Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. This is a
Speaker 1: story about a horror movie franchise, but it's also a
Speaker 1: story about a curse and freakish events that haunted the
Speaker 1: sets of three horror films. I'm talking about strangulation, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about an exorcism. I'm talking about a story where
Speaker 1: one actress from the film franchise was brutally murdered, and
Speaker 1: a story where two more actors died unexpectedly. It's a
Speaker 1: story about a horrible plane crash, a story about the
Speaker 1: poltergeist curse, a movie that scared the hell out of moviegoers,
Speaker 1: and a movie with an iconic theme. Great music, unlike
Speaker 1: that music I played for you at the top of
Speaker 1: the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset
Speaker 1: loop from my melotron called c Static MK two. I
Speaker 1: played you that loop because I can't afford the rights
Speaker 1: to Ebony and Ivory by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
Speaker 1: black and white cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on June fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and that was the day of the
Speaker 1: film franchise Poultergeist launched into theaters, scaring the hell out
Speaker 1: of teenagers and little kids like me at the time,
Speaker 1: and starting rumors of a cursed film franchise that would
Speaker 1: claim the lives of many. On this episode strangulation, exorcism, murder, death,
Speaker 1: and destruction in the Poultergeist Curse. I'm Jake Brennan, and
Speaker 1: this this disgraceland Richard laws And thought it was his
Speaker 1: lucky day. First, he had been able to beat the
Speaker 1: incoming snowstorm by switching his flight from Monday to Sunday,
Speaker 1: which meant that he'd be able to escape New York
Speaker 1: and make it to Cleveland, where he could honor his
Speaker 1: commitment to the Cleveland Cavaliers. As a drug counselor for
Speaker 1: the NBA, Richard often extolled the virtues of simply showing
Speaker 1: up and if he needed a little luck so that
Speaker 1: he could show up well, he'd gladly take it and
Speaker 1: then and more luck. The ticket agent at LaGuardia recognized
Speaker 1: him not from his work with the NBA, which, despite
Speaker 1: being real honest work, was actually his side hustle, because
Speaker 1: Richard Lawson's day job was as an actor with appearances
Speaker 1: and recurring roles on everything from Remington Steel to Dynasty,
Speaker 1: and most recently, as a regular cast member on the
Speaker 1: daytime soap All My Children. The ticket agent noticed that
Speaker 1: Richard was sitting in coach seat six A, and as
Speaker 1: a diehard All My Children devotee, quickly upgraded the actor
Speaker 1: to seat one F in first class. But now from
Speaker 1: the leathery comfort of his spacious first class seat, Richard
Speaker 1: had a sudden, inexplicable feeling that his luck was about
Speaker 1: to change. The snow was already coming down. Flights had
Speaker 1: been delayed all day long as Creuz worked to thaw
Speaker 1: out the side of the plane. Richard thought he could
Speaker 1: actually feel the warm chemical blast of de icing fluid.
Speaker 1: And then he felt something else, a chill. His stomach
Speaker 1: went upside down. The plane wasn't even moving, but something
Speaker 1: was off. Something was wrong. Richard felt it deep in
Speaker 1: his gut. He had to get off the plane. Now,
Speaker 1: hold up. He took a deep breath, calm down. The
Speaker 1: basketball team was waiting in Cleveland. He had to show up.
Speaker 1: He needed to chill the fuck out. Everything was going
Speaker 1: to be fine. Richard convinced himself that there was nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about. The plane took its place behind several
Speaker 1: others on the runway. Minutes passed, ten minutes, twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: the snow began to come down harder. Thirty minutes the
Speaker 1: plane slowly ambled down the tarmac and the wind blew,
Speaker 1: stinging wet against the cabin windows. As the plane was
Speaker 1: cleared for ta off, Richards started to worry again. All
Speaker 1: that de icing had happened thirty minutes ago. What if
Speaker 1: the plane was covered in ice again. Richard's anxiety began
Speaker 1: to increase in direct proportion to the plane's increase in
Speaker 1: speed as it taxied down the runway, and then they
Speaker 1: were airborne. The plane was barely fifty feet in the
Speaker 1: air when it began to roll to the right. It
Speaker 1: rolled some more hard, and then the nose pointed down
Speaker 1: like it was a magnet being pulled down to a
Speaker 1: steel turmac. Passengers screened and the plane was nearly sideways
Speaker 1: when it hit the ground, and the crunch was deafening.
Speaker 1: They caught air again briefly, and then once more came
Speaker 1: down hard, and the nauseating screech of metal on asphalt
Speaker 1: rang out. Flames licked the windows from outside. It was
Speaker 1: impossible for anyone to tell where the plane was at
Speaker 1: or what direction it was headed in. It was rolling
Speaker 1: over on itself, tumbling towards oblivion, literally splitting apart at
Speaker 1: the seams, and suddenly everything went black. The noises stopped,
Speaker 1: and the passagers could barely see a thing, but they
Speaker 1: knew they were upside down, held in place only by
Speaker 1: their safety belts, and the sound of bubbles began to
Speaker 1: percolate from all sides. Goddamn thing was underwater. The plane
Speaker 1: had landed in Flushing Bay and it was slowly sinking
Speaker 1: to the bottom. But Richard Lawson knew he was going
Speaker 1: to die. He was trapped, His body was pinned between
Speaker 1: two unseen objects. He began to panic for real, and
Speaker 1: this was luck, all right, bad luck. Maybe he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have taken that upgrade to first class, Maybe he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have switched flights. Maybe one of his minor decisions that
Speaker 1: day had jinxed it. And maybe his bad luck was
Speaker 1: bigger than his choices that day. As the plane cabin
Speaker 1: began to fill with ice cold salt water, Richard's mind
Speaker 1: flashed back to that one movie he had made ten
Speaker 1: years earlier, in nineteen eighty two, The legacy of Poltergeist
Speaker 1: and its Seagulls was infamous, four actors dead in their wake.
Speaker 1: Some said the productions were ill fated and that the
Speaker 1: actors were the ones paying the ultimate price. One by one.
Speaker 1: Richard Lawson struggled to free himself from the overturned airplane
Speaker 1: as it was swallowed by flushing bay. He knew it
Speaker 1: was futile. His fate was clear. He was about to
Speaker 1: become the latest tragedy in the Poltergeist Curse. The skeletons
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to be real, or that's what actress Joebeth
Speaker 1: Williams assumed. Real skeletons would be too creepy, too gross,
Speaker 1: But fake skeletons cost too much and took too much
Speaker 1: time to manufacture. Real skeletons were cheap and easy to
Speaker 1: come by, so it was real skeletons that bobbed up
Speaker 1: in the muddy water and brushed elbows with joe Beth
Speaker 1: Williams in the iconic pool scene from the original Poltergeist,
Speaker 1: Toby Hooper's nineteen eighty two horror classic. Joe Beth's authentic
Speaker 1: reaction to her close encounter with actual human bones helped
Speaker 1: make Poltergeist not only the highest grossing horror movie of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, but the eighth highest grossing movie of
Speaker 1: the entire year. And it wasn't the only authentic reaction
Speaker 1: in the movie. Eleven year old Oliver Robbins, who played
Speaker 1: Joebeth's son, was reportedly nearly choked to death by his
Speaker 1: character's toy clown as the possessed toy wrapped a long
Speaker 1: arm around his neck and tried to strangle him. According
Speaker 1: to Oliver, while they were shooting the scene, the animatronic
Speaker 1: clown malfunctioned and the arm actually constricted his airway. He struggled,
Speaker 1: his eyes bumped out, he gasped for air, and the
Speaker 1: crew of adults thought that Oliver was simply delivering a knockdown,
Speaker 1: drag out performance, and it wasn't until his face began
Speaker 1: to turn blue that they realized something was terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: None of these terrifying onset mishaps faced child actress Heather O'Rourke,
Speaker 1: who was all of five years old when she was
Speaker 1: first cast as Carol Anne, the youngest member of the
Speaker 1: Freeling family and the character who makes contact with and
Speaker 1: later is abducted by the malevolent spirits haunting her family's house.
Speaker 1: Heather was told there was nothing to fear. In fact,
Speaker 1: she had been taught how to pretend she was afraid.
Speaker 1: She hadn't acted before, but she knew the business of
Speaker 1: making movies, the make believe business. Her older sister made movies.
Speaker 1: In fact, Heather was lunching in the MGM commissary with
Speaker 1: her mother one day, waiting for her sister to wrap
Speaker 1: a scene, when Stephen Spielberg spotted her. Spielberg was Poltergeist
Speaker 1: writer and producer, and Heather fit his vision for Carol
Speaker 1: Anne Freeling to a tea. Spielberg was in the middle
Speaker 1: of making his latest masterpiece, E T the Extraterrestrial, and
Speaker 1: was therefore contractually prohibited from directing another movie at the
Speaker 1: same time, which is why MGM hired Toby Hooper of
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre Fame to direct Spielberg's Poultergeist script. But
Speaker 1: Spielberg couldn't divorce himself from the production. He was on
Speaker 1: set just as much as Hooper, and according to which
Speaker 1: cast or crew members you ask, he was the one
Speaker 1: who was actually really calling the shots. What Spielberg and
Speaker 1: Hooper did and didn't do where one of them ended
Speaker 1: and the other began. Well, that was just a little
Speaker 1: bit of Hollywood magic. It was all part of the
Speaker 1: larger sleight of hand. As Heather O'Rourke would learn, it
Speaker 1: was how movies got made. It was all make believe,
Speaker 1: just like the scary bits were make believe. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely true. That was just something that adults said
Speaker 1: to make children less frightened. The truth was, there were
Speaker 1: things there, unexplainable things, things that made the hair stand
Speaker 1: up on the back of your neck and the skin
Speaker 1: on your arms tinkle. Who were what those things were?
Speaker 1: It was sometimes impossible to know, but one thing was
Speaker 1: for sure. There he and they had always been here.
Speaker 1: James Hermann stood in the doorway to the bathroom, speaking
Speaker 1: to his son, who was brushing his teeth. It was
Speaker 1: a perfectly normal moment, downright prosaic, actually, one that happened
Speaker 1: nearly every day. But it was about to be disrupted
Speaker 1: by a very abnormal occurrence, the kind that was beginning
Speaker 1: to happen with alarming frequency at the family's three bedroom,
Speaker 1: single story house. It was around eleven in the morning Sunday,
Speaker 1: February ninth, nineteen fifty eight. Strange things have been happening
Speaker 1: in the Hermann's home at sixteen forty eight Redwood Path
Speaker 1: in Seaford, Long Island for nearly a week. Bottles all
Speaker 1: throughout the house were popping open on their own and
Speaker 1: falling to the floor. Shampoo, medicine, liquid starch in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: bleach in the basement, a bottle of holy water in
Speaker 1: the mast at bedroom, and none of the bottles were
Speaker 1: sealed with corks or pop tops. They all had screw caps,
Speaker 1: which required several rotations to remove. James and Lucille, along
Speaker 1: with their children, twelve year old James Junior and a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old daughter, also named Lucille, listened in varying
Speaker 1: degrees of confusion and fear as the bottles popped and
Speaker 1: fell from nearby rooms all week long, but they hadn't
Speaker 1: witnessed it firsthand until now. As James Junior worked the
Speaker 1: toothbrush back and forth on his molars, James Senior stood
Speaker 1: in the doorway of the bathroom and watched in horror
Speaker 1: as a glass medicine bottle moved shakily across the top
Speaker 1: of the sink eighteen inches give her take entirely on
Speaker 1: its own, and then it crashed and shattered into the
Speaker 1: sink basin. James Junior jumped, his toothbrush hit the floor,
Speaker 1: and James Herman couldn't explain it. The sink top was level.
Speaker 1: The medicine bottle shattered with such force that it must
Speaker 1: have been shoved, but by whom or what. When Nassau
Speaker 1: County Detective Joseph Tauzy arrived at the Herman's house to investigate,
Speaker 1: he made it clear that he didn't believe in the
Speaker 1: supernatural ghost spirit specters all horseshit. Surely there was a
Speaker 1: reasonable logical explanation for what was going on, perhaps a
Speaker 1: high frequency radio transmission, a down draft in the home's chimney,
Speaker 1: but unexplainable things continued to happen. The bottle of holy
Speaker 1: water once again fell from the master bedroom bureau. When
Speaker 1: James ran to retrieve it seconds after hearing it fall,
Speaker 1: he found it hot to the touch. And later that
Speaker 1: same day, James Junior and Lucille were watching TV when
Speaker 1: a porcelain figure rose from a table, moved three feet
Speaker 1: through the air, and fell to the floor. Detective Tozy
Speaker 1: himself bore witness to some truly weird shit. It challenged
Speaker 1: his logical just the fact's mind. He went home each
Speaker 1: night and thought about all the ways he could try
Speaker 1: to explain what he had seen. And the Hermans, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, had seen too much, and they were
Speaker 1: freaked the fuck out, so they got the fuck out.
Speaker 1: On February twenty first, a little over two weeks since
Speaker 1: they had begun to experience the inexplicable, they packed their
Speaker 1: bags and went to stay with a relative, and they
Speaker 1: were gone for two days. No supernatural activity was detected
Speaker 1: at their home while they were away, and now did
Speaker 1: anything out of the ordinary happen at the relatives' house
Speaker 1: where they were staying. When they returned to sixteen forty
Speaker 1: eight Redwood Path on the evening of February twenty third,
Speaker 1: they were greeted by a flying sugar bowl. An eighteen
Speaker 1: inch statue of the Virgin Mary rose from a bureau
Speaker 1: and sword twelve feet through the air. A large bureau
Speaker 1: tipped over in James Junior's room, a record player weighing
Speaker 1: ten pounds rose from a table and traveled fifteen feet
Speaker 1: across the room. The Herman's predicament became a local, even
Speaker 1: national sensation. People all over the country wrote letters, made
Speaker 1: phone calls, even showed up the Herman's home to play
Speaker 1: armchair ghostbuster. A priest performed a blessing. Another so called
Speaker 1: holy man conducted a ritual to cleanse the house. Some
Speaker 1: people blamed aliens, others said it was communists. A marche
Speaker 1: F fifty eight profile of the Hermans in Life magazine
Speaker 1: raised another possible suspect, James Junior. The article reported the
Speaker 1: quote in the Annals of Poltergeist, it has been consistently
Speaker 1: noted that the mysterious motion of objects has taken place
Speaker 1: in households containing adolescent children. It further reported that James
Speaker 1: Junior was often nearby when bottles popped in porcelain figures
Speaker 1: hovered midair. Doctor J. Pratt, a psychologist from Duke University's
Speaker 1: Parapsychology Laboratory, made the trip to New York from North Carolina,
Speaker 1: to investigate whether or not James Junior's mind was indeed
Speaker 1: influencing matter. Like detective Tozy, Doctor Pratt didn't believe in ghosts,
Speaker 1: but he did believe that some people were able to
Speaker 1: let's say, animate otherwise inanimate objects with their own minds
Speaker 1: without even knowing it. It is within the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1: Doctor Pratt once said that if eight million New Yorkers
Speaker 1: at one time concentrated on moving the Empire Higher State Building,
Speaker 1: it might move a bit. Doctor Pratt was in Seaford
Speaker 1: for three days, and nothing moved on its own, not
Speaker 1: the Empire State Building, not even a decorative porcelain figurine.
Speaker 1: But as soon as he left to return to North Carolina,
Speaker 1: it all started up again. Unlike the movies, there was
Speaker 1: no tidy ending to explain the paranormal activity occurring in
Speaker 1: the Herman's Long Island home. There was no discovery of
Speaker 1: an ancient burial ground beneath the house's foundation, no four
Speaker 1: foot three spiritual medium named Tangina who was able to
Speaker 1: detect an unsettling dark presence called the Beast, no portal
Speaker 1: to another sphere of consciousness that douses those who pass
Speaker 1: through it with a sloppy layer of ectoplasm. Those, of course,
Speaker 1: were Hollywood embellishments to the true story of the hermans
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight haunting, and that true story was used
Speaker 1: nearly twenty five years later, as that's the basis for
Speaker 1: the Poltergeist screenplay written by Steven Spielberg. Michael Grayis and
Speaker 1: Mark Victor in the movie Carol Anne Freeling played by
Speaker 1: five year old newcomer Heather O'Rourke, the one Spielberg met
Speaker 1: in the MGM Commissary is the manifestation of Life magazine
Speaker 1: psychokinetic child. She doesn't move objects with her mind, but
Speaker 1: she is clairvoyant and communicates with ghosts directly through the
Speaker 1: family's TV set. Heather talked to the TV set the
Speaker 1: way she talked to her stuffed animals and dolls. It
Speaker 1: was make believe. She knew not to be scared for real.
Speaker 1: Her performance, however, in the movie as a whole, scared
Speaker 1: the pants off audiences in the summer of nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: It also scared up some serious box office box throughout
Speaker 1: the summer of eighty two, and well it's the fall.
Speaker 1: For twenty four weeks, Poltergeist raked in more than seventy
Speaker 1: five million in domestic gross. That said, the number was
Speaker 1: peanuts compared to the money that the other Out of
Speaker 1: This World Steven Spielberg blockbuster made when e T was
Speaker 1: released the very next week. One cast member in particular,
Speaker 1: was never able to see Poltergeist reach its full box
Speaker 1: office potential when she was cast as he yelled this
Speaker 1: freeling sibling. Dominique Dunn was a twenty two year old
Speaker 1: actress with a handful of TV roles under her belt.
Speaker 1: Poltergeist was Dominique's first movie role, in her big Hollywood break.
Speaker 1: Her potential as one of the decades defining scream queens
Speaker 1: was palpable. Audiences loved her. One person in particular professed
Speaker 1: to love her more than anyone else. But Dominique knew
Speaker 1: that John Thomas Sweeney was confusing love with obsession, which
Speaker 1: was why she broke the relationship off. Sweeney was more
Speaker 1: than just jealous and possessive. He was volatile, unhinged. Even
Speaker 1: in August, when Poltergeist was putting fear in the hearts
Speaker 1: of moviegoers, Dominique was busy dealing with the horror film
Speaker 1: that was her life. During an argument, Sweeney grabbed Dominique
Speaker 1: by the hair and pulled so hard that he ripped
Speaker 1: out a chunk by the roots. Dominique wrote Sweeny a letter,
Speaker 1: but never sent it. We are not compatible. It red.
Speaker 1: When we are good, we are great, But when we
Speaker 1: are bad we are horrendous. The bad outwetes the good,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is made me realize how scared I
Speaker 1: am of you. A month later, against their better judgment,
Speaker 1: Dominique was living with Sweeney again. Around three am one night,
Speaker 1: they fought again. Sweeney wrapped his hands around Dominique's neck
Speaker 1: and the two fell to the floor. He was on
Speaker 1: top of her. He squeezed tight and Dominique struggled. She
Speaker 1: managed to escape. She scrambled out of the house of
Speaker 1: the bathroom window. Sweeney heard her car start up and
Speaker 1: ran outside. Suddenly he was in front of the car,
Speaker 1: but Dominique smashed her foot into the gas pedal. Sweeney
Speaker 1: jumped out of the way to avoid getting hit, and
Speaker 1: the car sped off into the La darkness. Dominique Dunn
Speaker 1: escaped for their life at least that time, but there
Speaker 1: was no escaping the fear she lived with constantly. She
Speaker 1: hit out at her friend's house. She only showed her
Speaker 1: face in town when she was one hundred percent sure
Speaker 1: that Sweeney was at work. It wasn't ghosts or an
Speaker 1: unsettled dark presence that would come for Dominique Dunn, but
Speaker 1: it was a beast, and not a make believe beast either.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 2: We're We're where.
Speaker 1: Dominique Dunn decided that she had left John Thomas Sweeney
Speaker 1: for the last time. She didn't care that he was
Speaker 1: the right hand man to fame chef Wolfgame Puck in
Speaker 1: the kitchen of the Shishi Mamaison restaurant on Melrose Avenue,
Speaker 1: or that he continued to profess his undying love and
Speaker 1: remorse with a fistful of flowers. In actuality, he did
Speaker 1: more evil with those fists than prepping food and carrying flowers.
Speaker 1: Dominique cared about her own safety. She cared about the
Speaker 1: fact that, when she filmed the cameo was a victim
Speaker 1: of abuse on the gritty TV cop drama Hill Street Blues.
Speaker 1: She didn't need any makeup to look battered. The black
Speaker 1: and blue bruises on her neck that she wore to
Speaker 1: set were real. Every time she looked in the mirror,
Speaker 1: it was a reminder of that cycle of violence that
Speaker 1: she continued to fall into, and she wanted out. October thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, eight thirty pm, Poltergeist was still showing
Speaker 1: well at movie theaters across the country, even if it
Speaker 1: had slipped from the upper echelonne of the box office.
Speaker 1: While movies like First Blood and An Officer and a
Speaker 1: Gentleman Dominated, not to mention Spielberg's et, which was well
Speaker 1: on its way to becoming the year's runaway smash, didn't
Speaker 1: matter much to Dominique Donne. She was already moving on,
Speaker 1: prepping for the next thing, the next big success. Dominique
Speaker 1: was at her one bedroom home on Rangeley Avenue in
Speaker 1: West Hollywood, the same one she had once shared with
Speaker 1: John Thomas Sweeney. She was running lines with fellow actor
Speaker 1: David Packer for the pilot of a new TV mini
Speaker 1: series called V. Dominique and David paused when they heard
Speaker 1: a car pull up outside the house. A car door
Speaker 1: opened and slammed shut. A voice, A knock. Fuck. She
Speaker 1: knew it was Sweeney again, always fucking Sweeney. Dominique opened
Speaker 1: the front door, but left the door chain attached. She
Speaker 1: looked through the two inch gap and saw Sweeney staring
Speaker 1: back at her. He said he wanted to talk. He
Speaker 1: was worked up, out of breath. She wasn't about to
Speaker 1: let him inside, but she knew she had to get
Speaker 1: rid of him. She hoped she could reason with him.
Speaker 1: She told David to wait inside. She undid the door
Speaker 1: Jean walked out onto the porch and closed the door
Speaker 1: behind her, looked over the script in his hands and
Speaker 1: began to run lines on his own. He could hear
Speaker 1: Dominique and swing He talking outside. Their voices slowly began
Speaker 1: to escalate. Sweeney's voice erupted. It dominated the argument with
Speaker 1: aggressive force. David could no longer concentrate on memorizing lines.
Speaker 1: He couldn't make out what they were saying, but he
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't good. A loud, smacking sound made David
Speaker 1: jump and sent chills down his spine, and another one
Speaker 1: in the front of the house shook with each thud.
Speaker 1: David couldn't see what was happening, but he knew someone
Speaker 1: or something was hitting the house. It was rattling the windows.
Speaker 1: Then a scream. Another scream, this one more blood curdling
Speaker 1: than the last. It horrified David. The screams were followed
Speaker 1: by more thuds. David panicked. He picked up the phone
Speaker 1: and called the police. Lapd responded and told him that
Speaker 1: Rangeley Avenue, West Hollywood, that was out of their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: Nothing they could do out of their jurisdiction. David couldn't
Speaker 1: believe he didn't have the number for the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: off hand. Lapd wasn't in a call forwarding kind of mood,
Speaker 1: and David was terrified to open the front door. He
Speaker 1: decided to slip up the back door, and as he
Speaker 1: came up the side of the house and approached the driveway,
Speaker 1: he saw Sweeney trying to blend in with the bushes
Speaker 1: but failing, crouching hiding like the cowardly piece of shit
Speaker 1: animal that he was, and then David saw Dominique lying
Speaker 1: lifeless in the driveway. On November fourth, Dominique Dunn was
Speaker 1: taken off life support at Cedar Sinai. Her funeral was
Speaker 1: two days later. Four to six minutes that's how long
Speaker 1: medical examiners estimated John Thomas Sweeney strangled Dominique Dunn outside
Speaker 1: her West Hollywood house four to six minutes. The prosecuting
Speaker 1: attorney opened Sweeney's murder trial by letting a stopwatch run
Speaker 1: for an agonizing four minutes to drive the point at home.
Speaker 1: But despite those chilling four minutes of silence, justice did
Speaker 1: not prevail. First, the judge would not allow another of
Speaker 1: Sweeney's former living girlfriends to testify about the ten times
Speaker 1: he had beaten her during their relationship. About how Sweeney
Speaker 1: broke her nose, punctured ear drum, collapsed or lung. The
Speaker 1: judge said, quote the law says you judge a person
Speaker 1: for his acts and not for the kind of person
Speaker 1: he has been in the past. To make matters even worse,
Speaker 1: the judge then granted the defense's motion to reduce the
Speaker 1: charge from first degree murder to manslaughter. In the defense's eyes,
Speaker 1: the killing was not premeditated. It was committed in the
Speaker 1: heat of passion. Despite their personal views on the matter,
Speaker 1: members of the jury had to deliver a verdict within
Speaker 1: the strict confines they were being presented. Sweeney was saved
Speaker 1: by the law. He got a max of six years,
Speaker 1: but wound up serving lightly less than three years eight months.
Speaker 1: To Dominique's family, it was a miscarriage of justice. The trial,
Speaker 1: the sentence, the time, all of it. It defiled the
Speaker 1: memory of their daughter, The tragic loss of Dominique Dunn,
Speaker 1: and the travesty of justice would haunt them for the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives. When John Thomas Sweeney was released
Speaker 1: from his appallingly short prison stay in nineteen eighty six, coincidentally,
Speaker 1: perhaps it was around the same time that the sequel
Speaker 1: to Poltergeist hit movie theaters. Steven Spielberg didn't return to
Speaker 1: co writer produce Poltergeist Too the other side, but the
Speaker 1: other original screenwriters did return, as did the majority of
Speaker 1: the original cast. Heather o'rouric, now ten years old, was
Speaker 1: back as Carol Anne. Since she was so young in
Speaker 1: her exposure to the media was kept to a bare minimum.
Speaker 1: There was very little documentation of how much Dominique Dunn's
Speaker 1: death impacted Heather on or off the set. There's also
Speaker 1: a little documentation to back up the rumors about strange
Speaker 1: occurrences that once again were reported to have happened during
Speaker 1: the sequel's production, like the one that an actual exorcism
Speaker 1: was performed in order to cleanse the set of evil spirits.
Speaker 1: While Poltergeist Io retains a cult status among diehard movie fans,
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't the same phenomenon the second time around.
Speaker 1: It barely made half the amount of money as the
Speaker 1: first installment, but there was one eerie similarity between the
Speaker 1: first and second Poltergeist. A few months before Poltergeist Too
Speaker 1: was released, Julian Beck, the veteran actor who co starred
Speaker 1: in the sequel as Reverend Harry Kane aka Evil Incarnate,
Speaker 1: succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of sixty and
Speaker 1: then in June nineteen eighty seven, a little over a
Speaker 1: year after the sequel came out, another of its co stars,
Speaker 1: Will Sampson, who played the Native American shaman protecting the
Speaker 1: family from Harry Kane's Our Normal Voodoo, died at fifty
Speaker 1: three from post operative kidney failure. Like the unexplained activity
Speaker 1: that had taken place nearly thirty years earlier at the
Speaker 1: Herman family home in Long Island. The fact that three
Speaker 1: actors died shortly after making Poltergeist films began to make
Speaker 1: people wonder was it all just a coincidence, a random tragedy,
Speaker 1: or was there something more, something that couldn't be seen.
Speaker 1: When principal photography wrapped up for Poltergeist three in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen eighty seven, Heather O'Rourke went home to
Speaker 1: Big Bear Lake in California. That winter, she turned twelve
Speaker 1: years old, she began to prepare for the press junkid
Speaker 1: that would precede the third movie's Hollywood premiere, But Heather
Speaker 1: O'Rourke never made it to the premiere. She never even
Speaker 1: got a chance to see the finished movie. What happened
Speaker 1: next turned a series of strange coincidences into a widespread
Speaker 1: theory that the Holtergeist movie franchise, just like the Herman's
Speaker 1: Long Island Home, was cursed. March twenty second, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Richard Lawson was still upside down. The entire plane was
Speaker 1: still upside down. US Air Flight four H five was
Speaker 1: currently inverted in Flushing Bay. The runway lights of LaGuardia
Speaker 1: flashed in the rear distance, and the snow continued to
Speaker 1: fall sideways. Inside the plane, it was all blackness. The
Speaker 1: water was on its way in, the oxygen was on
Speaker 1: its way out. It was all happening way too fast.
Speaker 1: Richards struggled to free himself, but he couldn't move. His
Speaker 1: head was stuck. What were these two objects pinning his
Speaker 1: body down? See to maybe other passengers. He was trapped.
Speaker 1: He was going to die. Up until this moment, he
Speaker 1: had thought it was all bullshit, All that stuff about
Speaker 1: the so called Poltergeist curse, the one that had claimed
Speaker 1: four actors from the three films. Fucked that curses were
Speaker 1: make believe those tragedies were real. Dominie Dunn died at
Speaker 1: the hands of a violent abuser. Julian Sands had cancer.
Speaker 1: Will Samson suffered complications from surgery. Heather, a uroric well
Speaker 1: that had come out of left field, shocked everyone. They
Speaker 1: all thought she had a nasty case of the flu.
Speaker 1: Her family, the doctors, but her heart stopped on the
Speaker 1: way to the hospital. They were able to revive her,
Speaker 1: and life lighted her to the Children's Hospital in San Diego.
Speaker 1: She died on the operating table before the doctors could help,
Speaker 1: and they didn't even know where to begin. No one
Speaker 1: knew that she had been born with the burn defect
Speaker 1: that made a section of her intestine abnormally narrow. She
Speaker 1: didn't have the flu. She suffered a bowel obstruction that
Speaker 1: sent bacterial toxins into her blood stream. She died from
Speaker 1: a shock caused by infection of her blood. The doctor
Speaker 1: said that Heather's death was very unusual because she never
Speaker 1: exhibited symptoms that anything was amiss at any point in
Speaker 1: her life. The problem seemed to have come from nowhere.
Speaker 1: Insights like those drove the curse conspiracy theorists wild, but
Speaker 1: Richard Lawson put little credence into any conspiracy theory, especially
Speaker 1: one that connected all of these tragedies until now. Because
Speaker 1: even though his role as a parapsychologist in the first
Speaker 1: Poltergeist movie was a small role, Richard had nonetheless acted
Speaker 1: in a Poltergeist movie, and like four other actors before him,
Speaker 1: he now found himself staring down an unexpected death. This
Speaker 1: was his fate. He knew it now. He had been
Speaker 1: foolish to doubt it in the past. He accepted what
Speaker 1: was about to happen. He ceased to struggle. He wanted
Speaker 1: to die with the spirit of peace. He wanted the
Speaker 1: people who loved him on the other side of the
Speaker 1: wreckage to know that he was okay, that he hadn't
Speaker 1: died afraid. He continued to hold his breath under water
Speaker 1: and was about to finally let it all go, one
Speaker 1: giant exhale and done, when something came over him. He
Speaker 1: felt a sensation take over his body. It was warm, friendly,
Speaker 1: the opposite of fear. The sensation enveloped his entire body,
Speaker 1: from the top of his head to the bottom of
Speaker 1: his toes, and he heard a voice say, get out
Speaker 1: of here. Take your seatbelt off and get out of here.
Speaker 1: Richard put his hands on his belt buckle and released it.
Speaker 1: He felt the seat belt release from around his waist.
Speaker 1: Get out of here, now, Richard. He put his hands
Speaker 1: on the things that had trapped him in place for minutes,
Speaker 1: things that had been on moor before. Now they easily
Speaker 1: moved the side with the gentlest of touches from his hands.
Speaker 1: He could hardly believe it. His body began to move.
Speaker 1: He didn't know if it was up or down. He
Speaker 1: just wanted to find an air pocket. When his head
Speaker 1: finally surfaced, the twisted wreckage below his feet kicking and
Speaker 1: thrusting him towards salvation. He took a deep breath. He
Speaker 1: inhaled bay water and jet fuel and spat it back out.
Speaker 1: He looked up in an arm and reached down through
Speaker 1: a hole in the side of the plane. He couldn't
Speaker 1: see who it was attached to, if it was a
Speaker 1: man or a woman, a first responder or another passenger.
Speaker 1: He just saw the arm, and the hand at the
Speaker 1: end of that arm was reaching out just for him.
Speaker 1: Let me help you, a voice said, and with that
Speaker 1: Richard was hoisted from a watery grave to a place
Speaker 1: where the snow and wind where so cold, you knew
Speaker 1: you were alive. Twenty seven people died in the crash
Speaker 1: US Air flight four or five that day. Richard Lawson
Speaker 1: later learned that at least one of those deaths had
Speaker 1: been a passenger sitting in row six, back in coach
Speaker 1: where he was originally assigned. If that wasn't a sign,
Speaker 1: he didn't know what was. His life hadn't been taken
Speaker 1: by some evil spirit. It had been saved by a
Speaker 1: benevolent force, something unexplainable, the kind of thing that made
Speaker 1: the hair stand up on the back of your neck
Speaker 1: and the skin on your arms tingle. Who or what
Speaker 1: that thing was it was impossible to know. But curses, Nah,
Speaker 1: curses aren't real. Just ask the Herman family in Long
Speaker 1: Island back in nineteen fifty eight. They eventually moved out
Speaker 1: of their supposedly haunted house and never experienced another paranormal event. Again,
Speaker 1: evil spirits didn't follow them. Maybe it was just some
Speaker 1: unknown natural phenomenon, or maybe someone playing some sort of
Speaker 1: sick joke on them, which would of course be a disgrace.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan. This this disgraceland. All right, Poulter, Guys, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm going to rewatch this now. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: are too. As I mentioned in the a Bloc, this movie,
Speaker 1: the original one anyways, scared the hell out of me
Speaker 1: as a kid. So this week's question of the week
Speaker 1: is which movie do you remember scaring the hell out
Speaker 1: of you as a child and why? I want to know?
Speaker 2: Six one seven nine six six six three eight. Leave
Speaker 2: me a voicemail, send me a text, let me know.
Speaker 2: We'll get into it in the after party bonus episode.
Speaker 2: You can also reach me at disgrace Slam pod as
Speaker 2: well on Instagram, X and Facebook.
Speaker 1: Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 1: Win some free merch. All right, here come some credits es.
Speaker 1: Disgracelam was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
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