Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast · Moms and Mysteries Podcast

When Pranks Turn Deadly

·42 min·2 clips

Boston shut down bridges and transit over LED placards for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

1. Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast covers prank calls, viral stunts, and deadly consequences in one episode. 2. Mandi and Melissa host the show, trade comments throughout, and connect each case to criminal charges, lawsuits, or police response. 3. The episode asks what happens when a joke, a stunt, or an online feud crosses into emergency response and physical harm. 4. The first case starts with Andrew Finch at 1033 West McCormick Street in Wichita, Kansas, after a $1.50 Call of Duty World War II wager and a fake address. 5. Tyler Barriss calls Wichita police from a VOIP line and reports a hostage situation, a shot father, and gasoline inside the house. 6. Wichita officers respond, Andrew Finch steps outside, and Officer Justin Rapp fires a single rifle shot that hits Finch in the chest. 7. The family is ordered outside in freezing weather, and a civil rights lawsuit later alleges Andrew's young niece had to walk over his body. 8. The episode then shifts to the 2016 clown panic, which spread through Greenville, Columbus, Green Bay, South Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin. 9. Parents, schools, and police react to reports of clowns with knives, fake accounts, school threats, and lockdowns in Alabama, Texas, and Pennsylvania. 10. The hosts note that one Green Bay clown image was actually a guerrilla marketing stunt for the horror film Gags. 11. The Boston story centers on January 31, 2007, when orange D cell battery packs with exposed wires and taped circuit boards appeared under bridges and transit areas. 12. Turner's Adult Swim campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force placed around 40 LED placards featuring the Mooninites in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. 13. The Boston Police bomb squad, the MBTA, and city officials treated the devices as possible IEDs, closing lanes, bridges, and transit lines. 14. Turner Broadcasting later issued a public apology and paid a $2 million settlement, while the installers were arrested and later saw criminal intent charges dropped. 15. The Toledo case follows four boys on an I-75 overpass in December 2017, where a worn sandbag dropped from the bridge killed 22-year-old Marquise Bird. 16. On April 6, 2018, Judge Denise Navarra-Cubbin sentenced three boys to the Lucas County Youth Treatment Center and gave the 13-year-old a suspended sentence tied to treatment. 17. The episode also covers Timothy Wilkes in Hermitage, Tennessee, who approached strangers in a parking lot with butcher knives for a fake robbery prank filmed for YouTube. 18. The hosts describe Wilkes' death as a self-defense shooting, and they contrast that with Pedro Ruiz III in Halstead, Minnesota, who held a hardcover encyclopedia to his chest for a .50 caliber test. 19. The tone mixes true-crime narration, host banter, and moral reflection, with Mandi and Melissa repeatedly pausing to react to the decisions behind each case. 20. Listeners who follow online culture, true-crime law, and viral hoaxes will get the most from this episode, while people avoiding prank-death cases may skip it.

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