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Speaker 3: Previously on Wiscrack.
Speaker 4: So after joining met with Brett's dad, she came at
Speaker 4: me with all these questions, really serious ones like did
Speaker 4: I insert myself into this whole story for attention, fame, glory, money,
Speaker 4: a free Tesla, an exclusive Nando's black card, maybe just
Speaker 4: to finally get on the prices right, which, by the way,
Speaker 4: I would crush except.
Speaker 3: Only during the Bob Barker era.
Speaker 4: Rest in peace for a real one, Drew Carey, I
Speaker 4: love you, mate, but the soul left with the skinny mic. Anyway,
Speaker 4: After she threw all that at me, after she made
Speaker 4: some pretty good points, I told her to fuck off,
Speaker 4: which makes this all a little bit awkward.
Speaker 3: Why am I still here?
Speaker 4: Why am I doing a recap for a podcast that
Speaker 4: might have just exposed me as a pathological liar with
Speaker 4: a flair for murder adjacent stand up material. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but you're here, I'm here, We're here, So let's both
Speaker 4: just shut up and finish the story, shall we?
Speaker 3: Strap in? This is the final episode of Wisecrack Never
Speaker 3: sing you look and love was right. I don't know
Speaker 3: the rest of the words.
Speaker 1: As he drove me to Heathrow, Ed was quiet, processing
Speaker 1: everything we'd been through on this trip. We said our
Speaker 1: goodbyes and he told me he needed some time, that
Speaker 1: he'd reach out. But after arriving back in Atlanta, days
Speaker 1: turned into weeks turned into months, not a word from Ed.
Speaker 1: I was starting to accept that confronting him about that
Speaker 1: night was all too much for Ed, that he had
Speaker 1: decided to put it all behind him, including me. But
Speaker 1: like all those years ago, out of the blue he
Speaker 1: reached out. Ed was ready to perform the set again,
Speaker 1: but this time with the full picture in mind, using
Speaker 1: all the real names and a different venue.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 5: I'm Jody Tovey. I'm one of the many folks who
Speaker 5: were putting on the show tonight. I'll be really brief.
Speaker 5: I am not the opener. You can't find an opener
Speaker 5: for this. A couple of years back, I went to
Speaker 5: the Fringe Festival in Scotland. I don't know if anyone's been,
Speaker 5: but it's amazing.
Speaker 1: He wanted to perform outside the long shadows of Stanstead.
Speaker 1: Ed wanted to come to me. So we're in for
Speaker 1: a real treat.
Speaker 5: But this is the US premiere, So you guys are
Speaker 5: the first people in America hearing the set.
Speaker 1: We sold it out, set the mic and turned on
Speaker 1: the lights. So in Lanta, give it up for Ed Hedges.
Speaker 1: Then I let Ed Hedges take the stage, having no
Speaker 1: idea what he was about to say. I'm Jody Tovey
Speaker 1: and this is wisecrack to episode six, Hold for laughter,
Speaker 1: My last night in Stanstead. Well, it wasn't the farewell
Speaker 1: either of us had in mind. Ed was pissed at
Speaker 1: me for doubting some elements of his story, and I
Speaker 1: was miffed that he thought I'd just forego those essential questions.
Speaker 1: I knew calmer heads would prevail, but I only had
Speaker 1: a few hours left in England. Though we had some
Speaker 1: bruised feelings. Both Ed and I knew we weren't the
Speaker 1: victims of the story. Any quibbling over unknowable details would
Speaker 1: never bring back Jillian, David or Brett. The only way
Speaker 1: to honor their memories was to get Ed back on stage.
Speaker 1: Armed with the new knowledge we had worked so hard
Speaker 1: to uncover. Ed needed to recount his experiences with new
Speaker 1: audiences and share with us how he had healed from
Speaker 1: the scariest night of his life.
Speaker 3: Mine's Ed.
Speaker 4: I woke up to that noise coming from my front
Speaker 4: door on the twenty second of July twenty fifteen. And
Speaker 4: we're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, hello,
Speaker 4: it's nice to be here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: You're all very nice. I've enjoyed my time here. This
Speaker 3: is already my.
Speaker 4: Favorite city on the face of the earth, because you're lovely,
Speaker 4: but you're weird as shit, like you're wonderful weird people.
Speaker 3: Oh, Walmart, that is the best place on earth? Right.
Speaker 4: Do you have any idea how long it would take
Speaker 4: you in the UK to go to a garden center,
Speaker 4: food court, a clothes shop, a bike shop and a zoo.
Speaker 3: That is mad. It's wonderful, lovely, people. It's good to
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you for coming. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you a story, right am. I'm from
Speaker 4: a really rayal background in England. Originally, I'm not from
Speaker 4: a big city. I'm from a very countryside area, rural family.
Speaker 4: My dad is a farmer, my mom is a cousin.
Speaker 4: So I was bullied. I was bullied a lot throughout
Speaker 4: my school years. And I got on the bus and
Speaker 4: go into school with like a ripped tie and school
Speaker 4: uniform and the teachers and be like.
Speaker 3: Oh, what we're going to do with you. Let's say
Speaker 3: stop the bullying please, But they didn't and didn't stop
Speaker 3: the bullying.
Speaker 1: Like riding a bike, Ed remembers exactly how to steer
Speaker 1: his set. Though he's older. He tells his childhood stories
Speaker 1: with the same wide eyed awe that I witnessed in
Speaker 1: Edinburgh almost a decade ago. The comedy was mostly the same,
Speaker 1: but the comedian was relaxed, self aware, at peace.
Speaker 3: And also another thing on top of that is I
Speaker 3: was a really chubby kid.
Speaker 1: But I noticed there were a few new stories I've
Speaker 1: never heard before.
Speaker 3: I was a bigger kid.
Speaker 4: I was quite a large kid, and I realized that
Speaker 4: I had to lose weight after I started comedy. Actually,
Speaker 4: I got booked to do a gig in Ireland and
Speaker 4: I stayed at a hostel. I didn't know what hostel
Speaker 4: was at the time. I thought it was a hotel
Speaker 4: owned by a dyslexic man.
Speaker 3: But it's not. It is not people of Atlanta.
Speaker 4: It's a concrete room with bunk beds where nightmares live.
Speaker 4: I was. I was two hundred and fifty pounds at
Speaker 4: the time. I got to the hostel and I got
Speaker 4: the last bit available. It was a top bunk above
Speaker 4: an eighty year old woman named Ingrid. Yeah, correct response.
Speaker 4: That doesn't work, doesn't it? That math doesn't work. I
Speaker 4: got to the hostel, the hostel and showed me the bed,
Speaker 4: took one look at me, took one look at the
Speaker 4: bed and went, no, we're not doing this. What's gonna
Speaker 4: happen here is you're gonna fall through that bed and
Speaker 4: you're gonna kill her on impact.
Speaker 3: So we're not rolling this dice tonight. Mate.
Speaker 4: He said, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna move you
Speaker 4: to the bottom bunk. I'm gonna move Ingrid to the
Speaker 4: top bunk. I'll tell her when she gets back from
Speaker 4: her day trip. Everything will be fine. So there's a
Speaker 4: great plan. I said, that is a good plan. Have
Speaker 4: a ninety year old woman climb up a bunk bed
Speaker 4: because my ass is too perfect. Okay, okay, And that
Speaker 4: was a good plan technically, And that plan would have
Speaker 4: worked if he'd have told Ingrid, which he didn't. So
Speaker 4: I got back pretty late at night, quite drunk. I'll
Speaker 4: here about you guys, but I like to jump into bed.
Speaker 3: How do you feel?
Speaker 4: She had these big white eyes, and I should have said, Ingrid, look,
Speaker 4: I'm very sorry.
Speaker 3: My name is Ed. I'm not a threat. There's been
Speaker 3: a clerical error here.
Speaker 4: He said you'd be on the top bunk and I
Speaker 4: would be on the bottom bunk. I'm too heavy to
Speaker 4: sleep on the top bunk. I'll get the host loaner. Now,
Speaker 4: he'll explain everything to you. You're perfectly safe and this
Speaker 4: is all gonna be fine. That is what I should
Speaker 4: have said to Ingrid.
Speaker 3: I panicked.
Speaker 4: I panicked and said the only words I had in
Speaker 4: my little brain, which was Ingrid, I didn't do that.
Speaker 3: I didn't do that. I didn't do that.
Speaker 4: I leant into a tiny geriatric face, real close, and
Speaker 4: I said, Ingrid, I am too big to go on
Speaker 4: top tonight, right, which.
Speaker 3: Kind of makes sense, But also no I would say
Speaker 3: that to an old woman at.
Speaker 4: So when I turned at and I started comedy, and
Speaker 4: I moved away from the village.
Speaker 3: I moved to London.
Speaker 4: So in twenty fifteen, I'm sitting in my apartment in London,
Speaker 4: minding my own business. I'm sitting in an apartment and I
Speaker 4: get a call. I get a phone call from our
Speaker 4: town counselor from the village. Now I've not been back
Speaker 4: to my home village in years. At this point, my
Speaker 4: brothers both moved out of the village, and my family
Speaker 4: meet at their house. And I've got two brother one
Speaker 4: brother called Jack, who's married to an American, and one
Speaker 4: brother called Sam, who had cancer when he was young.
Speaker 4: But he's a racist, so it's fine. He rolled the
Speaker 4: dice he lost. That is my favorite line in the show.
Speaker 4: A call from the town counselor. And they called me
Speaker 4: and they said, ed, we're raising money for the school,
Speaker 4: and we've.
Speaker 3: Seen in newspapers on the internet.
Speaker 4: You're gigging all over the place, and we'd love it
Speaker 4: if you'd consider coming back and closing the gig for us.
Speaker 4: So I said, yeah, I would love to come. I
Speaker 4: would love to perform. So I go back. I go
Speaker 4: back to the village and I do the gig, and
Speaker 4: it's wonderful because I had such a bad experience living
Speaker 4: there that I just kind of shut it out completely.
Speaker 3: I finished the.
Speaker 4: Gig and I walked back through all the streets, so
Speaker 4: I used to walk down as a kid. So when
Speaker 4: I get to my house, I go upstairs and I
Speaker 4: go to bed.
Speaker 3: I wake up.
Speaker 4: I'd only been asleep for about twenty minutes, and at
Speaker 4: the end of my bed someone is standing. It's my mum,
Speaker 4: and I go to say mom was going on? And
Speaker 4: before I can, she says the words to me, whatever
Speaker 4: you do, do not turn on the lights.
Speaker 1: It's always unsettling to watch a new audience hear that
Speaker 1: line for the first time. You can practically feel the
Speaker 1: rooms skin crawl. In unison, as Ed describes the eight
Speaker 1: minutes that changed his life, mine cross too even now.
Speaker 1: But tonight my uneasiness comes from a different place. After
Speaker 1: I challenged him on some of the discrepancies in his
Speaker 1: set that last night and stands Dead, Ed was barely
Speaker 1: speaking to me. So before we left for the airport,
Speaker 1: I texted him. I told Ed it didn't really matter
Speaker 1: if he ever spoke to me again. He needed to
Speaker 1: hear everything I learned. I asked him if he could
Speaker 1: meet me at Jillian's favorite bench overlooking the green, the
Speaker 1: small yard shared by Ed's and Brett's childhood homes. There
Speaker 1: I would lay out everything I'd uncovered about his childhood.
Speaker 6: Bully, We're on her bench, aren't we. This is where
Speaker 6: she liked to drink and chill.
Speaker 1: That's what your mom told me, that she would sit
Speaker 1: here and make phone calls. I'm just going to show
Speaker 1: you something for context. This is his rap sheet, and
Speaker 1: that was only twelve years of his life.
Speaker 4: This is close to m Everyone was scared of him.
Speaker 3: Shit, this is.
Speaker 1: There's a chronology of his arrests here. Twelve and thirteen
Speaker 1: was actually the age when things That's why it starts there,
Speaker 1: when he started to get into trouble.
Speaker 3: So right when I was getting bullied.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, I mean he was in trouble quite a
Speaker 7: bit for drugs, theft, violence.
Speaker 3: It's long lot of thirteen.
Speaker 4: He was doing drugs, yeah, Thus.
Speaker 3: And did he have his temper then? Oh, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I'm lucky. You get it. You're lucky. It was just donuts.
Speaker 1: He was in trouble over twenty times with the law
Speaker 1: across twelve years and had all kinds of opportunities with
Speaker 1: various professionals forced by the trouble that he caused, and
Speaker 1: no one ever diagnosed him with anything specific.
Speaker 3: Why why does that happen?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: At that At that stage, it feels like an active
Speaker 4: choice to not because they would have been aware. They
Speaker 4: would've been aware.
Speaker 1: The Essex Police were very aware that Brett was trouble.
Speaker 1: So two thousand seven he was actually expelled from school,
Speaker 1: so he never officially graduated.
Speaker 3: Did you know that? Didn't he He never finished school?
Speaker 1: No, he did take the equivalent of an exam that
Speaker 1: would give you a certificate.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was expelled.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty ten, and this was the only
Speaker 1: time that he ever sought long term mental health care,
Speaker 1: his private doctor referred him over to Essex University for
Speaker 1: some of his psychosis issues.
Speaker 9: Psychosis issues, Yeah, it was reported that he was hearing
Speaker 9: voices that he thought the radio was talking to him,
Speaker 9: so he would have conversations with the radio.
Speaker 4: So he he's he's he's no, no, sorry, yeah, no
Speaker 4: one said that. Psychological issues. But he is hearing voices.
Speaker 4: He's claiming he has voices.
Speaker 1: From It's worse than that, actually, So he threatened to
Speaker 1: murder his best friend and their family, which was one
Speaker 1: of the inciting incidents that put him in this care
Speaker 1: at Essex University.
Speaker 3: Really, well, who is his best friend?
Speaker 1: That doesn't say in the reports. I also thought it
Speaker 1: could maybe be Sam because of the timeframe. I scan
Speaker 1: Ed's eyes to see how he's reacting. I don't think
Speaker 1: the possibility ever crossed his mind. Brett's best friend surely
Speaker 1: belonged to the small world of the boys in Bentfield Gardens,
Speaker 1: someone within Ed's orbit. The fact that it could have
Speaker 1: been his brother, Sam, I can tell, is shaking him.
Speaker 1: Continuing on, I remind ed that later Rhett had served
Speaker 1: time in prison for beating his father, but upon his release,
Speaker 1: he had nowhere to go except his mom's house. It
Speaker 1: was a really bad time, I'm In the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, Jill had called the police Brett had threatened
Speaker 1: to rape her or kill her multiple times, multiple calls.
Speaker 1: Pete also called the police during that time because Brett
Speaker 1: was threatening to kill himself, so they were kind of
Speaker 1: going back and forth between their houses. I believe at
Speaker 1: this point, what the fuck.
Speaker 3: Is them all?
Speaker 1: There's much more so in twenty twelve, Jill calls the
Speaker 1: police again and explicitly says her son is trying to
Speaker 1: kill her. And as Pete had explained, she was making
Speaker 1: him live in the car outside of there in the
Speaker 1: garage because she was afraid for her life. So she
Speaker 1: let him live at her house but not inside the house.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, so she must have.
Speaker 4: Been so terrified. She must have been so to lock
Speaker 4: her own son in the garden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also didn't want to give put him out
Speaker 1: on the street.
Speaker 4: And she has no option, thoughts to do that because
Speaker 4: no one's helping her, no one's protecting her.
Speaker 1: So at this point, he is meeting regularly with a
Speaker 1: state mandated check in. The last appointment that he made
Speaker 1: was at the end of June. It was the final
Speaker 1: week of June, and Pete took him to that appointment
Speaker 1: and the officer wasn't there. She was on vacation at
Speaker 1: the time, so the final appointment, no one was there
Speaker 1: to check in. And then twenty two days later he
Speaker 1: killed two people. This one you're going to I've been
Speaker 1: loaths to tell you this, but it's absolutely true. So
Speaker 1: they did an assessment after Brett got out of prison,
Speaker 1: and in the assessment it said that the reason that
Speaker 1: he had so many issues was because he was bullied
Speaker 1: in school.
Speaker 3: No, he said, the two issues.
Speaker 1: That he had that caused all of his behavior disorders
Speaker 1: were because of bullying and dyslexia.
Speaker 4: And he was bullying a kid that had dyslexia. Everything
Speaker 4: he could me through.
Speaker 1: And he was doing he had the same issues.
Speaker 3: That's so weird to think that's really okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he he he literally bullied me continuously.
Speaker 3: Because he was being bullied.
Speaker 4: So he was giving the life that he supposedly had
Speaker 4: to someone else.
Speaker 3: That's he was always the thought. I never saw my thoughts.
Speaker 1: I had some professionals and experts look over his rap sheet.
Speaker 1: Everyone seems to point to the fact that this is
Speaker 1: not a person who is out.
Speaker 3: Of control of their emotions.
Speaker 1: It was not that he was evil or a monster
Speaker 1: inside and couldn't control himself. There was an inciting incident
Speaker 1: that caused this. Something happened that night that set him off,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just like you know, tripping over a
Speaker 1: curb or getting a flat tire. It was something that
Speaker 1: was a long held belief that had just been pulled
Speaker 1: out from under him. It had to have been something
Speaker 1: of that level in order to have committed such.
Speaker 3: A bloody crime. It was the show. I think it's possible.
Speaker 4: What do you think? Do you think it seems too coincidental?
Speaker 4: Because I don't really know what to think that in
Speaker 4: my majority, I'll be honest with you, posters would have
Speaker 4: been I've known that from day one. I'll be honest
Speaker 4: with you, I've I've known that he knew I was
Speaker 4: here from day one. You've known that I've always been.
Speaker 4: I didn't wanna say that to you because I just
Speaker 4: don't really wanna think of the idea that he that
Speaker 4: it could be linked. But you can't not see posts
Speaker 4: of me, that there was a wall of me in
Speaker 4: the train station for a month, the Rickling Stalford Bishops,
Speaker 4: like Bishop Stalford Stance did. My face was literally everywhere
Speaker 4: on every single notice board in every single park.
Speaker 3: He definitely knew. And I'm I, I, I.
Speaker 4: Ah, this is this is crazy, this is really I've
Speaker 4: got a lot of questions over whether it was me
Speaker 4: being there that night. This place like Phil's creakier. Now
Speaker 4: I know that I have to be honest. I don't
Speaker 4: mind thinking that he was creeping through the dark right
Speaker 4: over there, and that I was asleep right there. What
Speaker 4: if I'd have stayed for two more points at the
Speaker 4: gig takes about what ten minutes to drink a pint?
Speaker 4: He made the call at what time?
Speaker 3: Eleven?
Speaker 4: I must have got home at half ten, Far closer
Speaker 4: to this happening than I thought. I thought I was
Speaker 4: asleep for like three hours when this happened, I was
Speaker 4: asleep for probably twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: So one one more drink or a slightly longer conversation.
Speaker 4: As I was leaving the room, I would have bumped
Speaker 4: into my childhood bully when he was covered in blood
Speaker 4: outside of my house.
Speaker 3: How creepy is that.
Speaker 4: He was laughing, which means he wasn't at my house
Speaker 4: like scared. He wasn't banging on my door scared if
Speaker 4: he had no remorse for it. So that makes me
Speaker 4: think he was at my front door, and he was
Speaker 4: at my house in an aggressive way, just killed two
Speaker 4: people and more stopping you like go for glory. We
Speaker 4: all got so fucking lucky. I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 4: how I feel right now, and it's like flicking between
Speaker 4: like I feel sorry for this kid cause he was
Speaker 4: going through the same thing as me and he had
Speaker 4: these mental health issues, and then also like a tremendous
Speaker 4: amount of fuck you do it's it's it is upsetting,
Speaker 4: you know. I didn't think any of this would really
Speaker 4: get to me. I didn't realize he had dyslex yet.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize he had any trouble with bullies. He
Speaker 4: was like the pinnacle of what I thought a kid
Speaker 4: in our age should be. Yeah, that's so shitty as well.
Speaker 4: I didn't don't whether I'm supposed to feel bad for
Speaker 4: him right now. I've always been really hesitant to uh
Speaker 4: bring myself into this story at all. Yeah, Like, even
Speaker 4: when I was telling the story, Uh, I didn't really
Speaker 4: like to put myself in the end of it too much.
Speaker 3: I remember I I.
Speaker 4: I really had to be tracked into it, and I
Speaker 4: think quite a few times I didn't even say how
Speaker 4: I felt. But so when I first started his story
Speaker 4: in Edinburgh, I can remember strongly saying to you that
Speaker 4: it wasn't it wasn't linked And I don't know whether
Speaker 4: I believe or not. I'm certainly not saying that it was.
Speaker 4: But it's too coincidental, Like why that night, why my house?
Speaker 4: Why would you knock on my house?
Speaker 1: I came here to like suck things out. I thought
Speaker 1: the small town I can figure this out, And in
Speaker 1: fact I'm kind of a little.
Speaker 8: Bit more confused. No one's also, do you think that's
Speaker 8: the problem. I think it's always been the problem. I
Speaker 8: think it's always been the problem. I guess I'd always
Speaker 8: talked about this, and I was always protective by the
Speaker 8: idea that I didn't have all the facts, and I
Speaker 8: guess that was sort of a safe divilin time for me,
Speaker 8: and I never had to own up to the facts
Speaker 8: that this could have ended very differently.
Speaker 1: In a way, it feels like we were always meant
Speaker 1: to end up here, a slow burn, a series of steps, conversations, doubts,
Speaker 1: all leading up to this moment, and I had a
Speaker 1: single question left. Part of me wondered if I even
Speaker 1: had a right to ask it. Ed wrote this set
Speaker 1: in order to heal himself, even if he didn't know
Speaker 1: it at the time, he'd gotten what he set out
Speaker 1: to gain from the comedy. He worked so hard to shape.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's all he needed. But here I am sitting
Speaker 1: across from Ed, and I couldn't imagine ever getting the
Speaker 1: chance again. You're going to be performing the set with
Speaker 1: all this new information? Is the ending going to change?
Speaker 1: Ed's head is now in his hands, slouched over. He's exhausted,
Speaker 1: but I can tell he's been thinking about it too.
Speaker 3: I think the whole vibe of the show has that turns.
Speaker 4: All right, But the ending, yeah.
Speaker 3: Because I have an ending now.
Speaker 4: I'll walk out into the hallway and I'm like, Mom,
Speaker 4: I've just called the police, and she holds a finger
Speaker 4: up to her lips to tell me to be quiet, obviously,
Speaker 4: and I go quiet, And the banging has stopped, and
Speaker 4: it's replaced by this horrible silence. It's like the loudest
Speaker 4: silence I ever heard in my life, and whoever's outside
Speaker 4: goes silent. My mom turns to my dad and she says,
Speaker 4: I think it's all over, And as she starts to
Speaker 4: say the oh in over, the loudest noise I've ever
Speaker 4: heard in my life happens. It's the sound of whoever's
Speaker 4: outside drop kicking the door. The first kick smashes the window,
Speaker 4: the second kick makes the door buckle in the middle.
Speaker 4: We can hear the wood snapping, We can hear the
Speaker 4: metal hinges of the door start to gradually get ropped off.
Speaker 3: My mom grabs me and my dad.
Speaker 4: The banging got louder and loud and louder, and we
Speaker 4: were all kind of teared up at this point. We
Speaker 4: were really scared. And then the banging stopped and we
Speaker 4: heard a helicopter. Then the moonlight that was coming through
Speaker 4: the window was replaced by a really harsh blue light.
Speaker 3: Next morning, I wake up.
Speaker 4: For a second, I think it was all like a
Speaker 4: horrible dream, and then I hear my mum crying her
Speaker 4: eyes out downstairs.
Speaker 3: So I go downstairs.
Speaker 4: The blinds are shut, all the doors are shut, everything's
Speaker 4: turned off. My dad picks up the remote and he
Speaker 4: turns on the TV and it's on the TV is
Speaker 4: Sky News, And on Sky News is my house and
Speaker 4: the two houses next to it, and they're covered in
Speaker 4: police tape.
Speaker 3: There's about six police officers on the street.
Speaker 4: And I saw what happened, and I'm going to do
Speaker 4: my best to tell you what happened now.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Here was the moment for ED to truly change the
Speaker 1: way this set concluded with real names and real consequences.
Speaker 1: Would he stick with his promise through the end?
Speaker 4: On the night of the twenty second of July twenty fifteen,
Speaker 4: a twenty three year old man named Brett Rogers killed
Speaker 4: his family. Brett stabbed his mother, Jillian, fifty six times
Speaker 4: in the face, and he stabbed his mother's friend, David Oaks,
Speaker 4: fifty four times. At the trial, they identified it was
Speaker 4: Brett because of the imprint his shoe left on the
Speaker 4: side of his mother's skull, and then he came to
Speaker 4: my house.
Speaker 1: From everything I've gleaned, Jillian was a good time, not
Speaker 1: afraid of trading neighborhood gossip or naughty jokes. She was
Speaker 1: finally enjoying retirement after twenty plus years of working as
Speaker 1: a lunch lady at a local school. Jillian's laugh was strong,
Speaker 1: her poor was stronger at heart. She was a caretaker
Speaker 1: who took in her troubled son when the rest of
Speaker 1: the world wouldn't, and that's likely what David Oaks cherished
Speaker 1: in his friend too, a local taxi driver who had
Speaker 1: served his country in the Royal Air Force. David had
Speaker 1: survived multiple bouts of throat cancer and that summer he
Speaker 1: likely felt optimistic again after finally being in remission. In
Speaker 1: all my time in Stanstead, I had to pry these
Speaker 1: happier moments out of the people who knew them best.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if the way they perished revoked permission
Speaker 1: to remember the good times. I hope this podcast keeps
Speaker 1: their memories alive, that it opens the door to keep
Speaker 1: talking about what happened to them and for Brett. I
Speaker 1: feel their sympathy to be held for him as well,
Speaker 1: for a system that failed him, for the signs that
Speaker 1: were ignored, for the chances missed to simply ask are
Speaker 1: you okay. Nothing dismisses his actions. He took two life,
Speaker 1: and while we may never fully understand him, the question
Speaker 1: still remains. After he brutally murdered his own mother and
Speaker 1: her friend, why did Brett go to Ed's house. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he was searching for a place to hide. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: was there to confess. Perhaps he was there just to
Speaker 1: look into the eyes of the very people he had
Speaker 1: grown up with, as if to say things will never
Speaker 1: be the same again. You will form your own opinion,
Speaker 1: but here's mine. I do think Ed's presence in town
Speaker 1: was a contributing factor to the murderers. However, by the
Speaker 1: time Brett arrived at the Hedges house, I don't think
Speaker 1: he was there to hurt Ed. He'd changed clothes, stashed
Speaker 1: the knives, and called the police. At this point it
Speaker 1: seems the rage and confusion had subsided. And yet on
Speaker 1: the other side of that door was a family who
Speaker 1: had only seen the worst of their neighbor. Of course,
Speaker 1: they assumed Brett was there to hurt them. In the end,
Speaker 1: Ed and Brett are two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: But for the comedian center stage tonight, who, along with Brett,
Speaker 1: experienced dyslexia, depression, and the mental toll of constant harassment,
Speaker 1: it's time to make peace with his childhood bully. And
Speaker 1: in so many ways, is there anyone who could understand
Speaker 1: Brett better.
Speaker 4: I wrote this was ten years ago, now just a
Speaker 4: few months off the night, but in truth, I really
Speaker 4: don't remember why I wrote it. At the time, I
Speaker 4: thought I wanted to talk about all these men are
Speaker 4: grown up with, my brother, Brett, my dad, how different
Speaker 4: I was from them, how I saw everything differently and
Speaker 4: how I acted differently, how I took things differently by
Speaker 4: unparalleled sharp as a sense of humor. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you guys know what it's like to declare your
Speaker 4: wit as a weapon at customs, but it's been a
Speaker 4: struggle for me. And anyway, I debuted this show at
Speaker 4: the Edinburgh Fringes Festival, and after my show, I'd tell
Speaker 4: audiences to DM me they had any questions at all,
Speaker 4: anything they wanted to know, any grizzly details, and they
Speaker 4: were all gory questions, which is completely cool, and I
Speaker 4: gave them what I had.
Speaker 3: But I didn't have a lot. I didn't do any
Speaker 3: research into the night.
Speaker 4: I just sort of looked at what happened to me
Speaker 4: and my mum and my dad and my family, and
Speaker 4: I really only wrote about that. I'd like to say
Speaker 4: that it was creative license, but I changed a lot
Speaker 4: of things, and I removed a lot of details, just
Speaker 4: through sheer laziness at times, but also because I wanted
Speaker 4: to make this funny for you to see. Anyway, this
Speaker 4: producer finds me one night in Edinburgh. It's pissing it
Speaker 4: down outside, rain is falling, and I'm in my room
Speaker 4: getting ready for my gig, and I've know where I
Speaker 4: get a load of ticket sales from people that just
Speaker 4: don't want to get wet. She hadn't seen my reviews,
Speaker 4: she hadn't heard good things. She just didn't have an umbrella.
Speaker 4: So you like about me, I will always offer you
Speaker 4: shelter from the rain.
Speaker 3: No way.
Speaker 4: After the show, she starts messaging me all these questions.
Speaker 4: She starts asking me things that I hadn't been asked before.
Speaker 4: And I honestly didn't really realize it at the time,
Speaker 4: but I was really happy that someone wanted to know
Speaker 4: the why.
Speaker 3: Her name's Jody. She's there in the back somewhere. When
Speaker 3: we finally met up, Jody asked me more questions, more
Speaker 3: uncomfortable questions.
Speaker 4: Jo wanted to know if I wanted to know the whys,
Speaker 4: Why did Brett do it? Why that night? Why am
Speaker 4: my front door? Why am I in this story at all?
Speaker 4: Did my presence in the village spur what had happened?
Speaker 4: And I think because I felt guilty, I didn't want
Speaker 4: to know these answers, but I went along with it. Now,
Speaker 4: if you'd listen to my set ten years ago, you
Speaker 4: would have heard me end it by saying, no, no way,
Speaker 4: absolutely not.
Speaker 3: It was all coincidence.
Speaker 4: I just happened to be there that night he went
Speaker 4: crazy and it was all just luck of the draw.
Speaker 4: It's been so rough, honestly talking about this, reliving it,
Speaker 4: learning more things. The things I found out with Jody
Speaker 4: have kind of changed the way I feel about everything.
Speaker 4: The more I've learned, the more my opinions have changed.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, Brett was the same as me.
Speaker 3: That was the killer. Brett was the same guy as me.
Speaker 4: Brett probably had the same conversations every day that I had,
Speaker 4: felt the same things that I felt. Brett, like me,
Speaker 4: got left behind in his own childhood. He's the one
Speaker 4: that really shook me.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I've learned that Brett said that his life would have
Speaker 4: been entirely different if he.
Speaker 3: Hadn't been bullied since school. That's crazy, right.
Speaker 4: Brett was bullied to death in prison, murdered by two
Speaker 4: men that thought it was kinder to snap his neck
Speaker 4: craft and let him live in mental anguish. I did
Speaker 4: Brett bag on my door that night because he knew
Speaker 4: I was in town?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeah so? But was he there to hurt me?
Speaker 3: I'll never know. I don't know why things worked out
Speaker 3: for me and not Brett.
Speaker 4: I've got a lot of questions that I'll never have answered,
Speaker 4: but I can say that Brett was not the hero
Speaker 4: of my village, and he certainly was not the villain
Speaker 4: of the story either. There was a time I was
Speaker 4: confused about Brett's motivations. I felt sorry for what happened
Speaker 4: to Brett. But now I've come to realize that empathy
Speaker 4: is more useful than sympathy.
Speaker 3: I love stories.
Speaker 4: Aren't they good? I think they're brilliant. I think stories
Speaker 4: are important as well. We don't really think about it,
Speaker 4: but stories are all we really have. How we passed
Speaker 4: down information from generation to generation. We share stories to
Speaker 4: give ourselves warnings.
Speaker 3: We pass all of our answers to stories down.
Speaker 4: It's the one thing that makes us different as a species.
Speaker 3: And the past, the past is a.
Speaker 4: Story as well. Everyone's past the subjective to them. It's
Speaker 4: just your viewpoint on something that happened a long time ago.
Speaker 4: And these stories are what we base our worth on.
Speaker 4: The stories that we tell ourselves every day, what dictate
Speaker 4: our chances in life, chances with work, relationship, self image.
Speaker 4: It's all just based on the stories we told ourselves
Speaker 4: when we were kids. It's weird to think that if
Speaker 4: I believe the stories people told about me. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be here in Atlanta tonight. If Bred just questioned the
Speaker 4: stories people told about him, he would still be around. Look,
Speaker 4: I know this might not be a satisfying Hollywood ending
Speaker 4: that you all came to see, and I have tried.
Speaker 4: It's a difficult task, but I've tried to give you
Speaker 4: a message that you can take away on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Pithy little life lesson, Here's what I've got When one
Speaker 3: door closes.
Speaker 4: The Titan seventeen windows were all made in the perfect
Speaker 4: edition to your host dead good Night at Ladder O
Speaker 4: You two.
Speaker 1: Wiscrack is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Star Wit Productions. I'm your host Jody Tovey.
Speaker 1: The show is written by Charles Forbes. Stand up comedy
Speaker 1: written and performed by Ed Hedges, with additional writing contributions
Speaker 1: by Charles Forbes. Executive producers for Tenderfoot TV are Donald
Speaker 1: Albright and Payne Lindsay. Executive producers for Star Wars Productions
Speaker 1: are Jody Tobay and Charles Forbes. Lead producer is Alex Vespstad,
Speaker 1: with additional production by Stephen Perez, Joe Grizzle, ja Jah Muhammad,
Speaker 1: Jamie Albright, and Jordan Foxworthy. Lead editor is Stephen Perez,
Speaker 1: with additional editing by Harrington and Liam Luxon. Coordinating producers
Speaker 1: are John Street and Tracy Kaplan. Research by Jim Nally
Speaker 1: and Misty Showalter. Original music by Jay Ragsdale with additional
Speaker 1: music by Makeup and Vanity Set mix by Cooper Skinner.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Byron McCoy. Special thanks to Orren Rosenbaum and
Speaker 1: the team at UTA, Nate Ranson, Alexander Kaplan and the
Speaker 1: Synergy Clubhouse, and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like wisecrack,
Speaker 1: search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit
Speaker 1: us at tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening.