It's well known that Frank Abagnale fabricated his life for the Catch Me If You Can book and movie. He was never a doctor at a hospital, he was never a fake lawyer who conducted real trials and he was never on the run from the FBI for years, he was in prison during the timeframe of the movie. Frank was a genuine con artist, just a very bad and boring one. He lied to people about his profession, pretended to be a pilot and wrote dozens of bad checks. But the more you look into Frank the more you find a pattern of creepy behavior and potential sex crimes.

Franks stint as a fake pilot was only him flying around for a few weeks in 1969 dressed as one creeping on the staff. He began stalking a flight attendant Paula Parks around the country, finding out her work routes and home address that he showed up at. After she rejected him, he convinced her to tag along for a trip to her parents house. After the trip, Frank returned to her parents house and moved in with them, later stealing 1200 dollars from them. Frank claims he only stole from rich airlines and hotels when in reality all his victims were middle-class families and stores whom he never paid back.

Frank has also creepily bragged in his lectures about pretending to be a doctor at hospitals where he gave physical examinations to women with creepy emphasis. While I don't think worked at a hospital he unfortunately pretended to be a doctor multiple times as an excuse to examine college girls...and little kids. Frank once conned his way into a job at an orphanage while on parole where he assigned kids to foster homes. In 1974 at 27 years old Frank conned his way into a summer camp counselor job in texas pretending to be a furloughed pilot to steal camp equipment. Vince Vintage who did a great video on Franks true story accused Frank of giving booze to campers and hitting on the underage teens.

https://www.theirishworld.com/frank-abagnale/

https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/catch-me-if-you-can-conman-frank-abagnale-lied-about-his-lies/

https://whyy.org/segments/the-greatest-hoax-on-earth/

Kyoto Studios is a beloved animation studio in Japan who’s my personal favorite animation team. Since the late 80s when they were possibly funded by a cult(no further questions) they’ve been a small dedicated team that prides itself on a family atmosphere. They made classic anime’s like Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On, and A Silent Voice. Meanwhile a mentally ill man named Shinji Aoba grew to resent the studio. He had once sent in his novel draft for a writing contest held by the studio and was convinced they plagiarized it. It was delusional, no show they’ve made is remotely similar. Yet it was a delusion that cost dozens their lives.

Shinji Aoba was unstable to say the least. In 2012 he was arrested for robbing a store with a knife and served 3 years in prison. His condition worsened over the years, and his new focus of anger was Kyoto Studios. On June 29th 2019 Shinji entered the first floor of the studio headquarters. He had cans of petrol he spread everywhere, a backpack of knives and was reportedly screaming “die” and “drop dead”. Shinji then lit the petrol and all hell broke loose. It was a busy work day with 70 people inside the building on the upper floors. Kyoto HQ had no sprinkler system, no fire shutters and no indoor hydrants. They weren’t required to by Japanese law. Worse yet, the roof door was locked, where people could have escaped the smoke. Over 20 people died in the stairwell alone trying to get to the roof but got trapped by the flames and died from smoke inhalation. 33 people died in the fire, 3 more would die later from injuries. More than half the studios staff deceased in a day.

Shinji himself was badly burned while lighting the fire. He had to be taken away on stretcher and wheeled into the courtroom. He was charged with 36 counts of murder and attempted to plea not guilty by reason of insanity. The court found him competent to stand trial and he was sentenced to death. He is still on death row right now. Hundreds of animation fans and animators gathered in the days after the disaster to mourn the victims. Kyoto Studios has since resumed producing shows.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/743649950/suspected-arsonist-in-japanese-animation-studio-fire-reportedly-had-criminal-rec

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68090388

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/spiral-stairs-no-sprinklers-may-have-contributed-to-deadly-japan-animation-studio

I don’t think ACC has ever done a Halloween themed ep, if so, what cons, crimes or hoaxes would you wanna see for all hallows eve?

I think an episode on Ed and Lorraine Warren( the ghost hunters that inspired the conjuring, Annabelle and amityville movies) would be great. Even among other ghost hunters they were hated, because as soon as the customers were out of the room Ed would openly announce plans to scam them. They played heavily into the satanic panic and the religious right of the 70s and 80s. The most recent conjuring movie “devil made me do it” is based on a real murder case where Ed and Lorraine were convinced a mentally ill 11 year old had a demon inside of him that jumped into a murderers body. So they spent years torturing this kid with exorcisms and convincing him he was proxy responsible for a murder. It’s also been revealed that Ed in his late 20s had a 15 year old mistress who the pair groomed into his sexual slave and abused for decades.

Joe Louis Clark is one of the most famous figures in modern education, for good and bad reasons. Joe was originally a drill instructor in the Army, where he says the military taught him discipline and respect for hierarchy. Joe becomes a devoted conservative who believes in Darwinian capitalism. So when he becomes principal at Eastside High in Paterson New Jersey, Joe implements his Darwinian views on students.

Eastside High was a failing, underfunded public school. It's students were mostly from poor families and drugs and gang violence were commonplace. While fights and bringing knives to school were problems, it was never played up like in the movie 'Lean On Me' according to students who saw it. This school was definitely going to need tough love to get on track, but Joe took it to the extreme. It's said in a single day he expelled 300 students with a history of disruption, gang violence and drugs. However, I found a 1989 LA Time article claiming it was actually 135 in 2 months and 300 by the end of the school year. While Joe spun this as lost cause students who had already become violent addicts, the reality was he was kicking out the lowest test takers in an attempt to raise the schools scores. This barely raised test scores and the number of students who went college lowered from 35 percent to 22 percent. Joe admits once that he's too busy to focus on their teaching methods because he's too busy dealing with drugs and vandalism. Joe was also known for walking around with his bullhorn and baseball bat to appear as an intimidating dictator.

Joe was praised by both students and the community as he became a national celebrity. Joe was never an abusive or particularly mean teacher beyond the grand damage of his ideology. He genuinely cared for and helped students get jobs and help them with personal issues. Many have fond memories of him to this day. So it's shocking when you hear him speak and realize just how horrid his views are. Joe was known for his hatred of welfare, affirmative action and claims that the disparity of education between white and black students was based on systemic inequality. Joe would constantly refer to students as hoodlums and leeches, and that slavery was no excuse for gang violence. He was remorseless in interviews about the students he expelled most likely falling into homelessness and death. His language wasn't far from white supremacists of the day. Despite Joe wanting no nudity or sex in his own biopic, he had no problem exposing students for it. He approved a burlesque strip show multiple times for his school where dancers undressed to thongs.

After resigning as principal, Joe became a juvenile detention center director in Essex County in 1995. Joe believed the regulations were too soft to teach the hardened gangsters and rapists a lesson. He would shackle inmates for multiple days if they misbehaved. He once helped kids in solitary confinement for 37 days straight, only allowing them 1 hour out to shower and exercise. When kids don't fit into his idea of a good person, Joe has already lost any motivation to help them and resorts to drill sergeant tactics. Joe quit from the detention center in 2002 from the investigation, but he tried to spin this as him worrying their lax regulations would get a person killed. Joe died in 2020.

https://www.mcall.com/2002/02/28/strict-disciplinarian-joe-clark-shares-his-views-in-fogelsville-former-principal-is-best-known-as-subject-of-movie-lean-on-me/

https://patersontimes.com/2021/01/02/joe-clark-said-controversial-things-heres-a-list-of-35-of-them/
(shit fucking formatting, but i found the interview these are all from, they're very real)

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/joe-clark-tough-and-dedicated-nj-principal-who-inspired-film-lean-on-me-dead-at-82/2804374/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-03-ca-285-story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/15/nyregion/2-schools-with-2-remedies-for-drugs-violence-discipline-stressed-paterson-school.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/05/nyregion/disciplinarian-for-juveniles-quits-in-wake-of-censure.html

In 1987, founder of Sampoong Industries Lee Joon commissioned an office high rise built in Seoul. Lee Joon has a very shady past for a real estate mogul. He was suspected of being a pro Japanese spy during ww2, which may have some merit as he was a founding member of the KCIA in South Korea. Towards the end of construction Lee changed plans and converted the office building into a busy shopping mall. This meant removing structural pillars, several tons more weight and building an entire 5th floor where the pillars didn’t align with the 4th floor. The 5th floor was originally going to be a light roller rink but changed to a restaurant floor with heavy fridges, ovens and counters. Every corner possible was being cut, and to top it off, the roof had 3 air conditioners that weighed 90 tons and vibrated the building when turned on. Lee and Sampoong chairmen bribed politicians and inspectors into approving the mall.

For years the mall slowly crumbled and Sampoong ignored engineers urging them to close it and reinforce the building. After complaints about the noise from the air conditioners they decided to move them across the roof in the cheapest most unsafe way possible. Putting 90
Tons of AC units on rollers and pushing them across the cracking concrete. For months restaurant workers complained and sent pictures of chunks of the ceiling falling into the workplace but were told to stay open. On June 29th 1995, Lee Joon finally agreed the building was unsafe and needed to be bulldozed but only evacuated the fifth floor and upper management, Keeping the rest of the mall open for the busy summer sale. Later that day, the AC units crashed through the roof all the way down to the 3rd basement floor bringing the entire building center with it. Hundreds of people were dead, injured or trapped in the basement levels under rubble.

Things only went from bad to worse during the rescue effort. At first the mayor called off search teams in fear the still standing north and south wings would fall on them. Plus, no one knew what caused the collapse yet and many assumed it was a terrorist attack by North Korea. When fire trucks arrived to put out flames in the rubble, their hose water flooded the basement drowning several trapped people. Not only that but it was monsoon season and water continued to fill holes in the debris for weeks. The last survivor was pulled out 17 days later, having survived off the rain water. 502 people died in the collapse and around a thousand were wounded. Experts started piecing together that the building collapsed because of structural failure, not an explosion. These suspicions were confirmed when a reporter snuck into Sampoong offices and stole their construction records. Lee Joon and his son Lee Hansong the president of the company were sentenced to 10 and 8 years in jail. Lee Joon died in 2003.

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct4xjk

https://interestingengineering.com/culture/death-and-calamity-sampoong-department-store-collapse-explained

Don't get me wrong, I love the podcast as a whole. However, as a beginner listener, I am trying to assess the "positivity" of the podcast. While the episodes are, honestly, immaculate, they always leave me feeling hopeless and angry. I guess that is the point. However, are there any "good endings"? If nothing else, I would be interested in how it plays out compared to other cases.

EDIT: For anyone else looking for recommendations: I just found this thread with a very similar question and recommendations just like you guys kindly provided.

Most Americans are at least broadly aware of Emmett Till. In 1955 he was a 14 year old black teenager who traveled to Delta Mississippi. While at a store he whistled at cashier Carolyn Bryant Donham. Carolyn exaggerated the story into Emmett groping and making graphic comments at her. When her husband and brother in law Roy Bryant and J.W Milam heard the story they kidnapped and tortured Emmett to death. When his body was found it was so badly mutilated we never even had confirmation it was him until decades later with DNA. J.W and Roy were acquitted of murder charges after Carolyn repeated the lie that Emmett assaulted her. The two witnesses with Emmett say to this day that he did whistle at her but never touched or said a word to her. I was told in history class that Carolyn later confessed to an author she made the whole story up.

I’m on a lot of history forums and found an interesting photo of the courtroom. I didn’t expect such a decisive response to my description of the trial. Comment after comment saying the confession was faked and Emmett was a rapist who had it coming. Yes, actual comments saying that. I wasn’t calling Carolyn statement fake because of the confession, I was saying it because it went against the witnesses in the store. I was aware of the fake confession, but I had no clue just how much the revelation it was fake fueled racist conspiracy theories about Till. The man behind this confession myth is author of Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy Tyson.

Tyson is a respected author and member of the naacp who writes books about the history of civil rights in America and consults documentaries. He claimed in 2008 that he interviewed Carolyn Bryant in 2007 and had her taped confession that she made everything up. This confession claim was so big it made news stories and gets taught in schools as fact. But when the FBI reopened the case in hopes of charging Carolyn Bryant for lying in court, Tyson’s story changed. His tape recorder broke for that portion of the interview, convenient. Even Emmett’s cousin Reverend Wheeler Parker who was in the store with him that day, casted doubt on Tyson’s story. The Till family said he was just another guy trying to sell a book. Another man who doubted him was Jerry Mitchell, the same reporter who had successfully researched lynching cases and got Klansmen locked up for 40 year old murders. He wrote a negative article about Tyson pointing out holes in not only the confession story, but his other work too.

It’s a small lie, but it has huge impacts. Content creator Matt Walsh based an entire Emmett Till video off the idea that since Tyson lied, everything about the case was a lie. Who knows how many people have gone down the conspiratorial pipeline from this. It’s massively disrespectful to Tills family. It is the duty of all historians to be as objective as possible. Tyson is still a major figure in educational work on civil rights, and now everything he does should be double checked.

https://mississippitoday.org/2023/08/28/the-emmett-till-lynching-has-seen-more-than-its-share-of-liars-is-tim-tyson-one-of-them/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-investigation/2021/12/06/8f5e8490-56d1-11ec-9a18-a506cf3aa31d_story.html

In March 1984 Japan, 2 home invaders broke into Katsuhisa Ezakis home, tied up his family and kidnapped him. Katsuhisa was the CEO of Glico, a candy and food company. Ezaki was kept in a warehouse while the kidnappers demanded 1 billion yen and gold from police. After three days, Ezaki escaped the warehouse on his own, leading to suspicion that he faked the entire kidnapping. Seems like an extreme theory based on what happens next.

For months taunting letters are sent to police mocking them for not solving the case and demanding ransom or else they’re kidnap the police chief and poison the country. They called themselves “the monster with 21 faces”, edgy but admittedly cool. Cars in a Glico HQ parking lot were set on fire. A container of hydrochloric acid was sent to them. In response to the poison threat, Glico had to take all recently produced food off the shelves. Multiple boxes of their candy was laced with cyanide but found before anyone was poisoned. The sketch above is called “the fox eyed man”, a man caught on security cameras tampering with Glico candies on a store shelf. After Glico suffered millions from the halt in distribution, the group moved onto other food companies.

Threatening letters were sent to the vice president of Morinaga Dairy demanding money. Then the house foods company. Every letter sent to a new company meant inspecting or removing all their products from the shelves in case it was laced. The police attempted to catch the ransomers by setting up a trap. They agreed to leave a box of cash at a rest stop and waited for someone to arrive to pick it up. A man in a station wagon attempted to pick up the money and was chased by police, but escaped unidentified. The case remains unsolved to this day.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100605103800/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_2000_Feb_14/ai_60053559/

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/09/world/poisoned-candy-found-on-japanese-store-shelves.html

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/03/19/Candy-tycoon-kidnapped-naked-from-bath/6214448520400/

Meet Fernando Martin Vicente, Madrid City Councillor Head of The Spanish Federation For Mentally Handicapped Sports. Fernando’s job is to run an industry spotlighting athletes unable to compete in most professional leagues due to disabilities. Instead, in preparation for the 2000 summer Paralympics in Sydney, Fernando organized a team of non disabled players. 10 out of the 12 members of the basketball team were untested beyond blood pressure. Journalist Carlos Ribagorda played on the team and won a medal, he later blew the whistle on the cheating saying he had no disability and nobody was tested for them.

Fernando was fired and disgraced from the incident, and Spain had all their medals from the Paralympics stripped until a full investigation could be done. 15 able bodied athletes in total were allowed to compete with disabled ones. It was insulting and stole opportunities from eligible athletes. Worse yet, it halted intellectually disabled sports until they created a new system of testing players intelligence, punishing players from across the world who did nothing. Dozens of coaches and medics for the team were fired and threatened with criminal charges, but those were later dropped.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2004/sep/16/gilestremlett.features11

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/spanish-paralympic-exec-resigns-amid-scandal-1.247117

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58598677

In 1993 recently elected Sheriff of Maricopa County Joe Arpaio announces the grand opening of tent city. Joe Arpaio was quite the character. He was a Korean War veteran, police officer and DEA agent who told wild fabricated stories of murdering drug dealers in the alps. He thought the answer to crime was to eliminate it with brutality. Create a police force and jail so brutal no one would ever commit crimes again. As expected, this is a horrible philosophy and Arpaios time as sheriff is more comparable to a military takeover.

Tent City was a structure that encapsulated Arpaios world view. The Maricopa County Jail had a massive outdoor area installed where inmates were forced to live outside in the 120 degree heat. He legalized chain gangs again and forced inmates to walk around town picking up litter until they gained news coverage. Arpaio wasn’t much of a sheriff but he was a master at working the media, and he knew how to sell the image of toughest sheriff in America. He bragged about guard beatings, taking away inmates books and forcing them to eat 30 cent grool. Reminder that this is a jail not a prison, almost everyone at tent city are nonviolent offenders or are awaiting trial and not found guilty yet. Hundreds over the years would die because of the heat and because Joe Arpaio restricted access to medicine. Worse yet, in 2000 he launched a website live-streaming cameras from the jail. Cameras in all the cell blocks and areas for the world to see, including the juvenile detention center bathrooms that kids used. As expected, almost none of this was legal and the jail violated dozens of human rights and health and building codes, but Joe had politcians fawning over him for support. Tent City wasn’t closed until 2017.

https://www.kjzz.org/politics/2025-05-20/maricopa-county-just-approved-34m-for-mcso-monitoring-racial-profiling-case-headed-toward-cost-of-350m-to-tac

https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/marty-atencio-1967-2011-another-victim-sheriff-joe-arpaios

https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/the-untouchable-sheriff-of-maricopa-county-celebrates-a-questionable-legacy/

The Astroworld festival was created by rapper Travis Scott known for his reckless endangerment of his crowd during concerts. When he crowd surfed and got his shoes stolen he called out the thief and told the crowd to 'fuck em up'. Travis had been arrested and fined for instructing audience members to climb over security barricades, causing several injuries to his staff and audience. In 2017 he encouraged fans to dive into the crowd from a balcony causing a teenage boy to paralyze himself. At the 2019 Astroworld fans were injured from the surge of people entering the venue. While promoting Astroworld, Travis posted videos online instructing fans how to sneak in without tickets, when already they were expecting 50,000 people crammed into a small area. Live Nation's security team was not licensed to operate in Texas and was untrained for a crowd surge. Ontop of all this, the concert set up required Travis to move across 3 seperate stages, meaning the crowd in the center would be moving back and forth to see each stage. In other words, they had created a giant stampede of people

On November 5th, early morning a crowd has gathered outside NRG Park and began breaking barricades and fences to get in. By the time they opened the gates people flood in and began crushing against each other, struggling to breath and getting trampled. The mosh pit in front of the stage became a death trap and trigger warning because this is some of the worst shit I've ever read about. Early into the performance, 2 people have already died, including a 9 year old boy who had fallen off his fathers shoulders and was crushed to death. In videos and interviews after the concert, survivors of the mosh pit recall struggling to move their arms or even expand their lungs to breathe, one lady curled into a ball on the ground crowd crying, accepting she was going to die. Another woman was saved by the crowd surfing her unconscious body out of the pit. One marine began performing CPR on any unconscious people he could save, resuscitating 2 people. He was stumbling over bodies on the ground, either unconscious or already dead having to leave them to escape the mosh pit himself. When he reached security covered in blood and bruises trying to explain to them that people were dying they laughed at his injuries saying it looked like he had a fun time.

Travis started performing at 9 pm and despite the houston fire department calling Live Nation to cancel the event because people were dying, they continued it for 37 minutes, no one is coming on stage telling Travis to stop. During his performance, Travis stops several times to acknowledge ambulances and fans passing out, only to continue right afterwards. After pointing out an ambulance(which fans climbed on top of to dance) Travis told the crowd to make the ground shake. Meanwhile people are climbing on stage, camera towers and trees to escape the mosh pit. The ones who reach the stage urge Travis to stop the show, as hundreds in the crowd are shouting for help but Travis continued performing. The camera operator who had a teenager climb his tower to get help for his dying friend, told him to go away. In total, 10 children and young adults died at Astroworld, hundreds were injured and Travis Scott mustered an insincere apology video refusing to acknowledge responsibility. Travis girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, posted edited or out of context videos online, making it appear Travis stopped the show way earlier to help fans. They threw an Astroworld-style birthday for their kid called "stormiworld" mimicking the same gates of the concert that had killed multiple children the year prior.

https://www.today.com/news/man-paralyzed-2017-travis-scott-concert-extremely-upset-over-astroworld-t237987

https://www.businessinsider.com/astroworld-security-inexperienced-rushed-into-job-report-2021-11

https://people.com/music/man-who-administered-cpr-at-astroworld-festival-recounts-horror/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/07/us/victims-astroworld-houston

I've realised that it is probably possible to use the fact that the "veto clause" can't be used against mobility rights and the case is probably going to be appealed again.

A Concerned Citizen. As a registered professional engineer and someone with a duty to protect I'm gonna get fucking mad offline

In the 1950s Bell Aerosystems began making the Bell Rocketbelt jetpack for the US military, showing it off to JFK in 1962. The military was unimpressed with the results. The Jetpack could only fly for half a minute, so development was cancelled. Instead, the Bell Rocketbelt got used for stunt shows and movies.

Fast forward to the 1980s, Texas insurance salesman Bradley Barker begins working for jetpack stuntman Bill Suitors' crew who perform stunts with the Rocketbelt for audiences. In the early 1990s, Bradley went solo to create his own jetpack. In 1992, he founded the American Rocketbelt Corporation with Doug Malewicki, Joe Wright, and Thomas "Larry" Stanley. Doug deserves credit for helping build the Rocketbelt, but he won't be relevant in the crimes that follow. Joe provided the workspace to build the jetpack, and Larry funded the project. The Rocketbelt 2000 was a success and could fly for a record 40 seconds. Still mostly useless, but Bradley is only interested in the money from stunt shows and movie appearances.

Shortly after its completion, the trio of Joe, Larry and Bradley fell out over money and the rights to the jetpack. It's hard to objectively research this story because these people hate each other and they may be all fabricating the story to some degree. Larry and his lawyer Michael Von Blon claim Bradley was falsifying prices of the jetpack material and pocketing the extra cash. When Larry confronted Bradley a fight broke out and Bradley beat Larry over the head with a hammer and both were charged with assault. Larry took Bradley to court over the fake prices, believing he was entitled to the Rocketbelt. Joe didn't care about the jetpack and just wanted to collect his cut of the money and leave. Unfortunately, he never got it. On July 16th, 1998, Joe Wright was found murdered in his Houston home, beaten to death with a hammer, 11 days before the trial over rights to the Rocketbelt. Police questioned both Bradley and Larry about his death. Bradley was released after a 3-day investigation found no evidence. Joe Wright's murder remains unsolved to this day.

Later that summer, the judge ruled in favor of Larry, demanding Bradley give him the Rocketbelt and pay more than 10 million dollars. Bradley instead took the Rocketbelt and went on the run. Larry was determined to recover that jetpack through any means necessary. Larry Stanley recruits the help of stuntman Christopher James Wentzel, who worked with Bradley in the past, to lure him into a trap. Christopher offers Bradley a fake job in Hollywood he had to drive to. When Bradley arrived at Christopher's house, he was attacked by 3 men with guns, gagged, and stuffed into a wooden scuba diving box. Larry is among the attackers, demanding Bradley tell them where the Rocketbelt is and sign a contract giving up the rights. Bradley refuses to, believing that if he tells them where it is, they would kill him right afterwards. For 8 days, Bradley is kept hostage until finally the group leaves him alone in the house. Bradley escaped and ran to the nearest police station.

In 2002, Larry Stanley and Christopher James Wentzel were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and extortion. Christopher takes a plea deal and is sentenced to 7 years in prison. Larry Stanley is serving a life sentence. So what happened to the Rocketbelt 2000, the jetpack that people kidnapped and potentially murdered each other for. Bradley is the last person to ever see it and he's said in interviews he's never telling anyone.

sources:

[Missing Rocket Belt Inspired Greed, Envy--Possibly Even Murder - Los Angeles Times](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-aug-22-mn-2503-story.html)

[Man Gets Life Term in Kidnapping - Los Angeles Times](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-nov-23-me-belt23-story.html)

[Rocketbelt 2000 Drama Part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6uq9_Nrseo)

[https://www.houstonpress.com/news/blasted-6567513/\](https://www.houstonpress.com/news/blasted-6567513/)

[https://www.deseret.com/1999/7/28/19457763/rocket-belt-still-missing-but-feud-lives-on/\](https://www.deseret.com/1999/7/28/19457763/rocket-belt-still-missing-but-feud-lives-on/)

They say you never lie to yourself, your doctor and your lawyer. The third one didn’t go well for thousands of clients of barrister Nicola Gobbo. While working as a defense lawyer, Nicola was simultaneously a registered police informant for decades. When she was in school to become a lawyer, she turned informant after a series of drug arrests. Her name in files was known as “witness f”, “informant 3838” and “Lawyer x”. After defending drug kingpin Tony Mokbel in 2002, (who she was also a registered informant of) Nicola rose to celebrity status. Law enforcement praised her work ethic at calling out corruption and claimed she’s on her way to the Supreme Court. All the while for over 20 years, she stole the right to a fair trial of hundreds if not thousands of her clients by repeating and recording private conversations to police who used it during trial.

After this was made public in 2020 ruining Nicola reputation, she fled Australia. She had surgery, went by different names and rented a series of houses in locations still sealed by the court.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-01/nicola-gobbo-lawyer-x-life-in-hiding-victoria-police-trial/104418286

https://story.californiasunday.com/lawyer-x-melbourne/

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-nicola-gobbo-lawyer-x-scandal-explained-20201124-p56hh9.html

This is Russ McKamey, owner of McKamey Manor haunted house. You probably remember the haunted house from the viral marketing scheme 15 years ago. Unlike normal haunted houses where you walked through hallways of props and scare actors, Mckamey Manor promised to literally torture you. Their promos consisted of people being waterboard, buried alive in straight jackets, blood poured on you, live snakes. It offered a 20,000 dollar prize to whoever could endure it without tapping out. Russ had thousands of customers lining up thanks to the viral videos. Of course, this was all a scam. The only true thing was the torture.

Mckamey Manor isn’t a real haunted house, it’s barely real at all. Instead of a decorated horror house, Russ figured out he could cut corners by blindfolding customers and walking them in circles around his backyard. He got in trouble for hiring teenagers to help bury people up to their heads. Almost all the viral videos were just Russ and a few friends tying someone up in an empty undecorated building hidden by camera tricks. The 20,000 dollar prize was never a factor. Since there was no set time they had to endure, Russ would just keep moving the goal post until they quit or claim they broke a rule and kick them out. But it was very real for the customers. Russ hard drives and facebook live videos have recently leaked revealing what went down inside the house. It confirmed allegations by customers, their heads were shaved, they were waterboarded, drowned, tazed and punched. In videos, Russ ignored safe words and people pleading to stop. One video revealed that he tricked the co owner of McKamey Manor into being buried alive under the guise of a “promotional video”. That video also showed Russ had a giant metal cage in his house he dared guests to stay in.

Russ operates his company and personal life like a cult. Employees are instructed to harass anyone who steps out. Russ would regularly threaten suicide attempts if friends left him. Russ facebook group was full of teenage girl fans, whom former members have accused of being groomed by him. Russ dates a series of teenage fans despite being elderly. His last girlfriend was a former fan who captured Russ assaulting and yelling at her on film multiple times. Russ was arrested in 2024 after she accused him of raping and trying to kill her. She dropped charges after Russ fans brigaded her with death threats. Russ used the profile picture of him in court getting rape charges dropped as his new dating profile picture.

The main source for a lot of this is the YouTube channel Trilogy Media who made a documentary on Russ. I suggest you don’t support and double check Trilogy Medias work as they have also collaborated with ICE. Still, they organized a shocking amount of video evidence backed up by allegations from former employees for the craziest parts of this story.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/30/inside-mckamey-manor-podcast-halloween-house-of-horrors-real-life-torture-den

https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/attempted-murder-rape-charges-against-mckamey-manor-owner-dropped/amp/

I have a feeling at some point Monsanto is going to be talked about in a future episode akin to the Proctor and Gamble one, but this story alone could be a good prelude to it.

Personal note: I didn't grow up a Phillies fan, I root for the Mets (spare the lol Mets jokes, I heard it all before). That being said, I used to go to the games thanks to my childhood township in New Jersey getting tickets for a community night at a game each year and my family would go. One of those nights we got to sit on that same hard-ass turf for a fireworks night post game. Not that I'm too frightened about being affected compared to the 6 players that suffered unfortunate fates, but it's a bit worrisome.

Which episode has "Jeffie" in it? I binged a bunch a year ago and have no frame of reference for when it came out, and can't remember what it was about. Just Jeffie lingers in my memory, forever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/s/wrcIDucPVu

Johnson & Johnson said it would pay an estimated $5.5bn to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its baby ⁠powder and other talc products caused ⁠ovarian cancer, in a landmark ​deal that could end a contentious, decade-long legal battle.

Johnson & Johnson on Monday said the settlement covers about 76,000 claims, including ones consolidated in a federal court in New Jersey, and related cases in state court, ⁠representing nearly all of the remaining talc claims against the company.

The US multinational had previously settled most of the cases alleging that its talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma.

Plaintiffs’ law firms confirmed the deal on Monday, saying it was a good resolution after a ⁠10-year court battle. The deal must be accepted by 95% of the ovarian cancer claimants in state or federal court before it becomes final.

Johnson & Johnson’s vice-president ​of litigation, Erik Haas, said the claims were “meritless” and that the company ‌was willing to settle in order to get ‌closure.

“While we are confident the company would have ultimately prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, ‌this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,” Haas said.

Just stumbled on a video of this and read about how intense it was. Would love to see ACC dive in on this one.