
Speaker 3: kind of where I come in, because when you start
Speaker 3: putting heads under beds, that's how you get ghosts.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody knows that, right, You're like, that's in
Speaker 1: the cookbook. It's in the Joy of Ghost cook It.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's page two. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's the darkest Shel Silverstein poem ever. Right,
Speaker 1: Heads under.
Speaker 3: Beds, my children's book will be out this fall.
Speaker 1: Heads under Beds, under Birthcase. Look for it on Amazon. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd read it, I'd write it. So let's do it.
Speaker 1: Do it. I'll be proud to promote it on the show. Here,
Speaker 1: let's just go over these facts one more time. Rumba's
Speaker 1: afraid the murder will be traced to him, so he
Speaker 1: travels across state lines from Oregon to California in a
Speaker 1: stranger's car, a stranger who he threatens to murder. Then
Speaker 1: he attempts to have his teenage girlfriend commit a murder
Speaker 1: for hire on his behalf and he digs up Edward
Speaker 1: King's corpse, removes the head, puts it in a pillowcase,
Speaker 1: and likely hitchhikes back to Oregon with the skull in
Speaker 1: a pillowcase, the cross state lines again and hides it
Speaker 1: under his bed. What the f.
Speaker 3: What's the timeline here? I'm a little foggy on when
Speaker 3: King died as opposed to when he was dug up
Speaker 3: and had his head removed. What's the difference in time there?
Speaker 1: So he died on November fourteenth, nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 1: the authorities never found the body. Now this is early
Speaker 1: October Ninetheen seventy two, so it's about eleven months after
Speaker 1: the murder. And you know, Derek, you put your finger
Speaker 1: right on it. Because we've answered one of our key questions,
Speaker 1: which was how did the authorities find King's body? Well,
Speaker 1: they found it after Rumbad dug it up. And question two,
Speaker 1: what happened to King's head? Rumbaugh took it. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the Greek tragedy, the story of Oedipus, when you
Speaker 1: try to avoid your fate, it's those actions that bring
Speaker 1: your fate around and it drops on you like a hammer.
Speaker 3: You're your own undoing.
Speaker 1: Right, his fear of being found out and the actions
Speaker 1: he takes are the only reason they ever find the
Speaker 1: body in the first place. Before that, they basically had
Speaker 1: a missing person. All right, Well again, what about those
Speaker 1: charges he was facing an organ and what do they
Speaker 1: have to do with all this? Right? Well, he was
Speaker 1: scheduled to be tried in Organ right when the Humbled
Speaker 1: authorities went looking for him. So what did he do
Speaker 1: to get arrested and scheduled for trial? Here's what he did.
Speaker 1: He went to Medford, Organ, where he and Smith were
Speaker 1: visiting with a married couple. When the husband allegedly made
Speaker 1: sexual advances towards Smith, Rumbab pulled a gun on the
Speaker 1: couple and held them hostage at gunpoint while Smith mutilated
Speaker 1: the husband with a can opener. Oh, those are the
Speaker 1: charges Rumba is in jail awaiting trial for. And here's
Speaker 1: how it factors into Edward King. When Rumba hears that
Speaker 1: the Humbled authorities are looking for him in relation to
Speaker 1: kings killing, He's afraid, and rightfully so obviously, that they'll
Speaker 1: find King's skull under his bed. So he calls a
Speaker 1: friend from jail and asks the friend to hide the
Speaker 1: skull for him. The friend retrieves the skull and hides
Speaker 1: it under a wash tub on his own property, until
Speaker 1: two days later when the friend's nerve cracks and he
Speaker 1: tells the authorities about the skull. Meanwhile, Rumba is convicted
Speaker 1: on the assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping charges
Speaker 1: and sentenced to fire years in prison. He's then taken
Speaker 1: to California to stand trial for the murder of Edward King.
Speaker 1: At this point, they moved the trial from Eureka to
Speaker 1: Santa Rosa because local feeling and the notoriety of the
Speaker 1: case are running too hot. His trial in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two results in a hung jury. How is
Speaker 1: that possible?
Speaker 3: I was just thinking the same thing. I mean, it
Speaker 3: seems pretty cut and dry. He had the head under
Speaker 3: his bed, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right he did again. The disclaimer being, the first
Speaker 1: part of this story is Copy's version, the second part
Speaker 1: is Smith's version. But the fact that the head was
Speaker 1: under his bed and then under his friend's washtub, which
Speaker 1: sounds like the worst bluegrass band ever, that's just a fact.
Speaker 1: That's an established fact. That's not anyone's version of the story. Well,
Speaker 1: we've been telling everyone's story. So here's Rumbas, and it's
Speaker 1: fairly quick and simple, and it goes like this, Freddy
Speaker 1: Koppak killed King, not me. I wasn't even there. Last
Speaker 1: time I saw King was four days earlier, when I
Speaker 1: went to his apartment to buy some marijuana. I only
Speaker 1: knew where the body was because Freddy Koppick showed me.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know the body was Edward King, and listen.
Speaker 1: I took the skull because I thought it would be
Speaker 1: a funny Halloween prank to play on my fifteen year
Speaker 1: old girlfriend. And I thought it would make a funny
Speaker 1: Halloween decoration, so I hid it under my bed. Then
Speaker 1: I asked my friend to move it because I realized
Speaker 1: how incriminating it would look when they found when I
Speaker 1: found out they wanted me for King's murder.
Speaker 3: And they bought this, or enough of them bought this
Speaker 3: to hang the jury.
Speaker 1: Hm. Well, here's the thing, right, The American justice system
Speaker 1: is a piece of machinery that operates in a particular way.
Speaker 1: Rumba was a piece of garbage. But he wasn't on
Speaker 1: trial for grave robbing. He wasn't on trial for desecrating
Speaker 1: a corpse, conspiracy to commit murder murder for higher statutory
Speaker 1: rape or pedophilia. He was on trial for murder, and
Speaker 1: the jury felt that bat had not been proven and
Speaker 1: they hung. While the state wasn't about to give up,
Speaker 1: he was tried again, and the second time there was
Speaker 1: no hung jury. On January twenty fourth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: four years after the killing of Edward King, Rumba, now
Speaker 1: forty four, was acquitted for the murder of Edward King
Speaker 1: because the jury felt there was too much inconsistency in
Speaker 1: the testimony, and in particular that the state had failed
Speaker 1: to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rumba had killed King,
Speaker 1: or that Freddi Koppik, who testified at Rumba's trial, had
Speaker 1: not killed King. And so Rumba went to prison for
Speaker 1: five years for terrorizing the married couple in Medford, Organ
Speaker 1: and Freddie Koppik did five years as an accessory to
Speaker 1: the murder of Edward King. As for the actual murderer
Speaker 1: of Edward King, no one was ever convicted.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's that's disheartening. I'll be honest with.
Speaker 1: You, it sure is. And you know, here's a couple
Speaker 1: things that really grabbed my imagination about this one of
Speaker 1: them is almost a version of double Jeopardy, which is
Speaker 1: because they couldn't try Rumba and kopic simultaneously because of
Speaker 1: essentially a bureaucratic process where Oregon wouldn't give up Rumba
Speaker 1: in time, and they decided to go forward with Kopis
Speaker 1: trial anyway. I mean, Kopi's testimony was, look, I was there,
Speaker 1: but I didn't kill him. Rumba did. I only helped.
Speaker 1: He was convicted as an accessory. So he was convicted
Speaker 1: as an accessory to the murder that Rumba committed. That
Speaker 1: was the reason for his conviction. And yet Rumba himself
Speaker 1: was not convicted of that murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a catch twenty two or something.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Like, wouldn't you think they had to let
Speaker 1: Kopick out or something they didn't.
Speaker 3: We're honest, It sounds like all these people need to
Speaker 3: be behind Barnes, behind bars in my opinion. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, based on what you said, it almost seems
Speaker 3: like they should be. Uh, he should have been released
Speaker 3: because if there's no murder, I mean, they've they've decided
Speaker 3: that he wasn't well, I guess they didn't decide he
Speaker 3: wasn't murdered. They just decided that what was the gentleman's name, Rumba.
Speaker 3: That's right. They just decided that he wasn't involved apparently,
Speaker 3: so right.
Speaker 1: Right, But Freddie was still convicted as an accessory to
Speaker 1: Rumba murdering King, even though Rumba apparently didn't now.
Speaker 3: Didn't do it? How wild?
Speaker 1: I know, it's it's disheartening, and I find this a
Speaker 1: lot when I'm looking into stories. In season one, there
Speaker 1: was a story where a man killed an elderly woman
Speaker 1: with a clawhammer, and by the time they caught him,
Speaker 1: he was already on a parole violation for robbery with
Speaker 1: a deadly weapon, and so he was looking at five
Speaker 1: years in prison for that, And essentially they had trouble
Speaker 1: or didn't feel like it was a clean cut case
Speaker 1: to convict him for the murder, so they just said
Speaker 1: he's going to prison anyway, and they sent him back
Speaker 1: to prison for the parole violation on the five year
Speaker 1: bid for armed robbery. It seems like a similar decision
Speaker 1: was made here. The authorities just kind of said, both
Speaker 1: these guys are going to prison anyway. But it's sad
Speaker 1: when there's no real importance given to the idea of
Speaker 1: justice for a victim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no matter what the victim was involved in.
Speaker 1: Right. And here's where I think the state made a
Speaker 1: huge mistake in trying Rumban, especially trying him the second time,
Speaker 1: because rumbab by the way testified on his own behalf
Speaker 1: and told the story that I just shared with you
Speaker 1: about I took the skull for a Halloween decoration in prank.
Speaker 1: They should never have let Freddie Koppik. They should never
Speaker 1: have had Freddie Kopic testify for the prosecution, because if
Speaker 1: you just have Rumba tell his story, then you essentially
Speaker 1: have one insane meth head telling a hardly credible, crazy
Speaker 1: ass story that no one's going to believe. But when
Speaker 1: you have copy testify, now you have another deplorable, insane
Speaker 1: meth head telling a crazy story. And now the jury
Speaker 1: gets to choose who they find more credible. And even
Speaker 1: though both stories were absolutely fucking nuts pardon my French,
Speaker 1: they found Rumbaum more credible than Freddy.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's hard to believe. The one thing I'd like
Speaker 3: to say is thankfully this was what forty five fifty
Speaker 3: years ago, but it has it really changed quite honestly.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's changed as much as we'd like
Speaker 1: to believe, especially not in terms of bureaucratic expediency. The
Speaker 1: path of least resistance, the conviction you can get or
Speaker 1: the paper you can get stamped, etc. Is what you
Speaker 1: choose because you've got too many other cases to do with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know now now that I've kind of bummed
Speaker 1: everyone out here, Guess what, Derek, you get the enviable
Speaker 1: task of cheering everybody up. I guess do you have.
Speaker 3: A I brought them a long story?
Speaker 1: Well, then don't worry about cheering him out. Let's just
Speaker 1: give him a break from me. Do you have a
Speaker 1: you have a kind of murdery story you can share
Speaker 1: with us? Well?
Speaker 3: I do, and this one, this is a tragic story
Speaker 3: that I'm not involved in, but I was there for.
Speaker 3: Have you ever heard of Brian Schaeffer out of Columbus, Ohio?
Speaker 1: I haven't. Please please educate me.
Speaker 3: So essentially, Brian Schaffer was a twenty seven year old
Speaker 3: medical student at Ohio State University, and he went to
Speaker 3: a bar that I frequented often while I was I
Speaker 3: don't think I was there the same night that he was,
Speaker 3: But he walked into the bar. I had some talks,
Speaker 3: had maybe had a drink or something. There's a video
Speaker 3: of him stepping into the bar. The bar, there's a
Speaker 3: video of him stepping out, having a word, stepping back in,
Speaker 3: and then he vanishes. They can not find him anywhere.
Speaker 1: I have heard of this story, but please continue. I
Speaker 1: don't know any of.
Speaker 3: Them, shore sure, so I'll get into more detail here.
Speaker 3: So essentially, it took place on April first, two thousand
Speaker 3: and six, two thousand and six. I lived in Columbus
Speaker 3: at the time, and I frequented the bar that he
Speaker 3: went to. It's called the Ugly Tuna Saluna, and it
Speaker 3: was right on High Street, right over by Ohio State's campus.
Speaker 3: I went there all the time. I don't think I
Speaker 3: was there the night that he disappeared. Thankfully, the police
Speaker 3: didn't question me, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Did you meet him before?
Speaker 3: No, I hadn't met him. Or it's a big town.
Speaker 3: I mean, Columbus had a lot of people, so I
Speaker 3: was not familiar with the guy. I only saw the
Speaker 3: news report maybe a couple weeks later, and I was like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, you know that's the bar I go
Speaker 3: to all the time, and so essentially he came in
Speaker 3: at like one fifteen in the morning. And the way
Speaker 3: this bars designed, it's inside a building, there's no street
Speaker 3: front access to it, so you have to walk in
Speaker 3: like a movie theater, go up these escalators, and at
Speaker 3: the top there's this like chili style.
Speaker 1: Bar, so it's almost like a speakeasy of sorts or something.
Speaker 3: It's really public, like you can see clearly to bar.
Speaker 3: It's got a big k neon sign, but you have
Speaker 3: to be inside the movie theater or at least I
Speaker 3: think that's what it was at the time, and then
Speaker 3: go up to these escalators. You walk right into the bar.
Speaker 3: There's no other way in or out that's public. There's
Speaker 3: a oh my gosh, there's an access door in the
Speaker 3: back that I think is alarmed, and doesn't you have
Speaker 3: to go through the kitchen and all this other stuff
Speaker 3: to get to this thing. So there shouldn't have been
Speaker 3: any reason that he got in there. But the police
Speaker 3: scoured videos from not only in the bar, outside the bar,
Speaker 3: in the movie theater, the streets around because it was,
Speaker 3: you know, it's Columbus, Ohio state, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of street monitoring. Even back in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: They didn't find him leave that bar at any point
Speaker 3: that entire evening.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what's the name of the bar.
Speaker 3: Ugly Tuna Saluna?
Speaker 1: Oh right, you said that?
Speaker 3: Okay, wow, Yeah, that's so. Like I said, I visited
Speaker 3: this place quite often. You know, I went on dates
Speaker 3: and stuff there. It wasn't too far from where I lived,
Speaker 3: and that was the connection to me. Like when you
Speaker 3: see like news reports, I've went up those steps one
Speaker 3: hundred times. You know, I've walked through this door. I've
Speaker 3: ordered a drink here a million times. Like that's a
Speaker 3: place that I frequented. And to see somebody walk into
Speaker 3: this place and then just disappear as mind boggling. There's
Speaker 3: nowhere for them to go.
Speaker 1: Wow. And as an expert in strange occurrences, I feel
Speaker 1: like if anybody could come up with an imagination exercise
Speaker 1: to try to figure out what happened to him based
Speaker 1: on the fact that you were there all the time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've racked your brain about what could possibly
Speaker 1: have happened. Well, do you have any theories?
Speaker 3: I guess. I mean, I'm not an expert on the case.
Speaker 3: I've done a little bit of research and I brushed
Speaker 3: up on it this morning before we jumped on here,
Speaker 3: just so I knew what I was talking about. He
Speaker 3: had a girlfriend, he was about to leave for Miami
Speaker 3: to go on spring break, his mother had died three
Speaker 3: weeks prior, and so a lot of people that aren't
Speaker 3: close to him think that it might be, you know,
Speaker 3: taking his own life situation. But even still, how did
Speaker 3: he get out of the bar without you know, security
Speaker 3: camera seeing him? And on top of so that, there
Speaker 3: were security guards, two of them stationed right outside the door,
Speaker 3: and you can see them in the footage. So if
Speaker 3: there was some sort of foul play and they dragged
Speaker 3: the guy out of the bar, it would have been
Speaker 3: seen by these two security guards. So I'm not really
Speaker 3: a big fan of the taking his own life situation
Speaker 3: because what a weird place to even try it, And
Speaker 3: how would you even accomplish any of the things going on?
Speaker 3: So I can't help but think there was some sort
Speaker 3: of foul play.
Speaker 1: And if you do take your own life, you obviously
Speaker 1: can't hide the body, right, So yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: if he had taken his own life, he would have
Speaker 1: almost certainly been found.
Speaker 3: This is the middle of a city, I mean, we're
Speaker 3: not talking like rural areas, right. This is the middle
Speaker 3: of Columbus, and there is a river nearby. I think
Speaker 3: it's like six blocks away, the Old Tangy, which is
Speaker 3: a small river. It's not a deep river. You could
Speaker 3: probably walk across it without you know, waste deep water probably,
Speaker 3: And they searched it. They searched the sewers, they searched everything.
Speaker 3: Now there's a little bit of weirdness that took place.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know this till today when I was
Speaker 3: brushing up, but I mentioned that he stepped out out
Speaker 3: of the bar for a moment and it was just
Speaker 3: kind of like a group of people, like right outside
Speaker 3: the entrance and still in view of the cameras from
Speaker 3: the bar, and he's talking to a few people. And
Speaker 3: he had a girlfriend that he was supposed to go
Speaker 3: to Miami with the next morning, but he was still
Speaker 3: reportedly flirting with this new girl that he met and
Speaker 3: reportedly kissed her. So that's the that's the little nugget
Speaker 3: of information that I needed to kind of go wild
Speaker 3: with my imagination. And I was thinking, well, if this
Speaker 3: girl had a boyfriend, a dangerous boyfriend, and he was
Speaker 3: somehow inside, but it's still where did the body go
Speaker 3: if any of that took place, unless they threw him
Speaker 3: in the trash or something like that and he simply
Speaker 3: got wheeled out. They were able to account for every
Speaker 3: single person that went in and every single person that
Speaker 3: went out except for Brian.
Speaker 1: You've stumbled upon an inkling of a motive, but still
Speaker 1: the shear, the utter disappearance of the body.
Speaker 3: There's a motive, but there's no bad guy. I write
Speaker 3: word for this. I don't even know that this girl
Speaker 3: had a boyfriend. It's just a speculation that I made.
Speaker 3: This girl does exist, you can see her on the video,
Speaker 3: but outside of that, I don't know much about her.
Speaker 3: And you know, weirdly enough too. At the time or
Speaker 3: this morning, when I was brushing up, I found a
Speaker 3: timeline and it showed every bar that he went to
Speaker 3: that evening, and then where the last signal they got
Speaker 3: from his cell phone. And I'm incriminating myself. I did
Speaker 3: not I'm not involved in this, but I went to
Speaker 3: half of the bars he went to regularly. I don't Again,
Speaker 3: I don't think I was out that night, just as April,
Speaker 3: for I can't think of any reason why I was
Speaker 3: at any of these bars, but then where he got
Speaker 3: his last ping was the town just outside of town.
Speaker 3: I lived in a suburb of Columbus that I lived
Speaker 3: in Hilliard, So it was like right on my trail
Speaker 3: when I saw that this morning, I'm like, man, this
Speaker 3: guy had the same circles I did.
Speaker 1: Well, so, wow, you're brave. You're basically coming on a
Speaker 1: show called kind of Murdery and heavily implying that it
Speaker 1: could have been you.
Speaker 3: Well, it definitely couldn't have been me. I mean, there's
Speaker 3: video evidence there, but yeah, if that video didn't exist,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'd be saying the things I'm saying.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's wild. It's tragic to think that,
Speaker 3: you know, this up and coming guy, he was a
Speaker 3: med student, you know, he just seemed like a normal dude.
Speaker 3: He just disappeared like that. But it's also spooky to
Speaker 3: think I'm in these same places and if this guy
Speaker 3: can disappear, then I could have easily, you know, fell
Speaker 3: into the same fate.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, you know, speaking of spooky, I'm dying to
Speaker 1: know more about what's coming up with Monsters among Us
Speaker 1: and what's going on with Derek ha is Could you
Speaker 1: tell us a little more about that? Sure? Sure?
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, the show comes back today or
Speaker 3: I don't know what day this airs, but it comes
Speaker 3: back on Thursday. So we got another twenty some odd
Speaker 3: shows straight without a break. So wow, get ready for that.
Speaker 3: Buckle up. And I sat down. I sat down throughout
Speaker 3: my whole break and listened to hundreds and hundreds of calls.
Speaker 3: So I have a whole new call bank for the season.
Speaker 3: I have some great calls, some dog man calls, some
Speaker 3: really good bigfoot calls, some ghost calls that really gave
Speaker 3: me the chills. So I'll be peppering all that stuff
Speaker 3: through this season. Also, it's not out yet. We don't
Speaker 3: have a date yet, but we are working on a
Speaker 3: documentary based on a string area here in southern California
Speaker 3: that we're dubbing the Barrego Triangle. Now, this is out
Speaker 3: in ANNs Ofbrego Desert State Park, which is a San
Speaker 3: Diego County area, and we shot a documentary over the
Speaker 3: summer and we're about to release it.
Speaker 1: The Barrego Triangle. Sweet, I got to learn more about that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just moved to San Diego, so I guess I
Speaker 1: gotta find out where to go or where not to go.
Speaker 3: I guess maybe, man.
Speaker 1: Derek, thanks so much for being here with us. This
Speaker 1: has been an absolute blast.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Zeven. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Listen up, everybody. If you're not already a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Monsters among Us, you will be. So go to
Speaker 1: your favorite podcasting platform, subscribe, leave a review, check out
Speaker 1: their website Monsters among Us dot com. It's a wonderful
Speaker 1: ecosystem that Derek has created and an incredibly entertaining show.
Speaker 1: So please go find them, engage with them. I promise
Speaker 1: it'll be worth your while. For Derek Hayes, I'm Zeven,
Speaker 1: and this has been kind of Murdery.
Speaker 2: Kinamurderye. The Emerald Triangle is created, researched, edited, produced and
Speaker 2: hosted by Zeven Odelberg, with opening theme by Nile Madden
Speaker 2: and arct by the Gin of Lange. Available now on
Speaker 2: all podcasting platforms. If you like the show, please subscribe,
Speaker 2: review and tell your friends. You can find us on
Speaker 2: social media at Kindamurdery or email at kindamerderyat gmail dot
Speaker 2: com
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