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Hello. And welcome. To my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:33
Here we are again. That's right. Again and again times seven and a half years. I mean, what's the last thing you did for seven and a half years?
00:02:43
Truly nothing. We were such babies when we started this, weren't we? It's crazy.
00:02:51
I mean, it feels like four lifetimes ago. I was 35. Is that right? 36. That's a child.
00:02:59
I was underwater on my mortgage and nothing was helping. Yeah. Until this podcast.
00:03:08
Until you were like, let's do merch. And I was like, if you set it up, I'll participate with you.
00:03:15
Oh, life. It's so weird to see 40-ish most powerful people in podcasting. Can I brag about that for a second?
00:03:23
Sure. Hollywood Reporter in their like list and we're on it. And I'm like, who are those two girls who started a podcast in my like Thai town apartment?
00:03:37
And then someone commented like to me, like on Instagram, you should listen to like a
00:03:43
mini so something like 30 and see how far you've come. And I was like, I wonder what they mean.
00:03:50
and I listened to it and it's a mini set of the hometown is the Swiss cheese pervert.
00:03:56
Oh yeah. And I'm like, Oh my God, children at the time. It was so different. That was one of our first like people sending us material where we're just like,
00:04:06
this is the funniest. We couldn't have asked for better than that email and the person that
00:04:11
sent it to us. Yeah. And then Nick Terry turned again into a fucking video. Now, are you back in the comment section? Oh, that's a great question. Well,
00:04:20
She added me. I wasn't in our comment section. I was reading people who had commented directly
00:04:25
towards me. So technically, yes. Look, that was not an accusation. We are permanently in the
00:04:31
comment section. I had Josh Mankiewicz, the great Dateline anchor, Josh Mankiewicz,
00:04:38
text me the other day and he was like, what's going on? And I'm like, what do you mean? I have
00:04:42
no idea what you mean. He's like, this thing on TikTok. And I was just like, oh, no, no,
00:04:45
Don't worry about it. That happens all the time. Oh, he was surprised by it? It's just like, oh, you don't, you've never followed.
00:04:52
Okay. Yeah, no, this is the way it is. Oh, you must not be a woman on social media because you're surprised that this thing is
00:05:01
happening right now. You can't live in that shit. Waiting for this meeting to start.
00:05:05
I was like sitting down, waiting for it for once. Can I tell you that it's sad that you call this a meeting and not a...
00:05:13
Sorry, that is sad. I know you've had meetings all fucking day. And that's why you're saying that in that exact spot on your couch,
00:05:20
you're sitting in talking to a zoom, just like you are right now, but this is not a meeting.
00:05:26
This is the reason the meetings happen. The idea that I'm calling this a meeting is I've completely lost my way.
00:05:34
That's hilarious. Folks. It's Friday. It's Friday night right now. Folks. It's Friday. The week has been long.
00:05:41
The week has been taxing. Here's the thing. Ultimately, I love this life. I love the life this podcast has given us.
00:05:49
It's so delightful. The people that talk to us and like us love us. And it so nice And that is a very lucky thing And the fact that there a back end of like detractors or whatever is like that the
00:06:05
price you pay. You don't get the glory without the back end that slaps you in the face a little bit.
00:06:10
That's just how it is. And it's a good ego check. And it's a good reminder of like, hey, there are other people who have opinions and might
00:06:19
have something to teach you and might have something to tell you. And so fucking fine.
00:06:23
Yeah. There's fucking taxes to pay sometimes, right? Death and taxes. That's what this podcast experience has been about, literally.
00:06:32
I mean, to your point and to that person who was telling you that, I honestly believe there has been real evolution.
00:06:39
And I'm very proud of it. And I think one of the biggest pieces of that evolution is learning to learn from what is maybe the kind of thing that often we don't like to even listen to, which is criticism.
00:06:54
And it can be really hard and you can take it all kinds of ways and you can have all kinds of defenses about it.
00:07:00
But ultimately, we're all here on this fucking dumb planet to learn. To evolve. I think we've evolved.
00:07:09
I think we've definitely evolved. And I'm proud of that. about us. And I think it just means, you know, that we're evolving. We're always going to be
00:07:16
evolving as human beings. And if you don't, then you're fucking stuck and stagnant and you're
00:07:20
going to get black mold and it's going to just get rusty and gross. You know what I mean?
00:07:25
Respiratory diseases, legionnaires, be careful. Spiritual legionnaires disease is one of the
00:07:32
worst things that you can get. Is that what you're covering this week? yep it lets go right into my story that actually as we were saying that because i said this fucking
00:07:42
dumb planet reminded me because i was the queen i just really in the late 90s loved like a what do
00:07:48
you call it just you know one of them little t-shirts that everyone wore with a funny thing
00:07:53
on the front just a t-shirt you mean just a t-shirt like a ringer shirt or a whatever a graphic t
00:07:59
like a certain sales coffee shop or whatever like a exactly yeah and i had one a green shirt
00:08:05
that just said, I hate the environment on the front of it. Bring it back. I think it's time.
00:08:14
I think it's time that we stop fighting for the environment. It's trying to kill us.
00:08:19
Can we be honest for one second with ourselves? The hurricane, if there is any lesson in the world
00:08:25
that the earth wants us out of here, it's the hurricane. And see, this is what women in podcasting aren't allowed to do
00:08:34
is be completely sarcastic about not liking the environment and taking it down. We are kidding.
00:08:42
Why? Why? After all this time you've gotten to know us, would you not know the sarcasm
00:08:49
meter of this podcast? It's because the ones who don't know, don't know us. That's all.
00:08:55
That's true. That's all. You don't get it. That's fine. I mean, you can go sit at a different table. For real. For real. You got anything to share with the group?
00:09:02
Well, I do. Hold on. I always do this where I don't know how to do it. Oh, you X out of it,
00:09:08
right? Yeah. No, no. Don't leave the meeting. Don't leave the meeting. It's not a meeting.
00:09:14
Zoom thinks it's a meeting too. Zoom started it. How dare you call our child a meeting,
00:09:22
our baby. Our blessed, blessed baby. That's right. No, I don't want to leave. she truly is she defies the odds really that is a miracle that's true so i covered in let's talk
00:09:38
about it way back in episode 133 entitled made of crystals i covered the cold case story of the
00:09:47
lady in the dunes the victim was identified as ruth marie terry about a year ago and then through
00:09:55
the use of DNA and genealogy, they basically figured out that it was her husband.
00:10:02
Who did it? Yeah. Did he just get convicted? I think they just identified him. He died in 2002.
00:10:07
Oh, right. So it's one of those things where the DNA reports that that's what happened.
00:10:14
Yeah. Yeah. It's so old. Her body was found in 1974. And unidentified until a year ago. And that's why it's so important to identify
00:10:21
these victims, these victims without a name, is because, you know, half the time going to lead
00:10:27
back to someone they knew who can't be tried and convicted because there's no body or no proof of
00:10:33
murder. You know, it's why these cold cases are so important. Well, and also just, I feel like
00:10:39
so often you don't get that feeling, you don't get that satisfaction. And then like this one,
00:10:46
which was like a complete mystery. Like, and that there was that connection to the movie jaws and all those,
00:10:54
like there was so much mystery around it and so much like almost, almost, but it's like,
00:10:58
but they just cannot figure out who this person is. They do, whether it's citizen sleuths or investigators that don't give up.
00:11:06
Like the idea that that message coming through finally, after so much messaging of so much injustice that every once in a while,
00:11:15
there is a little bit of justice or at least a little bit of potential closure. I don't know.
00:11:22
In all these horrible things we talk about, it is nice to be able to say that every once in a while.
00:11:28
Totally. Should we do Exactly Right Corner? Let's do it. Let's jump right in. Erin Brown, who writes our Exactly Right Corner, who assembles this for us, goes,
00:11:39
I got a little squirrely on this one this week or something like that. And then I'm just about to
00:11:43
read. Now that we're done with our casual banter, it's time to get some, some very exciting.
00:11:49
I think we should see how far she can push it. That will, that will still read it. You know what
00:11:54
I mean Like how creative can she get until it will go I not fucking saying that That a great idea And I think no matter what we should do a Ron Burgundy and just read it like we mean it Let give her more work because she so
00:12:06
Yeah, exactly. She's not doing anything. She's not busy at all with every other part of our company.
00:12:10
Now that we're done with our casual banter, it's time to get to some very exciting news.
00:12:15
The wait is finally over unless you're listening one week early and then the wait is almost over.
00:12:21
this is like the longest paragraph of all time episodes one and two of infamous international
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the pink panther story are available everywhere you listen to podcasts on september 14th that's
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our brand new first true crime limited series so please go give it a listen and don't forget to rate
00:12:40
review and subscribe to the show while you are on its feed we appreciate you guys supporting us
00:12:45
and supporting Infamous International. It's awesome. Yeah. In other true crime news,
00:12:51
this week on Buried Bones, Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes undertake the first in a two-part series
00:12:56
about the Littlefield murders in 1930s rural Maine. And now switching gears, our very own Banana Boys,
00:13:04
Kurt Braunler and Scotty Landis, haunt Roz this week on Ghosted by Roz Hernandez.
00:13:09
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Code FLOW15. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of EarSense. Say, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will
00:14:45
Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago, and now narrates Stephen King's
00:14:52
The Body, the novella that inspired it all. We talk about what it's like to return to a story
00:14:57
that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth,
00:15:02
and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
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I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it.
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Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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new policyholder data for accident and illness plans pets age zero to 10. Okay, I'm first, as you just said.
00:16:28
I'm going to do a cold open for once. Oh, okay. Come sit back and relax. I won't ask you five questions right at the top.
00:16:35
Save them for like one minute, literally. Okay. In December of 1966, Karen, a beautiful dark haired woman looking to be in her early 30s
00:16:48
approaches the United Airlines lost and found counter at the JFK International Airport.
00:16:55
That's where we're starting. Here we are. She asks the attendant there if she can leave four small crates there.
00:17:01
She flashes her husband's United Airlines VIP card to show she's legit. She's just like, I want to leave these here.
00:17:07
You could do shit like that back in the fucking 60s. You could just leave things everywhere.
00:17:10
There was no see something, say something back then. No, there was not. Instead, it was everybody has the benefit of the doubt.
00:17:16
That's right. If you're white. So that's right. The clerk behind the counter agrees to hold the crates overnight.
00:17:23
The next day, the woman doesn't show up. Whatever. we trust everyone a few days later an airline employee is moving packages around and i bet he
00:17:31
was looking through packages just to be curious wouldn't you absolutely hell yes looking through
00:17:37
lost and found we were just like in 30 days this is dibs for sure dibs on this except when he picks
00:17:44
up one of the crates quote unquote yeah right outfalls a luger automatic pistol oh and he finds
00:17:52
that there's guns and different kinds of, what do you call them Ammunition Ammunition style weapons in all the crates And so the employee calls support authority police and then they decide to stake out the counter to see who this woman is
00:18:07
when she comes back. So she doesn't show up for a couple of days, but it's one in the morning when
00:18:11
she does, and she's carrying four more crates. And she tells the clerk that she'd like to ship
00:18:16
all the eight crates to Chicago. And then she's promptly arrested. Wow. All eight packages contain
00:18:22
tons of pistols and ammunition. Upon searching her rented car, police also find three riot guns,
00:18:30
a fucking flamethrower, another pistol, machine gun parts, shells for a bazooka,
00:18:37
and thousands of .30 and .50 caliber shells. So a whole cache of ammunition issues.
00:18:45
Now, could she have been the prop person for the musical Chicago? She was sending it to Chicago.
00:18:51
So I know that that must have stuck in my head. The woman who briefly goes to jail before being bailed out is Louise Thorison.
00:18:59
And she turns out to be the wife of the violent ne'er-do-well son of a Chicago steel tycoon.
00:19:06
So it fucking sounds like a play already. And if this traveling arsenal seems shocking, it's relatively tame compared with the dark twists and turns in the life of her husband, William Thorison III.
00:19:18
And that's what I'm going to tell you about today. Great start. Wonderful kickoff.
00:19:24
Thank you to my researcher, Allie, for doing that for me. My main source for the story are two books by the author named Glenn Wall.
00:19:31
And he's like the expert in this story. He has extensively searched William Thorazin's life.
00:19:37
And the other sources can be found in the show notes. So this guy, William Thorazin III, is born in 1937.
00:19:44
He grows up in Kenilworth, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago. It's a small, leafy, very wealthy hamlet in Chicago's northern suburbs.
00:19:55
If you've ever seen a John Hughes movie, you've basically seen Kenilworth and its similar surrounding towns.
00:20:01
So think fucking 16 Candles and shit. Also, the house at the end of planes, trains and automobiles where Steve Martin lives, that's in Kenilworth as well.
00:20:11
So like big, rich mansions. Got it. Thorazin's father is William Thorazin II. William and his younger brother, Richard,
00:20:19
and their mother, Kay, all call the dad Bill Sr. Bill Sr. is the owner of the great Western
00:20:26
Steel Company. The family is very wealthy. It's steel money, baby. I don't even know what the
00:20:31
steel company does. So yeah, I bet it's wealthy. They do fucking everything because what doesn't
00:20:37
have steel in it, especially back then, rich people that are in steel have their own rich
00:20:42
people name, which is Steel Magnate. Oh, yeah. And you name your kid after yourself, the second,
00:20:47
the third, all that stuff, because Bill Jr., Bill III. Billy Bill. But William will later tell
00:20:55
people that he was raised mostly by nannies, of course, and spent short stints at various boarding
00:20:59
schools. So they're that kind of rich. Yeah. The Thorsen boys are the local menaces of
00:21:05
Kenilworth, though. So you can't buy your kids' behavior. They will rebel no matter what.
00:21:10
It's almost the inverse of the more money, the worse behaved. Totally. Or more money, more problems is what you're trying to say.
00:21:17
Sure. Yeah. They get into all sorts of like Dennis the Menace style trouble in their neighborhood
00:21:22
as adolescents. As William gets older, though, the incidents get darker. And by the time he's in his late teens, William has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
00:21:31
On one occasion, he escapes from the hospital and goes back to his family home where he
00:21:36
barricades himself in his room and tells his father and two household workers that he has
00:21:40
a shotgun and will kill anyone who tries to enter. And he does have guns at this point. So,
00:21:45
wow. Yeah. A few months later, he steals one of the family cars while armed with a 45 automatic
00:21:50
handgun. While all this is going on, Richard, the younger brother, seems to be cleaning up his act.
00:21:56
He has far fewer run-ins and they decline as he gets older, but William is just kind of
00:22:01
declining and just becoming more and more of a menace. When he turns 18, he's dismayed to learn
00:22:08
that he will not be getting any kind of payout from his father. Oh. Uh-huh. In the summer of 1957, when William was 19,
00:22:17
a young woman goes to the Kenilworth police with a scary story. She says that William and another man who goes by the name Frog
00:22:24
had given her and her friend a ride. And when they were in the car, William and Frog were talking about cutting off heads and steel barrels.
00:22:33
And a week later, the decapitated body of a missing 15 year old named Judith May Anderson. Parts of her body,
00:22:41
including her decapitated head are found in a 55 gallon steel barrel. She had been shot in the head
00:22:47
four times with a 32 caliber revolver. Wow. So there's like a weird connection there. And William
00:22:53
had also been involved in a car chase near where her body had been found. He's questioned in the
00:22:58
investigation of her murder, but he's never charged. And Judah's case is never solved. And
00:23:05
it's this guy, Glenn Wall, the researcher says that the steel drums contain traces of chemicals
00:23:10
used in the production of steel. So like they were steel fucking drums. And Judah's case to this day
00:23:15
isn't solved. So in 1958, William meets a teaching student named Louise Banich. She's the one from
00:23:24
earlier in the story when she dropped off crates of guns at the thing. They're both 21 when they
00:23:29
meet. William is like a very handsome man. You wouldn't suspect him to be this nefarious person.
00:23:36
He's very clean cut in all his photos. Very 1960s Bond looking type. Hot privilege.
00:23:43
Yeah, hot privilege. He's got that hot privilege of you never think he has a 45 in his pocket.
00:23:49
If you told me he was D.B. Cooper, I would buy it. He's got that look. So they meet each other and they, I guess, fall in love
00:24:00
William doesn't really change much after meeting her. He still goes out with other girls.
00:24:03
He gets into fights. Still, they get married in January of 1960 when they're about 23.
00:24:10
About three weeks after that, William's mother files a malicious mischief report against her own son.
00:24:17
While William's relationship with his parents is tumultuous, they do still support him.
00:24:21
They don't give him lump sums of money to manage himself because they don't trust him,
00:24:25
but they essentially provide everything he needs to live his life. Do we know, was he cut off because of his behavior?
00:24:33
You know how sometimes they're like the money skips a generation type of thing? No, they definitely had the money.
00:24:39
I think that he was just such a troublemaker from a young age that they cut him off, you know, or didn't trust him.
00:24:45
Yeah. A few months after their wedding, William and Louise go on a trip to Maine where they both spend a little time in jail for stealing two canoes and some posters.
00:24:53
Which is like, oh, this just sounds like a fun night out with your husband. You know, let's go steal posters and then go on and go on the lake and just paddle around with our new posters.
00:25:03
Yeah, I love you. Shortly after this incident, they moved to Tucson, Arizona. Luis spends more time there while William's police record shows that he just kind of is a free spirit and bounces around a lot, mostly between Arizona, California and Chicago.
00:25:18
And in the early 60s, several charges are filed against him and ultimately dropped because his parents basically throw money at the problem.
00:25:26
In the summer of 1962, William is convicted of assaulting a woman in Santa Monica, California, while his wife is back in Tucson.
00:25:35
Those charges are pled down from original charges of rape. William is able to hire expensive lawyers.
00:25:43
He's sentenced to six months in prison and ultimately serves only a few weeks. That same summer, William and Louise have a son.
00:25:53
Ew. I know. In his travels, when he's not terrorizing strangers or his family, William collects military weapons, which is becoming a hobby of his.
00:26:02
Hobby is one word for it. In 1964, William's now 27 years old, and he and another man are both arrested for setting off bombs near a Tucson radio station.
00:26:13
It causes minor damage to the radio station, wakes up the whole neighborhood, but no one's hurt.
00:26:17
And William is basically let go because police don't have enough evidence to charge him.
00:26:21
So he's just fucking doing mayhem everywhere. It's like stealing posters is one thing, but setting off bombs.
00:26:28
What the fuck are you doing? Throughout his life, he has countless runs with the law for violent assaults, thefts and reckless driving.
00:26:36
He serves virtually no jail time for any of them because of those expensive lawyers he's able to hire.
00:26:40
In 1965, while Luis is still living in Tucson with their young son, William runs an apartment in San Francisco and begins experimenting with the drug that makes everyone chill out.
00:26:53
LSD. Kidding, it doesn't do that. It's always those people that are like, I'm already obsessed
00:27:01
with like guns and bombs. And now I'm going to fuck with the interior structure of my brain.
00:27:10
Hey, let's go a little more berserker and fucking just start dosing myself. He also spends a lot of
00:27:17
time at home and his Chicago home. His little brother, Richard, who's now 23, and he had gone
00:27:23
on the straight and narrow. He's living in an apartment in Chicago. And when his brother's back
00:27:27
in town, you know, as you do, he gets sucked back into his brother's misdeeds. Over the course of
00:27:33
the summer of 65, the Kenilworth police compile a thick file full of times they've been called out
00:27:38
to the Thorsen house. Often the boys get into screaming, somewhat violent conflicts with their
00:27:43
parents. It almost sounds like the Menendez brothers in a way, doesn't it? Like just these
00:27:48
troublemakers. They break things. They vandalize the house. They take china and vases and furniture
00:27:52
from the attic and hurl them down the stairs. They stand on the roof and yell obscenities
00:27:57
down to their parents and their rich ass neighborhood. This culminates in William
00:28:03
stealing more than half a million dollars worth of securities from his parents' basement,
00:28:07
which is worth how much today? Half a million. Half a million in 65. Three million?
00:28:13
six million. Fuck. So like, why do you have them in your basement? My God. Also,
00:28:18
what does securities look like to steal? Like, I don't know. Is it prearranged? They come in their
00:28:24
own briefcase that like made of metal with its own handcuff or like they come in a steel barrel.
00:28:30
It's down by the washing machine. Yeah. Honey, don't put the securities in the laundry basket he also convinces his little brother richard to write a will
00:28:42
left turn making william the sole heir to any wealth he may have already accumulated which is
00:28:49
like how does that come up in a like you know we're hanging out having fun smashing shit and
00:28:53
it's like you know it'd be fun she'll write a will giving everything to me also if it's your
00:28:59
brother you know what a creep your brother is because you've seen him be the creepiest so
00:29:03
why go along with that unless he's a super psychopath that's like very good at keeping
00:29:09
it under wraps. I think he must be. And you know, you want your big brother's approval and love.
00:29:15
And I think he's truly like a narcissistic psychopath for sure. William. Yeah. In September
00:29:22
of 1965, this little brother, Richard dies in a rented car in Lake Forest, Illinois. He dies of a
00:29:29
gunshot wound to the right side of his head. The gun is a 375 Magnum. It's found on the passenger
00:29:35
seat next to him. So police are like, well, this must be a suicide. But Richard was left-handed
00:29:41
and would have had to use his right hand if he had shot himself that way. There's no note.
00:29:47
William is out of town at the time of his brother's death, although he and his wife had
00:29:52
been in town the days prior So it just kind of this mystery A week after Richard death William moves his family into a mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco And I seen the photo of it It like this creepy haunted looking mansion
00:30:07
William jumps right into a massive renovation, but quickly falls out with the architect and the contractor.
00:30:13
So I'm sure he's easy to work with. So the family winds up living in a gutted shell of a mansion.
00:30:18
This doesn't stop William from throwing frequent acid-fueled parties. So he's kind of friends with the riffraff in San Francisco at the time in the mid 60s,
00:30:27
which, you know, are like fucking nefarious. There's a lot of him out there. It's around this time that William kicks his hobby of collecting weapons into high gear.
00:30:36
He and Luis travel the country buying up military surplus. So much of it that their 7000 square foot San Francisco mansion
00:30:42
becomes packed to the gills with crates of weaponry. What the fuck? And they have a child, too, by the way.
00:30:49
This is like what the kid is growing up in. That's right. Oh, that's horrible. Yeah.
00:30:54
Like, what the fuck? Indeed. 7,000 pounds. When she's busted at the airport, like we talked about earlier on December 1966,
00:31:02
Louise is initially suspected of being a terrorist, but it turns out she's just gotten sucked into William's hobby.
00:31:08
Quote, there's an obsessive quality to this collecting. Even after Louise is arrested, William keeps buying the weapons.
00:31:15
William and Louise spend about $250,000 on their collection, which today would mean that they spent about $2 million on their collection of weaponry.
00:31:28
And he doesn't have his parents' money. I think he must be getting a funnel of money somehow.
00:31:33
Yeah. You know. Because at first I was like, oh, well, you know, he's rich and he can kind of do whatever he wants.
00:31:39
But then it's like, if he's cut off, then that's every time he has to buy more guns, he's got to go ask Bill Sr.
00:31:45
I don't think he's cut off as much as he's like watched, but I think he's still able to accrue a shit ton of money.
00:31:52
Yeah. OK. That way, you know, securities and such. Securities and such. And I think he's really manipulative, too.
00:31:58
So I'm sure his parents also are, you know, and wanting to take care of their grandson and their daughter in law.
00:32:04
In April of 1967, when Luis's New York case is still pending in the courts, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm, Ray, the San Francisco mansion.
00:32:13
they find an anti-tank cannon, a mortar, machine guns, rifles, pistols, grenades, and ammunition.
00:32:22
Also in the house is the couple's five-year-old son, who is wearing a cowboy outfit complete with fake pistols.
00:32:29
In the end, 77 tons of weaponry are confiscated from the mansion. Three army trucks from the nearby Presidio military base are needed to cart them away.
00:32:38
The Thorson's lawyer tells reporters, quote, Thoracin is a screwball in some ways. He just likes to collect old weapons.
00:32:46
No, no. But also like if you collect old weapons, then you would have like displays and whatever.
00:32:55
Yeah. I heard you describe it as that there were crates full of that, which is like,
00:33:00
that's how warlords keep their weapons, you know what I mean? In a crate for future use,
00:33:06
as opposed to a collector that's like, here's my beautiful cabinet with my five guns from the Civil War.
00:33:13
Right. It's very different. It's militia. It's militia level shit. Yeah. What was this guy's deal?
00:33:18
Did he have a plan? There is some speculation in a bit that you'll like. So because he's a convicted felon from that rape that he,
00:33:26
you know, went to prison for, he's not actually allowed to own any guns. So in the aftermath of losing his very expensive collection,
00:33:35
And while racking up even more legal fees, William spirals into an even darker place than he's been so far.
00:33:41
He doesn't stop buying guns. Even with their weapons cases progressing, William keeps sending Luis out to buy more.
00:33:48
One month after the raid, she's caught with a German submachine gun. That summer, William is arrested and charged in Las Vegas for beating a woman and breaking her nose.
00:33:57
His lawyers once again get him off with no jail time. Jesus Christ. I know, dude.
00:34:03
William has always used Louise in his crimes, having her go out and buy weapons or try to ship them across state lines or as an alibi during times when he's committed other crimes.
00:34:13
But over the next year, their relationship becomes more and more dysfunctional and William becomes more and more abusive.
00:34:19
He's violent. He routinely threatens to kill her. She leaves him a few times but returns, as is often the case.
00:34:26
In the spring of 1969, the family moves to a small house in Fresno as part of an effort to get their weapons trial moved out of San Francisco.
00:34:35
By 1970, William has managed to fill that house with $20,000 worth of machine guns and grenades, which is $150,000 in today's money.
00:34:45
Like, what are you going to do with those? It's an obsession. It sounds like a true obsession.
00:34:51
Yeah. Good Lord. Then on June 9th, 1970, William forces Louise to write a suicide note.
00:34:58
He threatens to throw her off the Golden Gate Bridge. He beats her. He fractures her ribs, giving her a hairline fracture in her skull and breaking an eardrum.
00:35:08
In the middle of this horrific abuse, he confesses to Louise that he had his brother Richard killed to get his money.
00:35:16
Oh, no. He also says he later regretted it and killed the acquaintance he hired to do the job.
00:35:22
because remember he was out of town when his brother died. Yeah. He says he killed the hitman in their San Francisco mansion
00:35:28
by bludgeoning him with a hammer. That's how he killed the hitman. Something is wrong with this rich man.
00:35:35
Definitely. But Jesus Christ. He also admits to killing an additional male acquaintance.
00:35:40
On top of all of this, he says he once attempted to murder his parents and the family housekeeper.
00:35:45
The next day after their son goes to school, William makes several remarks to Louise
00:35:49
about how he can't let her leave the house. and that he'll have to kill her, Luis takes a pistol off the mantelpiece and shoots him five times killing him Oh shit Glenn Wall the author of the two books about William and who has researched his life extensively
00:36:06
believes he didn't confess all of his murders to Louise the night before she killed him.
00:36:12
There's Judith May Anderson, I talked about at the beginning, with the steel barrels,
00:36:15
of course. Then there's another case from just a few blocks from where William grew up.
00:36:20
In September of 1966, a girl named Valerie Percy, who was 21 years old and the daughter of a prominent Kenilworth businessman and future U.S. senator, she's stabbed to death in her bedroom.
00:36:33
Her murder is never solved. But in 2014, unsealed FBI records reveal that William was thought to be a potential suspect.
00:36:41
And we, of course, know that he was violent towards women known to break into houses because that's what he did when he was a kid.
00:36:47
his like mischief shit and was in the Kenilworth area repeatedly during that time period.
00:36:52
And near the home, the crime scene, a bayonet was found and it was like a vintage bayonet.
00:36:59
And he was obsessed with collecting stuff like that. Right. Glen Wall goes even further.
00:37:04
And this is his like pet theory about William. He lived in San Francisco between 1965 and 1970.
00:37:11
Who could he also be? The Zodiac Killer. That's what Glen Wall thinks. Huh. While the Valerie Percy theory has some backing from law enforcement, this one doesn't.
00:37:21
Sorry. This just made me think of it. When you said he kind of looks like D.B. Cooper, that's what that Zodiac police illustration
00:37:29
looks like. He, side by side, definitely looks like him. I guess the body description in some of them doesn't sound the same, but you know, you
00:37:37
can mask that certain ways. Lose weight and gain weight. Yeah. Right. Or like big jacket and stuff.
00:37:42
And both in the Valerie Percy killing I just told you about and one of the Zodiac killings, the autopsies found that the victims may have been stabbed with military bayonets, which William did have in his collection, which I find very interesting.
00:37:56
There's not a ton of like, oh my God, that's amazing Zodiac connections. But the fact that he was hanging out with nefarious people in San Francisco and had this huge amount of guns he was buying from random people.
00:38:11
Like maybe he crossed paths with him at some point. Like I wouldn't be surprised if that was like he was in his world somehow.
00:38:18
And the shooting of the cab driver by the Zodiac killer also was like 12 blocks away from his mansion.
00:38:26
Oh, wow. Wow. That is a big oh wow connection. I just at this point process David Fincher's Zodiac movie as the facts of the Zodiac case.
00:38:40
So I'm like, no, he lived in Santa Rosa. It's just like, no, no, no. That's one suspect or whatever.
00:38:48
I mean, I'm starting to think that there were multiple Zodiac killers. It wasn't just all one person.
00:38:54
So many crimes are similar. Like how many crimes have we talked about where there's military weapons involved or there's somebody who is obsessed with violence and with weaponry who collects. It starts as an acceptable thing of I'm going to collect this certain type of gun or knife or blah, blah, blah. And then that obsession grows because really what's underneath that obsession is thinking about what you're going to do with that weapon. It's not just the weapon itself and how it works or whatever.
00:39:22
Right. It's power and weird stuff like that. Yeah. The other interesting thing I found with the Zodiac is that, so there were letters written to the police and to newspapers after William was killed by his wife. So that's weird. But the one thing that did change about those letters from the ones before he was killed is that the envelopes are addressed and stamped completely differently. So that did change.
00:39:47
if he was a zodiac let's you know let's say he had maybe already written the letters and then
00:39:52
someone else put them in an envelope and sent them oh you're saying a co-conspirator right
00:39:58
uh-huh right i mean maybe yeah zodiac being two people makes complete sense to me
00:40:03
multiple people on their own or two people two different people yeah copycat that's very
00:40:10
believable but you mean you're saying copycat or you're saying people working in tandem
00:40:16
I think copycat makes a lot of sense. I think the main Zodiac suspect of the main like confirmed same person Zodiac killings, maybe.
00:40:26
Yeah, maybe it's co-conspirators. That's the thing of these cold cases. I know. Anything's possible.
00:40:32
That's right. So in late 1970, Louise has tried for the murder of her husband. Two witnesses, both of whom are in prison, testify that William tried to hire them to kill Louise.
00:40:43
three of william's former attorneys testify on louise's behalf one saying that he once walked
00:40:50
in on william attempting to throw louise off the balcony of a 20th floor hotel room in new york
00:40:55
holy everyone's like defending the shit out of this poor woman good louise proves that she acted
00:41:01
in self-defense and thankfully is acquitted oh good yeah also if this was 1967 like the women
00:41:08
couldn't have bank accounts. There's such, it was still that era and it's so recent. It's so weird,
00:41:14
but there was up until very recently, women were locked into the relationship they committed
00:41:19
themselves to when they were 20 years old or whatever. It's horrifying. Yeah. In 1974,
00:41:27
Louise publishes a book about her life with William. It's called, It Gave Everybody Something
00:41:31
to do. Just to tell you what the fuck, what it was like back then for women, the 1974 headline
00:41:38
of the New York Times article about the book is titled The Way She Tells the Story. It's a man
00:41:44
hater's dream. Oh, perfect. Yeah. No, she doesn't have a perspective or an experience. No, no,
00:41:51
she a man hater That why she killed him Oh my God Anyway I think the Zodiac angle is really fucking interesting And like there are some little details here and there and especially the old cold cases in Kenilworth should be looked into based on his evidence But that is the story of William and Louise Thorzin
00:42:12
Wow. I've never heard of that. I hadn't either. That's wild. Wild. Yeah. Great job.
00:42:18
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In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it, the cat in the corner is black.
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That's always fascinating to me, how they just bring in all these different nuances
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plans. Pets age zero to 10. All right. You know what we're going to do now? Left.
00:45:38
Turn. Left. Turn. Put on your blinker because we're going to go ahead and take a left turn.
00:45:43
Now, I don't know if you remember back when I covered the boy Edward Jones, who was the
00:45:49
queen stalker back in the day. Who was it? Queen Victoria? Queen Victoria. Thank you.
00:45:57
And in that story, when we were talking about it, I mentioned that there was a thing going on at the
00:46:02
time that people thought that the boy Edward Jones could have been this other person that was
00:46:10
terrorizing London. Oh, we're talking about suspects. I love this episode. We're talking
00:46:15
about suspects. We're talking about theories and people trying to figure out what the hell is going
00:46:21
on. And it also all takes place in my favorite place and time in the world, Victorian England,
00:46:28
specifically London in the 1830s. So according to professor named Dr. Emily Zarka, London is,
00:46:36
quote, the largest urban environment in the world at the time, which I didn't know that. That's
00:46:42
amazing. So Victorian England, obviously a gigantic world power. London itself is like
00:46:50
the biggest city in the world. The smells, the smells that must have been emanating.
00:46:55
The smells, the pollution, the like just constant coal smoke. It is blowing directly into your face.
00:47:03
The city is grimy. It's gloomy. It has a spooky feel to it. And that is during the day. At night,
00:47:10
by the sporadic gas powered street lamps or by people's own handheld lanterns that they would
00:47:16
walk around with because it was so foggy, coley, dark. You just look like a ghost everywhere you
00:47:22
go. Yes. It's because there were constantly shadows being cast onto every wall. And there
00:47:28
were so many dark alleyways. Maren showed me an illustration of Victorian England. And it was like,
00:47:34
it was like a bunch of front yards and everything was bricked up. So you're always going around a
00:47:41
corner going into like a weird yard that was then connected to a doorway that would go upstairs. Like
00:47:47
it was all interconnected and super spooky. And then at night, it got even spookier. And of course,
00:47:54
it was easy to get work in Victorian London, but it was extremely rare to find goodwill.
00:48:00
work with decent pay and humane conditions, especially if you were a member of the working
00:48:05
class. So a lot of Victorian Brits are hungry, exhausted, and miserable from living in extreme
00:48:12
abject poverty. A huge class divide separates the richest from the poorest Londoners at this time.
00:48:19
And it shows in the city streets. It's dirty. The slums are overcrowded. The crime rates are sky high.
00:48:25
there's an atmosphere of fear claustrophobia and chaos that permeates the city and if all of that
00:48:31
isn't scary enough in january of 1826 eyewitnesses begin to report a high jumping fire breathing
00:48:40
shape-shifting monster that is terrorizing the public of england as a whole it starts in little
00:48:48
towns and villages outside of london and then it slowly moves into the city center
00:48:53
I shall now regale you with one of Victorian England's most bizarre menaces, Spring-Heeled Jack.
00:49:02
So the main sources being used today are research by a British writer and historian named Mike Dash,
00:49:10
a 2020 episode of the PBS series Monstrum entitled The Original Urban Legend Spring-Heeled Jack,
00:49:17
a 2022 BuzzFeed video called Spring-Heeled Jack, The Demon of London. And I personally first heard about Spring Heel Jack on the podcast, last podcast on the left,
00:49:28
researched by the great Marcus Parks and his team of researchers. Go listen to the Spring Heel Jack episode of last podcast on the left if you've never heard it.
00:49:38
Henry Zebrowski is so insane and hilarious during that episode. It is like the funniest thing of all time.
00:49:44
That's so good. The rest of the sources are in our show notes. And actually, I added a Wikipedia article and there was another part that's from the podcast Unresolved.
00:49:54
So it actually begins north of London in a town called Northampton. And the first mention of Spring-Hailed Jack appears in the local newspaper there, the Northampton Mercury, in January of 1826.
00:50:06
They run a somewhat skeptical report that reads, quote, A shopkeeper in the area described seeing a man with spring boots, which enabled him to vault over a 10-foot wall.
00:50:16
We have not confirmed this sighting with anyone else in the area. And he was shit faced.
00:50:23
And that's what he saw. You know how steampunk is like based on that kind of Victorian England and like when people machinery and trains and big clocks and sciencey weird shit.
00:50:34
Yeah. The idea that someone could have gotten their hands on two large springs and started fucking around with them and then ended up putting them on the bottom of shoes.
00:50:43
and then they bounce around is I can see that so easily. Delightful, delightful.
00:50:49
Right. And so this is just one of those reports in a local paper of like, we're pretty sure we saw a guy with springs on his shoes jump over a wall,
00:50:56
but it's more gossip than it is fact. So we're just telling everybody. So then it takes about 10 more years.
00:51:04
Then in September of 1837 in the village of Barnes, rumors spread that what people refer to as either a ghost imp or devil has been harassing local
00:51:16
women within weeks these encounters are documented in more than 20 villages outside of london proper
00:51:22
the description varies from witness to witness some see a malevolent bull-like creature others
00:51:29
see a ghostly bear with blazing red eyes one person even reports an encounter with a big
00:51:35
knight-like figure dressed in armor. Sounds like a different guy. That guy sounds different. I mean,
00:51:41
a bear, a bull, or a knight. Right. It's like, what Guillermo del Toro movie are we watching
00:51:47
right now? Okay. But the most common description is that of a ghoulish man who from afar looks
00:51:55
aristocratic and gentlemanly. He wears a long black cloak over tight white clothing. He's very
00:52:01
ugly. He breathes fire. He has long metallic claws where his fingers should be, and he can
00:52:08
jump extremely high. For whatever reason, these ghouls, the bear, the bull, the knight, and the
00:52:14
aristocrat are not seen as separate entities, but as one shape-shifting monster. So either that's a
00:52:23
bunch of different people seeing different things, or the urban legend blends itself into it's one
00:52:31
guy that's all these things or shaped shifter or whatever. Right. Right. The thing that's
00:52:36
important to note is that these witnesses are mostly working class women. They're targeted
00:52:41
walking alone in public or in the case of servants, housemaids that are answering their
00:52:46
employers front doors. In some instances, the creature simply scares them. In others,
00:52:51
he actually tears their clothing to shreds with his sharp metallic claws. So it is an
00:52:57
assault. But back then, because it was Victorian society, which was renowned for being very
00:53:02
repressed and very prudish, at least publicly, Spring-Heeled Jack attacks are rarely reported
00:53:08
as sexual assaults. They didn't really speak in those terms at all back then. But we can assume
00:53:14
that the women who did come forward to claim it had been assaulted. And it was sexual violence.
00:53:21
I mean, that was what was happening. So when this creature finally makes it to London, it basically makes its debut by bouncing over the walls of Kensington Palace at midnight and, quote unquote, dancing on the wooded lawn.
00:53:35
So from there, rumors spread like wildfire across London, and the British press starts to cover the growing citywide panic over this creature.
00:53:44
It's not just the tabloids that are keeping tabs. The rumors become so rampant and are so mysterious
00:53:51
that respected British publications start paying attention to it too The Times even reports a claim that the creature quote so terrified the residents of Stockwell Brixton Camberwell and Vauxhall that several of them had died in terror end quote
00:54:09
Soon Victorian journalists give this monster a name. In a nod to his incredible jumping skills,
00:54:15
they start calling him Spring-Heeled Jack. But already the line between fact and fiction is hazy.
00:54:21
For example, there is no evidence that anyone can find to back up the claim that any Londoners died in fear because of Spring-Hale Jack.
00:54:30
It's unclear how and why that actually made it into the Times, like unchecked. And then a handful of specific rumors are debunked or deemed like miscommunications.
00:54:41
So the historian Mike Dash points out, quote, The few rumors that could be tracked down to their source turned out to bear little relation to what had actually occurred.
00:54:50
one reported ghost turned out to be a police inspector on a white horse another a white-faced
00:54:57
heifer and the report that jack had danced on the kensington palace lawn turned out to be an
00:55:01
exaggerated recounting of an unrelated incident that had occurred around 1822 and what happened
00:55:08
that event i mean it could have been like the gossip because you know there was like the country
00:55:14
cousins that somehow ended up talking to the city cousins so it was 10 years so maybe some like
00:55:20
things were witnessed on the outside of town and like slowly the story made it into town.
00:55:25
That's my personal theory. And I am, this is going to shock you, not a historian.
00:55:30
Wait, what? So what is true about this is that there are women experiencing violent attacks
00:55:38
and harassment at the hands of strange men and countless more are terrified that they might be
00:55:44
next. But these fears are mostly ignored by the men in power who could be meaningfully responding
00:55:49
in some way and just aren't. In early 1838, for example, someone identified only as, quote,
00:55:56
a resident of Peckham in South London sends a letter to the city's Lord Mayor, John Cowan,
00:56:01
and that letter includes shocking stories about women being severely traumatized by their
00:56:06
encounters with a, quote, supernatural attacker. This says, in part, in quote, the poor girl has
00:56:14
never from that moment been in her sense, but on seeing any man she screams out most violently,
00:56:19
take him away. There are two ladies, which your lordship will regret to hear, who have husbands
00:56:25
and children and who are not expected to recover, but likely to become a burden on their families.
00:56:31
End quote. So these are women that are being so traumatized by what they're experiencing,
00:56:37
whatever it might be, that it's really actually having a profound effect. But it's clear that the
00:56:43
writer who believes these rumors feels unsafe in their community and is basically terrified and
00:56:49
trying to report it to the mayor. Unfortunately, Mayor Cowan can't seem to get past that supernatural
00:56:54
aspect of these claims of Spring-Heeled Jack. It's understandable that he might feel skeptical
00:57:00
towards a ghost who jumps over walls and onto buildings. But in a public statement,
00:57:06
he addresses this letter and assumes the writer's a woman and mocks her, saying she's experiencing,
00:57:13
quote, hysteria. And he states his theory that Spring-Heeled Jack is probably some burglar
00:57:18
that wears a weird costume. And that is the extent of the investigation. But it's happening. You can't be like...
00:57:25
Something's happening. But it's actually... Something is happening. So you can't just say it didn't happen. Oh my God.
00:57:32
Yeah. Yikes. And then he basically goes on to say, this is all out of my jurisdiction anyway.
00:57:38
Oh, fuck you. So that settles it, I guess, then. Everything's fine. Goodbye. Because it's not your problem. But just a few weeks later, in mid-February of 1838,
00:57:48
around 9 p.m. It's a dark night and an 18-year-old girl is named Jane Alsup. Here's a
00:57:55
ringing at the front gate of her family home in Old Ford, London. So she ventures out to see who's
00:58:02
at the gate. And so there's like a little space between the front door and the front gate. And as
00:58:08
she approaches, she can see a man standing there in a cloak. Before she can get too close, he calls
00:58:13
out that he's a policeman and that he's just captured Spring-Heeled Jack and he needs her help.
00:58:18
So like any Londoner, Jane would know who Spring-Hale Jack is, and it's safe to imagine that she would feel a mix of relief and respect for the fact that this cop has just finally caught him.
00:58:29
The man tells Jane to run inside and get a candle, and Jane does it. And when she comes back, she walks down to the gate, opens it, hands the officer the candle.
00:58:39
When the man takes the candle, he holds it close to his chest, and to Jane's horror, it reveals a horrifying face that might not even be human.
00:58:49
This is the quote from the Times report on that incident. Quote, He threw off his outer garment and vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flames from his mouth, and his eyes resembled red balls of fire.
00:59:02
Jane observed that he wore a large helmet, and his dress, which appeared to fit him very tight, seemed to her to resemble white oil skin.
00:59:12
End quote. Oh, creepy. Yeah. So the front door of Jane's house is just behind her like a short walk away.
00:59:19
But before she has time to turn around and run back inside, the man bursts through the open gate, grabs her neck, puts her in a headlock.
00:59:28
Then he uses his metal claws to tear her clothing and her skin, and he pulls out clumps of her hair.
00:59:36
Oh, my God. She fights like hell, and she's finally able to break away, and she runs up to the front door.
00:59:42
But just before she can grab the doorknob, he catches up to her and pulls her down onto the front steps and the attack continues.
00:59:51
So Jane is finally able to start screaming for help. And finally her older sister Sarah opens the door sees Jane whose clothes are now in tatters and she able to run out grab Jane by her arms and pull her inside
01:00:05
And together they slam the door shut. Then the creature starts banging on their door.
01:00:10
And so they run to the windows, they throw them open and start screaming for the police.
01:00:15
And when they do that, Spring-Heeled Jack scurries away. So up until this point, sightings or attacks around London that are linked to Spring-Healed Jack are treated with skepticism.
01:00:27
And when they're mentioned in newspapers, all the details are very slim. And finding information about specific victims and their testimonies is really tough.
01:00:36
That is not the case with Jane Alsop. Her assault is taken very seriously. It's immediately treated as credible, and it has detailed reporting behind it.
01:00:46
clearly the powers that be immediately believe jane's story because she comes from a wealthy
01:00:51
well-respected family she is not the usual target which is a woman from the working class
01:00:57
she's a rich girl so they have just created the metropolitan police which i think you talked about
01:01:03
when you were talking about the mr witcher thing so it's very strange to imagine but there was kind
01:01:09
of no police department at all until like a couple years before this, I think. So they kick
01:01:16
off an investigation the day after this attack. A detective named James Lee issues a report which
01:01:22
notes that Jane's attack fits a pattern. For the past month, several women in the neighborhood and
01:01:27
even some men have reported being harassed by an unidentified perpetrator. Detective Lee says,
01:01:33
quote, a person answering precisely his size and figure had been frequently observed walking about
01:01:39
the lanes and lonely places enveloped in a large Spanish cloak and was sometimes in the habit of
01:01:45
carrying a small lantern about with him. So spooky. But like the Lord Mayor, Detective Lee is also
01:01:53
skeptical. He thinks this is the work of a belligerent thrill-seeking man, and he actually
01:01:58
goes so far as to suggest that Jane had, quote, much mistaken the appearance of her assailant
01:02:03
and that the whole affair was merely the result of a drunken frolic and not the act of Spring-Heeled Jack.
01:02:10
And fuck you. A drunken frolic. Frolic for who, motherfucker? Why are you speaking for the monster?
01:02:19
So condescending. So over the course of their investigation, the Metropolitan Police question a handful of male suspects based on tips from the public.
01:02:28
None of these men are ever charged for the attack. And this next incident is actually, I was looking up something and I came to the Unresolved podcast. They have a website that's like a blog and host, this is the host, there's a couple different Unresolved podcasts. This is the one that's hosted by Michael Whelan. And this is his blog. So this is a quote from his blog about this case.
01:02:52
It says, an embroidered coat of arms with a W on the cloak, but it's unclear if the police did anything with
01:03:29
this information. So then just a few days later on February 28th at around 8 30, two sisters are
01:03:37
walking home in the East London neighborhood of Limehouse. One of the sisters, Lucy Scales,
01:03:42
spots a man standing in the dark ahead of them. So as a precaution, she steps out in front of her
01:03:48
sister as they walk. I mean, can you imagine you're like, you worked at the matchstick factory
01:03:53
all day long and now it's 830 at night. You haven't eaten dinner. You're trying to get home
01:03:59
and you're just like, well, we have to go down three more like creepy corners and blind alleys
01:04:04
and whatever. And no, okay, here's this guy. As the girls pass this man, he emerges from the
01:04:11
shadows, gets right up in Lucy's face, and as he does, a hot bluish flame shoots out of his mouth.
01:04:20
Lucy falls to the ground screaming. She's temporarily blinded. The man runs away.
01:04:24
Then Lucy starts convulsing. Luckily, she makes a full recovery, and when she files a report with
01:04:31
the local magistrate, she describes her attacker as wearing a cloak and having, quote, a tall,
01:04:37
thin, gentlemanly appearance. Lucy also says that the man carried a small lantern, which was held up
01:04:44
to his face before she was showered with his fiery breath. So this encounter also gets written up in
01:04:52
British newspapers, probably because it's right after Jane's attack. It doesn't make as much of
01:04:57
a splash, probably because Lucy's family isn't prominent like Jane's. But Detective Lee is again
01:05:03
on the scene. And he starts his investigation by visiting the spot where the attack happened.
01:05:09
And when he's there, he notes, quote, no place could be better adopted for such an act as persons
01:05:15
could be seen at considerable distance, approaching it on both sides, end quote. But even as a few men
01:05:23
are questioned in connection with this assault, they're all eventually released and no one's ever
01:05:27
charged. So now a new wave of terror hits London. And before long, it seems like everyone has a
01:05:34
story about encountering Spring-Heeled Jack. Later that year, in 1838, a melodrama called
01:05:40
Spring-Heeled Jack is staged at the Royal Pavilion Theater, which is a theater that caters to the
01:05:46
working class crowd. So it's basically like, here's this thing you guys are all dealing with
01:05:50
and scared shitless of Now we can just go have a catharsis in the theater about it Between 1840 in 1869 Spring Jack is seen in the Midlands In 1863 he spotted in Middlesex Later he seen in Sheffield Lincolnshire Liverpool and even in some foreign countries
01:06:12
But the line between hard facts and imagination remains hazy. In 1877, for example, a creature fitting that Spring-Hale Jack's description terrorizes soldiers at an army barracks near Aldershot, which is 40 miles southwest of London.
01:06:28
and an American tabloid reported on that, saying that the creature slapped, wrestled, and outran sentries
01:06:36
before ultimately vanishing into thin air. Although the local British military newspaper reports a little more cautiously,
01:06:44
saying, quote, Someone or other appears to have made up his mind to play some rather questionable pranks
01:06:49
with the sentries at this camp while on night duty. End quote. It's like everyone was drinking, and here's what happened.
01:06:56
Yeah, exactly. enough time has passed that people aren't going straight to the spring-heeled jack theory so there
01:07:03
are aspects of the spring-heeled jack legend that are based in truth multiple women were victims of
01:07:09
real assaults some of these attacks were explicitly committed by a human or a human-like creature
01:07:15
dressed in a cape wearing tight clothing with the appearance of an aristocrat but other than that we
01:07:21
don't know exactly who or what Spring-Heeled Jack is, but there are many theories. So plenty
01:07:28
people of the time fully believed that this fire-breathing, high-jumping creature was a demon,
01:07:35
the devil, or a ghost. In more recent years, some people have suggested it could have been an alien.
01:07:42
One of the most popular theories is that a very wealthy man known as the McQuiss of Waterford,
01:07:49
his actual name is Henry Beresford, is the mastermind behind Spring-Heeled Jack.
01:07:55
He was a big character. He was a fixture of the Victorian Society gossip mill. He came from a wealthy Irish family, and he inherited his own fortune when he was very,
01:08:05
very young. And then he became notorious for using that fortune to bankroll his party-party lifestyle.
01:08:13
Everybody in London knew that this guy loved to get drunk and get into trouble. and according to Dr. Emily Zarka,
01:08:21
his exploits involved a slew of pranks, like streaking. He would pay people to fight him.
01:08:29
He actually, he was charged once for throwing meat out of a butcher shop. He also tried to pay some city officials
01:08:36
to run two trains at each other and force them to crash just so everyone could watch it,
01:08:43
like for the fun of it. So it's a parallel to your story. It was like rich guy mayhem. So in the late 1830s, when Spring-Hale Jack first pops up in the London
01:08:54
area, Henry's hijinks are at their absolute peak. So legend has it that in 1837, Henry and his gang
01:09:02
of equally rich, always drunk friends, they basically went on like a wilding where they
01:09:09
were super drunk. They had to stop at a toll booth. And when the toll booth operator basically
01:09:15
were like, you have to pay to go through this gate. There was some construction kind of supplies
01:09:21
nearby and they found a can of red paint and they just started painting. They painted the toll booth
01:09:29
operator red. They painted the toll booth red. They started going and just putting red paint on
01:09:34
doors everywhere and windows. It was just pointless, drunken vandalism. And it's where the phrase
01:09:41
paint the town red comes from. Shut your face. Yep. Here's a quote about Henry from Wikipedia.
01:09:49
It says, quote, that Lord Waterford had some role, has been accepted by several modern authors
01:09:56
who suggest that a humiliating experience with a woman and a police officer could have given him the idea of creating the character
01:10:04
as a way of getting even with police and women in general. They speculate that he could have designed
01:10:10
with the help of friends who were experts in applied mechanics, some of the apparatus for
01:10:17
special spring-heeled boots, and that he may have practiced fire-spitting techniques in order to
01:10:23
increase the unnatural appearance of his character. They also note that the embroidered coat of arms
01:10:30
with the W letter that was observed by the servant during the Ashworth incident was his
01:10:37
his last name starts with w he's the lord waterford oh no yes and so that's the one piece
01:10:45
that actually hooks him up with circumstantial evidence but it's pretty fascinating because like
01:10:51
when you look at it that way of like what if a rich guy was just like wild and just wanted to
01:10:57
only fuck with people all the time and just had money to burn what would he do and how would he
01:11:03
do it. And if he was drunk or that was like a part of it, the idea that it would just escalate
01:11:10
makes perfect sense over time where it starts out, he's spooking people and scaring people.
01:11:15
Then he's really starting to like it. I think he did it. I don't care. I don't want to even
01:11:20
hear it. Just the end. Goodbye. Stay sexy. The idea that he could have been Spring-Heeled Jack
01:11:25
doesn't seem out of the question. He was repeatedly described as looking gentlemanly,
01:11:30
But even if the Marquis and his friends were involved, we'll never know for sure.
01:11:39
And they couldn't be responsible for all of the sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack because they actually continued on past the time of his death.
01:11:49
The fact is the initial panic around Spring-Heeled Jack spawned decades worth of imposters.
01:11:55
Over the years, multiple Spring-Heeled Jack copycats, all men, were... questioned, arrested, or fined for the stunts that they pulled while dressed up as the famous boogeyman,
01:12:05
including a, quote, genteely dressed man that showed up to a London pub, announced that he was Spring-Heeled Jack, pulled out a club, and began swinging it at the landlady.
01:12:16
What the fuck? Yeah. So some researchers have also tried to explain Jack's supernatural features.
01:12:23
They argue that his jumping skills were likely exaggerations by traumatized witnesses,
01:12:28
that his claws could have been specially adapted gloves. And when it comes to spitting fire,
01:12:35
historian Mike Dash makes a valid point. He says, quote, Jack needed a naked flame to affect his trick.
01:12:42
In the Alsop case, he specifically requested a candle, postponing his attack and increasing the risk of detection by doing so.
01:12:50
When one was brought, he held it at chest level, then began to breathe his blue and white flames.
01:12:56
And similarly, he lifted a lantern to the same height just before attacking Lucy Scales.
01:13:01
This behavior is highly reminiscent of that of a carnival fire breather. So someone somewhere along the line could have taught the rich guy who loved to do crazy shit how to do that.
01:13:14
For sure. Another theory is that the uptick of Spring-Heel Jack sightings and encounters in the 1830s is an example of a collective delusion or hallucination.
01:13:24
Sociologist Robert Bartholomew says, quote, collective delusions can involve exaggerated feelings of danger within communities at large where members of an affected population are concerned over what they believe is an immediate personal threat, end quote.
01:13:41
So Victorian England, as I said, is a scary place. That's especially true for poor and working class women who were considered second class citizens and whose concern around the violence that they basically had to endure every day could just easily be dismissed, even by the mayor of London, as hysteria.
01:14:02
Yeah Historians have wondered if Spring Jack became a more relatable accessible way to talk about their baseline fear this instability and this anxiety that Victorian women felt every day It suspected that some victims of assault could have misidentified their male attackers as Spring Jack
01:14:22
because it's easier to blame a monster for the violence than to accuse a man that they knew.
01:14:28
Totally, totally. Historians also point out that Spring-Heeled Jack seemed to give women of the time
01:14:34
a coded way to talk about sexual violence. In 1845, for example, a new and terrifying story spread like wildfire
01:14:41
amongst London's poorest women. It said that a sex worker named Maria Davis was attacked by Spring-Heeled Jack in broad daylight,
01:14:50
that he spit flames into her face, forced her over a bridge. She fell into an open sewer and drowned.
01:14:57
And this would be the first instance of Spring-Heeled Jack actually murdering someone,
01:15:02
but it's not in any way backed up by historical record. And that makes some historians believe
01:15:10
that it's an urban legend that was passed around as a cautionary tale on the risks of interacting
01:15:16
with strange men. So in an interesting twist, Victorian Brits will eventually reverse the
01:15:24
legend of Spring-Heeled Jack and transform him from a monster into a scrappy superhero.
01:15:31
In the early 1860s, Spring-Heeled Jack becomes the protagonist in a series of Penny Dreadfuls,
01:15:37
which were the pulpy and salacious booklets that pulled their inspiration from real life crimes and headlines.
01:15:44
And in these penny dreadfuls, Spring-Heeled Jack is still a spooky prankster, but now he's also a vigilante who looks out for London's most disenfranchised residents.
01:15:55
And this Spring-Heeled Jack is written to be a hero for women, diligently protecting them from danger.
01:16:01
So whether or not this catharsis closed the chapter on Spring-Heeled Jack and his legend,
01:16:07
A little more than a decade later, in 1888, the city will suffer another rash of attacks.
01:16:14
This time, they're very, very real, and they are far grislier. And a new faceless monster will terrorize the streets of London.
01:16:22
And once again, the victims will be working class women. The Whitechapel murders are committed by a serial killer that is nicknamed Jack the Ripper And just like Spring Jack before him his identity remains a mystery to this day And if we just going to be you know
01:16:42
this way about it, which I always love to be, if we're going to theorize the potential of a
01:16:49
collective delusion or a collective hallucination, I want to push it even further and entertain the
01:16:56
theory that it was a collective premonition that the women of London knew that Jack the Ripper was
01:17:03
coming. And that's what was happening with Spring-Heeled Jack. Scary. That's scary. And that's,
01:17:10
I mean, but the fact is, it's like, it was happening. People were getting, women were
01:17:14
getting assaulted. It was real. And also the premonition ideas, it's just kind of my corny
01:17:19
ending, but it also could go in the other way, which is if just say a rich drunken Irish prankster
01:17:25
was responsible for Spring-Heeled Jack, but he basically started off as like, I love pranks.
01:17:31
And then it went into, I want to hurt people. Totally. Or I can get away with whatever I want in this costume.
01:17:36
I'm going to just push it further. And in these neighborhoods and in these dark alleys
01:17:40
that someone else picked up on that and learned that and went, I'm going to push it further.
01:17:47
So that's so creepy. The real Jack the Ripper was inspired by Spring-Heeled Jack.
01:17:53
Who knows? I could see that for sure. Yeah. We'll never know. But that is the story of Victorian England's aristocratic fire-breathing boogeyman, Spring-Heeled Jack.
01:18:02
Wow. I mean, the fact that they're both named Jack is very eerie, you know? Yep.
01:18:09
Wow. Great job. Thank you. Karen's specialty right there. Oh, all of my favorite things. Breathing fire, housemaids, you know.
01:18:20
Yeah. Wow. All right. Well, that's another one. We finished another one for you, dear listener.
01:18:25
We sure did. Thank you guys for listening and being a part of this little cult that we've all created over the past seven and a half years.
01:18:35
Yeah. Thanks for sticking around and, you know, stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:18:40
Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton
01:18:57
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:19:05
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01:19:13
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01:20:31
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