Where is the Line?

In part 2 of Massacre and Rape in Nanjing, we will explore the graphic rape, creative torture, and eventual murder of thousands upon thousands of Chinese non-combatants in Nanking.  We will cover the cover-up, and talk about the affect that research on this topic had on one very talented young author.  Much of what you are about to hear may sound made-up or unlikely. However, fantastic as it seems, the horrors outlined herein were actually visited upon the people of Nanking.  This. Happened.

The Rape of Nanking (Nanjing is the modern spelling) is an incident with no historic parallels and one that might represent the most horrific fortnight ever suffered by a human population. Over the course of this at least 2-part episode, we’ll hear stories of unborn children being cut from the wombs of expectant mothers… Of men buried to their waists before being eaten alive by hungry dogs… We’ll hear tales of forced incest, and violent gang rape.  And we’ll be talking about all of this occurring on an enormous scale.   Our topic today is an event in which, over the course of 2 weeks, 300,000 people were raped, tortured, and slaughtered.  

In 2009 a Kansas man named Shawn Parcells proudly began a forensic autopsy group that would eventually come to be known as National Autopsy Services.  Since then, Parcells has performed thousands of autopsies on bodies for which the cause of death was called into question.  In doing so, he’s provided countless heartbroken families with whatever peace can be found in finally discovering the truth of their loved ones' passings. 

Shawn Parcells has testified in numerous court cases relating to jurors his findings on victims' causes of death and helping them to either convict and condemn or acquit and redeem those who stand accused of dissociating bodies from their souls.  

Parcells has even found himself on CNN describing to Anderson Cooper his findings related to the police shooting of an unarmed black man named Michael Brown.

Shawn Parcells has provided peace of mind to grief-stricken families and has done the same for entire communities by way of local and national news interviews. He has given answers to seemingly unanswerable questions, and in the course of doing so has made himself the most recognizable dissector of human remains in Kansas City and throughout the rest of the midwest.

So, what’s the problem?  The problem is that Shawn Parcells is not qualified to be doing any of this.  How could this happen?  Why was a man with no credentials allowed to prod the interiors of thousands of human remains?  And how did he become so confidently prominent in a profession for which he was entirely unqualified?

That is the topic of this episode of Where is the Line?: The Goddamn Audacity of Shawn Fucking Parcells.

In the absence of resources, ingenuity tends to thrive.  There are few places where a person might find themselves more poorly resourced than in prison.  In a previous episode, the one with writer and former inmate Ryan Martin, we learned of homemade masturbatory devices that prisoners make from latex gloves and tobacco canisters.  This bold sort of indigent inventiveness will play a large role in today’s story.

One of the most endearing things about our new forensic autopsy specialist cohost Holly, is that she will from time to time, without context or warning, say things like, “today at work I had pull a domino out of a dead man’s penis”.  It was this sentiment exactly that led to today’s episode.  We’ve talked about genital modification before on Where is the Line?  In fact, our Shannon Larratt episode might rank near or at the top of our growing list of episodes that people have difficulty listening to in their entirety. 

The point is that even when performed by a professional and in a safe and sterile environment, the notions of genital modification and genital mutilation still just give some people heebie-jeebies.

Imagine now what happens when you take these same, to many people unsettling, procedures out of the safety and relatively regulated environment of a tattoo parlor, and instead perform them…  in a jail cell.  What happens when operations like these are performed without the benefit of sterile conditions?  What might someone use in the place of a scalpel when stainless steel is contraband?  And when pre-made silicon implants are unavailable, what items might suffice for implantation into ones most sensitive of areas? Find out on this episode of Where is the Line?

Have you ever ripped apart a deceased infant with your own two hands?  Have you ever stored a human brain next to the frozen broccoli in your refrigerator?  Can you differentiate between the smell of common road kill and the pungent and unique odor of a decomposing human body?  Have you ever removed maggots from human remains, covered them in acrylic paint, and then allowed those universally reviled larvae to crawl about a canvas unknowingly and unwittingly creating something that could be described as art.

It is always hard to say goodbye to a cohost, and this holds especially true for my talented, intelligent, and unfailingly kind friend, Robin. Being that I recently moved far from the soul crushing and astoundingly characterless town of Tuscaloosa, AL to a new pad in Kansas City, MO's "gayborhood", a lineup change was unavoidable. Finally, after months away from the microphone, we are so glad to welcome you all back to this new and optimized iteration of Where is the Line? - Where is the Line? Season 2, Kansas City Nights.

Everyone who listens to this episode of Where is the Line? will die. Your final demise will probably not happen anytime soon and will most certainly have nothing to do with having listened to this episode.  Still, you are all going die.  The fortunate among you may slide into the ether as you sleep, leaving behind a corpse that your friends and family will describe as looking “peaceful”.  Others may find themselves spattered onto a tree.  Regardless, assuming that you exit this horrible plane of existence in some way that does not disintegrate your physical form, the chances are pretty good that you are going to leave a mess.  A mess that someone will have to clean up.

Since I started this podcast, I’ve been trying to speak with someone who works in mortuary services; A person who has seen the worst of what we can do to ourselves and to each other.  As it turns out, and as is the case with a great many things, I should have just asked my mother.  It happens that she knows people in this gruesome line of work.

This might qualify as our first “live show”.  For this episode I travelled deep into the forests of Alabama... to my mother’s house.  On her back porch overlooking the Black Warrior river, I spoke with a pair who have worked in one of the most unsettling occupations in existence.  As we talked, a small group of family friends and neighbors joined us on the porch, and much like my interviewees and also myself, they were hammered.  I mention this not only to set a scene, but also to explain the background chatter, strange wildlife sounds, and the occasional heckle that can be heard herein. 

Explanations for the unusual audio artifacts concluded, I’d like to introduce you to Rachel and John Raymond, The Corpse Wranglers of West Alabama.

This is the story of a woman with a disfigured body and an irreparably corrupted mind. It is also a story about our own vanity and how it is reflected back at us every time we encounter someone who looks vastly different from what we consider acceptable. This episode's subject was a physical monstrosity from birth. Was her mind equally malformed from the outset? Or, was her degeneracy and depraved behavior something that was carved into her by the cruelty of those who surrounded her?

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As a consumer of macabre and grotesque media, you the listener may believe yourself to be already acquainted with the story of Robert Liston.  Thousands of websites, podcasts, and even peer reviewed academic journals and publications have recounted the fantastic story of an operation performed by Robert Liston which resulted in the deaths of not only his patient, but also of his surgical assistant and a bystander.  The story goes that in his efforts to expedite as much as possible the process of amputating his patient's leg, that Liston accidentally removed 2 fingers from his assistant, and whilst flourishing his knife about also nicked the coat of an observer.  The patient died on the operating table, the man whose coat was slashed died of a heart attack, and the assistant died some time later after the remaining stumps of his fingers became gangrenous.

This story has been recounted hundreds of times, each telling inevitably concluding with the clever summation that this was the only surgery in recorded history with a 300% mortality rate.  

If this is the story that you are hoping to hear, you might soon be disappointed.  That disappointment stemming from the fact the aforementioned and often repeated story of surgical buffoonery never happened. 

Robert Liston was however an extremely interesting character and one whose true story is filled not only with blood and questionable ethics in those agonizing years before anesthesia, but also with accomplishment and achievement.

So, how did everyone except Where is the Line? Get this man’s story so terribly wrong?  How do I know that everyone except Where is the Line? Is wrong?  Who really was Robert Liston and what might it have been like to go under his knife during the age of agony?   Find out on this episode of Where is the Line? 

Everyone makes mistakes. For most of us though, the consequences of our actions fall to ourselves and sometimes to those with whom we associate, but seldom extends beyond.  The residue of our missteps tend to erode away with time, until they are eventually forgotten.  Scars can remain, but over time, we tend to forget how we got them.

Occasionally though a mistake can change the course of history and even distort the face of the earth.  When the Khwarazmian Shaw humiliated and killed a couple of Mongolian trade emissaries, he arguably made one of the most consequential mistakes in all of human history.  This mistake would lead to the deaths of millions.  Borders would be redrawn. Family lines would end. Entire cities and cultures would disappear, and the Khwarazmian Empire would fall.

On this episode, we will be discussing the the pursuit of the Khwarazmian Shah by Chinggis Khan’s most reliable general, and one of planet Earth's all-time deadliest men, Subutai. 

Artwork for this episode was provided by Kevin "from Groveport" Edwards.  Thanks Kevin!  Check out more of his artwork on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/blackmoth7g

Late in the 12th century a young nomadic tribeswoman goes into labor under on the Mongolian Steppe.  Some claim that this woman’s child came into our world gripping in his fist a ball of coagulated blood, foreshadowing the millions of deaths that would soon follow.  Upon his birth, the child was given the name, Timujin.  If that name seems unfamiliar to you, it is probably because this child would eventually come to have a different name, a name rivaled maybe only by Jesus of Nazareth in terms of its attributed misery and murder.  This child would come to be known as Genghis Khan and his birth marks the beginning of an era that, that by its end, would bring about the violent death of more than 10% of the Earth's population.

On this episode, our focus is not on Genghis Khan himself.  Instead, we’ll be talking about the man who served as the Khan's right hand.  A general in the Mongolian army who was unnaturally gifted in the arenas of war and wartime subterfuge.  A man who, when unleashed, would chase his marks to the ends of the earth pillaging everything along the way and leaving mountains of the dead behind him. Like a ghost or a killer from a late 80s horror movie, this man’s targets would often flee terror, only to run directly into his blade. 

All those upon whom this man was set came to learn the hard way, that much like the Wu-Tang clan of our own time, Subutai ain’t nuth’n to fuck with.

Artwork for this episode was provided by Kevin "from Groveport" Edwards.  Thanks Kevin!  Check out more of his artwork on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/blackmoth7g