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Own the dream. What's up, Boston? Boston! It seemed like you weren't going to start it, so I just started it.
00:02:09
Yeah. I was waiting for you. Were you doing a dramatic hold? Well, I couldn't remember if we decided to say Medford or Boston.
00:02:16
I think it's Boston, right? Yeah. Should we do another one, too? Let's do one for Medford too
00:02:25
Just in case they're sad What's up Medford? What's up Medford? Now if you were really funny
00:02:35
You would have been just dead quiet Just fucking not one response In the entire room
00:02:41
And thank you ma'am for your one woman Standing ovation Really brave You didn't look back till the very end
00:02:50
and then you sat down right away so we knew you weren't crazy. It's just nice. It's a good feeling.
00:02:57
What's great about tonight is unlike last night, and I could be wrong about this,
00:03:02
there's not canned wine for sale in the lobby. So everyone isn't thinking they're drinking one glass of wine
00:03:08
when really they're drinking two and a half glasses of wine out of a can. It was 11% alcohol in a can of wine.
00:03:15
And from what I understand, a regular beer is 4% alcohol. So people were just like, I'm just going to have a couple of sips.
00:03:25
Fuck you! Yeah! Rock and roll! She's talking about me after the show when I had two and a half glasses of wine in a can.
00:03:36
Georgia had six cans of wine. And you barely made it here today. But luckily, I wasn't the naked man running around outside of our hotel when we got back.
00:03:48
You know, it's been an amazing tour so far. We've seen the sights. We've seen everything the East Coast has to offer, including a man who lost.
00:03:58
His shirt was off, and I watched him step out of his pants and then turned and went,
00:04:03
naked guy on the street, should we hold here at the, should we pretend we're going through our purses at the trunk and just hang out for a second?
00:04:11
We went for it. He was not conscious of us or anything else. And then I flashed you later.
00:04:19
Yeah, that was fun. I'd like to... No, no, tell the whole story. Oh. She fucking...
00:04:26
You open with the punchline, and then you think you're just going to keep going?
00:04:30
Well, then I got to my hotel room, and I opened my bag of stuff, and it was Karen's bag of stuff.
00:04:35
And I looked at my phone, and Karen's like, oh, shit, you have my bag of stuff. Let's trade.
00:04:39
And I was like, I'll come to you. she's like I'm at the elevator I'm like this is my fucking chance and I had on like um
00:04:44
like a strapless dress you know throw on little dress and so uh I hit her floor and I'm going up
00:04:51
and I'm like what if there are um cameras in here so wait till the last minute and pull my dress down
00:04:57
and then just step out of the elevator and the thing yes you're right to cheer for her tits you're right she's been gifted by god thank you
00:05:11
here's the thing george has done this to me many times she's a she's a touch of a nudist
00:05:16
it's a great prank i think every time it is like the surprise i can't process what i'm looking at
00:05:24
for the first half a second. So I'm like, well, it's her face. What are we doing down here?
00:05:32
Like every time I'm like, hey. I gotcha. I gotcha. That's not a shirt with pictures of tits.
00:05:39
That's your actual tits. Titties. Gotcha. Also, it was a Friday night in New York City
00:05:48
in a pretty busy hotel. So the odds that there would have been some rando dude standing next to me
00:05:53
were I would say pretty good I thought of that as I stepped out of the elevator Immediately felt shame and embarrassment Pulled it up pretty quick But I got the point across
00:06:07
Well, for my experience, you stepped off the elevator, and it was like one of those dresses with an elastic top here,
00:06:14
and just the elastic was down there. It was like I chose almost like an off-the-shoulder dress.
00:06:19
She was like, I'm doing off the tits tonight. Yeah. I don't think Vince even knows I did that.
00:06:26
Secrets. My own husband. We have secrets. We're in a high school. I know. Do you guys know that?
00:06:33
You're our student body. Ew. This is just what it's, this is really what it's like, though.
00:06:44
They should warn you in high school. It's like, you're kind of going to be in high school forever.
00:06:49
Just get used to it. it's always going to be this feeling of like we were supposed to prepare something
00:06:55
for the talent show but we got drunk and showed each other our tits in the elevator all night
00:07:01
and now we're like hello my baby do we say Medford or do we say Boston I don't know
00:07:08
why didn't we decide before at least we have our rug to distract everyone thank you
00:07:19
we brought it from home We didn't bring Stephen. Sorry. Yeah. It was the rug or Stephen.
00:07:29
Stephen's like, you can roll me in the rug. This rug's not going to take care of my cats
00:07:34
and send me lots and lots of photos of them when I'm sad about it. Is it? No, it's not.
00:07:44
But yeah. Oh, this is My Favorite Murder, the podcast. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. That's Karen Kilgara.
00:07:53
And this is Georgia Hardstart. Yeah. Thanks, you guys. You guys were the ones that woke up early on the day the tickets went on sale,
00:08:02
got the early show tickets. You're fucking on it. Thank you. You're the responsible ones.
00:08:07
That's right. Good job. You guys are the ones that are like, I want to go see them, but I'm not staying up all night.
00:08:14
No, I have shit to do. Yeah. We support that. I'm a pastor. I have to get up and do 7 a.m. mass tomorrow morning.
00:08:22
I'm not just going to. Yeah. I can't just. I can't be like. All the time. Oh, let's talk about your outfit.
00:08:29
Oh, all right. Tell us. Thanks, everybody. Oftentimes when we're on tour, I go through a thing called outfit resistance where I just
00:08:39
don't feel like getting an outfit. This time, I rolled the dice. I went on to the internet
00:08:48
where they have lots of clothes and I was just like, just order a couple things and see what happens.
00:08:53
So this whole thing rolls in and I tried it on and I was like, great, it fits, everything's perfect.
00:08:59
And then... Thank you so much. I like that a couple people were saying it like, pocket?
00:09:15
pockets it can't be it couldn't be they gave a pocket yeah i love it i didn't even know i didn't know when i ordered it it's just a fun surprise
00:09:28
bonus it was kind of like a pocket bonus and then i stuck my hand in them the other night
00:09:34
because they're nice deep pockets this woman goes oh and then there's cough drops in there yeah
00:09:40
i'm kind of like a reverse pinata you have to come in here then there's fun stuff like cough drops and what about your dress george this is a dress i bought
00:09:55
it i got ten dollar shoes on thank you very nice i put my really nice high heel gold shoes next to
00:10:03
the door at home and vince who was coming out after us i was like if you can put those in your
00:10:07
suitcase bring them don't forget and he was like okay i'll try and got to the hotel he's like i
00:10:12
couldn't fit them and I was so fucking happy about it. You know, in the future, you don't even have to
00:10:18
go through any of that. You can just not bring them. I know, but you know, I wanted to try.
00:10:23
Why? I don't know. This is a weird thing I have. Um, and so I got $10 shoes at Old Navy instead
00:10:31
and that's what's happening. And I am very happy with my decision and they have shoe, foot pockets.
00:10:38
Oh my God. You can put your, put it on. There's a whole knife in there. Oh wait, do a spin.
00:10:46
It's a feature that you didn't know you had last night. Look at Scarlett O'Hara.
00:10:53
You could put crinolines under there and go to a dance. I'm dizzy. I could say you're busy or you're dizzy.
00:11:00
Dizzy. I'm too busy to go to that dance. Nobody asked me. Stupid. Wait, what? Should we sit down?
00:11:09
Sure, yeah. These are nice. Oh, I want to... Never in the history of fucking this podcast live has a table been tinier.
00:11:22
This is less a table and more an elbow rest, actually. I mean, it's really all the room we need, but...
00:11:30
But still, give us a little more than we need. I feel inferior. Also, we were getting driven here by someone who works here,
00:11:41
and we were like, what shows have you been here lately? And I still feel the energy.
00:11:46
What was it? The Price is Right Live was here. Did you go to it? I didn't even know that was a thing.
00:11:52
Was it amazing? Was the Price Right? Did you win two cars Was Plinko here That sounds fucking amazing And then I just realized just now Was Plinko here Did Plinko come
00:12:05
Oh my God, did you get a photo with Plinko? But then I just realized I could actually go to the Price is Right actual show.
00:12:12
Yeah, in our hometown. In our hometown, but I was really excited about it being here too.
00:12:17
We asked if Drew Carey came, turns out he didn't. So if you're bummed that you weren't here, don't worry.
00:12:22
I bet you they got a local comic who tried their best I wonder if they gave actual money away
00:12:31
I bet they did actual money that's fucking cool if you were at the Price is Right live
00:12:38
please write to myfavoritemurdered at gmail.com and let us know what it was like
00:12:43
we'd love to know oh this is a true crime comedy podcast that's right there are rules and regulations
00:12:51
I mean, there's all kinds of stipulations. We basically like to tell people, because sometimes people bring, sometimes people are fans,
00:13:01
and then they bring people who are not fans to the show. And those people have no fucking clue what's going on.
00:13:06
They're like, this isn't really what I want to be doing. You just talk through the whole thing?
00:13:12
There's just talking. It's just girls talking. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
00:13:17
Ugh. It's the wave of the future. Get used to it. It's going to start happening all the time.
00:13:29
But, yeah, that's right. Here, we'll go first. We're going to dominate the conversation tonight, but then go ahead and get out there and really do it yourselves later.
00:13:44
But we just like to warn people, if you're not used to this show or whatever, We talk about true crime, which is really heavy and dark and can be very awful.
00:13:52
And there's a little loss. But we also make jokes to each other about it while we're talking about it.
00:14:00
Because that's what we're like and that's how we talk to each other. And life is complex and sometimes difficult.
00:14:09
And if you don't like it, you can get the fuck out. is essentially our invitation to you,
00:14:17
the person who doesn't exist in this room, and yet we're still dedicating five minutes at the top to them.
00:14:25
It's just what we like to do every once in a while. We got heckled once in Australia,
00:14:30
so now we feel like we need to give a warning at the top of the show. Yeah, we really just need to call that guy and be like,
00:14:35
hey man, what the fuck? We should do the warning. If you're a drunk Australian man
00:14:40
that's not used to girls talking freely and the way they want to, you can get the fuck out.
00:14:45
If you just buy tickets to shit. If you're a season pass holder to this theater and thought, you know,
00:14:54
I want to go out on Saturday night. I have favorites of my own. I'd like to see what their favorites are.
00:15:01
It's like a radio show? A podcast? I love radio shows. My granddaughter likes podcasts.
00:15:06
I'm going to give it a shot and get really shit-faced first. Then scream at them.
00:15:13
And then express feelings that have nothing to do with what's happening in front of me,
00:15:17
but that I can't talk to, to the real people I feel them about. Right. This is a psychology class.
00:15:25
We're really judging that Australian guy, but... I mean, come on. Love bread, baked goods, and pasta, but not the way they make you feel?
00:15:33
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00:16:30
Bro, from the show last night to this drive, why is it never chill? Because this is our life.
00:16:35
Backstage, on the road. It's loud, messy, real. And that's the best part. Whole crew, no plan, just moving.
00:16:44
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00:16:51
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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Who goes first again? I think it's you.
00:17:46
Okay. All right. I'm first tonight, guys. Thank you. All right. You know what that means?
00:17:54
You have the table Can I please have some room I just be over here kind of freely in space Table Thinking about my Spanx Okay
00:18:05
Let me talk to Spanx about different panels in the front, more military grade. Stuff that...
00:18:12
Some NASA shit going on. Yeah, one of those ones that gets this up here. Oh, yeah.
00:18:17
They have those. Yeah, the slip I have on that's basically sausage casing was just like,
00:18:23
we're going to pull everything in. And I'm like, not the tits. I need that. They're like, no, the tits have to go too.
00:18:29
Yeah. I need all the help I can get. Sorry. I didn't mean to touch your paper. I don't want you to see the name of it
00:18:35
because then you would know that I'm about to do the Parkman murder. Ooh. Ooh. Great.
00:18:42
Thank you. Spooky Halloween. Okay. Yeah, this is the murder of George Parkman. Okay.
00:18:50
You guys probably all learned about this your Boston history class. In this very building.
00:18:55
In this very building. When you went to high school down the hall. Well, then this will be just a refresher course for you.
00:19:02
Hang in there. I got a lot of info from the internet, but also you guys have a local history podcast
00:19:10
called Hub History, and they have a lot of good info on that too. So fucking shout out to them.
00:19:17
Okay. So mid-1800s. Yes. There we are. Great start. That's what we like. Everyone loves it.
00:19:25
The smells. They're everywhere. And then the bloomers and stuff. There's bloomers hanging from every gas post.
00:19:35
Yeah, you just throw your waste into the street with the horses. Okay, so there's this dude named John Webster White.
00:19:43
Okay, he's a doctor. He's from a well-connected family. He's a lecturer at Harvard Medical College.
00:19:49
So, like, hoity-toity and shit. I know the type. Chemistry instructor at the medical school.
00:19:57
He had his own laboratory. Excuse me, laboratory. I went to Harvard. No, I didn't.
00:20:06
You drove by. I did. The wing called Santa Monica City College. You know. Okay, he's an instructor in the laboratory.
00:20:15
Okay, he is described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a pleasant in the lecture room,
00:20:22
but a rather nervous and excitable person. And this might be because most of his lectures
00:20:26
and he shows people his laboratory chemistry stuff and it's like explosions and fireworks and shit.
00:20:33
He just mixes chemicals and then it's like kaboom. So he's nervous all the time.
00:20:38
Maybe he shouldn't have gone into that line of work. If you're a nervous, excitable type,
00:20:44
don't go into fireworks. It's probably not your jam. He had once been wealthy. He had been from a rich family in town,
00:20:53
but they'd fallen on hard times, and maybe because he wasn't good at managing his money,
00:20:58
he would do shit like, buy a mastodon skeleton for a lot of money. And be like, Harvard is going to pay me back.
00:21:05
And Harvard were like, we're not paying you back for that, bro. I fucking love this guy already.
00:21:12
He's a handful. He's all nervously buying a mastodon skeleton. Um, this is my interest.
00:21:20
I'm also scared of it. He had failed at running his own private medical practice,
00:21:26
so he had become the chemistry professor, and he kind of got free reign to do whatever the fuck he wanted.
00:21:31
That included selling tickets to go watch his laboratory firework shows and shit,
00:21:37
which is like how he made extra money on the side to support his wife and four daughters.
00:21:42
Okay. And they, I guess, were used to living it up in the high life because they had been rich, and now they weren't anymore.
00:21:47
so he was short on money. I don't like that he's blaming his wife and kids, because this motherfucker bought mastodon skeletons.
00:21:54
Yeah, I was going to say, if you're short on money, go ahead and give up that mastodon skeleton.
00:21:58
Yeah. Even used, you could probably get five, ten bucks for it. Absolutely. Wouldn't you think?
00:22:05
So they had been forced to give up the mansion that they had built in Cambridge,
00:22:11
but they were leasing a house that his family was pissed that they weren't living in luxury, as I said.
00:22:17
So he was in debt to a lot of friends. He had borrowed money from friends. Nervously.
00:22:26
Okay, so then this brings us to the next dude we're going to talk about. It's George Parkman.
00:22:32
So he's born in 1790. He's the ninth of 11 children. That's a lot. And his father at one time was one of the wealthiest men in Boston.
00:22:39
So this is another fucking hoity-toity, highfalutin family. He's super smart. By the time he's 15, he's enrolled at Harvard to study medicine.
00:22:51
Fifteen? Yeah. Ugh. That's when you're supposed to be smoking out by the railroad tracks.
00:22:58
Take it easy, friend. Trying to look at girls' bloomers and shit, right? He was into mental health,
00:23:08
and he was concerned about the poor treatment of those in asylums, so he was always like, even though his colleagues were like,
00:23:14
who fucking cares? We're rich. He was like, no, we should give a shit. And so he also treated the poor people in South Boston during his free time.
00:23:27
Poor people! South Boston! Poor people! We've seen your movies. We know who you are.
00:23:35
Wonderful, wonderful accent. And he contributed funding for a modern mental health hospital
00:23:46
for everyone to be able to go to. So not a bad guy, probably. He was in charge of his family's trust.
00:23:54
They had maintained their wealth, so they were still rich as shit. And he was engaged in real estate investment
00:24:00
and speculation. I don't know where that is. It's just where you pretend like you know stuff.
00:24:05
It's like, I'm going to buy that. I bet it'll be worth a lot of money someday. Not mastodon skeletons.
00:24:11
Bury the mastodon skeleton in it, and it'll be worth tons of money. That's smart.
00:24:16
And that also meant that he was in charge of collecting rent for all the buildings around Boston that he owned.
00:24:22
So he was kind of a cheapskate, so he wouldn't even get a horse. I guess it's like someone not getting a car these days.
00:24:30
I don't know. And so he would just walk, and he was always like a well-known figure
00:24:35
walking along the street in Boston. Because he walked with his hands up by his face like that?
00:24:39
Yeah, as a matter of fact, let me show you a photo first of John Webster White. Is it? Yeah. Oh, God.
00:24:49
I'm scared now. Don't be. Wait. Fireworks. Oh, no. It's not working. I think you pointed that way, yeah.
00:24:57
This way? Okay. If only. It's not working, and I don't want to show your... Oh, son of a...
00:25:02
There we go. Okay, is that him? I'm scared to show your murder on accident. Don't worry about it.
00:25:08
Okay. I know one's coming. Okay, that there is John Webster White. Okay, this is Nervous Fireworks Mastodon?
00:25:16
Yes. Okay. You can see it in his eyes. You know. You've met this guy before. He looks like his hair has been blown forward from an explosion.
00:25:26
He is early Bieber adopter. Yes. But then also he looks like a Los Angeles agent with the smallest possible glasses that you could buy at the store.
00:25:37
Right. Furrowed brow. And then son of a. Oh, no. Okay. I'm the nervous one now. You didn't see that.
00:25:50
Okay. So here's George Parkman. He doesn't do the walk again because look at how he actually walks.
00:25:55
No. What did I do? I don't remember. Right. So he'd wear a top hat. He had a fucking insanely huge jaw.
00:26:05
That was like one of his character traits. He was constantly arresting himself. Yeah.
00:26:10
He was lean and tall with a protruding chin, and he wore a top hat. Okay. So that was his thing.
00:26:16
That checks out. And he has, yeah, I was just going to say that, so shut the fuck up.
00:26:21
God damn it. Tiny feet, tiny feet. So I'm so mad at you right now. And he had tiny feet.
00:26:33
And in closing, he had tiny feet. That's what I was going to say. The tiniest. He was worth about half a million dollars in 1849, which is like 12 million today.
00:26:44
For real? Yeah. Wow. Probably. Oh. Is that your guesstimation? That's what Hub History said, and I stole it.
00:26:54
Okay. So, he, well, he was kind of a penny pincher when it came to transportation.
00:27:03
The guy with the chin? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he was the one walking around collecting rent, and he's rich as fuck, all these things.
00:27:09
He was a penny pincher, but he was really generous with loans and with people who couldn't pay rent on time because they'd lose their job or had problems.
00:27:15
So he'd be like, no problem. But then he would also, was super strict about loans, too.
00:27:21
So he would be cool with it, but then he would be really hardcore with the date that they were going to pay him back and crazy interest as well.
00:27:28
Yeah, that's how you get them. That's exactly how you get them and how you're gotten.
00:27:33
Okay. So these two dudes are friends here. They had met at Harvard as students, so they were friends and they knew each other, their families knew each other, etc.
00:27:43
Sometime in 1842, Webster Mastodon got a loan of around $400 from Parkman. So in today's money, that's around $10,000.
00:27:56
Jesus. That's a lot of money. So time goes on. Webster's not able to pay Parkman back.
00:28:03
Parkman is a total dick about it. He's following him around on his errands, being like,
00:28:07
when are you going to pay me back? He'd go to his lectures. But with his hands behind his back.
00:28:10
when are you going to pay me back? Give me that money. And he'd go to his Webster's Explosion lectures
00:28:21
and sit in the back and just be like, you owe me money and shit. He told everyone how much Webster owed him,
00:28:27
which I'm sure is embarrassing when you were once a wealthy person and not anymore.
00:28:31
I wouldn't know. And then, okay, so he also raised his interest like crazy. and so now
00:28:41
Parkman so he's still in debt to Parkman and this is like seven years later but he still needs money
00:28:48
and so Webster goes to Parkman's son-in-law, this dude Shaw and he's like look I will sell you
00:28:55
my fine cabinet and collection of mineral collections so it's actually worth some money
00:29:02
but I'll sell it to you because I need the money I mean isn't a mineral collection
00:29:09
rocks. Yeah? Mastodon? You may have my rocks. There, I've paid you back. Right. So he was like,
00:29:19
I'll sell it to you, and Shaw was like, I don't really fucking need a mineral collection,
00:29:23
but I feel bad for you, so sure, I'll buy it from you. And the problem with this is that
00:29:29
Parkman, way back when, when he gave him that $10,000 in today's money loan, the collateral
00:29:35
was said mineral cabinet full of rocks. So it was valuable. Yes. OK. And so if Webster was to default on his loan,
00:29:46
he had promised him that cabinet, which he had just sold to someone else. So the loan at this point, seven years later,
00:29:53
so it had gone from in today money Now it seven years later That kind of unfair Right No How do you ever pay that back Well you don borrow money you don have and then you don have that problem
00:30:08
Yeah. Or at least not from that fucking guy. Yeah. Get a guy with a better percentage.
00:30:13
That's a great idea. Okay. I solved it. Thanks so much for coming tonight, everybody.
00:30:20
This is the True Crime Comedy and Banking Podcast. We call it, it's just that easy.
00:30:28
And then Parkman fucking finds out about the mineral collection trick. And he is fucking pissed.
00:30:36
And apparently he had a little bit of a temper, too. So what happens? Well, shortly after this, Parkman, our chin guy, disappears.
00:30:46
Oh. Okay. So he's super known for his punctuality. They always see him walking the streets.
00:30:52
He gets where he's supposed to go in time and everything. And so when he doesn't show up home on Friday, November 23rd, 1849,
00:31:00
his family are immediately like, this is not right. Something's not wrong. No. Something's not right.
00:31:07
It's wrong. Right. That's right. He was wealthy, so the police immediately give a shit.
00:31:17
Another great tip. Right. And the entire city cares, too, because the next day, the Parkman family placed ads all over in all the papers.
00:31:28
They hand out 28,000 missing person flyers, and I'm sure with that drawing on it.
00:31:35
And they also offer a $3,000 reward for his safe return. So I'm sure everyone in town was like, let's find this fucker.
00:31:43
Yeah. The publicity in his disappearance results in hundreds of tips and sightings.
00:31:49
Everyone's like, he's right over there. And, you know, everyone sees him. It's not him.
00:31:57
Two days after the disappearance, our old friend, Mastodon collector Webster, he comes over to the Parkman's house because he knew them.
00:32:05
They were family friends. Knocks on the door, and the wife of Mrs. Parkman's like,
00:32:11
oh, he's come to send his condolences or whatever. Instead, he's like, hey, I saw
00:32:17
him the afternoon he disappeared. We had an appointment or like a week before and, or maybe the day
00:32:23
of. It's confusing. It's very unclear. It was so long ago. And he didn't save his calendars.
00:32:38
Nice one. Huh? I said, nice one. Thank you. So he was like, well, he came to visit me at my offices,
00:32:50
those weird laboratories that I have in privacy at the medical school. And guess what?
00:32:56
When he was there, I paid him all the money I owed him back, and then he left. Okay, well, great to see you.
00:33:01
Yeah. Thanks for dropping by and just squaring up the whole story. Right. So he said, like, maybe he had the money on him,
00:33:09
was on his way to the bank and got robbed or whatever. But either way, the loan is paid.
00:33:13
See you later. Yeah. Just crossed my name off that list. Right. And so Mrs. Perkin was like, hold up.
00:33:19
You know, she's not stupid. She called the cops and they probably didn't call the cops.
00:33:25
They didn't have that. Did they? I don't know. She pulled a weird string and then a series of bells went off down the street.
00:33:31
Right. And it's like, a wealthy person needs us. Let's go figure it out. Yeah. And so police were told about the weird encounter, and they kind of looked into it.
00:33:41
They did some basic searching of Webster's office, but he was like, don't look in that cellar directly under my laboratory or in the bathroom.
00:33:49
And they would have had to cut through a stone wall to look in there, so they were like, okay, we won't. Goodbye.
00:33:54
Great. Yeah, but instead they began dragging the Charles River and Boston Harbor,
00:33:59
looking for a body. They don't find anything. And then meanwhile, everyone in town is like, you know what we should do is let's find a poor person to blame for this because that's more likely.
00:34:09
And so enter the janitor. His name is Ephraim Littlefield. He was what's called a swamp Yankee of rural origins.
00:34:20
That's problematic. I know. I don't like it. That's what Wikipedia told me. Very nerve wracking.
00:34:25
So he basically wasn't from a wealthy Bostonian family of many, you know, he was not.
00:34:38
The table's so tiny. The tiny table's spinning. It's really fucking me up. So he had been the janitor at the Harvard Medical College since 1842.
00:34:54
he and his wife Carolyn lived in the basement of the medical college right next door to Professor Webster's laboratory.
00:35:01
To supplement his income, he obtained cadavers for dissection, which he sold to the professors, which I think was on the level at the time.
00:35:10
And as a janitor, he cleaned the doctor's rooms and laboratories and started their fires and set up specimens for their lectures.
00:35:18
Real quick, started their fires. Yeah, like legit on-the-level fires. Like we get in in the morning and it's freezing cold.
00:35:26
Ah, yes. Start your fires. Not arson. A professor comes and knocks on their door.
00:35:33
Quickly, would you burn down my ex-girlfriend's house? I have to get to a lecture and my hands can't be sullied.
00:35:41
It's part of my job. No. Great question, though. Thank you so much. Thank you for clarifying that.
00:35:49
Wood-burning stove. We're talking about the past. Exactly. Got you. and help them in their labs with the specimens and such So he kind of could tell immediately that people were suspicious of him and so he was like fuck this shit
00:36:05
and started putting some things together in his head and came up with a suspect on his own.
00:36:11
So he noticed that since the day of Parkman's disappearance, Webster, his wall neighbor, had been acting strangely,
00:36:21
including that Littlefield, the janitor, tell him what he saw the day of the disappearance
00:36:26
and questioning hardcore on it. And he had never talked to the janitor before, so the janitor was like, this is weird.
00:36:33
And then the day after, when the cops had come to kind of poke around, he gave Littlefield a turkey as a present.
00:36:44
And Littlefield was like, this isn't right. This motherfucker would never give me anything
00:36:49
out of the kindness of his heart. It wasn't November or any seasonal? It was November, and it was Thanksgiving.
00:36:56
However, he was a dick. No, you're right. No, it's like, I get it. I mean, if it was April and someone gives you a whole turkey, run away.
00:37:10
So he's suspicious of the generosity. Yeah, something's going on here. And then Webster had asked him a bunch of questions about the dissecting vault,
00:37:23
and let's see, he had heard an argument between Parkman and Webster in the lab earlier that week
00:37:31
and so he kind of knew something was up and that Parkman had been there and he cleaned the lab but Webster's lab was locked,
00:37:41
blah, blah, blah. He heard someone moving inside when it was locked and he thought that that was weird
00:37:45
so he peered under the door, which must have had a big, I mean, it must have been a big crack because he saw a lot.
00:37:50
He had to get so flat on the ground. Yeah. He saw him walk between the furnace and the fuel closet back and forth, back and forth.
00:38:00
And then when he touched the wall, the furnace was burning so hot that day that the whole wall was warm.
00:38:06
And he was like, this is fucking weird. So, oh, and this turkey. So he eats the turkey.
00:38:13
So he also went into the room when Webster had gone. And then it says, just casually in all the articles and shit, it says,
00:38:21
He found that the kindling barrels were nearly empty, though they had recently been filled,
00:38:26
and there were wet spots that tasted like acid in odd places. And nobody questions that online.
00:38:33
That tasted like acid in odd places. That always happens when you're looking up a certain event,
00:38:40
and there's a cut and paste that people don't check. So it's just like on every single website.
00:38:46
Yeah, and it is, and it's probably true, but it's like he fucking tasted, He licked the acid that was on the floor?
00:38:53
Now, what's this? Animal urine or oil? Look at this thing. Or acid? Just try it.
00:39:00
Just get down and try it, and then peek under the door. I just don't like that part.
00:39:06
It doesn't sit with me well. I mean, the past, am I right? The past. Everyone. So, on November 29th, Thanksgiving,
00:39:17
Littlefield borrows a hatchet, a drill, and a crowbar and a mortar chisel, grabs his wife, and is like, hang out with me while I do this.
00:39:26
I don't know. Maybe they were friends. Yeah, it was a good marriage. Right? Yeah.
00:39:31
So he starts chiseling away the wall under Webster's private lab privy, his toilet.
00:39:39
Right? So he starts getting in there. He goes down a tunnel into a vault where the wall had felt too hot
00:39:47
and begins to hack at it where the privy emptied into a pit that the police hadn't searched.
00:39:53
Already disgusting, you know what I mean? But they don't really, it's just so privy.
00:39:59
Okay, so he goes through two layers of brick, eventually manages to punch a hole through the wall, peers in.
00:40:04
It's totally dark. His eyes adjust to the light, and he sees something protruding from the ground.
00:40:11
turns out to be a human pelvis. Oh. He also spots a dismembered thigh in the lower part of a leg.
00:40:21
Upper and lower leg. Just like that whole entire leg. Right. Yeah. Every part. All parts of a leg.
00:40:31
Even the middle. That's right. Some call it a knee. Not me. So he's like, at this point,
00:40:40
he's like, all right, I'm not going to, my wife's, you know, getting sick, maybe, I don't know.
00:40:45
He grabs another professor and they go get the marshal. They all go back to the privy and they're all about to dig in.
00:40:54
It's like a bunch of cops and shit. And they decide that the man with the longest arms would have to go into the privy and hand out the remains,
00:41:01
which I just pictured everyone just immediately going like, who is it? Who would it be?
00:41:05
I don't know what it's going to be. Do you want to do it or should I do it? Let's measure arms.
00:41:09
Well, I'll just put your arm in. I guess it's going to be you, Eric. Eric Longarms, that's what they call him.
00:41:19
The long arm of the law. Thanks. Wow, applause on that? I don't know. I don't know about that.
00:41:29
I'm kind of with you. I mean, I don't want to take it away. I mean, it was pretty great.
00:41:37
What do I know? I'm the one saying it. Okay. So he goes in Some poor Eric long arm goes in
00:41:45
And he hands out the pelvis The right thigh and the lower left leg Then they go over to where the furnace is
00:41:52
And in there is a jawbone and teeth I know And then they like Do you guys smell that smell Coming from that closet over there And they like yeah It the privy right
00:42:05
No, it's not the privy. They go and they find a trunk. They open it, and in the trunk is a torso and thigh.
00:42:11
Yeah. And so they go and arrest Webster, and they take him to jail on a charge of murder.
00:42:21
He denies any knowledge. He says that the janitor must have done it and is blaming me for it.
00:42:27
He then takes something, a pill that he had been carrying with him. It turns out to be strychnine, but somehow it doesn't kill him.
00:42:35
And I don't understand that because they're like, he was, in all the articles, it was like he was too excited to die from the strychnine.
00:42:41
I don't think that's how strychnine works. Maybe he was just too excited to die.
00:42:47
Maybe he wanted to pop it and couldn't catch it or something. I don't know. It just didn't work on him.
00:42:55
Maybe he'd just been inhaling too many fireworks, like fumes over the years. That's probably it.
00:43:00
That's it. So he survives and goes to trial. The Webster-Parkman case reaches national headlines,
00:43:08
becomes one of those popular murder trials of the 19th century. Newspapers are fucking all over this shit, day-by-day accounts,
00:43:17
and rich people are like, it wasn't our rich dude. It must have been the janitor trying to set him up.
00:43:24
And there was so much interest in the case that in the 12-day trial, they had to put bleachers in the courtroom instead of seats.
00:43:36
Foam fingers and shit? Team Parkman. And then people, they also sold tickets to watch the trial for 10 minutes at a time,
00:43:48
like in and out. in 12 days they sold 40,000 tickets. What? These fucking looky-loos.
00:43:56
What if it was just one guy going 40,000 times? Murderinos have been around forever.
00:44:01
I know. That's what it is. Don't fucking tell us. I mean. The record show that about 60,000 people attended the trial
00:44:10
at some point or another. And so the trial is one of the first in American history
00:44:16
where forensic evidence is presented. Oh. Because they brought in defense and prosecution,
00:44:24
brought in medical experts to testify. And because they didn't have the head, they were like,
00:44:29
how can you be sure it's him? It might not be him. And it fucking totally was him.
00:44:35
But so they had the jawbone, though. And so they brought in a dentist named Dr. Keith.
00:44:41
and so he had to fit Parkman with dentures recently and because his jaw was so fucking insane he had to take
00:44:53
these crazy molds of it so he came in and did a dun dun dun in the courtroom the mold fits in the jaw bone
00:45:01
that we do have even though we don't have the rest of the head and stuff so it was
00:45:05
yeah it was totally him. So the picture where his jaw is sticking out. Like that was the real deal. That was a real quality that he had. And then it came
00:45:15
into play at the end. Did you do that on purpose? Make his jaw look like that? No. Like, oh,
00:45:24
talk about the jaw in the beginning and then later. Yeah, totally did that on purpose.
00:45:29
Well, great job. I am a researcher. That's my job. So Chief Justice Shaw, so this is the first time that this ever happens.
00:45:41
Usually the standard for saying someone is guilty was like 100% certainty. You had to be sure that they were guilty.
00:45:49
This is the first time he was like, how about this? How about beyond a reasonable doubt, motherfuckers?
00:45:54
And that was the first time that that happened. Wow. I bet he probably didn't say motherfuckers, but, you know.
00:46:00
It's in parentheses. Yeah, yeah. It's an implied motherfucker. All the evidence obviously points towards him being guilty.
00:46:10
So after three hours of the jury deliberating, Dr. Webster is found guilty and sentenced to be executed.
00:46:18
And a short while later, he shocks everyone by confessing. but he's like, not surprisingly
00:46:26
it was self-defense you know, that old one he claims that Parkman was in such a rage
00:46:32
when he came to his office to try to get his debts that he took the fire poker and hit him with it
00:46:38
probably not true he is executed by hanging on August 30, 1850 and afterwards Miss Parkman
00:46:50
the widow she opens a trust for Webster's widow and four daughters and puts large sums of money in it
00:47:00
and just becomes a philanthropist after that. Oh no. I know. I almost started crying.
00:47:05
Don't cry. That's so nice. Isn't that lovely? That's so generous. I know. Why did she do that?
00:47:12
I don't know. It's like she's a good one. I didn't see it coming. I know. We're all supposed to act like that.
00:47:21
I'm going to cry. That's really nice. I know. I mean, she was the widow first. Yeah.
00:47:27
Everyone would have been like, you don't have to do shit. Yeah, you're good. It's basically like she started a Kickstarter for the fucking family.
00:47:34
Yeah, she did. Her husband. Because it's not their fault that the husband is some fireworks asshole.
00:47:40
Yeah. Oh, by the way, you can still see the mastodon skeleton at Harvard College.
00:47:45
Oh, my God. They were like, we're not going to keep it. We're not going to pay you back, but we'll keep it.
00:47:51
Nice. Yeah. So that is the story of the murder of Dr. George Parkman. Amazing. Thank you.
00:47:59
Thank you. Thank you. Widows helping widows. You know that someone wrote a musical about that one day at some point in life, right?
00:48:11
Did or is going to? I bet did or is, yeah, either one. Did or is going to? Did or is going to.
00:48:18
There's one other picture, but I'm scared of putting it up. Well, let's see. And then if it's George's picture, we can have a final moment.
00:48:24
And then if it's my picture, it'll be the beginning of mine. Let's see what happens.
00:48:28
what if it's nothing what if it's no one I think point that way there we go there's him
00:48:35
there's old tiny feet McGee and then do one more there's no Karens no yeah that was kind of it
00:48:53
oh well something will happen at you In it? On it? Around. Let's just, I'll pass out my iPhone and you guys can all see the photo on that.
00:49:07
I blame Steven. Oh, here we go. There it is. There it is. Okay. There we go. Look at that jawline.
00:49:21
So that's the. Look how big his feet are in that picture. Humongous. not funny at all.
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For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. Okay, let's see what mine is. What's yours now?
00:51:14
Let's see. What could it be? If it works. What? What? What? What? What is that? Not that.
00:51:24
No. It's the great molasses flood of 1919. I feel like, let's just leave it on him.
00:51:40
People who don't listen, we're not cheering for people getting hurt. Yeah, that's a good one.
00:51:45
Remember the lecture Karen gave you before. We're cheering because we want Karen to tell us the story.
00:51:51
Tell us our... What are you doing? Still? Just the visuals. Okay. Oh, shit. Okay, great.
00:52:00
Tell us a story. Tell us a bedtime story. Here's the thing. I was preparing to do...
00:52:06
I was looking into a different one. And as I did, it dawned on me that this truly is one of my favorite stories of all time.
00:52:16
And I actually, it really is. I think the first time I saw it, it was probably on like mysteries at the fucking museum or some late night weird shit like that where I was like, wait, is this real?
00:52:28
It is the craziest, worst story that's also oddly funny and bizarre. It's so Boston.
00:52:37
It's so Boston. Isn't it? It's just like what happened to everybody with what item?
00:52:46
Okay. All of my information is cut it and paste it from Wikipedia. Like, so crazy, you wouldn't believe it.
00:52:56
Please donate. We owe them so much. So this is a 50-foot molasses storage tank. That's fucking huge.
00:53:07
50 feet. And it stands at 529 Commercial Street at the Purity Distilling Company facility in Boston.
00:53:16
North End. That motherfucker contains... Tell me a secret. Tell me a secret. How much does it contain?
00:53:30
I'm going to tell you so much about molasses. How many? How many shots did it take?
00:53:37
You guys, you guys. Do you want to do molasses with me? Over two million gallons of molasses was contained in this thing It was the property of the United States Industrial Alcohol which was a company that took regular shipments of molasses from the Caribbean and used them to produce alcohol
00:54:07
for liquor. Yes. It seems so innocent, like molasses. Oh, everybody snuff pancakes. No,
00:54:15
it was for liquor and it was for munitions manufacturing, oddly enough. Gross. I only like one of those things.
00:54:25
Guess which one? Munitions. Okay, so they built this tank in 1915. It was during World War I when the demand for industrial alcohol had increased.
00:54:42
Sure. But it was done in a rush, and so it was very haphazard construction. so by 1919
00:54:52
four years later this was a largely Irish and Italian immigrant neighborhood for all of us
00:55:02
and all these Irish and Italian families which must have been the loudest combination
00:55:09
if you think about it just people yelling and gesturing and telling endless stories
00:55:18
eating and eating so much bread. By the way, we got a fucking huge box of cannolis backstage.
00:55:28
Oh my God. They gave us... From modern pastries? They call them lobster tails. And lobster tails.
00:55:37
Lobster... I've never seen a fucking lobster tail. I thought somebody had made two big croissants
00:55:43
and then just gave them to us. They're humongous. I already ate half a cannoli before the show.
00:55:49
I'm going to eat another half for the next one just to get that sugar fucking high.
00:55:52
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And then bust out the back of your dress. Right.
00:55:58
Okay, so the Irish and the Italians are completely used to hearing this tank rumble and make creaky noises.
00:56:07
And they're like, that old thing. Anyway, as I was saying for 16 hours, it often actually leaked molasses onto the street,
00:56:18
and the neighbors would go over and just grab some and take it home and use it for themselves.
00:56:23
Okay. It was very common. So nobody minded until January 15th, 1919. Okay. And that day, oddly enough, the temperature had risen from 2 degrees to 40 degrees.
00:56:38
Oh. Even though it was January, it was a very mild winter for Boston. I was like, you must have gotten that wrong.
00:56:43
Because two degrees isn't a thing. Yeah, it is out here. I don't know. They do two degrees all the time.
00:56:50
You guys. No, for real. And they think 40 degrees is like kind of toasty. Oh, my God.
00:56:57
Yes. Do you know in California when it's 60, we're freezing our fucking tits off?
00:57:01
We're like, everyone stay inside. Yeah. And then you get your janitor to light a fire for you.
00:57:06
Your ex-boyfriend's house. Warm up by the ex-boyfriend's burning. That's right. Oh, don't.
00:57:14
That's terrible. Who said that? Steven, edit that out. Wow. Look at the rich people up in the balcony.
00:57:22
Oh, I didn't see without my monocle in. Oh. Oh. Oh. The Wahlbergs are here. Welcome.
00:57:35
Welcome. Look at our rug. Okay. So, January 15, 1919. It's about 1230 in the afternoon.
00:57:47
And witnesses say that they felt the ground shake. Then they hear a roar and a rumble similar to the sound of the passing elevated train,
00:57:59
which was right there, as you can see. Oh, I see it. Right? Uh-huh. So some people thought it was just a real loud train sound going by,
00:58:08
but then there was a deep growling, a thunderclap, and a bang, and then a crashing, and then a machine gun sound
00:58:20
as the rivets of the tank came shooting out of the side, like a fucking cartoon.
00:58:27
Oh, my God. Like when your girdle's too tight, and then bing, bing, bing, bing. except for it was a tank of 2 million gallons of molasses.
00:58:39
So the tank collapses, and it unleashes a 15-foot wave of molasses that's moving down the street at 35 miles an hour.
00:58:52
That's so fast. Run that fast to show everyone how fast it is. That's so fast. Is it hot?
00:58:59
It's hot when it starts. Okay. So it's also fast when it starts. Fast and hot. It's fast and hot.
00:59:07
And so the way the temperature changed that day, like in the weather, affected the molasses itself.
00:59:13
Okay. But then it starts pouring out, but then it hits the air. So basically the wave starts, and they kept using the word viscosity in this article.
00:59:24
And I just deleted it. I'm like, I don't know what that means. It's a gross word.
00:59:28
It sounds like a car thing for boys. I don't want to get involved. And viscosity, it's like from an oil commercial that I saw in the 80s.
00:59:38
You like viscosity? You're going to love the new Ford truck. The 1988 Ford viscosity.
00:59:48
It's ram tough. It's ram tough. Car and driver magazine. So people cars trucks Rams Rams even the toughest of rams horses are swept up in this flood
01:00:07
Shit. The Boston Post reported, which apparently was a paper at the time, molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage.
01:00:18
Here and there struggled a form. Whether it was an animal or a human being, it was impossible to tell.
01:00:23
Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was.
01:00:29
Horses died like so many flies on flypaper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared.
01:00:36
Atreyu! Don't you think? Never ending stories. Remember that? Remember how sad it was?
01:00:51
I'm so sad right now. Go on. Sorry. Also, human beings died. Oh, right. Sorry. That happens.
01:01:01
Oh, no. Human. I know. Literally, the next sentence is, human beings, men and women suffered likewise.
01:01:11
Oh, God. Should have just left that part off. Okay. So the wave is so strong, it damages this train that you see there.
01:01:20
It knocks these girders out. I actually have a picture. And it tips a railroad car off the tracks.
01:01:27
Holy shit. Yes. Let's see if we can do it. I believe you can. Let's give it the old Harvard try.
01:01:33
Local, local. What's that? Oh, no. Did you see that? No, what happened? Is it porn?
01:01:39
Oh, porn. It's porn time. Bring it all down. What kind of porn is this? Listen, it's just what I'm into.
01:01:47
Don't shame me. I swear I'm only hitting the outside part. That guy. That guy. This thing.
01:01:56
Okay, that broke. We were there. And then that's our podcast. Okay. Okay. Oh, look at you.
01:02:02
Well, there's, how about this? We'll look at this. Just to prove. There's the Boston Post.
01:02:07
There's a real newspaper. This came out afterward. You can see all the things. Yeah.
01:02:14
Oh, wow. There's, I have a picture somewhere in there. No escape from the giant wave of fluid, it said.
01:02:20
Yeah. Did you see that? Yeah. It was viscous. It really was quite viscous. But as it went, so it came out as water-like,
01:02:31
but then as it was out there, it hardened and, of course, thickened and got sticky.
01:02:37
So then it was harder and harder for people to get out of it. It wasn't just like, oh, wow, that was crazy or whatever.
01:02:43
engine 31 which is the firehouse in the neighborhood is knocked clean off its foundation
01:02:51
an entire firehouse causing the second story to collapse onto the first and the firemen that were
01:02:58
there that day were all sitting down in the kitchen playing cards those lazy bastards i can
01:03:05
say that because my father's a fireman and i know i know what those people do i spent my entire life
01:03:10
going, Dad, can we please have cable? And he'd be like, no, we have that at the firehouse.
01:03:13
You don't need it. That was his answer to everything. You won't like it. It's not, you don't need it.
01:03:21
I forgot your dad was a fireman. I was like, don't say that. I can. I can't say anything to a fireman.
01:03:28
It's the greatest. Anytime my dad's complaining, I've said this on the podcast before,
01:03:31
but anytime my dad complains or is an asshole of any kind, we're like, oh, America's hero is upset.
01:03:37
America's hero but here's the thing so all the rescue people the cops and the other firemen from around the city
01:03:49
they're there within minutes and they start this rescue and so they actually get in
01:03:58
and even though the second floor has collapsed onto the first they manage to rescue and save all but one of the firemen
01:04:06
So that was actually kind of miraculous. The nearby Clardy house, which is, that's, my cousins are the Clardys.
01:04:13
So this is my favorite part, even though it's horrible. The nearby Clardy house, meanwhile, is swept away and dashed against the L train platform.
01:04:24
Martin Clardy, having just woken up, watched his home crumble around him before being thrown into the current.
01:04:32
It has a current. Jesus. He said, I was in bed on the third floor of my house when I heard a deep rumble,
01:04:39
and when I awoke, I was in several feet of molasses. He nearly drowned in a gooey whirlpool before climbing atop his own bed frame,
01:04:49
which he discovered floating nearby. So he had to use his bed as a makeshift boat.
01:04:56
Then he rescued his sister, Teresa, and my aunt Teresa was Teresa Clardy. Isn't that crazy?
01:05:04
What are the chances? The Boston Globe reported that people, quote, were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet.
01:05:11
So even if you didn't get stuck in the molasses, like the air that came out with it, people were being blown back from it.
01:05:18
Dude, some fucking backdraft shit right there. My dad hated the movie Backdraft,
01:05:26
except for the part where there's a Mercedes parked in front of a fire hydrant, and so they just bust out the windows and run the hose through the windows.
01:05:35
And my dad would not stop laughing at that part. He's like, we really do that. I've done that before.
01:05:40
We really do that. But he didn't like any of the make-out parts. Oh, dad. Dad, a truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor.
01:05:52
Whoa. This was a serious tidal wave of molasses Tea party for trucks though Oh I get it i thought you were being political and i was like oh not that one
01:06:06
in a 1983 article for smithsonian edwards park wrote one uh one child's experience
01:06:13
this is fucking nuts eight-year-old anthony destazio is walking home with his uh four sisters
01:06:21
Tony? Tony DeStasio. Oh, that's a different neighborhood. He's walking home with his sisters from the Michelangelo school.
01:06:35
That's racist. Send the Italian kids to the Michelangelo school. And send the Irish children to Whiskey High School.
01:06:46
It's what's going to happen. Okay, so this eight-year-old boy is picked up by a wave, by the wave.
01:06:55
It was one big one. And he's carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he was surfing.
01:07:01
His sister stood there and watched as he basically rode the molasses wave. Holy shit.
01:07:08
For real. And then, of course, he was grounded. It rolled him like a pebble, it says.
01:07:16
and he could hear his mother calling his name, but he was covered in molasses and couldn't talk.
01:07:21
And then when he opened his eyes, his three sisters were standing up above him like,
01:07:25
dude, that was awesome. Let's see if we can do, there's a really good aftermath picture.
01:07:39
There it is. I broke the whole thing at the end. I'm so sorry. Oh, that's not it.
01:07:49
That's it. That was a Futurama screen. Yeah. Can you pick it? Can you go down to...
01:07:55
Oh, that's fine. There's just one of a close-up of all the death station. It's just so crazy.
01:08:01
So aside from the cops and the firemen, there was also, first to the scene, 116 cadets from
01:08:07
the USS Nantucket, which was a training ship from the Maritime Academy that just happened
01:08:12
to be right there docked at the pier. So they run several blocks in toward the accident
01:08:20
and they immediately try to pull out survivors. Of course, as the molasses is cooling, everyone's getting stuck
01:08:28
which is like a fucking nightmare. And also reminds me of when I knew I needed to
01:08:34
stop taking theater classes. I was in a movement class and they're like and now act like you're stuck in honey.
01:08:40
And I was just like, I'm fucking out of here. I hate shit like this. How does this help anything?
01:08:46
We're never going to get stuck in honey. I was wrong. So the Boston police, the Red Cross, the Army, other Navy personnel, they all come to help.
01:08:59
Some nurses from the Red Cross are diving into the blasts to try to pull people out.
01:09:05
Right? While others tend to the injured, keeping them warm and keeping the exhausted workers fed.
01:09:13
There's so many injured that the doctors set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building.
01:09:20
So because everything is taking forever and so long, they have to work all through the night.
01:09:25
It took four days to rescue all the people who actually lived through that wave to get them out.
01:09:32
and some people were in the molasses and unrecognizable. It took a really long time to identify the dead.
01:09:41
It's horrible. So the cleanup crews, they had to use salt water from a fire boat
01:09:46
to wash all the molasses away and they also sprinkled sand out to absorb it and the entire harbor was brown with molasses until summer.
01:09:56
So for six months, all the water in the harbor was brown. I bet it fucking stank too.
01:10:01
Yeah. I mean, I think maybe at the very beginning you're like, breakfast, and then you're like, I can't, I'm going to throw up, I can't do this anymore.
01:10:11
It took weeks to clean up that immediate area. Over 300 people had to help do it.
01:10:19
And then in greater Boston, they said it took indefinitely longer. Rescue workers, cleanup crews, sightseers, tracked molasses all over the city.
01:10:29
So they spread it to subway platforms and the seats on trains, streetcars, telephone handsets into homes.
01:10:42
In the paper they said everything a Bostonian touched was sticky for six months.
01:10:49
Gross. And it's still that way today. This felt like that's what you wanted me to say.
01:10:57
I don't know. I don't know. So two days before the disaster, warmer molasses had been added to the tank.
01:11:05
There it is, reducing the fucking viscosity. That pesky viscosity. That viscosity.
01:11:13
So local residents brought a class action lawsuit. There were actually 119 lawsuits that were brought against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company,
01:11:24
which they're the people that own Purity Distilling. and that company tried to say that the tank had been blown up by Italian anarchists.
01:11:36
But apparently that was a thing that happened during wartime is that anarchists would try to come to anywhere that they thought they were building munitions
01:11:43
and blow things up, except for that was total bullshit. Blame the fucking anarchists.
01:11:51
That's right. And so is the Italians. But a court-appointed auditor found that USIA was responsible after three
01:12:00
It turned out that a man named Arthur Gell, who oversaw the construction, neglected basic safety tests, such as filling the tank with water to check for leaks.
01:12:09
Just didn't do it. That sounds like step one. Yeah, no. He was like, can we just fill it with molasses and see what happens?
01:12:17
so when they did fill it with molasses and the tank leaked so badly that they just started painting it brown
01:12:27
so that no one could see how it was leaking out on all the sides that was their solution
01:12:33
one guy was like put your finger in the hole that's the solution you stand there, you stand there
01:12:39
and then they did a modern day investigation in 2014 and they found that the steel was
01:12:46
half as thick as it should have been for a tank that size. That guy was pocketing that fucking money.
01:12:52
That's right. So let's see. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company ultimately paid out $600,000
01:13:02
in an out-of-court settlement, which is $6.5 million today. She was. Relatives of those killed reportedly received $7,000 each,
01:13:13
which is the equivalent of over $100,000. And some authors believe that the main reason that that molasses tank was so full is because the 18th Amendment, which is going to enact prohibition, was being ratified the next day on January 20th, 1919.
01:13:34
So they were just trying to make as much fucking alcohol as they could before prohibition started.
01:13:40
And then they could make that sweet black market money. It's prohibition again. So I'm laughing and now I have to say this part.
01:13:52
Over 150 people were injured. And people actually had coughing fits for like a month afterwards
01:14:01
because of all the alcohol and stuff that was in the air, the chemicals that were in the air.
01:14:06
And 21 people died that day. Wow. Most of them were from the nearby paving yard.
01:14:12
so Patrick Breen 44, John Callahan 43, Peter Francis 64, William Duffy 58 James Keneally
01:14:22
no age John Sieberlich 69 there were some teamsters, William Brogan who was 61, Eric Laird who was 17
01:14:31
James Lennon 64 Peter Shaughness, he was 18 the fireman who died was named George Leahy
01:14:37
he was 38 two drivers died, Flaminio Gallagherini Galleriani, 37, and Ralph Martin, who was 21.
01:14:45
A Bay State Express foreman, his name was James McMullen, he was 64. A guy named Cesar Nicolo, 37, was killed.
01:14:55
A longshoreman named Thomas Noonan, who was 43, died. Michael Sinnott, who was a messenger, who was 76, he died.
01:15:06
Bridget Clardy, who was the guy who made the boat, that was his sister. she was 65
01:15:11
and Stephen Clardy 34 he died and then the little boy who rode the wave of molasses
01:15:20
his older sister Maria died she was 10 and then another 10 year old Pasquale Ian Tosca died
01:15:28
and that is the tragic story of the great molasses flood of 1919 wow isn't that netso?
01:15:39
that's fucking Bernada Yes. A couple jobs ago, I had a job on a TV show, and it was one about time travel, and so we had to pitch stories of like, oh, what should they go back, what times in history should they go back to, and this was my first pitch.
01:16:00
And I was so excited, I'm like, this is the best fucking idea in the world. And I explained the whole thing, and then the guy I was pitching to goes, yeah, how are we supposed to do that?
01:16:10
She's like, awesome. I'll save that for my animated show. Do we have time for a hometown?
01:16:18
I think we do. Oh, we do. We do. All right. Let's fix our undergarments. I will just briefly, very briefly tell you the rules.
01:16:29
I know you probably know them already. But we love it when it's local. That's the best because we're here with you guys.
01:16:35
Also I love to hear a nice strong accent if we could Because nobody ever does Boston accents right so if you guys can we like to hear it Please don be so drunk you can follow your own train of thought
01:16:48
It's just boring. Know the details of your story. Please have a beginning, middle, and an end. The
01:16:54
end is really important because if you just go, I don't know what happened to him, it really bums
01:16:59
people out. And just remember if you get picked, everyone else hates you. So you have to go fast.
01:17:04
Okay. Let me see. You want to go? You want me to go? Okay. I'm scared. I don't like doing this. You want to go? Okay. Yeah. Vince is right there. Go over to him. I hate doing this.
01:17:23
Yeah. Uh-oh, Karen's got a cough drop going. We're about to party. I can smell it from here.
01:17:35
Yeah. Oh. Which way? Here she comes. Hi. Oh, hi. Hi. What's your name? My name is Rachel.
01:17:45
Hi, Rachel. It's Rachel, everybody. Hi. Hi. Hi. Let's send her up. You guys match.
01:17:53
Yeah. I only wear those shoes. I have them. Aren't they comfortable? They're so comfortable.
01:17:58
Oh, sorry. That's okay. Where are you from? I've lived here for five years, but I'm from Connecticut.
01:18:04
Boo. I know. But listen. I'm kidding. Don't boo her. You can drive three hours here and end up in another country.
01:18:12
It's not like California. I know. So my hometown is the story of Tracy Thurmond, and it was made into a Lifetime movie.
01:18:21
So my dad went to high school with a woman named Tracy Thurman, and she dropped out when she was 16 to take care of her ill mother.
01:18:31
And her mother passed away, unfortunately. I'm, like, so nervous. I can't believe I'm up here.
01:18:36
I know. That's so crazy. Can we have the lights up so she can see with the whole few?
01:18:39
No, don't show her. No, I don't want to hear it. So her mother passed away, and she was like, whatever.
01:18:47
I'm going to travel up and down the East Coast. I'm going to do what I want. It's the 80s.
01:18:52
And she went, I don't know, somewhere down south, and she met a guy named Buck, which is red flag number one.
01:18:59
Sure. Because his name is Buck. Yeah. And they were waitressing, or well, I guess just she was.
01:19:05
She was waitressing, and they moved all over the place, and things started getting icky.
01:19:10
And she was like, I don't like this. I want to move back up to Connecticut. So she moves back up.
01:19:15
He comes with her, and they get married. And she's like, I don't know why I'm doing this.
01:19:20
but I'm going to marry him anyway. Things start to... I relate. Sometimes you have to.
01:19:27
Yeah, sometimes you have to. So, she... Things start to escalate a little more. He's abusive, and because it's the 80s,
01:19:36
everyone's like, it's not our business, even though it is their fucking business.
01:19:39
Right, right. Mind your business, everyone says. Yeah. So, they eventually get married.
01:19:43
You know, they have a kid and stuff like that, but then they separate. She's living with her friend, and he's living...
01:19:49
I don't know, in a fucking shithole, hopefully. And they're fighting, they're fighting, they're fighting,
01:19:56
and then one day he serves her with paper, or she serves him with papers, and he's pissed.
01:20:02
And at this point, this is the mid-'80s, and it was June of, I think, 1986, and between October of 85 and June of 86,
01:20:12
she'd called the cops on him like 20 times, because he was stalking her, all this other stuff.
01:20:17
So he's coming up there, and she's like, for fuck's sake. She calls again. And my hometown is
01:20:23
the size of this auditorium. It's not big at all. So the cops are like, alright, alright, we'll get there, we'll get there.
01:20:32
And the cops don't get there. And he stabs her. And she goes outside and she's like,
01:20:39
oh no, oh no, oh no. So she's yelling, she's running around the yard trying to get everyone's attention.
01:20:44
And he's still coming after her. and then the cops show up and are like, well, well, well, what is going on here?
01:20:52
So they decide the best course of action is to take the knife and detain it. Not the man.
01:20:58
They take the knife and they detain it. The cop walks down this long, long, long driveway
01:21:04
with the knife and is like, well, this is the problem. We've got to get this out of here.
01:21:09
And puts the knife in the trunk of the car. Meanwhile, poor Tracy is not doing well in the yard.
01:21:18
The guy goes inside he gets the husband goes inside he gets the kid He like torturing her with the kid all of this stuff The ambulance comes he still trying to get at her while she in the ambulance because the fucking cops haven detained him for some reason
01:21:34
She's in the hospital for months and months and months and months and she survives.
01:21:39
And she is the first woman to sue an entire city and to sue an entire police department.
01:21:49
she wins 1.8 million dollars and I don't have a magazine but in 80s money I think that's a lot
01:21:57
and she went on to help go into domestic violence work and all that stuff sometimes my dad sees her at the grocery store
01:22:05
and gives her a hug and her shithead husband only got 7 years but I mean she made history
01:22:15
so I guess, I don't know Well done. Love a survival story. Hell yeah. That was great.
01:22:27
Good job. I think we have a minute. We have, we got really, Steven texts us facts about the town we're in
01:22:37
and one of them is that one of our favorite Twitter accounts that started from My Favorite Murder
01:22:42
are here. It's My Favorite Murder Out of Context? I don't know if you guys follow that.
01:22:48
And the people that started, will you guys come up here? You're both here, right?
01:22:53
Right here, yeah. Hi, come over here. Are you here? Here they are. We get to say hi to them.
01:23:01
Go over to where Vince is. You have to go where Vince is. And he'll bring you up here.
01:23:05
It's his job. Yay. This Twitter feed is so exciting because I go on there. The first time I read it, I was reading it and laughing out loud,
01:23:17
and I looked at Georgia, and I go, we're really funny. This is good. It was the first time Karen was like, I like what they say.
01:23:23
Hi. Nice to meet you. This is Ange. Is it Ange? And that's Alex. Okay. Hi. Nice to meet you.
01:23:37
You guys, thank you so much. Thank you. You guys are consistently so funny. Yes.
01:23:43
Yes. We need to do our best. We need to try. So, like, it's actually a really funny story.
01:23:50
Can we tell you a story? So we dated in high school and then didn't talk for eight years
01:23:56
and then started dating again last November. And pretty much right away I was like, hey, I'm super obsessed with this podcast.
01:24:04
You should definitely check it out. And she did, and she was like, yeah, this is great, and that's kind of it.
01:24:11
it. Okay, so the first episode ever, I'm listening, and it was you, Georgia, you were like, I'll have the
01:24:17
collusion on the rocks. And I was like, I'm about to write that down. And she already listened to the whole thing, so then
01:24:27
I'm like, start writing down quotes, I start the Twitter, you know, whatever. As I'm going through listening to it, I'm
01:24:33
tweeting, you know, whatever. And I have no idea that this is going on, but then
01:24:39
one day I'm on Twitter and I see My Favorite Murder Out of Contacts and I'm like, oh, this is
01:24:42
funny. And then I start scrolling through the feed and then we were, you know, hanging at my house one night and I was like,
01:24:48
have you seen this Twitter, My Favorite Murder Out of Contacts? It's like, pretty good, but I
01:24:52
have some suggestions. I wonder if they... I wonder if this person takes recommendations, you know?
01:25:00
And she's like, yeah, I do. I love it! And I'm like, wait, so what I was doing was I was like hearing them and like just tweeting them.
01:25:16
This, I'm a Virgo, so there's a Google doc now. There's a Google spreadsheet. We have a spreadsheet.
01:25:25
So right away I was like, we got to get a spreadsheet going. I know what every single episode is from.
01:25:29
Yep. I was like, we got to know what episode it's from. Minisodes has a tab. Yeah, Minisodes has its own tab.
01:25:34
There's a tab. Conditional formatting. You guys do more work than we do on the actual podcast.
01:25:39
Well, I didn't want us to post repeats, so I was like, obviously we need a spreadsheet so we can track this shit.
01:25:46
If it repeats, it repeats. God. I really respect that. So, yeah, so now every week we listen to the Minnesota episode and we both write tweets down and put them in the Google Sheets.
01:25:58
Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, thank you. so cool thank you for being fucking hilarious because obviously without both of you this wouldn be happening I actually already have a tweet ready for tonight
01:26:16
I got one ready. This is the one. It's out of context, but it was from, you guys know,
01:26:20
right before Georgia was about to flash Karen when she was coming out the elevator.
01:26:25
She was like, this is my fucking chance. This is my fucking chance. So I'm really broke.
01:26:32
but I really was hoping. I need a ring pop. She asked me to get a ring pop for her earlier,
01:26:58
and I was like, Um... Alex, will you marry me? Yeah. Yeah. Yes! Yes! Yeah! Yeah!
01:27:45
Yeah! Yeah! Oh my god. Well, congratulations, you guys. I'm shaking. What a beautiful thing.
01:28:17
Amazing. It feels like we should leave, but this is our show. Thank you guys. Thank you all so much for being here.
01:28:26
Yeah, stay here with us. This is just one example of the fucking incredible community that this podcast has somehow started.
01:28:37
And we are honestly so honored to be a part of your guys' lives and all of what's happening here.
01:28:47
It's an amazing experience. It couldn't be more fun. It's incredibly beautiful. and it just
01:28:54
it's thank you so fucking much thank you all thank you too so much thank you you guys
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