You're listening to a tenorfoot TV podcast. Believe me, if I started murdering people, it'd be none of it left.
True Crime has always captivated us. But what if there's more to these stories than what we're told? The headlines, the verdicts, the familiar narratives, what if that's just the beginning? I created True Crime to dig deeper, to uncover the stories that go beyond the surface. We're diving into mysteries you think you know, the Manson murders, Jonestown, the assassination of Dr. King, and the ones you've never heard.
They would have thought he was the sweetest thing in the world because he portrayed that. He portrayed the happy family. He haunts me. He's with me every day. We were robbed. All of us. If it takes me 20 years and I can live that long, I'll be working out this case. We're not just telling stories. We're uncovering hidden truths. True Crime is available now. Listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2009, a young woman was arrested. She was later released in the middle of the night, with no phone, money, or transportation. She's in an unknown area. Do you know if she's here now or what she released? They said she was released. The case is now one of LA's most controversial disappearances. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm Payne Lindsay. And I'm Maggie Freeling. This is Up and Vanish Weekly.
From the team that brought you up and vanished comes an all new podcast that brings you a weekly dose of true crime cases. Join me as I talk through cases with special guests and true crime experts. There's got to be something at the heart of that evidence that they've got. It's got to be DNA. Yeah. Tune in as pain Lindsay lays out the crime in true up and vanished style.
A late-night knock at the door, a missing car, and a mysterious shadowy figure caught on camera. We cannot see that person's face ever, luckiest person in the world. What new evidence will it take to solve one of Florida's most high-profile missing person's cases? Up and Vanish Weekly is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
and now presenting rattled and shook.
Welcome to Roddled and Shook, a variety show where we tune into true scary stories and discuss our deepest, darkest fears, but in a fun way. I'm your host, Meredith Stedman, and today's theme is true crime. We're going to listen to a couple of crime-related scary stories, and we'll have a special guest in the middle. Today's episode is special because here at our parent company, Tenderfoot TV, we just launched a new show called Up and Vanished Weekly.
If you've been following tenderfoot podcasts for a while now, then you probably already know about this show. We're kind of originally known for our true crime shows around here.
Up and Vanished Weekly will be our team's newest weekly show about all things crime related. Up and Vanished Greater Payne-Lindsay and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Freeling will join forces every week and discuss and unpack missing persons cases, unsolved murders, wrongful convictions, et cetera, et cetera. There will also be guests, and I'm actually the first guest on their very first episode. We'll be discussing Jodie Who's Intrude's case, which is a missing persons case in which I'm pretty entrenched.
Jody was a news anchor in Mason City, Iowa, who disappeared under really suspicious and distressing circumstances. I actually was already part of an oxygen TV show about her disappearance a few years ago. So if this interests you, go search up and vanish weekly in your chosen podcast app to find and follow the show. Now onto our first scary story, which was sent in by a listener and may involve a high profile criminal you've probably heard of. Let's tune in and see.
Well, my grandfather was a CIA agent for many years and dealt mainly with capturing leading members of the mob, and this was worldwide during his career. However, in the 1970s, he was an investigator for a local police department in Florida.
And while I was growing up, I would go to his house and he always had all of these eccentric pieces in his office that he collected over the years. One day when I was in there, I noticed a gun. Well, a pistol. It was in a glass case on his shelf and also in this glass case was a picture of my grandfather with what looked like a signed written statement.
And when I asked him what it was, he told me it was a gun he collected in the 70s when he was an investigator. Now, he told me this story behind the gun later. One day, he received a phone call from a friend in the area. And she was concerned because her adult son, who still lived with her, had a friend over.
and her son had only met this person just very recently, and this friend had a gun on him. She said he was just acting strangely. She didn't know him, and the fact that he had a gun made her very nervous. My granddad said, sure, I'll come down and I'll get him. I'll bring him to my office and just chat with him.
My granddad did exactly that, brought him in, and the man said he was just passing through town while he was visiting the Florida coast. Nothing crazy. He had met the woman's son in passing, and the son invited him over to give him a place to stay for the night.
Now, my granddad told him he would have to take his gun because he was making the woman nervous, right? But whenever he decided to leave town, he could just come back and get it. The man said, not a problem. Thank you. And he left. Well, the man never returned back to the woman's house and never came back to get the gun.
My granddad just figured he had forgotten. So he held it in his desk. Some weeks later, he was watching TV and this same man's face was all over the news. He had just been arrested for the murders of several women. However, the name my granddad was given was not his real name.
his real name was Ted Bundy. My granddad said his appearance was quite different on TV than it was in his office. We now know that Ted Bundy was a master manipulator and would often change his appearance. We also know now that there was a pretty big disconnect between law enforcement nationwide.
So my granddad said at the time he didn't even know to be looking for him. Ted Bundy never killed his victims with a gun. So my granddad was able to keep the gun. After my granddad died, my grandmother gave the gun to a gun collector because she didn't want it in the house. She also didn't want to make money off of it by selling it. She just didn't feel right about doing that.
So now it's just a story we tell within our family and we look at the gun in our old photographs.
And we're back. Today, I'm lucky enough to have Maggie Freeling with me again. She was a guest on the show last year on episode 59, Snatchable. And she's also a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. And she's just back here to chat true crime and fear in general.
So Maggie, you've done a lot of crime stuff. What do you feel about like the space between like true crime and like people that listen to it for social impact reasons and then people that listen to it for like kind of thrills and that kind of gray area?
It is such a gray area, right? Because as a journalist, I'm also a storyteller. So people have to be interested in the story, right? So it's like, I've said this to families who like don't want something sensationalized. And I do think there's a fine line between interesting information and sensationalization.
But I've said, look, in order to get people to hear the story, to care, it's got to be grabbing. And sometimes that might be entertainment. But no one's going to hear the story if it's not entertaining. No one wants to listen to just boring, right? So something has to interest everyone. But I think it needs to be done with care and sensitivity.
a real understanding of that difference between sensationalism and storytelling and entertaining people while getting to the crux of the issue. Well put, question for you, as a woman, has there been a time your intuition kicked in and you were right?
Ooh, oh, that's really good. Okay, I think so. It's hard to be able to test it because I got myself out of that situation and I didn't dare look back. But I do, I did have a time where I was like, this is it. This is how I'm gonna die. What was happening? I, for sure, I had a stomach drop moment. I took a really scary Uber ride. I consider really scary.
Quick note, if you want to hear my full scary Uber story, it's an episode five called In a Scary Lighthouse with Chad GPT. Okay, back to Maggie.
Have you heard this new viral? It's not like a trend, but I guess a woman asked TikTok, like, would you rather be stranded in the woods with a bear or a man? Yes. And unanimously, a bear. I'd rather be with a bear than a man. I am afraid of bears. I'm also afraid of bears. So I'm tempted to say bear. I'm like, oh God, have you seen the Revenant? No, I'm afraid of bears. Wow, so you might be the rare one that would pick a man over a bear.
I'm stranded in the middle of the woods. No one around. I can't pick the man and I can't pick the bear either. That's important. How do you want to die by the hands of nature, by the hands of psychosis and misogyny? Maybe nature. I could see. I could see bear.
Yeah. I think a better test for me might be shark, which is my biggest fear. I am horrified of sharks. Love them though, like fascinated, like shark week. I have the same thing. I have that same sick fascination. It's almost like no, your enemy, right? It's like obviously I'm terrified of serial killers, but I'm fascinated. So it's like same with sharks. I'm fucking terrified. Yes. I feel like I need to know everything about sharks. So when I was a kid in the New Orleans Aquarium, they had a little tiny like flip bridge that went over the shark tank.
And this is the origin of my shark fear. And it broke during a tour. And everyone fell into the shark tank. And the shark tank is huge at that aquarium. Huge. As soon as I read that in like first grade, I went to sleep picturing falling into a shark tank. I just felt like, okay, so I'd fall in and then I would have a heart attack. And then that would be it. I wouldn't even die from shark. I just die from idea of shark.
That's exactly what I was thinking. When we were talking about how I freeze before, I was like, I think I might just die of panic. Just heart attack instead of... Yeah, you're just dead. Drop dead. Yeah, like, oh, God, bear. Bear would be so scary. I can't even imagine the jaws smell of a bear that close to me. But again, the idea of a human with malice in their eyes
I would be pissed if I lost to a man. Like, if I lost to a bear, I'd be like, okay. But like, I've been training my whole life for this moment of like a man attacking me. Like, I would be really pissed if like all of my skills went out the window. Like, if it was a bear and then a deer walked by, maybe he would go for the deer, but the man's not going for the deer.
That's fair. You did survive an animal attack, though. You were attacked by an owl. I did survive an animal attack. Yes, I have. I have a barred owl. I did. I had an owl talent in my head. And I think it did think I was a squirrel, my ponytail, not me. That'd be bad. But yeah, so look, if I could survive an owl, I'd probably survive a grizzly bear. You successfully fought off
the potential killer of Kathleen Peterson. Thank you. That's true. And I can't say, by fighting off, I did like this. So I don't think that would work with a man. I don't think that works. It could. It could. I also don't think it would be a fact of against a bear, though, to be fair. I think I'd like, I think I'd like secret third option, anything else. Anything else. Okay. Not an orbit. Here we go.
Oh, so now I have to say how I want to tie you. Would you rather be abducted by aliens or encounter a poltergeist? Like an actual evil spirit. I love that you're throwing this one back to me. I am throwing it back to you. Abducted by aliens. Yellig, you're in their ship.
But the poltergeist I just see or like pulls me into its realm, or it haunts me for a while. You're haunted by a poltergeist. Would you rather be abducted once, probed, come back, it's over, or like you move into a home and there is a poltergeist and you put your entire life savings into this home.
Can it follow me after the home? Is it like in perpetuity? Like I have- You could get out of your whole savings this year. Like you have no life when you leave that house. But I could leave. You could sell it, but no one wants it because it's haunted. Or maybe some crazy people would want that. You know there's some people that want that. Sabrina's not here to buy the house. Okay. Are you? She's not in the market. She already has one. She already bought a haunted house. Okay.
You know what, okay, in that scenario, all right, if I'm abducted by an alien and then probed and then brought back down to earth, I would have that story to sell. I would have superior knowledge. I would be like, I know things that no one else knows. Interesting. I would probably be told that I lost my mind. Most people wouldn't believe me, I think. And I might possibly have really bad PTSD and trauma. Yeah.
So okay, those things. And then pull it over. But it's over. But then you have lingering effects. Yeah, the lingering effects. Poltergeist, knowing me, the second it happens, I am never, ever, ever going back. I would rather live on the street and not get any of that money back. And realistically, I think I have enough friends and family that would help me. I feel like I'd be fine. So you would, you would like abandon to your life savings. Yes, I would abandon my life from the poltergeist. And again, I would try to sell that story, so get my money back.
I'm thinking about the financial repercussions of this. I like the way you thought it out, so know what is your final answer. Poltergeist when I'm out of there. Poltergeist when I'm out of there, because originally I was going to say alien. I think the lingering trauma if that's a lot.
Yeah, because I think if the poltergeist haunted me my whole life and it couldn't, if it didn't stay in the house and it was attached to me, yeah, I'm doing alien, whatever is not in perpetuity. Final answer, I'm going poltergeist, but I'm out of it. Poltergeist one time.
Poltergeist spent time over UFO one time over alien one time. Yeah, but poltergeist and perpetuity any. No, I'm not doing that. I don't want that other. I would pick. I think I'm with you on both. I think I'm with you on both. The losing like my life and life savings is hard, but I think the stigma of aliens is worse. Like if you're like, I'm abducted by aliens versus I abandoned my life because I poltergeist. I'd rather be the poltergeist girl, I think.
Yeah. And I'm thinking about like writing about it later. That's where my brain goes. But people are so much more like accepting a poltergeist. Yes, exactly, which is why I'd rather be poltergeist girl. I feel like I just have to go ghost for the brand. I have to go ghost for the brand. And next time you come on the show, we'll do UFOs so that we don't bring up any past trauma.
That's true. I've not had alien experiences. No, we'll do some aliens and ghosts next time. I have no experiences with that, so that'll be a little vacation for you. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Maggie. This was so much fun. It was fun. And now we're going to go record an episode for your podcast. Up in Vanish Weekly. Yeah, Maggie's going to host the Up in Vanish Weekly. So if you like Up in Vanished or you're a true crime listener or you're a fan of Maggie, it's going to be good.
And now we're from our sponsors. Let's tune in for another story.
My freshman year of college was off to a pretty good start. I had made a few new friends. We were still all getting to know each other, so we decided to have a movie night in the common room downstairs. The common room was a medium-sized room with a pool table, a foosball table, a bunch of chairs, and a TV. The walls were lined with windows, and there was one door leading outside of the dorm building.
Someone chose the movie Green Room, and we were all having a chill time watching the movie, which was pretty scary, but it wasn't freaked out by the movie or anything. As we were watching it, however, I started to feel this really eerie feeling, unlike anything I'd ever felt.
It was like literal chills on the back of my neck. I don't really know how else to explain it. Something, not a voice, but a feeling, told me to turn my head and look to the left outside the window. It was around 10 p.m. in Darkout, and the dorm building was lined with bright lights that lit up the pathway around the building. At the far end of the building, I saw what I could only explain as a ghostly scene
I could barely make out two forms standing frozen with police lights flashing behind them. Yellow caution tape was strewn across the bushes and stretched out over the lawn. The same feeling that told me to look towards the scene told me something else. Something terrible had happened here. And that thing, whatever it was, was unfinished in some way.
I sat in my seat, no longer watching the movie with my new friends, but staring into the dark, outside the building, at what I knew no one else could see. I knew I couldn't say anything to the people around me because I knew it sounded crazy, plus it would have totally ruined the vibe. Or they would think that I was weird. We had all just met each other not long before movie night, and I was still trying to act cool around them. So I just sat there and tried not to freak out about what I was being shown.
I honestly thought it was quite possible that I was losing my mind. Not only was I being told that some terrible thing had happened not far from where I was sitting and watching a movie with my friends, but now this feeling was compelling me to do something about it. Now there was a clear idea in my head that somebody had died near this building, and that person was somehow showing me these things from the moments following their death in the hopes that I could do something about it. And all I had to do was go outside and take a closer look at the scene.
Of course, the last thing I wanted to do was go outside and investigate what was, to my understanding, the ghost of crime scene passed. But I began to feel this horrible guilt.
So I started to get up from my seat and walk slowly towards the door. I got all the way to the door. I even opened it up and stuck my head out, feeling the cool night air on my face. I would have walked to the other side of the building, but one of my friends called out to me, what are you doing? Are you going somewhere? She said.
I couldn't answer either of those things honestly, so I just said I wanted to go out and get some air. I had kind of snapped out of it at that point and I knew walking out into the night with nowhere particular to go would look extremely weird to my new friends. I went back to my seat and sat down. I watched the rest of the movie and had a relatively normal rest of the night.
What I hadn't known at the time was that a room in my dorm building had actually been part of a crime scene.
In the 90s, a girl had gone out to a party and never made it back to her room. Her disappearance had never been solved, her body never found. I'm still skeptical about what I think I saw that night, maybe I was just tired or stressed by my new environment, but part of me wonders if that vision was her way of reaching out to somebody about her unsolved case. I don't know what would have happened if I had gone out of the dorm building to take a closer look at what I had only seen from afar.
I hope that her disappearance is solved and that her case is brought to justice, but I can't help but also feel glad that my friend and my fear of looking weird kept me from going out that night.
haunting, absolutely haunting. Thanks to our listeners who sent in today's stories, please keep submitting to our website or Instagram or to rattled at tennerfoot.tv. And that's today's show. We'll be back next week with new stories and new guests, so stay tuned.
Rattled and shook is a tenderfoot TV production in partnership with Odyssey. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Co-executive producer is Meredith Steadman. Hosted and produced by April Ruha and Meredith Steadman. Lead editor and sound designer is April Ruha. Additional production, sound design and mix master by Steven Perez and Dayton Cole.
Additional production by Sean Nerny. Production management by Tracy Kaplan and Jordan Foxworthy. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Original art by Puppy T. Follow us on social media at Raddled and Shook.