The Misery Machine

This week, Yergy and Drewby report on Maine's first shark related death that took place on July 27th in the town of Harpswell, on the quaint Bailey Island - a place Yergy and Drewby both grew up visiting. 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach, a New York native who, while staying at her summer home in Harpswell, was tragically killed by a great white shark while she was swimming in the ocean. We cover the facts of the case as made public by the media, and give our own tips as locals on how to stay safe in the ocean this summer. 

This week's episode is sponsored by Podcorn: https://podcorn.com/

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This week, Yergy and Drewby take a break from true crime to pay tribute to the legend known as Billy Herrington, highlighting his early work in male adult entertainment, and his unexpected rise to internet fame in Asia, and later the rest of the world, through the internet phenomena of Gachimuchi.

Billy Herrington was born in North Babylon, New York, and grew up on Long Island learning karate from his father, who was a sensei. He had interests in boxing, wrestling and martial arts, but did not start bodybuilding until he was 24 years old, after moving to New York City.

Herrington gained fame in Japan as an Internet meme, after a clip from one of his videos was posted on Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese video sharing website. Thousands of mash-up parody videos of him have been made, many of which utilize deliberate mishearings of lines from his films. He is affectionately called "Aniki," or "older brother," among the Nico Nico Douga community, and most of his videos are deliberately mistagged with "Wrestling Series," "Forest Fairy," "Philosophy," or all three, later these videos would crossover to Youtube as well as Twitch through streamers like Forsen, and Gachimuchi would gain international popularity alongside the Catalina Video meme craze.

On February 14th, 2009, Herrington visited Japan after he was invited to make an appearance in a special Nico Nico Douga livecast for Valentine's Day. According to the YouTube video description, more than 10,000 fans of Billy Herrington showed up at the Nico Nico Douga event in Tokyo's Akihabara district. On the same day as the event, Japanese model kit makers Good Smile Company announced that they would manufacture a limited-edition Billy Herrington action figure.

This week's episode is sponsored by True Crime by Indie Drop-In: https://pdsh.re/p/true-crime

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Source Material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Herrington

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/billy-herrington-gachimuchi

https://siivagunner.fandom.com/wiki/Gachimuchi

It's our anniversary! Thank you so much to all of our listeners that have been with us on this crazy ride. We appreciate all that you do and cannot wait to see what this next year brings. To help celebrate, this week we are releasing the heavily anticipated "Dahmer Episode" guest starring the one and only Eddy!

Jeffrey Dahmer and his crimes in the late 80's and early 90's shook the US. The murders of almost 2 dozen men and boys, many gay men of color, sent waves of fear through the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; in particular the LGBT community, which was already suffering through the turmoil of the AIDS epidemic, as well as prejudicial violence. 

Rather than discuss Dahmer and his crimes as a whole, Drewby and Yergy do a deep dive on how his crimes affected the LGBT community, and if there was any lasting effect today. We shed light on how Milwaukee for the time was something of an unexpected beacon for the community, developing progressive policies that became the model for anti-discrimination legislation that we see today across the United States. 

Eddy gives an invaluable first hand account of LGBT life in Milwaukee, as well as his own Dahmer connection, and how natives - both in and outside the LGBT community, view Dahmer's crimes and the effect they have on Milwaukee today. 

This week's episode is sponsored by True Crime by Indie Drop-In: https://pdsh.re/p/true-crime

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Source Material:

https://www.wuwm.com/post/how-did-jeffrey-dahmer-harm-milwaukees-gay-community#stream/0

https://www.wuwm.com/post/walkers-point-gathering-space-milwaukees-lgbt-community-75-years-and-counting#stream/0

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Drewby and Yergy cover the recent death of Mary Kay Letourneau, who was an American school teacher (and tabloid fixture of the 1990's) who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child, Vili Fualaau, who was 12 or 13 at the time, had been her sixth-grade student, and had allegedly also taught him in second grade. While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's child, a daughter named Audrey Lokelani. With the state seeking a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence, she reached a plea agreement calling for six months in jail, with three months suspended, and no contact with Fualaau for life. The case received national attention.

Shortly after spending three months in jail, the police caught Letourneau in a car with Fualaau. A judge revoked her plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence for the maximum allowed by law of seven-and-a-half years. Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter named Georgia. She was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004. Letourneau served her sentence in the Washington Corrections Center for Women.

In October 1998, Letourneau and Fualaau co-authored a book, which was published in France, called Only One Crime, Love. In 1999 a second book appeared, this one published in the United States, but written with only minimal cooperation from Letourneau, and none from Fualaau: If Loving You Is Wrong.

Letourneau and Fualaau were married in May 2005, and the marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. Letourneau died of colon cancer in July 2020 after several months of treatment, with Vili Fualaau at her side.

We dive into the hard questions - Did the media go too easy on Letourneau? Although now a legal adult, could Fualaau really make an informed decision after being victimized for years by Letourneau? If Letourneau were a male teacher, would the media still be hailing their story a fairy tale romance? Do boys get the support they need when preyed upon by older women? We speculate on all of these questions, share personal thoughts and experiences - and more.

This week's episode is sponsored by True Crime by Indie Drop-In: https://pdsh.re/p/true-crime

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This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss in great detail the Enumclaw horse sex case, which was a series of incidents in 2005 involving Kenneth Pinyan, an engineer who worked for Boeing and resided in Gig Harbor, Washington; James Michael Tait, a truck driver; and other unidentified men. Pinyan and Tait filmed and distributed zoophilic pornography of Pinyan receiving anal sex from a stallion under the alias "Mr. Hands". After engaging in this activity on multiple occasions over an unknown span of time, Pinyan received fatal internal injuries in one such incident.

The story was reported in The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005. It was informally referred to as the "Enumclaw horse sex case". After Pinyan's death, a video circulated around the internet of Kenneth Pinyan engaging in receptive anal intercourse with a horse. The video was nicknamed "Mr. Hands" or "2 Guys 1 Horse". The video, intended originally to sexually gratify the viewer, became one of the first viral reaction videos.

Pinyan's death rapidly prompted the passing of a bill in Washington prohibiting both sex with animals and the videotaping of such an act. Under current Washington law, bestiality is now a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

This week's episode is sponsored by True Crime by Indie Drop-In: https://pdsh.re/p/true-crime

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This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the little known case of Mary Cowan, who arguably is Maine's first serial killer. We also touch base on her connections to Lewiston.

Mary A. Cowan, known as The Borgia of Maine, was an American serial killer who poisoned two husbands (Willis W. Bean, and George H. Taylor), and four children between 1884 and 1894 (Gracie, Alice and Mabel Bean - as well as stepson Willis Cowan), and attempted to murder a third husband (Elias Cowan). Convicted of killing her step-son in September 1894, Cowan was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent off to the Maine State Prison, then in Thomaston, for the following two years.

In 1898, her examining physician turned to then-governor Llewellyn Powers with the request of pardoning Mary, as she was in failing health and wished to die peacefully in her Dixmont home. Despite her ailment, Mary gave birth to a child while in prison (an unnamed baby girl - referred to as Mary's final victim), but it, along with herself, died soon after.

Cowan, by then dubbed 'The Borgia of Maine' by the press, was first interned at Etna, where her parents lived, but her body was then moved to the Sawyer Cemetery in her birthplace of Plymouth, where she was buried on the family plot with her murder victims.

This week's episode is sponsored by Podcorn: https://podcorn.com/

Burial Plots of Mary and her Victims: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82040802/mary-bean-cowan

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This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the tragic death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.

The body of Elisa Lam was recovered from a water tank atop the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on February 19, 2013. She had been reported missing at the beginning of the month. A maintenance worker at the hotel discovered the body when investigating guest complaints of problems with the water supply. The person who found her soon left the country due to mysterious circumstances.

Her disappearance had been widely reported; interest had increased five days prior to her body's discovery when the Los Angeles Police Department released video of the last time she was known to have been seen, on the day of her disappearance, by an elevator security camera. In the footage, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering the elevator, talking and gesturing in the hallway outside, and sometimes seeming to hide within the elevator, which itself appears to be malfunctioning. The video went viral on the Internet, with many viewers reporting that they found it unsettling. Explanations ranged from claims of paranormal involvement to bipolar disorder, from which Lam suffered; it has also been argued that the video was altered prior to release.

The circumstances of Lam's death, once she was found, also raised questions, especially in light of the Cecil's history in relation to other notable deaths and murders. Her body was naked with most of her clothes and personal effects floating in the water near her. It took the Los Angeles County Coroner's office four months, after repeated delays, to release the autopsy report, which reports no evidence of physical trauma and states that the manner of death was accidental. Guests at the Cecil, now re-branded as Stay on Main, sued the hotel over the incident, and Lam's parents filed a separate suit later that year; the latter was dismissed in 2015.

Some of the early Internet interest noted what were considered to be unusual similarities between Lam's death and the 2005 horror film Dark Water. The case has since been referenced in international popular culture.

LordanARTS BrainScratch YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/user/GeekenDorx

Twist YouTube Conspiracy Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ckLZsNdkRY&t

Elevator Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZJCADL83X0

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In honor of Pride month, this week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the tragic case of Charlie Howard, a young gay man that was murdered in Bangor, ME in 1984, who never really received justice due to his sexual orientation. 

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This week, Drewby and Yergy cover the tragic story of Sylvia Likens. We draw comparisons to her case and that of Junko Furuta, and discuss the phenomena of bystander apathy, why no one in power stepped in to assist, why neighbors were apathetic despite numerous instances of public child abuse, and why neighborhood kids considered the ordeal to be some sort of funny sideshow or game, despite there being dozens of witnesses to her torture.

The murder of Sylvia Likens was a child murder which occurred in Indianapolis, Indiana in October 1965. Likens, aged 16, was held captive and subjected to increasing levels of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and torture, and neighborhood children were allowed to do the same if they paid an admission fee, which many did. These inhuman crimes were committed over a period of almost three months—by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, many of Baniszewski's children, and countless other neighborhood children, before ultimately succumbing to her injuries on October 26.

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