Episode 12: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I’m your host Julie Mattson. Today I want to continue this series on Halloween Homicides for the month of October. I remember all the good times that I had with all my high school friends when we were younger, and the rituals that we carried out during the holidays that were passed on to us by our parents or… I’m not even sure where… Of course, trick or treating is a lot of people’s favorite thing to do… Carving pumpkins is always fun. I can remember years ago, I wanted a Ouija Board, and I can remember many times asking my parents for one. I’m sure they couldn’t really understand why I wanted it, and I didn’t really know what it was to be honest, I just knew that it was mysterious and it was a game. As I got older, I realized that it had to do with spiritualism and believing that the dead could actually communicate with the living. This brings us back to our series Halloween homicides, where I ran across a story that happened on Chicago’s South Side in 2011. 55-year-old Ledell Peoples blamed his girlfriend for stealing his bag of Halloween treats. An argument ensued and 49-year-old Maria Adams threw a plate at Peoples’ head, which struck him above the eye and caused a gash. Peoples then grabbed a knife…
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SHOWNOTES:
• I remember one night when I was with my friends and we were in a spare room of our house in the little town of Valley View, Texas, shout out to my home town. We were playing with my Ouija Board that I had gotten for Christmas, and of course, it spelled out something, I can’t even remember what it was. But during this time, we were all a little bit spooked and it was new and it was mysterious. We looked up and there was literally someone looking in the window, it freaked us out and we screamed. It could have been completely our imagination, but we had so much fun with it, and I remember that game just being the highlight of many of our sleep overs. (02:34)
• Since 1984, there have been 24 homicide victims related to egging. This is because when you go to the store to buy eggs, of course you don’t have to have an ID, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like other items that they are now requiring identification for before you could purchase. You don’t have to be a certain age, obviously, to buy eggs. They are super cheap, they are very small, they’re easily concealed, they can be kept in your pocket, and you can sneak up on somebody and throw it at them and they will not know what’s coming. Some stores in certain areas actually don’t sell eggs or shaving cream or items that kids or teenagers can use to wreak havoc on their neighbors to minors during that week of Halloween. Which is really pretty smart when you think about it, it’s not something that normally would cause a problem. You wouldn’t normally question a teenager who goes into the grocery store and buys a carton of eggs. But around Halloween, it tends to look a little bit suspicious. (11:14)
• So whenever he came to the door, Pizer had on face paint and a mask and gloves, and all the things that someone would have on normally on Halloween. However, when he answered the door, she raised her arms and had a weapon inside the paper sack that she was caring and she shot him in the chest. So Joan Rabel was actually from Pennsylvania, and she was a writer and a photographer. Back in 1957, she had gone to one of Peter Fabiano salons and she was looking for a job, and that’s where she met Betty. She was also a hair dresser, she worked there with Peter. Betty and Peter owned a couple of different salons in the area, and that’s how Betty and Joan Rabel actually became friends. Now, Pizer was a medical secretary and she was divorced, and she also became friends with Joan. They would spend their time drinking coffee and gossiping and talking about other people, and so they became super fast friends. But Pizer had bought a 38 and they borrowed a car and then after Pizer shot Fabiano, she actually later hid the weapon in a storage container at a nearby store. (16:09)
• I’m a huge horror movie fan, and I can tell you growing up, my dad, who recently passed away, was my horror movie buddy. It’s very rare that you can call your dad at 11 o’clock at night and say, Hey, you want to go see cabin fever? You want to go see a scary movie? And for him to say, Yeah, let’s do it. Which theater, what time? Where should I meet you? And so we would go and literally eat our weight in popcorn. I love watching scary movies, trying to guess what’s about to happen and I love being scared. So my granddaughter is the same way, and I’m so super excited, I asked her the other day if she wanted to be my new scary movie buddy, and she said yes, and so I can’t wait until she gets older and she’ll actually go to the movies with me and watch these movies. I know most of them are super predictable, of course everyone always falls running from the bad guy, and it doesn’t matter really how corny they are or how terribly written I think they are, I still always want to see them. And in my mind, I’m not really a critic, I basically feel like if they entertain me for any given period of time, I am happy that it only cost me $15 or $20 to be entertained. (19:48)
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