The Cheat Sheet: Hammers and Humiliation

[00:00:00] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of rape, violence, and murder. It also contains profanity. Today on the Murder Sheet, we'll be covering cases in a few far-flung areas, including New York, my home state, New Jersey to the south, my ancestral homeland, Tennessee, and of course, Australia.

[00:00:22] So we're actually going international today. Tennessee is the former home of Elvis Presley, who unfortunately I swore about a couple of weeks ago, won't be mentioning Elvis, positive or negative in the rest of this episode.

[00:00:36] You were actually a victim of a crime while trying to go to Graceland. Yes, I was once mugged in Memphis. That sounds like a country-western song. Mugged in Memphis does sound like a country-western song. So anyways, let's get into it. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:00:50] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is the Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet. And this is Hammers and Humiliation. So to start off, we'll be going to New York.

[00:01:53] This is so surreal to talk about because we cover a lot of Midwestern Indiana crimes. We do a good amount of New York cases as well, but it's always fun to sort of talk about areas and places that I'm a little bit familiar with.

[00:02:06] So this is a case that we wanted to profile because the police do require some help from the public on this. So it's really important that we, if we have any sort of connection here, connections

[00:02:17] to the communities, we talk about it, we share it, we kind of keep word out there so that maybe there can be some progress. But this all comes from a press release from the New York State Police on Karen Angelilo

[00:02:31] Ramsey, as well as I also cited coverage from the Albany Times Union and coverage from both the White Plains New York Reporter Dispatch and the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Evening News via newspapers.com. So that's where I got all this information. Let's get into this.

[00:02:50] So in April, April 16th of this year, excavation work was being done for like a new home in the town of Patterson, New York, which is up in Putnam County and human remains were found.

[00:03:04] So New York State Police from the Brewster Barracks come in and they discovered that these are the remains of a white woman. She seems to be between 16 and 28 years of age. She had extensive dental work done, which always makes it easier to identify somebody.

[00:03:20] And they believed that the victim had been there for over 10 years. So immediately people's minds went to a different case, the case of Robin Murphy. This is a 17 year old who disappeared April 9th, 1995. And so state police and New York's Carmel Police Department tested DNA for her.

[00:03:42] Now that's a horrible case. I just want to give a brief overview. In 2001, her underwear was found in the suitcase of a man named Howard Gombert Jr. He had been working at a coin operated laundry at the shopping center where she went missing.

[00:03:56] She was waiting around for her boyfriend to get off his shift at Burger King. Shortly after she went missing, he tried to commit suicide. And he's also a suspect in the murder of 12 year old Josette Wright, who was also in Putnam County. Her skeletal remains were found in 1995.

[00:04:13] Two other men were convicted of that, but some believe that he is actually the perpetrator. And he's made apparently a lot of incriminating statements while incarcerated about both Murphy and Wright. So he's never been charged, but he is serving 30 years for an unrelated sexual assault.

[00:04:31] People were hoping it might be Robin, but actually on June 6th, 2024, we learned the name of this unidentified person. It was 25 year old Karen Ramsey. Her maiden name is Angelilo. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. If I'm not, I do apologize.

[00:04:46] So Karen was a resident of the town of the rather confusingly named Southeast New York, and she had not been seen or heard from since May 1980. So for those of you who are not from New York, Patterson is a town in Putnam County. So is Southeast.

[00:05:06] Southeast is about 18 minutes to the south of Patterson. So this is all pretty close together. And then I mentioned Brewster. Brewster is a village within the town of Southeast in New York. Whenever you have a village, it's in a town, even though it pretty much considers itself separate.

[00:05:24] It's all complicated. It's weird because I actually have spent some time up in Brewster. I think I've been to field trips. I remember going to this place called the Red Rooster, which is like a golf course slash restaurant on a field trip. I've been up here.

[00:05:42] It's very nice. I'm not super familiar with Putnam County, but it's not too far away from my old stomping grounds. Now who is Karen? Well, let's get into what I found. Keep in mind that it's possible that this is a different person, a different Karen Angelillo.

[00:06:05] The ages match up though, so I believe that this is the same person. I'm just adding a little caveat just because this is all kind of breaking and I don't want to steer any of you wrong. Karen first appears in the White Plains, New York reported dispatch.

[00:06:21] She was born on January 25th, 1955 at St. Agnes Hospital. Her parents were listed as Mr. and Mrs. Clement J. Angelillo of Thornwood, New York. Her mother was formerly Catherine Ward of Wyoming, and they lived at 592 Manhattan Avenue in Thornton. Thornton is a city in – rather, not a city.

[00:06:41] It's a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County where I'm from. She's also mentioned at the age of 12 in the same newspaper as helping out with a charity carnival and then later on in a 1969 wedding announcement as a 14-year-old.

[00:06:58] Her sisters are listed as Susan who married Richard Bertolacci, and her other sister is Mrs. Joan R. Hartman of Middletown, Connecticut. So she's got family. When she's a junior in high school at Westlake High School in Thornton, she's listed as

[00:07:19] one of the kids who learned to ski on a school trip to France and Switzerland. And then in 1971, her father Clement is listed as having died. So now what happened to the rest of her family? Well, her sister Susan died in 2016.

[00:07:36] It's unclear what has happened to her sister Joan. I will say that Susan's obituary mentions her parents Clement and Catherine dying and Joan still living, but it doesn't mention anything about Karen. So when stuff like this happens, I feel it's necessary to say like families can go through

[00:07:54] estrangement, families can kind of fall off the radar. I don't think it's appropriate for us to judge and say, well, why did no one report Karen missing? Because if there's one facet of this, the police are saying they can't find a missing person's report for Karen.

[00:08:09] So we don't know what happens in any family. I think it's just best to reserve judgment on that and not leap to conclusions. People move away. Sometimes people stop talking. There's not necessarily a reason to believe that somebody has been murdered.

[00:08:26] So anyways, this is where things get really weird, Kevin. And I'm going to be getting your take on some of the legalities of this. We're getting into divorce, divorce law. In September of 1980, the reporter dispatch ran a series of legal notices.

[00:08:44] These were from Karen's husband, John Ramsey, and they were supposed to be filed with the Supreme Court of the state of New York for the county of Westchester. John Ramsey was listed as the plaintiff against his wife, Karen.

[00:08:55] It was an action for a divorce and it was dated May 9th, 1980. A man named A. Charles D'Agostino was listed as Ramsey's attorney. It says, quote, the nature of this action is to dissolve the marriage between the parties

[00:09:08] on the grounds of abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment of the plaintiff by the defendant. And it also wanted, John Ramsey wanted absolute custody of their infant daughter, Jennifer Susan Ramsey. So that happened. And it was basically like, my wife has abandoned me. She never came back.

[00:09:32] I want full custody. I want, you know, basically a divorce to happen at this point. So Kevin, when you're dealing with something like this, when somebody is brought into a legal matter and then they don't show up, what can happen?

[00:09:50] Like in terms of like default judgments and things like that? Well, there can be a default judgment. What is a default judgment? Trying to tee you up. Are you trying to lose weight and feeling like you're getting absolutely nowhere?

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[00:11:20] A default judgment is what happens when a person has been given notice that they need to appear in court for some reason and then they don't show up. Sometimes this happens, you know, traffic tickets.

[00:11:36] If you challenge it in court and you don't show up, there's a default judgment issued against you, sometimes in bankruptcy or other proceedings. This is why you'll often see advertisements in the paper saying, if you have any issues

[00:11:51] with me or if you believe I owe you money, you're being notified that there's a bankruptcy proceeding. So, you're giving notice to people so they can show up and if they don't show up to contest

[00:12:02] what is at issue, then a default judgment will more likely than not be issued against them. So basically, you don't show up, you lose. You lose everything. So that's very interesting to me. She's apparently last seen sometime in 1980 and then that year her husband is filing for divorce.

[00:12:24] Now, that's not necessarily inherently suspicious. If they're estranged, they're not living together and then she stops showing up, maybe he thinks she's left. She's... And but maybe something else bad happened to her. But things are about to get a little more suspicious when it comes to John Ramsey.

[00:12:40] So the Albany Times Union did some great reporting on this great local paper. They said that the police have discovered real estate records from a Brewster condo where Karen and John Ramsey lived.

[00:12:52] So their signatures both appear on the paperwork in 1977 when they moved in and also in September of 1980 when it was sold. But there's something weird. Karen's signature is completely different both times and police say she was last seen in 1980.

[00:13:07] So how does her signature or what purports to be her signature get on this condo lease or condo, I guess, get us out of the condo paperwork? I don't know the official terms. I'm not in real estate. In 1981. Excellent question. I think some obvious possibilities come to mind.

[00:13:28] Well, let's talk about John Ramsey. So in 19... He was born in 1949 in Washington, D.C. He was raised in College Park, Maryland and served in the United States Army in Vietnam. So he was an insurance man, retired in 2015. He's described as very outdoorsy in his obituary.

[00:13:49] And he's listed as having married an Elaine Calvano Ramsey on October 10th, 1981. So I guess shortly after this apparent condo related signature happens. And he died December 10th, 2022 at age 73. So we'd have a lot of I mean, I would have a lot of questions for him specifically.

[00:14:13] To me, you could make an argument of like, my estranged wife went missing. I had nothing to do with it. I don't know where she went if there's no signature. But if suddenly you're saying she's vanished and has abandoned me and our child in 1980

[00:14:27] and then suddenly she's swinging back around in 1981 to sign something and then, oh, her body is found in 2024. That's highly suspicious. So I would be very interested in what happens there. And to make it official, in case there was any question about perhaps it was an accidental

[00:14:47] death or something went wrong on June 14th, 2024, the Putnam County Coroner's Office declared Karen's death a homicide. So if you knew the Ramseys, if you knew John Ramsey, if you knew Karen Ramsey, if you knew

[00:15:00] her family, if you just have any memories from the area at the time, or very importantly, if you know someone who might if you knew someone who was living in that area at the time, police want information. Police want people who are on the ground and have insight.

[00:15:15] So if you have anything, call 845-677-7300. It's the New York State Police. And hopefully we can shed some light on this case. Well, before we move on to our next case, that case is a very interesting case.

[00:15:32] I like to highlight sometimes how we find out about cases like this. Sometimes we get emails or messages from listeners who tell us about a case they find interesting. I think we have a case coming up that we actually got from a listener.

[00:15:48] But another way we find out about this, I'll just say how we found out about this story. We reached out to law enforcement in New York for another case, which we may or may not be covering. I don't think we've made a final decision on it.

[00:16:02] And when we talk to police, one thing we do at the end of each call, especially if it's something we haven't spoken with before, we say, if there's other cases that you are working

[00:16:13] on that need more attention, let us know and maybe we can do something for you and get the word out. And so we said this to this particular law enforcement officer. He told us about this case.

[00:16:26] And the reason I'm saying this is I'm sure there are law enforcement officers listening to my voice right now. And if that is so, and if you have a case that you feel should get more attention and should be featured on a cheat sheet or what have you.

[00:16:43] Or profiled alone. Please consider sending us a note and telling us about it. Yes, well said. I mean, sometimes that can really help get the word out. And we have a pretty national audience. I think a lot of our folks are certainly in Indiana. That's where we're based.

[00:16:59] But I think we have heard from listeners from all across the country and as we'll see later around the world. So if there's something that would just be good to get out and we always try to really

[00:17:11] encourage our audience to think about things and get into the weeds and perhaps even reach out to people who might know if you have them in your life. So just yeah, always well said Kevin.

[00:17:25] Always let us know if there's something that we can do to just publicize the case. So moving on, Jason Autry came up in the news and my sources for this are ABC News, News Channel 5 and AP News.

[00:17:41] Name Jason Autry may or may not ring a bell with you. But if you've been following true crime for a while, I wager that the name Pali Bobo might ring a bell for you. This was a young woman who was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Just a horrible story.

[00:18:02] Ultimately, a few years after that, there was a trial where a man named Zachary Adams was found guilty. And one of the key witnesses in the trial was Mr. Autry. And he, in some people's minds, he was a very compelling witness and he described the death

[00:18:27] of this woman and what happened to her. And as I say, the man was convicted. Now, the complicating factor in all this is that subsequently in recent months, Mr. Autry has said that he lied, that he made up his story, that it wasn't true and that basically

[00:18:52] he did it because he wanted to give the prosecutors what they wanted so he would get a lesser sentence. And in fact, he did get a pretty light sentence. He was facing some criminal charges at the time.

[00:19:05] He was subsequently released after serving a relatively short sentence and then he was rearrested. And the reason I saw his name in the news is that he was just sentenced for, I think, about 20 years for unrelated weapon charges. But so now he is saying, I lied.

[00:19:21] And so the questions that brings up are obvious, which is if somebody was convicted because someone lied, what do we do? Well, the first thing I think that's worth highlighting here is a procedural issue.

[00:19:42] These are, I think to a lot of people this may sound like a technicality and oddly enough, for some reason, I've lately been reading a lot of Perry Mason novels. I'm not sure why, but just before we started recording, I was reading a section where Perry

[00:20:01] Mason was talking about technicalities. And he described it by saying, in the law, anytime you draw a line between right and wrong, you're going to have things right on the border one way or the other.

[00:20:18] And it's easy for us to look at, say, the border between the United States and Mexico and realize, well, if I'm standing four inches on one side, I'm in one country. If I'm standing four inches on the other side, I'm in a different country.

[00:20:34] We can all understand that. But when the border is more hypothetical in the non-physical sense, it can be difficult to understand and it may sound a little bit technical even though it's not and there's good reasons for it.

[00:20:53] This preamble is my way of saying that when Mr. Autry said, oh, my earlier testimony was a lie, he did not say that in a sworn affidavit. It was an unsworn statement.

[00:21:12] So basically, he's saying, oh, when I swore to tell the truth, I lied, but I'm not now swearing to tell the truth. So it's difficult to put much credibility in an unsworn statement, number one. Does that make sense? Stephanie Lee I think so, yes.

[00:21:30] Adam Hickman And the other thing you need to evaluate, well first of all, obviously, that's something that can be corrected. If Mr. Autry really did lie and he feels remorse about that and wants to take responsibility

[00:21:45] for it, he can go and he can make a sworn statement under penalty of perjury and correct that. And assuming he does, the question we next need to ask ourselves is, did his testimony make a difference? Was he convicted because of this testimony?

[00:22:05] Because just the fact that in theory some inaccurate testimony shows up in a trial, that in and of itself is not enough to get the trial thrown out. It has to be so crucial that it made a difference.

[00:22:24] Let's say, as we often do, that Anya is on trial for stealing cereal and that there are security guards who testified that they saw her leaving the store with cereal that she didn't pay for.

[00:22:41] These same security guards say that they found multiple boxes of cereal in her car that she didn't pay for. They also say that when they confronted Anya about it, Anya said, yes, I admit it, I stole the cereal.

[00:22:58] Let's say we have all of that and then in addition to that, I testify that when I woke up on the morning of the incident, I went into the bathroom and I saw written on the mirror with lipstick, today I'm going to steal some cereal, signed Anya Kane.

[00:23:18] And I testify to that and then later on I say, well, that thing about the lipstick, I made it up. I think most people would look at the balance of the other evidence against you and say that was enough. We can throw out Kevin's perjury.

[00:23:33] Does that make sense? It does. Then again, I mean, I'll be curious about your take because you looked at it more recently, but I remember in 2011 when she went missing, it was haunting. The idea of this young woman being led into the woods by some awful perpetrator.

[00:23:55] And it was like, I remember waiting for answers. What happened? I mean, I would periodically kind of look in, like, did it have any updates? And I found her remains in, I think, 2014 and nothing for a while.

[00:24:09] And then there was this trial and I didn't follow it that closely. I'm not speaking on any sort of like a resolute way here, but I remember the narrative never completely came together for me on this one.

[00:24:25] And so I am curious about what you think about, do you feel like this does have a lot of, does this case have a lot of good underlying fundamentals when you possibly remove the star witness from it?

[00:24:38] There's no DNA, but apparently he made some incriminating statements to other people. So this is a determination and analysis the judges are going to have to make. And if they do determine that this evidence was crucial, that, and that the evidence is

[00:24:53] untrue, there needs to be a new trial. Even assuming that Mr. Autry repeats his recantation in a sworn document, the fact that he just now was sentenced on other charges, I don't know how that affects his credibility on any of this. What do you think?

[00:25:16] Yeah, that's pretty, that would be concerning. I mean, like what you mean is by the fact that he. Right around the time that he is recanting his previous testimony in an unsworn fashion and getting publicity for that, he's also facing charges and sentencing for unrelated things.

[00:25:39] Is he just trying to get publicity in some sort of bizarre misguided attempt to get attention? Yeah, I mean, it's impossible. I don't know. But I think the absolute first thing that has to be done is if this recantation is real,

[00:25:51] he needs to repeat it and swear to it. Right. Under penalty of perjury. Yeah. And some people's word just means absolutely nothing, unfortunately. Because lying is just like breathing for some people. And it's just upsetting that the family is being put through all of this.

[00:26:12] Either he lied then or he's lying now. Yeah. Oh gosh. That's awful. And it's a reminder that for the families, the words the end never appears. They have to deal with these cases and the ongoing trauma of these cases for the rest of their lives.

[00:26:32] And there's always twists and turns that they don't see coming that they have to deal with. Yeah. I know this is one of those controversial cases. There's been a lot of claims and whatnot of sort of drama between different investigative

[00:26:49] agencies, tactics of interrogation that people say are coercive or more getting people to say what you want versus saying the truth. And certainly this development, regardless of whether or not that is true or if that's just people spinning it, this does not help that image. No.

[00:27:10] Well, I do feel terrible for the family in that case. It's just such an awful case. I mean, just a woman going about her day and something like that happening. I don't know if that one always really bothered me.

[00:27:23] But anyways, so our next case is not in the United States. It's going to be in Australia. So thank you so much to the listener who reached out and tipped this to us. We are definitely interested in this overall subject.

[00:27:40] Now, my sources for this discussion are going to be the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's coverage of the Andrew Hayler case. I say that instead of ABC because I think American listeners would get very confused. And then also the CBS, SBS World News and The Guardian.

[00:27:59] So you and I think based on our experience covering the Kagan-Klein case, which involved a man who was convicted of preying on children in order to kind of have them send him CSAM, child sexual abuse materials. We're interested in issues around prosecuting and criminalizing things like CSAM, things

[00:28:23] like revenge porn, anything around non-contact sexual offenses. So meaning no contact is made to the victim, but it's still something that is illegal and a sexual offense. So one thing that I've been very concerned about is with the sort of advent of artificial

[00:28:40] intelligence, it seems like it's becoming very much easier for anyone, for predators to manipulate images and essentially make them pornographic, put children's faces on pornographic images, put adults' faces on pornographic images. It's very concerning.

[00:28:57] And as somebody who's a layperson but just kind of standing for my vantage point, the fact that we're basically getting AI forced down our throats with seemingly very minimal regulation and just hope it all works out for everybody, that seems just so misguided

[00:29:15] and ridiculous on so many levels, but especially the level of revenge porn, CSAM, things like that. I mean, we're already seeing cases where you have high schoolers manipulating images of their classmates. We're seeing CSAM already, and that's very concerning to me.

[00:29:35] So one interesting case just came out of the Commonwealth of Australia around this, and it was that of 38-year-old Sydney bartender Andrew Thomas Hayler. So he basically starting around 2020, he's feeling bored during the pandemic apparently.

[00:29:54] So for the next two years, he proceeds to digitally alter images of 26 women and upload them to a porn site with over 300,000 followers. Now, he wasn't just doing that. He was including the names of the women, their real names, where they worked, social media

[00:30:16] handles, and descriptions of his rape fantasies, encouraging others to rape these women. These real women, 24 of whom he knew. Some of these women considered him a good friend. He didn't know two of them, but the other ones were in his life.

[00:30:34] They trusted him and he thought of them as sexual objects for his own gratification. So these are some of the things that he would write on this. And just keep in mind some profanity here. I'm closing in on this slut. I now know where she lives.

[00:30:52] Let's claim her as ours. She is a future rape victim. This is the kind of stuff. So these victims, including a woman named Hannah Grundy, who's been speaking out on this, have been fighting for justice for years. They've tried to get the images taken down.

[00:31:06] But as we all know, once something is out there on the Internet, it's all over. You can't mitigate it. There's no taking anything back. And you know, Haler has talked about his side of it. He blamed substance abuse issues, boredom during the pandemic.

[00:31:28] He talked about how he has binge watched pornography since he was young. You get more and more into topics like domination. And basically uploading the photos of these women and giving out their full names and

[00:31:41] jobs and personal information was a way for a fully inadequate man to feel very superior and dominant over them. And he told the court that he just wanted it to be an outlet for a part of his psyche

[00:31:54] that he didn't like about himself and that there was no victim. It was sort of like a tree falling in the forest. How you get that when you're giving out their names as well, I don't know.

[00:32:05] But one psychological assessment that was read out in court had him at an above average risk of reoffending. But he did end up pleading guilty to 28 counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass and offend. So that's the charge.

[00:32:20] It's kind of interesting sometimes to see how when you're dealing with a new technology, how courts kind of what laws they use in order to deal with it. But anyway, so recently he was actually sentenced to nine years in jail.

[00:32:37] Now for folks who may not be familiar with Australia, Australia's laws and criminal justice system, that is a ton of time in Australia. That's like a very long sentence in Australia. That's not necessarily that long in the United States. But for Australia, that's pretty intense.

[00:32:57] So he'll be eligible for parole in December 2029. It's very likely that this will be appealed and may get reduced. But some have pointed out that honestly, in some situations, actual rapists might get less than that. I mean, I'm not going to tell Australia how to do its job.

[00:33:18] Far from it. But I can speak from my perspective in the United States. I can personally live with sexual offenders of all stripes getting long or even harsh sentences because I feel like when you're doing stuff like that, when you're victimizing

[00:33:33] people like that, regardless of whether it's, you know, if you're doing it on the Internet at this point, that's not really that much of an excuse. And we all have the power to publish and do whatever we want. Treating people like objects to be degraded is still wrong.

[00:33:52] And so I guess I don't have a lot of sympathy. I don't really have a lot of sympathy for people like this. I reserve my sympathy for their victims. So what are your thoughts on that? I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who commit sexual crimes.

[00:34:08] That's what you're asking. Well, I figured that. What are your thoughts on the whole avalanche that we seem to be about to kind of spark off regarding some of the fact that things like deepfakes are becoming increasingly easy for anyone to make? It's unsettling. It's very unsettling.

[00:34:27] I think I've mentioned this somewhere, perhaps in one of our Patreon lives, that a while back when I had surgery, I was worried I might not be able to talk on an episode or something. And so I looked into it.

[00:34:41] And just with a few taps of a button, I was able to create a fake Kevin voice that you said sounded just like me. And you can also do that, obviously, with images.

[00:34:52] And so it's unsettling how easily those things can be created and how easily they can be used to fool people. And in terms of creation of content, I think we've all seen that Google has been using more and more AI in its algorithms.

[00:35:08] And as a result of that, the quality of their search results certainly has gone dramatically down. Yeah. Google is garbage now. It used to be, frankly, a source of pride for me that I felt like I was really good at Googling stuff.

[00:35:22] You could find whatever you needed with the right – you could kind of game the system to get exactly what you wanted. And nowadays, it just wants to sell you a bunch of crap, including its terrible AI results. And it's just awful.

[00:35:36] And we're, I guess, just deciding as a society to kind of smile and wait for something horrible to happen when it comes to this stuff. Because not only is it something where it's putting people at risk regarding revenge

[00:35:47] porn and things like that, but it's also certainly rife for misinformation. And I think – I fear we're only at the tip of the iceberg. But, you know, the people unveiling this are just people who are, I mean, I think after

[00:35:59] money and don't seem to have any real sense of civic responsibility. So I guess that's what happens when we just incentivize that. I remember with the fake Kevin voice, you made it say all sorts of stupid and embarrassing things.

[00:36:14] And that's kind of funny when it's just a husband and a wife. But when you think about people doing that in wider contexts and doing it to publicly embarrass people they don't like, it just – it really gets frightening.

[00:36:25] I think just buckle up, everybody, because we're going to get into this. I think we're going to really be in trouble pretty shortly and it's going to be difficult for anyone to ascertain. No matter how media savvy you are, it's going to be difficult for anyone to ascertain

[00:36:40] what is true and what is real. And that concerns me. But again, I think that courts all around the world should be taking this stuff very seriously and not treating it like it's some sort of, oh, it's just a little internet prank.

[00:36:56] It has real repercussions for these victims. A man going around identifying them, making this fake revenge porn, talking about where they work, where you can follow them, that should be taken very seriously. I would hope it would be taken very seriously anywhere, frankly, because that's just totally

[00:37:18] unacceptable and frankly I think the punishment needs to fit the crime of something that serious. Let's move on to one more case. This one is from New Jersey, or I guess actually the person originated his flight in New Jersey. He actually went down to Florida.

[00:37:36] Oh, so I messed up the intro then. So this is a Florida case. It's an Eastern seaboard case. So I was close. The mistake was mine. It wasn't Anya's. I got it from NBC News. This is the story. There's so many things on the internet.

[00:37:53] We all have our little subcultures that we take part in. There are also subcultures that we know little about. And one subculture that I have friends who enjoy but that I don't really take part in or really even understand how it works, frankly, is online gaming.

[00:38:10] So this is the story of a man named Edward Kang, that's K-A-N-G, 20 year old man in Newark, New Jersey, who was in some sort of online game with a gentleman in Florida. And apparently he decided the man in Florida was doing things that were upsetting him in

[00:38:35] the game. And so Mr. Kang decided to do something about it. And what he did was he got a flight down to Florida and then he stopped and he bought a hammer and then he goes to this person's house and beats him with it.

[00:38:54] And thank goodness the person didn't die, but he was seriously injured as you would imagine a person would be if they were attacked by a hammer. And the main reason I talk about this is I don't think any of you guys need to hear this,

[00:39:09] but maybe we have people in our lives who do need to hear it. There are a lot of really annoying people online and no matter how annoying they get, don't fly to their homes and buy hammers. Go outside, enjoy the sunshine, take a walk, read a book.

[00:39:33] So many people are getting to the place where they think online is life. And if a person is annoying you in a game or on a YouTube video, you don't have to consent to that. You can just turn it off.

[00:39:51] And the funny thing is when you turn it off, it goes away. There's not that many people in your real life who are aware of this and will even talk to you about it. It doesn't affect your life at all.

[00:40:05] And we had a conversation with the prosecutors about some of the crazy online stuff in true crime. I wouldn't be surprised if you and I, Anya, do some more episodes about some of that at some point.

[00:40:16] But as annoying as this behavior is, don't take it into your own hands. I don't think our listeners need to hear this, but I think some people do need to hear it. You always have spoken about how fearful you are of another Comet Pizza situation. Refresh our recollections.

[00:40:37] What was that about? So Comet Pizza was a situation, I forget when this happened, but a few years ago, basically conspiracy theorists started talking about some, I think it was in DC, pizzeria called Comic Ping Pong Pizza.

[00:40:52] And oh, there's child trafficking victims hidden in the basement and all this. And a guy showed up with a gun to free the child trafficking victims in the non-existent basement that didn't exist. So you do have people who are unstable for whatever reason, who can be susceptible to

[00:41:16] some of this online conspiratorial nonsense, who say, I'm going to take matters into my own hands. They feel justified doing so because for them, it's very important for this man. He wanted to save the child trafficking victims that didn't exist. So we have situations like that.

[00:41:30] In this case, I guess the guy just wanted to get rid of an annoying gamer. Well, see, that's the thing. That's the difference. That's like a personal grievance. That's like your annoying sibling buzzing around and bothering you when you're trying to get work done.

[00:41:45] You still shouldn't get out the hammer. No, but you shouldn't get out the hammer in real life either. I don't, I mean, like I don't want to... That's what I'm saying. No matter how annoying someone is, once you start thinking about, well, maybe I need to

[00:41:59] get a hammer, you've become part of the problem. Also you're ruining your own life. But the other thing is, it's funny, mine was people should be thrown in prison over what they're doing online. Yours is just log off.

[00:42:10] I think it does depend on the situation, like a revenge porn situation that does affect people's lives, that does affect people's ability to feel safe and trust in other people. That is a huge sexual violation. And I think that should be taken seriously.

[00:42:26] But something like, this guy's a jerk in this game I'm playing. That's not... Just get over it. Don't play with him. I don't know how gaming works, but maybe you could just find somebody else and ignore that guy. Even in a revenge porn situation, go to the authorities.

[00:42:42] Yes. Don't take it into your own hands. I think vigilante justice, regardless of whatever the reason, is wrong and should not be encouraged. Should never be encouraged. There's a vigilante streak to true crime sometimes where you have like, this guy probably did it. Let's harass him.

[00:43:00] And it's like that's never a good idea. That's never the right way, in my opinion. Exactly. But yeah, especially about something as dumb as a video game. I mean, not to insult the gamers, if you like that, that's great. I mean, that should be a fun thing.

[00:43:15] But I think once, as you said, once you pick up the hammer, it's not a fun thing in your life anymore. You're going to wreck your life over it. I'm glad this young man was not murdered so horribly.

[00:43:25] But the fact that he has been injured so badly, I mean, it's just very upsetting. I don't know really what online gaming is. I have people I know who do things like on Twitch and things like that that I don't get. I think I'm just too old.

[00:43:38] I think if I was younger, maybe I would be doing that. I remember when I was, I'm so old, I'm so old, Atari 2600. I played a bunch of those games. If you could do those online with other people, I'd be there. See, here's the thing.

[00:43:53] I'm not as old as you, but I feel like an old person with video games because I didn't really play them growing up. But then when my younger siblings, they played them more growing up than I did. So then when you start something younger, you're better at it.

[00:44:08] So I would always be losing Mario Kart to a seven-year-old, which was super embarrassing. So that's all I know about video games. I'm just not very good at them. But you do know a lot about fashion. What?

[00:44:25] Oh, that was a clumsy setup into a bad ad that we do at the end of these things now. Well, you always make fun of my transition, so I'm trying to help give you a lead in. Well, I don't even know what to say now.

[00:44:43] So we have t-shirts. We bought a bunch of t-shirts for you guys if you want to buy them. And they're fashionable. They're very fashionable. If you want to say, I like Smart True Crime and this specific podcast, then they're for you.

[00:44:59] And buying them really helps us out a lot, helps us kind of have a little fund going for our records requests and traveling to report on crimes and whatnot. So we really appreciate it.

[00:45:13] And to be clear, when you talk about records requests, it's not like we're writing to Sony saying please send us Elvis records. No one is thinking that. No one thinks that. You're just confusing them more. What is with your Elvis obsession on this show recently?

[00:45:29] Oh, I promised not to mention Elvis. I apologize. You mentioned him at the top of the episode and now at the end. That's my hip reference. But I think of music. Elvis. And you don't even really like Elvis that much. You have a lot of issues with Elvis.

[00:45:44] So now people are going to walk away thinking you're like an Elvis head or whatever they call the Elvis stans. Elvis is back. His 1960 album was pretty good. His original song Sessions and then his recordings right after his comeback special, those were fine.

[00:45:58] He listens to like the Elvis Sirius FM radio station and then he just gets mad because all of the songs he doesn't like. Why are these background singers doing it? You're torturing yourself with this Elvis stuff. That's what I'm going to say. Oh my goodness.

[00:46:15] But anyway, so we have shirts. Elvis is not on them, but they do have the murder sheet people on them and they look really good. I think people who have gotten them so far have hopefully enjoyed them. It has the words, the murder sheet people on them.

[00:46:26] It doesn't have our faces. If people thought they had our faces, no one would ever buy them. That would be so weird. Why would we do that? I just wanted to clarify, you said they have the murder sheet people on them? That's horrible.

[00:46:40] Who are these weird looking people? That's really disturbing. Yeah, no, we didn't do that. We just, you know, we did. It's more conventional. It looks like our podcast logo. You know the one.

[00:46:59] If I want to buy one of these t-shirts, do I have to fly to the greater Indianapolis area and come to our home? Yes. And then you must complete 12 Herculean tasks in order to be worthy of one of these shirts. No, you can go to murdersheetshop.com.

[00:47:18] Let me actually just check that before rattling it off. Oh my God, what a disaster. I've never prepared for these things. I'm just always caught off guard. So okay, murdersheetshop.com. You'll see some cool shirts and you can get them.

[00:47:35] And if you join our Patreon at the $5 level, it's free shipping. So you get a nice little discount if you do that. But, but, you know, make sure you get the code first on the Patreon. Okay, because otherwise it's not going to work.

[00:47:50] Email us if you have any problems. But don't email us asking for the code unless you are a patron. Otherwise we'll be tricked. Couldn't you see that happening? No, because I think our audience is filled with upstanding moral people who are overly

[00:48:03] reliable and I'm shocked that you would suggest otherwise. Oh my God. Sucking up to you guys. Are you going to believe it? I'm telling you the truth. No, I'm just kidding. I don't think anyone would do that. I'm not concerned. I'm just rambling. That's all.

[00:48:19] Yeah, I think we need to stop it. Yeah, I think we need to get out of here. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. If you have a cheat sheet case or case for cheat sheet that you want us to cover, please

[00:48:29] email it to murdersheet at gmail.com. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com.

[00:48:44] If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities. If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com slash murdersheet.

[00:49:03] If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com slash murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support. Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and

[00:49:22] who you can find on the web at kevintg.com. If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much.

[00:49:40] We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.