Episode 494: Jack Tupper Part 1

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Got sick and then I got sick, and then I mutated whatever she gave me and gave it back to her.

We're in this weird like cycle that I don't love that. I'm going to stop immediately, I'm.

Worried, though, because school is starting again. Yep, so get ready, we're just going to be sick all the time, but then no, we're not.

Not going to be the worst manifesting. No one's getting sick ever. This is it this summer. Cold summer sucks, so I have a summer.

Bad news, don't give me bad news, a heat wave, don't do it in the September time.

Time in the September time. That's a TikTok that we should share. ZAchaRIaH Yes.

Zachariah Voice The Zachariah voice, Go follow Zachariah. I think everyone already follows.

ZAchariah But if you don't, this is not new. We've been following him for, like, a billion years.

But Zachariah forever go follow him on TikTok. Remember when he used to just go to like Savers or like whatever and buy?

Don't like meatloaf, I like mashed potatoes. Don't threaten me with a good time, I don't know.

About cupcake form, But you know, we're all in this together, eating meat cupcakes, I don't know.

You know what guys, this is really fucking random, but I really want you to go listen to the rewatcher. So I just thought about it and said that if you have watched Buffy, by the way, you're really missing out if you're not listening to the rewatcher and if you haven't watched Buffy.

It's a great time to start the rewatcher because I had never seen Buffy before, except, like, a couple.

Fucking episodes. I just really wanted to throw that in there because it's just we just recorded an episode and it's so fun. I just thought you guys would love it. I love it so much. Go check it out.

On Buffy Yeah, yay, all right. Well, yeah, let's get into morbid, because that's the time and place that we're at right now.

Is it a temporal fold? I mean, that was in Buffy. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

Triangle this week. Oh boy, and it all starts off with some jackass named buddy, you know?

It always starts off with some jackass named buddy, you know, really. His name was Harold, but they called him Buddy. I don't really know why. Those are always my favorite when the when. The nickname has literally nothing to fucking do with the original name, and somehow it's exactly as long or longer, sometimes, than the original name.

There, Harold buddy, that takes you the exact same amount of time to say, well, either way, Harold buddy Jacobson. He was born on December 10th, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York.

For that's the thing, what are you using to gamble? What are you using to gamble? what does?

Anyone have to give you like, I don't understand, it's just not a good idea. It does not compute.

Gross couple of humans to do that. you're a real fucked up individual. Yeah, you're real gross, you know what? I have an insult generator up here somewhere.

Guy is, I don't like that one at all. a pompous, taint hound. I don't know about that. Pompous, for sure.

Competitive streak is better than mine. Oh my god, I should have saw that coming. So, according to one.

Childhood friend Buddy was unstoppable, they said. Buddy was the yo-yo champ, He was the handball champ, He was the ping-pong champ. Okay?

Mean, that's a story, I mean, who wouldn't tell that story? I'm gonna tell that story from now on, tell.

That story, yeah, I will. Now. Only his most intimate friends actually knew the truth about where Buddy really came from, and they only knew it because it came out. If he was very emotional, or if his friends pried the truth out of him after quite a few drinks together, that's usually when the truth comes out.

What you're saying, you know what I'm saying, I smell what you're stepping on, talking about Ellis Island and all that shit.

I don't know, but his uncle, Gene Jacobson, he started working for him, and he was his job was basically walking. The exercised horses, which were referred to as hots, oh, because they were like, Oh, they're hot from the exercise.

Really, a dad? Oh, you know what? Those are two things that you should have interest in if you become a husband and a dad. Yeah, that's what most people say.

It's in the handbook, yeah, you know.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him.

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But buddy, he just really wanted to be the best, not the best father or the best husband, but just the best overall. Yeah, don't worry about those two things. No, you can slack in that.

Of course, you did you have to? Yeah, of course.

Yeah, so things started to turn around for buddy a few years later. And he was ranked second on list of leading New York trainers in 1960. Damn, just behind his uncle, Gene Jacobs, Oh.

He wouldn't have learned anything, yeah, he wouldn't have done any of this.

And he's like, Eh, fuck, nothing like, damn, like, so rude. Wow. It's like a classic case of not.

Remembering where you come from? Yeah, exactly, it's just like, erase it all, I did it all, get out of here.

Not that self-made No buddy now. His comments to reporters only spoke further to his fiercely competitive, petty and spiteful character. And people remembered Buddy being like that as a child, and they would continue to remember him the same way even after he died. Oh, no.

Oh, I was wondering where Joan was in all this.

She's not really in all of this in buddy's head, at least later. Buddy's assistant, Frank Pagano, explained the strain to reporters, saying Well, what happened was she wanted to go out to a movie once in a while, just to a movie. Nothing fancy, but Buddy didn't care to.

What an ass.

So you wouldn't even take her to a fucking movie.

That's an asshole move.

That's a dick move. You don't need a wife, no, you could have kept on living this bachelor life and stacking up the wins.

Marry a horse and you'll be fine.

Sounds like he wasn't even that like he didn't care about the horses that much, he just liked winning. Yeah. So now he's in his early 30s and his life is consumed by horses and his continuous drive to be the best. But, like I was just saying, for all his interest in horses, they didn't really seem to make him feel anything.

And also, horses are like the sweetest animals.

And they're so majestic. How the fuck don't you like a horse?

You ever look in a horse's eyes?

Not often, I haven't.

I was like, I don't know where you're going with this. I have not, but I feel like you could get lost in them. You could. I do feel that way. I don't have any evidence to back that up because I myself have never.

Looked in a horse's eyes, but it's just this innate feeling inside, she just pointed to her chest.

Yeah, it's just inside, I feel that.

Yeah, I was a little bit afraid of horses for a while.

I'm still afraid of horses.

Yeah, they just they're so big.

Oh, so big, so powerful, they can throw you off in a second. Yeah, there's a lot happening there.

My mother-in-law loves horses there you go, and Ma does too, actually.

Yeah, she used to ride horses.

Horses.

Horses.

So it seemed to Buddy's assistant Frank there, that all Buddy really cared about was the acquisition of things material. Things that he could hold up as evidence of his success. And then, by extension, at least as far as he was concerned, they those things placed his value as a person, or like, staked his value as a person.

Yeah, that's not a good way to be.

And this is when I said, it's giving Tom Buchanan from the Great Gatsby.

100 it is.

Thank you, but the problem was, when it came to Buddy, nothing was ever enough. By the mid-1960s, he had become kind of a celebrity. And he was making more money than he had ever even made. But he was spending it just as fast as it was coming in.

He's one of those stories. Oh yeah, they made it, they lost it.

Yeah, he lost so much. Oh no. His relationship with his wife had all but ended. They continued to stay married on paper, but they were not married in life.

Breaking those generational cycles, you know?

Yeah, seriously, yeah, good job. And I think the fact that he never dated much before getting married was kind of detrimental in his case. Because once he realized that there was women out there that didn't care that he was married. It was like he needed to catch up on what he had missed out on, or, like, felt like he had missed out on. Author.

That's a beautiful way of saying.

It's a beautiful way to say.

What a nice way of saying that.

He was a hoe, yeah, once upon a time, not long ago, he was a hoe, there you go.

That's about it.

He didn't really have a lot of trouble attracting women because, like I said, he had become kind of a celebrity in the wealthy New York circles. Yeah, but the women he was dating not. A lot of them stuck around for very long, they were there for like, a good time, not a long time. And the ones who did stick around were really only staying as long as they did. Because he was paying their bills.

Exactly, I was looking at that.

Yeah, now. Either way, the endless stream of young, beautiful women convinced Buddy that he no longer needed Joan. So in the mid to late 1960s, he moved out of their apartment and just never looked back again. They were still married, but he just ditched her. Cool.

Yeah, you did another cycle, like you're starting it right over.

Real shitty, real shitty. Later, after his eventual arrest.

Yeah, fuck that. Why would you don't give him any emotional support? I'd be like, good luck.

Can you imagine I think that reporter was just like, Hey, are you getting any support from the wife you left? Yeah, now, like most things in Buddy's life, which I'm sure you're catching onto a pattern here. Joan was just another one of those things that validated his worth and that he could hold up as evidence of his success.

Just cast her aside.

And his ability to sever ties with things that didn't serve him was like, insane, like, scary. And I think it was another hallmark of his life going back as far as childhood. And like most of his other personality traits, it only got worse when he became an adult. Former horse owner Sam Lafrak, Excuse me, said about Buddy as a personality He was a loner and he didn't like anybody telling him what to do.

I mean, yeah, sounds like it.

You're, like, relatable.

I was going to say, I don't want to say relatable because he sounds like a Nimrod, but.

He is a Nimrod, but you can relate to being a loner and not liking people telling you what to do.

Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that. I don't like how many similarities we have. Yeah, we have many, many things that are different.

You're very different.

So many different things.

I don't like people telling me what to do either. I wouldn't consider myself a loner, though.

Yeah.

I would never consider myself a loner.

Fuck that.

But by the late 1960s, Buddy had actually been elected president of the New York Division of Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.

Look at this guy.

He's killing it kind of, and almost immediately, though, because he's not really killing it. His personality put him at odds with the New York Racing Association. YEek. Now this is interesting. The reason he was at odds with them was because he was demanding that a pension fund be established for the stable hands.

Absolutely.

And control over literally everything, yeah. Sports writer Pete Akthelm said. I don't think he cared about Puerto Rican stable hands. I think he wanted to prove that he buddy Jacobson could overturn the whole power structure, yeah.

That's what it seems like with him.

It does so. Eventually, the racing association did cave and they agreed to the pension fund. And this shows you what happened and what Buddy's real intentions were. They put Buddy in control of the finances. But unfortunately, his arrogance caught up with him just nine days after taking over the pension fund.

Oh, shocking.

Yeah, so they removed Buddy from his post and they suspended him for 45 days. But the blow to his ego was too big, so he just decided to leave racing for good.

Wow.

They tried to suspend him for 45 days for essentially or allegedly stealing money.

That's a baby move.

And he said, I'm going to leave racing for good.

That's a big baby move.

I literally said, Guy is the definition of a petulant child.

Truly like, that's such a big baby move, like, Please, I just won't do it.

Such a baby, this guy's gross.

Ew.

So now, with considerably more free time than he had quite literally ever had, Buddy shifted his focus back to his new interests in women and property. He was spending more and more time at his quote unquote bachelor apartment in a building in Queens, and one of his short-term girlfriends later remembered the building as being quote full of stewardesses, all of whom seemed interested in Buddy, she elaborated Buddy had a cadillac, he would leave it out in the front for other girls to use.

That's what you do when you leave your profession, you know what? Like, where did that come from? Invest in a ski resort in Vermont, obviously.

Is head to Vermont ski resort? Yeah, boom.

So I'm glad, I'm glad that's how things are going.

And you would think that'd be a pretty good investment, because like Vermont skiing, sure, I mean, people love to ski, resorts are great.

Vermont is snowy.

Makes sense, you know? But and I'm sure this is going to come as a huge shock. It didn't take long before his personality started to rub people the wrong way there.

Oh, buddy.

One of the other investors, I'm used to saying investigators, one of the other investors said. He wanted to show that he could run a ski lodge better than people who had been running them all their lives.

Oh, see, that's a rookie move, going in there, thinking you can tell people what to do when you haven't been in that business.

That's the worst kind of person. When they come into your field and try to tell you how to do your job that you've been doing for years. The longest fucking time, and they think they can do it better than you.

It goes right up your ass.

Walk the other way.

Walk the other way.

Toxic person, walk the other way, get on out of here. That's what they said to Buddy, and that's what I would say to somebody too.

That's what I would say, you know, I'd say, fuck off.

Fuck off.

With that, it sucks. So when the resort didn't work out, Buddy shifted his attention back to New York, of course, and he just bought an apartment building on East 84th Street. As one does.

Imagine just being like, I guess I'll just buy a building, I suppose.

I guess since my heavy investments didn't turn out, I'll buy a whole fucking building in New York, you know? So he took over every role, from operations to screening to rental applications on this building, and it was there that he met Melanie Kane. She was a transplant from Virginia who had just moved to New York in 1973, and her goal was to pursue a modeling career with the Eileen Ford Modeling Agency.

That was her husband.

That was her husband, Eileen Ford's husband, that said that about Melanie Kane. Oh, okay, not about Eileen.

Okay, for a second, I mean, that's still what the fuck? But I was like, Oh, what a way to remember your wife.

Also a bit of a weight problem. Please look up a picture of Melanie Kane.

Yeah, you know, I just love that. It's like, Eh, yeah, she had good teeth.

Eh, good mouth, good teeth, you're disgusting.

Good mouth, good teeth, good mouth.

What does that even mean? I gotta go.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad.

I'm like, stop around.

She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

But she was way better than Jerry gave her credit for because within less than a year at the agency, Melanie's career was taking off. She's beautiful, I'm sure you can see why.

Yeah.

In March of 1974, she actually appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine, which used to be my personal favorite, and her face was seemingly everywhere. After that, a writer from Seventeen wrote Everything about Melanie is refreshing, she's the image of everything, wholesome, like Kellogg's cornflakes.

Yeah, not Apple Pie or anything.

Everything wholesome, like Kellogg's cornflakes.

What a way, what a descriptor. The 70s.

Imagine being compared to cornflakes.

Yeah, that would be strange.

The way that I would feel about that.

I'd be like, I'm not really sure what that means.

Like, is that an insult or?

Because you think, like, wholesome, like apple pie, that's always like the initial, you know?

I know, though, that writer could have gone places with that because she lived in New York. Big Apple Pie.

That's the thing, big apple pie.

Not Kellogg's cornflakes. Yeah, all right.

I guess they are wholesome, I suppose.

I guess so. Remember Melanie meets buddy at this apartment building? Maybe it was her naivete, but Melanie was almost immediately drawn to buddy. Not something that most people experienced often.

Yeah, apparently.

He was almost 20 years older than she was, and he was nothing like the male models that she had dated when she first arrived in New York. To her, he seemed down to earth. He didn't seem to care too much about his appearance, which I don't really know why. That's a good thing, and he had a confidence, she said. She found Irresistible, all right.

Wow, here he goes again.

But he did it with her, yeah, and they named the modeling agency My Fair Lady, My Fair Lady.

That kind of limits you, doesn't it?

It does, Yeah, absolutely.

In like an assortment of ways.

A myriad of ways. But unlike his career in horse training, where he'd worked his way up from the bottom. Buddy's foray into the modeling industry was a lot more like his experience with the ski resort. It was the product of overconfidence and spiteful determination.

You know, and that's the thing you can go into things being like,....

The way that you just had to like, move your drink to the side.

I just put my drink down for this because you can go into that. I'm all for having stupid confidence and spiteful determination, and spiteful determination. I myself am fueled by spiteful determination and stupid confidence.

I don't have that, but I do have the spiteful part.

I assume I can do anything and that's the way it is. But you gotta go in doing that being like, I can do this. But also learning from people who know how to do that, exactly.

Like, how does that work?

The whole game here is you take lessons from other people, you learn and you grow. And you say, okay, well, once I have all this information, I can be the best at this. Exactly, that's okay. Go in like that by all means.

And become the best.

Yeah, he's just going in, being like, No, I know how to do it better.

He's going in thinking he's the best, not wanting to become the best, and that's the difference.

Exactly, you have to have the drive to be the best.

That's what it is, and he doesn't have the drive.

He has the expectation.

And there's a difference. Boom.

So have the drive, not the expectation.

He had no idea what he was doing. No one model author told Anthony Hayden, guest of her experience with My Fair Lady They wanted young, fresh faces. They told me they just threw a dart at the map and where it went.

Yeah, I'm shocked.

Like, they just had a magazine full of ladies, or, like a assortment of photos on the wall. They threw a dart and said, Yeah, that one will do ridiculous. So the fact that my fair lady honestly managed to survive at all was due almost entirely to Melanie Kane, who was still enough of a draw to keep the business afloat. Because people wanted her pictures. Hell yeah.

Seems to be what he's good at abandoning, I mean.

Honestly, oh, and he seems like he's all right at property development. Yeah, there you go, you know, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know.

He seems fit for that. So, in the mid-1970s, he purchased the Park East, a former hospital near New York's upper west side. And he planned to develop it into a $3 million co-op. Damn, I don't. Yeah, I don't really know how that went because things go awry. So, their relationship may have started as a business matter, but it didn't take long before Melanie and Buddy were involved romantically.

That's bad, bad news, bears.

Now. He, on the other hand, had no interest in restraining his relationships with other women, and acquaintance said. It's tremendous. The power he felt. He's sitting in Nicola's with four girls, nine girls, 13 girls.

And he's telling her, you can't have male friends.

A single male friend, but I can sit at a table with 13 women.

It's so hard, I feel so bad because, like, obviously, she was in a position where she just didn't see it.

And she's young, and he's this older, like what she thinks is charming man. They're business partners and she's probably signed to some kind of contract at this point.

And it's easy to see in hindsight how red flaggy he is, but it's not easy when you're in it.

Exactly now. So, in just a few years of moving to New York to start her life, the things that had been so exciting for Melanie started to feel like a burden. After a few years, her relationship with buddy was deteriorating rapidly, and, despite her success, modeling just wasn't really filling her cup anymore. But still, when she walked into the All Ireland Bar in the late 1970s, Melanie wasn't planning to make any major life changes.

Oh.

So Melanie actually had met Jack a couple of times before the year before, when an acquaintance of Buddy's had brought him to a party at Queens. But she didn't really get to know him like that well.

Okay.

Now, Jack had grown up in New York, and a few years earlier he had moved into a building that buddy owned in Queens, near the All Ireland, which Jack was managing at the time.

Okay.

As far as Melanie could tell, Jack was everything that buddy was not. He was in good shape, he dressed nicely, he was friendly, he was charming.

He sounds delightful.

Jack's dad later told reporters There was no disgrace on him. He was a wonderful boy. a good boy, Jack Jack, forever.

I mean, who wouldn't? He sounds delightful.

He's adorable and he's a great guy, he's a good catch, yeah. So eventually, dates to go jogging started to started to include dinner afterwards, and just little reasons to stay and hang out longer than they needed to.

Oh my God, I just I'm like, cut that other asshole loose snip. Enjoy this clip.

CLIP ClIP Remember when we went to Dorinda's house? yeah.

That was crazy, that was wild.

But Melanie, she still wasn't ready to end her relationship with buddy. A friend of her said Apparently she'd been contemplating breaking up with Buddy, but it was hard. She'd been with him five years and they were in business together, That's hard. Five years is a long time.

It is, it's easy to say from, you know, over here to be like, cut it below Sonny. And then I'm like, I stayed in a relationship far past its fucking expiration date, and imagine if you had been? It was fucking rotten by the time I got out of there.

Oh God, it was further than rotten, it was growing penicillin.

It was so moldy, it was bad.

But and then imagine being in business with that person and trying to leave them.

I don't want to think of that, that's not good. Yeah, no, it's hard.

So instead, Melanie and Jack carried on in secret, hoping that Buddy would never question why their jogging dates kept getting longer and longer and more frequent. But it's like, you want to be together, guys.

You can't be together like this exactly.

Well, for a while it worked. Buddy was so self-absorbed that he didn't actually seem to notice when Melanie wasn't around.

It's beneficial in that way, yeah.

And so he didn't notice when she wasn't around as often as she typically had been. So soon. These dates weren't just a few hours longer, but a few days longer. And within weeks of making plans to go jogging for the very first time. Jack took Melanie on a weekend trip to visit his sister and her husband, who was an FBI agent stationed in Puerto Rico. Damn.

Whoa, look at these two.

I know I love them, I know I'm rooting for it, I know that some might say it's wrong, but I'm rooting for it.

Some might say it's wrong, but it's right.

It's right.

No, well, you just know this seems like it would be a better situation. You just want it to work out.

Yeah, and it's complex, it's many layers, you know, it is. So. Buddy might not have noticed a few extra hours of Melanie's absence, but a long weekend away was something entirely different. So when Melanie didn't return on Friday night and was still absent the next morning, Buddy knew that she was with Jack.

Like a good mama.

Mm-hmm. So buddy then proceeded to call. Literally everyone he could think of. That might have the number for Jack's sister in Puerto Rico, which is where he correctly assumed the two had gone.

Oh man, yeah.

So when Jack and Melanie got back from Puerto Rico, they hadn't even left the airport before. They learned that Buddy had been harassing their friends and family all weekend. Long eek Yeah. They were terrified of the consequences of having been found out, so they booked a $90 suite at The Drake, which is an upscale hotel on Park Ave. Damn.

We cannot do that.

Now, when Melanie finally did call Buddy the next day, she was surprised to find that. Rather than anger, he seemed apologetic genuinely, and seemed like he wanted to talk. Hmm, Melanie told Anthony Hayden, guest. I realized I owed him something, yet all this time I had wanted to talk to him and he had never had the time. But now I figured, Okay, let's settle up this whole business.

I don't this feels suspicious to me.

It does so. The next night, Melanie ended up meeting Buddy for a drink at Sign of the Dove, which was one of his favorite restaurants in Queens. And the apologetic, appeasing tone that he had just a day earlier was gone. He was back to his old, very offensive self, yeah.

Ah, I could think of a few more.

I could, too. Such as he's an asshole, yeah. Now. When it was clear that his attempts to bait her were not working, he came right out and said, You can't leave me, you're my wife.

She's not, though.

She was not, in fact, his wife.

I was like, unless I missed a giant portion of this story.

That is not true.

Incorrect.

Not true, so Melanie pushed back, telling Buddy that they weren't married, which is when Buddy's voice took on a more desperate tone. He told her, I'm going to get you back, no matter what, I'll beg for you or I'll wait for you, I don't care.

That's terrifying and horrifying, and I want to take her hand and just run away with her.

Far, far away.

What the fuck?

24 hours.

I'd immediately be like, we are leaving the country, like, we are leaving like, and holy shit.

Insane.

That's terrifying, like, 24 hours. What the fuck does that mean?

Exactly my guy. It's so bizarre. EW So Jack told buddy that it wasn't his decision to make.

See look at Jack.

A stand up guy.

She's her own woman, Yeah, she makes her own decisions. I'm not saying anything.

Exactly. And then he and Melanie got up to leave, and before walking out of the restaurant, Melanie looked at Buddy and said, Let's be friends, buddy. I'll always be your friend.

And look at Melanie trying to be civil.

Deescalate, yeah.

She's trying to deescalate, she's doing all the right things.

So a few days later, Melanie had moved her things out of Buddy's apartment, and in a move almost identical to the one that Buddy's father had made 40 years earlier. Eek, Melanie and Jack took an apartment a few doors down from Buddy.

Oh, come on.

In his Queen apartment, Queen's apartment building.

Oh, no, yeah.

So, away from Buddy, new opportunities did seem possible for Melanie, and, most importantly, she was finally with a man that appreciated her. She talked about her relationship with Jack years later and said It was a very loving relationship. We were going to spend a loving life together.

Oh, that hurts my heart.

Right, so? Meanwhile, Buddy seemed to alternate between continuing to pursue Melanie and accepting that their relationship had come to an end. In the weeks that followed, he would spend days calling and harassing her and then sending messages apologizing for the verbal abuse.

Ooh, that's scary.

On July 29th, he wrote to her, Dear Melan, sorry for the past week and for the abuse I've put you through for the past five years. You always hurt the one you love. Jack is a good guy and will love you. And be honest with you, you're right. I would have, I would always be a bum.

I mean, that seems, yeah.

That seems self-aware.

That really seems self-aware.

But then he kept trying to buy off Jack Tupper with offers of cash and property. Jesus Jack told Melanie one afternoon This guy's such an asshole. He offered me $100,000 to leave town and to buy a restaurant.

What the fuck?

Like, what? So, by mid-summer? Buddy's erratic behavior and constant presence in the shared spaces of the building had become a little too much for Melanie and Jack to bear. And they decided it was time to find a new apartment, far, far away from Buddy. So Melanie spent the first week of August 1978 looking at apartments, and eventually she found what she thought was the perfect one for them on 52nd Street.

There you go.

Now, in the days leading up to the signing of the new lease, Buddy's pleas for Melanie to come back to him grew way more desperate and way more unrealistic. On July 31st, he confronted her in the hallway of the apartment and he made yet another attempt to get her back. He yelled to her, Can't you see what you're leaving is doing to me? And then he made this outrageous promise to marry her and start a family, yelling to her, I will get you pregnant so fast. We will have six kids.

I have very little to say about that.

I just said, insert GIF of the what lady here.

That's honestly how I feel, right. Like I can't imagine somebody trying to get you back and being like, I will get you pregnant so fast, so fast.

We'll have six kids.

That's what.

Like six kids.

That's vaguely threatening six kids. Yeah, that's just a lot right away, and to be like, I'll do it so fast.

And I'm sorry, but like, six kids all at once is not a good bargaining tool. No, I'd be like, that's a good way to not get me back. Yeah, I'm like, damn.

All right, wild, what a bargaining chip he was using. I mean, I guess, throw all your cards on the table, that's what you got.

He's scary. So the more she resisted and politely rejected him, the more and more rambling and incoherent buddy's attempts to bargain got. Clearly. Melanie kept trying to politely rebuff him, like trying to spare his feelings. But at this point, she broke and she shouted to him I don't love you anymore, and not only don't I love you anymore, I don't even like you.

Because it's all true, it is. She's just telling him.

I don't like who you are as a person, you're terrible.

And I think you need to hear, like, instead of yelling at me, that you can get me pregnant at warp speed, like, you need to hear that. I don't like you, I don't like you, I don't want to be pregnant with you.

And I don't want to be near you either.

I don't want this.

So this statement, this blunt statement, did not seem to register with buddy. And he just kept rambling and rambling and making outrageous declarations of love until Melanie finally just walked away. More certain than ever that the only way to move on would be to get as far away from Buddy as humanly possible.

Yeah, that's what it seems.

So later, when she went to get the last of her belongings from Buddy, she learned the true depth of his depression and his desperation to get her back. Uh-oh. He had cut out stickers with masking tape and written declarations of love on them, and then stuck all of them. To all of her clothing and personal items, she said I would look at my underpants and there would be a sticker, I love you.

Oh, this is like, really scary.

It's really escalating.

She's lost it.

So on the morning of August 6th, Melanie got up early, kissed Jack goodbye and headed over to the new apartment where she planned to meet the new landlord and sign the lease. So, thinking nothing really of it, she went downstairs and she talked to some of the models in an apartment on the first floor. But when she came back up a short time later, Jack still hadn't returned. Hmm, and she was like, Okay, that's kind of weird.

And that just was weird to her.

So she started calling out around to Jack's friends, but none of them had seen or heard from him that day. So she's getting more and more concerned now. So she walks down to the All Ireland, the bar that he manages, and no one there had seen or heard from him either.

Oh, no.

So now she's desperate. And she walks back up to the apartment building and to Buddy's apartment, and she goes in without even knocking. And inside, Buddy's apartment was a fucking wreck. There were shattered pieces of mirror all over the floor.

Oh, no.

And there were people just milling about the apartment, who Melanie assumed were just some workers from Buddy's buildings on the upper west side. And then Buddy himself appeared in the doorway and screamed, Get out, I don't want to see you.

What?

Nearly chasing Melanie from the apartment and slamming the door.

What the fuck?

So like, after he's been desperately trying to get back with her, he's like, get the fuck out of here, I don't want to see you.

All he wants is to see her and be near her, and now he's like, get out. Yeah, no, this would terrify me.

So Melanie's shaken, so she calls one of Jack's friends and is like, Can you come over and just help me try to find Jack? And now? The man arrived and they went back to Buddy's apartment once he got there, and they knocked on the door. And this time, Buddy was completely collected and just said, Oh, yeah, I haven't seen Jack.

What the fuck?

He let them in, he let them look around the apartment, and now there didn't seem to be any outward signs of a struggle or a fight. But it was clear that someone had gone to great lengths to clean the apartment, and it even looked like somebody had washed the tile floor in the hallway of the apartment building.

Okay.

So firefighters go to that scene and they find this oily black smoke pouring from what they described as quote. A trunk on a heap of garbage, surrounded by a mound of garbage. Oh, no, now. Before they had even put the fire out, they could see a man's legs protruding from the crate. And after extinguishing the fire, they pried open the hinges on the box and they discovered the badly brutalized body of Jack Tupper No.

Oh my god.

When you find out what happened to Jack Tupper, Buddy is not even a human, he is....

Oh, no.

He's worse than a monster. I don't even know the word to describe what he is. Oh God, but he got his because. Firefighters reported the discovery to the nearest police precinct and the information went out on the radio, including the license plate number that had been provided by the resident who initially reported the fire.

Thank God, that person thought of it.

Now, listen to this. The universe is a beautiful bitch. So at the same time, Buddy Jacobson was stuck in a traffic jam on the Triborough Bridge, and it just so happened that there was a patrol car directly behind him.

Oh, shut up.

Yup, so. When the driver of the patrol car heard the report of the body come over the radio, he happened to glance down at the license plate of the yellow Cadillac in front of him. Oh my God, I love it. And to his astonishment, he realized it was a match. For the suspects that set the fire to the crate containing the body.

Imagine being that patrol officer and being like, Jackpot.

How serendipitous.

The Universe Girl.

So, buddy. Jacobson was immediately arrested and became the number one suspect in the murder of Jack Tupper. Oh man, and that poor Jack, I know.

Ugh.

But we're going to cover a good amount in part two. Things get a little crazy, some people go to prison, some people escape from prison.

All right, I'm here.

You here for it.

I'm here for it.

But it's really also very sad when you hear what happened to Jack and poor Melanie and poor Melanie. Because all she wanted to do was just spend the rest of her life with him.

Yeah, she just wanted to start her life with a good guy.

And he was like his dad said, he was like a wonderful boy.

A wonderful boy.

Just like volunteering with underprivileged youth. Break my hat and then there's buddy who's just been an asshole, literally, since he came out the womb.

With a terrible mustache that you can't trust.

His mustache can't trust it is one of the most upsetting things I have ever seen in my life. Fuck that mustache. And did you see a picture of Jack?

Have drive, don't have expectation, boom.

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