00:00:00
This is exactly right. Audible. Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes
00:00:36
on the next generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
00:00:41
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation. And Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved
00:00:45
the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. And by
00:00:50
engineering EVs with ultra fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day because
00:00:55
the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official
00:01:00
partner of FIFA. Goodbye. Where does summer take you? Maybe it's a coastal road trip or a quiet
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morning with the windows wide open. Summer smells like bright citrus, warm sand, and endless
00:01:12
possibilities. With Pura's smart diffusers and the new summer collection, you can restore your
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00:01:21
summer escape today. Visit Pura.com to learn more. Goodbye. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff. We're
00:01:51
doing this week what we call aggressive improv yeah like in your face yeah we don't want any
00:01:57
suggestions from you that's how in your face we are the suggestion is just there's no suggestion
00:02:03
go the suggestion is hell how's everybody doing this february oh is it oh yeah it's the middle of
00:02:10
it it's actually the second fucking week of february quick check-in quick check-in valentine's
00:02:16
Day, everyone's favorite fucking stupid ass holiday. Everyone loves Valentine's Day.
00:02:25
The people trapped in loveless relationships, the people pining for loveless relationships.
00:02:31
There's no one who doesn't want it to be happening. And the best way to tell someone you love them is to tell that person on your social
00:02:39
media so everyone sees it. That's love. Yeah, if he's going I-L-U on Snapchat, it's not real.
00:02:47
I'm so sorry. A text in person? Gross. Like, then everyone doesn't know. If he's doing it during Be Real, just to use you as a Be Real moment.
00:02:55
The only reason I know what Be Real is is because of Nora. It's like, it's an app.
00:03:00
I'm going to explain this wrong because I only know it through Nora and she kind of doesn't
00:03:04
like talking about it because she's fiercely private as well. 14. Yeah. 17. No, she's not.
00:03:10
Yes, she is. She fucking drives a car and does errands for my sister. I missed a whole chunk of your niece's life.
00:03:17
Yeah. I would have guessed 14, maybe. No, no. Oh, no, no, no. Holy shit. She has to start preparing for what college she's going to pick because it's the end of junior year.
00:03:28
Did you tell her not to bother? Like, Auntie Karen didn't go. Auntie Karen's like, you don't have to worry about that.
00:03:37
What if I did that like behind my sister's back? I was just in Nora's ear like, look, I tried it.
00:03:44
It didn't work for me. Why would it work for you? My nephew Micah just had his 14th birthday.
00:03:49
And I took everything in my power not to be like, cool, your Auntie Georgia was in rehab for that birthday.
00:03:56
My brother would be so mad at me if I said that to him. That's a little bit like, I feel like kids today are advanced in many, many ways, much further past when we were.
00:04:07
Right. But not in that way. Yeah. Not in like, that means it's not okay. But they don't get that.
00:04:12
Right. Well, also, I don't think kids like, well, I shouldn't say this because who knows and everyone's different.
00:04:17
But it's like that whole thing of like, hey, be cool and do some drugs over here.
00:04:22
It's not as. It's not the same thing. The parents are so in everything. Yeah. It feels like.
00:04:27
And the drugs are so much worse now. Yeah. Well, says the girl who was in rehab for meth at 13.
00:04:33
I mean. However. You can't get much worse than meth. where the fuck were we? You were telling me about an app.
00:04:41
Oh, I was going to explain what Be Real is, even though I don't really know, and also commence all of the 15 to 17-year-olds
00:04:48
giggling behind their hand. What I've seen it to be is that an alarm goes off on this app on your phone,
00:04:55
and you have to take a picture of yourself doing whatever you're doing right in that moment,
00:04:59
hence the name Be Real. Oh, please. As if anyone ever fucking has ever been real.
00:05:06
On the internet. internet who wants that so is it like supposed to be like what's the anti-influencer thing now
00:05:12
where it's like we're not faking what our lives look like anymore this is like now it's like the
00:05:17
opposite of it's de-influencing that's what it's fucking called yeah like no one's getting
00:05:21
on that interior set of a private plane to do their b-reels because that's the least real
00:05:26
unless you are yeah a kardash but or a swifty no or taylor swift not a swifty careful though
00:05:35
because you don't want to criticize her for doing an international tour. Edit that out, dude, immediately.
00:05:40
I mean, Jesus, we don't want those people on our own. I like her. I'm not even criticizing her, but I mentioned her without a smile on my face.
00:05:47
And I could get murdered for that. And that's when the police break down your door.
00:05:53
This morning, I woke up early. Then earlier I woke up angry And I was like you know I was scrolling really late last night And I saw our new merch on our Instagram
00:06:05
I was like, I don't remember approving that. Like, what? I don't know. I don't like that new merch.
00:06:10
Like, what the fuck? And so this morning, I woke up kind of like, this kind of sucks.
00:06:13
Then I scrolled all my emails to see if I had ever been shown it. And then I was like, hold on a second.
00:06:18
Go on Instagram to check. It was a dream. All a dream. I mean, Erin Brown, our fucking incredible queen of marketing, Erin Brown, my longtime friend.
00:06:28
Yeah, your longtime friend. So who's on it in the most, I owe her an apology. Thank God I didn't text her and be like, you know, I really wish she would have included me in this decision.
00:06:39
I resent. Yeah, I love that. Very understandable instinct where it feels like it's all already happened.
00:06:45
So you have to talk about it right that second because it's all gone past you. Could you describe the merch you don't like?
00:06:51
No, I couldn't. It was some saying, you know, that we had said, and I don't remember,
00:06:58
and I probably never said it. It was like, be a better you or something like so annoying.
00:07:04
And I was just like, I don't think I approve that. But, you know, and I kind of don't like it.
00:07:11
No, I don't. Yeah. I wouldn't have approved that either. Be a better you and like block letters.
00:07:18
Be a better you. It's all your fault. How about that? That makes more sense. And then the back of the shirt, it says, because it's all your fault.
00:07:24
Because it's all your fault. And then the attribution is your mom. That's what your mom told us.
00:07:30
Do better with clapping emojis. So my apologies to our dear, dear Erin Brown. To the entire merch team.
00:07:39
Yeah, truly to the entire merch team. Yeah. I've been doing the thing where I'm waking up real like bright and early at 3.30 a.m.
00:07:48
Jesus. every night, which is definitely like hormonal slash cortisol slash stress, whatever.
00:07:54
But I thought I had it beat because that's never been an issue for me before. And I thought it was like a weird COVID thing.
00:08:01
And now I'm doing it. I'm just like, well, I'm just going to keep on watching my whatever this series is that I started
00:08:07
because I don't know what else to do. And it always makes me go back to sleep. It's part A and part B of your sleep cycle.
00:08:14
And they don't have to, there can be an in-between. That's how I guess they did it in the olden days.
00:08:19
That's what Ben Franklin did. There you go. He invented kites. Did we talk about this already?
00:08:23
It's starting to sound familiar. No, but did he invent kites or did he just fly one to find out about electricity?
00:08:32
He flew it. I forgot the drunk history about that to know exactly how it happened, which is where I get all my history information.
00:08:40
That's right. Yeah. I think they're putting drunk history clips on TikTok. Are they?
00:08:43
Yeah, I saw one that was so funny the other day, but I didn't know. I didn't recognize the person who was narrating drunk.
00:08:50
It was really funny. It's real funny until it's you. Until it's you. You've done two, right?
00:08:57
Yeah. Yeah, girl. Just years long. Shame over. Right there. No, it's fine. It was funny.
00:09:04
Kill that shame. Kill it. Yeah. What else? Maybe we take a deep breath. Maybe in through our nose.
00:09:11
and sigh it out and drop those hands shake yeah we're doing some fucking yoga breathing bitches
00:09:21
yeah i have a slight like a twinge in my back lower back on the left side so i'm doing a lot
00:09:29
of stuff like that where all of a sudden i'm doing weird bends and stretches and deep breathing
00:09:35
because i'm like where did this come from and now what am i supposed to do now i sit in front
00:09:40
of this computer all day long. Baby needs some ashwagandha, it sounds like. Waking up in the
00:09:46
middle of the night and lower back pain. Cortisol manager, that shit works. For real? I'm going to
00:09:53
write that down. Did you know that one of the side effects of having ADHD is the inability
00:10:00
for time management? Absolutely. Oh, I didn't. You know, of course, these days, TikTok is
00:10:07
absolutely convincing me I have had lifelong ADHD. Well, it would make sense. They underdiagnose
00:10:12
women, especially in our generation for so long. And we, yeah, for sure. We've oversimplified it,
00:10:19
thought it meant boys that wouldn't sit down and stop talking during class. Exactly. But there's
00:10:24
all these worlds around it. And that's somebody was talking about it today. And they're just like
00:10:28
all the different things. They're naming things that I don't relate to. And suddenly it was like
00:10:32
an inability to manage time. And I'm like, wait a second. Oh, yeah. What a relief of like a mental diagnosis is. And suddenly your entire world
00:10:42
makes sense. It's so, it's one of the reasons I fucking highly recommend therapy is you stop
00:10:48
hating yourself for doing things that are not in your fucking ability to fix on your own.
00:10:54
It's not your personality. You did not choose it. And also if for some of those things,
00:11:00
there's you just put in a little work a little analysis a little talking therapy and you can
00:11:06
lessen the severity of the experience maybe it's not you know maybe you're in and this i do this
00:11:12
you know you're in fight flight freeze mode yeah i'm not lazy i'm in fucking disassociation
00:11:17
freeze mode half my fucking day because i'm so overwhelmed by life and shit yeah it's just weird
00:11:23
And also these days, oh man, there's so much going on. Like watching the Super Bowl and watching the ads in the Super Bowl and everyone's kind of sitting there with these expectations of like, it's time for the ads in the Super Bowl.
00:11:37
And every single one I was just like, who cares? No, get away from me. And it's like, oh yeah, this doesn't do it anymore.
00:11:45
Right. This, we need better and more to distract ourselves from the horrors of reality.
00:11:51
Yeah. The horrors of a truly of an entire population of people being a genocide in front of everybody And everyone ignoring it a little bit Yes Or like it just the weirdest
00:12:06
Everyone's scared to talk about it. I know. Yes. And also, what do you say? What does make a difference?
00:12:13
Just talking about it doesn't make a difference. Like what would make a difference?
00:12:17
But you can't not. So just start there. I guess it's just that. You have to. Oh, you know what?
00:12:23
Did you ever watch Deadlock? What's that? It's a show. It's an Australian show. It might be New Zealand.
00:12:28
Sorry. I think it's Australian because there are these two women, Kate McCartney and Kate
00:12:33
McLennan, which is kind of funny. And they did videos. You've probably seen them.
00:12:37
Two Australian women, a blonde and a brunette that was taller. And they had a fake morning show and a fake cooking show.
00:12:44
And they're so funny. What's it called again? The cooking show was called. I totally remember that.
00:12:50
Or what's it called now? Like what's the Kate and Kate show? I think it was called the catering show was the cooking show.
00:12:58
That's it. And Get Kraken was the morning show and it's Kraken with a K. That's it.
00:13:03
Their writing is so good. And they're the ones who made Deadlock, that mystery, that Tasmanian mystery of the lesbian city where all the murders are taking place.
00:13:13
Yes. It's amazing. Lock, L-O-C-H, Deadlock. Oh, my God. That's brilliant. Brilliant.
00:13:19
So good. anyway if you want to see somebody speaking to it in this amazing way she just won the australian
00:13:26
academy award for i guess theirs includes television so she won for like best comedy
00:13:32
and then she essentially was talking about like it's almost like the point of what the arts do
00:13:39
is telling stories and talking about what's happening and because we are what happens to us
00:13:45
We are what we talk about and what we don't talk about. And it was like such a powerful but simple thing. And then she's like, that's why we need a ceasefire. And the audience goes crazy. She also included the native people of Australia.
00:14:02
as like that it's all that kind of thing, like that whole thing has to change and that we can't stand by and not speak.
00:14:11
Like that's the greatest irony of artists not talking because that's what they do to help kind of life situation.
00:14:20
I don't know. And it was a really inspiring thing having been a person who's like,
00:14:25
I don't know what to say and this is too important to fuck up, right? That's the thing because the stakes seem insanely high
00:14:31
if you're going to talk about it. And if you say the wrong thing while you talk about it,
00:14:35
now you're bad even though you tried to say something. Totally. Totally. Like, yeah, not calling it a genocide,
00:14:42
which I didn't when we addressed it originally. Right. And I, you know, wish I had.
00:14:48
You learned after that that was a part of it. We're real good at fucking up and taking criticism
00:14:54
and incorporating it. Yes. You and me, not people in general. No, no, no. I think you and me specifically because of this show.
00:15:02
I don't know if I was before as much as I am now. Yeah, me too. Nine years ago. Nine years ago.
00:15:10
Nine. Well, we're in our ninth. So eight. This is the ninth coming up? We just hit the eighth.
00:15:18
Eight years ago. Perfect edit. You know what we need is to bring fucking Carl Sagan back.
00:15:25
Like, can we all start a GoFundMe? I don't know. Well, here's the thing, though.
00:15:31
In this day and age, people would be like, no, that science isn't real. Like, we need to bring someone back who is maybe a little more along the line of Rod Serling,
00:15:42
where it's like a person who understands or historians, people who understand how people's
00:15:47
minds are getting fucked with right now to go, oh, science isn't real. Reality isn't real.
00:15:53
I decide what's real. That whole thing is what's fucking people up. How funny would it be?
00:15:57
I just had a fucking panic attack when I was like, what if I'm not recording one of the
00:16:02
most important conversations? I just started sweating immediately. It would be perfect.
00:16:08
It would be perfect for us. Anyway, that woman's name, if you want to look up that speech, her name is Kate Box.
00:16:14
That actress's name is Kate Box. And it's her acceptance speech for like best actress in a comedy for Australian Academy
00:16:20
Awards. Yeah, pretty amazing. Amazing. And while you're there, go follow Celeste Barber.
00:16:24
She's one of the fucking funniest people on Instagram, in my opinion. She's the one who does the Celeste challenge where she like puts up a model, like modeling
00:16:32
a thing all perfectly. And then she recreates it as a normal human being with like whatever's around the house.
00:16:38
It's very funny. Like the outfit, the outfit she's wearing? The outfit and the way she does it, which is just so ridiculous on a normal human being
00:16:46
as opposed to like a Kardashian doing. Right. Right. Hey. Yes. Should we do exactly right corner?
00:16:54
Sure. Okay, so this is an exciting thing, especially for a podcast that's going into their ninth year.
00:17:01
We were recently nominated for podcast of the year by the iHeart Podcast Awards.
00:17:06
Fuck yeah. So apparently you, the listener, can vote online for who you want to win.
00:17:12
So if you have a few minutes, you can go to bit.ly slash vote for MFM. I guess specifically, that's all lowercase.
00:17:20
and you can go vote for this show and you can do it daily. And we're going to the award show.
00:17:26
So if you could do it, we'd really appreciate you voting. It's really exciting. It's really fucking cool.
00:17:31
Well, it's a true honor. There's some amazing other podcasts nominated with us, but also just for having been around this long,
00:17:39
it's like, wow, that's pretty amazing. But either way, we're going to go and have a lot of fun.
00:17:45
And just enjoy ourselves and be out and about as the free independent ladies that we are these days.
00:17:50
Hell yeah. And tell everyone how much we love their podcasts. In person. Yeah Huberman Lab If he there I fucking losing it Okay On to this week Exactly Right Podcast news That Messed Up and SVU Podcast is back with heavy guests This week Kara and Lisa are joined by the actor Becky Ann Baker for an
00:18:09
amazing conversation. She appeared in the 2002 episode of SVU entitled Juvenile, so definitely
00:18:16
check that out. Also over on Tenfold More Wicked Season 10 premiere, the episode's called The
00:18:21
Virginia elite. And on it, we meet one of Colonial Williamsburg's most respected men. But will he
00:18:28
remain respected for the duration of the show? We don't know. You have to go follow the show
00:18:34
so you don't miss an episode and you figure out what is going on with Kate Winkler Dawson
00:18:38
and Colonial Williamsburg, which apparently she has said is her favorite time of history.
00:18:44
So interesting. Yeah. Lastly, head to the MFM store and grab a koozie, a mug, or an enamel pin featuring Cocaine Bear,
00:18:52
Mothman, and other classic MFM animated illustrations. The website is exactlyrightstore.com.
00:18:58
Go take a look. It's a new store. Yeah, and it's actual merch, not just from my dreams.
00:19:03
It's not You Do You merch. Wait, what was it? Do better. No, it was. Yeah, what was it? You Do You. No.
00:19:11
Be a better you. Thank you, Alejandra. Be a better you merch. Be a better you. How in the world would we ever say that to another person?
00:19:20
So insulting. You know, you, could you up that a notch? Someone's like, I'm not doing well. And you're like, you know what would help
00:19:27
is if you would just be a better you. Yeah, be a better version of this whole thing we're getting already.
00:19:34
We'd like the upgraded version, please. It's giving not the best you. If you spend all day waiting to take your bra off, it might be time for Third Love.
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Use code MFM15 for $15 off your first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:20:49
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
00:20:56
rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either.
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Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
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00:21:21
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
00:21:26
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00:22:18
Goodbye. I'm first, right? Yes. Okay. So I have a twisty tyranny story today. It's a whodunit. It is unsolved. I hate to tell you this.
00:22:32
However, I think by the end of it, with all of us together, we'll have figured it out on our own.
00:22:37
On the show, you're promising that we're going to solve a case on this? No. Why not?
00:22:42
It could be fun. We could try. Let's get out there and make these promises. We'll solve it by within a half an hour.
00:22:47
Definitely. Let's do this thing. Okay. So today I'm going to cover a story about a 1977 death that left behind more questions than answers. I'm not going to give you too many details. It could be the mob. It could be the FBI. It could be like a government cover up, all these things. This is the mysterious death of Chuck Morgan.
00:23:06
And the main sources I used for today's story include an article from the Arizona Daily Star written by Kimberly Mattis and episode nine from season three of the original Unsolved Mysteries TV show.
00:23:20
Nice. And you can watch that on Peacock. Okay, so this dude, Charles Chuck Morgan, he's a middle-aged escrow agent living in Tucson, Arizona in the 1970s.
00:23:29
Tucson, Arizona. Yeah. He and his wife, Ruth Morgan, have four school-aged daughters, and the family lives a
00:23:38
fairly quiet, really normal suburban life. Over time, Chuck's success at work earns him the
00:23:43
opportunity to become the president of the company. And so things are looking good for
00:23:47
the Morgans. It appears that they're just doing normal fucking suburban life stuff. But that's
00:23:53
just on the surface. So outside of its suburban bubble, dark forces actually loom and they're
00:24:00
Arizona at this time. And we've done some old timey Arizona, like hometowns. And the mob was
00:24:06
present back then, more so than you would ever imagine them being. Yeah. To a degree where you're like, oh, these are people who ran away from New York, Chicago,
00:24:17
wherever, to a place where they thought they'd never be found. Right. Well, here I'll tell you why. The state is favored by criminals for its mild weather,
00:24:26
of course, its proximity to the U.S.-Mexican border and its corrupt state justice system.
00:24:32
Oh. So in the 1970s, multiple crime organizations established Arizona as a drug trafficking
00:24:38
corridor. Corridor? Corridor. Tucson, Arizona in particular, is dubbed the nation's, quote,
00:24:45
smuggling capital by the press. And due to its unique real estate laws, it's a prime location
00:24:50
to launder money. Wow. Unlike most states in the U.S. at the time, Arizona allows for land to be purchased through blind trusts. And this means people can purchase land and property anonymously. And so if no one knows who you are, no one can question where your money's coming from.
00:25:06
Mm-hmm. So it's a money launderer's dream scenario. Joseph Bonanno, who's, of course, a New York crime boss
00:25:13
who we've all heard about, he helps more than 500 racketeers move their operations
00:25:18
to Arizona, bringing their financial crimes and sweeping violence to the area. So infiltrating it.
00:25:25
Yeah. Can I just pitch a TV show to you right now real quick? Is it going to be My Blue Heaven?
00:25:31
It's like, it's a My Blue Heaven situation where Sopranos meets Better Call Saul.
00:25:36
oh yeah because that would be i'm sure if there were people that got sent out to tucson arizona
00:25:44
i won't stop saying it but what's that from it's from what we do in the shadows oh tucson arizona
00:25:50
yes i can hear it tucson i don't know why the first time i said tucson but it's tucson arizona
00:25:57
and he does this weird thing oh just the idea that if you're living out in tucson you probably
00:26:03
We wear Wrangler jeans and a Lee button-down shirt. It's a little cowboy aesthetic, but also desert-y.
00:26:10
Everyone's a little dry. Or you're just like a golfer, right? You're a retiree. Then here comes some mob bosses moving into the house next door.
00:26:20
What was that like? Yeah. Did they blend? Were they just like, don't worry about us?
00:26:26
We're fun and don't worry about it? We have guns? Right. That's a good question.
00:26:31
Yeah. Yeah. Did they have dogs? Were they trying to live like a suburban normal life too?
00:26:36
Yeah. Did they buy a bunch of Lee shirts and try to blend and then it clearly didn't work and nobody
00:26:42
was buying it? Right. That's a good question. Here's who comes in is our boy Chuck Morgan,
00:26:47
living his normal suburban life. He works as a top tier escrow agent. So he's obviously someone
00:26:56
they're going to go to, whether he wants to or not. So either he falls prey to these mob bosses,
00:27:02
or he willingly steps foot into their world of dirty money. So he's kind of in the line of fire
00:27:08
there. Right. So the morning of March 22nd, 1977, like any other day for Chuck Morgan,
00:27:14
he wakes up in the morning, he gets dressed, drives his daughters to school, goes to work.
00:27:18
But after he drops his kids off, he vanishes into thin air, leaving his family worried and confused.
00:27:24
That's until three days later on March 25th, 1977, at about 2 a.m., Chuck's wife, Ruth,
00:27:31
is home in bed when the dog starts barking. She gets up to investigate and hears a thump at the back door.
00:27:38
And when she opens it, to her surprise, after three days, Chuck comes barreling in.
00:27:43
One of his shoes is missing. His hands are zip-tied together. And another plastic zip-tie hangs around his ankle like he had just gotten out of it.
00:27:50
But, you know, what the fuck happened? Ruth, of course, hits Chuck with a flurry of questions and he just points to his throat.
00:27:57
He's unable to speak. Ruth asks if he can write. He nods. So she grabs a pen and a pad of paper and hands it to him.
00:28:02
And he writes that his throat's been, quote, painted with a hallucinogenic drug and that
00:28:08
if he talks, the substance could drive him irreparably insane or destroy his nervous
00:28:13
system and kill him. What? Is that real? I don't fucking know. I doubt it. Do you mind if I do some Wikipedia-ing while you continue? Because that sounds like either
00:28:25
humongous lie he made up in the car on the way there. Right. Or a deep state CIA fucking, right?
00:28:33
Totally. Trick to get people to... It just seems unlikely. Yeah. Or maybe his captors just told him that and he believed it too. That could be other things.
00:28:44
Yes. Right. Yeah, yeah. They were very convincing. Yeah. And it's the 70s. And he's just a fucking dude who lives in the suburbs.
00:28:51
Like, what does he know from hallucinogenics? And also, I don't think that can kill you.
00:28:55
He thinks having it in his system is going to drive him insane. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense.
00:29:00
Okay. Like, scientifically. So, either he knows or doesn't know that it's not true, let's guess.
00:29:06
Okay. Everything's still on the table as a possibility. Exactly. Okay. So, he tells Ruth to take his keys and move his car to the backyard immediately.
00:29:14
So, whoever's looking for him doesn't see that he's there. smart ruth wants to call the police or at least an ambulance but he says no he says that they
00:29:22
so some they will come after her and the kids and so she just does as he says ruth spends the next
00:29:29
week nursing chuck back to health feeding him water with an eyedropper before his voice returns
00:29:34
he uses the pen and paper to relay to ruth that he's been working as a federal agent for the
00:29:38
national treasury for about the last two to three years hmm this is the first she's ever heard about
00:29:45
this, but considering how bizarre the situation is, she's inclined to believe him. He goes on to
00:29:50
say that they whoever kidnapped him took his treasury credentials but he careful not to give Ruth too many details beyond that So it does seem a little fishy right From this angle Well only because like why would he have to keep working for the treasury a secret
00:30:08
And wouldn't it need to be a little more involved? Like, wouldn't you be working for the CIA covering the treasury or something like?
00:30:16
It seems like the treasury is pretty straightforward. Right. And there's not a lot of details, which he says, the less she knows, the safer she is.
00:30:23
But it's also like, that's a great way to not have to tell someone a whole made up lie.
00:30:28
That you then get caught in later because they go, wait, I thought you said your office was over here at the Treasury.
00:30:33
That's how you can tell a lie is they're really, really overly detailed in a way that they don't need to be.
00:30:38
Right. That's what they always say. So Chuck regains the ability to speak, makes a full recovery, but he has a tough time healing his mental wounds.
00:30:47
He starts getting super paranoid, never leaving the house without wearing a bulletproof vest.
00:30:51
He insists on driving his girls to and from school each day and instructs the school not
00:30:56
to let anyone else pick them up but him. Unfortunately, it turns out Chuck's paranoia is not unwarranted.
00:31:03
So a little over two months later, on the morning of June 7th, 1977, he drives up to
00:31:08
his parents' house and tells his dad that if anything happens to him, he will leave
00:31:13
behind a letter, quote, explaining why, how, and who would be responsible. And after his visit, he heads to work.
00:31:20
That afternoon, he leaves for lunch, calls the office real quick from a payphone in downtown Tucson
00:31:25
to say he'll be back in a half an hour, but he never shows up. So he disappears again.
00:31:30
And it would be nine days before anyone gets any sort of clue as to whether or not Chuck is alive.
00:31:36
It comes in the form of a phone call on June 16th, 1977. The Morgan's home phone rings.
00:31:42
And when Ruth answers, she hears the voice of an anonymous woman. The mysterious woman simply says, Ruthie, Chuck is all right.
00:31:49
Okay, hold on. I'm going to fuck this up. Ecclesiastes. What's the Bible verse? Ecclesiastes.
00:31:55
Thank you. This Jew right here. I knew the Catholic would fucking know. She says Ecclesiastes 12, 1-8.
00:32:04
And then she hangs up. So that's obviously a Bible verse. So Ruth finds the passage in the Bible and she reads it out loud.
00:32:11
I could absolutely read this long ass fucking Bible verse to you, but it doesn't make any sense. But instead, I'm going to recite it to you. It said,
00:32:19
so saith the Lord. Oh my God. If you knew a word for a word, I would just like close my computer
00:32:24
and walk away. It would be the only valuable thing that came out of my Catholic school education. But
00:32:30
no, I just know how to pronounce Ecclesiastes. That's amazing. I don't need to read it. People
00:32:34
want to read it to help them figure out the puzzle. Fine. But like, it doesn't give us
00:32:38
that many. It's just, it's the Bible. It's fucking confusing. As you'll find with many Bible quotes,
00:32:43
not a lot of there there. There's some greats. Proverbs kicks ass, but I don't know if Ecclesiastes
00:32:50
really got the job done the way we want it to. But was there any kind of like, was it a directive? Like God told some so-and-so to do this or that? Or is there anything?
00:33:02
It's just so, it's vague. Let me look. Was it more of a vibe of do better? Maybe that's where the-
00:33:09
Was it one of those do better things? it just starts remember your creator in the days of your youth blah blah blah before the days of
00:33:17
trouble come when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets when the almond
00:33:23
trees blossom it's very it's a little um ominous right flowery okay remember him before the silver
00:33:29
cord is severed and the golden bowl is broken and then the last line is meaningless meaningless
00:33:34
says the teacher everything is meaningless wow so it's vague and weird and creepy as fuck
00:33:41
I'm sorry. If I was in theology one in freshman year of high school, and they were reading that,
00:33:49
and they were like, and it ends with everything is meaningless. I'd be like, thank you. Thank you.
00:33:55
That's our new merch. That sounds more. Everything is meaningless. Ecclesiastes one through eight.
00:34:03
Right. Do better. Everything is meaningless, but be a better you if you can, if not.
00:34:08
Yeah, just to torture yourself, be a better you. But it doesn't matter because it's meaningless anyway.
00:34:15
Obviously, no matter how many times she reads it, she can't understand the significance.
00:34:20
But in her mind, that means Chuck is all right because of this random woman's call.
00:34:25
But she doesn't know where he is. But unfortunately, two days after this mysterious phone call on June 18th, 1977, Chuck's body is found off a dirt road in the desert,
00:34:35
40 miles west of Tucson, lying beside his car. He's got his bulletproof vest on,
00:34:42
but he was shot in the back of his head with a single bullet from his own gun, a .375 caliber Magnum found next to him on the ground. And the bullet is fired from close range.
00:34:52
It pierced the back of his skull and wound up in his mouth between his fucking teeth.
00:34:57
Oh, God. Isn't that awful? Yeah. Gunshot residue is found on Chuck's left hand, but there are no fingerprints on the gun
00:35:05
whatsoever. So that's weird. Inside his car, police find more weapons and ammunition. They
00:35:10
also find one of Chuck's teeth wrapped in a tissue sitting next to a pair of sunglasses that appear
00:35:17
to have belonged to someone else, but they're definitely not Chuck's. So like, what the fuck,
00:35:22
right? Yep. There's also a piece of paper with a map drawn on it in Chuck's handwriting
00:35:27
leading to the murder site. So basically the location in the desert where his body was found.
00:35:32
So it's someone saying, meet us out there. Here's how you get there. Exactly. Essentially.
00:35:36
Yeah. Time before MapQuest. Even more puzzling is a clue found clipped inside Chuck's underwear.
00:35:42
Like he was definitely trying to hide this thing. A $2 bill with various like writings on it.
00:35:49
On the face of the bill along the left side are a list of seven Spanish names, each beginning with the letters A through G in alphabetical order Written above the list of names is the Bible chapter Ecclesiastes 12 He wrote that down the Bible chapter
00:36:06
The same one mentioned by the woman with arrows pointing to the one and eight in the bill's
00:36:11
serial number to indicate that the verse is the one through eight, the same fucking Bible
00:36:15
chapter. On the back of the bill, where the signing of the Declaration of Independence is illustrated,
00:36:19
the declaration signers are numbered one through seven. There are also three lines drawn, a rough map of sorts, referencing three roads that are actually in Tucson that run between Tucson and the Mexican border.
00:36:33
They're real roads. One leads to a place called Robles Junction and another town called Sosabee.
00:36:41
And they're believed to be a landing site for smugglers traveling by plane. So there are, it's very confusing, but things like do make sense a little bit.
00:36:50
Yeah, there's some nefarious activities happening out there. Exactly. It ain't nothing.
00:36:55
Right. Despite all these strange clues, the Pima County Sheriff's Department rules Chuck's death a suicide, claiming he shot himself in the back of the head.
00:37:04
It's, of course, a near impossible angle for him to have reached, even more curious by the fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
00:37:11
Like, why would he have done that? Right. Chuck's father reports that his son had come by and said, you know, about his disappearance.
00:37:18
And he tells him about how Chuck told him that there was a letter that would explain what happened to him.
00:37:22
But the letter never surfaces. And the self-inflicted cause of death sticks. But that's crooked, right?
00:37:30
That somebody's paid off. Right. There's no way you would. Yeah. You can't shoot yourself in the back of the head.
00:37:35
I mean, I don't understand how you can have gun residue on your hand and then no fingerprints on the gun.
00:37:41
Right. It doesn't make sense, obviously. And I don't know how many times the gun was shot.
00:37:46
That's another thing. Like, did he try to shoot his gun? Someone got it away from him.
00:37:50
Right, at someone. Yeah. Right? And then it got put into his hand. Someone with a gloved hand is the one that actually picks it up and uses it.
00:37:58
And wiped it clean, including wiping Czech's prints off of it. Right. So there's no fucking prints.
00:38:03
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. Also, I'm sorry to interject, but. No, no, that we're solving this.
00:38:08
It seems like somebody going around. Because also it's like in 1977, I'd be interested to know how heavy bulletproof vests are.
00:38:16
Because I don't know. But like has Kevlar been developed at that point? It seems early.
00:38:23
That's a person who, whether or not he's right, believes that he is in danger. Because it would be such a pain in the ass to wear that every day and to be that scared.
00:38:34
And then the idea that you're wearing it and you get murdered like that, if it is in fact murder.
00:38:40
Right. Is like that's he clearly was in something new. He was in it and was trying to prevent exactly what happened to him from happening.
00:38:49
Right. It's not paranoia if it actually then happens. Yes. Right. Yep. Exactly. Two days after Chuck's body is found on June 20th, a woman who only identifies herself as
00:38:59
green eyes calls the Pima County Sheriff's Office. It's the same woman who called Ruth Morgan two days before Chuck was found dead.
00:39:07
and she tells them that she and Chuck met up at a motel just before his death. He had been using the motel as a hideout.
00:39:14
So remember, he was missing for a bunch of days. She claims he had a briefcase filled with about 60 grand
00:39:19
and told her that there was a hit out on him. And his plan allegedly was to pay off the hit man to let him live.
00:39:27
I don't know who this woman is, what her partner is. She doesn't say. If what she says is true, then it's conceivable that a gang or crime family
00:39:35
took a hit out on Chuck. Maybe the hitman warned Chuck to try to get money out of him.
00:39:40
Chuck agreed to pay him off. But of course, in this case, the hitman was scamming him.
00:39:44
And they met up in the desert late on the night of Chuck's murder. And the hitman took Chuck's money and killed him anyways.
00:39:50
So that's the thought. But why would a gang want to take a hit out on Chuck? Maybe what he told Ruth was true.
00:39:56
And he really was working as an agent for the U.S. Treasury to capture mob-backed money
00:40:01
launderers. Like maybe back then the treasury had a lot more going after this kind of thing, more like mobs.
00:40:07
Yeah, maybe. But why would they go get a escrow real estate man to do that? Because houses are being used as money laundering sites.
00:40:16
So he's like in the middle of it, knows the players, knows the business. If that was the case, though, and his cover was somehow blown, the mob surely would want to take him out.
00:40:25
Or maybe Chuck wasn't working with the Treasury, but was coerced into committing land fraud to wash mobsters money and threatened to rat them out.
00:40:34
So if that means you could buy a house without using your real name, so the government couldn't come after you and your money.
00:40:41
He was an escrow agent. He's in that line of people that they need to buy the house.
00:40:48
Yeah. So perhaps they forced him or maybe even worse, he was a willing participant in a money laundering scheme, wanting some extra cash, and maybe he got in over his head.
00:40:58
No matter the case, there's a strong possibility that Chuck knew more than he should have and someone had a lot to lose if he spoke out.
00:41:04
Yep. One night in July of 1977, three weeks after Chuck's death, Ruth gets a visit at her home from two men claiming to be FBI agents.
00:41:13
They flash her their bags super quick so she doesn't see anything. They barge into her house.
00:41:18
without a search warrant. They like search the whole house. The house is in shambles and they
00:41:25
don't seem to find what they're looking for. They leave and Ruth never hears from the authorities
00:41:29
about Chuck's death again. Oh, wow. So we don't even know if they were real FBI agents. Oh,
00:41:35
God damn. Right. I mean, this seems like the kind of thing that could only happen in Tucson,
00:41:40
Arizona, because it seems like not that anybody would know FBI agents like on site,
00:41:46
But it would be less likely it's like You from the Tucson office of the FBI or something It be very easy to dress up like those people Absolutely right and convince someone Yeah it got no countries for old men vibes kind of doesn it Like a normal dude got caught up in a thing that was too big
00:42:07
and he couldn't escape it. And you could see where if he got caught up being like,
00:42:13
this is the blind trust, but you're making it from me and it's I'm from the blankety blank
00:42:17
crime family. And then he has no choice and everybody gets threatened. And then here comes
00:42:22
the FBI. No, you have to turn on them. And he's like, I can't turn on the mob. Are you crazy?
00:42:28
It's just, yeah. So, okay, it gets fucking weirder. Meanwhile, there's an investigative
00:42:33
reporter out of Phoenix named Don Devereaux. He gets wind of Chuck Morgan's case while looking for
00:42:39
his next story. He had been drawn to the area to cover another mysterious death, the car bombing
00:42:45
murder of another Phoenix-based journalist named Don Bolas in 1976. So this guy, Don Devereaux,
00:42:52
decides to stick around. He hears about the bizarre details surrounding Chuck Morgan's death,
00:42:57
and he immediately takes an interest. And after speaking with Ruth, Don puts in a Freedom of
00:43:02
Information Act request for details on Chuck's case. And it's clear from previous interactions
00:43:07
with FBI agents that they've opened an investigation into Chuck Morgan's death. They even interviewed Chuck's attorney at one point, but now, oddly, the FBI claims to not
00:43:16
even know who Chuck Morgan is. So they're like, silent. That's kind of a dead giveaway, isn't it?
00:43:21
Yeah. Don realizes that if he's going to learn anything more about what happened to Chuck, he's going to have to figure it out on his own. I mean, it could be a case, too, of like, yeah, we accidentally got this guy killed. Let's pretend it never happened because that means we're on the line for it. Like, we've done a story where informants get killed because they were put in shitty situations by the authorities.
00:43:43
it's like the late 70s where a lot of the process wasn't set up god that's okay who the fuck knows
00:43:51
so while they have their theories about how and why chuck died neither ruth morgan nor don devereau
00:43:56
can make heads or tails of the cryptic clues he left behind for years ruth ruminates on the bible
00:44:02
passage and just tries to find anything in there of course and she can't find a fucking thing
00:44:08
Don, the journalist, focuses on the $2 bill. His hunch is that there must be a missing companion
00:44:14
document that would help decode the scrawling on the bill, like Chuck told his dad. But if that
00:44:20
document exists, it's never found. And maybe that's what those two, quote, FBI agents came
00:44:24
over to find. Like maybe he had hidden it somewhere. Oh, right. So then the episode of
00:44:31
Unsolved Mysteries covering Chuck Morgan's case airs on February 7th, 1990, and features both Ruth
00:44:38
Morgan and Don Devereaux, and the episode generates hundreds of leads from viewers calling
00:44:42
in on the show's hotline. And Don Devereaux uses these leads to continue his investigation,
00:44:47
which many of them prove to be useful, surprisingly. Through these tips, Don finds that Chuck was
00:44:53
named a potential witness in a 1977 state land fraud case involving a known organized crime boss.
00:45:01
Okay. So he searches through Chuck's work files and finds copies of escrow documents dating as
00:45:05
far back as 1973, conducted through a blind trust in which tons of money exchanges hands in the form
00:45:12
of gold bullion and platinum. Like who the fuck buys a house? You know what I mean?
00:45:17
With a suitcase full of platinum. Yeah. Is that just from your hit records that you're now using to trade?
00:45:24
Do you guys accept platinum records? Can you, can I pay in pop hits? 70s disco pop hits?
00:45:31
The total sum of this gold bullion and platinum that he had helped with these blind trusts is near a billion dollars.
00:45:39
Oh, shit. Yeah, we're talking like high-end criminals. A billion in 77? I think so, yeah.
00:45:47
Oh, shit. Right? Like, did that number even exist then? I mean, not when I was seven did I ever hear about a billion anything.
00:45:53
Right. Right. Then through more clever sleuthing, Don is able to connect many of these deals to the Bonanno crime family. But this isn't the only organization potentially involved in the dirty dealings. Don finds connections from the escrow money laundering scam to our friends, the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
00:46:14
Oh. And the FBI and the Treasury Department and exiled Vietnamese government officials and rogue CIA operatives.
00:46:23
It's like fucking pick one. It's like a who's who of you fucked. And it's almost like it's all high level crime dealings out in Tucson, Arizona.
00:46:34
Sorry. And like the unlikeliest place. Yeah. And it's not just one. It's almost like it justifies his seemingly crazy behavior and storylines.
00:46:48
Because it's like, if this person, if this crime family isn't trying to kill me,
00:46:52
the Treasury insiders that know I'm working for them are trying to kill me. Absolutely.
00:46:57
There's multiple people. Wow. Okay. Then one more weird death for everyone. On May 14th, 1990, about three months after the episode airs on Unsold Mysteries,
00:47:08
Another mysterious death rattles Don, the journalist. At 11 p.m. on May 14, 1990,
00:47:15
35-year-old graphic designer Doug Johnson arrives for his night shift at a Phoenix
00:47:19
computer company. He's a young husband and father. He left his former job as a forklift driver,
00:47:25
graduated with a degree in graphic design, got this great new job at the computer company to
00:47:29
better support his family, another normal Saroan dude. An hour after his arrival to his new job,
00:47:35
Doug is found dead in his car in the office parking lot. Oh, he'd been shot once behind the left ear with a 24 caliber gun.
00:47:44
According to ballistics experts, the gun is believed to have been fired from more than 12 inches away.
00:47:50
I had to hold my hands up to get the sense of it. That's a foot. Yeah, that's a foot.
00:47:54
A bullet casing is found at the scene. No gun is found. And despite that, and how,
00:48:00
no gunshot residue on his hands, and the fact that he was shot again behind his left ear,
00:48:04
but he's right-handed and from a foot away, police initially rule his death a suicide.
00:48:10
Crooked. There's no gun there. I mean, well, that's like, and I only learned this from the beginning of your story,
00:48:18
so I'm not trying to say this shit about Tucson, but that's a crooked, that's a bad coroner's report, right?
00:48:26
That's a lie. And look, today, everything might be fine in Tucson, Arizona. So no, this is not an indictment on the current people.
00:48:37
Let us know in the comments how they're doing. But yeah, you know, this is 1970 something, 90.
00:48:42
It would be kind of cool to learn that like part of the population of Tucson are the descendants
00:48:48
of the people who moved there to get their blind trusts or to get there or to escape
00:48:54
from their government. all these things where it's like well my grandfather was a criminal i'm just here hanging
00:49:00
out it's no big deal i'm an elementary school teacher i don't know what the fuck i just work
00:49:04
at panera bread can what's what do you want can you please place your order my grandfather
00:49:10
fucking but not oh you know i mean that's kind of how this entire country was built
00:49:15
people just like slowly escaping west to get away from the fucked up shit they did east
00:49:21
they did or had done to them. Yes. Had done to them is a big part of it. Yeah. It's thankfully later changed to be inconclusive. It could have been self-inflicted
00:49:30
or it could have been a homicide. They'll give him that, I guess. But if it is a homicide,
00:49:35
Doug's killer still has not been found. But not so coincidentally, this guy Doug's new office
00:49:41
is located right across the street from Don Devereaux, the journalist's office. And the car
00:49:48
he drives is very similar to Don's. Mistaken identity. Yeah. Don thinks that it was a botched hit and he was the intended target.
00:49:57
Contacts of Don's in the CIA and the intelligence field at large confirm his suspicion and they
00:50:02
tell him that there is still an outstanding target on his back. Oh, my God. Can you imagine getting that information?
00:50:08
Oh, my God. I mean, journalists never have it easy, but that kind of shit where you're just trying
00:50:15
to figure out what the truth is. And it's like, oh no, we're just, you're going down. That's wild.
00:50:22
And what a scary thing. Like the idea that that man sitting in his car waiting to go to his new
00:50:28
job. Yeah. So sad. That's that. It's horrible. So senseless. Yeah. The next year, 1991, Don is
00:50:36
contacted by a journalist out of Washington, D.C. named Danny Casilaro. Danny is working on an
00:50:41
expose about a potential government conspiracy believes and he thinks chuck morgan's case
00:50:46
is part of this conspiracy so don and danny the journalists they start to talk he asked don to
00:50:53
send him all of the information he has with regards to chuck's shady business dealings and
00:50:58
his whole case and don agrees to send it before he can mail the documents out this journalist
00:51:03
danny casolaro is found dead in his hotel bathtub there are a dozen razor blade cuts on both his
00:51:09
forearms, eight on the left and four on the right. And his death is ruled a suicide. But his family
00:51:16
and friends are like, there's absolutely no way. And he's like, why are you starting a new case?
00:51:20
You know, it's just, yeah, that's right. It doesn't add up for everyone. Oh God. Just imagine you're Don Devereaux and you get that phone call that your connection,
00:51:30
the other reporter is now dead also. Like that's so scary. So, so scary. And his friends and families who are like, he didn't do it.
00:51:41
They knew he was on the verge of breaking a big story, but they didn't know what it was about.
00:51:45
Yeah. So obviously it's possible, very possible that he was silenced. Then out of an abundance of caution, Don's investigation into Chuck Morgan's death comes to a halt.
00:51:56
He's like, steps away. Yeah. He would be next. I mean, like there would be no question.
00:52:02
Good God. So he relocates to Northern California, where he continues his investigative work today, though he appears to have set Chuck Morgan's case down for good.
00:52:12
And then in 2006, Ruth Morgan passes away from cancer, never knowing the truth about what happened to her husband, Chuck.
00:52:19
His four daughters still believe he was murdered. And one of his daughters, Megan, said that, quote, he had a lot of information about people here in Tucson that could have been very detrimental.
00:52:28
information about politicians, people who are still alive that work in our government,
00:52:32
and they wanted to silence him. So imagine still you're her and you still live in Tucson,
00:52:36
and you just walk around every day. There's people still in the government from back then
00:52:41
who are still in power from back then. Who could be responsible. Yeah. And also just the idea of you very unknowingly, you just wanted to be like the
00:52:53
escrow and title guy. You just wanted to be a real estate mogul. And all of a sudden you get
00:52:58
pulled into stuff that's so beyond, or maybe it went in slightly willingly of like, oh,
00:53:04
this is a good way to get that, you know, but with a, obviously a sense of innocence of like,
00:53:09
I didn't realize this would result in my violent death. I mean, oh man. So awful. And then worrying about your wife and daughters too, like somehow they're going to be
00:53:21
pulled in. And the daughters all mourn their father's untimely death, of course, but they
00:53:25
continue to hold out hope that one day the truth will come out. And that is the story of the
00:53:30
mysterious death of Chuck Morgan. God. I know. Wild. That would be the most satisfying Unsolved
00:53:38
Mysteries update ever, like on the new series, if they went back into that. I feel like they'd
00:53:44
have to arrest like two dozen people, though. Well, and also, I think we all know by this point
00:53:49
that the government doesn't even work the way the government thinks it works. Like,
00:53:53
that kind of stuff and what they hiding and oh good lord i know so scary Wow That was amazing Yeah Thank you That was a good story Thanks
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and went in that direction of the type of crime that we like to talk about. And now I'm going to take us left turn.
00:57:27
A lot of left turn. All the way into a biographical history, a story we know exactly the beginning,
00:57:34
middle, and end of, that also is a story of heroism. And it's a story of a brave and legendary American spy
00:57:43
who played a crucial role in the French resistance movement against Nazi Germany.
00:57:48
NPR has called her, quote, one of the most important American spies people have never heard of.
00:57:54
And author Sonia Purnell writes, quote, controversy still rages about women fighting alongside men on the front line.
00:58:03
But nearly eight decades ago, Virginia Hall was already commanding men deep in enemy territory.
00:58:10
She gambled again and again with her own life, not out of fervent nationalism for her own country, but out of love and respect for the
00:58:18
freedoms of another. She blew up bridges and tunnels and tricked, traded, and like 007,
00:58:24
had a license to kill. But her goals were noble. She wanted to protect rather than destroy,
00:58:30
to restore liberty rather than remove it. She neither pursued fame or glory, nor was she really
00:58:36
granted it. This is the heroic story of Virginia Hall, a woman who defied both sexist and ableist
00:58:43
stereotypes and helped deliver the Allied powers victory during World War II. Holy shit. Right?
00:58:50
So the main sources of today's story are a book called A Woman of No Importance,
00:58:55
The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell,
00:59:00
who I will be quoting a lot, the writer Sonia Purnell, and then a write-up on the home of
00:59:06
Hero's website called Virginia Hall, An Extraordinary Woman and an Exceptional Spy by a writer named
00:59:12
James G. Fassone. And then a Smithsonian article called Wanted, The Limping Lady by Kate Lineberry.
00:59:20
And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So go check those out. So Maren made a note for me
00:59:26
saying that Sonia Purnell's book, A Woman of No Importance, is like, this is obviously the super
00:59:32
shortened version of Virginia Hall's life. And so anybody that's slightly interested in this story
00:59:40
should definitely read Sonia Purnell's book because it's really good. You always love it
00:59:45
when a researcher's like, read this book, you'll like it. It's good. When Hannah sent me this one, she was like, holy shit, what happened?
00:59:53
It like oh that a good pick Okay So Virginia Hall born in April of 1906 to a wealthy family in Baltimore Maryland Her father Edwin is a banker Her mother Barbara was his former secretary who transcended social class to become a member of Baltimore elite after she married him
01:00:11
And so by all accounts, Virginia has a happy childhood. She adores her parents, although it's often noted that her mother was intentionally raising her daughter to marry and marry well.
01:00:21
That was pretty standard for parenting at the time. It's like roughly the 1920s. So like, yeah, that's for a very long time. Very recently, it's all women were expected to do. It was the late 70s when people got in, like the whole ERA thing happened and people started fighting that societally.
01:00:42
Yeah, you couldn't get a bank account without your husband's permission until very recently.
01:00:48
Yeah. Marrying a wealthy man shouldn't be difficult for Virginia. She is from a very
01:00:54
respectable, well-off family. She's also very beautiful, but she's not your typical girl.
01:01:00
Author Sonia Purnell writes about Virginia's reputation at her swanky private high school,
01:01:05
saying that she would, quote, assert her independence by wearing tomboy trousers and
01:01:10
checked shirts whenever she could. Wow. Checked shirts. Are you kidding me? What's this world coming to? I mean, for real. So, but I'm sure that was an insane standout where
01:01:21
like when you were really edgy back then, I think you bobbed your hair. That was like that long ago.
01:01:26
Pants for women were like not okay. Yeah. So as Virginia's personality develops and her really
01:01:32
her like personhood develops, her parents and especially her father begin to cater to her
01:01:38
more unique interests, even the ones that would be considered too masculine for girls at the time.
01:01:44
Sonia Purnell writes that as a teen, Virginia, quote, hunted with a rifle, skinned rabbits,
01:01:49
rode horses bareback, and once wore a bracelet of live snakes into school. What the fuck?
01:01:56
Which is awesome. Oh my God. She's like, in your face, everybody. So after high school, she does actually get engaged, but she ends up breaking it off with
01:02:07
the guy and going to college instead. She studies at several prestigious American universities.
01:02:13
And then in 1926, when she's 20 years old, Virginia convinces her parents to let her study abroad.
01:02:19
And while she's in Europe, she learns to speak German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.
01:02:26
NBD. Yeah. So clearly she should have gone to college. Like she was being a total rebel, I'm sure,
01:02:33
by not marrying that guy. Meanwhile, she's like super smart. The most important thing she learns from her time in Europe
01:02:40
is that she's absolutely in love with France. She goes to Paris and the artists, the nightlife,
01:02:46
the rich bohemian culture awaken something in her. She's inspired by the art and the intellectualism
01:02:52
and the overall sense of freedom that that city makes her feel when she's living there.
01:02:58
But she also notices those things being threatened by the right-wing extremism taking root throughout the continent. By the late 1920s, Virginia's
01:03:10
immersed in European politics, and she knows all about Adolf Hitler's rise to prominence
01:03:15
in Germany and Benito Mussolini's in Italy. So when 23-year-old Virginia returns to Baltimore
01:03:22
in July of 1929, she's worried about what those nationalist European leaders and political groups
01:03:29
could mean for the future of France. Now, at the same time, she returns in 1929. The Great
01:03:35
Depression has wiped out the bulk of her family's fortune. So her family lost it all in the Great
01:03:40
Depression in the stock market crash. Oh, man. My brain just made a chugging noise that I could hear.
01:03:52
Stock market crash. Okay. So now Virginia has to go get a job to support her struggling family.
01:03:59
So she wants to go into basically political diplomacy and work with the State Department.
01:04:05
She has the perfect skill set to do it, right? And she knows all those languages.
01:04:09
She's been over there. She knows her stuff. But the odds are severely stacked against her simply because she's a woman.
01:04:16
Purnell writes that, quote, the fact that only six of 1,500 foreign service officers were women should have been due warning.
01:04:24
Wow. The rejection was quick and brutal. So Virginia's forced to put her dreams of working in diplomacy on hold for two years until August of 1931 when she's 25 years old.
01:04:35
And that's when she finally gets her foot in the door with the State Department.
01:04:39
She's hired to work as a secretary in Warsaw, Poland. She's objectively overqualified for this job, but it isn't a bad gig.
01:04:47
She gets to go back to Europe and she gets to earn a $2,000 salary, which is worth around $40,000 today.
01:04:56
which Sonia Purnell writes is, quote, a third higher than the median household income of mid-Depression America when many families were on the breadline.
01:05:07
So the majority of people back in America would kill for this job and this salary.
01:05:14
So she's not going to complain. Warsaw. I don't know why I got it. My family is from Warsaw.
01:05:19
But also it's like, oh, no, don't go there right now, please. Right. She's going kind of right into the heart of everything.
01:05:26
So two years later, in 1933, Virginia's transferred to the historic port city of Smyrna, Turkey, which today is called Izmir.
01:05:35
And in December of that same year, Virginia organizes a hunting trip with her friends.
01:05:40
And then in a freak accident, she stumbles while she's holding her shotgun and the safety's off.
01:05:47
So she accidentally shoots her left foot. Oh, God. Doctors do their best to treat her but she develops gangrene She nearly dies So to save her life her left leg is amputated below the knee on Christmas Day After she recovers she is given a wooden leg that is as writer James G Fassone describes quote crude and heavy
01:06:12
Hall's prosthetic leg would have been made of wood and leather with an aluminum foot.
01:06:17
The prosthetic weighed more than seven pounds. It was attached by leather belts wrapped around Virginia's waist.
01:06:23
even if fitted properly the leg would have caused pressure sores and chafing oh god how awful so
01:06:30
it's a traumatic and life-changing injury but virginia is resilient and she learns to adapt
01:06:36
she even ends up giving her wooden leg a nickname she calls it cuthbert so this is a different kind
01:06:44
of person that we're dealing with this is somebody that's like yes exactly she's gonna kick life's
01:06:50
ass. And there's kind of, there's going to be no other way. Of course, her injury has real
01:06:55
repercussions on her career path. It's already moving at a glacial pace because she's a woman.
01:07:01
Eventually, she's still working as a secretary. She's denied yet another diplomacy job. But this
01:07:06
time it's because of an old State Department rule that explicitly disqualifies people
01:07:11
with disabilities from becoming diplomats. Oh my God. like stated wow and it would take 55 years for america to pass federal laws protecting people
01:07:23
with disabilities from discrimination in the workplace which is the americans with disabilities
01:07:27
act that was passed in 1990 i remember that wow that's insane yeah it's one of those things where
01:07:35
the change happens and i'm sure it's because i don't have a disability so it doesn't directly
01:07:40
impact me. But like that idea that for all those years, there was no nothing insured. You could
01:07:47
just be like, oh, I don't know. I'm not going to hire you. Yeah. Wild. 1990. Oh, my God. 1990.
01:07:54
So by the late 1930s, Virginia is dejected. She's frustrated by her inability to be promoted beyond
01:08:00
secretarial work, despite being extremely qualified and obviously very, very smart. So she leaves the
01:08:07
State Department altogether. But she doesn't want to go back to the United States yet, especially now
01:08:12
that the political situation in Europe is clearly barreling towards the Second World War. Virginia
01:08:18
wants to stay and fight for the freedoms that she loves. So she heads back to Paris and she joins
01:08:25
the French army. Right. And unlike the American State Department, the French don't care that
01:08:32
Virginia is a woman or that she has a prosthetic leg. They recognize her professionalism and her
01:08:37
courage. And she gets a job as an ambulance driver in the early days of the German invasion
01:08:43
in France. Yeah. And she gets right in it. She's like, yeah, I'll do that. Amazing.
01:08:51
But when France falls to the Nazis in June of 1940, she's forced to flee to England. In a real
01:08:57
twist of fate, she meets a man on her trip to England who, unbeknownst to her at the time,
01:09:04
is a member of Britain's secret spy group, the Special Operations Executive Organization,
01:09:10
or the SOE. So this agent is so impressed with Virginia when he meets her on like the trip back.
01:09:19
He recruits her to join the SOE as one of its 13,000 agents. Wow. She gets recruited to be a spy anyway.
01:09:28
What the fuck? Fate, man. Yeah, it's like what's coming for you is coming for you.
01:09:33
Yeah, wow. And unlike their American counterparts, the Brits running the SOE can see how valuable Virginia is to their mission.
01:09:42
The fact that she's a woman with a disability is actually an asset. And that, along with her professional background, her bravery, her passion for European freedom, give her the makings of being a perfect spy.
01:09:56
So in 1941, Virginia eagerly accepts a role with the SOE. And at 35 years old, she becomes the first female SOE agent to work in France.
01:10:07
Holy shit. Yeah. So she's sent to Lyon, which at the time is in the unoccupied part of France, but it is
01:10:15
under the jurisdiction of the authoritarian Vichy regime. The Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis.
01:10:22
The national government of France, led by Charles de Gaulle, went into exile after rejecting
01:10:27
the Vichy's legitimacy. so it's that weird and I never knew this about France it was like they were occupied to a line
01:10:36
and then there was supposed to be this unoccupied area where people got out of like Paris and went
01:10:41
down into the central and southern parts of France eventually though the Nazis took over all of it
01:10:48
and it was you know the Vichy government thought that they were gonna have an even trade with the
01:10:54
Nazis. And then they learn their lesson. So in Lyon, Virginia goes undercover as a reporter for
01:11:00
the New York Post. She's there to get all the hot goss in Vichy, France. This allows her to ask
01:11:09
anyone, including Nazi soldiers and Vichy officials, lots of questions without raising
01:11:15
much suspicion. And then she sends the intel back to the SOE. She spends the next year setting up a
01:11:22
vast network of resistance fighters. She works with the local nuns to create a safe house in
01:11:27
their convent. She befriends sex workers in local brothels who pass on intel along to her after they
01:11:35
have their visits with their Nazi soldier patrons. And she even sets up rescue operations for airmen
01:11:41
and agents who are injured in Vichy-run France. So it's all, of course, extremely dangerous work.
01:11:48
The writer James G. Fasson reports that, quote, of the more than 400 SOE agents ultimately sent to France, 25% did not.
01:12:00
survive. Wow. And 40% of female SOE agents in France did not survive, either being executed
01:12:07
or sent to die in Nazi concentration camps. Holy shit. Every month that Virginia Hall stayed in
01:12:14
Vichy, the risk of identification and capture increased exponentially. Every night she slept
01:12:21
wondering if it would be her last. Wow. That's insane. So Virginia has everything to lose,
01:12:28
captured female spies are particularly brutalized, often at the hands of a sociopathic Nazi named
01:12:35
Klaus Barbie. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon, and he was stationed in Vichy, where he
01:12:42
personally tortured countless Jews and members of the French resistance. We're not going to go into
01:12:49
the detail of Klaus Barbie's methods here because they are so brutal and so horrifying.
01:12:57
But to give you a sense of how high the stakes are for Virginia, the other women captured by the Nazis were raped, physically and mentally tortured, forced to witness violence against their family members, including young children, and were subjected to perverse sexual humiliation and degradation.
01:13:14
If you want to read at the insane risk that Virginia was under and the details of what people were going through, and it is a good idea to get a sense of exactly what people were put through in this time and by fucking Nazis.
01:13:30
read Sonia Purnell's book to get kind of the sense of what Virginia was under. But you should also just know that
01:13:37
and the fact that people these days around America are casually calling themselves members of the Nazi party.
01:13:43
Exactly what they're attributing to and perhaps hoping for is a good thing to know
01:13:48
because it's incredibly fucked up. This is really the high wire act of what Virginia Hall was doing.
01:13:56
We've all seen movies, documentaries about World War II, about the Nazis, about how truly evil they were. Imagine having an inkling of that danger and
01:14:07
getting up every day and risking your life and risking just being put in the hands of those
01:14:11
people. Yeah, she knew. It wasn't like it was a secret. That's so scary. And so scary to be that
01:14:17
brave is incredible. Well, on top of that, by the early 1940s, the Nazis are starting to hear
01:14:24
rumors about Virginia and her espionage work. They don't know her name. They don't know her
01:14:29
nationality. She's only identified by them as the quote limping lady, but there is a sketch of her
01:14:35
face plastered on wanted posters. And beneath that image, it says, quote, the enemy's most
01:14:41
dangerous spy. We must find and destroy her. Do you think she took one home and like kind of kept
01:14:47
it for a keepsake? How cool would that be? Actually, at one point, Klaus Barbie reportedly says,
01:14:55
quote, I would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian bitch because he thought
01:15:00
she was Canadian. Yeah. Holy shit. I'd be like, goodbye. You specifically pissed off the most
01:15:07
psychopathic Nazi. So as her colleagues are captured, as her colleagues are murdered,
01:15:14
Virginia continues working in this job. It's insane. But by the time America joins the war,
01:15:21
There's too much heat on Virginia, and she's kind of forced to accept that she has to leave France, at least for a little while.
01:15:27
But getting out of the country isn't easy. The safest way out is through the Pyrenees Mountains and into Spain, which at the time was technically a neutral country, although they did work with the Nazis to an extent, but they never joined the Axis powers.
01:15:42
So Virginia is forced to make a grueling 50-mile hike through the Pyrenees Mountains.
01:15:48
With her leg. with her leg and in bad weather. So there was rain and snow. It would have been a painful,
01:15:56
uncomfortable, and extremely risky journey for the soldiers that were trying to get out for
01:16:01
most people, much less a person with a prosthetic leg. Virginia never spoke publicly about what she
01:16:09
went through on that hike through the Pyrenees. We don't know anything about it, except for that
01:16:15
she got to Spain safely and she made it out. Then in 1943 with the war still raging England King George VI thank God it V and then Maren wrote the sixth in parentheses Thank God So I didn miss a beat
01:16:30
Whew. King George VI awards Virginia a member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE, which recognizes, quote,
01:16:43
outstanding achievement of service in and to the community, end quote. But at her request, the award is besowed in total secrecy to ensure that she can continue working in espionage.
01:16:54
Smart. And it's only now that the United States government has a change of heart and offers Virginia a position with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, also called the OSS.
01:17:06
This is basically the precursor to the CIA, so the OSS only existed for a little while.
01:17:11
But Virginia is recruited by them at the rank of second lieutenant, way beneath her experience level.
01:17:17
Come on, guys. Of course. But she accepts the job because she's the shit and because they're going to send her back to central France, this time as a radio operator, where she'll be expected to transmit intel back to the OSS as she continues organizing spy networks.
01:17:35
But because the Nazis now know Virginia's face, before returning to France, she consults with a Hollywood makeup artist to learn the tricks of the trade.
01:17:46
Because she figures she's going to need a few disguises to avoid being captured.
01:17:50
How genius is this? Yeah, I thought you were going to say plastic surgeon and I was like, oh my God.
01:17:55
Oh no. Among her most famous disguises is that of an old French milkmaid. it turns out very convincing.
01:18:06
She dyes her hair kind of a mousy gray. She paints wrinkles on her face. She has a dentist file her teeth down.
01:18:13
No, no, don't do that. Yeah, she does it. She even walks with a new gate to throw off the Nazis
01:18:18
who are looking for, quote, the limping lady. And because she learned to make cheese as a child,
01:18:25
Virginia starts producing and selling cheeses to Nazi soldiers in order to get, so she's got the outfit.
01:18:31
Yeah. Now she's making the cheese for real. And she starts selling to Nazi soldiers to gain proximity and to collect intel.
01:18:40
That's so terrifying. But it's so smart because what's the one luxury that you give up in wartime?
01:18:46
Cheese, beautiful. No one's making cheese. And she's in there like, oh, is this, hey, I can hook you up.
01:18:54
Wow. And then she's just an old lady that no one's paying attention to. So they're saying all kinds of shit in front of her.
01:19:00
So Virginia and her fellow operatives are also tasked with preparing for the upcoming allied invasion at Normandy.
01:19:08
So she once again recruits, trains, and organizes resistance fighters who carry out all kinds of crucial demolitions and other acts of sabotage against the Nazis stationed in France.
01:19:20
In a two-month period of early 1944 alone, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency website credits Virginia with, quote, sending 37 intelligence reports.
01:19:33
This is just two months. Overseeing 27 parachute drops of material for the French resistance, coordinating the efforts of 1,500 resistance fighters.
01:19:42
overseeing innumerable attacks resulting in more than 170 Nazi soldiers killed and captured,
01:19:50
managing dozens of acts of sabotage that disrupted German logistics and reinforcements,
01:19:54
and integrating a joint SOE-OSS operational team into her area of operations. Holy shit.
01:20:03
These acts of resistance that Virginia and her fellow agents execute, especially in these critical weeks before D-Day, are absolutely crucial.
01:20:12
By the end of the summer of 1944, Paris is liberated and the war will officially end in September of 1945.
01:20:22
Wow. And it's in no small part to her, dressed up like an old milkmaid and all the other costumes that she figured out.
01:20:31
I mean, like, it's almost like she found her calling in the truest way. She was pursuing it like a passion.
01:20:38
She's thriving in this environment where most people, I think, are so scared. Yes, rightfully so.
01:20:44
Yeah, totally. It amazing So after her mission in France is completed she returns to the United States Her boss at the OSS General Bill Donovan sends a telegram to President Harry Truman saying that Virginia needs to be awarded for her service overseas
01:21:00
The president wholeheartedly agrees. And then Virginia is notified she will receive a Distinguished Service Cross, which is the second highest honor from the U.S. military.
01:21:10
and she will receive it from the sitting president of the United States at the White House in a public ceremony.
01:21:17
Virginia rejects the offer. Girl. According to Sonia Purnell, quote, She was not only ambivalent about honors, but she did not think it advisable for a secret agent to be the focus of a public occasion.
01:21:30
It's kind of like, duh. Yeah, she's the only one with her eye on the ball. For her, fighting the good fight had become a calling, not just any job.
01:21:39
and perhaps she was also wary of her disability once again becoming an issue under the glare of the media, end quote.
01:21:47
Which is, yes, of course. So eventually, Virginia compromises and she accepts the award in a private ceremony from General Donovan directly, not President Truman.
01:21:58
The only other person in attendance is her mother, Barbara. Virginia is the only female civilian to receive a Distinguished Service Cross during World War II.
01:22:08
the only one. Despite her heroism, Virginia still faces disability and gender discrimination in the workplace.
01:22:16
When the CIA is formed, she's offered a job and is one of the first women hired by the agency.
01:22:23
However, she is, quote, relegated to office and analytic work for the remainder of her career.
01:22:29
End quote. It's the fucking CIA. This woman hasn't proved to you that she can do it times 25.
01:22:37
Like, what are you talking about? She killed Nazis and she fucking blew up bridges and she fucking figured shit out.
01:22:44
What do you want? She organized it. She climbed the Pyrenees with a prosthetic leg.
01:22:50
Yeah. What more must I do for you? Right. It's not about me. Virginia Hall retires from the CIA in 1966 when she's 60 years old.
01:23:01
afterwards she and her husband who actually is a fellow oss agent named paul gaio and they fell
01:23:09
in love during the war so she was truly living her best life in every way yeah she was doing it
01:23:16
yeah so her and paul moved to a farm in maryland after she retires and in july of 1982 virginia
01:23:23
hall dies at the age of 77 so throughout her later life she rarely talked about her heroism during
01:23:30
World War II, her niece, Lorna Catling, has said, quote, she always avoided publicity.
01:23:36
She would say, it was just six years of my life. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?
01:23:44
Like, I have seen, because, you know, my dad and I watch World War II movies during the
01:23:49
holidays. It's like the one subject we can agree on. So I watched a World War II movie that was a true story about soldiers escaping over the
01:23:59
Pyrenees. Oh. And it was all horrifying for them and incredibly difficult. Yeah. The idea that she, it was just six years of my life. It's like, ma'am, how do you do it? I think it's like in war years, it's actually, you can double it at least. That's right.
01:24:15
But the world disagrees with Virginia. In the last several years, there's been a ton of interest in her life story. Several books have been written about her. A movie is reportedly in the works. And despite Virginia's commitment to discretion, privacy and humility, her story of strength and bravery has resonated widely.
01:24:34
And as James Fossone points out, quote, Virginia Hall left no memoir, granted no interviews and spoke little about her overseas life, even with relatives.
01:24:47
She left behind no daughters, but she changed perceptions about what everyone's daughters could accomplish.
01:24:53
Her life is a roadmap of how to raise a strong and independent woman. End quote.
01:24:59
And that's the life story of the incredible World War II spy and resistance fighter, Virginia Hall.
01:25:05
Oh, my God. Like, chills. How come she not in any history books that we read about in school Who would play her in the movie Gwyneth Gwyneth When you think of resilience you think of goop
01:25:25
Wow. Who would play her? Frances McDormand? A young Frances McDormand? Yeah, we'll do flashbacks with like a younger actress, newer actress, but Frances McDormand
01:25:35
could be that. It's Frances puttering around the CIA. Yeah. Just kind of smiling and being nice.
01:25:40
And then someone's like, did you hear about Virginia? Or like she's making cheese.
01:25:44
She saved this country. Guys, I brought in cheese curds for everybody again. That was amazing.
01:25:51
That was inspiring. Let's all just like be a little more like Virginia. Let's all be and do better.
01:25:59
What was it? Be better people. Be a better you. Why do we keep forgetting that? Because it's awful and stupid.
01:26:08
No, I refuse to be a better me. I'm doing my fucking best. Like what more? This is as good as it gets, bitch.
01:26:18
Everyone be yourself. Be your whatever self instead of a better you. Be you, but like tweak it every once in a while.
01:26:26
Just change it up and see what happens. Yeah, make it worse so that it seems like,
01:26:29
so when you're normal, it seems like you're better, but you're not. That's right.
01:26:32
Right. Do it that way. Weaponized incompetence. It works. It works if you work it.
01:26:39
Yeah. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Hey, we're in our ninth year. Oh my God, we're deep in our ninth year.
01:26:44
We appreciate you guys sticking around for all the things. For all these things.
01:26:51
Yeah, there's been so many. And for podcasting in general. Yeah. Thanks for supporting podcasting.
01:26:55
Yeah, good. Look at you go. Good job for having an interest. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:27:02
Go away. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:27:16
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
01:27:20
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:27:28
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
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