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Speaker 3: Previously on Wiscrack, I at Hedges somehow became the center
Speaker 3: of a true crime podcast, which frankly was not on
Speaker 3: my five year plan. Jody came to my village. I
Speaker 3: tried to act call she made my family. Oh no,
Speaker 3: she didn't make my family. That was my grandparents. She
Speaker 3: met my family. I panicked and made everyone tea that
Speaker 3: no one asked for. Then I stood in the corner
Speaker 3: like a lamp. My parents confirmed everything I'd said on stage,
Speaker 3: so that was validating and also deeply, deeply awkward. I
Speaker 3: didn't need therapy before. I think we're heading there now anyway.
Speaker 3: JODI's still digging. Next up meeting Brett's dad. I tried
Speaker 3: to warn her about him, using only my eyes and
Speaker 3: a secret blinking language that I didn't teach her about
Speaker 3: before we went. She didn't pick up on it. It's
Speaker 3: her podcast, I guess onwards and upwards? Hi, how are you?
Speaker 4: How are you?
Speaker 5: I'm in the UK.
Speaker 1: Did you have a chance to read the report? One
Speaker 1: of the first documents I got my hands on was
Speaker 1: the Domestic Homicide Report. There isn't an official equivalent in
Speaker 1: the US, and it's only created in the UK when
Speaker 1: there is a long history of violence or abuse when
Speaker 1: society demands to know how did this happen? In Brett Rogers' report,
Speaker 1: it examines his entire life and was conducted by investigating
Speaker 1: all the government agencies that were supposed to support and
Speaker 1: assess him, everything from the education system to the parole board.
Speaker 5: What did you think? Yes, I read it.
Speaker 1: I sent this report over to my friend Aaron, a
Speaker 1: twenty year veteran of social work in Georgia. She focuses
Speaker 1: on at risk young adults with mental health issues diagnosed
Speaker 1: or not. Though our systems are different from the UK.
Speaker 1: I was hoping she could see something I couldn't, especially
Speaker 1: when it came to Brett's biggest advocate, his father, Pete Rogers.
Speaker 5: So it's just that's again a little bit of why
Speaker 5: I'm nervous for you of being around his dad. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure, like clearly none of that. I'm not sure
Speaker 5: that was in the report about how dad or past behaviors.
Speaker 5: I've just worked in the field for so long that, yes,
Speaker 5: some of it is biological and the brain does different things,
Speaker 5: and if he hasn't been diagnosed, that's one thing. But
Speaker 5: there is also a learned behavior that comes along with
Speaker 5: this where most people get it from where they live
Speaker 5: and what they see the most.
Speaker 1: What do you think this is?
Speaker 3: So you're saying this isn't safe, I.
Speaker 5: Personally would not go there, or please bring someone with you.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, now I'm nervous. Can you please be careful?
Speaker 1: The thing was, I was already on my way. I'm
Speaker 1: Jody Tovey and this is wisecrack to episode five Brett
Speaker 1: you never knew me. On the drive to Pete's house,
Speaker 1: I'm silent ed keeps looking over. He senses I'm nervous
Speaker 1: and responds with wise cracks and one liners. But I
Speaker 1: want to stay focused on the task at hand. The
Speaker 1: truth is the thought of meeting the father of a
Speaker 1: convicted murderer has me on edge. Out of respect for
Speaker 1: the subject matter, I ask ed if he can wait
Speaker 1: in the car while I interview Pete. Though it confuses him,
Speaker 1: he agrees, and I take a deep breath and walk
Speaker 1: up the front steps and knock on the door. Pete, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Jody. Nice to meet you. How's it going. I'm good, good,
Speaker 1: good good. Room in Marklas that is fine, keeps one
Speaker 1: bedroom is the bottom floor of a converted townhouse in
Speaker 1: the next village over. It looks a lot like the
Speaker 1: Hedges Home, only split in half for those who don't
Speaker 1: need room for a full family. All right, lovely, okay,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. The apartment is simple and unassuming,
Speaker 1: pared down to the needs of a retired electrician. He
Speaker 1: greets me in shorts and a loud printed shirt like
Speaker 1: an old surfer. I can tell he's nervous too, but
Speaker 1: he calmly smiles as he shows me his place, which
Speaker 1: includes his music collection and his new hobby, an acoustic guitar. Uh,
Speaker 1: we have a musician in the house. What were we
Speaker 1: listening to? There's so much I want to ask Pete
Speaker 1: about that night, about what he thinks about his son,
Speaker 1: about how he's continued to move on. But once we
Speaker 1: sit down, I just want to work my way into
Speaker 1: a conversation by starting simple. So I asked about his
Speaker 1: other son, Aaron.
Speaker 4: He's a bit like me, actually, He's like, he's very
Speaker 4: very soft, he's very clever actually, And I said, well,
Speaker 4: I say it self, he's sort of like he's a
Speaker 4: nice kid. Everyone says that, you know, everyone says that. Bear.
Speaker 1: You know what about Brett? Was he an easy kid
Speaker 1: as well or a difficult kid?
Speaker 4: Well, it was always naughty Brett. He was always naughty. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was you know, that was his character, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: You know he was full of life, full of life.
Speaker 4: And he's like, yeah, he was always out there playing.
Speaker 4: He would even play. The older kids would even follow him.
Speaker 4: He was good at football, He was good at sports.
Speaker 4: He was very popular, I would say, one of the
Speaker 4: most popular in school.
Speaker 1: When did that friend group start to shrink?
Speaker 4: I believe when he stopped football, which is at mumby
Speaker 4: of thirteen something like that. Yeah, he is about that then,
Speaker 4: I think, you know.
Speaker 1: Pete continued to walk me through Brett's childhood which includes
Speaker 1: his divorce from Jillian and when Brett was a teenager.
Speaker 1: He tells me about Brett's early run ins with the law,
Speaker 1: eventually leading to one of the worst days of Pete's
Speaker 1: life and perhaps the incident that sealed Brett's fate in
Speaker 1: the years that followed, and he.
Speaker 4: Did get a job. He got a job as a milkman,
Speaker 4: which was great. He was only good money. He was
Speaker 4: only his own money. That lasted about a month until
Speaker 4: we had a problem with me where he went out
Speaker 4: to he was on his bike. He was always leaving
Speaker 4: his wallet in his back pocket. Likely youngsters, do you know,
Speaker 4: lost his wallet? Come home and I was sitting there actually,
Speaker 4: and he went out there and make himself signing to eat,
Speaker 4: and he started calling me names again, you know, one
Speaker 4: of them they just flip. You see. I know this
Speaker 4: sach funny going on, but I didn't know about it
Speaker 4: then enough about it, and so I said, look, go
Speaker 4: and take a walk, take a walk in the blog,
Speaker 4: come back and calm down. So he decided to attack me.
Speaker 4: So I slipped and he might eye on that on
Speaker 4: the corner.
Speaker 1: Pete points to an area where furniture used to be.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that when Pete quote slipped, he hit
Speaker 1: the furniture so hard he broke open his eye socket.
Speaker 4: Anyway, go long story short. The police come around. They
Speaker 4: said to me, don't worry, it's a family thing. We
Speaker 4: won't get much time in that, you know, but he's
Speaker 4: going to get prosecuted, so we want your statement. So okay,
Speaker 4: I gave him my statement. Then they tried to give
Speaker 4: him seven years a family thing, So they tricked me.
Speaker 1: You know, tricked is a heartbreaking choice of words. I
Speaker 1: can tell Pete is struggling with memories of Brett. He's
Speaker 1: still grieving, still asking what if things could have been different.
Speaker 1: As much as his reasoning is strained, I also understand it.
Speaker 4: But they give him five years in the end, then
Speaker 4: he came out into about two and a half something
Speaker 4: like that. I thought he needed to be prosecuted. I
Speaker 4: thought he needed to but to give him five years
Speaker 4: was like ridiculous. Really, But they're saying the law works,
Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, they tricked me. I think don't want
Speaker 4: to have a little tick on their box, the police.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not saying it all like that. I'm
Speaker 4: just saying that that's the why it worked. At that point.
Speaker 1: M h, and so is that what it was like
Speaker 1: when he was staying here with you? It was just
Speaker 1: a switch that would flip seemingly.
Speaker 4: That's the first time it happened. Yeah, because I would
Speaker 4: try to understand him.
Speaker 1: You see, I can imagine being a dad and watching
Speaker 1: your son change behaviors so dramatically.
Speaker 4: It's not nice, not well, I didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 4: I dedn'ty I'm just schizophra any you.
Speaker 1: Know, this is the first time I've heard this word
Speaker 1: allowed to describe Brett, and I'm a little stunned, but cautious.
Speaker 1: Pete's casual use of the term makes me wonder if
Speaker 1: he's using the clinical definition of the disease. Schizophrenia is
Speaker 1: one of the most complex mental illnesses, affecting how a
Speaker 1: person thinks, feels, and behaves. It can cause someone to
Speaker 1: hear or see things that aren't there, believe things that
Speaker 1: aren't true, or feel confused about what's real and what's not.
Speaker 1: It's also one of the hardest to diagnose, because no
Speaker 1: test exists. In men, symptoms tend not to appear until
Speaker 1: their early twenties, and then, once recognized, a constellation of
Speaker 1: traits must be diagnosed, but that requires a consistent schedule
Speaker 1: with medical professionals to uncover. Simply put, it takes time
Speaker 1: to see the pattern. To be clear, Brett was never
Speaker 1: diagnosed with schizophrenia, but in hindsight Pete believes he suffered
Speaker 1: from it. And remember, in prison, Brett was prescribed antipsychotics
Speaker 1: intended to treat schizophrenia.
Speaker 4: And then he became eighteen or seven, not sixteen. When
Speaker 4: you stop, you stop having any power over him, you know,
Speaker 4: then you're lost because you can't do anything. The doctor
Speaker 4: won't talk to you. That's sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Due to British age of consent laws, Pete wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to the doctors about his son's mental health
Speaker 1: after he turned sixteen. It's a frustrating law, paradoxical because
Speaker 1: those late teenage years are exactly when symptoms start to show.
Speaker 1: After Brett was released from prison, it said the family
Speaker 1: felt like things were better and that the fact that
Speaker 1: these murders had occurred it seemed out of the blue.
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious when he that out of prison,
Speaker 1: can you describe his behavior, like did it feel out
Speaker 1: of the blue?
Speaker 4: Is that acting you come out of prison, you know,
Speaker 4: her to stay he had to go and see his
Speaker 4: probation officer. That the probation office was on holiday, bless her,
Speaker 4: so he couldn't see her. So there's a big thing
Speaker 4: going on there, like, oh what do I see? Then
Speaker 4: where do I go? There's no way they could give
Speaker 4: him anywhere to stay, so he's out on the street.
Speaker 4: He's not allowed to stay with me, even though I
Speaker 4: wrote him a really good letter saying, how I understand
Speaker 4: better what's going on, and I think things would be
Speaker 4: fine and all the rest of it, you know. So
Speaker 4: we put him up in one of these.
Speaker 1: Like like a hotel or a hotel or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's for about a week or so. And I
Speaker 4: thought we can't keep doing this. So her sister tool like,
Speaker 4: you know, she said, well, he can't stay here, you know,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Once the parole board had forbidden Brett to live under
Speaker 1: his father's roof and Gillian had agreed to take in
Speaker 1: her son, Pete had some unsolicited advice for his ex wife,
Speaker 1: and it was absolutely horrifying to hear him say it.
Speaker 4: I decide to her, get your knives or what does
Speaker 4: sharp knives and put them away put him somewhere else.
Speaker 1: You had warned Jillian to take away those knives. Was
Speaker 1: that because you knew that he was dangerous or because
Speaker 1: he had threatened before to like use weapons because.
Speaker 4: I know there was a risk. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 4: I know there was something not right. There was not
Speaker 4: something not right. You know, sat in his room when
Speaker 4: we put him in a hotel and he said, I
Speaker 4: want you to go now. So he's getting ally, you know, wrong,
Speaker 4: didn't they? You know? You just get to know that.
Speaker 1: The moment is both bone chilling and bittersweet. Brett, self aware,
Speaker 1: is telling his father to leave the room and get
Speaker 1: to safety before another psychotic episode takes hold of him.
Speaker 1: So you weren't surprised, No.
Speaker 4: No, I wasn't surprised the whole thing happening, you know,
Speaker 4: But merely and truly it didn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: This confession is staggering. Pete Rogers is telling me, pure
Speaker 1: and simple that he knew Brett was capable of something
Speaker 1: like this. With that weight hanging between us, now's the
Speaker 1: time to ask how did he react when he heard
Speaker 1: his son murdered his former wife?
Speaker 4: Well, Averon found me and a found He said, people
Speaker 4: are saying sorry about this and sorry about that, and
Speaker 4: I didn't know what he was talking about. And then
Speaker 4: I started getting messages and I went around there basically
Speaker 4: to see what was going on. I sort of knew something,
Speaker 4: something really bad had happened, you know so, And I
Speaker 4: don't know. They never told me. No, they keep storm,
Speaker 4: don't they. They just said, like, you know, the incident.
Speaker 4: It's an incident. Basically, it's a weird feeling because like
Speaker 4: you're in shock, and life goes on and even a
Speaker 4: little bit of shock, and you don't really know what
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: Pete. Having now met you, I think you're you seem
Speaker 1: like such a well adjusted kind person. How were you
Speaker 1: able to get through this? How have you been able to?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: If you're in stand and hold a house and a
Speaker 1: job and play guitar.
Speaker 4: Well you do. This comes in as years go by,
Speaker 4: don't it. I took a you onion analyst who's a local,
Speaker 4: and I sat with her for probably once a week,
Speaker 4: you know, more or less, for about five or six years,
Speaker 4: and eventually got to where I want to be. I
Speaker 4: guess sometimes you're all jumbled up in your head, aren't you,
Speaker 4: And you just go ahead and do things anyway, you know.
Speaker 4: But it gives you that space to sort of like
Speaker 4: sort of segregate things a little bit and make the
Speaker 4: right decisions basically. And me, for me, I am in
Speaker 4: the winter. I generally take antidepressants for any a small amount,
Speaker 4: a small amount, but recently I've taken a bit more.
Speaker 4: I've taken them in the summer. And basically I realized
Speaker 4: that I've needed them for years. I've needed them for
Speaker 4: because I've noticed that if depression comes upon you, you don't
Speaker 4: really know it unless you've been there, and you think
Speaker 4: this is life. And when you get something that lifts
Speaker 4: you that little bit, you think, well, this is how
Speaker 4: it's supposed to be, you know, And so you can
Speaker 4: manage your life like that if you have them problems,
Speaker 4: you know. Yeah, And that's the way I'll get through it.
Speaker 4: And I'd also like to like to laugh and have
Speaker 4: a joke, you know.
Speaker 1: My head went back to my friend Aaron's analysis. Of course,
Speaker 1: she's never met Pete Rogers. She'd only reviewed the domestic
Speaker 1: homicide report. But Aaron had nothing to worry about. In
Speaker 1: front of me sat a docile, polite man who openly
Speaker 1: discussed the worst night of his life. With a complete stranger.
Speaker 1: As we start to wrap up questions about Brett, Pete
Speaker 1: fairly asks for some clarity on the direction of the podcast.
Speaker 4: You've told me that you're here to do a podcast
Speaker 4: on Edward because he's an up and coming comedian, and
Speaker 4: he's also done a gig on that something involves that
Speaker 4: it may involve my one of my sons, and you
Speaker 4: seem very interested in my son, and so it does
Speaker 4: seem a bit over the top for you to come
Speaker 4: all away over here to do a podcast on a comedian.
Speaker 4: It does to me.
Speaker 1: So ed talks about in his story is how he
Speaker 1: was home the night that on July twenty second when
Speaker 1: everything happened, and he said that he came home he
Speaker 1: was doing a stand up set here in town or
Speaker 1: at Ugly Village Hall, and it was John and Carroll,
Speaker 1: his parents, both in the house, and they woke up
Speaker 1: to banging, and they think that Brett was trying to
Speaker 1: get into the house. That's what they believe. Did you
Speaker 1: ever hear that before.
Speaker 4: I've never heard that before, apart from yourself saying that
Speaker 4: I don't know. The first I knew about anything was
Speaker 4: in the morning.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that happened that Brett went and tried
Speaker 1: to break into their house that night, and this is
Speaker 1: presumably after he had killed Jill and Dave.
Speaker 4: Well, I wouldn't like to say it didn't happen, because
Speaker 4: I mean, it could have happened, couldn't it? Because the
Speaker 4: boy didn't know what he was doing? Really did he?
Speaker 1: If it happened, why do you think he would go
Speaker 1: to the Hedges house?
Speaker 4: It wouldn't I don't think. No, it won't be the
Speaker 4: hobbyist thing that I would think he would do. But
Speaker 4: who knows? Because someone with their mind scrambled like that.
Speaker 4: You can't blame someone who's got mental health issues like
Speaker 4: that anyway, and they're not to blame. Really, it's just circumstances. Really,
Speaker 4: you know, that's all it is. You get nowhere from
Speaker 4: blame like that anyway?
Speaker 6: Do you.
Speaker 1: Recognizing this as a chance for Ed to shar his perspective?
Speaker 1: On that night, I shoot him a text asking if
Speaker 1: he wants to come in, how you been?
Speaker 7: Was it all right? You're everything?
Speaker 6: Fine?
Speaker 4: Cool? Lovely?
Speaker 3: How much is I don't obviously I don't know what
Speaker 3: I've come what I'm coming into. How much has been
Speaker 3: explained to you?
Speaker 4: Because six week podcast six podcasts approximately sounds rough? It okay? Cool?
Speaker 3: So all right, do you know what happened that night
Speaker 3: with the house? We might have been for guns? Do
Speaker 3: you want me to tell you what happened from our side?
Speaker 3: Just to kill you in So, I became a comedian,
Speaker 3: did gigs all over the place. But then when I
Speaker 3: left stance did I didn't come back like ever because mates,
Speaker 3: I didn't really want So when I came back, I
Speaker 3: do you know ugly village?
Speaker 4: All yeah, they had me.
Speaker 1: Do I pack up my stuff and watch this reunion,
Speaker 1: a decade in the making, unfold out of the corner
Speaker 1: of my eye. It takes me back to the years
Speaker 1: when your friend's parents were just shapes and faces. You
Speaker 1: never thought about their lives, their worries, their fears. You
Speaker 1: were just a kid, But they watched you play together
Speaker 1: in the yard, ride bikes on the sidewalk, sheer meals
Speaker 1: at each other's tables. In this instance, neither family imagined
Speaker 1: how it would end. One of those kids would become
Speaker 1: a celebrated comedian. The other would become the subject of
Speaker 1: every whispered conversation in town.
Speaker 3: When you hear I'm a comedian and when you hear
Speaker 3: I was talking about this, you first thought it was like,
Speaker 3: why the fuck are you making jokes about that?
Speaker 4: Whether there's a line there, haven't there, but I don't know.
Speaker 4: I've never heard it show or no.
Speaker 3: So the way the way I did it was, if
Speaker 3: you think of the show, the story that I told
Speaker 3: in like one hundred percent, eighty percent of it was
Speaker 3: the village, me growing up, going to school, stupid people
Speaker 3: in the village. The last bit was about Brett because
Speaker 3: obviously me and Brett had some runnings and yeah, I
Speaker 3: didn't know it. And the whole show was about me saying,
Speaker 3: there's this bullshit thing that I think all men do
Speaker 3: when we hit thirty, where your father or husband and
Speaker 3: you've got to be like flawless. You've got to get
Speaker 3: your money, you got to protect your a lot. You
Speaker 3: can't show any weakness at all, and that pressure fucks people.
Speaker 3: It just rocks people away because if you can't if
Speaker 3: you can't show any weakness at all, if a guy
Speaker 3: can't turn around to his mates and be like, really
Speaker 3: not happy with my job, really not happy with what's
Speaker 3: going on, I'm not in a good place. I'm struggling
Speaker 3: at the moment, and I feel like if we didn't
Speaker 3: have that, and if Brett was in the situation he
Speaker 3: was in, he could have turned around and been like,
Speaker 3: I'm not good right now. If there was no shame
Speaker 3: around it, he could have got help. Because my stance
Speaker 3: on it is it ain't Brett's fault.
Speaker 4: Good time, so that the ones that keeping.
Speaker 1: Their memories definitely I taken everything. He just told Pete
Speaker 1: Rogers something that felt like a long winded confession. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it was just his nerves kicking in saying what
Speaker 1: he knew Pete would want to hear a way to
Speaker 1: justify his comedy. Either way, it was the first time
Speaker 1: I'd heard any of it.
Speaker 3: Pete, thank you so much, thanks your tom speech to
Speaker 3: say us.
Speaker 1: And as we say goodbye to Pete, I wondered how
Speaker 1: much Ed believed what he actually said, and it got
Speaker 1: me thinking there was one person in the story that
Speaker 1: I hadn't interviewed yet asked the hard questions one on one,
Speaker 1: Ed Hedges himself. How much of the truth did he
Speaker 1: not know? Had he not faced had he taken any
Speaker 1: liberties with the story that he still had not shared
Speaker 1: with me? In the car, I check into my flight
Speaker 1: back to Atlanta. I decided to follow up on a
Speaker 1: few final loose ends before I left Stanstead, and Ed
Speaker 1: was cool to drive me around the village, but the
Speaker 1: quaint friendliness of this place was quickly wearing off. I
Speaker 1: went to Ed's cricket club to interview his old coach,
Speaker 1: Keith Ayres, the one so proud he'd given Ed an award.
Speaker 3: I didn't say anything you no, I don't think you're
Speaker 3: gonna get anything from me.
Speaker 1: But we were met with nothing but icy glares and
Speaker 1: folded arms. At a local bar where all the kids
Speaker 1: who never left the village gather after work, we might
Speaker 1: as well have been invisible. I wanted to hear some
Speaker 1: good memories of Brett from his old friends, but.
Speaker 4: Instant, what do you say?
Speaker 7: Oh, and Argie membership?
Speaker 1: You went, You're not members. A family friend of the
Speaker 1: who had agreed to an interview suddenly ghosted. The former
Speaker 1: classmate of Brett's ran the local flower shop, but inexplicably,
Speaker 1: her store was now closed for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 3: And see what I mean by you?
Speaker 7: Yeah, totally sorry about that, guys.
Speaker 1: It felt like whispers were swirling around this town about
Speaker 1: our podcast and the questions we were asking about Brett.
Speaker 1: In an instant, an entire village stopped speaking to us.
Speaker 1: The cold shoulders put a chill on Ed's mood too.
Speaker 1: By sunset, he wouldn't even look at me. My mind
Speaker 1: rushed back to Sophie's accusations, through Ed's parents and the
Speaker 1: police reports. I confirmed most everything that happened, But was
Speaker 1: there something Ed wasn't telling me. I needed to confront
Speaker 1: ed here and now. So I sat him down and
Speaker 1: I asked him point blank, I'll just be very direct.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Sophie Hagen, who directed your original show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she says that you made a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff up. What is what's true and what's not.
Speaker 6: She's correct, She's definitely correct. She's definitely correct.
Speaker 3: And that's something I think I'm pretty upfront with in
Speaker 3: the past, even in reviews. You can look up and
Speaker 3: up front with it. She's you know, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to say she's incorrect with that. So in terms of
Speaker 3: in terms of what's correct and what's not, what's true
Speaker 3: and what's not, the story is true.
Speaker 1: Ed was caught off guard. His calm replaced with attension
Speaker 1: that crept into his voice. I could see him tense up,
Speaker 1: but I let him breathe let him process, and then
Speaker 1: I let him tell me his side uninterrupted.
Speaker 3: Anything to do with Brett is true, and anything to
Speaker 3: do with Brett coming to the house is true. Sophie
Speaker 3: was really keen on this being a one hundred percent
Speaker 3: true show, and it was really tough. It was really
Speaker 3: really tough for me to do a one hundred percent
Speaker 3: true show with no embellishments or lives. And I'm a comedian.
Speaker 3: That's my currency. I need people to laugh. If I'm
Speaker 3: telling you this really bad story, you gotta laugh. And
Speaker 3: I did a preview and a friend came up to
Speaker 3: me and he was like, well, it's a crazy story.
Speaker 3: And I was like, what do you really think about it?
Speaker 3: And he said, edits the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, not the
Speaker 3: Edinburgh Story Festival, and like a couple of my mates laughed,
Speaker 3: and I was like, shit, I'm a comedian, this needs
Speaker 3: to be funny. So I made the decision to start
Speaker 3: changing the punchlines. When I went back into my childhood,
Speaker 3: I would embellish stories. I was really nervous to tell
Speaker 3: Sophie that, because she was so adamant that everything had
Speaker 3: to be true, but I couldn't keep dying. And when
Speaker 3: you're dying on your ass on stage, it's just you
Speaker 3: and no one knows that you're being well, it was
Speaker 3: all true, that it's bollocks. I sucked for four or
Speaker 3: five months telling this story, and I decided that when
Speaker 3: I went back into my childhood, I had to earn
Speaker 3: the laughs. So I would give them some true, real story.
Speaker 3: And then I would tell a story that I'd embellished,
Speaker 3: or that I'd made up an ending, or I'd made
Speaker 3: up a conversation in my childhood.
Speaker 1: But the stuff that happened in the house with you
Speaker 1: being there with Brett, those.
Speaker 3: I never messed with that. I never messed with that
Speaker 3: because I knew that if someone found out I was
Speaker 3: lying about a murder in my village, I would get crucified.
Speaker 3: Everything that I said, you kind of had to be
Speaker 3: able to google it, You kind of had to be
Speaker 3: able to search for it. And that's what upset me.
Speaker 3: When Sophy searched for the things and she said, look,
Speaker 3: I don't think this happened in your childhood. I was like,
Speaker 3: damn right, it didn't happen. But that's not the reason
Speaker 3: they're coming to see the show. I'm glad I made
Speaker 3: the decision that I made. If you're going to bring
Speaker 3: the audience down, you have to bring them back up.
Speaker 1: I can understand that, and I'm not trying to where
Speaker 1: I struggle, like, I can confirm those things, but where
Speaker 1: I struggle is that I can't. I cannot confirm that
Speaker 1: you and your parents were in your house that night, right.
Speaker 1: I can't prove that there was banging at the door
Speaker 1: because it's not in a police report and it's not
Speaker 1: a yeah, that's and that's where i'm that's my struggle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Brett was found next to my house, like and
Speaker 3: you've seen the house. He was found ten foot away
Speaker 3: from my house. That's where they found him. Brett spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time at my house as a child.
Speaker 3: My house was the only house in the village that
Speaker 3: Brett could have gone to because we were the only
Speaker 3: house that he would come to to hang out as
Speaker 3: a kid.
Speaker 1: He was repeating the same facts, clinging to them, but
Speaker 1: not because he was sticking to a made up story,
Speaker 1: because there simply wasn't any new or different truths to
Speaker 1: offer me. I could see the wheels in his head turning,
Speaker 1: his frustration heating.
Speaker 3: Up with me. You've spoken to the three eyewitnesses, me,
Speaker 3: my mom, and my dad.
Speaker 1: I guess to be very direct, Do you have any
Speaker 1: proof though that you were?
Speaker 3: But Jody, what proof do you want? What proof can
Speaker 3: I give you? It is a first hand account of
Speaker 3: something that happened. If you can think of a way
Speaker 3: that I can prove this in a time that happened
Speaker 3: before video, doorbells and CCTV. If you can think of
Speaker 3: something I can bring to you, tell me and I
Speaker 3: will bring it. If you can think of something that
Speaker 3: will definitively prove it did or it didn't happen, tell
Speaker 3: me and I will bring it. You've spoken to all
Speaker 3: of us, and we've told you. Is there anything else
Speaker 3: I can offer you? Because if not, this is one
Speaker 3: of those things where you take my word or you don't.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to stay objective to form an educated opinion,
Speaker 1: knowing that there may never be hard proof that Brett
Speaker 1: was at the Hedges door that night. For me to
Speaker 1: believe that Ed is making it all up, I'd also
Speaker 1: have to believe that he's convinced his parents to join
Speaker 1: in on the lie, and after meeting them, I just
Speaker 1: don't buy it. The truth is I believe Ed. I do.
Speaker 1: ED repeats a behavioral pattern I've seen in my work, frantic,
Speaker 1: anxious energy the Ed you see on stage, followed by
Speaker 1: long periods of social withdrawal reflection. Those are the months
Speaker 1: I couldn't even get a text back from him. It's
Speaker 1: taken me this entire investigation to understand that this is
Speaker 1: Ed's healing.
Speaker 3: P I have done this show for so long, I've
Speaker 3: told this story for so long, and the fact that
Speaker 3: I lived through the.
Speaker 1: Night, I could see the burden of proof weighing on
Speaker 1: Ed's shoulders, and I wanted to stop the conversation and
Speaker 1: tell him I trust him. But with what he said next,
Speaker 1: I wasn't even sure i'd ever hear from him again.
Speaker 3: The fact that I lived through the night. I don't
Speaker 3: mean to sound like blase, but if I can be
Speaker 3: one hundred percent honest with you, and this might not
Speaker 3: be what you want to hear, I really don't give
Speaker 3: a fuck if you believe me or not.
Speaker 1: Next time on wisecrack, I'm just gonna show you something
Speaker 1: for context.
Speaker 7: This is his rap sheet And that was only twelve
Speaker 7: years of his life. So in twenty twelve, Joe calls
Speaker 7: the police again and explicitly says her son is trying
Speaker 7: to kill her. Wisecrack is a production of Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 7: and iHeart Podcasts in association with Starwiit Productions. I'm Your
Speaker 7: Host Jody Tovey. The show is written by Charles Forbes.
Speaker 1: Stand up comedy written and performed by Ed Hedges, with
Speaker 1: additional writing contributions by Charles Forbes. Executive producers for Tenderfoot
Speaker 1: TV are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Executive producers for
Speaker 1: Starwiit Productions are Jody Tovey and Charles Forbes. Lead producer
Speaker 1: is Alex Vespestad, with additional production by Stephen Perez, Joe Grizzle,
Speaker 1: ja Ja Muhammad, Jamie Albright, and Jordan Foxworthy. Lead editor
Speaker 1: is Stephen Perez, with additional editing by Dylan Harrington and
Speaker 1: Liam Luxon. Coordinating producers are John Street and Tracy Kaplan.
Speaker 1: Research by Jim Nlly and Misty Showalter. Original music by
Speaker 1: Jay Ragsdale with additional music by Makeup and Vanity Set
Speaker 1: mix by Cooper Skinner. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at Uta Nate Ranson,
Speaker 1: Alexander Kaplan and the Synergy Clubhouse and the Nord Group.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts like Wisecrack, search Tenderfoot Tv on your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast app, or visit us at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Episode six will release next week, but
Speaker 1: you can binge the rest of the season right now,
Speaker 1: completely add free by subscribing to Tenderfoot Plus on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or at time underfoot plus dot com.