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00:01:28
My favorite murder Hello! Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark.
00:01:53
That is Karen Kilgariff. I just realized I didn't brush my teeth this morning. Well, you're in your house still.
00:02:01
I am. Why would you, why would one? Dogs love bad breath. What risk? I just hate when you brush your teeth
00:02:10
and then go try to drink coffee and it just ruins everything. So I wait, I wait till evening.
00:02:18
I wait till I think, who else will this be affecting who will actually judge me for it.
00:02:24
And then I do it. Uh-huh. At what point will Vince say something about this to me?
00:02:30
He slowly backs away as you're trying to explain something to him. I just thought I'd kick off with a little truth,
00:02:37
a little hard truth about my mouth. Hashtag, hashtag truth, man. This is reality now.
00:02:44
This is who we are. It's what we do. This is us, the TV show. This is us minutes away,
00:02:50
hours away from going on vacation. Yes. That's what this is. We are taking an early summer vacation.
00:02:59
That's right. For lots of different reasons, but we're very excited about it. And don't, don't worry.
00:03:06
Don't worry. Yeah. We planned ahead. We planned ahead. We have some episodes that we're going to be posting
00:03:13
that every week, you guys aren't going to miss a fucking day, that we think you'll really enjoy.
00:03:19
Also, if you don't, don't forget, this is the thing with podcasts. You don't have to listen to them.
00:03:25
I just feel like sometimes people don't realize that. Yeah, and we'll be back too.
00:03:30
You don't have to listen. We'll also be back soon. There's also, I think, 700 other episodes
00:03:35
if you need to listen to our podcast that you can re-listen to. But we're very excited.
00:03:41
We know you understand. We've gone on vacation before and you've always been very nice about it.
00:03:45
So we appreciate that. So we're out posting new content. They're all new mini-sodes too.
00:03:51
We recorded a bunch of mini-sodes in advance. So you shouldn't miss too much. And we'll only be gone for a couple weeks, few weeks.
00:03:56
And we're going to enjoy every moment of it. You're only taking a few weeks off?
00:04:00
Oh, I didn't tell you? What are you taking? 19 weeks off. Yeah. I'm going to take two seasons off.
00:04:08
Come back in wintertime. Great. Me too then. Or I'll just sit here quietly by myself.
00:04:14
Every episode is just me, quiet. It's you and room tone. Yeah. Never know. That could be a hit podcast.
00:04:21
Could be. The nothing podcast, where you put it on at night and it's just nothing.
00:04:27
Yeah. Just a night, like 36 minutes. Uh-huh. With, but in between the nothing, there's a couple ad breaks.
00:04:35
Well, let's get into it. Let's get into it and then go on vacation. How about that?
00:04:39
I love it. I love it. Woo! Let's do it. We're recording during the day, which is weird.
00:04:44
So we should just, everything's loose and fun, guys. Right? Loosey-goosey. All right.
00:04:51
Here's some highlights from our podcast network called Exactly Right. That's right.
00:04:55
This week on I Saw What You Did, Danielle and Millie present an iconic double feature,
00:05:01
The Crow from 1994 and The Exorcist from 1973. Oh, man. The Crow did things to me in my 13-year-old brain back then.
00:05:10
I bet. Oh, Jesus. That movie was very groundbreaking for its time, and also very horrible for that horrible thing
00:05:17
that happened, Donna. I know. On Adulting with Michelle Buteau and Jordan Carlos,
00:05:22
the guest is none other than Padma Lakshmi, the host of Top Chef. My mind is blown.
00:05:30
I'm obsessed. They have another live show coming up also on May 22nd in Brooklyn.
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So make sure to check out their Instagram for tickets. It's at Adulting the Pod.
00:05:39
I can't fucking believe they got Padma. That's so cool. Amazing. It's great. Yeah, you should go see them live
00:05:46
because they're both amazing stand-up comics, but also because they book guests like that.
00:05:51
So you never know who's going to come and be on Adulting Live. And also visit MFM social media and take a quiz to find out if you a Karen a Georgia or the Mothman And then you can grab a t featuring Nick Terry illustration to match your personality
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It's such a cute little illustration. And you can go to myfavoritemurder.com to check that out in the store.
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Wonderful. What an opportunity. Truly. Just to really reflect on who you are. What if I got you?
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What if I got Mothman? What if you got Mothman? And Steven got me. I got you. And then the world exploded.
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I mean, get ready. You're first, right? No, I think you are. No, wait. What'd the email say?
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Let me look. Karen goes first. Is it Karen? Yeah, I did Ouija last time that I went first.
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00:09:04
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For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex Snap & Go. Goodbye. So I have a historical murder case for you today from 1898.
00:09:41
It's the chocolate box murders. Great. Maren pointed out to me that one of the sources from this story
00:09:47
is an article written by a journalist named Katie Dowd. And she writes for the website SFGate that I believe,
00:09:55
if I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure SFGate is what the San Francisco Weekly turned into after print media died.
00:10:04
And it's a great website. It's my dad's favorite website to send me true crime articles from.
00:10:12
And Maren pointed out, we've cited Katie's reporting in the Iva Kroger case that I just
00:10:17
did recently. And then the Demon of the Belfry case that I did a while ago. So we just wanted to give a shout out to Katie Dowd for writing such excellent true crime
00:10:26
stories for the SF gate that are so great. And then, so one of the sources that we use today
00:10:32
is the 2016 SFGate article by Katie Dowd entitled Murder by Mail. There's also a 2022 Murder by Gaslight article,
00:10:43
and it's also titled Murder by Mail. And Murder by Gaslight, I've mentioned on this show a ton of times.
00:10:49
Oh, yeah. Because a lot of the historical cases that we talk about are highlighted also on that website.
00:10:55
That website's written by author Robert Wilhelm. And if you're looking to read some historical true crime,
00:11:03
he's got five books on Amazon. Holy shit. Yeah. I just ordered The Bloody Century and Wicked Victorian Boston.
00:11:10
Oh my God. These two people, like, they should be your best friends. These two authors.
00:11:16
For real. Well, Robert Wilhelm kind of is my best friend because I've used so many of his articles.
00:11:21
Right. Big shout out to true crime journalists. We'd be nowhere without you. That's right.
00:11:26
And please, if you're interested in historical true crime, you can buy those books on Amazon.
00:11:32
And there's a bunch of choices and support true crime journalists and all the different things they do.
00:11:38
There's also, the third source that I'm going to mention is a Mental Floss article by Jake Rosson titled Strangers with Candy, Delaware's Chocolate Box Murders of 1898.
00:11:49
Ooh. Okay, this sounds fun. Yes. So we begin on August 9th 1898 in Dover Delaware It is a Tuesday evening at the mansion of Mr and Mrs John B Pennington So the Penningtons live with their adult daughters
00:12:06
Mary Elizabeth Dunning and Ida Dean and their daughter's respective families. So obviously big house,
00:12:14
it can hold all those people. It's a mansion. And the whole gang's getting ready
00:12:19
to host a dinner that night with some friends. Ida's cooking fish and corn fritters
00:12:24
because it's summertime. Who doesn't want their mansion to smell like fish? And oil and fried oil fritters.
00:12:31
With no AC because it's 1898. You better open a window. So this fish dinner is lovely,
00:12:38
goes off without a hitch when they're done eating. Several guests move out into the veranda.
00:12:45
It's a clear evening. There's a cool breeze breaking up the summertime heat and blowing the smell of fish every which way.
00:12:53
You know I love to add to these sentences. That feeling when you walk downstairs
00:12:58
after cooking the night before fish and it still fucking reeks of fish. Oh my God.
00:13:04
I just don't know how people do it. I don't know how people do it. It's the 21st century.
00:13:10
Can we please figure out a way to make fish not smell? And at the very least, it's the 21st century.
00:13:18
Can you please never microwave fish in your workplace? if you're lucky enough to have a workplace
00:13:25
that you actually go into, do not ever think that you're going to reheat some salmon
00:13:31
and get away with it. No. Maybe on your last day, just to give everyone a meal, fuck you.
00:13:37
Yeah. If you leave embittered, then sure. That's a different story. So they're out on the veranda
00:13:43
and Mary Elizabeth takes this opportunity to bring out a lovely box of chocolates
00:13:48
that she had received in the mail earlier that day, all the way from San Francisco.
00:13:53
where she and her husband, John Dunning, used to live. John's not at the dinner that night.
00:14:00
So San Francisco at that time had become famous for gourmet chocolates. Ghirardelli, of course, and Guitard had been operating in San Francisco for decades.
00:14:10
So the box is beautiful. It has gold swirly script that spells out bonbons on the lid.
00:14:16
It's wrapped in a silky pink bow. The price tag is still on the box. Oh, that's a flex right there.
00:14:23
Right? So it's like, hey, I'm gonna break out the good stuff. Who wants some? Yeah, yeah.
00:14:28
But what Mary Elizabeth doesn't know is exactly who sent them. There's no return address.
00:14:34
It just has the smeared postmark that says San Francisco. But it does have a note attached.
00:14:39
And the note says, quote, with love to yourself and baby, Mrs. C. So when they were living in the Bay Area,
00:14:47
Mary Elizabeth made a close friend named Mrs. Corbeley. So she assumes Mrs. Corbelli sent her these chocolates.
00:14:54
But it really could have been anybody that knows Mary Elizabeth because she has a legendary sweet tooth.
00:14:58
It's like what people know about her. They know that's the perfect gift. So Mary Elizabeth basically tugs on the pink bow,
00:15:05
opens the lid, helps herself to three pieces of chocolate. Ida takes two, and then the four other dinner guests each take one.
00:15:14
And basically, they just kind of enjoy themselves on the veranda with a nice little bit of dessert.
00:15:20
The evening eventually dies down. The guests go home. Everyone in the Pennington Mansion goes to bed.
00:15:26
But a few hours after turning in, Mary Elizabeth starts to feel nauseated. Then the nausea becomes unbearable.
00:15:34
And then just down the hallway, Ida starts becoming incredibly sick. And before long, a doctor's called.
00:15:42
Both sisters are in rough shape. When the doctor examines Mary Elizabeth, he says she, quote,
00:15:48
complained of a benumbed and tingling sensation in her legs and feet and a burning and boiling sensation in her stomach.
00:15:56
End quote. Her pulse is so weak that the doctor can't find it actually on her wrist.
00:16:02
Oh dear. Her eyes and face are swollen. She's clammy. Her breathing is shallow and inconsistent.
00:16:08
Both sisters are given remedies to treat the effects of food poisoning, but it seems much worse than food poisoning, obviously.
00:16:15
They were probably given cocaine anyways, and it's just like, or heroin. Hope this is a remedy.
00:16:21
This is kind of a, it's like a speed ball. It's cocaine and heroin mixed together
00:16:26
to cure your food poisoning. Right, and you'll also come up with a restaurant concept.
00:16:31
So over the next day or so, the four other dinner guests also get very sick with a strange sudden illness,
00:16:38
but they eventually recover. The Pennington sisters though, suffer for two days and then they both die agonizing deaths.
00:16:46
Oh shit. Yeah. Mary Elizabeth is only 35 and Ida is 44. Oh, I'm calling them the Pennington sisters.
00:16:55
That's their maiden names. They each have married names. So the Pennington family,
00:16:59
of course, is devastated and stunned. As they search for answers, the physicians who treated
00:17:04
the sisters stick to their theory that it was just a horrible case of food poisoning. But
00:17:09
their father, John Pennington, the patriarch of the family, does not accept this diagnosis
00:17:15
because they all ate the same dinner that night, but only six people got sick. And then John realizes he hadn't eaten any of the chocolates
00:17:24
and neither had his wife. The only people who ate them are the ones who got sick.
00:17:30
So John raises his suspicions to the police and he hands over the leftover box of chocolates.
00:17:36
And there's still a few pieces of candy inside in three distinct shapes. There two seem very well-crafted.
00:17:42
They look commercially made. one of them is soft one of them is hard but there is a third type of chocolate
00:17:48
in the box that looks out of place the police chief describes it as quote soft with every appearance
00:17:54
of being homemade hmm which is not the kind of thing I think you would pick up on if you had a box of like assorted chocolates that got sent to you You don think so
00:18:05
Well, like, no, it seems like I was just trying to imagine it if it was like, one looked like a caramel and one looked like a toffee. And then a third one looked like a
00:18:16
rolled up ball of something. Right, right. It looks intentional, kind of. I mean, I don't know.
00:18:22
Yeah, got it. I'm just saying I would absolutely be susceptible to chocolate poisoning.
00:18:27
Good to know. So the Delaware state chemist is brought in to examine these chocolates.
00:18:31
He performs a careful analysis of the three types that are in the box, and he comes to a shocking conclusion.
00:18:38
The oddly shaped homemade looking chocolate is filled with lethal amounts of arsenic.
00:18:44
Oof, so that's what arsenic poisoning does to you? That's awful. Yeah. Really horrible way to die.
00:18:52
Arsenic is tasteless, odorless, resembles sugar, and has basically been very clumsily mixed in into the candy.
00:19:00
The chemist tells a coroner's jury, quote, I found pieces of arsenic as large as peas.
00:19:07
The sender of the package had not even taken the precaution to pulverize the poison,
00:19:11
but left it in lumps. Horrible. So this is clearly a case of premeditated murder.
00:19:18
Now, the very next person the police want to speak to is Mary Elizabeth's serial cheating,
00:19:23
gambling, hard-drinking husband, John Dunning. Yeah. Not John. John. So at the time of Mary Elizabeth's death,
00:19:32
she and her husband, John Dunning, have been married for seven years. On paper, they seem like the perfect couple.
00:19:38
She comes from a rich, politically connected family. Her father actually served as a U.S. congressman.
00:19:44
Meanwhile, her husband is an esteemed reporter with the Associated Press. He spent time chasing stories in South America, in Europe, and in the South Pacific.
00:19:53
And he's particularly respected for reporting on military conflicts. So he's really made a name for himself.
00:20:01
And they're basically kind of like an it couple. But the two of them are very different people.
00:20:07
She's deeply religious and like many Victorian women, modest and conservative, whereas John is the exact opposite.
00:20:14
He is like a classic quote-unquote reporter type. He gambles, he drinks to excess,
00:20:19
he cheats on Mary Elizabeth so constantly and he's so bad at hiding it that she basically knows about it.
00:20:26
And it's an unhappy marriage, but Mary Elizabeth has very little recourse because of course it's the turn of the century.
00:20:34
Divorce is not an option for her. So she just basically has to try and make it work
00:20:39
and like live with it. In 1891, when John gets a job running the AP's West Coast office,
00:20:47
Mary Elizabeth and her daughter leave Delaware and move to San Francisco with him,
00:20:52
basically hoping that this new location is going to somehow help or mend the relationship,
00:20:58
which it does not. Right. It never does. It never does. I just repurposed our theme song.
00:21:06
So Mary Elizabeth is now far from her family and her support network. And John, meanwhile, continues gambling, drinking, cheating,
00:21:18
you know, all just kind of increases and gets worse. And then in 1895, while riding his bicycle through Golden Gate Park,
00:21:27
which is such a funny, like, it's the same setting as like the 90s when I lived there.
00:21:32
Except the bicycle has one giant wheel in the front, and one tiny wheel in the back.
00:21:37
That's right. And there's a little kid playing hoop and stick next to him as he rides by.
00:21:43
Just slightly different. That idea that it's one of those bikes is so funny. How do people
00:21:48
fucking ride those things? I don't know. So John, as he's balling out on that bike
00:21:56
through Golden Gate Park, he sees a woman sitting on a park bench and he's immediately transfixed
00:22:01
because he's a true legitimate horn dog. He hops off his bike. He starts chatting with this woman.
00:22:08
She responds immediately, is very open to it. And they basically just begin flirting with each other.
00:22:14
This type of public exchange is very unusual and deeply scandalous in Victorian society.
00:22:21
But these two, they don't care about the rules. They are so DTF. They don't even give a fuck.
00:22:27
They're immediately DTF, which has its own magic. Sure. But kind of sucks when you have a wife and baby at home.
00:22:34
Right, correct. So they make plans to rendezvous later that day. And this woman's name is Cordelia Botkin.
00:22:41
She's 41 years old. So she's 10 years older than John. And she is not your typical Victorian woman.
00:22:47
She is bold. She's dramatic. She's very flirtatious, which are all very taboo behaviors in this era.
00:22:54
Women are expected, of course, to be demure and chaste and they don't get to ride those gigantic bicycles.
00:23:01
Legs together, ladies, always. Bullshit. It is bullshit. Cordelia's husband is a rich businessman named Welcome Bodkin.
00:23:09
No. Yes. Cordelia and Welcome. Welcome. All right. And it turns out like Welcome doesn't seem to mind.
00:23:19
He actually lives in Stockton, which is like, I think, what would you say, an hour and a half?
00:23:24
Yeah. South of San Francisco. Which on giant tire bicycle time is? Is four days.
00:23:31
It would take for fucking ever. And dysentery. To write your book. Yeah, you drink out of that canal and then you don't make it to Stockton.
00:23:39
Right. Southeast, sorry. Stockton's in the Central Valley, right? Okay. I think so. I don't know.
00:23:46
It's kind of... I think it is. Anyway, no one cares, but I care. So basically, Welcome doesn't see Cordelia that often. And the nature of their relationship is
00:23:56
kind of unclear. Some sources say they're estranged or separated. but welcomes, still bankrolls.
00:24:03
Cordelia's kind of over-the-top lifestyle regularly gives her money. So she just was a woman
00:24:09
that was like born too early for what was a truly rad kind of sugar daddy's lifestyle.
00:24:15
Totally. Where it's like, you're old and rich, you go live in Stockton, I'll move to the city.
00:24:21
I'll just fucking hang out in Golden Gate Park and pick up men. That's right. And everything's cool,
00:24:27
but it's actually not. So it's only a matter of time. before Mary Elizabeth realizes her husband once again has a mistress.
00:24:34
And this time it's the final straw for her. So in 1896, Mary Elizabeth tells John that she's leaving San Francisco.
00:24:41
She's taking their daughter and going back to Dover. And after she leaves, John sinks deeper into his alcoholism.
00:24:49
He spends more time and more money at the racetrack. And he eventually has to move in with Cordelia into her apartment.
00:24:57
They drink and gamble together. And when John runs out of money to place bets at the track, Cordelia uses her husband's cash to spot him.
00:25:06
So they're kind of bawling out. They're really living it up. But then things blow up.
00:25:13
Not long after Mary Elizabeth leaves him, John is caught embezzling at $4,000 from the Associated Press, which is $145,000 in today's money.
00:25:25
Dude, don't do it. Like, it's believed he stole to pay off gambling debts. Yeah.
00:25:31
Which is like, he's really gotten himself into a serious alcoholic pickle here. Alcoholic pickle.
00:25:40
Hey, sounds delicious. The AP doesn't press charges against him, but they do fire him.
00:25:48
From there, his alcoholism becomes... Why did I put the accent on the end? From there is alcoholism.
00:25:56
becomes all-consuming. He can't keep a day job. He gets other jobs at other newspapers
00:26:03
and places to report. He gets fired at every single one of them. And pretty soon, Cordelia and her money
00:26:09
become his lifeline. But according to John, Cordelia also becomes increasingly possessive.
00:26:16
He says, quote, she is jolly company, but has raised Mary Hell several times. She wants me all to herself
00:26:24
and gets jealous if I look at another woman. Yeah. Yeah, dude. That's what happens.
00:26:30
That's kind of how it is when you take all her money, hang out, drink, sleep together.
00:26:36
Yeah. So as John's life becomes more chaotic, he starts, of course, to miss Mary Elizabeth,
00:26:43
his good old wife. Oh, no. Dick. Yeah. Of course, because she wasn't the problem.
00:26:50
You were the problem. That's why. So now he values the stability and security that he found in their marriage.
00:26:58
And so he starts writing letters to her. And basically she writes back and they rekindle their relationship from afar.
00:27:09
What a cad. So in 1898, John hits absolute rock bottom. And I think he must've been,
00:27:18
you know, obviously he was a really, really good reporter, but he must've still had some friends
00:27:22
at the Associated Press because he ends up getting a job. So after all that, and their motivation is unclear.
00:27:30
It might've been his colleagues trying to help him. It could have been just, he was such a good reporter,
00:27:34
no one else could do the job. And maybe somebody stepped in and was like, look, what are you doing?
00:27:39
Get your shit together and go do this job. So either way, they want him to go to the Caribbean
00:27:46
to cover developments in what will eventually turn out to be the Spanish-American War.
00:27:51
And John sees this opportunity as a fresh start that he very desperately needs. So he'll end up getting out of San Francisco,
00:27:58
being able to clean up his act, prove to everyone, specifically his wife, that he's a changed man.
00:28:04
So he's like, I will take this job. So John accepts the AP's offer. He packs his stuff at Cordelia's apartment
00:28:10
and he ends their now almost three-year relationship. So it's more than an affair at this point.
00:28:17
Yeah. And it's a true bummer. He's there for the good times. Yep. So he tells Cordelia
00:28:24
he won't be coming back to California. Once he finishes his stint in the Caribbean,
00:28:29
he's going to go back to the East Coast and patch things up with his wife. Cordelia is, of course, devastated by this information.
00:28:35
And she, quote, wept bitterly when they parted. So she wasn't just like, sounds good, live your life.
00:28:42
Like it wasn't casual for Cordelia. While John's away, Mary Elizabeth receives regular letters
00:28:48
about his journalism, about what he's doing. He reassures her he's left all his bad habits behind in San Francisco.
00:28:56
He promises that he'll be a better husband and a better father from here on out.
00:29:01
And Mary Elizabeth, who basically just has no other options, is willing to give him yet another chance.
00:29:08
So as the weeks pass and more letters are exchanged, the two seem genuinely excited to reunite once John has finished his assignment.
00:29:16
Okay. But then in July, Mary Elizabeth begins receiving additional letters in the mail,
00:29:24
but these ones are not from John, but they're about him. So none of them are signed, but they mention very personal details about him.
00:29:32
And one says, quote, Your husband is constantly with this interesting and pretty woman.
00:29:37
She is now divorcing from her husband, all owing to the marked intimacy with Mr. Dunning.
00:29:44
End quote. Oh, dear. Yeah. This gets very clear. It's almost clear from the beginning.
00:29:50
Right. There's some basic instinct shit going on. Yes. Did you watch that news The new version of it No It good Joshua Jackson and the girl from Party Down What her name Oh Lizzie Kaplan
00:30:05
Yes. How? Lizzie Kaplan. Good one. Came out of nowhere. I watched the first episode last night.
00:30:10
It was really good. Okay. Yeah. Cool. I like that it's a series instead of like a movie.
00:30:14
It's cool. Wait, is that Fatal Attraction? Yes. What did I say? I said Basic Instinct.
00:30:19
leave this in Alejandra please please please wait is today vacation or is it tomorrow
00:30:32
I'm sleeping already so sorry my apologies fatal attraction is the series that I'm such a fan of
00:30:40
basic instinct is the Sharon Stone movie okay guys guys get it together I say to myself
00:30:47
okay Over the next few weeks, more letters from this anonymous sender arrive, and some of
00:30:56
the messages read like threats, including one that explicitly warns Mary Elizabeth against
00:31:01
reconciling with her husband. And of course, Mary Elizabeth is rattled by all of these letters.
00:31:06
She tells her family, and she saves all of them. So fast forward to August 9th, which a month has now passed since the first anonymous letter
00:31:15
has arrived at the Pennington Mansion, which brings us back to the night of the fish dinner.
00:31:21
So basically, John is informed about the poisoning death of his wife and his sister-in-law, and he's devastated.
00:31:29
He immediately boards a ship and comes back to Delaware. And as soon as he sets foot on the East Coast,
00:31:36
he is swarmed by reporters who ask, who poisoned your wife? Police, of course, ask John the same question.
00:31:43
He claims to have no idea. Then police showed John the box of chocolates and the note that came with it
00:31:50
and how in the postmark that says San Francisco, the investigators also add that before her death,
00:31:57
Mary Elizabeth had been receiving threatening letters from an anonymous sender. Her father, John Pennington,
00:32:02
thinks the handwriting in those letters is a perfect match for the note on the box of chocolates.
00:32:08
And then it all clicks. John Dunning gives the police a name, Cordelia Botkin. And he admits to the officers that he had an affair with her.
00:32:17
And he thinks it's possible that Cordelia picked up on the fact Mary Elizabeth had a soft spot for sweets.
00:32:23
And could have sent the poison candy as a deliberate act of revenge for being dumped.
00:32:28
What a dick move. Yeah, it's like, how would she have known that? Because you fucking said it.
00:32:34
How could she have known anything? Because you shacked up with this lady. And then we're like, well, bye.
00:32:41
I'm going to go get my life together. And she's an innocent victim. Like, she has nothing to do with it.
00:32:46
She's been fucked over, the wife. And you're going to fucking threaten her? Right.
00:32:53
It's, for a second, I thought you meant Cordelia. And I was like, oh, I have great, I have news for you.
00:32:59
This is not turning out. Yeah, no, she is such an innocent victim. And like, it's so sinister to be like,
00:33:06
first, I'm going to threaten you with some letters, some anonymous letters. and then I'm going to trick you into eating candy.
00:33:13
And he also thinks that the Mrs. C signature was used by Cordelia because Cordelia heard John talk
00:33:20
about Mrs. Corbally over the years. Oh, dear. So again, he spent enough quality time with this woman
00:33:26
that he spilled the beans, basically, and enabled her to do this. So the Dover police immediately reach out
00:33:33
to officers in San Francisco, telling them Cordelia Bodkin must be arrested right now
00:33:38
before she has a chance to flee. So the police track her down to her husband, Welcome Bodkin's house in Stockton.
00:33:46
And according to Katie Dowd, the writer for SFGate, when police hand her the arrest warrant,
00:33:52
Cordelia is, quote, preparing for her second or third outfit change of the day. End quote.
00:33:59
She reportedly looks the arrest warrant over and then, quote, sinks into the sofa with a moan of anguish.
00:34:07
so before the officers take Cordelia into custody they say that she can go pack some clothes
00:34:14
to take with her to jail and she winds up stuffing a trunk with so many of her outfits
00:34:20
that it takes two officers to carry the trunk to the police car I don't think that's how prison works
00:34:26
I don't either here's also how prison definitely doesn't work Cordelia is reportedly escorted from the home
00:34:33
on the arm of the police chief Okay, sexy. Rich people. And here's the thing, prosecuting Cordelia Botkin will prove to be messy
00:34:42
because for starters, there's confusion about where the charges should be filed.
00:34:47
It could be in California where the crime was planned and executed or in Delaware
00:34:51
where the victims were actually killed. So after some legal back and forth between prosecutors in both states,
00:34:58
it's decided that the trial will take place in California. So this means several witnesses
00:35:04
have to travel to the West Coast from Delaware to testify. According to one report, quote,
00:35:10
a delegation of lawyers, doctors, and bereaved family members arrived by train from Delaware just as the trial began,
00:35:17
looking bewildered by what they obviously regarded as the Wild West. In turn, cosmopolitan San Franciscans
00:35:25
saw the Eastern visitors as provincial and slightly addle-brained. Jesus. It feels a bit like...
00:35:34
Classist or something? Classist and also like, it feels like that, obviously, I think it's a San Francisco reporter
00:35:41
that's a little defensive where it's like, they thought we were this, but they're the ones
00:35:46
that look like that where it's like, excuse me, you don't know what these people
00:35:49
are thinking. They just... It's like the Beverly Hillbillies coming on in the fucking...
00:35:52
Exactly. It's like, if they live in a mansion in Delaware I don think that they were provincial I bet they weren When will this East Coast West Coast rivalry end Not in 1898 Okay so this trial starts on
00:36:06
September 6th. It's an absolute media circus. The public is obsessed, of course, with this
00:36:12
salacious story of murder by chocolate. And like a soap opera that's playing out in real life,
00:36:17
people follow testimonies closely and they rally behind their favorite witnesses.
00:36:22
And for his part, John Dunning does not seem to have really any fans at all. Journalist Betsy Culp, who was reporting at the time,
00:36:32
notes that when testifying, John comes across as, quote, the whiny sort and, quote,
00:36:39
inserted a moment of drama into the proceedings when he acknowledged that he had been intimate with many women during his stay in San Francisco,
00:36:47
but couldn't remember all of their names. Oh, dear. Yeah, you're going to turn an 18-something courtroom against you with that.
00:36:54
Yeah, people are just like fainting away in the seats. So when Cordelia takes the stand, she doubles down on her plea of innocence,
00:37:04
but her explanations and her elaborations basically are lost on this courtroom. Instead, they focus on the more colorful and incidental things that she has to say.
00:37:14
She kind of upstaged herself. At one point she said, quote, I admit I have led a gay life.
00:37:21
I have lived for the pleasure of the world, letting none, absolutely none of its pleasures pass me by.
00:37:27
I would stop at nothing to gratify my desires. It's like, Cordelia, no. Don't do it.
00:37:34
She's got Sunset Boulevard vibes, which I kind of dig. Yes. I mean, I don't like her.
00:37:39
She's a murderer, but she's got these. She really, she's not self-aware enough to even be,
00:37:46
like, it seems like to be manipulative or try to act like she's this innocent, you know, anything.
00:37:52
She gets up there and just does a little show. So whether John Dunning counts as one of those desires
00:37:58
is unclear because she, Cordelia, describes him in court as, quote, a poor little fellow and, quote,
00:38:05
the most pitiful object I ever saw. Ouch. Yeah. So initially the case against Cordelia
00:38:12
doesn't seem very strong. The prosecution puts a handwriting expert on the stand who ties the anonymous letters and the chocolate box note to her. In addition,
00:38:22
her alibi, Cordelia's alibi, turns out to be unverifiable. That's pretty much all the
00:38:27
prosecutors have. But then about a week into the trial, they get a break. Police have finally
00:38:33
traced the chocolates back to a specific candy store, Haas and Sons Confectionary, H-A-A-S.
00:38:40
and a clerk there claims to have sold candy to someone that looked like Cordelia
00:38:45
and this transaction was memorable to the clerk because the woman asked for only half a box
00:38:53
to be filled with chocolates. Uh-oh. Yeah, so then the prosecutors put a drugstore cashier
00:39:00
named David Green on the stand and Green testifies he sold Cordelia arsenic back in June
00:39:06
and he remembered the sale clearly because when he asked Cordelia why she needed the arsenic,
00:39:13
Cordelia claimed that she was using it to bleach straw for a hat. And Green thought that was a strange answer
00:39:19
because there were much safer chemicals that she could use for bleaching. Like bleach.
00:39:24
Like bleach. So then the prosecutors put forward their most damning evidence yet
00:39:31
because at Cordelia's San Francisco apartment, they find string and a seal for the candy box from Haas and Sons.
00:39:40
So she opened it, pulled off the string, pulled off the seal, put the candies in and shipped them away.
00:39:48
And they got rid of the trash. Yes. Then she put those up on a thing and said, look at the gay life I'm leading, keeping evidence in my apartment.
00:39:58
So none of this obviously looks good for Cordelia, but it is all circumstantial evidence.
00:40:04
There's no smoking gun linking her to the murders, but she and her lawyers struggle to put forward a compelling defense.
00:40:11
So on December 30th, 1898, the jury deliberates and the entire city of San Francisco is waiting on pins and needles
00:40:18
to see what the verdict's going to be. And finally, it's announced Cordelia Bodkin is guilty of murder
00:40:25
and sentenced to life in prison. There's historians that point out that there was not enough evidence
00:40:30
to convict her of a life sentence. basically that the evidence that they had wasn't,
00:40:36
it wasn't enough to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know. A lot of circumstantial evidence adds up to proof.
00:40:45
You know what I mean? Right. But when it's a life sentence, it's like you kind of want all of it to be indisputable.
00:40:53
Got it. So Cordelia immediately appeals the verdict. And then basically in jail,
00:41:01
she just starts furnishing her cell. And she starts looking for ways to make, basically to make her incarceration fun.
00:41:08
According to Katie Dowd's article, quote, she entertained frequent guests in jail
00:41:13
and spent her solitary hours finding diversion in the vanities of womankind, which we can only assume means
00:41:20
she was just cycling through outfits from her big trunk or like, you know, whatever.
00:41:25
Giving herself manicures, prison, those prison manicures, you know? A prison manicure.
00:41:30
Did they have black Sharpie pens back then? I don't know. So all of this would be very unusual,
00:41:35
and it would also suggest a certain level of friendliness with prison guards. But you also have to, you know, add in the fact that this is a classic, like, Jezebel story.
00:41:46
She is an adulteress. She is a murderer. She is, like, this kind of gossip is just going to continue on the story.
00:41:53
She never going to be like no one ever going to step in and be like hey wait maybe we taking this a little too far It like the fallen woman who ruined a family and all that So Cordelia certainly seems to be getting preferential treatment
00:42:08
In fact, in May 1900, while her case is still in the appeals process, the judge who presided over her trial spots her out in public
00:42:17
when they wind up on the same streetcar together. Uh-oh. So the judge doesn't confront her directly, but he does report it to local officials.
00:42:28
And so articles start running in Bay Area newspapers. Prison officials, of course, are insistent the judge was mistaken.
00:42:36
And Cordelia herself spins these rumors to her advantage, saying there must be a lookalike in San Francisco
00:42:42
and that that person must have been the one that the witnesses saw buying chocolates and arsenic.
00:42:47
That's got to be it. Yeah. Eventually, Cordelia's appeal is granted and she does get a new trial, but the outcome is the same.
00:42:55
She's found guilty and she receives a life sentence. Then in 1906, which is the year of the horrifying earthquake, basically every building in San Francisco is pretty much leveled or burnt to the ground.
00:43:08
So she is transferred across the bay to San Quentin. And this is when everything starts to get turned into a real bummer for her.
00:43:18
First of all, San Quentin is a completely different situation than like a city jail, right?
00:43:22
So it's really a tough, intense place. On top of which, she starts hearing about one personal tragedy after another.
00:43:33
First, her ex-husband, because her welcome, Bodkin, divorced her during these proceedings.
00:43:39
Then she finds out that he's passed away. Then she hears that her son has passed away.
00:43:45
And then in 1908, John Dunning, who's only in his mid-40s, he dies in Philadelphia.
00:43:53
He's totally destitute and like shamed. And basically he's just died alone, which is horrible.
00:44:00
I would imagine alcohol was probably part of that in some way. Two years later in 1910, Cordelia's own health takes a turn for the worse.
00:44:10
Prison staff note that she's no longer her energetic over-the-top self, Instead, in the past few years, I've left her deeply depressed, of course.
00:44:20
And in March of that year, she dies of what they call, quote, softening of the brain due to melancholia.
00:44:27
Whoa. Which is like basically clinical depression and, you know, when she dies, she's just 56 years old.
00:44:34
Wow. What a waste. I know. The whole thing is like, that's what the good times get you.
00:44:42
Yeah. It's like a Christian parable. of like what the bad life will lead you to kind of thing.
00:44:48
Horrible. So many people dead. Yeah. It's just awful. So the case of Cordelia Bodkin
00:44:55
and the murders of Mary Elizabeth and her sister Ida are talked about, of course, for years.
00:45:01
Katie Dowd points out in her article, quote, a jilted lover poisoning a common gesture of love,
00:45:06
a box of chocolates was too sordid to ignore, end quote. But it's also historic because as Katie Dowd points out,
00:45:14
quote, it's likely the first time in American history that someone had used the Postal Service
00:45:20
to commit murder. Oh, that's interesting. Right? And that is the story of the poisoning deaths of
00:45:30
Mary Elizabeth Dunning and Ida Dean and their murderer, Cordelia Botkin. Wow. Good job. Yeah.
00:45:37
Never heard that before. Good one. Thank you. Wow. Deep cut from the turn of the century.
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Data accurate as of 2-20-26. Well, I'm going to do a historic story as well. Except mine takes place in the historic decade of the 1970s.
00:47:57
So it's a little different. Still pretty old. It's still pretty far away. And this is a momentous occasion
00:48:03
that I'm going to tell you about. It's one singular day in New York City that's still remembered
00:48:09
as one of the most significant events in the city's history. This is the story of the 1977 blackout
00:48:16
in New York City and the one murder that took place that night. Dude. Isn't that good?
00:48:23
I know probably what would amount to three sentences about that blackout. and it's from a TV show that I can't even remember
00:48:31
what the TV show was. But like, I'm so excited to hear about this. Okay, well, I have to tell you and everyone,
00:48:37
there is a PBS American experience called Blackout that is fucking incredible. Ooh.
00:48:44
Go and watch it immediately. It's like, this is just barely touches the surface of this story because there's so much going on at this time.
00:48:51
There's racial turmoil. There's this like level of these rich, you know, assholes and this like poverty,
00:48:58
this ignored class of people. There's so much going on boiling, you know. So watch Blackout for PBS.
00:49:05
This is also that era where they used to take a lot of B-roll shots in certain neighborhoods
00:49:11
where there would just be like a crumbled building that was burning on the inside.
00:49:16
And it was just like super devastated. Yeah. Devastating neighborhoods. There were a lot of fires happening at the time
00:49:21
because a lot of the building owners would just burn their place down for the insurance money
00:49:25
rather than keep them up. So there actually were a lot of burnt out buildings at the time because of that.
00:49:29
Because it's just a horrible time. Horrible. The sources I used today are a Medium article by Jenna Vasquez,
00:49:35
a New York Post article by Brad Hamilton, an episode of the Shoe Leather podcast by Rachel Bailey and Claire Amari,
00:49:43
and a Time article by Jennifer Latson. Shoe Leather? I've never heard of their podcast.
00:49:49
I know. Cute, right? I'm going to write that down. Read the description. Yeah. So Shoe Leather is an investigative podcast
00:49:55
that goes behind the scenes of forgotten stories that shaped New York City. Nice.
00:50:00
I'm totally gonna listen to that. That's great. Everyone download Shoe Leather. Okay.
00:50:04
And the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. All right, here we are.
00:50:09
It's July of 1977, and it's a terrible time to be in New York City. This is not the Disneyland that we all know
00:50:17
and tolerate of New York now. This was a completely different city, as I'm sure you've seen in photos and video.
00:50:24
But also the one thing that's true is it's in summertime in New York City, it's humid.
00:50:29
It's humid in a way people from California don't understand. No. So not only is it extremely hot in July in New York, everyone knows that,
00:50:37
but it is the beginning of one of the longest and worst heat waves in the city's history that year.
00:50:44
So it's hot and humid. Everything smells when it's hot in New York. It is a different monster,
00:50:50
the humidity and grossness in New York because everything's like asphalt and pavement.
00:50:55
There's no trees. There's just garbage everywhere. There's just so many human beings that live there.
00:51:02
It's such a concentration of like city life that you can't help but have, you have the most amount of garbage.
00:51:10
You have the most amount of like waste or whatever. Yeah. Oh man. So the temperatures rise to over 100 degrees
00:51:16
on a regular basis. The humidity makes it damp, heavy heat And around this time, New York is also experiencing a wave of crime that is so profound and terrifying to citizens that they have taken to calling New York, quote, Fear City.
00:51:30
Wow. That's its nickname. According to one article, from 1967 to 1977, murder and assault rates in the city have more than doubled and burglaries, burglaries?
00:51:43
Burglaries. Burglaries. Yep, you got it. There it is. Have tripled. This is also 1977 when Son of Sam is active.
00:51:53
Oh, yes. That's right. Before he gets caught. So David Berkowitz, one of the city's most notorious serial killers,
00:52:00
for the past year has been running around on his fucking killing spree. He's not been identified or caught.
00:52:05
Everyone is so on edge in that city, to say the least. So there's a lot going on.
00:52:10
Watch the Son of Sam documentary. It captures that part of it really well. It's so good.
00:52:17
So on top of all this, there's a very deep class divide in the city. The rich are very rich and the poor are very poor.
00:52:26
We've heard of that before, haven't we? Yeah, it sounds familiar. Unemployment and poverty rates are at record highs
00:52:32
and the city has been slashing social services for years to save money, which is a really big deal if you think about all the social services
00:52:40
that are needed to run a metropolis city like New York to make sure everyone gets their fair,
00:52:46
you know, share the roads. I'm not going to start doing that. I could do it for fucking effort.
00:52:51
Do it. This is like what my mom used to rant about at the dinner table, being a psychiatric nurse
00:52:56
and watching the privatization of the medical industry, watching social services get cut
00:53:03
as if you're saying, oh, we're just not going to fill in potholes. It's like, no, we're not going to support
00:53:07
the most vulnerable and exposed people in our community. And we're going to act like that's just fine,
00:53:12
which so is not. And then like when we slash afterschool services for those in need,
00:53:18
then when, you know, crime rises because there's so many people, you know, running around after school,
00:53:24
you're going to blame it on them instead of the fact that you've taken away any access to any kind of,
00:53:31
you know, afterschool activities and ways to grow rather than, you know what I mean?
00:53:36
Yeah. Cutting services, you're criminalizing poverty. Yeah, yeah. I can speak to this the way I listened to a lot of other people speak to it but I just recently listened to some podcasts where they were just talking about this where it essentially you cut off services like that and then the people that are in need have nothing and then what are they supposed to do Because they still there They still have families They still are alive So now they have to steal diapers and baby formula
00:54:06
And then it's like, how dare you? You're endangering. It's like, no, you're in danger.
00:54:11
The people that cut services are the ones endangering everybody else. That's right.
00:54:15
That's exactly right. And the city itself has even considered filing for bankruptcy.
00:54:19
Remember that whole era? Yeah. The rest of the nation, including then-President Gerald Ford,
00:54:25
has turned their back on New York, denying the city any financial support to relieve their troubles.
00:54:31
It's fair to say that this summer, New Yorkers are desperate, angry, and scared,
00:54:35
and hot as fuck. Yeah. You know what I mean? Boiling point. Yeah. So when a severe thunderstorm rolls over the city
00:54:43
on July 13th, 1977, it gives New Yorkers a welcome excuse to go inside and to try to cool off.
00:54:50
Those people who have air conditioning units, fucking crank those babies. And then people with fans crank those,
00:54:57
sit directly in front of them. So everyone's got their appliances. They're indoors because of a storm
00:55:01
and they got their appliances running. So when lightning strikes a power station
00:55:05
at 8.37 PM, everything that can go wrong goes wrong. The lightning strike trips two circuit breakers
00:55:13
at the power station, which then causes a chain reaction. One by one, circuits around
00:55:18
the already tripped up circuit breakers begin to overload, causing a domino effect.
00:55:24
Basically, it's a very dangerous problem. When a circuit overloads, it either trips,
00:55:29
meaning it shuts off power to the entire circuit. I'm an electrician now, pretend.
00:55:36
Act like I'm an electrician. Pretend I'm an electric doctor. Or it overheats and starts to melt,
00:55:42
which is a huge fire hazard. And it's the 70s, so everything's a little janky, you know?
00:55:45
Everything's a little like shag carpet-y. Exactly. Everything is avocado green. When more lightning strikes another power station,
00:55:55
five minutes after the first, because remember there was that fucking storm brewing,
00:56:00
more circuits are tripped and more transformers are impacted, which causes even more overloading.
00:56:06
And remember, everyone's already maxing out their power usage to stay cool on this hot evening.
00:56:11
And so for a third and final time, lightning strikes yet another vital power station
00:56:17
within just a few minutes. I know, a lot of lightning. It's very suspicious. Suspish.
00:56:23
I'm not going to start. I'll leave it to shoe leather to talk about what the why is and wherefores.
00:56:28
But doesn't that sound like the beginning of a Batman movie where it's like some villain is on those power breakers?
00:56:36
It's just horrifying. You're the God is just like, let's fuck with everyone. You guys, I hear you guys are having a hard time.
00:56:43
Let's see what else you can endure. Third lightning strike. and in addition to these,
00:56:50
there are multiple instances of backup generators failing and other random mechanical failures.
00:56:55
So shit just goes completely wrong. By 9 p.m., the entire complex system that is the New York City power grid
00:57:02
starts to fail. Witnesses report being able to see this effect unfold in real time at street level.
00:57:09
So you know when you're standing on a street in New York, you can just see all the way downtown,
00:57:13
basically, it's just because they're parallel streets. One witness described standing on Columbus Avenue facing downtown
00:57:19
and watching the lights go out, not all at once, but darkness rolling uptown block by block like a wave.
00:57:27
Oh, that would be very scary. Yeah. So at 9.36 PM, just 59 minutes after the first lightning strike,
00:57:35
the lights go out in New York City and more than 8 million people are left in total fricking darkness.
00:57:42
Oh, that's scary. That is scary. There's no one story of what happened in New York that night.
00:57:47
For some, losing power is just a minor blip because all the broadcast news channels lose power
00:57:52
and are off the air. There is little way of knowing what's happening in other parts of the city that night, obviously.
00:57:58
And there's no phones. Everyone remember that. So for people, I mean, there's phones,
00:58:03
but there's no cellular phones. They're all on a wall somewhere. In avocado green.
00:58:10
So for people safely in their apartments with no need to leave, this might've just been a power outage, right?
00:58:15
You grab some candles, you could like settle in, have a nice little cozy bonfire night.
00:58:20
I mean, don't have a bonfire in your apartment. That would be stupid. Not a bonfire during the summer.
00:58:23
Don't do it. Oh, right. I forgot to talk. So no big deal, right? For others, it might've been a fun or novel inconvenience
00:58:31
on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in the windows of the World Restaurant, RIP.
00:58:37
Yeah. Diners are given free champagne and continue to eat their meals by candlelight
00:58:42
above the darkened city. So it's just like a fun time for them. If I was in the windows of the world
00:58:48
and I watch the entire city of Manhattan, essentially. It's like an island and you just see it go dark.
00:58:56
Yeah, it goes dark. I'd be like, hey, I'm spending the night here. Yeah, well, the elevators wouldn't work, right?
00:59:01
I guess, right? In the documentary Blackout, it shows like footage from there. And so what, did people take stairs down?
00:59:09
I don't remember. That's no, that's too many floors. Fuck that shit. No way. I'd be like, more champagne, please.
00:59:16
I'm staying here. This is free now. Yeah. So, but for many New Yorkers, the lights going out leads to a frantic energy
00:59:23
and mania that mounts throughout the night. There's almost no moon visible that night.
00:59:28
So it's completely pitch black. Totally. I know. What are the odds of all of this?
00:59:34
I know. So people stick together and walk in groups down the street, in and around their neighborhoods.
00:59:39
Like it's kind of a fun, exciting thing for a lot of people, right? Where it's like, what is happening?
00:59:44
This is crazy. This is cool. Like, let's go have an adventure, I think for a lot of people.
00:59:48
I guess if you were in your hot apartment and everything turned off, including the AC,
00:59:52
and then you see a bunch of people starting to go outside like whoa that would be fun Yeah As long as you all the vibe was right Right It like novel It cool Let see what happened It like the other couple of weeks ago
01:00:05
like at night, everyone heard a car accident happened down the street from our house.
01:00:09
So like, then you go get to know your neighbors because everyone's like a looky-loo.
01:00:12
Like what the fuck's going on, you know? Oh yeah. Right. Everyone was fine, by the way.
01:00:16
Good, good, good, good. So the subway isn't working now, obviously, because of the lockout.
01:00:21
So wherever you are, where the lights go out, You have to basically stay there unless you want to walk home or have access to a car.
01:00:28
But driving is really impossible because the lights aren't working. Yeah. And then on that note, thousands of people are trapped in the subway.
01:00:35
Oh. Right? Can you fucking imagine? I would just start screaming. I would be upset for sure.
01:00:40
Yeah. And they have to be rescued in the dark tunnels by emergency responders and like shuffled out.
01:00:46
Oof. At least they got out though instead of like... Yes. Yeah. But then you're stuck where you are.
01:00:51
Like what if your home's in New Jersey? You're just like, you have nowhere to go.
01:00:56
Hit the pavement, baby. Hoof it? Hoof it. Okay. All the streetlights and traffic lights are out.
01:01:02
Some brave residents take it on themselves to direct traffic with flashlights, but there are still a ton of car accidents, of course.
01:01:09
Yeah. Some streets turn into block parties. People are drinking in the street and partying in darkened apartments,
01:01:15
which sounds kind of fun. It sounds great, actually. But many areas of the city become unsafe.
01:01:21
Electronic locks and buzzer systems on apartment buildings stop working. Oh. Right?
01:01:27
Mm-hmm. So some people take advantage and hide out in stairwells or hallways to ambush and mug unsuspecting residents.
01:01:34
That's fucked up. That's so fucked up. Many people are mugged in the street. Almost immediately after the lights go out, the looting begins.
01:01:41
Oh, yeah. As it tends to do. Yeah. Some people allegedly shout, quote, it's Christmas time.
01:01:46
while they break locks, windows, and security fences to steal merchandise. Yeah.
01:01:54
One source reports that 1,616 stores are looted, in many cases taking absolutely everything inside.
01:02:02
Yeah. You know why? Because you cut their fucking services. So that's what you get.
01:02:07
Yeah. Yeah. Police officers that night are ordered to go to their nearest precinct.
01:02:13
So basically they're like called at home and said, you know, don't go to your precinct downtown, wherever the fuck you live. If you live in Queens,
01:02:21
that's where you're policing that night. You know what I mean? Oh, okay. Which means that because not all the cops live near where they work, this creates a really
01:02:30
imbalanced police response. You know what I mean? Yeah. So in fact, many cops live outside the city in commuter neighborhoods in New Jersey or Long
01:02:37
Island. So in certain neighborhoods, there's almost no police presence because nobody lives
01:02:42
there who's a police officer. Right. And so many people, especially those that have been suffering in poverty with little or no help from the city, they take advantage of the situation.
01:02:51
It's mayhem in the streets and the looting continues through the night. And then Sarah made a really interesting note here saying there's this story, it's disputed, but it's an urban legend that this blackout was in part responsible for that crazy rise in hip hop in the 80s because so much DJ equipment was looted that night.
01:03:12
which enabled more people to make music. Yes, great. So some early DJs stand by the story
01:03:20
while most consider it, quote, a lot of bullshit. Either way, it's part of the mythology of the blackout.
01:03:26
Isn't that wild? I love the spirit of it, except for that there's also a racist element
01:03:32
to the spirit of it. Yeah. And then you have to think about the store owners who lost so much fucking money
01:03:37
because everything was looted. And then you can stop thinking about them because they're all insured.
01:03:43
That's true. That's true. Right? Ultimately. It's like that Sublime song. Where do you think I got this guitar
01:03:50
that you're hearing today? From the riots. Yes, I just quoted Sublime. Okay. I'm from Orange County.
01:03:58
Anyways. I thought you said Simple Minds and I was like, oh, that's a fucking deep cut.
01:04:03
No, Sublime. It's Sublime. OC, baby. That's right. Okay. Can take the girl out of the OC.
01:04:11
So in addition to the looting, people are also setting fires. In the same way the blackout opens a window for personal financial gain through theft,
01:04:19
it also creates an outlet for collective rage through destruction of property. Yeah.
01:04:24
More than 1,000 fires are started across the city, and many buildings are irreparably damaged or burnt down entirely.
01:04:31
It's almost like a sports team won the championships. Right. It's like, it's the same thing where it's like,
01:04:37
that is all just energy that has to get expelled somehow. Yeah. It's okay when it's your baseball team that wins.
01:04:45
Right, right. Although, are there a lot of baseball riots? I don't think so. I think it's...
01:04:50
Yeah. Is it baseball? No. When the World Series comes along, probably. I don't know.
01:04:56
Maybe? Or is it hockey? Okay. Blame the Canadians. Yeah. Those wild Canadians. Despite the arson and innumerable thefts during the 1977 blackout,
01:05:07
there is a surprising absence of violent crime. There's only one recorded death related to the blackout,
01:05:14
the unsolved murder of Dominic Siscon. Hmm. So Dominic is a 17-year-old dude in 1977.
01:05:22
He's tall with brown curly hair. Photos of him show a quintessential 1970s teenager
01:05:28
with that New York swagger. He's got a photo of him running a comb through his hair,
01:05:34
looking all suave, smirking with a drink in his hand, just like a typical New York teenager.
01:05:39
He's a little rough around the edges. apparently he loves to start fistfights, which I feel like was a normal thing in the 70s, right?
01:05:45
Hell yeah. But he's also remembered as a total sweetheart by his siblings and his parents. He lives in Carroll
01:05:51
Gardens in Brooklyn It has a very distinct Italian influence back then Now I think it got a very distinct hipster influence Sure Right It a very pretty neighborhood It a close community Everyone knows everyone
01:06:05
And they're very skeptical of outsiders. There's a well-known mob presence in the community as well.
01:06:10
But I think that's just like comes with the territory. It's generally regarded though as an extremely safe place.
01:06:17
And Dominic knows it very well. So the night of the blackout on July 13th, he's standing outside a local bar
01:06:24
on the corner of Court and Nelson Streets with his brother, Andrew. It's obviously now pitch black out.
01:06:29
So they're standing around a garbage can fire with some friends so they can see each other
01:06:33
while they hang out. This must be such an exciting experience for a teenager, you know?
01:06:38
Yes. Right? You got your beers and stuff. Yeah. Andrew, Dominic's brother, remembers that they were having a great time.
01:06:45
They were singing and talking and just taking in the crazy energy of the city that night.
01:06:50
And then suddenly out of nowhere, Dominic turns to his brother and says, quote, I think I've been shot.
01:06:57
Andrew doesn't believe him at first. He thinks his brother is either joking or confused.
01:07:01
People have been setting off fireworks. So Andrew thinks Dominic may have just been grazed
01:07:05
by like a bottle rocket or whatever. But when Dominic collapses, Andrew and their friends realize that Dominic
01:07:11
has indeed been shot in the back. Oh my God. From the light of a car headlight, from flashlights and fire dumpsters,
01:07:18
Andrew sees the shooter running down the block and Andrew goes and sprints after him.
01:07:25
Meanwhile, Dominic is being tended to by witnesses and friends. He's loaded into a car and driven to the hospital.
01:07:31
But of course, most hospitals don't have power at this time. Oh no. So some emergency procedures are being done outside
01:07:37
lit by floodlights powered by car batteries. Chaos, right? Yeah, at the hospital.
01:07:44
I know, so scary. Yeah. But it's too late for Dominic. The bullet has ricocheted inside his body
01:07:50
and ripped through his vital organs. and he dies on the way to the hospital. Oh, it's so sad.
01:07:55
He's 17. Mm-hmm. Andrew later describes the shooter as a, quote, well-dressed man.
01:08:02
And because it's so dark, Andrew had quickly lost track of the dude. And so that's really the only detail
01:08:08
he's able to provide. And because this murder occurred during one of New York's most chaotic nights,
01:08:13
the murder of Dominic Siscon never gets the attention it deserves. And given that Dominic was so well-known
01:08:20
and loved in his community, Many believe his murder is due to a case of mistaken identity.
01:08:25
Dominic just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's also possible that his murder was a crime of opportunity.
01:08:31
You know, someone might have taken advantage of the darkness to commit a random murder.
01:08:35
Maybe they're a copycat of the son of Sam or something like that. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?
01:08:39
Yeah. But it also seems possible that Dominic just had some enemies. He had served some time at Rikers Island jail
01:08:47
for getting into fistfights. His sister Mildred remembers that he still had bruises on his face at the funeral from one of the fights he had gotten into.
01:08:56
So his family wonders if, you know, his penchant for picking fights got him into bigger trouble with powerful people than he realized.
01:09:04
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this case quickly goes cold with no real ease because detectives have their hands full with other crimes.
01:09:11
But in 1997, 20 years after the blackout, a local newspaper runs a story about Dominic's murder.
01:09:17
and the police get two anonymous phone calls from people who say they know what happened.
01:09:22
Patrick Talbot, who's the detective who worked on this case, said, quote, the persons were very scared
01:09:28
and they said they would get back to me, end quote. But the sources never call back
01:09:32
or provide any evidence to prove their claim and the case is still unsolved to this day.
01:09:37
Wow. So after the pitch black night of chaos and destruction and revelry, the sun starts to rise over New York City
01:09:45
with increasing daylight. Some of the looting and arson slows down, but actually not by much.
01:09:51
Police response is still uncoordinated. And so it's up to business owners to protect what's left of their inventory and assets.
01:09:58
There's a lot of footage and photos from this. It's fascinating. But by 7 a.m. on July 14th,
01:10:03
Queens starts to get power back. Slowly over the course of the day and into the evening,
01:10:08
the lights come back on in New York. But even this has to be done slowly and carefully.
01:10:14
Electrical engineers are nervous that people will overload the power grid again,
01:10:19
so residents are encouraged to turn off and unplug their appliances until everything's fully back on.
01:10:26
25 hours after the blackout starts, at 1039 on July 14th, 1977, power is finally restored to every borough.
01:10:35
The impact of the 1977 blackout is wide-reaching and complicated. There are enormous financial costs.
01:10:42
The combination of looting, mugging, and arson ends up costing over $300 million in damages,
01:10:49
which in today's money is, let me tell you? Yeah. $1.27 billion. Billion. Uh-huh.
01:10:59
On a city that's almost bankrupt already, right? There's also enormous cost to people's livelihood.
01:11:05
In addition to the murder of Dominic Siscon, 4,000 people are arrested and jailed
01:11:10
as a result of crimes committed during the blackout. It's the largest mass arrest in the city's history.
01:11:15
So the blackout throws New York City and all of its problems into the national spotlight.
01:11:20
The city's leaders, as well as the power companies, are put under a microscope and people start pointing fingers at each other.
01:11:26
The power company says the blackout was a, quote, act of God. I agree. The mayor calls it, quote,
01:11:35
gross negligence on the part of the power company. The mayor is blamed for not intervening effectively
01:11:41
during the mayhem, and ultimately New York City politics begins shifting towards
01:11:46
a more law and order platform. Sorry, do you know who the mayor is at this point?
01:11:52
Well, not at that point, but Ed Koch is elected mayor the year after the blackout.
01:11:57
Okay. He's elected in part because of the blackout, as well. He goes on to serve the city from 1978 to 1989, becoming a well-known figure nationwide.
01:12:07
His platform is heavily based on issues around public safety, which of course resonates deeply
01:12:12
with New Yorkers who lived through the summer of 1977. And oh my gosh, everyone send in your
01:12:18
parents' hometowns of the blackout, please. Oh my, that would be incredible. That'd be good.
01:12:24
So in the context of all of this, it's important to note that there was another New York City blackout almost identical to this one in 1965. Oh. Right? So like over 10 years
01:12:34
before this one. That blackout is actually even larger in scope. Not only does New York City lose
01:12:40
power on November 9th, 1965, but a huge part of 10 states in the Northeast go dark. The blackout
01:12:47
lasts for 13 hours, but there are only five instances of looting in New York City that night.
01:12:53
So that's the difference between 1965 New York City and 1977 New York City. you know? Yeah. If you had stuff in your house and a reason to stay home, you would have stayed
01:13:04
home. But it's also November. Right. So it's colder outside. That's true. That's a good point.
01:13:10
Author and political analyst David Frum reports that most New Yorkers just stayed in their homes
01:13:15
and enjoyed the experience as if it was a big cozy snowstorm. In his words, quote,
01:13:22
the dimming of the lights did not unravel the fabric of civilization. But the blackout of 1977
01:13:28
did unravel the fabric of civilization, at least for a few hours. Executive producer Mark Sammels of the PBS documentary we've been talking about, Blackout,
01:13:37
says, quote, the 1977 blackout reminds us of how easily we take things for granted.
01:13:43
We expect the lights to turn on the garbage to be picked up and the trains to run All these systems keep our daily lives going but when a city is plagued by crime unemployment reduced services
01:13:54
and growing anger, an event like a blackout can be a spark that ignites a fire. The thin crust of civilization is suddenly gone,
01:14:02
and we discover that urban life is much more fragile than we thought. End quote.
01:14:08
And that is the story of the 1977 New York City blackout and the murder of Dominic Siscon.
01:14:15
That's amazing. First of all, it's so tragic, but it's incredible that only one person died in that.
01:14:22
Absolutely. With everything else that was going on. And also the idea that like hospitals
01:14:27
were having to basically put together like mass units and triage outside. Totally.
01:14:35
Thank God there weren't more shootings and more, you know, stabbings and things like.
01:14:41
Yeah. It almost sounds like people were like partying in a positive way rather than like, you know,
01:14:47
even the looting, like you see the pictures and everyone's smiling and excited like it's
01:14:51
Christmas, you know, it's... Yeah, especially if it's been, they haven't had anything for a while or it's been like
01:14:57
so hard and it's like, yeah, well, here we're going to even it up a little bit. Yeah.
01:15:01
Like those photos that you see of like the LA riots and stuff where people are like looting
01:15:06
and stealing diapers, you know what I mean? Yes. and formula. There's something wrong with society
01:15:13
when that's the case. You know what I mean? Yes. So, yeah. Wow, that's great. Thank you.
01:15:20
The PBS It's American... Experience. American Experience is such a good show. Ugh, I'll watch anything.
01:15:28
I'll even watch a baseball documentary if it American Experience Yes And I don give a shit about baseball It just such a good show My dad used to force us to watch PBS all the time growing up because he was so like
01:15:41
he was such a kind of hippie anti-TV person. And as an adult now, I'm so grateful for it
01:15:47
because you couldn't go wrong with like an American Experience or a Nova or any of those, like you would learn so much shit.
01:15:55
It's made so well. You can also put on Antiques Roadshow when you just want to veg out,
01:16:01
which is like the best thing in the world. And don't be afraid to watch a Poirot
01:16:05
every once in a while. That's all I'm going to do on my vacation is watch PBS. Just a bunch of PBS
01:16:13
and stare out the window. Well, great job. That's a really nice send-off for us.
01:16:19
Thank you, you too. Definitely. Thanks for listening, guys. We appreciate you. We appreciate you giving us this time
01:16:26
to set our brains back to the proper setting. Shape. Factory setting, yeah. Reset.
01:16:35
We're going to clear our cards. We're going to reset. We'll see you very soon. And until then, stay sexy.
01:16:43
And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah. This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:16:58
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
01:17:05
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:17:13
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
01:17:19
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