HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god, let him go, Ricci! Let him go, Ricci! Oh god. There's a lot of sad information in this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also unfortunately too, I went on a full, I did this, it's almost old school in a way where I was up til 3 o'clock in the morning on a straight up old school rabbit hole.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just on forums, I was deep into forums.
BEN KISSEL
It's not old school if you're not at a public library looking at microfiche.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Looking at the microfiche. I'm talking old school for me, man. It was good to feel it though and get back in the bones, get super paranoid like when we did the MK Ultra episodes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing is, guess what? What does it mean? It always leads back to MK Ultra in some way, shape, or form.
MARCUS PARKS
Every time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's CIA money, man. CIA fucking money, dude. That funny money, dude. Which I make every week.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I want to say again before we start thank you to the CIA for sponsoring me and my little PSYOP.
BEN KISSEL
CIA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It is the culinary institute of America but that's what we call it on the inside because I mean the Central Intelligence Agency. Yes, I am an op. But guess what? I only do it for the lols.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I wouldn't do a rabbit hole myself. I found a bunch of half eaten carrots, picky ass rabbits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Funny, funny stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Hi hi.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, something you'd like to say?
MARCUS PARKS
I do. I want to ask Henry, my god, are you an actual op or are you just saying that you're an op to throw us off the trail? Or is this a double blind where you're an op but you're saying you're not an op but you're making a joke that you're an op but you're real actually an op?
BEN KISSEL
Quadruple op.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Questions. Questions are being asked.
BEN KISSEL
Any answers?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can someone ask the ocean a question?
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about this. If we are all just mysterious entities floating through a polygon universe in which we are just representations of energies as our brains are operating systems that manage to sort of put together reality. What is even a question? What is even objective fact?
BEN KISSEL
You know what I'd ask the ocean? Can I get a towel? All right everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, here we go. This is not gonna be a struggle today.
BEN KISSEL
Hey, could I get a towel? You made me all wet, now could I get a towel? All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It couldn't have one. It couldn't have one if it wanted to, it's the ocean.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah I went down a rabbit hole, bunch of fucking half eaten carrots, picky ass rabbits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh god.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man. We are supposed to be professional. We have been doing this for so long. Marcus is 40!
BEN KISSEL
Professional has nothing to do with how good we are. Content professionally means that it's monetized. So there you go.
MARCUS PARKS
I have now officially done this show for the entirety of my 30s.
BEN KISSEL
Woo! Marcus is 40 years old and what a great episode to honor his 40 years.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Probably going back to past trauma that all of us and I know our listeners have experienced. So thank you so much for everyone who's listened to this series. And I know for many of you it's brought up some difficult feelings but we'll get through this together and beat these motherfuckers. All right, we're on the troubled teen industry part 3, Joe Ricci and the murder of Martha Moxley.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the troubled teen industry is obviously made up of cruel institutions that use violence and humiliation in a vain attempt to set teens on a path that's acceptable to their lazy and/or gullible parents. But that begs the question as to what type of person finds these methods to be not only sustainable but essential.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Assholes.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Would you rather have lazy parents or parents who are so far up your ass they could pick your nose from the inside? Because I watched South Park, Kenny's parents, horrible, but he got to do whatever he wants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But then Butters' parents, up his butthole, and he's deeply traumatized.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like we could search for a middle. I feel like there's a way to maybe not do either of those.
BEN KISSEL
You wanna go with a Stan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Randy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Randy.
MARCUS PARKS
Randy's fine.
BEN KISSEL
Well Randy's a sexual pervert who looks at animal porn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, that's on his time.
BEN KISSEL
True, true.
MARCUS PARKS
Well furthermore, since most of these schools are only loosely based on therapy programs originally intended for adults, stuff like Synanon, it begs the question as to what kind of person fills in the blanks with straitjackets, solitary confinement, and electric sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
An asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And in some cases these people were nothing more than grifters and copycats, the type you see a new regulation-free industry blossoming and therefore they decided to throw their hat in the ring with no previous experience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kind of like how we messed with humans minds, the US government did for a period of time in the 1950s and they found all these kind of applicable ways to make money off it truly and then continue it going. It seems that that's a really attractive thing, this idea of look, oh we're getting into the basement of a business that's all about working with human brains. And it is interesting to see a bunch of guys just go like yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean it's like they're finally given permission. It's like people who really do look at humans as robots, they look at other people as not human, they're the only human that exist in this world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And so finally you have an actual job in which your entire job is to treat people like robots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. I watched one of those documentaries called Human Resources which was one of the old school, it's an old school conspiracy head video that is on the left side vs the right side. And so you just get real deep into how Taylorism, like making scientific management, led to all of this stuff. It is interesting but it's a lot of well technically that's business but also it's profoundly cruel in the way they look at people is sort of moving autonomic parts and then they just figured out how to do that again and again and again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That sounds like a half eaten carrot to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for an example of a grifter, look no further than the aforementioned Gayle Palmer whose rip off wilderness program Summit Quest resulted in a tragic and needless death by dehydration just two months after Gayle launched the venture. But when it comes to Elan, the cruelest of these schools which we went into in depth in episode one, it took a special mix of egomania, sociopathy, narcissism, neglect, drug abuse, and sadism to create their proverbial electric sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that poopoo chute.
BEN KISSEL
I don't like that at all.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm talking of course about the Elan School's co founder Joe Ricci.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am not a criminal. I'm not a mobster. I'm not anything in this line. I'm just simply, I'm a principal. I'm an extreme principal. All right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I hate to stereotype but you sound like a criminal and a mobster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. What do you mean? You mean to say there's some kind of criminal accent that one can have? You racist?
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I wear tracksuits.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And yeah, I got this chain, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I drive a Rolls Royce but I deal in the business of screaming children. So you'd be like oh, he must be a criminal. But no, I'm running for governor.
BEN KISSEL
Well that wouldn't necessarily stop you from being a criminal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Criminals are never politicians.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, that wouldn't work out. How do you say mozzarella?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Moza!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Muzaday!
BEN KISSEL
You might be a criminal.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joe Ricci was a native of Port Chester, New York, located just north of New york City.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Raised by his maternal grandparents, Joe's father was an alcoholic nicknamed Bamboo because he could bounce back from any punch and he was locally known as the kingpin of bar fights.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I certainly wish he was known as the kingpin of good fathers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that would have been nice. Maybe you wouldn't be such a criminal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know honestly, I think it might just be in my very nature.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you got some chicken parm on your face there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was saving that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as little Joe's nickname went, he was called Joe Rich because he was tough, sharp, and able to get himself out of any sticky situation, which is a skill that would serve him well later in life. Additionally, Joe Ricci was a vindictive little fuck and if you ever crossed him, he'd never let you forget it. That would also serve him for the rest of his life.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is a common trait amongst cult leaders, isn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it really is. Now when Joe was 15 in the year 1961, he got into a car accident with three friends and got thrown from the vehicle. He spent months in the hospital learning to walk again. But after Joe recovered, he allegedly self medicated with heroin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's a real cool way to do it. It's very jazz.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, let's see if he learned how to play any musical instruments. Also I think the only cult leader that actually would forgive is Charles Manson. I feel like he let a lot of stuff slide.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But the things he didn't were like a big deal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because he didn't have an eye for detail.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon Joe Ricci was sent to a residential treatment facility for persons in need of supervision. It's pretty much an early version of a troubled teen facility.
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to Peepholes! Now what you'll see here is every single painting, those are not eyes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not a one.
BEN KISSEL
They'll be looking at you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I purposely when I went to art school to make art to put on the hallways of this incredibly restrictive teaching environment-
BEN KISSEL
Peepholes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just said peepholes. I don't even know how to draw a pupil.
BEN KISSEL
I've been the janitor at Peepholes for 15 years and I have never seen so much come.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joe spent two years in this facility and he returned to high school in 1963. But since Joe was two years older than everyone, he dropped out in 1966 at the age of 21.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dropping out of high school at 21 is like renouncing your citizenship to Atlantis.
BEN KISSEL
He's like that quarterback who just won the championship for Georgia, he's like 48 and he's just beating all these kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah just being like how does this count?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well still supposedly struggling with heroin addiction, Ricci reluctantly entered a residential drug and alcohol program called Daytop Village in Manhattan after he got caught robbing a mail truck.
BEN KISSEL
That's where you go to kick a drug habit, 1970s Manhattan?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's good. Maybe Oklahoma would have been better.
MARCUS PARKS
Well interestingly, Daytop was founded by a Synanon graduate named Ron Brancato.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, Synanon is just everywhere. That's why we covered it last week cause you really see just how really spread and how the pain kept spreading.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I think this is probably, I don't know this for certain, but it seems like this is probably when Joe Ricci first learned about the game and of course he would use that to great harm later on at Elan.
BEN KISSEL
So without Synanon none of this stuff happens. Or at least it happens differently.
MARCUS PARKS
It happens differently. I would say without Synanon, it's not as psychologically traumatizing but boot camps and shit like that-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Torture has been used as a motivator for better behavior since the beginning of time.
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't work on the Iranian soccer team.
MARCUS PARKS
Nope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that's a dig.
BEN KISSEL
They lost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's sad. No, there was a couple, there's a guy named Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, he worked under the Nixon administration and he literally wanted to create what he called, it's not a concentration camp, but it was like a place where a bunch of kids could concentrate, right, they could be in this place, all in one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And be forced to deal with a bunch of... And basically it was a way for them to handle troubled kids. And that was floated to Richard Nixon.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he in his wisdom said no for a short period of time.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it did seem to not die there.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So yeah. So this shit has been around for a long time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And behaviorism, that's the other thing I learned from Human Resources. You should talk about that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's a whole different thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Trying to create a utopia of just machine people has been a thing that we've been honestly hoping for and working for for a long time.
BEN KISSEL
Half eaten carrots.
MARCUS PARKS
Well additionally Daytop village, that was where Nancy Reagan was first made aware of the youth drug epidemic in the 80s. Her visit to Daytop Village is widely credited to be the genesis of the Just Say No program.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. That's what Ronald Reagan used to say when she used to slip off them panties.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I think Ronnie said yeah, she was quite attractive back in the day.
MARCUS PARKS
Nancy Reagan?
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. You know they used to call her like golden throat or something. She phoned all the guys in Hollywood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's been lonely since Vegas.
BEN KISSEL
No, this is true.
MARCUS PARKS
Golden throat, huh?
BEN KISSEL
Something like that.
MARCUS PARKS
I always just saw her as a skeleton.
BEN KISSEL
No, she was so hot back in the day. I'll do some research. Talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just write 'Nancy Reagan hot'.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Goddamnit.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know why but suddenly in my mind I just thought like would I rather sleep with Nancy Reagan or Angela Lansbury? And I think Angela Lansbury.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because of all the voices.
BEN KISSEL
Brother, you are just so fucking out of your element right now. That's young Nancy, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, yeah. She's pretty good.
BEN KISSEL
Look at her there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's fine.
MARCUS PARKS
She's all right.
BEN KISSEL
She's beyond fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was our president for like a year.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true.
MARCUS PARKS
But concerning Joe Ricci, a judge gave him the option of either doing seven years in a state penitentiary for robbing the mail truck or entering a drug rehab, so Joe took latter option.
BEN KISSEL
Drug rehab, yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait for that option.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
However some of Joe's relatives say that Joe actually never had a heroin problem but heroin always made a nice excuse when he needed to get out of a legal jam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a little bit of that I believe because I think that Joe Ricci as you'll see is nothing but a complete and total perfectly bred opportunist.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knows how to make situations work for him. So I think that he started off truly with the criminal's mind, which a lot of times is a mindset that is similar in many ways, you would view it as a quote unquote "businessman's mind", right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he knows how to flip things.
BEN KISSEL
Legalize it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knows how to make things that would be a detriment to others, he sees them as an opportunity. I'm gonna buy in low on myself and then when he goes in something he understands.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like oh, I don't have to go to jail, I can just say oh god, I'm so sick, I'm so sick. And then you can go to this, oh, it's called a village. Look, oh, this is incredible, there'll be a fountain! There'll be like a malt shop, I can go in there and get some sundries, I can go and get an ornament, a Christmas ornament and bring it home and it'll be like oh, how thoughtful.
BEN KISSEL
All you gotta do is pay off a local congressman and then boom, whatever you're doing illegal, it's made legal. Much like Dana White's new venture, slap fighting. I watched this on TNT yesterday, it is going to lead to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, you've never watched professional slapping?
BEN KISSEL
Now it's in Nevada, it's sanctioned.
MARCUS PARKS
Sanctioned?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. You've never seen professional slapping?
BEN KISSEL
This guy was bleeding from his fucking ear and they're like oh what a great game it was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dog.
BEN KISSEL
I was like that man's about to die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But do you remember the other game that's a piece of twine around the ears-
BEN KISSEL
That's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you hold the ears and you have to pull it back and forth and whoever fucking folds first is the ultimate pussy?
BEN KISSEL
That's still legal.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean me and my buddies used to slap fight in college, that was one of the things that we would do is like at parties you would just slap someone when they weren't looking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course then the game was on and then they slapped you when you weren't looking and it just got progressively harder and harder as everyone got drunker and drunker.
BEN KISSEL
And it's had zero adverse effect on you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you're not scary. I hung out with the girls.
BEN KISSEL
Shut up. No, you didn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hung out with the girls. They used to straighten my hair.
MARCUS PARKS
There were girls!
BEN KISSEL
There's a difference between hanging out with girls and hanging around girls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was in the room with women.
MARCUS PARKS
There were girls hanging out when we were doing slap fights too. It was a party.
BEN KISSEL
It's hot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but the whole time they'd be like ugh, these men.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's what they were getting turned on by.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These men are slapping each other.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while Joe was attending Daytop Village, he met and began dating his first wife, Sherry Benton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which disagrees immediately because we talked about, you did a little bit last week where you said in jest that AA was nothing but fat old divorced man in a lonely room.
BEN KISSEL
Just the guys that I know that have been at AA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but I just got a lot of feedback from that of people being like I'm a hot woman and I was in AA and all I did was get fucked. And then I got a lot of that. Like you'd be surprised who's around. It's called 13 stepping.
BEN KISSEL
I don't... Well it seems like they need to go to another meeting then for sexual prowess. They're too sexual.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one day Ricci showed up at the travel agency where Sherry worked and he announced that he was done with Daytop because they wouldn't let him graduate, they wouldn't let him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole time I was like, oh hey, they kept asking me would you please teach here? And I was like oh whoa, let's see, I got other options. I got a lot of situations I gotta sus out.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Like do a bunch of heroin in order to get off of what, charges of robbery?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He robbed a mail truck like he's fucking Jesse James.
BEN KISSEL
That's just incredible it was a time where it's like yeah, I did commit an act of robbery but I'm also doing this other illegal thing. So why don't you just let me off?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It worked!
BEN KISSEL
I know!
MARCUS PARKS
Well soon after he left Daytop Village, Joe got engaged to Sherry and by December of 1969 both Sherry and Joe, they were 24 years old and married. And Joe had somehow managed to snake his way into a job at a state facility in Connecticut called Drug Addicts Rehabilitation Through Educational Community.
BEN KISSEL
Rolls off the tongue.
MARCUS PARKS
DARTEC for short.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
DARTEC.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god. You gotta come up with the acronym first, fill in the words after.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes it's difficult.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean DARE.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What does it stand for?
MARCUS PARKS
Drugs After...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Drugs Are Radical Exceptional.
BEN KISSEL
Drugs Are Really Exceptional.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Dung After Renal Expulsion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know that firsthand.
BEN KISSEL
That's medical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
First butt.
MARCUS PARKS
Well taking a cue from Synanon's model, DARTEC adopted the model of using former addicts to counsel patients. But DARTEC at least had the good sense to pair those former addicts with professionals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a real rehab program.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Very much so. Specifically the program was headed by a psychiatrist named Dr. Donald Pet.
BEN KISSEL
Will do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh god. He worked alongside, there was a dentist named Dr. William Groom. Don't take the kids.
BEN KISSEL
No, it doesn't sound like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Dr. Pet seemed to be on the up and up, combining professional counseling techniques with the experiences of recovering addicts. It grounded the treatment in some sense of reality, you could talk to them on their level.
BEN KISSEL
I bet you dogs would love to go to him.
MARCUS PARKS
Dr. Pet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, cause his name is Dr. Pet.
BEN KISSEL
Puffin would probably be like (Puffin voice) I just love Dr. Pet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Puffin doesn't really like to engage with strangers.
BEN KISSEL
(Puffin voice) No but I do like Dr. Pet cause he pets me.
MARCUS PARKS
But that doesn't mean that everyone at DARTEC was credible because Joe Ricci worked there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Through staff at DARTEC, Joe was introduced to another unscrupulous character with some highly interesting connections. His name was Dr. Gerald Davidson, although information on Dr. Davidson is scant at best and even the most thorough researchers have had a hard time digging into his past at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have been looking into him because this was the rabbit hole I had entered in. Because we talked about this as we did our production call and we wanted to do the story of Joe Ricci and then as we went through it, we're like well the second half of this team is Dr. Gerald Davidson.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Gerald Davidson is the co founder of the Elan School.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right.
BEN KISSEL
But no one knows anything about him?
MARCUS PARKS
Very little about him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean this, it is almost suspicious in the level of which he is not present anywhere on the internet. And I found a bunch of essentially forums-
BEN KISSEL
As in suspicious as in the CIA did a little scrub job?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he had a lot of weird connections. He definitely went and served on the board of the Harvard School of Medicine around the same exact time a bunch of other fucking horrible assholes did. He was probably taught by B. F. Skinner, he also had this guy named Matthew Israel who was one of the single most... We should do a whole episode on him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was literally one of the single most evil people I have ever heard of. He started a thing called the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center where children, they basically electroshock children into changing them. And then there's a lot of autistic kids and shit like that. And it is brutal. Still, I want to say it's open until... They tried to close that one 4 times. And I believe it is still open.
BEN KISSEL
Just close it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they keep trying to close it. They keep trying to close it.
BEN KISSEL
Just turn the lock. It's closed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It makes a lot of people money though.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, I see. So you're telling me Harvard, the place financed by Jeffrey Epstein, that produced Alan Dershowitz, might have some corrupt foundation?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also the same years that Ted Kaczynski went for the various whatever the tests he was taking during the MK Ultra years, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the tests that destroyed him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That weren't necessarily related to MK Ultra but its all that same behavioral type of experimentation. Because that's the thing is that it's not necessarily that this guy was involved in MK Ultra but what we can say-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of his buddies were.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, what I think we can say for certain, it's what we also said in the MK Ultra series, they all went to the same parties.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
This guy is going to the same parties as the guys doing the MK Ultra experiments, they're all talking about it, they're all saying what they're doing. And that's the thing is that a lot of the MK Ultra guys also didn't even know they were being funded by the CIA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But there was this kind of revolution of behavioral science way back in the 50s and Gerald Davidson was one of those people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He even wrote it.
BEN KISSEL
It would be interesting punch bowl conversation for sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess so. Watch the punch! Because you are going to become a Manchurian candidate in the second but it's going to be a failed one.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's mostly getting pizza for Dr. Davidson.
BEN KISSEL
That's sucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But these guys, he wrote this article. Because people were looking for anything that you can hang your hat on about him. Because what they say was publish or perish is what they say at the Harvard School of Medicine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So everyone's like well if he was with Harvard, he would have published. But he did publish several articles and one was basically saying, and I might be getting this wrong, but it does seem to basically say that when people come in with what he called quote unquote "functional body complaints" which we now call something like chronic fatigue syndrome or pain. He basically said all of that is depression and that we can fix you and that you'll stop complaining about physical maladies once we fix your mental problems.
MARCUS PARKS
Let me guess how they fixed it. Electroshock therapy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also behavior modification. So whoever this motherfucker is, whoever Gerald Davidson is, because he died in '91.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So we think that maybe it was before because as we're going to get into the end of this episode, the internet is what stopped all of this shit. So these guys kind of slipped through the cracks. But this guy, he is so shady. And so as you go deeper into the topic, you start to see more and more people being like was the Elan School some form of behavioral science experiment that we were all a part of? And the big question is, a big old fun, which we learned about the MK Ultra, is that it's more questions than not. You're gonna be walking through a labyrinth of mirrors for a really long time trying to figure it out because they got rid of a lot of these records.
BEN KISSEL
Well I am sorry, it sounds like you're a man on the precipice of divorce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it. I literally joked with Natalie.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was like I was watching that documentary and she was doing something else and I was just like you know all that keeps me from the edge is the fact that you love me. And she looked at me and she did the thing, she's like I love you. And I was just like just know every single time I'm in one of these places, just show me your boobies. Because that'll bring me back in. Just remind me.
BEN KISSEL
She told you to show you her boobies?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I asked to see boobies.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she obliged.
MARCUS PARKS
That's fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
That's really good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It saved me, it pulls me back from the abyss.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I can tell. It's definitely worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, you just gotta get into this shit. It's just wild. You can't believe it. If you got anything on him, sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. Send it to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Please do. And I think at the very least or maybe even at the very most, you could possibly say that perhaps the Elan School, even though it was founded long after most of the MK Ultra experiments were over, you could possibly say that the Elan School was started as some sort of behavioral modification experiment or at least a data gathering center.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's deep into conspiracy theory territory but it tracks because that's their MO.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I don't know if it's really that deep.
BEN KISSEL
It's got to do with something.
MARCUS PARKS
It could have been started and then it was eventually just abandoned like the CIA abandoned... I mean hell, the CIA provably infiltrates governments and then abandons them to complete and total chaos.
BEN KISSEL
Job horribly done. Let's go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's go. Good work everybody. Copters out, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the hunta is rising and it's getting to the capitol building?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I think I hear the helicopter.
BEN KISSEL
Well you gotta get that Pizza Hut.
MARCUS PARKS
And so of course after these things are abandoned by the CIA, of course they've left it in a state of total chaos, it just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. And that's possibly why there's never been any real government investigation into the Elan Schools is because they might look back and see some government connection way back in the beginning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you start following the money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People like the Duponts that actually started the CEED program. There's all of this shit.
BEN KISSEL
Why don't we just jump out of the hole? Let's jump out of the hole, let's get back to Earth.
MARCUS PARKS
I thought the hole is where all the fucking carrots are, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you said a bunch of shit about carrots and I'm just covered it shit.
BEN KISSEL
You are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just covered in shit!
BEN KISSEL
You are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm panicking!
BEN KISSEL
You know what we're gonna do? Oh I can't believe our friend's dead. Bury him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bury him.
BEN KISSEL
Bury him. So we're gonna bury it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And let's just know we're on solid ground again.
MARCUS PARKS
Solid ground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh wow.
BEN KISSEL
You're back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For a second there I felt like I was in a mirror land.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I felt it. I actually felt that for you. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now from DARTEC Ricci moved to a drug counseling center called Survival Inc which was a group home for opiate addicted men that doubled as a marriage counseling service for drug addicts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, they're married?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean some drug addicts are married, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly any time you get one guy that throw another... It's like when you go to a hotel and somebody's like oh for 15 bucks we'll put water in the room. You know what I mean? You do something like that where you just do a little add on.
BEN KISSEL
I see so marriage therapy. That's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it is actually a good idea.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Someone goes into rehab and you bring the spouse in every once in a while, just say like hey, let's work through this thing.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They help to understand each other.
BEN KISSEL
All right, good.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it would happen again and again, controversy followed Joe Ricci when three staff members he brought from DARTEC were fired for personal drug use.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also it kind of talks about it is interesting cause a lot of times those addictive relationships are kind of circular, right. Because you're both addicted to the drugs and quite a lot of times you find that your relationship is kind of empty when you're both not high.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that was what brought you together and now you have to figure out can we love without cocaine?
BEN KISSEL
Probably not. Probably not. They probably just need to get a divorce at that point.
MARCUS PARKS
At that point, yeah. If you need drugs to be together then yeah, you need to get someone else who you can hang out with when you don't need drugs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Sober.
MARCUS PARKS
Sober, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you guys need your antipsychotics to be among society.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't take antipsychotics.
BEN KISSEL
I'll take a fucking psychotic. I'll take one right now. I feel like I've taken like eight since you've been talking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know, honestly I am upset by myself.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, I don't take antipsychotics anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay. See?
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
We are above ground now, guys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mirror world!
BEN KISSEL
We are good. Flowers grow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't even wake up! Socialism is not even what they call it over there, all right? It's different. That is what liberalism is used to call what we call the dictatorship over there.
BEN KISSEL
Look at this grass growing on the ground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after those friends were fired, Ricci, his wife, and Dr. Gerald Davidson decided to open their own treatment facility which would evolve into the Elan School.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now since the regulations for mental health were a little too restrictive in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts for the kind of quote unquote "radical therapy" that Joe and Dr. Davidson wanted to do-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they just flipped to page 8 and they're like no anal? Well then how the hell are we gonna treat these kids?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an okay policy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
MARCUS PARKS
After that they decided to open their facility in Maine where none of those pesky regulations would get in the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah, the freedom of skeleton land.
BEN KISSEL
Beautiful place.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to who did what, it's important to remember that Dr. Gerald Davidson was not in any way involved in the day to day operations at Elan. Instead Davidson was more of a scooper of students who stayed in Massachusetts and used his contacts to both develop the facility from afar and find some funnels for kids.
BEN KISSEL
That's called human trafficking, isn't it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not when everyone purchases.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a scooper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Scooper.
BEN KISSEL
He's a scooper. So no officer, I'm not a human trafficker, I'm a scooper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a scooper.
MARCUS PARKS
Scooper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And as long as you get an ice cream scoop, right, the size of a person and show it to a government officer.
BEN KISSEL
And if you scoop them, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they let you go.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he might have dipped a little bit of a toe in some form of the operations but truly all of the statements was that he was never seen.
BEN KISSEL
So he was Penguin's henchmen when he wanted to go collect the firstborn of Gotham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
He was that guy, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was the guy that made it all legit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he was the quote unquote "doctor". So he made it all feel like a medical, this is a whole medical process that we're doing here.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
If we're going for Batman villains here-
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He's the Ra's al Ghul. He's the man pulling the strings, he's the man in the background.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also he knew that if he could convince a bunch of high profile Harvard connected families to send their destructive children to his school, it would help him get other more high profile customers as well.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And it could also be that Davidson had entirely different motives for running and opening the school. It could be-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
MK Ultra data aggregation service.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It could be, it could be very quickly that he sat back and just got reports and that also allowed him to keep his distance from whatever happened there. He would always have plausible deniability. I don't ever go there, I didn't know what this guy was doing. So he could set Joe Ricci on fire and walk away scot free.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at first Gerald Davidson publicly had lofty goals for the Elan School and it was by no means opened or operated in secrecy. After its grand opening in 1971, Davidson, possibly referring to groups like Synanon, he said that therapeutic communities largely run by ex- addicts, they had become extremely sanctimonious, like all converted heathens become.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's the idea is you immediately hate all the ones before you, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you're the new kids on the block.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you're like Synanon, those are the old guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're not cool anymore, they're the establishment.
BEN KISSEL
So he didn't care about the technique, he was just like they're all cocky with their progress. That's what he was upset about?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because Chuck went full cult leader, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he's just like we're not like that. He's tastefully distant.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well this is before Chuck Dederich went full cult leader.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he smelled it.
MARCUS PARKS
He smelled it, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But he's the un cola, he's the un cult.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's the un cult, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he derisively said that these other places, they shave patients heads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
They make them wear diapers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who could?
MARCUS PARKS
They hang degrading signs around their necks.
BEN KISSEL
None of these things are good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I only that if I ask for it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Or if you want to get a discount at Dick's Last Resort.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And he said the Elan School, they don't do this stuff, they would never do this stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But as we know, Elan School used all of those techniques and much, much worse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost like he was telling us what they were going to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at the same time that Davidson was giving his interviews, Ricci was also promoting this more positive approach, saying in a local news report when the school opened that Elan would be a drug treatment center that instilled self esteem, self reliance ,and a capacity to love in the individuals they treated. It's all very Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very Synanon.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds good to me so far.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He said they tailored the program to fit the individual, not the individual to fit the program, which was of course the exact opposite of the Elan School's philosophy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, he's saying fake things, saying the opposite.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That does sound good.
MARCUS PARKS
A little respect, respect is due, it's one of the geniuses of Joe Ricci and Davidson where they went full PR all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They always talked to the press, they never hid what they were doing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're talking heads.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In all of the news coverage of it. There was The Children of Darkness, The Child's Own Good. All of those specials, they appeared in it. And Gerald Davidson looks like a fucking Santa Claus type character. I mean he doesn't have a beard but he's like kind, friendly, just being like these kids just need a loving gentle hand.
BEN KISSEL
Well that is an ironic way to hide. If you just blanket yourself all over the place, then of course people will just kind of let you get away with certain things. It's a very bizarre human-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Flood the zone.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Very bizarre human condition there.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the very beginning when the Elan School was supposed to be just a drug treatment center for teens, there very well may have been some intention to do something more positive, although that possibility is very slim. See when Ricci and his wife Sherry opened the first Elan School site at a former summer camp in Naples, Maine-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you love the pizza Naples, Maine. It's covered in mollusks.
BEN KISSEL
Honestly that could be good.
MARCUS PARKS
It could be good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just shell and all.
BEN KISSEL
Oh well not the shell.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it soon became clear that Ricci's goal was money. In the early days when Elan was struggling, Ricci spoke constantly to employees about how they were going to make their first $100,000. Becoming rich was an obsession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, come over here. Look, you see how this kid's crying? Look at that. It's five cents.
BEN KISSEL
That's five cents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Each one of these tears is five cents. Look at that.
BEN KISSEL
Five cent tears?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're making money right there.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, that's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this former employee said that to Ricci money represented power.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
MARCUS PARKS
And it exuded the appearance that he was someone important who would be accepted and respected by everyone around him, which was actually much more important to Joe Ricci than anything else.
BEN KISSEL
Being respected by others.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, being respected and being accepted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wanted to be the guy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wanted to be this kind of a go to, people looked at him... He wanted to be president.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Nightmare idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Pretty soon though Ricci and Davidson figured out that the real money was not in drug rehabilitation for everyone but in specifically the troubled teens of wealthy families. And those wealthy families were soon paying $1200 a month for treatment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me just see your kid. All right, come here, come here, kid. I mean obviously you're doing drugs, that's terrible.
BEN KISSEL
I actually don't do drugs. No, I don't do any drugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You stole a truck. No, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
I just told my dad I didn't want him to run as a senator again because he's a Republican asshole and I just want him to be home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, something like that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's real stupid, kid. That's stupid of you.
BEN KISSEL
No, I just wanted to be with my dad. Not like a Connecticut senator.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me just check your wallet, let me open this up. All right. So you got a credit card and you're 17?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah. My dad-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We gotta get you in here. Yeah, we absolutely, we can sign him up. Can we get a body bag?
BEN KISSEL
Dang it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well see Davidson and Ricci, they had a perfect double team grift going where Davidson, the reputable psychiatrist, he would recommend the Elan School to wealthy families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just a soft suggestion.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like the opioid epidemic for your brain.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
MARCUS PARKS
And then Ricci would make the sales pitch, offering Elan's private plane to pick up wealthy troubled teens in a method appropriate for their station.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
I will say this, out of all the image hits that have been taken over the past decade, private planes have really gotten a hit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really have.
BEN KISSEL
When I was growing up it was like private planes, amazing. And now I'm just like I don't think I want to go on that because god knows what you're going to have to do or see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I really feel like it's good that the TSA is there for only the fact that I'm afraid of what happens inside of private planes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know what happens in there. I know sometimes you drink champagne.
BEN KISSEL
Sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then sometimes though I think that you all have to watch somebody kill a girl.
BEN KISSEL
Something like that. I mean that's why it's like what's the name of your plane? It's called the Air Deposition. So if you get on it, do you like to sit for like 10 hours in New York City in a courthouse? You're gonna be doing that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just so you know.
BEN KISSEL
Free champagne!
MARCUS PARKS
Well in other words, Elan had credentials on one end and charisma on the other. And before they knew it, the Elan School was making enough money where they were able to open a second facility in Waterford, Maine. However in January of 1974 a mysterious fire destroyed a rented facility in Sebago. Or Se-bay-go. Se-bah-go. Whichever one you want.
BEN KISSEL
Whatever you wanna go with, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That earned the Elan School a tidy sum in the form of an insurance payment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no way that this was done purposefully in any way, shape, or form. I'm sorry, I choked on a full diamond just came out of the back of my mouth. No, there's no way I would ever do something like that because as everyone knows I hate being hot.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Yeah. Your tie is a little charred, Mr. Ricci.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was barbecuing.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you were barbecuing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I was barbecuing. I know it's February but I love being outside when it's bad.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, your hair is all singed, it must have been a big fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, that's a new type of haircut.
BEN KISSEL
Oh new haircut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called I'm going to hell.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this was the turning point for Elan because Ricci and Davidson could then afford to open a permanent facility in Poland Spring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that where the water comes from?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
I bet you it is.
MARCUS PARKS
It is, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
If you read the fine print it's like fresh Maine water.
BEN KISSEL
It ain't from fucking Poland at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then I heard a lot of it's just tap water put in a bottle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It mostly is.
MARCUS PARKS
And I think Nestle owns it now too so it's all lethal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're going to destroy the world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know, I actually have been having these really weird tumors. I've been drinking Flint water. It's good, it's really cheap. Five cents, five cents every 12 ounces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I put it in my car. Honestly it's really been incredible. It's so cheap.
BEN KISSEL
That's a joke about infrastructure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
No problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Lead pipe.
BEN KISSEL
Lead pipes.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
BEN KISSEL
Save the people, help the people, fuck Nestle.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well subsequently, Joe-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Make your own water. Fucking spit into somebody's mouth.
MARCUS PARKS
Can I get through this fucking sentence?
BEN KISSEL
I do like his idea. Recycled water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Recycled water.
BEN KISSEL
It's piss. All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're done. Now we're done.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we're done, okay. Subsequently Joe Ricci became a millionaire. Now once Elan had a permanent facility, states from all over the country began referring troubled teens to the school through Gerald Davidson's network of colleagues. Because Gerald Davidson can call up people in Illinois, California, Oregon, wherever, say hey, I got this thing going on, why don't you send kids here?
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
And they would of course say yes because everyone, I would imagine, everyone's getting kickbacks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And all the motherfuckers are just in suits walking down the street, everyone's like what respectable Americans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bain Financial also dropped a bunch of money into the troubled teen industry. Mitt Romney himself made a lot of money specifically off of these troubled teen industry shows.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I do like that they named themselves after a supervillain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Very accurate.
MARCUS PARKS
Utah is one of the number one states in America for troubled teen facilities.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got a lot of room.
MARCUS PARKS
I think Utah is actually number one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got a lot of room for activities.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's beautiful.
MARCUS PARKS
Well while Ricci was the day to day guy, Davidson was the real brains of the operation when it came to funneling students into the system. As we said, Davidson had powerful contacts at both Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. And he even had enough clout to successfully lobby congressmen in Washington DC to extend insurance coverage to facilities like Elan. This was previously not the case and this change greatly expanded the troubled teen industry.
BEN KISSEL
So you couldn't get cancer treatment but if your-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're paddling kids in an institutional manner, you got money, buddy.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You can't get cancer treatment but if your son smokes a joint, then yeah, they'll pay for that.
BEN KISSEL
I think my son might be gay, the other day he said the word dude and I just don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to who controlled the school, it was entirely Joe Ricci's responsibility which is of course the complete opposite of what the division of labor should have been.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now according to former employees, Joe, through a steady campaign of fear and intimidation, he became a sort of cult figure to the employees and students who bought into the program.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
According to The Last Stop, they basically said that when he came in it felt like a celebrity was there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'd show up in his Rolls Royce, he'd have these crazy suits on and shit. But he'd play it real classic, like not only was he the kindest guy you ever met at the Elan School but then he also did the general meetings harder than everybody. He was a fucking maniac.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Psychological torture.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well employees said that he had a way of defining things as if his definition was the only one. Classic cult leader stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And one kid even compared him to Jim Jones. He said we would have drank cyanide for this guy.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. So the kids were into it. Or some were.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the employees. The kids who graduated into employment, they were the ones that were the most behind him. They were the ones that would do fucking anything. We'll get to the reasons why here in a second.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as how Joe kept control, he had the ability to create an immediate intimacy with people. It's the only person in the room trick that politicians and cult leaders use.
BEN KISSEL
I got a 10 ft dick. I can make it feel intimate in a room that's huge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm 12. Please leave me alone, sir. He had this thing where there's something about when it's kind of like an abusive dad, right, an abusive the parent, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing where you create an environment that's really hostile and chaotic and scary but then you're also the person that brings the ultimate stability as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So if you pass through the gauntlet of all his love, because then Joe Ricci would get super close with you once you went through years of garbage with him and then became an employee of Synanon.
BEN KISSEL
I mean technically it's making a marine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not an employee of Synanon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You become an employee of Elan School, right. Because that's what it is, it's kind of like breaking a personality down. You make it so somebody is super scared of you but they also need you.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you're also the leader of the thing and you could make everything stop on a dime for that person and he probably flexed that time and time again, being like we're gonna wait on this. He would play people off each other.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. He sounds like a shitty Hollywood producer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean this is just 101 power tactics.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean his employees put it, he liked being a god. That's how he thought of himself.
BEN KISSEL
What a shock. I can't believe he liked being a god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of responsibility.
MARCUS PARKS
It is. And when Joe lost his temper, he'd make life horrific for anyone who got in his way and this of course trickled down to each and every person who was forced into the Elan School, that went from Joe to the employees to the kids. And from the kids it went to the other kids.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a culture. He created a culture of fear and pain.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes Joe would financially assist the poorer kids but this was of course another control method. He'd make these kids into staff therapists, even though they had no training. Sometimes they didn't even have a high school diploma, much less a college education.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, a lot of people I know who want to be therapists are some of the most out of pocket human beings I've ever met in my life.
BEN KISSEL
Well we also have some friends who are great therapists. But it's interesting that he didn't get them an education.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If you you want to do this then you have to put them through school, do these things that are proper.
MARCUS PARKS
No. That costs money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It costs money.
BEN KISSEL
But that would have been a good way to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also what it does is brings you to the outside world of a bunch of different perspectives and then you might hear that the things that Joe Ricci is doing at your place of work are actually really, really bad and you might be wrong. He wanted specifically people that were not educated because Joe Ricci wasn't educated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he literally is like, he thought that it was all stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Think about the word critical, right. Critical thinking, critical is bad, bad thinking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bad thinking.
BEN KISSEL
Boom. Who wants to critically think?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, critics are assholes.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you want to be an asshole?
BEN KISSEL
You wanna be an asshole?
MARCUS PARKS
Ben, what you're talking about is the method of sending the youngest son and a mob family to law school so you always have a lawyer.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't wait.
BEN KISSEL
That's how you do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's why I'm gonna send my kid to culinary school so I'm never fucking hungry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good idea. Or you just buy a chef.
BEN KISSEL
That's called what he did.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the reason why Joe Ricci gave financial assistance to these poor kids was because it made his lieutenants, for lack of a better word, easier to control. Because if anyone refused to ladle the electric sauce, if they refused to spank a kid until they shat themselves-
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Or if they refused to lock a kid in a room wearing a straitjacket, Joe would fire them and take away the fleeting financial security he'd given them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they'd get shot down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because these kids, this is the first time they'd ever had any kind of financial security. A lot of them the only time they'd ever had anything close to a family or a father figure and he used that again and again.
BEN KISSEL
And then you're shat out on the curb without a true education and your resume, I guess it's pretty slim.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At one point it would lead to other work but then eventually the Elan School would become a dark mark on a CV.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Joe was described by most everyone at Elan as cruel, power hungry, and willing to do anything to get his way. And if he couldn't get what he wanted by intimidation, he always had a fat stack of bills he could use to buy someone off.
BEN KISSEL
I like that way better if I was going to have to get something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, that's what's fun.
BEN KISSEL
Be like I'll take that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this threat of do what I say or else was further a burden on female employees and residents, the latter of whom were completely at the mercy of Joe's whims. The prettiest female residents would often be forced to babysit Joe and Sherry's kids which Sherry didn't like because most of the girls weren't very good at it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That reminds me of a letter that was sent to me that talked about they were sent to a wilderness program, something attached to CEDU. And one of the things that they had to do that was mandatory was called a one on one session where a counselor was attached to a student and they have to have a one on one session where cuddling was encouraged. And it was supposed to be same sexes but the guy that was in charge of their little program, he would choose the girls to go cuddle with in another room and he said that it was good to do, that it was important and mandatory.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Yeah, maybe if there were sheep dogs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah sure. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Little sheepdogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of different rules for sheepdogs.
BEN KISSEL
I was just cuddling Jerry earlier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's different. Again, Jerry likes it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah he does. Yeah he does.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once a girl who babysat for the Riccis inexplicably bullied their son Noah into pretending he was a cat and then she made the kid sit in her lap and act like a cat.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay well...
MARCUS PARKS
It's weird. Weird kid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a bad babysitting.
MARCUS PARKS
Its a bad babysitter, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Usually the kid's like I'm a cat and then you just have to be like okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
But the like you're not. So when mom and dad get home, you're not a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a cat. But that's how that babysitter was. I feel like the babysitter seems sort of like a manic pixie dream girl type in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's not that she was a bad babysitter, she was the wrong babysitter.
MARCUS PARKS
Well she was a bad babysitter because when the kid wanted to stop being a cat, she burned him with a lit cigarette.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't like that.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shouldn't do that to a cat either.
BEN KISSEL
You shouldn't do that at all, no. Also you shouldn't be smoking around a cat or a kid to be honest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean this was back in the day, kids' lungs were stronger earlier then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You can smoke around a cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I know. I'm just saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just don't teach a cat to smoke.
BEN KISSEL
That's cute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And don't fuck a cat, which we've covered before.
BEN KISSEL
We have.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Sherry Ricci learned about the cat cigarette incident, Joe told her nothing wrong with it. That's just what people do, there's nothing wrong with it.
BEN KISSEL
There's nothing wrong with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know how many times I tell somebody to be a cat? You know how many times I'm out there? Honestly I wish this cat could smoke. I've been trying to teach this cat to smoke.
BEN KISSEL
You're making a cool cat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've been talking to Dr. Davidson, none of his MK Ultra tricks are allowing anything. You the thing about a cat is it can't suck right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I keep shoving it in it's mouth, it keeps coughing.
MARCUS PARKS
Cats don't got lips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cats got lips.
BEN KISSEL
Cats do have lips. You know what a cat calls a cat nap? A nap.
MARCUS PARKS
It does. You sure cats got lips?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Grinding halt.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, they definitely do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This show's come to a grinding halt.
BEN KISSEL
They definitely do have lips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel the (braking noise).
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing is about Joe Ricci, he was telling his wife there's nothing wrong with this cat cigarette thing because that would stop a steady stream of young vulnerable girls from coming into his home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like if you're David Spade and lets a bunch of random women in your house and you're like yeah, sure, play with my Emmys, I don't care. You know what I mean? You just have to kind of let them be because if you start telling them to stop playing with the Emmys, the models will stop showing up.
BEN KISSEL
A very intriguing, very bizarre non sequitur. Very bizarre to bring Mr. David Spade into this. Does he have any Emmys?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so.
BEN KISSEL
He deserves some.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just Shoot Me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
BEN KISSEL
Just Shoot me. There we go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't forget that era.
BEN KISSEL
I love that, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well from reports, Ricci singled out girls and gave them special treatment and often did coke with the very girls he was supposed to be treating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is medicinal.
BEN KISSEL
See this is why they fucking-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is medicinal, it's just Advil, it's Advil.
BEN KISSEL
They were just hopped up on coke! Being like you're a cat. And then they would burn it. That's why! Now I get it.
MARCUS PARKS
But because of all the bad weirdness and because Joe spent most of his time at Elan, Sherry and Joe were no longer living together by 1978 and Sherry filed for divorce soon after. But because Joe was now wealthy and still a total dirtball, he decided around this time that he wanted to buy a horse track called Scarborough Downs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the single most divorced man thing that has ever been said out loud.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Besides being a hollow moon redditor, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The idea of going out and buying a horse track.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Not a horse to race on a track.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A track.
BEN KISSEL
The track. It's also so much work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it's like if you bought a slot machine just for your home, you know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which you can do.
BEN KISSEL
But you have to put your own money in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just like pulling the lever.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He actually had to write a letter to all the people at the track that he wasn't going to bet on races at the track and that he wasn't going to run his own horses at the track. But of course he bet on all the races at the track.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course he did!
MARCUS PARKS
And he ran horses all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's the most divorced man who's ever been!
BEN KISSEL
You know the horse that's his because it's the only one with hooves. The other ones are just bloody stumps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
I won again. This is amazing!
MARCUS PARKS
Well he told Sherry, hey, why don't you go in on the horse track with me? Doesn't matter if we're divorced or not. We're good together in business.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're good. You love horses, I love gambling.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Love that. I can't believe this man. So he runs a horse track and then he runs a home for troubled youth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's perfect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It tracks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Sherry easily recognized that Joe was just stalling until he had enough money to buy the racetrack before she got her cut from the divorce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Smart and dumb at the same.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But so she was able to get out while the getting was good.
BEN KISSEL
But she was also a scumbag too, right?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean she was involved in the school.
BEN KISSEL
She knew everything that was going on.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. That I can honestly say I have no clue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I think a lot of times we're like oh the wife has blinders on but also they talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. A lot of times-
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe they didn't, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is again, it's talking out of school but a lot of times it does seem the wife does know bit more than they-
BEN KISSEL
I think so. Have you talked to a man?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But mostly you're just trying to get out. You know what I mean? The best thing she could have done was get out. Because this was all from the book, what was the biography on Joe Ricci?
MARCUS PARKS
We will give the source at the end of the episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got it.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's all in there but no one tells her story because they're all coming for Joe Ricci.
BEN KISSEL
Got you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well just because Joe Ricci's wife said no to the racetrack, that didn't stop Joe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nah man, because he's a true American.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Dr. Gerald Davidson agreed to throw in for half.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually watching those horses go round and round, I find it absolutely fascinating.
BEN KISSEL
Fascinating.
MARCUS PARKS
And in 1979 they bought Scarborough Downs, this tells you how much money these guys made at Elan School, for $1.2 million. That is $6 million in today's money.
BEN KISSEL
You're making money though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think we can take any of these horses? I see that one, yeah, he's running in a circle but we can make him run in the trapezoid if I get some electric charges.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
And by 1979, Elan School was of course a horrific place of torture, degradation, and humiliation all under Joe Ricci's insistence and guidance. But this was all kept from the public, partly because troubled teen institutions were still a new thing and partly because Maine did fuck all on due diligence when it came to inspection.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also people were super into the idea of this because we were being fed this line of this rampant rise in teenage rebellion.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like they do like every 10 years, there's a new re up of it. It's like the kids version of the satanic panic.
MARCUS PARKS
And as a result, a newspaper article released just before Joe's divorce titled Meet Maine's Most Unusual Millionaire-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's the most unusual millionaire? I figured it'd be like a lobster guy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, well that would be usual for Maine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That would be, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but he's like...
BEN KISSEL
You're allergic to shellfish.
MARCUS PARKS
Were you about to do like Lobster Jim?
BEN KISSEL
Are you doing Lobster Jim? I was thinking that's almost a you character, Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually do Lobster Jim, please.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to try to find me a couple of lobsters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that easy.
BEN KISSEL
Lobster Jim.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Characters are that easy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. I've got lobsters in my jeans!
BEN KISSEL
God, I really wish we could have you do my GPS. Don't go down that road, now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't go down that road. What road am I supposed to go down, Siri?!
BEN KISSEL
It's just an elimination of all of the roads. No, don't go down that road. So I'm taking exit 14 then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I should just stay home.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in Meet Maine's Most Unusual Millionaire, Joe Ricci was painted with a very different brush.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Described as the embodiment of the American dream, Ricci was portrayed as a rags to riches triumph.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man because he's got the brain, he's got the sex, he's got the dick, he's got the moves.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so. I mean he can be both a horrible serial predator, a horrible businessman, and the epitome of the American dream. These things kinda marry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost like that seems to be the American dream.
MARCUS PARKS
Well falsely claiming he'd grown up in rat infested squalor, Ricci claimed to have graduated from the supposedly brutal Daytop Village with flying colors while still in his teens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They closed down the school because they never met such a perfect student.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, why have schools when you're so smart?
MARCUS PARKS
He also claimed to have founded DARTEC. Not true. And he said he took out a third mortgage on his house to start Elan, also not true.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All he did was make money.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it went again and again, no one checked up on Ricci's claims and Elan naturally got even worse after Ricci's first wife Sherry left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also a common string. Look at Chuck Dederich, look at Jim Jones. All these guys.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well no, Jim Jones' wife, she was there til the very end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that's right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She just became a loveless shell because he was banging all the other people and then she just kinda segued to the side and tried to have her own court and then feebly was like no, stop at the end. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he was exhausted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She's got a nice grave, by the way.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's really nice.
BEN KISSEL
Great, thank you for the update.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool. Good.
BEN KISSEL
Let us know what it's like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you go leave flowers once a year?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. We went and visited it on our Jim Jones tour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I remember your anniversary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Go dump a little Flavor Aid out on Jim Jones' grave and his wife. Just one for Jim.
MARCUS PARKS
Now reportedly Joe did cocaine almost every day during the 80s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Busy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's the 80s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he would often preside over employee parties where he openly rode the slopes with teenagers and young adults.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cool terminology.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's kinda cool. He rode the slopes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they say that on Craigslist.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, who wants to go skiing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cocaine.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah man, I went over there and I had all my equipment. They were all wearing swimsuits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was July so I figured they had some kind of machine.
BEN KISSEL
No, it turns out I was the table.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So three days later I have two ski poles up my asshole, right.
BEN KISSEL
Did you just yada, yada three days?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Ricci was also able to upgrade Elan in the early 80s with another alleged insurance scam, although nothing was ever proven. In 1983 the Scarborough Downs clubhouse burned down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no! Oh god.
BEN KISSEL
Another burned down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I simply, oh god. He comes up with a nightcap on like a full Ebenezer Scrooge. Oh I was simply asleep in my sleeping bed!
BEN KISSEL
Seems like your nightgown has a little bit of char.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that was because I'm doing this new... I saw Chef's Table and I saw that cooking over an open flame is the most primal way to cook, you see the flames licking the food itself and it's almost an erotic dance between the venue of cooking and the food itself. You know what I'm saying?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Seems like you're around a lot of things that burned down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it! Coals.
BEN KISSEL
You do like coals. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ricci claimed that it was arson but somebody else did the arson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Definitely.
BEN KISSEL
So this is interesting. So he went with the half truth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Well I mean that's the thing, allegedly.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Legitimate businessman.
BEN KISSEL
How many businesses do you get to have burnt down that you own?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? I'll say for my own coverage, three. Just for later on, I think by the second time that's just sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay so the third time you are busted, you don't get the fourth, you're done at three.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, three is... You got two open.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And then three with time to get to Mexico.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
Well investigators couldn't connect it to Joe and he again earned a tidy sum. Truly riding high on his own bullshit, Joe Ricci then decided to run for governor of Maine in 1985.
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck is the campaign slogan?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is just him. It literally is like me, I'm Joe Ricci, I'm not a seasoned politician. I don't know how these budgets work or how transit's supposed to be organized.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Awesome, it's a really key issue though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I connect to the local, I connect to the modern, the working man. All right. That was his whole thing was that he's like I'm a regular guy like you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you're an alcoholic, you've fallen asleep with a cigarette, you've burnt down your house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know how it is. Look at me, my head is too big for me to wear my shirt closed. So that's why you know I'm like you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just voting of him because again, I think that he is similar to me, a self made millionaire, just like I have $100.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he said that he had previously worked at non union shops and he'd organized places like Arnold Bakery, you've seen that bread.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. And thank god, thank god they finally unionized at Arnold.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they organized in the 1920s?
BEN KISSEL
Well he wasn't alive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a long time ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 25 years before Ricci was born.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The birth of unions is when they began cracking down, that's when capitalism actually began. It is the Medicis, dog. Fucking 1400s, dog.
BEN KISSEL
The meta cheese?
MARCUS PARKS
What the fuck are you talking about?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what are you talking about?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you, dude! I learned things.
BEN KISSEL
Man, it's weird how you get smarter and dumber. It's just weird. What is meta cheese?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Medicis were the guys, Italian, first of all. The original mob, right. Powerful Italian family.
BEN KISSEL
So they called themselves the meta cheese.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, the Medicis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well fuck, I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's the Medicis. Cause I thought you said like meta cheese.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
MARCUS PARKS
M-E-T-A C-H-E-E-S-E.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's weird.
BEN KISSEL
Like a cheese making a sandwich.
MARCUS PARKS
I thought you picked up some more stupid slang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. I heard some new slang. You know what's a good one? He's got riz. You got rizz.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. We're gonna move on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He got the rizz. I think that's an Asian version of Wizard Of Oz.
BEN KISSEL
Oh fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got the rizz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it means flirty.
BEN KISSEL
Great. Again, we'll move on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well really it seemed like Ricci only ran for governor as this sort of internal ego trip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that why everybody runs for governor?
BEN KISSEL
Some people want to save the world like Jesse Ventura who finally got the train to run in Minneapolis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's one train. And it's run by steam!
BEN KISSEL
It's not a steam train. There are some good hearted people in politics but unfortunately pieces of shit like this muddy all the waters.
MARCUS PARKS
Well and when I say internal ego trip, I mean within his own organization.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He got bored with the Elan School game and he wanted another way to manipulate the people around him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
So he's the head of the Elan School, he's got a racetrack, and now he wants to be governor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well a woman who worked for the campaign said that Ricci was constantly manipulating everyone, giving them jobs to do but distracting them with constant phone calls or meetings so the jobs would never get done. And when those jobs didn't get done, Ricci would get angry and ostracize whoever displeased him. And additionally Joe would also distract everyone with drugs and alcohol, partying at all hours of the night, then expecting everyone to show up fresh faced and ready to go the next day at 9 am.
BEN KISSEL
My question is was he fresh faced at 9 am?
MARCUS PARKS
Well he was alert at 9 am.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was there.
MARCUS PARKS
He was awake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what Jordan Belfort used to say, if you want to go out with the boys, you gotta wake up with the men.
BEN KISSEL
I don't care what Jordan Belfort used to say because I think he pulls a Costanza and sleeps under his desk all day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does, yeah. You see that's the thing is you just get fucked up at work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
you just wake up on time.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing is that I mean on a surface level yeah, Joe Ricci is there. Especially if you're doing cocaine for a decade straight, you got a rhythm going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing, you build a tolerance in a way that makes you almost a better person.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But you're not going to do a good job. And no one's going to do a good job.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
And when anyone fucked up in Ricci's campaign, save for Joe himself, they'd be fired immediately.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because no one fired Joe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only one that could fire Joe was god. With a bullet to the center of his brain.
BEN KISSEL
I think the only job that you could possibly do a better job while you're on cocaine, ship captain. I don't know why. It's a lot of bumps, you're alone in the middle of the ocean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't even think you sell cocaine better when you're using cocaine. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
I don't think they sell it better but I think if you're a ship captain, you look at the whales.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, the only thing that cocaine is really good for is playing a keyboard or a keytar a lot of times.
MARCUS PARKS
Possibly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In some form of Krautrock style band.
MARCUS PARKS
(drum beat)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(techno melody)
BEN KISSEL
That is the sound of cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Actually one night I did do cocaine and played some drums, I jammed with a couple of guys, I played a Krautrock beat for 45 minutes straight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude.
BEN KISSEL
You actually think it was good or do you think you were just so fucked you thought it was great?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean we weren't fucking playing Farm Aid, we were three-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the biggest concert you can think of?!
BEN KISSEL
Farm Aid. Farm Aid. The pinnacle.
MARCUS PARKS
We were three guys in a fucking windowless room in Greenpoint in 2012. No one cared what we were doing.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All that mattered was the fucking vibe, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
(drum beat)
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You didn't know if fucking The Hives were outside listening.
MARCUS PARKS
The Hives? They're from Sweden.
BEN KISSEL
They were a very popular band.
MARCUS PARKS
I know the how who The Hives are, they're not there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you probably don't even know who The Hives are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know I get hives.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, so do I.
MARCUS PARKS
Well all of this was not a winning strategy for a gubernatorial race.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
And Joe predictably lost his bid for governor. But Joe didn't take responsibility for his horrendously run campaign. Instead Joe blamed it on being an Italian in Maine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me about it. That's what happened to Andrew Cuomo as well. He was too Italian to follow the law.
BEN KISSEL
There was a mayoral race out here, there was this fella Caruso, this billionaire guy, and the chick doing one of the debates, she was like so what do you think as a white man, it's diversity? He said I'm not white, I'm Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, that's what I'm saying.
BEN KISSEL
I do love that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not white, I'm Polish.
BEN KISSEL
Brave.
MARCUS PARKS
So all of you are just trying to distance yourself from the English and the Irish, aren't you?
BEN KISSEL
I can't. I'm not white, I'm German. Oh god dang it, that doesn't really work.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after Joe said hey, I'm getting all this discrimination, I'm Italian, what's the problem? 60 Minutes actually gave him a platform to complain.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody says oh just because you wear a tracksuit every day even to court, oh just because I pay people in fucking spaghetti, that's racist! That's fucking racist!
BEN KISSEL
It as a little bit racist. There was somebody talking about how Italians are like we're not all mobsters and if you walk into like one of their rooms, it's just covered in Goodfellas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's like well you have to make a choice.
MARCUS PARKS
See since Joe had a lot of money and since he was Italian, it was assumed by the community in Maine that he was connected to the mob.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Which actually wasn't true. That's the crazy thing.
BEN KISSEL
That's the only thing he should have been doing it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it. Of all of the people who are not attached the mob, he has all of the characteristics of a man who would be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There is a reason why we have subconsciously been using mob terms and mob comparisons this entire episode.
BEN KISSEL
Henry has been doing it very consciously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also I do think he might have had a touch of a connection to the mob.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But we don't know. Again, if you own a horse track, there is no way... If you're the only Italian man that runs a haunted horse track just outside of Stephen King's home, you might just be a mafioso.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Good Jeff Foxworthy. Also he's surrounded by shellfish, I feel like this is mob all over the place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Because the one thing that took down the mob even more so than the FBI, the gout.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gout. Gout.
BEN KISSEL
The gout. Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean his money, yeah it was from torturing defenseless teenagers, but it wasn't from the mob.
BEN KISSEL
Not from the mob.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's not the mob.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Amazingly the 60 Minutes segment only mentions Elan School in passing and focuses mostly on Joe whining about how everyone in Maine assumes he's mafia just because he's Italian and wealthy. And that's why he can't get a loan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've said a lot of times I'm too Polish to get a loan and it's just because I can't figure out the application.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's funny.
BEN KISSEL
So he's got to burnt down buildings attached to his name, runs a really corrupt school, a horse track. Yeah, I wonder if it is because he's Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's because he's Italian.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There's even a small section, this is how far they crawl up his asshole, there is a small section in the segment that I can't play, it doesn't read in audio, it's just Joe Ricci looking out of a window wistfully while he listens to a sad song.
BEN KISSEL
Powerful.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know what the sad song is, it's unidentifiable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) When the moon hits your eye like a bit pizza pie, that's amore.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why they think I'm Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just because I danced to that at my wedding?
MARCUS PARKS
Well let's play the only mention of Elan School in this entire segment. And this speaks of the school in only the most glowing terms. This tells you what people... This is like 1987?
BEN KISSEL
Wasn't this after Geraldo broke... Or was this around that time?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh dude, no.
BEN KISSEL
This is before?
MARCUS PARKS
Dude, this was even before Geraldo.
BEN KISSEL
Cause that was the only great piece of journalism he ever did but it was actually very important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But no, that was a mental institution in Staten Island.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
This is the troubled teen-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the Cropsey school, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That was the Cropsey school, yeah. The troubled teen schools, Geraldo loved them.
BEN KISSEL
Oh he did?
MARCUS PARKS
Donahue, Sally Jessy Raphael, all of them. Half of the teens go to bootcamp-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It came from them!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it came from them.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are telling their parents to fucking send their kids to these things!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I forgot Geraldo had a show like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think Joe Ricci was actually on an episode of Donahue. These guys-
BEN KISSEL
Well we're not gonna besmirch the great name of Donahue.
MARCUS PARKS
I did love Donahue.
BEN KISSEL
I loved Donahue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's just so difficult, when you're that Italian they have to put all these paper towels so you can even sit on the furniture because olive oil is just shooting out of your fucking asshole.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, really good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is really difficult to be Italian.
BEN KISSEL
This is gonna get us canceled somehow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why.
MARCUS PARKS
You're half Italian though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? I can say it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're half Italian. Your mother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My mother's Italian.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, that's perfect. It's like Judaism, you're fully Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the only thing that it mentions in regards to controversy when it comes to Elan School is how people said back then it's funded by the mob, it's a laundering operation for the mob.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's a fun little mob called the Central Intelligence Agency.
MARCUS PARKS
Ooh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah bro. Getting a little too real to be understood.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's play that clip.
LPOTL
(audio clip)
The Joe Ricci story wasn't always this bleak. Joe Ricci is a former dope addict who succeeded in founding one of the most prestigious schools for troubled teenagers in the country. It's called Elan, a treatment center that over the years has used some controversial therapies to bring otherwise confused kids out of their shells.
(incoherent screaming)
Parents spent $25,000 a year to send problem teenagers to the school. That's what made Joe Ricci a millionaire while barely into his 30s. But Elan has also come under scrutiny among the allegations the bank says it heard was that Elan was under investigation for being a front for the laundering of organized crime drug money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the reason why.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's it. That's the only thing that they mentioned.
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't sound like they were really listening to the audio cause it seems like that child was screaming in immense amounts of pain.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was a general meeting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that was a general meeting. And they do a thing where it is kind of magical in its own way where you lead with your... Maybe that's propaganda, maybe that's a term for it where you lead with your worst aspect.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was proud and wanted people to see the clips of the general meetings. They wanted them to see that because then they'd always flip it like that may sound harsh but it's something that these troubled teens need.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They would do this thing where they would live out loud, they would show all of the fucked up shit out loud. They'd talk about the ring.
MARCUS PARKS
Not the Most fucked up shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not the most.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not the ones that have kids dying and all that kind of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's how they could actually hide, by hiding in plain sight really well by just letting all those kind of secrets out a little bit.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And being like this is the way we do it.
MARCUS PARKS
They do the big stuff like the ring and the general meetings.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
They'll say that, like yeah we do that. But then they also give caveats that they don't actually follow. So like yeah, we use the ring but it's only evenly matched students and it's only people who have been extremely violent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Violent offenders.
MARCUS PARKS
And then people are like oh yeah, that makes sense. But they don't mention electric sauce, they don't mention straitjackets for weeks on end.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They don't mention the spankings. And people just kinda let it go because they think oh it can't possibly get worse than that screaming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the screaming, honestly there's something about just the audio of it. They're like well that's terrible. But then you just kind of block everything else out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The only good thing 60 Minutes ever did was Andy Rooney.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah?
BEN KISSEL
That's it. And technically he was just a very mean man.
MARCUS PARKS
Give me a Rooneyism.
BEN KISSEL
Well you know my favorite. License plates. Now why does every state have to put their name on a license plate? Why do I care where you're from?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's the best one that he's ever done.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good one.
BEN KISSEL
Bottled water. He did a whole thing on bottled water. He's like people I walk by in the desks and all these people have bottled water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bottled water!
BEN KISSEL
How much do you think this cost? This is a $1.50. I go to the bubbler, I go to the water fountain. My water, it's free. He's just so on point. And technically he was right about bottled water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well actually until all the lead in the water and now we have to drink it.
BEN KISSEL
That was not Andy's fault.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Institutionalized bad problems.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the main thrust of the 60 Minutes segment is really the fact that Joe Ricci couldn't get a $125,000 loan because it was believed by both the bank and the government that he was in the mob. And because he was suspected in the death of a mobster named like Little Tony or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's a dumb name cause he was kind of fat.
BEN KISSEL
Right. They always are. Isn't that just five more people into one of his Elan Schools?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What's $125,000, it isn't even that much if you're getting $25,000 a year a pop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't wanna spend his own money.
MARCUS PARKS
That however was only a part of why he was denied and the other part having to do with Elan was not mentioned in the 60 Minutes segment. See enrollment at Elan was steadily declining and Elan was provably poorly managed even though Ricci and his lawyers maintained that Elan had a 90% success rate.
BEN KISSEL
That's actually not even that good.
MARCUS PARKS
90%?
BEN KISSEL
That's just the reverse of cigarettes. I need a 99.5%.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's 10 out of every 100 people come back totally fucked up. A carnival ride would have to be shut down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well to them it doesn't work. And again they're also up front with this concept of it's for kids that are really fun and have nowhere else to go. And they don't say like no, it's for anybody who can pay for a child to be here.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But after Ricci filed a battery of lawsuits against the bank claiming defamation, breach of contract, inflicting emotional distress, and discrimination under the Equal Opportunity Act, he was infuriatingly awarded a settlement of $15 million.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
BEN KISSEL
He got $15 million for being Italian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the American dream. That's the American dream is taking the bank to a court and getting more money than you wanted from a loan from the court.
BEN KISSEL
This was an era, and I love the Italians, but this is an era where we trusted them. What is happening?
MARCUS PARKS
Well after becoming incredibly rich, Ricci's actions and behavior took a further downward spiral and his drug use greatly increased along with his aberrant behavior.
BEN KISSEL
Weird. More money, more drugs. Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And this finally caught the attention of the Elan School's co founder Gerald Davidson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now he can deal with a lot of fucked up shit, right. He could deal with you helping him break down the minds of all of these children.
BEN KISSEL
Basically abuse children, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And across the board and taking over and then maybe using some MK Ultra tactics and maybe taking some money from various weird sketches. He can deal with a lot. But there's one thing he won't deal with, it's Joe Ricci taking his money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Joe Ricci was funneling funds from the Elan School to the horse track.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. Now that I didn't see coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause the horse track was losing money.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I know.
BEN KISSEL
Are you kidding me?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Horse track wasn't doing well. And so Gerald Davidson followed a lawsuit against Joe Ricci. But it's weird because Gerald Davidson also owned half the horse track.
BEN KISSEL
It just sounds like they're lunatics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that Dr. Gerald Davidson viewed Joe Ricci as a massive liability and decided he wanted to figure out a way to cut him loose as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or at least to cut himself loose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But lest you think that Davidson never had any idea what was going on at Elan, it was alleged that he sent a relative of his to this hellhole. And this relative by accounts got worse treatment than most. Her name was Jennifer. And according to one message board, I got this from a message board so take it with a grain of salt, Jennifer apparently went through a particularly brutal general meeting with a friend of hers named Mary O. In front of the whole school, Jennifer and Mary were allegedly sauced which was Elan slang for having a ladle of feces and garbage slurry poured over your head.
BEN KISSEL
That'll teach you to what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To have a big old head covered in shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Not even close to being over. They were then allegedly handcuffed, wrapped in sheets like mummies without being cleaned off at all, still covered in shit and garbage, and they were made to lay on the dining room floor for hours encased in electric sauce.
BEN KISSEL
What? Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this was a relative, if this is true, of Dr. Gerald Davidson. And I don't believe that he didn't know enough to know to not send their kids to the thing.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he knew it exactly what was going on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Must be a strange family reunion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just more the children don't have autonomous minds.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
When that didn't have much of an effect on Jennifer's behavior, she was drugged into submission for weeks on end. She was so sedated that her mouth hung open long enough to severely chap her lips, the only lubrication being a steady stream of drool that dripped out. And yet Gerald Davidson kept sending kids there at least until he was forced out following the racetrack lawsuit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He forced himself out.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after Gerald left, Elan continued operating well into the 90s and Joe Ricci made another unsuccessful run at the governor's office in 1998.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
1998!
BEN KISSEL
Holy crap.
MARCUS PARKS
Still going. 1998. Still going strong. But right around the time that Joe decided to run for governor, a murder trial involving Elan School began concerning a killing that had taken place over 20 years earlier. That was the murder of Martha Moxley. And the man on trial for that murder was a former Elan School student named Michael Skakel. This would be the beginning of the end for the Elan School. Now Skakel wasn't the only Elan student in its history to be attached to a murder but his case got worldwide attention because he was the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, aka he widow of good old RFK himself, Bobby Kennedy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dog.
MARCUS PARKS
This guy was Bobby Kennedy's nephew.
BEN KISSEL
I still like to imagine that Bobby Kennedy was one of the good Kennedys. I don't know if it's true. I'm just going to hold on to that mythos.
MARCUS PARKS
Hold onto it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hold onto it. I think that he's fine right now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah he's way dead.
MARCUS PARKS
He's way dead. He's gotta be better than that one that did the rebuttal to the debate and he had those really wet lips and his lips were so wet that all anyone talked about was his wet lips and then he just disappeared from the public eye completely.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. Multiplicity is a real thing and you just get dumber and dumber with every generation, don't you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. How many dead people have to be connected to the Kennedys?
BEN KISSEL
They have Chappaquiddick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
JFK probably killed Marilyn.
MARCUS PARKS
What do you mean have to be connected?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm saying. For us all to be like hmm.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know if it's a Kennedy thing, I think it might just be a filthy rich thing. It seems like the filthy rich have a lot of dead people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bodies just pile up.
MARCUS PARKS
Dead bodies just pile up around filthy rich families.
BEN KISSEL
Even the Kennedys, I do think they have more... Paris Hilton isn't killing anyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. But it's obviously the ones that got murdered, all the ones that are next to ones. You got Teddy. It's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I feel like the Kennedys are up there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe the Rockefellers. They've killed, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they've led to-
BEN KISSEL
Cause of all the mob ties and shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those guys have led to opportunities where they've worked probably thousands of people to death. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's different though, that's statistics.
BEN KISSEL
But didn't the Rockefellers work with the mob and have a couple of hits out?
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not sure.
BEN KISSEL
We'll cover them.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean the Rockefellers are part of the Bilderberg group, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're going to do, that's how you know Last Podcast is ending.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how we will begin our 20 episode series on the illuminati.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna be able to listen to that exclusively on infowars.com. It's gonna be great. We're gonna save the whole network.
MARCUS PARKS
So concerning this murder, on October 30th, 1975 Martha Moxley, aged 15, was bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the wealthiest part of Greenwich, Connecticut.
BEN KISSEL
So on brand.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The attack was so vicious that the golf club broke into pieces. One of those pieces was used to stab Martha Moxley in the neck.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
The grip which would have had the fingerprints was of course never found. But the golf club came from a set belonging to an extraordinarily wealthy neighbor named Rushton Skakel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What a fucking... Someone took my monogrammed golf club! Where are my monogrammed golf clubs? I cannot perform with something that doesn't have my initials on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Rushton Skakel was Ethel Skakel's brother. And the Skakels were richer than the Kennedys by far.
BEN KISSEL
What business were the Skakels in?
MARCUS PARKS
Something like, I don't know, like industrial coke, I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Oil or some shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shipping and it's that type of thing.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's just like they run the boxes that go on the ships, like that style of they make billions of dollars but you don't know what they do.
BEN KISSEL
That's good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Rushton Skakel, he was the father of five brothers who were known far and wide to be a pack of demons let loose on earth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If there could have been a family annihilator that could have stepped in, that could have saved a lot of problems, it could have been Rushton Skakel.
BEN KISSEL
It's never the bad families, it's always someone killing good families.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now the murder went unsolved at the time, go figure, considering the people involved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way.
BEN KISSEL
It's completely solved, we're gonna say it's not solved.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We know who did it but come on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guys, we need a bigger rug and a bigger broom!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Can't take down a Rushton.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the main suspect was one of the Skakel brothers, but not Michael Skakel. Instead the main suspect at the time in 1975 was his older brother Tommy. So in 1991, to finally put the matter to rest, the father, Rushton Skakel, hired a private investigator to solve the murder.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's how you always make sure you get something handled, you do an internal investigation.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then you handle the investigation and it's just you investigating yourself.
BEN KISSEL
OJ Simpson, it worked great for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This one backfired. This investigator was given full access to the Skakel brothers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like a movie. It's like a Joaquin Phoenix movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. By the way, the Greenwich police never were able to talk to the Skakel brothers, the lawyers kept them far away even though the murder weapon provably came from the Skakel home.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Upon investigation it was discovered that Michael Skakel, the future Elan School student, he used to sit outside of Martha Moxley's window and masturbate in a tree. Like it was a not acceptable anymore 80s movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He should never done it though. I feel it was never good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, you hold a boombox, you play them songs. I mean even in Animal House he didn't jerk off, he was on a ladder.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, you never go the joke?
BEN KISSEL
That he got a boner and that's why he fell?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Belushi didn't have that big of a dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also find if you masturbate in a tree, at least a good way to get rid of it is that you can just give it to one of the little baby birds.
BEN KISSEL
You are disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Take it. Take all of it!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. But also that wouldn't even hold true to that because his hands, first of all they were placed on top of the ladder, Belushi's in Animal House. And so he got hard but he never actually went down and did the deed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he didn't masturbate openly on film, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean there were some issues in the film.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But still, it's a classic.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Michael's alibi for the murder was that he was at his cousin's place watching a Monty Python movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Don't bring Monty Python into this.
MARCUS PARKS
But once the investigation was complete, it was concluded much to Rushton Skakel's chagrin that Michael Skakel had murdered Martha Moxley and Tommy Skakel helped him move the body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's gotta be a rough family meeting.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sitting there with the two private investigators and them being like your son is a murderer. And they're both like ha! And he's like what's to be done with them? We'll put them into soccer!
BEN KISSEL
Oh no, that's a fate worse than prison.
MARCUS PARKS
This was surmised in 1991. This was almost 20 years after the murder actually happened.
BEN KISSEL
Listen mister private investigator, we did not hire you to solve this crime. Didn't you understand the point of you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Believe me, I tried to not solve this crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Way back in the mid 70s, the Skakels suffered no consequences. But soon after the murder, Michael Skakel was sent to the Elan School because he not surprisingly had a pretty intense problem with drugs and alcohol.
BEN KISSEL
And masturbating in people's windows and murder.
MARCUS PARKS
That was also a problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was an issue.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like the bigger problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Skakel didn't take to Elan and after attempting an escape, he was punished by being made to alternate between sitting and standing for an hour at a time each, sit for an hour, stand for an hour, made to do that for three days straight without sleep.
BEN KISSEL
I kinda like this though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean for him, sure, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's like the one guy that I want it to happen to.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's a typical Elan School punishment, a lot of kids had to do that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then somehow Joe Ricci found out about the Martha Moxley murder. So in a general meeting, Joe told everyone that Skakel had killed a girl in Greenwich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Someone must have told him, somebody must have said something.
MARCUS PARKS
They had to have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They must have sent it as a part of his bio when they dropped him off.
MARCUS PARKS
They might have.
BEN KISSEL
Did they do so something like that? Like what Scientology does?
MARCUS PARKS
An audit?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, like an audit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It starts with this induction meeting. You go, basically you show up, you get screamed at, then you go to this first meeting where they kind of explain to you halfway the rules about how you need to do all the shit, we're gonna punish you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But what happens is that you get attached that big brother, right. You have that person that's walking you through the program and they're pumping you, acting like they're commiserating with you and getting to know you.
BEN KISSEL
Right. And then you get all the info.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And then they get all the kompromat.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ricci had a file folder an inch thick that was supposedly full of evidence that he's waving around. Here's the proof, here's the proof.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to start doing that in the office more.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well we just open it up, it's just a bunch of menus. Yeah, we know.
MARCUS PARKS
Other students were told to break Skakel down until he copped to the murder. And after the screaming and slamming and spitting that always happened during general meetings didn't do the trick, Skakel was forced into the aforementioned ring. After eight rounds of never ending boxing opponents, Skakel kinda admitted to the murder by saying I don't know when asked if he killed Martha Moxley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
According to my little police interrogation videos, that's how you know you got them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Once you start moving the needle.
BEN KISSEL
All you gotta do is add a two letter word. If.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All you have to do is talk to a man in an enclosed room for 12 hours and then eventually they will just fold.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That seems to be mostly unless they're a true psychopath. Or just call a lawyer!
MARCUS PARKS
Call a lawyer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Call a fucking lawyer! Say nothing especially if you're innocent!
BEN KISSEL
Very nice.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's important for everyone to hear.
BEN KISSEL
I mean if you're guilty you can also just admit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just call a lawyer.
BEN KISSEL
If you are guilty, you can save me the tax dollars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would be nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That'd be nice. Yeah, don't have to pay for the public attorney.
BEN KISSEL
It'll be easier, you get less time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If you're not guilty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I should be allowed to visit one prison cell a day and ask him to sing me a song, right, for the tax money.
MARCUS PARKS
I get that. All right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that can help. It actually might help.
MARCUS PARKS
It might, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I would love to see who would be singing after an hour of you in a jail cell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me just getting fucking railed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after the half confession, Joe Ricci instituted long term punishment. Skakel was quote "shot down", meaning he was stripped of all privileges, he had his shoes taken away, and he was forced to scrub floors and trash bins day and night.
BEN KISSEL
I will say this Mr. Parks, it does remind me of a punishment that you have given before.
MARCUS PARKS
Well okay.
BEN KISSEL
So Butterball was a bong and Butterball fell on the ground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He took the man's shoes.
BEN KISSEL
And then you took the man's shoes and made him walk home barefoot at night. Very interesting indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
I regret taking the man's shoes. I was actually thinking about this a couple of days ago, I've been reflecting lately.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
I turned 40 so you want to reflect upon your life a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't want to.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was one of those things where like I shouldn't have taken that guy's shoes.
BEN KISSEL
Butterball. You did like Butterball the bong.
MARCUS PARKS
I did. It was the best bong that ever existed in the history of man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did he ever fucking break another bong?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. He didn't return for his shoes, that's for goddamn sure.
BEN KISSEL
No, he never came back.
MARCUS PARKS
I told him he could come back tomorrow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I told him you can come back tomorrow and get your shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gave him an opportunity.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe he stepped on a needle and got hepatitis and died. We just don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
He might have. That's what I feel bad about. He had to take the train home with no shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's kinda on him.
BEN KISSEL
He might still be homeless.
MARCUS PARKS
That was just the first little, the first chunk. But yeah, I feel bad about taking that guy's shoes, I shouldn't have done that.
BEN KISSEL
If you're wearing a million dollar suit but you have no shoes, people are like poor guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or sometimes you're a super holistic fucking billionaire.
BEN KISSEL
Could be.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for weeks Michael Skakel was also forced to wear a sign that said confront me on why I killed Martha Moxley.
BEN KISSEL
That's great. Can someone make that t-shirt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
And in Elan School tradition, he was forced to read the sign aloud before every meal. But everyone wore a sign, like the person who had help, I'm an emotionally unstable monster, they'd have to stand up and say that before every single meal and they'd all go around and read their signs and then everyone could eat.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, students were in encouraged to constantly confront students like Michael who wore signs. And one student allegedly asked Skakel:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How does it feel to beat a girl to death with a golf club?
BEN KISSEL
Hyper specific.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. No, they got a lot of information.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like somebody in the family told what was going on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And what did he say?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he just went ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
But Skakel was eventually released from the Elan School and was returned to the world of the wealthy.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sure he's totally well adjusted now.
MARCUS PARKS
He spent decades free until several investigations, including one conducted by Mark Fuhrman-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that guy.
BEN KISSEL
He's an actor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the guy that-
BEN KISSEL
It was the OJ Simpson guy who took the stand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's an actor now?
BEN KISSEL
No, that's what he said regarding the testimony.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what he said, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
When he was acting like an LAPD officer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's just a character I played.
BEN KISSEL
Acting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they gathered enough evidence for an arrest and a trial. He actually went on trial for this.
BEN KISSEL
What year?
MARCUS PARKS
2001
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The story of what most likely happened to Martha Moxley was finally revealed. On the night of the murder, the Skakels had a new 23 year old tutor named Ken Littleton. It was his first night but instead of tuting, he got blackout drunk with the Skakel brothers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tuting is the verb form of tutors.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
No, I do know that. But maybe he was tooting some cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe, probably, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Ken was absolutely a suspect and he was interrogated again and again but he was never arrested or charged even though according to the Skakel family, Ken Littleton is the real killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, so that's kind of how they did it, right. That's how they kind of rationalized it amongst themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like a perfect scapegoat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they had a private investigator that says your son killed her. And they'd be like what if it was a guy standing next to my son?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Michael Skakel was sent to the Elan School after the murder because of his drinking and drug use as we said. Actually it was about two years after the murder that he gets sent.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But according to various students who testified at the trial, Michael didn't mind talking about the murder. Both Michael Skakel and a fellow student named John Higgins, they were night owls. Night owls, that's Elan School slang for guards that kept watch over other students at night to keep them from running away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The ones that would flash a light on them every hour to make sure that they were in bed and asleep.
BEN KISSEL
Got you. Yeah, that's not gonna wake them up or anything. That's gonna be really nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole point was to do that and then you'd wake up and then you'd break the rules and you get a general meeting.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
While on night owl duty, Higgins said that Skakel admitted to the murder of Martha Moxley in a roundabout sort of way. Specifically Skakel said that he remembered getting drunk and remembered taking the golf club with him to run in the woods, which is weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course.
BEN KISSEL
Everyone does that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I do.
BEN KISSEL
Everyone does that.
MARCUS PARKS
But Skakel said that he blacked out soon after entering the woods and therefore had no memory of the murder itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically this sounds very similar to what Tiger Woods said to absolve himself of his many affairs.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was just in the woods with my club.
BEN KISSEL
Leave Tiger alone.
MARCUS PARKS
Another Elan student named Gregory Coleman who was an inmate at a prison in Rochester, New York at the time of the trial law, Elan School didn't really work for him-
BEN KISSEL
Or maybe it institutionalized him and he's like this is actually a step up.
MARCUS PARKS
This is great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might.
MARCUS PARKS
He also had some things to say about Skakel. Coleman claimed that Skakel openly said that he got away with murder because he was a Kennedy or close enough where it didn't make a difference.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was right.
BEN KISSEL
I hate these assholes so much.
MARCUS PARKS
Furthermore, Coleman also said that Skakel bragged about using a golf pun. He said he drove her skull. You get it? Driver, drive the skull.
BEN KISSEL
I got it. Yeah, did he putt-putt her nose?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what a putz.
MARCUS PARKS
He said because Martha refused his advances. And when her body was found, her pants were pulled down but there was no evidence of rape. But Skakel also allegedly said that he masturbated on Moxley's corpse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not a brag.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that this is why I don't really believe Gregory Coleman because he said it happened in a blackout, I don't think a teenager in a full blackout is going to masturbate on the corpse and then clean up the corpse where there's absolutely no evidence of any sort of semen or anything like that.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, unless he wasn't blacked out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he wasn't blacked out and he did it all on purpose. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Even Joe Ricci ended up testifying as far as Skakel's confessions went. But on the other side of the Elan testimonies, students testified that the atmosphere at Elan was so horrific that kids could be coerced into saying anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely true, completely true.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then there's also a little bit of a nihilistic edge. I believe that he did confess truly but there's also a little bit of being like yeah, I fucking killed her. Because people have told you and you've been around this dead girl and you're a Kennedy so you think that you're above everything as it is. And so in a weird converse way you then adopt it to be more like I don't know, it's why people do false confessions in prison all the time. And so if you're already there, if you're already fucked up, you're in this scenario, it makes you appear to be more "badass" quote unquote to these people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's very bizarre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the thing, otherwise I think it's fully premeditated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's like that most recent story of that chick who wanted to get some clout being like I was a serial killer with my dad. And it's like no you weren't. Why the hell would you lie about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they just-
BEN KISSEL
It's very weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird. We're going to do a whole series on false confessions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's very bizarre.
MARCUS PARKS
You think this murder was premeditated?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he had a golf club with him in the woods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so I think that there was a coercion with this girl and he brought her out there. Maybe god knows how it led to blah blah blah. But then I think that he just straight up, she said no and he beat her to death with a golf club.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's like what was that movie? Not The Strangers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause he brought the golf club from home.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the difference. It'd be different if there was-
BEN KISSEL
Oh the woods weren't behind his house?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Well they were close.
MARCUS PARKS
They were like a next door neighbor's, there were like woods inbetween them.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But still. There's no reason to bring the golf club.
BEN KISSEL
What if you want to beat a squirrel to death?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is gross but if it was a crime of passion he would have used something that was around him in his environment.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he would have used a stick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A stump or a rock or something. But because he brought something, that to me makes it premeditated.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's Funny Games, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's the one with the rich kids who break into that house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they play the games. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the end Skakel was found guilty. He was found guilty of murdering Martha Moxley 27 years after the murder. He spent 11 years in prison but he eventually won an appeal in 2013 due in part to the efforts of his cousin, famed anti-vaxxer and all around disappointment RFK Jr.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know what you're talking about. This is just my voice, my strong DNA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a fucking piece of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone hates RFK.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He still thinks Sirhan Sirhan is innocent. He's fighting for his release.
BEN KISSEL
Whatever. Whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
He's such a disappointment.
BEN KISSEL
What created those broken... They're all weak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's years of incest.
MARCUS PARKS
I would imagine the explosion of John F Kennedy's head.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but even JFK was weak. His body was-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he got hurt in a war.
MARCUS PARKS
He wasn't weak, he was a veteran.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was decomposing. Oh hurt in war. Please!
MARCUS PARKS
He was a wounded warrior, Ben.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was. He was a hero.
BEN KISSEL
Shh. Shh.
MARCUS PARKS
What have you got against Kennedy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, John F Kennedy was the one vaguely good one.
BEN KISSEL
John F Kennedy?
MARCUS PARKS
What have you got against JFK?
BEN KISSEL
We did our entire bit at the Nashville show about there's only been four presidents assassinated and that's too bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yes.
BEN KISSEL
I said I like my presidents with brains in their head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know.
BEN KISSEL
He was very bad. Marilyn, he used to taunt Marilyn, run her all around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was a bad-
BEN KISSEL
He was a horrible person.
MARCUS PARKS
A bad person, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but he was president.
BEN KISSEL
That's what I have against him! What do you mean what do I have against him?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not pro Kennedy but I'm saying that yes, I think that this was an issue. His head just exploding randomly the way that it did because we know for a fact that nobody shot Kennedy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, his head just did that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It was suicide. I say that also they tried to put the top up but it kept hitting the back of his head. That's why they had to put the top down. Anyway these jokes are great in 1963.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
1964? Whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
63. But it was the end of '63 so they would have continued.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It would take into January.
BEN KISSEL
I would have had some awesome material on JFK in '64.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Michael Skakel was released and as of October 2020, no plans to retry him. He's out, he's done, it's over.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It was very bizarre that Jackie-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder who his booker is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we'll get him. He and Hinckley are gonna start performing together. Jackie O's first words after JFK got shot were 'soup's on!'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
BEN KISSEL
That's good.
MARCUS PARKS
Bridge too far, my friend.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's not a bridge too far! How is it a bridge too far? It was 90 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a long time ago.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I'm not saying a bridge too far as in it's offensive.
BEN KISSEL
Soup's on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A bridge too far is it's just not fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
It's not good, I know it's not. Uneaten carrots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, go back.
BEN KISSEL
Half eaten carrots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was the beginning of this whole thing where we were all on the same page.
MARCUS PARKS
That's good, I like that one.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Skakel's trial brought quite a bit of negative attention to the Elan School, especially after witness Gregory Coleman admitted that he once spanked a girl so much that she urinated and defecated all over herself.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
But what put the final nail in the coffin for the Elan School, the internet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
As more people got access to message boards and the like, stories from Elan School survivors began to circulate and get attention and enrollment dropped further. In fact one of the earliest subreddits back in 2005 when Reddit was founded, it was dedicated to Elan School survivors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they were being told for years that they were nuts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that everything that happened to them didn't happen to them and they were part of some great thing. And it took a generation of people to kind of wake up and understand like oh we were abused by an entire industry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was behind it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Reddit did good work here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And by 2010 dozens of forums were run by those same people. They organized petitions and they had people call representatives demanding that Elan be shut down. But of course it wasn't the government that shut down the school, rather the Elan School shut its doors itself in 2011.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah bro.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Despite the fact that main had renewed Elan's accreditation until 2014.
BEN KISSEL
So you're telling me Elan Schools shut down three years after we ended racism with the election of Barack Obama? Wow. That is honestly that's disheartening in some ways.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
BEN KISSEL
2011?
MARCUS PARKS
2011!
BEN KISSEL
Good god.
MARCUS PARKS
But Joe Ricci wasn't around to see the end of his beloved hellhole. He'd already died of lung cancer 10 years earlier in 2001 as a multi millionaire, a self made martyr who never faced a single meaningful consequence for his actions or for his part in helping to create the troubled teen industry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And would you fucking believe I get up to heaven and St. Peter is like you're too fucking Italian to be saved.
BEN KISSEL
Too Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was like what is even... Aren't boring clouds mostly gnocchi?!
BEN KISSEL
They are. Yeah, you can just see him being sad he missed 9/11.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanted to be there!
BEN KISSEL
One day, that was the one day I wanted to be alive.
MARCUS PARKS
See Elan technically never violated any laws.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it was all legal!
BEN KISSEL
It's almost like laws don't mean morality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a difference between legal and right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they never ran afoul of investigators in Maine even though other states did stop sending their schools in after their own investigations. It was either Indiana or Illinois, probably Illinois, let's be fair here.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was probably them saving their own ass.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well they just saw that it was horrific.
BEN KISSEL
Horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
You can't send kids there. The only reasons why Elan shut down was because of public pressure and because it wasn't making good money anymore. And these places still exist all over the country. In fact the Agape school that we mentioned in the first episode when talking about teen escort companies, it is officially and voluntarily closing its doors tomorrow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tomorrow!
BEN KISSEL
Tomorrow!
MARCUS PARKS
January 20th, 2023.
BEN KISSEL
And isn't that a nice birthday gift to you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, I did it for you.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yay!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He could have used a gift or some money.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. So far Marcus' gifts have been David Crosby dying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Crosby dying.
BEN KISSEL
Which is very sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, very sad.
BEN KISSEL
And this school's closing down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then there's a bunch more. There's Tobinworld which was investigated and it was condemned by the United Nations for torture of its students, that was closed, that was in Glendale here in California. That was in 2019 when that was closed.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. It was condemned by the United Nations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Said that it it was a center of torture for children.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they kept it open because it was a private venture and all you have to do is sign a waiver and let the kids go.
BEN KISSEL
God.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was Judge Rotenberg Educational Center which I brought up which is still fucking open. It is to this day, it was changed. So it used to be called the BRI, the Behavior Research Institute of California. It was made, again, this was used to specifically break down the child machine to be something else. And they would take away your food, they would zap you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They would beat you. And then the restraints which we're also going to find is a big thing. That's still open. And they changed the name, Judge Rotenberg, because Judge Rotenberg was the guy that went to bat for them to keep them open because basically he had kids in the program himself.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What a piece. So he was sending kids to the program as a kickback program.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, this entire industry is rife.
BEN KISSEL
It's all kickbacks.
MARCUS PARKS
It's all kickbacks.
BEN KISSEL
It's disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Kickbacks and campaign contributions. That's the whole fucking thing. And in fact them changing the name, it still is a very common tactic amongst the troubled teen industry. They get into trouble, they just change the name. They don't even have to move, they just change the name.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like fucking synthetic marijuana. You change one fucking ingredient and spice is suddenly legal again.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now it's just back to it. There's the Cenikor Foundation, another group that I believe was closed in the 2010s. Nope, still open. Cenikor, same thing, same shit.
BEN KISSEL
Cenikor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a rehabilitation program that also does wilderness shit as well. You also have CEDU.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is what Paris Hilton was a part of.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
CEDU is a many spider legged version of this that also continues to be open and send kids from one level to the next. So that starts at this sort of low level version of rehabilitation and then you go into the wilderness program where you're really fucked. So this stuff is still very much an active part of the American system.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have a lot of these. And kids are dying each year.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More kids have died in 2011 to now than in the first three decades of the troubled teen industry.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I would say more kids have been reported to have died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And these kids all died of the same thing, it's restraint. It's this thing where they put them in a prone position, it's a lot of what we're seeing with police brutality.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like Eric Garner. It's that type of murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They tie someone's hands behind their back, they put them face down on the ground, and they kneel on them or they hold their hands down and quote unquote that's supposed to be a "humane" way to restrain somebody. But a lot of times if you're on some form of psychotropic drug, trying to handle your mental illness, when you're in that position it can actually make it very easy for you to throw up. So a lot of times you are throwing up and then you're choking on your own vomit in this position. And it's still just so prevalent.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it's really disgusting the way they named that institution after Jim Morrison.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Jim Morrison didn't choke on his own vomit, it was Jimi Hendrix.
BEN KISSEL
All right, that's very depressing the way they named that institution after Jimi Hendrix or River Phoenix or Edgar Allen Poe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is a professional. The joke bombs, just switch it around.
MARCUS PARKS
Switch it around.
BEN KISSEL
What's the name of somebody else who vomited on their own... Chris Farley, maybe he would have died of the overdose but he also puked in his own mouth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was face up when he died.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's how you choke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, these are face down, face mushed into the ground.
BEN KISSEL
You can die in a whole series of ways.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seed is still around too.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A New York Times article released just three months ago featured testimony from half a dozen kids who have been treated in the exact ways we've described and worse. Because now it's starting to really pop into the transgender community, there are a lot of people sending transgender kids to these fucking places to shock and beat it out.
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so fucked.
MARCUS PARKS
It's human rights abuses 101.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's fucking horrific.
BEN KISSEL
We've been talking about that on Top Hat, it's coming from the legislative branch now. It is just absolutely disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in 2007, congress decided to investigate the troubled teen industry because of so many reports of abuse and because of all the deaths, there's a lot of deaths.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean three kids have died in troubled teen facilities since 2016. The last was just a couple years ago in 2020, one of the chokehold ones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at this huge ass list!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But predictably congress concluded that it was impossible to determine the true extent of the industry's problems because of inconsistent regulation and reporting. Those are features though, those are not bugs of the troubled teen system.
BEN KISSEL
Too big to fail? They gave it the too big to fail thing where it's like what are we gonna do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This thing is you go into these places, these kids are screaming, and it's like I can't even think straight.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's too confusing to prosecute basically. They're basically throwing up their hands and saying like ugh god, I don't want to do it. I don't wanna do it, it's so hard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
So hard!
BEN KISSEL
It is hard.
MARCUS PARKS
And legislation to reform the troubled teen industry failed repeatedly even though, I wouldn't say even though, I'd say probably because of the fact that millions in public funds, taxpayer money goes to fund these monstrosities.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. So we're all complicit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
Yay!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like a cultivized all of us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But things might be changing if ever so slowly. Of all people, fucking Paris Hilton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, she's a different person than who she portrayed herself on television.
MARCUS PARKS
She very much is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's intense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's very smart.
BEN KISSEL
She would adopt chihuahuas and then not take care of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's different. She was a poor dog owner in her past.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well she was a survivor of the CEDU school and her and other patients turned activists have lobbied congress to pass tougher regulations and these efforts have actually been met with some success on the state level. In 2021 Utah, perhaps the state with the most active troubled teen institutions as far as I can tell, they passed legislation limiting restraint and seclusion while also increasing funding for abuse investigations. So it's something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It is something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it's a little bit like baked Doritos.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's slightly healthier but if you eat a whole bag you're still going to get obese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just getting you there.
BEN KISSEL
But yeah, that's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, in this country in order for for us to erase the generations of violence that we allow to happen due to money, sometimes it just takes a second for them to be like but are you sure? Are you sure we want to?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But listen before, I know we've wasted, are you sure they want to do it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you slowly roll it back. Eventually they will realize that drugs have won the war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course we support Paris Hilton in this effort and she can have her Dee Snider moment. She's going for the congress.
MARCUS PARKS
That'd be great.
BEN KISSEL
It'd be awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd love to see that, yeah. Well in Oregon and California, children that were previously sent to out of state facilities, they were taken back. Kids from the welfare system. Oregon and California were just sending these kids out, like foster kids out to these places.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
MARCUS PARKS
And that at least puts the smallest financial pressure on the industry to tamp it down a little bit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because California especially is a pretty big market.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Although California can just send it instate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think we've built a new school here in a long time, like universities, but prisons are popping up all over the place.
MARCUS PARKS
So while the troubled teen industry will seemingly always have a place in American society, we can all do our part to make that place smaller. As is evidenced, the only thing that works to get these places shut down is public pressure which hits them in the only place they care about, their wallet. So spread the word. These places don't work, they never have worked, and they never will work. It is a travesty that they still exist anywhere and the more we talk about it, the less of a chance there'll be that the next generation gets sent. And if no one gets sent, then these places will eventually choke out and they'll die the death that they all deserve.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
There you go, I completely agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me too.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you all so much for listening to our series on the troubled teen industry. They've done nothing but create chaos and ruined lives. And it makes for an unhealthy society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kids need to be reached the way it always has been done.
BEN KISSEL
Candy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Through a singular rap done by a white woman teacher at a talent show.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The only way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the only way to reach these kids.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. I agree.
MARCUS PARKS
I understand. I get it. Yeah, no, I agree, I agree.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But what a story. So you want to tell people all of our, because we have many sources, there was many, many sources in this whole saga.
MARCUS PARKS
Definitely. All right, well our source on Joe Ricci is a book called 'Duck in a Raincoat by Maura Curley.
BEN KISSEL
This is the cutest name ever for a horrific story. I want a duck in a raincoat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course we had 'The Rise and Fall of Synanon', 'Help At Any Cost', those were both invaluable resources for the last couple of episodes. We also used a lot of articles. We used 'Suffer the Little Children' by Suzuki Nathie. We used 'Ex Students Describe Elan School' by David Gurliacci via Portland Press Herald. We used 'His Family Asks: What Really Happened to Phil at Elan School' by Kathryn Skelton and Lindsay Tice. We had 'The Day Officer Smiley Helped a Boy Escape from the Elan School' also by Kathryn Skelton and Lindsay Tice. We have 'Trial of Guilt' by Dominick Dunne. Dominick Dunne, he was also greatly involved in the OJ Simpson trial.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's the father of the actress who was murdered by her boyfriend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! From Poltergeist.
MARCUS PARKS
The girl from Poltergeist.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
He's her father.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's what we have, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn. Yeah, we went in deep. Next week we're probably gonna get a little bit silly before we get serious. Not too serious.
MARCUS PARKS
Not too serious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then the next big series we're gonna do is a long awaited update and I'm very, very excited because we're coming for them again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well I don't wanna blow the cover, guys, but it's all gonna be on the Burger King kids club.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you guys remember?
BEN KISSEL
What have they been up to and what did they do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what's the worst thing is that I heard the kid in the wheelchair could fucking walk.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that fucking fucked up?
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about that.
BEN KISSEL
And there was a character named Q. Wasn't the guy with the glasses called Q? Well this is why we're gonna get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Finally. We're gonna figure out all their names over an hour and a half long episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well they named the guy that you were referencing Wheels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Wheels, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was simple, it was simple.
BEN KISSEL
A little on the nose there.
MARCUS PARKS
But we're gonna do a big update on previous series but also before that we're gonna do a fun history series that I can't wait for. (singing) A whaler's life for me, a whaler's life for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Hope you like hooks!
BEN KISSEL
I love hooks.
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) Whaling, whaling.
BEN KISSEL
We should cover the invention of the Silly Putty. Okay well thank you all so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you, guys. Make sure you check out WizBru and Page 7 at the Release The Butthole Cut.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are in Dallas, Texas at the Addison Improv January 25th. And they are at Emo's in Austin, Texas on January 27th.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go and check them out. Take a gander. Wish Marcus a happy 40th.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. And to all the survivors out there, keep on doing your best and hang in there and congratulations on all your progress. And this shit, you never deserved it in the goddamn first place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never literally, I feel like that's really important, you never deserved it, it was never your fault.
BEN KISSEL
No one does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You shouldn't have been there.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me. If I was king of the world, I'd free every child. I'd free every child. Hee-hee.
BEN KISSEL
That's actually quite scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd free every child.
MARCUS PARKS
Free every child to do what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd free them to go to heaven.
BEN KISSEL
Let's just end it. We're just gonna end it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every child should be an angel.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the only way they're free.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Let's just cut it.