Episode 314

27:02He has inner conflicts with people inside his head. Oh, okay. He's always yelling at somebody to get out that he's going to kill them. He's always yelling at somebody to get out. Trespassing, you're doing this, you're doing that. He's diagnosed schizophrenic. I don't know if he's diagnosed schizophrenic, but I'll tell you what. If he isn't, there's definitely a problem. Does he take any medication? No, he takes vitamins. Tasha had thought Chris had Tourette's syndrome, but Carol assumed he was schizophrenic. Needless to say, none of these people were mental health professionals, put it that way.

27:34Chris woke the whole camp up every morning screaming about trespassers or people who were trying to hurt him. He lived in his own head, which was a dark neighborhood that he could never crawl out of. But even his chaos had rules. He stayed mostly to his corner, and others stayed to theirs. There was a kind of internal logic to the camp, full of invisible boundaries and unspoken understandings. But still, Carol was scared of Chris. Tasha was, too. Being the two women in the camp, Chris made them nervous when the men weren't around. By the way, who's the Karen responsible for getting rid of mental institutions?

28:20Remember when all these people were housed and cared for? But then something happened and somebody got hurt? So we got rid of all of them. I know one of you Karens out there was responsible. At least one of your grandma Karens with a PhD. What a fucking idiot. Just because a patient dies in a hospital doesn't mean you get rid of all hospitals. These so-called experts really are useless, aren't they? Probably should have lobotomized her instead of taking Dr. Karen's advice. All the men back here, which would be Kenny and Robert, told him, do not come this way. We have women that live here. We don't want to see you.

29:03And he's respected that and stayed away because I'm new. For the most part, Chris kept to himself and stayed clear of the couple's area. But whenever Chris did come knocking at their tents, the men would deal with him. Residents told police that earlier that afternoon, Chris had barged into the camp asking for an ace bandage. Carol's husband, Kenny, had given him one. He asked you for an ace bandage on his right hand? Or one of his hand. I went to camp. You tell us what hand it was. No problem. Go ahead. After that? After we ate, was watching TV, one other incident happened. The train stopped right out here.

29:47Okay. Then took off again. I figured, okay, he's playing stupid games again and the train ended up stopping because that's the only time they stopped. Gotcha. I don't know if you caught that, but listen carefully. Kenny said that earlier that day he heard the train stop near their camp, which was 100 feet north of the station itself. He assumed that it was because of this little game Chris usually played. He insinuated that Chris would often go to the train tracks and get close to the train, causing it to halt like a suicidal game of chicken. I guess when you're homeless, you got to entertain yourself somehow, even if usually it's at society's expense.

30:27What does Chris look like? Describe nothing. Tall, maybe six-toothed, skinny, long, dark hair, weird. Okay, long, dark hair, very weird. Okay, what makes him weird? He's schizophrenic. Okay. He's got like 12, he's got a whole family of invisible friends. It was hard to take anything Chris said with any credibility. He was always ranting and raving, fighting with the so-called invisible friends in his head. Then Carol remembered something strange about Chris coming over and asking for a bandage. Chris, take him over to our tent before you guys did come up. Okay, what? Said somebody tried to rape him.

31:10Somebody tried to rape him? It's something we've heard millions of times over. He did say someone tried to rape him. Oh, okay. When he was getting the A-Spanish. I said, who? He said, I don't know. Okay. Okay, you got to understand. I live with him next door screaming all hours of nights about him. His ghost was sticking something in his ass or mouth or something. Wow. Though the officer was shocked, Carol and Kenny were unfazed. They'd heard rape accusations from Chris many times, mostly about the ghosts who were trying to shove things into his backside orifice. So, like every other outburst from Chris, they turned their backs and zipped up their tent.

31:53I mean, what else could they do? But now, there was a man who had been stabbed to death in the place that Chris liked to go and try to halt the trains. According to Kenny, the only man who had weapons in their camp was Chris. Does he have any weapons or anything? His tent is a weapon. Oh, really? He's got all kinds of swords, knives, throwing stars, all kinds of them. Wow, okay. I don't worry about him. Does he have any, well, you say knives and throwing stars, he has like swords and stuff like that? Yeah, he's got swords, all kinds of words. Oh, jeez. Any kind of sword, knife. Remember any one specifically?

32:32Any kind of swords, like big swords or anything? Let's go. Like five big swords. When the police investigated Chris's tent, it was filled with weapons and a few cats. Poor things. Chris has display knives, samurai swords, throwing stars, and other exotic weapons all over the edges of the inside of his little home. He had a blow-up mattress, a makeshift kitchen complete with about nine bottles of vitamins, A boombox, a television, a DVD player, a microwave, and a little mat at his front door. How cozy. Maybe this was a tent in the woods, but it was also his home. And most damning of all, inside Chris's tent, they found the sheath to the samurai sword that had been used to kill the victim.

33:21Chris's real name was George Christopher Livingston. What a name. Sounds like some sort of old-timey explorer instead of a homeless nut. He was 51 years old and had been on the streets of Lake Worth for years. In fact, Tasha's partner, Robert, had known Chris for a long time. Tell me about Chris. Well, I've known Chris for the better part of, I don't know, four or five years now. Okay. And he's always been somewhat less than cohesive. Okay. Have you been living with him for four or five years or just known him? I've never lived with him, no. Same camp? There was a time a few years back when the radio station was all wooded areas.

34:08We stayed there. Uh-huh. Chris burned that down, so we got jettisons from that. I remember that. Yeah. Chris had burned down the last encampment Robert lived in. It was such a big fire that the officer remembered it too. Chris was always in trouble with the law, but it was never anything big enough to get him behind bars, unfortunately. It was just a hindrance, a drain on society. The man needed some serious help. He was mentally unstable. Stories like Chris's aren't rare. Untreated mental illness, no steady psychiatric care, and a legal system. that sees the need for help, but not the kind it can give.

34:52According to court records, his own parents had kicked him out of their home due to repeated violence, which is how he ended up on the streets in 1998. Things spiraled from there. In 2012, he'd been arrested in Boynton Beach, while hanging around a children's park with a large hunting knife. When the officers took him off the premises and searched him, He asked why they didn't also take his taser. It was stuffed into his spandex shorts. Around that time, you know, we'd have conversations from time to time. Nothing terribly extensive, but you can tell he's not playing with a full deck. He claims to have been struck by lightning.

35:37There was a time I'd come home and find dead raccoons laid out of my doorstep. You know, like, what the hell? Oh, I thought you could make a nice hat out of them. Can you imagine? So other than Chris and you and Tasha, who else lives here in this woods here? Kenny and Carol are here. Okay. And Dave Beckett. To be honest with you, I don't venture much past my own tent. The only reason I know Kenny and Carol is because we have a business arrangement sharing the generators. A business arrangement. Imagine living in the age of AI and you have a business arrangement involving a generator. So the other person that you mentioned, Dave, what's Dave's last name?

36:20Beckett. And you know that for sure? Not with a 100 % degree of certainty. Okay. But that's a name I've heard referenced to him on more than one occasion. Okay. What is Dave's, not Dave's story, but about how old is he? Can you describe him at all? Well, he's similar to my look, maybe a little shorter. Okay. But he's got the graying beard. Okay. He wears a ball cap all the time. About how old? Early to mid-50s, I would guess. Dave had been in and out of the camp. Like Tasha, he worked at the labor hall. In case you don't know, the labor hall is a temporary staffing agency that helps people pick up blue-collar work throughout the area.

37:06When was the last time you saw Dave today? Or have you even seen him today? See, I'm not sure it was Dave that I saw Chris encountering. Okay. I know at one point we had gotten back from the beach, I guess, sometime between 1.30 and 2.30, Tasha and myself. Thank you. I was going to say, who's we? All right. Tasha, 1.30 to 2.30 you said between? In that area. Okay. and um we went into the tent and we're pretty much sorting through clothes to decide what to take to wash and whatnot okay uh at one point i had to run to sitco and get some gas for the generator okay but at some point after we were home i couldn't nail down a specific time um two people i i recognized the second one as chris ran past the tent okay it appeared that chris was chasing somebody i thought it might have been dave but i wasn't certain see what the guy was wearing that he was chasing like a blurp of it like a uh well the reason i'm not entirely certain it was dave is because he was wearing i don't know what specifically but it was brighter colors than i'm used to seeing him it's usually a camouflage or a darker color okay you know But it seemed to me like he might have been wearing a t-shirt.

38:31It was light and maybe, I don't know, it looked like it was light blue with orange sleeves. The dead man on the tracks matched Dave's description perfectly. The gray beard, mid-50s, bright blue shirt with orange sleeves. I thought it was Dave ran past the tent first. Now Dave's more often than not drunk. So it wasn't with any real speed that he ran by the tent. And then, you know, three seconds behind him came Chris just yelling. Yelling something like, I was going to marry her, you raped her or something. I don't know. I don't know. It wasn't a big commotion, but it was enough to catch my attention.

39:11Tasha and I both stood up and went, what the hell's going on? Right. And we walked out, and we actually walked as far as the train tracks here and could see down here some altercation, but it didn't look too violent. violent or too serious, it just looked like a couple of guys shoving each other. Okay. Did anybody look for me? Well, I could see one of them was Chris. We saw one of them was Chris. What was Chris wearing? We have to put this into perspective because I know what you're thinking. If you heard two men rush past your home screaming at one another, you'd probably follow the noise to see what was going on.

39:48And if you saw them getting into it, you'd contemplate calling the police. But Robert and Tasha were homeless and squatting in the woods. During this time in 2017, there was an ordinance that made it illegal to set up permanent shelters on public property. Though their camp was hidden deep in the woods, it still wasn't allowed. Robert and Tasha didn't want to bring any attention, let alone the police, to their encampment. This is probably why they just all did their best to ignore Chris's outbursts and roll with the punches. The idea that you would call the cops for help concerning anything was preposterous.

40:29You don't do that when you're breaking the law yourself. It's the Wild West out there. Which raises a broader question about the growing homeless population. Encampments are now a major issue in cities nationwide. For years, most advocacy groups and academics have followed the consistent philosophy, provide housing regardless of sobriety or mental health status, and homelessness will decline. But the Cicero Institute challenges that view. The public policy think tank argues that the housing-first model has failed, and instead supports banning unauthorized street camping and reallocating funds from permanent housing to short-term shelters and treatment programs.

41:17Here's Devin Kurtz, public safety policy director from the Cicero Institute. Criminological literature is a lot of talking about, oh, well, this is a very visible population, which allows it to be, you know, policed more than other communities. And there's some truth to that. But there's also this sort of Wild West component where if you get an encampment that's far enough out, there's no one coming to help, and there's no one surveilling it. So these have at times become no-go zones for law enforcement, and it ends up until there's a fire or until there's a murder, it's sort of just left on its own.

41:56This encampment in our story had definitely become a no-go zone. The cops were unaware of it until the murder occurred. But how do you police something that's buried deep in the woods and no one even knows it's there? The Cicero Institute's hallmark policy is the prohibition of street camping. Most nonprofits are very unhappy with the fact that they have passed encampment bans in 19 states. And the framing by critics, and they usually come and they protest the hearings and they protest our office as they did a couple weeks ago. And this criminalizes homelessness and ultimately leads to mass incarceration of them and saddles them with criminal records, et cetera, et cetera.

42:41The reality couldn't be further from the truth. This is trying to respond to the obvious need for a community to regulate the existence of encampments in their community. If there's a camp on the sidewalk in front of your house or in front of your business, obviously there needs to be some mechanism by which law enforcement and the city and county and the state can ensure that that is dealt with in a way that is certainly compassionate. But I would argue that we're not experiencing a homelessness crisis that's particularly unusual as much as we are experiencing a crisis in unsheltered homelessness.

43:24What we're seeing in certain states is this population doubling. Robert, Tasha, Carol, Kenny, and Chris were a part of this unsheltered population, tucked away in a no-go zone of society's fringe. The crime happened in their hidden world. And if the victim's body hadn't been left by the side of the train tracks, maybe nobody would have ever known that this happened. In fact, Robert was the only one who witnessed the fight begin. What was occurring when you saw them standing there? Well, what I saw was whoever the other gentleman was, possibly Dave, with his back to the fence, Chris shoving them against the fence.

44:10There was a shove back. Okay. Do you see anything else? A little, you know, where they grabbed each other's elbows and, you know, and then who I thought was Dave ran that way and Chris came back this way. And Kosh and I went back into the tent. A few minutes later, Chris showed up just outside the tent asking if we had an ace bandage for him that he could borrow. Did he have any blood or anything on him? I didn't see any signs of blood, no. Does anybody here in this camp carry any weapons? Other than Chris, no. Okay, what does Chris have? Well, Chris has a cache of weapons in there. Swords, knives, an assortment of knives, Chinese throwing stars.

44:57Okay. A collection he's rather proud of. Everyone knew about Chris's tent of weapons. It was almost as infamous as he was. Did you see him, Chris, using any of those weapons tonight while this incident was going on? When he ran past my tent, it looked like he had a samurai sword possibly in his hand. Again, I didn't get a really good look. I'm just speculating, but he had something that had some length to it and was silvery in color. Chris had that in it. Chris did, yes. Okay. When Dave walked away from, again, I'm not sure it was Dave. I'm just guessing. But whoever it was that walked away back here, when they walked that way, they had something in their hands, too.

45:40But from where I stood, it looked like it might have just been a stick. If you saw a picture of Dave, would you be able to say, yes, that's him? Yes, I would. All right. That's when the officer brought over a picture of the victim and showed it to Robert. Yeah, that's Dave. Okay. Without the beard. Robert had said that Chris was screaming when he chased Dave past their tent. Something about a woman he was going to marry and that Dave had raped her. But then Chris had told Carol and Kenny that someone had tried to rape him. It was all just the mumblings of a man who desperately needed psychiatric medication.

46:17But Dave Beckett had been slaughtered to death with a four-foot-long sword. Dave may have been a homeless drunk, but he was still a person who lost his life. And the police had to find out why. In his years of being homeless, Chris had been charged with a few misdemeanors for carrying illegal weapons. Maybe this whole murder was a manic episode. A full break from reality where the hallucinations took the lead. Or maybe David pushed him. Provoked something dark that needed to finally come out. Because that's the thing. For as crazy as Chris was, his criminal record was pretty minimal. And every time he was arrested for something, he cooperated and just mumbled incoherently to his imaginary pals.

47:08Chris did what Chris did. He rode around on his scooter and his spandex shorts talking about the ghosts in his asshole. He was out of his mind. The women were frightened of him because, well, why wouldn't you be? I mean, I'm frightened of him. Wouldn't you be frightened of him if you lived in the woods, in a nylon tent next to a screaming man with nothing but a thin layer of cloth to protect you? The potential of danger was there. But Chris had no track record of physically assaulting or sexually assaulting anyone within the homeless community. He just had zero social awareness, like someone freshly released from an asylum, dropped into the world without a map.

47:52Dave, on the other hand, had a reputation. I always called him Dave. I did not tell you his last name. I know him. He worked out of the labor hall with me since 2015. I heard he lived in one of these tents back here. Okay. When was the last time you saw him? I haven't, I've never seen him back here. Okay. Except for my very first day. Which was when? Three to six months ago. That's when Robert came out and said, do you are not welcome here? To Dave? To Dave. Okay. Why was he not welcome? Because I'm here. Okay. And he has a bad reputation. and since that day I have never heard. He has even, we've passed by getting our checks cash because we all have to go to the same place to get our checks cash.

48:47He won't even look at me. He looks away. Dave, we're one of those people that when women see him, they make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. That was Dave, you said? Dave. Okay. And that's when you want to back away, and so that's why I never spoke like that. Throughout the Lake Worth homeless social circles, Dave was known as a sexual predator. Many women had been assaulted by him, and these rumors circled around the streets. According to the court records, Dave had been in trouble with the law since 2003. He's got two felonies under his belt, one for drug possession and another for driving with a revoked license, as well as a bunch of misdemeanors for trespassing, theft, public intoxication, and indecent exposure.

49:34In 2011, he was arrested for, get this, possession of a Burmese python without a license and improper caging allowing escape. Now, a Burmese python is one of the most terrifying snakes on the planet. It's also one of the largest. And for some reason, they are infamous in Florida. Now, I don't know why this man had a python, or what he was doing with it, but it fits, doesn't it? In any case, the records are sealed, but you can just imagine a homeless guy with a python. What a sight. Anyways, the python was a rare one, but most of Dave's charges had to do with indecent exposure, and even masturbating in public.

50:20One time, he was seen masturbating on the side of I-75. That'll wake you up on the way to work. Then Tasha told the police something that made them question who the victim in this whole thing actually was. It was a rumor, and this is all just rumor, that he almost, I have a friend named Robert Crofton. That's the person you live with? No, no, no. Okay, that's a different Robert? It's a different Robert. He goes by Bo. Okay. That there was a rumor maybe six months ago that he had beat up Robert Crofton and sent him to the Delaware Medical Center to beat him. And that was just a rumor. Tasha said that Dave had raped and beat a male friend of her so badly that he had to be hospitalized.

51:11Was Chris actually a victim? A target of a sexually aggressive drunken deviant? Dave was dead, so his side of the story died with him. Now, all that was left was Chris.

51:52If you've been sitting on a business idea, Shopify makes it easy to turn it into something real. Kind of like one of our monsters here. At TornScale, we use Shopify for our storefront, where listeners can browse our merch and check out without a bunch of friction. That matters because once someone decides they want something, you don't want to stand in their way. You don't want to make it complicated, and payment processes can be complicated. Shopify checkout helps more customers complete their purchase, and returning customers can check out with their details already saved. That gives us more time to focus on creating, promoting, and growing instead of wrestling with the technical side.

52:34See what you can build at shopify.com slash sword and scale. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So, go make one. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash sword and scale. Again, that's shopify.com slash sword and scale. Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American-owned spinquest.com. What's better than fireworks and American pie? Hitting a blackjack in the palm of your hand and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games including slots and live dealers. And$30 coin packs are on sale for$10.

53:19SpinQuest.com. Buy American players for American players. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details.

53:44When the body of Dave Beckett had been discovered slaughtered on the side of the tri-rail tracks in Lake Worth, Florida, police had followed the blood trail to a small encampment of five people, two couples and an infamous unhinged man everyone knew as Chris. Dave had been murdered with a four-foot-long sword. As police interviewed the residents of the encampment, they discovered that Dave and Chris had been seen fighting down by the tracks earlier that afternoon. Chris had told the other residents that Dave had tried to rape him, but no one took it seriously because Chris was always saying things of that nature.

54:22But Dave had a reputation as a sexual predator and had even recently beat and raped another homeless man sending him to the hospital for treatment. Now it was time to hear what Chris had to say. After paramedics took care of his hand, he was ready to start talking. So basically, I'm called out here. I'm at the sheriff's office. Because you've been detained for quite a while, you were handcuffed, I'm going to read your Miranda warnings. All right, have you ever been read your Miranda warnings? It's your rights, your legal rights. I know them. You know them? Do you mind if I just do my job? I don't trust them.

54:55Detective Oliver. You can call me Sean. Call me Dickhead. Whatever you want. I don't care. You have a right to my inside. Yeah, but these actually verbatim. It's our policy. Is this Miranda v. Arizona? Yeah, 1962. Chris stated the exact law that created the Miranda warning, Miranda v. Arizona, in 1996. The Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them. Ernesto Miranda confessed to a crime without knowing he could stay silent or ask for a lawyer. So the court said that violated his constitutional right. This decision created the Miranda Warning, the rights you've heard read over and over and over for the last 10 years on this podcast, and for the last 60 in the real world.

55:46How did he get to the point where he was injured with the sword? What did he get to the point? Because it's your sword, it's out of your tent. I gave it to him when he was there. When did he get it to him? I gave it to him almost a long ago, but he didn't know what to do with this, so I said, I'll get it to him when I get it. Did you give the sword to somebody that you already told me that you were afraid of? No, no. I tried to make some comment. I tried to, I guess, symbolic expression. Gesture? Yeah, that I'm in my own. Okay. Chris admitted that he was skeptical of Dave, but he had been hanging around.

56:22And he'd given Dave the sword as some sort of symbolic gesture. Like, here's my weapon from my collection. Protect yourself on the street. That sort of thing. But then Chris told detectives that he was scared of Dave. Because Dave did weird things that made him crazy. Chris felt like he needed to stay away. You told me earlier. I have never premeditated. Okay. Slaying man. You might as well do the reverse psychology. When I was injured, I couldn't help him anymore. When he had injured himself. Because I know he had injured himself. I turned my back on him. When the injuries occurred to me, I would no longer defend him.

57:06That's the end of my statement. But it obviously wasn't the end of his statement. Chris kept trying to explain that Dave was a sexual predator. He had raped and hurt other women on the streets, and Chris was fed up with it. Then he heard some woman that Chris had declared he wanted to marry. This is what Robert heard when Dave and Chris came running by his tent earlier that day. But Chris's story was bouncing back and forth as he tried to explain himself. His main point was that Dave was secretly gay. Chris knew that Dave had raped other men in his tent. Then he started coming on to Chris, and that changed the course of their relationship.

57:49I was being sexually harassed. He made comments about my material that it was pretty for a man. I knew that he was homosexual. He said, man, he needs to get it. I am not. It's a prohibition in the state of Florida. It is not legal. And numerous men in his tent haven't realized you're claiming something. You don't really know the statutes. I'm very, very well. Explain. I feel threatened now. Explain my home and my property. I didn't hurt you. I'm not going to explain it because I do not have to explain myself. Do if you're doing the self-defense. Remember what Tasha told police? She knew a man who had also been raped, beaten, and hospitalized by Dave.

58:32Without this rumor from Tasha, Chris's self-defense could have been viewed as pure fiction. The ramblings of a crazy person. Something the voices in his head told him to say. But maybe there was some truth to all this. Maybe this time, Dave had tried to rape him. You said you injured yourself, but you didn't ask me to answer my question. But you didn't get any answer. You fought yourself on the sword, didn't you? Why don't you ask him how many people he's raped and how many people he's murdered? Okay, well, what does that look, me look like? What does that make? Especially rape and murder somebody else.

59:07Myself, somebody else. How many? Just because Dave did that to someone else. Why didn't you bring him to justice? I don't know him. You obviously heard this jurisdiction. I don't know him. Were you born in Florida? I don't know him. Okay. I'm not going to do it, Dave. That's a good start with. Dave slipped through the cracks. It happened. Yeah. How many other people have you slipped through the cracks? 25 years of cracks. Yeah. Eight. He's a book United. The system is not perfect. And I agree with you on that. The system is not perfect. But you're claiming self-defense and all I'm asking is why.

59:37I don't want to claim anything. I'm not going to be incriminated either way by... You do this to protect other people.

59:56Chris had slipped through the cracks when it came to his mental health. He should have been institutionalized or at least seen a psychiatrist given a couple pills or something. But Dave slipped through the cracks when it came to his sexual crimes. And Chris was angry. Maybe he wasn't just a crazy man yelling at the moon for no reason. Maybe he knew something about the man he killed that justified his actions. Don't put the sword on the other foot. That's my advice to you. I can't. I don't live your life. I didn't live that. I didn't live that. Okay, you do. What is your question that will help you dispose?

1:00:38clarify you did not consider it I'm ready for this is true I just have him pre-medicated or so impulsive would it be like an active you know what a credible credible threat is it only requires a criminal intent to commit yes an aggravated assault or a felony right and once you bring so you're running after him as well he didn't have this you don't know what they know we got statements from them they saw you running after him with the so you okay Okay, well, oh, that's okay. That's your dude as the aggressor. Why were you running after him with a sword? After this? Where did that happen? I took it back.

1:01:14Where did that happen? And then he took it back. Actually, when I took it back, and then I gave it to him. But the detective needed to decipher the facts based on the physical evidence. The evidence was a dead man slaughtered by sword and an assailant with a giant defensive wound on his hand. So he fell on his sword. He had the sword. I gave it to him. I said, look, you're not going to use it on me anymore here. And I turned my back on him and left. I don't know if he ran after me or what. I don't know what happened. See, that's what I'm talking about. You know, you're adrenaline when someone, when your life is threatened, you're going to react.

1:01:51But you don't remember exactly how you do what you do. But you're alive because you're fighting for your life. How annoying is this guy? I mean, why, why, why? Why is he out on the street? Oh, yeah. Karen and her virtue signaling. Out of sight, out of mind. Ain't that right, Karen? I'm not going to be murdered in my sleep, by the end. How are you fighting for your life, bud? Weird. I just told you. Okay, I'm consistently, when I get stressed out, I begin to bleed internally. Because an injury happened 22 or 23 years ago. I was struck by lightning and told you. And you're causing it to hemorrhoids.

1:02:32And it's internally bleeding. Now, that's not good. This guy thinks his hemorrhoids were caused by lightning. Lightning. I'm not saying that you're in a misconduct. You're talking your introduction. You don't understand your man had a deviant intent. That's criminal. And it wasn't the ill will against me because perhaps I wasn't. What did he exactly do, though, to put you in fear? Anything and everything he could to sway me from other than a heterosexual, being a homosexual. By your verbal? body language, the things he did, he walked out and he exposed his genitalia and urinated right in front of me.

1:03:07When I asked, please, as many times as I asked him, he never respected what I said, that please do not wear your wall. Exposure, urinate. He doesn't never respect anything. You go in the woods, right? You go deeper in the woods. I don't know. I obsess myself with any kind of genitalia, the man, especially when it's common sense. How passive is this cop? Yeah, I know, I'm bitching a lot, but my God, slap the cuffs on him already. I mean, I'm all for due process and self-defense, but perhaps maybe Mr. Garrison here is better suited for a career track in botany rather than law enforcement. I mean, Jesus, man, grow some assertiveness.

1:03:51This unassertive detective was not going to get a straight answer about anything. Not mumbling the way he was anyway. Chris said that Dave had tried to rape him and was making sexual remarks, but the truth about how the sword was passed between these two men was unclear. And without a witness, who saw every inch of that murder, there was no real way to figure out what exactly happened. Then Chris said this about Dave, which mirrored exactly what Tasha had told the detectives she and other women felt. I know. Okay, you ever feel when you can't turn your back on someone because they feel like they're looking over your shoulder?

1:04:31What about a girl in that text? You can feel that stuff. That's what I'm saying on that girl. Dave, we were those people that when women see him, they make their hair on the back of your neck stand up. That was Dave, you said? Dave. Okay. And that's when you want to back away, and so that's why I never spoke to him. When he swung the sword, I punched him. And I don't know what happened because the sword's there and his face is there. I don't know how to test to my hand. How did you get the sword? You already said that you took it back from him. You said he swung at you. Sir, when someone's trying to kill you, your adrenaline doesn't allow you to decipher every critical fact.

1:05:07You never gave him the sword. You never gave him the sword. Yes, I didn't give him the sword. You said you didn't. You said you tried to give it to him, and then you took it back. And then from that point on, you've never said that you gave him back the sword. I'm not trying to complicate this. It's simple. Just be truthful. That's all I ask. Be truthful. Don't try to... It doesn't mean to be confident. You've got to accept responsibility for your actions. You understand that? You're a grown man now. I'm defending myself. Okay, but how? You have a sword. How are you defending yourself? It's your sword.

1:05:34You're running after him. I gave it back to him. You're running after him with a sword? I gave it back to him. Chris couldn't remember who had the sword first or how it all unfolded. Maybe adrenaline and mental illness blurred all the details. His life had always been driven by fight-or-flight instincts. How could he reliably recount events when he lived each day, assuming the world was against him? But what he did explain was that, ever since Dave had started coming around the camp, he had been making sexual advances towards Chris. And that it finally hit a breaking point. The officer wanted to know why Chris didn't just pack up and leave.

1:06:14His answer was simple. I was here first, he said. Yes, Chris had loaned Dave the sword. That much was true. But when they got in that scuffle down on the tracks, Dave swung at him with the blade, and Chris lost it. I don't know whether it was the blade, his face, or both, but once I was threatened, once he swung at me, that was it. I knew the intended swing would kill me. The sword. Where were you when he swung at me? in the tent. I mean, in between the tents. In my team. I need to get that sword. In your tent. I told you I gave it to him. But why? Why would Chris give someone who he deemed a sexual menace a sword?

1:07:05Was he ever really playing with a full deck? What did Dave do that? You have not told me that Dave would use to stab him. What justification you had to use a sword on him. So you just said that. Other than anger. You just said that again. You were not there. And I did not tell you that's what happened. So you are... We know he's dead. You know it's your sword. And you're injured because the sword cut you. And you had David's blood on him. We had David's blood probably in the tent. Why don't I ask you questions? I mean, you're asking all these questions. I'm not asking you one question. You have.

1:07:34Are you a homosexual? Does it matter? Okay. Does it matter? I don't care if you are. You know what? It doesn't matter to me, these questions you ask me anymore. And I don't mean it in disrespect. You haven't respected me yet. I have nothing to say. And I will not answer. I want my attorney then. Fair enough. Have a seat. And you're a detective Oliver? Yes. Okay. I'm suspending your badge name. You don't want any? Well, I can also have you taken in custody. I told the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Defense to wonder why this went on for 25 years. Okay. Why they didn't serve a death warrant to their self and execute him, I do not know.

1:08:07I do not have to disclose any more information to you. Right on. Okay. So you should respect that. Because as a man, I respect you. And your profession. Goodbye. This guy's got a real problem with gays. Anyway, why does he talk like Eugene Porter from The Walking Dead? I'm talking. Do you know what goodbye means? Goodbye. I don't want you in the jurisdiction anymore. Remove yourself from Palm Beach County. You think I'm kidding? You're dismissed. Or leave. I've said it a dozen times. Don't speak to me anymore. If you feel like talking again, it's funny. Yeah, you meant to arouse me, aggravate me, and cause internal bleeding again.

1:08:55Don't bleed inside. I'm bleeding in the neck and the chest now, thanks to you. We don't understand plain English. Do you understand yes or no? How about a million old times? We'll put in a little bit more. Go ahead. I don't want to hurt you. Can you go in any way? You already did. Can you move in any further? I don't want to hurt you. Right. I'm curious, I don't want to hurt you. Then leave and let her do her job. That's when Chris turned away and let the female officer put him in the squad car. He was done talking. He was done trying to explain what had happened. The stress had caused him, quote unquote, internal bleeding from his previous injuries.

1:09:32How exhausting are these nuts? I mean, I know how our audience just loves to be perceived as compassionate, but at what point are you willing to admit what a drain on society these people are? They provide nothing, not a single benefit whatsoever to society, yet they demand everything from it. It's just so insanely tiring. Crazy people can just, they can just drive you crazy, you know? It's contagious. There isn't a lot of great data on homelessness and crime, but according to Devin from the Cicero Institute, AI is slowly helping us get there. If it were me, a simple abattoir would do all the work.

1:10:15Slap chop it, I say. But that's why I'm never getting elected. Anyway, here's Devin arguing that statistics don't always match the cultural narrative. But in terms of hard data, the best we have is a report from San Diego's district attorney's office that did an analysis. They released it two years ago. on homelessness and crime, and they found that unsheltered homeless people, those people who were living on the street, were hundreds of times as likely to commit crimes like arson, robbery, etc. And they were dozens of times as likely to be victims of similar crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, robbery, etc.

1:11:00So what we're seeing is the case that you described of two homeless people getting into an antisocial spiral, ultimately an interaction that led to one of them killing the other. That is the majority of the violence that we're seeing in homeless encampments. There's this rhetoric by activists that's, oh, people are coming into these homeless encampments and they're robbing them and taking advantage of them. Well, those people tend to be other homeless people. The narrative around homelessness has long been rooted in the idea that housing is a human right. What a dumb idea. Obviously, some Karen came up with that who's never had to compete for limited resources.

1:11:43Somebody actually has to pay for it. Oh, so I get to work twice as hard to subsidize someone else's generator-based business arrangement? Okay, sure. But that better mean we put all these people in a locked facility and never let them out. I mean, would housing alone have helped someone like Dave or Chris? Giving Dave a bed wouldn't have stopped him from sexually assaulting people. Maybe a temporary shelter might have limited Chris's stockpile of weapons and kept it from growing into the unregulated arsenal it became. But both were deeply disturbed individuals. Misfits with serious mental health issues.

1:12:24They needed more than a roof over their heads. Sure, others at the camp would have gladly taken housing, but are they representative of the unsheltered population at large? I mean, we don't really know. The data just isn't there. It's hard to track a population in constant motion, both by nature and by necessity. Or illness. Then there's the darker question no one actually wants to ask. Do we even care that Dave was murdered? I'll be honest. I don't think I even need to be honest. You might actually be able to guess what I'm going to say. Question is, will you be honest, Karen? How much do you actually care past the virtue signaling tweet or the dollar you handed to that stinky man outside the Starbucks so he'd leave you alone?

1:13:19Until the Karens of the world, with the ability to vote, start being honest with themselves, actual tangible solutions that don't involve rotating blades will continue to remain out of reach. Dave Beckett was a known sexual predator, what the public knew was only the tip of a likely much uglier iceberg. Did Chris, in his own twisted way, do society a favor? Don't you dare roll your eyes, Karen. Because ultimately, whose job is it to manage adults who are incapable of managing themselves? Chris and Dave weren't just homeless. They were rejected by their families, shunned by their peers, even outcasts within the homeless community itself.

1:14:06The sad truth is that most people living on the streets aren't victims of circumstance. It's a great story to tell, and it keeps getting perpetuated by media, but those people put themselves there through their own actions. That may not be true all over the world, but here in America, the land of opportunity, you have no excuse for ending up homeless unless you want to. Not permanently, anyway. That's just an uncomfortable fact that Karens who want to feel good about being lazy and shitty to everyone around them refuse to accept? Why demand accountability when you can just virtue signal, feel good about yourself?

1:14:46The humans in this camp, and many others like it, were pushed so far to the margins, the only people left to deal with them were each other. And this time, it ended in murder. So, the question lingers. If society had stepped in sooner, not just with housing, but with real accountability instead of virtue signaling, would Dave still be alive? I think you probably already know the answer to that.

1:15:38Well, I'm going to get a lot of hate mail this week. It's a good thing I don't read any of it. As a matter of fact, why do I even have an email address? I haven't gotten anything other than Nigerian scammers and carrots for the last 10 years. Anyway, that's going to do it for another one of these silly murder shows you guys seem to love for some reason. Hope you enjoyed that one. We'll be back before you know it, probably over the weekend, with another one. they just keep happening, folks. People are shit. Speaking of which, head on over to our store to support us if you want to. We got some People Are Shit merch, which we can't advertise on YouTube because that's a dirty word.

1:16:23And all kinds of other stuff. Go check out store.swordscale.com. If you haven't signed up for Plus, that's where you get all the goodies, extra episodes, commercial free. lots of good stuff in there. So go check that out at sword and scale.com and download our iOS or Android app. We've made lots and lots of improvements. It's way better, much more stable. Got a lot more features in there. So check it out if you haven't in a while. And I think that's going to do it. That's my sales pitch. Thanks again for joining us. Thanks for being a plus member. If you are, we love you guys. Well, I don't love anyone other than myself because I'm a narcissist.

1:17:07But you know what I mean. I appreciate you. So does our staff. Oh, I almost forgot. This episode was written by Mish Barber Way, one of our producers here that's been with us for a long time. She's great. That's going to do it. Thanks again. Until next time, stay safe and stay out of the homeless camps.

1:17:38Thank you.

1:18:08Thank you.

1:18:37What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here, and we're driving through the States in the Bluffmobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino-style games on SpinQuest. They have over 1 ,000 games, including live dealer blackjack and craps, with tons of slots and unlimited options. You can get a$30 coin pack for just$10 for new users. Sign up today. Go to SpinQuest.com right now. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpendQuest.com for more details.