Skepticism

Garth Brooks isn’t a Serial Killer: Confirmation Bias in Action

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The other day I saw the news that Garth Brooks is being sued in civil court by a woman who says he sexually assaulted her while she was working as his and his wife’s makeup and hair stylist. I didn’t really have much of an opinion about the whole thing, as I’ve never been a fan of his or pop country in general. So, I had no idea how surprising this would be to people in the know. For instance, most people were surprised that Bill Cosby was a serial rapist but everyone in stand-up and Hollywood seemed to know about his behavior by the time it finally came to light in public. Garth Brooks seems like an “aw shucks” sort of doofus but maybe people in the country music scene already thought he was a creep. So I started looking through social media responses to the news, and one theme that kept popping up wasn’t that he had a history of being a sex pest, but that he is, in fact, a serial killer. And that’s why, a few days later, I know way more about Garth Brooks than I ever dreamed.

Okay, first let me fill you in on the lawsuit: Brooks filed his own lawsuit first, requesting anonymity for himself and a woman who he said was extorting and defaming him by lying about a sexual assault. Shortly thereafter and before a judge could consider that, the anonymous woman filed her own lawsuit, naming Brooks and describing how she was originally employed for several years to do hair and makeup for his wife, and when she fell on hard times Brooks hired her to do his hair and makeup. She describes several instances in which he made her uncomfortable by discussing sexual topics or even just appearing fully naked in front of her, and then she claims he violently raped her in a hotel suite in LA.

Brooks then amended his own suit to reveal her name, which her lawyers say is an act intended to intimidate her and expose her to public ridicule. You can certainly argue that he had that right considering that he originally asked for everything to be done anonymously, but I’ve skimmed through some Garth Brooks fan message boards and this woman is being completely dragged through hell, so in this video I’m not going to name her and contribute to that bullshit.

Did he rape her? I don’t know. Is she extorting him? No idea. Her complaint says she has incriminating text messages and witnesses to some of his sexual behavior, so it literally makes zero sense for me to sit here and rush to judgment when a judge and jury will get to that in the future.

So yeah that’s not what I’m going to focus on today. I’d rather talk about the completely bonkers claim that Garth Brooks is a serial killer, which I saw people using to add weight to the accusation of rape. Like, not sarcastically. Literally with a straight face saying things like “well there have been rumors about him for awhile now.” So yeah let’s talk about it!

The idea that Garth Brooks is a serial killer apparently began on a podcast called Your Mom’s House, where stand-up comedian Tom Segura chats with his wife Christina P, who is also a stand-up comedian. Fun fact I learned while researching this video: Tom Segura is a different guy than Bert Kreischer. Who knew? But I found a way to tell the difference: it is impossible to find a photo of Bert Kreischer without his nipples in it. “If it wears a shirt-a, it’s Tom Segura.” There, I made a little mnemonic for you. You’re welcome.

Anyway, back in 2018, Garth Brooks was gearing up to do a tour of stadiums, so he was posting videos for PR. On Your Mom’s House, Tom Segura and his wife discussed how weird he seems, and then said this about him. And Segura’s fans thought this was, like, peak comedy. This is the funniest thing ever, that Garth Brooks is secretly a serial killer with lots of bodies. So then, whenever Brooks posted to social media like this video on Instagram where he tours a venue and ends by staring down the camera, Segura would point out the weirdness and his fans would flood the comments demanding to know where the bodies are.

I wanna pause here to point out that at the start, everyone was clearly joking. Was it a good joke? Obviously I am less than impressed with it. Like yeah it’s a funny thought that a famous guy with a decades-long reputation of being a really nice guy (to fans and colleagues, if not to the women he’s apparently cheated on) but the joke gets less funny when you see what happened on that initial episode of the podcast before Segura made the serial killer joke: Christina P. says that she thinks Brooks is so weird and awkward because he’s on the spectrum, and argues that it looks like he’s just mimicking behaviors he sees in others and that he is clearly very focused on being very good at what he does, and…yeah, she might be right. So if you think about it, it’s kind of fucking shitty to look at someone who acts in a way typical of people with autism and to say those specific traits mean he’s a serial killer. In fact, you don’t even have to think about it, it’s obviously kinda shitty.

But okay, whatever, it’s just a joke, man. It was a shitpost. That was six entire years ago. As of right now, Brooks hasn’t really directly responded, though one guy did try to ask him about it in a way that is way more awkward than anything Brooks has ever done. But still, the “joke” spread, and spread, and at some point it got so far from the originator that the “humor” behind it fell away, and now you get people posting things like this and like this.

So now it’s gone from an obvious shitpost to an actual conspiracy theory, and you can see how the story escalated. Instead of “he’s weird, I bet he’s killed people,” now it’s that stuff PLUS that fans of his have gone missing after concerts, AND that unsolved murders have consistently happened in cities on dates when Garth Brooks tours through AND they share the same serial killer’s signature or modus operandi.

I actually combed the internet looking for this supposed list of unsolved murders aligning with Brooks’ tour dates, because I absolutely believe that someone could probably come up with that. It’s called “confirmation bias:” specifically seeking out information that confirms something you have already decided is true (like googling murders in a city that occur near dates Garth Brooks was there), and selectively interpreting all other information to do the same (like deciding every weird thing he does in social media videos are proof that he’s a murderer). That leads to illusory causation: the false belief that two events are related (a murder and a Garth Brooks concert) when they are not, they just happened at the same time.

For instance, I went to Garth Brooks’ website, which IS a crime that should be investigated by the way, and I picked a random past tour date. He performed in Buffalo, New York on Saturday, July 23, 2022. The night before the show, two men were shot by an unknown person less than 13 miles from the venue.

See? It’s easy. I could do more and I was going to do more just for fun but when I found the first match of murder and tour date it occurred to me that a real person was murdered and it felt gross so I’ll just leave it there.

But here’s the thing: I can’t find that anyone has actually even bothered to do that. It looks like someone just made that up and people spread it without even looking at the stupid correlation.

While I didn’t find anyone matching up Garth Brooks dates with unsolved murders, I did find something even more interesting and, dare I say, actually kind of funny?

That guy, @JalonBlacks on YouTube, now has several short videos in which he points out unsolved murder cases matching up with Tom Segura’s tour dates and moves, alongside clips of Segura talking on podcasts about how much he’s thought about how he would murder someone, like how he’d do it in a hot climate because cold preserves too much evidence. Oh and also clips of Segura’s wife Christina P. saying the n-word a lot, speaking to the overall character of the family home.

And then I found some people on Reddit discussing those videos, and one of them actually DID match up Segura’s touring schedule with the victims found in Lady Bird Lake and found that for each one, he was between shows and presumably would have been at his home in Austin (where he lives on a lake, but not Lady Bird Lake). Here’s how committed this guy was to this theory:

“The only (murder) that clashes with his location is the body found April 15, 2023, because Tom was in Oslo, Norway during that time. However, the body was sighted days earlier (as reported here) and his family hadn’t seen him since April 9. It was normal to be out of contact, but that also leaves a large time window that allows for this to have happened before Tom left for his tour.”

Also, someone pointed out that Segura’s Xitter handle is “Tom Segura AKA Mr. Ladybug.” A “ladybug” is the American term for what Brits call a “ladybird.” Hmmm.

Look, I’m not saying that THIS conspiracy mongering is any better than the stuff targeting Garth Brooks. I’m just saying that in this case, it has that added flavor of irony that makes it just a little more satisfying.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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