Did a Caller Once Confess to Serious Crimes on Howard Stern’s Show? The Story Revisited
Howard Stern has been stealing a living since 1986.
A long-discussed moment from Howard Stern’s radio show is being revisited, raising questions about what really happened during a shocking call-in segment. Over the years, the story has sparked debate about whether a caller may have made alarming claims live on air.
Honestly? I might not like it, but I do have to admire the cunning of it. A couple of days a week spent saying offensive shit for a few hours with all the pizzazz of a golf commentator on quaaludes? Yeah, sure, I’d get paid millions of dollars a year for that if the offer was going, well played, Howie.
Yet, there is actually an interesting part of Stern’s show. One that has nothing to do with Stern, his comedy or his personality, and everything to do with the fact that his show is a live call-in show that’s been going on for literal decades. Several baffling things have happened over the course of those decades, and Stern’s show has opened the floor for hundreds of thousands of freaks to weigh in with their two cents on the matter.
The infamous story is how Stern’s show was live on 9/11 and reacted in real time to the terrorist attacks on that horrible day, but there have been several moments when people would have listened to Stern’s show and wondered whether they were listening to something they really shouldn’t have. Case in point was on August 13th, 1997, when a young man called Clay called The Howard Stern Show. After a few minutes of back and forth, Stern asked Clay why he was calling the show.
Clay answered that he was calling because he’d killed a number of women and was planning on killing more.
Was the serial killer who called Howard Stern legit?
It’s a legitimately shocking piece of audio, even 29 years after it was recorded.
A damn sight more genuinely shocking than Stern telling Emma Bunton to her face that she should do porn. Clay goes into detail about his supposed victims, telling Stern that he had killed 12 women, mainly sex workers, with a hammer around the New Orleans area, with a nonchalance that is pretty chilling. Which is when you see a very different side to Stern than normal.
He neither drops the comedy act entirely nor plays it for laughs, instead drawing on his journalism background in his university studies by interviewing Clay. Getting him to drop any incriminating details like tell-all signs that might have been left at crime scenes, tattoos, hair colour, eye colour and age. Clay seems unfazed by what he’s saying, stating details about his crimes like it’s absolutely nothing before ending the call after about 17 minutes.
It’s a chilling segment, one that seems to leave the unflappable radio show host genuinely rattled. The question is, however, is any of it is real? Probably not. Authorities in the New Orleans area were alerted, and no reports of missing women could be corroborated. It’s easy to come across like you’re rattling off details of something you experienced when you can just make them up with impunity. Credit to Stern for treating this with a degree of seriousness, though.
