You Can’t Make This Up

Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator

Episode Summary

This month, we have a documentary film following Bikram Choudhury, the man who popularized yoga in America. Returning hosts Kevin Flynn and Rebecca Lavoie speak with director Eva Orner and lawyer Micki Jafa-Bodden about the rise and fall of a yoga guru who preyed on the very women who trusted him.

Episode Notes

This month, we have a documentary film following Bikram Choudhury, the man who popularized yoga in America. Returning hosts Kevin Flynn and Rebecca Lavoie speak with director Eva Orner and lawyer Micki Jafa-Bodden about the rise and fall of a yoga guru who preyed on the very women who trusted him.

Episode Transcription

Melissa: Welcome to You Can’t Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.


 

[Music]


 

I’m Melissa Slaughter and I’m hosting this week’s episode.  Here on You Can’t Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix Original True Crime Stories with special guests.  Today we have a documentary film following the rise and fall of yoga guru, Bikram Choudhury.  Returning hosts Kevin Flynn and Rebecca Lavoie speak with director Eva Orner and lawyer Micki Jafa-Bodden about the man who popularized yoga in America and preyed on the very women who trusted him.


 

A warning to listeners, today’s episode will cover sexual assault.


 

Now, here’s Kevin, Rebecca, Eva and Micki.


 

[Music]


 

Kevin: So, Eva Orner, you’re the director of this film and so our listeners know, I’m trying to remember—You’re the one with the Australian accent, right?


 

Eva: Yes, that is me.  Easy to identify.


 

Kevin: And we also have Micki Jafa-Bodden.  And you’re the one with the English accent.


 

Micki: That is correct.  Hi, Kevin and Rebecca.  Micki here.


 

Rebecca: Hello.  It’s wonderful talking to you both.  Eva, I’m curious, why did you make this documentary?  How did you hear about this story?


 

Eva: This one was actually brought to me by a development executive in a London-based production company after she saw my last film.  And she actually was an avid Bikram practitioner and she’d moved to hot yoga, sort of, after the scandals.  And she gave me a couple of articles and said, “Is this of interest to you?”  And I knew a little about him.  I’d read a little bit.  You know, I’d watched him a little bit over the years.  I didn’t know a lot, but I knew enough to know there was a story there.  So, I did a little digging and a little researching, and pretty quickly I thought, “Ooh, I could very happily spend some time in this story.”  I knew straight away there was something—there was something here.  And it was—it was pretty extraordinary.


 

Kevin: How about we start sort of at the beginning and explain who  Bikram Choudhury is and why he’s an important figure.


 

Eva: So, Bikram Choudhury is, as the film says, he’s a yogi and a guru.  He’s a man who came from Calcutta to America in the early ‘70s.  He landed in Beverly Hills and brought his unique style of yoga that he called Bikram Yoga, which is hot yoga.  It’s 26 by 2 postures, a 90-minute class.  He brought it to L.A. in the ‘70s and it took off like wildfire.  Celebrities were hooked.  People loved it.  People got results.  They got great bodies.  They felt fantastic.  And, so, it became this huge thing.


 

And, basically, until now, over the last 50 years, it’s become a phenomenon.  It’s practiced around the world.  You know, it’s in Australia.  It’s through Europe.  It’s through South America, Asia.  It is huge.  It’s popular and it works.  It’s actually pretty good.  I’ve done a bunch of classes now, as I had to to get into the community and get to know people.  And while it’s not my preferred form of exercise, it actually—It does really help with injury and, you know, it’s a really good workout.


 

What happened—he amassed a huge amount of money.  He became super-famous.  You know, he became, in some ways, like other Indian gurus who came to the West.  You know, he amassed a fortune.  He had flashy cars, a lot of them.  You know, the Bentleys and the Rolls Royces.  He has flashy clothes.  And then things started getting a little bit crazy.  And, where it’s ended up now, is that he has been accused of sexual assault, harassment and rape by a number of women.  He’s settled with a number of women.  And one woman, who’s here now, Micki Jafa-Bodden, successfully took him to court, civilly, in the U.S., in California, several years ago.  The trial was successful and he was convicted unanimously of all counts.  And he was awarded to pay her around 8 million dollars.  And he subsequently fled the country, transferred all his assets to his wife and they divorced.  And he is now a fugitive in America and he’s never paid that money.


 

And there’s still a bunch of womens’ cases outstanding that haven’t been settled.  And it appears that there are—This has been going on for a long time.  It’s not a handful of instances, but there are—This has been going on for many, many years.  So, it’s, you know, it’s the classic story of, you know, the American Dream gone badly.


 

Rebecca: Well, one of the things that’s so interesting to me about Bikram Choudhury’s story is a lot of it is built, seemingly, on—I guess we’ll just call them lies.


 

Kevin: Yeah, yeah.


 

Rebecca: He—And you explore this in the documentary.  He claims to have invented something that he probably did not invent, or did not invent.  He then went on and really got successful because he franchised it as a brand and made it, you know, so people had to go through a certain series of steps and pay a certain amount of money to be able to use the name.  That was really like--


 

Kevin: And President Nixon was so nice to him.


 

Rebecca: The trademark and then—


 

Kevin: And Elvis . . .


 

Rebecca: And the Nixon story.


 

Eva: I know.


 

Rebecca: I mean, to me, the Nixon story is the one that just—You know, this idea that, like, a former President had shattered his leg and, you know, called Bikram.  And he was, like, you know—Then he was just and walking.  I’m like, “What?”  Like--


 

Kevin: Like, the most provable--


 

Rebecca: He’s telling this story on television?


 

Kevin: Yeah, the one that we—you can disprove the easiest.  Anyhow, I guess--


 

Rebecca: Well, I guess my question is, how important is it to, you know, reveal this foundation of untruths.  I mean, the sexual assault stuff is bad enough.  But how much do you think the sort of foundation of untruths plays into that?  You know, does he sort of have a sense that he can get away with anything at this point?


 

Eva: One of the most challenging parts of the film in a way is you have to capture Bikram and you have to really capture what it is about him that attracted so many people and afforded him all of this success, but also afforded him all of these fans and people who loved and adored him.  That then became—That then put themselves, potentially in a position where they were in danger.  And, so, we had to really capture him and his charm and his—you know, the charisma and what people loved about him.  And that was actually one of the things I found the hardest.  Because I came into this from the, you know, from the back end.  I came into this not thinking he was the most, you know, upstanding guy.


 

And, so, the first act of the film, we had to kind of portray him as something pretty fantastic.  Because, you know, the people in the film are smart, good people and I didn’t want to, you know, disservice them and discredit them by not painting a picture of someone that you would fall for and that you would get hooked into.  And, so, that was—that was a really interesting challenge for me.  All the while knowing that in act three of the film, we would have to basically take all of that down and dispel all of these myths that he’d created about himself.  And that was structurally a real challenge in the film  But it was also one of the most gratifying and fun parts of the film.


 

Kevin: I gotta know, how did you—I mean, right off the top, how did you get all this video?  Because I don’t see how you do this documentary without it.


 

Eva: No, I—And that’s actually a really good question that I’m not exactly going to answer, because those are tricks of the trade and then I would have to kill you.  But, I mean, the film was always going to be a large archive film because it’s mostly past tense, and also because we can’t exactly get access to him anymore.  And the film ended up being 60% archive, which is a lot of archive.


 

And we had an incredible team.  You know, our editors, our assistant editor and our head archivist, you know, scouring the globe for everything and anything they can get.  And I think the big trick with archive is you never say no to anything.  You look under every rock.  And, you know, one of our biggest cachets of archive we got took over a year to get.  And we seriously got it about four weeks before we were locking the picture.  And, you know, that makes it—it always makes it sort of more tense and more exciting, and more terrifying in a way.  Because you’re always looking for that elusive piece of footage.  There’s quite a lot—there’s quite a lot out there that was existing and we were just trying to find things that nobody had seen before.


 

Rebecca: I hope one of the bits that you got at the last minute and were able to include was the bit where we see everyone in the giant hot room and Bikram sitting up there with the air conditioner only pointed at himself.  Because to me—


 

Eva: We actually go that early.


 

Rebecca: Okay.  Because to me that tells you everything you need to know about this person, right?


 

Eva: Yeah.  And that’s actually, as I recall, that Micki saying that story.  He tells us the story of having his own personal air conditioning.  And the film’s only screened a couple of times publically at festivals so far.  And I will say that’s one of the moment that does get some laughs in the audience.


 

Micki: Some laughs, yeah.  And, you know, that’s actually a still, this is Micki here, that we used during my trial, because we were trying to show the jury how, you know, completely ridiculous and, you know, this man was basically.  What a complete lunatic he was.  So, he’s making people do yoga in, like, sweltering temperatures, over 120 degrees, when the maximum should be about 105-107 and no more.


 

Rebecca: I mean it is one thing to hear this story or to read this story.  It’s another thing to see it.  Because you really do have to understanding, you know, the power dynamic involved here in so far as Bikram really having so much sway over so many people.  We’re not talking about, like, two people, we’re talking of thousands of people.  Really seeing the physicality of the trainings.  Seeing him doing those, like, standing on, you know, people’s bodies and shaming people’s appearances.  And everybody feeling like they had to buy into it.  Really, seeing it makes all the difference in, I think, really understanding the story.


 

Micki: Yeah, and the paradox.  Because then you see him in the depositions, you know, in the videos that we were able to provide to Eva.  I mean, the court-related videos are obviously from myself and my legal team.  And we wanted the world to see how this man performs when he’s being grilled by attorneys.  You know, when the shoe is on the other foot and he is no longer in control of the courtroom.  And, as you can see, he’s still being pretty abusive to one of my attorneys.  He actually called her a donkey at one point.


 

[Scene from Bikram]


 

F1: He didn’t like being forced to sit in a chair and answer questions, particularly from a woman.


 

Bikram: Don’t stop me when I’m talking.


 

F2: This is where the judge [unintelligible 00:10:21]


 

Bikram: Please, please, don’t stop me.


 

F2: . . . poor behavior.

Bikram: You—behavior.  Who’s behavior?  Talking about behavior.  You know how to spell behavior?


 

[End of scene]


 

Micki: And I’m sitting right next to her and there’s obviously a paradigm shift.  Because in the earlier depos in the Pandhora Williams case, I’m sitting next to him.  So, I’m on, you know, the Bikram—the defense side.  And my adversary is Carla Minnard, you know, the attorney for Pandhora Williams.  And then there is a complete power shift when I end up being the woman who then takes him to court.  And my former adversaries pitch up and join my legal team.  So that was very interesting.  And I think that’s something Bikram didn’t expect.


 

Kevin: It’s clear that Bikram could not have been such a successful sexual predator if he did not already have this successful cult of personality around him.  Let’s talk a little bit about how they get there and about these teacher classes and this whole sort of boot camp of sweat and yoga, and insults and motivation.  This is really interesting part of the story.


 

Eva: Yeah, teacher training is super interesting and it’s—You know, I don’t how it evolved exactly.  And, you know—but he was doing it from quite early on.  And this is where a) he made most of his money.  It’s nine weeks.  It’s on location.  People are segregated in a hotel.  They pay between—I think now it’s around $14,000, but it used to be $10,000, so it’s expensive.  And they’re locked into this place with hundreds of people.  And they’re doing hours and hours and hours of yoga together in a hot room.  They’re doing endless lectures.  They’re not eating enough.  They’re not hydrating enough.  Everyone’s exhausted.  And if you look at—You know, I’m no cult expert, but it’s pretty clear how cult leaders get people to fall into their cults.  And it’s generally, you know, the brainwashing happens when people are exhausted, emaciated, you know, removed from any familiar environment.  So, it’s pretty, sort of, textbook 101 cult leadership.


 

Rebecca: It’s like, I was watching this and I was like Bikram—It’s like he watched Wild, Wild Country on Netflix and then decided to come up with this whole thing.


 

Kevin: Or maybe they watched him.


 

Rebecca: I don’t know.  He had the Rolls Royces.  He had, like, everything.  All of the trappings.  The only thing he didn’t do was build an airport.


 

Micki: Yes.  If you look at the timing of it, the Bhagwan Rajneesh left the U.S. on his Alford plea in the late ‘80s.  And that’s sort of the time when Bikram’s starting to come into major money and prominence, and starts putting together his collection of Rolls Royces.  It’s Bikram who emulates the Bhagwan Rajneesh.  So, the Bikramites are basically, sort of, follow on from that.  And Bikram certainly did have, you know, a lot of inspiration from the Bhagwan.


 

My understanding, just based on conversation with Bikram, is that they never overlapped or anything of the sort.  But we do have people in the Bikram community who came to us from the Sannyasin, from the Rajneeshi community.  And some of those people still come to yoga class.


 

But just to pick up on what you were asking about, the teacher training, I mean, obviously I used to run Bikram Yoga.  And I’m pretty familiar with teacher training.  It’s a feeder system into the yoga study ownership.  It’s called affiliation, franchise, chain, whatever you want to call it.  In order to own and operate a Bikram Yoga studio, you have to go through Bikram training.  There is no other way to open a Bikram studio, right?


 

And Eva’s right in that the revenue stream generally came from teacher training.  But don’t underestimate the royalty income that was coming in from studios, particularly overseas in Japan and so on and so forth.  There’s over 650 Bikram Yoga studios.  And the teacher training continues to this day, I’m afraid, you know, as you’ve seen.


 

Kevin: Eva, can you tell us about how the sexual assaults began?


 

Eva: Well, what I can tell you is what I know from, you know, first hand interviews that I’ve done with people and everyone that I’ve spoken to.  I guess, it was 2013 is when the people starting speaking out.  They’d already been—When was it?  Micki’s shaking her head.


 

Micki: 2010.


 

Eva: 2010, sorry—


 

Micki: Late 2010.


 

Eva: Is that Pandhora, 2010?  Sorry.  Okay.


 

Micki: Yeah, late 2010.


 

Eva: Okay, so, in 2010 was the first complaint.  The first—well it was the first essentially case that became settled and it’s Pandhora, who’s in the film.  And that’s the woman where he calls her a black bitch and calls her cancer.  And she left the teacher training.  And she sued him successfully.  And because she was the first person—she was the first person to sue him so, you know, this is all covered by insurance.  And she got a good settlement out of it.  It’s all, you know, it’s all NDA agreements, but she settled.


 

And then, after that, is when all the cases started coming out.  Sarah Baughn, who’s in the film, with the long hair.  You know, who was a great yoga teacher.  She was the one who was—who captured national attention.


 

[Scene from Bikram]


 

Sarah: So, one day I was teaching a yoga class, came out of the class and my daughter looked up at me.  She wasn’t even three years old yet.  And she said, “Mommy, I want to be just like you someday.  I want teach yoga.”  And all I could think, when I looked into her eyes was, “You can’t do that.  You’ll get raped.”  I thought, “I have got to find somebody to represent me, so that I can make this more public.”


 

[End of scene]


 

Eva: And you have to remember, you know, one of the things about this film is, this a pre-Me Too film that has come out in a post-Me Too world.  And what I have found out, through my speaking with people in the community is that there are women that have said that he sexually assaulted, abused, or raped them since the ‘70s.  And my feeling is is that people don’t change.  Someone doesn’t just suddenly become a rapist or a sexual predator.  I believe he’s been like this for a very long time.  I believe this behavior has been happening for a very long time.  The climate has changed.  What women will accept has changed.  And you really have to credit this series of young women who came out well before Me Too and pointed the finger at someone who was so powerful, and also held, you know, the keys to their livelihood and existence.  So, it was—it’s a pretty extraordinary story on that level.


 

Rebecca: It’s really amazing to me the interviews that you do have on camera.  And one of the things that strikes me about all the people that speak on camera about first coming into the community is—It seems like they’re all longing for something.  You know, whether it’s healing, physically or emotionally.  Everybody is looking for a path.

Kevin: Yeah, good point.


 

Rebecca: And, you know, I can imagine if you’re a young woman, in particular, and you’re, you know, really interested in this brand of yoga, and this is the only way to do it.  You can imagine a future for yourself that’s very fulfilling, where you’re helping lots of other people, perhaps owning your own business.  But it really does seem like this kind of yoga really had a pull on people who were looking for something.  Can you just talk about why that was?  That this particular kind of yoga attracted people who felt that, you know, that emptiness?


 

Eva: And, again, this is not surprising.  I mean there were definitely a group of people that were attracted to this yoga who were seekers.  They were looking for something.  Whether they had an injury that needed to be healed.  Whether they were in recovery.  Whether they had emotional turmoil.  You know, whether they needed to lose a lot of weight.  And it wasn’t just women, it was men and women.  And it was really important to me in the film to have some, sort of, you know, non-stereotypical yogi men.  Like Jacob, who’s the bald man in the film who was a huge—


 

Rebecca: I loved him.


 

Eva: Yeah, he’s amazing.  And, you know, he came because he was overweight and he needed guidance.  John Dowd, who’s the older man, who used to be a yoga teacher.  He was just looking for something different.  One of the things is it also attracts a lot of A-type personalities.  So, you do have a lot of, like, CEOs.  And really it’s a very, sort of—It attracts competitive, hard care people because it’s not an easy workout.  It’s hard.  So, I imagine people who like running or—you know, people who like really pushing themselves are also attracted.


 

Kevin: You had people who basically said that it was an accomplishment to physically get through the class, especially the first time.


 

Eva: Yeah.  So, it does—It—You know, it’s not unlike a cult on that level.  Where it does attract people who are looking for something.  And what that does is it gives the person who provides that a power and a position where people really look up to him.  I mean, and it’s—honestly, I have friends that do SoulCycle.  And they talk about their SoulCycle instructors in such glowing ways.  And I always—I feel like people are looking for leaders.  People are always looking for someone that will help them.  Whether it means they’ll feel better, or they’ll perform better, or they’ll be a better person, or they’re confidence will be built.  And there’s a lot of people who are looking for that in the world.  And I think Bikram just filled this place really beautifully for them.


 

Micki: But, and just going back to that point Eva was making about, you know, the cultishness of it all—Yeah, I mean he’s really creepy seeming, right?  And—But one of the things that really struck me when I began investigating the sexual assault—Because during the course of the Pandhora Williams litigation, evidence started, you know, coming out about sexual assaults that had occurred during her training and prior assaults, including Sarah and many other brave young women who came forward.  And Sarah, Maggie and some of the others have been featured on, you know, other shows and things of that nature.  They have done press in the past.  But, take it from me, that just from the witness stand I was able to rattle off, I think, about 30 names of women who had very credible sexual assault allegations.


 

And the issue that we had – why were they coming back after the first assault?  And they were coming back—


 

Kevin: Why was that?


 

Micki: Yeah, because this is their community, remember.  And even Sarah says it, even in her own pleadings that she just took precautions.  They tried to stay away from him.  They tried to make sure they were not the last one left alone with him.  Whoever’s the last one left alone with him.


 

And then—and then, you know, one fine day I find myself in exactly the same position as these girls.  And by that time I knew that he had—you know, that he was a predator.  I’ve done, like, a lengthy interview on this whole, like, Stockholm Syndrome thing that goes on at Bikram.  I don’t know if Eva used some of that footage.  I think she used a little bit of it.  But there—it is like a parallel reality.  It’s very, very dystopian.  And when you’re in it, it’s very hard to break out of it.  And you’ll see—I mean, if you come to any of the screenings, you’ll see yogis and they’ll be happy to see each other.  You know, I’ll be happy to see the girls and some of the yoga teachers at the screening in L.A.  And you’ll try for a moment to try to forget.  It’s a bit like being in a dysfunctional, like, abusive family type thing?


 

Kevin: Right.


 

Rebecca: Right.


 

Kevin: Well, Micki, can you tell me—He’s fled the country, but what is the state of his actual business?  That infrastructure where money would be coming in and going out.  Does that survive?


 

Micki: Yes.  So, basically, the infrastructure is three corporations.  They’ve been placed into what is known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy in California.  So, the Federal Courts oversee that.  In addition, there are a couple of companies that were owned by his children, to which he very quickly transferred the trademarks and the copyright.  The IP is really at the heart of the business.  So, those companies are under federal court supervision here.  However, Bikram, personally did not file BK bankruptcy, because he’s outside of California.  And, so, he’s operating, basically, a shadow Bikram Yoga which they’ve set up overseas.


 

I’ll give you a couple of examples.  You know, they set up something in Hong Kong called Bikram Hot Yoga Limited.  And then tried to argue to the judge that that had nothing to do with them.  And the judge is, like, scratching his head, going, “But it says Bikram Hot Yoga, Ltd.  And it’s got a mailing address in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.  Like, who are you trying to fool here?”  You know.


 

Rebecca: Eva, I do want to ask you about, you know, getting the women to speak on camera, especially Sarah and Larissa.  What was that like?


 

Eva: You know, for me these people had spoken before, so I wasn’t the person getting them to speak for the first time.  But very much with Sarah and Larissa, they had put this behind them and they’d moved on and they’d gotten on with their lives.  And, so, for them to have to come out and speak again about it, that was the thing that I had to sort of convince them to do.


 

And what I normally do is, you know, I’m very, very honest with people.  I had a lot of conversations with them.  I usually give them some of my previous work to look at and that sometimes, I think, helps.  And I think I did that with Micki, as well.  You know--


 

Micki: [unintelligible 00:23:22] asylum, yeah.


 

Eva: If they can see the work that I do, then sometimes that will give them confidence to know that I’m, you know—they can trust me.  And, you know, I just—I actually just saw Sarah on Friday night and showed her the film for the first time, which was fairly terrifying.  It’s always—It’s always, you know, you always worry.  Do—You know, you want to make sure that your honor their stories and Sarah was—you know, she said—she said it was like—It was actually the—It was really—I hope she does mind me saying this, but she said it was actually—She never got closure because, you know, she had to settle.  And she said the film was, for her, like having a trial, which was just a really lovely thing to say.  So, she felt really—I think she just felt closure finally.  But, you know, she’s really moved on with her life.  It was a long time ago.


 

Kevin: Has a anyone tried to block the film, Eva?


 

Eva: No.  I’ve had other experiences with films in the past where, you know, there’s the potential threat of an injunction, you know, or something like that.  And I guess, with the work that I do—I’ve done work in the past where, you know, you’ve taken on governments before, where you’ve broken laws before.  So, one of the things that you absolutely have to do and be meticulous about as a film maker, making these kind of films, is the factchecking.  And, you know, Netflix are great about that.  You know, we have a large legal team.  Every single thing in the film is factchecked multiple times.  You have to have multiple sources.  So, you just—It’s—Again, it’s investigative journalism.  You just have to be super-thorough.  So, no, there’s nothing that can happen here.


 

I think—Look, I think the only thing that could happen is threats.  You know, Bikram has, for a long time, operated in way where he’ll threaten people and try and scare people.  But, you know, it’s not something that I’ve been particularly concerned about.


 

Kevin: Eva, you end the documentary with Patrice Simon saying, “I’m glad he’s still doing his training.  I think he’s going to make a comeback.”  Why end on that particular note?


 

Eva: I guess—I guess the point with that is I wanted to show that there are still people that have faith in him and believe in him.  And even people that have distanced themselves from him, you know, they want to make it very clear that the yoga is still news.  That the yoga is amazing, that it’s healing.  You know, that it needs to be preserved.  But I actually think—Look, the word comeback is, you know, maybe implies something else, but I don’t think he needs to particularly make a comeback.  He’s currently—There’s currently a teacher training going on in Mexico with probably more than 100 people--


 

Micki: 60.  There are 60.


 

Eva: There was one in Spain a couple of months ago that looked like it had around a hundred people.  You know, he’s making millions of dollars a year.  He’s traveling the world.  He lives like a celebrity.  He gives talks that he gets paid a fortune for.  I mean, in my head, he doesn’t need to make a comeback, he’s still living the life.  He can’t be in his beloved Beverly Hills, and that’s the one thing that I’m sure eats him up and destroys him to a degree.  And he’s diminished because of that.  Because this was his—yeah, this was his home.  This was the promised land.  This was his image that he projected.  But all of that said, he’s still beloved by a lot of people.  So, I guess the reason that we end with that is, you know, in my head, he has—he never didn’t have a comeback.  He’s always been there.  He has not been punished.  He’s gotten away with it.  And, to me, that’s the most irksome, horrifying part of this story.


 

Kevin: So, this story broke before Me Too, as you pointed out.  I’m wondering if you think, if the story broke today if it would play out differently.


 

Eva: That’s a really good question.  I mean, this is another really interesting thing.  You know, Bikram has never been tried criminally in California or anywhere in America.  The district attorney has not gone after him, despite multiple women coming out and saying I was sexually harassed, abused, or raped.  And, so, one of the things that’s I’ve been saying when I screen the film is what we need to do is put pressure on our new, fantastic, super-liberal governor, Gavin Newsome, in California to put pressure on Jackie Lacey, the D.A. here to go after Bikram criminally.  There is enough evidence.  I’m not a lawyer, but the lawyers involved in all these cases say there is enough evidence.  And you can use the depositions from the civil cases.  And there is enough evidence here to go after him criminally.  And that’s the only hope of really ever getting him back to America to face the music.


 

[Music]


 

Melissa: And that’s it for this week’s episode.  We’ll be back next month with a new True Crime Series for you to add to your watchlist.  You can find this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.  Make sure to subscribe, rate and review this show.  You Can’t Make This Up, if a production of Pineapple Street Media and Netflix.  Our music is by Hansdale Hsu.  I’m Melissa Slaughter till next time.


 

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