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My favorite murder Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark.
00:02:17
Hey, that's Karen Kilgariff. And we're here to provide you with some true crime stories.
00:02:24
the tough stuff and then some observations that are neither professional nor very well informed
00:02:30
are you into it apparently you are because you pressed play too late you're already in yeah or your sister pressed play you're in the car you're on a road
00:02:42
trip it's december now your girlfriend forced play sorry sorry it's gonna be like this from
00:02:53
From now on. It's December now. That's correct. Are you excited about the holidays?
00:03:00
Yes. Thank you for asking. I am up to my ears and catalogs that I can't stop lightly thumbing through.
00:03:07
And the rule now is if I'm going to buy something for myself, I have to buy at least two other people in my family a gift.
00:03:14
Oh, that's sweet. And right now I'm looking at, because in my office is my gift pile.
00:03:19
Oh, I think I might have one quarter of my Christmas shopping already done. You guys do hardcore presents like you. Everyone has to get everyone a gift.
00:03:27
Oh, yeah. That's a lot of pressure. It is. I don't do that. But my brother and his wife might do that. And then they come over and give me like
00:03:36
a little Lancome hand cream set. And I'm like, I thought we didn't do this every year. Every year
00:03:41
I have to apologize and said, I thought we don't do this. That's because your husband's lovely wife. Tell me your name again.
00:03:48
My husband's lovely wife is Georgia. No. And she is lovely. And she is me. Yolanda.
00:03:58
Asher's wife Yolanda. Yolanda, your sister-in-law Yolanda. You know that your brother would be like, no problem.
00:04:04
We won't do it next year. And then Yolanda is like, absolutely not. That's not what we're like.
00:04:10
Yeah. She makes our family look good. And then we just passed my older nephew a hundy, a crisp hundy dollar bill.
00:04:16
He must love you so much. I mean, we're the best. And then, yeah, that's it. Well, we don't do that. I'm glad. I don't,
00:04:23
yeah. It seems like a lot of pressure to get people stuff they might not want. Oh, absolutely. That's why some families exchange gift lists beforehand and you just,
00:04:33
it's basically for Christmas, you run errands for the other people and get them what they want
00:04:37
and they know they're getting it and then they get it. That's not what my family does either.
00:04:41
You have to- They don't make it easy. No. Before, during, or after. You have to get them exactly what their heart's desire is.
00:04:50
But they won't tell you what it is. They absolutely would never tell you. We don't know ourselves. I'll play both parts here. You
00:04:56
don't know as the shopper. You have no idea as the receiver. You just want someone to do it right
00:05:01
for once. So it's cashmere, slippers, a lot of cashmere, a lot of slippers. What about a magazine subscription
00:05:08
for the year? That's a great, great suggestion. That's a really good idea. Plant Club, plant of the month, and they send you a new plant every month. I really love that one.
00:05:17
Wait, did you get a holiday job suggesting presents? I'm writing Vogue's 15 holiday presents for people you don't know what to get. That's not true.
00:05:27
You turn it in and you're like plants. And they're like, Georgia, we do need a little
00:05:31
more specificity in this. Plants! And I just start screaming it. Slippers. What do you mean specificity? I dare you to go over there
00:05:38
with $50 in scratchers for each person. And that's fucking it that year for you.
00:05:44
That's actually, I think that both my sister and my father would love that. Now, would my niece be allowed to play? What's the age limit on the lottery?
00:05:54
It gambling It whatever gambling age is 18 I guess 21 What do you got this week I guess my one thing is I went to my first Christmas party of the season
00:06:05
Oh, wow. Yeah, pretty early. Really fun. And also just like the first party I've been to in, I don't know, four years or something,
00:06:13
like a really long time. Did you socialize? I did. Did you get dressed up? I, yeah, in the way that I do where I kind of look like 60s Ann Margaret.
00:06:23
So it's kind of like a tighter pant with a V-neck sweater. It's like the fashion black clothes instead of the everyday black clothes.
00:06:31
Exactly. I'm not pretending that I'm about to work out. I'm pretending that I'm, you know, somehow classy.
00:06:38
That you're leaving the house. Those are my two looks. I love it. That's perfect.
00:06:42
Always pretending. I'm nervous about our ERM holiday party. Yeah. Like, cause we don't work in an office, so we don't do face-to-face stuff.
00:06:51
We haven't met out of our many, many employees other than on Zoom. Right. We haven't met them in person.
00:06:57
And we have like, it's like 35, 36 people now. Yep. So that's a lot. But the good news is your idea held over from, I think, the last Christmas party, which was
00:07:08
we're using name tags again so that you don't have to deal with the pressure of how dare
00:07:13
you not remember. Thank God. I have a quick book rec. It's a quick, like, whodunit, strong female detective lead.
00:07:21
Yes. There's a lot of trigger warnings that I should say in it that you've got to look up
00:07:26
yourself. However, it takes place in Northern California, some of it in Petaluma. No.
00:07:34
Because aside from the fictitious crime we're chasing, it's at the same time that
00:07:39
Polyclass's kidnapping is happening. Oh. So that gets mentioned and brought in. Other real true
00:07:45
crimes get brought in. Well, that's the story I told on this podcast. Remember I told you that
00:07:49
there was the part where the kids at the junior high, when they found out that she was missing,
00:07:52
they picked up the missing posters and ran out into the street, just ran out of the school.
00:07:56
And it was like downtown. All of a sudden there was children everywhere, putting posters everywhere.
00:08:01
I remember that. That's in the book. Is it? Yeah. So someone on Instagram named Emily Drydahl told me to read this book. It's called
00:08:08
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McClain. And Paula McClain is like a great crime writer. So
00:08:14
it's a quickie. I got into it and out of it real fast listening to it. If you're,
00:08:19
you know, on a road trip or going to see your family or whatever. I need something to listen
00:08:22
to. It's a good one. I wonder if Paula McLean is from Sonoma County. It takes place in Mendocino.
00:08:27
And she mentions in the end that she lived there for a while in her twenties. So probably. Yeah.
00:08:33
Wow. That sounds great. I'm reading a very scary book right now, but I'll wait till I'm done.
00:08:38
That's my push to actually continue to read is you can't talk about it until you finish it,
00:08:44
you phony, because you'll just talk about it and never look at the book again, but it's real good.
00:08:49
You don't have to finish a book to like a book, right? True. But like, if we're going to do book recommendations.
00:08:57
Yeah. It's like, hey, I read the first seven pages. It's amazing. Like, I would absolutely do that if we could get away with it.
00:09:03
But like, are you getting joy from the first half of it? That joy doesn't go away because it sucks at the end.
00:09:09
True. But I do feel like especially authors would feel like the entire experience is the crucial
00:09:15
part of the recommendation. Like, do you know what you're talking about ultimately?
00:09:19
Okay. That's just a restriction I'm keeping on myself. Okay. Fair enough. Should we do a Spotify conversation?
00:09:28
I mean, this is kind of like, we're about to do a thing that we've never really done before,
00:09:32
which is like old school radio station shout outs. Like people are writing in, here's their shout outs, but it's basically,
00:09:39
you guys have all, all of our listeners every year, send us their Spotify wrapped when their
00:09:45
numbers for our podcast are really high to go, look what I'm doing for you people. Can I have a
00:09:50
little bit of credit for how much time I spend with you listening to you? That's right. And we
00:09:55
really appreciate all the Spotify wrap 2023 posts that we got. So we thought we'd read a couple
00:10:00
tweets from listeners and their number of minutes. Yes. Give them the credit that they have earned.
00:10:07
Okay. My first one is Bruised Tea Leaf at WAHNAY, W-A-H-H-N-A-Y. Listen to 15,958 minutes of My Favorite Murder.
00:10:22
Wow. Can you believe it? I can. Although, let's just do you one better. This is from at Liv Boardman, L-I-V-V Boardman, who says,
00:10:33
at My Favorite Murder, I've spent the equivalent of 20 days straight listening this year.
00:10:38
Still have one year's worth of episodes left till I'm up to date. Liv listened for 28,350 minutes.
00:10:46
Oh my God. And they're a top 0.5% fan. Thank you. I mean, it is fun to know the stat.
00:10:55
Oh yeah. I didn't see that. It is. Falcon at Falcon Lord Zero. the falcon lord listens they listen to 73 172 minutes of my favorite murder that's amazing
00:11:10
thank you well then you know what now i realize that aaron put these together almost in ascending
00:11:16
order because this last one is from vanessa at cry bix b in junior vanessa says the math is
00:11:26
telling me this is equivalent to 1,689 hours listening to us. And then it just says, I just
00:11:35
love you all so much. It says you've listened for 101,375 minutes. Oh my God. You must talk to
00:11:44
yourself in our voices now. I feel like, cause that's what I would do. Like when I listen to
00:11:48
something for a long time. Yeah. Like I narrate my life in the voices of whatever I'm listening to
00:11:53
Just please be careful Vanessa I been having to listen to this voice for 50 plus years It not great It going to turn on you at some point Just get ready
00:12:05
Question the advice that your brain is giving you, because it might be our advice, which
00:12:09
as we've said multiple times is not always sound. No, not certainly not professional.
00:12:14
Right. Not professional, not learned, not any of it, but. But it's from the heart.
00:12:19
It is. And we appreciate you. Should we switch right over to the ERM highlights?
00:12:24
Sure. Let's do it. Let's do it. Hey, we have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media.
00:12:28
Here's some fun things from it. Actor Lou Wilson, who's the announcer on the Jimmy Kimmel Live program, is Bridger's guest this week in I Said No Gifts.
00:12:38
And also, Bridger had a Black Friday billboard in Times Square. Go to his Instagram at I Said No Gifts to see the picture of Bridger lording over Times Square the way he always was meant to.
00:12:50
Oh, he was. It's made me so happy. And then on That's Messed Up and SVU podcast, Kara and Lisa discuss the SVU episode, A Misunderstanding, from 2016's Season 17.
00:13:02
And they also have a couple more live tour dates before the end of the year. So if they're in your town, you would be very, very sad to miss them.
00:13:10
Yes. I promise you. Great, wonderful performers. Also, if you like Nick Terry's MFM Animated, he has a new one out called Cookie's Dog.
00:13:18
It's an instant classic. He's really captured the conversation about Cookie's imaginary dog from episode 395.
00:13:25
So you can go to youtube.com slash exactly right media and you can watch that Nick Terry video.
00:13:32
And then all the other MFM animated, they're all up there. Go take a look. See, they're fun.
00:13:38
So funny. You know, it's so amazing about the cookies dog video is that Nick Terry, you can tell
00:13:43
he's a true artist because he went back and looked to see what color Cookie's harness
00:13:49
and leash were. like in my Instagram and got it right. Benz and I were both like, how does he know?
00:13:53
Purple. How does he know it's purple? It's like, oh wait, we post about her constantly.
00:13:57
Oh wait, he's a professional. He understands details matter. And at this point, it's too late to order merchandise
00:14:03
if you'd like to receive it in time for Christmas. However, the Exactly Right and My Favorite Murder store
00:14:07
now has gift cards. Hey. Hey, it's the perfect last minute gift or stocking stuffer for your favorite podcast listener.
00:14:15
And they can use it for all the fun stuff in either the Exactly Right and the My Favorite Murder store.
00:14:20
So go to exactly right store.com to grab one. And enjoy all our new designs while you're there.
00:14:25
There's some really cute ones. My sister went and bought a sweatshirt without telling me.
00:14:29
And Erin, we were on a meeting together. And she's like, your sister bought a sweatshirt.
00:14:32
I watched her do it. Doesn't she know one of the many perks of being your sister is that she gets free
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My Favorite Murder and Exactly Right merch? That's not true, though, because she doesn't listen to this podcast.
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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. All right, well, I'm first this week.
00:16:25
Okay. I'm telling you, not asking you. I've decided it's okay that you go first this week.
00:16:34
And then for the rest of the month, after this normal episode, we're doing like quickies, but they're not quick.
00:16:40
They're still like long episodes. They're very long and normal. Right, so we just don't have an opening.
00:16:45
and then one of us tells together a story each episode, but they're still great.
00:16:49
We did some really great stories in there. Harvey Milk. Yeah, I just did the Leavenworth prison break.
00:16:54
I mean, look, we don't have to make excuses. There's some podcasts that completely disappear
00:16:58
for the two holiday months. So like, we're still here with you, giving you fresh new content.
00:17:04
You're going to love it. And they're slightly shorter, but then at the same time, in a lot of ways, not at all.
00:17:10
Yeah. In other ways, you're still gonna slog through them. We promise. Yeah. Okay. I'm at the stage of my day where my story is printed on blue because I can't get the energy
00:17:22
to change my printer ink. You know what I mean? Hell yeah. You know, you're at the stage of 2023
00:17:26
where you can't do that. That's how I feel. That's right. It's all blue. It's all lay down
00:17:31
time from here on out. Lay down time. I love it. Okay. So today I'm covering a story that I read
00:17:38
in a recent Rolling Stone article that came out that was fascinating. And I was like,
00:17:43
I have to cover this. The article from Rolling Stone is titled Two Teens Hitchhiked to a Concert 50 Years Later,
00:17:50
They Haven't Come Home by Eric J. Greenberg. Wow. So this is the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwick and Mitchell Weiser So the other main source I used is MitchellandBonnie It a website that serves as a resource hub with photos news clippings
00:18:06
and more detailing their disappearance. And the other sources are listed in our show notes.
00:18:11
Okay, so here we are. It's the summer of 1973. The Vietnam War is still going on,
00:18:18
but American support has dwindled. Richard Nixon is in his penultimate year. Thank you, Jay, for the research and using smart words.
00:18:27
Do you know what year that is? Penultimate is the year before, right? That's right.
00:18:33
Fuck yeah. I didn't mean that to be so condescending. I thought that'd be a fun learning moment, but.
00:18:38
I wasn't offended. Okay, good. He's in the penultimate year of his presidency. And with the Watergate hearings in full swing, his approval rating has fallen to an all time low.
00:18:47
On top of all this, the Arab oil embargo is in full effect, causing nationwide fuel shortages and stunting American citizens' ability to travel on the open roads, which is such a part of American life and a modern American experience.
00:19:03
So just to give you an idea of what's going on, shit's not great. Got you. Not a great time to be alive.
00:19:09
So this political and economic turmoil of the early 70s sets the stage for a flourishing
00:19:14
of a counterculture movement that defines the era of the American hippie. Hippie youth grow their hair long and take to the streets to protest the Vietnam War.
00:19:24
Psychedelic drugs spark controversy between boring people and people who, you know, think
00:19:30
it's dangerous and shit. Yeah. And rock and roll music takes off facilitating the gathering of all those who choose to revel
00:19:37
in the peace, love, and anti-violence sentiments of the counterculture revolution.
00:19:44
Like what a terrible time to be alive. What a great time to be alive. You know, contains multitudes.
00:19:49
It does. As it always does. It's like as bad as things get, then people actually start to take action,
00:19:56
which is like we're seeing in 2023 as well, where it's like people start to realize I have to do something.
00:20:02
I can't wait for somebody else to do something. Yeah, the status quo won't do. So among the iconic rock and roll bands of this time are the Allman Brothers, the band called The Band, which I watched a documentary about recently with Vince.
00:20:17
It was pretty cool. And The Grateful Dead, of course. So all of those are playing at a massive music festival at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway in upstate New York on July 28th, 1973.
00:20:32
it's called not Woodstock, the Summer Jam. So organized by concert promoter and business
00:20:40
partners, Jim Koplick and Shelley Finkel and assisted by legendary concert promoter, Bill
00:20:45
Graham, Summer Jam is originally set to host 150,000 guests and they're all purchasing tickets
00:20:51
at $10 a piece. The venue Watkins Glen, New York's Grand Prix Raceway had only ever held
00:20:59
100,000 people. So the extra 50,000 was already kind of pushing the limits of like what they could
00:21:04
hold. But the draw of the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and the band, it can't be contained.
00:21:10
In the days leading up to the July 28th show, even though tickets had sold out, thousands of people without tickets show up in droves, as we've all seen in Woodstock documentaries,
00:21:20
jamming the small country roads of the roughly 2,700 person town. So small town, bunch of
00:21:27
fucking hippies and rock and rollers show up. Peace, love. What's crazy is that it's like all
00:21:31
those, I bet you many of those people were at Woodstock and none of them learned the lesson of,
00:21:36
remember how kind of awful that was and how fucked up it got? Like you were just showing up,
00:21:42
but I guess that's a very hippie way of doing things. It's like, we're just going to show up
00:21:45
and see if we get a little, you know, good luck ticket, whatever. We'll just see,
00:21:50
because you can still hear the music. You don't have to be standing inside the gate.
00:21:53
Yeah, I think the idea is like, let's just see what happens. That shit couldn't have happened often. A lot of them are probably from small towns. And like, why not? Right? It's summer.
00:22:03
Yeah. So of course, there's nowhere for the traffic to move. So everything gets jammed up. People start hopping out of their cars, leaving them there and hiking anywhere from five to eight miles to get to the venue.
00:22:14
Wow. Fuck that. So you're just in a permanent, like single line parking lot when you need to get back out.
00:22:19
Yeah. No, thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you. We're the girls who would stay home at Woodstock, given the choice.
00:22:28
For real. We're the no thanks, I'll stay home and feed the dog. You know what? Give me your purse and I'm going to walk back to our house and then lock the front door and stay there.
00:22:37
Yeah, I'm good. I'll be here. I need to do summer school. You guys go. Tell me about it.
00:22:42
Just remember everything and tell me. I'm going to love this story. Take mine pictures.
00:22:46
Okay, Kolkak and Finkel consult with Bill Graham and they decide to, fuck it, allow everyone who shows up to attend the concert for free.
00:22:55
They assume that's the only way to avoid the crowd backlash and help everyone have a safe, fun time.
00:23:01
You know, not like putting up barriers. Everyone's going to fucking trip their ass over them.
00:23:05
It's just going to be a riot. Fuck it. Let everyone in, which is smart. In the end, an estimated 600,000 people attend Summer Jam.
00:23:15
That's too many. Dorfing Woodstock's 400,000 person crowd just four years prior and making the festival a long
00:23:24
running Guinness Book World Record holding event for greatest claimed attendance at a pop festival.
00:23:30
With no water. Oh my God. Or toilets. No basic needs covered at all. I have to ask this in every story we cover that's historic.
00:23:41
What did women do with the period? Like how did they handle their period? They walked over to the forest.
00:23:45
They'll be like, well, I'll be back in two hours. Oh my God. I got to go find some moss.
00:23:50
But before the festival becomes a free for all, two lucky teens score those $10 tickets.
00:23:56
Those two teens are high school juniors, Larry Marion, and Mitchell Weiser, who's, they're both 16. When Larry's parents forbid him to go, however,
00:24:05
he gives up his ticket to Mitchell's girlfriend, 15-year-old Bonita Bickwit, who goes by Bonnie.
00:24:12
I'm gonna call her Bonnie for now. Mitchell Weiser is, he's 16, as I said, he's a Brooklyn native
00:24:17
raised in a middle-class Jewish family. Though their political beliefs and opinions start to
00:24:23
diverge as Mitchell becomes a teenager, as it always does, as seems to happen often,
00:24:28
He's still close with his family. He has many good friends at school. He's a skinny kid with glasses and long hair that he pulls back into a ponytail, just like
00:24:37
a sweet, normal kid from the 70s in Brooklyn. He loves baseball, but he's also very interested in the arts.
00:24:45
And he develops a love for photography and lands a coveted job as the photographer's assistant
00:24:51
at a local Brooklyn studio that summer in 1973. So normal, all-American kid. He's bright and talented.
00:24:58
and he attends a new experimental school for gifted students called John Dewey High School
00:25:03
in Brooklyn. And it's there that he meets Bonnie Bickwit. She's an equally bright,
00:25:09
yet far more outspoken 15-year-old. She's always been a high achiever academically.
00:25:14
So when she hears about the school John Dewey for like gifted kids, she writes an impassioned
00:25:19
letter to the principal asking to be admitted. The principal is so blown away by the letter that
00:25:24
he admits Bonnie into the school and even frames the letter and hangs it on his office wall.
00:25:31
So she is awesome. Like Mitchell, Bonnie also comes from a middle-class Jewish family with
00:25:38
whom she's quite close. She, like many other Jewish kids in her community, spends her summers
00:25:43
at Camp Wellmet, a popular Jewish summer camp in the Catskills. Once she reaches her teen years and
00:25:50
grows out of the camper age, she gets a job at Wellmet as a mother's helper. Bonnie and Mitchell
00:25:56
are an inseparable couple who all their friends love and envy. Their love is so strong that earlier
00:26:02
that summer of 1973, the two secretly exchanged, quote, wedding rings. Obviously, they're not
00:26:08
legally married, but that's kind of a, what is it called? Gesture? Teenage thing. Teenage gesture.
00:26:13
Both kids have big hearts and take an interest in causes like environmental preservation and
00:26:18
indigenous people's rights. Bonnie is described as free-spirited, Mitchell as fearless. They dated
00:26:24
for about a year and a half sharing their love of art and music. Bonnie's favorite band is the
00:26:30
Allman Brothers and Mitchell's is the Grateful Dead. So when the opportunity to see both of their
00:26:36
favorite bands at the same show comes up, there's obviously nothing that could stop them from going.
00:26:40
Yeah. So they get these two tickets. So the plan is for Mitchell to meet up with Bonnie at the Camp
00:26:49
Wellmet in Narrowsburg, New York. And then she was going to take off from the camp and they were
00:26:55
going to hitchhike together from the camp to the concert. So Mitchell takes all the cash she has,
00:27:01
25 bucks, and uses it for a bus ticket into Narrowsburg and a camp ride to Camp Wellmet.
00:27:06
But so though Bonnie spent many great summers at Camp Wellnett, by the summer of 1973,
00:27:11
she's kind of, seems like she's kind of over it. In a letter to Stuart Carton, Mitchell's best friend, who is also friends with Bonnie,
00:27:18
she describes being lonely and bored at the camp. She tells Stuart she's thinking about quitting her job and even asked him if the camp he
00:27:25
goes to is hiring so she can work there instead. So like, she's kind of over it.
00:27:29
So when Mitchell arrives and on the morning of Friday, July 27th, 1973, Bonnie's request
00:27:36
for time off is denied. And she's like, screw it. I quit and leaves with Mitchell leaving behind her
00:27:42
thing. She says, I'll come get them next week. Oh, yeah. She's I'll come get my stuff and my last
00:27:47
paycheck next week. So they're like nothing stopping them from going to this concert. Yeah.
00:27:52
So Watkins Glen, where the concert is, is about 155 miles northwest of Narrowsburg,
00:27:58
where the camp is. So they have to hitchhike 155 miles. That's a lot, right? That's like what from
00:28:04
here to like it's halfway to San Francisco or like a little less but I mean it's way up three hours
00:28:10
yeah the nearest highway state route 97 runs right through the camp so Mitchell and Bonnie walk over
00:28:18
and wait by the side of the road with a cardboard sign reading Watkins Glen waiting to hitch a ride
00:28:23
which at the time of course don't ever hitchhike now at the time it was a totally normal thing I
00:28:28
mean, it was more than normal. It was like how some people got around, right? Right. Yes. To me,
00:28:34
in my opinion, that kind of culture in the early seventies had that kind of like,
00:28:40
it was counterculture. So you're hitchhiking, you're, you're conserving, you don't have a car,
00:28:45
someone else is going to be cool and pick you up. And it was like in the spirit of the day,
00:28:50
which we now have done enough stories where looking back, it's like the spirit of the day
00:28:57
may have reigned and that was like what everybody wanted to be happening, peace, love, et cetera.
00:29:03
Right. But that isn't always the way. Yeah. There's always evil lurking. You know what? I just thought of this. If everyone's home for the holidays,
00:29:11
ask your parents or your grandparents if they have any hitchhiking stories. Yes. Send them for our hometowns at myfavoritemurderatgmail, please.
00:29:19
Good one. Right. But you know, ask the question, see what you can get going at the dinner table.
00:29:23
And then if that is fruitful, hitchhiking, then you get them. Now I know you did drugs.
00:29:31
And then you just get confrontational. Yeah. I guarantee your great aunt who never had kids has a hitchhiking story. Promise.
00:29:38
Yes. Right? Easily. Okay. So they're waiting to hitch a ride. The kids are wearing jeans and a t-shirt. They have
00:29:45
sleeping bags under their arms. Mitchell is also carrying a gray and olive green plaid flannel
00:29:50
shirt and his fancy camera It isn long before a passing truck driver pulls over to pick them up He takes them as far down the highway as he can then drops them off But this is the last time anyone would see or hear from Mitchell and Bonnie No one even sure if they made it to the
00:30:06
concert or not. So fast forward to that Monday, July 30th, 1973, the concert happened and Bonnie
00:30:14
doesn't show back up at Camp Wellmet to get her stuff. So camp staff calls Bonnie's mom,
00:30:20
Ray Bickwit and tells her that Bonnie's missing. At the same time, Mitchell's family, having not
00:30:26
heard from him, start to worry as well. Mitchell's dad and sister, Sydney and Susan, respectively,
00:30:32
hop in the car and make the five hour drive from Brooklyn to Watkins Glen. And they meet with
00:30:39
police there. But when they try to report the kids missing and ask the police to launch an
00:30:43
investigation into their disappearance, the local police, which is Schuyler County, police chalk the
00:30:48
whole thing up to a runaway teen situation and dismiss the family's pleas for help.
00:30:53
Certain the kids would not just run away and determined to find them, Sydney leaves photos
00:30:58
of Mitchell and Bonnie with the police anyway. He and Susan then drive around the county,
00:31:03
including the Watkins Glen Gorge, and search for the kids themselves. They spend hours calling out
00:31:08
their names, but don't have any luck finding them. It's such a nightmare. Like there was the
00:31:13
most gigantic music festival in the area. And then you're there asking police for this very
00:31:20
specific and very important help. And they're probably already, they have been overwhelmed for
00:31:26
so long. Like this, I'm sure this, imagine all the crazy shit that people got up to during this
00:31:33
festival. And now they're like, oh, but hold on, there might be some missing hitchhikers. And it's
00:31:38
like, you can just hear the police being like, we don't have time for that. Yeah. And they're minus like two teens who are hung over still and like they'll make it. It's like Monday. It's not even like a week later. But I think that's how weird this is for those kids is the fact that it wasn't even like a week later. It was Monday that the parents were like, something's fucking wrong. So like that in itself, you should listen to.
00:32:00
Absolutely. These are kids that go to super smart school. Right. These are people that do their homework that whose parents are in it with them.
00:32:08
Yeah. You can count on them. Yeah. Yeah. So looking to cast a wider net, Bonnie's mom, Ray, drives out to Monticello, New York,
00:32:16
to report the kids missing with the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department, which is another
00:32:20
police jurisdiction in the surrounding area. And that was the last place Bonnie and Mitchell were
00:32:25
seen when the truck driver dropped them off. They, too, blow it off, believe the kids are runaways.
00:32:31
Because both kids are Brooklyn residents, the NYPD are technically supposed to aid in the
00:32:36
investigation too, but they never got involved. Without much help from police, Bonnie and Mitchell's
00:32:42
families do everything they can to try and track the kids down on their own. They post ads in as
00:32:47
many newspapers across New York as they can afford to buy space in. They mail at least 500 letters
00:32:53
and circulars to Native American reservations and mission schools because Bonnie and Mitchell are
00:32:58
both big advocates for Indigenous people's rights. So they thought if they had run away, maybe they
00:33:03
went there. Oh, okay. You know, just in their minds. Just trying to follow any logic of what
00:33:08
could be happening. Exactly. And they follow up on every tiny lead that comes in, no matter how
00:33:14
obscure. Their friends from school, their super smart friends, raised $675 to aid on the cost of
00:33:20
the search. Ray even consults with a psychic and the psychic says she sees the kids, quote,
00:33:28
lying in a gravel pit, but never provides a location so awful. And Mitchell's sister,
00:33:34
Susan, even goes so far as to infiltrate local cults, like the Unification Church,
00:33:39
which is the Moonies, and the Children of God to see if maybe the kids had gotten lured in somehow.
00:33:46
I mean, that's incredible that a sister would do such a thing. That's just heartbreaking.
00:33:51
It's so sad. Like the desperation. Yeah, totally. But none of their efforts lead to finding
00:33:56
Bonnie and Mitchell. Mitchell and Bonnie's family friends keep their search up for the next 10 years,
00:34:03
but eventually their funds dry up and media coverage fades because it's the 70s. Tools like
00:34:09
Name Us and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children haven't been created yet.
00:34:14
And nobody took missing children, especially teenagers, seriously back then. It was just all
00:34:19
runaways in their minds. So the families kind of have no choice but to cut back on their search
00:34:23
efforts and the case runs cold. In 1984, the Weiser family moves to Arizona to help with Mitchell's
00:34:31
dad's asthma, but they pay the New York phone company every month to keep their new Arizona
00:34:37
phone number in the New York phone books in case Mitchell ever returns to the city and tries to
00:34:42
look them up. How heartbreaking is that? So sad. That's so sad. Okay. So 25 years later in 1998,
00:34:51
New York-based investigative reporter who I mentioned in the beginning, Eric J. Greenberg,
00:34:56
is looking for a story when he decides to dig back into the case. What he finds on top of the
00:35:02
NYPD's and Sullivan and Schuyler County's negligence is a flat-out mishandling of any
00:35:09
paper trail of the case at all. The original case files held by Sullivan County Sheriff's Department,
00:35:15
which contain things like a potential witness list and the kids' dental records to help ID
00:35:20
if any remains were found, have since gone completely missing. So like an initial witness
00:35:27
list that could be gold, you know, of like the people who are still around from the concert
00:35:34
milling about. Did you see these kids? Any of that shit. So the National Center for Missing
00:35:39
and Exploited Children had been established in 1984 and they generate age progression photos of
00:35:44
Bonnie and Mitchell and Sullivan County's Detective Lieutenant Anthony Suarez is put in
00:35:50
charge of reinvestigating in 1994 Unfortunately facing an uphill battle without those case files that are missing Suarez drops the ball entirely He doesn even try to track down witnesses nor does he contact the investigator originally
00:36:05
assigned to the case. Greenberg publishes his article detailing all of these missteps in 1998.
00:36:12
It generates a lot of outrage from loved ones and strangers alike, all taken aback by the fact that
00:36:17
the police could hear a report of missing children and completely neglect it. So looking back now,
00:36:23
members of each county's police departments and the NYPD admit that they screwed up and they say
00:36:29
they carry a lot of shame for it. As maddening as the report of police not giving a shit is,
00:36:37
it prompts Bonnie and Mitchell's loved ones to publicly call on the New York governor and
00:36:41
attorney general to reopen the case. So it gives us like some much needed attention.
00:36:46
Finally, in June of 2000, Governor George Pataki appoints Sullivan County resident and state
00:36:53
police investigator Roy Strever, along with Detective William Kilgallen. Hey, I got brought
00:37:00
on stage one time as Lori Kilgallen. Lori? You're like your first name, right? Lori Kilgallen,
00:37:05
because there's the comic Lori Kilmartin was a headliner. So the host was just kind of combining
00:37:11
all the girls and throwing it out there. Oh my God. So they're called on to reinvestigate the
00:37:18
disappearance of Bonnie and Mitchell. So that's in 2000. At the same time, MSNBC runs an episode of
00:37:24
its then new series, Missing Persons, that details the case. And so in October of 2000,
00:37:31
Striever gets a call from a 51-year-old man named Alan Smith. This is chilling. He saw the episode
00:37:37
of Missing Persons and claimed that he met Mitchell and Bonnie on the road all those years back in
00:37:43
1973. According to Allen, they had all tried to get to Summer Jam, but couldn't get anywhere
00:37:50
because of the crazy traffic. So giving up, they turned back and hitchhiked together,
00:37:56
landing a ride with a random driver in an orange VW bus with Pennsylvania license plates. So all
00:38:02
very specific. Along the way, he says that the four stopped by the Susquehanna River to take a
00:38:10
dip and cool off. But when Bonnie jumped in, he says, the current swept her away. Mitchell dove
00:38:17
in after her, but he vanished too. That's what he says. Like he saw that whole thing happen.
00:38:22
Okay. Alan and the driver, figuring there wasn't much they could do, they can't jump in as well,
00:38:28
agree to leave with the driver promising he'd stop at a payphone and report the incident.
00:38:34
So Alan got dropped off before they reached a phone. And he just says that he assumed the driver must have made the call, but he has no way of knowing.
00:38:44
That is his story of how they disappeared. How do you, it's like, it's creepy, right?
00:38:48
Yes, it is. It could be real. It absolutely could be real. But I just, as we always do on the show, I just kind of put myself in that position.
00:38:56
And if you think you just witnessed two drownings, you drive away going, hey, you're going to take care of it, right?
00:39:03
Like, I don't, I can't relate to that. I personally can't relate to that. I understand they would have had to get to a phone.
00:39:09
There's a lot of things involved because it was 1973 or whatever it was. But I just don't like treating it like it was an errand that you're going to kind of shift off of yourself and onto a different person seems cold at best.
00:39:25
Yeah. For sure. So Strever and Kilgallen, they meet up with this guy, Alan, and they drive him up and down the section of the Susquehanna area that he says it happened. But Alan says nothing looks familiar to him. You know, it's been so long.
00:39:42
Yeah. On top of that, there were never any bodies found in that region that matched Bonnie and
00:39:48
Mitchell's descriptions. While Striever and Kilgallen do find Allen to be a quote,
00:39:53
credible witness, there's no real way to confirm his story. So lacking any hard evidence though,
00:39:58
Mitchell and Bonnie's families do find it hard to have any closure with this theory.
00:40:02
And of course, doubts remain in their mind. Like it's a convenient story, but there's no proof of
00:40:09
it whatsoever. Yeah. And I mean, it's completely understandable that the family's not satisfied by
00:40:14
that. And it's purely speculation of what else could be going on. But after all that time being
00:40:23
told that where it's like, oh, there's some people who witnessed them drown and just didn't
00:40:30
let anybody know. But now we're going to let you know because 30 or 40 years have passed. It just
00:40:36
doesn't really track. Yeah. Well, he says it's because he saw the missing persons episode and
00:40:42
realizes that, you know, I guess like there wouldn't have been a lot of ways for him to
00:40:45
look it up on the internet and see what the outcome had been. True. And also, you know,
00:40:49
that person did reach out when they did. Like, I don't mean to be judgmental of that person. I just,
00:40:55
it all is like very odd. Yeah. I don't think if I had been a family member would have been like
00:41:01
satisfied and able to move on from that description alone. Unfortunately, the next year,
00:41:08
September 11th happens. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, of course, it occupies all of the
00:41:13
NYPD's personnel and resources. And so once again, Mitchell's and Bonnie's case is left by the
00:41:19
wayside. It isn't until 2011 that a new detective, Detective Cyrus Barnes of Sullivan County is
00:41:26
handed the case. He looks into the drowning story, but unlike Strever and Kilgallen, he finds Alan's
00:41:33
story to be full of holes. During the time in which he supposedly watched Bonnie and Mitchell
00:41:38
drown, Alan was actually in the Navy. I don't know if that means he was overseas or what, but
00:41:44
he was in the Navy. And he says, quote, it just made no sense. Then Detective Barnes gets a random
00:41:50
call from a woman in Florida in 2013 who grew up in Wayne New York She believes her father may have killed Bonnie and Mitchell She says her father was a serial predator who assaulted her and then used her to lure in other kids for him to assault
00:42:07
And her story is plausible enough for Detective Barnes to look into. They go to Wayne, New York,
00:42:12
which is actually interesting because another psychic had called in and said they'd need like
00:42:16
the name Wayne, that maybe the perpetrator was named Wayne had come into their mind and it's
00:42:22
Wayne County. So it's kind of interesting or a coincidence. This woman points police to two
00:42:28
possible burial sites in Wayne. They excavate both areas. No remains are found in either place.
00:42:35
And so the case is handed off once again to a different Sullivan County detective in late 2021,
00:42:40
early 2022. So recently. That's Jack Harb. So Harb has refused to discuss the case publicly
00:42:49
or share any reports because, according to Mitchell's sister Susan, Harb, quote,
00:42:55
believes publicity could prompt responses from new sources that he would have to track down and investigate.
00:43:02
So he's not publicizing it because he thinks it would create new leads that he has to then, like, what the fuck?
00:43:10
That's police work. That's exactly what police work is. Well, but is he trying to say he's going to go track down the sources that he already has and that he doesn't want?
00:43:18
new ones. I don't know. But what could be new at this point? You know how it is people like,
00:43:24
you know, a wife at the time who covered for her husband, who was a monster, is now free to say
00:43:31
what she wants to say. My question is, why is he talking about it at all then if he doesn't want
00:43:36
to talk about it? Like, why would that even be a story or be a thing? I just think that also what
00:43:41
we found is publicity on a case never hurts if it's done the right way for the right reasons.
00:43:47
Well, it seems like that's a broad generalization of never hurts, right? It's publicity.
00:43:52
If it does the right thing. It can do a lot of things. Yeah. That's true. Publicity is publicity.
00:43:58
But I hear what you're saying is that he's almost trying to prevent a thing that he can't control anyway.
00:44:05
And then while preventing what he thinks could be potential problems, he's preventing potential solutions.
00:44:10
Exactly. The wisers and bickwits feel like it's a dismissal. so after all this time authorities do not appear to be any closer to solving the mystery of what
00:44:20
happened to bonnie bickwit and mitchell weiser 50 years later and with the coming of the 50th
00:44:25
anniversary of summer jam their high school friends are hoping internet chatter might draw
00:44:30
more eyes under the case once again and prompt a new lead bonnie and mitchell's parents are long
00:44:36
since deceased as are many of the potential witnesses who could have pointed authorities
00:44:41
in the right direction, but their high school friends still want closure. When John Dewey's
00:44:46
graduating class of 1975, which would have been Mitchell's class, they had their 25-year reunion
00:44:51
in 2000 and they planted a Norwegian red crimson maple tree in honor of their missing friends.
00:44:57
The plaque beneath the tree reads, Mitch Weiser, Bonnie Bickwit, we still miss you,
00:45:03
classes of 74 and 75. Another 25 years later, the sentiment still remains. It's all still there.
00:45:11
The summer of 1973 is etched into their hearts and minds as the summer all of their lives changed.
00:45:17
Mitchell's old best friend, Stuart Carton, still operates a website. It's mitchellandbonnie.com,
00:45:24
and that's M-I-T-C-H-E-L and Bonnie, B-O-N-N-I-E, to keep their story alive in hopes that someone
00:45:30
might come forward with new information. When he reflects on his decades-long search for answers,
00:45:36
he says he keeps up hope, quote, because if the tables were turned, that's what Mitchell would do,
00:45:43
end quote. And that is the story of the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell
00:45:47
Weiser. Man. Yeah, go read that Rolling Stone article. It's really detailed and fascinating.
00:45:53
Also, just like that theory, the woman coming forward and talking about her father at the time
00:45:59
and that it's in time and place is accurate that idea of like if somebody who's already not okay
00:46:06
so like that woman was claiming her father was like a serial abuser whatever and then there's
00:46:12
all these people jamming the streets of their town or county and that they're not used to being
00:46:18
around and it's like that people are getting fired up and getting pissed off and we can't get out of
00:46:23
our driveway because these people, these people, I mean, that piece is so much more realistically
00:46:30
kind of trackable than, than that other one. I mean, people were just so much more trusting
00:46:36
back then. Like you'd go into someone's car hitchhiking or you'd spend the night at someone's
00:46:42
house. There was a stranger that let you because you were in town for this concert. You know,
00:46:46
it could, it could be anything. I think the craziest part is like, they don't even know
00:46:51
if they made it to that concert. So the area that they have to look of where they went missing is so
00:46:57
large. Yeah. It's just, it sounds overwhelming and just awful. Yeah, really does. And so tragic
00:47:04
because clearly they're just two very special teenagers, like mature, intelligent, caring,
00:47:13
all those things. Yeah. Who knows what they could have done with their lives. what a loss yeah total well great job thank you although frustrating i just like those ones are
00:47:25
awful the cold ones that you know i love yeah i mean but are important like you say it's like
00:47:31
i do think that is the huge benefit of the true crime wave is that it has enabled citizen sleuths
00:47:41
to take things into their own hands. And if in a case like this, where the police are either saying they're not working on it
00:47:49
or they're going to work on it to their own taste and nobody else gets to be involved or hear about it,
00:47:54
then it would be very helpful for people to, maybe people who are locals, people who grew up,
00:48:00
up there, people who know anything, like to be assembling some sort of investigation.
00:48:06
Well, it happens with these Citizens Loose where they're obsessed with the case and they're able
00:48:10
to match up remains that were found 30 years ago with missing people that are still being looked
00:48:17
for. And once you're able to do that, you're able to try to solve the case somehow. Once you have
00:48:22
any answers, like where did they end up? What part of the town or what part of the county were they
00:48:27
in, that's sort of how they die, then you can kind of start to put the pieces together,
00:48:31
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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Well, good job. Thank you. Are you making a left turn?
00:50:40
You know I'm going to left turn this thing. Today I'm going to tell you, and you may have heard about these gals already,
00:50:47
But I'm going to tell you about the Soviet Union's all-female bomber regiment that fought off the Nazis during World War II.
00:50:55
They flew under the dark of night so that the German soldiers couldn't see them coming.
00:51:00
They cut their engines on their approach so that the only sound that would give them away was the whoosh of the wind as their planes coasted into bombing position.
00:51:10
position. Likening the sound to a witch's broom, the Nazis gave these women the foreboding nickname
00:51:17
Noctexan, which translates to the Night Witches. This is the story of Marina Reskova and the Night
00:51:27
Witches. Damn. No, I don't know this at all. This is a goodie. So the sources that were used for
00:51:34
today's story are a Vanity Fair article from 2015 called The Little Known Story of the Night Witches
00:51:40
an all-female force in World War II, written by Eric Grundhauser, an article on graydynamics.com
00:51:47
from 2022 entitled Marina Raskova and the Night Witches by Rochelle Momy, and an article from
00:51:54
The Collector entitled Night Witches, the Female Russian Combat Unions of the Sky,
00:52:01
written in 2023 by Jesse Lee Smith. And the rest are in our show notes. I've also seen this mentioned.
00:52:08
There's those kinds of social media feeds where it's like mysterious history or like fascinating history.
00:52:13
Yeah. I've seen that mentioned there where I was immediately like, what is this?
00:52:17
So if you've heard of the Night Witches, but you don't know the details, I'm going to give it to you now.
00:52:22
So this story, as well as World War II, begins in 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland.
00:52:30
The Soviet Union had already entered a non-aggression pact with Germany called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, wherein both countries agreed not to attack each other while they secretly split up the European countries that were lying between them, granting each other influential dominion over an equal share of countries.
00:52:49
I had no idea about that or many things from history, but that is very fascinating to me because that explains a lot from the beginning of World War II.
00:52:59
But just two years later on June 22nd, 1941, as Hitler enacts his plan to rid the world of, quote, Jewish and Slavic races, end quote, Germany breaks their pact and launches an invasion of the Soviet Union with a mission dubbed Operation Barbarossa.
00:53:18
And that operation involves around 10 million combatants, and it'll prove to be the largest land offensive ever waged.
00:53:27
And it isn't long before Germany occupies part of Russia and Stalin is forced to beef up his military might and actually really fight back with force and brute.
00:53:39
A lot of people think that if Hitler hadn't done that, he would have won the war.
00:53:44
You know what I mean? Like you can't double cross Russia. No especially when Russia is literally like what a hundred times bigger than your country Like yeah Okay so while Stalin forms and expands tactical groups of the Red Army like tank regiments and naval infantries and artillery regiments and aviation squads women are almost entirely barred from combat
00:54:06
especially when it comes to the Air Force. Absolutely no women are allowed to serve
00:54:11
in the Russian Air Force. Some are able to fight on land, several even joining sniper teams.
00:54:17
Many others, of course, aid in unofficial guerrilla capacities like digging tank ditch traps
00:54:23
and creating other obstacles for Germans to contend with. And of course, they're all allowed to do the very difficult work of nursing the injured,
00:54:31
cooking everyone meals, sewing the uniforms, all of that. But these women have lost husbands, brothers, fathers, their homes, their cities,
00:54:41
their overall safety to these Nazis in this Nazi invasion. So the women of Russia want to fight back, literally,
00:54:49
especially the female pilots that are in Russia. There are many Russian women who can fly.
00:54:56
And so these women begin to reach out to the one woman who they know can help, a decorated flyer and national hero with a direct connection to Joseph Stalin, a woman named Colonel Marina Raskova.
00:55:07
So we'll talk about her for a second. She was born on March 28, 1912 in Moscow as Marina Malinina.
00:55:17
And young Marina dreams of following in her father's footsteps of becoming an opera singer.
00:55:23
But in 1919, she's just seven years old and her father is hit by a motorcycle. And the infection that sets in from those injuries ultimately kills him.
00:55:34
So over the next couple of years, the family's money dwindles. And Marina, of course, wants to help her mother financially.
00:55:41
So she changes her focus and she starts studying engineering and chemistry. And she graduates from high school in 1929 and promptly goes to work a chemist job at a dye factory.
00:55:53
The same year, she marries her co-worker, a man named Sergei Raskov. And the year after that, in 1930, they have a daughter named Tanya.
00:56:01
So shortly after her daughter's birth, Marina gets accepted to the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, which is a sanctioned school of the Soviet Air Force.
00:56:12
And she trains to be a draftswoman who's the person who draws up technical plans for aircraft.
00:56:18
And she quickly excels. So she falls in love with aviation. She's very good at it.
00:56:23
After just one year of schooling, she becomes an instructor. And during this time, she's learning how to fly a plane herself.
00:56:30
By 1933, she becomes the first Soviet woman to graduate as an aviator navigator.
00:56:36
And a year later in 1934, she becomes the first Soviet woman to become a pilot instructor.
00:56:42
So she learns and then starts teaching immediately. Wow. She's smart. Marina is sent to the Central Flying Club in Tuchino, and she officially earns her pilot's
00:56:54
license in August of 1935. This is also the year she gets divorced, which allows her to fully focus
00:57:02
on her career. So this woman is a trailblazer in pretty much any possible way that she can be,
00:57:07
it seems. She's got her pilot's license in hand. She racks up hours of flight experience.
00:57:13
She's constantly challenging herself to push it to the limit, and it's not long before she starts setting international flight records.
00:57:22
On October 24th, 1937, she sets the female world record for a nonstop long distance flight of roughly 898 miles, which she earned alongside fellow female pilot Valentina Grisa Dubova.
00:57:36
The next year in 1938, Marina beats her own records from the previous year, including a September 24th to 25th flight from Moscow to Komsolsk that spans over 4,000 miles.
00:57:50
This flight was taken again with Valentina Gris Odubova and a third female pilot named Polina Osipenko.
00:58:01
So Marina's achievements earn her the Order of Lenin Award and the Hero of the Soviet Union Award, a gold star medal seen as the highest distinction in the Soviet Union at the time.
00:58:14
She's dubbed the Soviet Amelia Earhart. So kind of explaining all those things, it's like the way they suddenly were allowing her to do these things and get these flights.
00:58:25
Amelia Earhart had been making news. Right. And so she becomes the Soviet Amelia Earhart and her achievements grant her the opportunity to meet Stalin.
00:58:35
And he shows great admiration for Marina. She's even recognized with a commemorative stamp that was issued in 1939.
00:58:43
The Soviet Union has a lot of pride in Marina and she has a lot of pride in her country.
00:58:49
And just in time, too, because 1939 is right when she and her skills and her expertise are needed.
00:58:56
so cut to 1941 marina answers the call of her fellow soviet women and she starts to lobby
00:59:04
to allow women to join the war effort she speaks directly with stalin and because he has so much
00:59:10
respect for her she convinces him to allow women to be eligible for the draft and then on october
00:59:17
8th 1941 stalin goes a step further and lets marina form three all-female aviation squadrons
00:59:24
with her marina at the helm. Wow. So now thousands of Soviet women from the ages of 17 to 26 enlist,
00:59:31
only roughly a thousand are chosen to serve. And those chosen are sent to Ingalls, which is a small
00:59:37
town in Saratov Oblast for training. And they learn how to fly or to improve on their existing
00:59:44
flight knowledge. And they're also trained in plane maintenance and in navigation. Now, ordinarily,
00:59:50
this kind of training would take 18 months but given the urgent need the program is accelerated and these women finish in just six months Once their training is complete Marina separates the newly minted pilots into three different all regiments
01:00:06
The best pilots are assigned to the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment. The second best ones are
01:00:13
assigned to the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment. And the third best are assigned to the 588
01:00:20
night bomber aviation regiment. So the 586th regiment is led by Commander Tamara Kazurinova.
01:00:29
But when enemy fire takes out a large number of the pilots in that regiment, another commander by
01:00:36
the name of Alexander Grindov steps in. Marina commands the 587th regiment herself and a major
01:00:45
Yevdoia Bershanskaya leads the 588th Knight Regiment. As the war rages on, the 588th becomes
01:00:55
a standout regiment. They're the only one to remain all female. Everyone from the pilots to
01:01:01
the navigators to the commanders to the mechanics. Wow. All women. And now this part's going to shock
01:01:08
you, Georgia. Just because these women are granted unprecedented access in the Soviet Air Force,
01:01:13
It doesn't mean that they are respected by their male peers or the senior staff.
01:01:19
Come on. You're surprised and you're hurt. And I'm sorry. Shocked. They aren't given new uniforms.
01:01:25
They have to wear the men's hand-me-downs. And of course, they don't fit. Kind of impedes a soldier if you're wearing really oversized clothes.
01:01:34
In some cases, smaller women are forced to rip up their own bedsheets and stuff them into their boots to keep them from falling off.
01:01:40
That's how bad it is. Oh, my God. Also, the equipment for the 588th Night Bomber Regiment is especially bad.
01:01:47
Because they're the least experienced group, the squad's 260 pilots are stuck flying Polakarpov or PO2 biplanes.
01:01:59
These planes are usually used as training aircraft for new pilots or for crop dusting.
01:02:04
They are definitely not meant for combat. So Jay included a picture of one for me.
01:02:09
It literally looks like one of those biplanes that you would see old newsreel footage of people going standing out on the side of, like trick planes.
01:02:17
Like it's charming. It's very charming looking. You don't think send that to World War II.
01:02:24
Also, the technology in these planes is outdated. They move very slowly. They're dangerously lightweight.
01:02:30
The seats for the pilot and the navigator are completely uncovered, so there's no protection whatsoever when they're in them.
01:02:36
On top of that, these planes can't fly very high, so they have to execute their combat missions flying very low and close to the enemy.
01:02:46
Basically, being an airwoman with the 588th is about as dangerous as it could possibly be.
01:02:52
And here's the kicker. These planes are made of wood and canvas. What? That's not real.
01:02:59
That's a toy. Isn't that insane? So basically, they're insanely flammable. one spark could basically set the whole plane on fire yeah they're flying them through action so
01:03:12
bullets and bombs are lighting up the sky around them so them catching on fire is highly likely
01:03:18
still the women of the 588th regiment do what most women do which is they make the best of
01:03:25
what they've been given so here's how the night witches operate once darkness falls
01:03:30
three PO2 planes take off together in formation. And as they approach their enemy target,
01:03:36
the two outer planes peel off in opposite directions and they act as decoys, drawing
01:03:41
the attention of the Nazi searchlights and ground guns below. When the moment is right,
01:03:47
the navigator in the third remaining plane taps the pilot's shoulder and the pilot cuts the engine.
01:03:54
And then that allows them to glide over the target unseen and unheard, but nothing but the whoosh in the wings of the plane to betray their presence.
01:04:06
At this point, it's already too late because that plane is dropping bombs on unsuspecting Nazis below.
01:04:13
So they're truly just coming out of nowhere. Like there's no way the ground forces looking up can see what's happening.
01:04:21
Yeah. In one night, they will repeat this process three times, with each plane taking a turn in the center position to drop the bombs.
01:04:29
Then all three planes return to base to be loaded up again for another outing. And because these planes are so light, each one can only hold two bombs at a time.
01:04:39
So in order to cover as much ground as possible, the pilots have to fly anywhere from 8 to 18 air raids in one night.
01:04:47
No. Uh-huh. On top of that, the planes expose the women pilots to bitter cold during the hours and hours of flight every night.
01:04:56
Many of the pilots and the navigators suffer from frostbite over the course of the war.
01:05:02
Plus, these planes are so outdated, they don't have proper navigational equipment, so these navigators are forced to rely on compasses and maps as they're flying in this plane bombing the enemy.
01:05:14
Here's my least favorite detail. The strict weight limits of these planes mean the pilots cannot carry parachutes aboard.
01:05:22
So if they're hit and they need to bail, they can't. Later days. Bye. But PO2 planes do have some advantages.
01:05:30
They're lightweight, so they're easier to maneuver. They're fairly quiet and they can safely drift with the engine off, which allows for their trademark stealthy approach.
01:05:39
I bet if they had like more modern in the time planes, they couldn't pull the shit off, right?
01:05:46
No, these things are like, it's like a box kite coming in and bombing your shit.
01:05:50
Yeah. The design of these planes also allows them to take off and land basically anywhere and they make emergency landings easier And the wood and the canvas construction while dangerous while in combat also make it so that German radar cannot detect them
01:06:07
So it's kind of ideal in those ways. So the silent attacks with basically only a whooshing sound
01:06:14
warning the enemy is what earns these pilots the nickname the Night Witches. But cutting the
01:06:21
engine isn't their only stealth tactic. These bomber pilots don't use any lights on their
01:06:26
aircraft at all. They use the light of the moon and the stars to guide them. Damn, that's romantic.
01:06:34
So they're astrology girlies, or sorry, astronomy girlies. A rumor starts that they're using some
01:06:40
sort of chemical in their eyes or a pill that gives them cat-like night vision. But that,
01:06:46
of course, none of that is true. It's just the hours of intense training at night
01:06:50
that has enabled their eyes to adjust to this darkness and take care of the job at hand.
01:06:56
The Night Witches become so deadly and so deeply feared by the Germans that shooting down a Night Witch's plane will instantly earn a Nazi soldier an Iron Cross medal,
01:07:06
which is one of Germany's highest military honors. So they were known, they were feared, and they were like, it's like you have to get them at any cost.
01:07:15
Yeah. But many of the male soldiers from the other regiments in the Soviet army can't seem to take the female pilots seriously, even though the danger they're facing in the battle as they serve their country is equal to that of their male counterparts.
01:07:33
If not riskier because they have big oversized clothes, no parachutes, like no cover.
01:07:40
So many obstacles. Yes. They're basically dancing backward in high heels, but okay, fine.
01:07:45
You can just make jokes and be a dick about it. It doesn't really matter, though, because whatever anyone wants to say about the 588th to soothe their own ego, these women's bravery and tenacity is unmatched.
01:07:58
So here's an example. One night in December of 1942, a pilot named Nina Raspopova is in the midst of an air raid when an anti-aircraft ground missile hits her plane and rips the entire floor of her cockpit away.
01:08:13
It's like Flintstone's car. Exactly. So it says now with her legs dangling out of the bottom of the plane while blood is dripping out of her shrapnel wound, Nina does her best to regain orientation.
01:08:25
But the German searchlight finds her in the night sky and it blinds her momentarily.
01:08:30
If she doesn't regain control fast, of course, her plane will crash. And if she's lucky enough to survive a crash landing, she's going to be in enemy territory and she will become a Nazi prisoner of war, which is worst case scenario.
01:08:44
knowing that how much they hate and fear the night witches because you know it pisses them off if
01:08:49
they have in any way found out that these planes that are so scary that are killing them are women
01:08:55
you know it's it's over yeah with all these possibilities looming over nina she suddenly
01:09:01
gets a glimpse of her own regiment's runway floodlight she's able to write the damaged plane
01:09:07
she points herself in the direction of home base and she's somehow able to land in neutral territory
01:09:13
The landing's rough. She and her navigator both survive. They both make it back to camp where Nina is rushed into surgery.
01:09:21
It does take her a few months to fully recover from her injuries, but then she goes right back to her plane to fly more missions.
01:09:28
So while Marina Raskova, who I was talking about in the beginning, is credited for establishing all three female aviation regiments, the Night Witches of the 588th ultimately fall under the command of Major Yevdokia Bershankshaya.
01:09:46
You got this. You're Russian. Get this. I speak Russian. I mean, I have very clear phonetic spelling in front of me and it's still hard to pronounce. That's crazy.
01:09:58
You're Irish. You don't need to. With years of flying experience prior to World War II, including fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Major Berkshanskaya is one of the only female officers and one of the only female pilots who actually has combat experience.
01:10:16
When she's put in charge of the 588th, she implements a strict kind of a tough love leadership style.
01:10:23
And I mean, what else was there in the Soviet Union? Was there a Montessori style that was happening?
01:10:30
Well, it would be a union in the war. It's like, you're not getting coddled. That's not a thing.
01:10:34
Don't come here for love. We don't have it to give. Under her guidance, what was considered the least skilled regiment becomes the most feared regiment.
01:10:46
And one of the many star pupils of that monumental force is a woman named Nadeshta Popova.
01:10:53
So Nadeshta loses her brother in the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941,
01:10:59
and then her home is commandeered by the Gestapo, so she becomes hell-bent on fighting the Nazis
01:11:05
herself. She's one of the first women to voluntarily enlist in the Soviet Air Force,
01:11:10
and when she's accepted into the 588th, she's thrilled. On her first mission, however,
01:11:16
a plane in her outfit goes down and two of her close friends are killed. but Nadesha still completes that mission, dropping bombs that destroy their Nazi targets.
01:11:26
So she watches her friends die. She still gets the job done. And from that day on,
01:11:32
flying these combat missions become a welcome distraction from her grief. Nadesha Popova
01:11:38
becomes one of the most prolific flyers for the Night Witches, completing a total of 852 missions
01:11:45
over the course of the war. And she holds the regiment's record for the most bomb raids in one night.
01:11:53
18. Wow. Like I can't function without a nap during the day. I was gonna say, when's the last time you did something 18?
01:12:00
times ever. No. In one night. It was like, if you left a bar to go to 7-Eleven and get chips,
01:12:07
like I would be like, I'm not doing that more than three times. Now I'm pissed. Nadesha is shot down several times over the course of her career. She survives every time.
01:12:17
She eventually works her way up to regiment deputy commander. She survives the war. She goes on to
01:12:24
live a long and storied life until her passing in 2013 at age 91. Wow. Yeah. So after World War II
01:12:33
is over, Major Bershynskaya, who is the one who had her tough love style, she was the one that
01:12:39
was training the night witches. She continues her military career. She eventually earns the rank of
01:12:45
lieutenant colonel. Then she retires from the Soviet Air Force in 1959. She passes away from
01:12:51
a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 69. But without her guidance, the Night Witches would
01:12:57
never have become the monumental force that they became in World War II. The Night Witches operations
01:13:03
last from June of 1942 until October of 1945. And by war's end, these female pilots of the 588th
01:13:12
regiment alone logged a total of 2,672 combat missions. Holy shit. They dropped over 3 tons of bombs and 26 incendiary shells successfully destroying 17 river crossings nine railways two railway stations 26 warehouses 12 fuel depots 176 armored cars 86 prepared firing positions 11 searchlights all of which the Nazis relied on during their occupation of the Soviet Union
01:13:47
So they just got rid of it. But also the Night Witches did drops where they supplied food and ammunition to their fellow Soviet soldiers on the ground.
01:13:57
And they did that 155 different times. Sadly, the founder of the Night Witches and of all of these female flying regiments, Marina Raskova, was not as lucky to live a long life as her colleagues were.
01:14:14
on January 4th, 1943, while she's leading two squadrons on a mission, a severe snowstorm kicks
01:14:21
up and she is forced to make an emergency landing near the Volga River. But as she does,
01:14:26
she crashes into the river's high West Bank wall and she's killed. And she's only 31 years old.
01:14:32
Only 31. She's only 31. Wow. But the good news is her bravery, her vision, her leadership is fully recognized by the Soviet
01:14:41
Union, she will be the first member of the Soviet military to receive a Soviet state
01:14:46
funeral from World War II, and her ashes are buried in the necropolis of the Moscow Kremlin
01:14:52
Wall in Red Square. And in addition to all the military honors that she received during her life, she's posthumously
01:14:59
awarded the Order of the Patriotic War I class for her heroics And Marina Raskova is still remembered today as a legendary pilot the Soviet Amelia Earhart and the mother of the Night Witches
01:15:12
And that's the story of Marina Raskova and the Night Witches. Damn. Good night, bitches.
01:15:19
Good night, bitches. It's the Night Witches. It's the Night Witches. Wow. Right?
01:15:26
Powerful. Powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, great job. Fascinating story. Never heard of that one before.
01:15:33
Thank you guys for listening and being with us and hanging out. And we hope you have a great
01:15:40
break. We'll still be with you. Yeah, that's right. Stay night, witchy. Stay sexy.
01:15:45
And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:16:00
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
01:16:05
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:16:13
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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