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Season Seven: A Vacuum "On est dans la merde"
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In this episode, we talk about news updates. One of these stories NOW has more information that was not available when this was originally recorded. Acknowledging that up front for the sake of advising the audience.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Updates on Michael Wiseman
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
One of these stories is like an update to something else we did. And one of these stories is because we just did Overboard. And I was like, we've got to do that. And i'm I'm always interested when they find like fugitives and like what the definition of a fugitive is. So I pulled the story of Michael Wiseman. Had you ever heard of him before? i don't think so.
00:01:21
Speaker
I've seen him like on... like the lists, but like, I never looked into his case so much. Um, this is, uh, I did pull like a people article from November, just to talk about him. I thought it was interesting how they, um headlined it for people.
00:01:41
Speaker
It basically just said man charged with sexual exploitation of a minor finally arrested after nearly 14 years on the run. That's a long time.
00:01:52
Speaker
But I think the most disappointing part for me was when I like started doing the math on 14 years and I only got to 2011. I was like, that doesn't ah feels like not very long ago.
00:02:04
Speaker
But it's 14 years. It's 14 years all day long, buddy.
Wiseman's Arrest and Charges
00:02:10
Speaker
Here's this is a story from Ingrid Vasquez. It was first published in People November 12th, 2025. This guy has like the saddest looking mugshot ever. Like he looks like he's basically stopped crying long enough for them to press the button on the camera.
00:02:26
Speaker
um But it says an Arizona man charged with multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor has finally been arrested after nearly 14 years on the run. Michael Wiseman, identified by the Scottsdale Police Department as its number two most wanted fugitive, and now I have to know who number one is, because that's the rabbit hole we'll go down next.
00:02:48
Speaker
um He was arrested in France on November the 1st. This is according to the Scottsdale Police Department in a news release. His arrest stems from a 2008 case in which he was charged with multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor,
00:03:03
Speaker
Following his arrest in February 2008, authorities alleged that Wiseman cut off his ankle bracelet and fled the United States in November of that year while under court-ordered monitoring.
00:03:15
Speaker
Scottsdale police said that the FBI's Phoenix field office was able to obtain an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution or a UFAP warrant. um This led to his arrest in Spain in 2009. After being extradited to the U.S. and being sentenced in 2012, however, police say he fled the country yet again while out on probation.
00:03:38
Speaker
So this guy has left the United States to avoid his punishment twice. ah Soon after, multiple nationwide extradition warrants were issued for Wiseman's arrest on charges of probation violation related to sexual sexual exploitation of a minor, probation violation related to escape in the first degree,
00:03:58
Speaker
and failure to register as a sex offender. Scottsdale Police Criminal Intelligence Unit, or their CIU, the detectives there said that Wiseman first fled to Vietnam, then traveled to Poland, and later to France, where he was allegedly living under the alias Robert Daniluski.
Legal Implications for Wiseman
00:04:19
Speaker
ah This is all in the press release and the People article. In September, Scottsdale CIU, in coordination with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, submitted a provisional arrest warrant to the Department of Justice International Affairs Office.
00:04:33
Speaker
After its approval, the warrant was forwarded to French authorities, who police said confirmed that Michael Wiseman was residing in Kilstit, France.
00:04:44
Speaker
Upon obtaining a search warrant for his email address, they gained access to Michael Wiseman's personal account in October 2025. which included historical and current data and what was believed to be new child sexual abuse material.
00:04:58
Speaker
The videos were confirmed to be child sexual abuse materials involving Weissman after being turned over to a detective in the Scottsdale PD Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit that they have nicknamed HEAT and assigned to the Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
00:05:18
Speaker
So... According to all of this, the newly acquired abuse materials contained evidence that allegedly indicated Michael Wiseman was sexually abusing his adopted child.
00:05:32
Speaker
This led to French authorities charging Wiseman with rape and sexual assault of a minor under 15 years of age. French authorities are holding him for crimes committed there before they're going to extradite him to the United States.
00:05:45
Speaker
um This is an interesting case. like This guy left the country to continue doing what he was on probation for, which is horrible. um It seems like a lot of work.
00:05:57
Speaker
It is a lot of work. like This guy definitely did not want to be found, caught. Well, and obviously... I don't know exactly what it means for exploitation ah charges, but all of that stuff is, like, really terrible and gross, and it's it's a weird thing to, like, fight for your right to do, I guess. Yeah. In the fact that he's, like, running.
00:06:31
Speaker
But... They did finally get him caught. And at he had to have known at some point, like he was going to have to face this. Right.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah. And the alluding, i assume. What does that matter? Like, do you get extra charges for that?
00:06:55
Speaker
For which part? Like the fact that the arrest warrant was out and he left, like he was a fugitive. Yeah, he he he gets – he'll probably get an absconding charge based on what I see here. Okay.
00:07:11
Speaker
um i I don't know. It's one of those things when I look at it and it's interesting – To see how scattered this has become. I mean, you want to talk about a jurisdictional nightmare. We talk about those all the time. You can't get much worse than a guy who has already had an escape to a foreign country that he's on probation for, in addition to... exploitation of a minor in addition to probation violations, like being found in a foreign country where not only does he have all of these warrants for so essentially absconding, escaping, but he also, like in addition to the flight to avoid prosecution, now has new charges for the very thing that he was on like the original charges for.
00:08:03
Speaker
None of that's. Right. That came to light because they were taking him into custody for, right? Right. And so I look at this and, you know, there are genuinely moments where I look at cases of child sexual abuse materials and.
00:08:25
Speaker
read about him in the news versus what I know to be in the court documents. And I go, I don't think that's exactly what people are going to think that is, but this guy appears to be exactly the nightmare. Like he has this adopted child that he's abusing. so it's very difficult to defend someone who, like you said, put all this work in just to basically continue abusing children.
00:08:48
Speaker
um Yeah. He, he looks like um a nightmare. All right. Yeah. Well, he's, is so he, like looking at him, there's not much to this. This is just true crime news for true crime news sake. And, you know, we, but it came up, you and I, i think had passed some of these back and forth. And this is one of them.
00:09:09
Speaker
um He's not the only one. I didn't know if you had a lot of thoughts on him. Now, i I had a tendency not to really think about um guys like this. ah it's I do think that you know it is a great thing that he got caught because a lot of these cases, they fall under the radar and you know they get away with being a fugitive, right?
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah. And that's not good. But yeah, I think it's awesome that he... I guess he'll be behind bars. I'm not actually sure... I don't know. I don't know exactly what's going to happen from here.
00:09:46
Speaker
Well, I know nothing about French law, but i can't imagine it's good.
00:09:54
Speaker
but I would imagine it's, uh, yeah, it's not good. that He was obviously, um, I guess my biggest problem is that, so he was already sentenced.
00:10:07
Speaker
Um, and,
00:10:11
Speaker
he was going to have a lifetime of probation, right? Correct. Which I guess is why he wanted to leave. Yeah.
00:10:21
Speaker
That's why he didn't want to be on probation. He didn't want to be registered on the sex offenders registry. If I understand Arizona law correctly, and I'm not great with like Arizona, New Mexico, that area, because sometimes I've been confused about how things work. I think there's a big suspended sentence that's like sitting here over his head.
00:10:40
Speaker
Well, I was trying to read. um So.
00:10:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:53
Speaker
He was brought back. The first time or the second time? um Well, theyre after the first time he left again. Yeah. Correct. Okay.
00:11:04
Speaker
The charges are still pending. you already talked about this. um It was a fugitive arrest in 2009. Right. He's brought back from Spain.
00:11:15
Speaker
Right. And so...
00:11:20
Speaker
He said that he left the country the first time after growing tired of the hardship from his wife leaving him after his 2008 arrest and his financial difficulties, according to court records. Wiseman, who spent over two years in jail after his return from Spain, was sentenced in 2012 to lifetime probation and one-year deferred jail sentence. The additional incarceration was later deleted by a judge in at least one of his two Arizona cases.
00:11:46
Speaker
Interesting. I don't know that judges can delete things. i i don't I don't know. this is on this is So the source for this is ABC News. I just want to point that out. But um that's weird. I don't know what that means exactly. but um That feels like somebody AI'd their way out of like figuring something out.
00:12:10
Speaker
And this is from November 14, 2025. So it is recent. um I don't know.
Anthony Michael Lennon's Case
00:12:17
Speaker
i do know that maybe it was ah recalled.
00:12:23
Speaker
like I don't think a judge is going to be deleting it I think a judge could have modified the judgment. like through But that would require like a motion for appropriate relief or something.
00:12:35
Speaker
Right. Okay. And so...
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. So, you know, whenever his French case occurs, he'll have to come back to the United States, right? They're going to x-ray him back. and see he was ah The whole reason that occurred was because they had a special warrant for basically someone, a fugitive that absconded, right? Correct. Correct.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, and he doesn't have like an inmate corrections profile I could look up. There are court records in here that you can poke around. i mentioned that i made the comment that he was the number two most wanted, Scottsdale, Arizona, ah police person. ah Do you know who number one is?
00:13:22
Speaker
I'm going to throw it out there. I don't. It's ah Robert William Fisher. So the guy that's wanted in the murder of his wife, son, and daughter. she like blew up the house and then drove out into the wilderness.
00:13:34
Speaker
That guy. He's also on the FBI's most wanted to list. Oh, yeah. I remember. That's an older case, though, right? Yeah, yeah. It's ah April 2001. Yeah, okay. He's the number one. This guy was number two behind him. But all they all that they were doing, i just want to make sure I understand this. um Wise men just didn't want to be on probation.
00:14:00
Speaker
Right. So he left the U.S. and made a circuitous route around the world and ended up in France living ah new life. But if he had just stayed here on probation, like none of that, they wouldn't have issued a warrant for him. Is that right? Yeah.
00:14:20
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Like he going there rather than waiting out his probation or whatever he had to do. Well, his his probation was lifetime. Right. But I'm saying some of that stuff is sometimes found to be unconstitutional. Right.
00:14:38
Speaker
Anyways, point being, that might have changed, but now he's going to have to face the new charges in France. He's going to have to come back here and face charges. won't get away with probation this time. don't think he'll get out of France.
00:14:54
Speaker
He may not. That was another thing I don't know. i don't know. i i was trying to think really quick. I don't know if France is more lenient or less lenient. Right.
00:15:08
Speaker
But I know that when he gets back to the United States, he is going to have to serve at least that one year sentence. Yeah. Unless that's the one the judge deleted, supposedly. I don't know what's happening with that. That was weird. Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
Well, at the end of the day, ah that guy's probably not going to see a whole lot of, um, uh,
00:15:37
Speaker
Sunshot in his future. Yeah. You know what i mean? That was choice though. I mean. He is interesting, but he's not the most interesting thing that I had for True Crime News.
00:15:49
Speaker
So we use the Charlie Project as a bouncing off point for a lot of our cases. I used to use it a lot more than I do now. Do you remember the days of using the Charlie Project for pretty much everything?
00:16:03
Speaker
I do. And Charlie Project and NamUs are obviously my go-to sources for missing people. And ah usually Charlie Project has more information that could be possibly like a little less ah formal than what's on NamUs, right?
00:16:26
Speaker
Right. And for those of you who are in a giving mood, um Charlie Project is definitely someone to give to. It's run by woman named Megan. She's been running Charlie Project for a pretty long time. um a lot of work goes into that site and keeping that database up.
00:16:45
Speaker
Over the years, you and I have found it's not always comprehensive because of how much work has to go into something like that. And this summer, i've read so i i read some of her blog here and there.
00:17:00
Speaker
um And she had this blog that popped with one of the tags I follow on the Charlie Project, like the RSS feed tags.
Importance of Missing Persons Databases
00:17:09
Speaker
It was interesting that she she brought up something and she kind of answered something I'd always wondered about way back a long time ago.
00:17:18
Speaker
you and i got You and I got into a... a conversation in our coverage of Israel Keys where we were talking about a guy named Anthony Michael Lennon. Do you remember him? Of course.
00:17:29
Speaker
Okay. So she put up a post in July 2025 on her blog about Anthony Michael Lennon, because at one point he was not there anymore.
00:17:42
Speaker
um But I wanted to read this blog post because it's interesting and there's a piece of news. um But it's interesting how she wrote it. This is from Megan from The Charlie Project. And she says, just did almost an entire case write-up, then had to throw it away, annoying.
00:17:59
Speaker
um And it's a short, it's a three paragraph thing. She says, so this gentleman, Anthony Lennon is listed as a missing person on NamUs and elsewhere.
00:18:11
Speaker
he was added to the top 10 most wanted fugitives list in the state of Oklahoma, 13 years after his disappearance in 2025. He's got warrants out for possession of child pornography She says, you know, she's got a bunch of links in here. So essentially the first place she takes you is over to NamUs, which we had covered. He's missing person, 32, 434. still in NamUs at the at the moment.
00:18:40
Speaker
um And then she says, this article makes it sound like Anthony Lennon is a pedophile wanted for child porn and that he was kidnapped from the motel he was clerking at by whoever stole all the money from the cash register. So I decided to write up a Charlie Project case file for him. It's wrong to rob motels and kidnap him, presumably.
00:19:04
Speaker
murder motel desk clerks even if that particular person is pedophile so the articles he references there is you know this uh kfor.com which is oklahoma news 4 it's an article pulling from a bunch of other articles that you and i have uh used over the years. One of the things that you and i also do a lot of is newspapers.com.
00:19:30
Speaker
um We have a subscription and we use that for a lot of the work we do here. Those subscriptions are incredibly expensive to get like the you know top tier access to everything that's ever been written about an old case. But a lot of times between the Charlie Project and NamUs and these old articles, you and I use that to find court records and to talk about the things we talk about. We're not just Even if it sounds like we're just pulling from a couple of articles, it's likely we've watched a number of things about a case and also read quite a bit about it if if those things aren't available.
00:20:03
Speaker
I actually get as much information as I can find before we talk about anything. Right. and that And that's just that's just been the way You and I have been, like as far back as I can remember, that's how we've done things to you know ah to figure out if we really need to go through the effort to do a public records request, which is one type of way to get information, or a FOIA, which is a different type of um information request. It's a Freedom of Information Act request.
00:20:39
Speaker
um I do a lot of this for my day job. We do a lot of this for the show where we're just digging into things. So Megan goes on to say, i was just about ready to hit save and post, which I found this article. And the article she references here is out of a Coco News 5, which is the ABC News affiliate in Oklahoma, which Specifically, this is by Jason Berger. It's out of Moore, Oklahoma. And they talked to the detective there. And like it's like one of those kind of news at 5 o'clock ah or 6 o'clock in the evening kind of interviews where it's like a few tidbits about the case.
00:21:20
Speaker
And it says, the article quotes a former detective from the police department investigating Anthony Lennon's case. The detective said they determined the crime scene at the motel was staged, and that Lennon had an active warrant for his arrest when he went missing. Now they think there was no kidnapping, and the person who stole, or the robber, was him.
00:21:39
Speaker
So he's not really missing after all, just one of the quite a few fugitives from justice who have found their way onto NamUs and other missing persons database. I hit delete instead of save.
00:21:50
Speaker
Okay. So this is Megan talking about it in the blog. We talked about him at length. um We were trying to figure out. That timing, man. Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
He goes missing March 9, 2012.
Lennon's Capture and Legal Consequences
00:22:05
Speaker
And for those of you who don't remember, um he goes missing in Moore, Oklahoma. Israel Keys had been wandering around Texas. And these days, um we had some better potential candidates for what had gone on there. We had ruled out James Tidwell, or I had. i think you were still wondering about James Tidwell. I know a lot of people think he killed Jimmy Tidwell.
00:22:30
Speaker
I do not um think that he killed Jimmy Tidwell, so i was looking for alternatives. This is one of the alternatives that came up. His name was Anthony Michael Lennett. So Megan explains why he doesn't end up on the Charlie Project blog, and I was like, oh, that's really cool.
00:22:46
Speaker
um I had read that this summer and i was surprised that to see his name anywhere. ah Not that surprised, but surprised. And it was really cool to hear her explain, you know, her frustration with his case and like having to dig into other sources, which is something you and I do.
00:23:07
Speaker
And then Saturday, November 1st, 2025, I woke up to a centralnewyork.com article, C-N-Y Central.
00:23:18
Speaker
It's a news station up in New York. Robert Hagen wrote this, and he updated it a couple of times on Sunday, November 2nd. And the headline says, Fugitives' Elaborate Escape Ends.
00:23:35
Speaker
And that always catches my attention. um But the sub headline says Anthony Lennon caught in New York after 13 years.
00:23:47
Speaker
It says, ah after more than a decade on the run, authorities said that Anthony Lennon, one of Oklahoma's 10 most wanted fugitives, was captured in New York. The Moore Police Department said Lennon was arrested on multiple counts of possession of child pornography, a case that has haunted authorities in Moore, Oklahoma, for 13 years.
00:24:06
Speaker
They share kind of the X feed for this, which has the press release from him being declared ah most wanted and then Also, the announcement of his arrest, and it says, after thirteen years on the run oklahoma's ten most wanted fugitive anthony lenn has been captured lenin faked his own kidnapping in more in two thousand and twelve to avoid arrest this case remains active but lenin will finally be held accountable for his crimes press release attached um So Lennon initially evades arrest in March 2012 after he was charged with possession of child pornography.
00:24:46
Speaker
Moore Police Chief Todd Gibson described the materials found as quite disturbing, depicting the violent rape and sexual assault of children, including infants. um He had been a convicted felon since 2008 on aggravated child pornography charges.
00:25:01
Speaker
But he had been released on probation after entering what's known as a blind plea deal. This is according to this article, and that came from Cleveland County District Attorney Jennifer Austin.
00:25:14
Speaker
Three years after this conviction in 2008, prosecutors sought to revoke his probation when Anthony Lennon was found with child sexual abuse materials again. So he gets arrested, he bonds out, and then he disappears.
00:25:27
Speaker
Authorities say that Lennon staged a violent robbery, abduction, and murder at the Super 8 Motel in Moore, where he had been working to mislead investigators. So they noted that Anthony Lennon took elaborate steps, such as using his own blood, to fake his death.
00:25:47
Speaker
So his evasion lasted more than a decade until authorities received new information, and he was captured outside a grocery store in Canton, New York, just 20 miles from the Canadian border.
00:26:00
Speaker
ah They also reveal some interesting stuff about him. So Anthony Lennon holds a master's degree in computer science. He had been living under the alias Justin Phillips, and he had been pursuing PhD.
00:26:13
Speaker
His true identity was confirmed through fingerprints, ah Chief Gibson emphasized, we will not stop, we will not lose focus, and no matter how long it takes or how far you run, we will come for you.
00:26:25
Speaker
ah Anthony Lennon is charged with eight counts of child pornography and violating his probation. If convicted, he now faces life in prison. According to District Attorney Austin, they stated, now that he's been found, we will bring him to justice.
00:26:38
Speaker
And a U.S. Marshal Johnny Cullman from the Western District of Oklahoma remarked, to me, the most important part is that This represents a great deal to the nameless children that were victims impacted by this crime.
00:26:52
Speaker
Authorities have obtained a warrant for Lennon's arrest for failure to register as a sex offender, and New York law enforcement is seeking additional charges.
00:27:04
Speaker
I just think all of this is fascinating. One, they caught him. go ahead. No, they did. Yeah, and you go ahead. Well, I was going to say this, you know, i chose to highlight him a long time ago based on the idea that I personally found it absurd.
00:27:28
Speaker
The link someone would have to go to to fake their own kidnapping and death and this robbery. i One, I didn't know the extent of his problems with child abuse materials.
00:27:46
Speaker
We didn't know any of that. We knew, like, we knew that there was an accusation and that there were warrants and we considered it. Not from, from the very, but I just want to point out, I, okay, how I remember it. I didn't go back and listen to the episodes or anything, but I remember sort of as we were like formulating ah it came up that he could possibly be running from a warrant.
00:28:15
Speaker
Correct. well Or something like that. But he was one of the only people that was on that route ah in that area that could have possibly been a victim of Israel Keys during trip.
00:28:29
Speaker
trip to Texas, right? The second trip, I think. I think this is right before Keyes gets arrested. It's like three hours north of Dallas. We looked at it and looked at it and looked at it, and we were just thinking in terms of the clerk idea at the the coffee shop with Samantha Koenig's case. And like, would he go into a motel and grab someone? Cause he was known to use kind of crappy little motels. So we had put all that together and we were like, he has time from the time he's seen to the time he's not seen technically to make this trip and grab this guy. We thought it was a little too messy for him, but it was just one of the second trip.
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah. It's just one of a handful of, um, missing persons that were a possibility as far as reported missing persons cases. And when we we looked at it, we I don't think either one of us went, yeah, he definitely did that.
00:29:29
Speaker
But we went, we can't rule this weirdness out. When we can't rule like something that's strange out, we we feel like it's kind of our obligation to talk about it a little bit, whether we believe it or not, because you and I have both seen odd things happen. And both of these true crime news pieces are examples of odd things happening.
00:29:52
Speaker
It just happens that they're both fugitives getting caught for these child sexual abuse materials. But one of them ties back to something we did in the first 20 episodes of this podcast. So can't not mention And that goes to show you, in my opinion, that it is incredibly odd when missing persons cases stay missing persons cases, right? It just illustrates my point. Eventually things are found, things are worked out, right? right
00:30:26
Speaker
As soon as we found out about like the warrants and stuff, it became more apparent that more than likely he faked his disappearance. Yeah, we knew that. I don't i don't know how much we talked about it out loud, but like we felt like either he was a suicide or eventually he would be caught.
00:30:45
Speaker
I just didn't think it would be like this, but it's interesting. Yeah, it seems like once he was put on the most wanted list, yeah it got some attention, and that's probably what drew attention to him. And, you know, they got a tip.
00:31:03
Speaker
I don't know if it was from the police or just like a person who knew what was going on or whatever, but they got a tip and he was taken into custody. But one of the interesting parts of that to think about is, okay, Keyes was going to be arrested very shortly.
00:31:23
Speaker
um ah can't remember what day he was arrested. Do you remember? So Israel Keyes ends up being arrested the following day, March 13th, 2012. The reason we found this guy so interesting was because we felt like when he was being arrested, he was leaving to go to where a victim was.
00:31:46
Speaker
Right. And so if you think about it in terms of this guy had what successfully faked his death since right around the time Israel Keyes got arrested, right? Correct.
00:32:00
Speaker
It just makes it seem like exponentially longer for some reason. Right. Like it was that much longer ago than, ah you know, I initially think about it, but it's interesting that it came full circle, right?
00:32:17
Speaker
It did. And here's what's wild about it. Canton, New York is 40 miles from Constable, New York. Oh, that is interesting. So when they talk about finding Justin Phillips in Canton, New York and verifying his identity, he's less than an hour from where Israel Keyes's family had of a little house up there on a piece of property.
00:32:41
Speaker
that's That is really interesting. It makes it seem like it's a small world. Yeah, it does make it seem like it's a small world. You know, it's kind of an odd thing.
00:32:52
Speaker
Like the whole idea of this guy, and i think it i think it I passed by the thought of him actually being accused of him a long time ago.
00:33:04
Speaker
But it's just, we mentioned him in like the original, like this podcast was only going to be 20 some episodes originally. And we kept going ah because of weird cases like this. And we always had a question of what happened to that guy.
00:33:22
Speaker
Well, right. And as far as that particular time goes so like right around the time and place that Keyes was, because we had a lot of details from that because he talked about it during his interviews. Like this was one of the prime possibilities. Yeah.
Community Reaction and Unsolved Cases
00:33:41
Speaker
It was, and there was some stuff that we didn't really release to the podcast proper. um I don't know that, and I know no one else has ever... released some of the things that we had. I don't even know if I handed everything to you, but ah i'll just I'll say it this way. People focused really intently on the FBI files and stuff, and they missed out on the Rangers files, the local Texas files. Somebody since then has gotten some of that. I know I have his interview from back then, but it's it's really useless um in terms of
00:34:14
Speaker
information I had all of his Anchorage police stuff, which was all the photos and the videos and the recovery of Samantha and them walking through Keyes' house and all of those things.
00:34:27
Speaker
But he did mention in some of those fairly useless things that like he was you know he had been up north in Texas, and ah that's how we kind of got into Oklahoma a little ways. And we were like, this is really too far. But i think at one point we looked at it we were like, well, if he left at 8 o'clock and he went here and drops his kid off, then he would arrive in Oklahoma around 3 in the morning.
00:34:56
Speaker
And then he'd be back by eight in the morning, nine in the morning if he did everything quickly and and kept moving. Right. And that was something that when we looked at that, we were like, it's ridiculous, but like all of this is ridiculous. So it's not outside the realm of possibility. Right.
00:35:16
Speaker
Sure. But I think we ultimately did find out about the fugitive situation and that was that. Yep. Yeah, that was it. But i I just thought it was interesting that there was an update in that case after I had seen her little a blog post mentioned, kind of answering my question of why does she not cover certain people and they don't put them on Charlie Project.
00:35:35
Speaker
Oh, well, char my understanding of Charlie Project is that ah she doesn't necessarily, like, check NamUs and put everybody on there. It has to come from, like, a different place and...
00:35:48
Speaker
A comment I've heard was i would probably never tell a family member no. So it's more it's it's more personal, right? It's not official.
00:36:02
Speaker
It's a very good source, though. And the fact that one person handles it is insane. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Over the years, I found a lot of secondary sources and tertiary sources for things by reading there first and then looking for a detail I didn't know about. I think that it boils down to, I know that there, she, there's actually criteria like listed right on the website. It's something to the effect of, you know, the person has to be reported missing to the, to law enforcement and, you know, this that, and the other. And the criteria is pretty strict.
00:36:41
Speaker
And I understand that because she's just a person doing this. Right. And I don't know. I did. I never, it never occurred to me that somebody that like would want their loved one on a missing person site, having not reported them missing.
00:37:03
Speaker
That would be weird. I mean, I can think of a couple of circumstances. People would be looking for someone that the police didn't take it seriously. and like, in my head, I think of cases where the police have a,
00:37:15
Speaker
different idea than the person and for whatever reason maybe they if it's an older case they didn't take a formal missing persons report because of a lack of cooperation or because they felt like it was a runaway or someone who was leaving a domestic violence situation i could see reasons not to um to necessarily put people in there i've certainly i i have found a lot of people alive over the years that I mean this whole finding this blog thing I was looking for someone it's an older case that I was I have now found alive I'm 100% certain they're alive and i was trying to figure out if where I got the information they were missing and I did finally find them on NamUs or something when I was looking over the summer but the bottom line is
00:38:05
Speaker
We find people all the time that are listed on Charlie Project, listed on NamUs, or are frequently talked about on Facebook or Reddit or whatever, even WebSleuths, and they're alive. They just don't want to be associated with the last person. or The i don't most person that thinks they're missing. Right. Yeah, the person that thinks they're missing is not someone they're going to explain anything to.
00:38:31
Speaker
Right, and that happens. And I don't know if the people, and i've I don't know if they know they're missing or not. It doesn't really matter. It just goes away. Because as far as I'm concerned, when I come across a missing person who is not, in fact, missing, I move on.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so, do you have much more on Mr. Lennon here? now Okay, so... I don't think these two guys, Weissman and Lennon, they might pop up again once they're kind of sentenced or if there's anything interesting that pops out about what they've been up to.
00:39:12
Speaker
They're probably not going to make another appearance. the The fact that they were together is kind of why they're here. Time-wise, they were together. Yeah, timing, like 2025. Right. um like they're they're They're fugitives for similar things that are caught in 2025.
00:39:27
Speaker
One we had covered before, one was just had this circuitous route he had taken that was interesting. i had one more piece of like true crime news. Normally this is where I would talk about a case.
00:39:40
Speaker
I'm not talking about a case.
Anna Kepner's Mysterious Death
00:39:42
Speaker
I'm talking about a bunch of true crime news and sort of the internet's reaction to something. Primarily I'm talking about it because you and I did this overboard series in the fall where we talked about things that happened on cruise ships.
00:39:54
Speaker
We're not talking about it from the perspective of like giving you answers to anything. we're talking about it from the perspective of how crazy the true crime ah sphere on Tik TOK and Instagram and Facebook have gone over this case.
00:40:15
Speaker
And specifically it's something that happened on a cruise ship and we were pretty surprised at, ah how much attention it's gotten.
00:40:31
Speaker
um I pulled a Fox News article, which is sometimes a good source, sometimes a terrible source, but I pulled it because it talks about some specific things. and I pulled a New York Post article.
00:40:41
Speaker
This is I think, a very heartbreaking case. I have seen court records in this case. I've seen a lot of people jump into conclusions on it.
00:40:52
Speaker
Michael Ruiz for Fox News threw up an interesting headline that says, Cruise Ship Death Mystery, Cheerleaders Final Post Hint at Heartbreak and Resilience, Dad Breaks Silence.
00:41:05
Speaker
um And then the subtitle on the headline is, 18-year-old Anna Kepner was a straight-A student who planned to join the military after graduation. So the article proper just says, The FBI is investigating the death of 18-year-old Anna Kepner, a Florida high school senior found dead aboard a Carnival cruise ship, just days after she posted a TikTok hinting at heartbreak and resilience.
00:41:31
Speaker
In an October 26 video, she shared a series of selfies and wrote that she would continue to have a smile on her face despite what sounds like a rough breakup. She says even after breakups being disrespected, being lied to, being cheated on, being used, getting manipulated, getting played. I will always have a smile on my face and a kind heart.
00:41:52
Speaker
Uh, this is from the on-screen text in her video, which this comes out of the lawyer Herald originally and Fox news just kind of ran with it as a secondary thing. Um, the post continued. I don't know why I've been through what I've been through, but I can promise you I never deserved it.
00:42:08
Speaker
Am I mad at those people for what they did to me? No. Am I upset? Yes. She has a final post on October 30th that's much shorter. It says, you deserve to be happy, but if it ain't with me, then never mind, or NVM.
00:42:24
Speaker
um Around 11.15 a.m. November 7th, 2025, she was found dead aboard the Carnival Horizon cruise ship. According to this article, her her full name is Anna Marie Kepner. She was a senior and a member of the varsity cheerleading squad at Temple Christian School, which is a private K-12 Baptist school about 40 miles east of Orlando in a town called Titusville.
00:42:48
Speaker
According to an online obituary, she was an avid boater. She got her boating license before she could even drive a car. She would often blast music offshore and record TikToks in her bedroom mirror.
00:43:00
Speaker
Her family revealed that she planned to join the Navy after graduation and hoped to one day become a police officer in the canine unit. At just 18 years old, she filled the world with laughter, love, and light that reached everyone around her.
00:43:13
Speaker
Her remains were returned to shore in Miami the following Saturday morning, and a cause and manner of death have not yet been released at the time of this article. um Kepner's close friend, Genevichie Guerrero, 18, told Fox 35 that Kepner was a positive influence on her friends and always encouraged them to do well in school. She said, this can't be real.
00:43:37
Speaker
Her father broke a silence in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Mail, explaining the family went on a six-day cruise together and that she had died under unknown circumstances while the vessel was in international waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:43:50
Speaker
We were there as a family. Everybody was questioned. Everybody came off that ship. I don't know who they are looking at or what their investigation is. He said he had not heard anything from the FBI.
Family Dynamics and Investigation
00:44:01
Speaker
which is a pretty familiar story, right? A lot of the stories we covered in Overboard, people didn't know what was going on.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yep. I pulled a second article from the New York Post by Catherine Donlevy from November 22nd, 2025. It says Anna Kepner's mom found out about daughter's cruise death on Google.
00:44:21
Speaker
Blames X for fraught relationship. ah The mother of the Florida teen killed on a carnival cruise learned of her cheerleader daughter's death online because the girl's pictures and story were plastered, quote, all over Google, end quote.
00:44:34
Speaker
Heather Wright claimed her ex-husband stayed silent about their 18-year-old's death and failed to break the news to her directly because of their strained family ties. My ex-husband did not try to contact me at all whatsoever to let me know my daughter had died. ah This is Heather Wright talking to News Nation on Friday, hours after news broke that Anna Kepner was apparently killed by strangulation.
00:44:57
Speaker
Wright lives in Oklahoma, first heard her daughter might be dead from a friend who told her young son that his sister was murdered on a cruise ship. The mother desperately tried to contact Kepner by a cell phone and even on TikTok, but got nowhere and turned to the internet.
00:45:13
Speaker
That's when she saw reports that the high school senior had been found dead in the cruise cabin that she was sharing with her two stepbrothers. She said, I googled 18-year-old died on a cruise ship, and that's when my daughter's face popped up all over.
00:45:26
Speaker
Even law enforcement failed to reach out to her. This is her claim. She alleged they still had not contacted her in the weeks since Kepner's November 7th death. The woman had a fraught relationship with Kepner's father, Christopher Kepner.
00:45:41
Speaker
um said he even banned her from attending their daughter's memorial. He said he knew for a fact that Anna would not want me to be there, and I said, that's a lie. He said, if I step foot in Florida, I will have you arrested immediately for back child support. She said, I wore a wig and some really tall high heels so that way if he was looking for somebody my height, he wouldn't notice me. No one spotted me and I stayed in the back close to the door in case I needed to make a quick getaway.
00:46:08
Speaker
Heather Wright admitted she and her daughter did not have a relationship as a result of the rocky history between herself and Kepner's father, which most recently involved a screaming match and exchange of obscenities between the pair.
00:46:21
Speaker
She said he made it extremely difficult for me to have a relationship with my daughter. um She said she spoke with the teen only on birthdays and holidays. The relationship was so strained that Wright did not know anything about the 16-year-old stepbrother that's now potentially being investigated in connection with Kepner's death, even though no suspects have yet been named.
00:46:41
Speaker
He reportedly had a creepy obsession with Kepner and once allegedly climbed on top of her in bed, according to the ex-boyfriend of the slain 18-year-old. The two were fighting in the hours before her death. I don't know how true any of this is. it says Kepner's body was found wrapped in a blanket covered by life jackets and stashed under a bed.
00:47:01
Speaker
um According to ABC News, Anna Kepner died from asphyxiation from a bar hold where an arm is held across the neck and had two bruises on the side of her throat.
00:47:12
Speaker
i don't know how true any of this is or whether this will change before the new year gets here, but I do identify with Heather Wright from Oklahoma, who is apparently biological mom to Anna Kepner.
00:47:25
Speaker
But that's where I was framing all of this from until I started reading through the court documents. And i don't know which of them is right, but there really truly is a terrible thing happening around all of this.
00:47:37
Speaker
And you've got this little girl dead on a cruise ship, which I think you and I know how this ends. Well, right. ah I would say that you can tell from the focus of her interview for that article sort of maybe what some of the problems are. Yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker
Because she's talking about how her ex-husband didn't notify her. Yeah. As opposed to anything to do with her daughter. Yeah.
00:48:11
Speaker
yeah It's very strange, right? I'm not going to justify either one of these people. i dug deep into all the other side of this. So the other side of this is Christopher Kepner has new relationship. There's all kinds of custody problems going on in all the relationships here.
00:48:30
Speaker
The allegations are that one of the children from his new relationship is potentially responsible for the death of Anna Kepner. purportedly, i didn't pull the record. I read the record, but I don't know where it came from. or i didn't go to the original source indicating that the child custody issues that are going on, that they needed to be continued because of the death in the family and the potential that a minor child was going to be charged in it.
00:49:10
Speaker
That was a court filing. Yeah. But it seemed very vague. And I wasn't sure, you know, obviously that's a convenient thing to push something you don't want to do any way off, right?
00:49:28
Speaker
As far as it, I mean, that's a, it's a serious circumstance, right? Yeah. that a child died. i mean, she was 18, but she died. And so that is a good excuse if there were to be a good excuse.
00:49:41
Speaker
I haven't, I've seen people, i don't, this is like a new trend in true crime. I thought AI was going to be worse thing this year. It is not. the The new thing is everybody's suddenly a crime reporter.
00:49:54
Speaker
And um all of the things that you do where you source stuff from at least two sources and then try to verify a third are out the window. People are just willy-nilly filing public records requests and pulling digital records from online and throwing bits and pieces of them up there. I have never seen anything like this. And this case seems to be one of the more popular cases. There's another one circulating right now where people are just not interested in the truth at all.
00:50:27
Speaker
It is so strange. Right. And more than likely, this case was a domestic problem ah to the extent that step siblings are ah in domestic relationships, right?
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah. i mean, it seems to be leaning that way. I have nothing to substantiate. I can't make that statement personally because I'm with you. Like, that's what it looks like. But everybody's an anonymous source or, like, just posted a piece of this custody thing. I couldn't tell you anything of what's going on here. And it's on a cruise ship. which we've already highlighted in multiple episodes this year, are kind of black holes, these moving cities on water where nothing really is ever what it necessarily appears to be.
00:51:12
Speaker
Well, and I guess part of what but led me to believe that it is going to end up being a domestic thing is because of the way that she was found,
00:51:24
Speaker
And the fact that like nobody else seemed to know what was going on. yeah Because she's staying in a room with siblings. And I say that with air quotes, like everybody can see me. She's staying in the kid's room, I guess.
00:51:41
Speaker
I'm not really sure. And she was stuffed under a mattress with, ah what did they say? Life preservers? Life jackets on top her. Yeah. Right.
Challenges of Cruise Ship Crimes
00:51:54
Speaker
And,
00:51:55
Speaker
So, you know, that's kind of a, that's a weird thing to happen, right? If, because of where she was found and, you know, assuming that it is true that she was staying in a room with other children in her group, her, her family group, that, I mean, who's going to do it? Who else would be responsible for it?
00:52:21
Speaker
oh I don't, so don't think you- anybody knowing. Okay, here's the reason that I say I can't make that statement. You and i we worked on a case a number of years ago where there was an accused and there was an autopsy released and the accused had been charged with murder and then it was suddenly dropped.
00:52:44
Speaker
And I went and talked to like family members and i I put all of this case together And ultimately it didn't make its way onto the show because
00:52:58
Speaker
no murder occurred. And we had been presented all this information from local news sources. It wasn't heavily covered. It had an ending though.
00:53:10
Speaker
This case is on a cruise ship and I'm not sure it'll ever get to this point. But one of the things that had happened in that case was a, it was a really weird, um set of circumstances where it was either these two people or this person. And the sheriff, for some reason, charged and held this person for like five years. But you and I had decided that it was really, and I'm not saying this is the ending. This is the reason we didn't cover it.
00:53:40
Speaker
We felt like we were looking at a very odd case of positional asphyxiation. because of that,
00:53:52
Speaker
Um, I, I tried to communicate that to the mother in that case, and it was a disaster. Um, because she really wanted to think it was murder, but like, I, I couldn't even put the kid there with all the witnesses I found. I couldn't put them at the scene that night. I could only put them at the scene like the day before.
00:54:13
Speaker
And by four o'clock I had him locked down. So that means this girl had to be killed between three 30 and four o'clock before his dad picked him up and took him home. Because he was like young. He was a kid.
00:54:25
Speaker
And like people had eyes on him. And you know he had gotten in trouble that night. So I knew exactly where he was when he was sent to his room with no pudding.
00:54:36
Speaker
You know what i mean? With no pudding. yeah Yeah. So when I look at a case like this, and I see a person who's active on TikTok and Instagram and stuff, the only thing I can think about how bad it is to like,
00:54:50
Speaker
pin the step brother in or either one of them. Cause there's a couple of step kids here. I think one, I think the oldest step kids, not on the boat, but the other, the next two in line are on the boat. And I say that because if she was doing some silly tick tock prank and I saw one recently that made me think of all of this, where the person does this weird thing in the bed where they're like laying in the bed and like the bed is all made up and looks like a normal bed, but there's a person laying there.
00:55:21
Speaker
Like in the, like, I guess in the video, they cut them out. Like they cut out a shape. But like another version of that video was essentially you make the bed up around you. You move the mattress in the corner. And the only thing I could think was if someone
00:55:41
Speaker
repositioned something and she was like pulling a prank. And when they put that mattress down, it squished her and had the bar across it. I mean, it's possible. That that could be.
00:55:53
Speaker
ah Anything like that would be possible. But it seems like that would have come out already. I don't think it would on a cruise ship. And that's the reason I'm saying i can't accuse any of these kids of anything yet.
00:56:06
Speaker
Because they're kids. And, like, I 100% could believe they did something. But no one has released any official information saying they did. I've seen no juvenile petitions were filed, which is another weird wrinkle to all of this. Because if it's, say, a 15-year-old or 16-year-old kid and they file a juvenile petition, in some states you don't see that for a long time.
00:56:33
Speaker
um And because of that, i like ah the only thing I can think is we're going to wreck that kid's life if we talk about it that way and it turns out to be something nutty.
00:56:45
Speaker
Well, right, and, you know, obviously, don't feel like we've pointed the finger really at anything. No, no, I don't mean us. I mean, like, the public at large. Oh, yeah, well, see, in a vacuum, okay, so they did immediately, the information that a an 18-year-old girl's body was discovered on a cruise ship like under or on top of, like between the mattress, whatever they said, right?
00:57:17
Speaker
That came out immediately. yes And then there was this vacuum where they were playing like 20 questions, not answering most of them. However, answering things like nobody was ah held captive on the ship. Nobody had been arrested. That everybody that had been on the ship was allowed to deboard the ship.
00:57:40
Speaker
Right. And so there was this. vacuum that was created where you've got this young girl who, and i I think it was very quickly also released that her cause of death was as asphyxiation and her manner of death was homicide.
00:58:00
Speaker
And again, that vacuum has to be filled. Like we cannot stand to have a vacuum like that anywhere in the realm of true crime. It just, it won't stand on its own. And so everybody starts filling it.
00:58:16
Speaker
Yep. And it's, as far as I'm concerned, without information, it's basically just fiction, right? I mean, it could be true, I guess, but under the circumstances of what occurred, it seems like it's going to be someone in an inner circle that will be responsible for this. If in fact, someone else is responsible for it.
00:58:45
Speaker
So that means in the event she was playing a prank, you know, that's on her to ah an extent. It's an accident, right? Yeah. And then if somebody else did it to her, like a homicide would suggest, that means that it had to be somebody who had access to her and to where she ended up being found without being interrupted by...
00:59:14
Speaker
someone else who would be talking at this point, right? Correct. And so that's what I'm basing it on. it's And it's really more, so it's not personal. It's just more so a set of facts.
00:59:27
Speaker
There's only so many outcomes that can occur, right? And in any other situation where someone dies on a cruise ship, like you're going to have...
00:59:40
Speaker
more information coming out because people would be aware of things happening. Now, I think this may be sort of a first as far as... the way that it was, the information was released, right? Because they're like, oh, there was a girl ah that her remains were brought back to I think, to Miami. Then they're like, oh, they've done the autopsy and, you know, she was killed. and But no other information is coming out. And that's where that vacuum
Public and Media Reaction to Anna's Case
01:00:10
Speaker
comes into play. And people just can't stand that.
01:00:13
Speaker
you know And I'm not bringing this. I brought this up as true crime news because I was fascinated by the response and how quickly yeah this cruise ship case came to the headlines. And also I had been so focused in on like looking at different um cruise ship stories because we had just come out of doing... the overboard stuff. And you and I do a lot of work along the way to make the holiday stuff happen. And i you know, ah to be quite honest, like what the mom says here is true. Like everywhere I looked about cruise ship cases was suddenly this girl's face.
01:00:51
Speaker
And, you know She's 18 years old. she looks like a complete I know nothing about her. She looks completely like a pleasant young girl. 18-year-olds in my life right now, in terms of like the the people I interact with that age, I don't understand a lot about what they do with social media. I don't understand a lot about how they interact with other people. so you know Looking at her, i have that exact same thought about her. and All I can see looking at her face over and over again is this loss of potential
01:01:21
Speaker
everything like her future. Um, what would she have contributed to the world? It's very difficult for me to like walk through on a cruise ship to start with, like all the basic motives and all the basic things that you just went over. um I hate it if it's a family related or domestic thing here that's happened.
01:01:42
Speaker
Um, I, you know, I ah just look at cases like this um, I guess they're, for lack of a better word, they're highlight to how weirdly we fill that empty vacuum you described.
01:01:59
Speaker
um That's 100% correct, by the way. It's the us as people having problems with that vacuum. It's one of the reasons that like you and I like answering our questions and recording it and sharing it with people.
01:02:12
Speaker
It is. it it You're absolutely right. I i my myself cannot stand the vacuum, but I go one step for ah further and I say, like i can't stand how haphazardly the vacuum is sometimes filled. And I'm guilty of it too.
01:02:29
Speaker
But yeah I would say that ah the timing was crazy on this particular thing coming out right In the middle of our report. I think we had already recorded everything, but I was still going back through. Because you had some thoughts on the Amy Bradley case that like.
01:02:49
Speaker
we weren't sure if we'd addressed, I had a couple more cruise ship stories I was interested in, um, covering and some, I had a couple of sea stories and like, it turned out you had addressed those things like in previous recordings. So they did make it into the overboard series. And so I kind of stopped. And the minute I stopped, I think maybe episode two had already come out and episode three was about to drop. And then this happened.
01:03:13
Speaker
And then episode four was like right on top of it. And um it threw me off. I was like, whoa, that's it's not something I did. But like this had almost, you know, Anna Kepner pretty quickly almost became the same level of intense press coverage as like Gabby Petito. Oh, it was immediate. And it was because of the vacuum. Yeah.
01:03:41
Speaker
if If it had been stated that so-and-so murdered her or that she was attempting a prank and died by accident, or if it had been a definitive statement as opposed to no further information is available at this time, we would not have had any of this.
01:04:07
Speaker
No. No, we wouldn't. we I mean, would have got a mention at the beginning of ah of a true crime news segment. like I would have mentioned that just because of the irony of having done Overboard and then this happening. Because like one of the things I've learned over the past year or so as we've looked at cases related to cruise ships, but definitely in the last four months because of the Amy Bradley thing coming out, I have discovered...
01:04:38
Speaker
That you have this description that you use where, you know, like the cruise ship is basically a whole town operating. It is, yeah. And I have discovered that, like, it is very difficult to get both useful and accurate information And that shocks me for one really specific reason.
01:05:00
Speaker
um Because for the last 25 years, these boats have had amazing closed-circuit television recording. So for there to be these locked-room mysteries occurring aboard these boats like sucks me in.
01:05:19
Speaker
And that's not like of a vacuum for me personally, but I do... like i like I think there are two different things going on there. I think the reason I'm sucked in is because why are we able to have people disappear from these boats with all this amazing video?
01:05:37
Speaker
That's my side. That's interesting because ah it that would fall back onto like what you think happened, happened, right?
01:05:49
Speaker
Because there's not video in the rooms, right? Correct. But the the this kind of the second part of that is, like, a cruise ship is the place you take your videos and photos. Right.
01:06:02
Speaker
if you're If you're a social media person, that's the place that your phone is going to be full, chock full of information of what you were doing. Not saying that's in your cabin, but.
01:06:13
Speaker
Absolutely. yeah it And there would be all kinds of stuff that in the background of you find clues to things. Yep.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the part, like, i I've had this thing for a number of years where I think we can get too much information. Like, you call a vacuum not having answers. is that correct?
01:06:37
Speaker
It's just a void. It's a void of just, you have like this situation, but you don't have enough information to get to a place that that situation makes sense. of It's a void. Yeah. Okay. So for me, i find sometimes that like the resources required to organize and to organize and analyze certain types of information,
01:07:08
Speaker
ah The resources required to organize and analyze certain types of information are overwhelming. um like When the Snowden stuff came out and they were talking about, oh they've got all of our cell phones, text messages, phone calls, and they've recorded everything we've ever done. And the only thought I had was, if only we had people in computers that could deal with that.
01:07:31
Speaker
And I look at a situation like this where, say you've got 2,000 people on this boat. That means you've got 2,000 devices wandering around with location information, text messages, video, photos, and like no way to gather it, organize it, and analyze it. Even if you're the FBI, there's no way to do it.
01:07:49
Speaker
Well, but it's not even necessary. No, it's not. It's not necessary in a case like this because you find out that it happened in the cabin and there's these life jackets, which I have no idea how the life jackets get in the cabin. I can't wait to hear. I like, they just have theirs there? No idea how all of this comes to be. And that's one of the things that makes it kind of fascinating to me.
01:08:11
Speaker
Well, and depending on what it ends up having happened, it's... I feel like the reality of it would be a lot less ah true crime exclusive worthy, sort of.
01:08:29
Speaker
like Right. I don't know if that makes sense, but, you know, if you're looking at a situation where, you know, it was an accident or a snap or anything like that, it's going to be, wow, that sucks.
01:08:45
Speaker
But I think that the reason that people go like crazy is because it's it's a terrible thing when an 18-year-old went on a cruise ship. she's She didn't disappear, Right.
01:08:59
Speaker
So they didn't throw her overboard. Right. ah And I don't know, it seems like overboard would be a much better idea than what happened.
01:09:12
Speaker
Yeah. As far as... and that it It's a weird thing. like they didn't know what else Somebody didn't know what else to do with her unless she was playing a prank. Which, I mean, i kind of doubt it, but I guess it is a possibility. But...
01:09:30
Speaker
I don't know. it We can't handle the idea that there's not a logical reason why this young girl is now dead in all kind of what we imagine to be a horrible way. And, you know, that is what it is. Yeah.
01:09:47
Speaker
Well, ah this is one that might get another true crime news update. I and having trouble wrapping my mind around this being... much more than domestic.
01:10:00
Speaker
If it has some sort of sinister motive behind it, i'm I'd be probably willing to talk. It it is a unique situation ah because of it being on a cruise, right? Yeah.
01:10:15
Speaker
Yeah. i would like to think something more towards accidental, but andm Because i just I see better options, but that doesn't mean anything really in this particular situation. You never know what has happened, right? Yeah, 100%.
01:10:37
Speaker
And it makes me wonder, did her family think she was missing for any amount of time? i don't i don't have like any of that information. like We didn't get it. like that And even the way the family is talking about this, some of them have started to shut down their social media lately.
01:10:54
Speaker
But when I like was running through the social media stuff for the people that are immediately involved, because I was able to find them really quickly. like i was able like When it's announced, I was able to find the name and like and like read a lot of what they were saying.
01:11:09
Speaker
I'm not 100% sure that everything I got in the first two or three days was 100% accurate. But I was able to read like cousins, uncles, people talking about it.
01:11:24
Speaker
And some of it was there was so much anger involved with the way they were talking to each to each other and kind of posting things.
01:11:35
Speaker
Like, I think
01:11:41
Speaker
if it's domestic, they knew something like this could happen.
01:11:47
Speaker
Kind of. Well, but see, ah you're right. However, If the newspaper articles are accurate in that, essentially, her dad said, I have no idea what happened. She's not here. She's dead, apparently. i don't know what happened. So that seems to kind of negate that, right?
01:12:12
Speaker
A little bit, but you're asking the question, like, do they know she's missing? i don't i think he I don't know what the discovery of her body circumstances was. I don't know if she was a missing person. i don't know she was a missing person and people came on the boat to look for her and found her. i don't know what happened there.
01:12:28
Speaker
I've heard like so many different accounts of that. And none of it feels like we're getting official, accurate sources yet, right? and and it's sort Well, I don't think so. I don't think anybody official has talked. And i feel like the people that are kind of close to the situation but not official, ah there're they're trying to narrate it or stop other people from narrating it or whatever they were. It's a weird situation because i I, saw a few things and then I stopped looking cause it was all kind of crazy. And i just, I, that stuff is toxic, man. it is.
01:13:11
Speaker
Um, and I feel, I do realize they're all going through like a really hard time though. Yeah. They, they do appear to be going through like a really hard time.
01:13:22
Speaker
And like, you know, i i I brought it up today because we were doing a wrap-up and it didn't feel right to do like a whole news story, but then had the other news articles.
Role of True Crime Community and Justice
01:13:34
Speaker
And I was like, I really want to talk about this, but like everything is so weird.
01:13:39
Speaker
Not about the case. The case, honestly, accident, domestic, whatever, is probably just a horrible tragedy itself. And like, that's kind of it The thing that was interesting about it was just how everyone is talking about it.
01:13:57
Speaker
and money Yeah, they've gone crazy. Yeah. And like that part, I wanted to bring it up and like have a comment on that because I don't understand why people do that. like It's a vacuum. Some some of these – yeah. No, I do now that I've talked to you about it. I'm saying like when I was looking at it. like Some of this stuff looks like official and it looks like big content creators are covering it. I'm just like none of this is like – I think that everybody, well, i okay, I think that the concern is genuine, whether it's for content ah you know to get clicks and likes and um monetize versus whether people are genuinely wanting to know what occurred.
01:14:40
Speaker
i think it's all coming from a positive place in that everybody cares about this, right? absolutely. They do. They care that an 18-year-old died on a cruise. It's just you can't take anything some random person comes up with as the truth of the matter because we don't know. And it's just really that's a hard thing to sit and kind of deal with because...
01:15:11
Speaker
It's a very tragic case. And in any other circumstance, let's say they weren't on a cruise. They were at home. Okay. We would barely hear about it.
01:15:22
Speaker
I don't think we would have heard about it at all Yeah, like maybe a local headline, if it's something like Stepbrother Kill Stepsister or something like that. We might have heard that, but we wouldn't I don't think we would know her name. And thank God they didn't throw her overboard because it would like – We would have a mystery for the next 50 years. Yep, yep.
01:15:44
Speaker
the She would be like the new person missing from a cruise ship. Yep. it I think about that, and I'm like, that makes me wonder, though, why didn't they throw her overboard? And I think that's how people have jumped to the stepbrother. They're like, he's too small to drag her out and throw her.
01:16:03
Speaker
Oh, really? You think that's why? I think that's why she ends up in the bed. I think that's what people are thinking. That's why she ends up where she ended up, because they weren't equipped to like equipped physically strength-wise to remove her from the room and dispose of her body. Because like if you're on a boat, why would you put somebody under a bed?
01:16:24
Speaker
No kidding. like There's a whole ocean. Right there. So that's what I think makes people jump to that conclusion. And I'm not saying he did or didn't do it. I'm just saying that's part of that vacuum filling that happens is people start putting two and two intuor together in their head.
01:16:41
Speaker
but Right. and that So I guess this might be one of the – I was trying to think. Has there been a situation where homicide on a boat occurred, like a cruise ship, and the body was discovered? because Yeah, we talked about a couple of those. Yeah.
01:17:03
Speaker
yeah But beyond, there what I'm saying is like she was secreted away, right? To some extent, I guess. You mean hidden? The body was hidden and then found? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think i think i think there's there's some that have just been open homicides where... Right, that I can um i can imagine. But usually, if somebody's missing on a cruise ship...
01:17:26
Speaker
like they're not also found on the cruise ship. The idea be that they're taken away from the cruise ship or they're thrown overboard or what have you. In this case though, i don't know that she was missed by anybody. I don't know. i mean, she was 18. It's possible she was, she might've not had contact with the people she was with and it not be a big deal. Right. Just depending on the dynamics of their vacation, I guess. But I guess it is unique in that she wasn't readily, like she wasn't just laying there, right? Like I i know pet i know a person who dropped dead on a boat and he was laying where he dropped dead, right? Correct.
01:18:10
Speaker
And that not doesn't seem to be what happened here unless she put herself under the mattress. Right. Which I'm not saying couldn't have happened. It just seems weird that that would be considered a homicide, right?
01:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i i looked at the pile of people that were like in this party. I think I counted correctly that there were seven or eight people all together here.
01:18:37
Speaker
And like I guess she could have been missing for a period of time. I don't think it would have lasted very long. I've been places with... So I remember going places with my 18-year-old. Mostly my kids would stay in touch with me. But that is the age where they go do things with people their age.
01:18:54
Speaker
Well, sure. And it just depends on the dynamic of the situation. yeah And like, so I could definitely see like a period of time passing where like I didn't see my kid, but like I can't see a period of time passing where my kid didn't at least respond to my text message if we were like out somewhere in the world.
01:19:14
Speaker
Well, sure. And that would have been the thing that maybe had tipped off a missing person search. And maybe they did find her body that way. I mean, they do. So the body gets to a medical examiner pretty fast. We get all this information.
01:19:25
Speaker
All of this information basically says very little about this case, even though you and I have spent 30, 40 minutes talking about it. Like, we don't know much about it. um We were talking about it from the perspective perspective of the vacuum and the spectacle.
01:19:37
Speaker
And, you know, I try and think, like, about other... murder cases where like somebody's found in a cabinet or a closet. I cannot like recall one off the top of my head related to a cruise ship homicide, but that doesn't mean it it doesn't exist. I just can't speak to it with any authority, unfortunately.
01:20:01
Speaker
Right. And all I'm saying is even if there are other cases, this is a unique situation. it is It's definitely a unique situation. I don't have anything else on this right now. Do you have anything else?
01:20:14
Speaker
I don't. i I hope we get to hear the actual story at some point. i feel like the attention that's been brought is going to almost force it at this point. Yeah, I tend i would agree with you there.
01:20:34
Speaker
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01:21:07
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01:21:18
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01:21:29
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01:21:40
Speaker
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01:21:58
Speaker
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