00:00:00
This is Exactly Right. of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:00
Hard seltzer instead of beer. Oh, they had a BOGO. Well, then you got it. Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:08
Before NXIVM, Nancy Solzman wanted to help people. Being able to help somebody, it's probably the biggest motivator of my entire life.
00:01:16
She trained in something called neurolinguistic programming. People loved our training.
00:01:21
Then, everything changed. Yeah, and they called it a cult. How does a method designed to improve lives end up in a cult?
00:01:28
A knife in the hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife in the hands of a murderer is a weapon.
00:01:36
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:58
Hello. And welcome. To My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:09
I think we should try to draw that out for like 16 notes if we can. Like just keep going like
00:02:14
opera style. I was impressed because I feel like that's the first time we actually said it at the
00:02:18
same time. That was why I was like, I was like, oh, yeah. And we did it kind of fast. Sometimes
00:02:24
you do the conductor, the conductor hands a couple of times. I do. It's only taken a seven
00:02:29
and a half years to get in sync on the intro. I think that's, we've put in minimum 70,000 hours,
00:02:36
which is the recommendation for podcasting. Really practice guys. It's important. It's
00:02:43
important stuff. You don't, you can't just wing it. You've got to go to college,
00:02:47
get all those college credits for podcasting. Yeah. Get those and then drop out.
00:02:52
But you still got your loan and that's never going to be forgiven. So yeah, just keep that forever.
00:02:58
Yeah. Too bad it wasn't a PPP loan, friends. The things that they forgive so quickly.
00:03:05
Oh, truly, truly. You were about to tell me about astrology, something about it.
00:03:11
Well, you know, over on TikTok, I follow a lot of and or seem to get in my algorithm a lot of astrology talk because I do enjoy it.
00:03:21
Yeah. And right now, and here's the thing, you should go and listen to people who know what they're talking about. All I was saying, and the whole message is, this is a big changing time.
00:03:33
So this stuff, and it just is weird and interesting to me when the stuff that's happening around us, like basically the full meltdown of structures and systems that we're used to is somehow reflected in like they say when the astrology people are able to go like, the same thing happened 59 years ago when this happened.
00:03:55
I almost said the French Revolution, but I know for a fact that didn't happen 59 years ago.
00:03:59
But it's that kind of vibe where it's like this time that starts today, which is the day we're recording, not the day you're listening, probably.
00:04:08
Kicks off. I want to say new moon, probably wrong. I know the word nodes is involved, but it's essentially just if you hang on, you'll be dragged.
00:04:17
So let go, let go, let go. I like that idea. If you hang on, you'll be dragged. Yeah. So we're entering a chaotic time and the best thing to do is acknowledge it and not try to fight against it, basically.
00:04:30
Yeah. Can't fight it. Don't fight it. It'll all be fine. And just work on yourself.
00:04:39
That seems to be the message of everybody is you have basically between now and this the end of December to manifest the life you want.
00:04:47
So just start focusing on yourself and the life you want because that's the one thing you can control.
00:04:54
Okay. All right. That feels like a long time. It's July, right? And then. Yeah. From July to December.
00:05:02
Also, though, what I just said can be applied to any point of time in the past or into the future because it's always kind of the truth.
00:05:10
Yeah. But it's nice to hear someone say it, you know, because then you're like, other than yourself, say it.
00:05:17
It's like nice to someone else to do it because otherwise I won't do it. You know what I mean?
00:05:21
Yes, for sure. It's also nice to think about, you know, the people that like poo poo astrology or whatever
00:05:28
don't seem to understand that it really, there's a lot to be found in kind of handed down wisdom
00:05:35
of the ages where they basically say, hey, we've been tracking this for several thousand years.
00:05:41
And this is a thing that comes up around this thing. So you don have to believe it and you don have to be an expert in it to kind of look at it and go oh okay well maybe I consider that since everything is kind of random and chaos anyway Moon phases are real Me being a Gemini and not affecting me might not be but there are moon phases of the moon and you can deny that
00:06:06
Try it. Right, and you shouldn't deny it because those phases of the moon affect the tides,
00:06:12
which is 70% of this planet and some very large percent of your body is water. That's right.
00:06:19
So there's things being affected, whether you want that to be happening or not. That's right.
00:06:25
I only have one, one thing I want to like shout out. The most wholesome documentary I've ever watched is the Wham documentary.
00:06:35
Oh yeah. Oh my God. Did you watch it? I haven't. But Chris Fairbanks was talking about it over on, do you need a ride?
00:06:42
And he, and we had a full conversation. So I was like, wait, what? And yeah, that's right.
00:06:48
Yeah. And people love it. It's so like, it's so pure and sweet. And it's just these two boys who've known each other since they were kids, like making it big.
00:06:59
And, you know, just it's just really sweet and lovely. And it gave me a whole new respect for George Michael because he's like 19 writing and producing these hit fucking songs, having no experience whatsoever.
00:07:13
And it's just it's a really sweet documentary. also you know as george michael's career went on the when he like say played at the queen yeah that
00:07:24
huge queen concert and basically did freddie mercury's part where you were suddenly like
00:07:28
oh this guy is a gigantic vocal like legend and in that moment when they show it on the documentary
00:07:35
i just turned to vince and i go like he shouldn't be able to sing like this he has no training
00:07:40
it's not like you know he had no training i don't think he had any training it was like very minimal and he suddenly has this voice and it's like okay this is definitely like
00:07:50
bigger than bigger than you yeah if i were religious which i'm very much not it's like
00:07:55
a gift from god you know what i mean yeah and it will and or you can think of it as like fate where
00:08:01
some people are born and they're fated to do certain things yeah and they don't need like the
00:08:07
normal routines to get there they and also that's that's the thing that i think is part of the reason
00:08:13
we are where we are today, the arts are not respected. We live in, I should say in America,
00:08:19
because capitalism has taken over to the degree where it's like cut the fat of anything that,
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you know, the big boys decide isn't important to them. But the arts, everything that that includes,
00:08:34
including outsider artists and people who make their own way, are like one of the most important
00:08:39
things to humanity. So it's just, I think that's a good thing to keep in mind while they're trying
00:08:46
to say that actors and writers aren't important in show business, where it's like, good luck with
00:08:51
show business after you get rid of actors and writers. I mean, yeah, it's like the most necessary,
00:08:56
one of the most necessary parts of it, you would argue, not the CEO of the fucking company.
00:09:01
It's the fucking point of it. It's the only reason all those CEOs have jobs is because of
00:09:06
the talented people that they're trying to basically put into poverty for their,
00:09:11
so that they can have a fourth yacht. Yeah. Like, fuck those guys for real. I mean, billionaires should not be a thing, especially multiple ones of them.
00:09:21
There's so many now. They're just, they've gone unchecked. They have. Meanwhile, rent is, it's unlivable.
00:09:30
What average people are living off of and being paid is not equal to what inflation has done to the economy.
00:09:38
It's not a livable fucking world anymore. Right. It's just, ugh. It's really wild.
00:09:44
Well, and luckily, astrology supports me when I say it's going to change. It's all going to change.
00:09:51
Here's an important change that people that listen to this podcast really care about that's really major.
00:09:56
they made an arrest in the case of the Long Island serial killer. I am obsessed.
00:10:03
How wild and how like, I have to say, and I guess it's like this for many cases that are old,
00:10:10
how hopeless I felt about that case. Yeah. And then I got a series of texts at 7 a.m. from people
00:10:17
and I'm like, oh, yay, it's another one. Like they just keep breaking these cases.
00:10:22
Unbelievable. And it's so, yeah. So we're recording this when he just got arrested.
00:10:27
So who the fuck knows? It's exciting. Like what's going to happen in a week or so when this goes on?
00:10:31
Like we won't even know. But I've been reading it. The way they caught him with the fucking cell phone triangulation shit is like fascinating and so rad.
00:10:41
And the pizza crust? The pizza crust being DNA swabbed. Like I don't even eat. Who eats pizza like that?
00:10:48
Like it's just. You mean doesn't eat the crust? No one I know. No. What is he like licking the crust?
00:10:53
It's just like, it's like such a tiny amount of DNA they're able to get is fascinating.
00:10:58
It's the holder, but it's the holder. Oh, is it the fingerprints? I thought it was the teeth.
00:11:04
Oh, he's eating pizza backwards. He should be arrested. Outside in. Yeah, that's bad news.
00:11:11
You know, my dad, my dad eats pizza by scraping. He doesn't want the carbs of the crust.
00:11:15
So he scrapes the sauce and toppings and cheese off and eats that. And so he's just always left with this plate full of empty crusts, like sad.
00:11:24
Marty, Marty, live a little. You're okay. I think he just decided to start eating the crust to live a little.
00:11:29
Like he just like turned a new leaf and was like, you know what? I'm 77. I'm eating the fucking crust.
00:11:36
Fatten up, buddy. It's time. You're okay. Every picture in your life is you skinny.
00:11:43
You've done it. Truly. Yeah. So him getting caught is amazing. I can't wait for all these families to finally have answers.
00:11:51
And oh, what a monster. What a monster. Also it very interesting And I think this is the interesting thing to me about the attention these cases get now and the way they laying out It going to be very interesting to see how that department handles all of it especially in comparison to the Idaho 4 murders because the police sheriff all those people in Moscow Idaho handled the communication part of those of that arrest and what they were doing and what they could say and what they couldn say
00:12:24
It was like going to school. And I just hope that that is the thing that continues going forward as opposed to...
00:12:33
Like transparency, you're saying. It's transparency, but it's also instructing people.
00:12:37
You can't have this answer right now. It's not known. Like these little factoids came out because the police get to say what led them to this moment.
00:12:46
But if all of that doesn't prove out, then that's where we'll be at the end of the trial.
00:12:50
Like basically kind of getting interested in the rest of the story. which I think I've said it before when the Idaho 4 arrest took place that I was just so blown away
00:13:00
by that DA and that all the law enforcement officers that were speaking on behalf of the
00:13:06
case because they were just like laying it out. Yeah. Not sensationalizing anything and just
00:13:11
making it. Yeah. And like instructing the press, basically, you can ask anything you want. We can't
00:13:16
tell you. Right. And you should understand that. Right. And this is how we're doing it going forward.
00:13:20
it's an active case until it's it's ended so i just want to know more though i want i'm fighting
00:13:27
between wanting to know everything tell me everything and knowing that that's you know a
00:13:32
private matter for these victims families to be able to process that and has nothing to do
00:13:37
with me or reddit or the fucking internet so you know yeah right i know that's the true crime the
00:13:43
true crime conundrum i guess the true crime of it all yeah it also makes me think of that uh the
00:13:49
Long Island serial killer made for TV movie. I don't think it was a series that I think it's
00:13:56
called Lost Girls. And our friend Liz Garbus directed it. And that mother who fought all the
00:14:03
way through didn't give a shit. But like, that's the person that I'm kind of holding a place in my
00:14:11
heart for because what all those families went through and the way they had to fight and got
00:14:16
ignored and got told to get out of our area. This is not your area. Like so disgusting and horrible.
00:14:23
It's just going to be, it's just going to be amazing to watch that and know that those people
00:14:29
at least have a little bit of peace right now. Well, the monster can't call them anymore. You
00:14:36
know, he was calling them from the victim's cell phone. Like what? I mean. And is that one of the
00:14:42
triangulation part you were talking about? One of them. One of many. Yeah. Yeah. Like,
00:14:46
it's just like the depravity of a person who would do any of this, obviously. But then I mean,
00:14:53
yeah, it's just it's just so hard to look at this picture of this man and like the
00:14:57
depths of evil. You'll never will never understand that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's our show. Should we go dip quickly back into astrology before we go out into
00:15:11
our other topics or should we just get move get it moving let's do it let's do exactly right corner
00:15:17
time we have a podcast network called exactly right here's some updates here's some stuff and
00:15:23
by the way if you are an astrologer please forgive me for just trying to throw down literally what
00:15:29
was at the top of my head to tell georgia that's how they know that's how a lot of us talk about
00:15:34
stuff we're just like yeah we try to approximate the millions of videos we've watched yeah
00:15:39
Yeah. We know we're not. We're not trying to teach a course. We really are not in any way.
00:15:45
In anything. Okay. So this week on the Exactly Right Network, if you missed this, the first episode of Ghosted by Roz Hernandez starring Georgia Hardstark is now available.
00:15:58
And then episode two with the great busy Phillips is now available. And those episodes will be coming out every Monday.
00:16:06
Please give Roz a follow wherever you like to listen. Rate, review, and subscribe any podcast you love.
00:16:12
It helps them out so much. And I'm sure Roz Hernandez would love that. And then on Buried Bones, Kate Wheatler-Dawson and Paul Holes discuss the Crumbles murders,
00:16:22
two separate incidents which took place on the beaches of England in the 1920s. And over in the MFM merch store, if you're looking for some silky PJs,
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00:17:46
But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the
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podcast The Secret World of Roald Dahl All episodes are out now Was this before he wrote his stories It must have been What Okay I don think that true I telling you I was a spy Binge all 10 episodes
00:18:05
of The Secret World of Roald Dahl. Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
00:18:10
you get your podcasts. Every story has a point where it's balanced on a knife's edge. That's
00:18:17
where we begin. For some, it's a confrontation no parent ever expects. They finally admit,
00:18:23
We're here to take your children. The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids.
00:18:27
It was just shock and horror and desperation. For others, it's surviving the unthinkable.
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As they're having this gun battle, thousands of feet up in the air, many of the bullets start to puncture the aircraft.
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I thought we were going to die then. The Knife is a podcast about real people whose lives were upended in an instant.
00:18:49
We talk to the people who lived it, unpacking what happened, how they got through it, and what came next.
00:18:56
And on our off-record episodes, we go even deeper into the reporting and answer the questions you can't stop thinking about.
00:19:02
New episodes drop every Thursday on the Exactly Right Network and the iHeart Podcast Network.
00:19:07
Listen to The Knife on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:13
And now, true crime. Now the true crime. Do you go first? Yes. Okay, good. Now, listen, look. So today's story, I found it when I was staying with my dad over the holidays. And I try not to look at my phone like before I go to bed. So my dad has a stack of books in a guest room on the nightstand that have been there since I think 1989.
00:19:43
Yeah. There's one about golf. There's like musings about golf. I'm pretty sure that one about
00:19:50
sea biscuits on there. A lot of those kinds of books. The large hardback ones, the big ones with
00:19:56
the like shiny covers. My grandma had those too for the same ones for years. Kind of dusty,
00:20:02
but they're sitting there. And I think it was like, you know, one night a while ago, I realized,
00:20:07
oh, there's plenty of good reading. My dad's a big reader. And before Kindle came out and he does
00:20:12
everything on Kindle now, but my parents had tons of books. So I'm like, oh, I'll just go to sleep
00:20:16
reading these books. And last time I picked up a book and it was called San Francisco Homicide
00:20:23
Inspector 5 Henry 7, written by retired detective Frank Falzone. And when I opened the book,
00:20:30
it was the inside was dedicated from Frank Falzone to my cousin Marty, who used to be.
00:20:36
Right. Yep. Wow. Marty. Marty. And he, I talked about long ago when we covered the Night Stalker, Marty and his partner, who was Frank Valzone's son.
00:20:48
Oh. They were the first cops on scene when the Night Stalker broke into that house in the marina.
00:20:54
Right. And they took fingerprints that led to Richard Ramirez being identified later on.
00:21:00
Yes. So that was that Thanksgiving where he told that story at the dinner table.
00:21:05
And I was like, how in the world do we not know this already? Like, what are you doing?
00:21:10
So it was kind of funny. I'm like, oh, perfect. I'll just read a series of cases Frank Falzone worked on during his career as a homicide detective.
00:21:20
This is great reading to go to sleep to. And in that book, I found this case that I really found compelling.
00:21:28
So today I'm going to tell you a story. It starts in San Francisco in 1973. So just for a little perspective, basically in 1967 was the year people started going in mass numbers to San Francisco for, you know, flower children, counterculture.
00:21:45
Basically, they all went to the Haight-Ashbury district, lured by the promise of free love and free drugs and a chance to make a difference in both the fight for civil rights in this country and also to protest the war in Vietnam.
00:21:57
It peaked in 1969 with the Summer of Love. And in the years after San Francisco was a little bit of a hangover mode, there was kind of the naivete turning to a jaded knowing of like, oh, there's no such thing as free drugs or free sex or, you know, like this fight is going to be harder than just all of us sitting in the park beyond acid.
00:22:18
And I think that's when Hell's Angels showed up and were like, things got dark at that point.
00:22:24
Yeah. Well, someone had to be providing the free drugs. And so basically, you know, all those connections, it was like, that's a nice concept, but there's always more to it. So 1973, the idealism of the hippie culture still prevails in San Francisco. And the city continues to draw new residents from all over the world. But of course, the seedy underside is really starting to show.
00:22:47
And it's in the midst of this cultural awakening and reawakening that a little known killer terrified San Franciscans with seemingly random and very public attacks.
00:22:57
This is the story of the paper bag killer. Ooh. Yeah. I don't think I know this one.
00:23:03
I had never heard of it myself. And I thought I kind of knew of like any kind of a story like this from up there.
00:23:10
But it was lesser known and it was happening kind of in the same time frame as a bunch of other crazy stuff.
00:23:20
So it was like it was a little more obscure. So just real quick, the sources used in today's story are the book I mentioned, San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5 Henry 7 by Frank Falzone.
00:23:34
I've definitely heard his name before. We've talked about him before for sure, right?
00:23:37
Oh, yeah. Well, let me I'll read you the rest of the title of that book, which is it's San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5 Henry 7. My inside story of the Night Stalker, City Hall murders, zebra killings, Chinatown gang wars, and a city under siege. So he this is a detective that worked, you know, on the force for so long. He was there for every major crime.
00:24:00
crazy famous case in the city. Amazing. Also, excerpts from the book Super Sleuths by Bruce
00:24:07
Henderson and Sam Summerlin and multiple San Francisco Examiner articles from throughout
00:24:12
the 70s. And the rest of our sources are in the show notes for today. Okay, so this all starts in
00:24:19
the morning of October 16th, 1973. It's a clear sunny autumn day in San Francisco and a plump,
00:24:27
bald 70-year-old man named Lorenzo Cornelia is walking along Third Street with a slight limp.
00:24:34
All of those things will be relevant later. So today, the neighborhood that Lorenzo was walking
00:24:40
in in 1973 is actually where Oracle Park, where the San Francisco Giants play their home games.
00:24:46
It's right down there by the water. Now it's very kind of fancy. There's tons of high rises.
00:24:52
But back in the early 70s, Third Street was mostly industrial buildings and warehouses. So there's
00:24:57
not a lot of foot traffic. It's actually kind of desolate. And it's unclear where Lorenzo is going
00:25:03
that morning as he walks along Third Street. What we do know is that he's carrying the daily racing
00:25:08
form under his arm and he's near the Greyhound bus station. It wouldn't be unusual for Lorenzo
00:25:14
to hop on a bus to San Mateo to go bet on some ponies at Bay Meadows racetrack, except that today
00:25:20
is Tuesday and there are no races on schedule at Bay Meadows. So we don't know what Lorenzo
00:25:27
was doing walking around there. But we do know is that around 1130 a.m., a young man starts
00:25:32
tailing Lorenzo, walking down the sidewalk with urgency and purpose. He follows a completely
00:25:38
oblivious Lorenzo until he's just a few feet away from him. And that's when this young man
00:25:43
raises a hand that's covered by a paper bag, points it at Lorenzo's back and pulls the trigger
00:25:49
on the concealed handgun inside. The young man shoots Lorenzo Cornelia in the back three times.
00:25:55
So multiple people witness this attack because there's like a hotel right across the street.
00:26:01
So there's people, there's not a lot of people walking around, but there are people that like have,
00:26:07
were looking out their window or like have eyes on. So multiple people do witness the attack.
00:26:13
So the police are called, but by the time they arrive, Lorenzo is in critical condition.
00:26:18
he's rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital where he dies from his injuries. So back at the scene, the police are searching for evidence.
00:26:28
The gunman is long gone. And aside from a small pool of blood and Lorenzo's crumpled up issue of the daily racing form,
00:26:34
there's almost no evidence to be found. And there aren't shell casings which lead the police and later the investigators to believe a revolver was used in the attack.
00:26:46
So officers begin interviewing the eyewitnesses, and they describe the gunman as a young, thin man between the ages of 18 and 22.
00:26:54
They say he had long blonde hair, wore a yellow shirt and faded jeans. And these witnesses report that after shooting Lorenzo, the gunman reportedly ran north toward Market Street.
00:27:05
So as helpful as all that information is, especially given the lack of physical evidence on the scene, this description is not much to go on.
00:27:13
it's San Francisco in the early 70s. So the amount of white men with long blonde hair
00:27:17
and blue jeans is countless. So homicide detectives Frank Falzone and Jack Cleary
00:27:24
are assigned this case. The detectives, when they arrive and they see the lack of evidence,
00:27:29
they decide to focus on witness testimony to drum up leads. So they just try to interview as many
00:27:34
people as possible. So they start knocking on doors at the seedy hotel that's directly across
00:27:40
from the murder scene. And they basically knock, just go from room to room knocking on the door to
00:27:45
try to get people to talk to them, which I'm sure was super fun. Almost no one has useful information.
00:27:51
Most people are not talking, not until they get to the third floor. And there, a man named Anthony
00:27:57
Miller, whose room looks right out over the crime scene, agrees to speak with them. In the book,
00:28:04
Frank Falzone says Anthony was not the most charming host, is the way to put it. He complains
00:28:09
about not being asked to sit down. But none of that really matters because this is the first
00:28:14
person that actually has some good information for them. He tells Falzone and Cleary that after
00:28:19
shooting Lorenzo, the gunman ran toward a nearby parking lot where he takes off his yellow shirt,
00:28:25
throws it on the ground, changes into a green shirt, runs back to Third Street, walks about
00:28:30
another half a block north, hops into a parked white van and speeds away. What the fuck? Yeah.
00:28:38
So that's actually a nice, you know, a witness statement. The only thing Anthony couldn't give them was the van's license plate number.
00:28:45
And that was just because it was too far away to see. So Falzone and Cleary jog back across the street.
00:28:51
They go to that parking lot. And just as Anthony described, they find the gunman's yellow shirt on the ground.
00:28:56
It's described as, quote, a worn T-shirt, tie-dyed yellow with a bold chain pattern blocked out on the front.
00:29:04
So pictures of this shirt are shown on the evening news and they run in local newspapers.
00:29:09
But unfortunately, that doesn't lead to any new tips. So without much else to go on, the investigation into Lorenzo Cornelia's murder stalls out.
00:29:17
Two months later, on a cold December morning, at the corner of 5th and Folsom Streets, which is relatively close by, it's kind of in the same area as where Lorenzo Cornelia's murder took place.
00:29:30
at Fifth and Folsom, a 54-year-old man named Ara Kuznezov is bundled up in a raggedy coat.
00:29:38
He's walking in the direction of the Lifeline mission, and he's planning on eating a free
00:29:42
breakfast there that morning, but the mission is not open. So Ara's just kind of pacing around
00:29:48
outside, walking up and down the street as he's waiting. So what's interesting about this is Ara,
00:29:54
like Lorenzo Cornelia is plump bald and walks with a slight limp And just like Lorenzo Ara being watched A white van has just pulled into the parking lot of the gas station next door and a young
00:30:09
man steps out of the vehicle wearing a hooded jacket and a knit cap pulled down over his
00:30:14
face. He's holding something big and bulky under his arm that seems to be wrapped in a brown
00:30:19
paper bag. One witness will later say that it, quote, looked like a broom in a large brown grocery store bag.
00:30:26
The young man quickly walks down the sidewalk in the direction of the Lifeline mission.
00:30:31
Unlike the day of Lorenzo Cornelia's murder, though, there are dozens of people around on the street on this morning.
00:30:38
But the young man is headed straight for Ara, who is still standing totally oblivious outside the mission at this point.
00:30:46
And when the young man gets within three feet of him, He pulls the bag from underneath his arm, sticks his hands inside, lifts it in front of him, and fires.
00:30:55
Witnesses report seeing Ara look up once before being hit by a shotgun blast in the face.
00:31:02
The force of the gunshot throws him to the ground. Ara is killed instantly. Horrified witnesses watch as the gunman stands in a daze for a second or two and then runs back to the gas station.
00:31:14
So at this point, the paper bag's been thrown off and the shooter is just walking down this busy street holding a pump action shotgun out in the open.
00:31:24
He then jumps into his white van and he manages to speed away before the police can make it to the scene.
00:31:30
So again, detectives Falzone and Cleary are called to the scene. And even though the weapons in the two murders are different, the similarities between the murders are obvious.
00:31:40
In both instances, witnesses described a young man with a gun concealed in a paper bag fleeing in a white van.
00:31:47
Both shootings also happened on weekday mornings within blocks of each other. So the detectives focus on their latest piece of tangible evidence, and that's that paper bag that was left behind at the crime scene.
00:32:00
They quickly figure out it's from a Safeway grocery store, which if you've ever lived in San Francisco, you know that's not going to help you that much because there's several.
00:32:08
and several in the Bay Area. When they actually look into it, it's estimated that 10,000 of these exact same paper bags
00:32:17
are used in those stores every single day. So not great. But in this case, the grocery bag ends up being an excellent clue
00:32:25
because its thick paper makes a perfect canvas for fingerprints. And police technicians are able to pull multiple prints off of that paper bag.
00:32:34
The bad part is, remember, we are in the early 70s, which might as well be the 1700s. There is no computerized database that the investigators can search to find a fingerprint match. There's no computers there. So they have to search through the fingerprint database that is basically a big binder with a bunch of fingerprints.
00:32:56
Can you imagine being that guy who has to like compare thousands and thousands of fingerprints
00:33:02
and then it might, it either might not match or you've got it wrong and it just didn't.
00:33:07
Right. And also how were the, were those organized? I mean, they must've been in a way where it's like, okay, swirls going left, swirls going
00:33:14
right. Like what's the system in place on that old thing? Because you're just comparing these intricate designs.
00:33:23
Like, you know, how do you do it? I'll send it on Instagram if you know how they used to do fingerprint.
00:33:28
Yes. Historical fingerprint experts. We'd love to have a discussion with you. Definitely.
00:33:32
I mean, it's the same thing I think about when the way people used to edit movies.
00:33:36
Oh, just like with scissors. They cut the film. They cut the film by hand. It's crazy.
00:33:44
Okay. So this operation, seemingly borderline impossible, but it's essentially, you know, how it was.
00:33:51
It's all they have. They also are trying to track down that white van. Investigators search as many as 400 vans over the next several weeks and interview over 100 drivers.
00:34:02
That turns up nothing. They're back to square one. So they decide to approach the investigation from a new angle.
00:34:09
Instead of looking at the gunmen, Falzone and Cleary decide to focus on the victims looking for any connection between these two men, no matter how big or small.
00:34:18
But there's no connection that they can find. These men didn't know each other. They didn't have much in common really at all.
00:34:25
Lorenzo was a semi-retired contractor at the time of his death. He was much older than Ara.
00:34:31
He owned several buildings around San Francisco. I think he was like a landlord type.
00:34:35
He had many friends. He was comfortable financially. Whereas Ara was living out of a hotel room with no permanent address.
00:34:43
He had just moved to the Bay Area. He had no belongings. And aside from a few pieces of clothing and a New York state welfare card,
00:34:51
He just didn't have anything. He didn't seem to know anyone in the city. And he was out of work at the time of his murder. So two very different lives joined by this horrible, horrific fact. But detectives Falzone and Cleary, they do manage to find important similarities. Both Lorenzo and Ara were older than the gunmen, much older. And on top of that, both victims were bald, short, heavyset and walked with limbs.
00:35:19
So that's kind of a crucial and interesting similarity. So now it's January 25th.
00:35:26
Three months have passed since the murder of Lorenzo Cornelia and about a month since the murder of Ara Kuznezov.
00:35:32
There's a lack of strong leads in both investigations until a call comes through the San Francisco Police Department's tip line and it's transferred directly to detectives Falzone and Cleary.
00:35:44
And the man on the other end of the phone seems very nervous, very cagey. He manages to tell the investigators that he, quote, knows something that maybe they ought to be aware of.
00:35:55
He says that a friend who drives a white van for his job at a delivery service has recently told him something that this man doesn want to share over the phone So he asks if the two detectives will meet him in a public place and he makes them promise to keep his name out of the investigation
00:36:12
So the detectives agree to keep the tipster anonymous, and they head out to meet him.
00:36:17
And when they do, they're greeted by a young man who's visibly nervous, and he tells them that he has a good friend who's, quote,
00:36:24
a real good guy, straight and level, but who recently shared something that is very concerning.
00:36:31
According to this tipster, this man had been showing off several guns and told him, quote,
00:36:36
he was trying to kill a man because this man was going around raping young girls, end quote.
00:36:42
And the tipster's friend who was making these claims even said that he had murdered this rapist
00:36:47
multiple times. What? But. Yeah. But according to the friend, the rapist kept coming back to life.
00:36:55
Oh, fuck. His friend was just like, hey. His friend's like, I got to call somebody.
00:37:02
Like, we were just playing pool and suddenly this guy fucking. Oh, my God. So scary.
00:37:08
I literally just put a little dash and wrote bone chilling underneath that because that is so scary.
00:37:14
Then the man tells the cops his friend's name is William Hansen. so finally the detectives have a real lead and they do some digging on that name and they learn
00:37:26
that William Hansen is 24 years old he's blonde he works a regular weekday shift from 8 a.m to 4
00:37:32
p.m at a delivery service it all matches the witnesses descriptions of the gunman and it seems
00:37:39
that if this man is a delivery driver then that would give him the opportunity to carry out these
00:37:44
crimes while driving around town at his job. Of course, none of it's a smoking gun, but it's a
00:37:51
very good start after three months of very little. They also find out that William's the son of one
00:37:57
of the most respected psychiatrists in California. And his mother is a local advocate who's passionate
00:38:04
about progressive causes. Basically, William Hansen's character and surrounding lifestyle,
00:38:11
There's no red flags. But then they dig a little deeper, and the detectives learn about another brutal attack
00:38:18
that happened just months before Lorenzo Cornelia's murder. In February of the same year,
00:38:26
an unnamed 54-year-old businessman was walking a few blocks north of Mission Street,
00:38:32
and out of nowhere, he sees a young man coming towards him with a knife. The businessman tries to defend himself.
00:38:39
There's a struggle. Fortunately, the businessman is able to knock the knife out of his attacker's hands.
00:38:44
And before the young man could get away, there are two patrol cops that are walking nearby.
00:38:51
They come in, tackle this attacker. They take him to jail. They bring him up on criminal charges.
00:38:58
This attacker's name is William Hansen. Oh, shit. And this businessman's description, his physical description, he's short, heavyset, bald, and he walks with a limp.
00:39:08
Oh, dear. So the problem is when William Hansen's trial date rolls around, the businessman is working in Phoenix and he can't testify.
00:39:17
So those charges are dropped. What's really crazy is the same businessman had been attacked two months before that incident.
00:39:27
In December of 1972, a businessman was ambushed while using a urinal inside the Greyhound bus station bathroom near Market Street, which was the same bus station that Lorenzo Cornelia would use to go to the racetracks, all same area.
00:39:43
And also not far from where Ara Kuzinov was murdered. So in the bus station bathroom attack, the businessman told police, quote, his assailant had come at him from behind, reached over his shoulder and stabbed him in the chest.
00:39:59
Jesus. And then the attacker vanishes before the businessman or any of the eyewitnesses can get a good look at him.
00:40:06
And it never occurs to the businessman these two knife attacks were carried out by the same person.
00:40:12
Yeah. You want to be like, of course, it's two knife attacks, but it's like San Francisco in the 70s. Not great. Yeah. I mean, two different places.
00:40:20
It's crazy. And I'm sure he had his doubts. I mean, like, I'm sure he didn't feel all one way about it. But still, you would think after the second one where the guy actually gets arrested, you'd be like, I'm going to go ahead and take that week off work.
00:40:33
As much for the case as for my own myself. Yeah. But this is the 70s when you weren't allowed to care about yourself.
00:40:41
Okay, so after they learn all this, detectives Falzone and Cleary are becoming convinced that William Hansen was behind all the attacks that they have been investigating.
00:40:52
So now that they have a name and a previous arrest, they know that that means William Hansen was almost certainly fingerprinted.
00:40:59
So they now get to have a much more focused search through the fingerprint catalog and they locate William Hansen's fingerprints.
00:41:08
and when they compare them to the prints that were lifted from the Safeway shopping bag,
00:41:12
they seem to be a match. Now, the investigators are able to secure both an arrest warrant for Hansen
00:41:19
and a search warrant for his parents' house in the Forest Hill district where William lives.
00:41:25
When they arrive at the house, they are greeted very warmly by Dr. Hansen, whose hospitality fades to complete shock when they explain to him why they're there.
00:41:36
A thorough search of the large home is conducted, and when they get to William's room,
00:41:41
they find both a revolver and a shotgun. And in William's closet, officers find the clothing that matches witness descriptions
00:41:47
of what the shooter had been wearing in each respective attack. So William's taken into custody.
00:41:54
He brought to jail His stunned parents tell the detectives they had no idea their son even owned a gun much less two And in fact everyone who knows the Hansen family and knows William is shocked to hear this news
00:42:07
William's friends describe William as a great guy. Like, no one can believe it. These are the stories where I'm like doubling up on my birth control the next day.
00:42:15
I mean, it's well, but no, this is interesting. And this is the reason that this case stood out to me is because so often we talk about
00:42:23
these serial killer cases where you go, why? Why? Why did this person do this? Why is it happening?
00:42:32
What's really compelling to me is that nothing justifies any of it, but there are these reasons
00:42:38
that make so much more sense than the normal reasons or lack of reason that you seem to find
00:42:44
in most of these cases. So William's transported to the police station and he's withdrawn, but he is
00:42:50
polite and helpful, but then something seems to shift in his personality. According to Detective
00:42:56
Valzone's story in the book, William's demeanor dramatically changes as the detectives outline
00:43:02
all the evidence against him. He says, quote, it was a complete change in character, voice,
00:43:08
demeanor. He was so delusional that he'd gone to an altered state. His facial expression went from
00:43:14
normal to cold, from a smile to a grimace. His eyes narrowed and his voice became guttural,
00:43:19
almost like a zombie in a horror movie. I'd never seen anything like it in a suspect under questioning.
00:43:26
End quote. So just this real turn, maybe it's the facade broke or who knows? Who knows what their reason could be,
00:43:34
could bend perception. But with this brand new version of William sitting in front of them,
00:43:39
the two detectives want to know conclusively if this is their guy. And it doesn't take long for William to start talking.
00:43:46
And what he tells them is extremely disturbing. So this is another quote from the book.
00:43:51
It says, There was a man, a man whose image was fixed in his mind, who was going around raping young women.
00:43:58
He knew what this man looked like. Stocky, bald, walked with a limp. The girls were innocent, Hansen said, and that's why he had to kill this man.
00:44:06
He knew he had to kill and kill again until he finally put this man away. The man would always come back.
00:44:12
No matter how many times he tried to kill him, this man would always be there again on the street.
00:44:17
He said the man tried to disguise himself by wearing different sized ears or a different nose or sometimes having thin fingers and sometimes having fat fingers.
00:44:28
But he could always tell because he could never change his height, his weight, the shape of his face, and in particular, his peculiar walk.
00:44:36
God. End quote. So this is a very young man who is clearly going through some sort of mental
00:44:45
illness and delusion and essentially hallucinating the same rapist that no matter how many times,
00:44:53
how violently he attacks him, he just keeps turning up again. I mean, there's, I think there's literally an episode of Twilight Zone like that.
00:45:01
Yeah, it's to be in that reality. What a nightmare. What a just a horrible nightmare. So William Hansen is handed two murder charges and he awaits his trial in jail. But two huge questions remain. How did this privileged, popular, respected young man become convinced there was a shape-shifting predator stalking women in San Francisco? And what drove him to carry out such violent attacks?
00:45:28
The answers come during Hanson's trial. According to the Hanson family attorney, William had been through horrible things in the past few years.
00:45:36
One of his siblings died by suicide and the other died suddenly in a car accident.
00:45:41
Oh, God. And then on top of that, his relationship with his fiancée had recently ended.
00:45:48
And this in particular seems to mark a huge shift for William, which would make sense if he had all that grief in his life and then his primary relationship ends.
00:45:58
Now, we don't know anything about his fiance except this crucial and horrible fact.
00:46:04
In 1972, she had been the victim of a brutal rape at the hands of a stranger. Oh, my God.
00:46:10
And she described her attacker as, quote, an older man, round faced, heavyset, who limped or dragged his foot slightly when he walked.
00:46:19
Oh, my God. So, William's attorney puts forth the theory that his client became fixated on getting revenge on his fiance's rapist.
00:46:29
And the thought of killing this man, whoever he was, became William's obsession.
00:46:33
To be clear, this lawyer never suggests that that therefore justified what his client did or that what he did was noble, simply arguing the fact that William was suffering with mental illness and was clearly in severe delusion when these attacks took place.
00:46:52
Here's a quote from that attorney. He said, quote, William's imagination created a fantasy world in which he was a Don Quixote trying to rectify the wrongs that were done to a girl he loved, end quote.
00:47:05
so in may of 1974 william hanson is found not guilty by reason of insanity and he is sent to
00:47:13
a tescadero state hospital where he is treated for that mental illness for an undisclosed period of
00:47:20
time and then released and that's the same psychiatric facility where notorious serial
00:47:26
killers like the co-ed killer ed kemper the freeway killer william bonnen and the manson
00:47:30
and family murderer Tex Watson all serve time as well. Wow. And that is the story of San Francisco's paper bag killer.
00:47:39
Wow. I never heard of that. And what a wild story that like came together in such an awful, tragic way, but it made sense, you know?
00:47:51
It's like, you rarely get a line of logic from a serial killer that you can follow and go,
00:47:58
oh, now we... There's always stories of horrifying, abusive childhoods, you know, the whole dark triad combination where it's no one, no one is purely evil.
00:48:09
No one is born evil, all those things. But this one is a serial killer that it's almost like, God, it's, it's such a, it's so clear.
00:48:19
It's so linear. It's so linear. Yes. In a way that it almost never is. That it just, I, it found, I found it to be incredibly fascinating.
00:48:27
Yeah. Wow. What's the name of that book again? Oh, the longest title of all time. Hold on.
00:48:35
I swear to God, I borrowed this book from my dad. I'll just say this. I borrowed this book from my
00:48:40
dad so I can read every story in it. And my dad bugged me about mailing it back to him as if he
00:48:46
was just like, hey, that's not mine. It's Marty's. You got to give it back. And I was like, so you
00:48:50
gave me two weeks to read this book. And then of course I just wasn't doing it. And finally I
00:48:55
I mailed it to him and he came down to visit me like three days later. I'm like, so glad you got the book back, dad.
00:49:01
That's like intense. Like, what are you in the middle of it? I don't understand.
00:49:05
He just didn't want to be the one that he goes, hey, it's signed. I'm like, I know it's okay.
00:49:11
He literally knows the guy that signed it for him. You don't throw your books in the pool when you're done with them.
00:49:15
So I think everything is like. I try not to, although, you know, this is the man who has seen me do every stupid fucking thing I've done for my entire life
00:49:24
and had to pay handsomely for all of those things. So he's sick of my shit. The book is titled
00:49:32
San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5 Henry 7 by Detective Frank Falzone. Great. Pick it up wherever you buy your indie books.
00:49:40
That's right. No, don't buy indie books at indie bookstores. You know, whatever you want.
00:49:45
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00:50:43
Code FLOW15. How much do you weigh, Wanda? Right now, I'm about 130. I'm at 183.
00:50:48
We should race. No, I want to leave here with my original hips. On the podcast, The Matchup with Aaliyah,
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I pair prominent female athletes with unexpected guests. On a recent episode, I sat down with undisputed boxing champ,
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search The Matchup with Aaliyah and listen now. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network.
00:51:15
Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents Soccer Moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the
00:51:23
hip since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later we're still joined at the
00:51:28
hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast we're recording it as we tailgate our
00:51:32
soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get
00:51:38
hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh they had a BOGO. Well then you got it. Listen to Soccer Moms on the
00:51:43
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. um real quick I would like to point out that while you were telling me that story
00:51:52
we got a group text you me and Alejandra from none other than Stephen Ray Morris it's his first
00:51:59
recording not with us and it just says like he knew what time we were recording because we do
00:52:04
it every week he says hope you're all having a great recording heart heart heart oh Stephen
00:52:10
That's so sweet. Steven! That's very sweet. I love it. It is a little, I had that thought before we started where I was just like, you can't think about it or you'll start thinking about it and like go too far into it.
00:52:25
But it's like, I'm so weirdly, I was going to say suspicious, but is it superstitious?
00:52:31
Where I'm just like, what if Steven's the magic and he's gone and we're done? It was Steven all along.
00:52:38
God damn it. Oh, shit. Yeah, that would be hilarious if he was like the glue that held us together.
00:52:46
We'll have to just shut it all down and open our respective donut shops or whatever.
00:52:51
Whatever plans we have, whatever next phase plans we have. That's mine. It's a donut shop. How did you know?
00:52:56
Oh, okay. Well, should I have to open one across the street from you to directly compete?
00:53:01
It'll be, I'll call mine G and K's donuts and you call yours K and G donuts and we'll just compete.
00:53:07
keep. I'm going to do K&G donuts and Chinese food just to get the edge. Sure. We're in LA after all.
00:53:14
Yeah. Okay. I've got a classic for you. Great. It's a story that I'm sure we've all heard of,
00:53:19
but I didn't know the details of. And so today I'm going to tell you the details of
00:53:25
the dancing plague of 1518. Oh, yes. Yes. main sources for the story are a book by john waller called a time to dance a time to die
00:53:40
damn john yeah like what were the other options he titled the shit out of that book
00:53:47
a 2019 episode of exactly right this podcast will kill you hey of course and the rest of the for us is going to be found in our show notes So you and I right now Karen picture it We going to Strasbourg which is now part of France but Strasbourg is
00:54:07
in the Alsace region on the border between France and Germany. So it's like half-timbered houses
00:54:14
and then glasses of Riesling, but this is in the 1500s, you know. And at the time,
00:54:19
Strasbourg was part of the Holy Roman Empire, so it wasn't France yet. And that existed in some form
00:54:25
between 800 AD to 1802. And its height contained modern day Germany and some or all of the other
00:54:33
modern day countries that surrounded it. You have to think of it as a precursor to modern day
00:54:38
Germany than having much to do with Rome. So that's the idea. That's where we are. That's what
00:54:43
it looks like. All right. So our story begins with this poor woman named Frau Trafoeia, which
00:54:48
translates basically to Lady Trafoya, and we don't know her first name, unfortunately.
00:54:53
She's just a Frau in our bonnets. Like Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein. It's a hot day in July of 1518.
00:55:03
Frau Trafoya walks outside and begins to dance. She's hopping from foot to foot, which doesn't sound like a great dance to me.
00:55:11
Sounds more like a jig, you know? She's doing, it's over the pony. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:55:16
One, two, kind of Charlie Brown. Yeah. Peanuts kids dance. And it doesn't, of course, people come out and start gawking at her.
00:55:25
Her husband begs her to stop, but she continues dancing well into the night in front of the growing crowd.
00:55:30
And initially, some of her neighbors believe that she's dancing just to annoy her husband, who by some accounts was like a grumpy dude.
00:55:38
So she's just like, fuck you, I'm dancing. But people dismiss this quickly when Frau Trafoeia continues to dance for hours despite being in physical pain.
00:55:48
Oh. Yeah. Like, that sounds really unpleasant. Yeah. She dances until she can barely move and
00:55:55
then collapses to the ground and falls asleep. As soon as she wakes up, she begins dancing again,
00:56:00
and she continues to dance for several days. Some people say four, some people say six days.
00:56:06
Some of Frau Trofria's neighbors suspect witchcraft, of course. Just go right to witchcraft
00:56:11
or demonic possession. Just go there. Yeah. It just, it's always in your pocket back there.
00:56:17
Back in the 1500s. You know what this looks like. But they settle on a consensus eventually that she's being punished by Saint Vitus.
00:56:26
Are you familiar with this bro? I've heard. I mean, he's not one of my main saints personally, but I've heard of him because of the phrase
00:56:35
Saint Vitus dance. Oh, well, there you go. Okay. And actually, this is not the first recorded instance of dancing plague in Europe, if you
00:56:42
can believe it. Similar events are recorded throughout Europe, particularly in France, Germany, and Switzerland, starting around the year 1017.
00:56:51
In the year 1237, a large group of children in modern-day Germany are said to have broken out in spontaneous dancing,
00:56:58
in like hopped and danced from their town to a town 12 miles away. Oh, shit. Which is far.
00:57:04
And this actually might be the inspiration for the story of the Pied Piper. Oh, right.
00:57:08
Right. Some accounts say that the outbreak of these dancing children started on St. Vitus' day.
00:57:16
So people connect the dancing plague to St. Vitus, believing it is a punishment from him.
00:57:21
Oh, okay. Sound about right in your Catholicism? I mean, yeah, punishment, random punishment on children. Absolutely. That's how we do it.
00:57:31
It's kind of their thing. And then in the late 1400s, people curse their enemies by saying,
00:57:36
God give you St. Vitus or St. Vitus come to you, which is a sick burn back then. And around 1500,
00:57:44
an altar panel at the Cathedral of Cologne in Germany is painted to show St. Vitus helping
00:57:49
three men with the dancing plague. So back then, people believed that saints could both help the
00:57:54
worthy and also dole out punishments. So just as St. Vitus could cure the dancing, he could also
00:58:00
cause it. And at the time Frau Trafeya starts dancing in 1518, she and her neighbors would
00:58:07
have probably known about the threat from St. Vitus. Okay, sorry, really quick. This is basically
00:58:13
by this point in history, this is something that's been happening for off and on for 500 years.
00:58:19
That's crazy. Like it's a thing that happens. Maybe it's back then. It's like, that's how long
00:58:25
it took something to go viral. Like a roughly 500 years. Because they're talking about like France and Germany and Switzerland.
00:58:31
It's like, it has to travel, you know? Yeah, and there's a lot of mountains. A lot of mountain ranges.
00:58:36
It's tough. Yeah. And people don't like live to be, people live to be like 30. So it's not like they have that much time to like figure, find out.
00:58:42
Yeah, they're like, really quick, really quick spread the word about the dancing.
00:58:46
They're like, what? So after a close to a week of dancing, Frau Troffia is brought by wagon 30 miles away
00:58:55
from her home, up a small mountain to a shrine dedicated to St. Vitus. She is cured of her
00:59:01
dancing. It stops. She's brought back to Strasbourg, where she discovers that the dancing has spread.
00:59:08
Oh, yeah. So she's stopped, but other people have started. Yeah, she's a trendsetter, and it's scrappening. By late July, more than 50 people in Strasbourg
00:59:17
are dancing. Most people describe them as being in kind of a trance state. They're not talking.
00:59:23
They're just staring and hopping around. Yeah, it doesn't sound chill. The local government intervenes by consulting both clergy and physicians.
00:59:32
Though Frau Traffia had been brought to the shrine for a religious cure, which the church supports,
00:59:38
the team of physicians insists that the plague is not caused by St. Vitus, but overheated blood,
00:59:45
and the only cure for the dancing is more dancing. that is a true non right there movie footloose isn it i mean you know it has its roots there jesus though what a Okay This is fascinating Yeah And the fucking We talking about physicians back then
01:00:05
They're not physicians today. Those are like... Yeah, those are the ones that were like, you have too much black bile in your system, so
01:00:13
we need to bleed you and put leeches on you. Exactly. Yeah. So the town, because the only cure for the dancing plague is more dancing, the town sets
01:00:21
up several dedicated dancing areas, including one that has a stage and they bring in musicians
01:00:26
and they ask the healthy and robust people to dance with the afflicted dancers to keep them
01:00:32
moving, thinking that they need it. Dancers are given food and water and weak ale and wine. So
01:00:39
they're like encouraged to dance, basically. It's now a festival. Yeah, that's right.
01:00:45
It sounds like. But John Waller, who wrote the book A Time to Dance, A Time to Die, said, quote, day after night, night after day, the dancers continued with their delirious motions.
01:00:59
One can picture them in late July 1518, eyes unfocused, faces turned up to heaven, their arms and legs moving with fatigue and their shirts, skirts and sockings soaked with sweat.
01:01:12
Amid the beat of drums and the melodies of pipes and horns rose the monotonous tapping of clogs and leather boots on hard floors and wooden stages, together with the sobs of onlookers and the occasional despairing cry or terrified scream from the dancing host.
01:01:32
So it's not a party. It does not sound chill. The thought of dancing and wooden clogs sounds like a fucking nightmare.
01:01:40
also like i i just i really would love to know this the unknown story of like the family that
01:01:48
lived in that town they were like hey we have to get out of here like pack up in the middle of the
01:01:52
night this is fucking weird lost their shit so creepy yes yeah my feet hurt just fucking reading
01:01:59
this shit so the dancing cure with the dedicated dancing areas that doesn't work obviously in fact
01:02:06
seems to do the opposite as more and more people seem to catch the dancing plague and they join in.
01:02:12
Right. So by the following month in August, between 200 and 400 people are just fucking
01:02:18
straight up dancing in the street. Because you can't fight FOMO. You just can't. Like it's,
01:02:24
it's from all time of humanity. It's ancient. FOMO is ancient. And some of them push their
01:02:30
bodies so far in the summer heat, because it's the fucking August at this point that they die.
01:02:35
So like people died from dancing plague. The total number of deaths is unknown. One account says that at one point,
01:02:41
as many as 15 people are dying a day. So that would quickly bring the death total
01:02:45
to more than 50, possibly a hundred. So what a bummer. And what a way to go. Truly, truly.
01:02:52
Nasty. Okay. The city officials backpedal and then you know how they were like, everyone dance, that's the cure.
01:02:58
Now they're like, there's no dancing at all. We forbid it. So they dismantle the stage
01:03:03
and tell the afflicted that if they have to dance, It must be in the privacy of their own homes.
01:03:07
And they also return to the religious approach and bring a group of dancers to the shrine of St. Vitus.
01:03:13
So it does and it takes days to get there. So it is a hall. Once at the shrine, priests place the dancers still fucking dancing under a wooden statue of St. Vitus.
01:03:23
They give them crosses to hold, put red shoes on their feet. Not sure why, but it has some connection to St. Vitus.
01:03:30
and the St. Vitus ritual works and Strasbourg continues to send the dancers to the shrine
01:03:35
until there are no dancers left. It almost sounds like it's in their heads. It almost sounds like perhaps a placebo of some kind,
01:03:45
but okay. No, go ahead. Well, it's just like, it makes sense that if, you know, you ritualize the cure and kind of involve everybody
01:03:54
and people are, it's yet another thing that they're all going through together and kind of like the thing
01:03:59
that's taking them along that way can be stopped in that same, if it's outside of them, they don't
01:04:05
know why it's happening, then here, we'll put you through this machine. That'll stop it. And it's
01:04:10
like, okay. And they truly don't know. It's not like they're trying to trick people, right? They
01:04:14
just, they believe it probably. Right. After you, you could accuse people of that for the first
01:04:19
17 hours of dancing, but then after that, they're not faking. Yeah. Especially in clogs.
01:04:24
especially if people are crying sobbing oh I'm just picturing myself like in my early 20s I used
01:04:31
to go dancing a lot and I'm just picturing myself sobbing on the day because my shoes were always
01:04:35
uncomfortable right like they never fit right because I get like vintage heels or like some
01:04:40
it couldn't be just like fucking adidas right like so like I get it yeah you relate I thought of your
01:04:47
your raving days as well it's like at least these people didn't have to go and get a secret egg
01:04:53
that gave them the password to get the location or whatever weird rave shit you guys used to do.
01:04:59
I used to wear like stacks, you know. Just full platforms straight off of Melrose.
01:05:04
That's right. Oh my God. Okay. So let's talk about theories. The first working theory of what caused the dancing played comes from Paracelsus,
01:05:14
who's like, that's, he's like a Madonna, like a one word name. That's how famous he is.
01:05:18
Okay. He's a physician and alchemist who visited Strasbourg in 1526. He learned about the plague and later wrote about it.
01:05:27
And he described the victims of the disease as choreomaniacs, which is fucking rad.
01:05:34
Like choreography maniacs? Choreomaniacs. Got it. Yeah. And suggested that they developed it because their thoughts were, quote, free, lewd, and impertinent, resulting in a, quote,
01:05:48
voluptuous urge to dance. Basically there was too much of the Roman Catholic Church up in everybody business And they were like what if we just did everything that God doesn want us to do Shake our asses all around town Yeah voluptuously I picture this guy as being
01:06:06
played by David Bowie in the labyrinth, right? That makes it better. He's that guy's there.
01:06:14
Choreal mania. Don't look at his eyes. They're two different colors. As the plague spread, mostly the women, he said it was targeting idle and disloyal wives.
01:06:25
That was his fucking thing. It should be noticed that Paracelsus was known. Oh, wait, it's not David Bowie.
01:06:32
Even at the time for his particular hatred of women. And Ali, my researcher, made a good point of to be a noted misogynist in 1530.
01:06:40
It had to be really bad. Yeah. Back when women had zero rights. And then it's like, you should see this guy.
01:06:49
Everyone's like, whoa, dude, that's a little far. But we, yes, we flog our wives.
01:06:53
but like you've taken this too far. But yeah, you seem especially bitter. So another theory that emerges later
01:07:00
is our friend ergot poisoning, which we definitely heard of. That was one of the theories
01:07:04
of the Salem witch trials, right? Yep. That's been a theory behind a lot of things.
01:07:11
Well, you talked about it in, you talked about ergotism and St. Anthony's fire during your story on the Great Famine of 1315 last year.
01:07:20
Oh, right. Thanks to Allie's note. That was episode 351, which we named High Five Halloween for some reason.
01:07:28
I don't remember why. Who knows? We never do. It might not have been Halloween. It just happened.
01:07:34
So ergot is a fungus, of course, that grows on rye, which grew in the region and was a major food source.
01:07:42
When someone ingests a toxic fungus, ergot poisoning can cause hallucinations and spasms.
01:07:48
but most of the time it causes restricted circulation, resulting in gangrene, a burning sensation,
01:07:54
and a very painful death. Oh no, there are some people who potentially had that going on at the same time
01:08:00
as dancing themselves to death. Well, maybe, okay, so not long ago, I was on a new medication and I had to stop taking it
01:08:08
because the side effect I got from it was restless leg. And I am here to fucking tell you, that is no joke.
01:08:16
I was laying in bed, been sleeping, and I didn't want to wake him, but I couldn't not
01:08:22
kick, kick, kick my legs. I would have fucking exploded if I didn't do it. It was like my whole body was upset.
01:08:30
Wow. Yeah. Like electric. It sucked so bad. So I could see that if you have ergot poisoning and like one of the things it causes is restricted
01:08:39
circulation. It also causes spasms. Like you're going to fucking lose your mind and go dance in the street, right?
01:08:45
Yeah. Because you're trying to get that feeling out of your body. Because you have to move.
01:08:50
Yeah. Yeah. So I find that interesting. Have you been eating a lot of raw rye lately?
01:08:56
No, but I've eaten a lot of fungus and ergot. You love that fungus. Okay. The thing is, though, the risk of ergot poisonings were well known at the time.
01:09:09
So they knew that. In fact, one mill was decorated with carvings of contorted faces, which are believed to be reminders of the dangers of the poisoning.
01:09:18
So like people were aware of it already. And the symptoms of the ergot poisoning were known as St. Anthony's fire because of the burning sensation.
01:09:28
Another one of your bros in the Catholic. Right. We got a lot of them. They've done great work for humanity over the years.
01:09:37
I guess one of the reasons people think you can rule out ergotism is because no contemporary descriptions of the dancing plague mentioned St. Anthony's fire and people would have known what it looked like, basically.
01:09:49
Like they would have already been familiar enough with the symptoms. But, you know, things, what is it?
01:09:54
What's the word? Change. Progress. Evolve. Thank you. So most people reject the ergot theory.
01:10:01
And then there's also the belief that dancers are cured by praying to St. Vitus, which doesn't explain ergot poisoning.
01:10:07
So most people agree on the theory that this was an instance of mass psychogenic illness,
01:10:13
which is better known as the very sexist term mass hysteria. So we're not using hysteria anymore.
01:10:19
Did you know that? No, I did not. It's now called mass psychogenic illness. Because hysteria, of course, comes from the Greek word for uterus.
01:10:26
And for a long, long time, it was a diagnosis only given to women. I mean, it's like, get off our backs.
01:10:36
Yeah, literally. Literally. For fucking once in 3,000 years. Can you get off of that?
01:10:43
Can we have a fucking uterus and it not be the devil? Please. Oh, Jesus. Okay. So mass psychogenic illness can cause physical symptoms to spread throughout a population
01:10:57
where there appears to be no external cause for those symptoms. So basically FOMO, like you're talking about.
01:11:03
Most people agree that the cause is actually stress. In highly stressful circumstances,
01:11:08
a person may experience that stress through physical symptoms or uncontrollable behaviors,
01:11:13
which can then spread. It doesn't mean the symptoms aren't real though. And the person
01:11:17
doesn't believe that they have this affliction, you know? They're really going through something. It's totally that part's real.
01:11:25
I'm going to tell you a couple instances of this. In 1962, students at a girls boarding school in
01:11:31
Tanzania began laughing uncontrollably. It began with three students and spread to 60% of the school and the school had to close.
01:11:40
And when the girls went home, the laughter spread to their villages and to other schools
01:11:44
and the disruption lasted months. And a total of 14 schools wound up having to be closed temporarily because of the laughing.
01:11:52
Now that's one that I immediately am like, it makes perfect sense to me because you flip
01:11:57
through TikTok and there's like one baby laugh. I just saw this video of a baby.
01:12:03
The mom goes, what did you name your moth? And he's like three years old. He's so little.
01:12:08
And he starts laughing. He's laughing so hard he can't say the name. And finally, when he says it, he named the moth, Moth You.
01:12:16
It's like, first of all, that child's a genius. He's like, gets how good that wordplay is.
01:12:21
Well above his age, for sure. Well, playing well above. But then at the same time, his laugh is like,
01:12:27
I was laughing so hard just watching him and yeah I think that the way especially girls are tuned
01:12:34
into each other and you know what I mean literally in my fucking paperwork oh shit no no you're right
01:12:40
it's totally true it is it is it's empathy and that is a strong female trait yeah sorry boys
01:12:48
work on work on empathy motherfuckers so a more recent case began in 2011 in Leroy New York a
01:12:58
small town outside Rochester in that case an outbreak of tics which included twitching humming
01:13:05
and arm swinging spread throughout a high school starting with members of the cheerleading team
01:13:11
and spreading to other students at the school and most doctors agreed that this was a case of mass
01:13:16
psychogenic illness. Although one doctor suspected a pediatric autoimmune disorder caused by strep.
01:13:23
So some students were treated with antibiotics and others were not, but both groups eventually
01:13:27
improved. So I remember that story because it, yeah, because they were just basically like,
01:13:33
it's this thing again, is it mass psychogenic illness? Yeah. Is it mass psychogenic illness
01:13:40
or is it something else or whatever? And that, yeah, just that idea of like, whenever a group
01:13:45
of people all start doing something and then people just keep joining and joining and joining.
01:13:49
It's like, that's a, yeah. Everyone's just like, stop for a second. We need to talk about this.
01:13:55
Especially because humans are such pack animals, right? Like it's the thing where you see that
01:13:59
prank of like people walk into an elevator and everyone's in on it, but one person and they all
01:14:04
turn around and face the other side of the elevator. And the person who's not in on it
01:14:07
does it too, because they're just like, I can't be the only person who doesn't know what's going on
01:14:12
here. No, in fact, that is being ostracized is like the one thing people can't handle. And that's
01:14:21
like, that's human behavior where all we do is try to connect with the greater group. So anytime
01:14:28
that's under threat, people will do whatever it takes to stay in the pack. That's how we stay
01:14:34
alive. That's lizard brain saying you have to stay alive. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. And even more recently,
01:14:41
beginning in 2020, shortly after COVID started, teenage girls across the country and around the
01:14:48
world were going to doctors with tics. The tics were often the same from patient to patient,
01:14:54
even across wide geographical areas. Do you know about this? I know. So I'm not gonna say who it
01:14:59
is, but I know a 19 year old who's into TikTok and she has these tics. I've seen her do it.
01:15:05
And I think she picked it up from there. It's wild. Yeah. She's just looking at it and seeing
01:15:10
other people doing it. Yeah, the repetition of the same words and the same movements.
01:15:15
And it turns out that many of these tics originated with the same couple of content creators on TikTok
01:15:20
who actually had Tourette's syndrome. And from watching those creators, the teenagers
01:15:25
developed some of the same tics. So it's really interesting. I mean, that is what you do when
01:15:31
you a teenager though You look at who you admire and you try to act like them because you want to be like them Yeah it like when you have a new friend and you start saying the same Sling they say because you just want to connect because you trying to connect with them Yeah And you also want to be like whatever level popular you think they are It like
01:15:48
oh, well, is this how you do it? Is this? It's natural. So that visibility is key in the spreading
01:15:54
of mass psychogenic illness. That's why in Strasbourg, that stage and the musicians,
01:15:59
you know, that they made possible worsen the spread of the plague in 1518. And it's also
01:16:05
probably how Frau Trophaya winds up dancing to begin with, since dancing plagues are known in
01:16:10
the region and anxieties around St. Vitus are common. So like she probably got it from someone
01:16:15
else too, you know? Huh. Interesting. Most experts agree that mass psychogenic illness is caused by
01:16:22
extreme stress. And this would certainly track for the dancing plague of 1518. Because in addition
01:16:28
to general disease, filth and hardships that make being a 16th century European peasant not fucking
01:16:34
chill and fun. There are some specific hardships going on in Strasbourg at the time. First of all,
01:16:41
in the background of all of this is discontent with the corruption in your favorite Catholic
01:16:47
church. This will soon lead to the Reformation and the founding of Protestantism. People feel
01:16:54
spiritually neglected at the time when the promise of something beyond this life is really the only
01:16:59
thing that keeps them going. That's rough. I mean, just think, think about that. We're just like,
01:17:05
that is not a good place to be in where you're like, whatever, whenever this life is done is
01:17:10
when I'm going to get my reward. It's like, okay, but what if, just think about it. What if you
01:17:15
get there and they don't show that movie, then what are you going to do? Like do it now,
01:17:20
please. I beg you. The point is for generations to come, but not me. And like, you know, what up
01:17:26
in the sky, everything's going to be great when I go to heaven. That's it. That's it.
01:17:31
If only, if only. So all this is going on throughout Europe, while specifically in Strasbourg,
01:17:36
there have been several straight decades of nonstop misery. Syphilis arrived in the area
01:17:41
for the first time in the 1490s. So not that far before. Just real quick side note, syphilis is back in Texas right now.
01:17:50
Shut the fuck up. No joke. They're having an outbreak of syphilis in Texas. Just guys,
01:17:56
guys protect yourself what are you doing everybody uh they should get yourself tested
01:18:03
use protection syphilis like old school like fucking nose falling off shit uh horrifying
01:18:12
yeah uh syphilis arrives as i said untreated syphilis let me tell you what it can cause
01:18:17
it's a long and gruesome and painful death and there's no such thing as treated syphilis
01:18:23
until the 20th century. Yeah. And there's an outbreak of bubonic plague also in 1511.
01:18:29
So like, they're just like, imagine if we had like COVID and then like COVID happened again, like 10 years later.
01:18:36
Like basically we're on the verge of dancing every moment of every day. Yeah, yeah, such stress.
01:18:42
Then starting in 1514, there are a series of really bitter winters, very dry, very wet summers.
01:18:48
It destroys harvests and causes the price of grain to nearly double. Basically, everyone's fucking starving.
01:18:54
Everyone has these debts they can't pay because the crops aren't growing. It's just a nightmare of a place to live.
01:19:01
Like, if you have a time machine, ixnay on the 1500 days, you know. Don't go back into any of those areas.
01:19:11
Truly. I'd say. John Waller the author of A Time to Dance A Time to Die Which is also a name of a what his name James Bond movie probably right Except for the dancing part Right So he says that it almost certain that the majority of the dancers in Strasbourg were poor
01:19:33
the ones who had been suffering the most for the past several years. He writes, quote,
01:19:37
We can be fairly sure that most of the dancers had the lined faces, deep set eyes, coarse gray clothes, loose blackened or missing teeth and the stinking breath that spoke of the hardships of the lowest cast.
01:19:51
So that's who is dancing. Shit. The bummeriest of the bummers. Well, and also I bet it felt pretty goddamn good to just be like, fuck it all.
01:20:00
I'm not going to go once again out into this field to reap or so. I'm just going to leave and let all my cows sit there unfed.
01:20:09
I'm going to just go dance, pretend like nothing else matters. I'm going to have a quick little mentee bee and I'll be back when I'm ready.
01:20:18
Right? Yeah. If Frau Blucher's doing it, why can't I do it? They say to each other and they're like, you can.
01:20:26
Don't worry about it. I've always wanted one. They built us a stage. They brought a band.
01:20:31
Yeah. Everybody gets there. People's like getting out of work free card is like.
01:20:35
And farm work, man, it just never ends. It's just the toughest. Toil. The toughest.
01:20:41
Only for the tough. Yeah. So just a few months after the dancing plague in 1518, news of Martin Luther and the Protestant
01:20:49
Reformation reaches Strasbourg and his teachings quickly become very popular. Luther also rejects saint worship.
01:20:57
So St. Vitus no longer has a hold over Martin Luther's new followers. Nice. What a convenient break.
01:21:04
Can we give him a high five, please? And at the same time, the Catholic Church responds to the Reformation with crackdowns
01:21:11
on corruption. Though there are later instances of people voluntarily dancing in devotion to St. Vitus,
01:21:17
this instance was the last recorded dancing epidemic in Europe. So it fucking ended.
01:21:22
Wow. And that is the story of the dancing plague of 1518, which most experts agree was a case
01:21:29
of mass psychogenic illness. Also the premiere of the term mass psychogenic illness on this podcast.
01:21:36
Wow. That's, that was great. So fascinating. I'm going to go with ergot poisoning.
01:21:42
I'm just going to pretend that I have any information other than. I mean, it's fun to make a guess at the end when you get all the factual information.
01:21:51
You're like, you know what? I'm going to throw all that aside and say it was caused by astrology.
01:21:56
You know what it was? Fucking Virgo was in cancer. Or no, what is it? The moon is in, what's the one?
01:22:04
Mercury. It was Mercury retrograde. Mercury was in retrograde. Right. That has to be it.
01:22:13
I mean, wow. It's heavy. It's heavy. It's funny. It's weird. I like learning. I like, because I've had that idea in my head or like every time I've ever seen the dancing
01:22:29
plague. It's like, I never, I've never read any kind of a long article about it or anything. It's
01:22:35
always just like, oh, interesting. And then not get the details. So I like to know the details.
01:22:40
And it's like, it's so interesting to picture life back then with all its kind of trappings.
01:22:46
And then on top of that, like you live in this village where everyone is so interconnected and
01:22:51
so interdependent. And suddenly one lady starts dancing and it all goes to fucking hell in a
01:22:57
And fucking 500 years later we talking about it on a true crime podcast That how fucking like instrumental it was It a it a big deal And also what has happened in our history and what could come back
01:23:10
Sure. Because it would be very interesting. Like mass psychogenic illness is a fascinating topic.
01:23:17
You know, how people are affected by either becoming a part of a group or being turned
01:23:23
away from a group. I mean, you know, it's interesting. There's some groups today that
01:23:27
you could really question what the fuck is going on. It is. There's a relevance to today's,
01:23:34
what we see and how we're affecting. You know, everybody wants to talk about, oh, teenagers saw some influencers
01:23:42
and they started doing the thing that influencers are doing. It's like, it's not just teenagers.
01:23:46
We've got some very old people out there doing exactly the same thing, but grosser and worse against their fellow man.
01:23:53
That's right. Just disgusting. I'm loving it. And here we are, the coastal elite.
01:23:56
is fucking being perfect. Thanks for listening, you friends. We appreciate you so much.
01:24:07
Yes. Thanks for coming back time and again over these long seven years. It was our first episode without Steven.
01:24:15
So forgive the mistakes and that hollow, empty feeling inside of us because it's going to be a change.
01:24:25
I'll grow my mustache out so everyone feels better. Thank you. I appreciate that.
01:24:30
I'll get my goatee going. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:24:43
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
01:24:54
This episode was edited and mixed by Liana Spolacci. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:25:00
Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
01:25:10
Goodbye. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.
01:25:21
Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
01:25:32
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.
01:25:38
And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:25:46
This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,
01:25:57
one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS
01:26:04
and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:26:16
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
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Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy, a weekly podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist.
01:26:28
It's mental health month. Let's figure out what actually works. I didn't care about my life circumstance
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when I listened to that stuff. It didn't matter to me. This isn't just a podcast.
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It's unconventional therapy for you every day. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy
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and start listening now.