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my favorite murder hello and welcome to my favorite murder that's georgia hardstark and that is karen kilgariff
00:01:51
and we went to denver over the weekend and guess what guess what guys it's bragging time it is that
00:02:00
was the first time we've been on stage since before the pandemic the wonderful banana boys
00:02:04
over on the bananas podcast through bananas fest in denver this weekend that's right do you know
00:02:10
the the number of people that came was it in the thousands i think it was in the thousands they
00:02:15
They did all their fun shenanigans, bananigans. Did they use that word? Hilarious, fun stuff.
00:02:21
But also like for charity, they're like just the best people, you know? It's like they went out into the streets of Denver and said, we want everyone to either
00:02:31
be in a good mood and have fun or be able to ridicule some people standing around in
00:02:36
like banana costumes. Who cares? Right. And then apparently they began to gather people who didn't plan to go, but were just there
00:02:44
going, what are you guys doing? Right. Or wearing banana yellow for some reason. Yes. The gut pulled
00:02:49
in. They did flash banana tattoos. They broke a world record of some sort. Throwing tampons in
00:02:55
the air. Throwing tampons in the air for charity. There was a dog costume contest. And like a month
00:03:01
ago, they were like, will you guys be the surprise guests at the late night show that we're having?
00:03:05
It's at the Comedy Works in Denver. Be our guests on the live podcast. And we said, how could we say
00:03:11
know to that? Right. Three weeks later, we responded and we're like, how could we say no?
00:03:15
We would love to. So we did. It was so exciting. It was so good. There's a video on our Instagram
00:03:22
and probably TikTok, I don't check, of us going on stage. It's very fun. Yeah. Check if you are
00:03:29
interested in anything Bananas Fest, seeing what happened. I mean, there's videos that are
00:03:33
hilarious. There's a dance contest to dance like one of those guys that they put out next to a
00:03:39
used car lot that just goes up and down like the wind tube guys yes people are dancing like them
00:03:44
I mean you can really get a sense of what was happening and then two live podcasts at the
00:03:49
comedy works and you know what's so weird is that I'm getting off the plane in Denver Colorado
00:03:54
going to an exactly right media like thing you know function one could say and I fucking run
00:04:01
into Paul Holes he was on my flight he comes I'm like waiting for Lauren Cook to get off the plane
00:04:09
to meet me and out comes this like fabulous fucking crime solver of a person. A proud citizen of Colorado coming to greet you at the airport.
00:04:19
It was surreal. I was like, are you the secret guest too? Like, did they not even tell us?
00:04:24
That is secret. I have a photo. I'll put it on the Instagram. Yeah. So thanks Denver and all of the people, people from Scotland, people from Iceland,
00:04:31
people from Maine. We met people from all over the world at Bananas Fest. It was amazing.
00:04:38
It was amazing. Murder bananas. That's a thing. Check it out. Oh, but I actually have kind of an important corrections corner because the episode from last week, I covered the murder of Sean O'Callaghan.
00:04:51
And there are people on the MFM Instagram who are saying I was pronouncing Sean's name wrong.
00:04:58
So Maren texted me and she basically said that that was happening. And then she said, I really and truly care about getting a victim's name right and looked into her name before sending in the packet.
00:05:11
I felt confident in the phonetic pronunciation. Since the episode came out, I've been obsessively investigating further, rewatching clips with Sean's family members, looking through the name forums, even referring to a friend of a friend in Wales to figure out why Sean missed the mark.
00:05:27
What I've gathered is that the on in Sean is similar to the on in Siobhan and rhymes with how an English person would pronounce barn, which would be bon, silent R.
00:05:41
I think my American accent caused me to make it sound like I was mispronouncing that name.
00:05:48
but it seems I still can't hear it. I've watched now the videos and she sent me actually the video
00:05:54
of the moms that sent her uh here how you pronounce this Wow And I cannot hear the difference So full apologies like very irritating to try to listen to that story And it sounds like I just
00:06:07
saying the name wrong. And like, I still can't hear the difference. So I'm truly sorry. And like,
00:06:12
that's one of those things. I think it's more of an accident of an accent. Please don't think it
00:06:18
was a careless mispronunciation because Maren really does her work. Yeah. That's good information
00:06:23
for sure. All right. You want to do some business and we'll tell our stories? Yes, here we go.
00:06:28
We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right. As we just said, here are some highlights.
00:06:32
This week on Wicked Words, Kate Winkler Dawson speaks with Rebecca Morris, who's the author of the book Boy Missing, The Search for Kyron Horman.
00:06:40
Wow. That's an incredible case. And exciting news. We're so thrilled about this. Ghosted by
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Roz Hernandez is being featured all month in the comedy category on Apple Podcasts.
00:06:50
And Roz's guest this week is actor Arden Marine. And then over on That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast.
00:06:56
Kara and Liza cover the SVU episode Mama from 2018. And they talk to actress Kathleen McNenny.
00:07:03
And then the 10th episode of Rewind with Karen in Georgia is out now. We reflect on the mystery of who put Bella in the witch elm and also the Richard Chase,
00:07:13
a.k.a. Vampire of Sacramento case. So basically, we listen along with you. We comment on it.
00:07:18
We give you updates about everything. Rewind. You're going to love it. Just get into it. It's like director's commentary, but we can't direct. We more just got directed by
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fate. And we can barely commentary. That's right. It's too hot in Los Angeles right now to do
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anything. At the moment, it's 102. So we're just trying to remind everybody that MFM store has a
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very cute Murderino water bottle and a hat if you want to help yourself and escape the sun. Go check
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out all of those things and everything else on the MFM store. You know, we always tell you to hydrate
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and keep yourself protected from the sun. Those are the two things we've really hit home
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in the past almost nine years, I feel like. It's really true. While the world watches the stars
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at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
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The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed,
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scoring from angles that don't make sense, rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust.
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Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation and Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach.
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Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability.
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And Hyundai continues doing it every day. From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game,
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the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA.
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Well, I've got a story. It's one that is a favorite of yours, an old school black widow.
00:10:06
Oh, did you do it just for me? Just for you. So this story is about a serial killer who was dubbed
00:10:11
the Giggling Granny. She's often referred to as a black widow, but authorities are pretty sure she
00:10:17
poisoned multiple family members, including horrendously some of her own children and
00:10:21
grandchildren. This is the story of the serial killer Nanny Doss. You know her? I don't think so.
00:10:29
So the main sources for this story are an article from the Encyclopedia of Alabama,
00:10:33
an article from All That's Interesting, written by William DeLong, and an article by Jean Curtis
00:10:38
from Tulsa World. The rest can be found on our show notes. Nanny Doss is born Nancy Hazel in 1905,
00:10:46
small town called Blue Mountain, Alabama. Everyone calls her Nanny. So her mother had been unmarried
00:10:53
when she got pregnant, was disowned by her family because she wouldn't say who the father was.
00:10:59
But then when Nanny's born, she marries a man named Jim Hazel, who some people think is the
00:11:04
actual biological father. So I'm not sure what's going on there. Either way, Jim Hazel, who is a
00:11:09
poor farmer, not a great guy and treats Nanny especially badly. Then the couple then has four
00:11:16
more children and the father treats these kids better because he sees them as legitimately has
00:11:21
something's going on here. Not great. By the age of five, Nanny is tasked with lots of difficult
00:11:27
farm work as well as taking care of all her younger siblings. Her father is physically abusive and
00:11:33
requires all the children to work on the farm, only sending them to school intermittently,
00:11:38
where they're mercilessly teased for their ugly clothes and lack of academic ability.
00:11:43
Seems like it was kind of the norm back then. Just work was just as important or more important
00:11:47
than school. Yeah. In America, people were just like, hey, we're out here on the prairie. We have
00:11:52
to stay alive Wait sorry What year is it 1905 is when she born Yeah Tough times Still Nanny does wind up learning to read and this will be her salvation And in a way it also plays a role in her becoming a serial killer
00:12:07
Oh. So by the age of seven, Nanny is beginning to escape from her awful life in the pages of pulpy romance novels and magazines,
00:12:14
which had to feel so amazing to be able to read and get out of this awful little place you're in, if only in your head.
00:12:20
Yeah, you escape through fantasy. Yeah. Yeah. Around that same time, she and her mother take a long train journey. And then on that trip,
00:12:28
the train stops short to avoid hitting a tree that had been knocked under the tracks.
00:12:33
So Nanny is jerked forward, hits her head hard on the metal seat in front of her.
00:12:37
And from the way the injury is described, it sounds like she has a bad concussion. So we have
00:12:42
head injury, abuse, head injury. And there's of course no medical treatment that she's given.
00:12:49
According to Nanny's family, her demeanor changes immediately after the accident. At the age of
00:12:53
seven, she begins mimicking the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her father,
00:12:58
beating and abusing her younger siblings. To make matters worse, Nanny is sexually abused at the
00:13:04
hands of other relatives and her father prevents the abuse of her sibling, but kind of throws Nanny
00:13:09
to the wolves, like not protecting her and then also blaming her for the abuse. Just horrendous
00:13:16
all around. Yeah. Also, many people suffer abuse in childhood and they don't wind up and have had
00:13:23
injuries and they don't wind up being serial killers, the majority of them. But for Nanny,
00:13:27
it does seem like all the factors line up to point her in that direction. So into her late teens,
00:13:33
and really for her whole life, Nanny remains absolutely obsessed with romance novels. And
00:13:38
they give her this fantasy of being swept off her feet by a man who is unlike any of the men
00:13:42
she's ever met. And she's singularly focused on falling in love. Nanny's father forbids his
00:13:49
daughter from wearing attractive clothes, doing her hair and wearing makeup. So she can't meet
00:13:54
anyone is what he's hoping for. But when she's around 16 in 1921, she gets a lucky break. She
00:14:01
convinces her father to let her take a job at a thread factory. And it's here that she finally
00:14:06
gets to socialize with other teenagers. At the factory, Nanny meets a boy named Charlie Braggs.
00:14:12
He's a year older than her. He's 17. And her father changes his tune about men and encourages
00:14:18
the relationship, hustling the two teenagers along to get married quickly because he sees it as an
00:14:23
opportunity to like relinquish responsibility for her. One less mouth to feed. Yeah, exactly.
00:14:30
Nanny and Charlie do get married quickly. And it's only after the wedding night that Charlie
00:14:34
tells Nanny that his mother will be living with them. Oh, yeah. Not fair. Like not cool. And
00:14:42
And obviously, as a teenage newlywed, this is not ideal for her. So she and her mother-in-law, of course, no shock, have a terrible relationship.
00:14:52
Charlie's mother is hypercritical and Charlie typically sides with her. She tries to forbid Nanny from reading her romance novels, saying they're like basically
00:15:01
her cheating on her husband by reading those novels. So the marriage is unhappy, but Nanny and Charlie still proceed to have four daughters
00:15:10
in a very short period of time. one a year between 1923 and 1927. And she's about 18 when she has her first
00:15:18
and 22 when she has her fourth. Wow. Can you even fucking imagine? I mean, not in the least.
00:15:24
And a mother-in-law on your back, hating you and everything you do. Yay for birth control.
00:15:32
The invention of birth control. Nanny dotes on her oldest daughter, who's named Melvina,
00:15:37
but sees the other as kind of like inconveniences. Weirdly. Predictably, the situation at home does not improve now that Nanny has four very small
00:15:47
children to look after. And she still harbors this idea from her romance novels that a new,
00:15:53
better relationship will solve all her problems. Both she and Charlie, her husband, have multiple
00:15:59
affairs, though she doesn't find a man who lives up to like the romance novel guy in her head.
00:16:04
They never do. They can't. No, man. They can't all be Fabio. They're pure humans.
00:16:09
They're no Fabios, turns out. They can't take a seagull to the face and live. They can't.
00:16:15
In 1927, when Nanny is 22 and Charlie is 23, he goes off for a few days, probably with another woman.
00:16:22
And when he returns, he finds a crowd of people at his home. And this is awful. The whole thing gets awful and stays awful.
00:16:29
Okay, I'm ready. His two middle children, who are about two and three years old, have died.
00:16:35
And people believe that the cause of death was food poisoning. doctors had been present when the children died and had diagnosed food poisoning as the cause
00:16:43
so the deaths are not investigated any further because like they were there so they're thinking
00:16:49
if someone killed them we would have seen it kind of you know what i mean yeah it's weird
00:16:54
nanny appears to relish the outpouring of attention she gets in the wake of her children's death
00:16:59
and now somehow at this point with nanny and charlie's families rumors are already circulating
00:17:04
someone tells Charlie not to eat any food that Nanny has prepared and he leaves in the middle
00:17:10
of the night with the oldest daughter Melvina he can't take the baby with him because she had
00:17:14
been sleeping with Nanny but after a short period of time away Charlie meets another woman and
00:17:19
essentially decides to unload Melvina back on Nanny and so he can move on with this other woman he's
00:17:26
like scared of her scared she's poisoning her children and like leaves them with her and move
00:17:32
Wait, so he doesn't go back for the infant and he drops the oldest back off. Yeah.
00:17:40
Okay. Well, that's, he's not the topic, I guess, but Jesus Christ. I know. So now she's like, this is great.
00:17:49
I get to meet the real man of my dreams. With Charlie gone, Nanny starts focusing on finding a new man.
00:17:54
So now she takes to everyone favorite way of communicating and finding someone the lonely heart section of the newspaper Truly What a time
00:18:05
It's so weird because it's almost like that is what the Internet is now. It's just it was much simpler black and white single source.
00:18:14
But same deal. It's like hot singles in your area trying to meet up. Trying to marry in this case.
00:18:22
Yeah. So she starts exchanging letters with a man named Frank Harrelson. And in 1929, when she's now 24 years old, this all happens so quick, the two of them get married.
00:18:32
And it becomes clear very quickly that Frank is also not going to be the grand romance that she wanted.
00:18:39
He's a heavy drinker, is also likely abusive. But the two actually remain married for 16 years.
00:18:45
And Nanny doesn't kill again until the end of that time period. So something's going on.
00:18:52
So now we're in 1942 and Nanny's eldest daughter, Malvina, meets a man, gets married and has a baby boy.
00:19:00
And Nanny appears to enjoy helping Malvina care for the baby. But then in 1944, at the age of 39, Nanny becomes a grandmother for the second time when Malvina has her second child, a baby girl.
00:19:14
That baby dies in the hospital while Nanny is holding her. Oh, no. And there's horrific rumors and people have ideas about what she did.
00:19:26
And I just can't even say it because it's so awful. It just gets stuck in your head.
00:19:30
So if you really want to fucking look it up, look it up. Some people think that in her twisted mind, she was trying to stop her daughter from having her life ruined from having too many children the way she thought hers was.
00:19:42
But in her despair following the death of her younger child, Melvina asks her mother to look after her older child more and more.
00:19:49
like not suspecting her mother. Just a few months after the death of the baby, this toddler named Robert dies while nanny is taking care of him. Yeah. She had taken out a
00:20:00
$500 life insurance policy on the toddler, which would be worth about $9,000 in today's money.
00:20:08
And no one knew until the baby's passing? Who knows? Maybe that was like a normal thing to do back then because I do think like life
00:20:15
expectancy for children was so much shorter, but that just, I don't know. I don't know what,
00:20:19
like what the normal thing to do back then was. Well, I guess the question would be,
00:20:23
did the other kids have insurance? Like, was that a thing that family did making sure everyone's
00:20:28
insured? Because if not, God, that's so gross. Yeah. And suspecting those things back then,
00:20:35
I don't think, you know, they do the way we do now because we've read so many fucking stories.
00:20:39
Right. The cause of death is listed as asphyxia, but the family will later suspect that Nanny had
00:20:45
fed him arsenic-laced cookies. Wow. So in 1945, Nanny's husband, Frank, comes home drunk after
00:20:53
celebrating the end of World War II. According to Nanny's later account, he rapes her that evening.
00:21:00
Then he dies a few days later, and the cause is presumed to be food poisoning again. But Nanny
00:21:06
will later confess that in the days after Frank raped her, she had been gardening and found one
00:21:10
of the jars of moonshine that he had buried in the garden so she wouldn't find them, you know,
00:21:16
and that she says she mixed arsenic in to the moonshine, hid it and like waited for him to find
00:21:22
it and drink it. So no autopsies performed and it's presumed that Frank dies of alcohol poisoning.
00:21:28
Nanny collects enough money from the life insurance policy to buy a plot of land in
00:21:31
Jacksonville, Alabama. So she goes back to the Lonely Heart section again. This time she takes
00:21:37
her time. She has some land and money now. So she's like, I can be picky. And she eventually
00:21:42
settles on a man named Arlie Lanning. And he lives in Lexington, North Carolina. And he and Nanny
00:21:48
marry in the late 1940s when Nanny is about 45. And she moves to North Carolina to be with him.
00:21:54
This relationship, shockingly, is as unsatisfying as the others have been. How? This is crazy. She's so good at relationships.
00:22:03
I mean, it feels like it's more unsatisfying for the spouses. unsatisfying is a word yeah i mean god that's it's like truly the monsters in the house with you
00:22:13
yeah so it turns out arlie the new husband is a womanizer and it's clear to nanny that he's
00:22:18
seeing other women almost immediately they separate and get back together repeatedly
00:22:23
both of them have multiple affairs and in 1952 after breaking up and getting back together a
00:22:29
bunch nanny now in her late 40s gets back together with him and then like plays the part of a perfect
00:22:34
wife. But a few weeks later, she bakes a prune pie for Arlie. Gross. And he is dead the next
00:22:43
morning. Wow. He also had been a heavy drinker. And so his death is ruled as a heart attack.
00:22:49
I mean, you could also rule it as death by prune pie, because can you imagine, just think of it for one second, having a slice of prune pie on its own. It's so,
00:22:59
So disgusting. So sticky. So tart. Yeah. After his death, she moves in with his family, which is fucking dangerous for them.
00:23:09
She lives with Arlie's mother and sister and learns that Arlie's will had not been updated.
00:23:15
But because they're married, she still gets most of his estate. But his house had been left to his sister.
00:23:20
And then it just burns down mysteriously. The house? Yeah. And Nanny tries to collect insurance on it.
00:23:26
and then Arlie's mother falls ill while Nanny lives there. Nanny takes care of her, cooking for her until she too dies shortly after eating
00:23:35
what Nanny had given her, which is stewed prunes. I guess maybe they hide the taste of arsenic really well
00:23:42
because they're so sweet and acidic and weird. Yeah, maybe. Or she bought like an old-fashioned barrel of prunes
00:23:48
and it was just the kind of thing where it's like no matter, don't go over there because you're going to get chicken with prune sauce
00:23:53
and you're going to get, you know what I mean? And it just, she put it in every single possible thing.
00:23:57
Gross. So gross. fell out of fashion, anything with prunes, but it's on those old school menus that you see
00:24:04
sometimes like this is the menu from this diner and it's like a bowl of stewed prunes.
00:24:09
I think you can get stewed prunes at Moustone Franks. I think you're fucking right.
00:24:13
I think that sounds right, but we could look it up. Yeah, no, that sounds completely right.
00:24:19
I mean, you know, look, they keep you regular. They actually work. They do. In a time where people were only eating meat, cheese, and potatoes.
00:24:28
I bet it was necessary. Absolutely. Then Nanny goes, this just goes on and on about Nanny moving in with her sister Dovey.
00:24:37
She'd been sick and then dies shortly after Nanny moves in with her. Nanny goes back to the Lonely Hearts section, this time focusing on a section for older people called the Diamond Circle.
00:24:48
So sexy. She meets a man named Richard Morton. He lives in Emporia, Kansas. They get married.
00:24:54
Nanny moves to Kansas. and during this time nanny's awful terrible abusive father dies and nanny's mother moves in
00:25:03
with them she fucking dies not long after having eaten more of nanny's stewed prunes
00:25:08
that tracks right just like that's your core wound right there your parents who treated you so badly
00:25:14
totally how many people is that at this point is it like six people she's killed it's a lot it's so
00:25:21
many. I know. I don't know if it's, she just does it for the life insurance, which would be different
00:25:27
than just this like need to constantly kill people for the attention or for no reason or to like move
00:25:33
on with her life. It's just, it seems like both a little bit. Yeah, it does. It's not, I think it'd
00:25:39
be more overt if it was like purely financial. Right. Yeah. She would have gotten caught earlier
00:25:45
maybe if it was like that. Now she shifts her focus to her latest husband, Richard,
00:25:51
who shockingly appears to not be that romantic ideal that Nanny was looking for.
00:25:57
But at first, everything is great. He's wealthy. They live in a nice house, it seems. But he
00:26:02
leaves on a lot of multi-day trips. Shocker, turns out he's having multiple affairs.
00:26:09
She immediately starts looking for yet another husband and starts taking out life insurance
00:26:13
policies and richard dies in 1953 after drinking a thermos of coffee that nanny had made for him
00:26:19
i wonder she has like a type obviously and i wonder if she's like falling in love with this
00:26:26
type that she kind of can't she doesn't realize about herself that she's picking these people
00:26:31
right and she's like seeing them as this romantic thing then she gets disappointed and she goes into
00:26:37
like a rage of like you're supposed to be this and you're actually exactly like my father or
00:26:42
or whatever. Like I, that's kind of, I just made that up right now, but I, it makes no sense. Like
00:26:48
after the third one, you don't go, Oh no, he's an alcoholic. I have to leave right now. Cause I know
00:26:52
how this is going to end, but it's like, she has something invested in how it's going to end. Cause
00:26:57
she gets revenge. Like she wants it almost to end that way. So she can justify what she's about to
00:27:03
do. She's kind of maybe killing her father every time. Ooh, that's a real, I am not a professional
00:27:10
psychologist and I'm not giving anyone medical advice right now. I wish you would. I'll go back
00:27:17
to school. He was really old. So no one looks into his death. And by really old, who the fuck knows
00:27:22
what that means? Because old back then was my age, essentially. Yeah, really. My guess is he was 56.
00:27:27
People are like, Jesus, how did he make it to 56? Marries another man. His name is Samuel Doss.
00:27:34
He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And at this point, Nanny is 48 years old. Okay. She's a little older
00:27:40
than me. He isn't abusive. He doesn't touch alcohol and he doesn't cheat. Here we go.
00:27:46
Hey there. Unfortunately, he still doesn't work as a husband for a nanny because he's a devout
00:27:50
Christian and disapproves of her beloved romance novels. So he's like, you can't read them anymore.
00:27:58
He withholds money from her unless she lives by his rules. But then, you know, she gets a life
00:28:04
insurance policy out on him. They share a bank account. She's not going to argue. She's like,
00:28:09
oh is that how you want it to go okay sounds good i'm going down to all state tomorrow
00:28:13
your decision right and he bans the romance novels from his house from their house hey guess what in
00:28:22
1954 samuel falls ill after eating say it with me prune cakes there we go he's hospitalized for a month and but he doesn't die he's released and then right
00:28:38
before being released from the hospital, he dies after drinking coffee that nanny had given him.
00:28:45
But because he had just been sick and got better, someone was like, that's fucking weird. Finally.
00:28:50
Who? Someone caught on? The doctor who treated him for being sick is like, huh, I did a good job. And I refused to like,
00:28:58
let my name be dragged through the mind. I don't know. Whatever it was, he was like.
00:29:00
He was all clear when he left my spot. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm really quick looking up prune cake.
00:29:05
just I just want to see what it looks like. My grandma used to make plum cake. She had this
00:29:10
gorgeous plum tree in her backyard and it was more like a pound cake with like or like a pineapple
00:29:14
upside down pound cake. Yes. But with plums in it and it was amazing. But I guess you could call
00:29:19
that prune cake because a plum. Prunes are just dried plums as far as I know. My sister and I
00:29:25
actually got into a fight about this because we were somewhere and there was a there was a thing
00:29:29
that said it was a prune tree. And I'm like as far as I know it's not a prune tree until after the
00:29:35
plums are dried. It's like they, it doesn't start that way, but this, I'm sorry, every picture of
00:29:42
prune cake on the internet looks really delicious. Let me see. Let me see. Let me see if it's my
00:29:46
grandma's. Well, it's like there's old fashioned prune cake, which is just squares. That's pretty
00:29:51
close Yeah But then there this one when you said it looks like um pineapple upside down cake One of those Can you see Oh like a Bundt cake Oh yeah Yeah Right Yeah Okay We challenge you to make a prune cake
00:30:05
Tag us. Post a photo. Tag us. Threaten no one's life. Take out no insurance. Just make a prune cake.
00:30:13
Or send us a recipe. I don't know why, but there's nothing I love more than like a coffee cake.
00:30:18
Like a homemade recipe for like a coffee cake. my great aunt and used to make the bisquick coffee cake that was on the back of the bisquick box
00:30:26
it's just basically a pile of brown sugar and then some bisquick but so good have you ever had
00:30:30
the one they have at vons does vons still exist yeah our local grocery store my grandma used to
00:30:36
get it it looks like a bunt cake and it's like a bunt coffee cake called socket to me cake i don't
00:30:41
know why it was called that but she always used to get it you get like a half loaf of it was so cute
00:30:46
in the bakery section. What was the flavor? Socket to me. It was like a coffee crumble cake.
00:30:52
Oh, now I have to look that one up. Sorry. But look it up. Well, also because, you know,
00:30:55
Socket to me was the saying on, was it laughing on that 60s variety show? I wonder if that's where it comes from.
00:31:01
Ooh, Socket to me cake comes right up. Ooh. This easy Socket to me cake uses a butter yellow cake mix,
00:31:08
add cinnamon, brown sugar, and pecans. I think we're talking about the same thing.
00:31:12
Yeah. Is that it? That's fucking it. Oh, it's got, yeah. it's all iced on top. Oh my God. We should just do a food podcast where we talk about,
00:31:22
just like show each other pictures of food we like and talk about it because it's truly where
00:31:27
we come alive. It's not, it's not visual. It's food memories. Talk about them. Oh my God.
00:31:35
Did I tell you that I had a friend who wanted to start a podcast about food history. She needed a
00:31:39
name and you know I fucking love coming up with punny names so I came up with a time and a plate
00:31:45
oh hey right really good yeah congratulations thank you write that down in your little comedy
00:31:53
notebook my little notebook of wins hey back to the serial killer oh okay yeah you're right so
00:32:00
the doctor is like wait a second somehow he convinces nanny to allow a autopsy which none
00:32:07
of her victims had had before. Right. And the autopsy shocking reveals that Samuel Doss had ingested enough arsenic to kill a
00:32:13
horse. Oh, I love that comparison. And anything that's enough to do something to a horse is what every metric should be,
00:32:21
in my opinion. That makes sense. Yeah. Or elephant, like the bigger, it gets bigger and bigger.
00:32:26
Because basically they're saying she OD'd him on arsenic, which is a terrible way to
00:32:30
die in the first place. Absolutely. Oof. So she is arrested. She's charged with Samuel's murder.
00:32:36
And she basically confesses to murdering four of her five husbands with her first husband being the only one to survive.
00:32:43
She had poisoned all of them, but only four of them died. He made the first one made it through.
00:32:47
He made it. And she laughs and jokes with the police while she confesses. Yeah, she doesn't care.
00:32:53
No. At this point, she could be played by like an old lady Roseanne bar. Oh, yeah.
00:32:59
You know what I mean? Like, like, but looking real granny ish, unsuspecting granny style.
00:33:04
Mrs. Doubtfiery. Do you think she was playing that part up to seem unsuspecting? Yeah, right.
00:33:11
And this winds up giving her the nickname, the Giggling Granny, which becomes like widely reported
00:33:15
in the press is like a big story. She insists that she didn't kill any of her other family members,
00:33:21
but authorities exhumed more of the bodies of her relatives. And one being her second husband,
00:33:27
who she's already admitted to poisoning. They also exhume her sister and her two-year-old grandson.
00:33:34
robber, the toddler. Nanny insists that he had ingested the arsenic by accident, but the family
00:33:40
is certain she murdered him. And arsenic is found in all three of those bodies. Oh, wow.
00:33:46
Authorities suspect that Nanny Doss killed as many as 12 people, all husbands and relatives.
00:33:51
12. That's insane. She's charged with murder in several of the states she lived in, but she only winds up being tried
00:33:57
in Oklahoma for Samuel's murder. She's found guilty and is first sentenced to death. But two
00:34:03
years later, a judge commutes her sentence declaring her insane. He says it would set a
00:34:07
poor precedent to make Nanny Doss, this old lady, this granny, the first woman in the state to be
00:34:13
put to death. So he won't do it. Okay. Nanny Doss dies of leukemia 10 years into her sentence at the
00:34:20
old age of 59. And in the wake of her arrest and trial, the Oklahoma legislature approves a bill
00:34:27
nicknamed the Nanny Doss bill. And it appoints state medical examiners who must investigate
00:34:32
all unexplained deaths that don't occur in the presence of a medical professional.
00:34:37
That was the late 50s that that happened? No, she was in her late 50s. No, that was 54 when he died.
00:34:44
So I'm not really, yeah, I don't know exactly when. But I mean, arguably recently.
00:34:49
Yeah, like close to the 60s. You know what? When people just drop like flies, especially around one person,
00:34:55
here's the thing. We got to send somebody out. That's just, that's going to be our new rule.
00:34:59
when someone young and healthy has a little midnight snack of you know everyone's favorite
00:35:04
prune cake and then drops dead let's go ahead and find out why and then their mother does and
00:35:10
then their grandpa does and then their uncle does and then everyone around them and their family i
00:35:14
mean jesus yeah not one neighbor that's like hey i just want to point out yeah and then think of
00:35:22
all the people that also like got sick but didn't die when they ate her food yeah like neighbors
00:35:26
you know and that first husband he must have been like holy shit yeah dodged a bullet and that is
00:35:33
the story of the giggling granny nanny dos who spent her life looking for love she was probably
00:35:38
incapable of feeling oh yeah that was from ally that was ally's sentence it was a good one good
00:35:45
way to end it ally powerful can you have empathy for a psychopath who has no empathy but is stuck
00:35:52
in their own psychopathy that way. Oh my God Well I think the fact that we could means we not psychopaths Well you never know Wait Do you know something I don know
00:36:06
God, that was crazy. Yeah. Just these awful. It's so surprising, these old stories we do of these like just terrible people that you expect to be good people.
00:36:15
Yeah. And it is weird, that thing of like women serial killers are usually poisoners.
00:36:21
Right. It's such a strange thing. Yeah. Silent killers. Yeah. They're like a quiet on the DL.
00:36:29
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00:38:58
Also difficult, but a little more, I guess, overall inspiring. Okay. I do want to say though, a trigger warning for anybody.
00:39:05
There is a talk of suicidal ideation in this story. So in case that's not something you want to hear right now, don't listen to this story.
00:39:14
All right. So in October of 1983, 23-year-old Tammy Oldham and her 34-year-old fiance, Richard Sharp, are sailing a luxury yacht called the Hazana from Tahiti to San Diego.
00:39:29
They've actually been hired to do this job. They're doing it for the people who own the Hazana.
00:39:36
They left Tahiti on September 22nd. The trip is supposed to take about a month. And at this point, they're deep in the South Pacific.
00:39:46
Richard is an expert sailor through and through. Tammy is only slightly less seasoned than Richard.
00:39:52
And this is, of course, a dream job for them. But it's also a little bittersweet for Tammy.
00:39:57
She's actually from San Diego. So she's a little trepidatious about heading back home.
00:40:02
she remembers she craved independence and basically made a bunch of decisions and is now
00:40:08
kind of looking back on what got her to that point and this is something that she later says quote
00:40:14
san diego home sweet home it seemed so long ago that i'd worked in the health food store
00:40:19
and graduated from point loma high i remember how i grabbed that diploma and split cut every cord
00:40:25
keeping me grounded i remember how important it was for me to be free on my own amen yeah
00:40:32
Although that becomes a little ironic as the couple crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere and that marks the halfway point on the trip.
00:40:41
So they celebrate with a toast. What they don't know is that somewhere overhead, an unexpected and powerful storm is gathering and it's going to change their lives forever.
00:40:52
This is the story of Richard Sharp, Tammy Oldham and an extraordinary survival at sea.
00:40:58
So the main sources that Maren used in the research today are Tammy Oldham's own book.
00:41:05
Now, her name is now Tammy Oldham Ashcraft. And the book is called Red Sky in Morning and Morning is with you.
00:41:12
And then several articles by Hawaii Tribune Herald journalist Jean Tao from 1983.
00:41:19
And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. so for the first several days of this yachting trip tammy and richard feel like they're on top
00:41:28
of the world the south pacific stretches endlessly around them it's vast it's peaceful and they get
00:41:34
to spend basically every single day doing what they love which is navigating the ship and trading
00:41:41
off steering and driving the ship i'm sure it's not driving but steering they get to share meals
00:41:47
under a blanket of stars and basically just falling deeper in love with each other.
00:41:52
Wait so it just the two of them like transporting the boat back to San Diego Exactly People do that Yeah They like someone wanted to go from San Diego or from wherever Someone went to Tahiti and they like the boat needs to go back though And we don want to
00:42:05
Yeah. We're going to fly back. You drive it back. Oh. Steer it back. What's the gig?
00:42:10
Navigate it. I know. Navigate. Yes. Navigate it. In the sixties, my dad drove a car from San Francisco to New York city and loves to talk
00:42:19
about going to New York city. Yeah. So I think that's like, that's just the rich person's version of what my dad did one time.
00:42:26
It's like instead of a tow truck or whatever. Right. Exactly. You can get those fees maybe a
00:42:31
little bit lower. Can you imagine just towing a yacht all the way across the ocean? I love AAA.
00:42:38
Okay. Anyway, it's so dreamy that at one point, a pot of dolphins swims alongside the Hazana.
00:42:44
Come on. And the scene is so idyllic that in the yacht's logbook that day, Tammy just writes one single word, bliss with an exclamation point.
00:42:54
Oh, but just over two weeks into the trip, the atmosphere shifts. It's October 8th and weather reports mention a storm brewing near the Americas.
00:43:04
So right now that's far away from the Hazana from where they are in the boat. But it's concerning enough that Richard makes a note in the logbook that says, watch this one.
00:43:13
It's a big enough storm that it already has a name. They're calling it Raymond. So they decide to steer the yacht north, hoping to basically outrun it.
00:43:24
But Raymond is stronger and faster, and it's growing stronger and faster by the minute.
00:43:29
It's also moving unpredictably, so it's difficult to track. So by the night of October 10th, the outer bands of the storm close in, and the Hazana gets hit with heavy rain and fierce winds.
00:43:43
So it's clear to Tammy and Richard that they have to do everything in their power to power and get themselves away from Raymond.
00:43:51
So they try to outrun the storm in the early hours of October 11th, pushing the yacht and themselves to the limit.
00:43:58
Increasingly strong winds tear apart one of the yacht's sails. So Tammy and Richard switch on the boat's autopilot.
00:44:05
Then they head to the deck and strap on safety harnesses to keep from being thrown overboard by the waves.
00:44:12
That's how big these waves are now. That sounds terrifying. So horrible. The wind is so loud that they can barely hear each other speaking, but still they work together
00:44:22
to keep this yacht under control. The water is splashing on the deck. It's drenching them.
00:44:27
Richard and Tammy crawl on all fours to the front of the Hazana. They take down the damaged sail and spend two hours putting up a brand new one.
00:44:37
Two fucking hours. Two hours. Their fingers are raw and blistered and they just like, it's like they have to do it.
00:44:43
Once they're done, of course, they're exhausted. But this is just the beginning.
00:44:48
12 hours later, the storm strengthens into Hurricane Raymond and its core is heading
00:44:54
straight for the Hazana at an even faster pace. So they are in the shit. They didn't outrun it.
00:45:01
And yeah, worst case scenario. Fuck this shit, man. Like I won't watch the movies and stuff and like documentaries about storms on the sea
00:45:09
or hurricanes. Like I won't, I can't handle this shit. It's so, it's almost like what's the opposite of claustrophobia?
00:45:15
Well, you're just totally out of control. You're at the whim of nature and just like getting tossed around by nature.
00:45:22
Horrible. I can't handle it. It's so funny because my sister, my cousins came to visit me.
00:45:26
And so we watched a show called Eye of the Storm. And it's just basically iPhone footage of people in tornadoes.
00:45:33
tornadoes, people in insane, like it's so crazy, snowstorms, blizzards. But what you're talking
00:45:41
about is so real because it's like, it's the same every time people are standing there going,
00:45:46
oh, look at, look at it's coming, whatever. Everyone's really confident just standing there
00:45:49
recording. Yeah. Cut to they didn't realize how close it was. Right. Tsunamis, all that shit.
00:45:55
Yes. This one guy, it's incredible. His phone stayed on the whole time. He was standing there
00:46:00
recording the tornado and he's at work and suddenly it's like coming and the wind gusts up
00:46:06
and he has to hook his arm around the push bar on the door of the front of the store and he
00:46:13
basically has to hold himself there while the tornado passes over him and the store and he does
00:46:19
it now imagine doing that but if you let go you're in the fucking ocean in the middle of the fucking
00:46:25
In the middle of the ocean where just sea monsters are waiting. Okay. I stay home.
00:46:30
Thank you. I just started a second story within my survival story. I just told a story within a story.
00:46:38
This is the kind of high level podcasting that we promise you on a weekly basis.
00:46:43
Prune cakes and stories within stories. Okay. And then of course, Frank has to, he has to have his say.
00:46:51
Okay. Despite their best efforts over the past couple of days, Tammy and Richard cannot outrun the storm.
00:46:58
In the logbook, Richard writes, quote, all we can do is pray. So now it's October 12th.
00:47:04
Tammy and Richard find themselves in the middle of a now category four hurricane.
00:47:09
The seas are unimaginably rough. There are 115 mile an hour winds, waves that are 50 feet tall, five story building waves.
00:47:19
holy okay yeah i want to build i want to build in comparison for sure yeah horse comparison
00:47:24
building or football field i'm gonna need okay at all times you know what i mean i can only do
00:47:30
a building that's my yards are too hard for me i'm not as familiar so tammy would later say quote
00:47:37
the sound of the wind was terrifying the boat would rise up high and then drop into deep troughs
00:47:43
each each wave would lift us into the air only to slam us back down i was scared out of my mind
00:47:49
End quote. Richard's doing his best to steer the boat while trying to basically stay upright.
00:47:56
So he gives Tammy the only emergency beacon on board. which is a device that when you activate it transmits a distress signal to alert rescuers to the yacht's location.
00:48:08
And he basically, Richard, yells over the sound of the storm that she needs to put it on and head down to the cabin to take cover.
00:48:17
So she's scared to death. Richard tries to reassure her. He yells to her, quote, someday we'll tell our grandchildren how we survived Hurricane Raymond.
00:48:27
Oh, no, because I know now what's coming. You know what's coming. So she squeezes her fiance's hand and makes her way below deck.
00:48:35
And she's somewhat reassured knowing Richard is wearing a safety harness. He's attached to the yacht.
00:48:41
So when she's down in the cabin, she attaches her own harness to the base of table.
00:48:45
And she braces herself as the yacht is violently rocked by wave after wave. And then things take a turn for the worse.
00:48:54
Tammy says, quote, There were waves coming from unexpected directions, creating spots where the waves crashed down like breakers.
00:49:01
I think we got caught in one of those spots because I had just gone below and secured my safety harness when I heard Richard scream, oh my God.
00:49:09
He saw it coming. Then I felt the boat drop out from under me as we turned end over end.
00:49:15
That's the last thing I remember. Holy shit. So what Tammy is describing there is the hazana being what's called pitch pulled, which is basically doing a frontward flip.
00:49:27
No, I didn't know boats flipped. Yeah. I don't think they normally do. They're not supposed to.
00:49:33
Yeah. So Tammy comes to. She has a pounding headache. Her vision is blurry. She can see that she's in a dark room that's covered with stuff.
00:49:42
As she looks around, she sees cans of food, books, clothes, silverware, and lots of blood.
00:49:48
Oh, there's about two feet of water all around her. She's still wearing the harness, which is clipped to the table, but she doesn't know why. And she doesn't know where she is. As she sits there, she's slowly realizing she's in the cabin of a boat. She doesn't know how she got there. No, the clock on the wall says 4pm. That doesn't feel right to her. She tries to stand up and she realizes how cold she is. She's freezing. She's shivering. And then she just vomits.
00:50:17
She manages to walk toward a nearby mirror and sees that her hair is caked and dried with blood.
00:50:24
And she has a long, thick gash across her forehead just below her hairline. She's actually so frightened by her own appearance that she screams.
00:50:33
And then she calls out to Ray for help. But then she wonders who Ray is. She tries to organize her thoughts.
00:50:41
She begins to realize Ray is the Hurricaned, Hurricane Raymond. But where's Richard?
00:50:46
then it hits her Richard her her fiance is not with her in this cabin so she starts screaming
00:50:52
his name and there's no response oh my god Tammy makes her way above deck her body is sore and
00:50:59
injured but the ocean is now calm it's much easier for her to move around so as she heads toward the
00:51:05
cockpit she realizes the extent of the damage on this boat the hazanas masts are broken the sails
00:51:12
are destroyed and chunks of the deck are gone. Oh. Which I was like, when I read that, I was like,
00:51:17
wait, how? Like, yeah, that's, it's like your car got totaled, but you're still trying to drive it.
00:51:24
Totally. So everything seems to either be missing, bent or broken. And tragically,
00:51:29
this includes the safety line that was attached to Richard's harness. So when Tammy sees that
00:51:36
broken line, she starts to panic. She remembers that she went below deck at 1 PM during the height
00:51:41
of the storm and now it's 4 p.m. So she figures Richard could still be out there somewhere treading
00:51:47
water. So she starts throwing every cushion that she can find overboard, knowing that they can
00:51:53
serve as a flotation device. And then she grabs binoculars. She starts scanning the ocean to see
00:51:59
if she can find Richard, but she can't see him. As she continues looking out over the water,
00:52:04
she tries to start the yacht's engine. It doesn't turn over. She's in an unbelievably difficult spot.
00:52:10
The yacht is basically now an inoperable vessel. So Tammy remembers the emergency beacon that Richard gave her before she went below deck.
00:52:19
She tries it. It won't turn on. She pulls out the batteries. She reinserts them and then dips the beacon into water, which is supposed to activate it.
00:52:29
Nothing happens. Then she tries to send distress signals on the yacht's radio. But both of the Hassana's long and short distance radios have been destroyed in this storm.
00:52:39
Fuck. So then Tammy puts it together that she's actually been passed out for like 27 hours, not three.
00:52:48
And then it hits her. She might never see Richard again. That's when it all comes together that all of that action she took and looking for him and everything is, could be to not.
00:53:01
She realizes she's alone in the middle of the ocean in a massless boat filled with water.
00:53:06
And this is when the reality of that situation sinks in. she feels hopeless and she even contemplates suicide. But then in her darkest moment,
00:53:16
she starts hearing what she describes as, quote, a strange little voice in my head.
00:53:21
Oh. Yeah. Third man. It was becoming my friend, my savior. The voice was scary, yet comforting too. It always seemed to know what to do or what I should do.
00:53:32
Damn. Great tie in with my story from last week. Yep. If you want to listen to Georgia talk about
00:53:38
the third man syndrome, listen to episode 444. You can hear all about it. So in Tammy's case,
00:53:44
the voice sounds sometimes like Richard. Sometimes it sounds like her mother and sometimes it sounds
00:53:50
like her father but whoever it is they tell her don give up keep the boat moving that she needs to work on getting the water out of the cabin It also tells her to keep looking for Richard The voice sounds fully convinced that he still
00:54:05
alive and that fills Tammy with hope. Wow. So she gets to work. She takes stock of the supplies she
00:54:11
has left. So she's got fishing gear. She's got a small medical kit, hand flares, a sponge,
00:54:17
a small hand pump for removing pooled water. She's got canned beans, fruit, tuna, a pack of
00:54:24
biscuits, six cans of water, several cans of beer, Cuban cigars, and about 25, and I would immediately
00:54:33
vomit like she did the first time, and about 25 gallons of clean water in the yacht's tank,
00:54:38
which is not much. But if she's careful, it would be enough to last her several weeks.
00:54:44
Okay. So the first thing Tammy does is use the medical kit on her wound. She has several wounds.
00:54:51
She starts with the large gash on her forehead. Then she starts using the manual pump.
00:54:56
And little by little, she starts getting water out of the cabin. And that's when the voice tells her to, quote, check the chart, make a plan to get to land.
00:55:05
Whoa. So Tammy goes to the logbook and she looks at the last position Richard had charted.
00:55:11
Tammy has experience navigating the ocean. In her own words, she is, quote, not a master navigator by any means, end quote, but she learned to sail on her father's boat.
00:55:23
And in 1979, she completed her own first Pacific crossing. Wow. So it's not like she doesn't know what she's doing, but in this situation, she has to navigate with no navigation systems and a head injury that is making it hard for her to focus.
00:55:39
Jesus it's these crazy survival stories that you do when it's the when the realization is that like
00:55:45
you can't just sit there and wait for someone to save you you have to fucking do it on your own and
00:55:50
that's just like when I get exhausted thinking about it right it's like you have to save yourself
00:55:55
no one's coming for you yeah and like the only way to do that is to have hope like that seems like
00:56:01
the trick you know yeah or just I think the thing of tasks which I think they all say you just start
00:56:08
figuring out just another step. And then I think hope comes like after that, because then you're
00:56:15
sort of busying yourself with necessary, you know, errands and tasks or whatever,
00:56:21
fixing things or pumping out water. There's a point to what you're doing as opposed to just
00:56:26
sitting there going, this is the worst. This is the worst. Yeah. I got to wait for someone. I got
00:56:30
to wait for someone. Yeah. It's kind of like when you don't feel like going out, but you get ready
00:56:34
anyway and you just go out tired and then by the end you're like I'm so glad I went out yeah that's
00:56:39
exactly like that that's every time anyone invites me anywhere it's like I am on a crashed ship in
00:56:46
the middle of the ocean it's that hard okay but the voice keeps talking to Tammy and the voice is
00:56:54
saying quote you should finish what you started make a plan to get to land Richard is home now
00:57:00
you go home via Hawaii. It makes the most sense. End quote. So Tammy actually goes and checks and
00:57:09
sure enough, the nearest land is Hilo, Hawaii, which is 1500 miles away from the last location
00:57:15
Richard charted. So it's basically the distance between Los Angeles and Houston in today's money.
00:57:23
Wow. Okay. Tammy says, quote, I ran the risk of being off the latitude of Hawaii. So that was
00:57:29
always really heavy on my mind. If I did not get to Hawaii, I would die. Yeah. It's all alone out
00:57:35
there. Yeah. So I think about that sometimes because I really do love going to Hawaii and
00:57:42
I would think on that plane ride over where it just like, just can't think about it because
00:57:47
truly underneath you is just the ocean for a really long time. That's so scary. It really is something. So Tammy knows that because there's nothing working on the ship,
00:57:59
she's going to have to navigate to Hawaii using a sextant, which is a tool used to measure the
00:58:04
angle between the horizon and a celestial object like the sun or the stars. And also her digital
00:58:10
wristwatch, which she actually found while pumping the water out of the yacht's cabin.
00:58:15
Wow. So the emergency beacon stopped working, but her Casio made it through. I'm actually picturing the one you have, that gold watch, the digital watch.
00:58:28
Vintage looking one. Yeah. That's like from the 80s. Tammy would later say, quote, I could navigate by the sun and get myself somewhere. You have to do
00:58:36
three sites a day. And sometimes I would have to do four. Doing all the mathematics required
00:58:41
for that really helped me focus. So she has a head injury, probably a serious concussion.
00:58:49
And now she has to do math. No, I can't even do it on my best day. Please. Yeah. It's like,
00:58:56
how much of a tip do you want to leave? No idea. The longer I think about it, the worse it's going
00:59:01
to get. So the stakes of course are enormous. Tammy has a finite amount of food and water.
00:59:08
She has gruesome injuries. The yacht is hardly functioning. And to make it to Hawaii, she has to find a way to get control of this yacht and power
00:59:18
it toward Hilo. She has to work with what's left of the wreckage, torn sails, broken masts, the emergency sail
00:59:25
that she and Richard put up. She actually ends up managing to rig them together in a way that lets her pick up a modest
00:59:32
speed of around two miles an hour. Oh my God. But of course, once she gets it done to her, it feels like now we're on our way.
00:59:40
Yeah. She says, quote, I thought about Richard all the time. I thought about our life together.
00:59:45
I thought about my family. Your mind just races and runs around. I would think, have I completed the things I wanted to do in my life?
00:59:52
Then there's this whole shout out to the universe. If I live I promise I won ever do this or that or whatever Been there I mean you just making promises to the universe It very humbling and it really puts you in your place
01:00:06
End quote. So for the next three agonizing days, Tammy suffers a high fever and that fever breaks
01:00:12
as the days and nights drag on. She's meticulously rationing her food and water, sipping just a small cup of water and
01:00:20
enjoying only one can of beer a day. the beer and actually the Cuban cigars are like a treat that she looks forward to and that ends up
01:00:30
building morale so she's you know she's really setting herself up in that structured way for
01:00:35
success but of course spending so much time alone on the ocean in a state of exhaustion and in a
01:00:41
state of grief and with a head injury takes a huge toll on Tammy her mental state is suffering
01:00:48
two times as she charts her course she sees boats on the horizon and at one point a plane flies
01:00:55
overhead and wait they're real it's not a mirage well she's actually not sure oh yeah yeah every
01:01:02
time she sees them she desperately fires flares trying to get their attention but every time the
01:01:09
flares go unnoticed then she starts seeing things bobbing in the water she sees a ripped tarp flip
01:01:15
flops, soda bottles. And she would later wonder if she actually imagined those things, that her
01:01:20
desperation and her loneliness was just growing more and more. So she just wanted to see it.
01:01:25
Oh my God. She also could have been near the great Pacific plastic patch, that horrifying
01:01:31
lump of garbage that's in the ocean. Either way, she keeps on course, but her mind continues to
01:01:38
play tricks on her. At one point, Tammy wonders if she might already be dead and she's just stuck
01:01:43
in limbo. And that's why the other boats and the plane didn't see her. When there's no wind,
01:01:49
she writes in the logbook that it's Satan's fault. I mean, she's not wrong. No, I mean,
01:01:54
hey, it's got to be somebody's fault. Sure. Three agonizing weeks pass. Three weeks
01:02:00
just on a boat. Three fucking weeks. Yeah. That's the longest time to be alone on a boat,
01:02:08
not sure if you're going to make it. With the kind of head injury, just think about how
01:02:12
quickly we send people to the hospital that could have a concussion and she's just like trying to
01:02:18
make it work jesus okay again tammy considers ending her life but the voice interrupts her
01:02:26
and tells her to keep going it says quote tammy you're close you're so close believe in yourself
01:02:32
oh my god and sure enough after 40 long days alone at sea whoa tammy wakes up one morning
01:02:41
and sees frigate birds circling overhead. She knows these birds rarely fly more than 500 miles from shore.
01:02:49
It's the sign she's been looking for. Shit. Those frigates. Right? Then on November 18th, a rainy gray morning,
01:02:56
Tammy sees something on the horizon, and it's the big island of Hawaii. She fucking made her destination.
01:03:04
Like not even like a different island. Nope. She did it. Jesus. She fires her flares again.
01:03:10
And this time a Japanese research vessel sees the flares and they come and find her.
01:03:17
She is finally rescued. Oh my God. The crew members who greet Tammy from that vessel are shocked by her appearance.
01:03:25
Her hair is thickly matted. She is extremely frail. They tow her and the Hazana two miles into Hilo Harbor.
01:03:33
so ultimately it was 41 grueling days since hurricane raymond rolled the hazana and tammy
01:03:40
oldham has finally made it home she's successfully navigated 1500 miles to land through sheer
01:03:46
determination and skill as the battered yacht arrives at port tammy celebrates by drinking
01:03:52
the last beer from her reserves i love her so much oh my god she's like correct her hair is like
01:03:59
matted with blood and fucking damn you deserve that one you just you deserve it i hope it was
01:04:06
a good one schaefer beer she later says quote i didn't even go to the hospital can you believe
01:04:12
that i can't believe nobody sent me to the hospital yeah what the fuck come on 1983 like
01:04:19
take care of your people they're like are you okay okay you seem fine as she reels from exhaustion
01:04:27
and grief, Tammy is then forced to deal with the overnight fame that accompanies her survival.
01:04:34
Reporters swarm her and they cover every angle of her unbelievable survival story,
01:04:39
including her visit to a Hawaiian salon where three stylists work to untangle her hair.
01:04:46
Did people know they were missing at the time? I doubt it. I think, well, just thinking of any kind of story like that, you just hear, it's like
01:04:52
person is rescued after this many days. So I'm sure. No, but why would they know about people just driving a yacht back?
01:05:00
I don't know. Like, was her family, like, you know, they were supposed to be back in San Diego by this date and they're not here yet.
01:05:06
Or the owners of the yacht are like, why isn't our yacht home yet? I mean, it didn't sound like it.
01:05:12
Okay. Didn't sound like it. Because you'd think if they knew, they'd send her to the hospital.
01:05:16
Right. What do they do? Here's a Mai Tai. Enjoy. Here, have some alcohol. It's great for head wounds.
01:05:24
So Tammy flies home to California on Thanksgiving day. Her recovery is long, both physically and emotionally.
01:05:32
And she'll later say, quote, I had the head injury and I couldn't even read a book for nearly five years.
01:05:39
Holy shit. So think about that. She navigated that fucking boat, but she couldn't like that was the kind of head trauma that she had.
01:05:48
That is a major injury. Yeah. She says, I couldn't finish sentences. My short-term memory was really bad.
01:05:55
Seeing couples together that sort of thing was hard I had nightmares I was consumed for years and years with thinking about it I then realized after five or six years that I could choose when to start thinking about
01:06:08
him and the experience. I started realizing, oh, I'm not consumed by this all day now, end quote.
01:06:17
So it basically takes five or six years before Tammy, in her own words, quote, feels joy
01:06:23
again. Wow. And when she does, yeah. And when she does feel joy, what does she do?
01:06:29
No. Yep. She heads back to the ocean. Sure. No. She gets her captain's license and she starts working on large sailing ships.
01:06:39
Damn. Yeah. Which I actually think is brilliant. Yeah. It's like, it must've been super hard, but it's like, she did the brave thing.
01:06:46
My sister calls it licking the frog, go lick the frog and then it'll be over. And then you're done with that.
01:06:52
Yeah. I mean, and she clearly has the skill, like she can believe in herself and rely on herself
01:06:57
and know she can. Yes. Yeah. She also meets a man named Ed Ashcraft and she falls in love.
01:07:03
The couple soon welcome two children. Oh. And then in 1998, 15 years after Hurricane Raymond changed her life, Tammy publishes
01:07:12
a book about her experience called Red Sky and Mourning. It's both therapeutic and an enormous point of pride for Tammy, who until this point had
01:07:21
quote, always wanted to tell my story. Hell yeah. I want to tell your story. It's a great story.
01:07:29
It's incredible. Everyone needs to hear it. Red Sky Morning is available in eight languages. And
01:07:35
in 2018, it was adapted into the movie Adrift starring Shailene Woodley. So you can actually
01:07:41
watch that movie. That's Tammy's story. No way. Yes. How good is that? Good for her. Come on.
01:07:48
When Tammy watched the movie for the first time, of course, it was intensely emotional for her.
01:07:54
She says, quote, the one scene that kind of really threw me is when Shailene is leaning over the side, putting the duct tape on the hull.
01:08:03
Hooray for duct tape. I know. Just seeing her alone with no land in sight with that wrecked boat.
01:08:09
Oh, my gosh. It just brought me right back. It was just so surreal. It was like, God, that was me.
01:08:15
I just wept. Oh, my God. Also so brave to go and watch herself, her story be told like that because, yeah, you are basically re-experiencing that insane, horrifying trauma.
01:08:30
Yeah. Today, Tammy and her family live in Washington State where she regularly takes sailing trips in the Pacific because she is the true definition of a badass.
01:08:40
Though she admits she's a bit more cautious now than when she was 23. You gotta hope.
01:08:45
Yeah. She also does a fair amount of public speaking, telling her story of courage and survival against the odds.
01:08:52
She does it in part to keep the spirit of Richard alive. Outside Magazine once asked her what she wanted people to know about Richard.
01:09:01
And she said this, quote, he had a very good sense of humor and people were drawn to him.
01:09:06
He was a people person. I'm a little bit more reserved. So we made a good couple in that way.
01:09:11
He was very well read. He was a pretty smart guy. He was an adventurer. That's what drew us together, quenching our adventurous spirit.
01:09:19
Being a sailor, it's hard to find a compatible relationship with someone. I mean, when you're sailing with someone, you're with them 24-7.
01:09:26
He was just a very genuine, beautiful person. When asked about her incredible survival, Tammy says this, quote,
01:09:35
no matter what's thrown your way, you just got to dig deep. If you can just hang on, get through it, be strong, and have perseverance,
01:09:43
then on the other end you're going to come out of it okay and that is the amazing survival story
01:09:50
of Tammy Oldham Ashcraft damn we needed that we all needed that yeah we all needed to hear that
01:09:59
today that's why I love those survival stories because it's hard all of this is hard
01:10:07
perseverance is hard yeah yeah all of it digging deep is hard yeah you gotta eat protein
01:10:15
you gotta sleep you gotta sleep feel your feelings as much as it sucks i know feel your feelings and
01:10:23
if you need to feel your feelings by re-watching pride and prejudice for the 97th time that's fine
01:10:29
it's it counts but you know i've never seen that why not i don't know not your style no but i want
01:10:36
to now because of what's his face in it matthew mcfadden the beautiful mr darcy here's what i'll
01:10:44
say to you about that movie it's just a good movie you don't have to like like jane austen
01:10:49
or anything like that it's and all the people in it are like such good actors i don't think i
01:10:54
watched it like a bratty like i like sci-fi kind of a thing way back when it came out and now i'm
01:10:58
like why didn't i watch that just fucking watch it it's a real good like sunday afternoon movie
01:11:04
okay yeah i'll do it wow great job thank you fucking great survival story let's i'll take that with us into the next what couple months forever i don't know i mean just
01:11:18
put yeah put in your little library up go to if tammy can do it then i can do it yeah because i'm
01:11:24
just trying to like empty the dishwasher perspective it's important hey should we do
01:11:31
some what are you even doing right now where you guys tell us what you're even doing right now
01:11:34
and you watch while you listen to the podcast. Yes. Okay. This one is from Gringa Tourist on Instagram.
01:11:42
And it says, what are you even doing right now? Listening to your minisodes whilst working in archeology
01:11:49
in the Australian desert. Damn. Yeah, right. Listening to the upbeat minisodes to wake me up at 5 a.m.
01:11:57
before walking all day, avoiding snakes, and dingoes for a week straight. They keep me sane and in good spirits.
01:12:06
Wow, that's amazing. That's really impressive. That's really... I love that we're there. That's
01:12:11
where we are sometimes. How amazing is it? Sometimes we get to be in Australia again.
01:12:16
Remember how we thrived in Australia? We had a great time in Australia. That was amazing. I love
01:12:21
that. Okay, this one's also from Instagram. It's from Lupita X Menendez. What am I even doing right
01:12:27
now I'm painting dozens of pages of newspaper, various vibrant colors for an oversized paper
01:12:33
flower display for the children's room of my library. Special shout out to all the murderinos
01:12:39
who have shared their going back to school journeys through the years. Y'all inspired me to go back
01:12:43
and get my master's degree in library sciences. And now I am the cool children's librarian.
01:12:50
Love you ladies Yes I know That so awesome There a lot of library accounts on TikTok that just kill They make videos They kind of doing dances or whatever They just doing cool stuff And I like yeah librarians are the best They really are They really are Also you know Danielle Kramer who runs the Exactly Right Network
01:13:09
she got her degree in library sciences. It's such a cool thing. I know some cool
01:13:13
librarians. They're always like fucking smarter than you. But still cool about it.
01:13:20
But they want to share that knowledge. That's what's so great about it. Yes. They're very open. They're trying to like, here's how you use the Dewey Decimal System. I'm
01:13:28
like, Danielle, I don't want to talk about this right now. That's all she ever wants to talk
01:13:31
about. Dewey Decimal System this, Dewey Decimal System that. Well, thank you guys for listening
01:13:38
to this podcast episode. We appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you guys the most, I think,
01:13:43
out of anybody, for sure. Truly. Delightful. That was a good episode. Tight. Yeah. We spanned a lot
01:13:50
of topics. Yeah, that's right. We talked about food. Always a good time we talk about food.
01:13:56
Prune cakes unite Okay Stay sexy And don get murdered Goodbye Elvis do you want a cookie Ah
01:14:27
and Allie Elkin. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the
01:14:31
show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye.
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01:15:32
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01:16:03
Goodbye.