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Data accurate as of 220-26. Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.
00:02:29
That's Karen Kilgariff. I can't tell our voices apart at all. I heard a clip the other day.
00:02:35
Oh, really? And didn't know who was talking. Oh, no. That's insidious. It's tough when you're editing a clip.
00:02:42
I'll tell you that. It was just weird. It was like a surreal feeling of like, wait, who's that?
00:02:48
Oh, my God. And then I also couldn't remember who talked. So it was like the current experience.
00:02:54
And then like I didn't, I was like, what is this from? I recently listened to an episode first, a project we're working on, and I listened to it at 1.5 speed because I just wanted to get through, you know?
00:03:05
And then I listened to another one at normal speed and I was like, these chicks are so fucking slow.
00:03:10
Hurry the fuck up. Which is insane because we're so fast. We are so fast. That's how my brain works.
00:03:15
My brain works better at 1.5. It might be good at a nice three. Just really get it up there.
00:03:23
Oh, no, that's meth Georgia. She's gone. She had her place. Bless her heart. She had her use.
00:03:28
Sweet baby angel. R.I.P. Wait. Wait. Oh, so this is just real quick. Yes. A vacation episode.
00:03:36
So we're recording these. We pre-record them slightly shorter than the normal episodes so that we can go on vacation
00:03:42
and you guys still have content. So it's basically the same as a regular show. We're just doing less.
00:03:48
Quick intro. And then one of us is going to read a story only. And that's going to be for two weeks.
00:03:52
And then we're back in your arms. You won't even have time to post in Reddit. It's funny that just as we get back in the studio, it's like, bye.
00:04:01
We have got to go. Oh, I have something. I have a comment I wanted to read you that someone put on our Instagram account.
00:04:07
Her handle is babe on the go-go. And it says, hi, Georgia and Karen. I've been a murderino from day one.
00:04:13
I'm competing in the Miss New York USA pageant. And my platform is missing and murdered indigenous people, as well as ending the backlog.
00:04:21
Whoa. As of 2024, the Miss USA contest changed the rules to allow women over 27, I'm 40, and married women as well as moms, mother of two, to compete.
00:04:31
So I've decided to go for it because if not me, then who? Shruggy emoji. I say this all to say I would love if you both would go to MissNewYorkUSA.com and vote for me for People's Choice.
00:04:44
My name is Andrea Hill, number 69. Also, followers, if you're reading this vote, thank you in advance.
00:04:49
maybe a long shot, but I really hope you all see this. I mean, sorry, that's a 40-year-old
00:04:55
woman of color who already made it and she's now just running for, like, it sounds like she's
00:05:02
representing New York already. Yeah. And missing and murdered Indigenous women. And has a platform
00:05:06
that actually could affect real important change. That's not your dad's beauty pageant. I'll tell
00:05:13
you that. It's definitely not your red hat's beauty pageant. So yeah, let me say it again.
00:05:17
It's MissNewYorkUSA.com. Her name is Andrea Hill, number 69. Woo-hoo. Andrea, thanks for being a day one listener.
00:05:24
Yeah. We have all kinds of questions about Vaseline-ing your teeth and hairspraying your bathing suit
00:05:28
to your butts. But congratulations on, you know, breaking the, well, maybe she didn't do it.
00:05:34
Maybe it already got done. But I mean, it's just cool. Being part of a really cool change.
00:05:38
A Miss contest that a 40-year-old is in. Oh, can you imagine? 40-year-olds can still fucking work their shit.
00:05:45
Hell yeah. can still twirl a baton with the best of them and fucking represent. I mean,
00:05:51
amazing. Do you have anything? I just have a really good attitude Do you have anything going for you That not real Yeah I know This has been it the day before we go on vacation and it has been a long several weeks What are you going to
00:06:07
do on your vacation? Oh, staycation. Oh, nice. I really, I realized that all of my time spent at
00:06:13
my house for the past four years has been deemed as work. Yeah. So I'm going to clean out. I have
00:06:19
junk drawers that almost can't be closed. They're so full of junk. Oh, the satisfaction. I have so
00:06:24
many wires to my phone cord charger phone jack charger that don't fit the phone anymore or don't
00:06:32
fit the jack anymore yeah but you don't know which because you haven't tried them so you just leave
00:06:35
them all for now so it's like they're all in a drawer and they've become entwined and they're
00:06:40
like a rat king rat king a rat king in my drawer yeah so i'm gonna try to go in and fight them
00:06:46
okay i'm proud of you what are you gonna do um bence and i are going to michigan
00:06:50
And we're going to have like a little Michigan road trip to like the pretty places.
00:06:54
Oh, nice. Like lakes and stuff they have there. Did you know? Yes, it's beautiful.
00:06:58
It's gorgeous. I think he's just like, let's take a look here. Yeah. Wants to show me another way to live.
00:07:05
Yeah. He's like, can you imagine a life outside of Southern California? I don't think he can, honestly, anymore.
00:07:11
So it's okay. You're like, where are all the freeway overpasses? All right. So short episode.
00:07:18
Short. So yeah. So that's the end. And now that's the end. But also, we need to actually tell you we're back on with full episodes July 4th.
00:07:26
Yeah. Which is a holiday. Your favorite holiday. It's number one in my book. And also you can find merch, including T-shirts, stickers and tote bags for all Exactly Right
00:07:34
podcasts at exactlyrightstore.com. So please check that out. And if you want to support this particular podcast using promo codes, which kind of is
00:07:45
the name of the game. I don't know if we've ever given that away. But I mean, advertising is what makes podcasts happen.
00:07:51
Free. And so when they give promo codes in the ads that we do, when you use those promo codes,
00:07:56
they track it and then they go, we love that podcast because they actually use their promo
00:08:01
code. Yeah, it's crazy. So use ours. Well, and you can go to myfavoritemurder.com slash promos and you can find all of them and
00:08:08
use anyone you want. It doesn't have to be simultaneous. Yeah, absolutely. Get that discount.
00:08:14
Also, you guys did this last time we asked for it, and it was so fucking incredible.
00:08:19
If you could rate and review this show, wherever you like to listen to podcasts, especially if it's on Apple Podcasts, we got screen grabs from last time you guys did this.
00:08:27
The nicest messages. Thank you so much. It meant so much. I know you don't think of doing that very often, but that is another thing you can do to support your favorite podcast is rate and review.
00:08:36
That's right. And you don't actually have to write anything. You can just review it and it counts and it just is.
00:08:41
It's good to show that your audience is active and stuff. You don't have to compliment us.
00:08:46
You don't have to say how pretty our beautiful black hair is. You don't have to do any of that.
00:08:50
Five stars is great. Four if you don't like the cursing. I totally understand. Three if you're sick of the talking at the beginning.
00:08:55
I don't care. Maybe I could just fast forward though. Okay, express yourself. Let's talk about modern home shopping.
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00:11:16
All right. You're going this week. I go first this week. That was weird. You moving that, you moved mine.
00:11:23
Stop it. Oh, because I'm moving the entire unit. Oh, my God. Vianna's grabbing her hair.
00:11:30
Just a slight slide. If this microphone doesn't work the whole time, This podcast is over.
00:11:36
Okay. This is actually, I'm so excited to tell you this story. It's perfect for a short episode.
00:11:42
But I do have to do kind of an intense listener warning at the top. Okay. Because this story mentions the killing of horses and the mutilation of livestock.
00:11:52
Oh, no. None of the stuff we talk about is nice ever. No But we all understand the we get what coming at us Right Sometimes things like that especially horses I mean have you ever seen the play Equus It horrifying
00:12:05
Majestic creatures. Okay. So we start with a name everyone knows, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
00:12:11
Hey. The man behind one of literature's most iconic characters, Sherlock Holmes.
00:12:16
Of course, one of the several television shows I fall asleep to, the old Sherlock Holmes, BBC, I think.
00:12:23
starring Jeremy Brett. Unbelievably wonderful. I think like late 70s, early 80s British television.
00:12:32
Could be the 90s. It all looks so long ago. Anyhow, if you're at all familiar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
00:12:39
whose name I can't seem to break up comfortably, I'm not going to call him Arthur.
00:12:42
Artie? Conan Doyle is odd, but that's what I ended up, that's what Maren ended up writing.
00:12:48
So we're going with that. S-A-C-D, call him that. Sacked. Sacked, yeah. So the Sherlock Holmes series is just one part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's varied and very rich and varied life.
00:13:04
He was a complicated man. On one hand, he was larger than life. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction.
00:13:11
He was a practicing doctor, which is, that's a lot. And he was an avid sportsman.
00:13:17
he was also a world traveler at a time when world traveling was very difficult and a huge
00:13:23
undertaking and he did it more controversially he is remembered for cheating on his dying wife
00:13:28
passionately supporting british imperialism and fully endorsing spiritualism which we talked about
00:13:35
in the harry houdini episode yeah if you want to go back and listen it's episode 363 landed in
00:13:41
marshmallows and just you know spiritualism was a popular like belief in the 19th and early 20th
00:13:49
centuries it's a belief that the living can communicate with the dead essentially think
00:13:54
seances with old you know victorian people and ouija boards and yeah crystal ball type shit yeah
00:14:00
got very very popular at the turn of the century houdini was a huge skeptic he thought that
00:14:07
basically spiritualism was hijacked by frauds and he fought against it vehemently. It was
00:14:13
around the time of some big war. Oh, it was after the Civil War. Some big fucking war.
00:14:21
He was kind of the original like canceler, if you think about it, like trying to cancel people.
00:14:26
Yes. He was also like the original fight back with David Horowitz. Did you ever watch that show?
00:14:30
Yes. Oh my God. We're like, here's a wrong. And David Horowitz is like, I'm going to write it.
00:14:36
And the audience is like, yeah, get that small business. It's like, yes, exactly.
00:14:40
This used car lot made this lady pay this much money. Oh, fuck. Fight back with David Horowitz.
00:14:46
Oh, my God. That's why in the early 80s, we were all so, like, placid. It was like, well, someone's going to take care of it.
00:14:52
Some dude in a weird tie and a bad blazer is going to take care of this. Nine News will do an undercover.
00:14:57
Come on. Can we get David Horowitz on the show? Oh, could you imagine? Yeah, just interview what was life like then?
00:15:02
How many fraudulent bullshit claims did you guys? Wait a second. I'm going to cover fucking David Horowitz on this show.
00:15:08
Get out of my area. I'll never bring it up again. Don't look at my paper. Don't look at me.
00:15:15
Okay. And it was either Houdini's fight or it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's kind of insistence
00:15:21
in believing in spiritualism that ended their once close relationship. Sorry, their once close friendship.
00:15:27
We'll say it that way. I get it. But there is another part of Conan Doyle's life and legacy that a lot of people don't
00:15:33
know about, and that's his real-life investigation into a grisly Victorian-era crime where he played
00:15:39
the part of a real-life Sherlock Holmes. This is the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the case
00:15:45
of the Great Worley Outrages. The main sources of this story are the book Conan Doyle for the
00:15:52
Defense by Margalit Fox. Margalit. Beautiful. And the book The Mystery of the Parsi Lawyer,
00:15:59
written by Shrabani Basu. And Shrabani is a woman with she, her pronouns. And then also from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own writing
00:16:07
and what he basically wrote about all this, the ultimate source. And then the rest are in our show notes.
00:16:13
So just to start us off, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is born in Edinburgh, Scotland in May of 1859.
00:16:21
He's the second oldest of nine children in a, you guessed it, devoutly Catholic household.
00:16:27
He has a not great relationship with his father, who's an alcoholic, but he is very close with his mother, Mary.
00:16:34
As a boy, Conan Doyle is sent off to be educated in Jesuit schools, and that's where he discovers his love of writing.
00:16:42
And it's probably influenced by his mother's love for books and stories. But ironically, Mary encourages her son to take a different career path.
00:16:50
She wants him to study medicine, so he does. He enrolls at University of Edinburgh.
00:16:56
He finds his studies super boring, but there is an instructor who completely fascinates him, and it's a surgeon named Dr. Joseph Bell.
00:17:05
Conan Doyle describes Dr. Bell as, quote, a very skillful surgeon, but a strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character, end quote.
00:17:16
So Dr. Bell has this remarkable ability to figure out the details of a patient's life just by observation.
00:17:22
Yeah. In one instance, Dr. Bell correctly guesses that a new patient was recently discharged from the military, served in a Scottish regiment and was stationed in Barbados.
00:17:32
It's crazy when you shut the fuck up and listen. All the information that someone will give you.
00:17:37
Just like they just know it. It's right there on you. He explains to his students, quote, you see, gentlemen, the man was a respectful man, but he did not remove his hat.
00:17:46
They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged.
00:17:51
He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados his complaint is elephantiasis which is West Indian and not British Click Fucking deduction junction
00:18:06
Me saying click was that Dr. Bell taking a selfie right after he said that. He's just like, what else do you fucking want to know?
00:18:13
Mic drop. It is really cool. So obviously, Dr. Bell is the man that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on.
00:18:22
Nice. So cool. So by 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle is not only a practicing physician, he's also writing stories. He's regularly submitting those stories to magazines. And this is the year he debuts the first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet. It's a colossal hit. People go nuts. It immediately spawns a rabid fan base.
00:18:44
Yet despite the extreme popularity, Conan Doyle soon gets tired of Sherlock constantly overshadowing his other books, especially his historical novels.
00:18:54
Boring. Everyone's like, no, thank you. Get to the mysteries. Get to the talk about what their fingernails look like and how that means that they're from France.
00:19:03
They're like sacked. Am I right? Sacked. Get out here. In fact, Sherlock Holmes has such a hold on the public that people sometimes mistake Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes.
00:19:16
Writer Shobani Basu says, quote, When a delivery of shirts Conan Doyle had ordered arrived marked to Sherlock Holmes, it was the last straw.
00:19:25
So in 1893, Conan Doyle kills off Sherlock Holmes in the story The Final Problem.
00:19:32
Damn. That's six years after his debut. and of course they all freak out yeah everyone goes crazy it's reported that after the story's
00:19:41
published quote young city men in london went about with black crepe in their hats and morning
00:19:46
bands on their arms wow goth which is actually did you ever watch the new series with benedict
00:19:53
cumberbatch no no i know i should you should it's really good if you ever have a long weekend and
00:19:58
you want to you know lay around it's so good and well done and all the people in it are so good
00:20:05
Andrew Scott. I know. I found that out recently. Hot Priest is in it. And I was like, well,
00:20:11
okay, maybe I can watch this. He plays a villain that is so scary. You get scared in your house
00:20:16
of him that he's going to come somehow into your house. He's so creepy. I've been putting it off
00:20:21
because my mom's the one who keeps telling me to watch it. So I'm like, no, I'm not having a baby
00:20:25
and I'm not watching the new Sherlock Holmes. I'm not going to do either anytime soon. Well,
00:20:32
Don't make the mistake I made when for like three years my sister said you have to watch Friday Night Lights.
00:20:38
And I was like, I don't care about football. I don't care about football. Come on.
00:20:41
Do you care about great writing and acting? Do you care about being alive? Cinematography.
00:20:46
Humanity. Okay. So now Conan Doyle shifts his focus to his historical political writing, Snooze.
00:20:55
And then at the turn of the century, I'm sure it was really good. I'm sure it was great.
00:21:00
Probably pretty good. Yeah, I'm sure. But you can't beat fucking Sherlock Holmes.
00:21:04
Sherlock Holmes is the best idea. He's like a detective on cocaine that's kind of in love with his partner.
00:21:10
Yeah. Dr. Watson. Like, it's the best. I mean, and like ride those royalty checks into the wild, wild west, man.
00:21:17
Like, do your best. Don't make it trite. Have there be a point. But like, it's like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was like in the band pavement.
00:21:27
Yes. Where it's like, don't fucking sell out. Yeah. Yeah, we're not selling it. And it's like, okay, it's been 40 years and like what now?
00:21:34
Yeah, just we're all here to sell out. Sorry. Everything's cringe. Sorry. You know, don't sell out, but buy in.
00:21:42
Right? Greed is good. No, it's terrible. We're going back to the 80s now. We're going back to our past now.
00:21:47
Okay. So then at the turn of the century, Conan Doyle volunteers to be a doctor during the Boer
00:21:54
War in South Africa. He writes extensively about this war and Britain's role in it, and it earns him a knighthood in 1902.
00:22:03
This is when Sir actually gets added to his name. And if you don't know, like I didn't know, the Boer War was a conflict between the British Empire and the two Boer republics in South Africa, which were set up by Dutch-speaking settlers.
00:22:17
And they basically did it so they could get access to the gold mines and expand the British Empire.
00:22:23
Colonialism. It's everywhere. So basically, thanks to a mix of the public's ongoing desperation for more Sherlock Holmes stories and the huge payday from publishers, Arthur Conan Doyle brings back Sherlock Holmes in the now classic story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
00:22:42
How does he explain away that he's dead? Is this like a misery type of situation?
00:22:46
Well, if I'm Kathy Bates, he just points to Kathy Bates and says, let her tell you.
00:22:53
You're welcome. You're welcome. I did it. Now, if I am correct, based on all the episodes I've seen, he goes and fights Moirardy, his ultimate enemy.
00:23:03
And they have this fight near a waterfall. And then everyone sees them both fall off the waterfall and like basically to their deaths.
00:23:11
Oh, yeah. He knew it was coming back. Yeah. He left it open for sure. And then it was like then to basically prove that Moirardy did the thing that he did, Sherlock Holmes had to go live somewhere else for like three years, you know, and collect the evidence.
00:23:25
Yeah, whatever. Okay. Please write in and tell me all the ways I was wrong about that, but that's my guess.
00:23:30
Actually, it's me, Sherlock Holmes. Paul F. Tompkins has a bit about praying to Sherlock Holmes because he's atheist.
00:23:40
Dear Sherlock Holmes. It's one of my faves. I love it. So even though he seems jaded by the success of his detective novels, Conan Doyle does start emulating Sherlock Holmes in real life.
00:23:52
In 1907, when a disbarred lawyer named George Adalji, who's in his early 30s, writes Conan Doyle a letter, George.
00:24:00
He insists he's been wrongfully convicted for a horrible crime, and he wants Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to help him clear his name so he can practice law again.
00:24:08
It's like the wrongfully convicted podcast. Right, exactly. But just these guys in the late 1800s.
00:24:14
But no podcast. It's just the two. So when he reads this letter, Conan Doyle's interest is piqued, and before long he is knee-deep in Georgia Dalji's case.
00:24:24
So Conan Doyle describes George's story as, quote, a chain of circumstances which seems so extraordinary that they are far beyond the invention of the writer of fiction.
00:24:34
And as Conan Doyle sifts through the documents and letters that relate to the case, this is what he learns.
00:24:41
That the Adalji family live in a small English town called Great Worley. It's a farming mining community that's right in the middle of the country.
00:24:51
George is biracial. His mother, Charlotte, is a white English woman. His father, Shapurji, was born in India and is a devout convert to Anglicanism.
00:24:59
So he's the vicar at the local church. Wow. It's reported that Shapurji is the first South Asian person to hold this position in all of England.
00:25:08
Holy shit. So we're in Victorian England. It's a small town at the height of Britain's imperial influence in India.
00:25:17
Influence. Yeah. Well, imperial dominance in India. It's all to say that there's a lot of locals believed in deeply racist stereotypes. They are very racist about Indian people. They do not like having an Indian man or a man of Indian descent or just a man that's not white as the head of their church.
00:25:36
Yeah. So now it's 1888, Jack the Ripper's year. Oh, shit. But also, this is the year after Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet.
00:25:46
So just getting you the timeline of like, we're kind of switching back and forth.
00:25:49
But it was basically right after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kind of exploded onto the seam.
00:25:54
In Great Worley, the Adalgies start receiving increasingly threatening anonymous letters in the mail.
00:26:01
in one the writer says that they're watching the family and they threaten to quote shoot reverend
00:26:06
adulgy dead damn yeah so then one morning the family wakes up to a broken window on the property
00:26:13
then soon after that another letter arrives promising more windows would be broken
00:26:18
and it has the same handwriting as the first letter then someone comes onto the family's
00:26:23
property and scribbles the words quote most of the adulgies are wicked on the wall of an outhouse
00:26:30
So most of the Adalgies are brown, except for the one. So it's obviously what that's about.
00:26:38
The family, of course, is understandably upset by the letters and by this racist harassment.
00:26:44
They reported all those to the police and investigation is opened. Officers interview everyone at the church and the people who work in the Adalgies' home.
00:26:52
and they eventually arrest a domestic worker named Elizabeth Foster because they prove that she was the one who wrote the message on the outhouse.
00:27:01
So the police claim that Elizabeth had paper and writing materials that matched those used by the anonymous letter writer.
00:27:08
She's also reportedly caught trying to burn documents. It's unclear what they were or if they were letters.
00:27:14
In 1899, Elizabeth is tried. She pleads not guilty. Her lawyer directly implicates her in the letter writing,
00:27:21
perhaps to minimize her actions in court. So Conan Doyle notes, quote, her solicitor pleaded that it was all a foolish joke
00:27:30
and she was bound over to keep the peace. An attempt had been made to contend that she was not guilty,
00:27:36
but I take it that no barrister could make such an admission without his client's consent.
00:27:41
Yay. Yeah, end quote. So can't know for sure whether Elizabeth was the letter writer,
00:27:47
but it at least seems possible that she was scapegoated by the investigators because they had no other viable suspects.
00:27:54
Conan Doyle later cites people who knew Elizabeth and say that she was, quote, animated by bitter
00:27:59
feelings of revenge after the verdict. That said, the letters stop following her conviction, only to resume again a few years
00:28:09
later in 1892. So that year, hundreds of letters smearing and threatening the Adalgies are sent to multiple
00:28:16
addresses in Great Worley. Oh my God, hundreds. Yeah. Yeah. Arthur Conan Doyle writes, quote, many were directed to the vicarage, but many others were sent to different people in the vicinity. So malevolent and so ingenious that it seemed as if a very demon of mischief were endeavoring to set the parish by the ears.
00:28:35
Wow. So the letters seem to be written by someone other than the author of the first set of letters. This handwriting is not the same. The language used by the new writer indicates he or she is more educated than the first writer.
00:28:49
But what really differentiates the batch of letters is how fixated these ones are on George, who is just a teenager at the time.
00:28:58
Oh, shit. So it's unclear why the letter writer went after George, but Conan Doyle suggests its discrimination on multiple levels.
00:29:06
The darker color of the Adalji's skin already made them stick out. But George is also described as having unusual facial features, specifically large bulging eyes.
00:29:16
This might have made him more of an outcast, but these letters are callous and heartbreaking.
00:29:22
Conan Doyle bookmarks one addressed to George's father, and it says this, quote,
00:29:27
Every day, every hour, my hatred is growing against George Adalji. I would dispatch him to hell in five minutes.
00:29:34
Do you think that when we want, we cannot copy your kids' writing? Our only reason for not forging their signatures and yours is that you all write such a vulgar hand
00:29:43
that no manager of newspapers would suppose it was written by a parson. May the Lord strike me dead if I don't murder Georgia Dalgy,
00:29:51
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00:32:48
So then they reference that thing of forging signatures. Well, then that actually starts happening.
00:32:55
So someone starts placing orders using the reverend's name and the family receives alcohol.
00:33:02
They get clothes, books, furniture, even musical instruments that they didn't order and that they cannot pay for.
00:33:09
Worse, clergymen are told to travel to burial sites for funerals or to visit dying parishioners on the reverend's orders only to arrive and find that the parishioners were never sick and there is no funeral.
00:33:21
Dude, mayhem. Yeah. So George is also the victim of forgery and impersonation. paid advertisements run in the local paper under his name that he did not write.
00:33:32
And in them, quote unquote, George claims to have sent the first batch of letters himself
00:33:36
and apologizes to Elizabeth Foster, suggesting that she's been wrongfully accused.
00:33:42
Oh, my God. Again, the police struggle to identify a suspect. The letters were mailed from various locations across England, sometimes delivered by hand.
00:33:51
They just couldn't track them. They couldn't track how many people were involved.
00:33:55
Just they did not know what was going on. And then in 1895, the letters stop again. But before they do, the anonymous writer makes one last disturbing threat that sticks with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He reports, quote, on March 17th, 1893, this real or pretended maniac says in a letter to the father, quote, before the end of this year, your kid will be either in the graveyard or disgraced for life.
00:34:20
unquote. So now it's 1903. It has been 15 years since the first batch of letters arrived at the
00:34:28
Adalji house. It's been eight years since they finally stopped. George is in his late 20s. He's
00:34:34
still living in Great Worley, working as a lawyer at his own legal practice. And things seem to have
00:34:40
finally quieted down for this family, even though no one's been arrested for the second batch of
00:34:44
letters or for the forgeries but this peaceful stretch ends abruptly with a series of bizarre
00:34:51
livestock killings that take place in great whirly sir arthur conan doyle describes the first event
00:34:57
as a horse being quote ripped up during the night oh my god horrible over the following weeks
00:35:04
horses cows and sheep are all killed in a similar way they're attacked with a sharp instrument and
00:35:11
left to die in the field. So the town's in shock. This situation draws comparisons to
00:35:18
Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel murders from 15 years earlier. And just like their counterparts
00:35:23
in London, the residents of Great Worley are furious, terrified, following police investigation
00:35:29
very closely. They just want to find out who is doing this. Then the letters begin again.
00:35:35
Come on, man. And this time they blame George for the brutal animal slayings, which are now known as the Great Worley Outrages.
00:35:44
So not catchy. Too hard to say. But George has no history of violence. He is just a humble, hardworking lawyer,
00:35:51
and he does not fit the profile for someone capable of such a heinous crime Still investigators focus on him as a suspect Oh yeah Conan Doyle writes quote now here the results of the police are absolutely illogical and incompatible
00:36:06
Their theory was that of a moonlighting gang, Adalji is condemned as a member of it, end quote.
00:36:13
So they're kind of like putting a story together to justify how this could be happening. There's
00:36:18
no proof that George Adalji was ever part of a gang. And as Conan Doyle reviews the case,
00:36:23
he becomes convinced that the consistencies between the killings indicate that they were
00:36:28
carried out by a single person, not by a group of men. Despite this, another horse is found dead,
00:36:34
and Georgia Dalgy is arrested within hours. So the morning of the arrest, police search through
00:36:40
Georgia's belongings, and they find dirty pants, a razor, and an old house coat stained with reddish
00:36:46
marks. The pants and the coat are described as, quote, damp, which stood out because it had rained
00:36:52
in the daytime hours before the horse was killed and the ground would have still been wet that night.
00:36:58
So investigators also discover short fibers on the coat that they thought looked like pony hairs,
00:37:05
along with muddy boots that they claim match some shoe prints found at the scene.
00:37:09
So police take all that circumstantial evidence and build a theory. George Dalji was wearing his housecoat and boots when he killed the horse in the rain.
00:37:19
They believe he uses the razor for the killing. And in the process of committing this crime, George stands both the blade and his coat with the animal's blood, picks up a few pieces of pony hair on his clothing and tracks mud onto his boots.
00:37:32
So George is like, this is not true. I am innocent, completely maintains his innocence.
00:37:38
He actually tells police he was home the entire night and his family can validate his alibi.
00:37:44
But public opinion quickly turns against him. One newspaper reporter in particularly racist language writes, quote, many and wonderful were the stories I heard propounded in the local ale houses as to why Adalji had gone forth in the night to slay cattle.
00:38:01
And a widely accepted idea was that he made nocturnal sacrifices to strange gods.
00:38:06
Oh, dear. End quote. So George Adalji is tried and found guilty and sentenced to seven years hard labor.
00:38:14
Wow. Yeah. So because of this, he loses his ability to practice law. They let him out after three years in 1906 because so many people make a stink about the fact that this case is so weak.
00:38:27
But officially, he is still considered a violent felon once he gets out and the police continue to surveil him.
00:38:34
So now it's 1907. And this is when George writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the letter and Conan Doyle joins George's fight for justice.
00:38:44
So the really brilliant thing is that the Adalji family identifies Conan Doyle as someone with a large platform who could really make a difference if he was investigated and was on their side.
00:38:56
Yeah, he's an influencer. Yeah, completely. It's very smart of them. So once Sir Arthur Conan Doyle looks at this case, he almost immediately is able to poke holes in almost every single piece of evidence that they have, starting with that housecoat.
00:39:11
Conan Doyle argues that if George had been out the night before maiming horses, his house
00:39:16
coat would be damp with rainwater and blood. But the reddish stains were dry and set into the fabric when police found them the next
00:39:23
morning, suggesting they weren't fresh. As Conan Doyle notes, the inspector, quote, had only to touch the bloodstains and then
00:39:30
to raise his crimson finger to the air to silence all criticism. But he could not do so.
00:39:35
So not only do you have somebody on your side, but you have somebody that's so good at like
00:39:40
Deduction Making these statements. Yeah. And kind of like making it all clear Then there's George's muddy boots and wet pants
00:39:47
George had admittedly been outside hours before the horse was killed when it was still daytime while it was raining
00:39:53
This Conan Doyle explains is why the pants and shoes got wet and muddy Plus he points out quote
00:39:59
It is an interesting point that the mud at the place of outrage was yellow red, a mixture of clay and sand, quite distinct from the road mud, which the police claim to have seen upon George's trousers.
00:40:13
It's like he's getting into forensics super early. And finally, the pony hairs. Conan Doyle discovers that the police never actually took samples of those hairs.
00:40:22
They simply looked at them while they were searching George's things and then decided that they were pony hairs.
00:40:28
So whether or not they actually were, whether or not there was something else like Thread, which is what George Dalji's family claimed it was, it's unknown because the police didn't take in evidence or preserve evidence.
00:40:42
Most importantly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who has extensive ophthalmology training, points out, yeah, right, points out George has terrible eyesight.
00:40:52
This never comes up in George's original criminal trial. Conan Doyle writes, quote,
00:40:57
Then Conan Doyle alludes to the racism tied up in this case, adding, quote, But such an operation, so hopelessly bad that no glasses availed in the open air grave, the sufferer a vacant, bulge-eyed, staring appearance, which, when taken with his dark skin, must have made him seem a very queer man to the eyes of an English village, and therefore to be associated with any queer event.
00:41:35
There in a single physical defect lay the moral certainty of his innocence and the reason why he should become the scapegoat.
00:41:42
So in 1907, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wraps up his review of George's case, and then he publishes his findings in the Daily Telegraph.
00:41:51
Wow. And then he requests that they run it with a headline that reads quote no copyright which means other newspapers can freely reprint that article Damn So unsurprisingly Conan Doyle coverage makes waves
00:42:05
It's a Sherlock Holmes case come to life and readers devour his first person true crime commentary.
00:42:11
The story of George's case becomes a sensation and the public is outraged by his shoddy trial.
00:42:18
And it puts pressure on the British government to get involved. So within months, the Home Secretary orders a review of this case, and the conclusions are strange.
00:42:28
George is exonerated for the animal mutilation charge, but the review still claims that George wrote the letters, except the letters blame George for the mutilations.
00:42:39
That doesn't make sense. It makes no sense. And most frustratingly, the Home Secretary uses this claim that George did commit an offense by writing the harassing letters to deny him any compensation for the three years he spent in prison.
00:42:52
There we go. Yeah, there it is. Conan Doyle reacts to these conclusions by stating, quote, it is a blow upon the record of English justice. So even though George is exonerated for the most serious charge against him, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle still can't let the animal slaying case go. He is fixated on identifying the real culprit. And he begins to zero in on a young man that works as a local butcher's apprentice. Conan Doyle even hires private detectives to trail him.
00:43:21
The Apprentice has a bad reputation and a documented history of animal abuse. According to a Conan Doyle biographer named Russell Miller, he also, quote, had a hankering to go to sea and found a berth on a ship out of Liverpool in 1895 when the hoaxes and letters ceased.
00:43:39
And he did not return until 1902, shortly before the first horse was maimed. Damn.
00:43:46
So Sir Arthur Conan Doyle feels confident that he has solved this case, but he doesn't reveal the young man's name, believing that the police and the legal system should handle the matter.
00:43:55
So he hands his findings over to investigators, but the information goes nowhere.
00:44:02
Decades later, in 1985, Conan Doyle's investigation is published and a book and this person's name is revealed.
00:44:08
However, as the Great Worley Local History Society points out, quote, ironically, Conan Doyle's suspicion was based on circumstantial evidence.
00:44:19
It was an over-reliance on this type of evidence in the first place that had resulted in Nidalgy's flawed conviction.
00:44:26
So, officially, the Great Worley outrages are still unsolved to this day. And as for the anonymous letters, Conan Doyle thinks some of them, particularly that last batch, could have been linked to the person who was killing the animals, written either by the culprit himself or someone close to him in an attempt to frame George to protect the real killer.
00:44:48
But Conan Doyle also believes that some of the letters, as well as certain forgeries, are linked to Elizabeth Foster or someone close to her.
00:44:57
Conan Doyle points out that the second batch of letters, quote, openly championed Elizabeth Foster, not to mention the forged public statement that was attributed to George and ran in the newspaper went out of its way to exonerate her.
00:45:11
So the theory is that she because she was so filled with bitterness and wanted revenge.
00:45:16
That's what she it was happening in those letters. So on the upside, with the help of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his crusade, George Adalji is finally reinstated to the bar.
00:45:26
The two men maintain a lifelong friendship, and when Conan Doyle marries his second wife, Jean Leckie, George actually goes to their wedding.
00:45:35
According to biographer Daniel Stashauer, quote, Conan Doyle claimed that there was no guest he felt prouder to see.
00:45:41
Oh, my God. I know. Isn't that sweet? Yeah. George eventually moves to London to practice law.
00:45:47
And meanwhile, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle maintains an active life until his passing in 1930 at the age of 71.
00:45:54
George dies in 1953 at the age of 76. He never receives any compensation for his wrongful conviction.
00:46:02
And according to Shribani Basu, he dies in semi-poverty. Oh, man. It's horrible.
00:46:07
But all these years later, George's case continues to be deeply important to English society.
00:46:13
It not only opened the public's eyes to failings in the country's criminal justice system, especially connected to race.
00:46:20
But this is the case that directly leads to the creation of a criminal appeals court. It hadn't existed in England before this case.
00:46:29
So the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 formally established England's Court of Criminal Appeal and is introduced the same year that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes about George's case in the Daily Telegraph.
00:46:42
And that's the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's real life investigation that exonerated an innocent man, George Adelji.
00:46:50
Wow. Never heard it. Right? Yeah. They made a four-part TV series. Some British people did.
00:46:59
I've seen it so many times because I start it. Every time I look at it, I go, oh, I've never seen that.
00:47:05
And then I start it. And then I'm like, yes, I have. And then I watch it again anyway.
00:47:10
Wow, that was amazing. Great job. Great standalone story. Right? That's what we're doing for you guys.
00:47:15
That's what we're trying to do. So we can have our vacay. Yeah. Should we see what are you guys even doing right now while you're listening to this?
00:47:21
You guys have been telling us. So here's one. Oh, this one is good for Pride Month.
00:47:27
Oh, good. Hi, lovely people. You asked what we were even doing while listening. So I'm listening right after coming out as trans to my family.
00:47:35
Wow. I told them my new name and I feel like I'm finally living as myself. This podcast has been alongside me throughout my teenage slash early adult years and has
00:47:44
been a grounding feature during some really tough times. Thank you and happy Pride.
00:47:49
Lee, they, them. Congratulations, Lee. Yeah. Well done. You did it. Wow. What a strong Pride Month.
00:47:56
What are you even doing right now? I know. You guys have to hashtag on our whatever, you know, when you comment on our Instagrams or TikToks,
00:48:04
tell us what you're even doing right now when you listen to the podcast. Here's another one. This is from Tony underscore B underscore 983. It says,
00:48:12
hashtag, what are you even doing right now? Spiraling at work because after 45 years on
00:48:16
this planet, I am just now learning that the classic mayo with the blue label I know is
00:48:21
Hellman's is actually called Best Foods and renamed for the East Coast. What is even real?
00:48:27
Please tell me you have Heinz ketchup. We got so much more mayo feedback than any other feedback we've ever gotten.
00:48:37
Were people like fighting between mayonnaise and Miracle Whip? They wanted us to know that Miracle Whip is a fucking dressing.
00:48:45
And how dare you? Right? What's the one that you took, you tasted and was super sugary?
00:48:50
That's actually a dressing. It's not even claiming to be a mayo. Yes, it is claiming to fucking be a mayo.
00:48:54
You don just get to change how people interpret Miracle Whip This is a great way to keep getting comments and like government people algorithms Keep going You fucking assholes How dare you Don touch my fucking mayo
00:49:08
What about aioli? Let's go aioli. I'm so sorry. Let's go fucking aioli now. It's a dressing.
00:49:13
It's a dressing. So you're reading this small print on the front of that label and telling me that Mrs. Packard did not put Miracle Whip on a bologna and cheese sandwich and fuck up my day?
00:49:24
You're saying that didn't happen and that's not valid. It sounds like they're questioning your memories now.
00:49:28
It sounds like you think a dress, just the words dressing somehow vindicates anything.
00:49:33
And we need a vacation. I'm so furious right now. And this is why we're going on a vacation.
00:49:40
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah. This has been an Exactly Right production.
00:49:56
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder
00:50:10
at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at
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