This week we talk about lying cats and continuing pandemic times. We review two podcasts: The Walkers Switch and Motive for Murder. We finish off the weekwith a toad based Weird Crime Time.
The Walkers Switch
The Walkers Switch a six part podcast by Augustine Cerf and Lauren Peters and it explores the colour of crisp packets.
Walkers one of the most well known brands in the UK and Ireland. They are best known for making crisps (or potato chips). They have a production facility in Leicester which makes 11 million bags of crisps a day, using 800 tons of potatoes. Whilst founded in 1948 in Leicester by a man named Henry Walker, they are now owned by PepsiCo who also own Lay’s. The most popular flavours of crisps in the UK, that Walkers produce are ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar and prawn cocktail.
The issue being investigated is whether Walkers, in the early 90s, swapped the colours of their cheese and onion crisp packet with their salt and vinegar crisp packet. We know that Walkers crisps have their cheese and onion in a blue packet and their salt and vinegar in a green packet. Which is against the norm.
Many people remember and firmly believe that the colours were changed in the early 90s. Some even remember an ad campaign by Walkers involving football and people wearing the wrong colour shirt. In fact, the podcast notes that 2 out of 3 people believe the switch occurred. However, there is a section of the FAQs on the Walkers website which clearly states that this is wrong – they have never swapped the colours of their crisp packets and that they have always used blue for cheese and onion and green for salt and vinegar and this is part of their signature branding. There was never any advertising because this simply did not happen.
The hosts even go so far as to track Gary Lineker down (a famous English footballer and face of the company since 1995) to ask him. Gary is a switch believer and is quoted on the podcast as saying “Everyone knows it happened”.
They then go on to explore fan theories, a potential Tory plot and how this could be linked to the Mandela Effect. They even interview people purportedly connected to the Illuminati. They interview a Google employee on whether it would be easy for images of the old packaging to be wiped from the internet. The interview a criminal barrister about memory. The Guardian reviews it as “It’s like Serial for crisps”.
Motive for Murder
Motive for Murder is a new by Dateline which take us through the story of the murders of Gelareh Bagherzadeh and her boyfriend’s twin brother, Coty Beavers. Hosted by Josh Mankiewicz, a familiar face to Dateline fans, this six part podcast explains fraught family relationships, pride and more murders that we expected.
Whilst detectives initially hit dead-end after dead-end when investigating Gelareh’s murder, when Coty was found shot dead by his wife, Nesreen Irsan, they were sure the murders were linked. Nasreen and Coty hadn’t been married long and had a tempestuous relationship with her sister and father.
*****SPOILERS*****
Dateline is well known for spouses killing spouses or crimes of passions, so this one is seemingly different. These murders occurred because of a father’s pride. Nasreen’s father’s pride (Ali Irsan). He murdered, or had a hand in the murders, of Coty Beavers who he believed had stole his daughter away from him. Gelareh, who was a classmate of Nasreen, had had a heated argument with him after receiving a call.
Whilst these two murders are gut-wrenchingly sad and deeply necessary, we go on to learn that Ali Irsan also shot and killed another one of his son in laws, claiming to the police it was self-defence and planting a gun on him in 1999. He received no criminal conviction for this.
Jurors convicted Irsan for the murders of Gelareh and Coty in 35 minutes in 2018 and he is now on death row in Texas. His son, Nasim Irsan, who was also complicit in the murders plead guilty and received a sentence of forty years.
Sources
E Online – https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/1157358/the-twisted-story-behind-motive-for-murder-is-as-tragic-as-it-gets
Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkers_(snack_foods)
Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Irsan
Global News – https://globalnews.ca/news/7025760/porn-nacho-vidal-toad-5-meo-dmt/
BBC News – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52920291
The Walkers Switch – https://www.laurenandaugustine.com/the-walkers-switch
NY Post – https://nypost.com/2020/06/10/doomsday-mom-lori-vallows-kids-have-finally-been-found-report-says/
The Independent – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/madeleine-mccann-suspect-latest-christian-brueckner-ex-girlfriend-portugal-police-update-a9560786.html
