Come in 81 Kilo: A Forever Knight Podcast

Come in 81 Kilo: A Forever Knight Podcast

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Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 19) - "Jane Doe"

/ 01:31:32/E71
Bad Guy:

Evil is not extraordinary. It's been now commonplace, and it'll make an appearance in the least likely of places. I believe dwelling within each and every one of us is god and Satan. And the right conditions are met, it's possible for the sanest person to commit the most heinous crime. Speak for you, sir.

Rachel:

Hi. I'm Rachel.

Matt:

And I'm Matt.

Rachel:

And this is Come in 81 kilo.

Matt:

A forever night podcast.

Rachel:

See, now that you told me it's written on there, I'm never gonna remember offhanded ever again. I'm gonna have to read it all now. That's how transactional money. Yeah. That's how it works.

Rachel:

Alright. Welcome back, friends.

Matt:

Let's do it.

Rachel:

You're just ready to go with this? Oh my god. This is another it's an episode is what it is. Season 3, episode 19, Jane Doe.

Matt:

We're only escalating the we got canceled. We don't care what our episodes are about anymore.

Rachel:

Nor do we care, like, oh, you guys we're not allowed to show a dead body. What are you gonna do, cancel us? What the what what just what happened in this episode? Yeah. This is really a further escalation of our, oh, we don't need to play it safe anymore.

Rachel:

So what can we do? And I have to admit that Reese is a little bit he he's a little bit fallen idle still. He's still he feels a little irrational, but it feels more justified. He's very defeatist in this episode, but it feels like this is probably a man who, through his entire career, has had to fight to be seen as a legitimate cop.

Matt:

Yeah. Yeah. I think Reese is traumatized has been traumatized by this guy

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Specifically for his entire career.

Rachel:

Yeah. And, oh, look. It's all happening again. And so it's got to be like, oh my god. I can't I can't even handle this.

Rachel:

And, oh, this one is gonna be look, we are gonna do our level best to discuss this through the lens of what the show is trying to say and not include the wider scope of the complicated, tragic, horrific state of the way that people of color and law enforcement have related to each other, historically since the dawn of since the dawn of the the 2 of these things. Like, since these two things existed together, this has been a problem. And, this is not the forum for us to solve anything or discuss anything about that. We are discussing the television show forever night. And just because they chose to discuss this, I don't feel like 2 white people in a room really get to weigh in on this.

Matt:

So think we have anything to add to that conversation.

Rachel:

Right. So what we're going to do is discuss this particular episode and the way that things are portrayed in this particular episode and the way that Reese is moving through the system that is given to us through the lens of forever night. And I feel like that's the best way for us to tackle this. Yeah. And I love that the last, like, 4 episodes I've had to issue a disclaimer at the beginning.

Rachel:

And guess what y'all? There's gonna be one next time too. Oh, boy. Alright. Like I said, this is forever night season 3 episode 19, Jane Doe.

Rachel:

So we open on this car traveling through the woods and it stops, and it pulls a body from the trunk. And they, whoever this person is, the driver, hangs the body up in a tree and then shoots the body with a shotgun multiple times and then drives off. And that is our intro.

Matt:

Cold intro.

Rachel:

And here's the part of the episode where I give you something to go and look at that actually gives you real life context on what's happening. Just like it's okay to not be okay is a great k drama about people with intellectual differences. If you are curious about the history of this type of systemic racism in the United States and to a certain extent, Canada, I encourage you to look up the National Memorial For Peace and Justice, which is located in Montgomery, Alabama, and they have a very powerful memorial to the victims of, what is referred to as lynching, which is when, people of color were hung, which is what they are, or lynched, which is what they're talking about in the beginning here, which is why this person is hung up in the tree. And as someone who lives in the Southern United States, this is a very present and real and painful part of our history. And to see it referenced in this show is like, oh my God, we are going there.

Rachel:

Okay. Here we go. But go look up that memorial. It is beautiful. I would love to someday see it in person.

Rachel:

It's actually part of a larger memorial. But anyway, that's our intro. That's how we start this episode. And we don't know right away that this person that got hung up in the tree is a black victim, but we find out pretty quickly. So Yes.

Rachel:

God. Because we come back and Reese is watching an interview on TV And the lady who is interview the interviewer, the talk show host

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. She's like, okay. Let me read this excerpt from this book, which can we pause for a moment and talk about how the cover design for this book is the most nineties cover design I have ever seen in

Rachel:

my entire fucking life.

Rachel:

It's like a who's who of nineties design aesthetics. It's got the I was clipped out of the newspaper letter font. It's got it's like at an angle. It's got it's just it's real wild.

Matt:

So she reads this thing.

Rachel:

Yeah. She reads it, and it's like, I was transformed the instant I first killed. I became and will be forever in the eyes of all, a murderer. And this woman is interviewing a guy named Jordan Manning, who wrote this book called The Killing Mind, and she refers to it as the most controversial book in recent years. And it was written by him when he was in prison for manslaughter.

Rachel:

So this guy is a convicted murderer. He wrote a book about a murderer, and the publisher published it.

Matt:

But it's a work of fiction Mhmm. Ostensibly

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

About a serial killer.

Rachel:

Written in poet poem form. Yes. I gotta be honest. This kind of sounds like driving. It just sounds like, nails on a chalkboard.

Rachel:

Like, I can't imagine reading a first person account about a serial killer in poet form, like in rhyme, in rhyme, in iambic pentameter. I just can't. But apparently it's really popular because, Lacroix later refers to him as the man who got rich writing greeting cards for the devil.

Matt:

Yeah. Because, of course, Lacroix has read this book.

Rachel:

I mean, he was like the killing mind. Me? This is about me? And so he checked on it anyway. But Reese is watching this interview, because we zoom out at this point to see that Reese is watching it.

Rachel:

And the interviewer is continuing, and she says, how much of you is in this book? And the guy's like, well, you know, every novelist enriches his characters with his own life experience, which is not an answer, but is kind of an answer. And the interviewer, what I love, she says

Matt:

It's an answer for Reese.

Rachel:

Yeah. It is.

Matt:

To read between the lines.

Rachel:

Right.

Matt:

But nothing that would hold up in court.

Rachel:

It's I'm not going there. Okay. So the interview said interviewer says, she read this book, and it's a first person account about a murder spree told by a poetry spouting psychopath. She she says, it's degenerative. It's amoral.

Rachel:

It's obscene. Did you write it for your for your buddies in cell block 11?

Rachel:

You know, I read this book, and I'll be right up front with you. Okay? It's a fictional first person account of a serial murder spree told by a poetry spouting psychopath. It's degenerate. It's amoral.

Rachel:

Who's your audience for this book anyway? I mean, did you write it for your buddies in cell block 11?

Rachel:

And I don't think we linger on how disrespectful this interviewer is Right. Long enough.

Matt:

He he very graciously moves past the implied insult Yeah. From the interview host.

Rachel:

Well, no. He turns to the camera and just stops addressing her and starts addressing the camera.

Matt:

Oh, really?

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Yeah. I guess he's good at just bottling things up.

Rachel:

Well, he's a psychopath. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that she's Or is

Matt:

he a sociopath?

Rachel:

No. I don't think he can turn it. Oh, maybe. He turned it on enough to be able to get a publishing

Matt:

copy. Usually aren't meticulous.

Rachel:

Oh, okay. So then he's a sociopath.

Matt:

Because they can't.

Rachel:

So she got it wrong. It's a poetry spouting psycho or sociopath.

Matt:

Maybe the book is about a psychopath.

Rachel:

Well, just anyway, like, the fact

Matt:

that she's on like

Rachel:

the fact that she's on public television

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And she's interviewing this guy probably for a promotional spot. Spot. Like, probably the publisher got him on here so that he could get some publicity. And she's like, this is some bullshit. What the fuck is this?

Rachel:

I can't believe I just read this. I feel like I need to scour my brain. I I like, I can't get it out. What the fuck did I just read? And he's like, okay.

Rachel:

So he turns and looks directly at the screen, and this is when he's like, evil is not extraordinary. It's banal commonplace, and it'll make an appearance in the most unlikely of places. There's God and the devil in all of us. There's 2 wolves in all of us. And if the right conditions are met, it's possible for the sanest person to commit the most heinous crime.

Rachel:

And during all this, Reese gets a phone call, and he just picks the phone up and goes, I'm on my way. Like, did anybody say anything, or did he just go, I'm on my way and hang up? And then he's like, shit. I don't know where I'm going.

Matt:

I didn't get the address, and I don't have caller ID.

Rachel:

Star 69 calls me back.

Rachel:

So then Reese actually says to the TV, addresses the TV, and he goes, speak for yourself. Like, not everybody will commit a crime when given the opportunity. Actually, most people will. There's some really cool sociological studies about that, like the one where you can push the button to shock your, shock your you think you're shocking somebody in the other room?

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And as long as someone in authority tells you to do it, most people will keep doing it even if they can hear the screams of pain from the other room.

Matt:

Yeah. What's that? The Milhouse? I think it starts with an m.

Rachel:

That's the he's like one sociology guy who did a whole he did the 6 degrees of separation. He did the one where people lined up around a building, and they weren't actually waiting in line for anything and some people stood in line for hours not even knowing what they were waiting for. Or he had a guy stand on the corner and look up at the sky to see how many people would look up?

Matt:

Yes. It's the Stanford Prison Experiment. We don't need to talk about it here. It was them. Doctor Philip g Zimbardo, but it's one of many in a whole class of psychology experiments, sociological, like, social pressure

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Experiments that that present a lot of counterintuitive patterns of human behavior

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

That I think everybody should be aware of for the sake of just put it in your toolbox as a reference for, oh, this is a bias I did not know existed.

Rachel:

And I probably have.

Matt:

And, probably, I have it.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And and knowing about it is the first step in, like, countering it.

Rachel:

Knowing about a trap is the first step in avoiding it? Yes. Yeah. There's yeah. It's kinda like when we talked to George Paxonos.

Rachel:

So on Strange and Beautiful Book Club, we interviewed this renowned neuroscientist, which sounds really fancy, and it is really fancy. And we did it, and I can't believe we did. But he was talking about how, like, free will is effectively an illusion because we are simply a set of instincts and prejudices and that that guides our behavior. And it's just that we are so cognitively removed from our own decision making process that we think we think it's free and inspired by our own agency. But in reality rational agents and In reality, we're effectively not and that a lot of what we do is really just training.

Rachel:

And that makes a lot of sense. It doesn't excuse anything. It doesn't get anybody out of anything, but it does give you a context, like a frame of reference for people's actions. Like, Like, when we look back at past atrocities and we're like, wow. A lot of people participated in that.

Rachel:

Why would they? And it's like, well, honestly, for a lot of people, they wouldn't have even noticed.

Matt:

Right. They were raised from birth where this is the normal thing.

Rachel:

Right. And it's like, you learn when you're thinking about your own thinking, metacognition. You know, the first thought is usually your upbringing or your training, how you have been taught to perceive the world, and you can kind of disregard it. And then the second thought is, like, who you've taught yourself to be.

Matt:

Yeah. There's a good book that summarizes a lot of those ideas called Thinking Fast and Slow.

Rachel:

Yeah. And, I mean, it's something to think about because we like to think that we're better and we like to think that we're, highly evolved and, you know, it's worth examining our own thoughts and ideas and biases and figuring out how we got here because I don't know why we're not talking about the episode anymore. So back to it.

Matt:

Babe, maybe, subconsciously, you maybe don't want to talk about this episode?

Rachel:

I do. I do wanna talk about this episode. I do. I wanna talk about this episode in a way that makes it feel like I'm just talking about the episode and that I'm encouraging people to think about the things that are happening in this episode, but that I'm not speaking for anyone.

Matt:

But we're tangential conversationalists. So

Rachel:

I mean yeah. I mean, that's why we have a podcast. Give us a topic, and we can just fucking go. So this I think that's the point of these last few episodes is to inspire conversation. And so bravo.

Rachel:

It inspires conversation. And what actually, Reese gets that phone call, and then he does the speak for yourself, turns his TV off, and then we go to the morgue because for some reason, Reese has been called to the morgue. We're not gonna examine this. It doesn't really matter. He just needed to be part of the discussion, so here he is.

Rachel:

And Natalie and Tracy and Nick and Reese are all standing around the autopsy table. And Natalie goes, this isn't going to be pleasant. And Nick goes, when is it ever? She actually tells him, mask up. This isn't gonna be pleasant.

Rachel:

I watch a lot of doctor g medical examiner, and she actually has an entirely separate room for, decomposing bodies, like bodies that have been found already deep in decomposition, and it's like you can clean it more effectively. So it's interesting that this body, which, by the way, if it was hanging in a tree for 3 to 4 weeks, would not have this much flesh still on it. Like Right. It's fine.

Matt:

Well, if you it was it was wrapped in, like, heavy plastic sheeting.

Rachel:

No. He took all that off.

Matt:

Oh, he took it off?

Rachel:

Yeah. All she is is, like, wearing her coat.

Matt:

Oh, okay.

Rachel:

Yeah. And it has

Matt:

that part.

Rachel:

In the woods

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

In an isolated area for 3 to 4 weeks. And they do mention that they can't get fingerprints because it's too far gone. Because actually your skin on your hands are the is the first thing to fall off. It's called gloving, which is really fascinating, by the way.

Matt:

Gloving?

Rachel:

Gloving because it ends up looking like a glove.

Matt:

Oh, okay.

Rachel:

Because it separates.

Matt:

Think is when it comes off.

Rachel:

Yeah. It sluffs off. Yeah. I love the word sluff. Sluff's off.

Rachel:

I'm done. I'm done. I don't know that they would I don't know that they would have also been able to see needle marks in her skin.

Matt:

That also, like, popped up for me.

Rachel:

And they get something out from under her fingernails?

Matt:

I I pushed

Rachel:

I pushed that out aside. We're we're just gonna we're just gonna not worry about it is what we're gonna do. Accuracy and realism being the thing that forever night is known for. We're just not gonna worry about it.

Matt:

On on the the fingernail thing.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

It's hairs, and hairs are really hard

Rachel:

Yeah. But her fingernails have fallen off.

Matt:

But it could have still been there, like, stuck to her fingers. What what I'm saying is the

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

It's fine. Guess, you're you're saying the hairs wouldn't be attack like, there anymore.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And I was saying the hairs wouldn't have broken down.

Rachel:

She's wearing gloves when they hang her up.

Matt:

That's right.

Rachel:

Because we see him untie the hands and hang her up, and she's wearing gloves. So we're just gonna go with that and leave it right there.

Matt:

That was his mistake.

Rachel:

Yep. Natalie is also able to take samples of her internal organs, which would be liquefied at this point, but which is, again

Matt:

First thing to go.

Rachel:

I can't. Because as Matt always tells the kids, you have an agreement with the bacteria in your body that right now you right now they feed you and later, you feed them. We're not we're not terrible parents. It fits when it when it comes up. Alright.

Rachel:

So this is jade no number 355, and she was found hanging in this tree. And they actually is outside their jurisdiction, her single table in the morgue where we have every single body.

Matt:

So this brings up an interesting question of jurisdiction. I could see them outsourcing the autopsy to Natalie because Natalie is the closest facility with with the resources. But why is the the I don't know if they have what the what is the equivalent of a county in Canada, in a Canadian province? But why doesn't the local law enforcement why aren't they doing the investigation? Because they don't have any information about where she was potentially from.

Rachel:

Well, they could actually be doing the investigation too, but Reese kinda goes rogue on this.

Matt:

That's a good point. Yeah. They just have the body, and Nick and Tracy are kinda like, no leads. Okay. And Reese is like, here's your fucking lead.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And they're like, okay, Reese. And really, Nick is doing his his police work following Reese around Yeah. Not investigating the murder of this lady, I guess, until they they get just the generic description of her and go through missing persons.

Rachel:

Reese absolutely hijacks Nick and Tracy for this and puts them on it. And I don't they there could very well be another investigation happening in the precinct where or in the, like, area where it actually happened, but we don't talk about it because Reese is just like, oh, I know who did this, and we're gonna figure out how to prove he did it. And I wanna point out that I made the crack about it's Natalie, but it could just be that she has a freezer because do you remember Michael Jordan, like the basketball player, Michael Jordan's dad

Matt:

Oh, yeah.

Rachel:

Was murdered in North Carolina in a rural county in North Carolina, which rural in America is not the same as rural in Canada because we are very decentralized. So there's still a fairly high population in rural areas, whereas in, like, Canada, you get really high density urban populations and super low density rural populations. So it could have been even more rural than our rural.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And they literally put him in a shed because they didn't have a freezer. Right. And that was in the nineties.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

That was about the time that this happened. They were putting Michael Jordan's dad, who they didn't know who it was. They just found him in a creek. They stuck him in somebody's shed, and by the time they got him and took him to a proper autopsy facility, he was, like, severely decomposed, and it was difficult to identify his body. So they're very well could have been no freezer capability in the rural county where she was found.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Whereas Natalie has that walk in cool room. So that literally could have been like the facility she's referring to could have just been the fact that she has a place to store them. So, Natalie says, like we said, decomp is 3 to 4 weeks. This is a black female in her twenties to thirties, but it, obviously it's going to be difficult to identify who she is because, her face is missing and Reese goes, no, she was deliberately disfigured to conceal her identity. And this is when Tracy is like, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna step out for a minute because they're all standing around this body.

Rachel:

This would be hard for most people because it would be hard for me. I talk about it a lot, but I also watch it on TV. I don't think I could be in the room with a heavily decomposed, body because, you know, there's things that go along with it that are instinctually unpleasant.

Matt:

Mhmm.

Rachel:

And

Rachel:

so she steps out. And this is when Natalie says that the shot might not have been what killed her. She she had ligature marks on her neck, so she could very easily have been strangled. And Nick says, talk about overkill. And then this is when Reese reveals that he has some information that he has not shared with anybody yet.

Rachel:

And that is just a really, really spot on hunch. I mean, he's seen this mode of killing before. He's seen this series of this is this this is Jordan Manning's signature.

Matt:

Right. He he literally spent a chunk of his early career

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Compiling a whole stack of similar unsolved murders that he kind of, like, deduced psychologically back to Jordan Manning.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And and so when he sees this and he hears the details, he's like, another one for the stack. Yeah.

Rachel:

I know exactly who did this. He goes, it's not overkill. It's desecration.

Matt:

Talk about overkill. It's not overkill. It's desecration. I know who did this.

Rachel:

Yeah. And he goes, I know exactly who did this. Jordan Manning. And then we cut back to the precinct. This is when Tracy and Nick and Reese are all together.

Rachel:

And Tracy and Nick are sitting at the table and Reese is kind of hovering over them, and there's this giant stack of folders on the table. And Reese is like, I'm I'm gonna give you the tea on Jordan Manning. Like, he's a bad dude. He kills people. And Tracy's like, oh, yeah.

Rachel:

I read his book. And they both look at her and she's like, skimmed it. It seemed really interesting. I mean

Matt:

She's a homicide detective. She's

Rachel:

a homicide detective. She read a book about a psychopath. I don't know what to tell you. And Nick's like, well, to hear people talk about it, he's the literary rookie of the year. And Reese is like, I'm gonna have to disagree with you there.

Rachel:

He is a raging racist, and you have never encountered evil like you've encountered this guy. Like, this guy's the most evil guy you'll ever meet. And Nick is like, ho ho ho. Hold my beer. Hold my blood light.

Rachel:

What? Because this says

Matt:

Have you been saving that one?

Rachel:

No. Okay. I've said it before. It's from my best friend is a vampire.

Matt:

Oh, gotcha.

Rachel:

This blood's for you. So this sends him into a flashback, because guess what, y'all? Nick met Hitler. This isn't funny, but also oh

Matt:

my god. They start out like it's not obvious it's Hitler.

Rachel:

Yeah. Honestly, on a rewatch, I think I'm gonna move this episode back to, like the Rasputin episode. So we get Rasputin and Hitler out of the way, and we don't have to come back to this because the final 5 are, like, the best episodes of forever night. And within in the middle of it is fallen idle and then this one, which is like, hey. I met Hitler.

Matt:

By the way.

Rachel:

I didn't like Hitler. He creeped me out, but I met him. And this is when we see them on the train and this guy is coughing and Lacroix ends up hypnotizing the guy and telling him to fuck off, so he leaves. And then this young bearded fellow who's sitting across from the monastery Mustachioed. Mustachioed.

Matt:

Long mustachioed fellow.

Rachel:

He's like, thank you, sir, like, for getting that guy to go away. And Lacroix is like, mhmm. Nicholas, were these the best accommodations you could find? And Nick goes, they were the only ones I could find given the circumstances. Why are they riding a train?

Matt:

They can fly.

Rachel:

They can fucking fly. They can fly.

Matt:

Maybe they're trying to maintain an identity, and part of that identity is, like, paperwork for how you got into a city.

Rachel:

You could buy the train ticket and then just fly.

Matt:

But if they're keeping track of who redeemed tickets?

Rachel:

They're not. There's no computer system. How would they keep track of that?

Matt:

I don't know.

Rachel:

Can they fight fly faster than a train? Obviously. One assumes. I don't know. Even if it's like, well, it's a multi day journey.

Rachel:

Well, this isn't a light proof train. They could literally have just flown, got on the train in the cargo compartment for the day, and then gotten off and flown again. I don't know. It's fine. Whatever.

Rachel:

Who cares? They're on a train. That's what matters. And the guy across from them is like, stinking gypsies. Are you guys gypsies?

Rachel:

And LaCroix is like, no. We are definitely not gypsies. And this is when we come back to the present, because Nick is like, hook. I can't believe I still remember that, which is funny actually because most of this flashback is LaCroix talking to who we find out is Hitler. Not Nick.

Matt:

And Nick is not even

Rachel:

in the room. Not even in the room. So how is he having a flashback about when he wasn't actually in the room? I don't know. But Reese

Matt:

Maybe maybe LaCroix related the story to him.

Rachel:

Yeah. Well, he must have because he gets that portrait that Hitler drew of him. Because remember, Hitler wanted to be an artist. Yes. Yeah.

Rachel:

So

Matt:

Yeah. But he got kicked out of art school.

Rachel:

Yeah. And that's all we're gonna talk about that. So Reese's don't

Matt:

No. No. You you can cut this out. But I think it was like a a webcomic thing, and it was this guy's complaining about this artist that is always, like, taking up space in this gallery.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And he's like, his stuff is horrible. Why does it always get put up? Like, it's it's causing a problem. I forget what the premise is. Yeah.

Matt:

But he's like, okay. I'm gonna go back in time and take care of this guy. And so he

Rachel:

He gets him kicked out of art school.

Matt:

So he

Rachel:

And it's Hitler.

Matt:

He comes back, and he's like, alright. I got that guy kicked out of art school way back when. What's the worst that could happen?

Rachel:

Thank you for that interlude.

Matt:

You're welcome.

Rachel:

This palette cleanser bought to you by Matt's Tangential.

Matt:

Moments in the meme sphere with Matt.

Rachel:

So then Reese is telling them about Jordan, and this is when he, like, taps the stack of files. And he's like, these are all unknowns going back 20 years. They're all black women chosen for their anonymity. They were all murdered or lynched in one way or another because that's his joke slash like trademark. And he says that of all of these women, only one of them was identified and it was his last victim.

Rachel:

And it's because Joe knew her. She was a regular girl on his beat when he was a vice cop, and Jordan Manning caught up with her after he found out that she was informing on Jordan Manning to Reese. And actually, the only reason Jordan Manning is even in prison is because he was arrested on an unrelated charge. He killed a guy in a bar fight.

Matt:

And since Joe was following him all the time, Joe was there to arrest him.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Yeah. So for the record, Reese brings out this stack of unsolved cases Yeah. And says, Jordan Manning did it Yeah. But there's no evidence, so you'll just have to trust me.

Rachel:

Yes. I mean, he tells them, well, he'll tell them in a minute. Yes.

Matt:

As much as Reese tell, like

Rachel:

We're not I

Matt:

can't gets on Nick gets on Nick about hunches.

Rachel:

Yeah. This is better than the time that Nick was, like, oh, I know who did it. It was Elon Musk and then proceeded and then proceeded to zoom around town sticking people in his trunk and leaving them, like, presents for skanky to come unwrap.

Matt:

Yep.

Rachel:

So at least it's better than that. And Reese actually assigns Tracy to help Natalie. He's like, okay. You're gonna go help Natalie. And she's like, oh, but captain, I was already collating the I was collating the missing persons, and he's like, nope.

Rachel:

You're done with that. You need to go and help Natalie, and you are on it until you find out who did this if it takes all year starting right now. Because she hesitates, and he's like, I said right now. And she's like, okay. I'm sorry.

Rachel:

She leaves. And Nick just gives him a look like, the fuck. And this is when Reese is like, I know. I know. Like, I'm getting I was really hard on her, but he says, if she wants to learn to cut the mustard, that means she's gotta get over her squeamishness.

Rachel:

So she's got to go. She's got to go and help Natalie. She's got to help Natalie figure out who this is and find them some evidence that gets Jordan Manning convicted of this murder.

Matt:

Right. And, also, side angle on it is she needs to get a little desensitized to dead bodies

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

So that she can be more effective as a homicide detective.

Rachel:

Right. If she's distracted by her physical condition when she's investigating a case, it's not gonna

Matt:

Right. She's not gonna be able to take in as many details and think about things.

Rachel:

Yeah. And this is when Nick looks at Reese, and he's like, okay. So tell me, how did you know it was Manning who murdered these women? Did you have a run-in with him in the past and you had a flashback? Because that's what usually happens to me.

Rachel:

And Reese is like, no. No. No. Let's just say I was 95% sure, and then he told me he did it. And then we cut to Tracy and Natalie at the morgue.

Rachel:

And Tracy is like, Reese told me everything is on hold. Every other case that Nick and Tracy have is on hold until they get an idea of this woman, even if it takes all year. And Natalie tries to give her anti nausea pills and just like pro tip for everyone who's been listening, never take pills that Natalie offers you. This is too soon. This is too soon after the last episode.

Rachel:

She's like, Tracy, I made these special pills. Why don't you just take them, and we'll both see what happens?

Matt:

It'll make your brain work better.

Rachel:

Why are they red?

Rachel:

It just taps her with the hypodermic. It injects her

Rachel:

with mixed blood. I just wanna see what happens. But Tracy actually refuses, which good job on Tracy. And she goes, I've got to learn how to do this, and that means no cheating. Actually, it wouldn't be that bad to take anti nausea pills because then your body learns to not be nauseous around dead bodies.

Matt:

Prevent the association.

Rachel:

Yeah. But that's fine. She goes, I'm not here for the captain. I'm here to deal with my little problem, which is her problem with really far gone dead body. I mean, it's a fair problem to have.

Rachel:

She's a young cop. Yeah. She was gonna have to confront this eventually. And Natalie's like, okay. Cool.

Rachel:

So let's start. And then she just whips the sheet off the body.

Matt:

The graphic reveal.

Rachel:

And we can see it from the top down, like, the missing face, tits out, all of it. It's just right there on the butt. This is the most dead body we've seen. Maybe season 1 where there's that woman on the bench, which is technically a dead body.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

But this is the most like, I'm a dead body dead body that we have ever seen in the whole show, and here it is. And Tracy ends up, like, closing her eyes and, like, summoning spiritual help to, like, get through this. And then she's they start checking the body with magnifiers. Natalie does this thing where she goes boop and, like, flicks her magnum, like her magnification glasses down, and so Natalie or Tracy does the same. And Natalie starts giving her report out loud about the missing face.

Rachel:

She's like, okay. We're missing you know, she's doing her

Matt:

dictating. She's recording.

Rachel:

Yeah. She's dictating her report for later. Yeah. And Tracy actually interjects, and she's like, this is so awful. It is so sad, and it feels like nobody cares.

Rachel:

And Natalie says, Tracy from Natalie. We know. We care, and now we're going to do something about it. It's so awful. It's sad.

Rachel:

I mean, to die like this, no one even knows or seems to care that you're gone.

Rachel:

Trace, we know. We care, and now we're going to do something about it. K? Okay.

Rachel:

Okay. Like, yes.

Matt:

You need a little motivation.

Rachel:

Yeah. We know. We're here. We we care. We're doing this, and we're gonna figure out what happened.

Rachel:

And that's our job, and we're gonna do it. And Tracy's like, cool. Let's do this. And then while they're busy doing this, I think Nick is just following Reese around because he knows what happened last time he went on a vigilante investigation spree, and he's concerned Reese might do the same thing. So he's following Reese around.

Rachel:

And so Nick and Reese go to this bookstore, and this is, oh, this looks like a really cool bookstore. Like, I wish we had this bookstore in here, but, like, I would go to this bookstore. Mhmm. I wonder if this is, Ben McNally's, like, from stranger than fiction.

Matt:

Oh, yeah. It could be the same.

Rachel:

Yeah. But they

Matt:

production team was consistent between this episode and that episode.

Rachel:

I mean, they're still filming in Toronto. So Yeah. Yeah. And this so they go to this bookstore, and Manning is actually having a book signing event. And Reese is literally just standing, like, 10 feet away from Jordan Manning, just glaring at him.

Rachel:

Just like, just like, okay. This part is really hard. And then Manning actually signs a book and gives it to him. He, like

Matt:

Manning approaches Reese.

Rachel:

No. He doesn't. He signs the book, and he, like, gives it to an assistant and tells him to give this book to Reese. Yeah. No.

Rachel:

He's gonna confront him in a minute, but not just yet. 1st, he gives him this book, and Reese takes the book and he's talking to Nick at the same time and he says, you're looking at the end of Western civilization. He's a cold blooded killer, and it made him a celebrity. So on the record, Reese predicted Dexter.

Matt:

Except, Dexter who wasn't

Rachel:

I think trained. The rise of the obsession Oh. Oh. With

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

I like

Matt:

to he culturally predicted Yeah. What would drive the popularity of a show like Dexter.

Rachel:

Yeah. I like true crime as much as I mean, I I listen to a fair amount of true crime. I go through seasons where I listen to true crime, and then I don't like it anymore for a while. But I never like listening to the ones that go in-depth about serial killers where we focus on the serial killer because to me, it feels voyeuristic. Like, what are why are we focusing on the way this person killed people?

Rachel:

It doesn't feel it doesn't feel great to me. And I've seen the rise of the true crime genre and how we're making movies about these serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer, one in particular. There was that Netflix one about Jeffrey Dahmer, and they cast an actor who is objectively handsome to be Jeffrey Dahmer. And so people were like, oh my god. I'm in love with Dahmer.

Rachel:

Like, he's so hot. And I'm sorry y'all, but that's just gross. It's just gross. Jeffrey Dahmer did some really terrible things, and he was able to get away with it because he was gay and it was perceived as a gay crime and nobody cared. And that's tragic and that's fucked up.

Rachel:

And I cannot believe we made a movie about it. That was a, sensationalized movie about it. And I can't imagine being a victim of some of these people and then you see a movie get made about the person that killed them. And, yes, no killer is allowed to profit off their story while they are in prison, but we should not be making these people celebrities. And that's what Reese is saying.

Rachel:

This guy should not be a celebrity for being a

Matt:

killer. Right.

Rachel:

If you wanna focus on anything, focus on the victims. That's why I like that that podcast by Holly Rubinhold about the victims of Jack the Ripper. It's not about Jack the Ripper. She doesn't give a shit about Jack the Ripper. It's about, giving back giving those victims back who they were.

Matt:

Right. Yeah. Focusing on their names and

Rachel:

And their lives

Matt:

and then filling out their story.

Rachel:

And what what in their life led them to that moment where they were where they were victimized and not, oh, they were prostitutes. That's why. And so they just become this caricature. Well, we are are so deeply fetishizing like Jack the Ripper or Jeffrey Dahmer or anyway, that's my soapbox about I'm bound to run a foul of a couple of soapboxes in this episode. Mhmm.

Rachel:

And that's when I feel like I can I can go off a bit about, which is just it's okay to be informed about true crime, but I don't think it's okay to fetishize these serial killers? And that's what Reese is talking about. He's like, this guy has become sensational because he's controversial, because people have this morbid fascination with murderers and this type of crime. And Nick is like, okay, captain. I'm here you.

Rachel:

But, like, if he confessed to you and this is when Reese goes, I didn't say he confessed. I told I said he told me he did it. That's a distinction without difference. I guess he didn't explicitly say it. What he's trying to say is in the book, he put so many details in the book that only the killer would know.

Rachel:

It had to be like a letter to anybody who knew he did it. Right. To be like, I did it, but couched in fiction in such a way that they could never use it as a confession. Right. And so Reese takes the book that Jordan Manning gives him and he flips it open.

Rachel:

And in the cover, it says, to my favorite loser, Joe Reese. And then there's a Italian phrase, which I'm a I'm a try. Perme say I don't know.

Matt:

Bill, is that Spanish? It's Italian.

Nick:

This way to join the lost people. Dante's inferno. It's part of the inscription of the entrance to hell.

Rachel:

And Nick is like, oh, okay. Because Rhys goes, it must be some kind of racial slur. And Nick goes, oh, no. It's it's Italian, and it says this way to join the lost people because it's from Dante's Inferno, and it's part of the inscription on the entrance to hell. Yep.

Rachel:

And because this is the type of thoroughness that people come to our podcast for, I went ahead and looked up the entire inscription on the entrance to hell.

Matt:

Oh, good.

Rachel:

Which is through me, the way to the city of woe. Through me, the way to everlasting pain. Through me, the way among the lost. Okay. So a note, I looked through, like, 17 translations, and I could not find one that specifically said, this way to join the lost people.

Rachel:

Through me, the way among the lost, justice moved my maker on high. Divine power made me. Wisdom supreme and primal love. Before me, nothing, but things eternal and eternal I endure. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Rachel:

There you go. Read the whole thing to you. And this is when Reese is like, yeah. He told me by putting it in the book, it's all in here, Nick, and he hands him his copy of the book. And then we kinda cut to a little bit a little bit forward when Manning is done doing his signature, like, his signing and he's getting ready to go.

Rachel:

And this is when Reese comes back to confront Manning, and Manning looks over at Nick, and he goes, I see they finally teamed you up with an Aryan. Oh, boy.

Matt:

So we can immediately see why Joe Rees feels as strongly as he does about Manning.

Rachel:

This kinda feels like you remember in Bad Blood, the Jack the Ripper episode? Mhmm. How I was upset that Jack the Ripper is so obviously evil that I thought it would have been a much more powerful episode if we weren't sure.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

But I feel the same about this. I kind of feel like if we had left it ambiguous about whether or not Jordan Manning was actually as bad as Reese said he was, I think I would have connected with him as a villain. I mean, he's a bad guy. I hate him. I'm I'm on board with this episode.

Rachel:

It's fine. But I feel like including this line and giving us, like, a slam dunk, this dude's a douchebag, ends up cheapening our overall narrative because, racism is insidious and it is not always overt.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And when we make this guy overtly racist and overtly an asshole, asshole. It undermines what we're going for here. It's fine. Again, it's fine, but I would have liked this better if he had not had that obvious of a dig. Because with the book, the book that he gives Reese, that doesn't automatically read as I'm a giant douchebag.

Rachel:

It's just like poke. Like Right.

Matt:

It's just we have a history.

Rachel:

Yeah. I gave you I gave you a gift.

Matt:

A rivalry.

Rachel:

Oh, good, Reese. You showed up for my signature. I wasn't sure you remembered me. You know? And then then we get this line, the Arian line, and it's like, that's not I mean, I guess they wanted they never wanted Reese at any point to appear like the villain, which is also fine.

Rachel:

But I think in a when we do the reboot in a 2024 lens, giving giving Jordan Manning a longer time period before we even even if we if he is never overtly racist, but he is always tacitly racist Mhmm. He's a better he's a more realistic version. I mean, yes. This happens over at least sometimes, but also just sometimes it's it's subtle. Yeah.

Rachel:

And that's the insidious thing about racism is that it is not

Matt:

More like a continuous accumulation of small slights.

Rachel:

Yeah. It's not always the big things. Sometimes it's little things. And Nick, I'm sure, doesn't love being called an Aryan. So, he has blonde haired and blue dyed, I guess.

Rachel:

But he's like, oh god. I met Hitler. Don't even play. It's not great. So then Reese actually pushes Manning up against the wall.

Rachel:

He, like, grabs him and push him against the wall. And this is when Manning goes, it's okay, people. He's a police officer. He's allowed to do this. I'm not going there.

Rachel:

I'm not talking about this. We are not discussing this. I saw that deep breath, and we are just we are gonna move right along.

Matt:

Moving right That's a whole other That's

Rachel:

what we're doing right now.

Matt:

That's that's a entirely different genre of podcast.

Rachel:

Yes. I'm sure they're out there. Please feel free to go find them. Find people who are people of color talking about that and listen to their voices. And this is when Jordan Manning is like, oh, poor Reese.

Rachel:

You still have a persecution complex. And as Matt pointed out earlier, if you are in a system that is systematically discriminating against you, that's not a persecution complex. That's just what's happening. That's just seeing the truth. And he goes, but you're a captain now.

Rachel:

Thank God for affirmative action. They pack so much shit into, like, 3 lines.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And I can't. I just can't because we just went through the overturning of affirmative action and there is so much there. And I encourage people to go out and find people of color talking about this and listen to their voices. We are not going to address it on this podcast because this is when Nick steps in and he's like, that's enough out of you. Like, quit it.

Matt:

Right. Stop egging on my captain.

Rachel:

Stop. And this is when Jordan looks at him and he goes, pardon me, detective. But Joe and I go way back. Our rapport isn't easily understood by outsiders. Then he looks over at Reese and he goes, you'd like to kill me, wouldn't you, Joe?

Rachel:

And Reese is like, actually, I'd like to take you downtown, and this is when Jordan is like, no, man. First, you don't have a warrant. You just shoved me against the law. I am leaving, and then he just dips. And Nick turns to Reese, and he goes, I'm sorry, captain, but what the hell is the matter with you?

Matt:

Which I'm glad Nick called Reese out on.

Rachel:

Like, what is happening? What did you just do? And then we cut to Natalie and Tracy and the very graphic body, which we are still very graphically showing everybody. And this is when Natalie is like, Tracy, how are you holding up? And Tracy's like, no.

Rachel:

I'm doing alright. And then she finds the hair and blood matted underneath the fingernails. And Natalie tells them to bag them and tag them, and she'll get them sent off. Like, that's a really good find, Tracy. Good job.

Rachel:

And Natalie finds puncture marks on the victim's thigh, and they're not typical of a user like a drug user. She says because they're administered too cleanly and also they're in a weird spot. They're like on her thigh. And Tracy goes, is it insulin? Is she diabetic?

Rachel:

Like, this is a clue. We we mull over it for a little while. And the real important here point here is this is when Natalie's like, okay. Are you ready? Because we're going in.

Rachel:

It's time to open this body up. And then we come back to Nick and Reese. And Reese and Nick are at the precinct, and Reese is, like, power walking through the precinct, and he's, like, now you see what we're up against or what I'm up against. And Nick goes, what we're up against. But honestly, captain, you tipped him off.

Rachel:

Now he knows. We're onto him. You should have held it together. I mean, it yes. But I can see where Reese is just like this guy.

Rachel:

He goes later, he says he gets under my skin and he makes it crawl. He's just he's dealt with this dude for so long. He's seen this guy get away with so much, and it has to be so infuriating. It's difficult to to not act on how he's feeling. And Nick tells him, like, you've told me plenty of times.

Rachel:

Like, you've given me the lecture about not tipping off the suspect before, and yet you just went and did it. And Reese is like, I'm sorry. I can't help it, man. This guy just gets under my skin. And Nick calls it.

Rachel:

He's like, oh, you're the one who busted him, aren't you? And Rhys goes, yeah. I was there. And he's about to say more, but this is when some flowers arrive, and they're from Manning.

Matt:

Of course, they are.

Rachel:

And he sent his entire tour schedule going back 6 months. So here's my alibi, basically.

Matt:

Mhmm.

Rachel:

This is what you're probably looking for. And Nick reads the card and it says, you'd have picked these yourself if you had the time. And Reese goes, funny guy. Next time, remind me to shove roses down his throat, thorns and all. And then he throws the flowers away and he goes, these are cotton flowers, Nick.

Rachel:

It's not important, but these are not actually cotton flowers. Like, we live in cotton country. I I drive past cotton fields every single day. This is not what cotton looks like, and they could have bought cotton. You can buy cotton for Well,

Matt:

you can buy cotton flowers around here, but they could've they could've plucked out the petals and stuffed in cotton balls.

Rachel:

No. Cotton doesn't really have, like, a flower you can pick. Like, you don't put cotton flowers in a bouquet. You put cotton buds, like unopened cotton buds or partially open cotton buds. They're real pretty, but, they there's a huge market abroad for cotton for bouquets.

Rachel:

And if you just look up cotton bouquet, you can see what they look like. They do look like a cotton ball in, like, a a flower. It doesn't matter. I get where they were going. Maybe they maybe it wasn't commercially available at the time, and they were just doing their best.

Rachel:

I'm not sure. But I just decide, though, these are not cotton flowers. But the point is that was the you would have picked these yourself if you had the time dig. Because famously, in the United States, if you're listening to this and you're not US based, cotton was one of the main crops that, enslaved people were used as labor for picking because it's extremely labor intensive, especially before the invention of the cotton gin, which the cotton gin was used to separate the seeds out of the cotton because, otherwise, you have to individually pick the seeds out. And, actually, the cotton gin is credited with the resurgence of enslavement in the US, and that's a whole other complicated history thing that we're not gonna get into today, but that's the joke.

Rachel:

I mean, that's the the shitty joke that Jordan Manning is saying is, like, here's some cotton. You depict it yourself. Okay. And then we come back to see Natalie, and Natalie is actually autopsying the body very graphically. Like, we see it from the top again.

Matt:

Organs.

Rachel:

We get organs. We get breasts with no nipples.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

We get breasts. And this isn't even remotely a y incision. I don't know why we didn't do all autopsies are performed the exact same. Why wouldn't it doesn't matter. It's fine.

Rachel:

But she's taking samples. They're not masked at all. They're just it it's fine. So she takes a pancreas sample and because that's how they're gonna test to see if this lady had diabetes because we think maybe those shots were insulin. Then we come back to the precinct, and Nick gets this stack of files.

Rachel:

He rees, like, drops it on his desk, and he tells him to find the clues in the book to the murders, and he'll see that the murders in the book include information that only the killer would have known and that they correlate to these missing persons cases. But he has couched all of his facts in fiction, and so he can deny it, deny it, deny it. Oh, I that's totally coincidence. I didn't know anything about it. And Nick says, well, back then, we didn't have the sophistication we have today.

Rachel:

We didn't have the cutting edge police work that we are working with right now. Even when we started the show, we didn't have the same level of DNA was not as prevalent when we started forever night, and it is now.

Matt:

From even from 92 to 96.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

DNA testing went from weeks and not not, I guess, as as high confidence that a match was a match. Yeah. And and in just, like, 4 or 5 years, we get you can get it back in a few days and have a lot more confidence that a lot more parts of the DNA match.

Rachel:

Yeah. And this is when Reese is really being super fatalist about everything that's happening. Like, he's on one hand, he's telling Nick, investigate these missing cases, like, match them up with the murders in the book. But on the other hand, Nick is like, well, there's got to be something. We'll figure it out.

Rachel:

And Reese is like, no. We won't. He just wants us to try so he can laugh at us, and you can bet your badge this murder is airtight, and we're never gonna figure it out. So he's like, figure it out. We're never gonna figure it out.

Rachel:

And I think what we're supposed to be getting here is Reese just wants to be believed.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

He doesn't really believe he'll be able to get Jordan Manning on anything. He's hoping he will, but he's not. That's not why he's doing this. He wants someone to tell him, you're right.

Matt:

Yeah. He wants someone to struggle through the same the same information, the same facts, and and conclude that, yes, this guy did it. Yeah. I'm convinced this guy did it. And I agree there's nothing we can put on him.

Rachel:

Right. He just but he wants vindication.

Matt:

Yeah. He wants to be seen.

Rachel:

Yeah. He wants to be seen, which is fair. And Reese tells him finishes his story from earlier about how he was there when Jordan Manning got busted for his manslaughter conviction. And he says, you know, I could have taken him out that night. He'd thrown the guy through the front window.

Rachel:

The guy broke his neck. Manning was coming out with a gun to finish the job, and when I told him to put the gun down, he hesitated. And I could have fired and taken him out, but I held back And I put my gun down, and you don't know what it's like, Nick, living with the idea that you could have changed history, but you didn't. And that's like Whoop

Matt:

whoop whoops. Nick, right back into the fight back.

Rachel:

Oh, actually, I do. Yeah. I could have killed Hitler. This is the one where he's not actually with them. He's, like, over drinking by the door, but we're still seeing the flashback.

Rachel:

I don't really wanna talk about this this flashback. Actually, not a lot happens. Most of it is Lacroix having a conversation with Hitler and Hitler trying to give him propaganda and Lacroix being like, I'm sorry. I'm apolitical. He goes, I am, as it were, above all that.

Rachel:

Yeah. And then Nick and Reese we're back to Nick and Reese, and Reese comes out and he's getting his jacket on, and Nick is like, oh, are you are you headed home? And he's like, no. I just think I need to get some air. I'm gonna go for a walk.

Rachel:

And Nick says, you know, I think I found something, maybe. I don't know. Because there's not really anything in this in this area that matches his description, the description of his murders recently. Oh, I found nothing is what he says. Nick says, I found nothing.

Rachel:

Like, there's nothing here that matches these descriptions. There's I I don't I can't there's nothing here. Like, I got I got nothing. And Reese says, well, it just seems so strange to me that so many people just disappear, and so many of them are never even missed. And all I could think about was the line from the Dresden Files where he says that the percentage of the population that goes missing every year is the same percentage of the population that goes missing in a herd to predation.

Matt:

Yes.

Rachel:

And I was like, So literally, the percentage or have you ever seen the map where it's like the cave systems and then people who go missing?

Matt:

Oh,

Matt:

yeah. Yeah. Subtranium.

Rachel:

If you overlap the 2, like more people go missing in areas with extensive cave systems than where there isn't an extensive cave system.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Anyway

Matt:

Just just a little seed to plant there.

Rachel:

That's that's terrifying. That's terrifying. And Nick is like, yeah. I've made people disappear before. I mean yeah.

Rachel:

No. I get exactly what you're saying. But Nick says, you know, we're a long way off from report from Natalie because she's got a big job, and she's gonna have to kind of guess at a lot of it, and then is it gonna even be right? And he goes, but, you know, we'll figure out who it is. Every life leaves a mark on the world.

Rachel:

And Reese does this, like, sit up a little taller thing, and he goes, every soul touches another soul somewhere for better or for worse.

Nick:

We'll find out who she is. Every life leaves a mark on the world, captain.

Matt:

Every soul touches another somewhere for better or worse.

Rachel:

I don't know if that's a quote. It looks like he's quoting, but I don't think he's quoting. I think he's just, like, internalizing the, like, yeah. Everybody affects somebody else, even if it's negatively.

Matt:

It bolsters him.

Rachel:

Yeah. And Reese goes on. He's like, every time Manning kills someone, he assumes that because they're black, they won't be missed, that nobody's looking for them, and he's wrong. That's not true. Then he's like, you know what?

Rachel:

We're gonna get him. We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna get him, Nick. And then he leaves. And Nick holds up Jordan Manning's book like he's looking through it.

Rachel:

Like, I gotta read this. There's poetry. Kinda sounds like LaCroix. That's gotta be hard to read. And then we go to Jordan Manning, and Jordan Manning is paying an old prison buddy to beat him up.

Rachel:

That's really all there is to say about this. He's just like, here's cash. Hit me in the face. And then we go back to the precinct, and Reese returns from his walk, which is a kind of important he goes on this walk right now because he's missing during the time period.

Matt:

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.

Rachel:

Gets assaulted. Yeah. So this is supposed to be a, oh, no. Did he do it? Which no.

Rachel:

Because we just watched Jordan Manning get beat up. It's just that he doesn't have a good alibi for the time period, which as we know, slam dunk. That's a

Matt:

nail on top of that. It's not even that he has an alibi or not. They don't even ask him. It's a report was submitted. Internal investigations is going to be processing this.

Matt:

Yeah. You need to stay away from the guy just so that you need to stay above board beyond reproach Yeah. For the protection of the police department Yeah. And for like, if this goes to trial or anything. Yeah.

Matt:

Like, you need to play it by the book, Reese.

Rachel:

Right.

Matt:

And don't go near the guy because that just complicates things.

Rachel:

Yeah. And this whole thing kinda goes away really quickly, actually. It's sort of like and then it's gone. Because Reese comes back, and they're like, oh, yeah. Jordan Manning is charging you with assaulting him.

Rachel:

Sorry, Joe, but you need to retain counsel. They give him the picture of the guy of Jordan Manning with, like, really fake looking, like, facial damage or whatever. And he says, you're restrained from approaching him or contacting him under penalty of law. And then he leaves. And congratulations.

Rachel:

That's the last we're gonna hear about that.

Matt:

And Probably Internal Investigations looks at it and is like, oh, Banning and Rees have history.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And if Rees responded just like off the record, like, hey. This guy probably, like, had himself beat up Yeah. And then claimed I did it because he's always trying to get at me. Yeah. And then they open the case file.

Matt:

Oh, yeah. He did that, like, 20 times when Reese arrested him before.

Rachel:

Yeah. It's just it's fine. It just goes away, and it's okay. Because if we'd belabored this, it would have felt like alright. Artificial conflict.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah. And so we go to Tracy and Natalie. We divided the party. We split the party this episode, so we're flip flopping a lot.

Rachel:

And so Tracy and Natalie are out in the hallway, and it's implied that Tracy had some kind of episode because she's, like, holding o 2 up, like, she's breathing oxygen to try to, like, revive her. And Natalie's filling out this form, and Tracy goes, I don't know how you do this day in and day out. And Natalie goes, it's what I was trying to do, Tracy. Like, I like to think this is where the real detective works gets done. Sometimes it's where the only detective work gets done.

Matt:

And and fair that it's, like, she's trained. Like Yeah. She literally trained for years in this kind of thing, And so it's not like a personal failing of Tracy

Rachel:

Right.

Matt:

That she can't handle it. It's Natalie is a professional. She has cultivated the skills necessary.

Rachel:

As long as the body isn't burnt, she's good to go.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Yeah. She says, you've actually really done really well, Tracy. You know, those fibers that you found were hair, I got news, and it's distinctly not her hair. So it's probably her her, the guy who assaulted her. That's his hair.

Rachel:

So you did really good, but we also didn't find any insulin or illicit drugs. So

Matt:

Or signs of diabetes.

Rachel:

Yeah. So we don't know what those needle marks are. And Tracy goes, yeah. But the position of the needle mark suggests self administration. And she's like, oh, Tracy, you're doing so good.

Rachel:

Like, now you're starting to sound like a medical examiner. And Tracy goes, yeah. But what about vaccinations? And I love it. Natalie reaches over and pushes the oxygen mask back on her face.

Rachel:

She goes, here. I have another hit. I think it's helping. And Tracy goes, yeah. But who vaccinates themselves?

Rachel:

And Natalie goes, oh, a doctor.

Matt:

Natalie would know. Yeah. Natalie's done lots of

Rachel:

She's given that option when we're done. We're done. So then Reese we go back to Reese, and Reese is like, oh, he's just trying to take me out so he can neutralize me. He must be planning another killing. Well, he's taking you out because you're obsessed with him and you're

Matt:

compromising. Only one watching him.

Rachel:

Right. Of course, he's neutralizing you. And you tipped off that you were there. He didn't even know this was entirely random. It's not like he he hung that body outside of Reese's precinct precinct.

Rachel:

The fact that the body was delivered to the precinct where Reese was the captain is entirely random.

Matt:

Right. It's just coincidence.

Rachel:

So had he not, he could have covertly kept an eye on him and caught him, you know, stalking a woman or trying to harm a woman.

Matt:

It's possible that if the body had ended up somewhere else, that Reese may have, like

Rachel:

Heard about it?

Matt:

Yeah. It it may have crossed his desk at some point, or he may have, like, an open open query, like, hey. If there's anything matching this profile, send it my way. Yeah. Because I'm keeping the list.

Matt:

And then and that could have still been like, this happened, like, right after Manning got out of prison.

Rachel:

Right.

Matt:

I'll add that to the stack, and I need to get eyes on Manning.

Rachel:

Right.

Matt:

And so it just would have taken a little longer.

Rachel:

Yeah. That's true. But Nick tells him, like, I don't get it. How come you didn't take your your suspicions to your superiors before? How come you haven't told anybody else about this?

Rachel:

And he's like, oh, you think I didn't? But, like, look at me. I was one black cop and just a vice detective at the time. And here I am telling a story about a genocidal racist because I couldn't give the story away.

Nick:

Captain, I still don't get it. Why didn't you bring your suspicions about Manning to your superiors?

Matt:

I did. Oh, believe me. I did. I laid it all out for my captain and anybody who would listen.

Nick:

And they didn't do anything about it?

Matt:

Look at me, Nick. We're talking one black cop, a vice detective at that, telling this crazy scenario about a genocidal racist. I couldn't give that story your way around here. Times have changed. You think so?

Matt:

I wish I thought so too.

Rachel:

Nobody wanted to hear it. And Nick goes, times have changed. And Rhys goes, you think so? I wish I thought so. And we're not going there.

Rachel:

We are not going there. Again, I encourage you to find podcasts that discuss this, find books that talk about this, educate yourself on the history and current state of race relations in the US by listening to person of color voices. Go go forth. Educate yourself. And we come back we're coming back to the episode personally.

Rachel:

Me, I am. And Reese tells Nick, can you please go and watch Jordan Manning and keep him from hurting anyone else? If I'd been the one to beat him up, Nick, there wouldn't be pieces big enough left for them to photograph.

Matt:

Yeah. So he's a little biased.

Rachel:

Yeah. He's like, I need you to go and do this. I did not beat him up, just in case you're wondering, because I would have done better. That's what he says.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And this is when we cut to Lacroix because what do we need in this moment? A Lacroix interlude. And Lacroix goes, pour the cappuccinos, friends. Smoke them if you have them because it's poetry night.

Matt:

Oh, LaCroix.

Rachel:

And he says tonight's lightness is from the fellow who got rich writing greeting cards for the devil, and then he reads a poem from the book.

LaCroix:

Pour the cappuccinos, friends. Smoke them if you have them. It's poetry time again. Some thoughts for you to dream on. Tonight's likeness exerted from killing mind by that fellow who got rich writing greeting cards for the devil.

LaCroix:

Life's ending evolution. Every death is gross. She should please me now, this dead one, with whatever warmth remains, with that rattle in Earthrock.

Rachel:

It's weird. It's like I see beauty in the final gurgle in her throat, and it it sounds like the kind of book I would never read. I'd be and when we come back, LaCroix shuts the book, looks at the cover, and makes like a face.

Matt:

Same Lacroix. Same.

Rachel:

And then we go back to the flashback because now Lacroix is joining in on the flashback break. He's like, dang. That reminds me of that time I met Hitler. And this is when the guy gets up and he goes to clean up before they arrive at their destination, and we it's actually him cutting his beard into the classic Hitler stash, and Lacroix and Nick are chatting about what they've sensed from him, and Lacroix's like, I kinda feel like maybe we need to we need to bring him over and have him join the family. I think he'd liven things up a little bit.

Rachel:

He'd certainly be interesting. And Nick goes, can you just kill him and have done with it? He feels so disaffected in this flashback. Like, dang it. I took a train because I was hoping Lacroix would wanna fly and not ride the train, and I could have some moment of alone time.

Rachel:

But Lacroix was like, oh, great. Road trip. Yeah. We'll go together. And he came on the train with him.

Rachel:

And Lacroix, I'm just gonna shorthand all the rest of this flashback so we can be done with it. Because Lacroix goes into the to the bathroom, and the guy looks at him and he's like, why are you here? Because LaCroix is about to turn him into a vampire, and as soon as Hitler looks up and he's got the the Hitler mustache, LaCroix is like, oh, god. No. No.

Rachel:

It freaks him out. I don't know if it's the mustache or the overwhelming stench of evil that is emanating from Hitler, but it's too much for Lacroix and he decides he's not gonna do it. The end. So then we come back to Jordan getting into a car like a taxi, and Nick flies off after him. He's actually in his car, but he gets out of his car and flies off after him.

Rachel:

And we get that, like, speedy low flight cam where he's flying just, like, 15 feet off the road. Mhmm. So, canonically, moth mothman's back. Woah. Somebody had a mothman sighting that night.

Rachel:

Congratulations. And then is Jordan going to the same warehouse where he got beat up? And Nick lands, and he's about to go in after him when Reese pops up because Reese is also following Jordan Manning. So what he was telling Nick was, I need you to follow him. I'm not gonna tell you, but I'm also gonna be following him, and I need you to be my eyes so that if we need a witness about what happens, you're there.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So Reese goes in after Jordan, who says, I knew you'd come, which kind of implies that Jordan had contacted Reese and set up this meeting. And this is when Reese is like, I wanna see hands. Like, I wanna see your hands. And Jordan Manning responds, come on, Joe. If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead.

Rachel:

And Reese goes, yeah. And hanging from a tree? And Jordan goes, that could be arranged. So Reese is like, why'd you call me here? And what he did was he called him there so that he could lay out his master plan, which again, I get it.

Matt:

You caught me monologuing.

Rachel:

I get it. We wanted this guy to be loved. He we wanted him to be a check every box villain. He's not only racist. He's not only killing people.

Rachel:

He's also trying to incite a race war, a la serial killer who wanted to incite a race war. He killed a bunch of people and wrote Helter Skelter on the wall and carved a cross into his forehead. He's not technically a serial killer, though. He's a cult leader. Manson.

Rachel:

Charles Manson. He's trying to incite a race war a la Charles Manson, like Helter Skelter, some Helter Skelter bullshit. And okay. Alright. Fine.

Rachel:

It's fine. But, again, when you make racism so much a caricature of racism, you undermine your actual point, which is that literally everyone has the capacity to do this. You don't have to be the kind of person who wants to start a race war. You can just be a straight up racist asshole.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And sometimes it's insidious and sometimes it's subtle and very rarely is it this big and overt and easily identifiable. And I'm just gonna leave it at that. I'm just gonna leave it at that. And Reese is like, you killed those women, didn't you? And this is when Jordan is like, you I thought you had more respect for my intelligence.

Rachel:

You really think I'm gonna be like, yeah. I killed all 20. Let me tell you my name their names and some facts. He's like, you're probably wearing a wire. I'm not gonna confess to you.

Rachel:

And then he punches Manning, which is come on, Reese, please. And pulls a gun on him. And this is this is not gonna look good on the IA investigation.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And Manning ends up daring him to do it because he's like, do it. It'll be all over the news that a black cop killed a white guy, and it'll start the race war that I wanna start. And Reese goes, I'm not gonna kill you. I'm gonna throw you in with the worst brothers in the pen, and then I'm gonna tell them what you're all about. And then I'm just gonna let the dice fall where they may.

Rachel:

Thank you, Reese. That's excellent. That's a fun chef's kiss. I love it. And Jordan goes, yeah.

Rachel:

That's not gonna happen. No justice, no peace, Joe. And this is when Nick pops up. We see him, like, behind, and he's watched this whole thing. And then when Reese leaves, he pops up and he's like, yeah, man.

Rachel:

I heard it all. And Reese is like, you heard it all? You you actually heard it? Like, you believe me? This is his moment where he feels seen.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Because Nick is like, yeah. I heard it, but I don't know what the fuck he was saying. And Reese is like, see? This is what I'm talking about. This dude is unstable.

Rachel:

And Nick is like, yeah. I see it. I got it. No. I heard heard.

Rachel:

I see it. And Reese says, cool. I'm glad you're on my side. Oh, by the way, I grabbed some hair when I had him, like, when I had him by the hand by the head. And I'm just gonna take these samples into me, like, whips out a plastic bag and dumps the samples in there.

Rachel:

Don't, Reese. You're not supposed to have any contact with him. You're not supposed to contact him. You're not supposed to do it now.

Matt:

Say, they compared it with samples from his personal effects.

Rachel:

Okay. So maybe he says

Matt:

he left it. This is just to confirm his suspicions that the hair samples would match.

Rachel:

Okay. So maybe Reese pulled up. Oh, I got it off his hairbrush when he was nowhere near me, and somebody brought me the hairbrush while I was safely in the precinct and nowhere near him. And Reese is like, I'm gonna take these in. I'm gonna get these processed.

Rachel:

You stay on him. Don't lose him. And in the meantime, Tracy and Natalie have ID'd the victim, and she was a doctor. And she had finished her residency, and she was going home to Kenya to open a clinic. And they hadn't heard from her because the area she was going to was really remote, and all her family is in Kenya.

Rachel:

And so as soon as she was, quote, leaving, she became invisible. And that's why he was able to murder her and get away with it.

Matt:

Right. Anybody who might have noticed she was missing would not have been able to get word out to them.

Rachel:

Yeah. And they didn't know she didn't arrive in Kenya. So even if she never contacted them again, they wouldn't know.

Matt:

Right. They weren't expecting to hear from her anyway.

Rachel:

Right. And she actually did a drug study at the prison where Jordan Manning was, and he was one of the people that participated in the drug study.

Matt:

Right. So they connected him.

Rachel:

Right. So he was planning this for a long time, and her airline tickets were never redeemed. Slam dunk. We know who this woman is. And Natalie pops in as Tracy is telling Reese about this and says, hey.

Rachel:

The hair samples matched. You got them, captain. And Tracy calls Nick and tells him to detain Manning. Rhys goes, call your partner. Tell him to detain Manning.

Rachel:

We're coming with a warrant. No, Joe. Not you. You're not supposed to be here. It's fine.

Rachel:

I get it. He needed to be the one that got him.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And it's fine. And so Randy Manning Manning spots the police lights as he's leaving the hotel, and he sees Nick come in and then Joe come in behind him. And he's like, oh, shit.

Matt:

And then he just team.

Rachel:

Yeah. He just So

Matt:

he's like, okay. This is this is not Reese personally

Rachel:

Yeah. This is

Matt:

confronting me. This is an official police activity.

Rachel:

Uh-oh. They got something. Yeah. That's what's happening. And so Tracy goes to chase him, and Nick actually holds Tracy back, and he's like, let's just work on containment.

Rachel:

Let's let Reese get this. Like, this Reese earned the chance to be the one that arrests this guy.

Matt:

Right. And then we get some vampire powers that actually, like, add to the the character growth.

Rachel:

I like this. I like this a lot because they're chasing him well, Reese is chasing him around the hotel, which has, like, a lot of stairs and a lot of basements. I don't know what's happening. It doesn't matter. But Nick is fucking

Matt:

They start out in the lobby, and then they go down, like, 4 flights of stairs.

Rachel:

Yes.

Matt:

Okay.

Rachel:

And then Nick, this is my favorite part, is Nick fucking with him? Because every time he opens the door to get out, Nick is waiting on the other side of the door.

Matt:

He keeps he's, like, shepherding

Rachel:

Manning.

Matt:

Nick is shepherding Manning, I guess, along the clear, easy path for Reese to follow.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Perfect. No notes, except pan guy, the guy who is walking with, like, a circular pan out in it it's like in a comedy when you

Matt:

The slapstick.

Rachel:

The slapstick comedy where they run through a a pane of glass. Right. Except it's a guy with a pan. What is he doing there? Why is he why is he doing that?

Matt:

Through the kitchens.

Rachel:

Okay. But they do that. I don't it doesn't matter. But they this guy is there exclusively for them to have somebody to run into and make a big bang noise. And then Nick I mean, this really gives us a clue into the fact that Nick understands the importance of supporting Reese, but in not doing it for Reese.

Rachel:

So, like, elevating Reese's voice, but not in speaking for Reese because he could have arrested this man at any time. But what was more important was the fact that Reese was the one who caught him. Right. And he supports him in doing that. And in the end, he's, like, shows up at the end of this hallway, and it gets because poor Reese is not catching up to Jordan.

Rachel:

So he he stops him in the hallway and delays him long enough that Reese can catch up. And he's like, we got you, motherfucker. It was an act of terrorism, wasn't it? I mean, it was terrorism. Whenever you're trying to incite fear to create conflict that is in fact terrorism.

Matt:

In the community. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. And he goes, I wish I could be there when you meet your maker. And he goes, no. You don't, Reese. You don't wanna meet the one who made me.

Rachel:

And Nick is like, dude, same.

Rachel:

Dude, same.

Matt:

I only wish I could be there when you meet your maker. No. You don't. You don't wanna meet the one who made me Joe

Rachel:

ever. And then they take him away, and Reese is giving a statement to the press. And he says that they found things in his effects that will allow them to open up some older cases. So he had some trophies. And, you know, he said, I just want everybody to know that this is the end of a long and bitter personal journey for me, and I am so glad I'm finally gotten this guy off the streets for good.

Rachel:

And then we cut to Manning in lockup, and he hangs himself after writing no justice, Joe, on the wall. Yeah. Oh, god. They couldn't even leave us that. They were just like, sorry.

Rachel:

Well, you know what? It's true. Racism doesn't have a happy ending most of the time. It's there's never the slam dunk you want. The bad guy doesn't always lose.

Rachel:

That's real life, and I don't watch TV for real life. I definitely don't watch forever night for real life, but, like, I get it. So okay. And then we come back to Nick talking to LaCroix at the bar because he's like, hey, LaCroix. So I was thinking, why didn't you turn Hitler?

Rachel:

And Lacroix goes, well, easy. He freaked me the fuck out. And Nick is like, oh, heard. Yeah. No problem.

Matt:

He was too evil.

Rachel:

Yeah. And Lacroix goes, I've often wondered how the world would be different. I mean, what if he made him into a vampire and then he was vampire Hitler? I mean, I feel like

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

That would be worse. And then if he killed him, of course, we don't know what would happen. It kinda reminded me of that short story collection that we read, the unfinished world. Mhmm.

Matt:

Oh, yeah. With the

Rachel:

by Amber Sparks, where we we met the people whose job it is. Like, once we invent time travel and it's cheap and freely available, there's an entire department of people whose whose whole job is to go back and reset the timeline every time someone goes back

Matt:

to try to control.

Rachel:

Yeah. So, like, there's a huge problem with people just vigilante going back and killing Hitler. So they have to keep they have to monitor his timeline and go back and stop the

Matt:

people from

Rachel:

killing him. Yeah.

Matt:

The psychological damage of having to

Rachel:

Save the bad

Matt:

guy. To the tragedies

Rachel:

Over and over again. Yeah.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. It was a really good story. And then he burns the picture that Hitler gave him of him, which he had conveniently in his pocket. And he just tosses it in the ashtray at the end of the episode.

Matt:

He was thinking about it because he'd read that book.

Rachel:

And I just wanna point out that on the wall behind him, there's a portrait of Jeanette painted on the wall of the raven.

Matt:

Oh, is that the portrait that

Rachel:

No.

Matt:

She left at Nyx?

Rachel:

No. It's not a hanging portrait. It's like somebody did a mural, and Jeanette is in the mural.

Matt:

Oh, is this over the the one that's been there?

Rachel:

No. It's not the naked woman over the bar Okay. Who is still naked and still on television. I guess it's fine as long as it's a picture. I don't know.

Rachel:

No. It's like a portrait of Jennette, but it's painted directly onto the wall. Mhmm. And it's kind of behind and to the left of Lacroix's head on screen, which I thought was really interesting as like a, this is the woman who inspired this place, that here's my homage to her.

Matt:

Mhmm.

Rachel:

And that's the end of the episode. And now we've got 3 to go.

Matt:

So close to the end.

Rachel:

My god. I can't believe it. I can't believe we've almost done it, and I can't believe we just survived Jane Doe. I mean, I know it's not a I'm not saying it's a bad episode. It's not.

Rachel:

It's a challenging episode to discuss because so much happens, and there's some things that just don't translate well to 2024, and there's some things that do. And a lot of it is not something that I feel is mine to talk about, And that's why I will, again, for the 3rd time, I am again asking you to go educate yourself about this by listening to someone whose voice has a lot greater weight in this space than mine does, as in the people who actually experienced this.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And I cannot believe that there was a television show in 1996 that talked about this and that we had a character like Nick who who is portrayed as supporting Reese, but not doing it for Reese, this definitely feels like the situation where in 1990, you'd be like, well, what you need is a white detective who everybody will believe to tell your story. Done so. What's your problem? But instead, it's like, no. We're going to get we are going to get Nick on Reese's side, and then he is going to support Reese's campaign.

Rachel:

He's not going to take it over.

Matt:

Mhmm.

Rachel:

Because Nick has a reputation. At any point, he could have popped in and been like, oh. I mean, he could have used his privilege in a way that that made he could have used what how do I fucking phrase this? He could have used his clout in the department to get those investigations reopened. But what would that say if this detective was able to accomplish something that the captain who gave a firsthand account of knowing a woman that was murdered by this guy and knowing he did it, and everyone's like, oh, fucking Reese, again with the Jordan Manning thing.

Rachel:

And then Nick is like, hey, guys. I think Jordan Manning did this, and everyone was like, oh my god. Really? It doesn't come across the same as what we went with in the episode, which I think is actually really progressive. And it's fascinating that we did this, that we did domestic abuse, and then we did, the nature of neuro neurological differences and whether you you need to be fixed or are you valid already for who you are and what happens when you when you encourage the narrative that they are in some way broken and they pick up on it and it becomes like a a sense a source of trauma for them.

Rachel:

And that's fallen idol, obviously. And then we did, race dynamics and systemic racism and the the illicit of the the awful effects of long term systemic racism on the populate. Like, 20 people never got identified because they were black women Mhmm. And because they probably were not given they were probably quote less dead than other cases. Even now we do this.

Rachel:

There was that case, maybe it was a couple years ago now, where there's the white influencer who went missing, and she was like a van life influencer. And she was traveling with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend showed up back at her house with her van without her.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

And it was, like, storm. Gabby Petito. So for a while, she was missing, and we were looking for her, and they found her body. And that was all solved really quickly. Well, do you know how many how many people of color?

Rachel:

How many indigenous women? How many how many non white people have gone missing since then, and have you heard anything about it? And this is why I do sometimes, I like to listen to true crime, and, specifically, I like to listen to crime junkie because they do a lot to elevate, stories that should be told and haven't been told. So, like Mhmm. Missing and endangered indigenous and minority women.

Rachel:

And, I'm just gonna leave it at that because there's no solution to this problem, but there is awareness of this problem, and with awareness will come solutions. So educate yourself. Do not be willfully blind to what happens in the world around you because then how can you see it when it happens in your own life? Mhmm. And we grew up in the nineties.

Rachel:

Do you know what we have had to unlearn? Do you know the work we've had to put into it? And I'm glad I did it, and I'm happy to have done the work. I'm not complaining about it, but we think of the nineties as modern and it's not. You know?

Rachel:

We because, oh, they kinda had cell phones, and they kind of like, the the media that we interact with from the nineties looks modern ish because now all those styles have come back. So we're like, oh, yeah. We're they were no. They're not. The sensibility sensibilities have changed so completely from the nineties.

Rachel:

I can't even express it. So, anyway, I'm just gonna leave it at that because I have more to say, but I'll just keep going forever. And, again, go find I'll maybe I'll find some podcasts and put them in the show notes

Matt:

Yeah. Good idea.

Rachel:

That you can go and listen to that are talking about this that go and educate yourself. So I'm gonna leave it there.

Matt:

Alright.

Rachel:

Until next time, friends.

Matt:

Bye.

Rachel:

Bye.

Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 19) - "Jane Doe"

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