isawallflower | RYSLIG; ic inbox

[ BT

Miss Riley...!

Well, she doesn't have to give the details.]

I want to know what normal people think is scary for a project. I don't really know a lot of normal people, but you help explain normal things to me.

[ ...Hm. ]

We did establish I'm not exactly a normal person either... So my fears might not really work for you.

I can tell you what I know other people are afraid of, in general.

Yes please. And...you're closer than me, but don't worry. I also asked someone that I'm almost positive is normal.

Good to know we'll get you a wide range then.

There's plenty of people afraid of things like the dark or thunderstorms. Arachnaphobia's pretty common, a fear of spiders. Sharks, many people are afraid of them. Some are afraid of the ocean in general. There's things a little more abstract, like the fear of getting lost or not knowing where you are. I know some particularly religious types terrified of defying God.

Is that sort of what you were looking for?

Both of you said sharks. That must be why Indiana Jones fights them. [This would be where she very seriously nods to herself, but there's other parts of Riley's list on her mind.] I understand the fear of upsetting God...

Yes, I think I can use some of these. Thank you, Miss Riley.

[ ...Oh, she can't help but smile. Indiana Jones distracts her from what, to her eyes, is the less interesting part of the conversation. ]

I wasn't aware Indiana Jones fights sharks. I just know a lot of people are scared of them because of this movie from the 1970s. It's contributed to a few cases of unsolved murders, since the culprits try and use hysteria from the idea of a shark attack to disguise their kills.

It was in one of the comics, so it's not as flashy or interesting as the movies.

[Because the movies were thrilling!!! And that's why they were inspiration for some of her traps. The comics honestly lost her pretty fast, even though she usually prefers reading. Too short of issues, not at all as satisfying as a textbook.

Meanwhile, this is the coolest that Riley has ever been.]

That's pretty smart. Even if sharks aren't likely to attack humans, they would eat human remains so I could see police accepting it instead of investigating. They probably destroyed a lot of the evidence, too.

Piranhas have a similar reputation, but they're even less dangerous. They're a lot easier to get, though.

[ Finally. It's something for them to genuinely connect over that isn't having an awful fucking childhood. ]

It's such sloppy investigation, though! A good coroner could find evidence of human involvement, if they didn't just dismiss it as an animal attack.

The weirdest case involving sharks happened WAY before that, though, so people have always been using animals to cover up crimes, even before the public was widely afraid of them.

It's true! The doctor and I could even tell the difference between most cases of human vs animal vs monster killing I bet. It's pretty simple if you know what to look for, and he's a good teacher. But we can't blame people in the past too much. They didn't know as much science back then.

Pigs are pretty popular partners in crime. They'll even eat through bone easily, so they've been used to dispose of bodies a lot. What was the weirdest case involving a shark though?

[ Riley winces at the mention of Danny. It takes her out of the almost relaxed atmosphere she's began to find in this conversation. But...he's a part of Rachel's life and like Aunamee she's not going to make every conversation about him. She refuses. She's not doing that to Rachel. ]

It was in 1935 in Sydney, Australia. People call it the Shark Arm case. Funny, right? Sharks don't have arms.

This one, however, did! Inside it. The shark was taken into captivity, to an aquarium, and within a week it became sick and regurgitated a human arm! As it turns out, it had eaten a smaller shark that had swallowed the whole thing!

[The funny(?) part is that she wasn't talking about Dr. Danny at all -- he's the doctor of therapy, eyes, and making Indiana Jones traps, but the body identification and mystery solving doctor is good Dr. Morgenstern. In that moment of excited sharing, it was almost as if Danny was removed entirely from Rachel's brain because lmao who cares?]

That's incredible! I didn't think about sharks eating other sharks. Was the first shark used for body disposal? How long had the arm been in there? It was able to digest the other shark just fine, but not the arm? Why didn't the first shark get sick? Did it just not have enough time?

Or maybe the arm DID make the first shark sick. Enough to die and then the aquarium shark could eat its carcass?

[ This is Riley's fault, for not knowing any other doctors. Or...at least not knowing Gabriel Morgenstern is a doctor. ]

It's so weird, isn't it?! I don't know about the other shark. No one does! See, the person who caught the shark was fishing for the smaller one, and the tiger shark followed because it wanted a meal. They thought the rest of the body would be in the shark, so they killed it, but there was nothing! It was especially cruel because reports could already tell the arm hadn't been ripped off by a shark......

It had been cut off!! With a knife!!!

[ Oh god she's enjoying herself. No one ever lets Riley talk about true crime, she's living for this. ]

[It's a shame that Riley probably wouldn't find the number of unsolved cases surrounding the reverse murder tower as fun or interesting because of proximity. Not like Ray knows the details about most of them though, really just the one about her parents that wound up getting attributed falsely to Zack.]

That is too bad... I guess it was easier than doing an X-ray or ultrasound on a shark.

Did they ever find the rest of the body? Or more body parts?

[ Yeah, unfortunately the only true crime Riley can get excited about is the kind that doesn't involve people she knows. ]

They never did! But, they could identify exactly who it belonged to, between the fingerprints and the arm's very distinct tattoo. The man was Jimmy Smith. He'd been missing for a little over two weeks when the shark vomited up his arm. Despite seeming like he didn't have any enemies, he was actually a small-time criminal, who had been doing insurance scams and drug deals for his employer, Reginald Holmes, for a few years. Recently, he'd taken to blackmailing him.

He'd last been seen with another small-time criminal, forger Patrick Francis Brady. The two left a bar and relocated to a cottage Patrick Brady had been renting. It was the last time anyone ever saw Jimmy Smith alive.

The two men, Brady and Holmes, kept accusing each other in the murder. Holmes denied having anything to do with Brady, but he tried to kill himself only days after they started questioning him!! The wild thing? He missed. He went on to be involved in a four hour speedboat chase with the police, while having a bullet hole in his head.

[Reginald Holmes sounds like the name of someone that would be a floor master... That has nothing to do with anything, but she thinks it all the same.]

Like Phineas Gage! I feel like I was just talking about him recently! Did Holmes survive the chase or did they kill him? It'd be interesting to see what sort of effect his injury had on him when the brain is so fiddly. I bet he at least dumped the body from his speedboat... It sounds like Brady and he failed the prisoner's dilemma. Was Brady ever arrested or did they decide he was innocent because of what Holmes did? If they had enough evidence...

You're asking just the right questions. :)

He DID survive, and he was taken to the hospital. He even decided to cooperate with the police! After Brady had claimed Holmes was the mastermind of it all, which was what turned the police onto him in the first place, Holmes testified that Brady killed Jimmy Smith, dismembering him in his cottage and then threatening to murder Holmes if he didn't pay him!! He had Smith's arm with him at the time to prove he meant it. Holmes panicked and threw the arm in the ocean, explaining where it went.

That should've been enough to lead to a conviction...but on the morning of the inquest, Holmes was found in his car with three bullets in the chest. This time, there was no miraculous recovery.

The scene was staged to appear like a suicide, but forensics were able to find inconsistencies. It was undoubtedly murder. Whether Brady had him killed or Holmes, having recently taken out a substantial life insurance policy on himself, hired a hitman to do the job. Whatever the reason, without his testimony the case suffered. Brady was acquitted and swore until he died thirty years later that he had nothing to do with the Shark Arm Murders.

[She’s being praised for her curiosity about crime and death!!! God, that feels good.]

That’s a sad ending for Holmes...but I guess he was already such an amazing part of the case, surviving or not might not have mattered in the end.

[It...makes sense in her head.]

Did Holmes have a wife? I know a married couple is supposed to love each other, but they don’t always. That’s a lot to deal with, especially if his injury affected his personality, and the money might have seemed like the better option.

I feel like it has to have been Brady...but that’s a long time to lie.

You can never know who to believe with these things...and because it's such an old case, it'll probably never be solved.

Holmes did have a wife. It's in fact one of the reasons why people thought he had himself killed with the life insurance policy. It's said the last time she saw him, she accompanied him to the door of his car, as he was very nervous about being out alone. He already tried to kill himself, so maybe he was finishing the job once he knew he had security for his family.

It certainly sounds like Brady was the ringleader...but there IS one more key player in all this who the public didn't really learn about until way after the fact. It was in 1995, in a book published about the case. Author Alex Castles posited that perhaps Brady killed Smith under the orders of someone else—Edward Fredrick Weyman, or Eddie Weyman, one of the most dangerous criminals in Australia during the 1930s. He'd been arrested twice. One for attempting to defraud a bank with a forged check, and the other time after a bank robbery that Smith allegedly gave information on.

This author also was one to push the idea that Holmes hired a hitman to kill himself, since suicide would've voided his life insurance policies.

That voids life insurance? ...That doesn't seem fair. You can get medicine and go to the hospital for it. It should be the same as dying from being sick.

Anyway... That would be nice of him. And nice of the hitman to be there for him, if that is what happened.

[Man. She misses Zack.]

In Australia?
[...ah -- ] You did say that. I forgot. It sounds like everyone had a reason to be mad at Smith. He must have been really good at pretending for him to not have any known enemies when they first identified him.

Are you writing a book about it, too, Miss Riley? You know an awful lot.

What? Oh my gosh, no, I could never!! I'm no good at writing. I just used to listen to true crime podcasts and watch documentaries when I wanted to unwind back home. If a case really interested me, I'd look into it more. That's how I found that book.

Really, it's just a hobby. I could never write a book or anything like that.

[ She tried. After her parents had a poem her brother wrote for a school contest framed. Hers rhymed and was about sunflowers. They didn't even read it. ]

Anyway, intent really matters with insurance policies. It's in EVERYTHING, from life insurance to just electronic warranties. Like how if a laptop doesn't cover accidents. There's a level of it being the person who owns the policy's fault, so the insurance companies don't cover it, to keep people from abusing it to just get more money.

It's always seemed a little bit mean to me, but it's how the world works.

...? It was more conversational than I'm used to reading, but I thought that was because it's a conversation. You're good at remembering and sharing details. You build anticipation. I thought you made it really interesting.

[None if what Riley's just said is making a ton of sense to her, actually. Imagine if anyone in Rachel's life had bought warranties. Imagine if she knew how any of that worked.]

But in the case of life insurance, they can't use the money. They're dead.

Thank you, Rachel. But it's different, between conversations and actually writing a book. There's a certain skill there. Some people have it, some people don't.

[ ... ]

For the insurance, their family can use it, the money. The worry's that people would do exactly what Alex Castles theorized Holmes did. They'd take advantage of it. Some policies do cover it after awhile, but you have to be on the plan for a few years beforehand.

Got it.

[Riley would be the one that knows, she supposes...and some people having "it" isn't really a hard concept to grasp, even if the angle you're coming at it from mostly has "it" being "the urge to kill".]

That doesn't really discourage suicide...just encourages homicide. Someone that wants more than anything to die will find a reason other than helping their family get money pretty easily. It's just a nice thought, being useful to people you value even after you're gone.

[ There's a pause here, as she...considers. ]

It's a nice thought. You're right. A very morbid one, but nice. A person who loves their family enough to go to any lengths to provide for them.

[ It's...hm. She lead them on this subject, but now it feels weird. ]

[It sure does feel weird... Ray's still here for it, but it's much, much weirder than it was five facts ago.]

Oh. Sorry, I wasn't trying to be morbid. That sort of thinking makes me really happy...

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, CHEERYCHERRY. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 019.46.820.17 * CHEERYCHERRY has joined 019.46.820.17 <CHEERYCHERRY> It's Riley! <CHEERYCHERRY> Please leave a message! <CHEERYCHERRY>** Please be someone with their priorities sorted out properly!

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<CheeryCherry> | cw: suicide in true crime

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< r.gardner > suicide chats

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