My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 423 - Crack It!
Episode Date: April 11, 2024On today's episode, Karen covers the Carolands Estate Predator and Georgia tells the story of Brian Regan, "The Spy Who Couldn't Spell." For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/...episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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["My Favorite Girl"]
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Hello
And welcome to my favorite murder that's george a hard stark that's karen kill cariff these are the stories
Oh have you watched the homicide like life on the street in New York? Like, yeah, the Netflix series that Dick Wolf produced.
Yes, I watched it.
I've been shit this weekend.
It is so good.
It is so good.
And my boyfriend is Mike Mooney, that big silver fox guy with a deep voice that's like,
I'm actually a philosopher and a genius.
And I'm in the Grateful Dead.
The first one I watched was the case of the woman who worked in the high-rise,
she's a cleaning lady in the high-rise building, and she just disappears inside the building.
Yeah.
Like maddening.
So maddening.
Yeah.
Yeah. I had never heard of any maddening. Yeah. Yeah.
I had never heard of any of those cases and they were, I was riveted.
I wonder if they're just going to start doing that all over or just in New York.
I mean, because that was a show that they tried to release on regular TV, right?
Oh.
This is my guess because I think this is what I saw, but I could absolutely, as we all know, be wrong.
2017, they released it on regular TV
and it just has like a regular run
and that doesn't get renewed.
And people are like,
how could a Dick Wolf show not get renewed?
And then watching it now, it's like,
oh, this was visionary true crime content.
This was advanced storytelling, sensitivity, all the different things.
Like, yeah, very cool. It was definitely like the best regular true crime show
that like the ones we fucking grew up watching, you know, like we're so good at
a certain time. It was that we, yeah, we've been shit. I hope they do more. I do
too because there was, I don't know how to talk about it
Correctly, but it just was that thing where it's like until the time where we figure out
how to fix
policing and how to fix the justice system and how to
First of all address like just say in LA alone the budgetary issues where schools have zero
Like just say in LA alone, the budgetary issues where schools have zero, mental health services have zero
and the cops have like 50 billion
or something that's like to a degree that is just wild.
All of that exists.
I have very progressive voting beliefs on all of it.
I want it changed.
I want it done quickly.
Of course.
At the same time, meanwhile, every single day, horrible things happen in this city,
let's just say by itself.
In this city, horrible things happen and horrible people do horrible things.
And there are people out there trying to figure out who those horrible people are and put
them in jail.
Yeah.
It's not as simple as it was when we first started enjoying true crime.
It's never been that simple.
I'll say it this way.
It's never been that simple.
We've always been copagandaed our whole lives.
Ooh, I've never heard copagandaed.
That's a new one for me.
Copaganda, which is just what law and order is,
what any of those things are to say,
hey, the justice system works great.
It happens, they track this works great. It happens.
They track this stuff down and it happens in three weeks. So you get an answer, blah,
blah, blah, whatever. But as I watched this series, it was just like all of that aside,
these people hear about this lady missing in this building and they bust their ass until
they get an answer. And that's just how it happened,
separate from everything else.
It's like spotlighting the people who care.
And that does give you hope for sure.
That fucking poor DA dude who was like,
yeah, I quit after that fucking case
because I realized it wasn't for me.
Most people cannot do it.
The average person cannot work in any kind of like, you could consider it maybe like
social services in a way.
Where you are there to service the public, it is terrible.
You see terrible things.
Terrible things happen in front of your eyes.
And you just have to keep helping somehow.
Yeah. Speaking of, I'm listening to a book
about a serial killer case I had never heard about.
What are those called?
It's not a documentary.
True Crime?
Yeah, but nonfiction, nonfiction.
What if you suddenly forgot what True Crime was?
I meant nonfiction, but yes, True Crime as well,
about a serial killer in New Bedford in like the late 80s,
New Bedford, Massachusetts, which I fucking knew nothing about. And now I want to go to,
but there's a serial killer who's killing sex workers there. All these bodies, like nine bodies
were found and 11 were counted as possible victims. I'm still listening, so I don't fucking know
what happens, but it's good. It's called Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle. That sounds good. Wait, that's an audiobook you're listening to?
Yeah. Yeah. New Bedford. Who knew? I am still watching totally dedicated to,
blown away by, and yet feel so stupid watching Shogun. I cannot read those
I cannot read those closed captionings as fast as they go.
I can't keep up. And I also can't stare straight ahead long enough
to read them, I think.
Like you want to be on your phone kind of a thing.
Slowly sneaking my phone into my line of sight
as I'm trying to read.
Karen's phone just snuck into the zoom as we were sitting here.
As an example of very, very casually sneaking a look at my phone while I'm trying to read
about this ancient Japanese warlords.
It's so good though.
I mean, it's just so well done.
It's becoming the war of the women, which is like very unexpected, spoiler alert.
Did you see this movie from last year
that I watched over the weekend
that I can't stop thinking about?
It stars, of course, everyone's favorite hot priest,
Andrew Scott. Andrew Scott.
Yeah. Yes.
And Paul Mescal called all of us strangers.
And it is, did you watch it?
No, I I've heard about it. I watched the two of them do a lot
of press junkets, but I didn't watch it.
Okay, it is heartbreaking. Watch it to the end. Basically, this
man gets to go back and visit his parents who died when he was
12. And they just like, everything's the same. They
interact like everything is normal. They did die when he was 12 and they just like, everything's the same. They interact like everything is normal.
They did die when he was 12 and they were meeting their adult son and he gets to like tell them all
these things about, I mean, it's just like he gets to have like a reckoning and meanwhile he's falling
in love. There's this beautiful love story. It's like heart wrenching. Sorry, is it slightly like
fantastical? Like his dead parents can't come back somehow?
Yes, yes.
Oh, those ones get me.
I can't, that one, that gets me.
This will get you so freaking hard.
The last 10 minutes broke my heart.
You have to watch it.
It's beautiful.
It's so beautifully done.
It's weird because I thought you were gonna say,
Andrew Scott, because of Ripley, which
is another new Netflix series.
And it is basically a retelling of the fabulous, the talented Mr. Ripley.
Oh, hi.
Who's going to say the fabulous Mr. Ripley?
Some would call him.
Some probably have called him.
Some may have referred to him as, but this one's just called Ripley and it's black and
white and when I started it, I didn't know anything about it.
I started it and I was like, I don't know what's going on.
And then I, you know, left the house or whatever.
And then Bridger's like, have you been watching Ripley?
And I'm like, no.
And he's like, oh, you have to.
I was like, is it not boring?
And he was like, don't do that.
That's what I thought.
You know, it's so funny because Vince was gone for WrestleMania over the weekend.
So I put on whatever, I put that on
and I knew in five minutes that if I was watching it
with Vince, we would have turned it off
because we give things five minutes.
But it's a slow build, but it's an incredible story,
like kind of supernatural.
So that hooked me.
And then towards the end, I was like, okay, I get it.
And then the end, the last 10 minutes are wild.
So I like, I would not have finished it.
So I'm like everyone, not because I didn't like it,
because I'm fucking impatient.
Yes, because we all, we've all had our dopamine, you know.
Rewired, reset.
Just ruined to a degree where we can't really do anything.
But nothing brings joy.
I'm gonna do a parallel.
This is a fun way to do a recommendation.
If you like a story where somebody who's dead
comes back to talk to the people that miss them,
then there is a movie.
Of course I'm blanking on the name right now.
I was about to go, my favorite movie of all time.
And I'm sure I've actually said this to you before.
Back to the future.
Listen, let me tell you how it goes.
Michael J. Fox is dead the entire time.
He's a ghost.
So is Bruce Willis.
No, it's a movie called-
Truly Madly Deeply?
Yes, God damn it.
It's a movie called Truly Madly Deeply. And I believe it is.
Alejandro, are you still on that page? I think there's a famous director and it's one of his
first movies. Directed by Anthony Minghella. Anthony Minghella, who did the English Patient.
Oh. And the Tales of Mr. Ripley. What? Oh. it's all coming together.
Full circle.
So yeah, that movie, if you have an alone Saturday where no one's going to be around
for a while and you like that feeling of like trick sob where like, oh, this is kind of
a nice little movie and all of a sudden you're crying your heart out.
That's truly madly deeply.
It is so cathartic and amazing.
Trick sob is the new genre.
I love that trick sob.
Right? Because you're like, I'm not here for that. What's going on?
And then suddenly you're like, oh no, I'm processing eight years of grief. Perfect.
Trick sob. I love it. Can I tell you really quickly something I did?
It just reminded me because my dad just text me. I was texting with my... I just need to say this
because it's so embarrassing. I was texting with my, I just need to say this, because it's so embarrassing.
I was texting with my sister about cats,
because that's all we text about.
That's our relationship.
And so I sent her this photo of Mo
like sprawled out on this like fake sheepskin rug.
And I sent her that picture and it reminded me of the picture
that like vintage playgirl picture of Burt Reynolds,
naked, all hairy, spread out on a bearskin rug.
So I found the picture, hit send, then realized I had sent that picture with no
caption or anything to my dad. And then I like deleted it from him. Because if you catch it soon enough, you can delete a text.
You know?
That's good to know.
It's like, it's really quick.
And so I was like, oh, thank God.
Then the next day, and my dad never
takes time texting back to me.
Like, you know, he's my dad.
He responds immediately.
Yeah.
The next day, he wrote something like, oh, I remember.
Like, he didn't know how to respond to it for 24 hours.
Had to figure out a how to respond to it for 24 hours.
Had to figure out a way to respond to his daughter sending him a fucking naked, sexy
photo of Burt Reynolds.
And then, because I didn't delete it fast enough.
Oh, shit, I'm so sorry.
That's hard.
That's a tough one.
Of all, hardest for Marty.
Because what the hell, he's just like, uh-oh.
Oh, no.
I did a similar thing.
I don't know why.
Well, my dad and I over Christmas were just like churning
through shows.
And so we're trying to think of something to watch.
And I was like, wait a second.
And I remember seeing the trailer from the most recent
Jackass movie where they have a girl pitching soft balls
into their nuts essentially, and and that's making people stand
and basically just get softballs pitched at them.
But this girl, she pitches like a hundred miles an hour.
Like it's crazy.
So she alone is really good.
And then it's like a prank on them, which is very funny.
But we start at the beginning of the movie.
So within 10 minutes,
all of a sudden we're seeing full on buttholes.
Like, because they're trying to do some trick where if this happens that happens.
And my dad goes, hey, Jesus, can we turn this off?
I'm like, I cannot believe I made my dad sit through this.
It's jackass. What do you think it was going to be?
Like hand holding and fucking... No, but I thought it would be like funny print like in the whatever they started with was
a little lighter and it was like funny and whatever. Yeah, they'll do like paper cuts
on your mouth or something stupid like that. Yeah, or just like, just people getting like
t shirt gun to the back of the head as they walk out of the bathroom. You're like, right,
right, right, right. Right. Big gotchas.
It's just getting us through the next three hours. Then we can talk about it later. He
thinks things like that are funny, but I did not realize they were like that gross. I didn't
know.
I was going to say immediate balls. Like that's what I thought you were going to say. Just
immediate balls.
Basically, but worse kind of. It was like normally when my dad,
when sexual stuff comes up in TV shows or movies,
my dad, he acts like he's mad and he like storms out.
Come on.
Okay, I guess you're uncomfortable.
But this one, he was more like,
why are you doing this to me?
Like you were like, I saw this great movie.
Let me show this to you, dad.
Dad, this is one of my favorite films of all time.
And I want you to share the art.
Jesus.
Poor Jim, poor home Jim.
But I swear to God,
I remember seeing that Burt Reynolds layout.
Oh wait, was it in Playgirl or was it?
It was in like Cosmopolitan or something.
I think he was partially covered up, but like mostly nude.
You can't see his dong, but it's definitely like suggestive.
He's on like a bare skin rug, I think.
Yeah. And he's just so hairy and it's just so seventies. It's very funny.
He might as well, like I remember it, but this probably isn't factually true that he
has a toothpick in his mouth.
Oh, I could see that. I could see that.
But maybe that's just smoking the bandit
and I'm combining the two.
Well, don't send that to your parents, everyone.
Don't be like me.
Hey, we have a podcast network.
You wanna hear some highlights about it?
We'd love to tell you about it.
Our newest True Crime Limited series,
The Butterfly King is a bona fide hit.
Thank you all so much for listening and just know
the fifth episode is out now.
It's an amazing journey.
Please go take it.
We really think you're gonna love it.
And this week's guest on Adelting with Michelle Butoh
and Jordan Carlos is Black Thought,
the co-founder and lead MC of the Legendary Roots crew.
Over on Buried Bones, Kate Winkler-Dawson and Paul Holes
embark on the first episode
in a two parter based in 1870s Connecticut,
where a bride to be goes missing before her big day.
And hey, guess what?
If you haven't heard, we're on TikTok.
Do you guys know that?
TikTok.
Last week, we launched our first new series.
It's called Sinkhole Saturdays,
where Karen reviews popular sinkholes. I love it.
So please be sure to follow My Favorite Murder on TikTok so you don't miss out.
And if you have a sinkhole in your area you'd like me to review, please send it over to,
I guess, myfavoritemurder.gmail.com.
Or tag us on TikTok. I don't know how that works.
Yeah, social media would probably be the fastest way. Or snail mail.
And lastly, the Here's the Thing Fuck Everything mug with Vanishing Ink is back in the MFM store.
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So I got a tweet from Tessa whose handle is Tesca on Twitter. I'm just calling it Twitter.
Recommending this story and it was one that is from the Bay Area that I had never heard
of before.
And it truly is, it's like a horror movie and it happened in this very wealthy area in the 80s to two girls who were exactly my age at
the time. So it's very close to home. And also it's the kind of thing where you go,
how, how did I never hear of this when it was literally an hour away from where I grew
up?
Wow. It's chilling.
Yeah. So the main sources I'm going to use in this story today are an article from SF
Gate. So SF Gate is like a still like a weekly independent newspaper in the Bay Area that
we use all the time because they write really good true crime articles and they do kind
of like true crime from the past in the Bay area. They cover a lot of really good stories.
And there's a writer named Katie Dowd who writes a lot of the articles.
So I've quoted Katie Dowd on this podcast multiple times.
So shout out to our partner in true crime,
Katie Dowd for writing for SF gate.
She wrote an article called murder and intrigue at California's last great
gilded Age Mansion.
And I think that right there tells you everything that you need to know. The rest of the sources are in our show notes.
Today, I'm telling you the story of the Carol Ann's estate predator.
First, we'll talk about the location.
So the Carol Ann's estate was built in 1914 in Hillsborough, California, which is about 20
miles south of the city, San Francisco. And it was the brainchild of this woman, Harriet Pullman,
was the heir to the Pullman train car fortune. So you can imagine how much money she had because
her dad invented train cars, essentially.
She's Pullman train cars.
And she had married an equally wealthy man named Frank Carolan and they owned several
properties around San Mateo County.
And they lived in a city called Burlingame.
But then Burlingame gets too crowded.
There's too many quote, regular people encroaching on their property.
And they're starting to like literally, Frank Carillon is complaining to the city that he can hear other people at his house.
And he's that makes him mad. And the last straw is when the Burlingame city government asks Frank to build a sidewalk around his polo field.
Then he's like, we're
getting out of here.
This is too much.
This is insanity.
They want me to pour cement around my polo field.
So they start buying property up in the mountains in Hillsborough.
This truly is, and I think it still is today. It's like basically between Stanford University and San Francisco.
This is like that area kind of along the coast, very elite, incredibly wealthy down there.
So Harriet and Frank buy 554 acres of land up on the highest perch of the hills in Hillsborough.
And the amount of land that they owned and that this estate was on was one sixth of the size
of the entire city of Hillsborough.
Wow.
So big time, they were big time in it.
And basically Harriet had a vision
that she was gonna put like a Louis the 14th
inspired French chateau up there on this property. And it was going to
be the quote, the wonder and admiration of America. So she was a rich lady with a dream.
They build it, the estate has 98 rooms.
Holy shit.
Yeah. Nine full ensuite bedrooms, three 18th century French salons, literally the walls,
floors and ceilings of three rooms imported from France.
Oh my God.
And also during World War I.
She wanted this stuff shipped in and she somehow went over and got it there.
They have a 30,000 volume library, pristine manicured gardens and grounds,
an unobscured hilltop view that stretches from Hillsborough all the way to San Francisco
on a clear day. How many clear days are there a year in this area? About 11. But when they're
there, you can really see, you can see up to the city.
The construction of this mansion around the time costs a million dollars,
which is roughly how much money in today's money,
a million in 1914 ish.
Yes, exactly. Almost somewhere around 1920.
Jesus, that's gotta be a 36 million today.
It's 28, but you were kind of close.
Okay.
A little bit close.
So Harriet clearly has a taste for the finer things in life.
She's probably never seen like a hamburger in her life.
So she needs all the best around her.
And of course, the Carolanda States really demonstrates this.
I was looking at pictures and you could film any Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice type
of remake in this house.
It is like they have the checkerboard floors, you know, the black and white tile floors,
crazy huge ceilings with big glass, like skylighty things and the grounds that are like perfectly manicured.
It's really unbelievable.
Brand.
It sounds grand.
It's quite grand.
So Frank and Harriet move in to Carolinas States in 1916, but by the time they actually move
in, so they start this plan, work on it for, it's, I think, four years, two years or four
years. By the time
they move in, their relationship is in shambles. They don't ever really spend time together.
At Caroland, they end up just living at their own separate houses because they each have
their own other houses. Then in 1923, Frank dies of a heart attack. Harriet remarries in
1925.
She spends the summer at Carolans with her new husband,
but then decides it doesn't feel like home.
So she decides to sell it.
Now the problem with this,
which MC Hammer ran into this exact same problem
when he built a similar mansion,
is when you build big and crazy like that,
it is very hard to sell.
There's not a big pool of people that are like, I also want to spend my money on this
exact type of stuff.
So several members of the elite consider buying Carol Anne's estate.
The Duke of Windsor and Duchess Wallace Simpson were in the market for a while.
American socialite and heiress Barbara Hutton and the
Danish count that she was married to at the time. Congress even actually thought of buying
it in 1939 to use it as the summer house for the White House.
Wow.
Which is kind of crazy. Yeah. But none of those plans go through. The land is eventually
subdivided and it leads to more homes in the area. They're kind of mansion-y houses,
but they're of course nothing like the estate
while the Carolans falls into disrepair.
In 1950, a real estate company has plans to buy the estate
so they can level it and build basically
a little suburban community up in those hills.
But before they can do that,
another wealthy heiress named Countess Lillian
Remiard Dandini, who she was the heir, her family was in construction and they
were the construction company that rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906
earthquake.
Damn.
So she had a couple of nickels to rub together herself.
She swoops in, she buys Carolanda States and for the next 23 years, she uses it as an event
space for the community.
She hosts parties, charity galas, even events for local students.
And then when Countess Lillian Remiard Dandini dies in 1973, she leaves Carolands to the
city of Hillsborough so that they will convert it either into
a museum or public library, something like that.
But the problem is the upkeep is far too expensive for the city to handle.
It's a gigantic crazy person's estate.
So the city transfers the ownership to the state of California, but the state of California
also neglects it.
They also consider leveling it because it is too expensive, like the upkeep is too expensive.
But when they announced that they might knock it down, architectural enthusiasts apply for
the Carolans to receive historical landmark status.
And they actually win that status in 1975.
So they can't knock it down,
but the government is not willing to spend the money to restore it to its
original grandeur. So for the next 10 years,
it just sits there and it is not being tended to or kept,
but watched over by security guards. And that's it.
So basically they have people there to make sure
no one squats, no one, God forbid people live
in this gigantic fucking house.
So it's of course legally off limits
and there's people being paid to be posted up there
to keep people out of it.
But as you would imagine, it becomes an open secret
among teenagers of San Mateo County
that some of the security guards will actually give you
a tour of this place secretly.
Oh my God.
And that rumor goes around, there's rumors going around
that it's happened, that you can go up there, whatever.
And this rumor hits the ears of 16 year old Janine Grinsel
and 17 year old Laurie McKenna. They're a junior and seniors at San Mateo High School.
Janine recently got her driver's license and for her birthday the month before, which was
January 9th, 1985, her parents gave her a car.
And that's what she was driving on the morning of Saturday, February 5th, 1985, when she goes and picks up her friend Laurie,
because they have decided they want to try and go get a tour of Carolands.
So together they drive up the hill to the gates of the estate, and they approach the security guard on duty that day, a 23-year-old named David Allen Rayleigh.
Rayleigh had just been interviewed by a local journalism student
about giving unofficial tours at Carolands. And in that article, he claimed, quote,
you wouldn't believe the things girls offer me in exchange for a tour, food, money, sex, anything
to get inside. So these are the kind of things that we talk about in 2024, and it seems so egregious and insane
that he would be saying that and basically like bragging about it.
And then we know that we're at the beginning of a true crime story right now.
So this is all bad omens, but it is so wild
that we have just come out of an era where like that kind of thing,
this is a grown man with a job and saying teenage girls
have to like give him something to get onto this property.
It's like, and he's just like proudly telling
of course other dudes about it.
It's also rumored that David Rayleigh has cornered
teen girls during his tours in the past,
pressuring them for sexual favors.
He allegedly wants asked a girl to go into the safe vault
that was in the basement and scream as loud as she could
so she could see that sound
would not penetrate the walls of the house.
So it's not just like funny, ha ha, or cute, or flirting.
It's all threatening.
It's all creepy.
It's all like tit for tat and weird.
And I think that was also part of like when you were a teenager
back in the time, it's like, well, let's just go see.
It was like dangerous and yet other people did it.
I guess we'll try to do it too.
So Janine and Laurie drive up, they ask Rayleigh
if he will take them on a tour.
He agrees, but he tells them that they need to park their car further down the road so
no one will know that they're there.
They follow his instructions and then he takes them onto the grounds.
He gives them a tour and then the tour ends around noon.
And then Rayleigh pauses cautiously and then he tells the girls he can hear dogs barking
and he thinks the police are coming.
So he rushes them down into the basement into that vault.
And so they go into the vault.
He tells them they have to hide in there and he's going to basically shut the door.
And then when the police go away, then they can come back out.
But the girls are so scared and creeped out by the vault,
they're begging him not to shut the door.
He says he won't, but the second they step inside,
he shuts it.
Oh my God.
So they're in the vault alone in the dark
for like five minutes.
And then they can hear him like in a sing song voice,
calling out Lori's name.
And so the girls demand he let them out,
but he says they're only gonna get out of there
if they take off their clothes.
They refuse, then he opens the vault door
and shows them that he is wielding a knife.
And so the girls strip down to their underwear.
He lets them out of the vault, he handcuffs both of them,
he ties Laurie to
a bench and at knife point, he forces Janine into the next room and sexually assaults her.
And Laurie is forced to sit there and listen to her friend scream helplessly. Then Rayleigh
tells the girls if they stay quiet, he'll let them go. And then he takes Laurie at knife
point into the other room and
assaults her. He is much bigger than both of these girls. Obviously he has a knife.
They still try to fight him off. As they try to fight him off, he starts stabbing them.
They're both stabbed dozens of times. Then Rayleigh beats Lori over the head with a claw
hammer and she will later say that she just thought
she was gonna die.
She says, quote, I kind of waited for the lights to go out.
End quote.
But they don't go out.
Rayleigh then ties Janine up with a rope.
He wraps Laurie up in a carpet.
And then he puts both girls in the trunk of his 1973 Plymouth.
And then he goes back to work.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
So they are in there in his trunk stifling for, you know, it seems like about three hours.
At one point, a police officer stops by to talk to Rayleigh because Rayleigh was known
kind of around town
as like a cop worshipper.
You know, like, so he wanted that, you know,
he was like one of those security guard guys
that actually wanted to be a cop
and was always trying to impress them.
When Rayleigh's unsuspecting boss comes by
to relieve him at 515, Rayleigh gets into his car
and makes an hour long drive home where he lives with his
sister and his dad in South San Jose. And Janine and Laurie are still in his trunk and they're still
alive. Holy shit. When Rayleigh gets home, he parks his car into the garage, he goes into the house and
he watches TV, he eats dinner, he even plays Monopoly with his sister. Like he just chills out with his family.
Oh my God, what a psychopath.
And in between doing that, he'd come out to the garage
and check on the girls in the trunk.
At one point, he actually lets them get out
and like stretch their legs and he brings them a blanket.
But then he hears a noise and like freaks out
and makes them get back in. So it sounds like he's
obviously like he's either really mentally not okay, which is I think very safe to assume, but
also he doesn't have a plan, which is seems kind of dangerous for this person. And he tells them,
stay quiet or my friend Bob will kill you.
Like there's somebody in the garage,
like watching over them.
Of course there's nobody.
So around midnight, while his family is sleeping,
Riley sneaks out to his car and drives about 10 miles south
to a remote stretch of South San Jose's Silver Creek Road.
And there he takes the girls out of the trunk and then he beats them again.
So he gives them like a final beating and then he throws both of them down a steep ravine.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
These poor girls.
Janine and Laurie land in a shallow creek at the bottom of this ravine and locals would
sometimes dump garbage down there.
Like that's how he knew that that spot was there.
It's dark, it's near freezing, it's starting to rain.
Janine and Lori are so afraid that Rayleigh is waiting for them
at the top of the ravine that they don't move.
They just stay exactly where they are
until the sun comes up the next morning.
And then the girls start to muster the courage
to try to go find help, because they know he's not there anymore. until the sun comes up the next morning. And then the girls start to muster the courage
to try to go find help,
because they know he's not there anymore.
But Janine's injuries are much too severe
for her to climb the ravine.
Lori isn't in good shape.
Her hands have horrible lacerations all over them.
But she realizes her climbing up that ravine
is their only chance.
So what she does is she commando crawls up the ravine
using her elbows.
This is Mary Vincent stuff, oh my God.
This is Mary Vincent story,
which is the Mary Vincent story is so upsetting
and disturbing and should have never happened.
There's no world we should be fucking living in
where you and I are going, this is Mary Vincent's story
about yet another teenage girl, or two teenage girls.
Like, it's so disgusting, it's so insane.
You wanna know why women talk about true crime
and are interested in true crime?
Because what the fuck is this?
That's why.
How is this happening?
How are we Mary Vincenting again?
How can a fucking security guard joke
about teenage girls giving him sexual favors
to get a tour as if it's not a big deal, and it's fine?
Like, that's a problem.
It took all of us a really long time to put it together,
where it's like, those those jokes a peeping Tom
Like all of the red flags that actually amount to women being murdered
Really matter and need to be paid attention to and need to be discussed
So everyone knows what they are if you go to a place where a guy thinks it's really hilarious to threaten your life
Don't go anywhere with that guy ever again. Tell other people about it.
It was that kind of thing where in the 80s,
that idea of like, oh, well, if you said anything
about that guy, God, don't be such a bitch about it.
Oh, okay.
But he could be practicing, you never know.
He could be the funniest security guard you ever met,
or he could be practicing.
Totally.
I'm sorry I'm lecturing you so much this episode, Georgia.
Oh, was that directed at me?
Yeah, this is all on you.
This is all your responsibility.
Okay, so Lori McKenna crawls up a ravine
with her hands lacerated so badly
that later she will have to be in surgery for hours with the amount of cuts, defensive wounds that she has on her hands lacerated so badly that later she will have to be in surgery for hours with the
amount of cuts, defensive wounds that she has on her hands. But she gets to the top, she waves down
a car and they drive away. It's literally exactly Mary Vincent's story. And then a second car comes
up and drives away. And finally two guys in a pickup truck pull over. They call the police. They
basically get it taken care of. They try to comfort her and she freaks out where it's
like, no, no, don't try to comfort anybody. Like, let's just get her to the hospital.
So Laurie spends the next three days at Santa Teresa Hospital undergoing surgeries on her
hands and wrists.
Janine Grinzel makes it into surgery, but she ends up dying on the operating table.
Janine Grinzel suffered a total of 41 stab wounds, a skull fracture, blood loss, shock
and hypothermia.
She was 16 years old when she died.
Oh my God, a poor baby angel.
And Laurie got stabbed like, I think Laurie's stab wounds were in the 30s.
Jesus.
But still an insane amount.
Like this man ravaged these two girls.
The only real positive in this story is that Janine and Laurie were both able to identify
their attacker as they were arriving at the hospital. So the police were given David Raley's name and he was arrested within hours of the girls being
brought in. On February 6th, David Raley is arraigned on first degree murder, attempted murder,
two counts of sexual assault with intent to rape and two counts of kidnapping. And because of the
gruesome torture involved with the attack,
the death penalty is on the table.
So his trial begins in March of 1987.
Of course, he tries to defend himself by saying
he wasn't the only security guard who gave tours,
that Janine wouldn't have died
if she had gotten medical attention sooner.
Like weird, horrible, disrespectful things to be saying just to
try to throw up a smoke screen.
I hate that.
I hate that.
It's horrible.
And then the families who absolutely have to be there, they're like standing on witness
for their dead daughter or their attacked daughter.
And they have to sit through that.
Yeah, it's disgusting.
Like just fucking plead
guilty, dude. And like let them go on with their lives. But I mean, the idea of like, she wouldn't
have died if she'd gotten to the hospital sooner. Right. It's all you do, dude. It's all, it's all on
you. There's, there's no, you can't parse it that way. No. After the fact. So the argument doesn't work. On April 22nd, 1987, the jury
convicts David Allen Rayleigh of first degree murder, attempted murder and kidnapping with
special circumstances. A separate trial is held on May 5th to determine whether or not Rayleigh
will receive the death penalty. The jury's deadlocked. A judge declares a mistrial on May 15th. He's retried the following year.
He is given the death penalty on May 17th, 1988.
Years later, he will attempt to appeal this decision,
but it is denied.
And David Rayleigh remains on death row
in San Quentin to this day.
What?
Yeah.
In the wake of the attack,
Laurie McKenna is overcome with grief. She feels like she'll
never be happy again. I mean, she's a teenager. She was the senior in high school when this
happened.
Oh my God.
So of course she spends some time just basically staying in her house. Then she wants to get
away because she wants to get away from the area where she's in that reminds her of it so much.
So she has some friends that go to UC Santa Barbara.
So she moves down to Santa Barbara to go to Santa Barbara City College to basically kind of start over and like start over fresh.
And it actually works for a little while.
I mean, Santa Barbara would have gorgeous place
to be able to go to and like the perfect vibe.
But it turns out that Lori had to have gallbladder surgery
related to problems from some of her injuries.
So she ended up having to move home
because she basically had continuing medical issues
from the attack.
Eventually grief does loosen its grip on Lori.
She starts living a more normal life,
but she does start to get crippling anxiety attacks,
of course.
She knows she can't just will the trauma away,
so she starts seeing a therapist.
And over time, she gains the tools she needs
to move beyond the horrible thing that she lived through
and basically start trying to live the life that she deserves. She ends up marrying a
retired baseball pitcher from the San Francisco Giants. They end up moving to Bogart, Georgia.
They remodel a big, beautiful home and they raise two daughters together. And the principal
owners of the Giants, Anne and Charles B. Johnson,
a couple billionaires, they go and they buy the Carolans estates and they spend millions
of dollars restoring it. They actually live there for 10 years and then they turn it over
to the Carolans Foundation. Today, free tours are offered. There's a lottery system, so
you have to sign up for the lottery. And
then if you get in, you can get a tour of this estate and it has been renovated back
to its like original pristine condition. It's really incredible looking. It would be a very
cool tour to take. So there was, I found this quote from this LA Times article from May of 1988, which was
two years after the attacks.
And they were interviewing Lori McKenna.
And it says, out of the whole ordeal, the death of her friend will probably have the
most lasting effect.
Janine Grinzel's birthday, January 9th, will always be the toughest day of the year for
her, McKenna believes.
I will always be sad on that day, she said.
I remember her last birthday.
She had just gotten her car and she was so happy.
McKenna still finds it hard to believe that she survived
and Janine Grinzel didn't.
Janine Grinzel was a fighter, she said.
And then a little later on, Laurie goes on to say,
it's not that I'm a basket case,
but they just don't know how to deal with it. Oh, she was talking about whether or not she was going to have a boyfriend,
which is such a creepy kind of question that maybe a reporter asked her two years after
this attack that I edited it out. But then you kind of have to know that. So creepy.
But she basically is saying I'm not a basket case. They just don't know how to deal with
it. People don't want wanna deal with yucky things.
But what happened to me is a part of me.
It's not something I can change.
There's nothing I wanna hide.
Wow.
And that is the story of the Carol Ann's estate attacks
and the murder of Janine Grinzel.
Holy shit.
That is heartbreaking and infuriating.
And they had a warning about him, the public.
But it's a journalism student.
So we don't know if that article like went out
and everyone read it and said that was fine.
And that was a time where that wouldn't happened anyway.
Because there were so many of those things
that just weren't in anybody's awareness of like,
oh, this is very, very red flag behavior.
Yeah.
Wow, that is awful and great job telling it.
Thank you.
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Goodbye.
All right, well, let's take a fucking sharp left then.
Get out of this.
Let's take a fucking 20 minute break
and just have some silence.
Let's have some snacks and some silence,
some deep breaths.
I'm gonna tell you about a spy.
Okay.
A guy who tried to become a spy.
His attempt was at the turn of the 21st century, so early 2000s, that showed America just how
dangerous computers and the internet can be without proper protections.
This is the story of Brian Regan, the spy who couldn't spell.
Do you know the comic Brian Regan?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Truly one of the funniest human beings on the planet.
Like so, one of the best standup comics of all time.
He's the one that goes, yeah, you too, you too.
When you say you too back to a person that's like,
enjoy your donut, you go you too.
Well, this is, it turns out he was a spy. No spy at one point. Did you know that? Love it.
I know. The main sources used in today's story include an article from CNN. And this guy
also wrote a book about this case. His name is you digit bodachari. And he was also in
an episode of wicked words with Kate Winkler Dawson in
November of 2022 discussing the case. So all this stuff is from him. There's also an article,
a talk given for the International Spy Museum that he did. His book is called The Spy Who
Couldn't Spell. That's like his catchphrase. Cool. So all the other sources are listed in the show notes. So here we go.
On December 4th in the year 2000,
that was what, five years ago or so?
Kind of.
December 4th in the year 2000, special agent Stephen Carr
of the FBI received some coded letters
that have been sent to the Libyan consulate
and written by an anonymous source,
he decodes the letter and the opening of the letter reads, quote, I am a Middle East North
African analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. I am willing to commit espionage against the US
by providing your country with highly classified information. I have top security clearance.
I have access to documents, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Basically, like, hey, Libyan consulate,
do you guys want some spy material?
Sorry, you said this was written in an email?
No, it's a letter, coded letter.
Snail mail?
Snail mail.
It's coded.
Special Agent Stephen Carr figures it out and sees that.
OK, OK.
And there are also 23 pages of copied secret information,
like a tease to prove that the sender
actually has all that information.
He's just like, here's a taste, boom.
And they're mostly aerial images
of a Middle Eastern military sites taken by US satellites.
So that is like not for enemy hands, essentially.
And remember this is like early 2000, so it's like not a great time. It's not a good time. No. Not for enemy hands, essentially. And remember, this is like early 2000s,
so it's like not a great time.
It's not a good time.
No.
Not a good time, Stephen.
And so Stephen Carr realizes that he has a real spy
threat on his hands.
So he gets to work trying to figure out
who this mysterious sender could be.
There's a marking on the image that
shows they're printed from something called Intel Link,
which is basically a private internet
server that only select government and military officials with the proper security clearance
can access. So Carr from this believes the spy is a government insider. And the fact
that some of the sample information is top secret also helps narrow it down to a pool
of suspects to these individuals with top secret clearance. This anonymous person is
legit. But even that number is in the tens of thousands. So then, Carr looks at the type
of code being used like this person had made up a code. And the sender uses something called
brevity codes, which are two character shorthands for bigger words. So like AP would be the
word anonymous. I don't know how coding works.
Don't try to explain coding to me.
I'm gonna.
I love it's like AP is for anonymous.
Cause you know that P and anonymous really.
Yeah.
Really, I mean that code, I would never be able to break it.
I'd be like, what?
AP stands for anonymous?
We wouldn't be code breakers, you and I, I don't think.
How?
Just be arguing it the whole time?
Whatever it is, this kind of code
is common practice for US military.
So Carr's like, okay, this person also has
a military background, just like gathering information.
Then there's a third clue that Carr makes note of.
The letter of instructions and the brevity code.
So like the letter that the anonymous person wrote
is riddled with spelling errors.
And so it's like this person's really smart, obviously,
they have top secret clearance,
but how could someone that's smart
also fail to use spell check or like not spell very well?
And the errors are so egregious
that when Carr reaches out to the CIA and NSA
thinking perhaps the sender
can come
from one of the two departments, they shut him down.
They're like, we would never hire someone
who spells so poorly.
With no leads, the search goes on for a couple months,
but Carr finds no suspects.
So he turns back to the documents themselves for clues.
The digital forensics teams are able to determine
that the documents came from the NRO in Chantilly, Virginia, which is the
National Reconnaissance Office. So like high level security. And when Carr investigates
the personnel there, it isn't long before the pattern of spelling errors point him to
his prime suspect, a man in his late thirties named Brian Regan. So essentially like his
spelling errors are what got Regan. So essentially like his spelling errors
are what got him caught.
So embarrassing.
I know, I've been there, I've been there.
There's so many people on the internet that would get caught.
Oh yeah.
Loose and loose, breathe and breath.
That's right.
That's right.
It's amazing.
So let me tell you about Brian Regan, not the comedian.
He's born on October 23rd, 1962 to Irish immigrants. He
grows up on Long Island, New York. The thing is, he is severely dyslexic. And that's why
his spelling is so egregiously poor. And he also has some odd personality traits. He has
memory lapses and little things that to the outsider make him seem less intelligent than he actually
is. He is very smart and he's generally pretty socially awkward as well. So he doesn't really
fit in. He's bullied for those reasons. He might not be very popular socially, but he
does do really well in school. He is smart. He excels in math and sciences. In 1980, he
takes his talents to the US Air Force, where he works as a signals intelligence
analyst, which is someone who intercepts signal transmissions in an effort to gather intel.
So like, hey, you got to be smart to do that.
Yeah, I would hope.
He serves during the first Gulf War and is a standout success.
He earned several accommodations for his work.
In 1995, Brian is assigned to the NRO, the
National Reconnaissance Office, and he works on a team that manages the US's
spy satellites. He does really well here too, but all his talents and hard work
still don't earn him the respect of his co-workers. And this is pretty sad. He's
still socially awkward, his dyslexia bleeds into his daily daily communications in his emails because they're riddled with spelling errors.
So even as an adult, he still gets picked on
and is the butt of people's jokes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And worse than that, his supervisors,
while they value his work, they don't value his personality.
So he's routinely given average evaluation scores.
He isn't promoted as he would be otherwise.
And it's really upsetting for Brian.
And by 1999, he's also found himself in a lot of debt because of his bad spending habits.
And he, you know, he's not getting those raises and those promotions as well.
And he and his wife Annette have three kids together and a fourth on the
way. And he's the sole breadwinner of the family. So things aren't great.
I mean, I used to know someone that you would, they would say a thing of like, you do it
if you wanted to kind of, that was that kind of thing where it's like, and I'm not saying
when you feel alienated, oftentimes the more you try to fix it, the worse you make it. That becomes
a spiral because you have an agenda. People don't like agendas. You're trying to say,
don't think of me this way. Think of me this way. People go, ew, what are you talking about?
And recoil more. That piece of it is very sad and difficult, but he has a marriage and
children. So he's like a grown man.
He has a life, it sounds like.
It's just, it sucks.
And it just seems like he's maybe not neurotypical.
And so, in the nineties and still today,
it's you're just, he's treated differently.
And it sucks.
And he's clearly very smart
and just doesn't learn the same way other people do.
And so therefore people think he's stupid. It's just like, it sucks.
It's insulting and it's kind of like any other problem.
If it was on paper, he could fix it.
This is the kind of thing that has that social nuance where he can't fix it and
he's making it worse. Right. Exactly. Or it just is getting worse. Yeah.
So Brian set to retire from the Air Force in August of 2000.
I guess, I don't know how that works.
He's only in his late 30s, so I don't know how retirement
works in the Air Force.
You just get to leave when you want to.
Yeah.
He has a pension, but the pressure
of paying off his debts may be too much for his retirement
plan to handle, so it's not going to cover it.
With no promotion prospects and little hopes
of finding another job that pays him the same or more
because his field is very niche, and also, again,
his social awkwardness makes him a tough interview and hire,
Brian's back is against the wall.
That coupled with coworkers who undermine him at every turn
stirs up a lot of resentment in Brian.
He knows he's smart, much smarter
than he's given credit for,
but perhaps has a little too much confidence
in his abilities.
And this combination of anger and arrogance
grows to dangerous heights.
He comes up with a plan that can both help him pay off
his debts and show the world just how smart he really is.
So there's like, you know, reasoning behind here
more than just getting money. It's ironic though. Why? So there's like, you know, reasoning behind here more than just getting
money. It's ironic though. Why? Because it's like going, I'm going to show everybody how
smart I am by doing the fucking stupidest thing. Like, anytime I hear a story where
it's like, they got caught selling secrets to whatever enemy, and just like, yeah, of
course you would. That's the one thing they're paying attention to. Yeah. And I'm going to go on to tell you how he did it. And it's not very well. Okay. That's the point. So yes, you are correct.
Also, I want to have an image because when I have an image in my head of a spy, I think of someone,
I don't know, like nerdy and like bookish. Right? I think of inspector gadget immediately. Exactly.
This guy looks like a totally normal average Joe,
like someone you'd see at like, what's that Hot Wings restaurant? Well, there's a bunch around
town. Just like at a sports bar, like a normal dude, like your brother-in-law's friend from
college. Like he just looks like a normal guy. He's got a goatee, you know, he's not bookish.
Buffalo Wild Wings? Yes, thank you, then. God, that was driving me insane.
Everyone was yelling it.
OK.
So Brian agrees to retire from the NRO and the Air Force
in August of 2000, but before he does, in 1999, he's like,
let me gather some intelligence.
So he uses his top secret security clearance permissions
and downloads a bunch of confidential information
from that Intel link site. But while the network is secure, the people with access
to it aren't monitored at all. They're like, once you get your security
clearance, we trust you. Goodbye. Good luck. Yeah, good luck. Brian's plan is to
steal as much sensitive information as he can before his retirement, then reach
out to foreign dignitaries to try and sell that information.
Just kind of get out there, do some icebreakers, pass your card around. It's me, the guy with the
info. The guy you met at the bar at Buffalo Wild Wings, he has got connections. The guy that keeps
whispering at Buffalo Wild Wings where you can't hear anything because there's 25 TVs on with all
the sports at once. He keeps wondering about white Russian and going, eh, eh, eh.
See, white Russian, spy.
OK, so it's obviously a huge risk,
but the money he could charge for such espionage services is massive.
He gathers all this information and in total, when he does go forward with it,
he asked for a total of 13 million dollars.
Yeah. So it's the first time anyone on American soil
has realized the potential of stealing digital information.
Remember, this shit's all new, guys at home, young ones.
This is the beginning of data mining.
That's right.
This is before Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.
So pulling this off would really make Brian a pioneer
and give him a name without naming him,
because he's trying to be a spy.
And the process of stealing the documents is really easy. All he has to do is print
out whatever he wants during the workday. He stuffs it in the bottom of his gym bag
and just walks out the door, no security checks or anything. It's so easy that he's able to
do it for months and months. And once he's got a solid collection of documents, videotapes,
CD-ROMs, et cetera, he wraps the materials up in garbage bags, seals them
in Tupperware and drives out in the middle of the night to two different DC area state
parks and then fucking buries that shit.
Dude.
This is his plan.
And then here's you and your friend drinking in the park that night. You stumble upon him.
Here goes the international thriller, spy thriller.
I mean, Jesus Christ, be more suspicious with your Tupperware and your burying.
He uses night vision goggles even.
No.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's having a little adventure on his own is what's happening.
He is.
He buries the packages, he writes down the coordinates of each package's location.
And then once, so the plan is that once a buyer bites, he'll hand over the coordinates,
and then they can go dig up the Tupperware.
Like geocaching.
Exactly.
But with horrible weapons.
Right.
Okay.
And the buyers he's targeting, NVD, are just Libya, Iraq, and Iran.
You know. You know, some of the big boys. he's targeting, NVD, are just Libya, Iraq, and Iran.
You know.
You know, some of the big boys.
And also like people you don't wanna be
fucking around with.
Well, not solo, not as an indie salesman.
In the park.
Indie spy is not a thing.
No, that seems dangerous as hell.
You need support.
You do, you do.
Of course, yeah, and the problem is he doesn't have any pre-existing relationships with foreign entities.
Like, no, he's an average dude.
He doesn't like meet people at galas.
Like he doesn't go to galas, you know.
He's, again, goes to Buffalo Wild Wings.
I don't know if it existed back then, but let's say.
He's literally cold calling Libya and being like, I think I have something interesting
for you.
Just call me back.
So basically that's what he does.
He cold calls with letters, cold letters.
He writes up code.
He sends out three different letters from three different places in case one's intercepted
or whatever the fuck.
And fortunately for Brian, all three envelopes do make it safely to his first target, the
Libyan consulate.
They do fucking make it there.
Right? Unfortunately, the recipient, anonymous person, receives that letter and sends it
to the FBI. So he's trying to be a spy and a fucking spy in the Libyan consulate receives
the letter and is like, boom, spy versus spy.
Oh, so it's like an American spy
that's already set in there?
Maybe, yeah. Or someone who's like,
maybe we shouldn't, like, stir this pot.
But the person who sends it to the FBI is never identified.
So I think it's another spy.
Or if it's just like a guy that's like,
-"Hey, look, we're just trying to get by in this world."
-"You should know." -"We don't want this bullshit."
-"What are you doing?" -"You guys are know. We don't want this bullshit. What are you doing?
You guys are gigantic.
We don't want this shit from you.
This looks like a trap.
I'm not fucking stupid.
Here FBI, try again.
Like, who knows?
Hey FBI, come get your boy, as they like to say.
Exactly.
So that's where Special Agent Stephen Carr comes in.
He figures out it's Brian a couple of months later.
And so he's like, this is our dude.
Let's get him.
So in April 2001, Brian had left his job and he still needs to work though.
So he starts working with the defense contractor TRW, which often works with the NRO where
he used to work.
So essentially it's a way for him to get back into those old offices where he got all
that information because he still wants to work there, because he still wants to get
more information.
Sure.
By May 2001, he's just waiting for his security clearance to be reinstated so he can go back
to the offices.
And so Stephen Carr is like, yo, NRO, here's what I want you to do.
Grant Brian his clearance, tell him all is
well and he'll go back to work and we can monitor him from there. And like, that's how
we're going to get all our, you know, evidence. The NRA is like, fuck no, we're not in the,
we're not in the game of hiring like potential spies. And finally they go back and forth
and they're like, okay, you can do it for 120 days. Get what you need, that's it.
So they rig up his computer
so that every keystroke is recorded and monitored.
There is a hidden camera in his office.
And on top of that car,
and the FBI agents tail Brian outside of work.
So he's being watched around the clock.
So they're on his tail.
Sure enough, like the day he gets back to work
at the NRO headquarters,
he starts downloading top secret files again.
Immediately.
Just doesn't even have a cup of coffee.
Just goes straight to his desk.
That's right.
This time, he's downloading aerial shots of missile sites
in the no-fly zone over northern Iraq,
along with other aerial surveillance shots of weapons,
depots, and other missile sites.
So, like, shit, we should not be giving to the fucking our enemy. along with other aerial surveillance shots of weapons, depots and other missile sites.
So like shit we should not be giving to the fucking
our enemy, you know what I mean?
He's definitely not starting small, that's for sure.
He's not like slowly feeding them anything.
He's just like, let's go for the big guns and get out.
I don't know about you, but I'm anti-war, we're pacifists,
but still you can't do this.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. Like this is bad for everyone. Yeah.
And now it also appears that he wants to expand his pool of potential buyers to
include our friends, China.
Oh yeah. That'll expand it quite a bit.
Right. So like really bad.
They find that he goes to the library and when he's there,
he does all this stuff on the computer.
And the FBI is like, what is he doing?
He leaves open his browser at the public library.
And they're able to just go back, back, back,
and see everything he had looked at.
Sir, sir.
What they find is that he's been searching
for the addresses of Libyan and Iraqi embassies in Europe.
And they figure out that he's like, fuck it, I'm just going to go straight fucking there.
Like he didn't get a bite. Nothing happened when he sent out the letters to the Libyan
embassy. So he's like, I'm going to go straight to the source in Europe.
So they just can't believe he's brazen or confident or arrogant enough to do this.
But they're like, oh no, we gotta keep an eye on him.
And then to do it at the library.
Yeah.
Where it's like, hey,
people are trying to do their history report.
Can you clear the computer please
and take your international intrigue somewhere else?
It's insane.
That's like spy school day one.
Like clear your browser history, bro.
Keep it on your personal laptop.
They don't have those yet though.
Oh, you can only get like an old Mac at the library. That's why he's going there.
Right. Or like, yeah, he doesn't want to do it on his Dell at home or the fuck.
So they're like, oh no, he's going to go to Europe. So basically when someone with a
security clearance as high as Brian's wants to leave the country,
they can't just go on a vacay.
They have to have a sit-down interview with the head
of their government department.
The NRO then has to know specifics
of the trip, the location, the timing, the reason for the trip.
It's all on record.
You're not just allowed to go to Paris for the fucking Christmas
or whatever.
Right.
So Brian doesn't want to go through this shit, obviously.
So he lies and tells his supervisors that he's taking his kids on a family vacation
to Orlando, Florida through like from August, like late August.
He's like, I need some time off.
We're just going to go to Orlando.
Hi Summer in Orlando.
Can't beat it.
Do you like stepping into a hot, hot steamy shower, but actually wearing clothes and being
outside in public?
Welcome to Orlando.
Do you want to make out with a mosquito?
Hi.
So on the day he's set to leave, August 23rd, 2001, obviously the FBI like we need to get
him before he leaves the country, right?
So they are able to gather just enough evidence from their surveillance of Brian to justify
an arrest and get their arrest warrant.
They get him just in time for his flight.
They show up at Washington Dulles Airport that afternoon and apprehend him.
They place him under arrest.
They go through his belongings.
They find a Manila folder containing four sheets filled with various codes, a piece of folded
up paper hidden between the inner and
outer soles of his shoes with the addresses for several Chinese embassies and consulates
in various European countries and just like a bunch of other coded stuff.
So like clearly that's what he's going to do.
Sorry.
He wrote down the embassy addresses, folded up the piece of paper and stuck it into the
inside of his shoe.
It doesn't seem to me he has like the spy training that like I've seen on cable television. Yes. However, the date is August 23rd, 2001. This is before, right? This is right before
security at airports is about to go haywire.
Yes.
So it's actually a little easier.
Little lax, okay.
Yeah.
So faced with all this evidence against him,
the smart thing for Brian to do at this point
would be to try and cut a plea deal
with the federal government
because espionage charges are severe.
So he really should try to do anything he can
to lessen a potential sentence.
But Brian's cockiness gets the better of him.
He's convinced he's smart enough to outwit the FBI.
So instead of fessing up to his crimes,
he tries blackmailing the U.S. government.
Yes, there we go. There it is.
Doubles down.
Solutions.
He issues a statement through his lawyer that he's got, quote,
secrets buried out there that could start a war,
end quote.
And then the only way, and he says,
the only way he'll reveal his hiding place
is if he's guaranteed a lesser sentence.
So he's essentially like,
I'll give it up with a lesser sentence,
not I'll give it up and then I get a lesser sentence.
It's I get a lesser sentence and then I'll give it up.
And they don't fucking like that.
Yeah, because he's not in charge.
It's like, Brian, sir.
No, your stance is inaccurate to the scenario.
Of course, the FBI and the Department of Justice
don't fuck around with blackmailing traders.
That's not in their rule book.
No.
Instead, they tap FBI cryptanalyst, who's
a person who decifers codes without a key.
So like the smartest guy at any party, I'm sure.
Who I bet can spell real good.
Oh yeah.
His name's Daniel Olson and they're like,
try and crack this.
This is Brian's code.
Find the very documents.
We'll do it our fucking selves.
Do you know Daniel Olson is the guy to find
at that cocktail party?
Like probably not easy to access,
probably a bit of an introvert.
But if you happen by him near like the cheese tray
and figure out the right topic,
can you imagine Daniel Olsen is a gift.
I just picture him, he's the guy who wears
the like suit jackets with the elbow patches.
Yeah, that's right.
But also he has kind of floppy hair.
He's kind of like, oh, I can't remember where I parked my car,
but here's the answer to the mysteries of the universe.
He's always losing his keys.
However, yeah, he knows that time is relative and how it's relative.
Exactly.
He knows exactly what Einstein was talking about in a way that most people don't.
He also is like looking around
and can like put things together.
Now we're writing a TV show where it's like a code breaker
and what that means throughout your day-to-day life
where that's a man that can put two and two together
and actually see what the fuck is going on.
That's exciting.
Plus time travel, just for fun.
What? Oh, just throw it in.
Yeah, like he goes back in time and solves codes.
Cause I want the Zodiac letters
to be involved in this somehow.
Oh, okay.
That could be the big season one finale.
Yes.
What if he has a magical coat closet
in the front of his apartment.
He got drunk and fell into one day
and then fell into 1969, the summer
of love. And he's like, what the fuck? I got to crack this. It's the show's called
crack this. What's happening? We're not supposed to be doing this on this show. Stop it. Stop
it. Okay. I'm not talking anymore. No, please do. Please do. Okay. Crack it. Crack it. So
he works out of the FBI lab in Quantico, of course,
because that's the coolest place to work.
And he, and Daniel Olson's the best in the biz
at deciphering codes, but even he can't crack it.
So Brian Regan is smart enough
that the fucking best code cracker
at the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
Who's also beautiful.
Who's also gorgeous and a time traveler.
And sensitive.
And sensitive.
Has stumped him.
He has cats.
He's got like this cat named Einstein.
That he talks to.
Okay.
So Brian Regan is right when he is embittered toward the world because he is really smart
and he is misunderstood.
And he does have, he has it to be.
And what if we fold Daniel Olson into this plot a lot sooner so that we set up a direct
thing to be upset by because he's like, I knew that before you said it.
Yeah.
It's like Lex Luthor where you're like, well, he has a point.
Yeah.
You know?
He's right to be so bitter.
Yeah. Like I'm kind of on his side.
He decyphers just a small piece of code.
So they're stumped on this now.
About two weeks after Brian's arrest, what happens?
Motherfucking 9-11.
Oh.
Yeah.
So obviously, the world changes completely.
Life is in turmoil.
Our country is devastated. Obviously, the story overshadows Life is in turmoil. Our country is devastated.
Obviously the story overshadows Brian's and the news.
So that's probably why we've never heard of it.
But now given the existing threat on Americans' safety,
the government officials investigating Brian
are now like, we have to double down
and recover these stolen documents.
Cause now national security is such a big fucking deal
because we were attacked on our own soil, right?
We're not ignoring this.
Especially since one of the countries
Brian was targeting to sell to was Iraq.
Now the Pentagon, the DOJ, the FBI, and the NRO
are all involved in getting Brian
to try to cooperate and tell them
where he hid those documents. And they all want to prosecute him
to the full extent of the law.
The fullest extent of the law for this charge
would be to seek the death penalty against him.
That's right. It traitors at that level,
it usually are shot by a firing squad.
That's the old way.
Yeah. I mean, it sounds extreme.
It's like, yeah, hard to wrap your brain around, but
like that's how serious it is to the government when you do shit like this.
When you go against your own country and you're like, ah, I guess I'll just do what's good
for me and everyone else can suck it.
Because it would have put so many lives in danger if it had gone through what he did.
Yeah. So if it goes through and he gets that, Brian will be the first spy in over 50 years to
receive the death penalty.
Of course, the last time a spy received the death penalty was in 1951 at the Rosenberg
trial where Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for providing details about the design
of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
How have we not covered that one?
Ugh, that one's such a bummer.
It's all about the like red scare
and all the different things where it's like,
these days it's like, what really happened
with the Rosenbergs is what you'd probably want to hear.
Yeah, and they give such grandma and grandpa vibes
that you're like, oh, this sucks.
So crazy.
Did you ever see Angels in America?
No, but I know it's good.
It's so good.
Meryl Streep plays Ethel Rosenberg.
Oh, wow.
It's unbelievable.
It's so good.
Okay, I'll watch it.
All of this, the death penalty on the line, all this shit.
Brian is not dissuaded.
No.
Instead of caving to the pressure
and cooperating with the investigators,
Brian writes a somewhat coded letter to his wife asking, this is so weird, asking her to bury little trinkets,
like little toys, little worthless toys as part of a scavenger hunt for their kids. So
I think he's trying to like throw off the FBI by being like, here's other things that
are buried. Maybe it has nothing to do. I don't know. I don't understand it completely. He's definitely trying to like do a double blind,
smoke screen, spy stuff.
Right. And she thinks he's innocent, his wife.
So she does what he's asked.
She buries those little trinkets.
But the FBI finds out about Brian's plan.
And now they have the grounds to prosecute his wife
for obstruction of justice.
Even though she innocently believed her husband
wasn't trying to be a spy.
So now the FBI are able to use this to their advantage
and tell Brian that if he helps them locate
the very documents,
they won't pursue any charges against his wife.
So if it's against him, he doesn't care,
but now it's his family.
They have four young children now.
He's like, okay, this isn't gonna happen.
And they say that if he helps them,
she'll still be able to receive his military benefits,
his pension and health insurance.
So like knowing he's kind of fucked,
he's like, I'm not gonna fuck over my wife.
Yeah, don't burn it all down, you fool.
Yeah, so finally, after two years
of holding out information,
Brian finally agrees to cooperate,
but not before he is tried and convicted of espionage in March of 2003. He doesn't receive
the death penalty, but he does get life in prison. He admits to bearing these packages,
these Tupperwares in two state parks. There's 12 packages in Pocahontas State Park in Virginia and seven packages
in the Patapsco Valley State Park in Ellicott City, Maryland. He also admits about the code.
He says cracking the code would reveal the coordinates. The code's super elaborate and
nearly unsolvable, as the FBI had found out. But he's like, but hey, you don't even need to do that because I also buried a key to the code in a,
like plastic travel toothbrush holder. And he tells them,
I swear to fucking God, he tells them where to find that.
And within hours, Stephen Carr and the FBI agents are there.
They dig up the toothbrush holder, they find the coordinates.
They go to Pocahontas State Park in Virginia, they find 11 of the 12 packages that same day because of the code.
And then they find the 12th when our friend Dan Olson is able to finally crack one of
the codes and they find the 12th one. So he did help.
Ha ha. He came back. He came back. That's actually all a little bit soft and gentle version of
Israel Keys. Carrying caches and going around. Because you're making everything so, and maybe
this is his thing, coordinates, whatnot. But it's just like, why wouldn't you just put
him in a safety deposit box? Put him in a storage container. Cause that's not like fun for him.
No.
It's not an adventure, you know?
Right.
I wonder how many things are buried out there,
like on that level that are never gonna be found.
Like in state parks or like in city parks
where people are just like,
we'll just put this here for now.
Oh my God.
Okay, so then that leaves the seven packages that are buried in Patapsco Valley State Park
in Maryland. Brian had buried the seven packages about a year and a half before he buried the
packages in Pocahontas and he did it using a completely different code. So this guy can
like come up with codes. I don't know if that's hard or easy. So they find the other tooth
brush holder for these packages.
I mean, he just needed to clean his bathroom out.
That's what it sounds like to me.
Just recycle, sir.
So because he wrote this code so long ago, though, he doesn't remember exactly how it
works.
He forgot how to decode his own shit.
All he can remember is that he built the code off some of the
content in his junior high yearbook. Like letters coordinating to this person to that
person to number, I don't know how codes work.
So he doesn't know like where his own key is or he doesn't remember?
I think that they don't know where the key is. Yeah. So they all work together. They
go through his yearbook, they sit down and they try to crack the code, fast forward for time's sake.
They figure it out.
So now they have the coordinates for the seven packages.
But the problem is Brian didn't use the same key that he did.
And because the GPS coordinates aren't exact, the FBI have to dig massive holes.
They finally, after weeks of digging, Carr has to jump through
these hoops to get Brian a supervised release so he can come to the state park in Maryland.
And even though he doesn't remember his code, he remembers exactly where each, like he's
got that brain, you know, that works his way. And he's able to find every single package
just by looking at the fields.
A park.
A park, yeah.
Wow.
That's crazy.
So they recover all the packages.
Here's a fucking funny enough story.
Inside one of the packages, Brian had mistakenly left an old sticky note from his days of working
at the NRO with his name on it.
So had the packages just been recovered without Brian's help, he still would have been
caught. He wanted to be caught. I know. He wanted to. He wanted the name of like this guy. For all
his smarts and cunning, Brian's obviously still has lapses in judgment that left him exposed. This
earns him the nickname given by one of the FBI agents of Mr. 80%. I know, I know. That's the meanest nickname
because that's exactly what made him so upset
his whole life.
Yeah, yeah.
Like that's it.
You basically got the exposed nerve
and then you were like, ah, here it is.
That one cuts deep for sure.
Yeah, that's rough.
When all the documents are covered,
the FBI discovered Brian had stolen and hidden
more than 20,000 pages, videotapes and CD-ROMs
of top secret and classified government and military information.
Brian is now 61.
He continues to serve his life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution of Hazleton
in Preston County, West Virginia.
He is, as he put it, quote, going to serve more time than any other spy ever, end quote.
Well then, hey, you're number one, buddy.
Yeah, and that is the story of Brian Regan,
the spy who couldn't spell.
Dang.
I know.
That is truly fascinating, kind of upsetting.
Also, like I always thought 80% was pretty good.
Oh, I'll take it. That's a B.
That's a solid B average.
That's a solid B. I'll take a solid B.
Wow.
Yeah.
Nice one.
Thank you.
This podcast is Mr. 80%.
This podcast is a solid 76 at all times.
I was just thinking that, I think we've talked about this before,
but all the things we lost
because 9-11 just took over
when they were equally important and equally pressing,
and then all of a sudden,
everything just got pushed to the side.
There's so, so many of those things.
Yeah, I mean, it was unprecedented,
literally, obviously, and that's why it was wild.
So crazy. We lived's why it was wild. Yeah, so crazy.
We lived through it.
We did.
And we lived through this episode, too.
And you guys lived through this episode.
And hey, we appreciate that about you.
Good job.
You did it.
We did it.
We nailed it.
We all nailed it together.
Well, thanks for listening.
We've done it again.
Two solid stories to really get you
through your what? Workday commute?
All of it. Yeah. All of it. Life.
You're just laying there.
Yeah. We'll get it. We get it. Painting your nails? Maybe you're painting your nails.
I mean, who knows? Maybe you're spying somewhere and burying Tupperware in the forest.
Oh my God. Listen, send us an anonymous hometown
of what you're doing.
Just tell us.
We need to know.
We won't give you away.
My favorite Red River Gmail, please.
We're not snitches.
No, we are not.
One other request, stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Goodbye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
Ah.
["Sweet Homework"] Do you want a cookie? Ah! 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.