Reflections on Mental Illness

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Get a quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial. comot Progressive casualty insurance compompany and affiliates. disiscounts not available in all states or situations He gave me a book Forgery I found myself drawn to these O masters How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas I began to unlock the secrets. I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion present it to an experienced expert, manipulate his mind and convince him and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine We flooded the market with my paintings And I couldn't believe what I did. I couldn't believe it Then the domino started falling and eventually the FBI were led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you At this point, you've sold a lot. You've got like a million dollars in cash. You've sold one painting for seven hundred seventeen thousandars. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? How are we having this conversation? I guess it's the greatest story of all To hear how Ken Perei made millions in art forgery, dodged the mafia and the FBI, subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show and check out episode two hundred eighty two in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. Bread And I'm Alice And we are the prosecutors Today on the prosecutors. The word Yaki is entirely meaningless in all languages, except to one man Gunther Stahall Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my Him Zunuk Co host Alice. Is that an entirely meaningless Wd except in one language, except in one language It's probably entirely meaningless even. the way you said it really But it means mysterious Maybe. in Dutch, which is close to German. And we're in Germany today so I will take that.. So what you guys missed was Brett rehearsing this word. I didn't know he was going pick this one for like ten minutes trying to ruin So he cares. he cares. When you send these words in, boy does he care? And I get to sit here and laugh at his pronunciation, but it sounds so Dutch sounds so good in a Southern accent. I just don't know why all these words have to be so hard Wh you sound me like a nice Straightforward. word with like one syllable and easily Ponounceable mononosyllabic annglo word. Jeez, it's a good You know, that would be great Anyways. H Hopeprings a Turnal. Hope Springs a Turnal N nextxt episode. Hope Srings a Turtle. So Alice, always good to see you. Always exciting to start one of these new cases. And this one, as you all know, my favorite cases. or just mysteries. I know a lot of y'all love The murders. A lot of y'all love our deep dives and trials and innocence claims and all that stuff. and I get it. that's a lot of fun. But my favorite cases are just ure mysteries where something strange happens And we are left to grasp at the true meaning in more ways than one in this case. Oh, a teaser. I agree. And we've been on a roll. I think we are appving all the naysayers who say we cannot be short in pity with all these one episode cases so Look at us try to do this in one episode. I think we can. And it's a good mystery. This is a really good mystery So this case takes us to Germany I don't know last time we were in Germany. Was last time we were in Germany when we did Hunter Kafck? Hinter Kifck? Oh, I think what like Was that season one or two? It was like season one, yeah Ye one of the podcast. Well we're back in Germany. We're in West Germany because we're also going back into the eighties when West and East Germany existed into West Failure. So this is exciting. those of you who are in Germany, I hope you enjoy this one. If you have any thoughts on this case, we'd love to hear from you. But going back to nineteen eighty four, when thirty four year old Gunther Stoll was living with his wife in Anshausen West Germany He was a food engineer by trade, which by the way, you know, I feel like food shouldn't be engineered. I mean, maybe it's just me I think the fact that we We are living in the wrong times. incredible food we eat is engineered. I actually think about this. I'm like, I understand crossing, you know, like ara oranges. Have you had these before? They did not exist when we were children. I don't I think it's one of the engineered oranges. Do you know? I like those like cotton candy grapes. Cotton candy grapes, which I actually don't like because they're way too sweet. And they're like engineered. I'm I know this is also how nature works, but is this healthy? Like should grapes actually have this much sugar in it I don't know. Well Gunther, you know, was probably on the cutting edge of this because it was nineteen eighty four. So food engineer probably just meant like he added the die that made the fruit loops bright red. But any event, he was a food engineer He was in a period of unemployment. And he also was having some issues. Now, like so many mysteries, we have very little about what happened before the events were going to discuss, which is kind of disappointing because I think it would probably illuminate a lot of things, but all we really know Is it going into the period of october twenty fifth and twenty sixth of nineteen eighty four, he had been experiencing some mental health issues. had been. plagued by a moderate case of clinical paranoid. Now this is always described as a moderate case though I'm going gonna tell you what he was thinking Ss pretty serious to me, I don't know. Maybe it's just me. I was gonna say paranoia in general. I don't know if there's moderate cases. It's kind of like, I have a touch of anxiety. I'm like any type of anxiety is pretty Anxious, right? Ning. anxiousing anxious thing. And well, and in this case According to Gunther's wife and his close friends and family, he was very nervous. He was anxious and jumpy because he believed that They We' out to get him. Now he never gave many details on who They were But nonetheless, he seemed to be truly concerned for his safety. And you knows sometimes Are you paranoid or just right Whatever his mental state was, it would all come to pass One night he was sitting home with his wife and he suddenly had Tiffany one that would ultimately lead to his untimely death and create An enduring mystery that has far outlived him. One we are going to discuss So let's go back to october twenty fifth, nineteen eighty four. On that evening, Gunther stole, he's sitting at home with his wife cozy in his armchair But suddenly He jumped up and yelled I don't know how to say this. I don't speak German, not a lick of German, so I'm sorry for how I'm going to pronounce this. Suddenly, Gunther jumps up and he yells getmir in Lichtf, which loosely translates to Now I get it. So I'm really sorry. I know that's not what it sounds like in German. I did my best, but he jumps up. He's there's nothing going on. He's not having a conversation. This is not, he's not trying to figure out some sort of puzzle. He just jumps up and out of the blue says now I get it Google Trlate actually says, Now a light goes on for me is the literal. Tlation. poetic. Yes. Wow You can see quite literally a light bulb going off, but that's what he yells out When he does this, he quickly reaches for a piece of paper and a pen and he jotted down the phrase Yachtszi spepelled in all caps Y O G T Z E Or he wrote, Why O six TZE. So it's debated whether he intended to write a G or a six Almost as quickly as that epiphany began, it seemingly ended when Gunther crossed out the phrase he had just written downown Yogsy For what it's worth, it looks like a G to me. But G to the first power. All right, so he has this epiphany, the light goes off for him and then he crosses this word out, but he's not done. at this point. he jumps up from where he's seated. He goes outside, He gets into his Volkswagen golf MK And for those of you who've ever experienced a golf, rather small car, two door, like most European vehicles Pretty tiny and heads for his favorite pub because what are you gonna do when you've had an epiphany. What better time then to head down to the pub and have yourself He goes to the papillon whichich is Papillon pub, sounds delightful. Located in nearby Wilmsdorf So he gets to the pub shortly before eleven PM and he orders a beer. But Before he could even take a sip, this is the true tragedy of this case. before he could even take a sip of the beer. he collapses to the gam whacking himself on the face as he fail Now this was bizarre. because witnesses would describe him as anxious or possibly even distressed, but no one thought he appeared drunk and there's no evidence he had been drinking up to this point. But for whatever reason, He collapses and hits his head At this point, he doesn't stick around for questions or any kind of help. He comes to and he immediately leaves the pub gets back into his car and starts heading ostensibly in the direction of home at around eleven thirty TM So about an hour and a half after leaving the pub, it's now crossing into the next day, october twenty sixth at one AM Stol is spotted again, but this time in his childhood town of Heagerslbach, roughly ten kilometers from Wilnmsdorf Not home, but rather childhood home He shows up at the doorstep of an elderly woman who he'd known from his time living back in Hager's oldwalk So he knew this elderly woman from you know, way back in his childhood. Now considering it's one in the morning The woman does not let him into the house, but she did talk to him briefly He was paranoid and he was clearly incoherent Now, he warned the woman that something horrible was going to happen that very night. E if I knew you Bret, even if you came up to my door at one AM and you're speaking kind of in an anxious manner saying something terrible is going to happen, but you don't seem all together yourself. I probably would be pretty freaked out and I may not be taking you seriously. I'll think something's happened right So the woman is worried for him and she advises Gunther to go home or to his parents' house, but he's not well Now he nods in agreement and he leaves her steps So this point, Gunther, he gets back in his golf and he drives off That brings us to three o'clock in the morning. Now we don't know. What exactly happened over those two hours. But what we do know Is that it about Three o'clock in the morning on october twenty sixth Two truckers were driving along the Autobon A forty five When they spotted a Volkswagen golf in a ditch, near the Hagen Sud exit, which is roughly sixty two miles from Hagers Solbach So, you know, at this point, see Hagers Solbach was ten kilometers from Wilsdorf He's now sixty two miles we're mixing or mixing our distances, but whatever. What can we say we're doing our best as Americans Yeah from Hager Sobach. So he's just it's unclear where he's going and why he's going there, but he's headed off And as they approached the crash site, they both reported Sing an injured man Wearing a white jacket walking away from the scene. so just to orient you. These two guys driving lowong the road. They see the car in the ditch And there's a guy what looks like a man who looks like he's injured, wearing a white jacket walking away from the scene. But This is not Gunther because this is going to get even stranger. One of the truckers goes over to the car to investigate while the other goes to report the crash on the nearest roadside telephone. Remember it's nineteen eighty four, no cell phones. If you're going to report the crash You got to go report it somewhere else and they had these roadside telephones, which are fairly common back then and even now in some places. You'll have these emergency phones. So he heads off to do that You know, the other guy he goes down to the golf and he probably expects to find it Empty. like he didn't who this guy in the white Jacket is, but he probably thinks that's the driver. But what he sees is something very strange indeed. Gunther Stow is still in the vehicle. He is obviously seriously injured But even stranger. He's naked And he's in the passenger seat. So he's Now in the driver's seat, he's not wearing any clothes and he's very injured. Now he is clinging to life, but he is still able to speak to this trucker. And he tells him that there had been four other people in the car with him though he was Careful to add, these people were not his friends Now it's going tell. this a little strange Be as we said That means Five people in the golf. that would be a tight fit. They really piled in there found them in the last two hours in the middle of the night between one and three AM. Right So he goes on to say that he was traveling with these four strangers If we didn't know when they quote Beat him loose whichich I assume is like So sort of German idiom, right So they beat him up and they leave him alone in the car. He doesn't really explain how the crash happens. So there's a little bit of a gap there, but he's saying there's four men and the truckers they didn't see four men, but they did see one person Walking on So remember the other trucker had gone to report this crash and at that point, an ambulance arrived to transport Stole to the nearest hospital But unfortunately, he was very injured so much so that he succumb to his injuries on route to the hospital. An investigation into Stole's death began and it was quickly determined that his cause of death was vehicular manslaughter Strangely, his autopsy determined that he was actually run over by a different vehicle and that he was naked when he was run over Police believed that someone had run stole over at a different location and then placed him in the passenger seat of his own car That's about as far as they got in the investigation Police were never able to determine the identities of the four people reportedly with stole nor were they able to find the man seen walking away from the scene Sowl's shoes were located in his vehicle, but his clothes were never found They were also not able to obtain a copy of the Yardzi note as Stole's wife had thrown away the piece of paper earlier that evening, unaware of its significance Instead, she recreated it from memory for the police after the fact. However We don't have a confirmed image of that recreation But there are three images of this Yachtsy phrase that often circulate. So no, none of these are what Stol wrote. None of these are what Stol's wife wrote, and Stol's wife is the only other person who saw the note. But she did recreate it and others saw the recreation at one point So we're going to put these on the website prosecutorspodcast. com if you want to see them on one place. Or obviously you can Google it. We'll describ them for you if you're listening If you're watching now, if you're a patron, you're watching now, I'm putting them up on the screen But essentially What they appear to look like and Once again, these are all recreations, but I would love to see The recreation that his wife did. that would be a little bit closer, right But what appears to be is why And in the recreations, a lot of the recreations, the why is very prominent. and it's very clearly a why. We're going to get to a recreation later on where it's not. Another thing, if you're German I would be curious because one thing that people have speculated is that some of these could be numbers. So for instance, there's a y and then there's an O, but people have speculated, maybe that's a zero You know, in the United States, we don't often really differentiate between o's and zeros. Sometimes you put a slash through it, but a lot of times you would just draw it. I'm curious in Germany how you would write these letters and Would you actually mistake them? If you write in about that later on, we'll be sure to read that in a future episode But why o or zero G then what appears to be like an apostrophe or an accent mark or something after the G, which I would also be curious if you're in Germany what that might signify Then a te Then a Z sometometimes depicted as having a slash through it Sometimes Not And sometimes depicted as quite obviously a Z and sometimes looking more like it might be a. M. So this is commonly read as Yoy, which is what we've been saying. though it could be Y O G or posossibly even. Y O six. and Another recreation that people have done of this is with a sort of less Obvious Letters more numumbered. where If you flip it upside down It could be z two seven nine zero six and the accent mark would be a comma betweenzero two seven and nine zero six, which It could be all sorts of things, could be a number, it could be coordinates, I don't know what it could be, But these are possibilities for what this is Unfortunately, we're speculating about this and we're going to speculate later about what the meaning might be, but we don't actually have the original is destroyed forever There may be a recreation somewhere in German police files, but what we're relying on are recreations of a recreation I mean, that's not much to go on, right? I mean, this is farther than primary evidence, not even secondary evidence. So there's very little to go on in this case Except I will say at first, you all may have been thinking because I was thinking the first time I read this Oh He's just a guy who's having a mental episode Joxy doesn't mean anything. He hits his head so that Maybe he was concussed as well as having a mental episode and he's just kind of this crazy man having an episode and then crashed his car in the ditch Except for the fact that his autopsy really does show because you can imagine maybe he stripped himself naked and imagined he's with four other people. The fact that he was run over wild naked with someone else's car and then someone put him in the passenger seat of his car and left him there with these truckers seeeeing someone walk away? That's the part that makes this so mysterious because otherwise, I would probably file this away as a very unfortunate mental episode that ended in someone's death. And you know, you think about this sort of last message type thing. We've seen this before So when we did Ray Rivera Way back. early in the podcast We talked about in that case, Ray Rivera seemed to be suffering from some sort of mental issues, some sort of mental illness Unclear exactly what it was. People debate that and dispute it. I think it's pretty clear that he was. And one of the things he left were ridings, fairly extensive ridings much more than Yoxy taped to the back of his computer before he died. in what appeared to be a suicide that some people have thought. been murderered in very similar in some ways paranoid Things people are following. Ths people are out to get him Write something down disappears. noobody can find him. He's then found dead in strange circumstances. a very similar case. Another case we did was the Brandon Lawson case, which you may recall has it's not a writing. it's a nine hundred and eleven call. very Unusual, strange, evocative nine hundred eleven call where you have him giving this message to a nine hundred and eleven operator that kind of like Yachty, you can't even understand what the words are at times. You can't even really follow what he's trying to say and he certainly can't put it together in any sort of coherent narrative A lot of people thought All sorts of things were happening. We speculated that probablyrob unfortunately he was under the influence of some drugs was hallucinating and probably just died in the wilderness. That was later confirmed. His body was found not very far away from his truck. took several years to do it. A lot of searching because It's oftentimes just difficult to find people. found his body very obvious that he wasn't shot, he wasn't murdered He got in the elements and There was nothing to what he said. I feel like this is really difficult for us We all want to make sense out of chaos. We do it all the time. You look up at a cloud and you see a rabbit. I mean, there's not really rabbit there, right? That's something we do. It's part of being human. It has some advantages if you're out in the wild and you're trying to tell whether or not that's a tiger in the bush or just a bush You know, it's important. but we're always looking for that and it bothers us and we can't find order We have that here. We have this very sort of chaotic thing, this chaotic story And this note, and you think. if we could just figure out this note We would know what happen. but very difficult to do, especially given that we don't even have the original So as Alice said, there's not a whole lot to go on here. We have what the truckers saw. we have what Gaonthther said right before he died, and we have the note and the story sort of goes cold And for forty years, it was the source of a lot of speculation A lot of conspiracy theories, really trying to figure out what happened. And then in April of twenty twenty five, so just last year. The case was actually closed And the way it was closed and the revelations from the closure have in some ways raised more questions than answers and have led some to wonder Whether maybe Door really was involved in something and there's some sort of cover up going on because what the police will tell us is completely different from what they said. way back in nineteen eighty four. So the Hagen police presented an update on the case. They had decided to reinvestigate this whole case for some reason. They're going to reinestigate it And they determine The Gutther stols injuries actuallyctually did not match up with him being driven. Over. which let me just say. That doesn't seem like something you would get wrong if you were the pathologist. Like that seems like something that has some very obvious hallmarks Like what tire treads are different than the tire, you know, like just like the injuries to your body from being run over I would think would be very specific And If you get run over Unless something really strange has happened Th That means somebody else is involved. And then you have the other indicators of someone else being involved, you have the guy wandering off and you have Gutther talking about four people. But now the police are saying Never mind No, no, he wasn't runver So they go out and they reconstruct the event. And in fact, they determine, not only was he not run over. They say he died as the result of a single vehicle accident, You know, maybe some of you are thinking about the Silkwood case, right where we talked about that a lot. 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Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies Try it at progressive. com Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states So what caused the accident is unknown But the investigation concluded, that Gunther was not wearing a seatbelt when his car left a forty five and hit a patch of trees According to them, the force of the crash then catapulted him into the passenger seat. So he gets into this wreck and he's thrown from the driver's seat into the passenger seat. I mean, I'm no physicist. That just seems like a strange way to fall, right? I mean, most people who are not wearing their seatbelts get catapulted from their seats, but usually through the windshield rather than sideways Well I will note There is a photograph of this vehicle available And it shows very clear damage to the center of the hood And one would think If you hit the trees and you're not wearing a seatbelt And you hit something dead on such that it collapses in the center of your hood. that that would throw you out through the windshill. I mean that's we see that all the time. That happens all the time But instead, you have this very strange circumstance. where Gunther is not thrown through the windshield But he's thrown into the passenger seat It seems a little strange And I'll just note They don't find as close. So was he driving naked, which is Absolutely possible, I guess No, no He did have his shoes on. He did haves or at least had his shoes in the car. The shoes maybe the force of the cataple removed his shoes The only thing that he was tried. Now long That's possible, right And we've been talking about how he's having these mental issues. He's having his mental breaks We have two hours they're unaccounted for. And he wasn't that far away. I mean, remember, he goes He sees this lady that he knows at around one AM He sees her in Hager Soelbach He's only sixty two miles away from Hager Solbach when these truckers find him two hours later So it would have taken him about an hour to get there. Golf didn't drive very fast, even though he's on the autobon He's put putting along. It's t about an hour to get there, but he's got an hour that's uncounted for Could he have removed his own clothes? Sure, you see that oftentimes. We've seen that in several cases where people apparently have removed their own clothose. The Jason Landry case we talked about where Jason Landry, he's driving home, He gets into a car wreck. We end up finding his clothes and his backpack not far away from the accident. the police didn't even bother the search they didn't see it. He hasn't been found since But unless you think he was abducted and then forced to undress, I think most people think he hit his head. and then took his clothes off. And remember Whatever was going on with Gunther, we have multiple sort of incidents here. You've got his prior mental issues. You got Yaki Then you got his collapse, his sort of unaccountable collapse in the pub Then he hits his head. Then he takes off So he's got a lot going on, which maybe could have led to him being unclothed, but as Alice notes, the only clothes you're finding in his car are shoes Where'd everything else go? There was at least one other stop Right where the clothes were left Exactly. And as we're going to see, the police are going continue to poo pooh this theory that maybe there are other people involved. But Whver he's going, would it be that crazy that he runs into somebody? You know, that somebody sees him Throwing his clothes in a bush or whatever, Taking his clothes off So we have the police. They're now saying he was not Run over. He was in a car accident His injuries are from that accident, but he's not thrown out of the car, which is often what happens and often causes a lot of injuries. Instead, he's thrown into the passenger seat where he is He did die from injuries and they'll say that he died from car accident injuries This is very peculiar because you would think that this is the most miraculous way to actually get hit where he doesn't go through the windshield. The windshield, if you look at the picture is not I don't think it's smashed. It doesn't look it smashed. It doesn't look like it's smashed. In other words, there's no blood force trauma from catapultting off the windshield, let's say. And so he's somehow essentially like Rolled to the passenger side seat, but that action, which did not break any windshields was enough to kill him That's really peculiar too because it's not just the positioning of where he is or the lack of clothes. It's also that whatever led him to I wouldn't even say Cataple. I'd say like essentially roll into the passenger seat was enough to kill him. Yeah, and and I just got to say like And it it's a small car. so I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here. We spend a lot of time talking about how Most conspiracy theories are faults But when you just read what the police are telling you, it doesn't seem to line up with anything we've heard at this point. This is not like a a slight variation or well we always thought this was a possibility and now the police have be able to confirm it. It's a Everything we knew for forty years. If you listen to a trrue crrime podcast before April of twenty twenty five The story you'll get is completely different becausecause they didn't have any of this information. And it's completely different. It could be more different, right Then the police say that they are able to determine that there was no foreign DNA in the car Now I got lots of questions. I got a lot to say about that. What? nineteen eighty four. They don't know DNA. They don't know to collect DNA. So even if they knew to collect DNA, they didn't have the foresight to know where to collect DNA. So the fact that they have no foreign DNA in the car only tells me that it's nineteen eighty four DNA is so barely understood at that point. that unless there are like buckets of someone else's blood, which I'm not even sure they could totally tell of someone else's blood at that point they would have known to collect it. So for an april twenty twenty five reinvestigation to definitively say there's no foreign DNA seems like a wild grasp that can't possibly be rooted in that case file. I mean, I don't think maybe I'm wrong. and unfortunately, They didn't release the report this is just there's a lot of public reporting on this. they made a lot of public statements about it. I really wish Police departments. When they did something like this they would release a full report. That's so helpful when they do that. And you're able to read it and really understand what they're trying to say You know, in this case, I don't think there's any way they kept that car for forty years Maybe they did. You know, Maybe that car has been sitting in a German pololice lot throughrough reunification, through forty years of change just sitting somewhere. And then in twenty twenty five, they're like, oh, we should see if there's any DNA in it Maybe that happened And if you're in Germany and you have more information on this, we'd love to hear it. We'll do a whole update on this case when the Germans wride in. Is the Germans when they wride in But I don't think they did that. and if they didn't do that, number one, even if they did Even if they did keep the car for that long. I don't think there's any guarantee that anybody was trying to preserve DNA because they didn't know what DNA was so I don't know why they'd be doing that. So like Alice said. And even if they had blood, all that would tell you is there was no blood from someone else in the car. And Gunther doesn't say anyone was in the car with him when the wreck happened. I mean, this is a little weird, right? It's possible that They went somewhere, the guys got out. he's trying to get away and that's when he loses control. That's a possibility, right? For instance But Assuming they didn't keep the car, even if they did keep the car. I don't know think there's any way they would be able to say there's no DNA in that car. They certainly didn't swab for DNA at the time. So I don't know how you say this I don't know you say this. Even if you had the car, I don't know how you say it, but I don't think they had the car. So the whole thing feels I'm not gonna to say it's a cover up because why would you cover up something that happened in nineteen eighty four with a twenty twenty five report? That doesn't even really make sense It's not like people honestly, you could just close the case and no one would know anything, right? because it's not like it was at the forefront. And the police close cases all the time and it's just like administrative. And honestly, doing this just brought more attention to the case Because before this it was just people who were interested in quirky little mysteries out of West Germany who talked about this. All of a sudden you're going have this big report on it. That's going to bring more attention to it. So it doesn't make any sense that you're doing this as some sort of cover upp, but it also feels very strange. I think You should look at reinvestigations with the same skepticism. You might look at the initial investigation because there's no reason to think Well we're all perfect now. We made so many mistakes back in ninet andy four, but now we're perfect. so if we did a readvestigation, well, then it' that's what happened You can't trust those original guys So I don't know. I just think it's a little strange But nevertheless, they closeed the case. Now It is one of the most unfulfilling closures you're going to have because They do not explain what Yogi means. In fact, they say it's completely rerelevant And maybe they're right. They basically say, look, you had some sort ofamental break He got in an accident, he died, whatever happened before, completelyir relevant Now know it was kind of like Ma Murray, Ma Murray got into a car wreck and walked into the woods and died Whatever happened before that? complepletely irrelevant. Doesn't really matter. Okay. I mean Maybe, right? But It's kind of weird they just happened to happen on the same day. Anyway, so it has nothing to do with it. They don't believe any of these men existed because they say, you know, he's suffering from paranoia and depression. He's been acting strangely. He probably hallucinated all four men. The problem with that The trucker saw somebody Like the truckers very specifically say they saw a man in a white jacket who appeared to be injured walking away from the area of the wreck Maybe a coincidence, but that's a lot of specificity Man, injured white jacket. It's not just they might have seen something in the distance moving. They actually saw a man No explanation for that. from the police either. They also just say that's a coincence. So the official position of the German police is mystery solved, nothing to see here. He died in a single car accident while the rest of us are lurking around and say, is the solved in the room with us? Well, since they didn't, in my mind, solve it Let's try to dig a little bit deeper because maybe this is nothing more than a man who had an unfortunate mental episode, stripped off all his clothes, got into a wreck somehow, and maybe the person in a white jacket was just a Good Samaritan trying to see if you could help A little curious because other good Samaritans were driving cars and this person was not reported to be from another car and has never come forward to say I was a good Samaritan. He clearly was very injured, evenven though he was alive, I walked away callall the police, right? Let's dig a little bit deeper then, because Though the police said Yagsi had nothing to do with this It is The start of kind of a domino effect of what ultimately led to his death that night. He was just at home. If he would have just stayed at home with his wife None of this would have happened, right But He said a light bulb went off in his head. He got it And up until this point, remember, he hadd been experiencing paranoia and he had thought that they, we don't know who they is, are getting him O onn october twenty fifth, when he shot up and said, I got it. He wrote down something that looked like Yoxie. So what does Yoxie mean This might not be a surprise to you, but Yoxie does not mean anything in any language So obviously deciphering exactly what it could mean is difficult, especially because people aren't even in agreement that Yogasy is what Gunthther wrote The part most in question is the letter G whichich many people speculate may have been a six Yet others have speculated that the O could be a zero and that the Z is a two In other words This is generally what it looks like, but we're not even sure if it's letters or numbers So if all of these are correct, that would make Gunther's message Y O six He T E notot a word. but a mix of letters and numbers. And the thing with that is That does mean something That's the call sign to a Romanian radio station There's no known connection to this radio station So it's possible that I mean, there's actually so many iterations, right? Every letter could be multiple different things Is it just possible that Somehow this happens to be the Romanian radio station call sign Or did it mean something more Yet other people speculate that maybe this is the license plate number And maybe the car was connected to his death Maybe he knew something and he wrote this down and it was not a word or a radio call station sign, but rather a license plate. Now This did happen hours before he was killed so at the time a foreshadowing, it's unlikely I don't even know my own license plate number to be honest. So for him to foresee that he was going to be killed Maybe run over by another car and write down the psychic The psychic license plate number seems A little unlikely. Yeah, a little bit A little bit. Now, there's also a problem that German license plates actually begin with a city code, which doesn't match what he wrote down at all. So while In principle, you could probably imagine A license plate At this time in Germany, this wouldn't have matched any license plate So another popular theory is that the message was related to his work as a food engineer or was scientific in some way. had something to do with his science background. someome people have said, lookook, Yoxy is an antagram For Zygot. there you go Solved it So Zygoe, you might be thinking, well, why would you write Zygoe? Why would you write an English? word Well it's an Englishd it's Gree And Zigo would be the same in German So if for some reason he' thinking about Zygoats, but they don't want write Zygoat down Maybe he wrote Yaxy doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but that's, you know, people. People are doing the best they can, a little bit of a stretch Maybe This is some sort of genetic modification thing, which would be A little early. it's nineteen eighty four so I don't know that. I don't even know the DNA. Yeah. I don't know that Gunther food science engineer is thinking about some sort of like Kammeric DNA Food thing and that's what he's doing And then some people thought maybe it's somehow a reference to something that Gunther was aware of or witnessed in his job and he's trying to think of a way to convey it. And that's what the Eureko moment was. This is how he's going to convey to the world. What he's seen, though if that's what he's trying to do It hasn't worked. So along the same lines, others have pointed to the last three letters of this message TZ E TZE is a flavoring used in yogurt, so it's possible that Gunther knew what it was, but it's not clear what sort of meaning that would have been here because there is this kind of like apostrophe or ka between the first three letters and the second three letters. but what's a Yog flavoring Yogurt flavoring, maybe that's what it is. But again, that's not clear that this would have any sort of meaning The biggest isue with the Yogy note in general, obviously, is that we're only relying on Stol's wife's memory of these strange string of letters Since this note was thrown away, there's no way to confirm if this was even what it said becausecause at this time, I mean, she didn't think it was important enough to save and it probably wasn't because he was probably spouting off a bunch of paranoid things at this time anyway. And so we don't even know that it's Yogi or any iteration of what it looked like. That's just what she remembers But even if we could determine the meaning of this note, please don't believe this has anything to do with his death Weich like I said' very unfulfilling. Okay, so we know the official view before we get to our theories. we know the official view of what happened here and the police. Let's talk about some alternative theories And This is a case We're going back to our roots Because there are people who believe that what actually happened here was an alien abduction. and this is a timely episode becausecause, you know, the United States government is releasing all these files Ab aliens, It's the biggest non story ever, but nevertheless A lot of you are following that closely And Hey Maybe it all will be revealed. Maybe somewhere in those files is Gunther stoes abbduction. Some people believe that he could have been abducted by aliens. And there are a few things that actually suggest that might have been what happened. Number one There are hours unaccounted for that evening when the abduction could have occurred. Missing time is a very common thing in alien abductions. You see it a lot because that's when you're up in the mothership And then, you know, you're driving along, it's nine o'clock, you blink and all of a sudden it's midnight and you're like, what happened? Well, that you were being tested on by the aliens and they put you back in the car and you didn't even know and you lost those time. So that's a possibility Gunter lost that time time. alsoso what is Gur He's naked And everybody knows when aliens abduct you, the first thing they do is take off all your clothes because they're into that aliens They're into that. So you know, wear his clothes on some planet on the other side of the galaxy. you're never going to find them because they took them with them and take his shoes They just took his clothes So there you go that also points to alien abduction. They drop him back in the car He's freaking out He's probably trying to get away. He's naked. He doesn't know why. How could those four people fit in that small car becausecause they were tiny little aliens, little green men in the car, they weren't friends, but they weren't people either. Those are the aliens and that's what happened to him and that's how he died. and maybe Yogsi was somehow related to the aliens. I don't know exactly how But could have been And maybe that's why they got him because he knew About the aliens, watchatch out. If you're looking through the files, search for Yoy ee it comes. mayaybe that's the name of there their plan For all and know Anyways, so that's the possibility alien Abductions. But I will say, I'm pretty much an expert on alien abductions at this point. Usually when you lose time, you lose a little bit more than just like an hour or two. So it's true. He didn't lose like thirty years. whatever Or even like six weeks He lost a couple hours and to be honest when I get lost That's about a big amount of time it takes me to find my way back. So small things, I'm not going to say I don't believe, but there's not actually like This is not your typical loss of time, shall we say? And they left his shoes on That guess they don't have to test his feet, just the rest of his body. You feet aliens all like feet Now one thing I'll say and Alice points this out and this is true The missing time, even if you're not tal about alien abductions is often focused on in this case because there is time that's hard to account for. and you can imagine any number of things were happening during that period Recall, a few things Number one, he didn't have Google maps. So particularly given that he seems to be driving to different locations There's no telling what route he took Just because he's sixty miles away doesn't mean he drove sixty miles straight. That's the first thing. Second thing, he seems to be driving erradically. It's not as if, for instance, we know he left work that day And it's a fifteen minute drive And he didn't arrive for two hours and we're trying to figure out what happened for that hour in forty five minutes. It's not a situation like that. He's not going anywhere in particular. We have no idea where he was headed when the wreck happened. So saying there's missing time I think is probably just incorrect. I think what really happened either walked around his hometown for a while before he got back in the car and drove off. or he drove aimlessly until he either met the people who were responsible for his death or was in this accident You guys have heard us talk about our absolute favorite blanket on the market and that's Lola blankets It's not just our favorite blankets now, it's become my go to gift for literally everyone in my life. I have a huge lola blanket on my couch in my living room and the first thing anyone does when they come to my house is wrap themselves in a lola blanket. 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There's a lot of unanswered questions I still don't understand how someone catapults into the passenger side seat without a seat belt, but not through the windshield. Now remember witnesses do say they saw someone walking away from the scene in that white jacket There was also other witnesses who recalled seeing a hitchhiker in the area that night If these witness sightings were to be believed, someone could have murdered Stole that night and staged it to look like an accident Many believe the motivation here would have been related maybe to his work as a food engineer. They really wanted Yeah Yogurt flavoring recipe. And I say that because we talked about the current conspiracy about NASA scientists or astronaut or whatnot I'm not saying that a food engineer isn't like the sexiest kind of person to be murdering for conspiracy theories, but it's not totally clear what like state secrets he may be holding or food engineering secrets he may be holding that would make him the target of this murder plot. Nonetheless People think that perhaps he was being targeted for his work Now, maybe Stole just saw something he shouldn't have Maybe he saw the beginnings of genetic engineering for food. and didn' he was going to be a whistleblower. Now the problem with this theory is that There's really no basis for believing that Stol had any insider knowledge of anything nefarious in the food industry. At the time of his death, he wasn't even employed. He was paranoid, he was unemployed. Proably honestly spiraling. because he was unemployed, because he had to sit at home all the time you know, we've being in a regular kind of Rhythm such as having a job can do wonders for one's mental health and the opposite is true too So he wasn't even employed at this time. He probably if he had any knowledge, what was he going to do with it? He didn't even have a job So He may have been murdered But I don't know that he was the target of some massive conspiracy to silence him because of his knowledge in the food engineering business Yeah. And so I guess that brings us to our theories in this case. I will say this I've been interested in this case for a long time I followed it when the new revelations came out The German police was very disappointed in what they said But I mean, look, I think we all have to acknowledge that Probably what happened here is Gunther was going through some sort of mental break and had an accident and got into a wreck. That it probably is what happened and that's how we died He probably was spiraling all day. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever know what Yogsi means I just I think only he knew and he's no longer with us. In fact, we don't even have the original Message But I I do think there's an alternative that to me is a little bit more satisfying and I want to I want to suggest that as a possible theory. and I'm interested to hear what Alice thinks about this. So I do think he was suffering from mental illness He was spiraling I have no idea what the Oxy thing means You know, it could be he was it's a code for something that only he realized You know, it could be one of those things. I don't know if this ever happened to you Alice Do you ever ever a dream and in the dream, the dream, it feels like you've stumbled upon something brilliant This happens to me sometimes as a writer. likeike I'll have a dream and I'll be like, wow, that storyline in that dream was awesome. I should write that down. so that I can write that story later. And I'll wake up and I'll write it down, right when I wake up, and I'll go back sleep Then I wake the next morning and I read what I wrote and I think This just makes no sense. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know why I thought that was so brilliant, but this is just Crown. Right? Is that ever happened to you? anything all the time? and not even in sleep Like I'll be in like school pickup line. I'm like, I got to write this word down. and I put it in my notes in my phone and I read it later. I'm like, I thought that was a good word. Like ye, That's not good at all. Yeah H or and I have written myself notes and looked at them later and had no idea what they mean. Like I've looked at the notes which are supposed to remind me to do something, remind me something, and read them be like, I have no idea. That might as well have been an alien. He wrote that because I don't know what that That wasn't me. That was some earlier iteration of me that no longer exists. And I think everybody's had that experience and it could have been something like that and the fact that he is in paranoia and he's dealing with mental illness makes it even worse that it's absolutely inexplicable to us and maybe it would have been inexplicable to him. But I think what we can say is that was going on He goes to the pub Maybe there's something physically wrong with him that we don't really even know Maybe he's not eating. Like why did he collapse? C been a lot of things. He could have been not eating, could have been not sleeping, it could have been some sort of mental health issue, could have been some sort of physical undiagnosed thing that even to this day we don't know caauses him to collapse, he hits his head Now we have you know, building on things He then drives to his hometown, which is a strange decision. He goes to this old woman's house. He talks about something terrible is going to happen tonight. Weerear his clothes? I think the simplest answer for that is somewhere between That old lady And where he ended up, he just takes his clothes off Maybe throw them out the window. Maybe throws them in the lake. Maybe throws them on the side of the road. And it's in a place sixty miles away from where he ends up that if somebody found them or saw, they would have no idea What those closes signify Why they're there. They would just think, wow, that's weird. There's some clothes on the side of the road. There's some clothes in the forest, right? So I think he leaves to Go wherever he's going to go, which I don't think he necessarily knows. I think he takes his clothes off, I think he leaves his shoes on I think At some point this is my I don't know that I think this, but this is my theory that fits the facts that we know. I think at some point he pulls that car over on the side of the road and gets out of the car And I think he's walking around naked except for his shoes in the middle of the road. And I think somebody hits him I think the police are wrong to say that he wasn't run over. I think that initial thought was correct. I think they hit him. I think they actually knock him out of his shoes I think four guys get out of the car they hit him They find him. He's like delirious. they get is shoes, Tham in his car, which is parked on the side of the road I think they put him in the passenger seat And they decide to stage an accident I think the other three guys then drove down the road a little bit The guy in the white jacket is either in the car and starts it moving towards some trees and then jumps out or whatever. He gets it going towards those trees. He gets out of the car, the car crashes, Gunther's still in the passenger seat because that's where he was because the guy driving was the one who directed it to the cars He then gets up, he starts walking back to where his buddies have parked just down the road. It's at that point the truckers show up. They see him walking away. He gets in the car with his buddies, they drive off, they never speak of it again. the initial review is actually correct He was hit by a car But then forty years later, the police look at it again and they decide, you know what? muchuch more likely is no one else was involved. This was just an accident. Could his injuries have been consistent with an accident? Yeah, so that's what we're gonna to say. That's kind of what I think happened. I think it fits with the facts and it fits with independent facts other than just what Gunther is saying and it means The man and the man in the white jacket are not just unrelated or hallucinations There was something connected to him, but still ultimately, it's the mental illness that led to his death Yeah, I know, we didn't talk about this beforehand, but as I was going through the facts, it hewed very closely to that. I think everything leading up to What ultimately killed him, and I think it was someone else, whether it was intentional or it was an accident and likely it was an accident because I think he took off all his clothes. He probably maybe he thought he had ants all over himself where he thought that someone was going to come get him and this way they couldn't find him if he didn't have his clothes on because they were tracking him from earlier. and he is quite literally like dancing in the middle of the road, not dancing, dancing, like joyfully, but because he is having a mental episode And it's three AM or two AM and a car veers around and they those guys were probably drinking because if they're out at two or three AM, they're probably coming back from the pub themselves and they may not have actually been thinking in their right mind, which is why they decide to stage an accident that It doesn't really look like an accident in the sense that they put their victim in the passenger seat. Like it probably would have been better if they put him in the driver seat his car in the direction, you know, put his foot on the gas or something like that. But I think that they were probably impaired and they were going to get in more trouble than just hitting a person. Maybe they were all drunk or something like that. I don't know if it those four people could have been two people, and he was seeing double. He had hit his head earlier in the night I think the Yogsi, the going to the pub, the hitting his head The driving off, the going and talking to the woman who he knew from his hometown but kind of knew, notot really knew. it's not like he was a childhood best friend or even his parents All of that was just a mental episode, unfortunately. Unfortunately I've had several people in my life go through very intense periods of paranoia and I don't know if this is the hallmark of paranoia, but at least in my experience, the people who are in the midst of paranoia, they can still speak to me and they see me. It's not like they can't see me. Always they're out to get me That is something I think that is very common in the paranoid. You're being watched like the Truman Show or the government has bugged all your phones, or we're all in some sort of hunger games where everyone is against you and we're all poolluting against you. every whisper, every phone call is something against you. and the paranoia is immense while that person can still do things like drive and Walk and write and even talk to you, like look you in the eyes and talk to you they are living in a different world. than the one that you see. And Everything was part of this immense, even if it was moderate paranoia earlier, I think something happened and we don't know The mind is an incredibly mysterious thing. I think the fact that he had moderate paranoia doesn't mean he had moderate paranoia that night. I think it was a ramp up to the immense paranoid break that he had at that moment. and that he stripped off his own clothes. And he didn't take off his shoes because he was probably outside of his car. And it would hurt to walk barefoot. And so he probably stripped off his clothes in a frenzy and that that was somehow going to save him or that was part of the plan to make sure they didn't get him And what happened next was either nefarious or an accent The only way I see nefarious is there's this weird person dancing in the middle of the road and You're with a bunch of guys in the car and you're all drunk and you're like, what if we try to hit that dfus who' in the car? Doesn't matter. I do think he was hit by someone else because he did not catapult from the driver's seat to the passenger seat. and die from those injuries I think he did see something, whether it was four people, two people. I think it was more than one person because I agree with you, the person who was walking away injured They may have been injured from the initial hit when a hit gunther or it may have been this staged crash They clearly were able to get away so likely there was someone else And I think this is incredibly sad. Really, I don't think there's a conspiracy or a mystery that Gunther was having a mental episode. It is a mystery who tried to cover this up, but I think it was probably something like an accident and they freaked out And I'll say this, the one thing I believe absolutely is the case is there was someone else in the car when the accident happened. And I think the person in white in the white jacket was that person whether it was what we just described or The hitchhiker. Somebody a hitchhiker was in that car with him and it happened. L I don't think the truckers made that up I think they made up seeing a man in a white jacket who appeared to be injured walking away from the scene the crime. And it amazes me that the German police so easily dismiss that Especially when it's two independent truckers who don't know each other, nor do they know Gunther. Right. That's incredibly powerful. So it's possible Gunther picked this guy up I mean, I guess if somebody stopped to pick me up and they were naked, I'd have to make a real hard decision about whether or not how desperate am I for a ride You know, I mean, I don't know exactly what happened there. I just think there's more to this. I think there's more to this than what we have. And Gonthther's paranoia led to it But As we discussed many times being paranoid. can put you in a place where something terrible can happen to you. And you know, we talked about and I can't remember his name and maybe you can remember his name or maybe someone in the chat can remember his name The man, he was from Canada, He ends up in Nashville. He's murdered very strange situation We covered the case. It's not the guy who ended up in Army fatigues in Washington. No, that's David Lewis. He came from Texas. This is a guy. Who? He was and normally I can remember this Blaair Adams, sorry, just took a second. So Blair Adams is a man from Canada. And what's crazy about these cases, we've covered so many of these sort of great mystery cases So many of them are tied to mental illness. It's really sad. Some of the greatest mysteries in true crime are really just mental illness and they're mysteries because we can't understand what happened And it's so weird and unusual because it's someone who's suffering from mental illness Blaair Adams, as you may recall very paranoid. visited a neighbor's house in the middle of the night, much like this saying that someone was after him then goes on a cross country drive ends up in Knoxville Tennessee Dad next to construction site in a very strange circumstance and we talked about What happened there Was it that someone really was after him and tracked him all the way there and murdered him Or did he in his very paranoid, unusual state run into someone and something happened and he ended up dead And I think that's what we have here. We have a man who was extremely vulnerable extremely apt to suffer something bad happening to him who may have either Putting himself in the circumstance where an accident was inevitable There was that case this week. The man who jumped over the fence at Denver Airport and ran on to the active runway and got hit by a plane and killed You know, that's Obviously someone who was in a very bad state who put themselves in a very bad place and ended up being killed C could have been something like that, could have been someone taking advantage of someone in that bad state. But what I am convinced of is that the German police's explanation is incomplete I just don't think That's exactly what happened even if they're right to point to the mental illness as the main problem Like you said, maybe it was purely administrative. They wanted to close out cases, but I think it doesn't do any justice to mental illness or to what happened here, obviously. And if anything, it's feeding the conspiracy theories in a case that I think, unfortunately, is not a conspiracy, is just mental illness All right guys. well, love to hear your thoughts on this, particularly if you're in Germany, what your thoughts are on this case, the German police, their position on this case, the letter, the note, what does Yogs seem mean to you? Do you have any insight on what might have been written Was it numbers? Was it letters? just really fascinated to hear your thoughts. so please shoot us an email Prosecutors paod at Gmail. com And like I said, we'll do a follow up either here or on legal briefs with whatever you give us shhoot us a message on social media at Prosecutorpod and all the various social media things. If you want to bring your thoughts to the gallery on Facebook Do that. It's a great place. So'll have a lot of fun there If you want to watch us record these and sort of see these pictures, you know, sort of live Please join our Patreon. It's only three dollars a month. You get to watch us record these episodes and you get the episodes early and ad free. Now if you want the episodes early and ad free, but you don't want to join Patreon, we also have Apple suubbscriptions. And as we always say Regardless, if you want to join any of those things, you will always get Our episodes eventually with ads That will happen. So you can do that for free and no times are tight for a lot of folks. All right, let's answer a question. So never trust bow ties Interesting name. I like that. Never trust Botaz N trust bow ties wants to know. We hear often about how expensive the death penalty is However, it's also used as a bargaining chip to get defendants to plea, which saves money Do you think in the grand scheme of things, it's a wasash for states and have it by saving the resources for those What do you think, Alice I don't think you have the death penalty just to be able to have a bargaining chip. And I think the cost of it is not because the death penalty is expensive, but because of what's built up around it. The courts have really messed up how we deal with the appeals. And the death penalty itself has created kind of this machine that where we don't execute people. So then it ends up being very expensive. I don't think we should have the death penalty just so we have something to dangle over people for purposes of plea deals I think we should have the death penalty for the most heinous of crimes because It is the deserving punishment and there's no rehabilitation. It is that heinous that person shouldn't be here. But I don't think that it should purely exist just for bargaining purposes Of course, that's a side effect when you have something that serious that it ends up being a bargaining chip that you can use But I don't like the argument that it only should exist so that we can have something worse on the table that'll make people come to the table because every single case, we shouldn't force plea deals Nobody forces plea deals. These types of cases end up having typically immense amount of evidence against the person. Everyone is entitled to a trial no matter how great the evidence is against you. That shouldn't be a cost saving mechanism If that makes sense There's the effects of having this and whatnot. Because when we talk about life and death I don't like to think about it as like an economic game of how we can save money with it It is true that it is incredibly expensive But I haven't done the economics at all. It Kind of makes me queasy to do an economic model of how much money it could be saving us because people are scared to get the death penalty and therefore take a ple deal. Yeah. so I just say this. I find a lot of the arguments yes death penalty be really stupid and the cost one is one of them becausecause it's either worth it or it's not. Like I don't actually care how much it cost. Number one. Number two, I think the cost argument is a little fake because it builds in things like litigation costs which includes things like the amount the lawyers you're getting paid. Those lawyers are going to work for the state no matter what. It's just whether they're doing the death penalty case or doing something else. I also think if you got rid of the death penalty and you go to lifeife without parole. You already have the anti death by incarceration movement. That's what they call it. death by incarceration You're going to have the same thing. If you whatever your maximum punishment is, I think you're going to see the same type of litigation costs. I don't actually think it saves money You make a good point about I do think it's nice when peopleeople like Brian Koberger can plead guilty spare the family that kind of p You know, I often wonder, if Richard Allen, if the death penalty had been on the table, would we have avoided all of this? Would we have avoided the fake innocence movement? Would we have avoided the pain of the trial? Would we have avoided the appeals I think at the end of the day, if you want to think about the death penalty, you want to decide whet or not you're for the death penalty.'t The dollars and cents and all that stuff, come on. We waste so much money in this country. It's barely even worth discussing the cost You need to decide for yourself whether or not you think someone like, you know we just had I mean, we we've intentionally avoided discussing this case, but Tanner Horner case, the murder of Athena Strand absolutely horrific case. No question he did it. He is one hundred percent guilty. He pled guilty. The only question was whether he got the death penalty To me, that should be your touchstone as a person. You either think he should get the death penalty or you don't. And if you don't, then I think you should be against the death penalty because that is a man who brutally murdered a child And we know we did it, there's no question about it For me, the death penalty is I don't think you can have a just society without the death penalty. That's just my position on this. It's my opinion. I think When something like that happens, when someone murders a child like that, If you as a society cannot impose a death penalty on that person, then you have failed that child and you don't actually believe in justice. I mean, I will go so far as to say there's some cowardice in that society because that society is not willing to face the awesome horrific Adea. of killing someone as society, killing someone taking their life because that is what justice demands. I think that is a massive burden on society to do that But I think if you want to have a truly just soety, you have to face that head on and say, yes, in cases like that, we're going to do that Now how you structure it, how you avoid innocent people from receiving it, thoseose are all debates I think we can all have But I think If you want to be four against death penalty Do it on a purely moral basis. Don't get sucked into these like Well, it's really expensive. I mean Yeah, justice is expensive It's a price worth paying. If you believe that's justice. If you believe that's justice, then that's like the primary job of society. Everything else is gravy provroiding justice, defending the people, those are the primary things you want your government to do for you. That's what you give up when you enter into society Fundamentally What you give up when you enter into society is the right to seek vengeance on those who wrong you That is a fundamental piece of the social contract You're agreeing that the vendettas that destroyed Sicily, We're not doing that anymore. We're giving that over to the government. We're giving up our right of revenge and we're trusting in the justice system to seek justice for us That is like The key And you know, seeking justice in the preamble of the Constitution, It's like the first thing that's mentioned So to me, decide whether or not you think it's necessary for justice. If you do, support it, if you don't, oppose it. That's how I think you should look at the death pent All right, on that easy simple question. Let's know what to think about de fing. Okay. All right guys. well this has been fun as always. probablyb next week we'll do something. I mean, it's always sad when someone dies and obviously Gunther Stroll died and that's a very sad thing for him and his family and I hate that it happened But probably we're gonna talk about something even more depressing nextext week. Alice, do you have any thoughts before we sign off for now You know, I think you made a really good point earlier about how many of the true crime cases that we cover are actually not about crime at all but about mental illness. And in these cases because they're so sad and this is forty years ago, it doesn't change the devastation that his wife faced and those who loved him faced by Especially in these cases of paranoia, it is so difficult because like I said earlier, you can continue to exist in your world. You just have like an added element where you're seeing the same things that the rest of us are seeing They have different import or different interpretation as to what's happening. Two people whispering and laughing are not just friends having a conversation. partart of a government conspiracy out to get you Because of that, it's incredibly difficult to spot and to get help But if you were able to be there for each other and to see this, you know, there were people with him at the bar that night. No one may have understood how important this was if someone had seen him dancing around down the side of the road without his clothes on, recognizing that this was, you know, someone who was deeply in need of help or maybe Instead of just sending him away that night, maybe someone calling his parents directly and saying, hey, maybe you need to come and get him Maybe there could have been a different outcome for Gunther Those are all the butts that we can't answer now. but what we can do is, as we've said so many times before Mental illness comes in so many forms And I don't think that our justice system or really even our society that we live in in the United States here. fully knows how to deal with mental illness in a way that is compassionate and treats the person with dignity. And while we're hopefully figuring this out, I know there are many of you who listen to this podcast who are part of trying to create you know, a system that is better suited to dealing with people with mental illness My only answer, the only way I know how to help fill those gaps right now is community, something that is very tenuous and has become much less common. Since COVID and really even before COVID, really since social media and smartphones