He's Not Really Dead - The Ari Squire Story

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1:00So this guy is dead, or is he? Now, the guy's name is Ari, and Ari's about 39 years old and he's living in Illinois, and Ari has a problem. He's broke. I mean, he's in a lot of debt, but instead of doing anything about it, he keeps spending all his money on his hobby, which is working on these diesel pulling trucks. But then, one day in 2008, things get really bad for him, because the housing market crashes. So his construction business goes under, and now he's almost $400,000 in debt. So of course, Ari is now freaking out, and he doesn't know what he's going to do. And that is when he comes up with an insane plan to get a bunch of money and start a brand new life. He's going to just fake his own death. What could possibly go wrong? So he goes to his wife, this woman, Denise. So he goes to Denise, and he's like, honey, I'm going to fake my own death and collect

2:03the insurance money. And I guess Denise is like, cool. Then Ari goes out, and he buys a $6 million life insurance policy on himself. Now in order to fake his own death, Ari needs to first find a body that's about his size and weight to replace him, which means he's going to need to kill someone. So he goes out, and he starts scouting around looking for guys that kind of look like him. And he ends up at Home Depot. And there he meets an employee that kind of sort of looks like him, you know, same height and build. So Ari approaches the guy, and he offers him a gig working construction on one of his jobs for $60,000. And he even gives the guy a job application. So the guy fills out the job application, and he agrees to do the gig, and he agrees to meet Ari at Ari's house. And then some time passes, and the day of the meeting comes. And Ari, he's waiting at his house for this guy to show up, and he waits, and he waits.

3:11And the guy just never shows up. He just flaked out. Apparently, his kid got sick and he just couldn't make it. So now Ari is all pissed off. I mean, how's he going to fake his own death if people are just flaking out on him? So he goes back to Home Depot, and he looks for yet another victim. And that is when he meets this guy, Justin. And Justin is 20 years old, and like the last guy, he also works at Home Depot. So Ari approaches Justin, and he offers him double his income to quit the job and come work for him. So Justin's like, alright, and he agrees to meet Ari at his house. Days later, Justin shows up. And the two of them, they get to chatting, and Ari tells Justin that he wants to show him something in the shop. And so they go out to the shop, and once they're in there, suddenly, boom, Ari attacks Justin with chloroform. And once Justin is all knocked out, Ari swaps clothes with him, and wallets. So now Ari's wearing Justin's clothes, and Justin is wearing Ari's clothes, then

4:15he takes Justin's body, and he places him underneath the truck in the shop that's propped up on a jack. He then somehow moves the jack, and he lets the truck fall on Justin, which unfortunately crushes him. After that, he gets a can of gasoline, and he pours it all around, and he sets the shop on fire. And then he leaves. Once Ari is gone, his wife Denise calls the fire department, and she says there's a fire in the garage, and the fire department comes, and they find Justin's body, but it's super burned up, and crushed underneath the truck. Although the body is wearing Ari's clothes, and has his wallet, so they think it was Ari who died in this fire. And thus, Ari has successfully faked his own death. Meanwhile, Ari goes out, and he buys hair dye, and color contacts, so that he can start looking more like Justin, because he's going to assume his identity now. Then Ari steals Justin's car, and he drives from Illinois all the way over to Missouri,

5:21to Lalo for a while, and he starts preparing for his new life as Justin. However, immediately, things start to go wrong. So pretty quickly, police are all over this case, and they start investigating. And they notice some things that don't really make sense, like the shop, like it smells like someone dumped gasoline everywhere. But it shouldn't smell like gasoline because the trucks Ari normally works on are all diesel. Police also find other things wrong, like they find a propane torch in the shop that had been left on, making it seem like the place was lit on fire on purpose. So now the police start to suspect someone may have intentionally set this place on fire. Now, as you probably know, from watching like a million of my videos, a common motive for burning a place down on purpose is insurance money. So police, they go to Ari's wife Denise, and they ask her if Ari had an insurance policy

6:21set up. And Denise just straight up lies to them, and she's like, nah. Like that's kind of stupid, because police have the ability to just go and check, and that's what the officers do. They go and check, and they discover that Ari did in fact have a life insurance policy set up for him, for $6 million. So police now know that something weird is going on, like none of this is adding up. But, as of right now, they don't have any hard evidence that anyone did anything wrong, so there's not much they can really do. But then, something unexpected happens. The medical examiner, whose in charge of examining the burned body, he starts having trouble identifying this body. I mean, he had been led to believe that this body belongs to Ari, but the tattoos he's supposed to have aren't in the right place. Plus, this body looks more like it's that of a 20-year-old than a 40-year-old. Meanwhile, Ari, the real Ari, he's still hiding out in that hotel room in Missouri.

7:24And he's like communicating with his wife Denise. They're all sending emails back and forth, checking on things. He's like helping her plan his own funeral, and she's letting him know how many people attended his memorial service, like there's something wrong with these people. But, while he's hiding out in that hotel room, he's also got Justin's phone that he stole off him, and he's using it to text Justin's mom while pretending to be Justin. And he's saying, like, I'm fine, Mom. I'm just taking a new job over in Missouri, because I guess Ari wants Justin's mom to think he's still alive so that she won't report him missing to the police, and police won't come looking for him, which is all kinds of f***ed up. Regardless, at this point, no one suspects Ari murdered someone in order to fake his own death, so he might just end up getting away with all this. This episode is brought to you by Whitecloth Search. Every podcast, big friend, no surprises there, after all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like Whitecloth Search.

8:26And with big bold flavors to enjoy, like blood-orange, blackberry, cranberry, and more, it's time to go all in untaste, unleash the flavor, unleash Whitecloth Search. Please drink responsibly. Hard Seltzer with Flavors, 8% alcohol by volume, Whitecloth Seltzer works, Chicago, Illinois. Marvel Television's Wonder Man, an eight-episode series. Marvel Television's Wonder Man, all eight episodes now streaming, only on Disney Plus. Until the police get a hold of Ari's dental records, and a forensic dentist confirms that the burned-up body they found does not, in fact, belong to Ari.

9:27So now they gotta go find who this body belongs to. Well, as it turns out, a young man named Justin, who has a similar heightened build as the burned body, was recently reported missing by his mother, and so police run a DNA test. And there's a match. The body does, in fact, belong to Justin. So now police put the information out to law enforcement around the greater area, and pretty quickly, boom, police find Justin's car parked at a random hotel in Missouri. And so some officers go there, and they ask the front desk clerk at the hotel, which room the person who owns the car is staying in. And the clerk tells them, so they go and knock on the door to that room, and Ari is inside. But he's not answering. In fact, he's in there freaking out, because he knows he's about to get busted. And once he feels like there's nothing left for him to do, he takes a gun that he dropped with him, and he unalives himself.

10:27And unfortunately, police never really find enough evidence to show that Ari's wife Denise was involved with the actual murder, so she's never charged with anything.