Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we discuss the comedy, drama, acting, drugs, life, and death of the one and only Robin Williams. He was said to be funny since childhood, and as he grew, so did his personality and laughs. He blew up with the once-in-a-lifetime hit Mork and Mindy in the late 1970s, and he moved on to a series of massive hit films. From Popeye to Dead Poet’s Society and Goodwill Hunting to Aladdin, his scope and range won him three Oscar nominations and endless awards. And don’t forget the standup. His insane half improved comedy routines were stuff of legend, and according to one story, they are the reason David Letterman got out of the stand-up business. He was born to an upper class family in Chicago, and his family moved around a lot. After an early retirement, they settled in Tiburon, California (where he still owned property when he died). He went to a couple of colleges to study acting, and eventually found himself at the world famous Juilliard School. After a few years, he was told he should leave the school because there was nothing left for them to teach him—not accents, not drama, not comedy, no methods. He was just that good. After college, he started doing standup in San Francisco and LA. He was discovered while on stage in LA and started doing small appearances on TV. Eventually, he was called in to play the alien Mork in a really bad episode of Happy Days, and he turned it into such comedy gold that he got his own show based on the character. It exploded as one of the most popular shows of the 70s and 80s and put him on the map. From there, he jumped to feature films with Popeye and spent decades doing amazing comedies and devastating dramas. All the while, he still did stand up and released comedy specials. Oh, and he did drugs. A lot. He quit and went back to them and quit again, but all the cocaine is said to have started his health decline later in life with heart problems. After four decades of hits, Robin Williams ended his own life on August 11, 2014. The common belief was that he battled from secret depression. His wife, however, revealed that he had Lewy Body Disease. The Lewy Body proteins in his brains were the worst his doctors had ever seen, and they made him miserable, paranoid, depressed, and anxious to the point where he could no longer function. After his death, he still released several films, so we like to think he’s actually alive and well and living on Tupac Island. Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/actor/robin-williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/robin-williams-death-biography-dave-itzkoff-excerpt https://n.neurology.org/content/87/13/1308 https://www.investopedia.com/articles/wealth-management/010516/look-robin-williams-net-worth-and-what-happened-his-estate.asp

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk some true crime and look at the life, murders, and death of Dean Corll. Called the Candyman or the Pied Piper, Corll had a reputation in Houston for giving candy to teenage boys from his family candy shop. He was loved by his community, and he didn’t seem to have anything in his background that was typical to trigger a serial killer. A divorce and some suppressed homosexuality were in his background, but none of the madness that usually forces one to kill. However, he became one of the most prolific killers, racking up at least 28 deaths in his time. Oh, and he had two teenage accomplices. Corll was raised by middle class parents and moved around a bit since his father was in the military. His folks divorced, remarried, divorced again. His mom eventually took the advice of a traveling pecan salesman (like you do) and started a candy company in her garage. A teenaged Corll worked there after school, and it eventually became big enough to move to a proper factory. Corll was drafted during Vietnam but served stateside as a radio repairman. He was discharged early on the grounds of family hardship since he needed to run the factory. Once home again, he put a pool table in the back of the factory and would often take batches of boys to the beach as a sort of “Scout Leader” persona. Eventually, the candy competition was too fierce, and the candy shop closed. Somehow in the year or so after this, he went from a model citizen to a maniacal sex crazed serial killer. He recruited two youths to help Dean Corll scout and bring him teenage boys for $200 a pop. They were David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. They saw him as a father figure and thought that the sex that was happening with Corll and their recruits was consensual. At least at first. Eventually, the rape and murder started. And eventually, Henley and Brooks helped hide the bodies and got involved at every part of the killings. This one leaves a lot of unanswered questions. First off, what set Dean Corll off? He went from mild mannered to monster in merely months. Second, how did they get so many teenage boys to come over to the house? Why didn’t the police start to investigate this crazy wave of teenage murders? Was Corll part of a nation wide teenage sex trafficking ring? Why did Henley eventually shoot Corll? What pushed him too far and made him say “enough”? Where did they hide the bodies? What kind of sentences did Henley and Brooks get? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/corll-dean.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Wayne_Henley https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-lost-boys/ https://rare.us/rare-news/history/dean-corll-candy-houston-texas/ https://www.oxygen.com/candyman-killer-dean-corll-elmer-henley-real-killers-behind-netflix-mindhunter https://heavy.com/news/2018/01/pedophile-serial-killer-candyman-houston-sadist/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Owen_Brooks

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at one of the greatest maritime disasters in history, the wreck of the Batavia. I know what you’re thinking. It’s like the Titanic but back in time. No, not at all. This one involved mutiny, hanging a young girl off the side of the boat, a shipwreck, murder, sex slaves, more murder, and a war between the survivors on small islands in the East Indies. The Batavia was the newly build flagship of the Dutch East Indies Company (not to be confused with their rival the British East India Company). It set sail on its maiden voyage with a fleet loaded with silver and gold. Their job was to make it around the world on a very dangerous 8 month voyage to buy spices in Java. It was said that only one in four sailors would make it back from such a trip, but all would be sharing in a split of the riches if they did. This particular trip started off poorly. The skipper of the ship was named Ariaen Jacobsz. He had to take his order from the fleet commander Francisco Pelsaert. But, based on pervious encounters at sea, they hated each other’s guts. Toward the end of the journey, the animosity grew so much that Jacobsz and a merchant named Jeronimus Cornelisz planned for a mutiny. They had a poor woman named Lucretia Jansz get assaulted in the night on the ship. They knew the Commander would over react, and they could use this as an excuse to mutiny. Then, they could take the gold and silver and go start a new island nation, like you do. But the dumb asses ran ashore the next day in dangerous waters and wrecked the ship. 40 passengers died in the wreck, and the rest reached shore. The Commander got a ship and some of the heartiest of the men and headed out to find water. It took them 33 days to make it back due to a series of bad luck at island after island. In the meantime Cornelisz took over and lost his marbles. He started to orchestrate murders of the healthy and those who could stop him. He consolidated power, boats, and weapons and sent those loyal to the company off to “Find water,” so he had no competition. Throats were slit, people were pushed off boats, he even planned to poison a baby. There were sex slaves and starvation, and pretty much the worst depravity you could imagine. So, how did the banished soldiers end up fighting back? What type of inter-island war started between these groups? How did the soldiers survive the fights when they had no weapons? What became of the the Batavia's Commodore, and how was he able to return at the helm of a big new ship? What happened to the mutineers and murderers? Why do they think this wreck was the first time Europeans colonized Australia? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://www.sea.museum/2016/06/04/barbarism-and-brutality-surviving-the-batavia-shipwreck https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/12/new-mass-grave-batavia-shipwreck-murder-australia-history/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship) http://museum.wa.gov.au/research/research-areas/maritime-archaeology/batavia-cape-inscription/batavia https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/wreck-of-the-batavia https://listverse.com/2018/06/15/10-punishments-of-the-royal-navy-during-the-age-of-sail/#:~:text=By%20the%201800s%2C%20this%20was,death%20was%20slow%20and%20painful.