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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and this is my show. What are you guys doing? Where were you on Friday? Where was I on Friday? That's the raw question. We did not have a little leader on Friday and that is because... I didn't want to do it. No, I love little leaders so much, but you know, we took a mental health day. We need to

did it. Nothing going on. Just needed needed a little break and actually I was super into researching for the case that we're talking about today. So I was like, you know, I'm on a good roll here. We're not going to stop. No time to pause. I've been reading and watching different things about today's story just because I wasn't super familiar with it going into it, but I am really excited to talk about. I mean, it's an awful case, but I'm excited to tell you about it. Hope everybody had a nice weekend.

I worked a lot, but I also got to do a lot of fun stuff, watched the new Halloween movie, Halloween kills. I really liked it. I was telling everyone I'm like, listen, I will like anything, probably, that the Halloween series or scream. Any of those, if they put out a movie, I'm going to be like, I loved it. It was fantastic. Even if there was, I had some questions. Okay, there were questions that came up throughout. I don't want to give away any spoilers.

You know what? I'll just say this in any horror movie situation. I'm like, why are we not checking that he's dead? If this monster had been stalking my town for 30 years and I can put an end to it, I'm going to cut the head off. I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Or I was telling Madison, she was there watching, I'm like, I would go for the eyes. Like, if someone was trying to murder me, the first thing I would do is try and poke out their eyeballs, because then I'm like, at least they can't see what they're doing at that point. People just punch someone and then they're like, they're out.

No, that's never the case. Michael Myers is never out, but I guess that's his powers. Not that he's a superhero, but super villain, I guess. What else?

I got to be a guest on another podcast, which I will share with you online when that goes live, because I'm not sure what day that goes out. That was a lot of fun too.

We talked about some of the stories that I told on a trick or deceit episode about Tainted Halloween Candies, which was actually also a really fun episode to do, because I feel like we got to the bottom of it.

We're like, yeah, I guess it pretty much is an urban legend, unless it's a cover up. Enjoy doing that one. I'm going to Halloween or night finally this week, and I am so excited.

My friend Chris and her husband are in LA for it, and we are, I'm just so excited. Obviously, haven't been in like two years. I don't really think I have anything else to fill you in on.

Oh, I got one of my costumes in the mail. I don't know if I'm dressing up. I don't know if I'm going anywhere, did by a costume for something somewhere. Somehow, I'm going to find a reason to wear it and show all of you.

I guess we'll just get into it. I'm feeling a very casual approach today, by the way, just in case you couldn't tell. We're not in business mode. We're in like, sit, and I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you what happened here.

Our story today took place in Berkeley, California. So in northern California, San Francisco Bay area, and it happened in 1955, which for some reason, I feel oddly connected.

Always to that year. I don't know. Maybe it's a past life thing. If that is real, who knows. But 1955 is when this happened. I'll introduce first the Brian family.

The Brian family had actually moved to Berkeley about two years prior in 1953 from Massachusetts. So they were just a good old New England family headed towards the Bay area.

They moved into a neighborhood in Berkeley, a really nice area. If you are from there or familiar with the area, they lived right up behind the Claremont Hotel, which is just such a beautiful property.

The whole area in general is super nice, super pretty. Lots of just really cool old houses. They have a lot of like their unique character to them still. I just love all of the neighborhoods up there.

A lot of well-to-do families live up there and did back then as well. The Brian's were no different. The dad Charles, he was a doctor, Dr. Charles Brian. He was married to the mom Mary.

The couple had five children. So they had their oldest daughter Stephanie, who was 14 years old. We actually just passed her birthday, which was on October 12th of 1940. So she was 14 years old.

And then from her down it was Rutledge, Cheryl, Estelle, and Beatrice. Stephanie is who we are primarily going to be talking about today. She was a ninth grader at Willard, Jr. High in Berkeley, California.

And she was just a good kid. I feel like she was like the typical oldest child where she was a total rule follower. She enforced a lot of the rules and never really went against anything her parents told her to do.

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