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00:01:52
Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgareff.
00:02:01
The podcasting begins now. And now we start to talk about true crime. Go. Now. Now. Now talk
00:02:08
about it. Now. But in a funny, lighthearted way. But not too lighthearted. But not too lighthearted.
00:02:16
Well, here's something that we can talk about in a purely conversational way, which is how this podcast was founded. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who is basically how everybody
00:02:27
in this country learned about Munchausen's by proxy syndrome, is going to be paroled. Now,
00:02:33
if you don't know that story and you are listening to this podcast, you have some catching up to do.
00:02:40
Yeah. And you could start with that HBO documentary, Mommy, Dead and Dearest, which is great. So good.
00:02:46
And then I think there's also a scripted version. The story itself is so beyond belief.
00:02:52
Yeah. It's the kind of thing where you're like, how could this go on for so long? You're like,
00:02:55
I know why it could go on for so long. Because can you imagine accusing a mother of making her
00:03:01
own child sick on purpose, basically, because she has that disease? It's unheard of. It's unbelievable. It happened. And the fallout and consequences that led to
00:03:14
the daughter, Gypsy Rose, in prison is also wild. I mean, I hope she can live a full happy life
00:03:21
now, but maybe, yeah, I'm sure she's gotten a lot of therapy. Right. And basically get a chance to live a life as the person she is supposed to be
00:03:31
under her own agency. It's just extreme abuse, extreme psychological and medical abuse. That's
00:03:41
a thing. Maybe. Physical, for sure. Physical, for sure. Yeah. Wild. Terrible. Wishing well for her.
00:03:47
The thing I was thinking about recently, because I was thinking about a different
00:03:50
story that we have been talking about now, I can't remember which one it was. It was one of those
00:03:55
driving in the car, like, God, that's weird. And basically, it's that idea. And maybe because my
00:04:02
mom was a psychiatric nurse growing up, so this was a little bit more in the common conversation.
00:04:08
But that idea that there are these very rare kind of syndromes that people can have.
00:04:16
Something like Munchausen's by proxy, which is like, takes you to this unimaginable area.
00:04:22
Yeah. But it is possible in the realm of possibility of why a person might be doing a thing they're doing.
00:04:28
Because it's happened enough times that there's an actual name for it and it's in the DSM.
00:04:34
It's not like, you know, this rare thing that nobody knows about. It's an actual.
00:04:39
It's not a one off. Right. Yeah. Which is like, holy shit. Yeah. What's another one that your mom was interested in?
00:04:46
Are you fascinated? Oh, my mom was always. Well, my mom was very loosey goosey with it conversationally because she'd always be like,
00:04:54
if somebody was like yelling in the grocery store in a weird way, she had this thing of
00:04:59
going, I think they've gone organic. That's like if you've gone organic. brain matter has started to turn to us. It's gone organic. I think it's a medical term. It wasn't a
00:05:08
joke term. She was always very serious about it. She wasn't judging people either. She was literally
00:05:14
kind of giving them their diagnosis. And then if something was actually happening, she'd be one of
00:05:19
the first people to like go over and be like, excuse me, my name's Pat. Do you need help? Like
00:05:24
she would get, oh yeah. She was the queen of getting into business. No, it was, it was so
00:05:30
normal that it just kind of felt like, well, she's the one that handles stuff like this.
00:05:34
Yeah. See, I guess when my mom did it and she wasn't a nurse, it was like, mom, leave those people alone. Your mom's an actual like professional. My mom would just
00:05:43
yell at someone else's kid to stop screaming in public. Looking back, she's not, she wasn't wrong.
00:05:51
Right In some ways Right No my mom wouldn ever she would let it get to the level where instead of having the police come maybe we see if we can solve this with like the grocery store manager and or whatever Wow Good for your mom Because she saw the other side of that all the time
00:06:06
Yeah, totally. It wasn't a big deal to her. I just watched the new documentary about Jimmy Savile.
00:06:11
I don't know why I insist on continuing to watch documentaries about him. Like I, he's the fucking awful, once famous, now hated pedophile from the UK.
00:06:21
He had a key at Broadmoor, which we talked about Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane, as it's called. And I don't know why I keep watching documentaries about him. So upsetting.
00:06:34
You want to hear my guess? Yeah. It's because he is an apex predator. Yeah. So it's kind of like watching something about great white sharks where you're just like,
00:06:41
oh, wow, I hope I never swim in that part of the ocean or whatever. Right. But it's like, that's the kind of person where you go, okay, what is this?
00:06:48
That's very similar to, I just watched the documentary on Netflix. Now we really, by the way, we can talk about all these things now because the strike for
00:06:56
writers. Yeah. The strike has ended. I just watched the unscripted documentary series on Netflix about the Boy Scouts.
00:07:05
Oh, shit. Like, in general? Oh, no. So we're in the same mindset of, like... We've gone to the same dark, dark mindset.
00:07:13
It's... Because somebody was talking about it just going, it's just kind of staggering, like...
00:07:17
And I think this is what's interesting these days, is, like, Jimmy Savile was a very popular
00:07:25
British host of like kind of a teen. What I remember from that, the documentary I saw was
00:07:31
like a dance show. So it'd be like Rick Dees, who like, I know isn't famous anymore, but like for us,
00:07:37
he's famous to us from our era. He's like the Carson Daly beloved. The last person you'd expect.
00:07:45
It's that exactly, which is what they always do. Right. But he was like, he talked, like they could
00:07:51
show interview after interview of him saying the most inappropriate, basically admitting that he's
00:07:56
into young girls and, and sexual assault, like over and over and over. And we go, Oh, you,
00:08:03
Oh, Jimmy, our Jimmy. Like nobody wanted to know that that was an issue back then. Nobody wanted
00:08:09
to acknowledge it. It was until the like late nineties, this document talks about that a child
00:08:14
sexual abuse, like police force even came about because they were like, well, that's not, nobody
00:08:19
does that. That's not a problem. And it's none of our business. And the guy who was the head of
00:08:23
that team even said, well, everyone thought it was like a woman's problem, like for women to deal
00:08:27
with. It's so troubling. To add to that, I was just going to say, it makes me think of when
00:08:34
everyone started talking about Sinead O'Connor, when Sinead O'Connor died and like everybody
00:08:38
talking about she was such a great fighter and such a whatever. And it's like, I remember Dave
00:08:42
Holmes tweeted this thing where it's like, she was fucking right the first time. This is almost
00:08:47
insulting at this point to pretend that everybody was so, what a great fighter. It's like, no one
00:08:53
says that real time, especially about women. It's always, oh, shut up. She's making a problem. Oh,
00:08:58
she's crazy, whatever. Sinead O'Connor was fighting that. She was one of the only people
00:09:03
actually saying it. And the context was out of context because in Ireland and also in the UK,
00:09:10
like that discussion of child sexual assault in the Catholic church had just begun. It had
00:09:17
not begun. The spotlight story that we all know is that movie had not started yet. So like that
00:09:25
whole idea of, it was so easy to just go, how dare you? The Pope is Breon reproach or the Catholic
00:09:31
church. How dare you say a word? And it's like, no, I dare. And she herself was a victim. So she's
00:09:38
like, yeah, I'm talking about it. This needs to be discussed. Well, it's crazy to like applaud
00:09:41
someone for being a fighter when like they fought because they had to. No one's like trying to be a
00:09:46
fight? Or they're like, I'm trying to do a thing and you're making me fight you. How is that? Like,
00:09:51
how am I being applauded for still standing up for what's right? Yeah. Well, and also it's like,
00:09:57
everybody does that after the fact. Right. I think people, because back then, pre-digital age,
00:10:04
truly, it was just like, no one knew anything and everyone was allowed to quote unquote,
00:10:08
not know things and just be like, what? We don't know what you're talking about.
00:10:12
And this day and age, how could you not see? How could you not know? Yeah. Well, anyways, I'm taking my vitamins and I'm feeling a lot better late.
00:10:23
Oh, good. Good. Speaking of. Way to put a silver lining on that. Thank you. Horrifying conversation.
00:10:31
I know. I don't know how else to scooch out of it. But no, I think that was a great one just to do a little integration for some sort of vitamin company.
00:10:40
Yeah. Right. This isn't a commercial. I just say that to say that like, you know, everyone's like, take your vitamins, you'll feel better.
00:10:45
Take your vitamins, you'll feel better. Like I've started taking my vitamins begrudgingly and I am not at the depressions a lot better.
00:10:51
Good. That's how that relates to the conversation we're just having is I've been less depressed lately, even though I watch it like that.
00:10:58
Are you taking magnesium? Is that one of the... Magnesium is the fucking cure all.
00:11:03
Everyone take your magnesium as Carrie has said before. Also though, citrate, exactly.
00:11:08
Check what kind of magnesium you need. You're just like my sister. My sister did the same thing where I was like, because I was taking it when I couldn't sleep
00:11:16
and it was working like a charm, but also the calming effects. It has the anxiety.
00:11:21
I told my sister who has been an anxious person since she was a child. And she was like, no way.
00:11:29
This is crazy. Like, she's like, this is insane. I told my mom. I told my mom to take it.
00:11:34
It's such an important thing. Get your blood tests done every year, you guys, and check your hormones and your levels.
00:11:39
Cause it could just be like you're low on vitamin D and that's why you have clinical,
00:11:44
not that I still have clinical depression. I'm still on my medication and I'll never not be, but like you're not helping yourself.
00:11:51
Yes. There's ways to help yourself. There's ways. What else up with you? Not much else I got my teeth clean this morning It been a little while not a crazy amount of time but since like the beginning of the year and it feels so good It just I forgot Yeah
00:12:08
When you get everything like just scraped off real good. And now's the day to whiten them too,
00:12:13
because they're like, they're like fresh raw babies. They're down to the bone. I got these
00:12:21
big fake ones. I don't know how much that actually applies, but you'll never have to
00:12:25
whiten your teeth again. You've got the nice ones. These big fakies, but she did use that
00:12:31
when they go to polish and it's that super gritty toothpaste that they use. I don't know why,
00:12:37
but I have loved that since I was a child. Did I already tell you that? It's like an exfoliation.
00:12:42
No, I didn't know that. Yeah. I actually, when I was a kid, asked our dentist, Dr. Brown,
00:12:46
if I could please buy some, if he could tell me where I could buy some. And he laughed so hard.
00:12:51
He was, and I completely meant it. I wasn't trying to be cute. Cause I was just like,
00:12:55
how good would it feel if I could brush my teeth with this stuff every night? You could use baking soda and some water, right? That's gritty.
00:13:01
Yeah. But it's probably not good for your teeth to scrape the enamel off every night.
00:13:05
Yeah. I don't know. And also baking soda is so salty. That's true. That stuff is like the perfect weird, it feels like something you should be putting on a car
00:13:16
or something. And it's like, and yet it tastes like bubble gum. It's so delicious. Oh God.
00:13:23
So disgusting. Yeah. That's my breaking news. What about you? I'm reading a book. It's historical
00:13:28
fiction, which is my absolute favorite topic ever. And it was like always on the list,
00:13:33
like best historical fiction. You should, it's the same with vitamins. Like you should do this.
00:13:36
And I like, I don't want to do it then. Then I'm not going to read that book. Then I'm not going
00:13:39
take my vitamins. And then I do it and I'm like, oh. So it's called A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor
00:13:45
Tolles, T-O-W-L-E-S. It's this beautiful book. It takes place between World War I and World War II
00:13:52
about a guy in house arrest in a hotel in Moscow. It's incredible. There's so much cool historical
00:14:00
facts about it. And then I found out the guy who's been booked to play, oh wait, can I talk
00:14:06
about the actor shit. But if you do a cliffhanger and you say you found out who it is and will tell
00:14:11
you once the sag strike is over. Yeah. So start reading it now. And it like fits perfectly. And
00:14:16
I love this actor. So I'm like, well, okay. Now I'm picturing him when I'm listening to the book
00:14:21
and it's lovely. It's a beautiful fucking book. A Gentleman in Moscow. Okay. I think I started
00:14:25
that book because that's one of the books on my dad's guest room nightstand. It's a total dad book
00:14:30
for sure. Okay. Like my brother who's a dad has read it. Oh, nice. Okay. That's a good one.
00:14:36
All right. Should we get into some network news? Let's do it. Network news. That's funny.
00:14:40
Oh, you love that show. Over on the Exactly Right Podcast Network, we've got a bunch of stuff going on. For example,
00:14:47
this week, Kate and Paul discussed the 1894 murder of the Meeks family on buried bones.
00:14:53
And they're going to be untangling all the details of one of the most horrific crimes
00:14:57
in Missouri's history on that episode. And then on this podcast, We'll Kill You, Aaron and Aaron are covering everything you need to
00:15:04
know about migraines. Fascinating. Every time I see a new topic they're doing, I get excited.
00:15:10
It's such a great podcast. Yeah. So much good information over there. And if you love listening
00:15:15
to the weird news podcast, Bananas, or the SVU podcast, That's Messed Up, get excited because
00:15:22
they are both heading out on tour this fall. You can go see all of those hilarious people live,
00:15:29
follow their shows on Instagram, and that's where you're going to get all that tour information so
00:15:33
you don't miss them when they come to your town. Great, great live shows. Like so much fun. Yeah.
00:15:37
And if you plan on trick-or-treating on Halloween or a big fan at the farmer's market, hey,
00:15:42
I like both. Head to the MFM store and check out some of our cute tote bags that you can fill with
00:15:47
candy or carrots or whatever you want. MFM tote bags. Hell yeah. Myfavoritemurder.com.
00:15:55
Good one. Good one, Erin. Good one. Like thinking of a new use for those things.
00:15:59
She's bringing it all together. Like, what would interest people in a tote bag? What are murderinos like?
00:16:05
Halloween and farmer's markets and books. Take yours to the library. And then it's just like a trifecta of what murderinos are into.
00:16:13
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00:18:10
All of that available at MeaningfulBeauty.com. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:18:22
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:18:38
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:18:46
And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:18:49
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:18:58
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:19:05
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.
00:19:09
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:20
I'm going first this week. Okay. Exciting. This story that I'm about to tell you, it takes place in the roaring 20s in Los Angeles, California.
00:19:31
Love it. If you watched the first season of Perry Mason, this story will seem familiar to you.
00:19:39
Okay. Frank's kind of punishing me for the fact that he can't be where he wants to be.
00:19:43
What's his deal? He doesn't like that I shut the door when I record in here. But if he comes in, he's loud.
00:19:50
He won't be loud, but Blossom will be loud because she has to bark at people who walk by in the window.
00:19:55
Sure. Anyway, it's a roaring 20s in post-war America. People are reeling from overwhelming death, destruction, and the austerity of World War I.
00:20:05
and of course Americans are now doing everything they can to basically make the most of the fact
00:20:11
that the war is over they're doing a lot of big spending and a lot of heavy partying and young
00:20:17
Americans are pushing back against their parents traditional values basically kind of attributing
00:20:23
those values for getting them into that war in the first place so suddenly traditional religion
00:20:29
is being turned away from and people are exploring spiritualism the occult and mysticism
00:20:35
which become a big part of pop culture at the time. And we did talk about spiritualism in episode 363
00:20:41
when I told you all about the death of Harry Houdini and his fight against spiritualism.
00:20:47
Basically, it was based on the idea that it was possible for certain people to contact the dead.
00:20:53
And so that idea was very comforting for people who'd lost loved ones, but it also spawned a ton of scam artists.
00:21:00
So this is the era that we're in right now. And then the 20s in Los Angeles is having this huge growth spurt between the oil industry and show business.
00:21:11
Both of those industries are like, there's just a boom in Los Angeles. So because of that, people from across the country are being lured to L.A. by this idea of being able to find their fame and fortune in a city like this.
00:21:25
There seems to be opportunity everywhere. And a lot of these transplants fit a certain kind of mold.
00:21:32
They're young, they're idealistic, they're adventurous, they're open-minded. Perhaps because of that, LA residents become very, very interested in the zeitgeisty alternative
00:21:41
spiritual practices that start getting really popular. We love to be on trend in Los Angeles, and we love to pretend that aliens from a volcano
00:21:50
are going to help us get a part on a TV show. That's who we are as people. It's simple, really.
00:21:55
It's been this way since the 20s, since the roaring 20s. So the main source of the story I'm about to tell you is from a book.
00:22:05
It's one book written by a man called Samuel Fort, and it's called The Cult of the Great
00:22:09
Eleven. And Samuel Fort actually has a theory on this. And he thinks that the open-mindedness of many L.A. transplants in the 20s drive an
00:22:20
absolute boom in religious cults during this period because they are everywhere.
00:22:26
And a 20th century religious scholar named Dr. Lewis Brown, who was actually based in Santa Monica, claims that he counted around 400 cults operating in the L.A. metro area in the latter part of the 20s.
00:22:41
Holy shit. 400. 400. 100. So today I'm going to tell you about one of these cults run by a mother-daughter con
00:22:49
artist duo who preyed upon people's hopes of spiritual renewal, eternal life, and of course,
00:22:56
money, money, money. This is the story of Mae Otis Blackburn and her daughter Ruth Weiland Rizzio,
00:23:03
who started the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great 11. Some people call it the Blackburn
00:23:09
cults. That's usually how, if you're going to search it in a true crime way, the Blackburn
00:23:15
cult is what most people call it. But Samuel Fort calls them the cult of the great 11,
00:23:20
because that's the actual name. Blackburn cult is based on the mother's married name.
00:23:25
And so we do what Samuel Fort does because he truly is the primary source of the story I'm
00:23:31
about to tell you. So this is the story of the cult of the great 11. Okay. So it starts in August
00:23:37
August of 1881. That's when May Otis is born in Storm Lake, Iowa. Don't know much about her early
00:23:44
life, but she marries for the first time when she's just 16 years old to a man named John Weiland.
00:23:50
And he is a bummer. Of course, May is very soon disappointed by his gambling and his knack for
00:23:57
basically just taking off and going on long adventures and staying away for a while. So by July of 1899, just two years after
00:24:06
they get married, they separate and Ruth is pregnant. So basically during that separation
00:24:13
trial, John vanishes, May gives birth alone and she names her daughter Ruth. So May starts telling
00:24:21
people that John is dead and she claims that she got a letter from a doctor in California
00:24:25
telling her John was shot and killed in a workplace dispute. Of course, May is under a ton of financial stress as a single mother.
00:24:33
And so she's forced to make a drastic plan. Her parents plan to move from the Midwest to Oregon.
00:24:40
And so she decides to send Ruth, her newborn daughter, to go live with her parents.
00:24:47
Of course, she loves her child. She does not want to be separated from her, especially by such a long distance.
00:24:52
But she is still a teenager. and a single parent. And it is the late 1800s. So she basically has to do what she has to do
00:25:02
to ensure her daughter's survival and safety. She sends her daughter with her parents to Oregon
00:25:08
and she heads to Minnesota to start her life over again. She's both beautiful and charming.
00:25:14
And around 1900, the turn of the century, my favorite time. Hey. Hey, girl. She meets and marries a man named Rudolph Schultz.
00:25:25
I immediately called him Rudy in this document. Rudy is absolutely in love with May,
00:25:29
but that may be in part because May has never told her new husband that she has a daughter, that she already has been married,
00:25:37
that she has a baby. Instead, she tells him she has a baby sister in Portland, Oregon,
00:25:43
who she loves and misses dearly, so much so that she convinces Rudy to move with her to Portland.
00:25:50
And then when they get there, he gets a job that pays him $150 a month. Yeah. That sounds like a lot, right?
00:25:58
Oh, I'll tell you, $150 would be worth $5,500 in today's money. Holy shit. So he's making good money at his new job.
00:26:09
May is able to convince him to give her $125 of those dollars, and he gets to keep $50.
00:26:16
For like upkeep of the house? No, no. Sorry. He gets to keep $25. Girl math. Girl math.
00:26:22
So basically she keeps the overwhelming majority of his paycheck. It's just a kind of a little anecdote that goes toward May's beauty and her maybe manipulation, maybe her just powers of persuasion, whatever it is.
00:26:38
So after five years of marriage in 1906, May comes to Rudy and she has some shocking news.
00:26:44
She tells him she's just found out that her first husband, John, who she thought was dead, is actually alive.
00:26:52
And that means that her marriage to Rudy is invalid because she never ended her first marriage.
00:26:58
She just thought it was over because he was dead. The truth is that May's first husband, John Weiland, was not shot and killed in a workplace dispute in California.
00:27:07
So the doctor's note that May had been showing people at the time was probably faked, probably by her. Rudy desperately wants to make it work with May despite this hitch, but she's already gone.
00:27:21
She basically comes and says, this is an invalid marriage. And then she leaves him, immediately starts dating a married man named Fremont Everett, who also happens to be very, very rich.
00:27:32
and he also spends tons of money on may he gives her entire apartment buildings in portland
00:27:40
buildings plural so she gets the income from those apartment buildings holy shit yeah lovely gift
00:27:47
but may wants more so she keeps dating him but she's also setting her sights on another man
00:27:54
his name is george edward bloom and it turns out may had read an article about george in the
00:28:02
newspaper about how he'd recently won a $3,000 settlement after a workplace accident. And that
00:28:08
settlement is about $90,000 in today's money. So May goes and tracks him down, asks him out,
00:28:15
they date, and then she eventually marries George Bloom. I'm just going to break it to you now.
00:28:20
The marriage does not last. So now it's the mid-1910s. May's daughter, Ruth, is a teenager.
00:28:27
and Ruth knows that May is her biological mother. The two women are very close, but they still refer to each other as sisters.
00:28:36
And when I read that line, I was like, okay, May is definitely a narcissist, if not a malignant narcissist,
00:28:43
because she's doing exactly what she wants, kind of seducing, getting her way, whatever.
00:28:49
But on top of that kind of like, I'm not your mother, I'm your sister. Like what?
00:28:54
Let's be best friends. And she's manipulating everyone. Yeah. So her daughter Ruth is repeatedly described as one of the most beautiful young women in
00:29:03
Portland. Wow. So she's a magnet for male attention. So by the time she's 17 years old, May starts getting ideas.
00:29:11
She's like, I think she could be a movie star. Basically, May takes all her money from, I guess, the apartments and from George Bloom's
00:29:19
injury and from all the different money over the years. And she sinks the bulk of her savings into making two movies for her daughter to star in.
00:29:31
One is called Nugget in the Rough and the other is called A Tale of a Dress. Okay.
00:29:36
And now these movies, I don't think were, I mean, they never, we never heard about them, right?
00:29:43
You've never seen them on TCM. Nugget in the Rough? No, it doesn't ring a bell. not familiar really but they are historically significant because they are some of the first
00:29:53
film ever shot of Portland Oregon oh so it really old footage you know yeah from the tens of Portland which is cool And local people love these movies Like they go to see them they perceived everyone loves them
00:30:08
But beyond that, they don't get marketed nationwide or anything. Local jokes get local work. I tell
00:30:14
you this and I tell you this. Even so, Mae believes Ruth could make it in Hollywood. And she also
00:30:19
thinks she could make it in Hollywood as a director. Let's all go to Hollywood. And we can
00:30:24
all make it in Hollywood if we just believe. So the two leave their lives in Portland and they
00:30:31
relocate to Los Angeles. So when they get there, Ruth does get a couple bit parts in movies,
00:30:38
but she isn't taking Hollywood by storm the way her mother thought. Because what happens to
00:30:44
everyone when they're the prettiest girl in Portland, Oregon, and they move to Los Angeles?
00:30:48
You're a Los Angeles six when you were a Portland nine. You could hope to be a Los Angeles six.
00:30:56
And also, May isn't getting hired as a director anywhere. No shit. A woman in the fucking teens isn't getting hired as a director anywhere.
00:31:05
She's walking and going, it's me, May Weiland Schultz Bloom, the director of Nugget in the Rough.
00:31:10
It's me. Don't you know who I am? Yeah. So to make ends meet, Ruth becomes what's called a taxi dancer. She's a private dancer,
00:31:21
a dancer for money. Do what you want me to do. You know the song. So basically that just means
00:31:28
that she's a hired dance partner who hangs around dance halls and clubs and men pay her based on
00:31:34
the amount of time they spend together. Like you'd pay a cabbie for a taxi. Okay. So it's not exotic
00:31:41
dancing. It's a dance club. It's almost like, you know, the Japanese like hostess clubs where you
00:31:46
sit and flirt and talk and everything like that. It's like that. Exactly. Okay. With dancing and
00:31:51
whatever. But I think it's basically maybe a baby step toward exotic dancing or toward sex work.
00:31:58
Ruth also was an exotic dancer. Okay. I think this was probably step one. Yeah. And then she's like,
00:32:04
oh, right. There's tons of, you know, there's tons of guys around here that want to dance with
00:32:08
a pretty girl. So she actually seems to genuinely like these jobs and does very well at them.
00:32:15
Her charm and beauty pull in a ton of male clients. Meanwhile, her mother, May, is very unhappy.
00:32:22
Samuel Fort says, quote, for the first time in May's adult life, she was not in control.
00:32:28
She found herself subject to the whims of fate in a strange and famously dispassionate city,
00:32:34
which I don't know if you can describe Los Angeles any better. Then the very simple description of it's dispassionate.
00:32:42
It doesn't give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. That's true. You don't think that's that big of a deal.
00:32:48
It's a really big deal. When you get here and you're like, oh, right. No one cares if I'm here or not.
00:32:53
It doesn't matter. You got to bring your own passion. That's right. Like there isn't any here to spare.
00:32:57
So you have to bring your own and hope it's enough. Bring your own passion and make it happen.
00:33:02
I'm just going to keep doing 80s song lyric quotes for the rest of this. So to pass the time, Mae starts spending hours studying the Bible, but not because she's a religious person. She has never been a religious person. What she is is an opportunist. And she has noticed the tidal wave of alternative religions that are exploding in Los Angeles at the time, and she sees a market to be exploited, which is kind of legendary.
00:33:31
Like she's like, oh, this book here, is this the one you're all going crazy about?
00:33:36
I'm going to read it. Yeah. Why not? Got to do something. Become a cult leader. Actually in this town, very common pipeline.
00:33:45
So by 1921, May is 40 years old. Ruth's in her early twenties and Ruth starts dating a 26 year old man named Arthur Carl
00:33:54
Osborne. Arthur is head over heels in love with Ruth. And then one day in their relationship, Ruth breaks some strange news to Arthur.
00:34:04
She tells him that she and her mother are being visited every night by the Archangel Gabriel.
00:34:11
Okay. And for those unfamiliar, Archangel Gabriel appears in both the Old and New Testament, Georgia, relevant to your people and my people.
00:34:21
He's one of God's messengers. he is the one who actually reveals that the virgin mary will be giving birth to christ
00:34:29
he's a very big deal so ruth explains to arthur gabriel says that she and her mother are god's
00:34:37
two hand-picked witnesses which are two people that are mentioned in the book of revelations
00:34:42
the two witnesses so she's like it's us it's been revealed where the witnesses and that they're here
00:34:48
to announce the apocalypse. Oh. So Ruth says she and May are writing down everything Gabriel is telling them.
00:34:56
And when they're done, they're going to compile it all into a big book. And thanks to Gabriel, they will basically have this book and they will be able to figure
00:35:03
out where all the world's gold gems and oil deposits are located. I mean, there has to be some like preemptive persuasion to this person, right?
00:35:16
You can't just like drop this in someone's lap. The preemptive persuasion is yet another P and it is pussy.
00:35:28
Preemptive persuasion is the name of this podcast because it can't be pussy. So it could be the three Ps though.
00:35:39
And we're talking biblical pussy. And so that is like, this is witness pussy. I'm so sorry.
00:35:45
And there are people that are trying to drive their children to school right now.
00:35:50
Pull over. That's another P. Pull over. The four Ps No I think it the classic thing of you basically trick someone into loving you and then they do whatever you want And then they kind of under your spell and everything
00:36:05
you do is kind of great. And everything you suggest is kind of what you want to do too.
00:36:09
I've never been that hot. You know what I mean? So like, I guess I can't wrap my head around it.
00:36:12
Like I'm cute, but I'm not like that hot. I'm funny. And so not hot that. Yeah. I've always
00:36:21
been the observer of like interesting you can do interesting maybe someday yes so that's the kind of
00:36:31
the running theme i think ruth probably learned it from her mother that's what ruth was doing to
00:36:37
marry all those rich guys yeah each one richer than the last we don't know if arthur bought this
00:36:43
story i bet it was kind of like they're sitting at el compadre and his stomach drops and he's like
00:36:48
Oh, no. Shit. I'm not going to stop sleeping with her. I'm not going to like leave.
00:36:54
Yeah. Come on. So he probably wanted to keep her happy. Either way, he starts lending them money for this project.
00:37:03
Because that's ultimately what it comes to is we want to be compiling these books of these messages from Archangel Gabriel, but we need money to do it.
00:37:11
Yeah. For paper and pens. Why? the problem is Arthur's not a rich man he's not one of those people that May landed at one point
00:37:20
he has to actually borrow cash from his employer he got a big advance and he gave it to them and
00:37:26
then he was supposed to basically pay it back and he couldn't do it and so he gets fired but Ruth
00:37:33
assures him he will be repaid when this book gets published and all the jewels of the world are
00:37:40
revealed. I assure you, you will be paid back. Oh, you'll be getting some of the oil money that
00:37:45
we get when the Archangel Gabriel, because here's the thing about angels. They love money. Oh,
00:37:52
totally. All throughout the Bible. They're like, yes, yes. The kingdom of heaven loves rich guys.
00:37:59
It's not true at all. So now it's 1922. One afternoon, Arthur stops by Ruth's house for a
00:38:05
visit, perhaps in between job interviews I wrote, you know what's about to happen. He walks up to
00:38:11
the front door and what? They're gone. Not out of the house running errands, but actually they
00:38:16
have skipped town without so much as a thanks for all your money. Goodbye. So of course, Arthur is
00:38:23
heartbroken, dejected. He feels used. He basically just turns around, goes and joins the military
00:38:28
and ships off to who cares wherever she broke my heart, shipped me to Guam. I don't care.
00:38:37
So meanwhile, May and Ruth, what they've done is actually gone back to Portland because essentially May's thinking, well, we know people up there and we know people that
00:38:48
will believe us when we say the archangel Gabriel is giving us these messages. So they
00:38:53
start courting members of the public for donations for their book. and specifically they target people interested in faith healing or people who are experiencing
00:39:03
poverty and much of their audience is women people who are basically looking for a possibility
00:39:09
an opportunity something to get them out of the position that they're in so they have the same
00:39:15
spiel as before they're writing a book that's being dictated by the archangel gabriel they've
00:39:20
been identified as the witnesses. On top of that, the publication of the book is what's going to
00:39:27
trigger the apocalypse. Oh, that sounds like a bad PR plan. Definitely. It would make it so hard
00:39:34
to then fundraise. But what they're saying is we're going to trigger the apocalypse. And like
00:39:40
every cult, everybody else dies except us. And then we'll be left to go find the jewels and the
00:39:46
oil. And even though the dollar will have no value anymore, still stop asking questions.
00:39:53
This is supposed to be a cult. So the fundraising for the book quickly turns into basically a pitch
00:39:59
for an entirely new religious order that May is the ringleader of. And she begins to build what
00:40:06
Maren wrote as a sloppy theology, which made me laugh so hard. Oh, that's my punk band's name.
00:40:14
Right? So good. But essentially, many researchers who've looked into this story believe that May was just making everything up on the fly. Her ideas are very convoluted. They're very hard to follow, which also, if you've ever read the Bible, also insanely convoluted and very hard to follow.
00:40:33
I think that's key kind of right. Where it's like, interpret this how you want. Because if we're too clear about it, you're going to be able to be like, it's going to be like spot the bullshit pretty easily.
00:40:43
Keep it kind of vague. Keep it a little foggy and talk fast. Works for us, right?
00:40:52
That's the key to our success here on My Favorite Murder. Amen. Now that's a religion I can get behind.
00:41:00
Okay, but the most important thing to know that basically Mae is able to drive home is that Doomsday is coming soon.
00:41:07
But the best Doomsday imaginable because their followers get to go straight to a new and better world.
00:41:15
And this new world is going to be very female-centric. May claims that she, Ruth, and nine other queens, 11 women total, will rule the world from marble palaces on Olive Hill in Los Angeles.
00:41:31
And do you know where Olive Hill is? Echo Park? It's Barnsdall Art Park. Oh! That's where, wow!
00:41:40
You had your birthday one year. I had my birthday one year. I lived across the street from there. That's where we started the podcast.
00:41:44
There's a Frank Lloyd Wright house there. Yeah, okay. I was close. That's Los Feliz, everyone. But I was thinking it was Echo Park.
00:41:54
Further down. Listen if you a hipster you know What if we a couple of the queens in this story I didn think about that part I could buy it Or anyone else that gone to Barnsdall Art Park and had a picnic at any time in the past 80 years
00:42:07
Here's another part that I'm sure drew women of the 20s in at the time. Not only are they in charge because they're queens, each one of them will have 12 kings.
00:42:17
And back to one of the original story points, they will all have gold, gems, and oil deposits, as many as they could dream of.
00:42:25
I love that idea that it's post-apocalyptic gold and oil deposits. It's like selling them to whom?
00:42:31
For what? What are you doing? Take your oil. I just want a comfy couch or whatever.
00:42:38
Look, you could have oil. And it's like, no thanks. Sell to whom? Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel?
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money-back guarantee. All of that available at MeaningfulBeauty.com. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:44:55
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:45:03
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:45:11
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:45:19
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:45:22
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:45:31
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:45:38
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end.
00:45:42
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:53
Of course, all of this in hindsight sounds ridiculous like any cult's belief system when you explain it out after the fact.
00:46:00
But what matters is who's telling you the story and how well they can make you believe it.
00:46:04
We know that May was a very convincing person, always was. and she's not afraid to use theatrics to get people hooked.
00:46:13
So the thing she would do with this story, she would pull out a massive storage chest
00:46:17
and it was filled with thick bundles of paper wrapped with twine. And she would pull them out and say,
00:46:23
these are the raw dictations coming straight from Archangel Gabriel's mouth. And on the cover of these bundles,
00:46:30
there would be pages with religious kind of esoteric gibberish written all over them.
00:46:35
That was like the proof, but she wouldn't let anybody touch them or read them or look at them up close. And of course, after the fact, it's revealed much,
00:46:44
much later that all the pages in these bundles are blank. Yeah. It's like wrapping a wad of $1
00:46:50
bills and $100 bill and being like, look at all these $100 bills. But most importantly,
00:46:54
in a situation like this, no one's looking past the cover and kind of no one wants to. It's just
00:46:59
like, just tell me that there's more to life than this. What year is it at this point-ish?
00:47:05
It's 1922, 23, maybe. Okay. So within a couple years, May and Ruth have managed to gain dozens of followers of what they're calling the divine order of the royal arms of the Great Eleven.
00:47:18
The Great Eleven for short. And in 1924, May moves the group back to Los Angeles.
00:47:25
So she gets a bunch of Portlanders to move to L.A. That's like the biggest feat you've accomplished.
00:47:30
You know how she did it? How? She was like, you can all be stand-up comics if you get it.
00:47:35
Just kidding. No, man, there's a lot of open mics. There's so much stage time, so much more stage time down there.
00:47:42
So she rents a house for them to all live in together, big, huge rented house. And there, the members start printing religious pamphlets and circulating them throughout the city to attract more members.
00:47:55
So it actually, in terms of the business they're about to be doing, she declares.
00:48:00
It's very smart business in terms of that kind of effectiveness. It's like go to a major city where the people actually are open to any and every idea and start papering the area.
00:48:13
Meanwhile, May is doing all the classic cult leader stuff. She renames her followers, claiming that the new names will put them in harmony with the universe.
00:48:22
Like one member is given the name, the four winds of the whirlwind God. and another is named the circling of the minor scale in the harmony of music weird huh so
00:48:36
not catchy hard to put on a business card but still in another classic cult move may starts
00:48:44
restricting her followers diets she bans apples because they're the forbidden fruit of the bible
00:48:51
But she also bans things like T-bone steaks and walnuts. So she's like, yeah, that's like such a classic move, like starve people and they'll be way more malleable.
00:49:04
That's how you break people down psychologically. Right. Food and sleep. Food, sleep, your name isn't your name anymore.
00:49:11
Don't talk to your family, all that. She's doing everything. She also has to pay for all these people in one house.
00:49:18
So then this idea of like T-bone steaks are against the Archangel Gabriel is like, yeah,
00:49:24
good idea. Yeah. No more kettle one for you guys. It's all Tito's from here on out.
00:49:30
Winner's cup was the vodka we used to buy at the grocery store in Sacramento. And it was truly the bottom shelf.
00:49:37
Winner's cup. Winner's cup. I've never even heard of that. And I've drank some shit before.
00:49:44
That's crazy. It had a wonderful little horse on the label. Oh, we had we bought cigarettes for 99 cents a pack in high school and they were called smokes.
00:49:53
No, they might have even had an exclamation mark at the end of them. Smokes, smokes.
00:49:58
Like they were worse than like parliaments or Wednesday. OK, go on. Sorry, go on.
00:50:02
No, no, I love it. Oh, also another classic cult leader tactic. She makes all of the followers give her their paychecks.
00:50:11
paychecks, insurance payouts, military pensions, any real estate holdings, oil rights. She actually
00:50:18
even makes them give her their cars. At the group's peak, she has collected around $300,000
00:50:26
from her followers, which is over $5 million in today's money. So with the follower she has,
00:50:36
she is actually making bank. And then she pulls in a wealthy recruit named Clifford Dabney,
00:50:43
whose family got rich off of oil. And he's very interested in this book of the teachings of the
00:50:50
archangel Gabriel about the apocalypse. And basically, more specifically, about May's
00:50:56
insistence that Gabriel will be revealing the Earth's hidden treasures. So he's banking on this
00:51:02
idea that if he gets this book printed, that he will basically be investing to have all this
00:51:09
wealth come back to him once the book is printed. Right. So it's like half smart and half so dumb
00:51:16
that you're like, what, how are you? How? So he makes hefty donations to May and he waits patiently
00:51:23
for the book to be finished. And he also donates several acres of land in Simi Valley to the group.
00:51:30
Uh-huh. But May isn't as interested in finishing the book as she was because now she's real excited about that tract of land in Simi Valley.
00:51:42
So she moves out of this rental house because then she doesn't have to pay, right, anymore to this donated land.
00:51:48
And they now have about 100 members. Wow. To live on this new property. And over the next year, the great 11 members are the ones who actually build cabins, buildings, and even a temple for them all to live in on this property.
00:52:05
Holy shit. So she has the cult members do the manual labor themselves. Yeah, of course.
00:52:11
And inside that temple they built, there's an 800 pound gilded throne that they say is reserved for when Christ returns to earth.
00:52:20
Wow. You know, Jesus, that whole thing that he was about gold throne. Excuse me.
00:52:25
I won't sit anywhere unless it's an 800 pound gold throne because I am Mr. Materialistic.
00:52:32
Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ of Jerusalem. You heard. You know me. So I love that idea.
00:52:41
We're just like, that's like that kind of thing where you get somebody a birthday present that you want.
00:52:45
Right. You're like, don't you love it? And it's like, no, I've never been interested in this ever.
00:52:49
I don't want this. But these construction projects are very expensive, obviously.
00:52:56
So May is actually burning through the millions of $5 million that she's been donated.
00:53:01
She's just like burning through it. So she comes up with a perfect solution to get the cult more money.
00:53:08
She has her followers go work at a nearby tomato packing plant. Okay. Great idea.
00:53:14
Hi. And of course, all those paychecks come right back to her. And of course, this is exhausting work. She basically has them doing manual labor at home and then going out and doing manual labor. So she has to now really work to keep her followers invested in this plan. So she secretly, this I love, she secretly hires people to start doing special effects during their meetings.
00:53:38
No way. So none of the members know this, but suddenly they're seeing flashing lights during the
00:53:43
meeting or they hear disembodied voices. And of course, this is all just convincing them this really is real.
00:53:50
And she's just called down to the Warner Brothers and been like, hey, do you have any
00:53:54
lighting guys I could hire for the day to come set up some stuff for me I mean who believes that shit I don get it I guess these people who have kind of like maybe they already had a little bit of a propensity
00:54:05
toward like the open-mindedness, quote unquote, which sometimes you say open-minded
00:54:11
when you just mean not that bright, right? Yeah, yeah. So you're just kind of like open to whatevs that comes along.
00:54:20
And also she starts doing these nighttime rituals. So it's getting cultier and cultier.
00:54:25
The nighttime ritual, she has everybody wear matching robes. And then they take the robes off.
00:54:32
They're naked and they dance in the dark outside. And then they sacrifice animals.
00:54:39
No. Right? Which is just kind of the hacky version of We're a Cult. Yeah. Here's the not hacky version, updated Los Angeles version.
00:54:49
They also sacrifice a couple cars. What? I don't know maybe maybe people bummed out about the animal sacrifice yeah I don't know what that
00:54:58
actually entails if it's like one of those rage things where you get to take a sledgehammer to a
00:55:03
car I don't know in 1924 43 year old May marries a man who is 20 years younger than her and you know
00:55:14
our instincts are to cheer during a story point like this only not when the guy that she marries
00:55:20
is a guy like Ward Blackburn, who is also, big reveal, her stepbrother. Oh, no. Uh-huh.
00:55:29
Ward, to put it mildly, is a loser. He brings nothing to the table financially, socially.
00:55:36
He's just nasty. He wears the same clothes until he stinks. He keeps his fingernails, prepare yourself,
00:55:45
five inches long. so Maren wrote basically it's like the length of a soda can yeah and then on top of that he's rumored to be a pedophile
00:56:00
right so there's a ton of theories of why May would marry Ward first obviously she can manipulate
00:56:09
him into doing whatever she wants. That's one theory. Another theory is May apparently has a
00:56:17
real aversion to being touched. Like the only person allowed to touch her is her daughter.
00:56:23
There's a theory that Ward being a pedophile would have no interest in a middle-aged woman.
00:56:29
He's probably causing problems for his family. So she's like, send him down here. I'll provide
00:56:35
cover for him. And essentially, then he's my quote unquote husband, but none of that marital
00:56:41
stuff applies for us. It's also been alleged that May also was a pedophile or maybe just a
00:56:51
psychopath. According to Samuel Fort, there are reports of May approaching young girls in public
00:56:57
and asking their mothers to quote, give them to her. And there's one case where May's driver
00:57:03
actually stopped in front of a house in Simi Valley and began to approach an unattended child in their front yard.
00:57:11
But before anything could happen, the kid's parents ran outside and chased the driver off with a gun.
00:57:17
Oh, my God. So whether it was pedophilia directly or she was just like, oh, there's value in having children or whatever.
00:57:27
It's just it kind of points to, I think, that like there was nothing kind of internally unhinged.
00:57:34
They're unhinged. Yeah. There's no moral compass here. Yeah. It seems. So at this point, it's now the mid 1920s.
00:57:42
And we're still only a couple of years into the great 11s existence, which is kind of
00:57:46
mind blowing. And May's cult leader tendencies escalate. When people try to leave the group, she reportedly threatens, stalks, extorts and blackmails
00:57:56
them. And in some cases, she has them kidnapped and returned to the property. Some people who speak out against May and against the cult go missing altogether, including Ruth's second husband.
00:58:11
So Ruth, her second husband, was a 17-year-old devout Catholic named Samuel Rizzio, who, despite marrying Ruth, never liked the idea of the Great 11 and what they were all about.
00:58:24
And in 1924, days after a fight between Samuel and Ruth that escalated into domestic violence, Samuel vanishes while on the cult property.
00:58:35
It's later revealed that just before his disappearance, May asked several Great Eleven members to go get her chloroform and poison.
00:58:44
Yeah. So then in 1928, a member of the Great Eleven named Margaret comes to May with a request.
00:58:54
She wants May to heal her sister, Frances Turner. Frances lives with multiple disabilities.
00:59:00
She is unable to talk. She's affected by paralysis. She's in chronic pain. And she presumably never consents to this treatment or even this idea.
00:59:11
She's under the care of good doctors, as she is. But Frances, in this cult, thinks that May has like superpowers, essentially.
00:59:20
And so she's like, can you please heal my sister? So Frances is brought to Simi Valley for a cure.
00:59:26
There is no cure. May has no powers. So basically she just starts making shit up.
00:59:32
And this is where things turn nightmarish and it becomes outright torture. Because May's idea for treating Frances is she puts her in a five foot wide brick structure that has chicken wire hanging horizontally from the ceiling.
00:59:48
And according to Samuel Ford's book, quote, What the fuck So Frances dies of asphyxiation within an hour of this treatment
01:00:07
It's unclear if May ever genuinely thought she could heal Frances, but Samuel Fort writes that, quote,
01:00:15
as soon as May realized she'd killed the woman, she jumped into her Lincoln and drove rapidly away.
01:00:20
She left the disposal of Francis Turner's body to another cult member and May had her followers dismantle the broiler and use the salvage bricks to build a walkway that led to the front door of one of the cabins.
01:00:35
May took the bricks that were the instruments of Francis Turner's death and turned them into a path trodden underfoot every day by other cultists.
01:00:44
Oh my God. Oh, it's awful. Another death linked to the Great Eleven involves a teenage daughter of two cult members,
01:00:53
that teenage daughter is named Willa Rhodes. And Willa was very popular within the cult, especially with May.
01:01:01
May adored Willa, so much so that she dubs her both a priestess and a queen of the Great Eleven.
01:01:09
Unfortunately, though, in late December of 1924, Willa develops a serious tooth infection that goes untreated.
01:01:17
And she dies on New Year's Day of 1925, and she's just 16 years old at the time of her death.
01:01:24
Of course, this looks very bad for May. May is supposed to be talking directly to God, basically, through Archangel Gabriel.
01:01:33
Why would she let someone who's actually a queen in this group die? Why would God allow her to die if there's this big plan?
01:01:43
And as Willa's devastated parents figure out arrangements for their daughter's body, May claims that she's just heard from an angel.
01:01:52
And she says that the angel says Willa is going to be resurrected soon, so they can't bury her.
01:01:59
Instead, she'll need to be preserved. So Willa's mother embalms her using a, quote, ancient recipe of herbs and ointments, and her body is then kept on ice.
01:02:12
which is constantly replenished for weeks. As months pass, Willa is moved from location to
01:02:20
location on the property, but never allowed to be properly buried. Oh my God. Yeah. There's a rumor that has been disproved or that Samuel Fort in his book says there's
01:02:32
almost no way this could be true. But there's a lot of people when they retell the story talk
01:02:37
about that they were driving Willa's body around so that other people would see her, quote unquote,
01:02:43
see her and think she was still alive. Yeah. But that's they think that's just kind of like
01:02:48
basically this story is so crazy that it then kind of spawns additional crazy stories.
01:02:55
Anyway, it still gets crazy because 14 months after Willa's death, May gives the Rhodes
01:03:01
approval to move Willa's body to their new home in Venice, California, Venice Beach.
01:03:09
They put Willa's body in a casket and then they place the casket in a hollowed out section of
01:03:15
their bedroom floor under their bed. Oh no. Uh-huh. They sleep above the body of their
01:03:21
daughter for years, waiting for her to be resurrected, wake up and climb back up out
01:03:29
of the floor oh my god that was the promise like the post-apocalyptic promise that the grade 11
01:03:36
was making to everybody i mean that's that's mental illness at that point that's not religious
01:03:42
you know what i mean it's brainwashing yeah they are in a cult full out they believe everything
01:03:48
they've been told and they're living it to the wildest of results right well there's also the
01:03:54
alternative of like, okay, but if they stop believing that, then they've done this to their
01:04:01
daughter and they can't live with that. So they have to keep believing it in order to not fall
01:04:06
apart. Yes. The greater the loss and the greater the stakes, the more you have to double and triple
01:04:12
down. And what's crazy is despite all of those horrible events, the great 11 manages to fly
01:04:19
under the radar for years. But then in the late 1920s, Clifford Dabney, who was the one that
01:04:25
donated the Simi Valley property and a bunch of money, he finally is fed up. He has been waiting
01:04:32
for May and Ruth to finish that book. Still no publication date in sight. He's finally seeing
01:04:38
through May's baseless promises. He's finally waking up. He's feeling cheated. He sunk $50,000
01:04:45
into the Great 11, which is worth over $700,000 today. So he goes to the police and files a report accusing May of fraud.
01:04:55
But the officers don't take him seriously right away. In their eyes, he willingly gave his money to May and the cult.
01:05:04
But then tips start rolling in from the public about either loved ones going missing
01:05:10
or people dying under strange circumstances out on the Simi Valley property. So the police start an investigation and finally in 1929, May is arrested.
01:05:22
Not for violent crime though. Instead, the police probe leads to 15 counts of grand theft related to May's alleged scamming.
01:05:32
Ruth is also arrested initially, but all charges against her are dropped when they realize that May is the ringleader.
01:05:39
May pleads not guilty to all charges. when her trial begins in January of 1930, she puts on a hell of a show. While testifying,
01:05:48
she collapses on the stand. When she comes to, she says she's exhausted by the angels
01:05:53
constantly interfering with her life And later when asked if she committed fraud she firmly says no before clarifying that if she did do anything illegal it was merely at the command of the
01:06:06
angels. That's not going to fly in court, I hope. No, I don't think so. May's trial includes testimony
01:06:14
about the multiple deaths and disappearances that are linked to the cult, including the fact
01:06:19
that police recovered the body of Willa Rhodes from under her parents' floorboards.
01:06:24
And by that point, Willa had been dead for four years. So May is found guilty on eight charges of grand theft.
01:06:32
She's held in Los Angeles County Jail and then sent to San Quentin. But shortly into her prison stint, her lawyers appeal her conviction,
01:06:41
arguing that May's trial was about grand theft and the prosecution's decision to include testimony about Willa Rhodes and Samuel Rizzio and Francis Turner
01:06:52
almost certainly prejudiced the jury. In 1930, the California Supreme Court weighs in on May's verdict and agrees with her defense attorneys.
01:07:03
The justice's decision also concludes that there's no real indication of fraud in this case
01:07:08
because the Great Eleven's cult members willingly handed over donations to May and her religious
01:07:14
organization. And with that, May is exonerated and released into the public. I don't buy that.
01:07:20
I mean, I wonder if they have things in place now where if you can prove that level of brainwashing,
01:07:27
essentially. Right. It's like just because you believed that she was talking to Gabriel and then
01:07:33
so gave her all your money because of that, that is fraud because she's not talking to him. But if
01:07:38
they can't prove that, like, you know, definitively, then it's not fraud. It's a gray area because
01:07:44
they did get into it voluntarily. I think that's why I love talking about cults, because it's the
01:07:51
kind of thing that can happen to anyone. It doesn't, just because like May targeted women
01:07:57
and targeted people who were poor, it could happen to a rich person. It could happen to
01:08:01
someone who went to MIT. Like it has happened to all of those types of people. It just depends on
01:08:07
what like the big hole inside of you is and what you're searching for and how opportunists can
01:08:13
basically turn around and be like, oh, you know that thing you're searching for? I gotcha. Here
01:08:17
it is right here. And like, what's yours? Mine's cats. Like I'd fall for a cat thing. You'd be in
01:08:24
a cat cult so quickly. I already am. I have three of them living in my home. You started it. You
01:08:30
started one. I like the way you're saying they're in my home. They've infiltrated my home. They're
01:08:37
everywhere in here. You're going to have to get rats to get rid of the cats. Oh, I love rats.
01:08:43
They're cute. They're so sweet. Okay. Okay. So after this, as you would be able to guess,
01:08:48
the divine order of the Royal Arms of the Great 11 loses a lot of steam. The coverage is very
01:08:54
sensationalized from May's trial. It's nationwide, making it very hard to find new recruits. But a
01:09:01
core group of followers does stay in it for several years after. And the cult eventually
01:09:07
relocates to Lake Tahoe. Oh, it's lovely this time of year. It's gorgeous. Although the lake
01:09:13
is very cold. There's a series that I love on TikTok. It's an account by a person. It's just
01:09:21
at geo geo and they have a blue check this person talks about lakes all the time and the bio on her
01:09:32
account is um yes hello which is how they start every single tiktok i love it which makes me like
01:09:38
um yes hello and it says lake by call stan account which is that super weird lake in russia that
01:09:45
has a bunch of mysterious things about it no one can explain what yeah you have to go on there no
01:09:50
We have to cover it sometimes. Yeah, maybe. Every October, they do Spooky Lake Month.
01:09:56
And so every day in October, they feature a different spooky lake. And on day one, October 1st, they covered Lake Tahoe.
01:10:03
And there's all kinds of shit. I was like, what? What? Do you know there's- Lake Tahoe?
01:10:07
I thought that was just for bros and shit. No, no. They think there's at least 200 bodies at the bottom of Lake Tahoe.
01:10:14
Yeah, I could see that. Because the mafia used to dump bodies in Lake Tahoe. Oh my God.
01:10:21
Okay. May remains at the helm of the great 11 with Ruth by her side over the next several years,
01:10:27
as you might imagine, even in Lake Tahoe, the group fizzles out. No one affiliated with the great 11, including May and Ruth is ever charged with any crime
01:10:39
related to any of the deaths or disappearances linked to the cult. As Samuel Fort explains, quote, by circumstance or design, all the cult deaths had occurred a year or more before the start of the police investigation.
01:10:54
There was talk of exhuming the bodies to look for signs of foul play, but that didn't happen.
01:11:00
And because of the limited forensic tools available at the time, the state had dim hopes of finding anything actionable, end quote.
01:11:08
So both May and Ruth fall out of the public eye in the years after the trial. we know that in the mid 1930s may self-publishes a book called the origin of god oh right she's still
01:11:20
on it which made me think of the lady from starvation heights remember the starvation
01:11:25
height story that i told you where even after she got caught and edit all the stuff she still kept
01:11:32
putting stuff out like yeah couldn't not do it she's getting high on her own supply essentially
01:11:38
Yeah, for real. But it's like, I get one like red notice in the mail and I freak out forever. It's like, there's some people who like go to trial, go to jail, get out. And they're like, what can I do that's very similar than what got me there in the first place?
01:11:53
Right. Like, they don't give a shit. I'm going to keep going with it. Yeah. I got to keep going. The book that...
01:12:00
a claimed was being dictated by Angel Gabriel never gets published. I don't think I have to
01:12:04
tell you that because it was all blank inside because it probably was never happening. Ruth,
01:12:09
meanwhile, the daughter goes on to continue writing religious books and pamphlets. And in 1951,
01:12:16
her mother May quietly passes away at the age of 69. Ruth herself dies in 1978 when she's about
01:12:24
80 years old. It's kind of, what's that phrase? End of an era? No. I mean, yes, for sure. I was
01:12:34
looking for the thing where it's like a disappointing ending because it's like, wait, after all that?
01:12:39
Yeah. That's what I'm looking for. Do you know what I'm talking about? I know what you're talking
01:12:42
about. It's a, um, what's it called? Right. That's the noise. Yeah. It's definitely the
01:12:54
noise of the word for sure it's a downer it's yeah it's sad trombone it's want one but there
01:13:04
there's a word for it there is anticlimactic thank you all i could think of was post-apocalyptic
01:13:11
that's what it was supposed to be that's what it was supposed to be and instead it was
01:13:16
anticlimactic. But even still, we're at the end. That is the story of May Otis Blackburn,
01:13:23
her daughter, Ruth Weiland Rizzio, and their cult, The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great
01:13:30
Eleven. And if you have a chance, because there's many, many more details and insanity and craziness,
01:13:37
you have to read Samuel Fort's The Cult of the Great Eleven, because this is a synopsis of that.
01:13:43
So go read that. That was a way bigger story than I thought it would be. You know what I mean? Like, I kind of thought it would just be like a couple years.
01:13:51
A couple years of like you know some tompoolery But like that was like how have we not heard of them This is like on the same level as well not so much but like you know that a big story
01:14:05
that I'd never heard of. It's been suggested. And also as I was reading Maren's research,
01:14:10
I was like, oh, I was on the dollop once with Dave and Gareth and they covered this story.
01:14:17
But at the time it was to not know the story at all. And then to have Dave just telling us the story.
01:14:23
And of course, Gareth and I would not stop riffing the entire time. So I didn't even kind of get what was happening most of the time.
01:14:31
And then when I read this, I'm like, wait a second. This sounds familiar. First season of Perry Mason, there's a female run religious cult in Los Angeles in it.
01:14:41
Is that based on that or it just happens to be similar? This is just guesswork. I think it's partially based on this and partially based on the sister, Amy, the church of the square in the circle or whatever it's called.
01:14:53
But there was a ton of them. Yeah. I mean, everywhere you looked. Yeah. I guess when you're a transplant to like a new city, a new growing city, you're like looking for a home kind of.
01:15:05
So it's probably pretty easy to like get sucked into. If you got here and you auditioned for say six months and then you started getting parts,
01:15:14
you have a career, so you have something to do. If you got here and after two years,
01:15:19
people are like, thanks, but no thanks. What do you do then? You get a regular job and you kind
01:15:24
of are like, oh, I get to watch everybody else do their dream and not do my dream. So like,
01:15:29
it's the perfect city for this kind of stuff. To have faith, right? Yep. And to be like,
01:15:35
I need to be maximizing my potential. I need to be, how do I do it so that I can get ahead of the
01:15:40
100 million other people that are trying to do exactly what I'm doing? Yeah. Oy vey.
01:15:46
It's rough. Oh Los Angeles you special bitch You crazy lady That was freaking awesome and excellent Thank you And way to go That was like such a great Karen caper
01:15:59
Karen caper. That was actually perfectly a story for me. Yeah. It really was. Well, then let's save mine for next week because I feel like that was like a perfect episode.
01:16:08
I mean, yeah, let's not keep going after an hour and a half. You don't want to do three hour podcasts anymore?
01:16:15
To be monetizing a two and a half hour podcast. There's a business element to this also.
01:16:21
That's not great. Yeah. Yeah. Which we've been learning as we go. And we are still seven.
01:16:28
Oh my God, almost eight years now. That's right. Coming up on eight years. We're still, we still kind of don't know what we're doing.
01:16:36
Well, what's great about us is we're not interested in knowing what we're doing.
01:16:41
And, you know, not everyone loves that. But some people do. And that's what we're here for, baby.
01:16:47
We never claim to be doers of knowing. You know what I mean? Not once. Never doers of knowing.
01:16:54
Not once. Not never. Doers of knowing. That's another good band name. Well, thank you guys for listening.
01:16:59
We'll see you next week. Yeah. Part two. Cliffhanger. Part two. Will we know what we're doing next week?
01:17:06
Who knows? That's right. Next week, we're going to both wear ties and blazers and fedoras.
01:17:13
I'm going to wear a pocket square. Yes. I'm going to wear a short skirt and a long blazer.
01:17:20
Okay, that's my last musical quote. 90s musical quote. Thanks for listening. Oh, and don't.
01:17:29
Do it again. Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:17:36
This has been an Exactly Right production Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache
01:17:56
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