Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh, and Chuck is here in spirit too,
Speaker 1: and we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that
Speaker 1: we are going to have a swinging Pacific Northwest Swing
Speaker 1: this coming February, and tickets are now on sale. February
Speaker 1: one will be at the More Theater in Seattle, February
Speaker 1: two will be at Revolution Hall in Portland, and on
Speaker 1: February three, for s F Sketch Fest, will be at
Speaker 1: the Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our
Speaker 1: social media's for more information and links to tickets, and
Speaker 1: we'll see you in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging
Speaker 1: out too, so that makes us a good old fashioned
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, Episode Old School Top ten of Dish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think we'll actually make it through ten of these?
Speaker 1: I'm not. Maybe you'll you'll do all tend keep going
Speaker 1: after you log off, how about that? Yeah, we could
Speaker 1: probably get through all ten. And these they're they're pretty uh,
Speaker 1: it's we'll see. Let's just start at the beginning. I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that we hit the last one,
Speaker 1: number one for sure. Okay, let's do it. Then, all right,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about? Even well, we're talking today
Speaker 1: about cases of mistaken identity, as anyone who read the
Speaker 1: title of this episode or maybe even the synopsis could
Speaker 1: tell you. And we talked a lot Chuck in our
Speaker 1: Doppelganger episode, which hopefully came out before this episode or
Speaker 1: else people won't know what we're talking about. We talked
Speaker 1: a lot about some of this stuff, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, terrible things can happen if somebody mistakes you
Speaker 1: for somebody else. Um. And that even in in the
Speaker 1: age of facial recognition technology and genetic testing, UM, that
Speaker 1: stuff can still happen. And because of our faith and
Speaker 1: things like facial recognition programs and DNA testing, if if
Speaker 1: you you come up with a mistaken identity case, it
Speaker 1: makes it much harder to be believed when you're like,
Speaker 1: I swear to God, it wasn't me, because people say
Speaker 1: we've got your d N a man, and it's a match.
Speaker 1: It was you. You're just fibbing, yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: it gets a lot more interesting when you're talking about
Speaker 1: mistaken identity for a crime that has been committed. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: So I already want to skip this first one, can
Speaker 1: we sure, let's do it and we'll go instead to
Speaker 1: uh grand Old Israel, where there was a an Australian
Speaker 1: ex pat named Nicole McCabe who'd been living there for years,
Speaker 1: was married. She was six months pregnant at the time.
Speaker 1: That has happened in two thousand and yes, and apparently
Speaker 1: she um was watching the news, the local news in Israel,
Speaker 1: and Um I saw that there was an assassination of
Speaker 1: one of the Hamas chiefs, Mahmoud. I'll mab Mabou, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm going with. Mabu, Yeah, Mabu m ab h
Speaker 1: o u A how else you going to say that?
Speaker 1: That's how I would say it. So Um he was
Speaker 1: assassinated in Dubai and the Dubai authorities were looking for
Speaker 1: twenty six people, and one of them was Nicole McCabe
Speaker 1: and she knew they were looking for because they showed
Speaker 1: her passport on television. That's right, So she was like,
Speaker 1: what is going on? W t F. So it turns
Speaker 1: out that if you are in Israeli intelligence agency and
Speaker 1: it's called Massad, you can say, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: use real identities as a cover. So instead of like
Speaker 1: making up a false identity as a cover for their agents,
Speaker 1: they use real identities and they basically use the identities
Speaker 1: of of foreigners living in Israel, and all twenty six
Speaker 1: of these Westerners evidently, and this is why they were suspected,
Speaker 1: is because they were real identities used by Massad as
Speaker 1: cover that we're real people, and they just basically lifted
Speaker 1: their information from government databases. It's not like she lost
Speaker 1: her her license in her passport and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: They just took it basically sorry, except they didn't say sorry.
Speaker 1: I didn't even say sorry. They just did it. And
Speaker 1: that's so like insidious that apparently the one some of
Speaker 1: the ex pats living in Israel were Brits, and the
Speaker 1: UK expelled the highest ranking MASSAD agent from the Israeli
Speaker 1: embassy as a result of this. It's just like you
Speaker 1: don't do that. And apparently that was like standard procedure
Speaker 1: for the MASSAD. So Nicole McKay, being an Australian, was
Speaker 1: expecting that Australia would help her out of like this
Speaker 1: legal jam that she had been gotten into, and they
Speaker 1: were like, how about we just give you another passport,
Speaker 1: and she said, is that in And they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it, but you should probably take it because you're
Speaker 1: going to be on every single watch list in the
Speaker 1: world now using your old passport. Just go with a
Speaker 1: new one. Do the smart thing, McCabe and she said,
Speaker 1: cry key, let's go Now, this isn't twenty in. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they've stopped using real identities because that just
Speaker 1: seems like a recipe for trouble. It definitely does. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that was like super reported on,
Speaker 1: and they never reported on the rain so I didn't
Speaker 1: see any follow up stuff, but it was widely reported
Speaker 1: on in different outlets about it, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the same story over and over again. It was. It
Speaker 1: was investigated, but there wasn't a lot of follow up. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: moving on to the next one. Number eight or number two,
Speaker 1: depending on how you want to number these. This was
Speaker 1: a case of a mistaken identity. That also was the
Speaker 1: case of someone else having that same name as well,
Speaker 1: which is we talked a little bit about this someone
Speaker 1: else I think in the Oh no, I don't think
Speaker 1: that anyone had the same name in the Doppelganger episode.
Speaker 1: Did they No, No, I don't think so. But that
Speaker 1: was the case with Will West in New York about
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century. Yeah, he was brought
Speaker 1: up on charges of manslaughter and taken to Level and
Speaker 1: Worth prison. Um to be um, what's it called when
Speaker 1: they induct you. It's not inducted? UM identify you? I
Speaker 1: guess when they book you. Yes, you procedurally check you in. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's what we'll go with as better than induction. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that, UM. And he said, I've never been
Speaker 1: here before. I've never been in trouble with the law before.
Speaker 1: H And as part of standard procedure, they followed the
Speaker 1: um uh bertillion um process of measuring your head, your face,
Speaker 1: the distance between your eyes, the length of your nose,
Speaker 1: the width from ear to ear, all this different stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a form of what's called anthropometry and throw and throw. No,
Speaker 1: I'm going with anthropometry. And we've talked about before, I
Speaker 1: think in the forensics episode, probably the fingerprinting episode. It
Speaker 1: was the way that you distinguished one person from another,
Speaker 1: usually criminals. Before we relied on fingerprints, and apparently it
Speaker 1: worked really well because it was so granular and so
Speaker 1: detailed and so they took will West's measurements and they said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we found somebody with the exact same
Speaker 1: measurements as you. Right, so you have the same name,
Speaker 1: you have nearly identical measurements. According to this French uh
Speaker 1: police procedure of of identifying people. Um, you look like
Speaker 1: him in the photograph. It's not just that your head
Speaker 1: measures out the same. And so we think we've got you, buddy,
Speaker 1: and he's like, it's not me, I promise you. And
Speaker 1: as it turns out, the real William West was already
Speaker 1: in Leavenworth, already serving a life sentence for murder. And
Speaker 1: even though fingerprinting wasn't widespread, they were able to use
Speaker 1: in the early days of fingerprinting, um, their fingerprints to
Speaker 1: to right this wrong. Yeah. Um. And some people have
Speaker 1: speculated that these guys were actually like related somehow, maybe
Speaker 1: even twins that were pulling a scam um. But as
Speaker 1: far as anyone officially knows, they were essentially doppelgangers. That
Speaker 1: how upen to have the same name, and they looked
Speaker 1: so much alike if you look at pictures of them, like,
Speaker 1: they were clearly doppelgangers. Um that will will West when
Speaker 1: he was being booked. They showed him the pictures from
Speaker 1: the past booking and he said, yeah, that's me, but
Speaker 1: I don't know where you got that photo. Like that's
Speaker 1: how much it looked like him. He thought it was
Speaker 1: a photo of himself. So they ended up um moving
Speaker 1: to fingerprints. I think the Warden of Leavenworth stopped using
Speaker 1: the barche ln Um process like the next day, essentially
Speaker 1: the fingerprints instead, because yeah, because everyone thought the bear
Speaker 1: chelon Um process was like unassailable, and then it showed no,
Speaker 1: there's a problem, and fingerprints got got us out of
Speaker 1: this jam. So let's just all move to fingerprints. From
Speaker 1: that point one, the headtime headline the next day said
Speaker 1: bird alone process assailable. Exclamation point. Clark says fingerprints rule.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, yeah, you're Clark. I got that. Now it
Speaker 1: sounds like he was Clark, all right, And now we
Speaker 1: can move on to the case of uh, well, three gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Uh there was a bad guy who committed crimes under
Speaker 1: the names John Smith and a much more fancy pants
Speaker 1: and name Lord Wilton to Willoughby. Uh And it seemed
Speaker 1: like this guy and for about uh geez, for almost
Speaker 1: twenty years, was bilking women out of their jewelry by uh,
Speaker 1: I guess writing bad checks. He was a con man
Speaker 1: and a thief, and I made a man named Adolph
Speaker 1: Beck was mistaken for this man. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the case of oh you look like him, we booked you,
Speaker 1: but hey, we cleared it up. This guy did hard time,
Speaker 1: seven years in prison. Yeah. So um. Apparently Lord Wilton
Speaker 1: to Willoughby's scam was he would find a woman say
Speaker 1: that he was looking for a mistress, and I think
Speaker 1: he'll do you just find you like me? I like you, um,
Speaker 1: And hey, that jewelry you're wearing is kind of shabby.
Speaker 1: Why don't you give it to me? And I will
Speaker 1: take it and use it for size to get some
Speaker 1: very nice jewelry. Um. And then he just wouldn't return
Speaker 1: the jewelry. And it was such a petty crime. This
Speaker 1: wasn't nice jewelry. Like he must have taken tens of
Speaker 1: dollars worth of jewelry, but he did it very frequently.
Speaker 1: He was convicted and put in prison in eighteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: The exact same crime was carried out in eighteen nine
Speaker 1: by him. But it just so happened that Adolph Beck
Speaker 1: was fingered for that crime, and they were like you
Speaker 1: and you were the same man who was convicted in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, and we know it. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't me. It wasn't me, and they didn't listen
Speaker 1: to him like you said. He did hard time, like
Speaker 1: for years, yeah, for seven years, and he had a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence to prove that it wasn't him. He
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I was in Peru during this initial crime,
Speaker 1: and I can prove that. And he said, also, I'm
Speaker 1: not circumcised. Take a look at this, and everyone went hey, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. He said this is important to stop being childish. Well,
Speaker 1: but that's true. He was not circumcised apparently. I mean,
Speaker 1: who was the real name. I think maybe Frederick Meyer.
Speaker 1: I saw that, I saw William Thomas, William Wyatt. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Most people just referred to him as John Smith,
Speaker 1: John old circumcised Smith. So, uh, fifteen convictions, seven years
Speaker 1: in prison, and it gets worse. He finally gets out
Speaker 1: of prison for a crime he didn't commit. He's in
Speaker 1: his I think he's sixty at this point, and old
Speaker 1: Lord Willoughby was still going to work and this guy
Speaker 1: got convicted again for the same guy's crime. Yeah. So somebody,
Speaker 1: luckily and journalists that the Daily Mail had taken an
Speaker 1: interest in this, was like, this is a gross miscarriage
Speaker 1: of justice, Like it's been documented, this is not the
Speaker 1: same guy for years, and they're going after him again.
Speaker 1: So he turned public um opinion against the Crown and
Speaker 1: basically pointed to the to the prosecutor and said this
Speaker 1: point his penis right. He said, this man is not
Speaker 1: not not only incompetent, he's almost a fraud. He's such
Speaker 1: a bad lawyer, um, and we should release this guy.
Speaker 1: So not only did they release him, the Crown gave
Speaker 1: him a five thousand dollar compensation I'm sorry, five thousand
Speaker 1: pound compensation, I chuck. Not only did I do the
Speaker 1: inflation calculator for pounds, I converted it to dollars. All right,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. So in nine, five thousand pounds was
Speaker 1: worth about six hundred and eighty three thousand pounds today,
Speaker 1: And if you convert that to dollars today, he got
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. That's about a
Speaker 1: hundred grand a year in prison. I get the impression
Speaker 1: he wasn't a bad guy from what I saw, but
Speaker 1: he Um was not a magnet for money. Apparently he
Speaker 1: did not die Um with any money. I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: say it. I know how much you hate it. He
Speaker 1: died penniless. But one of the upshots of this is
Speaker 1: a direct result of the miscarriage of justice from just
Speaker 1: mistaken identity Um. The British Court of Appeals was established
Speaker 1: like three years after he was convicted the last time. Well,
Speaker 1: and it became sort of a hey, eyewitness because I
Speaker 1: think sixteen people identified him, and it sort of became
Speaker 1: a hey, this reliability of eyewitnesses is not something we
Speaker 1: could really lean into all the time. Sixteen people, he
Speaker 1: really did look a lot like him. But I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, there's got to be something like, like, you
Speaker 1: can't read a genuine protestation from an innocent person. Let's
Speaker 1: let's open our eyes a little bit here, people, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and open your pants and just check out the penis.
Speaker 1: That would have solved that once and for all right.
Speaker 1: They were just so prude. I guess they wouldn't even
Speaker 1: look at that very clear evidence. I mean they were
Speaker 1: Victorian Chuck, all right, Should we take a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say I'm having a lot of fun here,
Speaker 1: but I do think we should take a break at
Speaker 1: this point. Okay, let's do it all right. Uh this
Speaker 1: one is a little uh sad on a lot of levels. Um.
Speaker 1: This was a medical identity theft. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this we want to thank our old If we're doing
Speaker 1: a top ten, chances are it's from our old friends
Speaker 1: at house stuffworks dot com because to write a lot
Speaker 1: of those. This one specifically is by Nicholas Jervis or
Speaker 1: gerbas So. I don't know how you pronounce the thing,
Speaker 1: but I think he did a bang up job on
Speaker 1: this one. Bang up job. Uh. So. This is a
Speaker 1: case of Anne Dorree Sacks, who lived in Salt Lake City, Utah,
Speaker 1: was a mom at four kids, and um, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden was reported that her newborn child under her
Speaker 1: name tested positive for legal drugs, which is a problem
Speaker 1: for that mom. She's like, hey, listen, I got four kids,
Speaker 1: but I don't have a newborn and I certainly don't
Speaker 1: have a newborn that tested positive for drugs. Myth no
Speaker 1: less um. So, not only was the newborn tested positive
Speaker 1: for meth, the newborn had been abandoned by the mother,
Speaker 1: who had also split with a ten thousand dollar medical bill,
Speaker 1: Dick's her baby to meth abandons. The baby doesn't pay
Speaker 1: a ten bill, So of course the hospitals like, you're
Speaker 1: a crook and we're not gonna listen anything you said.
Speaker 1: The woman's like, no, I swear to God it was
Speaker 1: not me. And finally turned out that drug addicted um
Speaker 1: uh woman had broken into and Dory Sacks's car, got
Speaker 1: her I D which is a lesson, never leave your
Speaker 1: life your license in your car. That's just a bad
Speaker 1: idea all around, got her medical records and then went
Speaker 1: and gave birth as and Dorry Sacks and ultimately apparently
Speaker 1: amended and Dorr Sachs medical history. Um with with this
Speaker 1: this information that may or may not have been purged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, who knows what uh this impostor reported
Speaker 1: about their medical history? But Sacks can't find out because
Speaker 1: there are laws, privacy laws that prevent the records from
Speaker 1: being shown even to her. So basically she has uh
Speaker 1: she has to always sort of be on the lookout
Speaker 1: for this. She has in real life a clotting disorder
Speaker 1: in her blood and if she's given the wrong blood
Speaker 1: type she could die. So she doesn't really even know
Speaker 1: what's in there for what kind of blood type she
Speaker 1: has on her medical records. So now Andrey Sachs has
Speaker 1: to be just really careful and I guess proactive anytime
Speaker 1: she goes to the hospital or doctor. Yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: thing is called medical identity theft. This happened and I
Speaker 1: think two thousand tennis and it was like a super
Speaker 1: scary two thousand ten things to happen, But apparently it
Speaker 1: was happening at the time early frequently enough that they
Speaker 1: interviewed a couple other people and they were like, man,
Speaker 1: if this happens to you, you are on your own,
Speaker 1: because not only is the hospital not helping you, they
Speaker 1: sick um basically billing investigators to find out what's going on.
Speaker 1: And they interviewed and Dory Sex's like children to find
Speaker 1: out had mommy been pregnant recently. Um. They would not
Speaker 1: believe her. They just they did not take her word
Speaker 1: for it. And it wasn't until she um took a
Speaker 1: DNA test to prove like, this is not my child
Speaker 1: they finally off. I wonder if you could like demand
Speaker 1: that first rather than putting your family through all that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, so you just show up with
Speaker 1: a zip block bag of blood at the investigator's office
Speaker 1: and be like test this. You just plunk it down
Speaker 1: on the desk in front of them, or just spit
Speaker 1: at them and say collect this. Oh boy, check. That
Speaker 1: turned dark pretty fast. But I liked it. Well, that
Speaker 1: whole story was dark. It's very just a heartbreaking situation
Speaker 1: all the way around. I've got a little positive spin
Speaker 1: for you. Then at the end of the article I read,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a different article. Apparently the mother um,
Speaker 1: the actual like biological mom who had abandon her kid,
Speaker 1: got let out of jail because she played guilty to
Speaker 1: some other stuff and did some time, and like did
Speaker 1: her time. But and Dory Sachs was interviewed and when
Speaker 1: asked how she felt about it, and she said, if
Speaker 1: the use of my ideas would allowed that baby a
Speaker 1: chance to survive, then it's worth it to me. Wow,
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say that, you know, the
Speaker 1: biological momb turned her life around and reclaimed the baby.
Speaker 1: And don't be naives. Oh that's a good one. How
Speaker 1: about this number five? Or we skipped one, so number four, six, six?
Speaker 1: How can we be that's this bad? At this? I
Speaker 1: don't know math, Uh in two thousand three, the cops
Speaker 1: in Britain said, we would very much like to arrestue
Speaker 1: Peter hamm Can and that's how we do things over
Speaker 1: here for cops. Because we think you've murdered someone. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna pull a gun on you, or we're just
Speaker 1: gonna ask you very kindly to come with us. We
Speaker 1: think you murdered murdered a woman in Italy last year
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. You match the description of the person,
Speaker 1: and you're coming with me. But this bartender was like,
Speaker 1: I've never been to Italy and they're like, you sound
Speaker 1: like you have it. As a matter of fact, you
Speaker 1: sound like you're from Italy, friend, he said, but it's
Speaker 1: not a true. So this bartender, what was his name,
Speaker 1: Peter Hampkin, I believe he was like, what do you
Speaker 1: guys have never been to Italy. I certainly wasn't there
Speaker 1: when this this murder happened. They said, okay, not only
Speaker 1: do you look just like the description of the guy
Speaker 1: that we're looking for, we're gonna take your blood and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you're a match, my friend, you're a match
Speaker 1: to this. Uh. I guess the evidence that had been
Speaker 1: found on the scene and um, Peter Hampkin was suddenly
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: was not himp And this is where we were just
Speaker 1: kind of like the beginnings of the true dystopian um
Speaker 1: mistaken identity stuff. Yeah, this one I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand it in a way. But here's how it works.
Speaker 1: If you are using DNA databases to match someone, it
Speaker 1: is going to compare um subsites on the strand that
Speaker 1: are called locusts or together they're called loki. And that's
Speaker 1: just like I've seen it described as showing like the
Speaker 1: genes neighborhood is the physical location of the geneo a chromosome,
Speaker 1: And depending on where you are and what lab you
Speaker 1: are and where you are in the world, you might
Speaker 1: use a different a certain amount of these low key
Speaker 1: as identifiers. In the States, I think the FBI uses thirteen.
Speaker 1: In the UK it is ten. And apparently that you
Speaker 1: can like make mistakes, like I thought DNA was the
Speaker 1: gold standard, and reading this, it seems like if you're
Speaker 1: just looking at as low as six low ki for
Speaker 1: a match, then that's can be a real problem. It
Speaker 1: certainly can. I think they thought before that nine gave
Speaker 1: you a one and a hundred and thirteen billion chance
Speaker 1: of a false positive. But apparently people looked into and
Speaker 1: they're like, where did you get that evidence? FBI, and
Speaker 1: they're like, we don't have to tell you'd be quiet. Um,
Speaker 1: So no one's entirely certain what m the actual chances.
Speaker 1: But the basis you said d NA was the gold standard,
Speaker 1: it totally is for forensics, and the chances are really
Speaker 1: really small that there would be a false match using
Speaker 1: standard search procedures. Because they're looking at I think you
Speaker 1: said thirteen. I believe they've up to ten. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: uped it to twenty. There's twenty sites that they say
Speaker 1: these loki. These loki are going to be the ones
Speaker 1: that we check. And you can have a minimum when
Speaker 1: you like, if you arrest somebody and you take their blood,
Speaker 1: you work up a DNA profile of that person, you
Speaker 1: have to have at least a minimum of those twenty
Speaker 1: cover preferably up to twenty for your for your profile.
Speaker 1: And then the more you have and the more you
Speaker 1: match the twenty loca, the less of a chance you
Speaker 1: have of a false positive. But it can happen. And
Speaker 1: I think the point of the people who are saying like, um,
Speaker 1: we need to talk about this. That there can be
Speaker 1: false positive is because if you are on a jury,
Speaker 1: especially if you watch a lot of C s I
Speaker 1: or Law and Order, you're like, you got DNA evidence,
Speaker 1: it's over for you. Pal The idea that it could
Speaker 1: be wrong is just out the window. And they're like,
Speaker 1: we need to train the public injuries better than this
Speaker 1: because they think it's it's again unassailable, right, But the
Speaker 1: idea is you can always get way more granular with
Speaker 1: your DNA uh peek alou and and and really find
Speaker 1: out the truth though, right, Well, that's how Peter Hampkin
Speaker 1: finally got off that bartender that kicked this whole thing off.
Speaker 1: He they did a further DNA profile of them, and
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, it's not you. Because the chances of
Speaker 1: somebody having those same mutations. They look at short tandem
Speaker 1: repeating um snippets, which are non protein coding sequences, which
Speaker 1: means like, it doesn't matter if they mutate a lot,
Speaker 1: So they mutate a lot. So the chances of you
Speaker 1: having the same mutation in all twenty of those is
Speaker 1: vanishing lee small, and even in all eight of them
Speaker 1: is pretty small enough. That it is still the gold standard.
Speaker 1: It's just if you get caught and you have money
Speaker 1: for a good lawyer, you can be like, you need
Speaker 1: to do a better profile, and then they'll find that
Speaker 1: it's not actually you. And of course I use peak alou,
Speaker 1: that's not the official language they use for looking at DNA.
Speaker 1: That's peekaboo. I used the slang. Okay, all right, I
Speaker 1: think we do one more then we take our other break.
Speaker 1: How about that? Okay, I'm still having a lot of
Speaker 1: fun here, chuck um. Alright, so I guess we're on
Speaker 1: either number four or number three and number five or
Speaker 1: number uh. There was a interesting case of mistaken identity
Speaker 1: in UM which turned out to be a sibling. In Alaska,
Speaker 1: police had a sexual assault case and it was they
Speaker 1: had a semen sample, they had usable DNA, they had
Speaker 1: a DNA match. This guy was already in the system,
Speaker 1: so they thought like, all right, this is an open
Speaker 1: and shut case. Except one problem. This guy is was
Speaker 1: in jail already when the crime was committed, So what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do? Yeah, this one was incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think this Alaskan um UH. DNA analysts or forensic
Speaker 1: analysts like like went around the country giving talks on
Speaker 1: this case and really opened people's eyes because it turned
Speaker 1: out that the guy who was in prison whose DNA
Speaker 1: matched the semen on the crime scene. I guess um
Speaker 1: had gotten a bone marrow transplant from his brother, and
Speaker 1: because of that, he was carrying around his brother's DNA
Speaker 1: in his blood. Because when you get a bow marrow transplant,
Speaker 1: you're getting uh like a red blood cell um stem
Speaker 1: cell transplant, and those things turned into red blood cells
Speaker 1: and they test your blood, So whatever DNA your blood
Speaker 1: has is what they come back with on the DNA profile.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the other brother immediately was like, you're
Speaker 1: looking for my brother, because like maybe it sounds like
Speaker 1: the brother. You know, the other brother was not a
Speaker 1: good guy obviously, I mean, clearly if he committed sexual assault,
Speaker 1: but if he was already in jail for something else,
Speaker 1: then it sounds like good good brother, bad brother. They
Speaker 1: were both sexual assaulters. The one was already in jail
Speaker 1: for it. The one who actually did it had not
Speaker 1: been caught yet. They thought that the guy who was
Speaker 1: in jail already was the purp for the outside one,
Speaker 1: and it turned out knows the whole family of sexual
Speaker 1: assaulters makes a lot more sense now, Yeah, I get it, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I mean it made sense before, but this,
Speaker 1: this makes such glorious sense. The like the blinders are off,
Speaker 1: so um, this really is like enough of a thing
Speaker 1: that that forensic analysts from Alaska who discovered this, because
Speaker 1: at first they were like, well the lab obviously made
Speaker 1: as up and they looked in there like what is
Speaker 1: going on here? They started looking into it more and
Speaker 1: they're like, this could be a thing. Actually we need
Speaker 1: to let the law enforcement know, Like there's a thing
Speaker 1: that happens when you get a bowemarrow transplant. Your DNA changes.
Speaker 1: And they there was a guy named Chris Long on
Speaker 1: a um I read about an I f L Science
Speaker 1: article UM and they tested him four years after he'd
Speaker 1: gotten a um A transplant from a donor in Germany
Speaker 1: who we never met, I don't believe, and his DNA
Speaker 1: in different parts of his body were entirely the donors.
Speaker 1: Including get this, chuck, his semen had had nothing but
Speaker 1: his donor's DNA. So if he fathered a child, whose
Speaker 1: kid would that be? Because the kid would have the
Speaker 1: same DNA as the donor, not him. His dad, Um, well,
Speaker 1: it would be his kids. Still, legally it would be
Speaker 1: his kid, but biologically wouldn't it be the German Donors child.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there's an old saying about that,
Speaker 1: like whoever smelt it delta? But I can't quite work
Speaker 1: it out. Uh, there's a couple of rhymes. I'm trying
Speaker 1: not right now. Two bad brothers, man. I just that
Speaker 1: was sitting there right in front of my face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well so they both went to jail, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe the Alaska forensic analysts got them, nabbed their person. Sweet,
Speaker 1: is it time for that break now? You promised? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ruminate on that justice served and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back and things. So I guess we should say, chuck,
Speaker 1: if you're out there in podcast land listening to us
Speaker 1: and you didn't actually have to hear an ad, give
Speaker 1: us a double twot. Dude, dude. You know there was
Speaker 1: an email er I think he bothered me several times
Speaker 1: with Emil that trying to convince us that we were
Speaker 1: in podcast land. Because we used to say that out
Speaker 1: there in podcast land and this guy ruined it. We
Speaker 1: just quit saying it because he was like you in
Speaker 1: fact or in podcast land. I kind of get where
Speaker 1: that guy's coming from. Was that you nabe? That's weird?
Speaker 1: He signed your name is Jehan Jehan Paul Dusseldorf three
Speaker 1: seven at hotmail. What I don't get that one? That
Speaker 1: was who who sent it in? John John Paul seven
Speaker 1: at hotmail dot com. I gotta check that was their email.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about these twins? Sure? Um, because apparently
Speaker 1: in real life, Chuck twins actually get out of criminal
Speaker 1: prosecution because they say, no, it wasn't me, it was
Speaker 1: my identical twins. Yeah. I don't see how this is.
Speaker 1: I mean, can't they do more work to arrest somebody
Speaker 1: for a crime when they know it's one of the two.
Speaker 1: All right, Well this happened in Germany. A big department
Speaker 1: store in UH in Europe is the calf House uh
Speaker 1: dis Weston's. And in January two thousand nine, Um, there
Speaker 1: were three people who broke into one of these department stores.
Speaker 1: They were smart, they were masks, they were Latex gloves.
Speaker 1: They sold close to seven million dollars in jewelry. But
Speaker 1: one of them left one of their gloves behind and
Speaker 1: they did a DNA test on the sweat inside the
Speaker 1: glove gross. And they had two matches of these two
Speaker 1: identical twins uh psalm and a boss uh. And Germany
Speaker 1: doesn't give last name, so the last initials oh and
Speaker 1: yeah a Samo Riley And they basically did what you said.
Speaker 1: These twenty seven year old twins were like, um, whatn't me?
Speaker 1: And the other one said what didn't me? And they
Speaker 1: let them go. They did. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to this group whom I'm not
Speaker 1: like a um an admirer of criminals or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I read Chuck. They did like real great Muppet
Speaker 1: caper stuff and like slid down ropes coming from the
Speaker 1: skylights to do this robbery. It wasn't like a smash
Speaker 1: and grab. They had finace at least, okay movie style
Speaker 1: robber robbery. So so yeah, exactly so in Germany, UM,
Speaker 1: they like, you can't just lock up both people because
Speaker 1: one of them might be innocent. And if you have
Speaker 1: to make that decision under German law, and the same
Speaker 1: thing in America, UM, you can't lock up innocent people.
Speaker 1: It's better to let criminal go free until lock up
Speaker 1: an innocent person. That's the trade off. That we have.
Speaker 1: And it's not just happened in Germany with the O'Reilly brothers. Um,
Speaker 1: It's happened around the world in other places too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think in Malaysia in two thousand nine there were
Speaker 1: identical twins who, um, we're narcotics traffickers, and they had
Speaker 1: a death sentence, but they couldn't prove who was who. Um.
Speaker 1: Here's my thing, and I agree with due process, but
Speaker 1: I think if you strong arm them a little bit, no,
Speaker 1: nothing like that, but like, hey, one of you is
Speaker 1: going to go to prison, and we'll flip a coin,
Speaker 1: We'll flip a Deutsche Mark. I still got one in
Speaker 1: my pocket from the old days. Uh, and and one
Speaker 1: of you is going to go to jail. I think
Speaker 1: they could pressure them into one of them, like they
Speaker 1: got to really be in unison, you know, one of
Speaker 1: them would eventually crack the person who didn't do it
Speaker 1: or did do it. So the thing is is, I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking about twin siblings here. I mean if
Speaker 1: they've got resolved and not rap the other one out,
Speaker 1: they've got it. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure if both
Speaker 1: of them know hack, both of them might have been there.
Speaker 1: It was three three robbers, so two of them might
Speaker 1: have been the twins. They just could not say which
Speaker 1: one they that was definitely there, so they said no.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, if you have no other evidence,
Speaker 1: what can you do? What can you do hot shot?
Speaker 1: Smack them around with I guess so you'd be like
Speaker 1: by Dousldorf, you will crack all right. So I think
Speaker 1: we got a couple of more. We just had a
Speaker 1: brief This is how the sausage is made, a brief
Speaker 1: off Mike convo. We're going to circle back to the
Speaker 1: original one that I wanted to skip at the end
Speaker 1: because Josh is in love with it. I love it,
Speaker 1: he wants to marry it. He's in love. I'm already married.
Speaker 1: We're skipping. Uh. I wonder if anyone ever goes to
Speaker 1: see what we skipped. I don't care. But there's some
Speaker 1: army members they're like, uh, listen up, everybody all time.
Speaker 1: I got the dirt on the one, all right, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna finish or do you want to finish with
Speaker 1: the one I didn't like? And then because you really
Speaker 1: wanted to do number one? Yeah, we have to. Man,
Speaker 1: it's the most astounding case of mistaken identity. And recent memory.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's do it right the second Okay,
Speaker 1: go now, So this was a case uh jeez, it's
Speaker 1: both sad and uplifting, kind of depending on whose family
Speaker 1: you're in. But it was a very tragic day in
Speaker 1: two thousand six. I kind of remember this happening. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a semi truck driver who in April of
Speaker 1: that year, like I said, fell asleep at the wheel,
Speaker 1: crossed the median and crashed into a university van from
Speaker 1: Taylor University that had nine people uh in the in
Speaker 1: the van. And it was a very bad crash. It
Speaker 1: killed five uh I think all students, but five people.
Speaker 1: And it was just you know, people were flung all
Speaker 1: over the place there. Stuff was flung all over the place. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was obviously a mess of a scene of
Speaker 1: an accident scene and two young women got mistaken for
Speaker 1: one another in a very tragic way. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: guess um uh Whitney saranac Um had her. She was
Speaker 1: basically bundled up onto a stretcher and um met of
Speaker 1: act out by helicopter. But the first responder who put
Speaker 1: her on the stretcher had grabbed an I d of
Speaker 1: another girl who was in the van that looked a
Speaker 1: lot like her, especially I'm sure at night under a
Speaker 1: crazy circumstances like that, And the I D went to
Speaker 1: Laura van Wrinn and while Whitney Sarak was alive, Laura
Speaker 1: van Wren was dead. But people now thought that this
Speaker 1: person who was bloodied, beat up um, whose face was
Speaker 1: swollen and would suit be bandaged for weeks was Laura
Speaker 1: van Wrin, when in fact it was Whitney's Iraq. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So boy, this one is um. Like I said, very
Speaker 1: very bad news for one family and very good news
Speaker 1: for another. And that one family thought their daughter was
Speaker 1: alive and she had passed and the other way around. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just this, this one's a tough one to even
Speaker 1: think about how someone gets through something like this in
Speaker 1: true movie fashion, Um and inconsistencies sorted to kind of
Speaker 1: pile up as she recovered, and people were sort of
Speaker 1: suspicious of what was going on, and finally someone asked
Speaker 1: her to write her name, and she wrote down Whitney. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a moment, like you know, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty chilling moment. It's a movie moment for goodness, sick.
Speaker 1: It's crazy because I mean in the meantime, like Laura's
Speaker 1: family were the ones who were at Whitney's bedside as
Speaker 1: she recovered for weeks in the hospital. Um and like
Speaker 1: they had had a funeral service for Whitney. So her
Speaker 1: family was just now coming to terms with her with
Speaker 1: the fact that she was dead when they found out that, no,
Speaker 1: she's alive. And Laura's family, who had been like hoping
Speaker 1: that their child was recovering, now found out that their
Speaker 1: child was dead. Like it's just mind boggling that this
Speaker 1: actually happened somewhere in Michigan. No less. Yeah, very very
Speaker 1: sad case. But we don't want to leave you with
Speaker 1: the said case, right, No, that's why we're going looping
Speaker 1: back to do number one, which is actually number nine,
Speaker 1: number sin which is number nine. Boy. This is about
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers, who uh somehow was mistaken for Woody Allen
Speaker 1: early in his career. A couple of key times. They're
Speaker 1: famously doppel gangers. I know, they don't look much alike.
Speaker 1: A couple of things I'll attribute it to is Woody
Speaker 1: Allen looked um when he was younger. He you know,
Speaker 1: he looked different than you might think of him now. First, Hall.
Speaker 1: Uh And Peter Sellers was was a sort of man
Speaker 1: of a thousand faces. As an actor, he was well
Speaker 1: known for doing disguises, doing accents. No one ever knew
Speaker 1: who the real Peter Sellers was. Um. Fascinating dude, very troubled,
Speaker 1: not too great guy in real life. But I'm a
Speaker 1: huge Peter Sellers fan and like read biographies on him.
Speaker 1: Uh And, but that's what he was known for, is
Speaker 1: is looking like other people. So it's no surprise that
Speaker 1: maybe he would get confused with someone else. I'm a
Speaker 1: David Niven guy, by the way, I love David Niven.
Speaker 1: So apparently on the set of Casino Royal, um Leo Jaffee,
Speaker 1: who's the head of Columbia Pictures, the studio making the
Speaker 1: movie at the time, which is I think nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven is when that movie was made. Yeah, it sounds right,
Speaker 1: And it was based on the Ian Fleming novel Casino Royal.
Speaker 1: It was a James Bond movie, but it was a
Speaker 1: horror show. It was so poorly conceived and made that
Speaker 1: they had five directors um each shooting different parts of
Speaker 1: the movie, each working with different James Bonds, David Niven,
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, I don't know who else was there. Um,
Speaker 1: and then each of the directors didn't know what the
Speaker 1: other one was doing. And then they put it together
Speaker 1: and thought it was going to be a good idea.
Speaker 1: But even before then, um, they had bigger problems on
Speaker 1: their hands because Leo Jaffey was talking to who he
Speaker 1: thought was Woody Allen, when in turn it was actually
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers, and um, he started complaining about Peter Sellers
Speaker 1: to Woody Allen, who was in fact actually Peter Sellers.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I'm just now looking at a picture
Speaker 1: of Peter Sellers from the late sixties and with the
Speaker 1: horn room glasses he and Woody Allen, I can see
Speaker 1: it a little bit, I guess, especially if you're a
Speaker 1: studio exactly, who couldn't like all the actors are just
Speaker 1: like cattle to you with or cash registers as well.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh. This happened again on the set of
Speaker 1: What's New Pussycat? Uh, And at this point Sellers was
Speaker 1: pretty annoyed that this kept happening and that he was,
Speaker 1: you know, he was a big star at that time,
Speaker 1: and what Allen was kind of just getting started, so
Speaker 1: uh and he had quite an ego, so he wasn't
Speaker 1: none too pleased. Yeah, so, if you read um write
Speaker 1: ups on UM Casino Royal the nineteen sixty seven version,
Speaker 1: people are just like this was a legendary catastrophe, which
Speaker 1: are some of the most fun movies to read about.
Speaker 1: Those in Stanley Kubrick films are in large. Von Tarier
Speaker 1: films are the most enjoyable to read about because people
Speaker 1: are just agog for one reason or another, about what
Speaker 1: their their subject is. Mm hmm, great word. I think
Speaker 1: so too, man, I've been peppering really great words throughout
Speaker 1: this episode. If you ask me, I've noticed you got
Speaker 1: anything else? You want to talk about some more stolen
Speaker 1: identity or mistaken identity stuff? Nah? All right, let's not then. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mistaken identities, you
Speaker 1: can check out this article on how stuff works. And
Speaker 1: since Chuck said nah, it's time for listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read the first thing I saw because it
Speaker 1: didn't have one prepared, and this is called Chuck's rope Trauma.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, hey, guys, I'm imagining we're gonna play this
Speaker 1: out for years. Hey guys, I'm imagining Chuck at a
Speaker 1: rough go at practicing shabari on himself. I'm sure hoping
Speaker 1: this is true so we can get a future topic
Speaker 1: on the art of shabarim thing. I don't know here
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I think it's rope binding for sexual
Speaker 1: pleasure Japanese bondage. You well, I just I just know that,
Speaker 1: like in the back of my head. Apparently those pictures
Speaker 1: are Yeah, these pictures are interesting. So Chuck answer the question,
Speaker 1: is that where you got your rope trauma? No, it
Speaker 1: wasn't shabari. Unfortunately, that seems like a lot more fun
Speaker 1: than what happened to me. Um. But this is from
Speaker 1: Ryan Loves the Show. Listen to every episode and Ryan
Speaker 1: works in a diesel shop. Diesel like the clothing wine
Speaker 1: No for over the road trucks, which I don't even
Speaker 1: know what that means. Is that like a long haul trucker?
Speaker 1: Probably over No, I think it's like a flying truck. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: you should leave that in there. A momo. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just parked, everybody. Uh, it's nice to keep my mind
Speaker 1: active while I'm mindlessly wrenching on bolts all day. And
Speaker 1: that is from Ryan Schmidt and Waterloo. I A uh,
Speaker 1: Waterloo Idaho. I A, where is that? That's Iowa? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to rip the Iowans and the idaho WANs. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that was Ryan. That's Ryan. Thanks a lot, Ryan.
Speaker 1: That was a good question. So, Chuck, do you want
Speaker 1: to share now what the rope trauma was? No? I
Speaker 1: think I literally think we should play this up for years.
Speaker 1: And so I was talking to one of my one
Speaker 1: of my friends and neighbors, Wesley, and he had just
Speaker 1: heard the episode about Mallory today and was like, so, so,
Speaker 1: what was it what happened to Chuck? I was like,
Speaker 1: he won't tell me. He could not believe that you
Speaker 1: didn't actually tell me. I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: any more than any one else. So, oh, we've got
Speaker 1: a genuine internet mystery. Then I love it. It's a
Speaker 1: genuine one. If you want to send us a guess
Speaker 1: at what happened to Chuck with the rope, you can
Speaker 1: already cross Shabari off of the list. You can send
Speaker 1: it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows