026

-026

Sup y'all. Lots of horrific things going on in this crazy world we live in. One particularly daunting thing coming up for me is potty training my almost 3 year old over the march break. Please pray for me.

With that said, there will be no newsletter next week, but I'll be back the week after, and hopefully I'll have one less child in diapers.

Was this TMI?

Madison

My Pod

The second part of my series on Richard Kuklinski deals mainly with his family life, which was BRU-TAL. We hear a lot from his wife and daughters, who suffered greatly in their own home. It's a pretty horrendous story of domestic violence, so if you have any sensitivities around that subject... well you've been warned!

You can watch or listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify or Youtube.And maybe subscribe to us on youtube, if you want :)

‍A reco

A number of people in my life recommended this doc series, Don't Pick Up the Phone, months ago, but it didn't sound super interesting at the time. Eventually I decided to give it a watch, and DAMN.

This series documents a very large number of incidents in the United States where a serial caller contacted fast food establishments, impersonated a police officer, and convinced an employee to sexually assault another employee. What this caller got people to do was horrific. It made me feel very angry.

The caller was essentially playing out the scenario from the famous Milgram experiment, which was FASCINATING. I highly suggest reading into that study if you haven't.

I won't ruin the ending of the series, but let me just say, it's upsetting.

4.3/5

‍The most fucked up thing I've seen all week

Okay, this one is really messed up. I almost didn't use it, because I thought it was a bit much... but then what's the point? Right?

So here we go.

Andre Thomas is a Texas death row inmate. He was due to be executed on April 5th of this year. His execution has been delayed because this man gouged both of his eye balls out on separate occasions and ATE THEM.

His crime? He murdered his whole family and mutilated their bodies, he said God told him to do it. You can read more about it here, I think that is as much detail as I'll go into, it involved very young children.

So the real interesting debate here is not just the death penalty (thoughts anyone?) but the death penalty for the mentally ill. Andre Thomas is very mentally ill, obviously.

According to the previously linked article:

‍"The Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness. However, it has ruled that a person must be competent to be executed".

‍It's interesting, I was always under the impression that in the states you weren't allowed to execute people who were mentally ill, but somehow they just got around it all the time. But now I understand this to be that, for example, the person due to be executed can have schizophrenia, but they need to be medicated, or not be having any sort of episode at the time of their execution.

Something about this just doesn't sit well with me, but I'm not sure I can identify why exactly. Maybe it's just because I lean more anti death penalty to begin with? Maybe this distinction just seems like it's way too subjective? I can't seem to put a finger on it.

What do you think? Go read about what he actually did and let me know if you think he should be given clemency. Would love to hear from some Americans on this one!

Please respond to this email with the craziest story you hear next week, if it's worse than anything I can find, I'll throw it in next weeks letter.

‍

‍Survey

‍Please send recommendations of all kinds. Books, movies, podcasts. They don't even need to be true crime. Looking for some inspo!

‍

Thank you so much for subscribing! Please feel free to reach out with feedback and suggestions, and tell your friends!If you were forwarded this email and would like sign up please do so here.

xx

Madison

‍