Payton and Garrett explore several murder cases in Saint Louis, all tied to a common serial killer.
Forensic Files, Season 7 Episode 35: “X Marks the Spot”
Fox2Now - https://fox2now.com/news/true-crime/serial-killer-maury-travis-the-street-walker-strangler/
Saint Louis Post-Dispatch - https://www.newspapers.com/image/142857903/?clipping_id=31904973&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjE0Mjg1NzkwMywiaWF0IjoxNjQ0ODU4NTg5LCJleHAiOjE2NDQ5NDQ5ODl9.1Z1HKjvrRspgE55U_G4G8psvVkhivjYy2JWF1BSwcMQ
https://www.newspapers.com/image/142061857/?terms=%22Alyssa%20Greenwade%22&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/142814741/?terms=%22Mary%20Shields%22&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/141160308/?fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjE0MTE2MDMwOCwiaWF0IjoxNzA5NTk5NTk0LCJleHAiOjE3MDk2ODU5OTR9.B-bK-Xyh8TM9-YtiDUKplTKki7HUhSG5gu9lep0v2Zw
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/from-the-archives-st-louis-serial-killer-victims-were-less-than-human-to-him-police/article_6d10868c-b3ef-5e32-81ab-bd450eb85268.html
ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-found-serial-killer-lived-home-watching-tv/story?id=24467447
https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/exclusive-serial-killers-home-movies/story?id=132005
CBS Mornings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7wyKX23vuY&t=41s
The City of Saint Louis - https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/live-work/community/neighborhoods/baden/index.cfm
Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/
FBI - https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder
You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland, and I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband.
Another week back in action, reminder as always—okay, not free bonus content, you gotta pay for. I don't know why I said free. It justsounded good to say free, so I said free, but it's not free. If you want bonus episodes and ad-free content, it's not free. It costs money, but it's basically free because we give you such good content and everything's ad-free. And it's ad-free on Patreon, Apple Subscriptions, and Spotify. If you want to check it out, there will be links below, everywhere.
All right, G, are you ready for your 10 seconds for thisepisode or this week? Looking at new cars, don't know what I'm going to do yet,but I've been looking. I'm always looking. I'm always looking for new cars,even though I don't need a new car. And by new car, I don't mean like a newcar, just I love cars, I like cars. If I could spend every last dollar on carsand live in the trunk, I would do it, but that's not real life, so I don't doit. And on top of that, hot take for the week is Del Taco is better than TacoBell. What do you think about that? I disagree. Peyton disagrees. Del Taco isbetter than Taco Bell. Um, I know people are going to say, "Oh, they'redifferent, they're different," okay, but we're just going to take the two,we're going to put them side by side. Which one are you going to? Del Taco orTaco Bell? Taco Bell. If you've never been to Del Taco, you need to try it outfirst before saying you like Taco Bell and vice versa. You have to go to both,and then you can't be, you have to be completely emotionless about it, and youhave to decide what's better.
Do you know what it is about Del Taco that throws me off?What? It's a little bit like Jack in the Box, where if there's a place that iscalled Del Taco but then also sells hamburgers and french fries, that—okay. ButTaco Bell does that too. No, they don't, they don't sell hamburgers. They sellall different types of Mexican food, but they have french fries. No, they havenacho fries, they don't have french fries. No, okay, I still think Del Taco isbetter than Taco Bell, so let me know below you're for sure Taco Bell, forsure. Payton loves the Doritos. We haven't had either of those in forever, butI still like Del Taco. I'm just—I know what you're saying though, I kind of getwhat you're saying about that, but it could be a Mexican hamburger, you don'tknow. It's not, but see, this is exactly—they don't call it a Mexicanhamburger, you know what they call, though, at Taco Bell? Mexican pizza. Okay,but just because you put Mexican in front of something doesn't make it Mexican.I'm just saying, stay in your lane, okay?
Our sources for this episode are Forensic Files season 7episode 35, Fox 2, now St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ABC News, CBS Morning, the cityof St. Louis, Pew Research Center, and FBI. Trigger warning: This episodeincludes discussions of murder and self-harm, including suicide, so pleaselisten with care.
All right, as we know, the internet has changed basicallyevery part of our modern lives, from the way we shop to how we do our jobs. Andit's frankly kind of creepy how easy it is to keep tabs on people throughsocial media. Really, you can tell exactly how people spend their time, wherethey go, and maybe even what they're up to right now. The worldwide web hasalso transformed the way police conduct investigations, not only thanks tomassive databases or the way they can ask for tips and share informationonline, but also based on what their suspects do when they hit the web.
Today's case, which was from way back in the early 2000s,was only solved with the help of a travel website. It was from a time when alot of people didn't even use the internet regularly, so life was prettydifferent from today. But the tactics the detectives used were practicallyunlike anything they'd done before, and when they solved the case, they madeforensic history.
So, let's jump back to when the investigation began, and thepolice never suspected it would be so groundbreaking. In fact, at the start,the murder they had to solve felt pretty routine. On April 1st, 2001, thepolice were called to the scene when somebody found a body in St. Louis'Washington Park. The victim was a 34-year-old Black woman named Elise LisaGreen Wade. There were marks on her neck, her wrists, and ankles that indicatedshe'd been tied up and strangled to death. Jeez, so it was clear she'd beenmurdered. But Elisa was a sex worker with a history of substance abuse. So, tobe clear, she still deserved justice, everyone does, but her death wasn't ahigh priority at the beginning. She lived a dangerous lifestyle, and there werecountless possible avenues the investigation could take. It would have beenvery easy for police to let her murder stay unsolved, for her case to just gocold like we often see. Except Elisa wasn't unique. A month and a half later,another woman's body was found. Her name was Teresa Wilson, and she had a lotin common with Elisa. Both were Black sex workers who worked in or near thesame St. Louis neighborhood called Bayen. They'd both abused controlledsubstances in the past. And while the police couldn't determine Teresa's causeof death, so they weren't sure if she was also strangled, her body was dumpedin the same general area. So this obviously suggested a connection.
And then, a bit over a week later, on May 23rd, theauthorities found another victim who fit the same profile. Okay, one more wasfound in June, one in August, and then a final one in October. So six, seven,six, okay. And after that, though, the killer just stopped. It was like thekiller stopped, they had no more bodies show up. I always wonder, this seems tobe a common thing amongst serial killers, they'll do like five, six, seven,whatever it is, and then they'll stop for years. And I don't understand that.It's like did they move, did they get put in jail? Like, why all of a suddenstop? What happened? Well, and the police are thinking the same thing. Theyweren't sure what had changed. In total, like we said, this meant that sixwomen were all killed in the same six months or so, between April 1st andOctober 8th. All of them were sex workers, and most had been killed bystrangulation. Maybe all of them were; the police just couldn't be sure ofevery woman's cause of death, but the odds looked good that they'd all died inthe same way.
So either way, it was now undeniable there was a serialkiller prowling St. Louis, Missouri. Even with the uncertainty around thecauses of death, there was just too much similarity between the murders forthem to be unrelated. So once the police realized that, they started noticingthat some other older murder victims also fit the profile. For example, one sexworker was found dead in December of 2000, so that was almost a full yearbefore the others were then found pretty close together. At the time, the policehad figured hers was an isolated case, but now with all these other victimsturning up, the detectives were thinking that maybe their serial killer hadbeen killing people at least a year and a half ago. Maybe this was his firstkill, and then he or she solidified what they were doing and then went on to dothis rampage. But the clock is ticking again.
In January, new bodies turned up after about a 4-monthhiatus of no activity. They were back at it. And to make matters worse, thepolice were also discovering even more remains of previous victims, as inpeople who'd most likely been killed in the summer or fall of 2001 but thenweren't found until 2002. By this point, they were too decomposed for thepolice to take their fingerprints to identify the bodies, and in some cases,they couldn't even find a cause of death either. The detectives assumed thesewomen were also victims of the same serial killer because their bodies weredumped in the same area and on the same timeline as the others. Seems crazy tome that someone can kill that many people and nobody has any idea who it is,and then it takes so long to put together. Like, how can you kill that manypeople and be just like, "Dang, we have zero idea who it is"? Well,so police are like, "Okay, this murderer is even more prolific than we'doriginally thought," and they estimated the kill count was around nine orten by this point. That's ridiculous. But they're also like, "What bodyshould be included in the serial killer? What shouldn't?"
So now this was, in a word, tragic. It seemed like thepolice didn't have any leads, and more women were losing their lives the longerthey took to solve the case. It's obvious the more people would die. So ajournalist named Bill Smith wrote an in-depth profile on one of the victims,and in his article, he said he wanted her to feel like a real person, not justanother statistic. He focused on the second confirmed victim, that was TeresaWilson. To research his piece, Bill interviewed Teresa's friends, people who'dknown her for years. And here's what Bill said.
So he's like, I want to draw attention to this case. Teresawas very independent even as a young girl. She didn't like to be told what todo, and her parents were pretty content to let her explore the worldunsupervised. On one occasion, Teresa convinced a friend to hop on a bus withher and head to an amusement park. They didn't tell their parents where theywere going. It was just a little adventure. Except she and her friend missedthe last bus back home and ended up stranded in the park. They had to call afamily member and confess what they'd done so they could then get a ride home.
But that didn't mean Teresa was always getting into trouble.In fact, she got good grades, and she didn't drink or abuse hard drugs whileshe was in high school. She then got pregnant when she was 17, and afterward,Teresa was a devoted mother. She was willing to move the moon and the stars forher daughter, Chastity. But sadly, something changed when Teresa was in hermid-20s. It's hard to say what; she didn't tell her friends what she wasstruggling with, so Bill couldn't include an explanation in his article. We doknow around that time, Teresa began smoking, she began doing cocaine, shedeveloped an addiction, and after this, her life took a sharp turn for theworst. She turned to sex work to support her habit. Most days, she'd walk upand down the street in Bayen, waiting for clients to pick her up. And from thesound of it, she didn't charge much. Teresa barely made enough to survive, andshe was in debt to her drug dealers. Some days, she couldn't even come up witha measly 20 bucks to keep them off her back. It was a dangerous way of life,and Teresa was arrested a number of times. She also went through a drugaddiction recovery program. From the sound of it, Teresa was serious aboutgetting clean, but before long, she was back on the streets.
Her friends, the people who knew her before her addiction,worried about her. They told that sometimes they drove up and down the streethoping they could spot her and bring her back home to safety. That old friendwho snuck off to the amusement park with her once tried to wrestle Teresa intoher car, like she could help Teresa beat her addiction by force. It's safe tosay she was trapped in a spiral, and she didn't get out, even after herdaughter was removed from her care. The locals in Bayen knew who Teresa was.They were used to her disappearing for days or weeks at a time.
So when she disappeared sometime in May of 2001, nobodythought anything of it, and no one bothered to report her missing. In fact,nobody realized she was in trouble until her body was found on May 15th. Andnow, thanks to Bill Smith's reporting, her story could be told. And as soon asit hit the newsstands, it was like Teresa came alive for the people of St.Louis. She wasn't just some anonymous body in these unsolved murders. She was areal woman who deserved to be remembered, which apparently made her killerfurious.
See, just a few days after Bill published his article, hegot a letter in the mail. And at first, he thought it was a prank. The returnaddress was obviously fake. It said it was from New York City, but the postmarkshowed that it was mailed from St. Louis. The name in the return address was"Ithraldom," which was the name of an S&M-themed website at thetime. And the note inside was typed with red text, and it said, "DearBill, nice sob story about Teresa Wilson. Write one about Elisa Green Wade.Write a good one, and I'll tell you where many others are to prove I'm real.Here's directions to number 17."
That phrase, "number 17," implied the letterwriter had killed at least 17 victims, at least, which was pretty alarmingbecause the police had only discovered around 11 so far. What a weird, I mean,obviously a complete weirdo. He is killing people, right, but that he got thatupset he wrote a letter. Yeah, that's, that's embarrassing. Also called it a"sob story," like what? I don't know, man.
So assuming the letter was real, that meant there were fiveor six more bodies that hadn't been found yet. Now, in addition to the note,the sender also included a printed-out map with an "X" on it. Itlooked like someone had downloaded the map from one of those websites that gavedirections back in the days before we had navigation apps on our phones. The"X" indicated a certain spot, the spot where victim number 17supposedly was. The page was a smidge smaller than your typical 8x11 standardsheet of paper. It looked like the person who sent the message cut off thebottom of the page, specifically the footer where the website URL usually is.
So, whoever the killer, we're assuming printed this off,didn't want the URL they used to be cut off. I guess it was a way of hidingtheir identity. If the police didn't know what webpage the killer had used,they wouldn't be able to trace the map back to them. Assuming that is that theperson who sent the letter really was the killer. Bill wasn't so sure it wasreal, but he handed it over to the police anyway, just in case there wassomething to it. And they followed the instructions to a tee.
They drove out to the address that was indicated on the mapand searched the grounds. Sure enough, no freaking way, there was anothervictim there. Not very often that happens where it's real. And she fit theexact same profile as all of the other women, and her discovery basicallyproved that the letter was not a hoax. It was straight from the real killer.So, this meant it was worth the detectives' time to take a closer look at theletter itself. Obviously, this is not like the biggest piece of evidence theyhave. It's possible that the killer figured that they'd covered all of theirtracks. The police didn't know their real return address because it was typed.There was no handwriting to analyze. They tested the paper and the envelope forboth prints and DNA. There was nothing found on it. However, the murderer hadmade one major error. Let's hear it.
It had to do with the map they included. Now, it's importantto remember, this is 2002. Only about half of all Americans used the internetat all. I'm trying to think what year it was, but I remember there was acertain website that my family used for directions that they would print outwhen they needed to go places. You know what I'm talking about? I know theyexist, but I don't know what one it is. I'm curious if it's the same one thatyou're about to mention if you mention a website. Well, it was just Expedia.com.Oh, okay, it wasn't Expedia. Okay. So obviously, the internet is not nearly aswidespread as it is today, and a lot of the most popular websites we use in2024 didn't even exist yet. So, on the entire worldwide web, there was only onesite at this point that had a map of this specific area, and like I said, itwas Expedia.
The police contacted Expedia's parent company and asked ifthey had records on who had accessed that specific map. They knew the killermust have downloaded it after May 19th, which was the day Bill's article waspublished, and then on May 21st at the latest because that was the date on thepostmark. It's crazy the things they can track. Yeah, it also goes to show youwhenever you're trying to hide something online, it's impossible. It's justnearly impossible, it seems. And it's also like this killer obviously dumpedthe victims' bodies in a remote area, so there was only one place that wouldeven have a map of that area at the time. He just didn't think about that. Hedidn't think about it. Granted, I mean, you have VPNs and VPSs now, but backthen, I think it was a little bit of a different story. It's not like they'regoing through his search history.
They went to Expedia and said, "We need anyone whoaccessed this map days, literally." So, it turned out there was only onespecific St. Louis area user who viewed that map in the right date range. Ofcourse, the folks at Expedia don't know their name; they only have the IPaddress for the computer that was used. Still, with that IP address, thedetectives could figure out the killer's address. Hopefully, as long as it'snot like the library. But it was a house in a St. Louis suburb. Interestingly,it was only about a 10-minute drive from Bayen, which was where many of thevictims worked. That's so creepy. The house belonged to a 55-year-old womanwith no criminal history, so police are right off the bat like, "Hey, wedon't think she's the killer."
But she had a 36-year-old son who lived with her and workedas a waiter. His name was Mory Travis. Mory had been in prison on a number ofoccasions, but he'd never been convicted of a violent crime. His record wasmostly robbery and drug-related charges. Still, he was worth taking a closerlook at. Now, while the police were figuring all of this out, I have to imaginethat Mory didn't suspect a thing. Oh, for sure. Today, we're all so aware ofthe way our phones and computers and tablets can track us and the ways ourbrowsing habits and clicks all get packaged and sold to advertisers. It'scommon knowledge. But the internet was so new to so many people in 2002. A lotof individuals didn't even understand things like cookies or IP addresses. Theweb felt pretty anonymous at that time, so it's entirely possible that whenMory downloaded that map, he had no idea it would lead anyone, especially thepolice, straight to his door.
Either way, the police showed up at Mory's house at 7:00a.m. on June 7th. They knocked on the door while shouting that they had awarrant, and when Mory answered, at first, he seemed more annoyed at the hourthan anything else. His first words out of his mouth were, "It's 7 in themorning," and the police agreed. They knew what time it was. They askedMory if he knew why they were there, and I don't know if it was the officer'stone or what, but it was like Mory immediately realized he was in trouble. He lookeddown, almost ashamed, and said, "Yeah, I know why you're here."
Oh, man. When they searched Mory's house, they discovered areal-world nightmare. Oh, I cannot even imagine what they're about to see. Hisbasement was stained in blood, and it was everywhere. How...time out before youkeep going. The mom just lives upstairs, doesn't go down into her son's space?Yeah, I don't know about that. She's older. Okay, holding all my thoughts.
The blood was on the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Whenthey opened a filing cabinet drawer, they found tools like rope and gloves,exactly what a killer would need to commit their crimes. And there were a tonof videotapes; one was labeled "your wedding day," and I'm sure thepolice didn't know what to expect, especially given that Mory wasn't marriedand he couldn't have a wedding tape. Instead, the video was extremely graphicfootage of him strangling one of his victims to death.
Oh my gosh, in 2002, this guy's filming his killings. It wasso disturbing; all the officers who watched it were required to go tocounseling afterward. And it wasn't the only one like it; there were countlessvideos of Mory with different women he'd taken home. There is, oh, and probablycontroversial, but I do not understand how... I know what happened, but howyour son can live below you and kill that many people. I'm not talking about hewent and robbed a grocery store or he went and took something from your nearest7-Eleven. We're talking about filming and killing people below you, multiple,17, maybe more. I don't know, I'm sure we'll get to it. That blows my mind.Yes, but at the end of the day, he is the only one responsible, 100%. I'm notsaying she's responsible or blah blah blah, I just... it's just how can thathappen? How exactly? How can that happen, right? And there were countless,countless videos of him; sometimes, he would just have sex with them, and thenhe would let them go.
It's not clear what made the ones different that he let goversus that he chose to kill. Some of the clips showed Mory toying with thewomen before he murdered them; he gave them weird orders, like that they shouldput on a white garment and dance around for him. It's got to be loud too. Othertimes, he would say horrible things to them, like they deserve to die. OnceMory was done messing with their heads, he either handcuffed or duct-tapedtheir arms together, and then I'm not going to go into detail, but he wouldtorture them, and then eventually strangle them to death.
It really showed a lot about Mory's psychology; he seemed tosee sex work as deeply shameful, which was very hypocritical because he wasn'tabove hiring these women for their services at times, and he even used cocaineextensively. But then, whenever he would talk on tape to these women, he wouldtalk about how they cocaine more than their own children and just really judgethem.
So it's odd that he saw these women as inferior to him; thequalities he hated, like their drug use or their sex work, were qualities thathe shared with them. From the comments he made, it also sounds like Moryassumed all of these sex workers were bad mothers who'd abandoned theirchildren, and for the record, that wasn't true; some of his victims were veryactively involved with their kids. But Mory didn't care; regardless of reality,he decided that these women all deserved to be punished. One police officersaid that Mory saw them as "less than human."
I'm not too sure why he was so obsessed specifically withthe idea of absent mothers and substance abuse; there was no indication thatMory's parents had ever been neglectful or abusive or that they ever useddrugs, so the police weren't sure what made Mory the way he was. And even whenlike this all comes to light, his friends are shocked that he would dosomething this violent; he never had a temper, he never got into fights. Infact, he was known as a quiet guy who stayed out of people's way, someone whovolunteered to help out his neighbors when they were in need.
His girlfriend also said she never got the sense that he wasinterested in experimenting in bed; those weird head games he played with hisvictims seemed completely inconsistent with his personality. Mory had reallycome across as a normal guy with a very normal childhood right up until the daythe police identified him as a serial killer. And I think that's interestingbecause according to the FBI, there's no such thing as a standard serial killerprofile. These people can come from all kinds of backgrounds, and they have allsorts of different motives. Some individuals do turn to violence aftersurviving horrible abuse and neglect, but others were just ordinary people withordinary pee who grew up to kill anyway. But I'm not doubting that, but I wouldbe surprised if there was something not said or something hidden just becauseof how many people he killed and what's going on. It seems to be deeper thanthat, right?
Well, there's one thing there's no question about: he wasobviously guilty. We can say that with confidence even though he neverconfessed during his interrogation. He didn't even seem interested in talkingabout the murders. Instead, he was really curious about how the police hadfound him. He asked a lot of questions about that, and the detectives explainedeverything. They were like, "We got you through the map. We contactedExpedia, found your IP address." Freak man, and he was fascinated. He waslike, "You what's an IP address?" Like he was f early, I guess thatmakes sense, 2002. It's not really a very known thing, right? He didn'tunderstand. Yeah, this was all news to him.
But it was okay that he didn't confess because the policedidn't really need him to admit anything. The evidence spoke for itself. Evenbeyond the videotapes in the torture chamber in his basement, at one pointduring his interrogation, Mory sipped out of a can of soda, and the policesaved the can to collect his saliva. Then, they compared it to some geneticmaterial they'd found on the victims' bodies. It's an obvious match. They alsomatched the blood in Mory's basement to six of the victims that they'd found.And they figured out why the remains had stopped turning up in October of 2001and then began again in 2002. During that short little window, Mory spent sometime in prison on unrelated drug charges. The killings had stopped right whenhe was off the streets and then started just when he got out.
And finally, this might be the creepiest piece of evidencethat the police gathered against Mory: he had plans to expand his basement.He'd made these hand-drawn blueprints, and they made it look like he was goingto add rooms. And he'd done research on adult diapers. The police thought itwas so Mory could imprison his victims for days, I cannot even... I can't eventhink about that. He could lock them in these rooms; they wouldn't have accessto a bathroom. He could then bring them out, put them back in. All I can say isthank God they caught him before he could make any of these dreams a reality.And I know that typically these stories then go into trial, but we're nevergoing to make it to a trial in this case because when Mory got put back inprison, he got put on suicide watch because he had expressed multiple timesthat he didn't want to be there, he didn't want to be back in prison.
So basically, a Watchman was supposed to stop by Mory's celland check in on him every 15 minutes, but on June 10th, so 3 days after hisarrest, something goes wrong. The jail has never publicly explained how thishappened; all we know is that the guards missed two check-ins in a row, so 30minutes, well, it was actually 45 minutes, he was left unattended. Okay, thiswas enough time for him to take his own life. When he died, Mory left behind anote. It included an apology to his mother, among other comments. He said,"I'm sorry for the pain this caused you and the family," but Mory, inthat note, never apologized for the murders or admitted he was guilty. He neverapologized to the victims' families. He died before he went to trial. He wasnever convicted. He died before he went to trial. He did this 3 days after hewas arrested. Oh, okay.
And since he died without confessing, the authorities stillaren't sure how many women Mory killed, even to this day. Yeah, the letter hewrote the reporter said there were 17 bodies, but the police have only beenable to definitively link him to 12, so some people think he might have beenunderestimating. There maybe close to 20. Some people are like, "No, maybehe was overestimating and didn't actually kill 17." Sadly, it's likelythose women's families will never learn for sure what happened to their daughters,mothers, sisters, or aunts. Plus, there were those bodies that police found butcouldn't identify or link. Even after Travis's death, the police still didn'tknow who they were. There's no guarantee that a trial would have even answeredany of these questions, but it is so frustrating that Mory removed himself fromthe equation without sharing what he knew, without giving these people closure.
Now, before I wrap up the episode, I do want to give you alittle bit of an epilogue in this case because this story didn't actually endwith Mory's death. Remember, his mother owned the house that he lived in, andshe didn't get rid of the property after Mory's arrest. Okay, instead, shefound a new tenant to move in and pay rent on it. Oh, I have so many questions.
Her name was Katrina McGau, and Mrs. Travis didn't say aword about how the previous resident had murdered at least 12 women within thebasement in Missouri. There's no law that requires landlords to tell you ifsomeone has died in the house, and it was her son, right?
So, Katrina moves in, she has no idea, not until a familymember called her and said she had to watch this documentary on this serialkiller named Mory Travis. The relative wouldn't say why, just that she reallyneeded to check it out. Katrina turned on the TV, and her house popped up on ascreen.
Now, Katrina was not okay living there now that she knewwhat had happened, and she was also really annoyed that her landlord, hismother, had withheld this information. So, she tried to break her lease andmove out, but Mrs. Travis wasn't willing to let her walk away from the rental,and they ended up in a legal fight about the situation. Dude, I'm telling you,there was something up with the mom. That's all I'm saying.
Eventually, Katrina took her story to the press, and beforelong, she was appearing on the national news to talk about how desperately sheneeded to move out of this house. The bad coverage encouraged the Missourihousing authority to get involved, and they helped Katrina and Mrs. Travis workout a deal so she could pack up her things and leave. Work out a deal? Yeah,which Katrina did as soon as she could. And I've got to imagine from that pointonward, Katrina Googled the address of every home she ever considered movinginto. That's all, I'm telling you, is I still think there's something up.
Well, really, this is just the big theme at the heart ofthis story. Yeah, the internet is so full of information, and it makes ourlives so convenient, but all that data isn't just there for our use. Thesewebsites are also collecting a ton of information about us with every keystrokewe make. Yeah, this was a good thing, right? In Mory Travis's case, obviously,the world became safer when he was arrested and taken off the streets. Yep, butit does make you wonder what other secrets are websites storing. Will they helpbreak the next big case? And in the meanwhile, how much does our browsinghistory reveal about every single one of us?
I can't believe how many people he killed. That's so sad.It's just so devastating how bad it was. I know. I've said this before, but Ireally do think we need to figure out a segment where I can just share myunfiltered thoughts 'cause I just be getting all this pent-up angst. Kidding,but you know what I'm saying. Well, I think that you're not alone in this, butwhen you cover these cases like we do multiple times a week, right, and we'vebeen doing this for almost four years now, it just gets to a point where you'relike, it's frustrating. It really is frustrating. Screw this. Like, how arepeople continuing to kill people, and there's not better punishments? It'sstill happening, and you know, I guess it's just the way life, and it's alwaysgoing to happen. Yeah, but it's just sad. Oh, it's devastating, and I thinklike you said, it's just frustrating when you hear some of these cases. It isjust so frustrating because you're like, how could this happen?
All right, you guys, that was our episode, and we will seeyou next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.