Hi friends, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to

murder, mystery, and make up the podcast. Today is a podcast exclusive story. Oh yes, this

one's just for you, baby girl. Listen, today we're going to be talking about going postal. Have you

ever heard that phrase? Well, back in the 90s, we had all sorts of fun, I guess. Some might say like

cringy. There was phrases like, you go, girl, or like, talk to the hand. Or that's the bum.

You know, but looking back, by far the cringiest slang phrase was going postal, which was

popularized in iconic movies like

clueless and TV shows like Seinfeld, because the reality is going postal has some

pretty dark origins. Between 1986 and 2006, there were a rash of shootings that took place at U.S. post offices, all carried out by postal workers.

The first occurred on August 20, 1986, at the Edmund Post Office in Edmond, Oklahoma,

at the hands of postal carrier Patrick Sherrill. In a matter of 15 minutes, Cheryl killed 14 coworkers and injured an

additional six before turning the gun on himself. What makes an already horrifying situation even worse

is that the postal service's response was severely lacking. In fact, many believe the extreme stressful work environment

and the hiring practices at USPS were major contributing factors like to the situation and the other

shootings. And while the shootings have mostly ended, a lot of people fear USPS hasn't really changed. So let's investigate, starting with Patrick Sherrill. Huh? Yeah, let's go. Patrick Sherrill was born in Wetonga, Oklahoma on November 13th, 1941. Now, there are definitely some major red flags littered all throughout Patrick's childhood.

For starters, he was known to steal bike parts off of like other kids' bikes, and he tried to

breed female neighborhood dogs with his dogs, or his dog, I should say. Yeah, I don't know what

that was about, but he got bad grades in school, and he was considered a loner.

The only thing he seemed to excel in was sports.

He even lettered in football, but he, of course, preferred solo sports like track and field, rather than, you know, team sports where he had to, like, interact with people.

When he was a teenager, his father sadly died of a stroke. Now, Patrick once confided in someone that his father was

mentally ill. And for that reason, Patrick said he never planned to marry because he was afraid

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