509 - Let Me Corrupt You | My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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hello and welcome to my favorite murder that's george a hard start that's karen kilgariff

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I have shit all over my hands. She's having a night. She's having a day, a night, a year.

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This feels, and it's very stolen valor for me to make this comparison, but coming back from a Thanksgiving break to wait to go on Christmas break very much feels like when I first heard that they used to make soldiers in Vietnam go for two weeks to meet their wives in Hawaii and then go back to war.

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Where I'm like, wait, that's a horrible thing to do. Yeah, I hear you. We have two more weeks until we're on Christmas break.

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Yes. And this is hard to go back. It's like we went on tour. That was insane. I still can't get over the fact that it's over.

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Like I still can't believe that. I know. And then it's also like hard to go away from like people cheering from you for you forever.

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And then also now it's like, welcome back for two weeks. No one was excited to see me when I went home for Thanksgiving.

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No one cheered. Kept looking at people going, you do realize that I just spent three months experiencing.

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I'm sorry. Do you know who I think I am? You better get on board with this. How are you?

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I'm good. Because we've been on tour, I wanted to bring the dogs home for Thanksgiving.

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So I drove up north as if I don't count in the big Thanksgiving travel nightmare.

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It's different for you. It's different. Me? I've been doing this for so long. I know how to do it or something.

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The way home, it took me 12 hours to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Everyone needs to know.

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It's a six-hour drive usually. So it's as if I drove home to Los Angeles and then back to San Francisco, essentially.

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That feeling when you get to the grapevine and you're like, I'm almost there, but you're fucking not almost there because that's when the worst of the traffic starts.

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Because the 99 and then this thing with the trucks comes and it is like a big nightmare, big why of traffic.

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And then you sit there for three more hours. Jesus, I'm sorry to deal with that.

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Listen. I stayed home. It was. You were fine. Excellent. Were you fully rested right now?

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I don't want to tell you. I don't want to say. I don't want to make you feel bad.

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But yes, I'm pretty fucking rested. I did a nice ketamine session over the weekend.

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Hey, what does that mean? Therapeutic ketamine. You and some horses? I went to the stables and did ketamine.

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And yeah, I'm rested. I'm very rested. I'm like clear minded. And I gave you drugs just now, though, too.

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Yeah, George and I are doing drugs before the show. It's a thing we're going to try out.

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See, it worked for Fleetwood Mac. And we think it's going to work for us. It's just nicotine pouches.

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That is my like new thing. I discovered it that Georgia was doing nicotine pouches, not patches, while we were on tour.

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I'm doing both, but pouches. Oh, you're doing it all. Careful. I know. But then right before we started, I was like, I drove her 12 hours.

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Georgia was like, I want a nicotine pouch. I felt like such a, I have definitely been, when I was younger, the girl who gave someone their first cigarette.

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Yeah. And I was the don't hang out with her. She's a bad influence person. Entirely.

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So I totally had flashbacks to that with you just now. And it felt kind of good.

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Yeah, it's a great feeling. It is. It's the full rebel. It's like day drinking. You're like, not supposed to do it.

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Do it. Do it. Do it. Let me corrupt you. Yeah. It's fun for everyone. Come over to our side.

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Yeah. We shouldn't get, we shouldn't drink, right? It's daytime. That's crazy. We shouldn't have a drink, right?

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No. We should get a bottle. And also it's like, are you super tired? This might work.

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I mean, I don't know, but it's something. Yeah. Are you feeling it? I think I do.

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I feel like things got a little more in focus. Yeah. Does that make sense? It does.

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Yeah. I did it so hard the other day that I was in such a good mood that I called my mom and had a great conversation with her which only happens when I have at least one drink And we have a great conversation about cats and about you know nice things

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Flowers. Yeah. Yeah. But this time you were just like, oh, what's up, mom? Hi, I love you.

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Yeah. I mean, look, as my therapist said, and I've said a million times on the show, everybody needs a little oblivion.

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They do. And even if it's nicotine oblivion in a pouch, like you're an old cowboy.

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Yeah. I love the, I do too. much oblivion. I do what my therapist calls I win by losing. I was like, I get back at something I'm

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mad at by drinking. Yeah. And it's not hurting the thing I'm mad at. No, it's fucking up the thing.

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I am. Which is you, which is me. Yeah. Always. I know. But it's like, then they shouldn't have

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invented it. And they shouldn't have made it so effective. Truly. I mean, I have to say on par

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with drinking though what we did a lot this holiday i guess week weekend was we played a lot

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of games so it was like thanksgiving night you guys love that shit we love games the one that i

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really love is the three it's basically three rounds of charades where you get to say full

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sentences the first round one word the second round charades the last round okay but you have

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to remember the clues people gave why on the other teams because it goes back in the same bowl

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It's called Fishbowl. So you can just point at that person and be like, what they did.

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Exactly. Oh, that's fun. Like that and then like bowling or whatever and then people know.

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Okay. Yeah, it's very fun and it's fun because people think they're not going to be good at it and they're great at it because they just want to win and it's hilarious.

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We just played Jenga. Oh, that's good. Were you on a cruise? Is that a cruise game?

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I'm thinking of those. Have you seen those giant Jenga things? Yes. Hilarious. Yeah, that's, you know what it is?

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whether it's drinking, nicotine pouches, or just like agreed upon fun. Yeah. I want that cruise in the afternoon feel.

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I've never been on a cruise and I want that too. I don't even know really what you mean, but I bet I guess post nap.

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Yep. Pre-dinner. Yep. Like cocktail hour. Everyone's agreed that no one's going to talk about work.

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No one's going to be worried. We're all just going to be weird versions of ourselves and have fun.

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No Wi-Fi. No Wi-Fi. You don't need it. Everyone's in their like socks and stuff.

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No one's in their shoes. I get really uptight. I'm just like, are you about to leave?

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Where are you going? Why do you have your shoes on? Take those shoes off. You have to take your shoes off.

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And somebody has to spill red wine on the carpet so that you can salt up a red wine stain.

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I've got it. I'm on that one. That's what Sophie did it to Anna. And it was this big, huge thing.

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And we couldn't stop laughing because my Aunt Jean, who was there, and my mom, every single time we got together, someone would spill red wine on the carpet.

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So it was like just the perfect. Yeah. It's good luck. Yeah. Speaking of good luck, this is my favorite part.

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No, we don't do that anymore. That's a live show thing. I know. Isn't that sad? It's over.

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We have some responses from you guys. We sent out our newsletter asking you what you're thankful for.

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Thanksgiving in general, if you have anything to tell us about stuff that went down or, yes, what you're thankful for, anything.

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Okay. Just write in. I have a sweet one. Okay, here's mine. This one is called Thank You for More Than Just the Tough Times.

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Dear Karen, Georgia, and the MFM team, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for getting me through not only the tough times, but also for teaching me how to embrace the good ones.

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I may not be your typical fan or listener. I'm a 47-year-old Mexican father of two daughters, 21 and 24, living up here in Edmonds, Washington.

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But I've been with you since day one. What? A brother from another mother, as they say.

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Yes! Your insight and humor gave me the tools to better communicate with my daughters.

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Oh, my God. I've passed along the MFM protocols, encouraged them to stand up for what they believe in, and remind them that caring for their four-legged friends is just as beneficial to their own well-being.

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Yes. Those lessons have meant more to me than you know. Although I have two sisters of my own, you both have become the West Coast sisters I never knew I needed.

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This guy's trying to make me cry. I know. And I'm not going to do it. It says a bunch of really sweet things.

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And then it says, thank you for being exactly who you are and for letting me be part of this community.

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With warmth and love, SSDGM, Angel. This is such a delight to know that you are here with us.

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Sweet baby angel's here with us. Sweet baby angel. We should send him a shirt. Let's do it.

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Well, this goes very much along with that email. And it just says, hello, ladies, and felicitous compliments of the holiday season to you.

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Oh, wow. It's the Monopoly man. He's an English major. So I thought of something that might help you with folks who frown upon the idea of a true crime comedy podcast.

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Tell them it's just like how the TV show MASH is a comedy about war. oh how genius is that brilliant like a dark comedy right this ought to help soothe people's feelings

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well at least people over 40 years seriously and then it says saw you in chicago you were great

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jenny isn't that nice so nice i love that it's like if you're listening to this podcast and you

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think of things like that if you have tips or tricks for us right hopefully you know what do

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you tell your friends when you're like you should listen to this podcast it's i know it sounds but

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But it's like, what is that? Right. We want to know. Yeah. And Angel, if you have some suggestions, you've been here since day one.

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Get in here. Get back in here. Back in here, Angel. Reporting from Angel. I'm so grateful for that tip from Jenny and for Angel writing it.

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Thanks, guys. It's exciting. Hey, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media.

00:11:26

Here are some highlights. Well, this week over on The Knife, Hannah and Pasha talked to Ashley and Crystal,

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who are the daughters of Donna Nelson, who was arrested in Tokyo in January of 2023

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on international drug smuggling charges. They immediately suspected the man Donna had been dating online

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to be responsible for this. And so they share their family's heartbreaking story

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and their fight for justice and the warning signs behind elder drug mule scams. I never even heard of that That is something else Okay and then over on That Messed Up Kara and Lisa break down the SVU episode They Already Disappeared with actor Blake DeLong

00:12:05

Then they dive into the shocking real-life case of Anatoly Moskvin and his 29 mummified human dolls.

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Then on Ghosted, Roz reunites with comedian, oh, just truly one of my very favorites these days,

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Vinny Thomas. He's the one I'm sure I told you he has an amazing TikTok and he does that bit where

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He goes, it's his impression of a pigeon at Pride Parade. Yes. And he's, throw out some bread.

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It's the funniest. I love him. So he's on Ghosted with Roz for a freaky deaky cosmic kiki, they call it.

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And they get into psychic swindlers, aliens, a silicon-based life, and Snooki's soon-to-debut paranormal ghost hunting show.

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I kind of love, like, fits for her somehow, like, perfectly. Even though it makes no sense.

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It's not connected at all. But it's like, yeah. Yes, please. I also think that Snooki's personality, I think she was wronged in the time where they got popular.

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And it was so easy to dump on Snooki. Right. And I think she deserves to do whatever the fuck she wants because people want to watch and listen to her.

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She's a star. She is a star. Okay. And then tomorrow will be featured about Snooki.

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Justice for Snooki. God damn it. Why are you oppressing Snooki? And then tomorrow we'll be featuring episode one of Brief Recess, our newest podcast here on the MFM channel.

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This episode features Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking member and top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

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Then be sure to go over to the Brief Recess feed and check out their first four episodes.

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Please, please, please binge the newest podcast on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts and rate, review, subscribe.

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Also, Brief Recess is on YouTube. They're just as much a video podcast as they are an audio one.

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So go watch them at YouTube.com slash at Brief Recess. Also, attention holiday shoppers, the Exactly Right store has been fully stocked with gorgeous trinkets and treasures for you and your loved ones.

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We have added, do you want to go through this list together? Sure. Oh, I own this one already.

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We have the SSDGM necklace, the Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered pendant necklace.

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It's so beautiful. I have the gold one and I wear it all the time. It's fucking beautiful.

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It's like not shitty. It's not shitty. And also what a cute little bag. It says My Favorite Murder Established 2016 on the front.

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Keep your nicotine pouches in it. It's worth it just for that. Let me see if I can pouch this up right now.

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And then what else do we have? We have a Mothman plushie key chain. So hang your keys up here.

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But then you got a Mothman down here. Cute. Cute details on this. Can we get a catnip one of these, Nicole?

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Oh, that's a great idea. Okay. And then our red flag beanie. You have that. The cutest.

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I love that red flag. I love it. And then our cozy MFM script zip up hoodie. So it's just my favorite murder in script.

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It's pretty simple and like straightforward. I love that. And then it says murderino on the sleeve.

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I mean, do you want to come out as a murderino? That's pretty fucking cool. If you're ready.

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It's like also like really good material. Vince is always like really obsessed with good material on merch and he would this would pass his test.

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I know Nicole really does not slouch. She gets good ones. She does. She cares. So go to the exactly right store dot com to shop now.

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And there's more good news. We have extended this sale, so now it's going to December 7th.

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So you can get it all. You got to use code ERM2025 at checkout for 20% off site-wide.

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That's exactlyrightstore.com. Dot com. Support your local podcast. That's right.

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All right. So before we get started, real quick, we want to do our December donation announcement.

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You guys know every December, every week, every episode, we like to donate to a great cause.

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This month is no different. No, that's right. And this is actually one of my personal favorites.

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I talked about this book, Father Greg's book. So we're going to kick off December donation drive with $10,000 being donated to Homeboy Industries.

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And that's this nonprofit here in L.A. dedicated to providing hope, training and support to formerly gang involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

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They offer a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes.

00:16:10

So if you'd like to join us in giving to this very important cause, go to their website at homeboyindustries.org.

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They actually have a really great cafe and they are making TikToks where it's like a bunch of guys that look like tough guys that go up and they order black coffee.

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But it's like the little thing. We talked about that, right? Yeah. And they're actually like getting their like soy latte with vanilla.

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And then they're all like going over and sipping them all cute. It's the funniest.

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Yeah. So cute. Also, if you're not in a place to give money right now, they're looking for volunteers.

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So there's volunteer opportunities around tutoring. They need experienced teachers.

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And they would also like some volunteers that are mental health professionals. I love that.

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So let's find ways to look out for each other in the coming year. Yay. Yay. The way Homeboy Industries does.

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Thanks, you guys, for helping us donate. Yeah. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

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00:18:31

Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

00:18:37

This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordie Lachance in Stand

00:18:43

By Me 40 years ago, and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all.

00:18:50

We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth,

00:18:57

and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.

00:19:02

I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it.

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Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:19:19

All right, I'm first. I have been, I guess the word isn't looking forward to telling you this story, right? Because it's MASH. It's a comedy about Vietnam.

00:19:31

There's, yeah, there's real war in these. Right. So it's not looking forward to, but the story is fascinating. And we're going to Australia for this one.

00:19:39

So this is a story of the mysterious death of a young woman in Australia about 15 years ago.

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It's a troubling case that doesn't have a clear answer. It's not a cold case necessarily.

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But the most troubling part is probably how the initial investigation was handled.

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This is the story of the mysterious death of Phoebe Hanschick. And I actually heard about this from a 2016 six-part podcast series called Phoebe's Fall.

00:20:04

And it was an investigation by Michael Bachelard and Richard Baker, who are both reporters for the Melbourne newspaper The Age.

00:20:12

It's one of those classic deep dive. They interview the whole family and friends and just really get into this case and ask great questions that never were asked by the police.

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So it's a really good podcast. Highly recommend it. And it's always stuck with me because the girl Phoebe reminds me of me or us or murderinos or people we would know.

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she just seems very, oh, let's just get into it. Okay. On Thursday, December 2nd, 2010, at about 7 p.m.,

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the concierge at a luxury high-rise apartment complex in Melbourne called the Valencia

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goes to the refuse room on the ground floor where all the trash from the high-rises trash chute goes.

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So each floor has a trash chute. Trash goes to this room. She is looking for a broom to sweep something up.

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But when she tries to get into the refuse, refuse? Refuse, yeah. The door is stuck.

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When she gets the door open, she sees blood and a body and she panics. She first calls her boss, then the police.

00:21:11

And it's quickly determined that this is a young building resident named Phoebe Hanschuk.

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Police very quickly come up with an explanation that Phoebe had taken her own life.

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And because of this, they make many mistakes over the course of their very short investigation.

00:21:24

And it will leave many questions unanswered. The first thing they do is they don't check for a pulse.

00:21:30

They don't check for signs of life. and it's homicide detectives. So like you'd think that they know

00:21:35

to establish that immediately, right? Like that's the first thing you do. Is it assumed that if they're there,

00:21:42

it's because it already has been established? I don't think it's supposed to be.

00:21:45

Okay. Because the whole thing is like signs of life is like important and so they don't even check her pulse.

00:21:51

I mean, yeah, so that's what's going on. But let's talk about Phoebe. Phoebe had been 24

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and she had lived with her boyfriend who's 45. They live in that luxury apartment

00:22:01

on the 12th floor of this building. The apartment belongs to Phoebe's boyfriend and they've been together for about a year and a half

00:22:07

and Phoebe had moved in fairly shortly after meeting him. We do know that their relationship was somewhat rocky

00:22:14

and Phoebe had talked about ending it on multiple occasions and maybe even tried to end it

00:22:18

and just kept going back to him. This man is, I'm just going to call him Anthony,

00:22:25

that's his name, but he had been cleared of any involvement in or knowledge of her death by a coroner.

00:22:32

So I'm not going to say his last name, but you can find it anywhere. The journalists from The Age take pains

00:22:37

to say that they are not arguing with that finding, that he's not involved. But because his name comes up a lot

00:22:42

in connection with this case, and at the same time, he's not been charged with any crime,

00:22:46

I'm not going to use his last name. But in any case, his name is Anthony. And he's kind of a mover and shaker in Melbourne

00:22:53

as he's a very successful producer of major events. So he kind of is like in the know. He goes to like all the cool parties. He throws all the cool parties. You know, he's got money, that kind of thing.

00:23:05

His parents are both judges. His father is a retired Victoria Supreme Court judge and his mother is a district judge.

00:23:14

So, you know, well off and like also well respected in the community. Yeah. His sister is sort of a socialite and is known to be a minor cocaine dealer, although she won't be convicted of this for several more years. And when that does happen, when she does get convicted of it and found with selling cocaine, she gets a very light sentence because of her parents' connections.

00:23:34

I mean, to have two parents as judges? Yeah. Wow. Like, good luck going through the system.

00:23:41

Yeah. You are the system. Right. Yeah. So meanwhile, Phoebe. Come on, still got it.

00:23:47

Meanwhile, let's talk about Phoebe. She's born on May 9th, 1986 and grew up in a lovely part of Melbourne with her parents and two brothers.

00:23:55

Seems like she had a really lovely childhood and she's known for being creative and beautiful.

00:24:00

and like stops people in their tracks. But she also seems like she's kind of, she seems like she'd be a murderer now.

00:24:06

She has, she seems very artistic. She seems like the cool girl in high school who like always took photos

00:24:11

and was in like art classes and photography classes and she had a pierced lip and like short spiky hair.

00:24:18

She was just cool. She was a cool girl. Yeah. Like someone you'd want to be friends with.

00:24:23

Yeah. Just really quick on that. I just saw a TikTok that was all about having hobbies

00:24:28

is not just like a pastime or a distraction. Like hobbies, especially in women, teaches you how to care about the things,

00:24:36

like care about yourself and invest in yourself and then develop. So it's like you start it, a hobby,

00:24:41

and you're like, say, playing the guitar. And if you just keep doing it, eventually you'll get good.

00:24:46

And then you can actually do something with it. And that idea where it's just like that.

00:24:50

I love the idea of like girls in high school that are like, I want to be a photographer.

00:24:54

I'm into photography. And it's like, you don't have to do that forever. Right. Just like chase that kind of instinct and get into it.

00:25:00

You know I'm all about those like temporary hobbies and just like what's new, what's next.

00:25:04

Try it out. See how you feel. And so she has a rebellious streak. Totally reminds me of being in the 90s as a precocious teenager.

00:25:12

She starts going out to clubs with fake IDs when she was 13, starts drinking and doing drugs.

00:25:18

It's exactly what I did. At 16, Phoebe gets her first job at McDonald's. And this is just kind of like a way to show you how she was and what she was like.

00:25:25

I love the story. She hates the job. She quits after her second day. But when you quit your job

00:25:30

at McDonald's, you have to return your uniform. And Phoebe had come to work wearing it. So she

00:25:35

decided she's had enough. She quits. She goes into the back room, strips off the uniform and

00:25:40

then runs home in her underwear so she doesn't have to pay them for the uniform. Like that's

00:25:45

the kind of like I want that girl to be my friend. Yes, that's a cool girl for sure. Yeah.

00:25:50

She seems like someone you'd be like following on Instagram now who's like an influencer who does

00:25:54

really fun, cool stuff. And, you know, Phoebe's close with her family, but her parents get divorced

00:25:59

when she's in her teens. And she is estranged from her father for a while, but they ultimately

00:26:05

repair their relationship. And she's really close with her grandmother, a woman named Phyllis. And

00:26:10

Phoebe trusts her completely. She really tells her grandma anything, including about her teenage

00:26:16

exploits and experimentation with drugs, which my grandma would have had a fucking heart attack if

00:26:21

I had told her what I was doing. But this grandma is cool and totally nonjudgmental.

00:26:26

But she's also honest when she's worried about what Phoebe is telling her. Because the grandma had done her fair amount of experimenting herself.

00:26:34

Phyllis is up front with Phoebe about her own experiences with drugs, including LSD,

00:26:39

saying how she didn't tolerate psychedelics well. So be very careful. It's like not for everyone.

00:26:45

And Phoebe respects her grandmother, but ultimately pays a normal amount of teenage

00:26:49

attention to this advice, which is none. Thanks so much. Thanks for your input. Good to know. And so she definitely struggles to some extent with mental health and with drug and

00:27:01

alcohol use, as a lot of us do. It sort of blurrily fits into what is considered the expectations for

00:27:08

young people. Her family isn't too fazed by her relationship with much older men, which she's

00:27:13

always had, including a relationship with a teacher when she was in high school.

00:27:18

He was 30 and she was 16. But it seems like the mother and the grandmother both had always had relationships with older

00:27:26

men and didn't see it as problematic. And he lived with them for a while. And it's so hard to say nowadays.

00:27:33

You can't date your students. There's a fucking power control. No, if they're children, you're not supposed to.

00:27:37

Yes. No, that's wrong. But they don't see it as problematic. And yeah, so all this is to say, there's a lot going on in Phoebe's life, much of it typical for someone who's 24. But people can't seem to agree if Phoebe's alcohol and drug use and relationships have crossed over into a territory that's more worrying.

00:27:54

in the week leading up to her death, Phoebe was in close contact with her psychologist and did

00:27:59

seem to be in some amount of distress about her relationship with her boyfriend and as well as

00:28:05

her drinking, which she thought was getting out of control. And there might have been some drug use

00:28:09

as well because, you know, he was in the nightlife scene. And his sister, as we now know, was selling

00:28:15

cocaine, which all is to say, if you already have mental health issues, adding those things

00:28:21

are very detrimental. And proximity with stuff like that, it's like, if you can get away from it,

00:28:27

that's why people are like, then I moved to the country or whatever. Exactly. Because if you're right in it

00:28:31

and that's where all your friends are and that's what they're doing. And you're trying to keep up

00:28:35

with this older crowd. And she wasn't the type of person who was like, she didn't have a ton of money,

00:28:40

but this crowd that he ran in, you know, they threw parties for like famous people

00:28:44

and they had all this money and, you know, designer things. And so she was kind of 24

00:28:49

and trying to keep up. Yeah, that's a world we've all been told we're supposed to want to be in.

00:28:54

Right. Yeah. So her therapist says that during that week, Phoebe was talking about taking her own life, but it hadn't risen to the level that she thought she should send a crisis assessment team to the apartment.

00:29:05

Like she had mentioned it before, but not with any concrete plans, which I think is the thing that they always look for.

00:29:13

And she later says that she regrets not sending someone to help her. All that said, while people close to Phoebe agree that she was experiencing mental health struggles, perhaps even more severe ones, no one can understand how she could have possibly taken her own life.

00:29:28

And this is how she died by stepping feet first into the garbage chute of the 12th floor.

00:29:36

So problematic. And that's why she was found down in the trash room. Right. I get it.

00:29:43

Yeah. So many things are weird. There's no fingerprints or handprints left behind in the garbage chute.

00:29:48

You can imagine, like remember the one I had at my old apartment? It's tiny. It's like you open it.

00:29:52

It's the size of a laptop. So if someone were to put her in or she were to go in herself there would be handprints clear handprints Yeah But there weren any And it unclear totally if it was like they just weren any usable prints or no prints at all

00:30:09

Like fully wiped down. Exactly. Both of which are, you know, don't make a lot of sense.

00:30:13

The other thing, too, is that her family and friends say that, you know, she did struggle with mental health.

00:30:19

She did have a hard time taking her medications all the time. And so her being suicidal wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility.

00:30:28

But they point out that she had a balcony and or they point out that she was just this free spirit who loved nature.

00:30:36

She would have taken her own life in a different way. You know, she was an artistic, creative person.

00:30:42

You don't put yourself in a fucking trash shoot. Like that's not you don't do that.

00:30:47

It sounds, yeah, it sounds unrealistic, but it's also just like it feels like if you're in a moment like that, you're not also trying to torture yourself in that way.

00:30:56

It's very, very suspicious. Like you'd think that the police, the first thing they would do when they got there would be to assume immediately that that is suicide is so far fetched.

00:31:06

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like to conclude it eventually, maybe. But to assume it immediately and treat the investigation that way is super suspicious.

00:31:16

Yeah. So on Tuesday, November 30th, two days before her death, Phoebe goes out partying and gets so drunk that she spends pretty much the entire day of Wednesday, December 1st, in bed with a hangover. Phoebe's family says this happens sometimes. And on the morning of December 1st at about 1030 a.m., Phoebe sends out a group text to her mom, brothers, grandma, her boss and her boyfriend, the one she lives with. And it's concerning.

00:31:44

And so I'm going to read it to you. It's very odd. It says, quote, Hi, family. I am in bed and about to sleep. And when I wake, I will turn into the most incredible human being you've ever seen. Not I will go to the hospital. It's safer there. And I hear the special tonight is tomato soup. This is known as a tomato soup letter. Delicious, nutritious. I love you all very much, but not enough to send an individual text. Sorry about that. But time is sleep and I must be on my way.

00:32:13

merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream xo so that is the text she sends to everyone

00:32:20

i'm trying to wrap my head around it having been hung over really bad myself and the like

00:32:27

shameys that you get and the guilt and you're awful and i need to fix this and i want to tell

00:32:32

my friends and family that like i swear i'm gonna fix this and i'm gonna get better but it doesn't

00:32:37

Makes sense. It's just a weird text. Yeah. When she receives this text, Phoebe's mom is about to get on a plane home from Western Australia, and she's so concerned that she asked her mom, Phoebe's grandma, to contact Phoebe's boyfriend.

00:32:51

So he picks up the call. He says he's at work, but he'll check on Phoebe after work.

00:32:56

And this story gets even more muddy and strange because by some accounts, and it's so convoluted, Phoebe's boyfriend had her cell phone at the time that message was sent.

00:33:06

he said he had taken it to work that day because it was broken so he's going to drop it off at the

00:33:11

store but why would that text then come from it it seems like someone else wrote the text right

00:33:17

and it's also like perfect punctuation perfect you know casing like if she was drunk or high or

00:33:24

there was something like that going on yeah but also it's like he receives the text he's on that

00:33:32

thread. Right. But then he also has the phone. Right. He says, yeah. And there's a huge amount

00:33:38

of confusion about the timeline and whereabouts of this iPhone. It sounds like Phoebe maybe had

00:33:44

two phones and still had the second one on Wednesday, but it's just hard to tell. That

00:33:50

evening, Phoebe does talk on the phone with her father for about 10 minutes, but the call happens

00:33:54

on her boyfriend's phone, not hers. And they make a plan to have dinner together the next night.

00:34:00

So the next day, Thursday, the day Phoebe dies, Phoebe's boyfriend leaves for work.

00:34:05

And by some of his later accounts, Phoebe had her iPhone up until this point. And this is the day he takes it to be fixed.

00:34:11

He kind of changes his story a couple of times, which is suspish. Is this all making sense? Do you have any questions?

00:34:16

No, no, I'm right with you. It's just weird knowing that you already kind of gave the caveat that he's not involved and has been cleared, where it's like, but all these things like.

00:34:24

Yeah, we don't believe. We think that the reason he's cleared is because it was not properly investigated, not because he actually had nothing to do with it.

00:34:33

Okay. So regardless, he leaves in the morning while Phoebe's still sleeping. Later that morning, there's a fire alarm in the building and Phoebe's seen on a CCTV footage with her dog piling out of the apartment.

00:34:44

Some people point out that she seems to stumble in the footage at one point, saying like maybe she had been drinking, but she seems sure-footed walking back into the building.

00:34:52

So it's hard to say. Around noon, Phoebe's boyfriend's house cleaner comes to the apartment, and she's the last person we know of to see Phoebe alive and speak to her.

00:35:01

She says Phoebe seems sick and hungover, but not depressed, otherwise normal. So at 6 p.m., Phoebe's boyfriend returns to the apartment.

00:35:09

He says it was empty when he got there, but he saw broken glass on the floor, as well as a small amount of blood in some places, including on the computer keyboard.

00:35:20

He says Phoebe's like purse with her wallet in it is on the counter, which is weird.

00:35:24

She always takes her purse with her. So he doesn't know where she is. He has a cigarette, has a beer and then orders Thai food, which is a weird thing because he and Phoebe were supposed to meet with her dad that night for Thai food at the same restaurant.

00:35:40

But he doesn't know where she is. They have plans. And then he orders Thai food.

00:35:45

They have plans for dinner. Right. It doesn't add up. When the Thai food comes just after 7 p the delivery guy mentions that there are police in the building foyer Something going on And that when Anthony the boyfriend goes downstairs to discover that Phoebe body had been found Mm Right Yeah I just thinking like you have these plans and then your girlfriend is like you can get a hold of her

00:36:10

The idea that you're just going to have some dinner. Right. Feels odd. Yes. Yeah, like, I wonder what Vince would think if he came home and I wasn't there, my purse was there.

00:36:20

Like, he'd be, he'd know something was wrong. You'd just be working on that probably.

00:36:25

Yeah. I don't think you order dinner. I better eat. Right. So this is all pretty awful.

00:36:31

Trigger warning. Phoebe had fallen 12 stories through that chute, more than 100 feet first.

00:36:40

So the blade of the compactor machine at the bottom of the chute had badly injured her ankle on the way down.

00:36:47

Once it gets to the bottom, there's a blade for the trash nearly severing her foot.

00:36:53

Sorry, but it's clear from the blood on the floor of the refuse room that Phoebe had survived that.

00:36:58

She had climbed out of the bin and crawled across the room trying to get out before ultimately dying of blood loss is what she died from.

00:37:07

That's horrible. I know. I mean, that's worst case scenario. It's really awful. She's down with her jeans down around her ankles, which is a weird mystery, too.

00:37:17

Did they come down when she fell? Or a lot of people are like a way to get her legs together to fit her in the chute.

00:37:24

If someone else would put her there would be to pull her jeans down around her ankle.

00:37:28

You know what I mean? So that's really suspicious. There's no signs of sexual assault.

00:37:33

But she does have some bruises on various parts of her body, like her wrist and her arm, places where someone would have had to grab her to have those bruises.

00:37:43

But that's inconclusive. And then so Phoebe's blood alcohol content is 0.16, which is twice the legal driving limit in the U.S. and triple the legal limit in Australia.

00:37:54

So this part is like what people point to when they're like she did it herself. And she's found to have what is essentially Ambien in her system, which is a amount consistent with a normal dose.

00:38:05

But she also had a lot of alcohol. The coroner writes in his report that he believes Phoebe climbed into the chute in a sleepwalking state induced by the alcohol.

00:38:14

and sleeping pills. But Phoebe's family points out that they had seen her drunk on numerous

00:38:19

occasions because she didn't have a particularly high tolerance. And they did say she was very quick

00:38:23

to lose her sea legs, but they are extremely skeptical that she could have climbed into the

00:38:30

chute with that amount of alcohol in her system. So it's almost like they're saying that the alcohol

00:38:34

in Ambien made her do it. Everyone else who doesn't think so are saying how could she have

00:38:38

done that if she were on that much alcohol and ambient. Yeah. And why? You have to ask why she

00:38:44

would do that. I just don't. It doesn't make sense. Especially knowing that she lived through it.

00:38:50

Right. Where it's like, why would you do a thing that wouldn't if you're going to go through

00:38:54

something like that and make a decision? Right. And it's the aversion. If she put herself in there,

00:38:59

I don't think she would have known she was going to die. So she actually was wanting to take her

00:39:02

own life. There's so many other ways to do it. But if she was like totally impaired on alcohol

00:39:08

While in Ambien, maybe it wasn't a decision-making process that was like normal or linear.

00:39:13

But if she was totally impaired on Alcohol and Ambien, how could she have climbed up into the chute, fit her entire body, you know, like without leaving prints behind?

00:39:22

Yeah, right. It's just weird. Yeah, it's weird completely either way. So the chute is about three feet off the ground.

00:39:28

And it's one of those ones that doesn't stay open unless you hold it open. And there's really nothing to hold on to if you were going to climb in.

00:39:34

It's just in a wall. and it would be easy enough to get one leg in, but you'd have to be very small and very strong

00:39:42

and very agile to get in. And that said, Phoebe is actually incredibly fit. She is learning karate and kickboxing.

00:39:50

She spends hours at the gym. She's also a great climber. And so it might be physically possible

00:39:55

for her to climb into the garbage chute, but at the same time, the fact that there's no usable fingerprints or handprints,

00:40:01

Phoebe's or anyone else's, is very suspicious. So this is the botched investigation. There are many, many missed opportunities at the beginning of this investigation where the Melbourne Homicide Squad does not gather crucial evidence. For starters, as I said, no one checks her body for signs of life. She clearly was alive for some amount of time after her fall because of the crawling. So there might have been a chance that she was hanging on still when help first came.

00:40:28

So the investigating officers are part of Melbourne's homicide squad, as I said.

00:40:32

So it's not like the idea of this case involving foul play would have immediately been dismissed out of hand.

00:40:38

Like that is not the first thing I would think if I saw the scene is she took her own life.

00:40:43

Not at all. Right? No. I mean, I wouldn't. When they investigate Phoebe and her boyfriend's apartment, they do find the small bloodstains on the wood floor, shattered dishes nearby.

00:40:54

But they don't take the shattered dishes to see where it came from. There's two glasses that had been used like cups on a bench.

00:41:02

Like to me, that says two people had been there. They also don't take samples of her blood and they don't take her cell phone that she has and her computer as evidence to just see what's in there.

00:41:15

There could be a suicide note, maybe. They don't even check that. And they don't take the laptop for that reason.

00:41:22

There's also blood on the laptop and they still don't take it. Right. That's crazy.

00:41:26

Yeah. Police also don't take the building's CCTV footage on the day of Phoebe's death.

00:41:33

They look at it. The building manager who is in this podcast says that he offered it to them.

00:41:38

He told them that it's on a two-day loop. And so it erases itself every two days.

00:41:43

He lets them know that. He offers it to them. And they don't take it. And they don't even look to see who's in the building at entrances and exits.

00:41:52

Even just to rule it out that no one was there Yeah that very strange Right It only after more than two days have elapsed that the police contact the company that services the building CCTV footage to try to recover it

00:42:05

And unsurprisingly, most of it's gone. And this includes all the footage of the garage under the building, which would have shown who came and went around the time of Phoebe's death.

00:42:14

It just that doesn't track at all. It's just basic police work, no matter what kind of crime you're looking at.

00:42:20

There also appears to be no footage from Phoebe's hallway or the room where the garbage chute was.

00:42:26

The police also don't lock down any particular crime scene. So there's actually three crime scenes if you really look at it here.

00:42:32

There's the apartment. There's the room where the chute is. And then there's the refuse room.

00:42:37

Those are three crime scenes that should have been cordoned off. Not one of them are.

00:42:42

And Phoebe's boyfriend and his family, judges, are in the apartment the whole time this is going on.

00:42:48

They're allowed back in the apartment. Oh, no. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. They don't take any of Phoebe's electronics for months.

00:42:55

And by this time, the SIM card from her iPhone is gone. And her boyfriend admits to getting rid of it, thinking it wouldn't be useful for anything.

00:43:03

I have never gotten rid of a SIM card. I don't even know how to do it. You know who does?

00:43:07

Like weird spies and stuff. Exactly. Like anyone that's like, oh, pop this out and throw it into the river.

00:43:12

Like that's the Karen Reed case. Remember the one cop who like fucking threw away a SIM card?

00:43:17

That's so sketchy. Jesus. Very. Yeah. Very, very. It gets rid of SIM cards. I have my phones from like 2006 still.

00:43:25

I wonder if you can find out what's on there. I've tried. It's really boring. It's like just photos of –

00:43:30

Dumb shit. It's so dumb. It's so like bad photos of dumb shit. Don't look back. Don't look back.

00:43:34

Don't do it. But also I didn't really put that. I mean sitting with this and then it's like you suddenly can see like and allegedly, allegedly I'm making this up.

00:43:43

But it's just like trying to assemble some sort of idea of what was going on that night where it's like two judges are in the apartment.

00:43:49

basically dictating what is and is not going to happen. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?

00:43:55

But that idea as one theory suddenly is like, oh, right, don't look at that. Shut that down.

00:44:01

Don't go over there. Like, this is over. You'd also think that they would want that to happen.

00:44:05

If they didn't think that he had anything to do with it, they would be like, what are you doing?

00:44:09

This isn't protocol, right? Yes, get everybody in here and have everybody talking.

00:44:13

The only people who think it's suicide and who think she took her own life is him and his family.

00:44:18

Yeah. Like that is fucking. It's not great. That's not great. They immediately are telling like their friends and people they know that it's suicide.

00:44:27

Like putting it on Facebook. Instead of please figure out what happened. They're the only ones who think that it's not suspicious.

00:44:35

That's to me is like the biggest red flag. It's not great. No. Also, her sunglasses were found with her.

00:44:42

Why would she have her sunglasses on? I mean. You know what else they didn't do is check the trash bins where she was found.

00:44:49

They didn't check inside. Like inside something that was in the room where her body was.

00:44:54

Right. So like maybe, OK, maybe she went to take trash out legitimately, ran into some awful monster and that happened.

00:45:02

But then also like why was their glass broken in the apartment? Why was there blood?

00:45:06

Why did she have her sunglasses with her? It's just baffling. Police also didn't take samples. I guess there were mysterious large shoe prints leading away from the apartment and they didn't check that out at all. And then the other phone she had had been lost. So it's just her laptop and it's months, months later that they finally take it.

00:45:27

So Phoebe's grandfather, Len, is a retired police detective. So he's like, fuck this shit.

00:45:33

Yeah. And while he's devastated to lose his granddaughter, people who have spoken to him tend to agree that he's approached the question around her death logically and rationally.

00:45:42

He gets in contact with a company that makes the garbage chute. And the company allows him, basically they make him a reproduction of the chute.

00:45:51

He's like, there's no way she would have put herself in there. Gets a reproduction of the shoot and then asks her friend, a couple of her friends were the same size to reenact like how she would have gotten into the shoot.

00:46:02

Whoa. And films the whole thing. And with tremendous effort and there's video of it, they're able to get themselves into the shoot, but not without bracing themselves on the shoot and the wall around it, which would have left like, I think, clear finger and palm prints.

00:46:16

And they can't fit into the shoot without lifting their arms above their heads. Like, it's just it's very hard to do.

00:46:22

It's not impossible, but it's very hard to do. And this is something the cops would have tried to reenact.

00:46:28

Right. Yes. And it's just such a horribly unpleasant thing to do. I guess, like, maybe I'm just identifying with her way too much.

00:46:36

But, like, I would never do that. I would. That's it's gross. It's gross. It's awful.

00:46:42

It's scary. Her friend said she was claustrophobic, too. So, like, doing that. It doesn't make sense.

00:46:47

It doesn't make sense. But that on top of no prints is something is wrong. On top of so many things.

00:46:54

Yeah. So meanwhile, in Victoria, Australia, at this point, they still use the antiquated coroner system, which you used to see in the UK and United States as well.

00:47:05

And so when we talk about old murder cases, you hear us talking about the coroner convening a jury to determine whether or not a murder has taken place.

00:47:15

It's like the coroner's inquest. And then criminal charges stem from there. So the coroner initially rules it an open finding. That's what he rules the death as, meaning there's not enough information to determine Phoebe's manner of death. So it's an open case.

00:47:29

It takes years of pressure from Phoebe's family to open an official and full inquest into this.

00:47:35

Like you have to petition the government. And I've listened to other podcasts and read other stories where it's just so hard for the family to do it.

00:47:41

In fact, they have to pay for it themselves, the family of the victim that they're trying to get an inquest for.

00:47:49

Part of the reason it's so hard is that Phoebe's boyfriend's parents are such prominent judges, which means that they know every lawyer in town.

00:47:56

So no lawyer can actually take the case. Right? Because it's a conflict of interest. They finally get a lawyer and the inquest finally happens in 2014, four years after Phoebe's death. And not until her mother, Natalie, is able to raise $50,000 from donations and her own savings to cover the family's legal cost to have them properly look into her daughter's death.

00:48:20

Wow. Right. The other reason it takes this long is that Phoebe's boyfriend tries to petition against there being an inquest at all, but ultimately goes through and it's determined at the inquest that it is very difficult to make any kind of ruling because the amount of evidence that was lost or not gathered, how convenient at the time of her death.

00:48:38

Ultimately, the coroner rules that Phoebe died, quote, by misadventure, meaning an accident.

00:48:44

This is against the advice of his counsel, the lawyer who is tasked with working with the coroner to parse through the evidence.

00:48:51

Oh, wow. She had written that she believed the case should be left open. The coroner writes that he believes Phoebe had gotten into the chute herself in an altered state brought on by Alcohol and Ambien, despite several medical experts testifying.

00:49:03

while alcohol and ambient can make people deliriously do things, they believe it's highly unlikely Phoebe would have been able to climb into the chute on her own.

00:49:13

So like everyone's telling you not to rule it that way and you just do it anyways.

00:49:18

Inside job. Right. In 2008, so four years before Phoebe's death, a new law had made it harder for people to appeal the coroner's findings

00:49:26

based on their own interpretations of police evidence. And so this was part of an effort to modernize the coroner system.

00:49:32

So if the coroner had left the case open, Phoebe's family wouldn't have had to appeal.

00:49:38

Because he ruled death by misadventure, they would need to appeal in order to change that.

00:49:43

So under the 2008 law, if the appeal didn't go in their favor, they would be responsible for all of the legal fees incurred by that appeal.

00:49:51

So pay for justice. This is speculation. And allegedly Phoebe's boyfriend has another girlfriend die by suicide in 2018.

00:50:02

which people do or don't think is suspicious depending on the case, whether or not, you know.

00:50:08

And it's possibly had nothing to do with either woman's death, but this is always brought up when people talk about the case.

00:50:14

The widespread attention to Phoebe's case has led to calls for change to the coronial court system,

00:50:19

which makes it extremely difficult for families to appeal the coroner's decision.

00:50:23

And so in 2018, partly because of this case, the Victoria Attorney General announces that there will be some reform to the 2008 Coroner's Act.

00:50:31

and it's tied directly to the issues raised in the podcast that was used as my main source

00:50:37

that I listened to called Phoebe's Fall. So they actually were able to enact changes just with this

00:50:42

podcast, which I think is so incredible. Families are now able to challenge coroner's decisions

00:50:46

based on more factors than they had been originally able to do so, and they are at less

00:50:51

financial risk to do so. So we're recording the show right at the 15th anniversary of Phoebe's

00:50:56

death and she'd be 39 if she were alive today. And it's still one of those stories that people

00:51:01

are just always talking about because it just doesn't make sense. And there's so much to discuss.

00:51:07

I mean, like there's layers and levels of like, even if there was no boyfriend, right? But then

00:51:13

it's like, but then you lay that on there. Yeah. All that additional information where it's like,

00:51:19

it kind of reminds me of the staircase in that way. It totally reminds me of that.

00:51:22

They discovered the other wife. And then, of course, at that point, me, the way I ingest things, we're just like, well, there we go.

00:51:31

It doesn't happen twice. No, it doesn't happen twice. But it does. It does. It can.

00:51:36

And it does. But it makes something that is already suspicious seem like, well, come on.

00:51:42

Yeah. It's at least worth a second serious looking into. Totally. You'd think they'd want to do that to show that they weren't being, you know, biased.

00:51:51

Yeah. But nope. And it's just really sad. I just I think about her and how she was 24 and struggling.

00:51:59

And then so are we. And we got the chance to straighten things out. And she didn't. And it's just so tragic. And I just don't I just don't.

00:52:08

It just doesn't make any sense. She deserved better than that. Yeah. Than what she got.

00:52:12

Yeah. And that's the story of the mysterious death of Phoebe Handshuk. Wow. That's that's a lot. That's a heavy.

00:52:19

Yeah. That needs to get solved. Phoebe's Fall. Definitely listen to it. It's from 2016 and they've done other stories since then. And it's just a really great investigative podcast and interviewed a lot of people, a lot more details than I was able to put out there.

00:52:33

And it's making change. Like it's actually affecting people who are wanting to look at it. Wow. Unbelievable.

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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

00:53:48

This week on the podcast I sitting down with Divergent author Veronica Roth to talk about her sprawling new novel Seek the Traitor Son It a sci fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted My first book was Divergent

00:54:05

And when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted, like, mostly positivity,

00:54:10

but the negativity, I sucked in like a sponge. And I think it was, like, critiques of things I liked

00:54:17

when I was, like, you know, I was 23 and I wrote this book and it had all my, like, dorky little cheesy

00:54:22

or maybe unrealistic loves in it. And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things.

00:54:29

And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little things that like make you feel pleasure when you read.

00:54:37

But I also was like saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it.

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All of that available at MeaningfulBeauty.com. So can you change direction now, please?

00:55:59

I would love to, and I'm going to. Great. Although it's not, you know, it's still over in the dark place where we like to spend our time.

00:56:07

Because today my story is about a legendary maritime disaster. It's about a massive ship that gets caught in a horrible storm and then vanishes into thin air.

00:56:17

Oh! But it's not on the open ocean. It takes place on one of the vast, volatile Great Lakes.

00:56:23

Fifty years ago, many loved ones of those who were lost in this maritime disaster are still alive and still grieving.

00:56:31

It inspired a legendary Gordon Lightfoot song. This is the story of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

00:56:37

Holy shit. Vince has been watching because he's from Michigan, right? So he knows all about it.

00:56:41

He's been watching the documentaries and TV shows. It's crazy. I don't know anything about it, though.

00:56:47

I didn't really either. And I didn't think I knew the song. And then I listened to the song.

00:56:51

I was like, oh, this has just been kind of playing in the background. Because, like, I grew up in the, what do they call that?

00:56:57

AM Gold era of the 70s. Where you just turn on the radio and there was, like, amazing music.

00:57:03

And Gordon Lightfoot was one of those voices. A famous Canadian kind of traditional singer.

00:57:08

But then he had, like, some amazing hits. And he just very recently died. Okay. So the main source used in the story today is Christopher Rowley's excellent 1996 Discovery Channel documentary called Shipwreck, the Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

00:57:23

And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So it all begins on a beautiful, sunny autumn morning on November 9th, 1975 in Superior, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior.

00:57:35

This part of the lake is lined with enormous docks. I don't know if you've ever seen those really gigantic docks on the Great Lakes.

00:57:41

They look like several sets of train tracks that extend half a mile out over the lake and 80 feet above the water.

00:57:50

And then basically big freighters come up and they wait to be loaded with their cargo there.

00:57:54

And in the mid-70s, that cargo would typically be pellets of processed iron ore, which is an important industrial mineral that gets converted into steel.

00:58:04

So the ore arrives by rail from mines in places like Minnesota. And then once it's loaded onto the ships several tons at a time, it gets hauled through the Great Lakes and out to steel mills in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit.

00:58:19

And this is why the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is docked today, is named for the president of the insurance company that owns the ship, Edmund Fitzgerald.

00:58:29

Okay. You need a legacy. You got to have a legacy. Got to do it. But you're risking that this could be your legacy.

00:58:34

So the ship has a 29-person crew that's currently tasked with freighting iron ore eastward towards Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and then down to the lower Great Lakes, and then ultimately landing in Detroit.

00:58:47

So it's a massive freighter. It's 729 feet long. It's the length of two football fields as a ship.

00:58:54

It towers nearly 40 feet off the water. The height is basically about a four-story building.

00:59:00

Oh, my God. It weighs more than 13,000 tons when it's empty, and it can carry around 26,000 tons of cargo.

00:59:07

And it is lovingly nicknamed Big Fitz. So the Fitzgerald is so gigantic that when it was first unveiled in the late 50s, around 10,000 people showed up to the christening ceremony just to see what it looked like.

00:59:22

But that ceremony devolved into chaos when the Fitzgerald gets launched. and it basically slides sideways into the harbor

00:59:30

and creates this huge wave that breaks onto nearby docks and drenches the thousands of spectators.

00:59:38

And then as it kind of bobbles to right itself, it crashes into a nearby pier. And in that documentary for the Discovery Channel,

00:59:46

they say, quote, one man is so shaken by this sight that he suffers a heart attack and dies.

00:59:52

And another swears that the Edmund Fitzgerald is trying to climb right out of the water CREEPY So just to be there and see all of that happening The idea that a guy had a heart attack I like wait is that my weird fear of gigantic ships

01:00:05

Am I the reincarnated soul of that man? Must be. It's all about us at the end of the day.

01:00:10

So this takes place 25 years after that. And since that time, the Big Fitz has proven itself to be a reliable workhorse of a freighter.

01:00:19

Its next trip is Old Hat. It's a two-day run. they've done it a lot of times over the 17 years on the Great Lakes. The captain of the Edmund

01:00:27

Fitzgerald is 63-year-old Ernest M. McSorley, who over his 44-year career has climbed the ranks.

01:00:36

He starts as a deckhand and gets all the way up to the captain. I mean, with a name like McSorley,

01:00:40

what else are you going to fucking do with your life? Come on. And you better drink whiskey and

01:00:43

you better tell a good story. That's right. And you better belly up to that bar. That's right.

01:00:48

So there are very few people who know gigantic ships like the Edmund Fitzgerald or the Quarks of the Great Lakes better than Captain McSorley.

01:00:56

And of course, like any great tragic story, he's about to retire. His wife Nellie's recovering from a stroke.

01:01:03

And so he has promised her that after this shipping season is over, he will finally come home for good.

01:01:09

Come on. This haul will be the last one for Captain McSorley. Son of a fucking bitch.

01:01:15

But he thinks it's the last one for a different reason. And then it will. It takes dozens of deckhands about six hours to load all the iron ore pellets into the Fitzgerald cargo holds just below deck.

01:01:26

Then it takes another half hour to close those holds. And they have to manually seal the hatches.

01:01:33

And those hatches are above deck. And once the hatch cover clamps are shut, and I'm going like this, but I don't know why.

01:01:40

I know nothing about what I'm talking about. It could go that way. It could go a different way.

01:01:43

I'm picturing it like those hermetic jars with the ball jars with a little bit of rubber.

01:01:49

It's probably nothing like that. But anyway, that's a very important part of it where they have to seal that.

01:01:54

And then they'll be weather tight once those clamps are sealed. Around 2 o'clock, the Edmund Fitzgerald is ready to set out.

01:02:02

It's a warm, beautiful autumn day in Superior, Wisconsin. It makes it seem like everything's going to be smooth sailing.

01:02:08

But the Great Lakes are known to throw a few curveballs weather-wise, especially at this time of year because it's autumn so the water's still a little bit warm

01:02:16

from the summer but the cold fronts come in and that's how you get all the action okay again good

01:02:21

to know i don't really know this i am reading so if you grow up in this part of the united states

01:02:28

or canada you know kind of how all this works but if you didn't like us the great lakes are

01:02:35

very large. Collectively, they span 95,000 square miles, and they hold about 20% of the entire

01:02:42

planet's freshwater. Yeah, they're a big deal. And one of them, the one that the Edmund Fitzgerald

01:02:49

will be crossing in this run, is Lake Superior, and it's by far the largest. Superior contains

01:02:55

about half of the Great Lakes total water. So of the 20% on the planet, 10% is Lake Superior.

01:03:02

Not sure if that math is right. Sounds right. But basically, that would be somewhere around three quadrillion gallons of water.

01:03:11

Fuck. So we're up above trillion into an area I don't like to go to. I'm not there.

01:03:16

Please, let's not. That's enough to flood the entirety of both North and South America one foot deep in water.

01:03:23

Holy shit. It's roughly the size of Maine, Lake Superior is. And at its deepest point, you could submerge the Empire State Building and only its antenna would be sticking out of the lake.

01:03:34

Wow. So just— What's down there? The fish with the light. Yeah. There's some freshwater version of that guy.

01:03:40

Okay. And mermen. So what Captain Mick Sorley is now sailing across—I don't think sailing is the right word—traversing has the ability to generate and amplify its own weather systems, just like the ocean.

01:03:55

Whoa. In autumn, I just explained to you this part. Cold fronts move in and it clashes with the warmer lake water. Still not warm water, but warmer than the cold fronts. And that causes these violent storms that are called the witches of November.

01:04:11

So Captain McSorley isn't fooled by the beautiful afternoon weather. He knows conditions on the lakes turn quickly.

01:04:18

He's been doing it for 40 years. He's also been following the weather reports, but it is the mid-70s.

01:04:24

So they're slower and, of course, more rudimentary than we're used to. Still, when they start this journey, there's no weather warnings in effect.

01:04:32

But what Captain McSorley doesn't know is there is a powerful weather system moving out of the Great Plains

01:04:38

and doing what's called a panhandle hook. You know this one. It's a storm that originates in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.

01:04:46

It moves east before making a hook-shaped motion northeast and straight toward the Great Lakes.

01:04:53

And this type of weather pattern is rare, and it comes as a surprise even to the forecasters.

01:04:59

So several hours after the Edmund Fitzgerald leaves Superior, Wisconsin, the lake suddenly becomes rough.

01:05:05

That scares me so much because it's like you can plan all you want. Like that recent Tahoe storm that came out of nowhere.

01:05:11

Yes, and just killed people that were out like on kayaks. Because it was a beautiful day and no one expected that.

01:05:17

No, and suddenly it's hailing. I saw video of people on the shore where it was just like huge balls of hail.

01:05:24

It's just not fair weather. It's a little crazy. Okay, so nine o'clock that night.

01:05:29

It's seven hours into the Fitzgerald's trip. And the National Weather Service issues a gale warning for Lake Superior,

01:05:35

meaning that they're anticipating sustained winds between 39 and 55 miles an hour and just for

01:05:42

perspective a category one hurricane falls between 75 and 95 miles an hour so it's approaching

01:05:49

hurricane levels not there yet it not an ideal situation but captain mcsorley he seen it all and also he not alone out there there another big iron ore freighter called the SS Arthur M Anderson These fucking men and their boats

01:06:05

Name a boat after me. Name a boat after me. I demand it. So that ship is also completing the same trip across Lake Superior.

01:06:13

And that ship is helmed by Captain Bernie Cooper, a 30-year veteran of the field.

01:06:18

And they're only about 10 miles behind the Fitzgerald. So those two captains see each other on each other's ship's radar and they radio to each other. They check in. Captain Cooper is charting the weather himself and based on the latest forecast. So he warns Captain McSorley the situation is going to get much, much worse. And Captain McSorley heeds that warning. He wants to ensure everything on the Fitzgerald is weather tight and secured so the ship won't take on any water as the weather deteriorates.

01:06:47

so that crew is dispatched to double-check all the clamped hatch covers. Around midnight, the National Weather Service upgrades its existing gale warning to a storm warning.

01:06:58

Now it's predicting the northeast winds of up to 57 miles per hour or more. It's getting close.

01:07:05

But even before that issue is posted, the Fitzgerald is already clocking winds out of the north-northeast at 60 miles an hour

01:07:14

and waves that are 10 feet tall. Ooh. In a lake? In a lake. It's so weird. Yeah.

01:07:20

Lakes, how do they work? Lakes. And suddenly it's just like a bank is sitting next to you on your boat.

01:07:27

So, of course, there's rainfall, so there's very low visibility. But the Fitzgerald and the Anderson can see each other on their radars.

01:07:35

They remain in radio contact, so they're not that worried about that part. The buddy system.

01:07:39

Yes, exactly. These big boats have friends. Not long after the upgraded warning is posted, the captains decide they're going to reroute north and chart a new path that runs along the Canadian shoreline.

01:07:51

So even though it makes the trips longer, being closer to land will give them cover from these northeasterly winds.

01:07:57

And, of course, it's not an ideal situation. But because these captains have 80 years of experience between them, they feel like they have it under control.

01:08:06

But by 5 a.m. the next morning on November 10th, the situation becomes more volatile.

01:08:12

The skies above the two ships on Lake Superior darken, the clouds swell, and the captains find themselves in the thick of a brutal storm.

01:08:20

The freighters are hit with wind gusts at nearly 100 miles an hour. So we've gone double hurricane.

01:08:26

57 to 100, yeah. That's actually what you'd see in a Category 2 hurricane. Huge waves dump water onto the decks as these ships rise and fall on the Superior like little bath toys.

01:08:39

They have no other option than to keep moving. So around noon that day, the two captains decide it's time to turn back south towards Sault Ste. Marie.

01:08:48

But this is a little tricky because it requires passing an area called the Sixth Fathom Shoal, which is a shallow, mile-long underwater reef.

01:08:57

But it's not a coral reef. It's made up of huge, jagged rocks. Cool. Uh-huh. And those are rocks that could absolutely, of course, rip up the belly of a ship like this.

01:09:08

Normally, captains have to avoid the shoal. In this storm, they can't maintain the control to avoid the shoal.

01:09:15

Large waves are knocking the freighters around while making it hard to get a visual on the shoals themselves.

01:09:20

So they can't see, and they know they're going toward them. And then it starts to snow.

01:09:25

And it snows really hard. And before long, they're in whiteout conditions on the lake.

01:09:30

And they can only track each other by radar. Then around 3 p.m., which is a full 24 hours into this trip, Captain Cooper looks at his radar and he sees that the Fitzgerald is dangerously close to Six Fathom Shoal.

01:09:43

So around 310, he radios Captain McSorley, but McSorley brings up an entirely different problem, which is he says the seas are so high they're interfering with the Fitzgerald's radar system.

01:09:55

And so he's now blindly navigating on Lake Superior in whiteout conditions with waves the size of three-story buildings.

01:10:04

They've gone up to three. No, thank you. McSorley tells Cooper that Fitzgerald is taking, quote, heavy seas over the deck and listing to one side, which means the ship is taking on water.

01:10:16

But McSorley doesn't know if that's purely because of the waves or because of their structural damage below deck.

01:10:22

He tells Cooper his crew is working to pump out all the water to right the ship.

01:10:26

So then the captains come up with a plan. McSorley is going to slow the Fitzgerald and give Cooper a chance to catch up to him because they were about 10 miles apart.

01:10:36

And then McSorley is going to follow the Anderson to the nearest safe harbor because they have radar.

01:10:42

And that will be several miles away in Whitefish Bay, which is on the eastern end of Lake Superior between Ontario and Michigan.

01:10:50

But by 4 p.m., hurricane force winds are still blowing. More snow is dumping down.

01:10:57

And in these violent waves, Captain Cooper struggles to keep a visual on the Fitzgerald.

01:11:02

So the Fitzgerald couldn't see them, and now he can barely see the Fitzgerald. The navigation issues that McSorley mentioned also mean that Anderson can only intermittently see the ship on his radar.

01:11:13

And it keeps basically dropping on and off the map. So now it's 5 p.m. Anderson's still trying to catch up to the Edmund Fitzgerald.

01:11:22

And, of course, Captain McSorley is on edge. He's radioing to any and all reachable ships to check his position since his radar's down.

01:11:30

He actually connects with a Swedish vessel in Whitefish Bay. McSorley tells that ship's crew that waves are still washing over his cargo deck

01:11:38

and that in his 40 years, he's never seen a storm this powerful. At 6.40 p.m., Captain Cooper reports a succession of two 35-foot rogue waves that knock into the Anderson.

01:11:52

The Discovery documentary describes these waves as, quote, as powerful as those found in a mid-ocean cyclone.

01:12:00

So it just goes. You seen that video of the fucking wave in the ocean when that tanker?

01:12:06

Oh, my God. It's the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. Is it when they used to do the North Sea things?

01:12:10

They're like, oh, whatever. Yeah. How do they do that? I don't know. And then they kind of just get used to it.

01:12:17

It's like that's what regular life is like. No. Please, no. Please don't make us do that.

01:12:23

Stop making us become sailors. Just start crying. At 7.10 p.m., Captain McSorley radios over to the Anderson again, and this time he talks to first mate Morgan Clark, who can see the Fitzgerald on the radar.

01:12:37

He gives McSorley his position, and when Clark asks the captain how he's faring, McSorley simply replies, quote, we are holding our own.

01:12:46

Those are his last words. Minutes later at 7.15, the Edmund Fitzgerald drops off the radar, and it never reappears.

01:12:54

By 730, the storm is still raging on Lake Superior, but the snowfall lightens up a little bit.

01:12:59

So visibility improves. Based on the Fitzgerald's last position, Captain Cooper thinks he could be getting closer to them.

01:13:06

But when he looks out to catch a glimpse of them, he can't see anything. Like he can't see them at all.

01:13:12

And at the same time, the Andersons' first mate, Morgan Clark, is trying to reach Captain McSorley again by radio, but there's no answer.

01:13:20

So a rattled Captain Cooper calls the U.S. Coast Guard, tells them he's worried that something terrible has happened.

01:13:26

So the Coast Guard launches an immediate search for the Edmund Fitzgerald, but there's a problem.

01:13:30

All their big rescue ships are too far away, and the smaller boats can't go through that storm.

01:13:36

They can't weather it. The Coast Guard starts with an air search, but they don't see any sign of the Fitzgerald at all from the air.

01:13:44

A ship that's the size of two football fields seems to have vanished. The immediate presumption, of course, would be that the Fitzgerald sank because basically what else could it be?

01:13:54

But the idea that it could go under that quickly without Captain Cooper or one of the Coast Guard planes seeing it at all is pretty unbelievable.

01:14:03

And just for a very rough comparison, the Titanic, which is much, much larger, but still it's comparable.

01:14:11

It took two and a half hours to sink. So the idea that suddenly it's just gone is crazy.

01:14:16

With a few other options available, the Coast Guard asks the captains of eight large ships sheltering in Whitefish Bay to join this search.

01:14:25

Basically, they're asking all these captains who have just come in from a storm to go back out.

01:14:30

So nearly all of them decline, but two do agree. One is Captain Don Erickson of the William Clay Ford, which is another big ore freighter.

01:14:38

And the other is none other than Captain Bernie Cooper of the Arthur Anderson. So those two ships spend all night searching for the Edmund Fitzgerald.

01:14:47

They find nothing. That is until 11 a.m. the next morning when they see a battered lifeboat, which Captain Cooper says, quote, looked like a giant hand had just taken and torn it in two.

01:14:59

There's nobody in the lifeboat? It's just the boat. Torn in half. Yeah. They see an oil slick and more debris, like an inflatable raft and some life jackets.

01:15:09

But by this point, any hope for survivors is gone. The lake water is less than 50 degrees, which is only survivable for a short window of time, even when the water's calm.

01:15:19

But this water is not calm, which makes it even more lethal. A Coast Guardsman named James Hobart will say, quote,

01:15:26

We searched for three days in probably the roughest seas I've been in in my life, including the North Atlantic and hurricanes in the Gulf.

01:15:34

Yikes. On November 14th, four days after the Edmund Fitzgerald disappears, a U.S. Navy plane using magnetic detecting gear hits on a large object at the bottom of Lake Superior, right around where the Fitzgerald was last seen on radar.

01:15:49

And using the military equipment searchers are soon able to determine that this is in fact the Edmund Fitzgerald split in two on the bottom of the lake 17 miles away from Whitefish Bay where they were trying to get to So that means Captain McSorley almost got his crew to safety 17 miles miles is not a lot It so close when it two football fields on its way But even after the ship located

01:16:15

no one can agree on what actually caused it to go down. Two federal investigations are conducted

01:16:19

in the late 70s. Both concede we'll never know exactly what happened. But they both suggest the

01:16:25

likeliest culprit were those hatch covers on the cargo holds. Oh, those bell jar things you were

01:16:30

The bell jars. A report suggests that they might not have been clamped tightly enough. And in the

01:16:36

storm, huge waves pouring onto the deck. There's so much lake water spilled into the cargo holds.

01:16:43

And basically the ship became so waterlogged that it went down. It made it go down fast.

01:16:48

But that's a very controversial theory for a couple of reasons. One, it puts the blame on the

01:16:54

crew, on the Fitzgerald's crew. Many people object to that because these people knew what

01:16:58

they were doing. They did it all the time. But many Great Lakes captains and engineers

01:17:03

reject that theory because even if the covers weren't perfectly sealed, we know that they were

01:17:08

as close to that as possible because the captain called for them to be rechecked. It's hard to

01:17:13

imagine enough water would have been able to down a 729 foot or freighter in seconds. It just doesn't

01:17:20

make sense. You've got to imagine that it's able to take on some amount of water without fucking

01:17:25

falling apart. Yes. Right. So that brings us to the second theory, which is people thinking that

01:17:30

the Edmund Fitzgerald actually was physically damaged either by a stress fracture incurred

01:17:36

while it was just being slammed around in the water or because it scraped six fathom shoal.

01:17:42

And that's what Captain Cooper thinks happened. He theorizes that the fatal blow actually happened

01:17:47

hours before the sinking. When Captain McSorley first reported the Fitzgerald was listing,

01:17:53

Captain Cooper has said, quote, I don't care what anybody says. At 310 in the afternoon, she, meaning the Fitzgerald, had either bottomed out or had a stress fracture in the hull.

01:18:03

That's the only two possibilities. She was sinking from that time on. Yeah, that makes sense.

01:18:08

That makes much more sense. Cooper also points out it's totally possible Captain McSorley didn't even feel the fatal blow or scrape because the lake was so turbulent that it was like one of many things going on.

01:18:21

Right. But that still doesn't explain why Captain McSorley, who was using his radio, didn't call anyone as the ship was actually sinking.

01:18:28

It adds to the suspicion that it went down within seconds. So whether you ascribe to the theory about the hatches or the damage, many people also think that there was a final catastrophic rogue wave that took the already compromised ship and buried her before any of its crew could escape or call for help.

01:18:47

Yeah. You'd think if it sunk, like at least some people would have gotten off of it.

01:18:53

Gotten away somehow or, yeah. And also the fact that it's just cracked in two. So we'll never truly know what happened. And that, of course, has been a source of pain for the crew's loved ones over the years.

01:19:05

Many of whom first learned about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by watching the nightly news.

01:19:12

Oh, man. Horrible. So very soon after that wreck, Canadian traditional singer Gordon Lightfoot, who's beloved anyway, some great hits.

01:19:22

If you I think Sundown might be one of my favorite songs of all time. Yes. That really good low voice.

01:19:28

Yeah. And the beard. And he was like he was, you know, he's a hot guy. Drinks Miller, Genuine Draft or something.

01:19:34

Yeah. He was like the vibe of the mid to late 70s. So he reads about the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking in Newsweek weeks after the tragedy.

01:19:46

And he is really upset that it wasn't more widely reported and more people don't know about that tragedy.

01:19:53

So he goes into the studio and he records what would end up being his legendary ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which he will later say is his proudest achievement.

01:20:03

What I think is really interesting, and I did see this on TikTok, so grain of salt.

01:20:07

But somebody said what you hear it was a guy that knew so much He was like one of those music guys I sorry I didn write down his name That you knew he probably read like four books on the wreck and on Gordon Lightfoot and on Canada and the 70s

01:20:22

He had a little pork pie hat. And he said that basically Gordon Lightfoot got like an Irish traditional ballad.

01:20:32

Like those are the chords he was using. And they just wrote the actual words. And they went into the studio to record it.

01:20:39

And he just told everybody, just like, play what you feel because it's a really simple tune.

01:20:44

And they got the first take. And then when they tried to go do it again, like the real version, it just didn't feel right.

01:20:51

So what you hear when you hear it is their very first take ever of the song. It's wild.

01:20:56

It's very cool. And like people were asking questions. He's like, I don't know. Just do what you think sounds good.

01:21:01

And like that's what it ended up being, which then ended up being number one on the Canadian charts and went to number two on the American charts.

01:21:09

So it was a huge hit. Again, not as good as Sundown. Okay. I shouldn't be arguing that in this story.

01:21:16

Truly, it's like all of Canada knocks on our door. So to this day, the bodies of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald remain buried in Lake Superior, 530 feet underwater.

01:21:27

And over the years, the crew's friends and families have come to see the wreck site as a burial place that should be respected as such.

01:21:35

They've made it clear they don't want dives to the wreckage. They don't want anybody bothering it.

01:21:41

They want everything to remain on board as it was and just for it to be like that sacred place.

01:21:48

But for most families, there's been one exception to that rule. In the mid-90s, they agreed that the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell, which is the heart of any ship, should be excavated and brought up and used as a monument.

01:22:03

It's a huge endeavor involving careful planning and a team of expert divers, but ultimately it's a success.

01:22:10

And in 1995, the bell is removed and replaced with a replica that lists the names of Captain McSorley and his 28 crewmen.

01:22:18

And the same year, during a dedication ceremony for the bell, each man's name is read aloud one by one.

01:22:25

And as they are, their respective family members ring the bell to honor their lost loved one.

01:22:31

Don Donarski Jr. of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society is among the speakers at this event.

01:22:38

And he says in a speech that, quote, as we remember the men and hear the tolling of the bell, we should grieve, but we should also celebrate their lives as well.

01:22:47

As the bell is in their hearts, so they are in the bell. And in the bell's tone are the voices of the men, and we shall listen.

01:22:56

So Captain Bernie Cooper has already, he passed in 1993 when he was in his mid-70s before that ceremony took place.

01:23:05

But his heroism is reflected in the U.S. Coast Guard Distinguished Public Service Award that he's given for his participation in the search effort.

01:23:12

And today, Big Fitz's Bell is on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society Museum, which is fittingly located in Whitefish Point in Michigan, which is the entry point for Whitefish Bay.

01:23:24

Just a few weeks ago in November of 2025, events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald took place there.

01:23:34

And as many as 3,000 people showed up to pay tribute. Wow. So those in attendance would have heard the ship's bell ring 31 times.

01:23:43

So since that very first ceremony back in the 90s, two additional bell ringings have been added.

01:23:50

It rings 29 times for the Edmund Fitzgerald's lost crew. It rings a 30th time for all sailors lost on the Great Lakes.

01:23:57

And since 2023, there's an additional ring commemorating Gordon Lightfoot himself, who passed away that year.

01:24:04

No way. And what interesting is that Gordon Lightfoot actually wrote the song and then talked to surviving loved ones and tweaked the original lyrics if there was anything that like he got wrong or that he changed And basically this song is undeniably preserved the history and kept the story of this horrible disaster alive And the week of November 13th 2025 when it was

01:24:32

the anniversary, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald topped the U.S. Billboard's rock digital song

01:24:37

sales for the very first time because four million Americans streamed it that week.

01:24:43

What? Yep. And that's the story of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Wow.

01:24:49

Vince is going to be so pleased that I now know what the fuck happened. What all that's about.

01:24:53

Yeah. I mean, it's such a, it's so funny because it's like, there's so many people that really

01:24:58

love that song and it's like, it's important to them. But also if you want to absolutely destroy a karaoke night, you sign up for that song.

01:25:07

In a good way or destroy it? The worst way where everyone's like, because it's a bummer.

01:25:12

It's a ballad. There's probably 95 verses. Like, you're just like, and it's the same thing the whole time.

01:25:19

Okay. That's good to know. Because destroy can mean anything. If you're out to ruin someone's karaoke birthday party.

01:25:26

There you go. That's my recommendation. Write in if you disagree with me and you're super upset right now.

01:25:32

Speaking of being super upset, this has been my favorite murder. That's right. We hope we've helped you process some big feelings today.

01:25:40

You've helped us so much. Yeah. And is it 2026? Not yet. Oh. We're going to make it to the end.

01:25:51

Real soon. So, so soon. Real soon. Until we do stay sexy. And don't get murdered.

01:25:57

Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! This has been an Exactly Right production.

01:26:09

Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

01:26:15

This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi. Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Allie Elkin.

01:26:20

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgi

509 - Let Me Corrupt You

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