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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Goodbye. My favorite murder
00:01:32
Hello! Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That is Georgia Hartstar. It's Karen Kilgarith.
00:01:51
And added a new cast of characters this week. Here's the newest one. Her name is Blossom.
00:01:59
Karen got another dog. Come up here. Come up here. Come up here. She doesn't really listen when I tell her to do stuff.
00:02:06
Well, she's new around here. She's one day new. Oh, my God. It's very exciting. Frank needed a friend.
00:02:15
Yes. And so I went ahead and got him one. She's pretty great. Is it so exciting to have like a new like little personality around the house?
00:02:26
It really is. It's well, what it is, is like Frank and I were kind of in our routine. And a lot of the routine had to do with Frank coming in and laying on the couch in the other room. So I was taking that kind of personally and being like, why aren't you? Why don't you want to be right next to me? Like, you know, whatever. But it was because he was kind of like tired and bored. He just was just like, well, I can sleep here or I can sleep there. But it's all basically the same.
00:02:50
Do you get so you get offended like me when I'm in a room and I'm like, I have four animals and there's not a fucking single one of you that wants to be in the room with me.
00:03:00
I'm like, I pay rent. Yeah. I'm the reason you eat at night. Yeah. And it sucks because he's made me promise not to get another animal for 10 years after like after Mo.
00:03:11
But I'm like, but none of them want to hang out with me right now. I know. Let's get another one and see if they want to hang out with me right now.
00:03:19
It also feels like they should want to hang out with you and they should, even though like I literally have had her now 24 hours, essentially, I'm a little bit offended that she doesn't come immediately when I call her, which is like she doesn't know where the hell she is.
00:03:33
It is very cute to have a little new animal that if I just get up to do something, like go throw something away, she follows and then turn as she watches me do it, turns her head to the side like, whatever could this be?
00:03:45
Where it's like, this is me throwing something away. You're going to see this a lot.
00:03:51
This is me getting more coffee. You're going to get used to it real fast. Watch this.
00:03:56
Yep. Oh, we're going back in here again. And yeah, I also introduced her to the washer and dryer because I knew they made noises where I was like, here's me shutting the dryer door.
00:04:05
Well, that wouldn't be a problem for me because I do that every three weeks. So they just should be like, oh, are you a pile up laundry person?
00:04:13
I've become I've become really lazy. like okay i think when i live with someone and like vince i'm not dirty i'm messy and it's really
00:04:26
made me realize that living with vince because he doesn't give a fuck but sometimes i'm like
00:04:30
does that bother you that i have all the things here and he's like no because he's messy in his
00:04:35
own ways and we don't overlap so that's great but yes uh yeah i've become a laundry pilot person and
00:04:41
And then my therapist gave me this like fucking open my mind. It was like, you don't have to do all the laundry now.
00:04:48
You can do one load. So I pile it up because I'm like, I'm not ready for like eight hours of laundry.
00:04:55
I could just do one hour of laundry. That's right. Chip away. Chip away. Yeah. The chip away method, which with laundry, the thing that, and I'm saying like I have
00:05:06
a pile that's been sitting there in different sizes since I moved into this house because
00:05:11
I like to clean and have everything clean and empty surfaces but then I have to put it somewhere.
00:05:20
There's so many steps. There's so many fucking steps. It's almost like you sacrifice this
00:05:25
area of the house to be the piled up laundry area because then you can have a clean
00:05:29
room or vice versa. Then if like, you know. I don't care. Mimi keeps peeing on the fucking bed so we have
00:05:37
half the laundry is fucking bedding, which I don't give a shit about. Well and also I think with animals there is just the constant cycle where it like normally I would have wear this shirt You know if you didn like sweat or do something weird you could wear a shirt two times but not not with dogs with white hair no not with cats I don wear any black because of that yeah
00:06:00
pets corner life is difficult with pets with pets pets better and difficulter yeah it's true
00:06:11
It's worth it, though. I think it's the overall vibe. It is. Definitely. It's worth it.
00:06:18
And also, she really enjoys a yard, which is very cute to see. I can't wait to get Cookie a yard.
00:06:25
We just have this, like, balcony. The Cookie, like, suns herself on. It's very sweet.
00:06:30
But there's, like, nowhere for her to do Zoomies. So she has to, like, do them in our, like, around the mid-century modern falling apart dining room table.
00:06:40
Sure. Get it done. I'm like, oh, shit. Okay. This is a cat's house, not a dog house.
00:06:46
What are you going to do? Do you ever take her to that dog park down the street?
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Yeah, but it's disgusting. It's just like pee dirt. It's dirt that has been peed on multiple times.
00:06:59
And then people who are like trying to do something. I'm always like, I can't approach groups of people who seem to be doing something.
00:07:09
Like if I'm at the dog park, I'm there to let the dogs roam free and just kind of like check out.
00:07:16
Yeah. But there's that seems to be almost like a take my business card style. And I can't.
00:07:22
That is a singles fucking meetup. Oh, is it? Oh, my God. That's the best place to meet someone is at a dog park.
00:07:31
Really? Yes. I feel like people go there who don't have dogs to watch dogs because like everyone wants a dog.
00:07:37
but like they don't have room in their apartment or whatever. But they also like it's better than Tinder.
00:07:44
Wow. Oh, that's a good thing. That's a good like thing for the people IRL. That's nice.
00:07:50
Yeah. And it's like it's like I have this burden in life of a dog and I'm single.
00:07:56
So do you. And look at our dogs are playing. Let's fucking meet up again. It's meant to be.
00:08:01
It is. Yeah. Let the dogs decide your relationships. Yeah. And I feel like it's a great place for people who don't drink to meet up to like to meet people who like daytime dates are the fucking worst thing in the world.
00:08:14
Everyone knows that. Yeah. So then you just meet someone at the fucking dog park.
00:08:18
That's really good. That's funny because the only when I used to, you know, I would have to take George every morning and I would go to the illegal Hollywood sign dog park.
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Right. And I didn't talk to anybody. I'm sure people didn't like me because there were definitely social groups there that I would just like I would buzz by and not stop.
00:08:37
But it just reminded me of the time that I was there because I would go at six in the morning just so I like she would get it done.
00:08:43
I wouldn't have to deal with anything. And one time I was standing there by myself and I look up and there was just a guy in a ninja costume fucking doing shit with a sword.
00:08:53
I'm sure I told you that story. And I was just standing there like, so you're so antisocial that you're going to be beheaded at the dog park.
00:09:01
Oh, there she is. Like, you fool. So you hit on him and now you guys are married.
00:09:06
Now you married a ninja. That was my first husband. And the reason I've never met him is because when I come over, he's just a ninja.
00:09:12
He's a ninja. He's always up on the ceiling. He's really shy, but he's so nice. Look.
00:09:18
Look at her. Look at her. She does a kind of like, I love this. It's almost like she's a Jane Austen character.
00:09:23
Her body is very long, but she's a small dog. She looks like Cookie in the way that they could be cast in an Annie production as the street urchin's dog.
00:09:37
She's got that Cookie spot. I love to chew on a boot. I'm an old-fashioned dog. Here's a boot.
00:09:47
I chew on it. And I'm real loyal. Sip, sip of the sarsaparilla. I think they actually also size wise might be a good dog party partners because she's she's totally down for playing and was basically doing has been doing to Frank for the last day.
00:10:06
What Cookie did to Frank when she came over that day, which is just like, please, please, please.
00:10:11
Frank was just like, what? Like every time Cookie would circle him, he was like, what is happening right now?
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I know. Yeah, she'd be good. It almost made me feel like Frank had not spent a lot of time with actual puppies.
00:10:22
Like that dog is like little, little. Yeah. Where he was like, is this a gopher?
00:10:28
Cookie. Except we made her fat on accident because we misread the dog food and we're feeding her twice as much as she was supposed to.
00:10:37
So four meals a day, basically. And we took her to the vet and they're like, um.
00:10:42
And Vince is very protective over her of fat shaming. Yeah. That's kind. Yeah. speaking of ninjas which makes me think of which you said about swords which leads me naturally to
00:10:57
my game of throne updates please which is only this is the only update i have because i haven't
00:11:03
been watching that much sam from fucking the night's watch yeah is in marry me with j-lo and
00:11:12
fucking Owen Wilson. Wait a second. Did you see it? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Did you go to the movies? No,
00:11:20
no, no. It's on TV. It's on the television somewhere. Oh, okay. Karen, I cried. I had
00:11:26
been drinking, but I cried at the end of it. It was cute. We watched it to hate watch and I fucking
00:11:34
loved it Here the thing I believe in J Of course Across the board When that because that trailer for that movie has been on a bunch lately
00:11:46
Yeah. And my dad was here visiting. And every time it would come on, he'd go, I hate that guy.
00:11:52
His nose moves when he talks. I'm like, Dad, you only need to say it once. You only need to yell it once.
00:11:59
Yeah. Yeah. But I think it like the whole setup trailers are cut terribly. Oh, my God.
00:12:06
Yeah. Trailers are cut for people who don't understand what anything is that they're like, oh, oh, my God.
00:12:13
Oh, she does. I heard that. I heard you. Oh, she loves you already. She's a goodie.
00:12:21
She's a good one. She's white, you guys, with some like, oh, is it like orange spots?
00:12:26
she's got yeah she's got she's white with orange ears and then she has one classic almost like
00:12:32
central casting dog spot on the side of her that's also that kind of orangey color and then one
00:12:38
one eye is black the skin around the eye is black and the other one it's pink so it kind of looks
00:12:43
like she's winking at you hey girl hey and she's a happy lady and she's a friend of a family and
00:12:50
also the ears go up and down separately she and cookie might be like long lost cousins
00:12:55
separated by money. Street dog. You can tell there's a little chihuahua in here.
00:13:02
There's a little... There's lots of family members in there. Anyway, I was just going to say,
00:13:11
I'm down. I will completely watch a rom-com. I really enjoy it. It is what it's supposed to be.
00:13:17
You know what I mean? It delivers on that. It has some shitty Rotten Tomatoes fucking score because people don't understand
00:13:23
that you're just supposed to watch a rom-com. Like, it doesn't need to be more than that.
00:13:28
And it's two great actors, and it's really cute, and, like, a bunch of fucking friend of the family,
00:13:32
Michelle Boutot, of course. Are you serious? Yeah. Is she in it? Yeah, Sarah Silverman.
00:13:37
Oh, shit, I have to watch it now. Sarah Silverman, too. It's shiny and cute. You know what I mean?
00:13:42
Everybody. Oh, yeah. That's great. You know what? That casting, what you just named right there,
00:13:47
Sarah Silverman and Michelle Boutot, that means whoever made that movie knows what they're doing
00:13:50
in terms of comedy. They made 90s rom-coms. And they're doing it again. How did Sam from the Night's Watch do?
00:13:58
He was. He came on and I was like, I know that. Oh, you know, like he's in a suit.
00:14:04
So that was like threw me off and was like cleaned up and shit and not in like pelts from fucking wildebeest.
00:14:10
But he's like he's a sweetheart. He's the manager, like the bumbling manager. He's like so cute.
00:14:16
Sweet. Oh, I got to watch it now. Also, he has a great face. A darling face. Yeah.
00:14:22
His darling. his darling face and a great actor i think yeah he was great it was i can't believe i'm i can't
00:14:29
believe i'm like like halfway through i texted girlfriends and was like okay everyone watch this
00:14:35
i'm crying it's cute yeah give into it also it's that kind of thing it's like we were talking about
00:14:40
it before it's what what we need right now is what we need and we can't do we can't do anything
00:14:45
about it i do hate songs that are made up for movies when they're like this is j-lo it's not
00:14:53
Not J-Lo, obviously. This is her hit. But I actually didn't, like, they're catchy still, but they're not like, they're not like
00:14:59
hits, but they're like, they are what they're supposed to be. Yes. It's not clearly a song written by a writer who thinks they're trying to be witty or something.
00:15:09
Skeleton sword fighting, songs made up to be singer songs in movies. Can't handle either of those, but it still worked.
00:15:19
What's the skeleton sword fighting part? That's the thing I don't like in Game of Thrones.
00:15:24
You know, I'm just saying like things that I can't get past sometimes. Skeletons sword fight.
00:15:29
You were just doing a comprehensive list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like here's things. But I was thinking maybe that was act two of this movie.
00:15:36
It's like, okay, so they immediately get married. Then the skeletons come. That's right.
00:15:40
And then they have to fight. Didn't they show this in the terrible trailer? I thought that it was a different trailer.
00:15:47
Well, I was going to tell you about there is a Netflix series that our producer, Hannah Crichton, texted me like two weeks ago, I think, and said, have you seen The Puppet Master?
00:16:02
It's on Netflix. And I said, no. And she said, you drop whatever you're doing, watch the first episode right now and then text me back.
00:16:10
And I was like, OK. And I think it's one of those Netflix that's only either three or four episodes.
00:16:18
So it's like limited, limited series on Netflix. And it is the story of this con man who was in England and or Ireland in the UK, maybe we say, in the 80s, 90s, I feel like.
00:16:32
and it's the craziest like it's next level con man people that go like go in and take over someone's
00:16:40
life and suddenly they give all their money this person and they disappear and they're separate
00:16:44
separated from their family yeah this reminds me that i watch sweet bobby is it the kind of
00:16:51
similar or watch listen to the podcast sweet bobby is it similarly like it it's so next level
00:16:58
of evilness like sweet bobby is fascinating and also like what the hell and everybody wants to
00:17:04
know more and details or at least i do i should say but this guy is like a supercharged con man
00:17:13
according to this let's say allegedly and according to this not netflix documentary
00:17:17
uh right but it you have to watch it okay like it just a staggering the puppet master okay like metallica is that metallica i don know puppet masters the horror movie you mean No isn that Steven Who wearing a Chris Gaines shirt today by the way
00:17:37
Steven. Steven is Puppet Master. Doesn't give a fuck. Yes, it is. It's Master of Puppets.
00:17:42
Master of Puppets. Thank you. Yeah. So I listened to Sweet Poppy. Yeah. I think we should ask people to send in hometown or like for their hometowns catfishing stories.
00:17:55
that they experienced. Because I feel like in early AOL, all of us got fucking catfished by like,
00:18:02
I'm into Modest Mouse 2. Sure. Everyone's like, no, you're a fucking 48-year-old creeper.
00:18:09
Yep. Yeah. That's a great idea. It was hard to listen to. Then we should pitch it to MTV
00:18:15
and we should call it Catfish. Karen, with the ideas coming in. Right? Pitches, IPs, television plays.
00:18:25
that's what podcasting that's the point of it but i do you're right i love that idea because
00:18:30
probably everybody has at least one minorly creepy experience yeah whether it's creepy or like someone
00:18:38
trying to get their money like i know that that's or like the grandma's money that's like a normal
00:18:43
thing for sure yeah and i remember that thing that was going around where it was like uh
00:18:47
some you know say the electric company would call up and get a grandma they're like you need to pay
00:18:54
your bill or everything's going to get turned off, but we need you to pay it in gift cards.
00:18:59
Read us the, or was it, wasn't that? Or like, go buy gift cards or something. The number on the, yes.
00:19:07
Dude, it's, it's a confusing, um, leave grandmas alone. I mean, they need that money to give us $5 bills on our birthday cards.
00:19:19
Um, all right. I have an Instagram to suggest that I found that someone suggested to me that I just loved so much.
00:19:28
I posted a photo from San Francisco eating the yellow Oreos and having a whiskey and yellow Oreos in bed watching fucking, you know, 2020 or whatever.
00:19:40
And someone was like, you need to follow this Instagram. And it's called The Eating Bed.
00:19:46
And the caption is photos from the queen size napkin. a.k.a. the eating bed and this dude just posts people send him and this reminds me of us on tour
00:19:58
so much when we'd like at the end of the night we go to our respective hotel rooms we'd order room
00:20:02
service we'd both put on fucking forensic files and we'd send each other a photo of our chicken
00:20:06
wing fucking Caesar salad situation and it's just photos of fucking food on sheets white sheets
00:20:16
they tag whatever like it's people submit them and they tag whatever restaurant it is and it's
00:20:23
just like different but like funny captions this person must be like a comedian the eating bed
00:20:28
that's genius it's just made me so happy you know what's really funny and i you know like
00:20:35
doing that on the road and that's such like hotel room behavior of like anything goes also where
00:20:40
you're supposed to go like sit at that weird two top that's in the corner like i'm not doing that
00:20:44
The sticky, weird two top. Yeah. No, I'm not going to go sit at a table for one in my own hotel room.
00:20:50
Can I please just do what I want? Right. But I never think to do that. I never think to do it at home.
00:20:57
And it was like right after I came home from Christmas or, you know, that trip, there was
00:21:03
one day where whatever happened, it was like I had to do five things in a row. And then I ended up just like, I was like, I just need to lay down.
00:21:09
I think I also was scared I had COVID or because I was like, God, I'm just fucking exhausted, like to the bone.
00:21:17
And then I remember like, oh, I should order dinner now because there's going to be a delay and whatever.
00:21:23
And then it dawned on me. I can just stay here. I can get up, go to the door and bring it back in here because I never think to do that.
00:21:34
Not to say that I am not gross and eat a bunch of crazy shit. You're not above it.
00:21:39
It just never. Not above it, but the bed is, it really is kind of the beyond. The term queen size napkin really fucking hit me in a deep, deep place.
00:21:54
Like Vince and I will take a towel and lay it out. And then in every photo, it's like they're clearly traveling, which means you order all the McDonald's options.
00:22:04
And which means sometimes they forget to give you chopsticks with your ramen. So you have to use two coffee stirs.
00:22:13
Everything is in there. Or like you can tell it was like, OK, late night. I got all I got my entire meal from Walgreens.
00:22:20
And yes, she's in charcuterie, but it's Walgreens. I just it made me so fucking happy.
00:22:26
I remember near the end of that tour when it was like, you know, not to blame you,
00:22:31
but you were the one that was doing it because you're married to him where you'd be like,
00:22:35
Vince, you cannot let us order mac and cheese. Yes. Like you would yell it at him like it was somehow his responsibility where it's like,
00:22:41
there's no way if I went, Vince, I'm getting mac and cheese. He wouldn't be like, sounds good.
00:22:45
Yeah, you told me not to. Also, Vince is an enabler. Like we're super fucking, what's the word when you're really intertwined, intertwangled?
00:22:54
Codependent? We're really codependent. So he'll be like, okay, you said not to get it, but I ordered it because I know you love it.
00:23:01
And I just want you to be happy. You know what I mean? He won't fucking listen. If I say don't do it, he'll double down and do both and do it.
00:23:09
He wants you to be happy. I know. Yeah. And he wants you to be happy. And he also doesn't want to tell you not to eat things because he's not a fucking...
00:23:16
No. I wish I... I wish I could do it. Like, it's pretty basic. It's just like, and also every morning we would
00:23:25
get up and be like, why did I eat mac and cheese at 1230 at night? You know what my thing was?
00:23:30
It's not why did I eat mac and cheese at 1230 nights? Why did I eat bad mac and cheese at 1230
00:23:35
at night? If it was really good, like that was fucking worth it. And hell yeah. But instead,
00:23:39
it's like you ordered or got the kids menu. Yes. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be
00:23:44
cheese and macaroni. Yeah. Remember the mac and cheese I ordered? I'm pretty sure we were in North
00:23:50
Carolina because it came with goldfish crackers on top of the mac and cheese. And I had to send
00:23:55
you a picture. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I got other shit, but I feel like we covered everything.
00:24:01
I mean, I think we've covered all the truly relevant topics of our day. Oh, my only other
00:24:07
thing. Sorry. I do want to say this because my dad came into town and stayed with me on his way
00:24:13
down to Palm Springs for the Super Bowl party. And while he was here, I'd already read this book,
00:24:19
and then I gave it to him to read. There's a writer named Seamus O'Reilly, Irish, obviously.
00:24:25
He's from Derry. He's from Northern Ireland. And every time I read the name Derry in this book,
00:24:32
I got a cringe of the time I called it Londonderry on this show, because that's what it said on the
00:24:39
map. He is a columnist. He's like, and he's a friend of me, I believe, or knows Maeve Higgins,
00:24:46
who's my friend, who's also Irish. Anyway, he sent me this book and it's called, Did You Hear Mammy
00:24:54
Died? And it's about him being one of 11 children and his mom died when he was five. And it's a book
00:25:04
of some of the most hilarious essays I've ever read about like what his family life was like in
00:25:10
that whole experience. And it, the writing is, is so good and so funny that I gave it to my dad and
00:25:17
I was like, you're going to die. And it was like, he finished it in like two days. So it's got two
00:25:22
thumbs up from the Kilgareffs. What's it say the name again? It's called Digiye, Here Mammy Died,
00:25:29
and uh the writer Seamus O'Reilly it's if you're looking for like it's um it's a memoir
00:25:35
so they're essays but it's just really about like a certain very specific experience it's just like
00:25:43
and they're just it flows along and it's it's laugh out loud hilarious which it's pretty great
00:25:51
Okay, perfect. Single drunk female. TV show I like. Who's in that? It's like kind of, you know, young people.
00:26:01
So I don't really know that many people. Sophia Black De'Elia. She was on like Gossip Girl.
00:26:10
I don't fucking know. But you know who is in it that I recognize because she's older is Ally Sheedy plays the mom.
00:26:16
And you're like, holy shit. Oh, yeah. But then this chick, Lily Mae Harrington, who's the best friend, who has a strong Boston accent and plays fake drunk beautifully.
00:26:26
And you know how much I appreciate a fake drunk turn. The greatest. But it's about a girl trying to get sober and it's really good.
00:26:33
I like that a lot on Hulu. Yeah. It's like heartwarming and funny and fucked up.
00:26:38
I believe in Hulu. They make good shows. They really do. They really do. All right.
00:26:45
What about our business? Let's do business. Oh, yeah, we have business. Let's do it.
00:26:48
Da-da-da. Boo. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. What? On Exactly Right Network Highlights this week, Bridger's guest this week, and I said no gifts, is none other than Weird Al Yankovic.
00:27:00
Like, come on. We've been freaking out about this, like, on the staff meeting for, like, two months.
00:27:07
It's the booking of a lifetime. My dream. Everyone is so thrilled. And also it's to celebrate Bridger's 100th episode, which is kind of mind boggling that he already has 100 episodes done.
00:27:20
And it was the Apple podcast spotlight pick of the month. Of the month. So congratulations.
00:27:27
Bridger, you killed it. Great job. You're a dear. You know, of course, hats off to Weird Al Yankovic for all of your hard work and dedication.
00:27:36
Yeah. Yeah. On Parent Footprint, hosted by my cousin, Dr. Dan. That's right. They're insulting to call a doctor your cousin.
00:27:45
No, that's a fact. That is a fact. He chats with pediatrician Dr. Ken Ginsberg, who's a specialist in the ever so complicated teen and parent communication field, which, wow, how does that happen?
00:28:03
Prove it, Ken. Prove it. Let's get your daughter in here right now. As my dad always says, you've succeeded as a parent if your adult children still want to talk to you.
00:28:13
Yeah. Oh, yes, Marty. That is true. That is a very good point. I'd love it if Dr. Dan started the interview by saying prove it can.
00:28:23
Oh, and to wrap it up, we have hello and welcome. Welcome, Matt, for your front door over at the My Favorite Murder store.
00:28:34
I believe it's myfavoritemurder.com. You've got it. That's the one. Dot org? Dot this.
00:28:44
Dot CA? No. That reminds me, speaking of podcasts. So last week, we had an incredible crossover episode with the woman and Phoebe Judge from
00:28:54
Criminal telling us a story which was like epic. But people kept thinking that it was you doing a voice.
00:29:04
I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it Like in the very beginning that epic like when we introduce ourselves and then she goes and I Phoebe Judge Like people thought you were fucking with us
00:29:15
Oh, I love it. It's such a compliment that I would, first of all, like adhere to a bit for that long.
00:29:22
Yeah. And also be that good because my version of Phoebe Judge is very much a caricature and not.
00:29:29
And when she actually said it, when we recorded that episode, like I got chills because Phoebe Judge is truly the shit.
00:29:38
And I think it feels like people who listen to this podcast, when they saw that post, they went crazy.
00:29:44
They were super stoked about her, actually. And it was the most delightful conversation.
00:29:48
She's truly such a cool person. Yeah. Shocking to no one. She's rad and a professional, but also says the word mother.
00:29:56
That the little the little what's it called Easter egg at the end where it sounds like Karen is making a fake saying motherfucker.
00:30:04
That's Phoebe Judge. It is not Karen doing a fake motherfucker. Phoebe Judge says motherfucker. Please listen.
00:30:11
The episode was so I'm I feel very like proud of us for for putting that like for doing that.
00:30:17
It feels very like a really cool like a cool thing that we got to do in our careers with someone we really admire.
00:30:24
We genuinely admire. And also it was Phoebe Judge's idea to say, hey, there's all these stories that on Criminal We Can't, me and Lauren Spore, can't produce because like there's not no one's living or whatever.
00:30:38
That whole idea of her with the file of like the stories that need to be told. Yeah.
00:30:44
And that she wants to tell them to us. It's like, hell yes, girl, anytime. So cool.
00:30:49
Yeah. It was really exciting. Yeah. So thank you, Phoebe. Thank you. Thank you. thank you thank you and good night she played ball and she said motherfucker which like
00:30:59
she said at the beginning of the episode and i was like oh this is gonna be fine
00:31:02
yeah exactly it was mother fuck right that was that's her mother fuck it's like almost a
00:31:08
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00:34:04
slash MFM. Goodbye. Okay, so I talked about this and I can't remember now if it was in a Minnesota
00:34:15
or a regular episode. And I told a very shortened version of it because it was a story that I was
00:34:21
told when I attended Charles Nelson Reilly's one man show in 2001 in at the Tuluka Lake Falcon
00:34:30
Theater, which is still there and still in business. Charles Nelson Reilly, who has since
00:34:35
passed RIP to a real one, did a one man show that my friend Scott King and I went to. And it was
00:34:42
amazing. But in it, he told this story of going. He was from Connecticut. He grew up there. And when
00:34:48
he was 13 years old he went to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus But his mother had told him not to go and they kind of snuck out anyway And and then he goes on to tell the story of the Hartford Circus fire which he was there for
00:35:05
And which we've had relatives of survivors write us emails about. So when I talked about it in passing, somebody emailed us and was like, you have to or tweeted and said, you have to go find my email because my great grandmother was a survivor.
00:35:23
So I am officially now going to tell you the story of the Hartford Circus Fire. Oy vey.
00:35:31
It's heavy duty. Okay. So let's see. There's an official website about the Hartford Circus Fire.
00:35:38
It's circusfire1944.com. So there's a lot of information taken from there, from the Wikipedia page.
00:35:44
There's an Associated Press article. There's an article in the Paris Review by a writer named William Browning called Tears of a Clown.
00:35:53
and of course Charles and Wilson Riley's Wikipedia page. Please bookmark that for yourself.
00:35:59
And then there is an article from the New York Times archive. There's an article from the Hartford Courant by a writer named Tom Condon called Hartford
00:36:09
Circus Fire Day of Panic Heroes. There was a story about it on NPR's Morning Edition.
00:36:15
and Brendan Reimitz wrote an article for Chem History about it. So those are all the sources.
00:36:26
All right. So it's July 6, 1944, and we're in Hartford, Connecticut, and the circus has come to town.
00:36:34
The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, they're in their second day of performances,
00:36:39
and the afternoon matinee on this day, July 6, had sold somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 tickets.
00:36:47
Holy shit. Which I didn't even think. No. At all, it was that big. For one big top, right?
00:36:55
Yeah. I would think like 400. Right? The maximum capacity of the big top was 9,000.
00:37:02
Too many people. Yeah, right? It's so many people. And it was a three ring circus.
00:37:07
This is old school. You know, it's the 40s. It's the oldest of old schools circuses.
00:37:12
Yeah. Um, so at two 23, um, eight minutes late from the scheduled start time of two 15, the ringmaster,
00:37:21
Fred Branda steps to the center ring and welcomes the crowd. And then of course,
00:37:27
a tiny clown car enters and 20 or so clowns spill out of it to the delight of all who are familiar
00:37:33
with how cars actually work. There's simply too many clowns to fit in this one time. Amazing.
00:37:42
So next up is the big cat display. It's featuring lions and tigers performing stunts.
00:37:47
They're in cages, but they're, you know, out in the ring. And then it's time for one of the show's most popular acts, the family of trapeze artists called the Great Walendas.
00:37:58
They would later be known by the nickname the press gave them, which was the Flying Walendas, which is what my dad used to call us when we jumped on the bed.
00:38:07
It was like a nomenclature, like a thing. Exactly. Because when I saw the great Wallendas, I was like, Jay, you got the name wrong. And then I looked it up because, you know, and then it was like, oh, no, that was like their nickname, basically, because they could fly through the air.
00:38:23
Okay, so the Great Wallendas start their dangerous and spectacular high wire stunts.
00:38:31
It's now about 2.40 in the afternoon. So near the middle of the Wallendas act, the circus's band leader, his name was Merle Evans,
00:38:41
he spots something on the sidewall of the tent near the front entrance, flames. So these flames are, they're moving quickly.
00:38:51
They're like growing and moving so fast. that Merle immediately directs the band to play Stars and Stripes forever,
00:38:58
which is the circus's subtle distress signal to alert the staff that something is wrong without frightening the audience.
00:39:07
Isn't that the best insider information? Yes. It's like when they say at hospitals,
00:39:11
like, doctor, panic, something's happening in the, we need you in this place. What if that was the code at hospitals where some of the smartest people
00:39:23
people work. And they're like, I don't know, call him Dr. Panic. Dr. Panic, nothing crazy is
00:39:29
happening. But we'll just meet you over in the ICU now. Dr. Freakout, please report to level four.
00:39:36
Dr. Freakout. So okay, so they're playing Stars and Stripes forever. But by this time,
00:39:42
several members of the audience have already spotted the flames. Some start yelling fire.
00:39:46
Yeah. So ringmaster Fred Brandis gets back on the mic. He tries to tell everybody to stay calm
00:39:53
and to exit in an orderly fashion. Fucking 8,000 people. Yeah, right. But as he's trying to say this, the power cuts,
00:40:02
and so no one can hear him talking. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. So also, just to remind you that the fire started near the front entrance.
00:40:13
So where everybody, we talked about this in other stories like this, where you walk in is usually where you will run out if there's an emergency.
00:40:21
So it's always good to look at where exits are because there's always emergency exits in other places and to not go the way you came because that's where everyone else is going to go, especially when there's 8,000 people.
00:40:34
So especially in 1944, when everything is just like made from flammable material, like every single thing is just like excited to catch on fire.
00:40:44
And everyone from seven to 77 is a smoker two packs a day men And this is the circus I actually say this later but it the circus where everything on the ground is straw
00:40:56
Right. It's it's a tinderbox. Like and then there's another detail that's a little bit mind blowing that I'll tell you after.
00:41:02
OK, so so three minutes later, a fire alarm starts blaring, which alerts the local fire department that there's an emergency on the circus grounds.
00:41:10
But the flames climb up the sides of the tent at an incredible speed. And because the fire is burning at the front where everyone entered, it looks like there's no way out.
00:41:19
And the crowd goes into a frenzied panic. So it is truly worst case scenario inside this tent.
00:41:26
So real quick, I'm going to break from that and give you the history of circuses.
00:41:32
Hey. Just to change it up a little bit. Take a deep breath. Right. Okay. So originally a British phenomenon, big top circuses began touring America around 1871.
00:41:44
And the most popular ones at the time were Barnum and Bailey Circus, which was founded by P.T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey.
00:41:52
And then also the Ringling Brothers Circus, which was founded by the seven Ringling Brothers.
00:41:57
So after James Bailey's death in 1907, the Ringling Brothers buy out Barnum and Bailey.
00:42:04
And then they merged the two in 1919 to become Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which is then billed as the greatest show on Earth.
00:42:15
So I shortened it to RB and B&B is the largest circus act in the country. And their success continues to grow through the Roaring Twenties.
00:42:25
It was called, quote, one record breaking giant of all exhibitions. So its popularity takes a dip in the 30s because of the Great Depression, of course.
00:42:37
But then it bounces back in the early 40s because of World War Two, basically in an effort to boost wartime morale in the States.
00:42:46
President Roosevelt excludes the circus from the train travel restrictions that the rest of the country is subject to.
00:42:52
So apparently it's like, don't nobody, nobody travel on trains, but the circus got to keep theirs and basically enables them to maintain their popularity through the 40s and into the 50s.
00:43:05
But in the 40s, because of the war, the railways are short staffed and they're stretched thin.
00:43:12
So this leads to delays in scheduling. So, in fact, because of those delays, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus arrived late in Hartford on July 5th, 1944, and they were actually forced to cancel their matinee show.
00:43:28
So this was the day before the fire. Oh, yep. And Circus Superstition says it is extremely bad luck to miss a show.
00:43:39
Also, you're not allowed to whistle under the big top. You always step into the ring on your right foot.
00:43:44
And if you find an elephant hair, it's considered very lucky. What? Those are just some other circus superstitions that I wanted to tell you about.
00:43:53
All right. And that was from a website called Skirkus that seems to be about all things circus.
00:44:01
Oh, I know that. I've spent many late nights scrolling Skirkus.com. What I didn't understand was that I am fascinated with circus superstitions.
00:44:10
Turns out. Turns out I will hear about them all day long. Okay. So, but missing a show, that superstition actually proves to be true because while the evening show goes off without a hitch, the circus employees feel uneasy heading into the rest of the week.
00:44:28
And that uneasiness is proven correct one day later when the fire breaks out. So we're back to the fire.
00:44:37
The ushers hear that music cue. And then, of course, then they hear the cries of fire.
00:44:41
They rush toward the flames with buckets of water, but it's spreading so quickly that it just is ineffectual.
00:44:48
And actually, the circus's most popular clown, a clown named Weary Willie, who's actually a performer named Emmett Kelly, who, if you saw a picture, he's the most famous looking clown face.
00:45:00
He looks sad and his mouth is a stripe of white. But then he has like a five o'clock shadow and a big red nose and he just looks kind of bummed out.
00:45:09
Classical timey. Yeah, he that's a performer named Emmett Kelly. He heard the screams and he ran out and tried to fight the fire himself. And there's actually a picture that a newspaper photographer was able to take that day. That's like one of the more legendary pictures from this day of like this sad looking clown who's just like doing his best to try to put this fire out.
00:45:33
But by the time everyone got out there, the fire has reached the top of the canvas tent.
00:45:40
So now flaming bits of canvas and wax coating are falling down on the people below, burning and sticking to the audience member's skin.
00:45:51
Eventually, the ushers realize they need to give up trying to put the fire out and work on guiding the audience to safety any way they can.
00:45:58
But even with their help, it's pure chaos because some people manage to escape from the tent only to get outside and realize that their loved ones are still trapped inside.
00:46:09
And so they run back in. Horrifying. Also, other people stay seated, either stunned in shock or hoping that the circus staff will either put the fire out or tell them what to do.
00:46:22
So a lot of people just kind of keep their seats and are watching it almost like it's part of the show.
00:46:27
Oh, my God. Some run into the center ring desperate to find a way out, but they only end up running in circles because there's no clear way to leave aside from the way they came in. And in the midst of the chaos.
00:46:40
Most people are just trying to help each other get out, lifting and even tossing children over barriers and cutting holes into the sides of the tent, like with knives to let people free.
00:46:51
Hell yeah. And to be said that it was World War II, so the majority of people in this tent were women and children.
00:46:58
Yeah. Yeah. So now also the big cats, which was the act that had just ended before the Flying Alondas, are still in the tent and they're backstage waiting to be led out of their performance cages and into there's basically a system.
00:47:14
They have enclosed wire chutes that the cats walk from their performance cages out through these wire chutes and into the outside cages where they stay.
00:47:25
But people don't know that. And they're looking for an escape. So they end up. It's horrible.
00:47:31
No, no. They end up running through the flaps and into the wire cages where lions and tigers are also leaving the tent.
00:47:41
And the wire chutes are not big enough to hold people running out, especially en masse.
00:47:49
So, of course, there's a crush of people. And so there's people who are trampled.
00:47:54
And there's also people, they're in there with lions and tigers. It's a nightmare.
00:47:59
Also, one of these chutes just disengages entirely. And then lions and tigers are just running free.
00:48:05
And they're panicked, too. So they're like. Yeah. It's horrifying. Okay. And so so other audience members try to escape the burning tent by climbing up the bleachers and jumping off the back so that they can at least try to slip out like under the bottom of the tent.
00:48:25
And that was actually the story that Charles Nelson Reilly told in his one man show where they were.
00:48:30
I can't remember if he said they had snuck in in the first place. Right. Right. Or but but basically that's him. And I believe it was his cousin that was with him snuck out. They immediately when they saw the fire just went under. Yeah, I think it's because they snuck in. So they went back the way they came and they just just ran and kept running all the way home is the way he told it.
00:48:53
So, yeah, there's people that were basically like, well, I can't go down because that's where there's so many people down there.
00:49:01
There's you're just be adding to the mass of people. So they ran up the bleachers and then jumped off the back.
00:49:07
In some instances, this actually ends up working for 11 year old Maureen Krikian, who later remembers that she was, quote, sitting up in the bleachers and jumped down.
00:49:18
I was three quarters of the way up. You jump down and it was all straw underneath.
00:49:23
There was a young man, a kid, and he had a pocket knife and he slit the tent, took my arm and pulled me out.
00:49:30
So it was kind of like just another kid, like people just doing whatever they could to help other people survive.
00:49:37
For others, jumping from the top of the bleachers only leads to injuries and in some cases death.
00:49:42
So it's just people panicking and doing whatever they can. After just a few minutes, the fire reaches the top of the tent. And when it does, it blazes across the canvas so quickly, there's a loud sound that would later be compared to a jet aircraft on takeoff.
00:50:00
The support poles inside the tent start to weaken and buckle as more flaming canvas falls from above. One boy, six year old Jack Mayhar, he was six years old at the time. He remembers his dad carrying him into the fire toward the entrance and away from the rest of the panicked mob.
00:50:19
He says, quote, to get to the street and the handler yelled yes of course go ahead so this guy took his
00:50:56
kid and just fucking booked it out of there and then was i mean that's the like insanity of it
00:51:02
then you're just met with a herd of elephants when you get outside so crazy so jack and his father
00:51:07
like many of the survivors find their way out of the burning big top only to realize they can't get
00:51:13
their cars out of the parking lot because all of the emergency vehicles have arrived and they're
00:51:18
now blocking the exits and the roads. They also can't use pay phones to call loved ones and let
00:51:24
them know they're all right because all the lines are tied up by emergency personnel. So there's no
00:51:29
way to get through with nowhere to go, no way to contact anyone to come pick them up. Many of the
00:51:35
survivors are left standing outside of the burning tent, watching it burn and listening to the screams
00:51:42
of the people trapped inside. It's horrifying. One survivor, Carol Tillman Parrish says, quote,
00:51:49
until this day, I can smell the stench of human flesh. Horrifying. She was only six years old
00:51:55
on that day. Okay. So here is the email from listeners, Elise and Claire. So they wrote in,
00:52:05
Our Nana, Catriona, was 10 years old in 1944 when her mother took her and her cousin to
00:52:12
the Ringling Brothers Circus in Hartford, Connecticut. They were sitting near the orchestra and enjoying the greatest show on earth when a fire broke
00:52:20
out under the big top tent. She remembered looking around and seeing a sea of people stampeding toward the tent exit When she stood up to follow the panicked crowd my great Nana who was also named Catriona told her and her cousin to sit down and wait
00:52:38
Nana then saw a line of fire moving across the other side of the tent toward them.
00:52:43
They waited a bit for the crowd to move. And then they walked to the end of the bleachers,
00:52:47
jumped down where the lions came out and walked to the back of the tent. So basically,
00:52:52
she did that thing, which is you go away from the crush and the crowd and find an exit in a
00:52:57
different direction, but toward lions. I mean, like there's, it's the worst kind of chaos.
00:53:04
Okay. They ran across a field and sat under some bushes until great Nana deemed the situation safe
00:53:10
enough to leave. The other two Catriona's and Nana's cousin had to travel to another town
00:53:17
to call my great grandfather to let him know that they were all right, because close by phone lines
00:53:22
were completely tied up by first responders. After dropping the kids off at home,
00:53:26
Great Nana, who was a Red Cross aide, returned to the scene to help the victims of either the fire or the stampede.
00:53:36
And then it says, talk about remaining calm and going where you can be most helpful.
00:53:40
I've always admired the strong get shit done quality of most of the women in my family.
00:53:46
Nana went on to become a nurse and volunteer with many organizations, including the Burlington, Connecticut fire department.
00:53:52
Wow. So that's an, you know, slightly more uplifting survivor story of like, holy shit.
00:53:59
And the idea that that woman went back after what she saw and experienced, because it was
00:54:05
the same as all those, you know what I mean? It's like, it was the same as all those other people.
00:54:08
And she was like, I have to go there and help. Yeah. It's incredible. Okay. So by 2.50 PM, the fire has completely consumed the big top tent.
00:54:19
So that's, it's like 20 minutes essentially. Yeah. I was going to say how long. Oh my God.
00:54:24
Yeah. Because remember they started late. They were supposed to start at 2.15. They started almost like 2.30.
00:54:28
Yeah. Or so. Yeah. So basically the, that was when the roof collapsed onto center ring and trapped the remaining
00:54:38
people inside. So by 2.50, the whole thing came down. Holy shit. Every nurse doctor and first responder in the area comes out to help.
00:54:48
They set up triage in the parking lot and in the field surrounding the fire to treat burns, broken bones, and other injuries while the fire department works diligently to put the fire out.
00:55:00
And when everything is said and done, around 700 people are injured and at least 168 people are dead.
00:55:09
Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Considering it's 8,000 people, though, it's not surprising.
00:55:20
Okay. So investigators get to work trying to identify as many of the bodies as they can.
00:55:27
But of course, them being burned victims makes it really difficult. They're able to identify most of the victims, but there are a handful that can't be identified.
00:55:39
And one of them is a little girl who becomes one of the most notable and well-known victims because they end up calling her.
00:55:50
I don't love this name. I don't like saying it. Little Miss 1565, which was her number assignment from the morgue.
00:55:59
But I think it was done lovingly. lovingly, they end up putting this picture in the newspaper trying to identify her,
00:56:07
trying to see if there's family somewhere that, you know, she's missing. Yeah. But that's the only way they don't know how to identify her.
00:56:15
Her face is actually intact. And so it's a recognizable face. And that's why they end up putting it in the paper.
00:56:22
Oh my God. First statewide and then nationwide, hoping that somebody would be able to come forward and identify her.
00:56:29
No one does. And they end up burying her. in the Northwood Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.
00:56:36
Wow. So investigators soon learned why the fire spread so rapidly. In an effort to waterproof the canvas of the tent,
00:56:45
the canvas had been coated in a combination of paraffin wax and gasoline. I knew it was going to be something fucking stupid.
00:56:53
Yeah. Oh, my God. To make it waterproof. So basically they put a candle on the entire fucking thing.
00:57:00
Yes. a candle that all that had a center of gasoline i mean like horrifying and also um this was another
00:57:08
thing charles nelson riley talked about in his one-man show where it was like it wasn't just
00:57:12
coated like you know sponge painted or whatever it on the parts of the the big top where it kind
00:57:20
of i'm doing this with my hand am i getting it's gone thank you it's concave i saw it it's pools of
00:57:26
gasoline and paraffin are sitting in those. You know what I mean? It's all over there. So it was like
00:57:32
so incredibly flammable. Incendiary. That's what they call it. Yes, that's right.
00:57:38
Although effective with waterproofing, which is like, is this your biggest concern in July?
00:57:44
Yeah. But I guess it was. So investigators examine the wreckage. They try their best to pinpoint
00:57:50
how the fire started, aside from why it spread so quickly. But their best guess is someone must have flicked a cigarette at or near the tent.
00:58:00
But because of the size and the scope of the fire, there are lots of Hartford citizens that believe that the fire was the work of an arsonist.
00:58:07
And with no hard evidence suggesting that these suspicions might be true, the investigation is left inconclusive.
00:58:15
Yeah So then in 1950 so this is six years later a 22 year old man by the name of Robert Dale Seiji is arrested for arson in you will not believe this none other than our Squad Gord hometown of Circleville Ohio
00:58:32
Oh, shit. Right. So Seiji is accused of setting 25 to 30 fires in Portland, Maine.
00:58:39
Oh, my God. So he's a true arsonist firebug among other violent crimes. So he signs a confession while in police custody stating that he is the one who set the Hartford Circus fire.
00:58:51
And he talks about having a vision where a Native American riding a flaming horse comes to him and tells him to start setting fires.
00:59:00
And then after he has this vision, he blacks out. And when he comes to the circus is on fire.
00:59:06
Records indicate that CG, who was at who was 16 years old at the time, was working as a roustabout.
00:59:13
which I think we talked about that term. It's an old fashioned word for a temporary laborer for the
00:59:19
Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus from June 30th, 1944 to July 13th, 1944.
00:59:27
So he actually could have done it. Yeah. He worked for them in exactly that time frame,
00:59:33
but there's no hard evidence that puts him in Hartford at the time of the fire. There's no
00:59:37
travel records. There's no eyewitness accounts, which would make sense if you're on the circus
00:59:42
train that you could just kind of be on it and no one's, you know, is there a check, a check-in?
00:59:48
I don't think so. And there's also no direct evidence that links him to proving that he could
00:59:55
have lit the fire, like say burned skin, burned clothing, nothing like that. On top of that,
01:00:00
Connecticut officials are quote, denied access to statements made by the youth and quote,
01:00:06
because he's being held in a psychiatric hospital for observation. Robert C.G. gets a 44-year prison sentence for the arson charges filed against him in Maine,
01:00:15
but he's never formally charged for the Hartford Circus fire. And he actually, shortly after he's sentenced, he recants his confession to the Hartford Circus fire.
01:00:26
I just don't think that he's even necessary in it. You know what I mean? Like a match from a cigarette.
01:00:35
it's all a mirror a watch that's like pointed at that yeah yeah it feels like any little thing
01:00:42
so basically that that kind of line of questioning of could it be an arsonist and them looking into
01:00:47
it and whatever didn't really pan out and that was also six years later the day after the fire
01:00:53
the five top ringling brothers and barnum and bailey circus executives are arrested on circus
01:01:00
grounds and they're all charged with involuntary manslaughter. So it's the vice president,
01:01:07
the general manager, the circus executive, the chief electrician, and the chief wagon man are
01:01:13
all arrested. So essentially, and I think this was before the litigation type of culture that we live
01:01:21
in now, this is kind of how they used to do it where the case ended up getting these cases of
01:01:26
involuntary manslaughter, they get settled out of court because the circus then agrees to take
01:01:31
full financial responsibility for the disaster. The amount agreed upon between the city of Hartford
01:01:37
and the Ringling Brothers and Bartim and Bailey Circus is roughly $5 million to be paid out to
01:01:43
both the city and 600 of the victims, including families of those who died that day and some of
01:01:50
the most severely injured survivors. This payout would equal about $73.8 million today.
01:01:58
And the circus ends up forfeiting all of their profits for the next 10 years in order to pay
01:02:04
that settlement. Wow. Yeah. Which I don't know the details of how all of that got settled,
01:02:10
obviously, but it seems to me to be a pretty decent thing. Yeah. I mean, but it's such a huge,
01:02:17
horrible disaster. Yeah. It makes sense that they would they would hold people accountable. Yeah.
01:02:23
Okay. So decades later, in 1982, Hartford fire lieutenant and history buff Rick Davey learns
01:02:30
about the Hartford fire and he sees the photograph of the little girl that was not identified
01:02:36
and he's haunted by the image. So he sets out to investigate the fire and to try to discover her
01:02:42
identity. So after running countless burn tests and examining existing evidence,
01:02:48
Davey concludes that the fire could not have been started by a cigarette. And he presents an arson
01:02:53
theory to the FBI. And the FBI agrees about his point about the cigarette, which I think is really
01:03:00
interesting. It's like it couldn't have happened the way in that way. Wow. Because and maybe it's
01:03:05
just like one cigarette, you know, couldn't have made like all of it go up at the same time or
01:03:10
whatever. So the FBI agrees about the cigarette, but quote, refuses to comment on the arson theory.
01:03:17
So maybe there's something in there that they couldn't comment on. Even still, it prompts a
01:03:22
new interview with the man who recanted his confession to starting the fire, Robert C.G.
01:03:27
And in 1991, C.G. says, I can't talk to anyone about that. It's happened too long ago. I don't
01:03:33
want to. I've been tested enough and they ruined my life. I didn't set the fire. I was had.
01:03:40
Hmm. So we don't know what that means. He denied setting the Hartford Circus fire his whole life and passed away in 1997.
01:03:51
The true cause of the Hartford Circus fire remains a mystery to this day. Wow. But after nine years of investigating, Lieutenant Rick Davey is finally able to put a name to the face of the unidentified girl.
01:04:04
eight Eleanor Cook was at the circus that day with her mother Mildred and her brothers Donald who was nine and Edward who was eight When the fire started nine Donald was separated from the family and he managed to slip out underneath one of the sides of the tent
01:04:23
Mildred then made it out with Edward, but the six-year-old had such serious injuries that he died a day later.
01:04:30
And as we know, Eleanor never made it outside of the tent. Investigators worked with Eleanor's family in the wake of the tragedy to try and help locate and identify Eleanor's body.
01:04:41
So this is from the other side of them trying to find their lost daughter and lost sister.
01:04:49
But the one time they were called in to see the body in question, that body did not look like Eleanor to them.
01:04:57
And years later, they believe they may have accidentally been shown the wrong body.
01:05:02
So because there were so many children there, the odds that that could have happened.
01:05:08
And also that it was like such a disaster to a level that I'm sure most people, they didn't have anything set up to do things properly.
01:05:18
Right. So and on top of that, how do you identify like burn victims? It's really tough.
01:05:24
And you've just been through an insanely traumatic event. Right. Wow. Yeah. It's so tough.
01:05:31
when Donald Cook, who was nine the day of the fire, when he saw the photo of Little Miss 1565
01:05:39
in the newspaper, he contacted authorities to say he believed it was his sister,
01:05:44
but nothing ever came of his report, which makes me think if it happened, even in like five years
01:05:51
later, he would still have only been 14 years old and may have just been dismissed as like a prank
01:05:56
call or, you know, just like not listen to because he was a kid. Or I bet there were so many people
01:06:02
calling in if a hundred something people died. And the list just was the whole thing was probably
01:06:09
overwhelming for the police force there. Absolutely. And for whoever they had set up,
01:06:14
like day of, they have, I'm sure tons of volunteers, but it's like long after when it's that horrible
01:06:20
job of identifying bodies. It's just, and also I wonder, Mildred Cook lost two of her children
01:06:26
in that fire. So I wonder if like, she wasn't there to be, you know, it's like, she's not there
01:06:33
to find the child because her whole, she's devastated. It's just, it makes me very sad
01:06:40
to think about that. Like a little kid thinking he needs to take care of it. Totally. Even if,
01:06:46
even if he's a teenager, he's still a little kid, you know, comparatively. So Lieutenant Davies' investigation prompts some DNA testing, and in 1991, Donald is finally proven right, and his sister is identified as the girl in the newspaper photo.
01:07:05
Eleanor Cook's body is exhumed, and she's reburied next to her brother, Edward. So she got to go home.
01:07:12
In the wake of the tragedy, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus does eventually get a new non-flammable waterproof coating for their tents, obviously.
01:07:21
But by 1957, after their debts to the victims and the city of Hartford are all paid, they switch from performing in tents to performing in established stadiums and arenas.
01:07:32
Right. Which is kind of interesting that that might have been the emphasis for that.
01:07:36
It was just like that. Yeah. They continue their run for the next few decades, but run-ins with animal rights activists coupled with higher costs and low audience turnout caused the circus to shut down in 2017.
01:07:51
And then a notable survivor of the Hartford Circus fire is actor, comedian, director, and the star of the Match Game game show franchise, Charles Nelson Reilly.
01:07:59
He was only 13 years old on the day of the fire and the event left him so traumatized that he would spend the rest of his life avoiding sitting in audiences of any kind.
01:08:12
What? And he's a performer. So it's basically like if he he said that if he did have to be in an audience or like have to see a show, he would have to sit at the very back of the house next to the exit.
01:08:24
Totally. Oh, my God. What's interesting, though, is Nana Catriona from the listener story in the beginning.
01:08:32
She still loved and attended the circus after the circus fire. So here's this is from that email near the end.
01:08:41
Nana, oddly enough, continued to absolutely love the circus, though she despised the song Stars and Stripes Forever.
01:08:49
Right. After her husband died, she moved out to Wisconsin to be closer to our family.
01:08:53
I went away to college in Madison, which is about an hour away from Baraboo, Wisconsin, the home of Circus World.
01:09:03
You see, Circus World is not only a lovely museum, but it has its own little big top tent where they put on different shows throughout their season.
01:09:12
They have elephants, clowns, contortionists and trapeze artists. So I took Nana to the museum and after being totally enamored with the show, she walked right up to the ringleader as we were exiting and told him her story. As soon as she said, I am a survivor of the Hartford Circus fire, the ringleader's eyes lit up and he ushered her to the side so that he and the museum staff could get her firsthand account of the event.
01:09:37
The ringleader had actually been researching this fire and thus began a relationship that delighted Nana until the end of her life.
01:09:46
That's amazing. Yeah, chills. Right? I will always cherish the memory of seeing her light up and share her story of my family's calm in the face of panic.
01:09:57
After all, it is because of great Nana's calcetation. calculated response that my family is here today. And that's listeners, Elise and Claire,
01:10:06
which is hilarious because clearly like Claire wrote it and Elise is like, you better put my
01:10:11
name on that. Right. Or vice versa. Elise wrote it. And Claire's like, tack me on there. I'm part
01:10:17
of this. I told you about the podcast. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay. Uh, I, that's such a,
01:10:24
That's such a lovely feel good, like way to go, Nana. Totally. The Hartford Circus Fire Memorial Foundation is established in 2002 to honor the victims and preserve the legacy of this historic tragedy.
01:10:37
On July 6, 2004, it was the 60-year anniversary of the fire, and a memorial was built on the exact site of the fire, and a bronze plaque listing every one of the recorded victims' names stands in the middle of that site, right where the circus's center ring once stood.
01:10:59
Wow. And that is the horrible story of the Hartford Circus fire. Dude. Right? heavy great job thank you it's like it's kind of like that it's the reason all the kind of rules
01:11:17
and regulations that we have today it's like the 40s like before all that when it was like i'm just
01:11:23
go over here by this tiger cage and smoke a cigarette yeah and let me pour some gasoline
01:11:27
on a place where 9 000 people congregate real quick and smoke cigarettes freely yeah goodbye
01:11:35
goodbye oh my god disaster stories are so hard but like i feel like in so many of them
01:11:42
regulations come out that save so many people's lives so right then it's kind of like what good
01:11:49
is going to come out of this because something needs to and you know that's part of it and then
01:11:54
also people telling that story where it's like okay so in those moments as scary as it is to take
01:12:00
five seconds and actually orient yourself to where you are and don't go where everyone else is going
01:12:07
right because there's this is how many stories like this have we told where it immediately made
01:12:12
me think of those women that were on the ferry in greece and the ferry hit hit a rock and started
01:12:19
sinking and then they saw a man that like was like come this way everyone's going that way
01:12:23
you come over here and they lived. Okay. Yeah. Oof. Oof. All right. Well, mine sucks too.
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Use code MFM15 for $15 off your first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. I'm going to tell you the stories of the disappearances of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis and the private investigator who fought to solve their disappearances.
01:14:53
And this is a story I knew about. And like there's video footage that's really interesting from it's the early 2000s.
01:15:00
I've seen it on all kinds of, you know, the shows we watch. But then it wasn't until recently when I found out about this private investigator and what she went through to get this solved that I was like, oh, this is fascinating.
01:15:14
But it is also a really tragic, horrible story. OK. The sources used in today's episode are an NBC News article by none other than Keith Morrison.
01:15:25
Oh. A Paradise Post article by Valerie Lum. A ThoughtCo article by Charles Montaldo.
01:15:32
A CBS News article by Brian Dox. A Portland Tribune article by Jim Redden ABC News staff article Oregon Live article by Michael Bambersberger a couple other news outlets KVL and KATU And then also there a YouTube a true crime YouTube called Gray Days TV that I watched So we in Oregon City Oregon It a suburb located on the Willamette River
01:16:01
It's under 30 minutes from Portland, but the city is way more suburban than Portland. It's a safe,
01:16:08
small town feel. When our story takes place in the early 2000s, there's only about 25,000
01:16:14
residents there. So small townish. And like, you know, Oregon, beautiful picturesque, of course.
01:16:22
Yes. So on January 9, 2002, a 12 year old Oregon City girl named Ashley Pond is reported missing.
01:16:31
Ashley was a darling girl. She was well liked, friendly. She was smart. She was on the school
01:16:36
dance team. And that day she was running late for school. And she said goodbye to her mom around
01:16:44
8.15 in the morning and left her apartment at Newell Creek Village to start the 10 minute walk
01:16:50
to the bus stop that would take her to her middle school, but she disappeared before making it onto
01:16:55
the bus. Everyone, every parent's name. I know. So of course, at first, many people, including
01:17:02
law enforcement, think Ashley's a runaway. She's 12 years old, but she looks older than that. And
01:17:08
And you can tell she's starting to become a teenager. She's got the early 2000s choker.
01:17:14
And she's got the long hair. She looks cool. But she acts older probably because she's had to take responsibility for herself from a young age.
01:17:23
Her mother drinks a lot. And neighbors had had a call for child welfare checks to the apartment numerous times in her life.
01:17:33
A teacher of hers, Linda Verdon, who was a teacher at her elementary school. said in a 2004 interview with the Oregonian, quote, she was one of the most badly abused kids
01:17:45
I've ever seen. That's also just that's saying something because teachers see some awful shit
01:17:53
over the years. That's right. So that's awful. Yeah. This young girl, you know, 12 years old,
01:17:59
and she definitely had a hard life, but she was still a happy kid and well-liked and just trying
01:18:06
hard. So after having been missing for a week, Ashley's nowhere to be found. So investigators
01:18:12
finally start treating Ashley's disappearance as an abduction. She hadn't taken anything with her.
01:18:17
Disappeared early in the morning. You know, it was very odd. And they even call in the FBI.
01:18:23
So right off the bat, investigators face a major setback in their investigation because there's too many suspects. Portland Tribune reporter Jim Redden later tells the
01:18:35
NBC News that Ashley lived in an apartment complex that, quote, had a number of mentally ill people
01:18:41
that would be placed there by the county. And there were, in fact, a lot of single mothers who
01:18:45
attracted a lot of really bad boyfriends, end quote. In fact, there were more than 90 sex
01:18:51
offenders living within a mile radius. Good God. Uh-huh. Investigators also look into, oh, this is,
01:18:58
okay. They also look into Ashley's mother and her current boyfriend, and then they look into
01:19:03
Ashley's biological father, which she hadn't found out was the man who she thought was her
01:19:09
biological father when the parents divorced realizes that he's not her biological father.
01:19:14
So they track him down and she starts spending time with this father, the biological father,
01:19:20
biological father. So they find this guy, he had been convicted of kidnapping and sexually abusing
01:19:26
two girls in 1995. And then he had been indicted on 40 counts of raping and sexually abusing Ashley
01:19:35
over the course of several years. So she finds out who the real father is. He gets, you know,
01:19:41
custody of her on certain times and he abuses her. Good God. Yeah. So this poor, poor girl.
01:19:48
And just five months earlier before she disappeared in September 2001, this fucking asshole had taken a sweetheart plea deal in which all but one of the charges against him,
01:20:00
placed by his daughter, were dismissed. And he's sentenced to 120 months in probation.
01:20:07
So investigators look into hundreds of leads, but even with the large suspect pool,
01:20:12
they don't find anyone suspicious enough to focus all their attention on. Weeks go by and there's still no sign of 12-year-old Ashley.
01:20:20
And this is where a private investigator named Linda O'Neill steps in. And actually, a couple weeks ago, bought and read her book that she wrote about this just for preparation for this.
01:20:32
And the book is missing the Oregon City Girls. And so I read that. So let me tell you a little bit about her.
01:20:39
Before she became a private investigator, Linda O'Neill had attended college and graduated with a degree in liberal studies.
01:20:46
She started working as a dispatcher for the Oregon County Sheriff's Department and eventually worked to help officers write their reports.
01:20:55
So she's a great writer and very intuitive. She later switches careers and becomes a fraud investigator for a bank and then becomes an investigator for an attorney.
01:21:06
And then once she had enough experience, she starts her own private investigation business.
01:21:11
That's very cool. Yes. So it turns out the reason she had heard about this case, she lives in the area, but also Ashley, the girl who disappeared, is Linda's, the private investigator's, ex-step granddaughter.
01:21:27
So Linda's husband had previously been married to Ashley's grandmother. So then they still involved in the family You know it their family members So it not a huge connection but Linda speaks to the family of Ashley and they ask her to look into the disappearance since the police aren finding any leads And Linda becomes like super focused on finding basically her
01:21:50
step granddaughter. Yeah, absolutely. Ashley's disappearance makes national news and the
01:21:56
neighbors and some of Ashley's classmates are interviewed. You know, it's like this media
01:22:00
frenzy. They come to the town, they interview anyone who knew Ashley, including one of her
01:22:06
best friends, 13 year old Miranda Gaddis, and they interview her and it's broadcast on TV.
01:22:14
Miranda tells a TV reporter, quote, it's really hard to believe that happened to one of your
01:22:19
friends. It's just really different and really sad. So Miranda lives in the same complex as Ashley,
01:22:26
and they attend the same school. They're on the same dance team. They were close.
01:22:30
And on March 8th, Miranda Gaddis disappears in the exact same way Ashley had only eight weeks earlier.
01:22:38
She'd been interviewed for it on air and then she disappears as well. So just after 8 a.m., Miranda had left the Newell Creek Village Apartments on her way to school, starts making that same 10 minute walk to the bus.
01:22:52
And just like Ashley, she never made it onto the bus. Wow. With a second young girl missing, Oregon City residents are panicking.
01:23:02
They think they have a serial killer in town. And it was just caused absolute panic.
01:23:08
The FBI calls in additional agents to bring in the total agents investigating to more than 60.
01:23:15
And a task force comes together. Jesus. Because it obviously was connected at that point.
01:23:20
Same age girls. They were friends. They look the same. They disappear in the same exact manner.
01:23:26
Yeah, that is actually super creepy and pain-inducing. Right. So meanwhile, Linda has been investigating a case in her off time, but she soon finds herself turning clients down so she can focus all of her time on Ashley and Miranda's disappearances.
01:23:41
God, thank God for Linda O'Neill. I know. Linda speaks with Ashley and Miranda's family members to get a feel for the suspects.
01:23:50
And when she's done speaking to them and interviewing everyone, she has narrowed down the large, huge suspect pool and decides to start looking into a name that she's heard over and over.
01:24:03
And that name is Ward Weaver III. Ward Weaver III is a former family friend of Ashley's who lives in a house right next to the apartment complex.
01:24:13
It's like a rundown little house that he's renting. Ashley's aunt had told Linda that Ward is no longer a family friend because recently Ashley had reported that he had been molesting her.
01:24:26
And Ward Weaver had a daughter Ashley's age and they were friends at school. So Linda does a deep dive on Ward and finds out that he has a lengthy violent past.
01:24:36
In 1981, when he was 18 years old, he was accused of raping a relative. The victims interviewed, but authorities didn't press charges because they felt like it was, quote, useless. And Ward goes and enlists in the Navy and is about to go and was about to go to boot camp soon anyway. So the authorities were like, you know, good riddance. He's gone. Let's not bother. Essentially.
01:24:59
That same year, Ward's father, Ward Weaver Jr., had picked up these hitchhikers and had murdered them, these young hitchhikers.
01:25:13
This couple, he buried one of the bodies in his yard and had poured concrete over the top and built a deck to cover his tracks.
01:25:22
When he was arrested, he had said that he had killed more than 20 hitchhikers while working as a truck driver.
01:25:29
And he said he confessed to all the murders in exchange for life in prison instead of the death penalty.
01:25:35
But the DA's office wanted him to face the death penalty. So they said no to any of the confessions.
01:25:42
Oh, man. I know. I know. Ward's father is sentenced to death row in California. So he's the son of a serial killer.
01:25:51
Yeah. Yeah. And then there's all these other like, I mean, he is just an abusive monster.
01:25:59
You know, his five month pregnant girlfriend has to go to the hospitals with injuries from him beating her.
01:26:06
He attacks a friend's teenage daughters and goes to prison for that for three fucking years.
01:26:15
You know, it's just it's just instance after instance of this man being a horrible, abusive psychopath.
01:26:23
Yeah. So he has a daughter around the same age as Ashley and Miranda. They're friends with her.
01:26:29
everyone likes going to the daughter. I'm not going to say her name because clearly she's a
01:26:33
victim as well, but they love going to her house because, you know, the single dad will give them
01:26:38
booze. They can hang out there. He's the cool dad. He puts in a swimming pool. You know, he's
01:26:45
basically grooming these young girls. Right. And setting it up to be like, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
01:26:50
You want to hang out here. And so Ashley had lived with them for a short while. I think her
01:26:54
home life was really strained and I'm sure he was grooming her. And so she moved in with them and then,
01:27:02
and they actually said that she had slept in the same bed with him at times. Yeah. And so then she finally accuses him of raping her and moves out.
01:27:11
This is Ashley. So in her deep dive, Linda finds that police have already looked into this guy into ward.
01:27:17
He has an alibi officers and search dogs search his house and property with no results And then a man named Harry Oaks offers to help Linda free of charge with the aid of his search dog And the search dog name is Valerie So on March 20th Harry brings his dog along
01:27:37
They start searching the apartment complex where the girls had lived. And he just follows Valerie as she follows a trail straight toward Weaver's property next door to the apartment buildings.
01:27:49
so Harry then tells NBC News he goes over and knocks on Ward's door and asked if he could search the house
01:27:58
and Ward is just like cocky like over involved in the whole case and like a little too
01:28:05
like enjoying the attention a little too much which is suspicious and Ward says I've got nothing to hide
01:28:13
and lets Harry and Valerie go through the house Valerie picks up on a scent in the hallway
01:28:18
and they follow the trail to the backyard all the way to the recently poured concrete slab,
01:28:23
which Ward had said he was putting in for the jacuzzi. And then Valerie gives the, quote, death alert near the spot.
01:28:31
You know, Harry tells Linda she's, of course, like light bulbs going off. They let the FBI and the police know, but they're not interested in the story.
01:28:41
But of course, the light bulb that goes off in Linda's head is that Ward's father had buried one of his victims
01:28:48
under a concrete fucking slab. Yeah. What? Why ignore that? I know. What? Like, I feel like they don't like, you know, meddling people meddling in their business
01:29:01
so they don't take their their info seriously. You know, we got to change that somehow.
01:29:07
Yeah. Change that. So it's a so we can frame it like it's welcome because this is really hard work and there's
01:29:14
a lot to it. Yeah. And if people are like a licensed private investigator, like the great Linda O'Neill.
01:29:21
Right. They're trying to help you. Exactly. At least look into it. Totally. Totally.
01:29:26
At least look at the file that says his father also buried people under a slab. I mean, if you're even in the 90, if you're even on the list of 90 suspects and you've just poured concrete in your backyard.
01:29:42
Please. Top of the list. Please. Guess what? help us help you that's right i wonder if it's that because they did it so casually
01:29:50
with the dog that all of it would get thrown out in court absolutely that just out of just out of
01:29:57
fairness in the argument we just made right to devil's advocate the other side but i feel like
01:30:01
a tip and then you do your work and the other thing to me too is that like the search warrant
01:30:06
thing if he had said no he was a he rented that place so the owner was the one who could have said
01:30:12
yes or no to a search. Oh, not him. But did you get your law degree when I wasn't paying attention?
01:30:19
I did. Yeah, it's like a thing. You can't, you don't want to brag about it. I didn't want to
01:30:23
brag. But yes, I went to MIT. Where's a good law school? I don't fucking know. MIT is one of the
01:30:28
best law schools in this country. I went to fucking Hogwarts and then MIT. And now, and look at me now.
01:30:34
You went to robot law school. They're going to break down your door. I went to space camp in
01:30:40
Florida. What's up? Got that certificate. That's right. And look at me now. So Linda,
01:30:46
of course, knows she's on the right track. She continues to focus on Ward. She speaks to more
01:30:51
people who know Ward. And of course, many of them not surprisingly have really disturbing stories
01:30:57
about him. Another teacher at Ashley's school said that she saw Ward and by the way, he's in
01:31:02
his late 30s. He saw him drop Ashley off at school before she disappeared. And that when she got out
01:31:09
the car he kissed her quote passionately she fucking reports the incident as you do and nothing
01:31:16
at all came of it and i think the report had gotten lost quote you know what i mean like it's
01:31:21
just she fell through the cracks so heartbreakingly and it and multiple multiple times yeah yeah so it
01:31:32
had come out ashley had finally been speaking and saying he raped me he was molesting me
01:31:37
and all of her friends, including the daughter of Ward, turned on her and were like,
01:31:45
you're making this up and you're making my dad look bad. And then he kind of, Ward threatened Ashley.
01:31:52
This was during when she was, this is when she was pressing charges against her own father
01:31:57
who had been raping her. He said, stop, stop spreading this quote rumor or I'm going to testify against you in this trial
01:32:05
and say you're a liar and you make stuff up. So this poor girl was just, you know, there was just nobody on her side.
01:32:15
And it was so sad, except the people who were trying to be and got fucking ignored.
01:32:19
Yeah. An ex-girlfriend of Ward actually comes forward and says that Ward was mad at Miranda.
01:32:26
Miranda Gaddis, the second girl to go missing, because she was telling girls in the neighborhood to stay away from Ward because he, quote, might molest them.
01:32:33
So she was telling everyone, like warning them away from, I'm sure she believed her friend Ashley.
01:32:40
Yeah. And was spreading what I'm sure Ward called a rumor. Yeah. Linda reaches out to the FBI, gives them all the circumstantial evidence that she's compiled, but they tell her they don't need help from a private investigator.
01:32:54
Come on. Yeah. She has a personal connection to this case, too. So she cares more than anyone.
01:33:00
Also, if you haven't solved it, you still need help. I'm sorry. Isn't that kind of the just like, why not go with that basic? No one's saying you have to listen to every single person. Right. But if you don't know and you haven't solved it. Yeah. This is a professional. Hey, so Linda.
01:33:20
of course, is, feels so defeated. And so she reaches out, no one else will listen to her in
01:33:26
law enforcement. So she reaches out to Portland Tribune reporter Jim Redden. She catches Jim up on everything she knows. They form a plan where Jim shows up at Ward's house and
01:33:38
asks if he'll do an interview. He says yes. And Jim says that, quote, he seemed like a very
01:33:43
normal kind of guy, the more he talked, the more nervous he got. So Ward is like stoked to be on TV.
01:33:50
And he's almost like flaunting that he's like, maybe that he's this bad guy. He says that he's
01:33:57
the FBI's prime suspect, which isn't true. They don't have a prime suspect. So he's like
01:34:02
making himself out. It's just this weird narcissistic attention seeking behavior.
01:34:09
And it's the thing whether and I know there's there's always discussion between psychopaths and sociopaths or whatever, but there is one of those two where they think they're smarter than everybody.
01:34:22
Exactly. So they absolutely indulge in that love of fame and celebrity because they want they they want it and they don't think they're going to get caught.
01:34:35
because of it. It's almost like they're taunting. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the people who show up to pass out flyers,
01:34:43
but they're actually the murderer themselves. Right. Well, there's a little detail in this story
01:34:48
that's not that, but similar. That is bone chilling. Okay. So hold on and I'll tell you.
01:34:54
Okay. But first, so Linda at this point, like everyone thinks that he's not the guy.
01:35:00
She starts questioning her sanity. and then Jim publishes the article about the things Linda has found and it's the first time
01:35:08
the media names Ward as a suspect so he motherfucking named himself as a suspect before the
01:35:12
media even had thank you dude you fucking idiot he did it yeah he did it other outlets pick up
01:35:18
the story and Ward seems to be enjoying the attention he goes on national news and says
01:35:24
that Ashley better be hiding out wherever she's found a place to live like almost like she's
01:35:30
making my life miserable, like assuming she ran away, suggesting she ran away, right?
01:35:35
Good cover. Yeah. Good cover. Doing great. Really convincing. By early August, Ward says he's going to move to Mexico or Idaho because of all the crazy
01:35:44
media attention. So he packs up all of his stuff and moves it out of the house. Okay.
01:35:50
And then this is where things, I mean, this is just such a crazy story. Then on August 13th, he picks up his son, Francis's 19 year old girlfriend, takes her back home to his empty house on some premise.
01:36:04
And she later tells Keith Morrison that, quote, all the way to his house, he wasn't acting different or anything.
01:36:10
But when they get to the house, she said, quote, that's when he snapped. That's when I noticed a different face.
01:36:17
Ward throws her on the ground. He rapes her. He tries to smother her. she says that she recalls Ward looking possessed quote it looked like Satan inside of him but the
01:36:28
second he stood up off of her his face went back to normal and so this badass woman pushes him with
01:36:36
her feet pushes him back with both of her feet and then runs out to the back of the house
01:36:43
she grabs a tarp covers her naked body and runs into the street and gets the attention of a motorist
01:36:49
and goes to the police. Oh, my God. 19. And it's her boyfriend's dad. Like, she probably had, you know what I mean?
01:36:58
She had no idea. So shocking and traumatizing. Totally. So Ward is promptly arrested and charged with rape and attempted murder.
01:37:08
And I mean, the fact that this woman had the ability to escape is the reason that this
01:37:15
motherfucker got caught. so following his arrest a 15 year old girl comes forward to report that ward had raped her
01:37:23
in his house back in july and she hadn't reported the crime at the time because she was so scared of
01:37:28
him because it was like common i think it was a rumor in town that he had killed these two girls
01:37:34
right so of course she's terrified of that as well but now linda's more hopeful than ever that
01:37:40
authorities will take this take him seriously as a suspect for Ashley and Miranda's disappearances.
01:37:46
But that's not what happens. They get a search warrant for Ward's place. But it's only for evidence linked to the rape of the girlfriend.
01:37:57
At this point, the residents are now like, what the fuck's going on? They put the pieces together. They start asking the same questions as Linda.
01:38:04
Like, why isn't the FBI looking into Ward for these disappearances? And so people start showing up to Ward's house protesting with picket signs saying, like, what the fuck, you know?
01:38:18
So finally, on August 23rd, 10 days after his arrest for the rape and attempted murder, authorities search Ward's backyard after Ward's son, Francis, the boyfriend of the girl who had been raped, tells police that his dad had confessed to him to killing Ashley and Miranda.
01:38:36
Like that's what it took, an actual like confession for them to finally take it seriously.
01:38:42
Yeah, for real. So in a shed behind the house, authorities find a cardboard box for a microwave containing Miranda's remains.
01:38:52
And the next day under that concrete slab investigators find Ashley remain inside a steel barrel So what you said about putting up the you know the killers putting up the missing flyers they realized that in one of Ward on interviews with a reporter named Anna Song he had you know kept her there for so long
01:39:14
He had walked her around the property and he had stood on the concrete slab while he's being interviewed by the reporter on camera and talked about the missing girls and them being friends with his daughter standing on the fucking concrete slab where Ashley had been buried.
01:39:33
Evil. Evil. Just evil. Yeah. I mean, how else do you describe a human being that is that craven and disgusting?
01:39:41
It's just the narcissism of this person. It's unbelievable. Ward is charged with 17 counts for offenses against Ashley and Miranda, the girlfriend and the 15 year old rape victims, both of whom one would say if Ward had been looked into more deeply and taken more seriously, those last two victims might not have been not have become victims.
01:40:04
So it's, you know, maybe there's a way to figure out how to accept information from outside sources in in the just in the prevention of of immediate future victims.
01:40:20
Right. Like as opposed to us talking about ego or this or that or, you know, it's just we're just commenting on stuff we don't understand.
01:40:29
Right. But when you look at it like that, where you could have listened and at least figured something out, at least to be officially investigating and say and saved that additional trauma and heartache.
01:40:45
It's it's yeah, it's confusing. It is. It is. Obviously, we don't know all the details.
01:40:51
We don't know what we're not in law enforcement. Well, also, we've heard these stories, you know, this is six years of these stories. So this is part of part of it, I think, is people when you when you read the these stories a lot, and you know, the truth of them, when these things come up time and again, of just information and, and like people coming forward to share information, and those theories being rejected out of hand or never even considered.
01:41:23
And then the cost of that, like there's real cost and that should be measured and balanced.
01:41:29
And, and basically it's like, if you worked at any other job, if you worked at Jamba Juice and there was a way you were doing it that was actually screwing things up and making it really awful, they would change the procedure of how things went down.
01:41:44
And, you know, it's like it can't just be like our way or the highway forever because because it doesn't need there doesn't need to be so much human cost and carnage.
01:41:58
If Ashley's, you know, claim of being raped by this man had been taken seriously or, you know, and I know there's like these these, you know, there's funding that needs to be given to these organizations so they have more people on the ground looking into these, you know, cases of child abuse and rape.
01:42:19
And but if it had been taken seriously, maybe her life wouldn't have been taken from her, you know?
01:42:26
Yeah, well, it's we've talked about it a lot, but it's a thing my mother is a psychiatric nurse used to rant and rave about all the time is when you cut off services, when you divert money from services, when you when there's, you know, when you have 50 social workers and 10,000 cases, then this is how children fall through the cracks.
01:42:48
This is how abusers continue doing what they do. And the and it is about voting and it is about politics.
01:42:55
It's about getting the right people in power. But it's also about talking about where money is always taken from, which is schools and services for things like this and where it's kept.
01:43:08
And that is what that's the real discussion that needs to happen. It doesn't need to be this bad.
01:43:13
It's like my sister says it every time where she goes, people are so offended at this idea of defund the police.
01:43:19
And she goes every single time they cut school funding and no one no one's pissed except for the teachers and the people that understand the real cost.
01:43:28
But they do it every year to teachers. Yeah. But God forbid you even mention it about the police.
01:43:34
Totally. So Ward refuses to talk. he pleads not guilty, but when he's faced with the death penalty, he pleads guilty or no contest
01:43:43
to all counts in exchange for two life without parole sentences. He doesn't confess anything.
01:43:48
He just pleads guilty and goes off to prison. But later he does like have conversations with his
01:43:53
daughter who this poor girl is so like confused and still loves her dad and doesn't understand
01:43:59
what's going on and kind of explain. It seems like he tells her what happened. And also Miranda's
01:44:05
A little sister goes to try to get answers from this monster. And his answers are, you know, I was going to get caught and found out.
01:44:14
So I killed them. It's nothing rewarding. It's nothing that makes any sense to us with normal fucking minds to understand why this monster would do such a thing.
01:44:25
Yeah, it's just unsatisfying. So sadly, the Weaver family's tale of violence doesn't end with Weaver Ward III.
01:44:34
In 2016 the son Francis Weaver whose call led to the discovery of Ashley and Miranda body he is convicted of murder in connection with a drug deal gone wrong In January 2007 Linda publishes the book Missing the Oregon City Girls
01:44:55
And for the story, she had changed some names and reconstructed conversations, quote.
01:44:59
But for the most part, the book is the true story of her investigation into Ashley and Miranda's disappearances.
01:45:07
And so that is the tragic stories of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis. man. I know there's no silver lining on that.
01:45:17
It's just this tragic story of people who could have been helped. I will say if we have to look and we always should.
01:45:27
Yeah. You're Linda O'Neill's of the world. The people, whether it's relatives who are hurt,
01:45:34
broken, and then because of that passionate and fueled, or whether it's a private investigator,
01:45:43
who cares and learns meets the families and then just gets involved yeah there's a human element
01:45:49
to these stories that gets them broken in some way and thank god you know what i mean it's like
01:45:55
and that she did what needed to get done and clearly she the the guy with the search dog i
01:46:03
don't remember his name yeah i remember valerie's name but it's like those people went in and did the
01:46:09
job. They did it. That reporter from, from the, um, tribune. Yeah. Like they did it. Yeah. It's
01:46:17
a thing of like, you know, she looked, she looked at this from her investigator mind and said,
01:46:22
this is solvable. This isn't some strange. It's never some stranger who came into town,
01:46:27
especially when the second girl goes missing. That is, you know, has the exact same characteristics and is in the family. It's like,
01:46:36
Just ask around and like people in town know who the town creep is. You know what I mean?
01:46:42
We're like where all the girls were going or where fucking Ashley had just said that this guy had been molesting and raping her.
01:46:50
It's not. It's. But the problem is, it's about, you know, the second you stamp somebody troubled teen.
01:46:58
Right. It's like the 70s runaway thing. And they did it to her, too. In the very beginning.
01:47:03
this is a 12 year old girl that we've been talking about 12 years old it's that's hard
01:47:09
stopping to think that's a child and she's trying to uh get you know talk about this incredible
01:47:18
violence that's being done on her the strength that's took for her to actually come forward
01:47:23
and then it's like oh it's it's that makes you the troubled person you're coming to say this
01:47:30
happened to you is, is, is the way that, you know, whoever it is in the, whoever it is,
01:47:38
is rationalizing, not helping her. Totally. Totally. And the prosecutor on her, on her dad's side is, is abhorrent. I mean, there's this whole, there's more stories in this,
01:47:49
obviously in this tale that are just like, just let down after left down of this,
01:47:53
these poor girls. Is it in Linda's book? Is it all in Linda's book? I don't think that part is,
01:47:59
But you can watch the YouTube channel I talked about, Gray Days TV. He does talk more about that.
01:48:06
So check that out. And I definitely have. When you first, when you talked about when Miranda went missing, she was the second girl, right?
01:48:14
Yeah. Then it hit me where I was like, oh, yes. Yeah. This one's rough and sad. And they're so young.
01:48:22
It's so sad. The first time, the thing that always stuck in my mind for all of these years of it is the concrete,
01:48:27
him standing on the concrete giving an interview was just, and I think later he also stands in front of the ice chest where he had kept
01:48:34
Miranda's body for a while. Like he led them over there. Yeah. They're fucking sick. He's rotten in the brain for sure.
01:48:43
Um, how about we each do one fucking, you want to, I'll go first. Uh, this is called,
01:48:52
this is from the fan cult forum and it's called kicking COVID-19 in the balls. On August 23rd, 2021, my husband's twin brother, James, died of COVID.
01:49:03
He was 31 years old. In direct response to that tragic day, 12 of our closest friends and family are now fully vaccinated.
01:49:13
As a nurse in the ICU actively battling this pandemic, I can confidently say that he has posthumously saved multiple lives.
01:49:21
So fucking hooray to those we love the most who are now unexpected martyrs. We miss you, James.
01:49:27
To the rest of us, please keep fighting and fuck COVID-19. Shelby and Cody in Texas.
01:49:34
That's heartbreaking. So sad. But yeah, 12 people. Yeah, they went, hey, yeah, that cuts through all the noise and the bullshit.
01:49:46
And it's, yeah. And now, wow. Maybe someone here listening will get finally vaccinated after hearing that.
01:49:55
Yeah, maybe. Okay, this is from the Fan Cult Forum, and it says, Fucking Hooray for Quitters by Rizuru.
01:50:02
It says, My fucking hooray is reaching my two-week mark of quitting smoking. Yes.
01:50:07
Two weeks. Oh, yes. You're on it. You're doing it. Yeah, you're doing it. That's 14 days.
01:50:12
It might not seem like much. It does. But during an insanely busy and stressful month where I spend most days in tears,
01:50:19
I'm so proud of myself for not giving in. I might have sobbed while driving past my go gas station yesterday but I didn turn in and I made it home without giving up That exactly what you build on when you trying to quit something that this hard or that you addicted
01:50:37
to is those little tiny victories. And can I just say that it made me think I recently discovered a
01:50:45
drive through a car wash near my house that provides me with the strangest amount of calm
01:50:51
piece. It costs like seven bucks. Yeah. And you just, you drive through it. It's, it's so short.
01:50:57
It's probably 20 feet long. The ones where you're like in the tunnel and like you can't hear
01:51:01
anything and it's the rain and the color. Oh my God, I have one too. I love it. It's the best,
01:51:07
like if you're trying to give something up and it's a thing like that, where Rizuru is trying,
01:51:11
trying to not just pull into the outstation, which is the habit you have to break. Cause there's,
01:51:15
Because you attach like emotions to that habit. Go find a similar habit that you try to get equal emotions out of.
01:51:24
Like, I'm not kidding. I went to this gas station one day because we, there was just this, it was the most stressful, crazy day.
01:51:31
Yeah. And I was like, I didn't, I was just kind of driving around with my ears ringing.
01:51:36
And then I was like, wait a second, I'm going to wash this car. by the time I was on the outside on the other side of the gas of the car wash it was like I
01:51:45
had been washed by and those fucking blowers the last step blowers where every drip of water gets
01:51:51
blown off it's just like and then you've actually accomplished something that day too
01:51:55
yeah you're doing it for yourself and for your sanity but hey guess what your car doesn't look
01:51:59
like you're a fucking nightmare too yeah what I mean like my car walk up to your car and go hey
01:52:04
Yeah, right. It's a real just saying if you're looking for alts for the bad thing you're doing, you can get a little creative because that I literally thought of doing that because that was like a thing when we were little.
01:52:17
There was a car, a drive through car wash in Petaluma. My mom used to take us through and I was like, oh, that'll feel good right now.
01:52:23
So I made the mistake of taking cookie through one recently and too scary. she like climbed onto my lap
01:52:31
and was like why are there monsters out I felt and I was like how do I jam on my gas and get out like I'll break
01:52:37
my car but it's so sad no you can't you're in the they're moving you along in that weird
01:52:43
locked thing so weird oh my god also quitting smoking I just that's so important
01:52:48
I keep saying to Vince remember when I smoked like during the pandemic there was like a year of me
01:52:55
smoking and then I stopped and I'm like, who the fuck was that? Yeah, you just needed to do something. Yeah, it's good to quit. I you
01:53:03
stopped thinking about it after a while, for sure. Not that I was addicted, but like, you stopped
01:53:07
thinking about it. Yeah, you get those. Well, right, you get you just have to find substitutes.
01:53:13
That's all. Totally. Absolutely. That's all I say is I lay down and eat like a fucking frozen
01:53:19
Snickers on my couch. Not not finding a substitute. I have nothing but boxes of seized
01:53:24
candy in my house right now and that's really upsetting nuts and chews all of them every kind
01:53:31
every fucking kind because remember we bought too many for christmas for our employees and so they
01:53:36
were like hey we have too many we're sending them to you and they sent us like the boxes of them and
01:53:41
i don't fucking want them they i don't need them but they sure are there are there keep opening
01:53:48
them. All right. Send us things. Not seize candy, but anything else. Yeah. If you need to send us anything,
01:53:56
go ahead and use the myfavoritemurderatgmail.com. Just let us know what... Oh, let us know about
01:54:02
your... Any kind of catfishing experience you may have had. Yeah. I mean, that was way back at the beginning
01:54:08
of the show. This is a two hour and eight minute episode. We did it again! We're back, baby.
01:54:14
We're back. We're back and better than ever. That's right. So stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:54:22
Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:54:30
Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Associate producer, Alejandra Keck. Engineer and mixer, Stephen.
01:54:37
Ray Morris. Researchers, Jay Elias and Haley Gray. Send us your hometowns and your fucking hoorays at myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:54:45
And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
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