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Shop BOEM's new arrivals at BOEM.com. That is B-O-H-M-E dot com. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. Hi, that's Karen Kilgariff. Hi.
00:02:36
Hi. How are you? Look, we need to greet each other and then we need to greet America.
00:02:43
That's right. And Sweden. And the UK. And parts of Finland. Australia. Don't forget Antarctica.
00:02:49
And Scotland, which is not part of the UK. Sometimes people listen to us in Cuba.
00:02:57
Do they? Dubai. Is that a word? Do I? Dubai. Do I? Oh. That's exciting to think people are listening to us in Dubai.
00:03:06
Did we forget Canada? Always. But you know what? Just as soon as I memorize those provinces, Canada, we're going to come at you.
00:03:16
Saskatchewan. Fucking Victoria. Please don't do this. Why are we doing this? I'm getting so nervous.
00:03:21
Why are we doing this? Hey, enemies. We're like setting ourselves up for people to be mad at us.
00:03:27
You know why? Because we like the negative attention. You must. We have to. As podcasters, you must.
00:03:34
If the last five plus years, five and a half years show us anything. Is it our five and a half year anniversary?
00:03:41
Today. Today's the day. I got you this and I pull out an edible arrangement. Oh, my God.
00:03:47
pineapple with chocolate who doesn't want that hideous taste combination i still think edible
00:03:54
arrangements are the best joke in the entire like my favorite fucking joke this is not an ad you
00:04:01
can't use promo code murder yet yet until they realize that's right that's my that's my goal in
00:04:07
this podcast is for someday for an edible arrangement ad here's what i would like to ask
00:04:13
finland uh or whoever gets this is edible arrangements a hollywood joke because things
00:04:23
like that get sent around this town so often where it's like congratulations on on potentially
00:04:28
maybe getting this that or the other thing yeah here's some pineapple covered in dark chocolate
00:04:33
right or is that a thing that like everybody does it and people because i know like sherry's
00:04:38
Barry's great podcast supporter over the years. And that is a thing people love, like a chocolate
00:04:43
covered strawberry. It's like got a class to it. It is. It's fancy. So is it like, is that,
00:04:49
is it just a thing like, no, Karen, people love that. People love it. They love it everywhere.
00:04:54
Another question is when people get it, are they like, well, why didn't you just get me a
00:04:58
fucking bottle of fancy champagne? Like you're actually being not funny and cheap. Well, it's
00:05:04
not cheap but but you're also you're assuming every time someone sends an edible arrangement
00:05:09
it's a joke oh yeah i don't think it's like i still eat it it's exciting but it's funny i think
00:05:17
people love it also sometimes there's just cantaloupe that they cut into the shape of a
00:05:21
flower oh my god yeah with a little like um watermelon in the middle yes stamen pistol
00:05:29
name and crocus no why are we naming things we don't know uh anyhow anyway thanks for the
00:05:39
edible arrangement i really appreciate it i let it go rotten on um on my kitchen table how is it
00:05:44
gonna fit in your fucking fridge also how does a person eat that much fruit and chocolate mixed together it not healthy it actually completely healthy but it not healthy the thing is is the thing about this podcast is if you interested in true crime well then obviously this is the place to be Obviously But at the same time
00:06:03
that's nobody's one interest. They also have interest in fruit arrangements, different parts of the world. True. What else? And greetings.
00:06:13
Greetings. Different ways of saying hi. Finland. uh hey here's some good news okay robert durst was found guilty of murdering susan berman last
00:06:25
friday amazing it feels like there hasn't been as much like fervor about it it's like kind of low
00:06:30
key well i think that uh it's that's the kind of thing where the story has told itself by now and
00:06:38
i think everyone kind of expected that the story would have been bigger if he was found somehow not
00:06:43
guilty but um i think when things that's i think that's how things kind of go when it's what
00:06:50
everyone expects yeah it doesn't hit as hard and no one wants to give that asshole more attention
00:06:54
than he already fucking has probably but i'm really happy to hear that i am too because the
00:07:00
the murders this is the alleged murders um all the all this the hell he hath wrought it really
00:07:10
and because he was so rich. Yeah. There was so, you know, he went for so long just getting away with it.
00:07:18
Well, I hope he rots in prison. It makes me wonder, should I be so greedy? Which part makes you wonder that?
00:07:28
Because I don't know. There's no part of this story that makes me think of Karen Kilgariff.
00:07:33
Really? Every story makes me think of Karen Kilgariff. God, that's weird. The greed.
00:07:39
you know it makes me wonder if i should be a sociopath with black uh pupils that take up my
00:07:47
whole eye yeah and you should start stealing sandwiches from grocery stores that would be a
00:07:51
good move peeing in the sandwich didn't he pee in one of those like ready to make ready-made sandwich
00:07:57
um i don't remember that part of it but maybe i didn't follow the story all the way through
00:08:01
I tend to not do that. I think it stuck out to me because it felt like rage peeing, which is such a remarkable
00:08:10
thing to do, especially inside a story in like New York City or wherever he was.
00:08:14
What's rage peeing? When you're really mad, so you pee on something like, yeah, you'll all pay.
00:08:19
All you sandwich eaters will pay. Yeah, that happened to my friend. Like she lived in Florida and we were out for a night and she had a vegetarian or vegan
00:08:26
sticker on her car. You know, we were very young and we came out to some fucking jock peeing on her.
00:08:31
car because she was a declared vegan yeah wow yeah wow everybody right take your corners everybody
00:08:39
and relax he was being like in the handle of the door so like when the person had to open the door
00:08:46
their hand would be in pee but they wouldn't even know it so what's the point yeah that's the kind
00:08:52
of thing that you uh yeah you you think you're getting them right but if they just think it's
00:08:58
like condensation right from the you know a marine layer that rolls in while they're in the club
00:09:04
then you know they just go like ew and wipe it on their pants it's a secret gotcha yeah it's his
00:09:10
little secret he's gonna take throughout life with him oh i peed on a vegan's car once you know
00:09:17
i think i've told you this story but one of the scariest things that ever happened to me was once
00:09:20
my friend suzy sullivan and i the great suzanne sullivan who used to work at the san francisco
00:09:25
improv she uh and i went down to one of the pride festival because like in san francisco
00:09:34
it there's like different neighborhoods have events on different weekends yeah so we got
00:09:40
super drunk and went down there to meet our friends um hell yeah at one point i tried to
00:09:45
find a bathroom and every single we were in um the tenderloin no no south market south of market
00:09:52
and nowhere had a bathroom. No, events don't have bathrooms. No, especially back then.
00:09:59
And the businesses around there were like, no, get out, everybody. And at one point we walked by
00:10:06
and there was just a big open kind of empty lot where they were about to build apartments or something.
00:10:10
And it was just lined with men in kind of like leather daddy outfits peeing. Against the wall.
00:10:17
Yeah, and I was like, Susie, I have to pee. So we found what we thought was like a downstairs to like a basement to kind of like stairs down off the street to nothing like
00:10:27
a doorway or whatever and she goes just go down there i'll i'll sit on the step and watch for you
00:10:31
so we go down there and i pulled i'm wearing black tights with shorts of course no because
00:10:37
it was like get naked from the waist down 1991 yeah exactly so it's it's i'm in a bad position
00:10:43
and there's a guy walking by and he stops and looks down goes are you peeing down there that's
00:10:49
someone's house and i go what no we thought it was you know whatever and he goes what and he he
00:10:55
starts yelling at us but i think he can tell oh wait they're drunk yeah and they just made a very
00:11:00
bad call yeah and that's when the door behind me opens and a guy dressed in full leather leather
00:11:06
daddy outfit it starts going are you being on my front door and i'm like oh my god oh my god we had
00:11:13
no idea. And then the guy who was yelling at us starts defending us. And he goes, no, wait,
00:11:19
they didn't know. They didn't know. Get up here. And then we run up the stairs and then those two
00:11:25
guys start fighting as we run away. It was mayhem. And I've I've had like that permanent, like it's
00:11:33
now been 25 year cringe because the sound of the door behind you had to be. And like, I don't I
00:11:40
I had no interest in peeing on anyone's front step. Sure. I don't want to. I don't think it's okay.
00:11:45
Yeah I would never ever do it No You don advocate for peeing on people doorsteps It kind of not your thing Especially not like you know kind of keyed up gay men who are like into whips and bondage
00:11:58
I don't want to mess with them. No, you're not trying to disrespect a leather daddy.
00:12:03
I fully bow to the leather daddy community. As you should. As we all should. As we definitely do.
00:12:10
And maybe bend and you pop our butt up a little bit. You bowed, but the wrong kind of bowing.
00:12:15
More like crouching and squatting. I was squatting and we were already the kind of people they have no interest in.
00:12:23
It's just not fair, though, because like the guys up top could just take their dicks out.
00:12:27
That's what they get to do. Yeah. And we have to. It's just. It's a whole issue.
00:12:33
It's a whole issue. And it's like, hey, drunk girls, maybe don't don't go be a tourist at the gay fair, the gay street fair.
00:12:42
because there's no services for you. It's not for you. It's not for you. Yeah. We were basically like,
00:12:48
it was kind of on par with like when bachelorette parties go to like drag shows.
00:12:54
Oh yeah. Tourists. Yeah. And kind of like, yeah, everything's for us. And it's like, it's not.
00:13:00
And they don't want you here. It's gay tourism. And it needs to stop. And that's our stance for today.
00:13:07
It's a strong one. It's a strong one. But let's also not cut off finances to the gay tourism community. Also, I really want to go to a drag show. So I also want
00:13:17
to be like, it's not okay for anyone but me. And well, it also, you better go to a drag show,
00:13:23
because that's some of the best comedy you're ever going to get in. Those are people who are trained.
00:13:29
And they're so fucking funny. They're so good at comedy, because they've been defending themselves
00:13:36
for most of their lives. So they have it right there. It's that thing of did you have a good
00:13:41
childhood or are you funny? Yes. What's the one you took me to in the basement of the Mexican
00:13:46
restaurant? Casitas Del Campo. Casitas Del Campo. Who did you take me to see? Was it Sam Pancake
00:13:52
and Drew Droji? No, but I love them. But it was. Was it the Golden Girls? No. Keep going. Jackie
00:13:59
Beat. Jackie Beat. I love my friend Jackie Beat. One of the best, funniest, most talented drag
00:14:08
Queens. That was one of the best shows I've ever been to, period. Yes. It was so funny. When Jackie
00:14:13
goes around the room asking everyone for money, I gave them all of my money. I was like, take all
00:14:19
my money, take my purse, take everything I own. Because that's talent right there. The talent,
00:14:25
the singing, the parody songs that Jackie writes about all kinds of crazy. I mean, like, you just
00:14:33
have to see it. Yeah. My favorite. So Jackie and I used to write. My first writing job was on a
00:14:38
sketch show for the WB and Jackie was also one of the writers on that show. We were trying to write
00:14:43
a sketch about the John Travolta film phenomenon that had come out that year. And someone goes,
00:14:54
or no, it was about Michael, the John Travolta movie where he was an angel. And then someone goes,
00:15:01
wait maybe we should make a reference to the movie Phenomenon like somebody's trying to get something else going
00:15:09
and Jackie goes oh come on and on like immediately and I was like wait that's the best I've ever
00:15:16
heard in my life it was so fast and so perfect and also really like mean like oh like that's the dumbest
00:15:24
oh come on and on it was so funny everyone look up Jackie B Jackie B is the most talented I
00:15:31
um i adore him by i believe his pronouns are him okay but jackie if i'm incorrect
00:15:37
my apologies speaking of funny people how are you i'm good um i'm good i got a sunburn on my face uh which is cute though i i shouldn't say that
00:15:53
because i'm so anti like sunburn like we we got to protect we have to you look good like with a
00:15:59
a little pink glow. Really? It's not like sunburn red. It's like pink glowy glow.
00:16:04
Wow. Thank you. Wow. Cause this, this afternoon it was sunburn red in a way where I was like,
00:16:09
am I going to have to go to the, like the melanoma department tomorrow? Because this is,
00:16:16
this is how my family, you know, processes. Yeah. But I just, um, didn't think about,
00:16:22
it was that kind of thing where I went into the sun early in the day and went, I haven't put on
00:16:27
sunblock yet. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. And then never did it. No.
00:16:32
I got a legit like weird as if I tried to lay out in the sun sunburn. Oh, it's good. It's cute. I wish I didn't look good with the tan because I have face to show it
00:16:44
now. But man, sometimes it's just cute to have a little. To have a little. Hey, I don't know. I
00:16:49
was outside. Oh, I party sometimes. I guess I party outside. Have you been partying outside
00:16:55
lately? No, because I quit smoking. Okay. So I have no reason. You're so not a smoker. I know I'm not.
00:17:03
I picked it up during the pandemic like a year ago. I was like, I'm bored out of my mind.
00:17:10
I'm just walking in circles around my house. I need something vice-y to do. And you didn't have
00:17:16
a hammer and nail to just drive into your palm? Or my lungs. Yeah. So I picked up smoking. I was
00:17:23
like this will be a funny hobby. You probably did it like when you were in your teens. Oh,
00:17:28
yeah. I smoked in my teens. And then, you know, when you're out at a bar and someone has cigarettes
00:17:32
and you bought my cigarette and then you regret it the next day. So I took up smoking and then
00:17:35
it became a real thing that I became a smoker in my 40s during the pandemic out of nowhere It wasn like I quit for 10 years and then went back to it And Vince was like I think I like a challenge And Vince is like you way past just like quitting cold turkey because I tried to quit a couple times Yeah Then I was like watch me and quit Right Because that how I work Thank God you could Yes It not that easy And I think it because I was never a smoker really Yeah And then I had this one day where I couldn take a deep breath
00:18:07
and it's probably it was probably like anxiety but i was like well this is actually damaging my
00:18:12
lungs now so fuck this shit yeah good yeah so now i don't go outside i've never used to go outside
00:18:17
that was the only reason you were going out there yeah shit man thank you for being honest that was
00:18:23
really that was that was really honest look i mean the thing that's funny is it wasn't that long ago
00:18:30
where people smoked all the time indoors in restaurants yeah smoking quote-unquote smoking
00:18:37
sections yeah doctors fucking recommended it or whatever yeah but i mean like even in as recently
00:18:44
as the night yeah smoking or not i bet a lot of our listeners don't fucking know that because they
00:18:48
never had to deal with it yeah like up until the late 90s in certain places you'd go in like a
00:18:53
fucking coco's and they'd be like smoking or not which yes just meant the whole fucking place
00:18:59
smelled like cigarettes. Yeah. Like if you were in non, but you were back to back against the
00:19:04
smoking section, you were in the smoking. There was no plexiglass. They smoked on airplanes.
00:19:10
Yes. So everyone who doesn't smoke can go fuck themselves essentially. It's and also it's weird. And I think it's really telling because this all the ban happened
00:19:19
before the internet existed. So it just happened. And that's it. Those are the rules. The end.
00:19:25
And no one got empowered to go, I can hit people because I want to smoke. Right.
00:19:30
It didn't happen. Did you ever smoke on a plane? No. I think I was too young to have done it.
00:19:35
You didn't? No. Okay. No. Are you disappointed we never got to have that opportunity just to see what it was like?
00:19:41
Well, it seems I don't want to be introducing fire to any scenario where you're already a little bit scared.
00:19:51
I wouldn't smoke on a train. No, you shouldn't smoke near an airplane. No. Nobody should.
00:19:56
No. It's yeah, that that one was a weird. But I mean, that shows you how in the 50s, literally everyone smoked all the time.
00:20:06
Yeah. And it was not a big deal. I wonder if they really didn't know that it was bad for you.
00:20:11
They didn't for this for a long time. Do you think anyone was like, yeah, but I know it is.
00:20:17
Well, I mean, people must have known. It feels terrible. Yeah. It feels terrible.
00:20:22
Yeah. It makes you sick. Yeah. the book alan carr's uh the easy way to quit smoking if people need to quit smoking that's
00:20:30
like the bible yeah so check that out you should definitely we should all quit smoking yeah it's
00:20:36
it's very it's not good for you but i think i feel like we're talking to a bunch of people are like
00:20:40
uh yeah dummies we know yeah gen xers it's not fucking good for you yes i will always say i'm a
00:20:49
Gen X or even though I'm not really, but I will. But you're a cusp. Yes, there's I read some article
00:20:55
that they were calling you guys geriatric millennials. I love it. No, I'll take it.
00:21:03
That's better than just plain old millennial. True. It's a bad that man that dividing line is
00:21:10
a very strong dividing line. It is cultural references, though. I insist that I have the
00:21:16
Gen X cultural references. So yeah, because you had older siblings. So you were right in there with all of it.
00:21:23
Yeah. Have you seen anything fun? Never. Oh, never. And you have no proof that I did.
00:21:32
Seen anything fun. I tried watching a little more Game of Thrones. We're going to have to get back into it when I have a chance to watch it again.
00:21:37
So yeah, sometimes you need to take a little break. Yeah. Let's put a pin on that one.
00:21:42
Sure. But I'll get there. Yeah. Because I do like it. It's not a binge. I was just talking to Bradford about this because he also started it like re is started a rewatch.
00:21:52
And we were talking about how it is not a binge type show. There's a lot to absorb.
00:21:57
There's a lot to follow. And it was when it was on HBO on, I believe, Sunday nights.
00:22:04
It was the perfect like, oh, it's going to happen next. And it was like cliffhanger.
00:22:08
One a week. That makes sense. I am watching Why the Last Man. You are? Yes. What do you think?
00:22:14
I like it. it's a little soap opera-y. Right. But fucking Diane Lane is the most beautiful fucking
00:22:21
woman. She is. Talk about a champion for, what, 30, 40 years. Fucking ladies and gentlemen,
00:22:27
the Fabulous Stains. I can't believe that's her. If you guys haven't watched it, go find it and watch it.
00:22:34
She's amazing. Also, she was Cherry in The Outsiders. The best line in cinematic history, in my opinion, is
00:22:41
when Matt Dillon is Dally is bugging her and then she turns around and goes get lost hood and that's how she says it like the
00:22:51
intonation when i saw the movie is like i want to say that one day i want to talk like that
00:22:55
um i i have an admission that i didn't realize that only the men had died until like the third
00:23:03
spoiler alert episode but no because it's called why the last man yeah how would i not have figured
00:23:09
that out because we don't pay attention to things like that it's just like i literally thought and
00:23:15
And I'm not this is not a joke. I started watching it because I thought it was a new season of The Last Man on Earth with Will Forte and Kristen Schaal.
00:23:24
That was a good show. And I was like, yeah, it's back. It's fun and funny. Let's have some fun, funny.
00:23:29
And then it's like dark, deep. And then it's truly the apocalypse. But I just was really impressed with how.
00:23:37
That I mean, that first episode was just. Yeah. I like it a lot. I mean, we're going to definitely.
00:23:42
It hooked you. Keep watching it. Yeah. I'm interested. And wow, he's hot. Who that main guy?
00:23:48
But I love the CIA, the Secret Service. Oh, Agent 355. Yeah. Also, the concept of that, of the Secret Service that the president doesn't know about.
00:24:01
Yeah. It's awesome. Ashley Romans. She's incredible. She's great. I watch it just for her.
00:24:06
Oh, and Amber Tamlin's really good at it. Amber Tamlin is unrecognizable. And amazing.
00:24:11
She's so good. I hate her in it, even though I like her a lot. You don't. This is not your daddy's Amber Tam.
00:24:20
No, that's not the way it's. That's not the same. I literally I was watching. I'm like, who is this woman?
00:24:26
Who? And then I went, she's familiar. And when I saw that it was Amber Tam, I was like, how is this possible?
00:24:32
She's so good and unlikable in it. It's great. Do you know that I was an extra in her TV show in the late 90s?
00:24:40
Dr. House? No. Joan of Arcadia. Oh, wow. Joan of Arcadia. That's the one I totally forgot about until I watched this. People have sent me screen grabs
00:24:53
on Twitter of like, I just saw you in the background of Dharma and Greg or Sleepover.
00:24:58
There's Clueless, the TV show. But the one I totally forgot about because no one's ever sent
00:25:02
me a screen grab is Joan of Arcadia. That's hilarious. Yes. So what were you doing? Milling around the town square?
00:25:08
No, I was a teenager. You know, I looked so young. So I was at their high school walking. I mean, I was a teenager probably, but walking around just in the background, you know, like it's like between periods. And here comes Georgia walking by Amber Tamblyn, you know, that's my backpack on.
00:25:24
Nice. How often did you do that? I did it like a few times, seven or eight times.
00:25:31
Wow. It was really fun back then. Yeah. Before the internet, I just sit and read all fucking day and then go be in the background
00:25:38
of it. And then you got to see how like TV works and movies works and shit. It was really fun and see famous people.
00:25:44
There's nothing more exciting. Yeah. And then get paid for it. And free lunch and breakfast too, because I was broke as fuck.
00:25:50
So I'd show up early and like eat the crappy craft service that they give to extras.
00:25:55
Yeah. You know? Yeah, load up, put some scrambled eggs in your purse, then you're out.
00:26:00
Then you read your book and then you're gone. That's right. I love that. No, but yeah, she's so good.
00:26:06
Yeah, that's a good show. It's exciting to find one that you're excited to go back to because I feel like because of the way I binge and because of my, you know, because of all of our interior habits these days, it's like, oh, I don't have, I finished that.
00:26:22
There's nothing left. Yeah. There's nothing left. There's nothing. All right. Well, should we get going?
00:26:28
Yeah. Should we do this job? Let's definitely do our actual true crime podcast. Yeah.
00:26:33
Let's do it. For once in our lives. Can we please? You're first. I am. I am. Okay.
00:26:39
Can I take my shirt off real quick? Uh, sure. I have an undershirt. I have an undershirt.
00:26:45
A little hot. See? Wow. Woo, boobies. No. I have a little camisole. A cami. Can I, you know what?
00:26:54
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00:27:05
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The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Okay, so you may have already heard of this, but this is a very disturbing, of course, very awful story of the Rosewood Massacre.
00:28:50
Okay, so let me tell you some broad strokes. There's a movie directed by John Singleton and starring Ving Rhames that you can watch.
00:29:00
But for this story, some of the sources, the Tampa Bay Times, which used to be called the St. Petersburg Times.
00:29:07
So I kind of reference both. But there's an article revisiting Rosewood truth be told by Dan DeWitt, an article from The Guardian called Rosewood Massacre, a harrowing tale of racism and the road toward reparations by Jessica Glenza.
00:29:23
There's, of course, Wikipedia has the Rosewood Massacre article. There is Rosewood Massacre on a website called blackpast And that article is by Trevor Goodloe There actually a website that managed by the Rosewood Heritage Foundation rememberingrosewood
00:29:45
Okay, so I'll tell you a little bit about this. So in 1982, an investigative reporter for what's now called the Tampa Bay Times, but at the time was the St. Petersburg Times, named Gary Moore.
00:29:59
He drives out to a city called Cedar Key, and it's near the site where the unincorporated town of Rosewood once stood.
00:30:09
And Gary Moore is looking for a story. So he remarks to a local woman that the area has a, quote, gloomy atmosphere.
00:30:18
And the woman says back to him, I know what you're digging for. You're trying to get me to talk about that massacre.
00:30:24
And Gary Moore did not know about the Rosewood massacre. So he wasn't digging for that. But now he's a journalist. He's like, now I do need to know what you're talking about. And so he begins an investigation and that leads him to a man named Arnett Doctor. So when Arnett was five years old, his mother named Philomena Goins Doctor tells him and his family a story.
00:30:46
She says, of 1923 after a white woman from a neighboring town makes a false criminal claim involving an
00:31:23
anonymous black assailant which incites an angry white mob who invade and destroy the town and
00:31:31
many of its citizens and then for the next 25 years our net doctor obsesses over this story
00:31:38
of the town of rosewood but his aunts who he goes to talk to about it um they were taught never to
00:31:45
discuss the details of what happened in Rosewood, primarily for their own safety. So it is basically
00:31:52
a taboo subject in the family. So we'll give you a little background. Rosewood sits on the
00:31:57
northwestern side of Florida. It's about nine miles east of the coastal city of Cedar Key.
00:32:03
And of course, it's named after all the cedar forests that were there. So Rosewood begins as
00:32:10
a logging hub and a very successful one, which leads to its settlement in 1847. They opened two pencil factories in nearby Cedar Key, making pencils from all the timber
00:32:22
that's gathered in and around Rosewood. Ticonderosa? No, not that. I mean, I don't think so because they closed.
00:32:30
And we know that the Dixon Ticonderoga brand and product are still going strong to this
00:32:36
day. Right. I don't actually know that for a fact. I just know that pencils are still around.
00:32:41
I mean, pencils have to get made by someone, right? They have to. And because people so rarely use them all the way down to the nub, which is, as you know, my favorite thing.
00:32:49
Sure. Fully used pencils. Anyway, so basically these factories create jobs that draw both black and white Floridians to Rosewood and increase the population in the area.
00:33:03
So soon the town gets its own post office. that gets its own Florida Railroad train depot.
00:33:09
By 1890, these cedar forests actually get completely deforested, and Cedar Key's two pencil factories end up having to shut down.
00:33:18
So the marginally wealthy white population in Rosewood packs up, and they move about three miles away to the city of Sumner to try to look for new jobs.
00:33:28
So Rosewood becomes a predominantly black community, and that community flourishes.
00:33:33
They're almost entirely self-sustaining. They have their own school. They have three churches, a Masonic lodge, two general stores, one owned by a white family and the other by a black family.
00:33:44
They even have their own baseball team, the Rosewood Stars. Many black families in Rosewood enjoy a middle class lifestyle and the luxuries that it affords.
00:33:53
And a former resident named Robbie Morton remembers Rosewood as, quote, a town where everyone's house was painted.
00:34:00
There were roses everywhere you walked. Lovely. Yeah. So they're basically two prominent families in town, the Carrier family and the Goines family.
00:34:11
And the Carriers take over what remains of the logging industry in the area. And the Goines family introduces a turpentine industry to Rosewood.
00:34:21
The Goines family is so successful that in the by the early 1920s, they are the second largest land owners in all of Levy County.
00:34:29
So one member of the Carrier family is a woman named Sarah Carrier, and she works as a laundress for a white family named Taylor, and they live in the next town over of Sumner.
00:34:39
So 30-year-old, the patriarch of that family is 30-year-old James Taylor. Okay. Right?
00:34:45
So James works as a millwright, which is basically a craftsman who fixes and maintains factory machinery, and he works at the local sawmill.
00:34:53
So he gets up every morning before dawn to go to work. And he leaves behind his wife, Frances, nicknamed Fanny Taylor.
00:35:01
She's 22. And they're two young children. So Fanny is known around town to be a little bit odd.
00:35:07
Very obsessed with being clean. She's actually the floors of their home are woods.
00:35:13
And she has bleached them white and keeps them white. Yeah. She's a little distant with her neighbors.
00:35:21
But Sarah who who Fanny refers to as Aunt Sarah doesn mind her She thinks she fine So as an employer it not that big of a deal But then in the early morning hours of January 1st so it New Year Day 1923 one of Fanny neighbors allegedly hears Fanny screaming
00:35:42
So this neighbor grabs a revolver and runs through the darkness to the tailor's house to find Fanny laying on the ground, bruises all over her face and scuff marks all over her perfect white floor.
00:35:55
Oh, my God. Fanny tells the neighbor that a black man broke into her home through the back door, beat her, and then ran out.
00:36:04
So according to this neighbor's account, there's no sign of Sarah Carrier, who normally would have been there at that time.
00:36:11
Okay. But Sarah Carrier has a completely different story. She was there at the house.
00:36:18
She arrived early that morning, and she brought her granddaughter, Philomena, to help her do the laundry.
00:36:24
and that her granddaughter, Philomena Goyens, is Arnett Doctor's mother. So that's how this all connects.
00:36:33
So according to Sarah, she and Philomena both see a man leave out the back door of the Taylor's home,
00:36:40
but they say it was almost noon when this man left and they say that man was white.
00:36:47
Okay. So Sarah and her grandchildren, Philomena and her brother, they have seen this white man before.
00:36:53
And Sarah's theory is that Fanny's having an affair with this white man that they meet after Fanny's husband leaves to go to work every morning.
00:37:02
And that basically this one morning they got into a fight and this guy beat her up.
00:37:06
So she had to make up a story of what happened. Right. Not surprisingly, when Fanny reports this assault to Sheriff Robert Elias Walker, he believes her without question.
00:37:17
And he assembles like a posse to, quote unquote, investigate. But of course, word gets around about this attack and the story quickly morphs from assault to a rumor of robbery and rape.
00:37:31
Now, the problem with this is the day before in nearby Gainesville, Florida, the KKK had just held a New Year's Eve rally where they had actually marched behind a banner that read first and always protect womanhood.
00:37:45
so you can imagine what happens when this rumor of a black man raping a white woman
00:37:50
reaches these clan members who are all nearby in sumner just happen to be gathered around
00:37:56
which was unfortunately and as many of us know which was what was happening in 1920s
00:38:06
especially in florida but the south and in the midwest yeah it was a hotbed of race racist
00:38:11
oppression. So in 1866, Florida's black code laws were overturned and they included laws against
00:38:20
black people voting, bearing arms, gathering groups for religious worship and barring them
00:38:25
from reading or writing. So it was actually a progressive move to overturn those laws.
00:38:30
But of course, white supremacists were furious about it. So in response, they retaliate with
00:38:36
violence. And around 1915, the Ku Klux Klan, which had basically kind of died off a little bit,
00:38:45
they reemerge. And by the mid 20s, lynchings in the name of so-called vigilante justice
00:38:52
become the norm, especially in Florida in this area. So basically, when this report of assault
00:38:59
on Fannie Taylor comes in. Sheriff Walker asks around and he learns that a black prisoner named
00:39:06
Jesse Hunter had recently broken free from a chain gang and was at large. Jesse Hunter immediately
00:39:13
becomes the prime suspect with no evidence and no motive. And as many as 400 Klansmen start pouring
00:39:21
into the area to, quote unquote, help track him down. Sheriff Walker, instead of saying, no, no,
00:39:27
No, we have to. This is a, of course not, legal procedure. So he tries to deputize them all, but there's too many to manage.
00:39:34
The sheriff reaches out to a local convict camp and asks to borrow their dogs to help with this search.
00:39:41
So it's basically an unruly mob. It splits into several factions. Some go with the search dogs and the search dogs have picked up the assailant scent that goes from the tailor's home
00:39:55
into the city of Rosewood, the town of Rosewood. And so basically the mob decides that one of the black residents in Rosewood
00:40:04
is probably hiding Jesse Hunter. So the dogs lead the mob of 100 to 150 men to the home of Sarah Carrier's nephew, Aaron Carrier.
00:40:16
And they find no sign of Jesse Hunter, of course. So instead they drag Aaron out of his home in front of his mother
00:40:23
who is crying and pleading for them not to kill him. Yeah. But of course, they are out for blood now.
00:40:29
Yeah. And this is very disturbing, very horrible, as all of this kind of violence was back then,
00:40:37
really, really beyond. They tie Aaron to the back of a car and they drag him for three miles.
00:40:44
He somehow miraculously survives this attempted lynching. And when he does that, Sheriff Walker puts him into protective custody in nearby Bronson.
00:40:57
Now, that might sound nice, but he's basically putting this victim in jail after an angry white mob attempts to lynch him.
00:41:07
Years later, some Rosewood survivors would say that they suspect that the white man Fannie Taylor was having an affair with knew he was in trouble when he left her house after that beating.
00:41:18
Yeah And he ran to Aaron Carrier house to hide because Aaron was a Mason And the theory is that Fanny lover was also a Mason And so they knew each other And so Aaron hid the man and helped him escape not knowing what the result of that
00:41:37
helping would be. And that would also explain why the dogs were led to Aaron's house on that scent.
00:41:43
Totally. This is now just a theory. It's the survivor's theory. It's unproven, But it would make a lot of sense. So because in Rosewood, the few white people that still lived in Rosewood, like the white store owners, like they people got along with them.
00:41:59
Yeah, it would. There is not a contentious situation there. Yeah. He knew he could hide out there as opposed to some some other friend.
00:42:06
Right. And he had to go somewhere close. Right. You know. So at this point, the sheriff's newly deputized Klansmen are drinking.
00:42:14
They're getting more angry. They're getting more violent by the minute. They're completely out of control. So Sheriff Walker advises all black locals to stay at the turpentine mills where they work so that basically for the rest of the night. So no one gets caught on the street and no one gets caught in their house with these mobs.
00:42:32
So he basically created this situation and then realized he had made a huge mistake and incited mob violence, essentially.
00:42:43
Not a mistake, but yeah, much something much worse. Even though everyone's been warned, there is a blacksmith named Sam Carter working at one of the mills who actually has a run in with one of these mobs.
00:42:58
They beat him and they torture him into, quote unquote, confessing that he's hiding Jesse Hunter.
00:43:04
And so they force Sam to lead them to the spot where he's hiding him. But of course, there's no trace of Jesse.
00:43:11
He's not actually hiding him. Right. He was never hiding him. So then one of the men just shoots Sam Carter dead.
00:43:20
Then they hang Sam from a tree as a warning, quote unquote, to the rest of the Rosewood community.
00:43:27
So it is a it's a like a berserking mob going around this area. Oh, my God. So basically after this, this is kind of like the pinnacle of that violence.
00:43:40
And then they start leaving Rosewood. So on their way out of town, a few stragglers are lagging behind and they bump into Sarah Carrier's son, Sylvester.
00:43:53
Sylvester's nickname is Man. and basically he is everyone in rosewood loves him they respect him and they kind of fear him
00:44:02
he's a great shot he's an excellent hunter he's tough he's confident he's even musically talented
00:44:08
and basically they they see him they start to try to harass him they tell him he needs to leave town
00:44:16
and sylvester's like you're gonna need more people because that ain't happening and of course this
00:44:24
infuriates these few stragglers and they run back to the mob wherever they have all ended up
00:44:31
to let them know that this has happened. So they do get more people. And for the next three days,
00:44:39
these Klansmen and this out of control mob recruit more white men while all the while
00:44:46
stoking each other's anger. Sheriff Walker allegedly tries to disband this mob. It's too
00:44:52
little, it's too late. So on the evening of January 4th, 1923, a group of about 30 Klansmen
00:44:58
returned to Rosewood and surround Sarah Carrier's house where Sylvester lives. There's somewhere
00:45:04
between 15 and 25 black Rosewood residents hiding inside the home. So some are her neighbors who saw
00:45:12
this white mob coming and knew that they would be safer if they were all together. And some of them
00:45:17
were Sarah Carrier's relatives who had come for the holidays and were just there visiting their
00:45:23
grandmother. Oh, God. So when the mob descends on his mother's house, Sylvester's armed and he's
00:45:30
ready to protect everyone that's hiding inside. And so the accounts of what happened next vary
00:45:37
because it's basically survivor's accounts. But basically, two white men from this mob
00:45:43
approach the front door a man named Polly Wilkerson and a man named Henry Andrews and
00:45:50
shots are fired but no one's sure who fired the gun first but in that first wave of bullets Sarah
00:45:57
Carrier is shot and killed oh my god yeah and then Sarah's nine-year-old niece Minnie Lee Langley
00:46:05
comes downstairs to see what's going on and that's when her cousin Sylvester grabs her pulls her into
00:46:12
the firewood closet with him. So basically he's like, get in here, you know. Yeah.
00:46:17
So this is according to Minnie's first-hand account. Wow. She says, quote, he got behind me in the
00:46:24
wood bin and he put the gun on my shoulder and them crackers was still shooting and going on.
00:46:29
He put his gun on my shoulder, he told me to lean this way and then Polly Wilkerson
00:46:34
kicked the door down. And when they kicked the door down, cuz Syl let him have it. Holy shit.
00:46:42
So Sylvester Carrier battles the mob well into the morning. Oh, my God. But Wilkerson and Andrews are killed.
00:46:49
Several of the men are wounded. And so the mob ends up backing off. They never end up overtaking the house.
00:46:55
But it is believed Sylvester is killed in the battle. Although, according to Arnett Doctor, Sylvester lived to escape to Louisiana.
00:47:05
But no one else knows that. They think he died. Arnett says Sylvester would sometimes reach out to the family by sending a postcard, but that he remained in hiding until his death in 1964.
00:47:19
Holy shit. So he just the rumor was he died. one else would come after him. Right, exactly. And also he shot and killed two white men,
00:47:28
so he could never go back. I mean, he was, you know, always in danger, basically.
00:47:35
Now, all the other accounts say that Sylvester died in that standoff, and that would logically
00:47:40
kind of make the most sense if he was one of the only people with a gun inside the house.
00:47:44
But nothing is official, of course, because none of this ever got processed correctly by the
00:47:51
authorities. Right. Several other people in Sarah's Carious house were wounded, including one child
00:47:58
who actually had their eyes shut out but survived. Luckily, the other children managed to escape by
00:48:04
running out the back door and hiding in the brush or in the swamps. But even after all that violence,
00:48:11
the mob is not done. As Rosewood survivor Robbie Morton, the niece of blacksmith Sam Carter,
00:48:17
who we talked about earlier she would later put it quote they didn't find jesse hunter
00:48:23
but they noticed that here's a bunch of black people living better than us white folks
00:48:28
and that disturbed these people so the next day news outlets from all over florida and all over
00:48:37
america published varying accounts of the january 4th standoff most of the papers sensationalized
00:48:44
the fact, counting higher death tolls and embellishing the story to make it seem like,
00:48:49
quote, unruly black folks had started a race war. But black-run newspapers like Baltimore's Afro-American, however, they frame the story
00:48:58
as one of heroic black people trying to defend their home from Klansmen with the help of
00:49:04
Sylvester Carrier, who they refer to in the article as a desperado. The white folks of Florida read the national and local papers.
00:49:13
They don't see any other side of the story. And so the mob is reignited. Oh, Jesus.
00:49:19
So on January 5th, a mob of two to three hundred angry white men return to Rosewood and unleash hell.
00:49:28
They set fire to churches, loot and burn Rosewood residents' homes and shoot people as they try to escape.
00:49:35
So they light the house on fire. And as people try to get out of the burning building, they shoot them.
00:49:39
Oh, my God. The first known victim of the day is a woman named Lexi Gordon. When she sees the mob descend on Rosewood, she orders her kids to run out of town. But Lexi herself has typhoid fever. She can't escape. So she tries to hide under the house as it starts to burn. But the mob finds her there and murders her.
00:49:59
Oh, my God. So in this chaos, the Rosewood residents, they run for their lives, most of them into these swamps.
00:50:07
A survivor who was a young, a nine-year-old boy, his name's Wilson Hall. He remembers trudging through the swamplands with his mother and the rest of his family in the early morning darkness.
00:50:17
They made their way to Gulf Hammock, which is a 15-mile walk from Rosewood, where they finally find safety.
00:50:23
Other families find refuge in the swamps themselves, hiding out for days in the uncharacteristically cold Florida temperatures because it's January.
00:50:32
They're soaking wet and they're just in a swamp. Sylvester's brother, who's Sarah Carrier's son, James, he's among those who escape through the swamps.
00:50:44
He finds a hiding place when the turpentine factory manager, a man named W.H. Pillsbury, takes him in.
00:50:50
a white man takes him in. But the hiding place doesn't last very long. And the mob soon finds
00:50:56
him and forces him to dig his own grave and then shoots him and buries him in it.
00:51:04
This mob is so vast and widespread that a man named Mingo Williams, who is 20 miles from
00:51:10
Rosewood near the town of Bronson, he's out collecting sap for the turpentine factory.
00:51:15
He stopped by people from the mob. When they ask him his name, he says his nickname, which is Lord God. And they interpret that as him being arrogant. And so they shoot and kill him on the spot.
00:51:30
Fuck. So it's just they're berserking mayhem. Yeah. By the end of the day, at least two women are raped and the combined death toll of of everything jumps to at least eight.
00:51:42
Although it's believed there are many more unrecorded assaults and unrecorded casualties because they're doing things like walking people, making people dig their grave and then shooting them and putting them in it.
00:51:54
So we would never know what any of that is. And it is, I think we've talked about this before, but when it came to lynchings, nothing was official.
00:52:06
Nothing was run through the authorities. Nothing was investigated. It was all, it happened.
00:52:12
And then it was just supposed to be a warning and a threat. And that's all. Right.
00:52:18
Never investigated. Yeah. Not treated as a crime. Right. Ever. so Sheriff Walker calls for backup from the surrounding town's sheriffs now he's trying to
00:52:27
police the mob he basically created Governor Kerry Hardy contacts Walker saying he's ready to deploy
00:52:35
the National Guard to help out yeah but Sheriff Walker declines oh dude he says he's got everything
00:52:41
under control and he doesn't anticipate further disorder so Governor Hardy takes his word for it
00:52:46
and goes on a hunting trip. Meanwhile, the manager of the Turpentine factory, he does what he can to help his black employees.
00:52:54
He and his assistant, who's a man named Johnson, they're doing everything they can to convince the white employees
00:53:00
not to join the mob and not to be a part of it. And Pillsbury's wife helps by smuggling some black people out of town while she can.
00:53:10
Wow The two general store owners John and Mary Jo Wright who are white they hide black residents in their home through the night and into January 6th And Sheriff Walker and his deputies who are not part of the
00:53:26
mob, they're helping residents make their way to safety at the Wright's house. So they're basically
00:53:30
trying to find people and get them to basically white people's safe houses. And then having spent
00:53:39
years working and trading with the people of Rosewood, there are two white train conductors
00:53:44
who are brothers named John and William Bryce. So they decide they're going to lend a hand. So they
00:53:50
basically drive the train as slowly as they can through Rosewood so that the women and children
00:53:56
can hop on and they can take them up to Gainesville to safety. And they end up doing this
00:54:03
several times. But they're too afraid of retaliation from basically the Klansmen and
00:54:10
the mob to go back and help the men of Rosewood who have been left behind, who were last to go.
00:54:17
So after a full day of frantic evacuations, a mob of about 150 returns on January 7th,
00:54:24
and they spend the day burning down what's left of Rosewood. At the end of the rampage,
00:54:29
The only building left standing is John and Mary Jo Wright's house because it's a house of white people.
00:54:38
Rosewood is otherwise completely destroyed and completely deserted. So fearing the optics of what has now just become a gigantic clan fueled race riot, Governor Hardy decides he needs to take some sort of action.
00:54:56
So on February 11th, 1923, an all white grand jury meets in Bronson, Florida to investigate the events of the first week of January.
00:55:06
Over the course of four days, they hear from 25 witnesses. Only eight of those witnesses are black.
00:55:12
Even still, the accounts are incredibly damning. But it isn't enough for the all white jury to prosecute anyone.
00:55:20
Although the judge condemns, quote unquote, the acts of the mob, when all is said and done, no arrests are made, no one's prosecuted and no one is held accountable for the horrors of January of 1923.
00:55:32
News reports immediately following the trial note that the events were, quote, deplorable and a, quote, foul and lasting blot on the people of Levy County.
00:55:43
But after a week, basically, if this story falls out of the news cycle completely and it only takes a few years for the country to forget about the massacre entirely.
00:55:56
Sarah Carrier's husband, Haywood, had been on a hunting trip during the week of the massacre.
00:56:04
So when he returns home, he finds his wife, his brother, and his son have all been murdered, and his entire hometown has been burned to the ground.
00:56:14
Oh, my God. His grief untethers him, and he dies just a year after the massacre in 1924.
00:56:22
Wow. According to official reports, there are eight deaths that occur during the massacre.
00:56:28
Yeah. The two white men, CP, Polly Wilkerson and Henry Andrews, and six black residents of Rosewood, Sam Carter, Sarah Carrier, Sylvester Carrier, James Carrier, Lexi Gordon and Mingo, Lord God Williams.
00:56:46
But Minnie Lee Langley remembers, quote, stepping over many white bodies, unquote, during her escape.
00:56:55
And other people recall, other survivors recall seeing a mass grave of black people.
00:57:02
Oh, my God. So the actual death toll probably starts at 27. And who knows how high it goes.
00:57:10
Totally. The surviving former residents of Rosewood scatter around Florida and try to start their lives anew. For some survivors, the silence that they that they choose is a matter of safety. Of course, the trauma haunts them. Yeah. But they they fear that revealing themselves as survivors might put a target on their backs.
00:57:33
Minnie Langley just wants to protect her kids' innocence. It takes her 60 years to relate the story to her children.
00:57:41
And she would later say, quote, I didn't want them to know what I came through and I didn't want to discuss it with them.
00:57:47
I just didn't want them to know what kind of way I come up. I didn't want them to know white folks want us out of our homes.
00:57:55
So some of the survivors' descendants, like Arnett Doctor, see power in keeping the story alive.
00:58:01
So when reporter Gary Moore finds him in 1982, he's more than willing to share what he knows about the Rosewood massacre.
00:58:10
Behind his mother's back, he goes with Moore to the original side of Rosewood and tells him Philomena's story.
00:58:16
But when Philomena, his mother, finds out, she gets so angry she slaps him across the face and threatens to disown him.
00:58:24
She wanted her son to know the family history, but she still feared what would happen to them if they spoke out.
00:58:31
And this was 1982. Oh, my God. The trauma. Yeah. PTSD. Well, and also just it's not like the racism got any fucking better.
00:58:40
Right. So in a later interview, our net comments that is, quote, Aunt Beauty said it was a wise head that carries a still tongue.
00:58:49
And I'm still sitting here running off at the mouth right now. So the resulting story that Gary Moore writes for the St. Petersburg Times, which would later become the Tampa Bay Times on July 25th, 1982, it actually ends up getting made into an episode of 60 Minutes.
00:59:06
Oh yeah Which then prompts living survivors They see it and then they come forward to tell their stories and publicly share their accounts of what happened to them that night And more importantly
00:59:17
those Rosewood survivors and their descendants start to find each other. And on July 1st, 1985, they hold their first annual Rosewood family reunion
00:59:27
in Lacoochie, Florida. They also form the Rosewood Family Advisory Committee, of which Arnett Doctor becomes the chairman.
00:59:36
And he uses that position to contact high-powered lawyers in hopes that he can find someone who will fight for some form of reparations
00:59:44
for these survivors and their family in court. So after Philomena Goine's doctor, Arnett's mother, passes away in 1991,
00:59:54
Arnett's determination to gain justice intensifies into an obsession. What he doesn't know is that there's already a claims case in the works
01:00:02
that was brought by other survivors and descendants. So he finds out about that.
01:00:08
He's hurt that he wasn't involved, but eventually he joins in the fight and they bring him in to help.
01:00:14
So the case is filed in 1993 by a law firm called Holland and Knight on behalf of 13 survivors and their descendants,
01:00:22
including Arnett Doctor and Minnie Lee Langley. And in 1994, on the grounds of recouping lost property,
01:00:28
a bill passes awarding a $2.1 million payment to be split amongst those who can prove that they either lived in Rosewood in 1923 or are the descendants of those who lived in Rosewood.
01:00:42
Wow. And not long after that, Florida's Department of Education sets up a scholarship fund for Rosewood descendants called the Rosewood Family Scholarship Fund.
01:00:51
And in 1995, descendants of the Rosewood Massacre survivors create the Rosewood Heritage Foundation, which works to educate people across the U.S. about the Rosewood Massacre.
01:01:03
They organize traveling exhibits, heritage tours, and they provide information on the existing Rosewood Family Scholarship Fund for descendants who choose to pursue higher education.
01:01:14
Then in 1997, director John Singleton, who found out about the story and was incredibly struck by it, he collaborates with Arnett Doctor to make the film Rosewood.
01:01:26
The movie receives a lot of negative criticism for fictionalizing and some say over dramatizing certain details.
01:01:34
And Arnett also receives backlash from some of the fellow survivors descendants for taking more credit than they believe he should for reviving Rosewood's story.
01:01:43
And while Arnett may be considered controversial, Steve Hanlon, who's one of the lawyers who secured the payout for the survivors and their families, stated, quote, point blank, no question about it.
01:01:56
It wouldn't have happened without him. So in 2004, Florida declares Rosewood a historical landmark.
01:02:03
They erect a marker along State Road 24, listing the names of the known victims and briefly describing the events that took place in January of 1923.
01:02:12
And in March of 2015, 72-year-old Arnett Doctor passes away in Spring Hill, Florida, just a few hours south of Rosewood.
01:02:21
Today, both the Rosewood Heritage Foundation and the Real Rosewood Foundation, both run by descendants of the survivors who have now all passed away,
01:02:30
they continue to work towards educating the public about Rosewood and about racial injustice.
01:02:37
One descendant named Lizzie Jenkins, who works with the Real Rosewood Foundation,
01:02:41
emphasizes the importance of telling painful and disturbing stories like the Rosewood Massacre.
01:02:47
She says, quote, It has been a struggle telling this story over the years because a lot of people don't want to hear about this kind of history.
01:02:55
People don't relate to it or just don't want to hear about it. But Mama told me to keep it alive, so I keep telling it.
01:03:02
It's a sad story, but it's one I think everyone needs to hear. And that's the story of the Rosewood Massacre.
01:03:10
Wow. I'm embarrassed that I had never heard of that. Well, but I think this is exactly the kind of stuff that does not get talked about.
01:03:19
And it certainly doesn't get taught in most classrooms at all. Absolutely not. You know, that's incredible.
01:03:26
Great job. Thank you for telling that. Thank you. Yeah. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast.
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and use code Tori20. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, and host of Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club This week on the podcast I sitting down with Divergent author Veronica Roth to talk about her sprawling new novel Seek the Traitor Son
01:05:13
It's a sci-fi fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted. My first book was Divergent. And when that came out,
01:05:23
because it was so popular, I think it attracted mostly positivity, but the negativity,
01:05:28
I sucked in like a sponge. And I think it was like critiques of things I liked when I was like, you know, I was 23 and I wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves in it.
01:05:42
And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things. And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little things that like make you feel pleasure when you read.
01:05:54
But I also was like saying no to these parts of myself that I then was like, screw it.
01:06:02
So that's this book. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:06:13
Okay, so today I'm going to tell you the story of the man who thwarted an assassination attempt on Gerald Ford.
01:06:24
Name Oliver Billy Sipple. So we're going to be in San Francisco for this one. I know the city.
01:06:31
You love that place. You pee everywhere. Oh, my God. Hopefully this takes place near where I have peed.
01:06:38
You got to hope. I mean, the odds are highly in my favor. OK, the sources used for today are a Washington Post article by Lynn Duke, a New York Times article by Jesus Rangel,
01:06:51
an AP news article by Jennifer McNulty, an All That's Interesting article by Natasha Ishak,
01:06:59
and an episode of Radiolab, which I'll talk about more. Okay. All right. September 22nd, 1975.
01:07:07
President Gerald Ford is in San Francisco attending a World's Fair Council meeting.
01:07:12
I hate to stop you after your first sentence, but didn't Squeaky Fromm also try to kill
01:07:18
Okay. She did. Sorry. I knew that we were so confused. I'm like, did a bunch of people try to kill that guy?
01:07:26
Here's the thing. Yes. And no one. The story is so not well. I'd never heard of this before.
01:07:32
Yeah, I've never heard of it. Until recently. I just saw an article, you know, and was like,
01:07:36
what the fuck? Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So sorry. Yeah. Everyone tried to kill Gerald. I mean,
01:07:41
Jesus. Poor guy. Okay. But lucky guy. He got lucky a couple times. So I know it's wild.
01:07:49
It's intense. That afternoon. So the afternoon, September 22nd, 1975, a crowd of about 3000 people are gathered outside the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square, hoping to catch a glimpse of the president as he walks out of the hotel to his limo, which is parked out front.
01:08:05
At 3.30 p.m. after speaking to the World Affairs Council, Ford emerges from the hotel and walks towards his limousine.
01:08:13
And he pauses, of course, to wave at the crowd. Hello, hello. They're all cheering.
01:08:19
And they're just across the street. What the Secret Service don't know is that in the crowd is a woman with a gun who, as she later says, was hoping to incite, quote, a violent revolution.
01:08:33
Oh. Sarah Jane Moore is a 45-year-old West Virginia woman. She had had five divorces behind her.
01:08:41
She had four children. And she had moved to San Francisco and joined in radical politics.
01:08:48
Five divorces? Five at 45. Love is tough. It is. It's tough. Listen. Look. Relationships need a lot of work.
01:08:58
Constant. And then at a certain point, you just got to start over. That's right.
01:09:03
multiple times you gotta let go and let god okay so she gets really into radical politics seems like
01:09:08
she's a big fan of patty hearst's like just obsessed the day before she had been picked up
01:09:15
by police on an illegal handgun charge and police had compensated a 44 caliber revolver and 113
01:09:22
rounds of ammunition but had deemed her not a threat and had released her she's not a threat
01:09:27
but what about all her ammunition ammunition is definitely a threat i mean what did she
01:09:31
lipstick? It was a cute haircut. I think she also worked as a paid informant for the
01:09:40
FBI, so they might have been like, let her go. Really? Is that your personal theory? It's not. I read it.
01:09:45
So I don't know why I said I think. No, but I like the idea that you'd be like, this feels to me like she's a paid informant
01:09:53
for the FBI. Here's my theory. And it's loose. It's not based in reality. I don't know where I'm getting this,
01:09:59
but... So but that day she had another gun on her, a 38 revolver. And as the president waves at the crowd, Jane Moore reaches her hand into her purse and pulls out a gun, aims it at Gerald Ford's head and pulls the trigger.
01:10:18
Now, there had been another assassination attempt on Ford just 17 days earlier. Oh, shit.
01:10:26
Fucking people, women are coming at him everywhere. These hippie women with their big ideas.
01:10:32
They're radical, inciting. So by Manson family member Lynette Squeaky Frome, she had approached him outside the California State Capitol building.
01:10:40
There's photos of it, not video, right? Yeah, photos. And she's just an arm's length from him.
01:10:46
Takes this gun out, points the pistol at him, pulls the trigger, but because she had not chambered around.
01:10:53
Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Yeah, you do. Thank you. the gun didn't fire and squeaky was arrested yeah so back to san francisco so sarah pulls the
01:11:03
38 and fires the gun. She misses Ford's head by just five inches. The bullet instead ricochets off
01:11:09
the side of the hotel and strikes this poor fucking taxi driver named John Ludwig in the groin.
01:11:15
Oh, no. Bad day for him. It just a bruise. He was fine. He survived. Yeah. Oh, thank God.
01:11:20
President Ford freezes in place. And as Sarah's just standing there with her hand holding the gun,
01:11:26
realizing she has to shoot again, she goes to take another shot. But before she's able to pull
01:11:30
the trigger a man in the crowd lunges at her grabs the gun pulling it down while holding her arm
01:11:38
and um his brave act gives him enough time to tackle the woman and gerald ford survives his
01:11:46
second assassination attempt in three weeks i mean that it's horrifying yeah but that idea
01:11:54
that you'd be like well i went through this horrible thing with this yeah lunatic manson
01:12:00
acolyte yeah and you know and i'm sure there was meeting after meeting about how we're gonna tighten
01:12:05
up you know the game and you know can't let this happen again and then it just fucking does but
01:12:12
both times it's so it says a lot about it and that both times for the rest of the day he went on with
01:12:18
his meetings and stuff he was all business he was such a businessman he didn't give a shit he was
01:12:23
like that's like my sister to nora where it's like you can keep crying but you have to move toward
01:12:28
the car you know what i mean yeah you're allowed to have a fucking meltdown look we have a job here
01:12:33
you're still a president you've got to keep doing that job i mean i would take a day off if i if i
01:12:38
stubbed my toe i would run straight back into the hotel to the bar yep give me that whatever the
01:12:45
topmost shelf anything on there yeah and then be like and no one's allowed to talk to me well back
01:12:50
then in the limo he probably had alcohol everywhere cigarettes were being fucking you know like he had
01:12:55
it there oh i hope so yeah i hope so gotta help gets on the fucking what's it called plane president
01:13:01
plane air force one and later days i mean they're all drunk all the time too besides cigarettes
01:13:07
right yeah but here's the thing if he was drunk he he would not have frozen he would have kept
01:13:12
moving but like that's very like he froze like deja vu this again what this time a gun actually
01:13:19
fired and like by five, hold on, how many? Five inches. That's very close to one's head.
01:13:26
That is too close. That's as close as you want a bullet to be to your head. Definitely. So instead of becoming a national hero, though, and winning all the president awards,
01:13:36
whatever they're called, this. The presidential fitness award. That's the one. OK.
01:13:43
This moment of bravery ruins the man's life. What? Okay. Let me tell you about him.
01:13:50
Okay. His name's Oliver Sippel, and he's born on November 20th, 1941 in Michigan.
01:13:56
He's one of eight siblings raised by very devout Baptist parents. He joins the Marines in 1967 and serves a tour in Vietnam.
01:14:05
He's injured twice, including a head injury. One of the times Oliver is receiving treatment, the hospital he's in is bombed.
01:14:14
What? It's just a very chaotic tour. When he returns to America, he suffers from what they used to call shell shock, but I'm sure would now be diagnosed as combat PTSD.
01:14:24
He becomes very emotional, starts receiving treatment at a Veterans Affairs hospital.
01:14:29
He's found to be 100% disabled due to emotional trauma, which I think is just a pretty normal thing that happened back then.
01:14:38
After effects of war, yes. Especially Vietnam. Yes. During all four during all Fourth of July weekends, Oliver has to stay in a VA hospital so he can be away from the sounds of firecrackers.
01:14:49
Very common. It's very common for veterans. Veterans of all kinds and all processes is very common.
01:14:59
Right. Fireworks. So upsetting. It is. Unmarched. And they didn't know how to deal with it back then, you know.
01:15:05
right yeah they didn't know how to deal with most things back then but especially stuff like that
01:15:11
where especially if you were like a soldier it's like no you have to man up you have to be you're
01:15:15
not supposed to have any you're not supposed to care about anything right and i think the difference
01:15:20
with vietnam is that like in world war one and two they're coming the soldiers are coming home
01:15:25
as heroes and in vietnam of course they're being you know vilified vilified exactly um on march 23rd
01:15:33
1970, Oliver's discharged from the reigns. He moves to San Francisco so he can live the life
01:15:39
he wants without upsetting his Baptist family because Oliver had been hiding the fact that he
01:15:44
was gay since he was young, knowing he has to keep it to himself as his Baptist parents would never
01:15:50
accept their child being gay. So according to this Radiolab episode, it's called Oliver Sipple,
01:15:57
The Sound of Pride. San Francisco at the time, quote, is a place where you can be out,
01:16:02
but to the people you left behind, you can still be in. So of course, you know, that's San Francisco.
01:16:08
Yeah. It's a place where you can reinvent yourself. So this is exactly what Billy does.
01:16:13
He starts going by the name Billy instead of Oliver. He joins the San Francisco gay community.
01:16:17
He starts going by the name Billy. He frequents gay bars. He marches in gay pride parades.
01:16:23
He even joins the campaign for Harvey Milk, who's actually a longtime friend of his.
01:16:28
They had become friends in New York. And of course, Harvey Milk's one of the first openly gay candidates for office. And it seems like he's living his best life despite the issues he still deals with from combat PTSD.
01:16:39
So on September 22nd the day in question a 1975 33 year old Billy is just taking one of his normal daily walks and he happens upon the crowd gathered to see Ford outside the St Francis decides to wait with them So he can see the president Cut to Sarah trying to shoot the president Billy marine instincts kick in and he able to basically disarm her despite his fear
01:17:05
of loud noises like gunshots. Yeah. He's still able to just react immediately, totally heroic and blocks her from taking
01:17:14
another shot, thus saving the president's life. Wow. Which like who the fuck? I always wonder like who who knows what life would have been like if Gerald Ford had been
01:17:21
assassinated. Yeah. Right. In the same way if like RFK hadn't been assassinated. I was just wonder what life would have been like.
01:17:30
Well, just to imagine how close it came. Right. Two times. Yes. And like just defying the odds. Totally.
01:17:37
It's also just thinking about it. Even if you didn't have PTSD. Yeah. The idea that someone shoots a gun near you and you move toward that totally is so brave. And so like he had to.
01:17:53
maybe overcome way worse fear than the average person. Right. Or that's just it's remarkable.
01:18:01
It's heroic instincts. Yeah. You know, so Sarah's apprehended by the Secret Service.
01:18:06
President Ford is rushed into his booze laden limo. Billy's taken in for questioning. He is shaking, of course, because he does.
01:18:15
He is scared of loud noises like that. He's questioned by Secret Service, released after three hours of questioning.
01:18:21
They realize he has nothing to do with it. When he gets home, a reporter's already waiting for him there.
01:18:26
Billy tells the reporter he wants to be left alone, like he doesn't want any accolades for this.
01:18:32
He says, quote, I'm a coward. I don't know why I did it. It was the thing to do at the time.
01:18:38
Once he's inside his house, more reporters start calling him when they learn that he's a former Marine.
01:18:45
They learn that he's a former Marine. They're like, this is a big story. They start hounding him, asking him questions about his Marine training.
01:18:52
Like they want to make this a big story. He asked them not to publish his name, address. Like he doesn't want anything to do with this story. He's like, I reacted. I did this thing. I don't want the accolades for it. But by the following day, Billy's all over the news, on TV, on the front page of the news. He's a reluctant hero. And he really wants the media to stop focusing on him, hoping in the next couple of days they'll stop talking about it, but they don't stop hounding him.
01:19:21
So unbeknownst to Billy, two of his friends, Reverend Ray Brochier's at the time LGBT spiritual leader and a highly vocal critic of the San Francisco police, as well as his friend Harvey Milk, tip off famous San Francisco Chronicle journalist Herb Kane.
01:19:42
Herb Kane. What do I always do? Every time. I cannot say the name Herb. Well, because no one has that name anymore.
01:19:53
And so you're just reading it as an herb. But I always do the thing where like, get it right this time, get it right this time.
01:19:59
And then I still do the wrong. Too much pressure. Herb Cain. A legend, by the way.
01:20:05
Legend. Truly legendary. If you grew up in the Bay Area, Herb Cain was my, I just, that's somebody my parents
01:20:12
would talk about at the dinner table because he had a column, I believe in the Chronicle.
01:20:16
Yeah, it was like a gossip column, right? Well, it was kind of like, you know, it wasn't gossip as much as just like goings on about town.
01:20:23
Who's who going on? Yeah, I believe so. OK, well, they call him and they tell him they out Billy, essentially.
01:20:31
And part of the reason Billy didn't want any of these accolades is because he didn't want it to come out that he was gay.
01:20:35
No one knows but his friends in town. And so basically what happened is that Harvey Milk was really big on the fact that if you're gay, you should come out of the closet because gay people were hated by the public.
01:20:53
And so Harvey Milk and a lot of people's idea was that if you come out and you're this normal person, you're not the stereotype that everyone thinks you are, then it's going to give us more credibility.
01:21:01
So basically, in Harvey Milk's mind and other people's mind, outing people against their will was okay for the cause.
01:21:10
Well, and also, and I'm not sure about the timing of this, but there was around the same time, because you said this is 1975?
01:21:19
Oh, 1975. Yeah. Because there was that, they tried to pass a proposition that made it illegal for gay teachers to teach in public schools.
01:21:27
And that was when Harvey Milk took to the streets and was just like, we cannot let them do stuff like this. And like basically started his grassroots campaign.
01:21:37
Yeah. So I'm sure I mean that I feel like I could be wrong, but I feel like that was before this. But it's all about that where being in the closet is enabling these bigots to tell everyone else who and what gay people are when in fact gay people should be able to tell you who they are.
01:21:59
Right. But what a difficult time because, you know, it's it's them. It's two other people deciding. Right. What this man's life should be like.
01:22:08
Which I feel like they even understand that they're invading someone's privacy, but it's for the in their minds is for the greater good.
01:22:15
Because he is a true hero. Right. And it's so here. So Harvey sees Billy's heroic act as an opportunity to show the world that, quote, gays do heroic things.
01:22:25
And he's tired of people thinking, as he says, that gay people are, quote, limberisted, child molesters, perverts, you know, these fringe of society.
01:22:34
No, they're they're Marines. They're heroes. They're people all around you. So Harvey Milk kind of like went around, I think, what what Billy would have been OK with for the cause.
01:22:46
I see that. I mean, yeah. But it essentially ended up ruining Billy life Dan Moraine a political affairs columnist at the Sacramento Bee says Harvey quote used Billy outing as an opportunity to promote gay rights
01:23:00
So on September 24th, the article by Herb. Yeah. Kane is published and it reads in part, Billy Sipple, quote, was the center of midnight attention at the Red Lantern, a Golden Gate Avenue bar he favors.
01:23:18
So without saying it's a gay bar, kind of implies it. The Reverend Ray Rochier's head of Helping Hands and gay politico Harvey Milk, who claimed to be among Sipple's close friends, described themselves as proud.
01:23:33
Maybe this will help break the stereotype. So the day after Herb Cain's article is published, reporters show up to Billy's apartment to interview him.
01:23:42
Billy tells the reporters that he hasn't heard anything from the president, like thanking him or even the mayor of San Francisco.
01:23:48
He's only heard from the press. Before they leave, Billy asks the reporters not to disclose his sexuality.
01:23:55
When the reporters ask about his sexuality, Sipple says, quote, I don't think I have to answer that question.
01:24:00
If I were homosexual or not, it doesn't make me less of a man than I am. And they don't listen to him.
01:24:06
multiple national newspapers immediately start reporting on Billy and his sexuality.
01:24:12
These newspapers don't just hint at his sexuality. They completely spell it out.
01:24:17
Headlines include, quote, gay vet and, quote, homosexual hero. Some papers even, quote, speculate that President's Ford failure to promptly thank Billy for his heroic act is a result of Billy's sexual orientation.
01:24:32
So, like, you know. Yeah, they're now they're kind of like twisting the story around.
01:24:38
Yeah, it is weird that President Ford hasn't reached out to thank him for saving his fucking life.
01:24:44
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Many newspapers defend their decision to out Billy as gay.
01:24:50
They say that mentioning Billy's sexuality is important because it, quote, presents information contrary to the stereotype of homosexuals as lacking vigor, which is something the reporters believe activists want.
01:25:04
right like everyone's trying to act like this is what they told us to do yeah it's good we're
01:25:11
saying he's a hero isn't this great the newspapers feel like they are quote raising significant
01:25:15
political and social issues then actually in radio lab in the beginning of the episode they
01:25:20
interview the woman who tried to assassinate um gerald ford sarah jane moore sarah jane moore
01:25:28
which is interesting news of billy's sexuality makes it to detroit where billy's devout baptist
01:25:34
parents are living. And Billy's brother, George, later tells the Washington Post that seeing the
01:25:39
news about their son being gay was, quote, an embarrassing blow to their parents. Billy's
01:25:44
parents and siblings are hounded and teased about Billy's sexuality. At work at the GM plant,
01:25:51
just days before, fellow employees had been calling Billy a hero and congratulating his
01:25:57
father and brothers. But now they're taunted and laughed at on the factory floor. At home,
01:26:03
Billy's mother is harassed by neighbors and reporters. Billy's mother tells Billy that she never wants to speak to him again.
01:26:10
Billy's father tells his brothers to forget that they have a brother. Billy's parents, eventually they accept him back into the family.
01:26:19
Billy's parents and siblings, though, they never fully accept him completely. And when Billy's mom dies, Billy's dad doesn't want Billy attending the funeral.
01:26:29
And he stays home in San Francisco. Horrible. On September 25th, so just a couple days later, Billy and his attorney hold a press conference where Billy says, quote,
01:26:38
My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with the saving of the president's life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel on Tuesday.
01:26:50
My sexuality is a part of my private life and has no bearing on my response to the act of a person seeking to take the life of another.
01:26:57
I am first and foremost a human being who enjoys and respects life. I feel that a person's worth is determined by how he or she responds to the world in which they live, not on how or what or with whom a private life is shared.
01:27:12
When asked what he would like to see happen now, Billy says, I don't know. I'm very shook up.
01:27:17
I'm feeling very sorry for my family. It's awful, just awful. I've got nothing more to say.
01:27:22
So he's completely traumatized by being outed. The next day, President Ford writes a letter to Billy, which is publicly released.
01:27:30
Ford wrote, quote, I want you to know how much I appreciated your selfless actions last Monday.
01:27:35
The events were a shock to us all, but you acted quickly and without fear for your own safety.
01:27:40
By doing so, you helped to avert danger to me and to others in the crowd. You have my heartfelt appreciation.
01:27:47
So on the third. Sorry, really quick. I just remembered that this was President Ford's second assassination attempt. And that's why he
01:27:56
wasn't so quick with the thank you letters. Because I bet you he was like, fucking ripping
01:28:02
people to shreds. You know what I mean? Like, right? Wouldn't they have to circle up and be
01:28:07
like, okay, this truly you guys, this can't happen again. So there's all kinds of internal strife.
01:28:13
Right. That's because I was like, why the hell wouldn't they thank him? Why wouldn't well, everyone a medal?
01:28:19
Because everyone assumed it was because he was gay. Right. And it's just true. He didn't get any kind of medal. He didn't get it. You know, everyone was like, he should have been invited to the White House.
01:28:29
Yes. And General and President Ford should have shaken his hand like he should have been receiving all these accolades. And Harvey Milk was vocal about it being obviously because he was gay. Right. You know. Yeah.
01:28:40
So finally it sounds like he was maybe Gerald Ford was hounded enough in the press that he sent that letter maybe reluctantly But you right I sure there was a playbook being burnt Yes Yes I sure So then in response Billy writes a letter to Ford
01:28:56
He says the stories about his sexuality have caused, quote, great anguish to my parents and
01:29:00
to the rest of my family. Billy tells Ford that it's, quote, a very hard thing to have your mother
01:29:05
and family not want to have contact with you. He asks Ford to at least send his family a card or
01:29:11
call his family to at least, you know, reach out to them. He says, quote, I love my family and do
01:29:17
not wish to be separated from their loving companionship. Your help would be gratefully
01:29:22
appreciated. But there's no evidence that Ford ever makes the call. He also never publicly thanks
01:29:28
Billy or shakes his hand. And Billy about this whole thing just feels bitter and disappointed.
01:29:33
He files a $15 million lawsuit against seven newspapers, accusing them of invading his privacy
01:29:39
and all the consequences that came with it. Of course, his family finding out he was gay and abandoning him.
01:29:46
And also that the newspaper, quote, exposed Billy to contempt and ridicule, causing him great mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation.
01:29:54
In 1984, the lawsuit is dismissed by the California Supreme Court on the basis that Billy's sexual orientation had been known
01:30:01
by, quote, hundreds of people prior to this. But of course, those people are just the San Francisco gay community.
01:30:08
Right. So it's not like it was a known thing. No. As time goes on, Billy's health deteriorates. He starts drinking daily, heavily. He starts receiving treatment for paranoid schizophrenia, alcoholism and other health issues, including hypertension and heart problems. His health just completely deteriorates.
01:30:27
it's obvious to those around him that Billy's struggling. He gets drunk and says he wishes he had never saved the president's life,
01:30:36
saying it wasn't worth his life being ruined. Yes, that's completely understandable.
01:30:43
Yeah. On February 2nd, 1989, Billy's friend Wayne Friday is asked to do a welfare check on Billy.
01:30:49
How sad is this? The bar that he frequented all the time, the bartender hadn't seen him in a few days and was worried about him.
01:30:56
Like that's those were his regular friends at that point. Wayne goes to Billy's place and doesn't get an answer at the door and can already smell through the door that Billy's dead. The landlord lets him in and Billy is dead and had been for some time, a few days. Billy's sitting in a chair with a bottle of Jack Daniels nearby. The TV's still on. It's he's died of natural causes, but he's only 47 years old.
01:31:23
I know. Following Billy's death, President Ford writes a letter to Billy's friends and family that reads in part, quote, I strongly regretted the problems that developed for him following this incident. It saddened me to learn the circumstances of his death. Mrs. Ford and I express our deepest sympathy in this time of sorrow involving your friend's passing. And actually, when he was found dead, President Ford's original letter was framed on his wall, on Billy's wall.
01:31:50
Oh, I know. Oliver Billy Sipple is buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery. Today, multiple law review articles and more than a dozen books and commentary pieces have mentioned the ethical implications of newspapers outing Billy against his will as a subject's right to privacy.
01:32:10
In 2011, Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco signed a resolution making September 22nd, which is in two days from now, meaning two days ago, for people listening, all over Sipple Day.
01:32:24
And Billy Sipple is thought of as an LGBTQ hero by those that know the story, despite him never wanting to be outed in the first place.
01:32:32
And the event of saving President Gerald Ford's life, ruining his own life. and that is a sad tragic story of the hero oliver billy sipple wow i i am from i was born in san
01:32:49
francisco i was raised in baria i've never heard this story i the name sarah jane moore was familiar
01:32:57
i always thought she was one of the manson family yeah no every time her name would come up
01:33:04
I would just go, oh, she must have been another. Right. Like I just had I had it all so confused. And this story is I would just think at some point I would read it in a magazine or newspaper. Yeah. About how they, you know, I think I got it on like Reddit. It's like I never heard of it before.
01:33:24
And it is funny because when you hear the president, Daryl Ford, being assassination attempt happening, you think squeaky from.
01:33:31
That's part of the narrative of the Manson family. Yeah, this one. Then two weeks later.
01:33:37
Then there's other one. It happens again. And that like, God, everything about that is so fateful and sad and hard because this was a person who already was having a hard time.
01:33:49
Right. But was kind of like taking it back and getting his life and living the life he wanted to live.
01:33:54
Getting healthy because his life was his own. Yeah, but still had so many issues.
01:33:59
And of course, yeah, of course, you wouldn't want to be the center of attention if you are having all these issues to begin with, but also have to kind of be in the closet for one side of your life.
01:34:10
Right. You know? Yeah. And like, yeah, just the outing of someone who did not want to be out is so unethical.
01:34:17
I also think the way things have changed is so drastic. And I know this is such an old person thing to say, but like it, the kids today don't understand. My friend Sam Pancake, who is a brilliant actor and a hilarious, hilarious comedian who also does shows because he does go. He talked about this one time on a podcast. I think it may have been.
01:34:42
Yeah. pod safe america because they were doing live shows at the improv before covid started and he
01:34:50
kind of talked about that where the kids today the difference is so vast from how it was like
01:34:57
in the 80s growing up yeah um even in you know that recently they don't understand
01:35:03
how bad it was and especially like in you know when when aids hit like it was like even if things
01:35:11
were starting to improve um you know in the 70s the actions harvey milk was taking the kind of like
01:35:18
the this upswing and then the aids epidemic and the what that did to people and what that did to
01:35:26
gay visibility gay rights just and also just the gay population and the mishandling i'm not
01:35:32
mishandling the outright fucked up-edness of reagan and bush just completely ignoring the aids
01:35:40
epidemic for political reasons and letting thousands and thousands of people die because
01:35:47
of politics. It's just, it's just, it's a beautiful thing how much it's changed, but yeah.
01:35:56
But there's still a long fucking way to go. Yeah. And also I think just people need to like stuff like this is like the more we can hear
01:36:03
stories about that. I mean, I cannot wait to listen to that radio lab because what an amazing tale.
01:36:10
And and there's so many things like that that just are just not discussed. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if the radio labs it's from 2017.
01:36:19
So I don't know if you can listen to it. Like, I don't know if that's going to try to get me to sign up for a subscription.
01:36:24
So I just was hoping that if you could sign right here. No, but so you can find the episode on the Sound of Pride, the WNYC Studios podcast.
01:36:35
So you can find it there. It's like Oliver Sippel from Radio Lab. Cool. Yeah. amazing that was a great story great find right totally yeah those were good stories this week
01:36:47
really good um well shit we did it again wow that was that was a great show yeah i'm proud of us
01:36:54
no it's good i mean wow it's almost kind of like unknown unknown untalked about yeah uh
01:37:05
stories that should actually be very widely known. Absolutely. Yeah. Let's fucking do more of those.
01:37:11
Please. Oh, before we go, we actually do have a very, very exciting announcement. We do? Yeah.
01:37:18
I guess we have a trailer that's about to play. Oh my God. After this episode, we have a trailer
01:37:22
that's about to play for our first original Exactly Right limited series. We are so excited
01:37:29
to share this with you guys It been in the works for like a long time It been over two years since we have been working with the great great performer writer journalist superstar Dave Holmes So talented We
01:37:43
obsessed with him. The minute he was like, the minute the word podcast came out of his mouth
01:37:47
near us, we were like, yes, you can do whatever you fucking want. Yes. And then the idea he had
01:37:52
was so unique and rad that we've just been losing our minds over it. Very excited because
01:37:58
Entertainment Weekly just covered this story which we're very excited about. That was really
01:38:04
exciting because essentially Dave has been obsessed with a band called Sudden Impact who is featured
01:38:12
in the Boyz II Men video Motown Philly from 1991. It's been a very long time. It's a very obscure
01:38:22
reference and moment in time when everyone used to watch videos and everyone used to know all the same, all the, all the same references.
01:38:31
We listened to all the same music, even if you didn't like it, you knew white snake,
01:38:36
even if you, you know, I mean, we all, uh, as Dave calls it, the monoculture, we were
01:38:41
all involved in it. And there was a very popular video that featured, um, a three second clip of a boy band posing
01:38:50
called sudden impact. Their name was Sudden Impact. And then they just disappeared.
01:38:57
And Dave Holmes, who is, as everyone knows, a pop culture obsessive, has not stopped thinking about this three second clip and who were Sudden Impact.
01:39:05
What happened? Where did they go? Why did he never hear about them again? So you can find out all about and even if you even if you're 12 years old and you don't know any of those things we're talking about, this is the most compelling and fascinating story of one of those.
01:39:21
Not even aware are they now, but where did they wherever were they in the first place?
01:39:27
And then from there, he so brilliantly turns it also into the story of the people he ends up interviewing about that time and place and their career.
01:39:35
And so it's so much more than this boy band story. Right. It's about the pursuit of fame. It's about show business. It's about what are you, what you start out thinking you want and what you end up getting and how for almost everybody that is not a straight line.
01:39:49
Yeah. And that is not a direct route. And it's a really, really well done podcast. We're so, so proud of it. So after this episode, you can listen to the Waiting for Impact trailer.
01:40:01
Yeah. Just keep listening and you'll hear it. And check out the premiere on October 12th here on Exactly Right.
01:40:08
And there will be new episodes every Tuesday. And of course, please subscribe. We know and we've told you that it really makes a huge difference when you subscribe to a podcast.
01:40:18
That's waiting for impact. Please go subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It might be on Stitcher It might be on Amazon Music Wherever you listen Yeah You know all throughout Throughout thick thin us eating candy corn in your ear Thanks for listening
01:40:33
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Nice. Did it. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:40:45
It's the summer of 1991. The peak of the monoculture. Everyone is watching and listening to, or at least aware of, the same TV shows, movies, and music.
01:40:56
The internet hasn't had its way with us yet. A song comes out that summer from the R&B group Boys to Men.
01:41:02
It's called Motown Philly. In the music video, we meet Boys to Men and the other groups in the East Coast family.
01:41:08
Another bad creation, Belbiv DeVoe. And then, two minutes and 38 seconds into the video, we meet another group.
01:41:16
Five young guys in matching white button-down shirts, each with his own unique necktie,
01:41:21
their name in lights above them, Sudden Impact. They point at the camera. They point at you.
01:41:28
Like, are you ready for Sudden Impact? I was a young guy in the Midwest at the time,
01:41:33
glued to MTV, dreaming of a life in the entertainment industry. I was ready for Sudden Impact.
01:41:39
The world was ready for Sudden Impact. Motown Philly just came out. they're on MTV for the first time.
01:41:46
And the first question is, who's those white guys in the video? You know, like he's already promoting an act
01:41:52
that doesn't exist yet. Here it is. You're going to love this. This is my universe.
01:41:58
These are my, this is my record label. Enjoy. Thank you. Or pardon me, you're welcome.
01:42:03
I couldn't wait to see what Sudden Impact was going to do next. What they did next was disappear.
01:42:10
I'm Dave Holmes. And as a former MTV VJ and professional pop culture obsessive, I've been thinking about Sudden Impact for 30 years.
01:42:18
I always wanted to know what happened, so I decided to find out. And let me tell you, what happened was a lot.
01:42:25
We actually got signed to Motown off of a poster without them even hearing any music.
01:42:35
Music probably saved his butt from going to jail. Wow, we could really make it. We could do this. We could do that.
01:42:40
It ain't right, man. You're playing God with me. Let me fucking go. If you don't plan on doing something, let us fucking go.
01:42:47
Two grown men just broke up. Like two heterosexual males just broke up. Am I still holding on to that hope?
01:42:53
Like, oh, I can't wait to see this. I still have that. Because I don't like thinking that it's over for anybody.
01:42:59
I always suspected there was a story behind Sudden Impact. I had no idea. I'm going to track these guys down one by one.
01:43:06
And I'm going to find out what happened. and I'm going to try to answer the most bewildering question of them all.
01:43:12
Why can't I stop thinking about them? This is a podcast about big swings about high hopes about what happens when your best laid plans go sideways It about the 90s and what we left there
01:43:25
This is Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. Be sure to listen to the show's premiere on Tuesday, October 12th on Exactly Right.
01:43:34
New episodes drop every Tuesday. Subscribe now on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.
01:43:44
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.
01:43:50
Associate producer, Alejandra Keck. Engineer and mixer, Stephen. Ray Morris. Researchers, Jay Elias and Haley Gray.
01:43:58
Send us your hometowns and your fucking hoorays at myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:44:03
And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
01:44:08
And for more information about this podcast, our live shows, merch, or to join the fan cult, go to MyFavoriteMurder.com.
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