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See full terms at mintmobile.com. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
00:01:10
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like,
00:01:15
okay, hold on, I got a new favorite food. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Kewpie Mayo.
00:01:23
Yeah, it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it at the grocery store.
00:01:27
And this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Kewpie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor.
00:01:35
It's smoother, deeper, almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything.
00:01:39
Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it.
00:01:46
Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise.
00:01:53
My favorite murder Hello! Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.
00:02:13
That's Karen Kilgariff. This is The Beginning. We do it right every time. Boom! Just like that.
00:02:20
Check it out. Look at the pros. Year seven. Year seven. Year seven. And a half. That's almost two high schools of podcasting.
00:02:32
Almost two high schools. We've almost graduated high school, both of us. Yeah. It's great.
00:02:37
It is great. I'm happy for us. I know. I mean, we're really stuck in there. We didn't quit like college, you know.
00:02:44
Or almost high school in my case. And you know, I will say this, compared to high school,
00:02:51
this show, I've done more homework for this show than I ever once did in high school ever.
00:02:59
Yes. A hundred percent. I never did homework in high school. It's like less drugs and more homework. How did we sell this to ourselves?
00:03:08
Right. Like I don't think anybody considered the long-term effects of just starting up a
00:03:13
homework show and then several side businesses all at once. Right. Highly recommend not a podcast
00:03:20
that you have to do homework for? Talking and driving ones are fun. Plenty of other kinds. What's going on with you? What do you got?
00:03:32
I got not much. I do a lot of the same thing. But then it makes it kind of fun because then
00:03:39
when I do leave this house and go like meet a friend for dinner or do something, it's like,
00:03:45
literally, I drive around Los Angeles. I'm like, look at that. How long has that been there?
00:03:51
You're like a new baby. Yes. Or like I just moved here from Cleveland or something.
00:03:56
Like I signed up on TikTok for like, here's the coolest new rooftop bars on the east side
00:04:03
or bars on the east side. And I literally have not heard of one of them. I have to look them up.
00:04:09
Like, where would that be? I don't even recognize the street it's on. No, I do that all the time.
00:04:14
As if we're like, we're the kind of people to go to rooftop bars. Never. Or like I follow this one Instagram account called secret.losangeles.
00:04:22
And it's like fun things to do this weekend that are like this and that. And I'm like, this looks fun.
00:04:28
I don't like crowds. I don't like leaving the house. I don't like heat, the sun.
00:04:33
I don't know what I'm thinking, but I'm going to utilize any of these things. But it's fun to dream.
00:04:38
It's fun to dream and picture. And sometimes I think I also signed up for secret Los Angeles.
00:04:44
That's really funny because was one of the things like a vegan festival? Probably.
00:04:50
I don't know. I literally was like looking like, that's interesting. And I'm like, Karen, can I please talk to you for a second?
00:04:56
You're not going to a vegan festival. You're a carnivore. Like that's A and B and C.
00:05:03
You're a couch based carnivore that resents the slightest difficulty. It's like, we'll send me home.
00:05:11
What am I talking about? Parking will be a nightmare. fucking if that weren't the case I would be at the beach like every day I haven't been at the
00:05:18
beach in like three years yeah also sometimes those accounts like on TikTok there'll be clips
00:05:24
of like here's our happy hour or whatever yeah and I'll kind of like the general look of it but
00:05:30
it's like if I was sitting at a table there I'd only be negative and judgmental like what am I
00:05:36
talking about and I'm also like solidly 25 years too old to be at any of those places right yeah
00:05:43
A lot of them are not for our age range. What about secret Los Angeles for bitchy 50s?
00:05:50
Yeah. Something like around that area. Like it could be like a Gen X secret Los Angeles where it just like we know you want to stay home You probably not going to come to this but here is a place to go That isn loud That isn loud Not too loud
00:06:07
Everyone's kind of like chill and withholding. So you don't have to like get into anything.
00:06:12
No one looks at anyone because they don't want to accidentally recognize each other and have to
00:06:15
have awkward small talk when you make eye contact and go, oh, hey. Or kind of like look and absorb
00:06:21
the judgment from a peer group. Right. Because that's probably what's happening. Right. Okay.
00:06:27
I have a corrections corner. Okay. Great. That I really appreciate. This one's from Chanel Renee
00:06:32
at Chanel Renee on X. I'm talking about Twitter. Oh, this is not a porn discussion.
00:06:40
This is not punk rock band. It's not Curious Georgia signature. It's Twitter. Um, Chanel
00:06:48
Renee wrote, just wanted to share a bear aphorism I learned recently. Quote, if it's black, fight back.
00:06:55
If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, say good night. Wow. And then the end says, just a friendly
00:07:04
correction, grizzlies or brown bears, I think in this week's episode, you meant to compare black
00:07:08
bears. Yes, I did. For sure. Thank you, Chanel, for knowing me and supporting the misinformation
00:07:15
that I insist upon putting into the world every week on this podcast. But that's why we have Corrections Corner,
00:07:21
is because we are open and willing and almost aggressively excited to correct ourselves.
00:07:30
That's right, which is a really great way to be. Yeah. You know, and some people are threatened by that.
00:07:36
Yeah, yeah. Oh, here's what we can talk about. What? The loss of Pee Wee Herman.
00:07:42
It's heartbreaking. what a joyous human being that the world has lost and the amount of clips that are now i'm seeing
00:07:51
on both x twitter and tiktok like he was an early letterman comedy panel guest which is a very
00:08:01
difficult thing to do he did stand up on letterman like he was going to do a set and then it was just
00:08:05
like him pulling shit out of a bag and acting like a child which everyone loved but then he would have
00:08:10
to go sit down and basically do the same thing seated, which is really hard. And every clip I've
00:08:17
seen is like funnier than the last and better than the last. I just loved that guy. He was such a huge
00:08:22
part of my childhood. Me too. And it was great seeing so many people, like a lot of famous people
00:08:28
being like, this is how good of a friend he was. And this is like, not even famous people, like the
00:08:33
place I got my cat, the Orphan Kitten Club, he was like friends with them. And they're like showing
00:08:39
photos with him. He like helped save animals and was just like this good fucking person. It's
00:08:45
unbelievable. That's the legacy you want to leave behind, you know? Entirely. Yeah. Like overtly
00:08:50
caring, invested. I should say this. Paul Rubens died. Pee Wee Herman was a character he played.
00:08:57
I just was saying the first thing that came to my head. And that should be said because he played
00:09:01
lots of other characters that were so hilarious. They keep showing that 30 rock clip.
00:09:07
Oh my God. Best episode. Best episode of 30 Rock. The little hand is like one of the greatest things.
00:09:12
Welcome to my party. It's just epic. Epic. Oh man. Go watch it if you haven't seen it and laugh.
00:09:18
So good. Such a loss. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I have a podcast I can just shout out real quick.
00:09:26
It's by my gal who does Nothing Much Happens. Of course, I love that Go to Sleep podcast.
00:09:31
She's now doing a meditation podcast called First This. She's cashing in on that voice of hers.
00:09:37
and her writing skills, which is like good for her, you know? Yeah. But it's just a 10 minute mindfulness meditation podcast by Catherine Nicolai.
00:09:46
10 minutes. That's like what I need once a day. It's 10 minutes and I can't fucking do it.
00:09:51
It's impossible for me to sit down and not concentrate for 10 minutes and do something.
00:09:57
Can I make a suggestion? Please. What if you try to do it like on a walk so that you don't feel the sit down part as a
00:10:03
restriction? I like that. I like that. Because sometimes that's the, it's almost like stop your whole day and go do this thing
00:10:11
that animals will bug you as you do it. This, this, like you can easily list all the reasons it won't work out.
00:10:17
Yeah. But if you're already doing something else, you could get into the habit of like spending
00:10:21
10 minutes focused on that. I like that idea. I'd never thought of that. It's like always so restrictive.
00:10:27
Like you have to do it this way or you're not doing it right. And so I don't do it, you know?
00:10:31
Whose voice is that, Georgia? Who's talking in that? Janet! No, I'm kidding. I don't know.
00:10:40
That's my bully voice in my head. She's real mean. Yeah. Yeah. I got one more thing.
00:10:47
Okay. I pulled it off the X feed. Erica, who is at Gilly Gal on X, Twitter, tells us Mysteries Abound has a Patreon
00:10:56
where Paul releases new episodes and adds old episodes onto the end. So our old favorite podcast that we were talking about last week,
00:11:05
Mysteries Abound, does have a Patreon. We love that podcast. You should love it too. Talk about a great voice.
00:11:11
Yeah. Yeah. And great stories, compelling, interesting mystery stuff. And now you can
00:11:17
just directly support him through a Patreon. That's great. That's great. I love it. Support
00:11:21
your local podcasts, rate, review, subscribe. That can do it. I think that's the perfect segue
00:11:27
right into our highlights, don't you think? Hey, speaking of rate, review, subscribe,
00:11:31
Let's do exactly right corner. Let's do it. Okay. We're really excited to report that Ghosted by Roz Hernandez debuted at the top of freaking
00:11:40
comedy podcast charts, you guys. Nice. Thank you so much for following her, for loving her, for reviewing her.
00:11:48
She is such a talent. The podcast is so incredible and we're so proud to have it on Exactly Right.
00:11:52
So thank you guys for supporting. And this week Roz guest is none other than comedian and friend of the network Patton Oswalt That going to be a great episode Yeah What are his ghost stories I known him forever
00:12:05
I've never heard a ghost story. All right. Another reminder that Adulting with Michelle Boutot and Jordan Carlos is back after a summer break.
00:12:12
And now this podcast is weekly. And they're this week joined by comedian Mike Yard.
00:12:20
So make sure you're following that show and that you don't miss the brand new episodes that come out every Wednesday.
00:12:26
And on this podcast will kill you. Erin and Erin discuss all things asthma. How brilliant is that?
00:12:33
Like, I don't know anything about asthma. I do. I had really bad asthma growing up.
00:12:37
Really? Uh-huh. Well, find out why by listening to this podcast will kill you. I'm going to call in and argue with them, with the science explainers.
00:12:47
Also, just a quick reminder, the MFM store is stocked with some new merch bundles for Puzzlerinos, BFFs, and those of you who might be new listeners.
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So just go over to MyFavoriteMurder.com and check out our merch store. Yeah, do it. Thanks.
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average from 162 to 92 calories per serving. Data accurate as of 2-20-26. Okay. This story is sad and a bummer and not good because it's the story of a kidnapping
00:15:18
of a child. So it's a hard one. The reason I'm covering it is because it's Australia's first
00:15:26
ever kidnapping for ransom case. And it completely changed the forensic investigation field
00:15:33
there and everywhere. And it changed laws. It changed the whole mindset of how cases are solved
00:15:41
in Australia and all over the world. So it's important. My main source for today is an episode
00:15:47
of an Australian show called Crime Investigation Australia, which interviews many of the original
00:15:52
investigators in the case. This is from the 1960s. They're all old timers now. And the way they
00:15:57
solved this is so incredible. So it's a really great episode. And the rest of my sources can be
00:16:03
found in our show notes. The story begins with the construction of the Sydney Opera House.
00:16:08
Oh. Where none other than where you and I did a fucking show once. We did a show at the Sydney Opera House that was so intimidating. Like we were driven
00:16:17
underground into the parking structure. We were walked to the area and then we got on that stage
00:16:24
and it was just like, what is, how did we get here? Hollowed grounds. Crazy. I thought it was like at last minute they were like, just kidding, you're at the chuckle club
00:16:32
or something like that. It was so crazy. So construction begins on the now iconic design
00:16:38
in 1957. At the time, the project is supposed to be completed in 1963 at a cost of three million
00:16:45
pounds, which is about 76 million in today's dollars. In reality, the opera house isn't
00:16:52
completed until 1973, 10 years later. And the cost ends up being $709 million in today's money.
00:17:00
Oh, that's way over budget. Way over budget. Yeah. And actually, in the time it took to build the Opera House, Australia had changed its
00:17:08
currencies from pounds to dollars. So like the fucking money isn't even the goddamn same anymore, you know?
00:17:14
It's like time is truly passing when the money changes. Exactly. Exactly. So the people who were building it had this brilliant idea to cover what ultimately became
00:17:24
a 1,357% increase in the budget. the New South Wales government began to hold lotteries. So basically you go pay for a lottery
00:17:35
ticket, the money for the lottery tickets went to the opera house to build it and people would win
00:17:41
money. Like they would choose a lottery winner, basically how lotteries were. Yeah. The lottery.
00:17:46
Sure. It's a great idea, you know, but it's like usually goes to the state, right? Or like,
00:17:50
it a great idea to be like this is how we going to build stuff Well yeah because you buy a ticket and then you just like see that building over there I paid for part of it I paid my piece Yeah It almost like you doing a raffle at a school you know fundraiser
00:18:05
Yeah. Recently, the Powerball in California was, I think it was over a billion. Oh, shit. And I was like, shouldn't we do a little provision where once it goes over a certain amount,
00:18:14
we go ahead and give that also to the schools? The schools need it really bad. My sister
00:18:18
hasn't had air conditioning her entire career in her classrooms. They're just getting it.
00:18:25
this summer. Yeah, it should go back to the schools. Anyway. Yeah. That's for the other
00:18:30
podcast about schools. So great idea, right? So on June 1st, 1960, a man named Basil Thorne,
00:18:39
it was the 10th drawing of the lottery and he wins first place. He's just a normal family man
00:18:47
and he wins 100,000 pounds, which in today's money would be somewhere around two and a half
00:18:55
to three million dollars. Oh, wow. So he becomes wealthy overnight. Doesn't he already sound
00:19:03
wealthy with a name like Basil Thorne? Basil Thorne. Yeah. I feel like when you have a Z in
00:19:07
your name, you're just immediately like the upper echelon. Does he have a Z? Is it Basil with a Z?
00:19:12
Basil with a Z. Wow. Okay. I know. Very Australian. This is a huge windfall for the Thorne family.
00:19:19
Basil makes a modest income as a traveling salesman. And just so you know how substantial that amount is, like you think nowadays $3 million,
00:19:27
like you could maybe buy a house in LA, right? But back then you could buy a home in a Sydney suburb, like a normal home for around 8,000
00:19:38
pounds. Oh. So the rest of that money is just like goes to whatever the fuck you want it to.
00:19:44
So it's a lot of money and you don't have to waste it all on a house. Like, yeah, Jesus Christ.
00:19:49
You could buy several neighborhoods if you wanted to. Exactly. Exactly. So, of course, when he wins the lottery, it's this huge, you know, publicity thing.
00:19:58
They show his name. They put his face in the paper with his check. There's a photo of it.
00:20:02
At the time, no effort is made to protect lottery winners privacy because it's PR.
00:20:07
And everyone's like, you know, they're happy about it. It's 1960. Everyone's innocent, right?
00:20:11
Yeah. Not like the guy who put on a scream mask when he won the lottery recently for his photos.
00:20:16
My hero. So smart. The most genius person of all time where he's like, sure, I'll go down there and take this
00:20:21
photo op wearing a scream mask. I love it. Also, wait, sorry, really quick. Did you also see the lady who went in?
00:20:30
They found out first what the location was. It was this little like convenience store downtown.
00:20:36
town. And so all the news cameras showed up there and this lady walked in and pretended she was the
00:20:43
winner and did a whole loop around the store pretending to be crying and going, thank you,
00:20:47
and doing this whole thing. And she came in and went right back out and she wasn't the winner.
00:20:51
She just did it like for fun. What the fuck? I love her so much. Okay. I'm the main character.
00:20:59
Yes. She's like, I will have my main character day. Oh my God. Isn't that hilarious? Vince and
00:21:05
I like to play the lottery every once in a while, you know, when it's like the big one.
00:21:07
But a lot of the times I'll buy a lottery ticket based on how the liquor store looks.
00:21:14
Like the ones that win are a little run down. They're a mom and pop place that have been there forever.
00:21:20
Yeah. Like those are the ones you see in the paper of like this place in Alhambra, like won a billion dollars.
00:21:25
It's always that one. So you got to buy from them. Don't buy from the brand new, you know, fucking Quickie Mart.
00:21:31
I've never seen like the machine that's in the grocery store. Right. I've never seen it be like, here's the machine that sold it.
00:21:37
That never happened. That's true. Okay. So all his info goes into the papers, of course.
00:21:44
The Thorne family lives in a rented apartment in Bondi, which is a suburb of Australia's
00:21:49
most famous beach, Bondi Beach. Basil and his wife, Frida, have three children, Cheryl, and they have a son named Graham,
00:21:58
who's eight, and a little daughter named Belinda, who's three. on july 7th 1960 exactly five weeks after basil thorne wins the lottery which is also posted in
00:22:09
the paper that he'll get the money five weeks after the lottery like they tell you everything
00:22:14
so exactly five weeks later little graham eight years old graham he leaves the house to go to
00:22:19
school following his typical daily routine he's this cutie pie with his little school uniform
00:22:25
on with a tie and a little cap and then like knee-high socks and everything. And like, just picture perfect.
00:22:32
He looked like Angus Young. Exactly. From ACDC. Oh, no. Yes, he looked exactly like Angus Young.
00:22:38
Cutie pie. Every day he leaves the house at 8.30 a.m., walks about two blocks and waits on a corner
00:22:45
for a family friend named Phyllis Smith to pick him up because Graham goes to school
00:22:50
with Phyllis's two sons. So it's like his normal carpool. a witness another one of graham's classmates will later tell police that he saw graham walking his
00:22:59
typical route but when phyllis a few minutes later arrives to pick him up graham isn't there
00:23:04
and like i feel like normally in these stories you hear that the person just assumes that they're sick
00:23:10
and drives to school and the parents don't find out until after school or later that the kid is
00:23:15
missing but this woman bless her heart went straight to the thorn house and was like why isn't
00:23:20
your son on the corner. Like she knew that wasn't okay. So Frida, the mother calls the school to see
00:23:27
if he's there. He's not. And then so she immediately calls the police. So an officer named Larry O'Shea
00:23:33
arrives at the Thorn house. And not long after that, the phone rings. Frida picks it up and
00:23:39
quickly hands the phone to the officer O'Shea. And on the line is a man with a European accent.
00:23:45
He says he has Graham and that the family must pay him £25,000 by 5 p.m. that evening, or else he will, quote, feed him to the sharks.
00:23:55
Oh. Which becomes like the headline on all the papers. Shay pretends to be the dad, Basil, and says that they might not be able to get that much money together in such a short time.
00:24:06
And so the caller says he'll call back at 5 p.m. I don't think that at that point that the officer knew that they were the lottery winners and they could pay the ransom.
00:24:14
So at the time, kidnappings are unheard of in Australia. There is not even a law against kidnapping children in Australia.
00:24:22
Because it just has never happened, really? Never happens. The last thing that everyone heard about was like the Lindbergh case, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
00:24:30
And that had been like 30 years earlier, not in Australia, but like it wasn't on people's radar.
00:24:35
Right. I will say that they did kidnap Aboriginal children in Australia. And so.
00:24:40
Yes, that's right. That is something we have to acknowledge and be aware of when this story is told, which you don't see a lot.
00:24:49
Right. So the huge police activity outside the Thornhouse catches the attention of the press immediately.
00:24:54
And by that afternoon, news of the kidnapping is in the late edition of the papers with the headline quoting about the sharks.
00:25:02
His mother sees that headline and is just, I can't even fathom what she's going through.
00:25:08
So Basil had been away on business. He's a traveling salesman. He lands in the Sydney airport on the evening of July 7th.
00:25:14
And that's when he learns that his son had been kidnapped. That evening, he goes on the nightly news.
00:25:20
And there's a clip of this in that episode of Crime Investigation Australia of him, you know, in black and white, sitting in front of all these cameras and microphones trying to plead with the kidnapper.
00:25:32
But he is so busted up that he can barely speak. He says, quote, well, all I can say is if the person that's got him is a father and has children of his own, well, for God's sake, send him back in one piece.
00:25:44
And then he just breaks down and can't say anything else. It's fucking devastating.
00:25:48
The idea that he had to do that the day he found out, like what a horrible series of finding out in such a shocking way and then having to be the one that goes and is the face of it.
00:25:58
That's horrible. It's really awful. The kidnapper does call again that same evening, but not until almost 10 p.m., five hours after he said he was going to call.
00:26:06
And this time another officer picks up the phone and also pretends to be Basil. They try to trace the call, but the call is not long enough because the kidnapper gives instructions to put money in two paper bags.
00:26:17
But then he hangs up abruptly, giving no further information. So maybe he noticed that the two voices of the person who claimed to be Basil wasn't correct and knew something was up.
00:26:27
But I'm sure he saw the papers as well, that it was like being covered. The search for Graham consumes Sydney.
00:26:33
It shocks this peaceful, safe suburb as well as greater Australia. The search, which becomes the biggest manhunt in Australian history, also consumes the police.
00:26:43
All police leave across the state of Sydney is completely canceled. A reward of £5,000 is offered by the police and another award of £15,000 is put up by two different newspapers.
00:26:57
Police conduct an extensive search through Sydney and they even enlist the help of known criminals, which is wild.
00:27:04
Sydney's organized crime groups assign their foot soldiers to assist. I know. It's almost like they're asking around
00:27:10
being like any of your cohorts, are they behind this? These are these gangster types
00:27:15
and the kidnapping of a little school boy is like against their code. So they're ready to fucking like crack some skulls
00:27:21
if they find out who did this. Yeah, that's kind of a nice little bit of a human element to a horrible story.
00:27:26
Totally. So during the search, a few clues start to emerge. Frida tells the police that
00:27:32
three weeks before the kidnapping, A man had come to her house claiming to be a private investigator, but it was like kind of weird and shady.
00:27:39
He asked to confirm the family's phone number, which was weird because they had just gotten a telephone for the first time.
00:27:45
So it's like, why would he know that information? And witnesses report seeing a stocky man sitting on a park bench that faces the Thornholm several times in the days leading up to Graham's kidnapping.
00:27:56
the day after the kidnapping Graham's school briefcase which has his name on it is found on
00:28:03
the opposite side of Sydney Harbor in an overgrown area some kids just stumble upon it it still has
00:28:09
his apple inside that his mom had peeled for him and then wrapped back up in the peel so it wouldn't
00:28:17
turn brown which I think is like a little detail that some of the investigators who had young
00:28:21
children, it just kind of hit them really hard. Yeah. Like such a small detail of like the love
00:28:26
of your parents, you know? Right, right. Another witness reports that on the day of the abduction,
00:28:31
he had seen a 1955 Ford custom line painted in iridescent blue, so really specific,
00:28:39
parked near the Thorn home. And he said he noticed it because it was parked oddly blocking the
00:28:44
crosswalk. And police realized that the car is blocking the crosswalk that Graham would have used
00:28:50
to go to his usual corner. The police are kind of suspicious of this guy because they're like, how do you know
00:28:55
like the year of this car and how specific it is? And so they drove him around town
00:28:59
and they were like pointing out cars and he knew everything about them. So he just fucking knew a lot about cars,
00:29:04
which is very, very lucky because the Ford Custom Line was Ford's mid-range model produced in Australia
00:29:11
only between 1952 and 1959. And the specific 55 model that the witness saw had undergone a redesign.
00:29:19
So it had a distinct look. So the police go directly to basically their DMV and start pulling records of any Blue Ford
00:29:27
custom line in the area ends up being about 5,000 cars. There's no computerized fucking system.
00:29:33
These are cards that people have to go through and they go through over 300,000 cards justifying
00:29:40
this car. Yeah. Of course, people are fucking horrible. So there are a few tips that don't pan
00:29:47
out as well as some fucking hoaxes of people calling always every time trying to get that
00:29:52
fucking money it just what the fuck so on august 16th about five weeks after the kidnapping a group of children are playing on a vacant land around a mile away from where Graham school briefcase was found
00:30:07
And they notice a blanket wrapped around something that they immediately surmised to be a body. And so they don't touch it. They run straight home and tell their moms.
00:30:17
the moms are like wait for your dad to come home and so that evening when the children's fathers
00:30:22
get back from work they take a closer look and they do determine and discover that graham's body
00:30:27
is inside the blanket oh no i know his body has been wrapped tightly in a wool picnic blanket
00:30:33
and it had been placed at the base of a rock outcropping so kind of hidden from plain view
00:30:39
graham is found with a scarf around his neck which police believe had been used as a gag
00:30:45
and the autopsy determines that Graham's skull had been fractured, having been struck forcefully by a blunt object.
00:30:52
And they believe that this is the cause of death or it is a combined cause with asphyxiation from the scar.
00:30:59
So based on the condition of his body, investigators can tell that Graham died on the day of
00:31:04
or very shortly after he was abducted. He's still in his school uniform and he still has the two handkerchiefs his mom had put in his pocket,
00:31:12
folded and ironed. He's like, tie is still on. And so then this is where like all the forensics starts to come in
00:31:20
because the School of Agriculture at the University of Sydney tests the mold that had grown on the
00:31:27
bottom of his shoes. And they determined from the mold growth that he hadn't walked on the shoes for
00:31:33
some time. So that's part of the reason they were able to place the timeline of his death.
00:31:37
okay so while the thorn family is joined by the entire country in mourning of the loss of their
00:31:44
son the police and some of australia's best scientists come together to launch the country's
00:31:49
first major forensics investigation sydney's police scientific team examines the blanket
00:31:55
and retrieves hair fibers seeds and other kinds of debris the hairs are sent to a top biologist
00:32:02
who determine that some are human. And then he says that some of them have come from a very specific dog,
00:32:08
not just a dog, but a fucking Pekingese. And actually the investigators are kind of upset by this specificity
00:32:15
because it really narrows down their pool of suspects. You know, if they find someone that they think is very good looking for the part
00:32:23
and doesn't have a Pekingese or just has some kind of other dog and ends up being wrong about this,
00:32:27
it's like, can you just say this kind of dog? But he's like, nope, it's a Pekingese.
00:32:31
Yeah. So traces of soil and plants are also examined by geologists and botanists.
00:32:36
And the botanists find traces of two varieties of cypress trees. And they say that the plants themselves aren't super rare, but to have the two different cypress trees in the same area, in the same yard, is very rare.
00:32:49
So they need to look specifically for that. The geologist also finds traces of pink builder's mortar in the soil on the clothing and scarf that Graham was wearing.
00:32:58
what this tells them is that the boy had probably been near or under a brick building at some point
00:33:05
because of the components the building had probably been a house so like they were able to get very
00:33:12
very specific so it's a brick house with two different cypress trees somewhere nearby and
00:33:18
perhaps a pekinese dog inside right right and the fact that the mom had you know finger pointed this
00:33:26
stranger came to the door who had a European accent, who was kind of a big dude. And there
00:33:30
was a couple other witnesses. They're able to get very specific. So all of these scientific findings,
00:33:35
of course, take some time. But by early October, about six weeks after the discovery of Graham's
00:33:41
body, police are canvassing the area, carrying pictures of the types of cypress trees they're
00:33:46
looking for. They talked to a postman who says that he knows of one house made with pink builder's
00:33:52
mortar with trees that look like the ones in the pictures. That is such a good idea to ask the
00:33:57
mailman. They see everything all day. Yeah. He's already canvassing the fucking neighborhood.
00:34:02
That's right. Yeah. But the postman says the family living in the house had already moved out.
00:34:07
But it turns out that the police have already interviewed the owner of the house because he
00:34:12
was the owner of an iridescent blue Ford custom line. Oh. His name is Stephen Bradley. He's 34
00:34:18
years old. He is married, has three young children and a blended family with his second wife, Magda.
00:34:25
Stephen Bradley was born in Hungary and immigrated to Australia, where he changed his name from
00:34:31
Istvan Baranje to Stephen Bradley. Bradley's neighbors first went to the police themselves
00:34:37
in August, three days after Graham's body was found, telling them that Bradley drove the kind
00:34:42
of car they'd been looking for. So that's why they already knew, had him on the radar, which is like,
00:34:46
fuck yeah be a nosy neighbor be a nosy postman i mean you know when it comes to missing children
00:34:51
do what you gotta do fuck yeah when questioned by police bradley had said he had been moving out of
00:34:57
his house on the day graham disappeared and that he and his car had both been at his house all day
00:35:03
he added that he sold his car three days after graham's disappearance which we all know is
00:35:08
suspicious but on october 3rd when the postman's tip leads them back to steven bradley they discover
00:35:15
two things. One is that he and his family have left the country. A week prior, they had boarded
00:35:21
an ocean liner headed for London to move. The other clue is that before they left, they brought
00:35:28
their dog to a vet's office with the instructions to send it along to London. Once the Bradley
00:35:33
family had gotten there, the dog was a Pekingese. Yeah. How wild is that? He was fucking right.
00:35:42
He was right. Down to the breed. Yes. And his fur matches the fur from the picnic blanket.
00:35:48
Well, and the idea that it wasn't like, you always have to think, and this is obviously
00:35:52
always a consideration, right? Where it like what if your best friend dog was a Pekingese and they came to that one picnic with you or whatever But it doesn always mean the firm exact thing You know it just potential evidence
00:36:05
but it's questionable until you can prove it. And that makes sense that they're just like,
00:36:11
if you're telling us this exact dog, we could easily go be led astray by that idea.
00:36:18
I feel like this case had all the workings of becoming a cold case. And the fact that within
00:36:23
a year they had caught this guy. I mean, less than a year. It's unbelievable. Like, right.
00:36:28
It's just seems like they did so much hard work and, you know, and, and also worked together
00:36:34
with a lot of different agencies to get clues. I think that postman move was crucial. Ask the
00:36:40
postman. That's so genius. Fuck yeah. I call him the mailman, but the Australians call him a postman.
00:36:46
Mail person, mail carrier. Mail carrier. Get with it. Yeah. While police make a plan to intercept
00:36:53
Bradley, who's still on the ocean liner, they also investigate his old house more thoroughly.
00:36:59
They find the pink mortar and in the garage, which is a brick garage, they find a tassel
00:37:06
belonging to the same picnic blanket that Graham had been wrapped in. And they also tracked down
00:37:11
the code number that was on the blanket. They like flew to the place where it had been manufactured.
00:37:16
They found out who bought it. And that person admitted to having given that blanket to
00:37:21
Steven's wife as a present. So like thorough as fuck. Yeah. Right. They also visit the apartment
00:37:26
the family had briefly moved to. And in the garden, like having been thrown out a window,
00:37:31
they find some old photo negatives that were just like strewn like trash. So they bring the
00:37:37
negatives back to the lab and they're able to try to see what's on them. And on them is the Bradley
00:37:43
family sitting on that same picnic blanket out and about for a picnic. Oh, wow. Police find a
00:37:49
vacuum cleaner that Bradley had sold, which contains more of the Pekingese hair, as well as
00:37:54
human hair that matches samples from the blanket. They find the blue Ford custom line that Bradley
00:38:00
had sold. And in the trunk of the car, they find again, hair that is a match for what was on his
00:38:07
school uniform and blanket, but also a match for Graham's hair, which we now know it's like
00:38:13
bunk science maybe, but I feel like it's... Hair fibers? Yeah. I feel like it's still circumstantial enough to be used as part of the evidence.
00:38:24
I don't know. I mean, I think they can say, we believe that these things match, but that can't be the thing.
00:38:29
No case can hinge on it, right? You would need like way more stuff in addition to.
00:38:35
That's from what I understand. Yeah. That makes sense to me. From my last case that I tried.
00:38:39
so a week after police discover that bradley is their man that his ship docks in colombo sri lanka
00:38:47
although at the time the country is still called ceylon australian police have made contact with
00:38:52
the ship's captain and he's like fucking on it keeps an eye on bradley you know like the most
00:38:57
exciting thing that's happened in his career probably yeah aside from like shuffleboard and
00:39:01
stuff. He's like, I'll absolutely track a potential murderer on my boat. I'd love to.
00:39:08
So he alerts the local authorities and they arrest Bradley, but Ceylon has only recently
00:39:14
become independent and has no extradition treaty with Australia. So it takes about 10 days of back
00:39:20
and forth. And finally, Australian authorities are permitted to fly to Colombo and bring Bradley
00:39:26
back to Sydney. Meanwhile, Bradley had like sent his family on to London. So Frida confirms that
00:39:33
Bradley is the same man who came to the house posing as a private investigator before Graham
00:39:38
had been kidnapped. Bradley later confesses. He says he had come up with a plan to kidnap Graham
00:39:45
for ransom money after seeing the Thorne family written up in the newspaper. He admits that he
00:39:51
studied their routine. He admits to everything, basically saying that he told Graham when he
00:39:57
picked him up on the corner that the woman who usually drove him was sick and that he was driving
00:40:03
him that day. And Graham, trusting, you know, there's no such thing as stranger danger at the
00:40:08
time. No. And it's like, your mom sent me to pick you up. Of course he gets in the car.
00:40:12
Yes, absolutely. During his trial, though, he pleads not guilty to murder, saying that it wasn't
00:40:18
his intention to kill Graham and that he had like left him in the fucking trunk of the car,
00:40:22
comes back later and he's dead, which is like, it doesn't add up with what the autopsy showed
00:40:27
at all. Prosecutors, of course, dispute this claim, citing forensic tests that proved it
00:40:32
would have been impossible for Graham to breathe and still be alive in the trunk.
00:40:36
After a nine day trial, Bradley is found guilty. And at this point, the entirety of Sydney,
00:40:42
this is the trial of the century there. Like people are pushing and shoving outside the
00:40:47
courthouse to try to get a seat in there. Like it is front page news on every paper for months and
00:40:53
months. It's a big fucking deal. So when it's announced that Bradley is found guilty, the crowd
00:40:59
inside and outside the courthouse breaks out and cheers. Normally the judge would not have allowed
00:41:05
this, you know, order and all that. But he, I think is aware that so many members of the public
00:41:10
had become so invested in poor little Graham and his murder that he allowed it. So people are just
00:41:17
cheering. Bradley is sentenced to life in prison. He dies in prison in 1968 of a heart attack at the
00:41:25
age of 42. Oh, wow. Which is like a bummer that he couldn't rot in there for longer, you know?
00:41:31
Well, maybe he rotted the most he could and then his heart stopped because he was rotting so hard.
00:41:37
I mean, like, aside from a plan to get money, why in God's name would you endanger a child
00:41:42
or even involve a child? Yeah. And he had young children of his own. But do you know what I mean?
00:41:47
Like, was he a pedophile that was covering his tracks? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like he really was just greedy and had lost his job and needed money and like lived a certain lifestyle and wanted to keep it up that way It possible he didn plan on killing Graham even though it clear he did
00:42:07
It's not known. It might've just been a ransom thing for him and it just went south.
00:42:12
Yeah. I just, such a wide gap in my mind between needing money and doing something out of
00:42:19
desperation for money, which happens all the time and is horrible to killing a child that's
00:42:25
sitting in front of you. That's just like, I don't know. No, no, absolutely. The Thorn case is seen
00:42:32
as a turning point in Australia and it kind of marks the end of innocence. It's the whole like
00:42:37
people didn't lock their doors. Kids walk to school by themselves, played outside by themselves,
00:42:42
no big deal. And of course that completely changes. And as I said, kidnapping a child
00:42:46
wasn't even listed as a crime at the time. And of course, that quickly changes. People didn't even
00:42:52
believe these kinds of kidnappings could happen, and they didn't have stranger danger, and that
00:42:57
just changed everything. It also marked a turning point in forensic investigation in Australia.
00:43:02
It demonstrates the power of science in narrowing down these huge wide suspect pools,
00:43:08
as well as putting together the necessary evidence to prove a case. So that was complete sea change.
00:43:13
then of course Australia's lotteries stopped publicizing information about the winners.
00:43:19
Good. Yeah. They let people choose if they want to be public or not. Well, I mean, it is kind of like you're saying it's a very sweet reality that they were living
00:43:28
in beforehand where it's like this can be trusted public information. Right. And they had no reason
00:43:34
to believe otherwise. Yeah. Thorne family moved to a different suburb and Basil died in 1978 at 56
00:43:41
years old. Frida died in 2012. She lived to be 86 years old. And of course, their lives were
00:43:48
reportedly never the same, obviously. And that is the sad story of Graham Thorne, the victim of the
00:43:55
first known ransom kidnapping in Australia. Wow. And there's a book written by the former New South
00:44:01
Wales senior crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi. His book about it is called Kidnapped. He's also
00:44:08
best known as the prosecutor of Ivan Malot. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, you know, he's seen some shit.
00:44:15
Oh, the horrifying story. Right. So that book's called Kidnapped by Mark Tedeschi.
00:44:21
If you want to hear more. Amazing. Great job. Thank you. And yeah, it's just heartbreaking.
00:44:27
Yeah. Horrible. Also, just as a smaller tag on Georgia's story, if you want to hear more about
00:44:34
what we were talking about with Aboriginal children being kidnapped by the government,
00:44:38
in Australia. There are tons of great Australian podcasts where Aboriginal people tell their own
00:44:44
stories and talk about what that experience is like of basically being shipped into servitude.
00:44:52
Yeah. Let them tell you about it because I've just listened to them. I'm just repeating part
00:44:57
of what I've learned, but it's pretty compelling and amazing story that people should be aware of.
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Data accurate as of 220-26. Okay. Well, we're going to take a left turn. Are you ready?
00:47:07
Please. We're going to change the subject entirely. We're going to come back to America.
00:47:13
We're going to go to 1912. Okay. This is the cold open. Open on. It's February 15th, 1912.
00:47:20
The day after Valentine's Day. But it's 1912, so everybody got a little piece of coal.
00:47:26
So it's a cold winter day in lower Manhattan, and two young clerks working for the East River National Bank
00:47:32
throw on their coats, step outside. they've just picked up $25,000 for a routine money transfer. And that is over $800,000 in today's
00:47:43
money. So one of the clerks is lugging a heavy briefcase with the cash in it. The other one
00:47:49
walks ahead to open the door of a waiting taxi cab. And this cabbie has been contracted by the
00:47:55
bank to drive these clerks around as they make these transfers and deposits around the city.
00:48:00
The men climb into the cab. They throw the heavy briefcase on the floor. The driver pulls out into traffic.
00:48:05
They're headed to their next location. It's business as usual. Until a man in a long black overcoat starts walking alongside the slow moving taxi.
00:48:14
He's walking very close, but it doesn't really raise an alarm to anybody. It's New York City.
00:48:19
It's all pedestrians and traffic. So no one's really noticing anything. Until a second man starts walking alongside on the other side of the taxi.
00:48:27
and suddenly these two men at the same time open the taxi's back doors. They jump inside the back seat and begin violently beating the young clerks that are sitting back there.
00:48:37
Once these two men are back there, a third man runs up, jumps into the front seat,
00:48:42
holds a gun to the cabbie's head and tells the cabbie to drive them to a nearby train station.
00:48:47
When they get there, they tell the driver to stop. They grab that briefcase with all the money in it, jump out and they disappear down into the subway station.
00:48:55
So the cabbie is unharmed, but the two bank clerks are bloodied and bruised and that money's long gone.
00:49:01
And the next morning, this heist is headline news. New Yorkers are stunned by the thieves' brutality and boldness and the huge amount of money that they got away with.
00:49:11
Meanwhile, NYPD Deputy Commissioner George S. Doherty knows that he has to close this case as soon as possible
00:49:18
because it turns out at this time, the NYPD is trying to rehab its dismal reputation.
00:49:26
They've been accused of being corrupt and ineffective. Officers are known for taking bribes and demanding payouts from illicit businesses
00:49:33
like gambling halls and brothels. Doherty knows that they can't afford yet one more ding on their reputation.
00:49:41
So they assigned 60 detectives to this case. Yikes. Thanks to multiple eyewitnesses, they quickly learn who the three thieves are, but days go by and the suspects are not apprehended or charged and New Yorkers are having a field day with one more example of the NYPD's incompetence.
00:50:02
One newspaper even describes the department as, quote, the subject of jest and cartoon from coast to coast, end quote.
00:50:09
Yeah. But then a seemingly innocuous tip rolls in, saying that one of the suspect's girlfriends is renting a room at a seedy downtown boarding house and a light bulb goes off in Doherty's mind.
00:50:21
He thinks this girlfriend might be a way to catch these robbers, but cozying up to a violent criminal's girlfriend would require a dangerous undercover operation.
00:50:31
the assigned detective is going to need brains, courage, and creativity to avoid blowing their
00:50:36
cover. And that's something the NYPD's detectives can't really be trusted to do right now.
00:50:42
So the deputy commissioner decides to assign an unlikely person to this case. A woman? What? What's she going to do? What's she going to do? Nag the case until it solves itself?
00:50:57
no quite the opposite i'm about to tell you the story of the police matron turned detective who
00:51:05
helped crack one of new york's most gripping armed robbery cases when no man could and made
00:51:11
history in the process this is the story of the nypd's first female detective isabella goodwin
00:51:18
fuck yeah right so the main sources used in today's story are the book the fearless mrs goodwin
00:51:25
by Elizabeth Mitchell, a New York Times article by writer Corey Kilgannon. I love all these kill
00:51:32
last names that I've been dealing with lately. And the article is called Overlooked No More,
00:51:38
Isabella Goodwin, New York City's First Female Police Detective, and the book Women in Blue,
00:51:43
16 Brave Officers, Forensics Experts, Police Chiefs, and More by Cheryl Mullenbach.
00:51:49
And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So we're going to start in February of 1865.
00:51:55
that's the year Isabella is born in New York's Greenwich Village. Her parents, Anna and James
00:52:00
Logri, own a successful hotel and restaurant in the area. The family is comfortable and happy,
00:52:07
and Isabella is a child filled with ambition and self-confidence. She dreams of one day becoming a
00:52:13
famous opera singer, and she's said to have, quote, an indomitable and fearless quality that
00:52:18
was something like a shining armor, end quote. As Isabella grows older, she maintains her passion
00:52:24
for opera, as well as her individual spark. But Isabella's coming of age in the mid-19th century,
00:52:32
so she can't escape the expectations placed on women of that era. In 1884, at just 19 years old,
00:52:39
she does what many women do, she gets married and she starts a family. And her husband,
00:52:44
John W. Goodwin, is a policeman himself with the NYPD, while Isabella's left to raise the couple's
00:52:50
four children by herself in the Goodwin's tiny apartment. In the mid-1880s, it becomes clear
00:52:56
that John's job is simply not paying enough to sustain their family. So the couple decides to
00:53:02
follow in Isabella's parents' footsteps and open a restaurant in Chelsea. But within the first five
00:53:09
years, the restaurant burns to the ground in a three-alarm fire. And worse than that, it wasn't
00:53:15
insured. So it's a complete loss. Things only get worse from there. In 1889, after serving more than
00:53:23
seven years with the NYPD, John has witnessed some serious corruption in his precinct and he tells
00:53:29
Isabella that he has threatened to expose it. One of his allegations is that the police officers
00:53:35
were bringing sex workers right into the station while on the job. Wow. So in response to John's
00:53:43
whistleblowing, his superiors try to punish and threaten him into staying silent. Isabella knows
00:53:48
that John's job is all they have and it's already not enough. So they're in real crisis. And then if
00:53:54
things couldn get worse one afternoon as John is driving their carriage and a pregnant Isabella sits by his side They get into an accident The carriage is flipped onto its side
00:54:05
And Isabella is thrown to the ground, and then the carriage comes down on top of her.
00:54:11
She's severely injured. And when the police show up, she's taken to the hospital,
00:54:15
but John's arrested by his own colleagues accusing him of drunk carriage driving.
00:54:22
John fiercely denies this. He's thrown into a jail cell. He doesn't know if his wife is alive or dead at this point.
00:54:30
And his fellow officers tell John that the only way he's getting out of there is if he signs a resignation letter.
00:54:36
Ooh. Mm-hmm. So he signs it, but underneath his signature, he writes the phrase, in protest.
00:54:43
Damn. So for the next seven weeks, Isabella's condition remains critical. Four kids at home, and she's in the hospital.
00:54:52
She loses her unborn child. but eventually she makes a full recovery. She's finally released from the hospital,
00:54:58
but now John is waging war against the NYPD over his wrongful termination. And as he's fighting a contentious courtroom battle and one that Isabella actually testifies
00:55:09
at on his behalf, many newspapers start calling him a hero cop who's willing to take down the
00:55:15
city's corrupt police department. And this case ends up going all the way to the state Supreme
00:55:21
court. So it's a really big deal. For a moment in January of 1895, the Goodwin's luck seems to
00:55:28
finally be turning around because John wins this case. He's given his old job back. This is very
00:55:35
echoes of Serpico where it's like, sorry, how is he supposed to still work there when he's now like
00:55:40
the whistleblower? And the other problem is that the stress of the past almost decade, really
00:55:48
altogether have taken a terrible toll. His mental health has deteriorated and he's really started
00:55:54
drinking quite a lot. He's become a serious alcoholic. By the end of that year, he's sent
00:55:59
to Bellevue Hospital for treatment. And future president Theodore Roosevelt, who has recently
00:56:05
started his tenure as the city's police commissioner, actually goes so far as to tell the New York
00:56:10
Times that the hero cop John Goodwin is now clinically insane. Oh, no. Yeah. So it's pretty
00:56:17
ugly. John will struggle with his medical and mental illness issues until August 11th, 1896,
00:56:25
when he dies from the side effects of alcoholism. Yeah. So now Isabella is a grieving single mother
00:56:33
of four with no source of income. At the time, the NYPD offers some financial assistance to
00:56:40
officers, widows. It's not very much money at all. Certainly not enough to support a family of five.
00:56:45
as an additional form of compensation. They let Isabella know there's a job opening for women.
00:56:52
So she has almost no other options. So Isabella is actually forced to seek employment from the
00:56:58
same institution that arguably killed her husband. I mean, in the most extreme interpretation of what
00:57:05
happened, but still not great. So this one job a woman can apply for is police matron. And this
00:57:13
involves stepping in for male officers in situations that involve women, so frisking
00:57:18
female arrestees, bringing food and water to their cells, monitoring them during their
00:57:23
incarceration. But in the 1890s, as women's groups advocate for more meaningful representation
00:57:29
in American institutions, Commissioner Roosevelt expands the job description. So now matrons are
00:57:35
broadly responsible for the welfare of any woman or child that enters a New York City police station.
00:57:41
According to writer Cheryl Mullenbach, these matrons are effectively seen as social workers.
00:57:47
So even though the NYPD has kind of offered Isabella this job, she still has to make the cut.
00:57:54
Over 200 women have applied for it and only 10 positions are available. So to weed out the applicants, the women must pass multiple exams and the tests are tough.
00:58:06
There's a math and written component, which right there. Fail. immediately fail. There's got to be a bakery around her somewhere I can work at.
00:58:16
A section on investigative and policing principles and a physical exam. Double buy. In one section,
00:58:23
Isabella has to decipher nearly illegible handwriting. In another, she has to explain
00:58:28
how she'd help if a woman suddenly went into labor under her watch. But Isabella does a great job,
00:58:34
and she also submits 20 letters of recommendation from her most well-respected friends and
00:58:40
acquaintances. Wow. And in the end, 31 year old, five foot tall, Isabella Goodwin gets the job.
00:58:47
She's a little lady. She's offered a salary of a thousand dollars a year, which is $36,000 in
00:58:54
today's money. Ouch. And this is when there. Yeah. Right. It's echoes of the gap. Echoes of my 20s.
00:59:02
This is one of the lowest salaries in the entire New York police department. Much, much lower pay,
00:59:08
of course, than the lowest ranking male officer gets. But Isabella is fine with it. She finally
00:59:14
has a way to feed her children and keep a roof over their heads. So after she is appointed at
00:59:19
this job, Theodore Roosevelt himself shakes her hand and welcomes her to the police force,
00:59:25
even though very recently he said a horrible fucking thing about her husband. So all of this
00:59:31
must have been incredibly difficult just to swallow having to go back into basically this.
00:59:37
Totally. Rats nest for her. On top of which, her workday starts at 6am. She says goodbye to her children who are left with her mother, their grandmother, and she
00:59:48
reports to a downtown police station. Of course there nothing glamorous about this turn of the century police station Writer Elizabeth Mitchell describes it like this quote the stench alone was overwhelming The closed windows trapped the perfume of fetid socks Cops worked 13 hours at a stretch without
01:00:07
a moment home, so laundry got done at the station. Drying uniforms not quite purged of their sweat
01:00:13
hung out to dry. So gross. The air hung heavy with pipe smoke, cigar smoke, and on cold days,
01:00:20
the belch of pot-bellied stoves that stained the walls a demonic black. Oh my God.
01:00:27
Enjoy. I bet it smells so bad. To protect and serve. Just hideous. So filthy. So basically Isabella now has a job in a smelly, vicious boys club.
01:00:38
And she actually is the only woman working in that entire station at the time. But Isabella doesn't give a shit, essentially.
01:00:46
She has no time for her male colleagues' rudeness, their judgment, or their underestimation.
01:00:51
As Elizabeth Mitchell writes, quote, Isabella was fearless and had been since childhood.
01:00:57
She would not shy from wariness or prejudice, end quote. So all those wonderful childhood descriptions, she carried that throughout her whole life.
01:01:06
That was who she was. Nice. So she clocks in for a 12-hour shift. She goes home for 12 hours and wakes up the next day, does it all over again.
01:01:15
sometimes she has to pull a 24-hour shift depending on what's happening and she's also
01:01:21
required to be on call anytime she's not there so she has to go in whenever they need her
01:01:26
including the seven days a year she's allowed to take off yeah the 40-hour work week that labor
01:01:34
unions won us had clearly not gone into effect yet thankfully Isabella has her mother to look
01:01:40
after her children, but between her job at the precinct and her role as a single mother of four
01:01:46
young kids, she barely has time to rest. And still, Isabella genuinely finds joy in her work,
01:01:52
and she seems committed to serving others. At the station, she tends to the women and children as if
01:01:57
they were her own house guests. Many of the people under her care are despised by society,
01:02:02
from accused murderers to highly stigmatized sex workers, and many are going through traumatic
01:02:08
experiences themselves. That's why they're there. Isabella watches over runaways, women who are
01:02:14
homeless, people who are escaping abusive domestic situations, who in that era, they would get
01:02:20
themselves arrested so they could go to jail so they would be protected from their abusive husbands.
01:02:24
Oh my God. Regardless of their backgrounds, Isabella makes sure that they're all comfortable and cared for.
01:02:30
She brushes their hair. She asks them about their lives. And even though she hardly gets to see her
01:02:35
own kids, she joyfully takes care of any children who end up at a police station. So it's a lovely
01:02:42
idea that female energy that's so needed in those horrible times, she was there providing it.
01:02:48
She's extremely good at her job. She's intuitive. She's considerate. She's patient. She's very
01:02:53
thorough. And because of all that, she slowly starts to accumulate more responsibilities.
01:02:58
In 1904, she's handed her first big opportunity. That year, Isabella's police captain, a man named
01:03:04
John Cottrell gets a tip about a female-only gambling house that's operating nearby.
01:03:10
Sign me up. Did we or did we not have rights? Because that sounds rad. We had fun.
01:03:18
Cottrell knows that this would not be a job for male detectives, obviously, but the concept of a female detective does not yet exist in the NYPD.
01:03:27
So Cottrell calls on Isabella for help. He orders her to find out where the gambling house is,
01:03:32
how to get inside and gather any evidence of illegal activity. And she is stoked. She's like,
01:03:39
I will absolutely do that. I would love to. Because it allows her to be both creative and
01:03:44
strategic. So she carefully puts together this plan. Knowing that she has to build trust with
01:03:49
the downtown gambling crowd, Isabella starts making daily appearances in seedy parts of town.
01:03:55
Fun. Which is, yes, a great way to kind of get out of work, get in the seedy parts of town where the
01:04:00
funds at. So what she starts doing is carrying an issue of the Daily Racing form under her arm,
01:04:07
the national tabloid newspaper that covers horse racing. I talked about it when I covered the
01:04:12
paper bag killer. If you know, you know, but if you've never heard of it, you're like,
01:04:16
really? Oh, this is just something people that bet on the ponies know about. So Isabella knew.
01:04:21
And so she throws one under her arm. This tactic pays off within a few days. A woman approaches her
01:04:27
asking if she'd be interested in visiting a ladies-only betting club. Perfect. And Isabella says yes, and she's escorted into this very discreet-looking building.
01:04:38
You would never know that that's what's going on inside. Inside, Isabella witnesses all sorts of illegal activity taking place,
01:04:44
and she reports everything she sees back to Captain Cottrell, who arranges a raid, and 15 people are arrested.
01:04:51
And to make sure her cover isn't blown, Isabella gets arrested alongside them. She does this without any guidance from her boss or any other officers.
01:05:01
She knows it's in her best interest and it's important for the safety of her children.
01:05:05
And in the New York Times coverage of this bust, Isabella is reported to be a pivotal part of the investigation.
01:05:11
Of course, once people read that, there's a ton of interest around the fact that a police matron, not a detective, was the key to making this bust.
01:05:19
Can we just get it out of the way and say, Mark? I mean, yeah. Can't people just bet on some horses in the company of their fellow ladies?
01:05:26
Sure. It has to be said, but yeah. It has to be said. I mean, this is a story about a cop, so we're talking narcs.
01:05:33
Yeah, yeah. Isabella is very relieved that the Times don't include a sketch of her face,
01:05:37
and she's even more excited that she's being validated by the New York Times. She thinks if they're reporting on her excellent work,
01:05:45
then there's hope that she might get more undercover assignments in the future. And she right That exactly what happens Isabelle is regularly asked to go undercover in cases that involve accessing female dominated spaces And she gets really into it She known for her willingness to wear disguises to learn new accents and her chameleon
01:06:06
ability to blend in with any kind of crowd. She can pull off a high society look just as easily
01:06:12
as she can blend in with the ladies who frequent saloons and pool halls. I mean, and this is the
01:06:18
time where like the difference is so vast where the high society ladies have their big bustles
01:06:25
and their crazy outfits and they're all about how you present and you know all that kind of thing
01:06:31
so clearly Isabella in her dreams of the opera she was an actress it's guerrilla theater essentially
01:06:39
on top of all that Elizabeth Mitchell writes that quote Goodwin had the qualities of a great
01:06:44
detective, a good mixer, the ability to blend well with people of different classes, courage,
01:06:50
self-control, and one of the hardest traits to develop correctly, patience. So she was a great
01:06:56
improv player. Yeah. That's what you're saying. Yeah. And chess, it seems like. So before long,
01:07:02
Isabella has established a beat for herself. Instead of going after the gamblers, just looking
01:07:07
for a good time, she starts busting the charlatans and the fraudsters. She ups her game from just the
01:07:14
average narc to let's get the people responsible for this as opposed to just the people standing
01:07:19
around. And this includes phony doctors, religious snake oil salesmen, and the many predatory psychics
01:07:26
and mediums that were popular back in that day. Okay. So despite doing difficult and often
01:07:32
dangerous field work, Isabella is still technically a matron, but she is becoming the talk of the
01:07:38
town. She doesn't have a uniform. She isn't authorized to carry a gun. She can't arrest
01:07:43
anyone. And every time she's assigned to a new case, she is put into risky situations alone with
01:07:50
no way of protecting herself. After a while, her picture does get into the papers and her risk is
01:07:55
even greater. And she does have a few close calls. In one case, she's trying to bust a phony surgeon.
01:08:02
And I think that means like they weren't licensed and they were just kind of like, yeah, if you give
01:08:07
me the money, I can do that surgery for you. I mean, look at Brazilian butt lifts, like people
01:08:11
still fucking get that shit. I mean, we've always had problems with the medical profession.
01:08:18
So basically what she does, Isabella goes through the consultation process, she gets an appointment and she shows up as scheduled for an operation.
01:08:29
Wow. She stays undercover long enough to actually be laid out on a table with the fake doctor and
01:08:34
his surgical knife above her. And basically once she knows that he is going through with the
01:08:39
surgery, she has enough for the police to arrest this fake surgeon. So she bolts out of the room
01:08:45
with seconds to spare. Oh my goodness. And also alone. It's not like they're waiting right outside
01:08:50
the door. She has to run back to the fucking station and then report what happened. During
01:08:56
another investigation, she goes undercover to visit a swindling fortune teller. But at this
01:09:01
point, it's well known that New York's favorite undercover lady cop Isabella Goodwin goes after
01:09:06
psychics and mediums. So when she goes to the session, the fortune teller, who has no idea that
01:09:12
she's talking to Isabella, but she does have a picture cut out of the newspaper of her.
01:09:17
But it's long ago enough that it's an illustration. And this fortune teller says to Isabella,
01:09:24
if this woman ever sets foot in my establishment, she will never go out looking the same way she
01:09:30
came in. So I bet she got busted too, because that's quite a threat. But also then I was thinking,
01:09:37
well, maybe that fortune dollar actually did have psychic powers if she was taking the time to
01:09:42
threaten Isabella to her face. Maybe. Yeah. It's a warning. So despite her incredible work and her
01:09:48
glowing reputation, Isabella is of course never considered to be on the same level as her male
01:09:53
colleagues. This finally changes though in February of 1912 after the taxi bank heist that I told you
01:10:00
about at the top of the story. So the three suspects that robbed those bank clerks in that cab
01:10:06
are known criminals. It's Gene the Parrot Splane, it's Billy Dutch Keller, and it's Eddie the Boob
01:10:13
Kinsman. These nicknames are top notch. The best. The Boob will wind up being a particularly
01:10:20
important suspect. And that's because the NYPD gets word that his girlfriend, a woman named
01:10:27
Annie Hull, is living in a downtown boarding house. So Deputy Commissioner Doherty turns to
01:10:33
the force's tried and true matron, Isabella Goodwin, to break this case. Doherty asks Isabella to
01:10:39
infiltrate this boarding house, get evidence linking the boob to the stolen $25,000. And of
01:10:45
course, an outright statement from Annie about his guilt would be ideal, but basically any indication
01:10:52
that he has recently come into some money. Right. That would at least help them be able to start
01:10:57
getting closer to him. So Isabella immediately starts scheming and she comes up with this plan
01:11:03
to gain access to the boarding house without raising any suspicion. She goes and tries to
01:11:09
find a job there. She tracks down the landlord, asks if he's looking for a housekeeper, and
01:11:14
Luckily, he is. He offers her a live-in cleaning job for $6 a week. So Isabella moves in and she
01:11:21
gets straight to work. According to the New York Times, Isabella, quote, dons a ragged outfit,
01:11:27
affected an Irish brogue, and begins snooping between scrubbing floors and cooking meals,
01:11:33
end quote. So one day, Annie Hall shows up to the boarding house wearing a beautiful and extremely
01:11:38
expensive new suit. And while eavesdropping on some residents, Isabella hears Annie say that,
01:11:43
quote, Eddie the boob turned a trick all right. End quote. Can she be drunk? And Eddie the boob turned a trick all right.
01:11:54
Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so Isabella feels like she's close to linking Eddie to Over the
01:12:00
top spending, but she doesn't quite have everything she needs. So she starts watching
01:12:04
Annie closely. And so one afternoon, Annie leaves the boarding house. Isabella slips into her room,
01:12:11
checks the tag on that new suit, identifies where the suit was purchased, passes that information
01:12:17
along. The cops visit the shop. They confirm that Eddie was the buyer. The shop owner adds that Eddie
01:12:23
was, quote, shedding money like a canary does feathers in the molting season, end quote.
01:12:29
Just say he had a lot of money. I mean, they can't, back then they couldn't. Everything was a metaphor and a simile.
01:12:37
Yeah. So Captain Cottrell now has probable cause. He just needs to find Eddie. And again,
01:12:43
he turns to Isabella. So one night she presses her ear against the keyhole on Annie's door.
01:12:49
And here's Annie telling a friend about a trip she and Eddie are taking to San Francisco.
01:12:54
Isabella gets so much information from this one eavesdropping session that when the couple
01:12:59
eventually arrive at Grand Central Station to buy their train tickets to go on this trip,
01:13:04
they're arrested by several NYPD officers. The boob immediately rats on his accomplices.
01:13:10
Author Cheryl Mullenbach writes, quote, There was little honor among thieves and each ratted on the other.
01:13:17
Others were also implicated, including the cabbie. so in that bank heist the fucking cabbie was in on it why didn't he get hit in the head like
01:13:27
everybody else did yeah for sure so everyone that's linked to the notorious taxicab bank
01:13:32
robbery is eventually brought to court and convicted giving the mypd the win they so badly
01:13:37
needed and it couldn't have been done without isabella goodwin finally after years of hard work
01:13:44
she's promoted to detective yay making her the very first female detective in the history of
01:13:50
the New York Police Department. Along with this job title, her salary goes up from $1,000 a year
01:13:55
to $2,250 a year, which is basically 70 grand in today's money. Nice. Yeah. And meanwhile,
01:14:05
Isabella continues to be a media darling across the United States. Stories about New York's very
01:14:10
first female detective run in all the newspapers. The New York Herald even reports, quote,
01:14:15
there is many a six-foot detective with a gun on his hip who does less valuable work for his
01:14:21
$3,300 a year than Mrs. Goodwin, a slight quick-moving little woman whose brain more than
01:14:29
keeps pace with her body end quote The New York Herald really that a nice review Yeah they dug her They dug her and they kind of were like and look at these fucking slouches over here Like she busting ass
01:14:42
It's the least you could do anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a final quote from Isabella.
01:14:46
She said, quote, I do not care for the distinction of being the first woman to become a member
01:14:51
of the detective force, but I hope my work will be so successful that I will be known
01:14:56
as one of the cleverest detectives in the department. I love the excitement and I want to show just what a woman can do when the chance comes her way.
01:15:04
End quote. Over the next few years and following in Isabella's footsteps, more and more women join the NYPD ranks.
01:15:12
And then in 1921, Isabella Goodwin, now 56 years old, is told that she'll be co-creating the NYPD's very first women's precinct.
01:15:22
Yes. Yes. Fortunately, this experimental precinct is the complete opposite of the station where Isabella has been working all these years.
01:15:31
I fucking bet. The building housing the women's precinct is described in the following way.
01:15:37
Quote, a bright, cheerful place in Chelsea with a piano in the reception room, window boxes and white coverlets on the beds in the detainees dormitory.
01:15:46
In a reception room with a Parisian rug and a snow white desk topped with a vase of roses, the top officials from the police department lauded the team of female officers as valiant members of the force, ready not just to stop crime, but to prevent wrongdoing.
01:16:03
The male police choir serenaded them with a song called Dear Old Pal. Wow. End quote.
01:16:10
I would never have thought that there would be like a whole precinct of women that early on.
01:16:16
you know. And just to let you down, it only existed for two years. And then in 1923,
01:16:23
NYPD quietly closed the women's precinct and gave no official reason for its closure.
01:16:30
Because they were being embarrassed by how shitty they were and how easily and wonderfully the women
01:16:35
ran the show. I mean, this is the poor man's copyright. The women's precinct, the detective
01:16:42
story of all the badasses that were in the women's precinct kicking ass and solving crimes
01:16:48
is a movie or TV show. Yeah. Doesn't exist. So this is, it's not breaking strike rules to talk
01:16:55
about it, but I mean, how awesome would that be where it's like, yeah, they shut it down because
01:16:59
it was too good. Right. Right. 1921 marks a significant year for Isabella in more ways than
01:17:04
one It also the year that she marries a professional vocalist named Oscar Seaholm who shares her love of opera And get this Oscar 30 years younger than Isabella Get it get it get yours
01:17:21
That's me marrying my 22 year old. And extremely, the rest of that line is an extremely unusual age gap for the early 20s
01:17:33
where it's like girl for the early any times. I mean, how old are her kids at this point?
01:17:38
Because they can't be much younger than him. They're probably like, hey, do your chores.
01:17:44
No, I think they're completely grown. I think he's definitely younger than them.
01:17:48
All of this is completely out of step with the expectations of women at the time.
01:17:53
But that's Isabella Goodwin. That's how she did it. A few years later, after a long career and one last bust involving a phony doctor,
01:18:01
Isabella finally decides to hang up her detective hat for good. She's ready for a much-deserved retirement where she can spend as much time as she wants with her family.
01:18:09
And that's exactly what she does right up until 1943 when she passes away from colon cancer at 78 years old.
01:18:18
And here's one last quote from her. I threw myself, body, and soul into the work.
01:18:24
I think I was born for just such work. The excitement always keeps one's interest at the fever point.
01:18:29
It's not a career that I would recommend to every woman, but it is a lot better than those of the majority of women I know.
01:18:36
And there's the added incentive of knowing that you're doing something really worthwhile.
01:18:41
And that is the story of the NYPD's first female detective, Isabella Goodwin. Yes.
01:18:49
Good one. Good one, Goodwin. Good one, Goodwin. She did it. Wow. She really did.
01:18:56
She really did. Alone with no gun. Yeah. Try that. Also, it feels to me like the work she was doing at that precinct and kind of, you know, before she got really into like straight up undercover work, she was doing the work that they're trying to test out now of like, call this number and these people will come and help instead of the police.
01:19:18
Right. Right. Yeah, that was a great one. That was quite a twisty turny episode.
01:19:24
The cabbie was in on it. The cabbie was in on it. Of course he was. Of course he was.
01:19:30
Also, I'm picturing like a yellow cab. But now that I'm thinking about it, it's like it wasn't.
01:19:35
In the 20s? Yeah. I wonder. Oh, was it a carriage? Yeah, it was like an old timey carriage or like Ford fucking Edsel.
01:19:43
All right well we did it We did it again It over Thanks so much for listening once again Thanks for being here with us You know hanging out doing whatever
01:19:54
Doing some podcast stuff. Yeah. Let's meet again next week. Same time. Hey, great idea.
01:20:00
Perfect. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:20:13
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
01:20:18
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:20:23
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:20:28
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
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