My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 420 - Sip Of Drink
Episode Date: March 21, 2024This week, Georgia covers serial killer Derrick Todd Lee and Karen tells the survival story of Norwegian hero Jan Baalsrud. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Lea...rn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is exactly right.
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Echo thanks its presenting partner, Sun Life. My favorite murder
Hello!
And welcome to my favorite murder
That's Georgia Hartstark
That's Karen Kilgaraff
Sip of a drink
And there's my sip of drink
And that's how you know the podcast has begun.
Cause I'm drinking.
Amen.
Hi, what's going on with you on this beautiful,
maybe it's gonna thunderstorm evening.
I know, I actually took a picture of the sky
when I was at the mall earlier
and I thought it was like high art.
And then I'm like, oh, this is just like
what springtime does to you. And then I'm like, oh, this is just like what springtime does to you.
Where you're just like,
look at that beautiful single Simpsons cloud in the sky
over the mall in such a way
that I'm going to take a picture of it.
Well, when LA has the slightest of changes
in the atmosphere and weather,
it's a fucking revelation.
It's an Instagram opportunity.
That's right.
And I'm not even on there.
And I can recognize an Instagram opportunity
when I see one.
You don't have your account of just the sun,
the sky in Los Angeles?
Sky only?
I did make a fake account or like a,
what are those called when it's not your name?
Throwaway account.
What?
Yeah. Did you say throwaway? Throwaway account. What? Yeah.
Did you say throwaway?
I thought you said bro away.
It's like what?
That's when a bro is trying to hit on other girls.
Yes.
When he has a girlfriend.
Yes, bro away.
Oh my God.
The lengths that people go to to be dishonest in this modern digital age really blows my
mind.
Oh, like just be yourself and be dishonest.
You don't have to be a fake person, right?
Yeah.
Oh, I mean, I know that there is enjoyment in the trickery, but it seems hard.
It seems effortful.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Like to keep up Oh yeah. Yeah.
Like to keep up a lie.
Yeah.
Or multiple, like you're trying to plate spin
several women at one time as a bro away,
as a bro away account.
No, no dude.
That sounds exhausting.
There are other things to do.
Maybe they're not as the payoff isn't as great.
And like, who hurt you and like go to therapy and like take care of your shit so that you
don't cause other people to have shit. You know?
That's right. You're actually continuing the chain. You're not breaking the chain the way
Fleetwood Mac would want you to. You're continuing that chain of like damage and then of course reaction in the other person to
then damage others. Break the cycle, leave people the way you found them or better would be great
too. Better would be nice. Even it's possible. Could be a little evolution there. You know,
I wanted to say we were lucky enough to get invited to the iHeartRadio awards for podcasting.
to get invited to the iHeartRadio Awards for podcasting. Yeah.
It was last weekend.
And while we were there, because we've been invited before,
we never really do stuff like that.
And we decided to do it this year.
And the really difficult and incredibly shocking news
is that Travis Kelce and his brother won.
For best podcast of the year, we lost to them.
Dark Horse out of nowhere.
But what I've never thought about in doing these things
and being like, yes, no, I don't care about that, whatever.
As a person who's written on award shows
and seen how the sausage is made,
it doesn't leave any fun behind.
But all of this is to say,
we got to see some old friends,
we got to meet some new friends.
It was such a cool experience to be in a room
with a bunch of podcasters, including Chris Pine,
the podcaster Chris Pine, who was mere feet away from us.
I just never turned my head.
I never turned it like I...
You never looked?
I never looked over, never once.
Because Chris Pine is number one, in my opinion.
The idea that he was there with us was kind of insane.
Very close to us, as was Kyle McLaughlin,
who he let me take a selfie with him on my way out.
He was much more polite than Corey Feldman was
that one time I tried to take a photo with him.
And Samantha Ronson was DJing and she's a member of our family podcasting community.
Oh my God. Samantha Ronson, that was really fun because she walked up and just started talking like we were old friends. And I was like, this is the huge benefit of being a podcaster is you have these relationships that are just sitting there waiting for you. It's just the greatest. Lacey Mosley of Scam Goddess was there looking gorgeous as ever.
Oh, and she won?
She won.
That was cool. That was early in the night. Very cool.
Old friend Payne Lindsay, of course.
Payne Lindsay was there. Jake Brennan of Disgraceland was there.
Yes.
Paul Scheer from How Did This Get Made was a presenter and I found him in the
bar before it all started and I was like, hey man, what is up?
Very exciting.
And then I haven't been able because we had Becky and EJ from the Butterfly King on the
last episode, so that was pre-recorded.
So I haven't been able to give this recommendation.
So I'm going to fold this in.
But wait, did you want to say, I feel like I've been talking this whole time. Did you have other people?
I was just thinking I should let you talk because I've been interrupting you this whole
time.
What? We're through the looking glass on this episode.
Yeah. No, go.
I feel like that's a thing. The more I leave my house, the more I'm like, you have to stop
talking. And I kind of just can't. But then it's like on this I'm supposed to. And like, you have to stop talking. And I kind of just can't. But then it's like, on this I'm supposed to.
And like, I feel like if anyone's used to it, it's you.
But the point of all of that was to say,
I have been listening to a podcast that I cannot believe.
And it's recommended by my Canadian friend,
Jacob Tierney, who has the best taste from Letterkenny
and from Shorzy and from many other things.
And he was like, have you listened to this yet?
And when he does that and actually texts it to me,
I know that I just go straight to listening.
The podcast is called Murder 101.
And hopefully you guys have already heard it.
If you haven't, go now, follow it,
do all the things, support it,
because it is the podcast story of in real life, a group of high school sociology class
in Tennessee, who their teacher decides they're going to do a special like semester.
And they start looking into the cold cases, the series of cold cases and unidentified
Jane Doe's from their community that eventually
they put together and it is a serial killer that has been killing people in their area
for decades.
And this class starts doing the work of like FBI profilers.
They pull in a journalist who'd been working alone on it.
And they had to learn how to do that.
It wasn't like they were all into true crime. They had to figure, I'm listening to it now because you told me to and I'm in love on it. And they had to learn how to do that. It wasn't like they were all into true crime.
They had to figure, I'm listening to it now
because you told me to and I'm in love with it.
They had to like figure, how do we solve a cold case?
So they started from the very beginning of it,
which I think is such a great tool
because you see things that other people miss
or have missed, of course.
So amazing.
Also this idea that because it's sociology,
it's kind of like, how does your community work?
How does the policing work?
How do you get ahold of the FBI
if you had something to tell them?
Would it work?
Would they care?
Totally.
Like all these different things,
but then you hear these kids start talking about,
these are people in this community that matter.
They're people's relatives, all those things,
but a really young person, it's like a person that's putting it together for themselves.
They disappeared, they deserve to be found, they deserve to be spoken for.
And while we were at the awards, a woman walked up to me and was like, Hi, I'm Stephanie Lidecker
from Murder 101.
And I had been talking to somebody at iHeart Radio about how much I love that podcast.
And then she came up and introduced herself to us.
And I was like, this is it right here.
This is what I'm in it for, right here.
So cool.
And we got a dress up too, which is so fun.
On top of everything, I found a fucking old vintage dress.
Looked amazing on you,, 10 out of 10.
Thank you.
And there was a famous dog there.
Remember?
I was like, I bet it's so famous and we're just like the old ladies who don't fucking have any clue who this dog is.
Apparently people love this dog.
Did you know the internet loves dogs?
Crazy, right?
We can post all those photos on Instagram, by the way, because I
forced you to take a couple photos. So we have photos with Samantha Ronson, a
couple others. Do we really? Yeah, remember I was like, we're taking one without asking you.
There's a podcast that won, and I think it was like a subset of True Crime, but
it's a podcast called Wrongful Conful conviction. Oh, they were so cool
They were super cool and I had never heard of them
I apologize. They're very famous and they've won before and they're very experienced
Entertainment executives and broadcasters and stuff. So like entirely on me
but the way they got introduced,
the stuff that they talked about,
and then them themselves in their acceptance speech,
it was, I was like, oh my God, thank God.
They're actually reversing wrongful convictions
with a podcast.
They're legit.
And we talked to them afterwards
and they were so fricking cool.
Very cool.
Make sure you listen to that,
Wrongful Conviction, Murder 101, all the things.
And then of course, my stalwart favorite, Murder in Oregon,
which Lauren Bright-Pachenko was the host of,
co-hosting with the journalist from The Oregonian,
and we met her too at the party.
I hung out with her for a little while.
The coolest, coolest woman.
Yeah, it was just, that was very cool
to be in and among so many cool, bad-ass, nice podcasters.
Our peers.
Our peers and our people.
Yay.
And Chris Pine.
And Chris Pine, and always Chris Pine.
Chris Pine.
Should we do Exactly Right corner?
Sure.
Okay, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly
Right. Here are some highlights. Now I really have the feeling like I've been
talking the whole time. Well we have huge news. Today is the day that The Butterfly King, a
World War II murder mystery, premieres on the Exactly Right network. You can go
over to the show feed, The Butterfly King. Please give it a
follow. Please listen to the first two episodes now. And then of course, remember to rate and
review it. Last week, we were just talking, we had EJ and Becky on. So we're so excited for you to
hear the work that they do and their podcasting prowess on the Butterfly King. We're so proud of
it. We're so proud of them. Such an exciting thing.
And also there are lots of funny people
on our ERM podcast this week.
Writer Emily Heller joins the ladies on Lady to Lady.
Actor Michael Urie is Bridger's guest on I Said No Gifts.
And Canadian comedian Deborah DiGiovanni
visits Roz on Ghosted.
Deb DiGiovanni, if you've never seen her do stand up
and you have the opportunity, you absolutely have to. She's one of the funniest people there is. And then over in the exactly
right store, we're having a spring sale and you can get 15% off all regular priced merch with the
secret code TREASURE, all caps, there's a Y in the middle, through March 25th, and then look out for the last chance section for bigger
discounts on lots of things from pins to puzzles and everybody, everything in between.
And everybody.
And everybody.
And finally, the day has come.
My Favorite Murderer has joined TikTok.
Yay!
So search for My Favorite Murderer in the app and give us a follow.
We're the ones with the blue check mark.
In case you're on a different one where they're talking about all the problems that we have.
That's not us.
That's not how we do it.
No it isn't.
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Okay, Karen, this is a big one.
This is a rough one. This is, wh This is a doozy. This is one of
the ones that I've been researching and researching and researching, and I'm glad to take a break
from it because it's just kind of taken over my thoughts and dreams and is really fucked
up. Yeah. Did you know, Karen, that there were multiple serial killers operating in
Southeast Louisiana at one time?
No, I only knew that about Los Angeles in the 70s.
Yeah. In the 90s and early 2000s, there were possibly three or more serial killers active
at that time. And between the years of 1992 and 2003, Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital, is one of the
deadliest cities in America.
Wow.
I know.
And approximately 60 women are missing or murdered.
60.
So today I'm going to tell you the story of one, just one of those serial killers and
how the murders he committed would have become a cold case if it hadn't been for the persistence
of a small town police chief.
Wow.
This is the story of one of the butchers of the Bayou.
Wow.
I've never heard of this.
This is wild.
And so my sister lived in Baton Rouge for a while,
and I asked her about it because I have no reference at all.
You know, I've only been to New Orleans.
So I always like thought it wasn't safe because of you
hear these stories about the murder rates there. And she's like thought it wasn't safe because of you hear these stories
about the murder rates there.
And she's like, it felt really safe.
There were just some places that you didn't go to at night.
So it still is small towny and there's a big college there.
So it's kind of still a college town.
Right.
So the main sources I used in today's story
include the four-part documentary
called Butchers of the Bayou, which I highly recommend.
And then all that's interesting article by Amber Breeze and all the other sources are
listed in our show notes.
All right.
You ready for this one?
Yeah.
Okay.
So Baton Rouge, have you been there?
No, I don't think so.
No, I think I've only been to New Orleans.
Yeah, me too.
Baton Rouge.
Baton Rouge.
It sounds like a place I would have gone to do like a college by myself.
Yeah, right.
And there are a lot of murderinos from there.
We got a lot of emails about this story.
And a lot of them lived there at the time and talked about how scary it was.
Wow, okay.
To live through this.
So it was once thought of as a safe community, the kind of place where people left their
doors unlocked
and windows open because it was hot out, you know,
greeted everyone with a friendly smile.
One of those towns, and a college town, as I said.
That is until 2001, when in a span of eight months,
multiple women are attacked and murdered in their homes,
causing the city to go into panic mode.
For just like eight months, there's this killing spree.
It reminds me of the Gainesville Ripper story in Florida
that I covered once.
Oh, yeah.
So let's start in 2001.
Gina Wilson-Green is a 41-year-old nurse
who is full of life and has a strong desire to help people,
hence going into nursing.
She lives alone in a cottage not far from LSU's campus
in Baton Rouge.
She knows the area to be friendly, so she's usually comfortable living by herself.
But on September 23rd, 2001, she tells her mom during a phone call that she feels like she's being watched lately.
And she is a really safe person.
She has, I mean, it's 2001 and she lives alone and she has security like set up in the whole house,
which I think wasn't as popular back then to get security.
Wasn't as common.
Yeah, it wasn't as easy to get ahold of.
Right, it was expensive, it wasn't easy.
So that night she goes to bed like normal,
but at 3.47 a.m. her home security alarm goes off.
She gets a call from the security company to check on her.
She looks around, says everything's fine,
so they don't dispatch any security or police.
And she goes back to bed.
But the next morning, September 24, 2001,
Gina doesn't show up for work, which is very unlike her.
One of her coworkers decides to go to her house
to check on her.
And when he gets there, a little after 1 PM,
he finds Gina laying face down on her
bed. She's naked, she's non-responsive and he immediately calls the police. Police arrive
to find Gina's back door unlocked, which is not like her. She doesn't open the door to
strangers and she locks all her doors. There are strangulation marks on her neck and when
they question Gina's neighbors and tried to gather clues,
one neighbor says that he saw a white man in a white truck
drive away from Gina's house the night before.
So that's where the police start looking
for a white man who drives a white truck.
I feel like in these stories that we tell each other,
one of the most painful and upsetting parts
is when women know that something is wrong
and they feel for whatever reason,
that that instinct is, it's just them,
or you know what I mean?
That they dismiss it.
And I'm not saying that in a judgmental way against her,
only in that way of,
I wish we were raised to never doubt our instincts.
I wish all of us were, it was like,
if you're feeling it, you're right.
So that when that alarm went off,
she would have gone, send people out here right now
and whoever you send, they're spending the night
because what's going on?
Like it's so easy to say 2020,
which is what all of talking about true crime is,
but I just wish that wasn't such a painful point.
It's so hard with these stories
because it's these little tiny things that happen
that could have been different.
And we can't help, but think about all the times
we have been in similar situations
and that one little tiny thing didn't happen.
Right.
And it's just, I mean, it's unfathomable.
Yeah.
So that was in September.
And then on January 14, 2002, just a couple of months later, before police can find this
white man in a white truck, 21 year old LSU grad student, Jerilyn DeSoto is found stabbed
to death in her home.
Jerilyn puts up a good fight in the struggle, and the forensic teams find DNA samples from
under her fingernails.
But when it comes to pinning down a suspect, police are still at a total loss.
It's 2002, early 2002.
There's not, DNA is not a huge thing yet.
It's becoming bigger, but like they can test it for basics and compare, but not much more than that.
They have no idea what it's about to turn into.
Right.
And how much information they can actually get from it.
And they have no leads.
You have to match the DNA with the suspect and they have none.
So that case goes cold.
However, the main suspect is her boyfriend who has been abusive to her in the past.
So the police zero in on him.
And these two cases aren't linked yet.
So Charlotte Murray-Pace, 22, her friends and family call her Murray.
She's a star student.
She's just graduated from LSU as one of the youngest people to earn an MBA.
So she's super smart, very charismatic.
All these women are beautiful. She's got plans to move to Atlanta
by the end of the summer.
But for the time being, she's sharing a townhouse
with her roommate, Rebecca.
On the afternoon of May 31st, 2002, Charlotte is home alone.
She's eating lunch.
She answers a knock at her door.
And the man she opens the door to
forces his way inside the townhouse
and starts to attack Marie.
I'm calling her Marie. That's what everyone called her. she opens the door to forces his way inside the townhouse and starts to attack Murray.
I'm calling her Murray. That's what everyone called her. Murray fights back like hell and a
huge struggle ensues. But sadly, the man overpowers her. He rapes her, beats her, stabs her and then
flees. When the roommate Rebecca returns home, she finds the house covered in blood and her roommate dead from blunt force trauma and 81 stab wounds. Oh my God. I know it's horrific. Also, that's so frightening and
so such a horrible detail. But equally horrible is the fact that she's 21 or 22 years old.
21 the brightest futures all of these women had. Like so young, just babies.
That's yeah. Yeah. And that's what's so hard about doing these cases is you read the details to get
everything right. And so I can't help but put myself in her shoes and imagine, you know, the
terror she must have felt. Oh, yeah. It's just, it's horrifying. So that was May 31st.
Then like a month and a half later on July 12th, 2002,
44 year old Pam Kinnamore is abducted from her home.
Now, Pam is well known and loved
in the community where she lives.
She has an antique shop called Comfort and Joys.
And she had worked late that night.
When she came home, she drew herself a bath,
not knowing that she had left her keys
in the lock on the door outside.
I've done that so many times.
Of course you have, we all have.
Oh, I know.
And like she was being targeted,
the killer would have gotten in.
So it's not her fault at all that that, you know what I mean?'s like, that is just an insane, awful, you know, piece of information. But
Yeah, no, that predator was determined on the attack clearly, especially with those other, but
good Lord. Oh, so her husband comes home finds the bath still full signs of a struggle,
but Pam is gone. so he calls the police.
And sadly, Pam is found dead in the Whiskey Bay, which is nearby, three days later on
July 15th, 2002.
And so there are actually two eyewitnesses who said that when they were driving in the
area, they saw the passenger in a white truck,
a nude woman who looked unconscious
or the other one was saying that she looked like
she was like begging for help from the passerby.
So two people, white male, white truck
in the Whiskey Bay area.
So with the DNA found on Pam's body,
all three cases are now linked.
And of course that means we have a serial killer on the loose.
Yeah.
So then on November 21, 2002, so a few months later,
not that, like, so, I mean, just imagine
you live in this small town, and every month and a half,
two months, some horrific event happens like this.
How terrified you would be.
Pam was taken out of her own home.
Yeah. Yeah. And murdered.
That is like, it's all a nightmare,
but yeah, that town, people must have just been losing it.
Yes, people were, I cannot understate
how fucking terrified people were
and all the emails that I read from murderinos were like,
I was there, it was awful, I moved away.
Like everyone was just so freaked out. Yeah.
Then on November 21, 2002,
23-year-old Trenacia Colum,
she's kidnapped from the parking lot of the cemetery
where she had just visited her mother's grave,
who had died a few months earlier.
How fucking awful is that?
Trenacia had a bright future.
She had been in the Army,
and she had plans to join the Marines.
Sadly, a few days later, her body
is found beaten to death right outside of Baton Rouge.
She's linked by DNA to the same serial killer.
And it's actually interesting because if the DNA hadn't been
there or hadn't been tested, she probably
wouldn't have been linked to those first three murders
because the MO is completely different.
But also those first three women were white and Tranesha was black. So they didn't think that they were connected at all.
And they are. So now they know they have this monster roaming the city attacking women.
He's not just breaking into houses, but he's finding people by themselves. That makes me
think of the, from true crime bullshit, which is the unbelievable and amazing podcast
about Israel keys and all of the potential cases
around there.
There's a story of a woman who was visiting
her grandfather's grave.
Graveyards by nature are empty and quiet
and there's very, very, very few people coming by.
And the idea that there's people like targeting a place like that,
where people are basically isolated by choice is so frightening and horrifying.
It is, it absolutely is. So finally, on March 3rd, 2003, 26 year old LSU grad student and
environmentalist Carrie Lynn Yoder vanishes from her apartment.
Her boyfriend had called the police when she wasn't home
and had found some suspicious stuff going on in the apartment.
Her body is found 10 days later by a fisherman,
again, in the whiskey bay.
And it was found just right by where Pam's body
had been found back in July.
So it was clear these were all connected.
She had been raped, been beaten and strangled to death.
Again, a DNA match.
So now fear grips every citizen of Baton Rouge
and the surrounding area.
The popularity of self-defense classes skyrockets.
Everything is booked.
You can't even get in to take a lesson.
Mace flies off the shelf.
And then rumors about how these normally safe conscious women
open their doors to a stranger start to swirl.
Stuff like perhaps it was a police officer
or a delivery man in uniform knocking,
or the killer knocked and said he needed
to use their phone maybe, or his car is broken down,
or he's lost or whatever, which things we hear all the time.
I've personally, in that time especially,
and for, you know,
it just doesn't seem that weird to open your door
when someone knocks to me.
It's not like that shocking.
I think that it's just the natural inclination
is to open your door when you hear a knock, right?
So it's not totally out of the ordinary.
Nowadays, I would talk to someone through my ring cam,
you know, but like back then you just opened your door, someone knocked, especially during the ordinary. Nowadays, I would talk to someone through my ring cam,
but like back then you just opened your door,
someone knocked, especially during the day.
But I wonder also, I think this is just the thing,
people in that town were trying to do the thing
that we're trying to do, which is essentially
what is happening, why is it happening,
who's doing it and how do we make it
so it doesn't happen anymore.
And whether we're talking about now in hindsight,
you know, if you have this instinct or whatever,
or if it's just don't answer your door.
If only it was that simple.
If only that was the solution of like,
okay, never answer your door again.
That's not it.
Yeah, like that's the only way someone can break in.
Well, especially these pieces of shit
who are serial killers or like predators who won't
be stopped.
They'll just, you know, Trinitia was murdered in the parking lot of a cemetery.
So there wasn't one way to do it for this guy.
Absolutely not.
I want to hear the creepiest theory of how the killer got in.
They started going around that the killer would play
a tape of a crying baby outside the woman's home
to lure the woman out.
That definitely sounds like a rumor.
Yeah, it was never corroborated.
I think it's not true, but somehow that got started.
Because it's so creepy.
It's so creepy.
Yeah.
So a multi-agency homicide task force is formed in August 2002 to track down the killer.
Because of the multiple sightings of this white man
in a white truck, a composite sketch
is plastered all over the news.
It's this really shitty rendering.
And I guess people with white trucks, fucking the South,
there's so many white trucks everywhere.
I found out from reading some stuff that you get white
because it gets so hot during the summer
that it doesn't attract the heat, I guess.
So everyone has a white truck.
But they swabbed over 1200 men, white men
to get DNA and to try to match that.
And the FBI gets involved as well.
Meanwhile, okay, we're over in a small town
just outside of Baton Rouge called Zachary.
It's a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone.
It really is like a safe, quiet community,
a suburb of Baton Rouge.
Police chief, his name is David McDavid.
I'm not fucking that up.
That's pretty great.
He has a hunch that he knows who the killer is.
He is one of only two detectives in the Zachary police department,
which tells you what a small town it is. So because of that,
he doesn't get much attention when he brings his theory to the, you know,
Baton Rouge task force that has the FBI and all these jurisdictions attached to
it. But he's sure
he's right. And that's because they have a killer in their midst as well. And he's been sure that
his cases are linked since the Baton Rouge killings started. So let's go back in time in Zachary.
So on August 24th, 1992, we're going way back, an accountant named Connie Lynn Warner is found to
have been abducted from her home in the Oak Shadows subdivision in Zachary. Blood is found
inside her home and it indicates she may have been murdered. It's that much blood, or at least harmed
before she was abducted. Connie is a careful person and not one, again, to open doors for strangers,
which is why
police are surprised to find no signs of forced entry. Several days later, on September 2nd,
1992, her body turns up near the State Capitol building in downtown Baton Rouge. Unfortunately,
Hurricane Andrew had ripped through town, washing away any evidence that might have helped find Connie's killer. And the case goes cold.
Six years later, in 1998, a woman named Randy Mebrewer
is also living in the Oak Shadows subdivision of Zachary,
just a block away from where Condi Lynn Warner lived.
Randy is a recently divorced home health care nurse
raising her three-year-old son on her own.
The night of April 18, 1998, Randy vanishes. a recently divorced home health care nurse raising her three-year-old son on her own.
The night of April 18th, 1998, Randy vanishes. The next morning, her three-year-old son knocks
on the neighbor's door asking to play with their kids and the neighbors notice there's
blood on Michael's clothes.
Oh my God.
I know this is horrifying. They go to Randy's house to check on things and they find the house in disarray
and a trail of blood running through it.
But I guess there's a handprint in blood on the son's door,
but he had slept through the whole thing, whatever happened.
Oh, thank God.
Yeah, so he didn't even know.
They called the police,
they conducted an extensive search for Randy
because she's missing all around the area for weeks, but her body never turns up and her case like Connie's runs cold.
In between these two murders, so 92 and 98, there's an incident in the same area generally
where two teenagers are parked outside a cemetery late at night when suddenly like a machete
wielding maniac comes out of nowhere and attacks them.
Randomly, a police officer drives by
in the middle of the attack
and the perpetrator is able to escape
and leaves the two teens badly injured but alive.
Oh my God.
I know, I know.
This is a combination of every like horror movie
and scary story you've ever heard,
like urban legend kind of thing.
Totally.
So then years later in 2001,
when the murders in Baton Rouge start to take place,
David McDavid strongly suspects his murders are related
as they have so many similarities,
including the women opening the door to their killers.
And in the Baton Rouge murders,
the killer would leave with the victim's cordless phone. That was like the trophy he took.
And in the Zachary murders, he took the car keys of the victims. Even when the police pulled up
behind the car that he was attacking the teenagers in, he took the time to grab the keys out of the
ignition and run. Like that's how much he needed that weird prize.
And he also still got away. Yeah. Wow. It's fucked up.
So the FBI builds out a profile for the man they're searching for cause they're
in it now. And among other things,
they say that it's a white man age 25 to 35. That's who they're looking for.
And here's where the problem comes in for McDavid, because his suspect is black.
But still, McDavid is persistent about checking his crime scene DNA with that of the Baton Rouge
crime scene DNA.
He doesn't care.
He is still convinced that these are so similar, have the same feeling, and he thinks his earlier
attacks are connected.
However, Baton Rouge refuses to test the DNA
against his crime scenes, says he's wasting their time.
And remember, this is the early days of DNA,
so they're just like, there's no way.
Then everything changes.
In 2003, there's a technological breakthrough
in DNA testing, where they're able to get more information.
This is a enter young Paul Holes on forensic files,
explaining to all of us what exactly DNA is about.
Yeah.
That is so accurate.
That is 100% accurate.
It turns out that they are able to test DNA
to see what race a person is.
So when they test the DNA of the perpetrator
from the crime scenes, it comes back with at least quote,
85% African ancestry.
So it's not a white man this whole fucking time
they've been looking for, it's a black man.
And the public is outraged that they've been wasting
so much time on this composite sketch
that has nothing to do with the actual suspect. This
white man, white truck thing is not true at all. So the public are outraged. If that hadn't
been the case, then maybe some of these women wouldn't have been killed. That's their theory.
So that now takes us back. We're going to go back a little bit to 2002 to a seemingly
unrelated case. On July 9th, 2002, and so this is in the middle of that killing spree, a nurse named Diane
Alexander opens her door to a strange man on her doorstep.
She lives just outside Baton Rouge in a rural area.
And she's also a nurse.
Yes.
Interesting.
Lots of nurses.
Yeah, that is.
The man tells her he's lost.
He asked to use her phone.
He's very polite and charming. She says no, but he forces his way
inside and starts to violently attack her. Then in the middle
of the attack, Diane's adult son shows up and chases off his
mom's attacker. And so she survives. This she's one of the
heroes of the story. Yeah, they're able to provide a clear
enough description for police to come up with a composite sketch.
They had detailed the car, even a dent in the car, what exactly this man looked like,
and they have a composite sketch.
The man Diane describes, however, is not the white man with the white truck.
He's a black man.
Since police are certain that they're looking for a white man, white truck, ages 25 to 35, they assume the attacks she experiences unrelated to the murders.
And so they treat Diane's case separately.
So then cut back to them finding out that it's not a white man.
And McDavid from Zachary sees the sketch in Diane's case that she had come up with.
And he immediately recognizes the face as his original suspect, a man by
the name of Derek Todd Lee.
So this is the guy that McDavid suspected the whole time and just couldn't prove?
Yep.
Wow.
From his second murder, he suspected it in 1998, but he had no proof.
So let me just tell you a little bit about Derek Toddly. Not much. He grew up in Zachary, Louisiana.
And in fact, he lived for a time in the Oak Shadow subdivision
where both women were murdered.
He's one of 13 kids. He has learning disabilities.
He gets bullied. Not a great background.
He does become a pretty charming adult,
which would explain how he could talk his victims
into letting them into their homes or opening their doors.
He's been arrested several times for stalking and watching women
and breaking and entering in Zachary.
So, McDavid, you know, he had been turned down by the task force
to test his DNA from his crime scenes.
So, he goes off on his own and gets a warrant to collect a DNA sample
from Derek Todd Lee on May 5th, 2003.
And this is the craziest part. This four-part documentary, which is at the Bayou, tells it really well.
Basically, he brings that DNA sample in himself to the Task Force Crime Lab because he doesn't want it to get lost in the shuffle.
There's tons of, of course, outside jurisdictions trying to see if their
cases are connected as well. You know, it's, it's a crazy time. Right. But he is adamant
that they test the sample. So later when the analyst tests it, she thinks she's just testing
a sample from another crime scene. Meaning like, yes, the perpetrator is the same from
the other crime scenes because she sees it matches the serial killer. When she looks
at the paperwork it comes with,
she realizes that it's actually from a suspect
and she can't fucking believe it.
And so it matches Derek Toddly
and connects him to all the murders.
But police announced that they're looking for him.
And so he goes on the run.
So he is on the run for two days
and that in region surrounding areas are like on lockdown,
freaking out.
They like know who the serial killer is.
They can't believe the police have let him get away.
He's on the run, you know, it's just mayhem.
Yeah.
But thankfully two days later, he's caught without incident in Atlanta, Georgia on May
27th, 2003.
There was some argument actually that he was incompetent to stand trial because he scored
an average of 65 on IQ tests.
But the trial moves forward and Diane Alexander, the survivor, takes the stand in both of his
trials and testifies against Derek Toddly, helping the
jury to find him guilty of the murders of Jerrolyn DeSoto and Charlotte Murray Pace.
And he's sentenced to death. He's also linked by DNA to the murders of Randy Meaburer, Gina
Green, Pam Kinnamore, Ternatia Colum, and Carrie Yoder.
God. So the city's finally able to breathe a collective sigh of relief when police have finally captured
Derek Toddly.
With Lee behind bars, police are sure they finally got the monster responsible for all
the murders that took place in the area.
However, DNA and other evidence had only linked Lee to seven murders that they're investigating.
And so to the police's surprise and horror,
there's at least another six murders
that they expected to tie to him, but he hadn't committed.
He's not a match for them.
Once they know the DNA, it's like,
oh, they just wanna put it all on this guy
and say we're done with that.
And the truth is, nope,
you've got other problems on your hands.
Well, it's that belief that it's like, these monsters, you know, are few and far between.
Like, this is such an anomaly. And to find out that no, it's fucking not. There's a lot
of these people and there are more in your community. I mean, the terror. Horrifying.
And just so wild where it's like, that's truly like there's a rampaging monster.
And somebody finally takes that monster down and it's like, oh, yay. And then it's like, that's truly like, there's a rampaging monster
and somebody finally takes that monster down
and it's like, oh yay.
And then it's like, hold on, sorry,
two more monsters, we just can't see them right now.
That's right, because after he's locked up,
there are dead mutilated bodies of area women
found in the city of Baton Rouge
and they realize they have yet another serial killer
in their midst.
But that's a story I'm gonna cover.
Coming up soon, part two.
Part two.
Yeah.
Yes, oh my God.
I know.
I was gonna do them together, but they're so,
like these two butchers of the Maya, they're so fucked up.
They just had to have their own episode.
Yeah, for sure. So Derek Todd Lee, sentenced to death by lethal injection
in December 2004, he's held on death row at the Maximum Security Louisiana State Prison.
The families of the victims have to go through appeal after appeal. And before he can face his fate, he dies of heart disease on January 21st, 2016
at the age of 47.
And some families are glad it's just over
and some families feel like he didn't get what he deserved.
And that is the story of serial killer, Derek Toddly.
Wow.
I know.
That's the thing that's gonna stick with me.
He's stabbed Charlotte Marie
Pace 81 times. 81 fucking times. What kind of person?
Yeah. What's happening? What's happening with that person?
I just can't. You know, and we've said a lot of stuff about
people being put to death in jail and stuff like that, but he died.
You know what I mean?
It's like, I can really see that
because it's easy to get very emotional
and very like results oriented
when it comes to serial killers.
These are not normal people.
These are not people getting arrested
because their tail light was broken or something like that.
These are people that are frenzied and berserking
and stabbing people 81 times.
And even still, if he died by natural causes,
at least he's dead.
And it's not like that idea that he's supposed to
get a certain type of death.
That's the only way that you can unhook
from that cycle of trauma is terrible and sad to me.
Because I don't know, it's just so extreme.
No one could imagine going through it.
It doesn't matter what you think your feeling would be.
It's just such a horrible, horrible fact to be living in.
Yeah, definitely.
Man, that was insane.
Yeah, yeah, that one was really hard to research for sure.
Yeah, well, at least there's a part two
and perhaps a part three.
You really signed up for it on that one, my God.
I really did, I know. I have a positive story next week and then the following we come in
and do the other one.
Oh yeah, you kind of lace it throughout.
Yeah.
That's nice.
Need a little break.
Yeah. Smart. Well, great job.
Thank you.
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Goodbye.
Well, along that same line of changing it up
for everyone's mental health,
that's what we're gonna do right now.
Yay.
That's what Alejandra and Hannah do for us
when they plan out these stories.
So I think I've talked to you about this
because my dad and I, when I go to his house
for all the major holidays and to hang out with him,
the one thing we can agree on, my dad and I,
are World War II movies, get the Nazis movies.
There's always a handful on Netflix that you can find.
So I watched this movie around Christmas time with my dad and it was so good and of
course it's a true story, it's World War II.
And so, we find a movie from 2018 called The Twelfth Man.
And we watch it and I have never in one sitting heard my father use the phrase, you got to
be kidding me so many times. This story is so crazy.
And it's such a great story of the Norwegian resistance, the Norwegian
citizens who banded together to fight against the Nazis and also to save a
Norwegian soldier, their fellow citizen.
Today, I'm going to tell you the survival story of a man named Jan B fellow citizen. Today I'm gonna tell you the survival story
of a man named Jan Balserud.
Amazing.
So the main stories used in this are a 2016 article
for the New York Times called The Fugitive,
written by Robert Kolker,
and a 2019 article from Recoil Off Grid,
I guess that's a website,
Recoil Off Grid, I guess that's a website, Recoil Off Grid entitled,
The World War II Survival Story of Jan Balserud
by a writer named Patrick McCarthy.
And all the other sources are in our show notes.
So I'm gonna give you first a little backstory on Norway.
Stop me if you've heard this already.
So during World War I, Norway declared themselves neutral,
they're pacifists, you know, and they actually were neutral
in World War I.
And then when World War II rolled around,
their pacifism is no match for Hitler's insatiable need
to conquer the world.
So Norway is invaded in 1940 and Nazis take over Oslo,
Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik.
There's also a really good movie called Narvik
and it's on Netflix.
You keep seeing them all, haven't you?
I really have, like ask me anything.
There's some great ones too.
It's just, it's incredible because we,
as people who are in entertainment,
pay a lot of attention to entertainment.
When you watch a good story, you're like,
oh, how did they come up with this?
When you're watching true stories that they make into movies,
you're like, I can't believe this is real.
And that's the longest way of saying truth is stranger than fiction
or more interesting.
But it really is like in wart time, these times where people have been
like pushed to the very edge and this stuff people can actually like accomplish in those
times. It's, it's really amazing. That's what the story's about. So what we do know about
Norway, the one thing everyone does know is it has fjords. They're famous for their fjords.
Oh, sure. If you've never heard of a fjord, it's a little inlet of the sea that
reaches very far inland. And so fjords begin to create kind of maze-like protection that
if it was a ship that wasn't from around that area, it would have a really tough time navigating.
And this is of course, incredibly favorable naval positioning in times of war.
The Nazis recognized that and they want to take advantage of it.
So April of 1940, Nazis invade Norway.
They stake their claim over the land.
They establish military bases in several of Norway's port cities.
The vast majority of Norwegians want the Nazis gone, but there
were a select few who were sympathizers, if not completely joining them. And one was named
Vidken Quisling. He was a Norwegian military officer. He was a right wing politician, former
diplomat. He welcomes the Nazis with open arms. He's also a white supremacist who has outspoken
about his support for Hitler even before the invasion. So when the Nazis invade, they appoint
Vidken head of state. But Vidken's political views do not reflect most of Norway's. And so
the ordinary civilians of Norway band together to fight the Nazi occupation
Mostly by forming underground resistant groups that train in secret and work
Effortlessly to foil Nazi plots on their home turf. Well now there's there's a beginning of a story
You mean the regular butcher down the street and the little kid that's off at school,
they're in the resistance?
Yes, they are.
All right.
So one of these groups is called Company Linge.
It's Norwegian Independent Company One
formed in March of 1941.
And it's headed by Captain Martin Linge,
who was an actor who had gone
to military school in his youth.
This company travels to Shetland, Scotland
to get trained by the British special operations executive.
And then when they come back,
they all start different missions with the same goal
to sabotage Nazis.
Company Lynch's first raid, Operation Claymore, takes place in the
spring of 1941 with the help of two British commandos. Company Lynch destroys
German controlled fish oil and glycerin factories in northern Norway's
Lofoten Islands. So both fish oil and glycerin are chemicals used by the Nazis to make explosives.
So when they complete this raid, they take 228 Nazi prisoners,
including some of Wittgen Quisling's Nazi collaborators.
And in their second raid, called Operation Archery,
that takes place a few months later on December 27th 1941 in the town of Malay on the southwestern Norwegian island of Vagse.
So there are these trained underground like guerrilla fighters.
Yes.
That are like fighting back against their own, technically their own people at this point.
Fighting back against the occupying forces,
the occupying German forces, essentially,
and fighting back in very subtle ways.
So it's like, oh, suddenly your fish oil factory
has exploded, now you can't fuel any of these bombs
or whatever kind of things that they're doing.
All that kind of stuff that in the day to day,
and also Narvik is very much like this.
There's a woman who
was working at the hotel that the Nazis take over and then the head Nazi kind of takes
a liking to her. So she very slowly but surely having that inside position just fucks things
up here and there so that they don't know, they don't hear about this and they don't
know about that. So it's the resistance on the inside. Frank's here and
he wants you to know about it. So in Operation Archery, their objective is to destroy the
production of explosives chemicals, but this time Captain Lynch is actually killed in combat.
So the rest of company Lynch has to continue their vital work to save Norway from the Nazis for the next
four years without their leader. So in 1943 company Lynch's focus shifts from destroying
German war supplies to destroying German war machines, the boats, the tanks and the aircraft
that they have all around the area. So on March 28th, a faction of the company sets out
on one such mission called Operation Martin. I will test you on all the names of these operations.
I hope you're writing them down. So I mean, that's my dad's name. I'm not going to forget that one.
Yeah, that one you'll remember. And because this is the, this actually is the inciting incident. So
here we go. So on this operation, Operation Marty,
their objective is to sneak into Tromsø, which is a northern port city of Norway where
Nazis have secured an air and a sea base and basically blow up as much of the Germans equipment
as they possibly can. And the way they're going to do that is by taking a fishing boat
called the Bratholme and filling it with explosives and
essentially hiding it in plain sight. So this happened a lot where basically the citizens,
the Norwegian citizens would be there like, hey, I'm just fishing. It's no big deal. This is what
I do all the time in one of our many fjords when actually what was in the boat was like filled with
stuff because they were in it, they were in that resistance.
So they were gonna do that on a bigger fishing boat
called the Bratholme.
So the problem is that one of the members of company Lynch
reaches out to make contact
with a local ally of the resistance,
but unbeknownst to him,
he actually is talking to a German imposter
and telling the imposter the whole plan.
And he realizes this the next morning
when he sees the Nazi ships headed straight for them
in the cove where they're hiding.
So he pilots the Braatham North,
weaving through the fjords to escape the pursuing Nazis.
They get cornered in a bay, Totefuren Bay, which is on the northeast side of an island
called Rebenesoya.
So they're trapped.
OK.
They make a decision for themselves.
Basically, they set a time-delayed fuse.
All 12 guys jump onto a dinghy and push off
just as the brothel explodes.
So essentially they're not gonna get their stuff confiscated.
Yeah.
Right, they just blow up the boat
and then they try to row away as fast as they can.
Oh my God.
But the Nazis opened fire,
killing one of the 12 men and sinking the dinghy.
So now the remaining 11 try to swim away.
10 of them are captured and executed.
And only now one man remains.
And that is Jan Belsered.
Holy shit.
This part of the movie is so exciting
because it kind of makes no sense how he escaped.
They're just being,
the Nazis are right on them shooting at them.
And he's in this freezing cold water.
It's Norway and it's like March.
So it's like the end of winter freezing cold.
So crazy that they just caught them and executed them.
Like it went from 12 to one fucking person.
Like, oh my God.
In the movie, and I would imagine,
it's not hard to imagine, Jonathan Rhys Myers,
he plays the Nazi that's basically like pursuing Jan,
the entire movie.
And it's this thing where he tries to test out
how long could somebody stay in this water realistically.
And so he goes and gets in the water
and he can only stay in the water for 30 seconds
or something like that.
It's so incredibly cold.
But Jan.
Grew up like that, right?
Yes, he's like in it.
And also it's life or death for him.
So he's not getting out anytime soon.
It's a life or death cold plunge.
Yeah.
Fuck.
The worst kind, the very worst kind.
Also, if you were an older woman,
maybe closer to perimenopause,
you're not supposed to do cold plunges.
It's that kind of shit where everyone's like,
you know, it's really good for you.
It's like, unless it's not.
Right, you know who they tested that on?
Men, so.
Yep.
Probably best not to do it.
Unless they have the same hormones you do,
probably not, don't go with it.
Anyway, let's get out of the perimenopause update and back into this
World War II gripping drama.
Okay.
So we're going to talk a little bit about Jan real quick.
He was born on December 13th, 1917 in what was called Kristiania, Norway, but
that's modern day Oslo.
We've been there.
Hey, we did a fucking live show in Oslo.
We met so many wonderful Norwegian people in Oslo
who spoke better English than both of us.
That was the one I loved where somebody would walk up,
I would say, hey, what's your name?
And then they would go, and then I would be like,
I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said. And they would go, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr So, and also the majority of candy we got was from Oslo and we had that candy for,
I think there's still some left. We had so much wonderful candy.
There was also when we were in Sweden, a ton of candy too.
Yeah. Oh, that's true. We picked it all up in our Scandinavian candy tour.
Adventures.
Okay. So Jan was the son of an instrument maker, and he followed in his father's footsteps
and went to school
to become a cartographical instrument maker.
So like the compass that you put on a map
and you're like, we're 300 miles away.
So he knew that kind of stuff.
He graduates from school in 1939 at age 22.
So the next year is when the Nazis invade Norway.
So Jan flees to Sweden, which has managed to remain neutral up until that point.
He spends the next year traveling from Sweden to the Soviet Union, then to Africa, then to the United States.
Finally, he lands in Great Britain in 1941.
But it's while he's in Great Britain that he learns about company
lynch and that the fact that they're training nearby up in Scotland.
Remember I told you about that?
So he goes and joins them, trains alongside his fellow countrymen.
And in 1943, he returns home to Norway to fight the Nazis at age 25.
Damn.
Yeah. When they launch Operation Martin, Jan's job is to swim up to the Nazi sea planes,
attach underwater magnetic explosives to them, and blow them up. So now that that plan is foiled
and Jan is on his own in ice cold water and surrounded by the enemy, he has to improvise.
So clearly, you know, like cold plunge swimming
was his specialty because that's who got picked to do that
to their Nazi seaplanes.
So in the midst of Nazi gunfire,
Jan is able to swim 70 yards through Arctic waters
until he reaches the shores
of that little island of Reben Nesoya,
Reben Nesoya, Reben Nesoya maybe, he takes cover in a ravine
and hides behind a large rock,
but the Nazis are everywhere.
They're on him, they know one guy got away.
They're not gonna let him get away.
And if there is any truth to the portrayal
of this Nazi in the movie, he's like, no,
like if this guy gets away, that's my reputation. So, right. So they're like, you have to get him.
It's one guy. It's freezing cold water. There's no way he could have survived that.
It's fucking Norwegian Rambo all of a sudden. Yes, the best.
Yeah. The best kind of Rambo.
So basically he hides there surrounded by Nazis. And finally, two Nazi soldiers come up on him.
there surrounded by Nazis and finally two Nazi soldiers come up on him. But Jan still has his snub nose Colt revolver on him. So he shoots both. He kills one and he injures
another. It's enough to buy him some time to run up the hill. And this is when he realizes
one of his feet is bare. Oh no, because in the explosion, he lost a boot in the water. Oh my God. So
now he's soaking wet. He's running through the Norwegian winter and he has a bare foot.
So he runs up the hill, he takes cover and he waits until nighttime. And then he starts
walking around the island trying to find help. And mercifully, he does find it in the form of two young girls.
So, by the time he finds these young girls, his uniform is frozen solid.
That's how, because he's soaking wet and then he's walking around in the winter.
Luckily, the girls' family heard Jan's commando boat explode.
They feared for their lives, So they fled inland to another
family member's house and they lead Jan back to their aunt's home. The adults inside warm him
next to the fire. They take off his literally frozen uniform. They give him dry clothes and food.
And although he's grateful for their help, Jan knows that if he stays with this family,
the Nazis will kill them for helping him.
So he has to get out of there.
He knows that he has to keep running.
And basically that the only way that he's going to survive is if he makes it to Sweden,
where basically the Nazis can't get him once he crosses the border to Sweden.
So once he's sufficiently warm again, Jan heads out without telling the family his plan.
He knows that the less they know, the safer they are.
But before he leaves, he does make sure to impress upon the youngest member of
the family,
a 10-year-old girl named Dagmar, Dagmar Idripsson.
He impresses upon her the importance of keeping a secret.
He says, if she ever tells anyone that he was there,
she and everyone she loves will be murdered.
Just a quick note before I leave.
Which meanwhile, hey dummy, she's a girl, she gets it.
She's going to keep that secret.
She's not a boy, she's gonna zip it.
Okay, so Jan sets out for Sweden,
and basically he sticks with this approach throughout the journey.
Don't tell anyone where you've been, who you've met, where you're going.
He only knocks on people's doors if he is absolutely desperate,
not only because he knows that he's risking knocking on a Nazi sympathizer's door,
somebody that could turn him in, but to his great luck,
every time he gets desperate enough to knock on someone's door, somebody that could turn him in. But to his great luck, every time he gets desperate
enough to knock on someone's door, he only finds people who support the resistance. So
there were not very many Nazi sympathizers at all. One woman is a midwife and she offers
to hide Jan in her home by disguising him as a pregnant woman going into labor. But
he says, thank you, but I have to keep going. It's too risky.
When he's forced to stop again,
he finds refuge with the man who supports the resistance,
but the man's neighbor who works for the Nazis
stops by for a visit.
Somehow this man manages to hide Jan
and get rid of the fascist neighbor
before they can find Jan.
At some point later in his journey,
when Jan finds a
Rocky kind of watery pass that he needs to get across
He meets a kind man with a boat who is willing to row him throughout this difficult corridor in the dark of night
Right past Nazi guards. So this was that kind of beauty of hiding in plain sight I was talking about. Where just like, they were very, very brave.
You would call them ordinary citizens, but they're not
because they're doing shit like this,
like knowing they're just helping a soldier.
So even with all the help of these kind strangers,
the elements are too harsh for almost anyone to endure.
Jan gets frostbite on his feet.
His toes began to turn black and decay in the cold, but he keeps going.
And a stroke of good luck comes when a fisherman gifts him with a new pair of boots and a set of skis to help him cross the snowy landscape faster.
These skis are so effective that on one morning Jan glides right past a group of Nazis enjoying their breakfast.
He's moving so quickly, the soldiers don't even have a chance to pay him any mind,
let alone peg him for a fugitive. So it's this kind of thing of like, who, me? Nothing. I'm just,
I'm just cross-country skiing. No big deal. Right. But then a blizzard hits and Jan gets thrown off
course. By the time the snow stops, the UV rays bouncing off the ice and the snow
burn his eyes and he becomes temporarily blind.
He gets snow blindness.
So he finds himself on the side of Mount Yegevar.
This is an icy mountain with a 3000 foot peak.
He knows he's on a slope, but he's so disoriented, he can't
tell if he's traveling upwards or downwards. He's still got the skis on, by the way. So
as if skiing itself isn't hard enough, but now you're skiing snow blind.
Yon keeps himself from falling off the ledge of his path by throwing snowballs and listening
for them to hit the ground.
If he hears some drop, he moves forward.
If he hears nothing, he turns and heads the other direction.
Oh my God.
Blind skiing.
No.
Just nightmare.
No.
By this point, Jans made it about 50 miles
with the Nazis hot on his trail.
Wow.
Frozen, partially barefoot,
well not really barefoot anymore, that was from before, blind, and he still hasn on his trail. Wow. Frozen, partially barefoot, well not really barefoot anymore,
that was from before,
blind, and he still hasn't gotten caught.
And then on or around April 4th, 1943,
an avalanche hits.
No.
Yep.
It slams Jan 300 feet down the mountain
to the valley below.
He's knocked out and when he wakes up,
he's buried in the snow with a concussion.
His skis are broken and his backpack of supplies
is nowhere to be found.
Oh, fuck.
With limited vision and impaired cognitive functioning,
because he hit his head really hard,
Jan musters up the strength to dig himself out of the snow.
Oh my God.
And what's the trick we learned for getting caught
in an avalanche and being stuck in snow?
Spit, and whichever way the spit goes, that's up. That's right. And what's the trick we learned for getting caught in an avalanche and being stuck in snow?
Spit.
And whichever way the spit goes, that's up.
That's right.
No, that's down.
That's down.
Yeah.
Spit goes down.
Classic, my favorite murder help is it's half wrong and you can figure it out better by
yourself.
The wrong half with Cannon and Georgia.
The important half.
So once he digs himself out, he can't orient himself
or figure out what direction he's supposed to go,
but he just keeps going.
He has to keep going.
He's hoping that he's going south
toward the Swedish border.
He doesn't know.
He walks for three days.
Now on top of his snow blindness, he begins to hallucinate.
He begins to hear the voices of his fellow resistance fighters
from his commando in their final screams
as the Nazis capture and kill them.
So he is going through it.
On the fourth day of his post avalanche wandering,
which is April 8th, 1943,
Jan stumbles upon a home in the remote and tiny village of Furuflaten. In a truly
miraculous coincidence, this home belongs to the sister of a member of the resistance.
Holy shit.
Yep. A man named Marius Grønvold. So with the help of Marius's family and friends in
the village, they are able to hide Jan in the family's barn loft, and they do their best to nurse him back to health while he's
there.
Twice, the Nazis come and search the barn, and twice they fail to find Jan hidden behind
a pile of hay in the loft.
It's not like they built a special area for him, nothing like that.
He just gets away with it.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
After about four days, Jan regains his sanity.
But his frostbite has gotten so bad that he can no longer walk on his own.
But he has to keep going or the Nazis will find him and kill him
and whoever's hiding him.
So Marius and a few others load Jan onto a stretcher and while pretending to fish,
they sneak him past occupying Nazis and into a rowboat. Marius and his friends row Jan
across the fjord with a plan to carry him the rest of the way to freedom. So now it's
April 12th, 1943. How long has he been on the road for I was just about to tell you
Oh, yeah, yeah fucking weeks two weeks
Yeah, when they reach the other side of the fjord they realize the land there is too steep for them to just carry him straight up
Themselves they know if they're gonna get yon to safety
They need a sled to pull him in and that's gonna take some work. So right now he's on like a stretcher.
So they stash Jan in a nearby six by nine shed.
So a tiny shed.
They leave him with food, water, a knife, a lamp,
and some hard liquor to last him a couple days.
And Jan, I almost said Jan yokingly.
Jan jokingly refers to this setup as the Hotel Savoy.
So back in the village of Furu Flaten,
Marius and his friends and his team recruit a school teacher
who's also a woodworker, and they ask him to build this sled.
And of course he has to do it in secret
because the Nazis are regularly
using the schoolhouse as their meeting place. So this schoolteacher has the brilliant idea
of building the sled in pieces so that Marius and his friends can carry the pieces by boat
back across the fjord and then assemble it at the foot of the hill. So a sled won't ever be found being assembled.
So meanwhile, Jan is spending days in this shed waiting for them. He rations out his food to try
to make it last. Marius manages to be able to pay him a visit a few days in to make sure he's okay,
but he's not. The frostbite on his feet is getting worse
and now gangrene has set in.
So, and this is the part.
Oh no.
Do you can skip ahead 30, if not 60 seconds.
Oh dear.
No, I can't.
Yeah, you can't.
You have to stay in this with me.
I stayed in yours with you.
You have to stay in this with me. Okay stayed in yours with you. You have to stay in this with me.
Jan takes the knife Marius left him.
He holds it under the flame of his lamp,
heats the blade, slices into his dying skin,
allowing the infection to drain
so that it doesn't spread further.
But that's not enough, it doesn't work.
And he knows that his frostbitten toes
are only going to make that gangrene worse.
So he's forced to perform several crude amputation
on his own toes to save his foot.
No.
Yes.
No, no, no.
In a little shitty shed.
Finally, the sled is complete,
but then bad weather delays Marius and the guys for another
few days.
And you know, these Nazis are on his trail.
So this is time they don't have to spend.
The weather finally clears, they row across the fjord, they find Jan bloody and starving.
They load him onto the sled and together they pull him up the steep hill another 2,700 feet.
Once they get near the top, they're forced to leave him in a carved out boulder so that
basically, so no one notices they're gone.
They can't just go on the full trip with him.
They realize if the Nazis in town notice that they're gone they're gonna that's how they're gonna be onto them so they just stow him essentially under a
big rock on this stretcher and they leave him there and they're like we're
gonna be back tomorrow if not the next day well it's nine days before they come back. This poor guy. Yeah.
In this stretch of time, Jan, basically he has had a bottomless well of hope for this
entire journey.
And this is the first time that it runs out and he actually contemplates ending his life.
There are some accounts that say that Jan actually tried to pull the trigger on his colts and it was
frozen and it didn't shoot. There are others who say he only considered it because he was
so low and there was so much stacked against him. Either way, when the men return to the
hiding spot, Jan is still alive and he's of course, they're very happy to see each other.
I'm sitting here freezing right now too.
Like I think just somehow I'm getting into my head,
I'm turning the heat on.
The idea that he swam and then had to get out
and walk around in the freezing cold.
I feel like that from that moment,
I would never be warm again.
No, yeah.
It would just be like,
you can give me all the thermals you want,
it's not gonna work.
Sit by a fire, but you're fucked.
Yeah.
Okay, so their plan of traveling with Jan
a ways pausing and then resuming after a few days
continues on for weeks.
And each time Jan reaches a new village,
the previous group passes him off
to a new group of local allies
that take him on the next leg of the journey.
Okay.
Over the course of a little more than two months.
Holy shit.
Yes.
Jan makes it to the border of Finland.
It's like a relay race.
Exactly.
With a Nazi resistor.
Yes.
It's the regular people of these little villages are just like, oh yeah, we'll get involved. Absolutely.
We'll do this. We'll save this man's life. We'll save this member of the resistance.
Up to the point where basically they have to cross through one part of Finland, which
has basically been taken over by the Nazis. It's Nazi territory at that point to get to
Sweden. So when they
get to this part, the people from his last leg of his journey reach out to a group of
the Sami people who are the indigenous tribe in Norway, asking them for assistance. So
basically the Sami people attach Jan Sled to a team of reindeer.
And those reindeer pull him through that last leg of the trip to get to the border of Sweden.
And in the movie, this part is so beautiful because the Nazis are there kind of on lookouts
right at the border.
It's the border, right?
So this is their occupied territory.
They know over there is neutral.
And so anybody trying to leave or anything, they're there.
And what they see is a bunch of reindeer running
really fast through a bunch of other reindeer.
Cause it's like just this big kind of,
in the movie at least, it was like a tundra shot.
And so it just looks like there's reindeer running and then the Nazis
don't realize it until the sled is far enough away that the reindeer are pulling a sled.
Holy shit.
And then basically it's such a cool thing because it's almost like these elements
that he's been fighting this whole time finally are on his side and help him.
But really, it's the Sami people that helped him and made that brilliant plan where it's like,
let the reindeer do it, they'll fix it.
So he crosses the Finland-Sweden border, and at last,
Jan Balsrud has reached the safety of neutral Sweden.
When he arrives on around June 1st, 1943,
the Sami people find locals and ask for help.
And those locals call the Red Cross.
The Red Cross sends a seaplane that takes Jan
to a hospital in Boden, Sweden.
When he's admitted, he weighs 80 pounds.
Whoa.
He spends six months in the hospital.
I almost said in hospital, like a British person.
He spends six months in the hospital
regaining his eyesight from the snow blindness.
So he was blind that whole time.
Oh my God.
And relearning how to walk once his infections
and self-administered amputation wounds are healed.
Shit.
And as soon as he recovers, he goes back to
Scotland where he begins training the next round of Norwegian resistance soldiers.
Dude.
Right back in. When the war ends in 1945, Jan returns home to Norway to see the end
of the Nazi's occupation with his own eyes, his affinity for his home country stronger than ever. Jan
marries his wife, Evie. They have a daughter named Liv, and they settled back in Oslo at
the time, Kristianna, to live out the rest of their lives together. In 1957, Jan is named
chairman of the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union, and he holds that position until 1964. On December 30th, 1988, at the age of 71,
Jan Baselrud passes away of natural causes.
They couldn't get him with the frostbite,
they couldn't get him with the gangrene.
They couldn't get him with direct gunshots
toward his head and body.
So there's several landmarks that commemorate Jan's journey
and his bravery, including a museum in Furuflatten.
There's also a street bearing his name in Kolboten.
And there's an annual remembrance march on July 25th,
where the locals retrace part of his path
over a nine day stretch.
Wow.
Years later, Jan's second cousin, Tor Hogg,
told the New York Times in a 2016 interview
that while there have been books written and movies made
about Jan's experiences,
he felt none had truly captured the key to his survival.
So Tor himself set out to write a book of
his own called Defiant Courage. It was published in 2001 and it was co-authored by Astrid Carlson
Scott. And Tor said, my intention was to honor all of his helpers because that's what Jan
would have wanted. And that is the survival story of the Norwegian hero,
Jan Balsarud, and the heroic efforts
of all the Norwegian citizens who joined the resistance
and helped keep him alive.
Wow.
The reindeers, especially the reindeers.
Including the reindeers that went on
to pull Santa's sleigh that year.
Oh, wow.
Oh my God.
Good one, great one.
You did it again.
Did it again.
Me and Jim watching Christmas shows,
watching entertainment during the holidays.
This is why you gotta watch more TV, everyone.
I think we say it every time.
We truly do.
Why are you listening to podcasts
when you should be watching streaming television?
Don't leave the house. Sit on the couch and watch TV. Really quickly, I'm joking about
that because I cannot tell you how furious I have become when I turn on streaming services
that I pay subscription fees for and there are commercials. Bullshit. Yes, absolutely.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
This world is a mess.
I mean, for all the things we've talked about
in this episode and more.
Truly.
But you're not a mess, and we appreciate you tuning in,
even if you are a mess, to our podcast.
More so if you are a mess,
because how did you make it here?
Congratulations.
Welcome to your tribe.
You're the Yon Balsa Road of your life. That's right. your tribe. You're the young balsa root of
your life. That's right. You've done it. Your cats are your reindeers. Oh, take care of
your toes. That's right. Thanks for listening, guys. We appreciate you so much. And don't get murdered. Good-bye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah.
["Sweet Home Alone"]
This has been an Exactly Right production.
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace.
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Ali Elkin.
Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com.
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook
at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at MyFaveMurder.
Goodbye.