Pod Insights Rotten Mango Fertility Specialist Helps Couples Get Pregnant, Then Has Affair With Wives- Mysteriously Found Dead About this episode Everyone hears about pre-nups but what about post-nups? They’re drafted and signed AFTER two people are legally married and they’re typically much weaker when brought in front of a judge.
For example, the following post-nups of a young couple in Hawaii will likely not stand up in court.
It states that in the event of a divorce: the husband gets all the assets; their family home and full custody of their daughter. The wife gets nothing.
Nothing besides two stipulations:
She is permanently banned from visiting psychics nor can she ever, under no circumstance, see or speak to her fertility specialist ever again.
The specialist is a local acupuncturist named Jon Takuhara who has helped multiple couples successfully conceive. What does Jon have to do with anything? And is it just a coincidence that two weeks after the couple signs their post-nups, Jon is found murdered?
Full show notes available at RottenMangoPodcast.com
Transcript 13,746 words · 3 speakers
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0:59 Speaker 00 It's a big debate. The good old infidelity clause in a prenuptial agreement. Is it viable? Is it not viable? It depends on the state. You think that you can just write in there, before I get married, "Hey, husband, hey, future wife, if you think you're gonna cheat on me, guess again, you're not, because you're gonna give me everything if you do." Some judges in certain states will say, "Yeah, that doesn't work here. You're still gonna get half of everything, even though your pants were in somebody else's closet. It doesn't matter." But there are a lot of other weird clauses that are getting popular. The Weight Watchers Clause. One partner or both partners usually... Yeah, usually the wife will be forced to stick to certain lifestyle habits and fitness goals.
1:43 Speaker 00 Basically, they write into the prenup that for every 10 pounds that a woman gains, she owes her partner a financial fine.
1:50 Speaker 01 Wait, that's... This is real?
1:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, or she forfeits some of the private property that both of them share.
1:57 Speaker 01 Wait, how is that real? This is real?
1:59 Speaker 00 It's most likely not going to be held up in court, but people have been writing it into their prenups. And it's not like a tiny weight on the scale either, the financial fine. One couple wrote that if the wife ever weighs over 120 pounds, she forfeits $100,000 worth of property. Allegedly, reportedly. Jessica Simpson and some guy named Tony Romo, I think he was like a...
2:24 Speaker 00 Some ball dude quarterback or something, okay? Dallas Cowboys, don't be offended. I can't throw a ball for the life of me, okay? But allegedly, when he and Jessica Simpson were dating, they were going to have a prenup clause that required her to pay him half a million dollars for every pound that she gained over a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Thankfully, they never got married? I don't even know if this is true. He is now married to, you know Nate from Gossip Girl?
2:49 Speaker 01 No.
2:49 Speaker 00 Nate Archibald from Gossip Girl, his sister is married to Tony Romo now. But I don't know what's going on in their prenup, if they have one. Or there is a Netflix narc clause. For every hour of TV that a partner watches over the weekly allotted stipulated amount, they will pay their partner a fine. How much TV do you have to be watching for someone to write that into their premarital agreement? The only one that I could maybe, maybe see a use for is a clause that dictates the number of overnight stays for each in-law parent every single year. This could maybe be useful if you have overbearing, always in your space, opinionated, wants to date their own child in-laws that never leave you alone and never stop criticizing you. But that might be the only clause that's not completely unhinged.
3:32 Speaker 00 But also, I feel like you could have probably handled that before you get married. There's also suddenly, um, we're in the red light district clause. If intimate relations are not had at least X amount of times a week, a fine is paid. One couple allegedly even came up with a list of pre-approved positions that count as intimate relations. Some positions don't count, I guess. I don't even know how this is trackable. How would one person prove to the other party that they did not adhere to the terms? I will say, it sounds awful and it probably is, but again, it's entirely unenforceable in the court of law. I highly doubt that a judge is going to sit there and enforce any of these clauses.
4:12 Speaker 00 Which if one clause of an entire agreement in a prenup or a post-nup is deemed frivolous by a judge, it could actually render the entire agreement void and unenforceable. And that is why a lot of attorneys say, hey, don't be dumb. And prenups are very weird.
4:27 Speaker 01 So the cheating clause is also not always enforceable?
4:31 Speaker 00 No, there's lots of states who don't enforce it. California is notoriously one of them. Yeah.
4:37 Speaker 01 Tea?
4:38 Speaker 00 Yeah. So some states just don't like it. I guess it also could depend on the judge, but it's very interesting. Prenups are done before two people get legally married. Postnumps, a lot of judges these days hate postnumps. Postnumps are drafted and signed after two people are legally married. And obviously with postnumps, it's difficult because the courts just hate it. It's more expensive, first of all, to get attorneys to draft up postnumps because they have to go through all the entangled assets that you guys already collectively have. And then from there, judges don't like it because typically you're taking away the rights that people receive upon getting married. So prenups, you're modifying rights before those rights are given to you.
5:21 Speaker 00 Before you get those rights, because the minute you get married, you have certain rights. So you're modifying, hey, you're not going to get this right before we get married. So you never had that right to begin with.
5:31 Speaker 01 Right.
5:31 Speaker 00 But then with a postnump, judges are saying, well, now you're taking away rights. And now we have to factor in, was it signed under duress? Like, there could be a whole butt load of reasons why someone might have signed a postnump versus a prenump. People think prenumps are done with much more clear-headed minds in space. I don't know if that's true, but a lot of attorneys will argue, I mean, yeah, definitely if you don't have a prenump, get a postnump, those are always encouraged. But if you have to pick between the two, if you're thinking about getting a prenump or a postnump, get a prenump. It's so much easier, more affordable legally, and more likely to stand up in court. And this specific couple, a young couple in Hawaii, did a very odd postnump that I really don't know how it would hold up in court.
6:15 Speaker 00 It most likely is not going to stand. I mean, even though it has been heavily criticized, not in family court, though, in criminal court. The postnump between a Hawaiian couple states that in the event of a divorce, the father will get all the assets, the house, the money, the cars, full custody of their daughter. And the mother gets nothing. She gets zero. She doesn't walk out with a dime. And the mother is no longer ever, ever, ever, ever allowed to visit psychics. That's written into the postnump. If she visits a psychic, a divorce will be had.
6:49 Speaker 01 That is crazy. That's likely not enforceable, though, right?
6:53 Speaker 00 Oh, and she can never see or speak to her fertility specialist ever again. Why would that be in a post-nup agreement? Especially when this women's fertility specialist is a man named John Takuhara, a local acupuncturist who recently helped multiple couples conceive. What does John have anything to do with anything? And what does it mean when just two weeks after this document is signed by this Hawaiian couple, the fertility specialist, John Takuhara, is found killed? This is the case of John Takuhara.
7:44 Speaker 00 We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Hawaiian Council, one of the leading nonprofits whose mission is to enhance the cultural, economic, and community development of Native Hawaiians. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. We'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Today's case involves mentions of infertility, infertility treatment, and as well as extramarital affairs during very vulnerable, sensitive times. Please take care and watch with discretion. And with that being said, another note, statements in quotes may be condensed for brevity. So with that being said, let's get into it. January 13th, 2022 is not the best time to be in certain parts of Hawaii.
8:28 Speaker 00 There is something called a lava lake. It's very rare. There's only like 10 documented cases of persistent lava lakes in the entire world. These are different from pools of lava or even lava ponds. Essentially, it's a crater. It's a dip in a volcano. It could be on the side, it could be at the top, and it's created this almost in-ground pool structure to be filled with lava. And every day it just burns lava. And it's connected to a continuous supply of lava, and it's never gonna stop burning. It's like a death swimming pool. And it's always moving because there's lava being pumped into the lake, if you will. And the top layer looks like it's cooled down. So there's almost like this crusty-looking substance covering the red. It looks like if you were to get a Chicago deep-dish pizza, put it on a high broil setting,
9:13 Speaker 00 you've got that crispy layer on top, but the minute that you plunge your finger in, you're gonna get burned because that mozzarella sauce has not cooled down, and it's very wet inside. And the depth is visual. When you see videos of the lava lakes at night, it looks like the center of hell. It's so bright. It just has a red angry glow. You can't even stand near the lava lake's edge without specialized heat resistant gear because your skin is going to melt off. It's gonna just be sludge. The lava itself is going to be from fourteen hundred to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I can't even give you a comparison, but I don't know a single person who doesn't complain when it's like eighty-eight degrees outside.
9:53 Speaker 00 It's deadly and it's even more dangerous because even if you were to kill someone before they fall into a lava lake, like a movie, falling through the volcano fog, the smoke is going to eviscerate airways before they even make contact with the lava lake. January thirteenth, twenty twenty-two, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory gets word that all the monitoring equipment that they set up to monitor one of the lava lakes on the island is about to get covered in lava. So they have to do the quickest rescue mission for their devices. Thankfully, they pull it together and nobody is harmed, but that is not even the biggest news.
10:29 Speaker 01 Why are the device gonna be covered, though?
10:31 Speaker 00 The lava's overflowing.
10:32 Speaker 01 Oh, I see, I see.
10:34 Speaker 00 And that's not even the biggest news. I mean, this was like a big deal, but that doesn't even make the biggest news. The biggest news on the island that day, January thirteenth, twenty twenty-two, is something happened to the healer. The healer makes it sound overtly spiritual, but if you have tension, if you have chronic pain, which a lot of people have, you have to go to the healer and they just call him the healer. He doesn't call himself the healer. He's not like a cult leader. They call him the healer because he's just that good. They're talking about John Takahara, the best acupuncturist in the entire island, the whole area. One person writes in a review, John Takahara works miracles. I've been seeing him for close to a year for traditional Japanese acupuncture. I had constant pain in my back and with his treatment, I can kind of function again.
11:17 Speaker 00 My quality of life has gotten so much better. I'm a person who hates needles, by the way, but I hate taking medications more. So coming from a person that hates needles and pain, you can do it. You barely notice the needles going in. John is that good. You will feel so much better after just one treatment that is going to keep you coming back. Whatever you've got going on, pain, fatigue, stress, depression, headaches, sleeplessness, etc. There is relief. Moreover, there is also designated parking spots for the building, so parking will never be an issue. Community members say, "He really was the healer. He was healing people and people who had pain, discomfort. He's the type of acupuncturist, if you show up at his door in pain, you have no money, he's gonna take you in, he's gonna take good care of you, and he's not gonna ask for payment."
12:00 Speaker 01 Wow.
12:01 Speaker 00 That morning of January thirteenth, twenty twenty-two, eight AM, an older woman with silver hair gets out of the driver's seat of her car. She's parked directly in front of John Takuhara's acupuncture clinic. And she's not here for acupuncture, although she looks like she probably could be. She wasn't able to sleep much last night, and she's walking a little bit slow, she's a little bit elderly. And something just very weird happened last night. Her son was supposed to show up for dinner, she made a hot plate for him, and it's just been sitting there. He never came home for dinner. I mean, he doesn't live with her, but he visits her for dinner, and he's always on time. He doesn't show up, he's not responding to any of her messages. She thought, "Maybe he forgot? Maybe he decided to eat dinner with his girlfriend instead," but he's not the type to not tell his mom about that.
12:46 Speaker 00 She gets out of her parked car, opens the door to the acupuncture clinic. And laying in a pool of blood, next to the front desk, is John Takuhara, the healer. And he's been murdered. Someone walked into the clinic, the acupuncture clinic, and shot him four times in the head. But who the hell would want a healer dead? There's a few different ways acupuncture can be explained. The first more traditional way is the idea that energy flows through the body, so there's qi. The energy is called qi, and there's fourteen different energy channels inside of our bodies. When one of those energy channels becomes blocked or imbalanced, of course, you're gonna feel pain, which could explain why certain illnesses, like you feel like
13:29 Speaker 00 you try all this modern medicine and you can't fix the pain, it's because you're not fixing the root of the problem, which is your qi is blocked. Acupuncture aims to help unblock and rebalance the energy by stimulating specific points along certain energy channels. Then there's the more biomedical perspective, but here's the very interesting thing. Both things lead to the same place. So someone can say, "Oh, the qi is blocked here, so I'm gonna put a needle here." And then the biomedical perspective, which is- Simply when you insert needles, it can activate local receptors and nerve fibers, which could do one a few things. It could do nothing, or it could release endorphins, which are natural painkillers that your body produces. It could also help modulate cortisol, the natural stress hormone, or it could be like, okay, to put it for like the skincare girls,
14:13 Speaker 00 micro needling on the face. Why are people stabbing their face with needles? Because when you create these micro, super tiny traumatic environments, it signals to the body to recruit immune cells.
14:25 Speaker 01 To heal it.
14:26 Speaker 00 Yes, to heal it, to release biomolecules that promote tissue repair, which just doesn't just repair the tiny micro traumatic incisions, but also whatever was bringing you pain in the first place. I mean, this practice has been around for at least three thousand something years. The needles are not painful. I mean, once they're inserted, you usually have to keep them in for thirty minutes. They're about the width of a tiny hair. And people say you can't even feel it going in. And if you do, it's kind of like a, like a warm sensation.
14:52 Speaker 01 You tried it, right? Yeah, years ago.
14:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. My mom goes to an acupuncture. She loves it. I'm not the biggest fan because I get really anxious. But people love it. And I will say, because it's rooted in eastern tradition, there's definitely a lot of skepticism and opinions about it in the West. Opinions range from the efficacy to the probability. I mean, people will say things like, it was okay. It got rid of my headache for the day. It's kind of comparable to like a deep tissue massage. Other people will say, it cured my chronic pain and that could not be fixed by anything. I got surgery and it didn't do anything, but acupuncture saved my life. So it's like a vast range. I think the main reason people don't believe in acupuncture is because they hold it to a really high standard.
15:37 Speaker 00 Just like how most medications and probably even surgeries will not cure people of chronic pain or ailments, acupuncture should be held with the same regard. But I will argue for acupuncture in the sense of, out of all the things that someone could recommend to another person to help remedy chronic pain, acupuncture probably has the least side effects versus opioids, versus painkillers. You know what I mean? It seems like.
16:03 Speaker 01 I mean, maybe not painkiller, man. Even painkillers?
16:06 Speaker 00 They have crazy side effects, which I'm not saying you shouldn't use painkillers, but I'm saying, you know, the side effects. Yeah, if you had to recommend something that has like the least probability of harming someone to just test out. Acupuncture could be one of those, provided that you go to a good practitioner. A lot of people agree, it's not the worst thing to try out if you've already tried out a lot of things. But it's very interesting. A lot of acupuncturists actually say they're always the last resort. They say patients will come in every day and the acupuncture clinic is the last stop before the surgeon. Before they're like, okay, if this doesn't work, I'm getting surgery. Or it's the first stop right after surgery, because they're like, hey, so that surgery didn't do shit. They're usually at a dead road. They've tried twelve other things before this.
16:51 Speaker 00 They don't believe in acupuncture, but here they are. They're like, I've tried everything. Sometimes it changes their lives. Sometimes it doesn't, and it does seem like there is a growing trend for acupuncture being used as fertility treatment. I'm not a medical professional, but recently I've been listening when when I was going in my deep dive. And I don't want to name the people because I think all of them have been in scandals, but a lot of, everyone's in a scandal, everyone's in the files. A lot of doctors, big name doctors who had podcasts. Oh, I'm not talking about that doctor. I'm talking about like Andrew Huberman. He was not in the files, but he was, I don't know. There was something with him. I think, whatever. He was also even talking about how there have been recent studies that do show a strong link between acupuncture and fertility.
17:31 Speaker 00 So a lot of Western doctors are like, okay, we were wrong, like, this is not some voodoo Chinese shit. We thought it was, like, maybe it actually works. There have been recent studies funded by the National Institute of Health that show links between acupuncture and hormone health. So they say that acupuncture helps with blood flow, which in turn helps with the health of the ovaries. Additionally, on the male side, apparently there are a lot of clinical studies that have shown that acupuncture can help with sperm quality and quantity. But they don't stick it where you think they'll stick it, so you don't have to freak out. You can just go, you'll have a good time. One acupuncturist's website reads, ultra-thin acupuncture needles will be applied to specific points in the body. Usually like near the pelvic area, but not there.
18:14 Speaker 00 And it reduces stress, balances hormones, improves blood flow. And you're not supposed to do this before IVF. So they're not saying this is IVF replacement. They're saying actually the best time to do acupuncture for fertility is three months before your IVF round. Because it helps blood flow, helps the health of your eggs, the quantity of the sperm. So like three months before you're trying to conceive or before IVF, and it really helps increase your probability is the belief out there. And it's interesting because acupuncture, they alternate on the different weeks of the menstrual cycle. So they're very in tune with the hormones. It's not just like, hey, woman, sit down. It's like, oh,
18:56 Speaker 00 when was your last period? Okay, now let's fine tune with what we think the body needs depending on the cycle phase. John Takuhara was an acupuncturist that had success in fertility treatments. It has been reported that many of his clients came to see him with fertility concerns, and they were able to conceive after seeing him. So why would someone want to kill someone like John Takuhara, who is out here helping people create families?
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22:03 Speaker 00 When the authorities get to the acupuncture clinic, the first thing they do is comb through the office and later, all the security cameras outside. There's no cameras inside the office, but there's some street-level cameras from the nearby businesses. And they just keep looking and there's nothing crazy going on. It's a normal day, there's a lot of businesses, a lot of people walking around, except this one person stands out to them. It's not like a weird person. They keep seeing him walking in circles around the block. And it's not like they're standing and pacing in front of the clinic, but their movements just seem unnatural. So a few things stand out. The weather in Hawaii, January, really warm. High of 79. This person is wearing an all-black outfit, long black pants, long black jacket, carrying one of those brown paper shopping bags from a grocery store,
22:47 Speaker 00 and a big white bucket hat that covers their entire face. You can't see the person's face. You can't even tell if this person is a man or a woman. You can just tell they're weird. They first appear on cameras a few blocks away from John's clinic. They're walking with determination for a good chunk of the way. Where they're going, we don't know yet, but it seems like they know. But the moment that they're in front of John's office, there's this weird moment where they like turn around. And then walk a few paces away from the office and then turn back around and walk towards the office once more.
23:21 Speaker 01 Like they can't decide where to go.
23:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:24 Speaker 01 What to do?
23:25 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. But they were walking with determination all the other times and then suddenly they're like, uh, maybe I should turn around, maybe I shouldn't turn around.
23:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Is his face showing at all on in the camera?
23:37 Speaker 00 No, no face. They're presumably inside the clinic for forty eight seconds. That's what the police have put out. Where it is believed that John is killed and ambushed. There's no signs of a fight and it seems like whoever this was took John completely by surprise.
23:52 Speaker 01 Wow.
23:53 Speaker 00 Now, I don't know what they would have done if John was with a patient.
23:56 Speaker 01 Hmm.
23:57 Speaker 00 I don't know, but they just walk out of the clinic forty eight seconds later and then walk away. There are two interesting moments that are captured when they walk off. First, there's this seemingly anxious moment. So the whole way that they're going towards the clinic, they're determined. Their fast brisk walk and then all of a sudden they U turn and then you turn it back and then they enter the clinic. Forty eight seconds later, they walk back out, same walk, they seem casual and then they have this anxious moment where they open up the brown grocery bag. And then look, you know, kind of, it's like when you walk through the airport and you randomly have a moment of panic and you zip up in your bag and you're like, oh, okay, yeah. My passport is exactly where I saw it two seconds ago, but then you do it again and again and again. It's kind of like that.
24:38 Speaker 00 It doesn't look like, oh, let me just casually open this bag and see if I bought my sour candy.
24:43 Speaker 01 He's like, open it. Oh, my gun is.
24:46 Speaker 00 Yes.
24:47 Speaker 01 Still here.
24:47 Speaker 00 Yes, that's the, it looks like that. And more importantly, there is this moment when this individual in question is walking across the street. And the wind hits, it's like the gentlest blow of wind. And the white bucket hat flies off the person's head and lands directly in the middle of the street and they don't stop. They don't stop, they don't pick it up, they don't U turn later, they just keep walking. Their hat is on the ground getting run over by cars. It's almost like they don't feel the hat flying off of them. But how do you not feel your bucket hat blowing off in the wind?
25:22 Speaker 01 So is his face out there then?
25:25 Speaker 00 Well, how do we know it's him? Because underneath, there's long hair. But that long hair, police believe, might be a wig.
25:36 Speaker 01 Like how long, like your your hair long?
25:38 Speaker 00 A little bit shorter, mine's a little long, but a little shorter.
25:41 Speaker 01 Okay, and what color is it?
25:43 Speaker 00 Blondish. It's very clear, it's like a wig.
25:47 Speaker 01 Right, is it like a woman's hair?
25:49 Speaker 00 It looks like it's like long but tied, kind of tied up.
25:53 Speaker 01 Okay.
25:53 Speaker 00 So is it a woman wearing a wig, is it a man wearing a wig? But that wig might be the reason that they don't feel the hat blowing off.
26:02 Speaker 01 Ah, I see.
26:04 Speaker 00 But that that hat is the key to a lot of questions. It could have this individual's DNA. It could be a very specific brand that only eighty nine people on the island have ordered this hat online. Everything else at the crime scene doesn't have a clear lead. This is the closest that authorities are going to get to whoever shot John in the head four times. Ten days after John's murder, they tracked down the white bucket hat. And it is now sitting at the very edge of a man without a home's camp.
26:34 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
26:35 Speaker 00 Just like squeezed on in the side, next to his tent. He said, yeah, picked it up on the street. I wore it once, and then I never touched it again. This hat is going to be a very, very big problem in the murder trial for who murdered John Takahara. Eric and Joyce Thompson are high school sweethearts turned millionaires. Pretty much their entire lives, they've been with each other, and now they have a daughter together. Eric and Joyce have a daughter. And a very strange postnub, like you don't just wake up from slumber one morning and decide that life cannot go on without the signing of a legal document that forbids one of your party members from seeing psychics. What the hell is happening inside the Thompson home? Eric could tell that something was off with Joyce.
27:20 Speaker 00 It's not as subtle as other couples, so some people say that the signs are barely there. And when they come up, it's so small that you try to explain it away and laugh it off. Like when you're driving in the car and your partner turns to you, and they're like, oh, should we go there for dinner next week? You're like, where? That restaurant that we just drove by, don't you love it? I've literally never been there my entire life. Sure you have. You you you said you liked it. I never said that. Okay, it's weird. You've been together for so long. But the only explanation is like, maybe he genuinely got confused. From like a different restaurant, even though none of the other restaurants sound the same. Or have similar locations. Or even types of cuisines, but like maybe they're stressed out from work. Or suddenly their phone is always on silent when that's not their normal pattern.
28:03 Speaker 00 And they always turn it down, face down on the table, no matter where they are. Or they've disconnected it from all the cars. Suddenly their airplane is not connected. Their Bluetooth to the car is not connected, which is really odd. But like maybe their phone reset it and they just haven't had time to reconnect it.
28:20 Speaker 01 These are so specific.
28:22 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:22 Speaker 01 Crazy.
28:23 Speaker 00 Someone said it was actually the strange dropping of the word we. Like when we would go and hang out with family and friends. It was always like, oh, we haven't thought about that. Like, we should try that. We should go there one day. But like suddenly that we is gone. Oh, I should try that. I haven't thought about that.
28:38 Speaker 01 That's crazy. Are these like real?
28:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:40 Speaker 01 Things that people picked up on?
28:41 Speaker 00 Yes.
28:42 Speaker 01 From their cheating partner?
28:43 Speaker 00 Yeah. All the small subtle signs. But you know, these are very small things. That you don't pick up on until they pile up. For Eric, the details were more in his face. He was on a work trip and his wife Joyce is constantly going to family dinners. That he's a part of because he's her husband. So like he's family, right? He's like the father of their child. So he's family, right? But then she would explain to him, oh, it's just me and my siblings in my side of the family, not you. All of a sudden, you want to have separated family. It doesn't make sense. But then during a work trip, Eric gets a notification on their security cameras in their multimillion dollar on the water mansion in Hawaii. That there's movement. Joyce is caught on the cameras, leaving the house alone.
29:27 Speaker 00 That means their young daughter is inside the house alone. And Joyce is leaving the house alone. And she's gone for like forty minutes, but where would she need to go? That is so important that she leaves their young daughter.
29:37 Speaker 01 How old?
29:38 Speaker 00 Like four years, three years old?
29:40 Speaker 01 Oh, oh, right, right, right. Whoa.
29:42 Speaker 00 She's gone from the house. Oh, no, I'm so sorry. Like a year old.
29:45 Speaker 01 A year old?
29:46 Speaker 00 Yeah. She's gone from the house for about forty minutes.
29:50 Speaker 01 What time is she leaving?
29:51 Speaker 00 This is like in the morning, so presumably the baby is asleep. And he says, I was just kind of scratching my head, like, where are you going and where's our daughter? When he gets back from his work trip, Eric confronts Joyce and they spend the entire night fighting and the next day she confesses that she's having an affair. Eric says, quote, I was shocked. And then I was like, was this with? You know, like, the people that you're having dinner with, like, who are you going on these dinners with? And she said, no, it was with John Takahara. And I was like, who? And she's like, you know, Dr. John. And I was like, oh shit, the massage guy? That's what he calls John Takahara.
30:31 Speaker 00 John Takahara is the man that Joyce went to to try and help her and Eric conceive a child when she was struggling with fertility. Then after giving birth to their daughter, she started having postpartum, or at least that's what I think. Eric describes it as like, she's always wanted to be a mom, but then she was feeling not like she wanted to be a mom, which sounds exactly like postpartum. And she went back to seeing him and clearly an affair started. How did Eric feel about that? He says, it was just like, just like, didn't make any sense. Like, not only why, but like, how, how logistically could this happen? I had no, I mean, prior to that week, there was like zero suspicion, like I never would have expected.
31:12 Speaker 01 So John calls him the massage guy, right?
31:14 Speaker 00 Eric calls John.
31:15 Speaker 01 Oh, Eric calls John. Is, does John do massage or only?
31:19 Speaker 00 Just acupuncture.
31:20 Speaker 01 Just, okay, okay, I see.
31:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, also, I think it was probably a tough spot, because I wonder if maybe perhaps Eric felt like he's in a more financially stable point in his life than John Takahara. And John Takahara is ten years older than both of them. Because him and Joyce met in high school.
31:40 Speaker 01 Wait, who, John is ten years older than Eric?
31:43 Speaker 00 Eric and Joyce. Eric and Joyce are the same age, yeah.
31:46 Speaker 01 How old are they?
31:47 Speaker 00 They're probably in there like when this is unfolding, late twenties, early thirties.
31:51 Speaker 01 What? They're young.
31:53 Speaker 00 They're young and they're, he's a millionaire.
31:55 Speaker 01 What, what, what, what did they do?
31:57 Speaker 00 He's the bathtub guy. So if you are not able-bodied or for more elderly people in the island, he will specialize bathtubs that are easy to get in and out of so that they can take baths independently.
32:11 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
32:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, so he does these custom bathtub builds and he does really well for himself. I mean, they live in like this two and some change million dollar house on the water.
32:20 Speaker 01 Wow, okay.
32:22 Speaker 00 And he says, I was sad at first, just, you know, because my suspicions were confirmed. I was pissed, like, why would you, why would this happen? Like, what, what did I do to deserve this? And like, it's just really confusing. Eric says the next few months, they're just dedicated to rebuilding this trust. The post-nump is obviously part of it. And according to Eric, Joyce is the one that suggested it to give Eric peace of mind. She's like, hey, if you feel stressed about it, like, we've been dating since high school. I'll sign a post-nump where you get everything if we divorce.
32:51 Speaker 00 Eric says, Joyce, I mean, she's, she's really great. I mean, I couldn't have expected or asked for more of her. I could tell she's fully committed to making the family work. The affair, it was in the rearview mirror, more or less, just more planning for our futures. That's what we were doing. What did they plan exactly? Because two weeks after the signing of the post-nump, John is dead.
33:13 Speaker 00 The police go through John Takahara's phone and they find thousands of messages. And if they follow each and every lead that's in it, it's going to lead them to at least three different men. John DiMarco. I'm just gonna call him DiMarco to not get confused with the victim, John Takahara. DiMarco is a man who looks like he gets sunburnt easily and owns way too many Hawaiian shirts. But DiMarco has a lot of reason to want John Takahara dead. John is DiMarco's other John. He is the reason that DiMarco and his wife divorced. DiMarco's ex-wife had gone to see John, the acupuncturist, which started this passionate affair that DiMarco eventually found out about. And he's honest with detectives. He says I was super pissed. But also, I said, kind of like, good riddance. He could have her.
33:57 Speaker 00 And I just wanted to focus on my kids and myself. I knew that I've never been able to trust her again, because that was just a huge part of me, you know, as a person. I was just like, good riddance. And then I called John up and we weren't yelling or anything. I'm not a fighting type. DeMarco's ex-wife actually stays with John Takahara a while after their divorce. And John becomes like a secondary father figure to their kids for a little bit. But that was like years ago. So DeMarco is like, there's no reason for me to want to kill John Takahara. It's not like I was still with my ex-wife. Why would I want to kill him? At least that's what he says.
34:32 Speaker 01 Is John still with the ex-wife then?
34:34 Speaker 00 No.
34:35 Speaker 01 Oh, they also broke up?
34:36 Speaker 00 Yeah. The police keep digging and that lands them at the door of a man named Daryl Fujita. Daryl is a man who could safely. You could safely assume that he's been scorned. Daryl's ex-girlfriend broke up with him for John Takahara. We don't know if there was an affair, but she breaks up with him and starts dating John Takahara. Then her and John break up and she goes back to Daryl and they start dating again. Okay, then she breaks up with him and was the current girlfriend of John Takahara when he passed.
35:10 Speaker 00 So Daryl has been left by his girlfriend twi- they also share a child together. And it is also believed that he, she went to John Takahara for fertility treatments as well and other acupuncture services. But he's been left by his girlfriend twice because of John Takahara. And one could maybe assume that she was having an affair. We don't know. A- and it's not like Daryl and his girlfriend are, we're in this casual fling. They have a house, they have a child together. But he claims, Daryl is like, there is no bad blood. None. None, none, none, none. None. The police are like, can we search your phone? He's like, okay. So this is how I think the preceding conversation unfolded. Can we go through your phone?
35:51 Speaker 00 Absolutely. But I should let you know, I just reset the entire phone. So there's really nothing on there. I re-formatted it. I reset it. There's nothing.
35:59 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
36:01 Speaker 00 Why would you do that?
36:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:02 Speaker 00 Why not? He literally says later during the trial, he's like, I mean, why it's not weird to reformat your phone unless you have something to hide.
36:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:13 Speaker 00 And then he immediately hates his words because he said, it's not weird unless you have something to hide. And then he's like, I mean, not that I had anything. And then he just is like fumbling, bumbling.
36:25 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
36:26 Speaker 00 Then there's Eric Thompson, the bathtub guy. Okay. Eric and Joyce Thompson, you know, John, this is how they figure out. Police find out that John has an Instagram account that only has one follower. And this one follower's name is Little Squeeze Me. And there are messages, DMs between the two of them. And when authorities tracked down the owner of that Instagram account, they found that it belongs to Joyce Thompson. Joyce Thompson is Eric Thompson's wife, and she's having an affair with John Takahara. The affair lasted two months, which seems like a short amount of time. Not that cheating is judged by the scale of duration, but they were connected very quickly. There's at least 5,600 messages between the two of them. John, the acupuncturist and Joyce, the wife, within
37:10 Speaker 00 the span of one month. That's just one of the two months that they were having an affair. There are messages from July where they seem to end things. Joyce tells John that her husband Eric found out and that she doesn't want to end things with Eric. She doesn't want to be with John. John was actually ready for a committed relationship. He was telling her, like, if you leave your husband, like, I want to be committed. But she said, I'm not going to leave my husband.
37:32 Speaker 01 But he had a girlfriend, too.
37:34 Speaker 00 He did not at, well, we don't know if he was seeing her at the same time, or like, he saw her right after. Because after they end the affair, there's like nine months before he dies.
37:47 Speaker 01 Oh.
37:48 Speaker 00 That's what's weird. Yeah.
37:50 Speaker 01 Wait.
37:51 Speaker 00 But the.
37:52 Speaker 01 This was nine months or?
37:53 Speaker 00 Yeah. So this, they end the affair July. He, okay, not nine months, six months. He passes away January.
38:00 Speaker 01 Oh, okay. Interesting. So during that six month period, nothing is happening. And then at the end of the six month, she offered to do a post-nup.
38:13 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
38:14 Speaker 01 And then he died.
38:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, they sign it.
38:16 Speaker 01 Like a cooling period of six months of nothing is happening.
38:19 Speaker 00 But like, I don't know if she offered the post-nup near towards January or towards July. I do know that probably the drafting of it would take a long time since they've been together since high school. I wonder if there's a lot of assets and they have a successful business. And then they, I don't know. I actually don't know how long that would take, but maybe not six months. We're pretty quick.
38:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:44 Speaker 00 And so as she's breaking up with him, John is asking if he can still keep in contact through her siblings. And she's like, no, no contact. It's just too much. Interestingly enough, one month later in August, there's one last phone call, a FaceTime from Joyce, the wife, to John, the acupuncturist, and he doesn't pick up. By all appearances, eh, I, one could imagine that their affair is over. The relationship is done. And there's a ton of photos that were exchanged during that affair, um, intimate photos, lots of messages. And they, they did say things like, I love you to each other. Yeah. And the whole thing is made trickier by the fact that Joyce and Eric, they first bring John into their lives when she's trying to get pregnant.
39:27 Speaker 00 Joyce had suffered a miscarriage. Her friend recommends her to go see John, the acupuncturist, and she gets pregnant soon after, successfully gives birth, and then she's struggling with postpartum, and then she goes to see John again, and that's when the affair starts. Some people think that perhaps it's easier for Eric, the husband, to forgive Joyce, knowing that she was dealing with postpartum. Like maybe in his mind, this is his high school sweetheart. She's never done anything like this before. And she had this experience where all of her brain chemicals and her hormones were off balance. And she's in this vulnerable space. And I'm not the one justifying it, but some nutizens are saying, maybe he could forgive her because of all of those reasons.
40:09 Speaker 00 And he also saw fault in himself, perhaps, because the way that he initially described what was going on with Joyce after giving birth, it seemed like maybe he did not understand postpartum. He just seemed confused. Like, you've always wanted to be a mom. So now you're a mom. Why aren't you happy? Like, that was his confusion. So maybe, because would Eric really kill John Takahara nine months after the affair is already over? Besides, that night that John was killed, Eric claims that he has an alibi. He was busy dumping construction material in his truck. And are we sure that these are the only leads? What about the backpack? So right next to John Takahara's body was a backpack,
40:51 Speaker 00 and inside of it is a bundle of cash, $4,000 in cash, wrapped in a piece of paper that has the word herbs written on there. What does that mean? And what about the psychic? Psychics have a long history of reading relationships and sometimes sending people off into fits of paranoia. Like, they will tell you how your relationships will go based off of your reading. This psychic that Joyce apparently went to encouraged her to have an affair with John Takahara, told her it's the right thing to do.
41:23 Speaker 01 That's insane.
41:24 Speaker 00 At least that's what Joyce claims. But I'm not sure if any of them predicted, though, that right around Eric and Joyce's wedding anniversary, Eric Thompson would be arrested for murdering John Takahara. The evidence against Eric Thompson is aggressively thin, and that's not to say that I don't personally think that he's guilty or that he did not do this, just that the evidence itself is thin. There are really only a few elements. The truck, the hat, the fire. Let's start with the truck. A white Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck is seen driving in circles around the business just minutes before John is killed. Side note, authorities believe that the This is a 2014 to 2016 pickup truck.
42:04 Speaker 00 They find fifty-three vehicles registered in that area with that same pickup truck manufactured in that timeframe. They talked to fifty-two of the owners and all of them have alibis and only one of them is connected to anyone that has any connection with John Takahara. And that is Eric Thompson. Furthermore, an odd detail is Eric would always have this silver toolbox on the back of his truck. It's like a huge trunk. Do you know what I'm talking about? Some pickup trucks like near the near where the passengers sit, but on the truck, there's this huge silver box.
42:35 Speaker 01 Like the toolbox.
42:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's like a toolbox that stays on there and he always had it on there. And his neighbor's ring cameras caught him pulling out the day before John Takahara is killed. That toolbox is gone. He took it off. Why did he take it off? He says it was to load construction equipment, but the authorities are like, we never saw you ever take it off.
42:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:55 Speaker 00 Then that car is seen driving around. We don't have like the exact license plate matchup, so it's hard to confirm nail on the head that that's him. But that's what authorities believe. Then there's the figure in the white bucket hat. Why do people think that this random person walking around is a person of interest compared to everybody else? Well, they just look nervous. It seems like they walked in the direction of the acupuncture clinic and then they walked away after forty-eight seconds. It seems like this is the killer, right? This is the only way that makes sense. Nobody else entered the clinic. It's gotta be the white bucket hat. But how do we know that this white bucket hat is Eric Thompson? There is a video of the white bucket hat walking and he swings his right arm a lot.
43:35 Speaker 01 Okay.
43:36 Speaker 00 Then there's a video of Eric walking and he swings his right arm a lot. It sounds super circumstantial, but the authorities will say it's something that you can't even try to fix. For example, in the CIA, it's reported that operatives, when they go undercover and they work in a in environments where they can't give away their gate, they will put a small piece of gravel in only one shoe to alter how they walk. Because it's something that you can't even think about fixing so constantly. And since we're listing out all the strange things, it does get worse. After Eric gets home for about five minutes, his backyard is all lit up. The neighbor's camera, it's like orange. He's burning something. Later, during the police search, they find a bucket in a wheelbarrow that shows something was burnt in there.
44:16 Speaker 00 Police argue that he's getting rid of the murder weapon, which they believe is a ghost gun, like a 3D printed gun, because they haven't been able to find this murder weapon.
44:24 Speaker 01 Crazy.
44:25 Speaker 00 He's cleaning up the crime scene. Eric argues he was lighting up tiki torches. Cause he was out there with his daughter and there's a bunch of bugs, so he's lighting up tiki torches. Within a few hours, Eric leaves the house again, and this time his white pickup truck has a steel toolbox back on there like it always has. And he was like, oh yeah, I was going out for more work.
44:46 Speaker 00 But allegedly, one of the messages between Joyce and John, the acupuncturist, Joyce is warning him that she cannot be with him. She cannot leave her husband, she cannot leave their daughter, and also Eric might kill you.
45:00 Speaker 01 Like actually warning him that Eric's gonna kill him, or is like, oh no, if he finds out, he's gonna kill you?
45:06 Speaker 00 We don't know.
45:09 Speaker 00 Others are defending Eric. They say that video of the white bucket hat, we don't even know if that's a man or a woman. How can you say it's Eric Thompson? When the hat blows off, there's a wig, but that so-called wig is never found. Some people have also resorted to victim blaming, saying things.
45:24 Speaker 01 The wig is burned.
45:25 Speaker 00 Yeah.
45:26 Speaker 01 That's very easy to burn, isn't it?
45:29 Speaker 00 But wouldn't there be strong smells?
45:32 Speaker 01 I mean, if he, they live in a big waterfront house, there's like so much space.
45:40 Speaker 00 That's true.
45:41 Speaker 01 Okay.
45:42 Speaker 00 But others have resorted to victim blaming. Some say that an acupuncturist is actually kind of like a physician. A physician holds immense power. This is an online comment. The inherent trust placed in them by patients who are often vulnerable or in distress, this creates a profound imbalance of power, where genuine consent becomes murky and the risk of exploitation is high. It's not just unprofessional, it's a cause for license revocation in most states. One attorney who analyzed the case writes, despite specializing in fertility treatments, a field that demands the highest level of professional boundaries, Mr. Tokahara engaged in sexual relationships with three different patients, a fact confirmed and uncontested in open court.
46:22 Speaker 00 It's hard to grasp how such clear violations were overlooked, and honest reckoning might have prevented a tragic ending. But also, I don't know if that's rights to kill anybody. But Eric and his family would say that Eric would not kill John. That is not in his nature. And let's say in some crazy world he did. This would not have been the time. They say Eric and Joyce were actually making amends after the affair. They were not fighting. They were actually using it to reflect with Eric realizing that he was spending too much time working and not spending enough time with his young family that he desperately wanted so badly. But I don't know. That's what family is saying. And they're saying six months after the affair ended, what motive would Eric have?
47:05 Speaker 00 Regardless, Eric Thompson is charged. They're gonna go ahead with the trial and he is able to post a one million dollar bond and gets released from jail three hours after being charged.
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50:08 Speaker 00 There are a few ways a lot of defense attorneys would have gone about arguments in court. The first could have been it's a crime of passion. You're in severe emotional distress is another one. But the problem is the murder happens six months after the affair ends. That's not a crime of passion. It's not like you walk in and catch your partner cheating and then perhaps you could try and argue that it's a crime of passion. And then as for the emotional distress, other legal experts argue you can't just argue that you're angry and sad and upset that your wife is cheating. You have to have reached a severe mental capacity that lessens your faculties and causes you to commit a crime. It's very difficult to argue. So Eric's attorneys go for the third option, which is just straight up. Your honor, my client didn't do it. He didn't do it. In fact, there could be a ton of other parties that just had more motive.
50:54 Speaker 00 The third-party defense. And that is why you have DeMarco and Daryl brought in by the prosecutors to testify on the stand. So they want to rule out Eric Thompson being able to use that as any sort of defense. And the prosecutors argue throughout the trial that Eric Thompson is a perfectionist. And Joyce is no longer seeing her affair partner, John, but he will always be a stain, a potential in their marriage. He would have to be gone in order for them to move on. Just look at the way he handles the affair. The prosecutors argue he has her sign a post-nump agreement. I mean, the defense argues it was Joyce's idea, but the prosecutors argue, but they still signed it.
51:37 Speaker 00 And he made her tell their families what she did, and she was forbidden from being alone with her siblings. Because her siblings covered for her and helped her cheat. Which, I mean, some people say is not that crazy of a thing.
51:51 Speaker 01 I mean, that's.
51:52 Speaker 00 Some people say it's crazy because if you're forbidding your partner from seeing their siblings alone, then you might as well just divorce at that point because like, where's the trust? The prosecutors further argue, even if it is true that Joyce is the one that came up with this post-nump, to go through with it is incredibly controlling. She cannot leave no matter what, unless she's ready to lose everything, including her child. If you're really not a controlling person, would you not just not sign it and try to make your marriage work? And yes, while the affair was done six months before the murder, one of the biggest things in the post-nump is that Joyce was not allowed to ever see a psychic again. Because the psychic is the one that allegedly told her to have an affair, and she seems like someone who would absolutely listen to everything her psychic says. Well, within the 12 days after signing the post-nump,
52:36 Speaker 00 and before John Takahara is murdered, she goes and sees a psychic. The prosecutor is putting the question in people's minds, did that trigger Eric? Did he realize that she's clearly not going to listen to the post-nump? So that means she could easily just rekindle an affair with John Takahara? And the night that John Takahara is killed, Eric says that he's out dumping bricks. Yeah, well, the prosecutors, they go to the dump site, they even bring in during the trial, the guy that works there. And they're like, do you guys take bricks? No. But the defense is like, well, do you even check what everyone's bringing? And he's like, no.
53:11 Speaker 00 But it's not enough, you know, the prosecutors argue in their statement that forty eight seconds is what it took for Eric Thompson to kill John Takahara. The defense argues Eric is innocent. This, none of this makes sense. He has a similar truck. He has a similar walk to the guy. Everything is similar, similar, similar, but there's no concrete evidence. They also go on to victim blame. The defense, they say, look at John, he's talking to so many women, so many people have motive, which one person close to John Takahara hated that and says, he was not a homewrecker. He was a nice guy. I mean, he gives back to his community. Like for high school, if you're participating in a sport and you're in a medical field, guess what? You get a $2,000 scholarship from John Takahara. Like, that's the type of guy he is.
53:55 Speaker 00 The defense argues, yeah, he's that, but also someone who just like goes after married women. And I do think that that's like a crazy victim blame because,
54:05 Speaker 00 I mean, one thing can be true, but doesn't mean anyone should be justified in murder. I guess the way that they're trying to say it though, is that, no, he has lots of suspects, but the police have only zeroed in on our client. They're not looking at all the other potential scorned men out there. They're only busy about this one. That's what they're arguing. In their closing statement, they're like, we need more to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. There was evidence that John Takahara had a track record of cheating with, becoming involved with women who were in relationships. Two thousand five hundred messages with another woman. Okay, we didn't follow up on that one. We didn't follow up on the woman, the messages that he ghosted. We didn't follow up on the gambling posts. The detectives told witnesses specifically, John was not involved in any gambling. We had a secret life.
54:48 Speaker 00 So the money, they're trying to pin it on gambling. Because the $4,000 in the backpack, the defense is like, well, he also posted about gambling, so maybe he was gambling and he owed someone money. But I mean, the way it said herbs on there, I kind of wonder if he was just buying herbs for traditional medicine.
55:07 Speaker 01 Right, hmm. Yeah. So tho- those are his money, just left it, right, okay.
55:14 Speaker 00 And the defense argues that the prosecutor's narrative about Eric Thompson being this controlling guy. I mean, i- it's weird. They say, no one forced his wife to sign this post-nub. They put Eric up on the stand. And Eric says, we've been together for so long, she knew that I was never gonna leave her, and she knew that she was never going to cheat again. So it was just like, hey, look, I'll prove it to you. So it was more of like a symbolic thing, they're trying to argue, than like a real thing, especially because it probably wouldn't hold up in court anyway.
55:44 Speaker 01 Where is the wi- wife during the trial and?
55:48 Speaker 00 She is sitting right behind Eric Thompson, supporting him the whole way through. She chooses not to testify, but she is there every day of court, every day of trial, for both trials, because the first trial ends up as a mistrial. With three jurors being hung.
56:07 Speaker 01 Huh, because they couldn't come to?
56:09 Speaker 00 No.
56:09 Speaker 01 The, wow.
56:12 Speaker 00 Also, the fire burned in the backyard, those are from tiki torches. They bring in a fire expert who testifies from the video of the fire, that could potentially depict tiki torches, like, there's no way to say what that fire is from. As for the wheelbarrow with the bucket of melted stuff in there, he says that he uses it to melt metal for work projects, because that's what he does for work.
56:35 Speaker 00 Also, they argue that none of this footage makes sense. So they say that the white bucket hat man enters the building for forty-eight seconds, and then he leaves, and John Takahara is presumably dead at that point. So this man allegedly enters the building at six sixteen P M. Forty-eight seconds and then leaves. But there was activity. John's phone was unlocked at six eighteen P M.
56:59 Speaker 01 What does that mean?
57:00 Speaker 00 So they're like, okay, but he leaves forty-eight seconds after. Who, who unlocked John Takahara's phone is what the defense is asking.
57:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, who did?
57:08 Speaker 00 It wasn't John. It wasn't anybody else, so that means they're just saying, we don't know, but it seems like your timeline is wrong.
57:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:17 Speaker 00 The defense argues, like, if you can't even get that correct, what else are you not getting correct? The prosecutors are arguing, okay, well, it could have been like six sixteen, that was about to be six seventeen. And like, you know, everyone is arguing lots of different things.
57:32 Speaker 01 So he's John helps with fertility through acupuncture, right?
57:38 Speaker 00 I know where you're going with this.
57:40 Speaker 01 Is there any discussion of the kid with John and during the trial during the investigation?
57:49 Speaker 00 The authorities seem really evasive about it for some reason. But there is some netizen speculation that perhaps the motive that Eric Thompson had to want John Takahara dead could be that maybe there was some questioning of the paternity of their daughter. Of who the dad is for their daughter, because Joyce went to go see John Takahara before she got pregnant.
58:15 Speaker 01 Right.
58:15 Speaker 00 And then got pregnant and then afterwards for postpartum, but I don't know, the authorities just like won't touch it. I don't know if it's the fact that they disproved it, which I don't know why they wouldn't outright come out and just put that theory to rest. But they just won't get that involved. Every netizen has their own theory for why authorities don't want to get involved. Some people believe that it's because this happened in Waipahu, which is a very small, tight-knit community and they don't want these types of allegations and theories circulating. Which then, wouldn't it be very easy to do a paternity test and shut it down? Then you have other people saying, oh, well.
58:55 Speaker 01 So this is like a a thing that many people are discussing, right? Not not just me.
59:00 Speaker 00 No, this is like online. It's definitely not really so much in the trial. And then you have some people saying, well, maybe it's not a great thing to touch because who knows what other doors it could open? Like, maybe that's a fear of this tight-knit community. And you have multiple people who were able to successfully conceive, not that I'm saying that anything strange or unruly happened. But like, maybe it's just something that you don't even want to touch because you don't even know what's gonna happen once you start touching it.
59:31 Speaker 01 Right. But, okay, to talk about the other side then, like the prosecutor.
59:37 Speaker 01 I would think they will probably want to test it and because that will give the biggest motive for Eric to commit such a crime, right? If they can prove that.
59:49 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
59:49 Speaker 01 Wouldn't you think that's something that they will really try to prove?
59:53 Speaker 00 But I also wonder with the type of evidence they have, if this could also be something that benefits Eric. Don't think about like you and me in a jury pool, but think about like a jury pool of random people. There's already so much victim blaming. There's already so many people who believe that it's like, oh, well, if you are going after vulnerable women who are just desperately trying to start a family.
1:00:21 Speaker 01 That's so interesting, what?
1:00:22 Speaker 00 So like there could be a way that this could be beneficial for Eric Thompson, or it could just be that it's not true. Or it could just be that like, maybe the kids don't have to know or be involved in something that adults have done. I don't know.
1:00:38 Speaker 01 It's just not talked about at all.
1:00:40 Speaker 00 It's not talked about. And so all netizens can do is speculate and speculations are never great, right? So it's like, but how can you not when it's not talked about, when it's not really uncovered during the trial?
1:00:51 Speaker 01 Right, okay.
1:00:52 Speaker 00 So Eric Thompson, he testifies and he just says like, I was pissed. I was really disappointed about the affair. So, because you know, the only thing that they really have on him is the motive. And I'm not saying like he's innocent. That's the only thing they have on him. I'm just saying like, clear, cut and dry. There's no argument for the motive. There's lots of arguments for the truck and the white hat and the fire. And he says, I mean, it just didn't make sense that John helped us through the pregnancy. And I mean, I just didn't understand why he would do that if later he's just gonna blow it up. The first couple of days I was thinking about calling him, chewing him out, but then I came to the realization that I don't think I could have said anything to make things better. And I don't think I could get him to say sorry or feel bad. I mean, what's the point?
1:01:35 Speaker 00 I mean, I think he obviously didn't care about what I thought or my family. So I mean, I just realized there's no point. So he says like, there's no point in me confronting him, talking to him or anything. And as for his wife, he says, I think she was truly sorry for it. She made the effort. She never talked to John again. I came to the realization that the problem was with me and Joyce. I mean, she cut him off and he was a non-factor after that. I realized I was kind of neglecting her sometimes, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think she said that I was like taking her for granted sometimes. Some people liked his testimony, others didn't. Some people thought that he was very evasive and that he kind of changed his sentiment a few times here and there, but like nothing explosive. He wasn't impeached on anything too crazy. Others say that he just had like this weird energy where he was trying to downplay it
1:02:20 Speaker 00 and like trying not to seem upset about the affair. So it's really just how you read the micro-expressions of someone on the stand. One netizen writes unpopular opinion, the husband shouldn't serve time. If he is an otherwise lawful citizen and a good spouse, how many times in the past has an affair partner meddled in another's marriage and got killed? It's a well-known fact that you risk your own well-being when you engage in an affair with someone who is in an exclusive, monogamous relationship. If you are a cheating spouse or the affair partner and you decide to carry out your urges to interfere in someone else's love life, then you must be ready for the consequences, no matter how miniscule or major. Someone argues back, so you're pro-murder? Would another form of punishment not fulfill your seeming bloodlust?
1:03:01 Speaker 00 Another person writes, absolutely, John doesn't deserve to die, but he cheated with multiple women, he had an MO, befriend clients that are women, have intimate relations with them when they're vulnerable, and in many cases, ghost them when he was done. It was bound to catch up with him, and unfortunately for him, it did. He effed around too many times and found out. He messed with a woman whose husband was nuts. Karma was not a bitch this time, it was an angry husband. To which someone responds, dating a married woman means you deserve to die? Thank God, people like you aren't doing policy work. And then I think that one thing that really helped Eric's case was actually the other two husbands that testified. I think the prosecutors had to bring them in to show, hey, these are not third parties that had motive. We already investigated them. They have no, you know, they're good, they're clear.
1:03:46 Speaker 00 The defense, if we don't bring them in, they're gonna try to build them up as like these crazy monsters behind the scenes that could have done it, but like, look at them. They're fine. They're fine people. I don't know if that's exactly what happened when they testified. I think one thing it could have shown to the jurors a pattern. Again, I'm not saying that, but like it could have been interpreted that way. And then the second thing is, um, one of them, Daryl, Daryl is crazy. Daryl's on the stand and he like clearly doesn't want to be there and he's very angry about it.
1:04:15 Speaker 01 These are all like recorded, right?
1:04:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, and he's just like, this is ridiculous. I don't know why I'm here. I mean, like, I know why I'm here, but like, I don't want to be here. Like, this is so not cool. Why am I here?
1:04:24 Speaker 00 Like, that's his energy the whole time. And then he's like, I don't think it's weird to format your phone unless you have something to hide. Not that I had anything to hide or anything like that. And it's just like a whole thing. And then there's a whole problem with the DNA. The police state that they took a sample from the inside top of the white bucket hat and they claimed that it matches Eric Thompson. That is the strongest piece of evidence by far that Eric Thompson has to the crime. But that gets thrown out. The FBI does an audit of the Hawaii Police Department's procedures unrelated to this case. And they state that HPD has not been using validated methods for DNA testing. Validation is very important, so you have to make sure whatever tools and softwares and method and instruments that you're using is validated.
1:05:08 Speaker 00 That it produces precise and accurate results before you start using such devices and mechanisms in DNA testing. Okay, think about it like this. The weight of something is very important. You get a scale to weigh this object. But you never test the scale with any other objects or another scale to make sure that the weight is proper. But you just take the first number it spits out and you trust it with your life.
1:05:31 Speaker 01 That's so crazy. What, what in the odds?
1:05:33 Speaker 00 So that's what HPD was doing with DNA testing and it was really bad because it's a double edged sword, which means this type of testing puts innocent people in jail, but it also lets guilty people go free.
1:05:45 Speaker 01 Right.
1:05:46 Speaker 00 There's also no phone, phone cell towers placing Eric Thompson at the scene of the crime. Like, there was really not a lot. And that is why the very first trial ends with a mistrial. Not an acquittal, but a mistrial. They decide to go through with the second trial and this time, the juror comes back guilty.
1:06:10 Speaker 00 But even that, people are concerned about. There seems to be an appeal that is going to be in process, but one of the jurors did an interview after the fact. And they were like, yeah, he probably did it.
1:06:24 Speaker 01 Hmm, he probably did it?
1:06:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, probably is not good enough.
1:06:28 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:06:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:06:31 Speaker 01 Right, like, how could you say guilty if you think he probably did it?
1:06:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, the part that's very sad is like, in this case, he probably did it, right? But in other cases, maybe they didn't do it, maybe there's not enough evidence for sure. It's hard for John Takahara's family to hear comments like this. Because it's not about John Takahara, it's more so about the justice system, but I'm sure it feels targeted. For example, one comment reads, he absolutely had the most motive. However, the evidence was circumstantial and the video recordings place him in the area, but not necessarily in the business. And we don't even know if that's him in the white bucket hat. I don't know, every single detail, but the dude was very close to getting away with it, which is crazy. Others say, I personally think, this is the comment, no one has clean hands.
1:07:19 Speaker 00 Everyone was damaged, no one had any maturity to think about how greatly others would be affected. I feel the worst for the child. Some people feel angry that Joyce Thompson is not facing any consequences. She did the worst thing initially. She's the one that had the affair. John was likely not dating anyone, had no obligations to anyone, and like, yes, I think that objectively and emotionally, we can feel some type of way about the other party in a marriage. We can also feel some type of way about him being the acupuncturist and her being the patient. We can have all of those feelings, but in terms of relationship wise, she probably did the worst thing, which is cheat on her husband.
1:08:00 Speaker 00 And then he ends up dead, and now he's going to prison for life. There is possibility of parole, though. So that's not opted out, but a lot of people have sentiments about that. Others have sentiments about like, some people were saying some crazy things of like, he should have just killed his wife instead of John. Like, it's some crazy, a lot of people had opinions and they were not afraid to list them out online about this case. Others are just saying, it's just weird, he probably did it, but it's supposed to be beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. In the first trial, the jurors couldn't even decide if it was a man or a woman in the white bucket hat. Some jurors also don't know. What Joyce knows about any of this? So like, let's say Eric, Joyce's husband, did kill John.
1:08:44 Speaker 00 Did Joyce know and she's now supporting her husband because of guilt, obligation, fear? Or she's sitting there like, my husband never wears white bucket hats. It's totally not him. Like, wha- what is it?
1:08:54 Speaker 01 Hmm, right.
1:08:56 Speaker 00 During the sentencing, many of John's family and friends were able to give impact statements for the judge to consider. And a lot of them were pointedly towards Eric, saying, you will sit in a cell in a six by ten jail cell every day and have nothing but time to think, and you deserve that. You took someone's life. John's sister states, it is the day our lives forever changed. It is the day our hearts broke down, and it is the day true evil showed its face, brutally ripped from this world, taken from us and left to be found by mom. Which, by the way, um, Lily Takahara, John's mom, she was there every day. She testified. And she held her composure and she was, yeah. And she was the one that found John.
1:09:40 Speaker 00 The sister continues, over the last three years, I have asked myself the same question over and over. How did Eric Thompson think that committing such a monstrous and senseless crime would solve his problems? His heartless and soulless disregard for human life has managed to destroy many, many lives. Another one of John's closest friends states, Joyce will now have to pick up the pieces for the destruction both of you have created and raise her daughter without a dad. She will one day have to explain to her daughter what caused her dad to kill someone. As for Eric, he will have to serve at least fifteen years before he's considered eligible for parole. And with that, that is where I leave you with this case. Who do you think did it? I will say, most netizens do think it's Eric Thompson.
1:10:22 Speaker 00 And I will say, most netizens, like, there are some weird people who are victim blaming John Takahara. I think that there can be more constructive conversations around being an acupuncturist and what it could mean ethically in not sleeping or having affairs with clients. But I think when it just comes from like a, well, he effed around and found out, I think that's an unproductive, weird victim blaming conversation to have. And even so, I do see a lot of netizens saying, even though he is an acupuncturist who maybe have violated some ethical rules of being with a client, does that mean that you can commit the worst ethical rule of not killing someone? So there's a lot of conversations happening online. What are your thoughts about this case?
1:11:07 Speaker 00 Let me know in the comments and I'll see you in the next one.
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