Unscrupulous

Episode 11 - The Stone of Destiny + Sherri Papini

Unscrupulous

We're gonna need you to start imagining bagpipes right about now.

Bec (they/them) starts us off in Scotland, where four Glaswegian students are ready to take back their nations history as they plan to steal the Stone of Scone...of Destiny.

Next Adam (he/him) introduces us to Sherri Papini, a kidnapping victim who is found wounded by the side of the road. Family and friends are thrilled at her return, until some of the details of her disappearance don't quite seem to add up.

Bec's resources:
https://ultimatehistoryproject.com/an-infamous-theft-the-stone-of-scone.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-63130942


Adam's resources:

Make sure to follow us on instagram @unscrupulouspod and send us an email at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com

[00:00:28.370] - Bec Rose
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Unscrupulous, the podcast where we talk dishonest folks whose victims always live to tell the tale. I'm looking at my beautiful friend, Adam Lawlor. How you doing, bud?

[00:00:44.660] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, I'm even better for having seen my excellent, good, gentle- them  Bec Rose off.

[00:00:50.930] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. Was that off the top of your head?

[00:00:54.020] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it was.

[00:00:56.530] - Bec Rose
I love it. That's amazing.

[00:00:58.470] - Adam Lawlor
There you go.

[00:00:59.220] - Bec Rose
Thank you. I'm going to hold that in my soul. I have nothing to say. Besides, I'm so excited to be here and I'm really excited to tell you my story.

[00:01:11.750] - Adam Lawlor
I'm beyond. I'm so ready. I just dive right in.

[00:01:15.790] - Bec Rose
We'll just dive. Prepare for a lot of Scottish brogue. That was not very Scottish accent.

[00:01:27.930] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it went all over the place.

[00:01:30.590] - Bec Rose
Excuse you. I put myself out on the line and you call me out. That hard.

[00:01:36.460] - Adam Lawlor
I'm sorry. But one time when I was a youth, I was collecting you were in.

[00:01:43.190] - Bec Rose
The UK where you were born?

[00:01:46.530] - Adam Lawlor
No, my family was collecting a friend from Pearson Airport and I was returning the luggage cart and I was in the elevator and there was one other guy in the elevator and I think maybe I was maybe 1213. And I still don't know why this happened. And he looked at me in the elevator at Pearson International and was like, Are you going to Glasgow? And I looked at him and for some reason I just went, no, I'm just here to pick up some frames.

[00:02:21.110] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[00:02:21.540] - Adam Lawlor
And then I stared forward and I.

[00:02:24.380] - Bec Rose
Was like, an attempt to show me up.

[00:02:27.120] - Adam Lawlor
I was just like, Please don't ask any follow up questions. It was the weirdest. I still don't know why I did it. It just happened. I didn't even make the choice.

[00:02:36.680] - Bec Rose
The story was just an attempt for you to say, yeah, I didn't like your accent, and suck it on this glosswegian one.

[00:02:43.990] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. I made it up. That's never actually happened.

[00:02:46.140] - Bec Rose
Thank you for humbling me. I appreciate it.

[00:02:50.680] - Adam Lawlor
I raise you up and I drag you back.

[00:02:53.030] - Bec Rose
Yeah, right. It's so good to see you. Your accent work not your best, I'm honest. In my defense, when I lived in Scotland, I lived in Edinburgh, not Glasgow.

[00:03:10.190] - Adam Lawlor
Which I'm still so jealous about. Every time I see any kind of picture of Edinburgh, I'm like, oh, why?

[00:03:16.830] - Bec Rose
Oh, yeah. I honestly will always consider Edinburgh like a second home. I miss it all the time, but their accents are very light. There the one I would hear quite a bit, the Scottish term. I worked at a hostel and it was in the middle of two pubs, and so often this Scottish word I would hear quite a bit, quite drunkenly slurred, was toilets. And you'd be like, Just up one flight, my friend. Toilets. It was ridiculous. Oh, my God, I missed it so much. So let's visit there, because that's where the story takes place. All right, so this is going to be a tale of deep Sculptish pride. So, in the UK, like, everywhere you go, there are rivalries for different countries. We hate being compared to Americans. Australians and Kiwis hate being mixed up. The same goes for every single country within the UK. But they have this added baggage of literally thousands, hundreds of thousands of years of battling over this land that they get mixed up over. So, yeah, there's deep, deep resentment, specifically of, like, England, Scotland. So it really pissed a lot of Scots off that their beloved Stone of Destiny was sitting beneath the throne in Westminster Abbey in London, England.

[00:04:52.750] - Adam Lawlor
Got you.

[00:04:53.840] - Bec Rose
Adam, I can hear you asking me, what is the Stone of Destiny?

[00:04:59.550] - Adam Lawlor
Tell me what the Stone of Destiny is.

[00:05:03.170] - Bec Rose
You need to calm down, my friend. I'm getting to it. Sorry. Don't rush all back. I go with my many names, most commonly being Stone of Destiny, but also Stone of Scone. OOH, just makes me hungry. Because it resided in Scone Abbey.

[00:05:22.470] - Adam Lawlor
Gotcha gain.

[00:05:24.250] - Bec Rose
It's just fun to say, gary, the documented history of the Stone starts around the time it was stolen out of Scone in 1296.

[00:05:34.890] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:05:36.170] - Bec Rose
But it had a history before that because someone stole it, because when you see it, it's literally just like a slab of granite. Maybe granite is not the right term. It's just like there's not much about it that you'd be like, OOH, I'm just going to take this. Like, it clearly had a history leading up to 1296, is what I'm trying to say.

[00:05:57.090] - Adam Lawlor
Right. If there was no lore surrounding it, you might just think it is, why.

[00:06:03.030] - Bec Rose
Would they take it? But it was stolen out of Scone when King Edward I took it back to England after the first Scottish War of Independence and he placed it in Westminster Abbey. He had it fitted in a box underneath a throne of his that is specially made.

[00:06:22.810] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:06:23.660] - Bec Rose
Have you heard of the Stone of Destiny before?

[00:06:26.170] - Adam Lawlor
No, I don't think so.

[00:06:27.690] - Bec Rose
Okay, so obviously, we'll put pictures up, but this throne is just like a wooden throne, and then on the bottom of it, there's just this added little compartment that the Stone slides into and it sits in Westminster Abbey. Okay. It has a very long history. There's various theories, all this stuff, but our story takes place in the 1950s.

[00:06:57.910] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:07:00.090] - Bec Rose
So we're going to fast forward quite a bit from the 1200s.

[00:07:04.340] - Adam Lawlor
Gotcha.

[00:07:07.750] - Bec Rose
First of all sorry. Before we come to the 1950s, in the 17 hundreds, the Treaty of Union was created and all coronations of monarchs following this were done on top of the stone.

[00:07:20.110] - Adam Lawlor
On top of the stone in Westminster.

[00:07:23.610] - Bec Rose
Abbey yes. To have this symbolism of residing over Scotland.

[00:07:29.470] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:07:31.250] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Scottish people don't love it. Okay. So now we're in the 1950s. Welcome.

[00:07:37.430] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:07:39.890] - Bec Rose
So, 1950s, a group of four young Scottish people decide it's time for the Stone to come back home. It has been in England since the 1200s. We were ready to see her come home. Ian Hamilton, Kay Matheson, Alan Stewart and Gavin Vernon hatched a plan to break into Westminster Abbey and take the Stone from underneath this throne and bring it back to Scotland.

[00:08:09.090] - Adam Lawlor
I love this. I loved every part of that sentence.

[00:08:12.510] - Bec Rose
Now when I say hatch a plan, it seems like they really didn't do much besides the thought process. We should bring the Stone back to Scotland.

[00:08:27.810] - Adam Lawlor
Got you.

[00:08:29.170] - Bec Rose
That was really the hatching of the plan and, you know, breaking action.

[00:08:35.490] - Adam Lawlor
What hatches forth from an egg but a newborn baby? Chick.

[00:08:39.290] - Bec Rose
Exactly. And in this instance, chick equals idea. It's all great. So right before Christmas Day, 1950, the four of them drive from Glasgow to London, which is almost a 20 hours drive.

[00:08:54.090] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:08:54.620] - Bec Rose
Wow.

[00:08:55.080] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:08:57.470] - Bec Rose
And it's also hilarious because it's a 20 hours drive to go from one end of Scotland to the bottom of another country middle. I don't know where London is in England. I know geography. Whereas in Canada I just Googled this the other day, for someone to drive from where we live, like Halifax to Toronto, is an 18 hours drive and you're only like a third of the way of the country.

[00:09:26.470] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's wild. And if you go the other way, if you leave from the Barry Toronto area and head like westward going around Lake Superior, you can drive for 20 hours and still be in Ontario.

[00:09:41.550] - Bec Rose
Exactly. It is insane. We would take the train from Edinburgh on one side of the country, 40 minutes on the train to Glasgow to the other side of the country. It was bonkers. So anyways, Ian is kind of the ringleader of they're all college age students. He also was saying how neither car had heat and that the super long ride was really uncomfortable. Shortly after arriving in London, they go to a cafe, a little bit of food, warm up, and they decide, let's just go take the Stone right now.

[00:10:26.870] - Adam Lawlor
Why not?

[00:10:28.090] - Bec Rose
I mean, we're here. So their thought that was Ian would slip into a dark corner of the Abbey just before it closed, and they thought that he could hide in there and then let the others in from like a side door on the inside.

[00:10:42.700] - Adam Lawlor
Gotcha. Gotcha.

[00:10:44.710] - Bec Rose
But the night watchman caught him pretty quickly. Ian pretends to be drunk and makes it seem like he'd been locked inside by accident.

[00:10:53.890] - Adam Lawlor
Pretty smart move, actually, for someone who thought that the previous plan would work. Thinking on his feet went pretty well.

[00:11:00.100] - Bec Rose
It was a good cover. Yes. The night watchman takes pity on him, lets him out and even throws some money his way, thinking Ian's like, down on his look. Bless. Years later, Ian says that that's the only thing he feels guilty about is taking that man's money. Okay, so the next day, Christmas Day, they try again. 04:00 a.m. Outside of Westminster Abbey. So I guess really like Christmas Eve night into 04:00 a.m. They had driven up one car and parked it to act as a getaway car. And Kay, who was the only girl in the group woman apologies. She's waiting in the other car as lookout. Okay, so they're outside of the side door trying to jimmy it open and there's this massive sun. Kay said she could hear it from inside the car and she was sure you could hear it, like, so far she thought they were caught.

[00:12:05.230] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:12:06.650] - Bec Rose
They like, pause, nothing seems to happen. And they continue on with that thud. They're in, though.

[00:12:17.740] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:12:18.110] - Bec Rose
They go over to the throne and slider out from underneath. So here's the thing about the stone. It's not granite. I don't know anything. It's sandstone.

[00:12:31.090] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, no.

[00:12:31.800] - Bec Rose
It's just a slab of sandstone weighing about 336 pounds with two chains on the side of it. And again, proving really not how much thought went into this. They didn't know how they're going to get it out of the building, let alone to Scotland. So they think of using Ian's coat to drag it along the floor. But when Ian grabs one of the chains of the stone, it fucking breaks.

[00:13:06.490] - Adam Lawlor
No destiny.

[00:13:13.790] - Bec Rose
I literally wrote in my notes, I'm so excited to hear Adam's shocked laughter here.

[00:13:23.390] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, God. I felt like all my organs just dropped.

[00:13:31.650] - Bec Rose
But it sort of worked out. Ian, ever the optimist, is like, well, now the weights distributed a little differently. So the one chunk weighs, like, 90 pounds on its own. Ian describes picking it up and running with it like a rugby ball, which seems unnecessary, but, yeah, this sounds like ideas based on adrenaline alone.

[00:13:55.830] - Adam Lawlor
That's fair. Yeah.

[00:13:57.480] - Bec Rose
That sounds like a stress dream. Like pulling it and it breaking and being like, what the fuck?

[00:14:03.350] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Oh, my God.

[00:14:05.860] - Bec Rose
So he just, like, runs out the side door with the smaller piece. The other two are kind of like kay is in the car, she sees him coming out, and then at the same time, she sees a policeman coming down the lane and she knows Ian is going to be seen for sure if he runs across. So she pulls up really close to the door. Ian throws the stone in the back seat and he tosses his coat on top of it and he jumps into the front seat. And thinking quickly as the policeman approaches their car, he throws himself on her and they pretend to be fooling around.

[00:14:45.290] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. This is a movie scene.

[00:14:47.810] - Bec Rose
What? Yes, there is a movie based on this, by the way.

[00:14:52.210] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:14:53.870] - Bec Rose
So they're like, oh, we're newlyweds, we're visiting and we couldn't get a hotel for the night. And so we decided to sleep in the car. And obviously it was sexy time. So the cop, like, buys it and they have this friendly little chat. And with that, the cop is like, you know what? I'm sorry, you guys can't stay here. Have a great night, blah, blah, blah. And he leaves. So I read two different accounts here. One says that Ian and Kay drove off. Like, the cop is saying, Sorry, guys, you can't stay here. He gets in his car, he watches them drive off.

[00:15:34.890] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:15:38.810] - Bec Rose
But Ian returns back because he realized that he had dropped the keys to the second car.

[00:15:53.730] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:15:55.090] - Bec Rose
The other account just said that he went back to the church and had sent Chaos on her own and went back for the other piece.

[00:16:03.750] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:16:05.030] - Bec Rose
I believe in the movie, they depict him having dropped the keys, but he lucks out because he steps on them really quickly and finds them near the side door.

[00:16:16.720] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:16:18.330] - Bec Rose
But either way, he gets back to the Abbey and it seems empty because the other two thought that they had been abandoned and so they just dipped.

[00:16:28.030] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, no.

[00:16:29.690] - Bec Rose
They didn't take anything with them. They're just like and walk?

[00:16:33.900] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. They like, what are they going to do with you said the other one was 90 pounds, so this one's like, 210.

[00:16:39.870] - Bec Rose
And they have no car like weighting? No, they have a car. They just don't have keys to said car.

[00:16:47.410] - Adam Lawlor
Right. But I feel like that would make me even more paranoid that I had been screwed over. I think it's like, you get to the car and you're like, oh, my God, they're gone. Their car is gone and we don't have keys and we're left with the broken evidence. Okay. I can understand not the most level headed team, but yeah, no.

[00:17:13.610] - Bec Rose
And if there wasn't planning that had gone into it in terms of, like, this is what's going to happen, and if they heard a cop come and they panicked, it sounds like this was very whim every decision. So Ian is alone in the Abbey and he decides he's going to have a go at the larger piece.

[00:17:37.810] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. All right. Go, Ian.

[00:17:39.950] - Bec Rose
He puts it on his coat and just inches that motherfucker along the floor.

[00:17:46.540] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:17:47.350] - Bec Rose
All night long. Yeah. He drives away with the keys and half of a historical relic just as the sun begins to rise. Christmas morning, 1950.

[00:18:03.450] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:18:04.730] - Bec Rose
And who does he pass on the road? The other two people that were in this team, he picks them up and they meet up with Kay. They decide to bury the larger piece of the stone in Kent and Kay hides the smaller piece at her friend's place in Birmingham Biminum.

[00:18:28.510] - Adam Lawlor
Birmingham Biminum.

[00:18:30.430] - Bec Rose
Because it's in the north. And then she somehow makes it back through the roadblocks back into Scotland.

[00:18:40.090] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:18:40.730] - Bec Rose
Being a cute young girl. So, obviously this theft was discovered immediately, like it's an abbey on Christmas morning. I'm sure there was an event planned there and for the first time in 400 years, the borders between Scotland and England were closed.

[00:19:07.550] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. But you said so is the rock exposed under the throne, or was it in like a oh, it is. Okay. Oh, my God. Guys, like, even just put a picture of the stone. There, like, bundle up a sweater.

[00:19:29.500] - Bec Rose
I don't know who's got a gray hoodie on them.

[00:19:35.590] - Adam Lawlor
It's like pockets full of loose gravel. Oh, I was for some reason, I had pictured it like a drawer that you pull open and then you take the stone and then put the drawer back.

[00:19:53.500] - Bec Rose
But yeah, more of like a little open slot.

[00:19:59.230] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. Yeah.

[00:20:01.140] - Bec Rose
The stone just fits in, and then you can barely see. Yeah. And then the stone is just, like, underneath the seat of it.

[00:20:08.360] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Okay.

[00:20:10.130] - Bec Rose
So Ian claims that his original plan was to leave the buried piece beneath the ground until all of the attention died down. But it was December, and there was cold temperatures, and the stone hadn't really been exposed to the elements in, like, some 600 years. And so him and some new friends went back. Just get more people involved.

[00:20:33.810] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, sure.

[00:20:35.070] - Bec Rose
They go back to where they had buried it, but there were some travelers now camping on the site.

[00:20:41.390] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Oh, wow. That's the turn in the real story. When you're watching the movie, you're like, well, this didn't happen. That's dumb. Like, of all the places to camp, like, there's no way.

[00:20:54.290] - Bec Rose
They do end up getting it dug up. And eventually they cross the border back.

[00:20:59.490] - Adam Lawlor
Into England, undetected into Scotland oh, my God.

[00:21:05.620] - Bec Rose
With a stone. So they have the full like they.

[00:21:08.570] - Adam Lawlor
Have they've got both. Yeah. This is wild. How they started. I was not expecting this to be in any way successful for any number.

[00:21:16.010] - Bec Rose
Of minutes, let alone seconds. So in a homecoming ritual, they douse the stone in whiskey. Sounds delicious. I got really into whiskey when I lived in Scotland.

[00:21:32.590] - Adam Lawlor
It's so good. It was one of the alcohols that for the longest time, I was like, people lie about liking this, right. They're not really into it. But then you taste a good whiskey.

[00:21:47.090] - Bec Rose
And it's also finding the right one for you.

[00:21:50.000] - Adam Lawlor
That is true.

[00:21:50.610] - Bec Rose
Smoky one. So that took some time. Delicious. So they get the stone secretly repaired, and one of the conspirators, he actually put a piece of paper, like, rolled up into the stone when they put it back together, but no one knows what he wrote on it.

[00:22:12.780] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:22:14.010] - Bec Rose
Fuck England. I hope it said.

[00:22:19.550] - Adam Lawlor
Not my ribbled. Robbie burns poem.

[00:22:24.110] - Bec Rose
For some weird reason, when you said Robbie Burns, I thought of Robbie Williams.

[00:22:29.080] - Adam Lawlor
Like, from it is a caricature that he had had made of Robbie Williams.

[00:22:37.330] - Bec Rose
With the stone in the trunk of his. Incredible. Once mended, they hand the stone over to members of this political party that they knew for safekeeping. I should have said too. So they are students, but Ian was planning on becoming a solicitor, like a lawyer.

[00:22:58.660] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, boy. It's going to go great, I'm sure, after this.

[00:23:04.410] - Bec Rose
But the idea is, like, they had highbrow ties, right?

[00:23:09.260] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. Yeah. They are connected.

[00:23:11.620] - Bec Rose
So they give it to this political party who had been, like, wanting Scottish independence, and they, I guess, were friends or whatever, and they're like, we'll hold onto the stone for you. So the police visit libraries around Scotland and ask if anyone had shown particular attention to items about the stone, which I love that process. Another library coming in.

[00:23:35.590] - Adam Lawlor
Another library. I love that. I thought for sure when you first said that, I thought that they were just among the many incompetent police officers. We're just like, I don't know. Do we go to the library?

[00:23:51.840] - Bec Rose
Is that where no, I'm not praising the police library. Which is also the idea that yeah, that's how they would have had to do the research.

[00:24:05.810] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:24:06.910] - Bec Rose
So, lo and behold, Ian Hamilton had taken out every single book the library had on Westminster Abbey in the stone.

[00:24:17.750] - Adam Lawlor
Ian no, that's take out, like, one.

[00:24:22.550] - Bec Rose
Erotica make some burner accounts.

[00:24:26.560] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Split up the oh, my God.

[00:24:30.540] - Bec Rose
So that's a little suss for them.

[00:24:32.540] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:24:33.990] - Bec Rose
So they eventually discover the names of everyone involved and interview them. Each one of them eventually confessing after some time, it did take a bit, except for Ian. During this time, the stone had been hidden in the floorboards of a factory, and then it was moved to the ruins of a different abbey, and they posed for this super dramatic surrendering of the stone at the ruins, where they placed the stone on display. And then they had their lawyers call the police to come pick it up, and there are a ton of really good pictures of it.

[00:25:09.170] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay. That's very cool. So cinematic.

[00:25:12.950] - Bec Rose
Yeah, it's very dramatic. This whole thing is very dramatic. So, by the end of the short three and a half months in which the stone had been missing, everyone involved had reached their goal. The students, the four of them had raised issues of Scotland's independence into the minds of fellow Scottish people and also the whole world. Okay, quickest. I mean, I know he's already an idiot, but, like so I when Brexit happened, donald Trump landed in Scotland that day, and he just happened because he has a golf course there.

[00:25:55.170] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, I forgot about that.

[00:25:57.890] - Bec Rose
He tweeted about how it's so great to be in a country that took back what they wanted, and all the Scottish people were like, none of us voted for this. Scotland was the only one in Brexit that had the overwhelming vote to not do it. I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding about Scottish people's vibes and intentions. It's because they're too drunk to give a shit to correct you on your perception of them. But here, these four people were like, we have our own thing and we are our own people.

[00:26:37.680] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:26:38.160] - Bec Rose
So the English authorities, they get the stone back. And this little part I saw, I wrote down. I didn't write this part. It says and the Scots had the satisfaction of knowing that some of their own had finally gotten revenge for Edward I of England's initial theft of the Stone of Scone.

[00:26:59.590] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:27:00.790] - Bec Rose
So while the Stone was returned to its place beneath the Coronation Chair, eventually it no longer lives in England. Yeah. So Queen Elizabeth II of England, first of Scotland, used the Coronation Chair and sat above the stone in 1953. But in 1996, the English authorities returned the Stone to Scotland on the on the condition that they may, quote, borrow it for any future coronation ceremonies. But as of right now, it's on display with the other Scottish regalia in Edinburgh Castle.

[00:27:41.010] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:27:42.470] - Bec Rose
So, years after the infamous theft, ian Hamilton said, when I lifted the Stone in Westminster Abbey, I felt Scotland's soul was in my hands. Ian yeah. After the return of the Stone to Arboreth Alley ally guys. After the return of the Stone to Abareth Abbey, the four conspirators never met again.

[00:28:09.790] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:28:10.850] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Kay Matheson returned to Invernessdale in the West Highlands.

[00:28:18.040] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:28:19.630] - Bec Rose
She was a teacher at a local primary school, and she passed away in 2013. Gavin Vernon graduated in electrical engineering, and he moved to Canada in the he passed away in March 2004. Alan Stewart had a successful business career in Glasgow and died at age 88 in 2019. And Ian went on to be a successful lawyer.

[00:28:50.890] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:28:52.570] - Bec Rose
None of the students were prosecuted for their actions because, as the government said, no one had been harmed, even if the Stone had a bumpy ride.

[00:29:04.130] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. That is lovely.

[00:29:08.890] - Bec Rose
That's the story of the Stone and Destiny.

[00:29:11.000] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, what a great story.

[00:29:13.570] - Bec Rose
Yeah. I love Scotland. I miss it so much.

[00:29:16.520] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, that is incredible. So, okay, my one question or my one request is for brief breakdown of what the Stone of Destiny is like, what it represents, kind of thing. Is there a brief way of breaking it down, or did I just, like.

[00:29:41.850] - Bec Rose
Well, I think the idea of it, to say it briefly, is that we don't know a lot of history of why it became so beloved, but there's historical documents of it being used by royals. And eventually, when it was residing in this abbey in the 1290s or whatever, I said 1260s, that's where Edward I took it. So it became this representation of Scotland as a country, them taking the stone and saying, because they took it from this abbey and not only did they take it and bring it back to their country, he had a fucking throne fitted where he could sit on top of it and literally be crowned and say, I rule over Scottish people. So the symbolism of this Stone is so huge, right.

[00:30:47.310] - Adam Lawlor
And even I wonder if it even got it was clearly an important part of Scottish history and lore before, but it's like that idea of can you martyr a stone? Like, you basically made this legendary now, regardless of what it meant before, now it stands for Scottish independence and freedom and okay.

[00:31:18.090] - Bec Rose
I'm just going to do the quickest Google.

[00:31:20.730] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:31:24.730] - Bec Rose
So for centuries, the stone was associated with crownings of Scottish kings and queens. So they used it within their own coronation.

[00:31:33.430] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:31:34.240] - Bec Rose
And then it's being taken and basically appropriated.

[00:31:40.210] - Adam Lawlor
Right, okay.

[00:31:42.130] - Bec Rose
Yeah. According to legend, the sandstone slab was used by the biblical figure Jacob as a pillow when he dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven and then brought to Scotland by way of Egypt, Spain and Ireland. There's, like, places called I remember like, something called Jacob's ladder when I was there too.

[00:32:11.130] - Adam Lawlor
Hmm.

[00:32:16.330] - Bec Rose
Oh, yeah. It's saying here the stone was brought from Syria to Egypt by King Gatholis, who then fled to Spain following the defeat of the Egyptian army. So basically, this stone, for some weird reason, has been like, a symbol of something quite great for a very long time.

[00:32:36.550] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:32:38.210] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I have seen it.

[00:32:40.150] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, yeah. Is it, like, impressive? Did you feel the magnitude around it or were you like I can understand that for people it has significance, but I am looking at a rock.

[00:32:56.310] - Bec Rose
Adam, I'm going to need you to Google what it looks like and I think you'll answer your own question.

[00:33:01.020] - Adam Lawlor
All right, here we go. Stone of Destiny.

[00:33:09.610] - Bec Rose
Just the stone?

[00:33:11.630] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's like a little like a little bench.

[00:33:17.310] - Bec Rose
No, it's sitting on top of those legs.

[00:33:21.060] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:33:24.270] - Bec Rose
But it doesn't is it even the legs bit?

[00:33:29.490] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, all right.

[00:33:31.140] - Bec Rose
It's literally just a slab, sandstone, two chains on the side of it. So, no, it was not very impressive in person, but the castle is incredibly impressive.

[00:33:42.720] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, I bet. Any castle. Give me any castle.

[00:33:46.550] - Bec Rose
Come on. We had a castle membership pass.

[00:33:51.770] - Adam Lawlor
What is life that you could just have something in your wallet called castle membership pass.

[00:33:57.370] - Bec Rose
And so what we would do was we would plan day trips around castles that were like we could go on the train. So we'd be like, oh, this is a cool one, and we can get in for free because we have this pass. If you go two times, you've paid it off, and every time people came to visit, we'd go to castle or we'd like, give them our pass.

[00:34:18.310] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:34:19.080] - Bec Rose
We were at work or something. So, yeah, we'd plan these day trips and just go to different castles around Scotland and learn shit and walk around these little towns.

[00:34:30.880] - Adam Lawlor
That sounds heavenly.

[00:34:34.510] - Bec Rose
Like, it's so good. My friend Mark. Shout out to Mark if you're listening. Hi. Will text me in Scottish bro. It makes me so happy. He doesn't say dog, he says Doug. I just miss it so much. So this was my little love letter to Scotland.

[00:34:59.010] - Adam Lawlor
That is amazing. Thank you so much. I knew nothing about that and yeah, that's incredible.

[00:35:06.670] - Bec Rose
Have you seen Stardust?

[00:35:09.170] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[00:35:10.210] - Bec Rose
Oh, what a dumb question. You recently watched it at an event, which is, like, just to give a little context. So Charlie Cox, who's the main person in Stardust, plays Ian Hamilton in the movie.

[00:35:27.290] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:35:28.730] - Bec Rose
And Kate Mara of house of cards fame.

[00:35:37.730] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Plays K. Okay. Yeah.

[00:35:42.880] - Bec Rose
Best part of House of Cards is when she dies. Spoiler. I do not like her character. I found her very annoying, and I cheered when he shoved her in front of a train. Crazy show.

[00:35:57.490] - Adam Lawlor
Crazy. Okay, so my story is kind of like the polar opposite of your story. Thematically, it's much more dark and, like, grim and and weird.

[00:36:22.000] - Bec Rose
I mean, it's usually how we roll.

[00:36:23.890] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, that's true. We got a good balance this episode. So this week, I bring you the tale of the kidnapping of Sherry Papini.

[00:36:36.510] - Bec Rose
That's a fun name.

[00:36:38.100] - Adam Lawlor
It is a very fun name.

[00:36:39.950] - Bec Rose
Papini Peini.

[00:36:42.910] - Adam Lawlor
So on November 4, 2016 it does. Okay. I was trying to think of what it sounded like to me. It does sound like a past.

[00:36:53.090] - Bec Rose
I always cut you off getting sidetracked by people's fun names.

[00:36:59.190] - Adam Lawlor
I should start finding true Crime Thomas.

[00:37:01.680] - Bec Rose
Blood all over again.

[00:37:02.760] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's just name based. True crime based.

[00:37:08.250] - Bec Rose
You got to say it like Papini.

[00:37:11.540] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It feels like you need your hands to be involved exactly. In the pronunciation.

[00:37:18.890] - Bec Rose
Oh, God. So good. Anyway, sorry. Sherry Peppini.

[00:37:22.230] - Adam Lawlor
Sherry Papini. So on November 24, 2016, which was Thanksgiving Day in the US. A 34 year old woman named Sherry Peppini is found on the side of a highway about 235 km away from her hometown of Redding, North Carolina. She's been missing for 22 days. Her long blonde hair yeah, her long blonde hair is cut short, and she has gone through obvious trauma, including injuries and bruises all over her body. Perhaps most disturbingly, the Bible verse Exodus 1216 is branded onto her right shoulder.

[00:38:07.950] - Bec Rose
Remember when we were talking about sandstone?

[00:38:11.130] - Adam Lawlor
That was nice, right?

[00:38:12.460] - Bec Rose
That was a nice time.

[00:38:14.350] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, so the biblical verse, according to the new international version, says this anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper's possession. Just wild.

[00:38:37.170] - Bec Rose
The Bible is a weird book.

[00:38:39.570] - Adam Lawlor
It's a weird one, guys, if you.

[00:38:42.630] - Bec Rose
Like a book that has that in it. Girl yes.

[00:38:47.500] - Adam Lawlor
Just like just reevaluate.

[00:38:51.610] - Bec Rose
Out here cursing Twilight.

[00:39:02.270] - Adam Lawlor
So three weeks earlier, on November 2, sherry Papini's husband, Keith Papini, came home from work. Strangely, Sherry is nowhere to be found. She is a jogger, but her jogging route does not usually take her away from the home for this long. He uses a tracker app, and then he discovers that her phone and her earbuds are at an intersection about a mile away from where they live. And neither the phone or the earbuds are moving. So slowly, Keith begins to confront the fact that his wife and. The mother of their two children is nowhere to be found.

[00:39:40.490] - Bec Rose
Sorry. Did they go find the earbuds in the phone? Okay.

[00:39:44.970] - Adam Lawlor
So after the police are informed and the investigation is underway, keith reaches out to the public for any help he can get finding Sherry. He appears in an interview on ABC News. He's quite visibly disturbed. He wants to talk about the experience and the ongoing efforts, and he even says the whole ordeal is, quote, excruciating. I don't like to think too much about it because I just assume that I'm going to get a phone call any second or she's going to show up at my house. So he's just like he wants her back. It's like dream logic almost. It's very surreal. Okay, so a reward is offered. GoFundMe is set up by Keith's friends and it reaches $50,000 in the pursuit of the kidnappers. And while Sherry is still missing, detectives create almost 20 separate search warrants poured over cell phone and bank accounts, the emails and social media posts and profiles anyone who could maybe possibly be connected. At one point, the case even took multiple investigators out of states, which means that our super cool and totally above board friend, the FBI, got involved. After weeks of searching and a huge outpouring of community support, sherry is finally found.

[00:41:18.090] - Adam Lawlor
Keith's public statements after Sherry is released include the details that, along with the prominent signs of physical abuse he just calls her bruises intense. His statement is so, like, it felt very necessarily distanced to me. Almost like he couldn't yeah, I thought.

[00:41:39.170] - Bec Rose
It was weird when you said okay, yeah, I thought it was weird when you said that. He is saying that he's trying not to think about it.

[00:41:49.090] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:41:50.450] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:41:50.920] - Adam Lawlor
It is an odd way of saying it, but I get the sentiment.

[00:41:54.710] - Bec Rose
I'm suspicious of you.

[00:41:58.230] - Adam Lawlor
So along with those bruises, he says her nose is broken and she weighs only 87 pounds. Her injuries are recorded and treated, and afterwards, she's questioned by the investigating police. While the horrific incidents are still somewhat fresh in her memory, so Papini relays that she was kidnapped by, she thinks, two Hispanic women. They took great pains to hide their faces, but according to Sherry, they spoke a lot of Spanish, they drove a dark colored SUV, and they had at least one handgun that Sherry could recall. Police sketches are released to help find the perpetrators, and this makes fear and paranoia just, like, tear through the local Hispanic community. And the sketches are not it's just one of those things that when you look at it from that distance, you're like, if you're going to try to cast blame on anyone, anyone could fit these sketches. They're so vague, generic.

[00:43:02.790] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:43:03.130] - Adam Lawlor
And one of them even has, I think, like, three quarters of their face almost covered by a bandana. It's ridiculous.

[00:43:11.480] - Bec Rose
Have you seen that news footage where they're like and here's a video with, like, the paper.

[00:43:21.570] - Adam Lawlor
It's so good. And he, like, tries to be like and you can see there he's got a nose. Oh, God. So good.

[00:43:29.170] - Bec Rose
That's what I think about that all the time. Who approved that for television?

[00:43:38.410] - Adam Lawlor
I love it. Keith during the whole thing. He's extremely cooperative. The investigation didn't rule him out. This was even the case after he voluntarily took and passed a polygraph.

[00:43:53.830] - Bec Rose
I'm suspicious of Keith as well.

[00:43:57.390] - Adam Lawlor
We all know how problematic and outright garbage polygraphs are, but it's still, like, an important detail that he was, like, polygraph me. He volunteers it himself.

[00:44:10.610] - Bec Rose
Really? The test of a polygraph to see how willing you are to participate, to take a polygraph.

[00:44:16.380] - Adam Lawlor
That is very, very true. One of the important comments from the police was that regardless of his involvement or lack thereof in the actual crime, like, Keith's public statements after Sherry was found may have compromised ongoing investigations. So they were kind of, like, sticking tight to him because he was very involved publicly and giving out details. So I think what I can see is that they may have been referring to some of her injuries, and it's.

[00:44:48.380] - Bec Rose
A little bit too loose lift.

[00:44:50.160] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:44:51.530] - Bec Rose
I can't trust him to keep a secret.

[00:44:53.540] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly.

[00:44:55.230] - Bec Rose
Yeah, that's fair. And that also would be a really good subtle tactic if he was guilty.

[00:45:06.090] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. Yeah. So the case continues to develop. Sherry's clothes are examined for DNA. They find multiple DNA samples from two individuals that are neither Sherry or Keith. Neither sample has any match in the FBI CODIS system. And so the search continued for years.

[00:45:25.370] - Bec Rose
At this years.

[00:45:26.950] - Adam Lawlor
Yes. So this is 2016. We jump to a massive break in the case.

[00:45:32.730] - Bec Rose
Did you just say drump? I may have put an R in the word jump. Drop.

[00:45:39.790] - Adam Lawlor
Maybe I'll take it again.

[00:45:41.870] - Bec Rose
No, do not take it again. This is saying, perfect.

[00:45:45.980] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:45:46.590] - Bec Rose
You're a dromper.

[00:45:47.780] - Adam Lawlor
So we dromp to 2020.

[00:45:51.920] - Bec Rose
Hey, have you seen that Hayden Christensen movie Dropper, Dropper?

[00:45:57.890] - Adam Lawlor
Have you seen the classic film masterpiece white Men Can't Drump?

[00:46:03.170] - Bec Rose
It's actually being remade. Jack Harlow is going to star in the in the remake of White Man.

[00:46:07.350] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, really? Jack Harlow stepping into Woody Harrelson's shoes. It seems weird. That was Woody Harrelson, right?

[00:46:14.100] - Bec Rose
I have not seen that movie, Dang.

[00:46:16.000] - Adam Lawlor
I can't remember. So there's math that breaking the case through. Looking into genealogical DNA databases, so I think, like, 23 ANDME and all that jazz. Investigators found that one of the DNA samples did actually have a match, and it's one of Sherry's ex boyfriends. Yeah. So closing the loop on who might be behind this years old case at this point, the investigators bring one James Reyes in for questioning to determine exactly what his involvement was in Sherry's horrific three weeks of captivity. James Reyes has a baffling story to tell. He freely admitted that he knew exactly where Sherry was during the entirety of the kidnapping, but he didn't know anything about who kidnapped her, and he didn't know who the women kidnappers might be.

[00:47:06.810] - Bec Rose
Lies.

[00:47:08.020] - Adam Lawlor
Because James Ray said that Sherry Peppini was never kidnapped in the first place.

[00:47:15.720] - Bec Rose
Oh, he's saying we got a Gone Girl situation.

[00:47:20.350] - Adam Lawlor
That's exactly what he's saying.

[00:47:23.310] - Bec Rose
Did he James reference the book and say, this is a Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl situation.

[00:47:30.430] - Adam Lawlor
He got everybody to sit down. Was like, I'm going to get real Gillian Flynn on you.

[00:47:35.650] - Bec Rose
I think it's Gillian, not Jillian.

[00:47:39.490] - Adam Lawlor
I'm pretty sure it is, because I used to say Gillian Flynn when I worked at Chapters, and then I heard.

[00:47:43.590] - Bec Rose
It in that's embarrassing.

[00:47:46.220] - Adam Lawlor
I know.

[00:47:47.050] - Bec Rose
At Chapters.

[00:47:48.350] - Adam Lawlor
I know.

[00:47:49.590] - Bec Rose
Oh, well, that's hilarious.

[00:47:51.900] - Adam Lawlor
Dark times, no job.

[00:47:55.780] - Bec Rose
I love working at chapters.

[00:47:57.310] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, working at a bookstore is the best. Yeah. To be fair, for any listeners, we're saying it's embarrassing that I couldn't pronounce a name correctly. Not working at Chapters was okay.

[00:48:06.410] - Bec Rose
That's what I thought you meant. So clarifying for listeners and me.

[00:48:11.290] - Adam Lawlor
So James lets everything loose. Sherry had gotten into contact with him in 2015, the year prior to the whole disappearance story. Investigation found that Sherry used a series of burner phones to keep in touch. Sherry told James that she was trying to get out of her toxic marriage and that Keith was a monstrous abuser. On the day of the alleged kidnapping, she had convinced James to rent a vehicle and pick her up so that she could finally make her so called escape. She then simply stayed with James for three weeks. Over this time, James told investigators that she had both injured herself and asked him to injure her. The brand, he said, was her idea too. And while he was a little apprehensive about it, he says that the brand of the branding, that he'd never done it before. Yeah, man like wild.

[00:49:10.990] - Bec Rose
I would hope not.

[00:49:12.530] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. But he did go through with it. And when he asked what eventually led to her being found, james said she started to express that she missed her children and wanted to return to her family. And so she just did, only with a whole new story about two mysterious Hispanic women, their SUV, and many, many more self inflicted injuries.

[00:49:36.960] - Bec Rose
Okay, wait, Adam. So he's saying that they did the injuries once she decided she wanted to leave, or he's saying the injuries happened and then she decided she wanted to leave.

[00:49:53.900] - Adam Lawlor
So she had some injuries before he picked her up because that played into her narrative that she was escaping an abusive marriage, and then she hurt herself while she was there over the three weeks and asked him to hurt her, and he helped brand her. And then she, on Thanksgiving, decides that she doesn't want to do this anymore and then leaves.

[00:50:19.040] - Bec Rose
That doesn't make any fucking sense.

[00:50:21.510] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, sherry peppini makes no sense.

[00:50:25.350] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. The only thing that Keith has going for him is his stellar last name?

[00:50:31.530] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[00:50:32.730] - Bec Rose
Peini. I don't want a chance to say that. If you were aware that great. Last name is Papini Peini.

[00:50:41.470] - Adam Lawlor
When investigators had previously questioned Sherry, she had made a huge point of having her husband by her side because she, quote, knew he was in her corner. So it was there that Keith sits beside Sherry as the investigators confront her with James's story and all of the corroborating details and evidence that supports it. Keith eventually just silently rises up and slowly walks out of the room like he's in a day.

[00:51:15.690] - Bec Rose
He's that Homer gift. Just going back into the brushes.

[00:51:19.620] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:51:23.210] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[00:51:24.120] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:51:24.810] - Bec Rose
Color me confused.

[00:51:26.340] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Sherry Peppini was arrested in March of 2022. She was charged with making false statements and mail fraud, as she had that's this year. Yeah. She'd accepted payments from both the California Victims Compensation Board and Social Security disability income. And in all the case, it cost the public over $300,000. That's the investigation, plus the payments she had taken.

[00:51:53.560] - Bec Rose
And once you get the US. Mail involved, jail time quadrupled.

[00:52:00.430] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:52:01.350] - Bec Rose
They are serious about their mail there.

[00:52:04.180] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. In the aftermath, several people who knew Sherry in her childhood expressed that this behavior made total sense with the Sherry they knew.

[00:52:16.330] - Bec Rose
I can see you're doing it.

[00:52:18.090] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Anytime something happened that Sherry didn't like, her response was always to lie at, like, a pathological level and run away.

[00:52:29.070] - Bec Rose
Okay. But this goes beyond that.

[00:52:31.490] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. The Reading community obviously felt betrayed. The Latin community in Reading, rightly. Points out that they were all too eagerly painted with a wide, obviously racist brush.

[00:52:45.170] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:52:46.150] - Adam Lawlor
There's a couple named Terry and Marilyn Smith who had supported Keith and Sherry for years. They felt particularly betrayed because their own daughter Tara had actually been missing since 1998. Marilyn told the media that the whole case, quote, just kind of makes a mockery out of anyone who really is a lost person. Keith Papini filed for divorce this year as well. In a statement he read just after Sherry was sentenced, he said, quote, my current focus is on moving on and doing everything I can to provide my two children with a normal health as as normal, healthy, and happy a life as possible.

[00:53:31.090] - Bec Rose
And ripping the Peppini name from Sherry's.

[00:53:34.690] - Adam Lawlor
It's Gown. Sherry. Sherry was ordered to pay $309,000 the total of what funds were spent on the case and what she had fraudulently collected, as well as sentenced to 18 months in prison. She waived the right to an appeal, accepting full months. Yeah. 18 months, which I thought was going to be way more, especially with the mail thing. You hear that stuff in cases. Yeah. She waives her right to an appeal, accepting full responsibility. In her statement to the court, she said the following, quote I'm not choosing to stay frozen like I was in 2016. I am choosing to commit to healing the parts of myself that were so very broken. And she in her larger statement, she accepts full response. There's not really a lot of deflection going on. Like, it's very accepting. It's very interesting. Sherry Peppini will turn herself in to begin her prison sentence on November 8, 2022. Just barely over six years since she decided to disappear in the first six days from today. Six days from today, sherry Peppini will begin her 18 month prison sentence. And that is the story of Sherry Papini's kidnapping.

[00:54:57.330] - Bec Rose
What do you think she's doing right now?

[00:55:03.970] - Adam Lawlor
Finding another ex texting with another birder phone.

[00:55:09.330] - Bec Rose
Oh, see, I was thinking, like, journaling panicking.

[00:55:14.410] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, definitely.

[00:55:15.850] - Bec Rose
Stress pooping.

[00:55:17.340] - Adam Lawlor
Stress pooping? Yeah. Just making a mess of that bathroom. Oh, God.

[00:55:23.030] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Well, I trusted no one along that story except for Sherry. And then she duped me, and it seems like I was the only one shocked because everyone else was like, yes, saw that coming up.

[00:55:35.370] - Adam Lawlor
It was so funny. And even the articles and things like that, they keep referencing there's all these mentions of, like, law enforcement thought that her story didn't really match up. He's like, but you still investigated it for four years before you got this breakthrough. And it's not like when an ex boyfriend's DNA comes up. That's not an immediate red flag to me. It's like an obviously, yeah, this guy would kidnap a woman. It's never like, in my mind, it was not like, a man. Oh, yeah, they're in cahoots. It's such a wild story, and yeah, it's shockingly recent. She was sentenced either in late September or early October. It was very, very soon. And even though I thought this was so funny, the judge on the case, after the sentence was read out, she has to pay the $309,000. And the judge was like, I question her ability to repay that money, because, honestly, who's going to hire this woman?

[00:56:45.310] - Bec Rose
But I mean, that's every single case.

[00:56:49.350] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. I find it so funny. It makes no sense to me when they're like, oh, yeah, this person typical person with an average job, and they're like, you owe 3.7 million in restitution. What are you doing?

[00:57:06.580] - Bec Rose
But it also means that that person will never make money, because everything they make will have to go towards that.

[00:57:12.920] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:57:13.660] - Bec Rose
Only if you're rich and have the ability to make those other accounts and shit. Yeah. The whole system is fucked up.

[00:57:22.910] - Adam Lawlor
But yeah.

[00:57:23.920] - Bec Rose
Sherry, thank you for the downer. I have to Google what Sherry Papari looks like.

[00:57:29.890] - Adam Lawlor
Go for it.

[00:57:30.720] - Bec Rose
Can you spell Papari for me?

[00:57:33.330] - Adam Lawlor
P-A-P-I-N-I papini.

[00:57:36.780] - Bec Rose
I've changed it to Papari.

[00:57:38.430] - Adam Lawlor
I mean, I did like it.

[00:57:39.700] - Bec Rose
Everyone she looks exactly like you think she would.

[00:57:43.350] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, I thought that was so exactly.

[00:57:46.360] - Bec Rose
What I was picturing.

[00:57:47.710] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Boo boo. Yeah. Okay, well, a wild story, and I'd never heard of it before. It's like, oh, shit.

[00:58:04.390] - Bec Rose
This thing here says it was only until the day before she entered her guilty plea that she privately admitted to whoever this person tweeting is for the first time ever, that she had lied about everything to everyone. So she held on to that until the bitter end.

[00:58:20.640] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Her response in the room when they confronted her with James Ray's story was apparently like, I don't understand James. James would never do that. He loves me. And I was like, what are you talking it sounds like you thought they were saying a different story. You had practiced.

[00:58:39.790] - Bec Rose
Are we having the same conversation?

[00:58:41.980] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Her response makes no sense to me. I was kind of like, I had to read it a few times and then I was like, yeah, it definitely sounds like you had rehearsed because you were like, eventually they'll find James and they'll pin it on him. And I will in my mind. Are you just going to act like it was him and act shocked and grossed out because you thought they were going to come to you and be like, we're so sorry to her. This is such trauma. So shocking. It was actually James that she was like, but he would never do that. And they were like, no, we told you that. We know that you did it together and you lied to us. Like, what are you talking about? He would never it's so strange. So strange.

[00:59:21.820] - Bec Rose
Very weird. Oh, man. Weird times. But thank you for that.

[00:59:27.750] - Adam Lawlor
You are so welcome.

[00:59:30.630] - Bec Rose
Thank you, everyone, for joining us again for some fun times. We're past the singles. We're into the doubles of the digits of episodes. I gave zero context around my sense that was a sentence said out of order, but this was episode eleven, which is pretty exciting.

[00:59:52.840] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:59:53.600] - Bec Rose
Soon we're going to be teenagers. Whoa.

[00:59:57.870] - Adam Lawlor
Moody.

[00:59:58.990] - Bec Rose
Oh, God. Although, please, we could get into how weird of a teenager it sounds like you were and that you were, like, not weird. You didn't experience angst. It sounds like.

[01:00:15.110] - Adam Lawlor
I just curled into myself in my depressive phases.

[01:00:19.510] - Bec Rose
But weren't you, like, a weirdly good kid and had, like, a good time or something?

[01:00:24.810] - Adam Lawlor
I was a pretty weirdly good kid. Yeah, it's true.

[01:00:28.240] - Bec Rose
Must be nice. Yeah. Join us next week, and when we'll talk, more devious people.

[01:00:36.890] - Adam Lawlor
And don't forget to give us a review to rate us. Wherever you get your podcast, send to your friends.

[01:00:46.510] - Bec Rose
Yeah, tell a friend.

[01:00:47.940] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, tell a friend. Tell people who aren't friends. But yes, share it far and wide, everybody, please.

[01:00:55.250] - Bec Rose
Okay, we'll see you next week.

[01:00:56.950] - Adam Lawlor
See you next week.

[01:00:58.130] - Bec Rose
Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to Unscrupulous podcast. If you want to hear more from us, you can check us out on Instagram at unscrupulouspod. You could always send us an email with any of your case suggestions or just your ad for us at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com. Make sure to check out our show notes where you can find information on where we got our resources today. And we will check you out next time.

[01:01:36.330] - Adam Lawlor
Our channel.