00:00:00
This is exactly right. average annual single-line payment of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers
00:00:32
compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan as of January 2026.
00:00:35
For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.
00:00:38
For you, save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point.
00:00:45
Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Kinder, Ghost Energy, Cottonelle, Ben & Jerry's, and Popsicle.
00:00:52
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more.
00:00:58
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00:01:35
Data accurate as of 2-20-26. Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstart.
00:01:58
That's Karen Kilgariff. And we're here to very professionally record a podcast. In the just possibly worst week that we could do it in.
00:02:09
I mean, which we said every week. That's true. But this week, so if you're listening on Thursday, which is the only day from then on, you could be listening.
00:02:19
You need to know we're recording on Monday. The day before the election. So we normally were pretty good at mind reading and telling the future.
00:02:28
Like, we're pretty good at that. We're prognosticators. Thank you. Deep down. Excuse you.
00:02:33
But we're not right now because we have no fucking clue what's going to happen. So, you know, we're I mean, are you feeling the stress?
00:02:41
Yeah. Uh-huh. Of course. How could you not? Nobody is confident. I mean, one person's fucking confident.
00:02:47
Well, nobody feels safe enough to be confident because all any of us can do is remember the times we were confident.
00:02:58
Yeah. Go back to we haven't done the rewind of the 2016 post-election Amazon five star reading, comment reading, because that's all we could fucking handle.
00:03:08
So hopefully next week, guys, it'll be a celebration of women's rights and non- Codifying Roe v. Wade and actually getting this fucking shit back together.
00:03:20
So speaking of politics, just kidding. Did you watch, I'm changing the subject, did you watch the new fucking Zodiac documentary?
00:03:30
No, I was just, the people I was eating dinner with last night told me how incredible it is.
00:03:36
Okay, it's totally incredible. Well, it's called, it's on Netflix. It's called This is a Zodiac Speaking.
00:03:40
And it's about Arthur Lee Allen. Right. Who is like, everyone's, almost everyone, except if you're on Reddit's favorite suspect.
00:03:48
And this, I don't want to tell you everything. Right. Right. Spoilers, spoilers.
00:03:52
But basically his like, kind of stepchildren from around that time are coming forward.
00:03:57
And like, here's our story about him. Right. And it's fascinating. And I have no doubt in my mind.
00:04:05
I kind of always figured it was him, just based on the evidence. But this is creepy.
00:04:11
This is the most you've ever heard about him. I can't wait to watch it. Yeah, you're going to love it.
00:04:14
But when I got home last night, because everyone was like, watch this series, this series, whatever.
00:04:20
And when I got home, I was like, there's no fucking way I'm watching a Zodiac True Kachan Dog series right now.
00:04:27
No, you need your British shit. I literally turned on the first British thing that I saw that I'd never seen before and pulled up the weighted blanket.
00:04:35
It was just like, take me away, Butler from Downton Abbey. The British show is a weighted blanket, essentially.
00:04:43
It's a double weighted blanket. Yeah, it's great. You'll love that. Great. Also, did you see episode two of Breath of Fire?
00:04:52
No, I haven't watched any of it yet. Oh, my God. Ah, Mince and I. No. Write it on your hand.
00:04:56
I'm bringing it down. So Joe Berliner is coming out with a new JonBenet documentary, which like he makes everything legit.
00:05:03
And you're like, oh, JonBenet, I know it. But like, that's going to be an amazing doc.
00:05:06
There's so many good ones right now. Amazing. Yeah. I'll get around to those February, February, March.
00:05:13
But Brother Vire. I think it's because, and I think we talked about this, it's the Kundalini yoga documentary.
00:05:15
Okay. Yeah. And it is so L.A. in the 90s, 2000s. Yeah. There's shots of Golden Bridge where I was like, was I in that class?
00:05:29
Because this is all anyone was doing. Wow. Okay. Crazy. I didn't know it took place then.
00:05:35
Yeah, I figured it was like the 2000s because yoga. Yeah. Okay. Breath of Fire. I'll watch it.
00:05:42
I just finished a book that made me think a lot, which was fun. Okay. It's called Hear One Moment.
00:05:48
It's by Lynn Moriarty, who wrote all the TV series that you've watched with Nicole Kidman
00:05:54
as the dramatic lead Pretty Little Lies She wrote them So this one is about these people people in australia they get on a plane in the middle of the plane right this older lady stands up and starts going down the aisle pointing at people and telling them how and their
00:06:10
age of when they're gonna die like in a trance you so you this and that and then the rest of the
00:06:16
book follows those people who got the ones that are like you're gonna die soon as well as her and
00:06:21
kind of tells you their whole life stories. It's not real. No. But the question is like...
00:06:28
Sorry, you were just talking about documentaries. I'm like, this is incredible. When did this happen?
00:06:34
That's a good point. I did not specify. But the point is like, you know, it's like, does fate exist?
00:06:39
Can you change your future? Would you want to fucking know? Like, would you want to know?
00:06:44
Me? Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. If she were passing out age and cause of death, would you be like, give it to me?
00:06:50
No. No? No. Then you're just sitting there in your house being like, here comes March.
00:06:56
Like, why would you do that? So that's this book called Here One Moment. It's amazing.
00:07:00
Is the subtitle of that book Final Destination? It's good because you're like holding your breath the whole time because you start to like care about these characters who are supposed to die soon, you know?
00:07:10
Also just in an enclosed space on a plane like that. You can't move. And she's up and she's in a trance.
00:07:16
Yeah. And then you find out why she's doing it like later in the book and you're like, oh, fuck.
00:07:20
For attention. No, it's like sad. It's kind of sad. You want to hate her and then you don't hate her.
00:07:27
I don't know. It's good. It's good. I bought so much makeup. Can I have some? Yes, absolutely.
00:07:34
Because there's shades I got absolutely wrong. But I keep on trying new foundation before we record these goddamn things on video.
00:07:43
I don't know. I just have to say it because my skin's a little bit burning right now.
00:07:46
Your skin looks great. They're like creamy. Really? Is that a gross word for things?
00:07:53
I think it's great for me. It looks great. It really was. I wish I could have shown you like sitting in a lighted up mirror.
00:07:59
Oh, that's you can't do that. It's been fun, though, like putting on makeup again after the pandemic.
00:08:04
This is like the first kind of time I've been like actually regularly putting on makeup.
00:08:08
That's right. And I'm older. So it's like everything has to be different. We got to work the shades and the sides and the filter and the toner and the fucking.
00:08:18
Ugh, all of it. Thank God for the Sephora sale. But here's, seriously, but here's also the thing that, because we've been talking so much about doing this and planning it and scheduling it and da-da-da, and then you realize, oh, it used to be, like when I was younger, it used to be if you did something like this, it was this big deal.
00:08:36
These days, it's like, what, filming? Doing a video, putting out a video, being in video, like any of that stuff.
00:08:44
It is truly like, okay, bye. And if you look like shit, it's going to be gone within fucking 12 hours.
00:08:49
No one's going to even look at it. And no one cares anymore. It's not like that anymore.
00:08:54
Can I tell you, like, the first photo that comes up when you Google my name, and yes, I fucking Googled my name.
00:08:58
Everyone Googles her fucking name. It's one of the worst photos of me I've ever seen in my fucking life.
00:09:03
I mean. And I don't know how to get it down. I think you can pay somebody. I'm, like, slouching in a way that I can hear my mom yelling at me, and she's fucking right.
00:09:12
Like, that's the worst part about that photo. Every time I look at it, I'm like, Janet was right.
00:09:17
Janet. You look like fucking shit. Sit up. Well, also, I think the thing of like the Instagramification of everybody's brains is really bad.
00:09:29
Not only because I'm a middle-aged woman who's like, oh, this has always sucked for me.
00:09:33
But the fact that it makes you think, same with like dating apps, it makes you think that that is what matters or that is informing you about what the person you're seeing.
00:09:43
Yeah. And it like you have this shorthand of like not not valuable, valuable, not valuable.
00:09:48
Yeah. It's just what we do. It's very human. But, like, it isn't in any way true or accurate.
00:09:54
So you've got people who couldn't be more gorgeous, who are insanely insecure to the point of, like, won't leave their house.
00:10:01
Yeah. Because they think they're not as pretty as a person who has a filter on their face and never looked like that in the first place.
00:10:09
Or people who are not fucking gorgeous and they still have so much. That doesn't mean you don't have anything to offer the fucking world.
00:10:15
Like, I don't have to be perfect and gorgeous and pretty. I can just exist and like take up space.
00:10:22
There's no there's no like rule or there is a rule, but I can fucking ignore it that I have to be pretty to matter.
00:10:28
Yes. And I fucking don't. Well, and the rule, quote unquote, it just changes person to person.
00:10:35
So like what I think is attractive is completely different than what you or anybody else thinks is attractive.
00:10:41
So we're actually making up that, oh, I'm disqualified. I'm disqualified over and over based on completely random where it's like the person in the corner is in love with you.
00:10:51
Right. Sorry to tell you. Right. These are all great points. And I agree with all of them.
00:10:56
However, I should sit up straight. However, I have to get a different face foundation.
00:11:00
Shoulders back. Shoulders back. Also, I read a thing where when you sit in the posture, when you hold the posture with your hands behind you kind of touching your lower back and you kind of rub that.
00:11:11
That's the one. It's good for aging. It's good for your aging health as you age.
00:11:16
To rub your lower back or to sit up like that? To sit up and rub your lower back.
00:11:20
That's a little Chinese medicine I'm getting on TikTok that I really love. I'm like, is that the trick?
00:11:25
Okay. Maybe we should get like posture things for these chairs. Yes. What if we got kind of like straight up and down, like we're on the voice where we like spin around.
00:11:34
We could also strap our necks to the back of them. So we're just never. Sounds good.
00:11:40
Okay. Some tape, some tape pulling our entire faces back. So we cut through that in a real quick, quick second.
00:11:47
We breeze through the opening. Let's breeze through the highlights from our network.
00:11:52
Exactly right media. Karen picks clean her microphone You gotta hope You gotta hope Most fucking Bridger has been recording in here He like and he like as a guest will you please rub your head on that mic
00:12:05
Ew. Okay. You go. Okay. We have a podcast network, and it's called Exactly Right,
00:12:12
and you're here on it. Yeah, thank you. We'd like you to go to other places on it as well.
00:12:17
Yeah, listen to the other podcasts. There's a fucking lot of good ones. For example,
00:12:20
this week on Lady to Lady, the gals are joined by comedian Danielle Perez, They have a hilarious chat.
00:12:26
They answer a listener's lady problem. Danielle Perez is a hilarious stand-up comic and friend and, you know, just a person that's been around for a long time.
00:12:36
Yeah, and we have a lot of lady problems on this podcast. Clearly, on this podcast, we have lady problems.
00:12:43
And on another podcast hosted by a bunch of great ladies, this podcast will kill you.
00:12:47
Erin and Erin bring you part one of the series all about retinoids. Like, I have been using them, stealing them from my mom since I was too young to be using them.
00:12:57
You know, it's like teen makeup TikTok thing. Was it the one thing that was like red, then white, then red?
00:13:03
Yes. I did the same thing and burned a whole fucking thing on my face. It was all pearlescent, creamy, beautiful.
00:13:11
And I just got a huge dollop of it and like put it on my cheek. So stupid. So check out this podcast.
00:13:17
We'll kill you. Retinoids. Erin and Erin will actually tell you the scientific stuff behind retinoids, not these little anecdotes that we told you.
00:13:25
Also, if you missed it in person, this is your chance to listen to Bridger's I Said No Gifts live show.
00:13:30
He recorded it at the Bell House in Brooklyn last month. Bowen Yang was a guest.
00:13:35
Jeff Hiller was a guest from Somebody Somewhere, the show we love so much. Sydney Washington was a guest.
00:13:42
She's incredible. Hilarious. Speaking of gifts, you can now purchase a card version of Bridger's Game Gift or a Curse that he plays on the show.
00:13:51
You can own it. You can play it with your family during the holiday. Go to the ERM store to buy that.
00:13:56
And while you're shopping, check out all of our new items for the season, including a festive sweatshirt with crows wearing Santa hats.
00:14:03
I mean, that's a deep fucking cut. Yeah. And they're sitting on a phrase that says, my favorite murder.
00:14:09
That's right. We said we like crows. It's the holidays. We also have a cozy hot dog sweatshirt.
00:14:13
Like I just said, we have new stickers. We have freaking ornaments and so much more.
00:14:18
So go to exactlyrightstore.com. Celebrate with us this holiday season. Please. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.
00:14:26
For you, save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point.
00:14:32
Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Kinder, Ghost Energy, Cottonelle, Ben & Jerry's, and Popsicle.
00:14:39
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more.
00:14:45
Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
00:14:50
Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:15:00
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago
00:15:07
and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all. We talk about what it's like to return to a story
00:15:15
that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth,
00:15:20
and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
00:15:25
I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid,
00:15:31
I was Gordy LeChance when I didn't know it. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club
00:15:37
on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Missatisfying breads and pastas and want to add protein
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Data accurate as of 220-26. I'm first, which means it's the bad one. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?
00:16:45
Sure. Like, that's what it's become. It's all pretty bad. I mean, yeah, it's all bad.
00:16:49
I'm going to tell you a fucked up story that like sounds like a plot line in a soap opera.
00:17:00
Great. But it's not. It's freaking real. Obviously, I wouldn't be. This is not fiction.
00:17:05
It's true crime. Yeah. Today, I'm going to tell you the story of Delamar Vera. Not going to give you more info on that.
00:17:11
Okay. The main sources I used in the story are an article by Anna Moore in The Guardian.
00:17:15
And that previews the new documentary that's about to come out about this case in the UK on UK TV.
00:17:24
And then also I used reporting from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the rest can be found on our show notes.
00:17:30
Is it BBC One or BBC Two or BBC Three or BBC Four? Coming out this week on UK. I think UK TV is like not BBC, essentially.
00:17:39
I don't think so. What's UK TV? I think that might be the generalized like it's going to be it's coming out over there and we'll get it later.
00:17:46
Probably. I feel like if there was a channel called UK TV, I'd already be paying $17.99 for it.
00:17:53
Can you check on that, Alejandra? That what Allie wrote If I just found out that there is a new app that I should have joined long ago I going to be really upset It like a multi broadcaster owned by BBC Studios
00:18:05
There you go. We were both right. Sorry. It's literally a thing called UK TV that I can get so I can watch UK TV.
00:18:14
This is not an ad for UK TV. I might have to get up and leave the studio right now.
00:18:19
Go program your recording box. There might be something like a U streaming service.
00:18:24
She'll figure it out later. I'm telling a story. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. This is about you.
00:18:29
I don't care. This is about you. KTP. Okay. Sadly, the beginning of this, is it called the fire?
00:18:39
So let's get back into this. Yeah, we have to reset. Yeah, actually. Here we go.
00:18:42
But also, like, we're trying to, all that energy is, like, election energy. Yeah.
00:18:47
That now we have to, like, put aside. Yep. And focus. I mean, it's only Monday. Anything could happen by fucking Thursday.
00:18:54
Okay, truly. But where we are, for our purposes, it's the evening of December 15th, 1997 in Philadelphia.
00:19:03
Oh, great. Luz Cuevas has just put her 10-day-old newborn baby girl to bed. The baby is named Delimar.
00:19:12
Luz has two other kids, boys who are five and six years old, and the family lives in a row house in the Feltonville neighborhood of North Philadelphia.
00:19:20
The older kids are from a previous relationship. They all also live with Delamar's father, Pedro Vera, who is a mechanic.
00:19:28
It's a happy, albeit tired time in the Cuevas Vera household with a brand new baby settling in and Christmas coming up.
00:19:38
In the early evening, a relative of Pedro, the father, comes over to the house. She's a cousin by marriage.
00:19:45
She had stayed overnight the evening before and has now returned because she forgot her purse.
00:19:50
Her name is Carolyn Correa. Some accounts say she's been over many times, while others say this overnight stay has been her very first visit.
00:19:59
And also the first time she met Luz, the mother. So that's kind of fuzzy. Anyway, Caroline tells the family that she, too, has actually just given birth to a baby.
00:20:09
Which is odd because it's hard to just spend a night away when you have a newborn, right?
00:20:16
But no one seems to dwell on this. And when she comes back the next day to get her purse, Pedro is out.
00:20:21
So Caroline gets her purse, uses the bathroom upstairs, and then leaves. And then 10 minutes after that, Luz hears a loud bang coming from Delimar, the newborn baby's room upstairs.
00:20:32
It's never been determined exactly what the bang is. Sometimes it's described as more of a pop, but there's some commotion from the baby's room.
00:20:41
Luz races upstairs to check on her daughter, whips the door open to the bedroom.
00:20:45
and to her complete horror, she sees that a small fire has started in the corner of the room
00:20:50
and the room is beginning to fill with smoke. Oh my God. I know. She also sees that the window is wide open,
00:20:56
but when she gets to Delamar's crib, she sees that it's completely empty. Luz frantically looks around the room for her baby
00:21:03
and doesn't see her anywhere. She runs downstairs, gets the rest of the family out of the house
00:21:08
and then returns to the baby's room, which is now ablaze. Again, doesn't find her baby anywhere
00:21:14
and burns her face in the process of looking for her. She's so frantic. Yeah. But then she has to leave the house
00:21:21
because the fire has gotten so out of hand. So once outside, Luz, of course, is screaming
00:21:26
because she doesn't know where her baby is and the house is on fire. And a neighbor tries to enter the house and climb the stairs,
00:21:32
but the smoke and fire are too overpowering. He will always say that as he climbed up the stairs,
00:21:38
he heard a baby crying. That's always going to be his statement. The fire department shows up quickly
00:21:43
and the blaze is put out within 15 minutes. And during this time, while the fire is being put out,
00:21:48
Pedro, the father, comes back home, sees what's happening, and realizes his baby girl is unaccounted for.
00:21:56
The whole upstairs portion of the house has been completely gutted. Luz tries many times to communicate
00:22:01
to both the firefighters and the police that she doesn't think that Delamar, the baby,
00:22:05
was actually in the room when the fire started. Luz speaks very little English. She's originally from Puerto Rico.
00:22:12
Somehow, it seems no one bothers to find a translator or someone who can translate.
00:22:18
None of the neighbors are able to help with that for some reason. And also, there's somehow no police or firefighters who speak Spanish who can communicate with them.
00:22:26
And I mean, it's 1997. I'm not trying to say anything's better now, but, you know.
00:22:31
We have Google Translate now. I mean, fuck. So the firefighters say that the fire began because of a faulty extension cord that was being used with a space heater in Delamar's room.
00:22:41
They say they don't see any proof of arson, and they also say they find no trace of the baby, no bone fragments, nothing, which is very unusual.
00:22:52
Pathologists disagree on whether it would even be possible to find nothing. Some say that because Delamar was so small, she was completely consumed by the fire, which is such a horrible fucking thing to consider.
00:23:03
Other experts say that this is not what they would expect to have happened in a fire that only burned for 14 minutes, you know.
00:23:10
Right. It reminds me of that one case of all the children in that house. Have we covered that one yet?
00:23:16
The Sauter family? The Sauter family. Yeah. And it's the whole idea of that, like, how long does it actually take to incinerate completely?
00:23:27
Right. That idea. That you would find absolutely nothing. Right. Investigators sift through the charred remains of the bedroom.
00:23:33
And at one point they give the family what they claim are the remains of their baby daughter.
00:23:39
But they're tested and they turn out only to be part of the mattress, some melted piece of fabric.
00:23:47
And because Delamar's body is never found, the family has never issued a death certificate.
00:23:52
They are told that they can get one through the courts, but the family, A, doesn't have a lot of money to do such a thing.
00:23:58
And Luz does not speak much English. Which, as I said, and of course, Luz doesn't really believe her daughter has died.
00:24:04
So Delamar is never legally declared dead. Which is so heartbreaking that she just has to hold on to that.
00:24:10
Right. It's also just so confusing. Yeah. Like all this series of events where it's like all of a sudden.
00:24:16
Yeah. A bunch of horrible things happen. And no one will listen and believe you.
00:24:21
Yeah. Luz tries repeatedly to get the police to investigate this as a missing persons case.
00:24:26
But they say the baby died in the fire and they won't pursue the matter. any further. A member of Luz's family think that she is simply overcome with grief.
00:24:35
Her brother says, quote, we thought she was just traumatized by the fire. Neighbors and friends will report that both Luz and Pedro are constantly saying that their baby
00:24:44
is alive. They totally believe it. The couple have another child together in 2002, but they
00:24:49
ultimately split up. Cut to six years later in January of 2004. Luz and her family attend a
00:24:56
birthday party thrown by Pedro, the father's sister, Evelyn, for one of her grandchildren.
00:25:03
At the party, Luz sees a beautiful six-year-old little girl playing with the other children.
00:25:09
And she fucking just knows. It's her daughter. She's looking at a child that bears a striking resemblance to herself.
00:25:16
And remember, this baby was 10 days old when she last saw her. She has a dimple in her cheek that was there when she was 10 days old.
00:25:24
And then she realizes that the little girl is there with none other than Carolyn, that overnight house guest from the night that Delamar disappeared.
00:25:33
Oh, my God. Then according to Luz, a family member takes it a step further. The other family member who's not related to Luz says, like, notices something's not right.
00:25:42
And she's like, isn't Carolyn's daughter beautiful? She's not your baby. Like, fucking outright says that.
00:25:49
The sentence, she's not your baby? Yeah, isn't she pretty? She's not yours. because I feel like she sees her losing her fucking mind.
00:25:55
Yeah, except for wouldn't you say something like, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?
00:25:59
Like immediately going to that. That's a person you don't want as your ring man.
00:26:05
Well, for Luz, the mother of all mothers, enough is enough. In 1997, when Delamar had disappeared,
00:26:11
there wasn't really that much discussion about what could be done with DNA. But by now, it's all over the place.
00:26:17
And Luz has seen a lot of crime shows. She beckons the little girl over, who she finds out is named Aaliyah.
00:26:25
Listen to fucking this. This is like next level. Like women, mothers can do anything.
00:26:30
She tells the little girl she's got gum in her hair, yanks a couple strands of this six-year-old's hair
00:26:38
out of her fucking head. Yep. Brilliant. I mean. In the moment like that when you would be so shocked
00:26:43
and reeling and trying to probably get people to listen to you or get... Your first fucking instinct.
00:26:49
She goes right to it. Unbelievable. This time, because the police have turned her away multiple times and clearly are not taking her seriously about her daughter not being dead, this time Luz goes to her local representative in the state legislature.
00:27:02
It's a man named Angel Cruz. And Angel is skeptical at first, but he connects Luz with the police and gets them to agree to the DNA test of that hair.
00:27:12
And by the end of February, about a month after this encounter at the party, the results come back.
00:27:18
That little girl is Delamar. Oh, my God. I know. How? I hadn't heard of this until I started doing research on it.
00:27:26
I've never heard of this. Wow. The way most people tell the story and the way it would make the most sense is that Luz
00:27:33
has always suspected Carolyn of having something to do with her daughter's disappearance.
00:27:37
And it sounds like other people in the family also had their suspicions and shared them
00:27:41
with Luz and Pedro over the years. Some people report that Pedro actually saw Delamar in person at some family gatherings.
00:27:48
It's all just a little like sketchy and vague and weird. Yeah, and manipulative, it seems.
00:27:56
And I guess the new documentary may shed some light on this as well. So back to Carolyn.
00:28:01
She had been raising Delamar as her own daughter only 15 miles away from the house that she was stolen from, right over the state line in Philadelphia suburb in New Jersey.
00:28:12
So I wonder if just a completely different state they weren't even aware. Yeah. But they also didn't look into it, so it wouldn't have fucking mattered.
00:28:19
Yeah, the Philly police had already dismissed it. Exactly. And at first it seems like Carolyn is completely convinced that she is Delamar's mother.
00:28:28
She willingly gives her own DNA sample when the police are like, we need to compare the DNA.
00:28:32
But it just ends up being further proof that she doesn't match. So many people believe that Carolyn was consumed by the desire to have a child, even though she physically couldn't.
00:28:43
And it's all those things of like, it's the same as like the rewind we just did of the woman who.
00:28:48
Sarah Brady. Who wanted to steal the unborn baby. Yeah. This obsessive like need or want more like for a baby and telling people you're pregnant and then getting desperate.
00:29:00
I mean, it truly, it seems like pretty serious mental illness. Yeah. And not like a thing that someone is just like choosing to do one day.
00:29:09
No. There's an obsession quality to it. there's clearly some sad, deep need, trauma, whatever.
00:29:17
Right, right. No excuses, but. But also, oh my God. Yeah. And also it's within your family.
00:29:24
It's not like, you know, you've heard these stories every once in a while of like a kid
00:29:28
goes missing and then is discovered 30 years later. Oh God, yeah. But also Carolyn had had her tubes tied years earlier.
00:29:35
So she knew she couldn't have children. That almost to me shows more of a mental illness too, where it's like you actually
00:29:42
cannot physically have a baby because of a decision you made and you're still obsessed with the idea of having a baby.
00:29:48
Do we know it was her decision or was it like medical? That a great point We don know So after the DNA tests Carolyn turns herself in and is charged with kidnapping and arson because of the fire she set This is actually not her first time being charged with arson In 1996 Carolyn had been charged with setting fire to a medical office in order to hide the evidence that she had been stealing checks
00:30:10
I think she had worked there. And this case had actually been in the courts when she kidnapped Delamar.
00:30:16
And she was waiting, you know, to be arraigned. And some speculate that she wanted to use the excuse of having a newborn daughter in order to get a more lenient sentence.
00:30:25
which just turns the whole thing into, instead of this like mentally ill woman who would do anything for a baby, just transactional, weird, gross.
00:30:36
Right. So it could be any of those things. That's very odd. Yeah. She pleaded guilty in that case and was sentenced to five years probation.
00:30:44
So this time Carolyn pleads no contest to the kidnapping charges and the arson charges are dropped and she's sentenced from nine to 30 years in prison.
00:30:53
She's since been released, and I don't know what the details are, and hopefully the documentary will shine some light on that.
00:30:59
Carolyn's story shifts and changes over the years. Eventually, she'll pretty much settle on implicating both of Delamar's parents saying they actually gave her the baby, which is just, let's not even pretend.
00:31:12
Yeah. There's no evidence of this, of course, but Delamar's own mother, Luz, will eventually come to believe that her now ex, Pedro, was actually involved.
00:31:23
And Luz does not appear in the new documentary, but Pedro does. And it doesn't seem like Delamar believes that at all herself, the adult.
00:31:30
So that's just something that Carolyn threw out there. I mean, it seems like just she's thrown out anything.
00:31:36
Yeah. And Pedro is always vehemently denied that he had anything to do with the kidnapping and he's never been charged by police. But it sounds like Carolyn has some mental health struggles, obviously, and has had them over the years. And in the days before she took Delamar, she had told multiple people, including her ex-boyfriend, that she was expecting a baby, the ex-boyfriend's baby.
00:31:58
Carolyn admits that she actually was pregnant in 1997 and had a stillborn baby, but there's no evidence of this in her medical records.
00:32:05
And this would have been after she had her tubes tied. So I don't know how possible that is.
00:32:10
Seems impossible. Seems like it. Yeah. So back to 2004 when the DNA test comes back.
00:32:15
Once the truth about Delamar comes out, a lot of child psychologists and experts weigh in saying that Delamar's reunification with her real family, her birth family, should be a slow process.
00:32:27
But on the other hand, Carolyn is now in jail. So, you know, the options are basically sending Delamar, who's six years old now, to a foster family or just sending her back to her birth family's house, you know, which seems like the better option.
00:32:42
And so authorities opt to reunite her as quickly as possible, pretty much like immediately after the DNA results come back.
00:32:49
So this poor little girl finds out everything, finds out everything at once and then is sent to a bunch of strangers' house.
00:32:57
Right. You know, who love her and have missed her, but she doesn't know anything about that.
00:33:02
Right. Delamar, for all she's been through, it does sound like a delightful child in these photos of her.
00:33:08
She's just beaming. She's this lovely child. When Luz first walks into the room to meet her daughter, her older daughter, for the first time,
00:33:15
when both of them know the truth, Delamar hides under the table. And Luz was super worried.
00:33:21
But when Luz walks in, she jumps out and yells surprise. And like they hug and, you know, it's all beautiful.
00:33:30
So like she's just actually this like sweet child. She's just classic six-year-old where she's like,
00:33:35
oh, you don't understand what you hiding under the table is actually doing to your mother.
00:33:39
And you're just trying to have fun with it. Because also it's a six-year-old where a stranger, a woman walks into a room and the feeling of the emotion must have been like overwhelming.
00:33:51
And Delamar says when she saw Luz at the party, she thought, what a beautiful woman.
00:33:57
Like she wasn't immediately drawn to her, but she did think, like she did notice her and like have some kind of moment.
00:34:04
It's just so, oh my God, I can't fucking imagine. And on the day that Delamore goes to her new home, to her birth family's home, is March of 2004.
00:34:14
And, of course, reporters are there. They're loving this fucking story. They ask little Delamore how she's feeling, and she tells them that she's happy.
00:34:21
She smiles and poses from some pictures on her front stoop. And then she asks the reporters not to come to her house anymore.
00:34:28
She's like, I'm done with this. Which is like, adults can't even fucking do that.
00:34:31
Yeah. Great. Yeah. That's funny. In 2008, Lifetime makes a movie out of the story, and it's called Little Girl Lost, and Delamar and Luz actually attend the premiere together.
00:34:41
There's this sweet picture of them. And so for the past 20 years, that's been kind of where the story has ended for anyone who was following it.
00:34:50
Delamar goes home with her new family. Carolyn goes to prison. And, of course, we hope that everyone lives happily ever after.
00:34:57
But the truth, of course, is more complicated than that. Oh. Delamar spoke on the record about her experience for the very first time just a few weeks ago for that article in The Guardian ahead of the release of the new documentary.
00:35:10
She's 26 now. And she says, quote, for a really long time, I almost thought this new life was temporary.
00:35:17
I had one photo of me with my old siblings on a bench and I'd look at it and think, oh, I'm going to go back and see them.
00:35:24
Like six years old. Like it's just so confounding. Yeah. It would make no sense.
00:35:28
And you're old enough to kind of know what's going on. Yeah. She says, quote, there was no support, no therapy, no resources.
00:35:36
Nobody ever sat us down and said, are you OK? Do you need help? Of course not. No.
00:35:41
I mean, it was 2004. Hopefully that would be the case now. It seems recent, 2004.
00:35:48
It's not. But in terms of therapy and talking about stuff like this. Right, and childhood trauma and shit.
00:35:52
It might as well be 1950. Totally. All of the practical aspects of Delamar abduction are probably just as mysterious to her as to everyone else since she was an infant But Delamar now sheds a lot of new light on her time with Carolyn
00:36:06
For one thing, Carolyn had warned her that a, quote, bad lady wanted to take her away and that this bad lady would claim that she was Delamar's real mother.
00:36:16
But as I said, when Delamar saw Luz at the party, she said she instantly gravitated towards her.
00:36:22
And actually, Carolyn was not around that much. as the mother. She worked long hours at a pharmacy. So it was really extended family
00:36:29
members who Delamar spent most of her time with. Delamar was entered into pageants and
00:36:34
auditioned for commercials. She attended private school, but Carolyn also withheld food and was
00:36:40
abusive and would hit Delamar with a belt. It sounds like when she escaped this family, it was
00:36:47
like for the best for that child. Yeah. And she says that some things were an instant relief when
00:36:53
she was reunited with her birth family. Luz's household was just more functional. Food was much
00:36:59
more abundant. Delamar now had a sibling that was closer to her in age. The siblings that she had
00:37:06
through Carolyn were much older. So she's really close with her brothers now from her birth family.
00:37:13
But then once Delamar got into her teenage years, things got rocky. She had no support. She needed
00:37:19
mental health support. She and her mother started butting heads and Delamar left to go live with her
00:37:25
father, Pedro. They had a relationship breakdown as well. And so when she was 15, Delamar wound up
00:37:31
living in a group home. So young. She was then left vulnerable to several bad and predatory
00:37:38
relationships. But then somehow at the age of 20, she found the strength to change her entire life.
00:37:45
She saved money. She removed herself from the abusive relationship she was in. She rented an apartment and she became a healthy, functioning adult.
00:37:56
I mean, this person is at age 20. Yeah. Wow. This person is just so admirable. It's incredible.
00:38:02
And for someone with her circumstances who was given very few resources, it's very remarkable.
00:38:08
She also repaired her relationship with both of her parents, her birth parents, Luz and Pedro,
00:38:12
with the help of the man who is now her husband, a man named Isaiah. She's in this beautiful relationship now.
00:38:20
She says, quote, Isaiah drew me closer to them. We started hanging out with my family more.
00:38:24
My dad lives in Puerto Rico, but he calls me and will chat for an hour. My mom and I talk multiple times a week.
00:38:30
We spend holidays together. My brothers are my best friends, end quote. On Delamar's Instagram, she says she's working on writing a book about her experience,
00:38:39
And there's a beautiful photo of her and her mother at her wedding. They're both beaming and they both have dimples.
00:38:48
And that is the story of the disappearance and reappearance of Delamar Vera. I mean, God, it's like as a true crime story, it's like best case scenario.
00:38:58
Yeah. For the fact that she was just kind of over the state line. Yeah. But oh my God.
00:39:04
I know. she fucked the seeing her at the party and the ruse of getting hair out of her head to me is just
00:39:13
like oh shit six years of being away from your own child 10 days with that infant and you fucking
00:39:22
knew immediately yeah like that to me is like oh wow that's okay that's what motherhood does to you
00:39:29
yeah like something i'm kind of sad i'll never understand well you can read these stories i can
00:39:34
And my mom would do that for me. She'd pull hair right out of your head. She fucking would.
00:39:40
For a DNA test or really any reason. Really any reason. Do it. Truly. Well, I mean, that is, you're right.
00:39:45
It's like, it's a very special, important relationship. And it's nice to think that, like, no matter the circumstances, your mom would know you.
00:39:54
Your mom would recognize you in a million universes. Oh, very sweet. And yank your fucking head out of your hair.
00:40:01
And be like, look, I gotta do it. It's for the best. It hurts me more than it hurts you.
00:40:07
Yeah. Isn't that wild? That was incredible. It's just, yeah, I want to watch the documentary.
00:40:12
I want to just, I mean, powerful. Amazing. Yeah. event-long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings
00:40:39
when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery. Restrictions apply. See the website
00:40:44
for full terms and conditions. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart
00:40:51
audiobook club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with divergent author Veronica Roth
00:40:56
to talk about her sprawling new novel, Seek the Traitor's Son. It's a sci-fi fantasy epic about
00:41:02
two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted.
00:41:07
My first book was Divergent. And when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted like mostly
00:41:14
positivity, but the negativity I sucked in like a sponge. And I think it was like critiques of things I liked when I was like, you know, I was 23
00:41:23
and I wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves
00:41:29
in it. And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things. And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little things that like make you feel pleasure when you read.
00:41:42
But I also was like saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it.
00:41:49
So that's this book. Listen to Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts
00:42:25
Calorie content has been reduced on average from 162 to 92 calories per serving.
00:42:27
Data accurate as of 2020-26. You know what I was going to tell you? I forgot at the top because we were busy at the top.
00:42:36
The whole story around the quote of us in the movie Venom, we got it wrong. Oh, no.
00:42:43
So it wasn't stay out of the forest, which is kind of funny because it's like, I don't know if that was like gossip or just weird misinformation.
00:42:50
information but aaron sent me aaron brown marketing director sent me the clip and they're like sitting
00:42:57
around at a campfire and a guy walks up and sits down with them and starts talking and tom hardy
00:43:03
just starts talking to him and then this like it seems like they're like a family i'm not sure what
00:43:08
them haven't seen it yet and then this very sulky kind of teenage girl comes out and says he's like
00:43:16
one of the killers from my favorite murder podcast. So the way she says it even is like,
00:43:23
she might not even been saying it. Either she's never heard of us. My favorite murder.
00:43:27
Or she's just saying that. So they don't have to pay to use our title. Because we make so much money out of those quotes.
00:43:33
Because we need it more than they need us. But I watched that quote. I'm like, so did we just repeat a completely made up story?
00:43:39
I think we got really excited about a made up story. Look. But it's close. I mean, at least we're in there.
00:43:45
Yeah. Well, I'm going to take it. I don't care. I'm taking it. Hell yeah. As a win.
00:43:48
It's ours. It's a win. My favorite murder was fucking said. That's right. Those three words in a row.
00:43:55
That's right. And then the word podcast. Like, that's us. Somebody knows what that means.
00:43:59
I mean. That's all that matters. Or didn't, which is why they didn't rewrite it.
00:44:02
And that somebody is Tom Hardy, our number one fan. It's got to be Tom Hardy. Okay.
00:44:07
Okay. So, definitely this is a left turn. Okay. And it's a weird left turn. And I kind of love it because it's a very parallel to true crime type of story.
00:44:18
So it's light, but it's also more historical informational than anything else. Love those things.
00:44:24
Also, Maren is my researcher, does an amazing job for me every week. But she was on pregnancy leave for, to me, forever.
00:44:34
Her kid's like, what, five now? Yeah, exactly. She just left. And the research was taken over by our friend, Jay Elias, who used to be my researcher, works in the development department now.
00:44:47
What would this company be without fucking Jay Elias? For real. He was like, what, our third employee?
00:44:53
Yes. It was like you, me, Stephen, Jay, and Danielle at the first staff meeting.
00:45:00
Thank God he stuck with us. I mean, for real. So this story is about my favorite place, dark, grimy, merciless Victorian England in the year 1854.
00:45:12
So it takes place 15 years after the boy Edward Jones breaks into Buckingham Palace, which, listen to episode 382, Under Underpants, if you want to hear that creepy, oily little story.
00:45:27
Spring-Heeled Jack is still being spotted around the country, but we're still a few decades away from Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel murders.
00:45:37
Spring-Heeled Jack is covered in episode 393. It's not a meeting. I did Jack the Ripper at that live show in London,
00:45:44
but I don't know if we ever posted it. I don't either. We must have used it at some point.
00:45:48
We used all the usable ones when we needed a fucking week off. Yeah. Okay, so anyway.
00:45:53
It's 1854. Okay. It's a bad time for London. Dirty, polluted, crime-ridden, severely overcrowded. And that's the nice part of town. Conditions in the city slums are horrifying. They're getting more dire by the day. London's Soho neighborhood is filled with jam-packed tenement houses.
00:46:13
So if you don't know about tenement houses, and most major cities around the world have them and have had them, there's an amazing quote from 1849 quoting residents who lived in tenement houses in the London Times.
00:46:29
And they say, quote, they live in muck and filth. We ain't got no privies, no dustbins, no drains, no water supplies, and no drain or sewer in the whole place.
00:46:41
Ew. Yeah. It's a firsthand account. Also, a visitor to the area in 1852 describes what they see, and they say, quote,
00:46:52
In a back alley opening onto Church Street was a den which looked more like a cowhouse than a room for human beings.
00:46:59
Little, if any, light came through, and yet 17 human beings ate, drank, and slept there.
00:47:05
The floor was damp, and below the level of the court, the gutters overflowed. When it rained, the rain gushed in at the apertures.
00:47:14
Like, think of the worst port-a-potty general admission at a music festival. And, like, you live in that, though.
00:47:22
Right. That's your fucking home. Yeah. With a little hay. Some hay. It's really rough.
00:47:27
Yeah. I mean, that's the whole reason Charles Dickens started writing the stories he wrote, because he would go and see that and be like, this has to change.
00:47:34
And people were like, finally, you're fucking telling it. Yeah. Like it is. So it's no surprise that new cases of cholera begin to emerge here in August of 1854.
00:47:45
So London is no stranger to this disease. Previous waves of it have claimed thousands of lives and stoked fears and riots among the citizens.
00:47:54
If a viable treatment plan isn't in place soon, this new bout of cholera is poised to claim thousands more.
00:48:00
But Victorian doctors have no idea how to stop it from spreading until one young physician's keen observations and willingness to think outside of the box turn that around and to this day change the way we approach pandemics and public health altogether.
00:48:16
This is the story, and it has nothing to do with Game of Thrones, of Jon Snow and the Broad Street Pump.
00:48:23
Okay. Right? Yeah. The main sources used for this story today are an article from the National Library of Medicine entitled John Snow Cholera, The Broad Street Pump, Waterborne Diseases Then and Now.
00:48:35
It's a picture book by Theodore H. Tolchinsky, a video produced by Harvard University called John Snow and the 1854 Broad Street Cholera Outbreak, and the John Snow Archive and Research Companion, which is a website that has compiled various documents written by John Snow himself.
00:48:54
and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So bend the knee and let me tell you about Jon Snow.
00:49:00
Sorry. It is really hard because I say Jon Snow so many times in the story, but it just is how it is.
00:49:08
Yeah, don't go there in your brain. Try not to stay there. So he's born on March 15th, 1813 in York, England.
00:49:16
He's the oldest of nine kids. And in his youth, he witnesses the harmful effects of pollution firsthand
00:49:23
when his hometown river becomes contaminated with sewage and wreaks havoc on his neighbor's health and homes.
00:49:30
This drives his interest in medicine. And in 1827, when he's 14 years old, he becomes a medical apprentice.
00:49:39
When he's 23, he starts medical school at the University of London. So kind of this horrible situation where he grows up drives his career.
00:49:48
In 1837, he starts training to be a physician at the Westminster Hospital. He's so dedicated to his work that he swears off alcohol, gambling, meat, and marriage.
00:49:58
Me too. I mean. Just kidding. I got all of those things. What are you doing with your life?
00:50:05
Something good. Well, oh yeah, that's right. Shit. So he becomes a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on May 2nd, 1838,
00:50:15
before finally graduating in December of 1844. So John Snow hears about how American surgeons use ether as an anesthetic during surgery.
00:50:26
So in 1846, he tries his hand at applying it during his own surgeries, and it's a great success.
00:50:33
And he becomes the leading expert on ether's use in the UK and is appointed an anesthesiologist position at St. George's Hospital.
00:50:43
So I don't think there was a ton of anesthesiologists before that. I don't think there was a lot of anesthesia, right?
00:50:49
Right? They'd kind of crack you in the head and be like, Yeah, bite down on this.
00:50:52
Drink this whiskey. We'll see you later. So Jon Snow starts incorporating the use of chloroform as an anesthetic as well,
00:50:59
even using that on Queen Victoria during her deliveries of her youngest two children,
00:51:05
Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice. Damn, knock her out. Yeah. So he was good enough at his job to actually deal with the queen.
00:51:14
And then in 1848, London's hit with its second big cholera outbreak. Cholera is a deadly disease.
00:51:22
It causes excessive vomiting and diarrhea. By the way, if those topics like repel you or a problem for you, this story is going to be a problem for you because that's pretty much all it is.
00:51:33
So excessive vomiting and diarrhea, it results in severe dehydration. So people who get it can lose between three to five gallons of fluids a day.
00:51:44
Holy shit. For several days in a row. So at that time, that meant it was fatal in about half of all the cases.
00:51:52
There was no... Pedialyte? There was no pedialyte. You couldn't go to a spa and get a, what's it called?
00:52:00
An IV. Infusion, an IV. Yeah. You couldn't get some B12 and just kind of bounce back.
00:52:05
No. So in 1848, the cholera outbreak results in over 14,000 deaths in London alone.
00:52:13
Across all of England and Wales, an estimated 53,000 people die from it in just one year.
00:52:19
That's more than twice the death toll from the 1832 cholera outbreak that claimed between 4,000 and 7,000 lives.
00:52:27
So even though it's not his specialty, the 1848 outbreak drives Jon Snow to read up on the current theories surrounding cholera's transmission.
00:52:37
He's skeptical of the prevailing theory of the time, a thing called the miasma theory.
00:52:42
Skeptible? Is that what I said? Shit. He's skeptical. The miasma theory states that decaying organic matter, including human waste, releases harmful particles into the air, and those particles are what infect humans.
00:52:59
So it's not hard to understand why they came up with that theory. At the time, although London does have a sewage system, it doesn't go all the way across town.
00:53:10
And so, of course, Soho, which is the bad part of town, the slum, doesn't have a sewage system yet.
00:53:19
So to get rid of household waste, people would dump excrement right onto the city streets.
00:53:26
Just like the bucket out the window kind of thing. Exactly. Can you imagine the smell back then?
00:53:33
Everyone's always like, I want to go back in time and be a fucking newsie. Do not do an impression of me like that.
00:53:38
Everyone in Karen is a Newsy No it smelled so awful I bet I feel like there something and I can remember what it is
00:53:49
It's like a comedy that takes place in Victorian England where someone just throws, like, shit out the window.
00:53:56
It's got to be a Monty Python sketch. I feel like I've seen it. Yeah. Or it's just like, like, this is just how it was.
00:54:04
They also threw it directly into the Thames River. They also had things called cesspools, which were underground tanks that had to be manually emptied.
00:54:13
By who? No, thank you. The cesspool man, who was good friends with the muffin man.
00:54:19
Cesspool man. So a scholar named Alyssa Goodman points out in a video produced by Harvard University, she says, quote,
00:54:27
the people who lived in tenement buildings, some of them had cesspools in their front courtyards.
00:54:34
So like you're saying, like living in a porta potty, it's kind of how it was. They would, sorry, I added that into the middle of the quote.
00:54:41
We're back into the quote. They would take their human waste and other waste and kind of throw it out the window into the cesspool or bring it down to the cesspool.
00:54:49
And then it would drain wherever it drained. Don't you think that maybe people were a little less uptight back then, too?
00:54:55
Because like, yeah, like if you see a squatty potty in someone's bathroom, you're like, oh, you know what I mean?
00:55:01
Like, I don't want to see that. But these people were just carting their fucking waist around.
00:55:06
And it wasn't long after people just had a chamber pot. Right. Under the bed. I think they were a lot less squeamish about it back then maybe.
00:55:17
Yeah. It's like, yeah, people go to the bathroom. That's just part of life. And you have to stare at it all day and smell it constantly.
00:55:25
I like it better now. I do too. Because also the deodorant issue. All of that is to say that people, especially in the medical community, are realizing a lack of sanitation in Victorian London is a serious health issue.
00:55:40
And that's what leads to this miasma theory. Actually, it's a belief in a concept of, quote, foul air causing illnesses like cholera.
00:55:50
Okay. And it was foul. Yeah. So, Jon Snow decides he's going to investigate further, and he starts to lean more toward a very controversial germ theory, which argues that diseases are spread not by foul air, but by invisible microorganisms, often through contaminated water or contact.
00:56:10
So, at this time, the germ theory was, like, super nutso. Crazy. Where he's like, they're tiny, and they're sticking to everything.
00:56:18
No, probably not. Hang him. I don't know. What did they do that? Yeah, I think probably.
00:56:23
Since as a child Snow observed how contaminated water could make people very sick,
00:56:28
he works out a theory that a cholera germ has made its way into the Thames, contaminating the water supply from much of South London, particularly Soho.
00:56:38
Okay. So most doctors disagree with Snow. They consider his ideas to be on the fringe.
00:56:44
Regardless, in 1850, his interest in the subject leads him to become a founding member
00:56:49
of the London Epidemiological Society. Hey, good job. A group of doctors dedicated to the study of widespread diseases and their patterns.
00:56:58
So get in there, anesthesiologist. Yes, I love it. Even his hobbies he's great at.
00:57:04
So when yet another cholera outbreak wreaks havoc on Soho in August of 1854, so it's just happening all the time,
00:57:13
Snow gets a chance to test this theory. So he has no idea at the time, But the first identifiable case for this outbreak is tragically a five-month-old baby girl who also lives in Soho named Frances Lewis.
00:57:26
In late August, Frances gets very sick. Four days later, she dies. The cause is listed as, quote, exhaustion after an attack of diarrhea.
00:57:37
But then other members of the Lewis family start to get sick, followed by more people who live nearby.
00:57:43
And then rumors start to circulate that another cholera outbreak is coming. And rumors circulate around the pump that's in the area that people literally go get their water out of and then stand around and talk.
00:57:58
And literally, it's like the modern-day water cooler back then. It was the pump.
00:58:03
And here, for this area, it was the Broad Street pump. Fuck, okay. So they were right because shortly after Francis Lewis passes away, death sweeps through Soho.
00:58:14
In a span of just three days, 127 people die on Broad Street alone. So locals are terrified, of course.
00:58:23
The fear of cholera runs so deep, residents just start leaving Soho in droves. But Jon Snow's work is just beginning.
00:58:31
He hits the pavement. He starts tallying the deaths all around Soho. and before long he has created a map marking where the deceased cholera victims lived.
00:58:42
Snow realizes that these deaths are all clustered in a fairly condensed part of Soho,
00:58:47
which kind of gives weight to the miasma theory. So he ends up writing, quote, within 250 yards of the spot where Cambridge Street joins Broad Street,
00:58:57
there were upwards of 500 fatal attacks of cholera in 10 days. Holy shit. But very importantly, Snow finds several exceptions.
00:59:06
Some of the cholera victims didn't live anywhere near Broad Street, while some residents and workers in the area are entirely unaffected.
00:59:14
So for one example John Snow makes a note of a Broad Street brewery where none of its 70 workers contract cholera during this outbreak He points out that under the miasma theory this wouldn make sense because these workers would be existing in the foul air for their entire workday
00:59:34
Right. Then when interviewing families of the cholera victims, Snow uncovers a crucial link.
00:59:40
Prior to their deaths, the victims had all visited the Broad Street water pump. So at that time, most Londoners rely on public water pumps,
00:59:50
since indoor plumbing is rare. Soho's Broad Street pump is located just outside the Lewis family home where Francis Lewis died, and it's the main water source for the whole neighborhood.
01:00:04
John Snow writes, quote, I found that nearly all the deaths had taken place within a short distance of the pump.
01:00:10
There were only 10 deaths in houses situated decidedly nearer to another street pump.
01:00:15
In five of these cases, the families of the deceased persons informed me that they always sent to the pump in Broad Street as they preferred the water to that of the pumps which were nearer.
01:00:27
In three other cases, the deceased were children who went to school near the pump in Broad Street.
01:00:33
So Jon Snow now theorizes that the pump itself, not the air around it, is the true source of this latest cholera outbreak.
01:00:42
And he figures that the pump's water was likely contaminated by germs from any number of sources.
01:00:48
It could be sewers, drains, compromised cesspools. So this explains the situation with the brewery workers because it turns out the brewery has its own in-house water pump that they use to brew the beer.
01:01:03
Right. So on top of that, workers get free beer while they're on the clock. That's right. They're always saying beer was better for you than water back then.
01:01:09
Yeah, people drank beer much more often. And it was like safer. So between the in-house water and the free beer, none of the workers ever drink from the Broad Street pump while they're on the job.
01:01:20
Now, Snow is careful to point out that while the Broad Street pump is most likely the main source of this particular outbreak, he believes cholera can spread by other means of contact.
01:01:31
Anytime someone comes into contact with the excrement of an infected patient, whether they know it or not, the germ can be transferred to a new person.
01:01:39
Groundbreaking theory back then. So Snow presents his findings to the Board of Guardians of St. James Parish, which is a local elected board of officials, to address neighborhood issues on September 7, 1854.
01:01:53
But there's still some skepticism, although they do agree to remove the pump handle from the Broad Street pump the very next day on September 8.
01:02:02
So within days, the cholera outbreak near Broad Street and Soho completely ends.
01:02:08
So it would seem like this would be enough proof for the medical establishment to buy into the germ theory, but many still have their doubts.
01:02:16
Even Snow himself admits that the cholera slowdown may have begun before he even started his research.
01:02:22
As he writes in his report, it's, quote, impossible to tell whether the decline in the mortality rate is a direct consequence of the Broad Street pump being shut off or if it's due to, quote, the flight of the population.
01:02:35
which commenced soon after the outbreak. So to prove his point, Snow conducts what he calls his grand experiment.
01:02:43
Two major water companies in the city of London, the Southwark Vauxhall Company and the Lambeth Waterworks Company,
01:02:51
both draw their water from the Thames, but they get it in different locations. So Southwark Vauxhall gets their water in a southern section of the river.
01:03:01
Lambeth Waterworks gets their water further up the river, And that makes it less susceptible to contamination from the seth pools and the sewers of the city that are getting drained into the river.
01:03:12
Got it. So using data collected by Parliament over a seven-week period in 1854, Snow compares the rate of fatal cholera cases in homes that use water from Southwark Vauxhall to the ones from Lambeth.
01:03:26
And he then compares it to the fatal cholera rates for the remainder of the city of London to establish a control group.
01:03:32
And he finds that while the rest of London recorded 59 fatalities per 10,000 households from cholera,
01:03:41
the homes using the water from Lambeth recorded just 37. And the homes using water from Southwark Vauxhall recorded 315.
01:03:52
There's still skeptics who criticize Jon Snow's data, but his argument for water contamination is strong enough to enact some actual change.
01:04:00
More extensive sewer systems are built around the Thames involving large underground pipes that separate sewage and water supplies.
01:04:10
Imagine that. Come on. Separate the fucking thing. Get it going. So this system lasts until the 19th century when it's replaced by more modern updated systems.
01:04:20
Also in 1897, England starts using chlorine to purify the water supply. Don't just take it out of the river.
01:04:28
Yeah, right. Anything could be in there. Anything could be in there. It's real gross.
01:04:32
The changes in London's approach to sanitation and public health because of Jon Snow's work lead to a dramatic drop in mortality rates.
01:04:40
Even still, because some government officials do not want to publicly admit that Jon Snow was right.
01:04:47
That's how they are. They replaced the handle to the Broad Street pump after the epidemic dissipates.
01:04:53
You know, you've got to think of it more sinister, too, because they maybe wanted that population to die off a little bit.
01:04:59
You know what I mean? Yeah. Or once seeing that they were, were like, we don't have to rush.
01:05:06
Right To help them You don need to worry about that Let yeah Yeah And Jon Snow he probably A wasn thinking about you know class and class warfare
01:05:16
And also probably had to fight a lot of higher ups to even bother putting money into saving, you know, poor people's lives.
01:05:24
Yes, that's right. So. And if he, I mean, he sounds like he was from a family of nine kids.
01:05:30
Right. There's a good chance he wasn't rich growing up. So he saw, basically he became a doctor so he could start advocating for people.
01:05:37
He's kind of punk rock, and I love that. He's pretty badass, and that's why they named the Game of Thrones character after him, I think.
01:05:44
So now it's understood that the Broad Street pump's water was in fact contaminated by a nearby cesspool,
01:05:50
and the water was used to clean baby Frances's diapers, and the soiled bedding from her sick family members was being dumped into their cesspool
01:06:00
that was adjacent to the Broad Street pump. And because the cesspool had decaying bricks,
01:06:06
infected waste was able to seep into the pump's water supply, which then affected many of the people who drank from it.
01:06:13
John Snow continues his work as a premier anesthesiologist for the rest of his life.
01:06:18
He even writes a book on a subject entitled On Chloroform and Other Anesthetics,
01:06:23
which is published in 1858. Unfortunately, John Snow never lives to see his book's publication.
01:06:29
he dies from a fatal stroke at just 45 years old on June 16, 1858. Today, Jon Snow is considered the father of modern epidemiology
01:06:40
and is best remembered for his pioneering studies around the 1854 cholera outbreak.
01:06:46
A replica of the original Broad Street pump stands at the original site today, although now that street is Broadwick Street,
01:06:54
and that commemorates Jon Snow's groundbreaking work. In more developed countries where access to clean water is prioritized, cholera is nearly non-existent.
01:07:04
But in parts of Africa, India, and the Middle East, cholera outbreaks still happen to this day.
01:07:10
And it reinforces the fact that clean water is an essential human right that must be prioritized.
01:07:16
That's the story of Jon Snow and the Broad Street Pump. Wow. I want to take a very clean shower after hearing about that one.
01:07:25
I want to go to Victorian London. Don't mind if I do. In it. In it. In it. I want to, like, very much like this where, you know, in the upcoming year or two, I'm going to bore you with Victorian England stories because I'm fascinated by it.
01:07:43
But there was other things they had called ash piles where they would just pile all their ashes in these big piles.
01:07:50
And then people would go through the ash piles to see if they could find something that people didn't realize they burned and left in the ash piles.
01:07:59
That's how fucking poor people were in Victorian England. That's fucking insane.
01:08:05
I mean, it's dumpster diving, but in ashes. In ashes, which is like, and also not just Victorian England, in lots of places where poor people are just trying to figure out a way to do things.
01:08:18
This is all we can do. Stick together, help each other, care about your neighbor, care about the people in front of you.
01:08:25
I think we've always said this, probably now more than ever. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:08:35
Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:08:48
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
01:08:52
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
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