Search Captions & Ask AI

119 - Fingers Everywhere

May 03, 2018 /

This episode of My Favorite Murder covers the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping, featuring Charles Lindbergh, his family, and the subsequent investigation. The hosts discuss the details of the case, including the ransom, the discovery of the baby's body, and the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was convicted of the crime. They also explore theories surrounding the case, including potential inside involvement and the implications of eugenics in Lindbergh's life.

Hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark recount the events leading up to the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son, Charlie, in 1932. They detail how the family was targeted, the ransom demands, and the eventual discovery of the child's remains. The emotional impact of the case on the nation is highlighted, as well as the media frenzy that surrounded it.

The episode delves into the trial of Hauptmann, who was found guilty of the kidnapping and murder. The hosts discuss the evidence presented, including the homemade ladder used in the crime and the ransom notes. They also touch on the public's reaction to the trial and the execution of Hauptmann.

Additionally, the hosts examine the theories surrounding the case, including the possibility of multiple kidnappers and the influence of Lindbergh's beliefs in eugenics on his actions. The episode concludes with reflections on the lasting impact of the Lindbergh case on American society and law.

Listeners are encouraged to consider the complexities of the case and the societal implications of the events that unfolded, as well as the personal stories of those involved.

TLDR

The episode discusses the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the investigation, Hauptmann's trial, and theories surrounding the case's implications.

Episode

2:06:49
00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
00:00:33
Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town
00:00:39
selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
00:00:45
and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
00:00:51
This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
00:00:58
or binge the entire series right now only with Audible. Goodbye. The best parts of summer aren't just places, they're feelings.
00:01:07
It's the scent of fresh ocean air, sun-warmed skin, and long evenings outside. Pura's new summer collection is designed to capture those fleeting moments and make them last.
00:01:16
Restore your sense of place with clean, premium fragrances you control from your phone.
00:01:21
Bring the feeling of summer home. Discover the collection at Pura.com. Goodbye. Goodbye.
00:01:28
Oh, hello and welcome. Hi, welcome. Are you saying that to me? I'm reiterating. Oh, because welcome to you.
00:01:49
Welcome to you, Karen. Thank you. Welcome to everyone to My Favorite Murder, the podcast.
00:01:54
This is a podcast where we talk about true crime, you know, and everything else under the sun.
00:02:00
Everything we can even imagine. Oh, my God. We're getting into a lot of religious stuff lately.
00:02:06
Spirituality. I'm more spiritual than religious. I'm not religious than I'm more spiritual.
00:02:11
No, but I hear people saying that on dates behind me at restaurants all the time, and I just want to punch them in the face.
00:02:16
I love to sit behind a date where they were like, I am strictly religious and I think spirituality is wrong.
00:02:24
Yeah. I'm here for the rules and the books, and I don't care about the soul or the feeling.
00:02:29
I would be relieved to hear that. In L.A., you'll never hear that in L.A. I witness, I feel like in L.A., I witness so many Tinder dates or, like, coffee meetups.
00:02:43
Yeah. And I get so involved. Oh, like how? Well, I'm a humongous eavesdropper. Totally.
00:02:50
I'll fucking eavesdrop on anybody. Me too. Well, how can you not? Like, it's not eavesdropping.
00:02:55
It's listening to the conversation going on that is going on way too loudly. Always.
00:02:59
Because it's a city full of actors. Right. And everybody thinks they should be heard.
00:03:04
Right. But then they're talking about stuff. That they think is unique and interesting.
00:03:09
Like us, for example, on this podcast right now. Like, true crime. Why talk about it if you're not going to record it?
00:03:15
Like, this murder. You know what makes me? It's because I have a problem with vulnerability.
00:03:18
so when two people are sitting in front of each other trying to trying to present themselves as
00:03:23
here's my most interesting it makes me want to vomit into the closest garbage can for seven hours
00:03:29
is i'm sorry did the garbage can because there's also a composting can and there's also a recycling
00:03:34
and there's also the coffee place i go to has a um an area to put your like coffee sleeve in to
00:03:41
recycle the sleeve oh okay which i think has to be definitely against health codes but i do it
00:03:45
anyways um oh well my first of all my vomit would definitely go into composting sure because that's
00:03:53
just going to churn up all that mulch plastic bottles the acid is going to break down all of
00:03:57
those eggshells because every place you go into here has three bins and you sit there and stare
00:04:02
at them and i'm going on a tirade go on three three bins 17 actors everybody's trying to hook
00:04:09
up yeah and um yeah and then if you want to reuse a coffee sleeve wait now is that voluntary or are
00:04:17
they just going to reuse those coffee sleeves and you don't know about it as the person buying what
00:04:21
you think is a new coffee with a new sleeve i bet i bet you think it's new and it's not new
00:04:26
you think that's true with the dirty fingers all over it no i'd rather burn my fingers your fingers
00:04:33
are where you put you put your fingers everywhere i put my fingers everywhere do you know do you
00:04:38
You know that about me. I'm confronting you. That's how I meant that sentence. You've been on tour with me.
00:04:44
You've seen me in airports. Stop putting your fingers everywhere. Oh, shit. Okay.
00:04:50
All right. Speaking of which, and I'm sorry for the segue. Someone started a hashtag, hot for holes.
00:04:57
And it is wrong. It's filthy. It is. It's making us look bad. Say what you think, though.
00:05:05
And it is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Hot for Holes is obviously our love of our lives.
00:05:10
Paul Holes. Paul Holes. The criminologist who solved the Golden State Killer among many people.
00:05:15
Which you know he would defer. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I didn't do anything. He did.
00:05:19
You know what I mean? Someone made like a, it looks like a science project poster board thing of just photos of him.
00:05:27
Cut out photos of him all over it. I should be referred it. I believe you can find that under the hashtag Hot for Holes.
00:05:31
I bet you fucking can. um he's wearing all different kinds of oakley blades and all different sun settings um but
00:05:38
someone else made a really good point they posted a photo of him they saw him in an old episodes of
00:05:42
like forensic files and said uh he he's aged well because he doesn't look so hot as a young man and
00:05:49
you bullshit i agree he looks i would have i would have fucking punched his puka shell wearing face in the fucking face like he just didn look that hot you not into early Paul Holtz No I into later stages Like he looks like he been hanging out on
00:06:05
what's the island with the tequila, with the guy who sings in Hawaii? No. Margaritaville?
00:06:10
The island? Yes. No, no, no. Stephen's Island? Margaritaville? Stephen's Island.
00:06:15
You know the one with the... Cabo? Yes. With the tequila. I don't think that's an island.
00:06:21
We got to go and tour to Mexico. Edit this out. Yes, he definitely has vacationed along Baja, California.
00:06:31
And like the kind of pre-skin cancer look now that he's got like withered a little.
00:06:36
But here I have to say, first of all, I was talking to my sister on the phone this morning and she called Paul Holes the Indiana Jones of criminology.
00:06:45
And she I couldn't stop laughing. She goes, I'm not kidding. I like wrote I love you on my eyelids as I was watching this interview.
00:06:52
He gave some hour long interview on KTVU, which is our channel to our home station, which we grew up watching.
00:07:01
There's only one, too. And so she called me this morning to give me like the basically the lowdown.
00:07:07
So that is the best description of anyone I've ever heard in my life. Am I right?
00:07:11
Yes. Laura. Laura. Also, it's funny because Laura is not interested in true crime whatsoever.
00:07:18
She's just taking this ride with us. Love it. But so she like gets into it because she knows we go crazy.
00:07:23
My sister, too. I don't think she gives two shits, but she's like happy that that I'm finally getting my need for attention met.
00:07:29
So she doesn't have to deal with we really guys anymore. Yeah. Have you ever wanted more attention in your life?
00:07:38
Oh, my God. Anyway, salute to Paul Holes. Yeah. Speaking of what? I don't know. Pick one.
00:07:46
DNA. Yeah. Go DNA. Okay, so Stephen just sent us, as we walked into class, that's what I'm calling this today,
00:07:54
a link of, so people are losing their shit because it comes out that they found the Golden State
00:07:58
Killer by getting the familial DNA off some fucking person that was like, I want to know
00:08:04
what race I am, you know, like, from fucking wherever. Just tell yourself you're Dutch Spanish.
00:08:11
Yeah, whatever you think you are, I learned this by submitting my DNA to 23andMe, you're
00:08:15
whatever you think you are. Oh, okay. I'm so fucking Eastern European Jewish that I am basically inbred.
00:08:21
Like, there's nothing else about me. Your tribe kept it tight. I was so bummed because I was like, oh, I have, you know, my family has dark hair.
00:08:29
Maybe we are a little bit something cool. No. I mean, not that it's not cool, but just like a little mix.
00:08:33
You guys did a great job, though, as a tribe. Thank you. You kept it alive. Uh-huh.
00:08:37
You kept that hair good. Yep. Great features. We kept it in the family. There's just 100%.
00:08:43
So some fucking person was like, I'm blaming to be inbred. What else is there? So he so someone was like, what do you what am I?
00:08:55
And they sent their DNA in. Yeah. To a half rate fucking company that didn't have the protection that 23andMe has and all these other and ancestry.com has that are like, we won't give your fucking DNA away.
00:09:07
Well, they actually said, though, I read an article where they had in their disclaimer, it said, if you were afraid you may have committed a crime or you don't want to be searched, like we, we do not keep these DNA profiles out of that. So don't submit your and like that that's always been their customer service thing.
00:09:27
It really annoyed me that like last week. So I took myself off Twitter because I just couldn't handle it anymore.
00:09:34
But so the last shit I saw was like, you know, what's what does this mean for public safety?
00:09:40
Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, it wasn't a big fucking company. If it's not like a big deal.
00:09:45
It's not everyone. Calm fucking down, everyone. Let's talk about this murderer and what he did instead.
00:09:51
That'd be great. So but they're going to run Zodiac's. Stephen told us DNA through this company.
00:09:58
Yes. That'll be fun. I saw that article. They said they aren't saying what company they're running.
00:10:03
Oh, good. Okay. Cause I was like, someone's going to kill them. Some old man is about to kill himself tonight.
00:10:08
Right. When he sees that. Well, let's keep our eye out for any, uh, how old would he be now in his late nineties?
00:10:19
Um, I mean, that would be exciting. It would be very cool. I agree with the people who are worried about there have to be restrictions or there has to be privacy.
00:10:28
If you are spitting on a piece of cotton and sending it to some company because you want to find out just how Dutch you are.
00:10:36
Fuck you. You're on it. You're then you're in the mix. You're in too late. You're done.
00:10:41
And also, you know, like if they they have to have probable cause, you know, our boy, Paul Holes, lined it up so that it's like this thing.
00:10:51
if they were going to do it and get the answer from a certain way. And I understand how outsiders don't trust this.
00:10:58
I trust Paul Holes. He did it by the book because they don't want it to fall apart in court.
00:11:03
Well, you know, Sally. Yeah, exactly. And you know, Sally Hall or Sally Holes. Oh, my God.
00:11:08
Who's Sally Hall? I was going to say that, you know, Sally and HR at whatever fucking DNA company
00:11:13
who like Paul Holes came up to her. I was like, I'm going to tell you why you're going to do this.
00:11:16
Like, I need this. And she was just like, there was no chance. I love that. And then she wrote Mrs. Sally Holes over and over again.
00:11:25
That's what I was going to say. My favorite thing is so many people are now writing dirty jokes.
00:11:33
Like, I got one the other day where I was like, I thought I was being trolled. Where I was like, I'd like to investigate some of these holes
00:11:41
where I'm like, oh, I get it. People are really experimenting with their blue comedy,
00:11:45
with this specific combination of nouns. Well, all we need to do is add them to Karen's list of men she loves with last names that are...
00:11:55
Nouns Nouns Yep It just We got Jimmy Buttons Buttons We got Paul Onions Onions Now we got Mr Holes There one other one Someone made a really great like Jackets But Jackets was a bad guy Oh yeah I don love that guy Okay well he one of yours He still one of yours He is one of the characters in my universe But he not canon
00:12:20
um oh what i was going to talk about is yesterday in los angeles we had a high speed chase right i
00:12:27
didn't see that with a winnebago and it was explain that to me how high speed is this like
00:12:32
what is high speed definition because well think about it in la you can't fucking get anywhere
00:12:37
over 35 miles an hour so there was a winnebago going uh 55 up i think it did a 5 134 170 transition
00:12:48
You can't do that on more than 10 miles an hour the whole time. Well, this thing was flying up the freeway.
00:12:55
I saw Brandy Posey, our friend from the great podcast, Lady to Lady. She tweeted it.
00:13:01
We've got a live one and then posted the link. And I was at the mall and I pulled out my earbuds and sat down and watched the live feed at the mall because I was like, what?
00:13:14
I did not know you were that kind of girl. I love a high-speed chase. They worry me.
00:13:19
I don't like them. They worry me. They're worrisome. That's part of what I love.
00:13:21
I can't take my eyes off it. And Steve and I were just talking about, they happen in LA a lot.
00:13:27
Yeah. Because we've got a lot of freeways and a lot of action. But it turned out.
00:13:32
So my friend Dan Telfer, who's also a comic. So I like him on Twitter. He's hilarious.
00:13:38
A lot. He's a great writer. He used to work on At Midnight. And he's just cool. And he's listened to us from the beginning.
00:13:44
Thank you, Dan. and uh and supported so anyway he got in what if he was unsupportive he's listened to us highly
00:13:52
critical most of what we do hates us no he um he got he was in mine and brandy's conversation and
00:13:59
then at one point sent the follow-up article about what had happened and it's very dark because it's
00:14:05
this guy who was a registered sex offender grabbing sex with children under the age of 14
00:14:10
Stop it. And he was in that Winnebago with his three-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter.
00:14:17
They had been, they were from, I want to say they were from Washington State or Oregon State.
00:14:24
And they were down in San Diego, I believe. And something happened and he took off with the kids.
00:14:30
And he was on the phone with his mother and his wife the whole time. And he ended up getting arrested.
00:14:36
The kids are safe. He's a pedophile and he has a mother and a wife? That's not fair.
00:14:39
I mean, some people, it's just about charisma. I think it's like confidence. If you just go into situations, you're like, I'm not the worst person that's also a sex offender.
00:14:49
And you're just like, hey. And of course, if you triangulate and you neg people, you can get anyone you want.
00:14:55
And people believe what you put out there. So it's like, oh, Jesus. It's about the energy.
00:14:59
And again, it's about spirituality. Spirituality over religion. At all times. Oh, sorry.
00:15:05
Can I do a sidebar? Absolutely. From that story. I had just gotten a coffee at Starbucks in the mall.
00:15:12
And as I was ordering my coffee, the girl I was talking to, I saw her writing, you know,
00:15:19
Starbucks, they write your order on the on the dirty sleeve. Can I say before you say anything?
00:15:23
I know the other side of the story because she posted it on Facebook. Oh, that's then I was going to tell you the other side of the story because
00:15:28
my friend Vicky, as I was shopping, sent me what she posted. Oh, OK. So you're in.
00:15:34
OK, so you're in Starbucks. You see a chick writing a thing down on the dirty sleeve.
00:15:37
I see her and I'm like giving my order, which is a little bit confusing. What is it?
00:15:43
It's a double tall one pump mocha. Okay. So it's, it's people are always like, what?
00:15:47
But it's like, they put too much double. If it's that small, they put too much chocolate in it.
00:15:51
You want it not that big because you don't want the milk and you want only one pump of
00:15:55
mocha, please. Just a nice suggestion of mocha. Not don't drown me. Yeah. So she's writing it down, but I see that she does all the, you know, M and one and all.
00:16:05
and then I see her write SSD. Then she does a weird thing and then throws it away.
00:16:11
And I was about to go, wait, were you going to, and I was going to do the funny confrontation.
00:16:16
Yeah. But then she, I don't know, something else happened. There's, it was, there was a lot happening.
00:16:21
Yeah. So I didn't confront her. I thought it'd be funny, but there's a bunch of people in line, whatever.
00:16:26
Uh, then, so in her new one, she just rewrites the order again and sends it. Then the order goes through.
00:16:35
Her boss, I'm standing over there waiting, and then her boss, or the person making it, and I found it was her boss after, goes, do you want whipped cream on this?
00:16:44
And I said, no thanks. Which the person who was ringing me up already asked, and I said no.
00:16:51
But she didn't remember to put it on the second sleeve. So then she gets yelled at for not putting it on the sleeve.
00:16:58
And I was about to go, again, about to, but didn't do it. I was about to go, oh, no, she asked me.
00:17:03
I just she, you know, she did ask me that. But then I was like, I can't get involved.
00:17:07
Then high speed chase. I'm drawn away. Then my friend Vicki Ernst, who lives in New York, does the funniest part and was far away from me.
00:17:16
She said she sends me a text that goes, I don't understand what your life is now.
00:17:23
And then it's the Facebook post from Rachel. What does it say? She says, I normally don't get rattled when a celebrity comes to Starbucks.
00:17:32
but it's LA and it happens. No brag, no brag. No brag. Man, now reading this sounds stupid,
00:17:39
but she basically said, I lost my mind on the inside. My hands were shaking. That's not true.
00:17:44
I didn't see any hands shaking. I was so nervous, tried to sneak an SSD GM on the cup,
00:17:48
but couldn't. Worst of all, my supervisor chastised me in front of her. Embarrassment level 10,000.
00:17:55
Well that was my Tuesday Maybe next time I be cooler Rachel you couldn have been cooler There was no indication on your face or anywhere that you knew who I was or anything to the
00:18:06
point where when I saw you starting to write SSD, I didn't want to be the asshole who was
00:18:11
like, are you writing my thing? So I just didn't say anything. That's how cool you were.
00:18:15
So don't worry about it. You'll be able to handle it. Yeah. Next time, just give Karen a free coffee and it'll be fine.
00:18:22
next i always appreciate people are just like uh like i'm not reacting to you whatsoever
00:18:28
but and thank you for calling me a celebrity what a joy rachel what a joy between that and
00:18:34
high speed chase fuck i mean i had a power day at the mall power day power day um can i say can i
00:18:41
do our power a couple power tour quickies please so we're leaving for fucking europe on saturday i'm
00:18:47
losing my mind i'm so stressed out it's very stressful i cannot wait to be on that plane
00:18:52
I can't wait to be in the airport. Like, that's how excited I am about it. I can't wait to be in a fucking germ-ridden, disgusting fucking airport.
00:18:59
That's how fucking stoked I am. It's going to be so fun. I'm trying to get all my pre-stress out now so we can just have the best time.
00:19:06
Me too. It's going to be great. Okay, there's Oslo, you guys, May 9th. We need to see you there if you want to come.
00:19:14
I don't know. Come if you want. I'm not trying to be like, you have to come. What's the thing that would make a Norwegian, you know, we're going to be giving away free smelt.
00:19:27
Every cocktail comes with a free shot of smelt. You can have herring. Free. As much herring.
00:19:34
You can bring it and you can have it. Then we just lose half the ticket sales just now.
00:19:39
They all get returned. They're like, fuck you, you racist asshole. Amsterdam. Those are the two shows that aren't sold out.
00:19:46
So Amsterdam on the 16th. that's going to be a good show because we're going to have had two days to chill the fuck out.
00:19:50
So like we're going to be on point. That's right. You know what I mean? Like we're going to have some fucking stories about tulips and buildings and, you know, houses.
00:20:02
And getting so stoned that we laid on the ground. Right. Just kidding. And then for our tour, for our fall tour coming up in the U.S., it's fucking like almost completely sold out,
00:20:13
except for Portland on October 18th. It's my sister's birthday. Come celebrate my sister's birthday.
00:20:20
She won't be there. Lee. And then Los Angeles. Okay, here's the thing. We're doing a show on Halloween at the Microsoft Theater.
00:20:30
And it's kind of like our biggest deal show we've ever done because it's the most seats we've ever had.
00:20:36
And then they can also keep opening up the theater so we can sell out more tickets.
00:20:40
It's kind of a big, scary deal. And I think our dude said that it's going to be like the biggest live show podcast ever and ever.
00:20:50
So that's scary and big. We want to make sure people come. They've already opened up one wing ever, Karen.
00:20:58
There's going to be so much sitting. There's going to be a lot of, I hope, costumes.
00:21:03
You and I need to figure out what the fuck we're going to go as. It's Halloween.
00:21:07
Someone made a really good point of that. Like, okay, but parents can't go now. Good.
00:21:13
Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. So just like if your kids are young enough, they won't even remember Halloween.
00:21:18
It's fine. I mean, I have friends. My friend, Paul Dankey, when I told him about it and he was like, will you put me on that
00:21:25
list? I was like, of course. And I'm like, but you have two young daughters. And he goes, I don't give a shit.
00:21:30
That's what I'm looking for in a person. Those are our people. Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:34
So fucking Halloween in Los Angeles. It's going to be at LA Live, like at the Microsoft Theater where we had, we just saw
00:21:41
Shen Young. Shen Young. It's going to be, we're all, we'll meet you at the Yard House or we'll meet you at fucking,
00:21:46
what, is there a fucking Margaritaville there? I don't know. Maybe there will be by then.
00:21:50
We'll meet you there. It's going to be fun. It's going to be crazy. And then Atlanta on November 9th, that's not sold out either.
00:21:57
So that's an added show. Okay. Yeah. You have six months to sell that show out. It's almost sold out.
00:22:03
So get your fucking tickets. And also just thanks, everybody. We know that this thing has been crazy.
00:22:08
And some people have been, you know, there's been a lot of feelings and there's been a lot of fits and starts.
00:22:15
We want you to know we are so thrilled that you care. Yeah. And it means the world to us.
00:22:20
We go out to all these cities and it's a lot of cities for us. I know it's not enough, but it is a lot of cities for us.
00:22:27
And the idea that you that so many people want to come and watch us do this bullshit is very fun.
00:22:33
and we really, really are grateful for all that you go through. We're very lucky.
00:22:38
We can't believe it. Also, if you're in the fan cult, when we leave for Europe next week,
00:22:41
we're going to start posting exclusive videos from the tour. We cannot promise quality.
00:22:47
No, no, no. But we will make them. I think maybe that part of the allure will be we are going to look horrible.
00:22:55
It's going to be shot badly. But you're going to see Europe through the lens of our experience.
00:23:01
It's going to be real. and we want to bring you with us in the uh you know lo-fi way that we do everything it's it'll
00:23:10
be it'll be a learning curve for everyone that's right it'll be fun i would like to join if you're
00:23:15
part of the fan cult look out for those videos yeah i think it's we will try to have fun with it
00:23:20
and if you're not you can go to myfavoritemurder.com and join and you get free shit with it
00:23:25
it's cool that's right okay um i was just gonna say a quick corrections corner oh great i made fun
00:23:30
of the posting that was on next the next door app. Lots of responses about the next door.
00:23:35
Yeah, hilarious. I mean, there is so much crazy, hilarious stuff on there. People posted some really funny stuff.
00:23:41
I made fun of somebody for posting raccoon in the daytime. We immediately got a response again.
00:23:48
I'm going to get better about writing people's names down, but day of Oh, for a second, I thought Stephen was holding up a cue card
00:23:54
that gave me the person's name. Somebody immediately responded. If you see a raccoon in the day, they probably
00:24:00
of rabies. I love that word. And then I will go ahead and say, call the non-emergency police number,
00:24:07
not 911. No, do not call 911 if you see a day raccoon. A day raccoon? But don't approach,
00:24:13
do not approach a day raccoon. You almost gave people rabies, Karen. If you got rabies,
00:24:20
we want to hear about it. It's like Maury Povich. Do you have rabies and your boyfriend cheated on you?
00:24:27
If they're in the fan cult, Is there a forum of what we've done, how we've done you wrong?
00:24:33
Yes. We want to know. I think that does exist, actually. Does it? Oh, shit. Summer clothes should feel easy and still look polished.
00:24:42
Low maintenance, high reward. That's how we live our lives. For summer clothes you will actually wear, there's Quince.
00:24:48
Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and toffs with styles starting at $32.
00:24:55
Their denim is soft and easy to wear, and their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights.
00:25:01
Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories.
00:25:06
So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has become a destination for elevated essentials across the home,
00:25:14
kitchen, bedding and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life.
00:25:19
I am a fan of Quince. Yeah, Karen's wardrobe is Quince. I mean, I'm a lazy basics person.
00:25:25
and the things that I get from them, I always go, oh yeah, now I'm wearing these. They work,
00:25:30
they're cute, they're stylish. And they're classy. Like it doesn't look lazy. It looks classy. And
00:25:36
it's so affordable. Yeah. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash MFM for free
00:25:41
shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash
00:25:48
MFM for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash MFM. Goodbye. When you're young, you don't really buy furniture.
00:25:57
You either inherit something from your parents or you just drag something in from the street
00:26:02
like you're some kind of hipster raccoon. When you're ready for furniture that you actually like, check out Article.
00:26:08
Article offers the style and durability you want at a price that actually makes sense.
00:26:12
They take great care in curating their collection, focusing on pieces that stand the test of time.
00:26:17
There's no filler. Every item is chosen for craftsmanship, design, and lasting value.
00:26:21
And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you can easily return it.
00:26:30
Plus, Article's customer care team is available seven days a week, offering knowledgeable support and even free interior design services to help you get your home just right.
00:26:38
Yes, please. Don't we all kind of need that? Like the eye of an expert? Yeah. Where should I put this? And also, what should I move here and there?
00:26:45
And what should I even get? But Article has it all, so you can get whatever there.
00:26:48
That's right. You could be like, I have this thing. Should I get this one or that one?
00:26:52
Am I Scandi or am I mid-century? Help me be boho chic, please. If you're in the market for a beautiful new sofa, dining table, or bed, head over to article.com.
00:27:01
Goodbye. This episode is brought to you in part by Vital Farms. Their hens have outdoor access year-round with fresh air and sunshine,
00:27:09
and they forage on rotated pastures with local grasses. The eggs are tended by hand by farmers who care, providing open pastures, fresh air, and sunshine.
00:27:16
Every carton can be traced back to the farm it came from, so you can see the pasture where the hens live by visiting vitalfarms.com slash farm.
00:27:24
Vital Farms is a certified B Corporation with a purpose to improve the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food.
00:27:31
Look for the black carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more.
00:27:34
Vital Farms, good eggs, no shortcuts. Goodbye. I think that's all my current business.
00:27:42
I got nothing. Should we get the fuck out of here? I got my hair dyed. I'm so excited.
00:27:48
I got my hair dyed days before we leave on this trip so that I won't have gray roots during.
00:27:53
It looks great. Thank you. I finally got the timing down. It's really hard. I get gray roots like every three weeks.
00:27:59
So I have to like be on it. That sucks. I don't know. I don't know how to. It wasn't a rich area.
00:28:11
good thing we're now being sponsored actually literally by a hair like a hair color company
00:28:17
i know i'm fucking stoked this is not a commercial there's see how there's no music behind it this is
00:28:21
not a commercial and we're not saying the name no and we were no this isn't free um steven who
00:28:27
goes first well last week was the golden state killer but then the week before karen went first
00:28:33
okay all right want to do over you want me to go first i want to go first you go first great
00:28:38
All right, let me take a sip of my canned rosé. Is that what that is? It's a fucking canned rosé.
00:28:45
I would have thought that was a die cook, so I don't have my glasses on. You can be a secret alcoholic this way.
00:28:49
I love it. All right. How is that canned rosé? It's all right. They're not paying us, so I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:28:57
Perfect. You can get it at Trader Joe's. All right. This is one that I hope you didn't do at a live show.
00:29:08
Well, let's find out. This is the lipstick killer, William Hirons. Hirons. What's that face?
00:29:16
I'm trying to remember. I don't think you did. Okay, great. She answers her own question.
00:29:24
Okay, great. It's exactly how I did. You did a lip bitey thing. It looked like I have something bad to tell you.
00:29:31
But here's how I can't tell anymore. Because we've gone to a bunch of different cities.
00:29:35
Yeah, Hirons. And we've looked up all these people. Yeah. And we've researched these people and then chosen not to do them or whatever.
00:29:42
Yeah. So we didn't do it. A bunch of... Yeah, I don't think we did it. Okay, cool.
00:29:46
And then there was a time before we... Stephen was with us that we did a couple Chicago shows.
00:29:51
So I can't ask Stephen because he wouldn't know. I don't... Fuck it Fuck it all Once our fucking biography comes out then we Well and also William Hirons is super famous Is that the correct pronunciation
00:30:05
I've heard of him. And you've seen a million photos of this, too. Okay. He looks...
00:30:10
There are old photos of him. He looks scary, and you're like, oh, that guy's a murderer, because you've seen his photo
00:30:14
a million times? Oh. Is he? We don't know. Let's find out. Here we go. Great. All right.
00:30:19
So the lipstick murders started in Chicago just after the end of World War II. So World War II is over.
00:30:27
Everyone's fucking stoked. It's like a great time in America, all this bullshit.
00:30:31
So the first murder took place on June 5th, 1945. 43-year-old Josephine Ross is found dead in her apartment by her daughter.
00:30:40
Her apartment's close to Wrigley Field in Chicago, obviously. Josephine had been repeatedly stabbed.
00:30:46
And then her body had been washed by the killer and all her wounds, this is fucking weird, had been covered with tape.
00:30:54
No. So each of her stab wounds. So if someone was like, oh, fuck, washes her. Like, that sounds like some serial killer shit, right?
00:31:00
Yes. Washes her, covers each wound with tape and then places her back into bed. Her head had also been wrapped with one of her skirts, almost like can't look at your FaceTime.
00:31:11
But this is a time when they didn't have, you know, criminal profiling or like serial killer wasn't even a term yet.
00:31:17
Right. So she had been washed, but the investigator still found dark like hair clutched in her hand.
00:31:25
Like she had ripped his fucking hair out of his head as he attacked her. The blood spattered apartment, it had been ransacked, but nothing was missing.
00:31:34
And police found no fingerprints and no obvious motive. And they assumed that she had surprised an intruder, but nothing had been stolen.
00:31:42
So I don't know about that. Josephine's murder at the time didn't even make the front page news.
00:31:49
And at the time, there were five big Chicago papers led by the Chicago Tribune. And they all competed for circulation, especially post-war when less shit was going on.
00:31:58
But it didn't even make the front page. About six months later on December. I know, right?
00:32:03
Yeah, that's super crazy. Also, just the detail alone of the tape. The tape. If that was in the newspaper, a million people would go crazy about that.
00:32:12
Nope. Nuts. About six months later, on December 10th, 1945, a 32-year-old woman, she's a stenographer, and she's a former Navy wave, forgot to look that up, who had served during World War II.
00:32:26
Her name is Frances Brown. She's found slumped in her bathtub in her apartment at the Pine Grove Hotel in Chicago.
00:32:32
She had been shot in the head. And this is horrible. A bread knife had been driven sideways through her neck with such force that the blade had emerged on the other side.
00:32:45
I know. She was nude. And just like Josephine, she had been washed after being murdered.
00:32:52
But he left her at the side of the bathtub for some reason. And her head was wrapped in towels.
00:32:58
So it was like kind of a similar thing. And again, the apartment had been clear, had been wiped clean of fingerprints.
00:33:05
But this time, someone had left a message on the wall of the apartment written in lipstick.
00:33:13
And it said in like crazy person writing. Yeah. It said, for heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more.
00:33:22
I cannot control myself. Do you want to see the photo? Yes, please. Okay, here you go.
00:33:26
We'll put it up on our Instagram. This is like, I love when any story parallels the movie Seven.
00:33:32
Oh, yeah. It's exactly like that. that's i didn't even think about that okay here's it's like written like a crazy person okay and
00:33:41
we'll put it up on twitter and all the places you know why can i just say yeah because as a as a
00:33:46
handwriting analyst expert yeah it's combining capital letters lowercase letters and cursive
00:33:53
oh the cursive part's creepy cursive l's in the middle of like a like a regular block yeah
00:34:01
everything about this says i don't know what the fuck is going on from second to second right
00:34:06
right or am i trying to make it look like i don't know what i'm doing from second to second i guess
00:34:12
that's true but it's very effective it is i don't like a loose cursive l is very unnerving right and
00:34:18
is it some of the letters like fucking toys r us style like backward and forward too
00:34:22
you know what i mean rs like corn style backwards to upset you corn yes it's a for heaven's sake yeah read it because it's like for heaven's sake uh curly qc catch me
00:34:40
so the c is like a spiral it almost looks like a lowercase cursive e yes that's exactly right
00:34:47
catch me b4 capital b capital f everything else lowercase i kill kill is an unconnected cursive
00:34:56
yeah it's all crazy it's written in fucking lipstick um and then the press then goes fucking
00:35:03
crazy for it also no punctuation and the other thing about this is that because at the time
00:35:10
women used the term for heaven's sake a lot they thought it might be a woman who'd done this oh
00:35:16
which everyone was like what are you fucking talking about that's some that's some poor
00:35:20
theorizing yeah everyone now is like what the fuck okay so uh this note earned the killer the
00:35:26
name the lipstick killer by the media of course who are now obsessed with it because they have a
00:35:30
catchy name and two murders that are supposedly linked um four weeks later all right so they're
00:35:37
going crazy they're like who the fuck is this killer we don't know and at the time it was kind
00:35:42
of an innocent era and so uh people are locking doing the whole locking their doors for the first
00:35:48
time thing Then four weeks later at about 730 in the morning of January 7th 1946 in a wealthy section in the north side of chicago called edgewater it was discovered that six suzanne dagnan was missing from her first floor bedroom whoa did you say six
00:36:09
she's this little fucking sweet little blonde baby girl young thing um is missing her window
00:36:17
is open and a ladder is placed underneath it outside so like someone had climbed in
00:36:23
and taken her. When they search her room, police find a crumpled note. And this is another fucking psychotically written thing.
00:36:33
I have a photo for you. The note says, tells the family to prepare $20,000 ransom,
00:36:40
not to notify the police or FBI, and to wait for a word from the kidnapper. But they didn't find it until after.
00:36:47
So look at that fucking psychotic note. Oh, no. It's similarly written, right? Yes.
00:36:53
It's got the curly Q, E's, but also... But the E's are curly. I mean, it's an E, not a C.
00:37:01
I looked at them, and I tried so hard to tell if they were connected or not. Ooh, that police C is not the same.
00:37:08
Yeah, I don't think it's the same. But it's still capitals and lowercases. It is.
00:37:12
It's still a fucking crazy note. But not like bills. The L's in bills are not cursive.
00:37:18
They're not blending the cursive. To me, that note seems like it was written by someone uneducated.
00:37:25
And the lipstick killer one looks like it was someone trying to seem crazy. So that's just my bullshit.
00:37:31
Yeah, this looks like someone who doesn't write well. Yes, and it doesn't look planned because it's so sloppy.
00:37:41
It's really sloppy. It looks like it was hard to write. Right, and words are misspelled, too, which the other one isn't.
00:37:46
Okay, so they find that note. And then on the reverse side is written, burn this for her safety.
00:37:55
Right. Okay. So by the evening of her disappearance, though, they received some hang-up calls about ransom,
00:38:03
but they never go through and they never give details. And by that evening, police receive an anonymous phone call suggesting the police look in the sewers near the Degman residence.
00:38:14
Okay, this gets fucked up. Ready? Yes. Yes. Only a block away from the Degnan home, they find the severed head of little Suzanne Degnan in a storm drain sewer.
00:38:25
Jesus Christ. I know. This is 1940 fucking six. Like shit like this does not happen.
00:38:31
This is Chicago? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's so awful. Then they find Suzanne's right leg in a catch basin.
00:38:41
they find her torso in another storm drain and her left leg in another drain each piece is found
00:38:49
further and further away from the home like the person was just hiding them along the fucking way
00:38:53
and all the drains um had cast iron manhole covers that weighed at least 110 pounds each
00:39:00
whoa yeah is that heavy that's heavy right 110 pounds yeah yeah i mean it's like picking up a
00:39:07
fifth grader okay i can bench like pretty you know you could punch like a second grader yeah yeah
00:39:13
um that's awful i'm sorry this is this the whole fucking city goes crazy this is not this does not
00:39:21
happen little girls like this like adults people can deal with it it's not even front page news
00:39:25
well also this is the second you said this part i think it i'm positive i've read this but when it
00:39:33
comes to something like when the details are that bad and gory yeah it's hard for us to do those at
00:39:38
live shows because it's just so awful that's why i was like i bet we didn't do this because i would
00:39:42
remember us talking about this yeah because it's so quiet and sad and horrifying yeah and it's just
00:39:49
like you're right it was that time where because things were so things were so i mean i feel like
00:39:55
we are experiencing this societally not to get too broad about it but these days we all know
00:40:01
everything. We're desensitized. Yeah. And we, and we're in it. We're in the mix, which I think is
00:40:06
part of the reason this kind of true crime thing is like kicking up in the last 10 years so strongly
00:40:11
is because it's like basically going, I'm not going to pretend anymore. This is real and it's
00:40:15
happening and I want to pay attention to it. Yeah. But back then this was like the, the war is over,
00:40:20
buy a car, buy a house, get a wife, have two kids, be white. You can be whatever you want.
00:40:25
Yeah. If you're white. And yeah. So it's that, and everybody's kind of locked and focused on that
00:40:31
and not letting go of it. So this is a real aberration. And it's also the time, and I think you can't tell this story
00:40:38
without making it, with making that a big part of it, what you just said, and also that, you know,
00:40:44
it was, of course, the time, even in fucking Chicago, where children just walked around
00:40:48
and were out all night, or out all day, did whatever they wanted. There was, you know, partying and...
00:40:55
Throwing dice in alleys. Right. Yeah, but there was a lack of supervision because there wasn't a need for supervision
00:41:01
because it was a, you know, a safer world. Supposedly, yeah. Supposedly a safer world.
00:41:07
And it was, though. But, you know, then something like this happens and it just changes the fucking landscape.
00:41:13
And, well, yeah, people can't tell themselves that lie anymore. Right. Essentially is what it is.
00:41:17
Right. And worst possible way to do it. Exactly. So they search an apartment building
00:41:24
near the location where Suzanne's head was found. and they uncover and somehow this is fucking crazy that they found this to me but whatever a basement
00:41:32
laundry room um and in there are tubs because it was like not i was like well what about why are
00:41:39
there four tubs in there it's like oh no they didn't have washing machines right it was a tub
00:41:43
is the laundry room yes oh god um they find four tubs and uh in the drains uh they find blood oh
00:41:54
So they think that Suzanne had been dismembered there The press began to refer to this as the murder room And that day Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly also receives a note
00:42:07
And it says, this is to tell you how sorry I am not to not get old Dignan instead of his girl.
00:42:15
So not to kill the dad instead of Suzanne. Like, I'd rather kill the dad. Roosevelt and the OPA made their own laws.
00:42:24
why shouldn't i and a lot more so this is what this means at the time chicago was home to the
00:42:30
largest stockyards in the nation uh of meat animals and shit you know yep meat packing
00:42:38
stockyards is all about steer there you go yeah i'm from orange county okay yeah uh there was a
00:42:43
nationwide meat packer strike going on at the time and the office of price uh administration
00:42:48
So the OPA was their enemy. That's who they were fucking striking against. Suzanne Dignan's father was a senior executive with the wartime meat regulation board and
00:43:01
had just recently. And so he was part of the OPA. And just recently, another OPA executive had received threats against his children.
00:43:11
Yeah. Also, a man involved with the black market with black market meat, which sounds just
00:43:17
horrifying. I mean, no, but if you marinate it just right, you can barely taste the chronic.
00:43:22
That's good for your intestines. You want to really put some meat on your chest.
00:43:25
Old, rotten meat that's been sitting out. Yeah. So he, a man involved with black market meat, so basically a fucking, what's it, line crosser,
00:43:34
what do they call them? Strike breaker? Line crosser? Scab. Scab. Had recently been murdered by decapitation.
00:43:42
Oh, no. Yeah. So police consider the possibility that Suzanne's killer was a meat packer, obviously.
00:43:47
Seems to make sense. I mean, sure. About the dismemberment, the coroner's expert said, quote, not even the average doctor could be as skillful with the dismemberment.
00:43:59
You know, like there weren't any hacking marks, that sort of thing. And then he said it had to be a meat cutter.
00:44:04
Like everyone in town and in this time of period is like stirring some shit up without facts.
00:44:10
Like everyone's fucking doing it, including especially the media. Well, again, I feel like the time that existed before the Internet existed, when you could immediately fact check that it was just a glorious time for us liars where you could just kind of say whatever.
00:44:26
No one could check it. And if you were a person that was like talking to the media, so you're the mayor, you're somebody high in power.
00:44:33
Nobody would check it. You had there was so much good faith. And the media and the fucking this is the time when the media and the police were fucking besties.
00:44:42
So the cops would want to like get some shit out to be like, we need to catch this person.
00:44:46
Here's some information. Yeah. That could also not be true. Right. And it would be printed.
00:44:51
Right. So it was just a lot of bullshit. So saying that, whatever. Also the perfect setup for like, oh, it's a meat packer.
00:45:00
See, they're the bad guys. Oh, you mean the working class guy? The people that don't have a lot of money?
00:45:07
They're striking so that they could not work fucking seven hour days. know seven days a week yeah you know yes isn't that what they did okay so all right so then with
00:45:19
no direct evidence and this is a time before miranda rights existed too really wow yeah they're
00:45:25
that recent yeah i think so shit okay we should find out about that yeah okay uh with no statement
00:45:30
with no direct evidence police police were like you know what okay the the janitor at the building
00:45:38
where Suzanne lived. Let's fucking get his wife to pressure him into confessing.
00:45:43
He's a 65-year-old man named Hector Verberg. She's like, implicate your husband.
00:45:51
And she's like, fuck no, what are you talking about? Still, the police told the press
00:45:56
that this is the man. Like the police kept, or the press kept being like, we got our guy, we got our guy.
00:46:03
He's held for 48 hours of questioning during which time he's beaten severely and had to spend 10 days in the hospital afterwards.
00:46:10
Oh, shit. He said that any more and he would have confessed to anything. So it's later determined that he is actually a Belgian immigrant,
00:46:17
so he couldn't even write English well enough to have written the ransom note. He sues the Chicago Police Department for $15,000 at that time, $15,000,
00:46:26
and he's awarded $20,000. Oh, shit. They're like, no, no, no, you're going to get even more.
00:46:30
The people have spoken. Yeah, so this is how poorly this investigation is going.
00:46:34
A month after Suzanne's body parts had been found and after she had been buried, then her arms are found by sewer workers.
00:46:44
So her body is buried without her arms. It's not a month until they find them. Horrible.
00:46:48
How horrible is that? By April, 370 suspects had been questioned and cleared. And the press is starting to criticize the police's ability to catch Suzanne's killer.
00:46:59
So they're turning on each other. Right. And they're like, they've got the heat on them.
00:47:02
investigators say that they had found two partial fingerprints on the ransom note
00:47:07
and one smudged fingerprint on the doorknob at the second crime scene and that um experts
00:47:15
match the handwriting and fingerprint they they linked everything together so that the two
00:47:21
the murders of the two women who are so different in every way to the murder the kidnapping and murder of suzanne are linked they say it's that they're all linked
00:47:32
yeah which seems impossible to me it's almost just like these are the three most upsetting
00:47:37
things that have happened in the city recently right we have a monster yeah this sells papers
00:47:42
we're gonna take care of everything at once yeah i mean it's a nice idea right and it's like it's
00:47:47
weird uh evidence even if there were like the experts say that the handwriting matches it's
00:47:52
like that's clearly bunk science we fucking know that now and that's not that's circumstantial
00:47:58
evidence it's not true evidence Anyways, in late June of 1946, police questioned this fucking creepy ass dude named Richard Russell Thomas.
00:48:08
He was a nurse at the time of the investigation. No judgment on male nurses. No, no, no, no, no.
00:48:14
But he has medical knowledge so he could dismember. Here's judgment time. At the time of the investigation, he's in prison in Phoenix for molesting one of his own daughters.
00:48:26
So, judgment. So, full judgment. Full judgment. from now on um but he was in chicago at the time of suzanne's murder and a handwriting expert
00:48:35
again uh says there's great similarities between thomas's handwriting and the ransom note
00:48:41
and that many of the phrases that was used uh in the ransom note this dude richard thomas had used
00:48:49
previously in an extortion note years earlier in an attempted kidnapping oh so he fucking had tried
00:48:57
to do it before and has similar phrases in writing. He pulled down his crime file
00:49:01
and he was like, what's my other hand copy, hand paste? Right. He pulls out his pre-computer
00:49:11
font, murderer, serial killer font. That's right. Oh, and he had medical training
00:49:18
as a nurse. Blah, blah, blah. Okay. And then during questioning by Chicago police,
00:49:24
he totally admits to killing Suzanne. Oh. But I don't know about this guy. Anyways.
00:49:30
Well, because we do know that the other guy got beaten for hours and was in the hospital.
00:49:35
Exactly. So it could have been just one of those situations. Right. Grain of salt.
00:49:39
So they think they have their guy. That is until authorities get a new suspect reported to the paper the same day that this Thomas dude is happening.
00:49:51
They find out that a college student was caught fleeing from the scene of a burglary and that when cornered, this guy had pulled a gun on police.
00:50:01
Oh. And at this time, this Thomas dude had recanted his confession and police let him go.
00:50:07
So they're like, this other guy must be our guy. So let's talk about this guy. 17-year-old William Hirons.
00:50:15
17? Yeah. 17. William Hirons is born he was born in November of 1928 grew up in Lincolnwood
00:50:23
which is a suburb of Chicago he's the son of poor immigrants from Luxembourg and his parents argued constantly
00:50:30
when he was a kid which made him just leave the fucking house and wander around town
00:50:34
and eventually he started committing petty crimes like burglary just for fun he said just to release tension
00:50:41
he would break into houses and steal shit to release tension Yeah, it's like, all right, bro.
00:50:47
I mean, have you ever heard of baseball or making a friend? By 13 years of age, he's arrested for carrying a loaded gun, which he had stolen from a fucking...
00:50:56
Jesus Christ. Yeah, he's on a bad path. That's very Bugsy Malone. It is. A search of his house, they discover a number of stolen weapons in an old storage shed,
00:51:07
along with furs, suits, cameras, radios, and jewelries he had stolen. he admitted to 11 burglaries uh and was sent to school for wayward boys for several months but
00:51:17
here's the thing he never sold anything he never stole for money it was almost just like he was
00:51:23
bored and wanted to see what he could get away with and and do yes the thrill of it yeah and
00:51:28
he was poor but he still didn't like sell the camera on the street or anything like that i
00:51:32
think he still stole stole money but it didn't seem like that was his intent he so he wasn't a
00:51:38
cat burglar. He was, he was like a weird break in peeping Tom, maybe type of guy.
00:51:44
Yeah. I don't know about the peeping Tom part, but just like a, how about a nosy Nelly?
00:51:48
A nosy Nelly kid who just like, yeah. Who wanted to break some rules and get up into people's business.
00:51:54
Exactly. So he gets released and then William Hirons is again arrested for theft and larceny.
00:52:01
This time though, he's sentenced to three years at a school operated by Benedictine monks.
00:52:06
Uh-oh. No, that's what I thought, too. It turns out when he's at this school, he fucking flourishes.
00:52:11
Oh. And it turns out he's smart as fuck. He's an exceptional student, excels in all kinds of crazy fucking subjects that I couldn't do.
00:52:20
Like what, Latin? Yeah. Electronics? I don't know. At the time, I could probably do this.
00:52:25
Electronics. 1945. You know. But this wire here and that wire there. Use the phone.
00:52:31
You're now an electronics major. But he's super fucking smart. His test scores are so high that he gets admitted to the University of Chicago's experimental school for gifted students.
00:52:45
Oh, he's enrolled for a Bachelor of Science wanting to become an electronics engineer so he can use the fucking phone.
00:52:52
He loves that phone. Calling people all the time. Hello, it's me, Richard. Can you believe this shit?
00:52:58
Ahoy hoy. saying ahoy hoy in a business like voice is the best ahoy hoy i mean it right so he he starts in
00:53:12
the fall of 1945 he was 16 years old at this point and he started this fucking school that's
00:53:18
college a college yeah smart guy college yeah this is a little man tate situation yeah okay
00:53:24
Okay. Congratulations, William Hirons. What happened? Yeah. Well, here's what happened.
00:53:28
Okay. He, of course, couldn't afford any of this shit. So he worked several jobs, but he's also like,
00:53:33
I'm going to go back to being a serial burglar because it's fun and I can make money. So he
00:53:37
keeps doing that. He kind of like lives his crazy double life. But at school, he's known as like a
00:53:42
good dancer. He's handsome and charming. He goes on dates and shit. Like people love our friends
00:53:48
with him and love him. He's pretty cute too. You want to see a photo of him? See when you post a
00:53:51
photo of him. That's what some chick was like. There was like a dance It can be him Well it was dance club So like it wasn like they go dancing It would be like let all learn how to like do the Lindy hop and shit And so this chick was like everyone wanted to dance with him because he was like charming
00:54:06
and a good dancer. And a good dancer. Right. Which is like, it's the perfect cover.
00:54:09
It's not what we say anymore. Okay. Now we're like, oh, he rides a motorcycle. Yeah, exactly.
00:54:17
So the afternoon. All right. So the afternoon that he, that cops are like, maybe this is the guy.
00:54:23
he it's june 26 1946 he's 17 years old he goes to the post office to catch to cash a thousand
00:54:30
dollar savings bond which he had purchased with the money from previous burglaries he had a date
00:54:36
that night and he needed money that's why he was doing this he burgles then he takes it he buys
00:54:42
bonds yeah he invests uh-huh and then he needs the money to take a lady on a date which a thousand
00:54:48
dollars for a date i'm like fucking take me out bro there he is he has your forehead
00:54:55
he has a three head for sure no it's just like a strong hair dark hairline karen forehead yes
00:55:02
kilgara forehead um it also he has very great great hair great eyebrows good features he you
00:55:11
know he looks the first you've got you're getting text even i want to read those texts out loud so
00:55:16
bad don't you who who'd play him um rob riggle that's the first person i thought of when i looked
00:55:23
at that picture if rob riggle i feel like he'd have to be a little smaller but he definitely
00:55:26
has if italian shorter rob riggle you know we do rob riggle we do a door phone golf thing where
00:55:33
rob riggle stands on his knees totally and then we shoot around it you know we just make it work
00:55:38
yeah we just we we do a being john malkovich kind of small down the set he gets on his knees
00:55:44
we're off to the races okay i figured it out i'll call some people great i'll be there
00:55:50
um oh and so he okay so he has a thousand dollars on him he's like fuck i'm gonna bring a gun with
00:55:56
me this is a lot of money that's why he has a gun on him um the he's making listen look this guy
00:56:03
listen he's making bad decisions okay yeah consistently consistently this isn't Before I fucking tout why he's innocent about other shit, he sucks.
00:56:14
And like he's doing some shitty stuff. Yeah. Because when he finds out that the bank is closed, he's like, well, I'll just rob a place real quick and get some cash for the state tonight.
00:56:22
So like you're not and you have a gun on you, too. You're not the best fucking dude.
00:56:28
Well, yeah, because if you're smart enough to go to college when you're 16 years old, Mr.
00:56:32
Gifted, we but you're not none of those abilities are applying to the any other part of your life.
00:56:38
Right. Or like, it's not even about being smart. It's just like, fuck everyone. Fuck everyone else.
00:56:44
I want what I want. I'm going to take it. Yeah. Like you're stealing money from people who probably need that money too, dude.
00:56:50
Well, right. And it's, yeah, that's all power moves and stuff where it's like that, you know, those
00:56:55
breaking people turn into murderers because they don't give a shit. Exactly. And they're doing everything.
00:56:59
It's like the thrill of it. And I'm, it's what I'm interested in. It's what I want to do.
00:57:03
It's narcissism. Like there's part of you that wants to be like, well, you're 17.
00:57:06
you're going to like straighten your shit out and be a good person, which I think a lot of people sitting in this loft have done in their lives.
00:57:15
Straighten your shit out. At least two, Stephen. At least two of them. Yeah, but, you know, fuck.
00:57:21
I mean, yeah, he's so young. Right. But, okay, so he goes to burglar a place to get some cash.
00:57:28
He goes to a place that had been stolen before, and it's just a few blocks away from the Degnan house apartment.
00:57:34
He's caught while trying to grab the money. this chase ensues blah blah he's cornered by the cops and then he fucking pulls his gun
00:57:40
on the cops yeah he doesn't shoot but it's like what the fuck are you thinking is he suicide by copping maybe i don't know okay he's suicide by being 17 years old he's
00:57:52
suiciding by being a stupid fucking idiot um and then there's like a the cops gun jams or some
00:57:59
shit there's a scuffle and then it turns into a fucking laurel and hardy or like three stooges
00:58:04
pick because another cop grabs a fucking clay flower pot and smashes it over his fucking head.
00:58:13
It says three of them. Like it takes three fucking flower pots and smashes his. It's fucking.
00:58:18
For real? Yes. That's hilarious. That's how he gets stopped from fighting with his cop.
00:58:23
He was stopped by officers Tom and Jerry. Exactly. Exactly. He goes unconscious. They take him to the hospital. He drifts in and
00:58:32
unconscious. He says that he remembers someone saying that he's a suspect in the Degnan case,
00:58:36
and he feels his fingerprints being taken. Oh, okay. They raid his houses and shit where he
00:58:42
lives. They find all his stuff from his previous blurbleries. I'm calling them blurbleries. A
00:58:47
couple blurbleries. They were called blurbleries until 1950. They were just a blurbleries. Oh my
00:58:52
God. Yes. Blurgleries. Blurgleries. Karen, that was amazing. Thank you. I'm really trying. A
00:58:58
A couple of things that are recovered are a scrapbook containing pictures of Nazi officials that he had stolen from a war veteran that was taken when he blur-glurred his place.
00:59:12
Yeah. The same night that Susan Dignan was killed. Uh-oh. Which I want to fucking know about this dude who had that photo album.
00:59:19
Like, what a psychopath. Or did he liberate some French city Nazi-occupied and then grab shit?
00:59:28
That happened a lot. His name was Harry Gold, so I'm going to guess you're right.
00:59:32
Yes. Harry Gold was on the right side. Harry Gold was not a Nazi. Harry Gold's people came through Ellis Island.
00:59:39
They're like, why don't we clip that berg off? Yeah. Let's move to Chicago. Act as white as we can.
00:59:44
Oh, World War II. We have to fight Hitler. Let's go for it. Let's do it. Okay. Harry Gold, I apologize for insinuating you were a Nazi.
00:59:52
Also. What? The first Jewish Nazi people He wouldn be the first Who are you going to cast in that Okay Also in his possession in Williams shit is a stolen copy of the Psychopathia Sexualis
01:00:08
Yes. From 1886. Reach it. It's the one, it's like the fucking, it's like the psychology of.
01:00:16
Sexuality? Sexual, psychopaths. Yes. Sexual psychopaths. Yeah. Right? You know who's read that book?
01:00:22
Who? Mr. Paul Holes. Oh. sorry steven he never got past chapter one sorry steven you play the fifth you play chapter fifth
01:00:34
the fifth chapter that's what's wrong with him he just starts reciting everything in the fifth
01:00:36
chapter well it turns out in latin in addition okay they find that and then they also find a
01:00:46
stolen medical kit so and they're like oh is this shit this dismemberment stuff but it's like it's
01:00:52
not um he's interrogate okay so then here's what happens then william is interrogated around the
01:00:57
clock for six fucking days he's beaten by police refused food or water he's not allowed to see his
01:01:03
parents and or a lawyer he's 17 yeah and like they beat the shit out of him yeah they did
01:01:09
he's subjected to interrogation for three hours under the influence of sodium pentothal which we
01:01:15
know as truth serum which we also now know is fucking bullshit and is not doesn't work um
01:01:22
while under the truth serum he like and it's like a psycho what is it called sexualis
01:01:29
it's just like that it's just like it he like concocts this person like an alter ego named
01:01:37
george merman who's the father's brother yeah merman's brother um eugene's grandfather that's
01:01:45
Right. Who authorize. It's basically like it has his alter ego that makes him kill people, whatever, like makes it up on truth serum, maybe.
01:01:53
And other people like or did he make it up? Is he the killer? Is it true? Yeah. You know what I mean?
01:01:57
And then the fucking media is like, oh, Merman must be short for a murder man. And then like, just go with that.
01:02:03
It's just so stupid. I would have tabled that for a little bit longer. I mean, like, I understand why you're excited about that idea.
01:02:10
Let's keep work. Sure. Not the worst. But definitely not the worst. And feel great about it.
01:02:15
Like, go move. Go forward with that. But it's too. It's too open. Why aren't you just saying merman like a mermaid?
01:02:24
On the fifth day, he's given. With OK, no anesthesia, given a spinal tap. No, no, that's torture.
01:02:36
Holy shit. Then they drive into police headquarters for a polygraph test, which they couldn't do because he was in so much fucking pain.
01:02:42
And to this day, they still don't understand the we still don't know why they gave him a lumbar puncture.
01:02:47
They was like for a reason. But nobody. But it's like they didn't write the reason down.
01:02:51
No. Fuck. Sorry. They did that in a hospital and then drove him to police headquarters.
01:02:56
That's the epidural, too, right? No. No, no. I'm sorry. Before that. But it's still it's stuff getting shoved into your spine.
01:03:03
They gave him that. That's OK. I hear that with with anesthesia. Ladies who have had babies.
01:03:11
this is the most like when they have to fucking shove that shit in your spine you don't want a
01:03:16
needle in your spine i mean i don't i know i can be really controversial but i'm gonna fucking say
01:03:21
it you don't want a needle karen are you sure you want to leave this look at leave it in steven
01:03:25
how dare you oh my god all right when the polygraph is administered results are inconclusive
01:03:32
uh they're declared inconclusive although the people and this is part of him being uh
01:03:37
taken a trial. But later in 1953, the people who had said it was inconclusive, published the findings in their book, which I'm sure was just a fascinating read.
01:03:49
And they say that his test, quote, clearly establishes him as an innocent person.
01:03:54
So like, people are lying. Handwriting analysis said his writing is the same as the lipstick
01:04:00
message and the ransom note. They say that his fingerprints match the fingerprints on the smudge
01:04:05
on the door jam, even though it was a smudged fingerprint. They say that it's his fingerprint.
01:04:13
There's also another fingerprint found on the ransom note that they say is his blah, blah, blah.
01:04:18
After being intermittently tortured and held with that food sleeper access for five days,
01:04:25
he is finally indicted for assault with intent to kill, robbery, 23 counts of blur glory.
01:04:32
Jesus Christ. How's that canned rosé? I wish I could blame it on that, but I haven't had that much of it.
01:04:39
Blurglery. Blurglery. And three counts of murder. Blah, blah, blah. He's transferred to the county jail.
01:04:44
And his lawyer who's hired for him is like, no, man, you're guilty. Let's figure this out and keep you out of the fucking chair.
01:04:51
Like, that's his plan. Wow. He said that he thought he was guilty and that the burglaries alone he would face life imprisonment.
01:05:01
So he's like, let's just keep you out of the chair. well that guy's pretty negative for a defense lawyer are you supposed to be like over the top
01:05:08
optimistic and fake it in the real world yes yeah um so they there's a plea bargain a blargin
01:05:17
a plea blargin he's gonna if he if he pleads uh guilty he'll get a single life sentence
01:05:24
uh and then but if he but then he refuses all this shit happens where he like is like
01:05:31
I didn't do this. They're mad at him for saying that. And then finally, he's threatened with death penalty. If the trial goes, if the case goes to trial, he says later that I confess to save my life. So he sentenced ultimately to three consecutive life sentences for the murders.
01:05:49
and okay then the handwriting expert recants in early January of the next year and said that the handwriting on the ransom note in a lipstick message had quote few superficial similarities and a great many
01:06:07
dissimilarities. Okay. Doesn't matter. He's fucking already in prison. Yeah. Too late.
01:06:11
And then some have questioned the legitimacy of the lipstick note completely saying that,
01:06:16
quote, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a man to pick up a piece of lipstick and
01:06:21
write the message with it. basically they think a fucking crime reporter went in there was like this story is boring and
01:06:28
wrote the lipstick note yeah well what's boring about a woman getting stabbed and having her
01:06:33
wounds taped shut that's like that was the first murder oh that's the note was on the second murder
01:06:38
yeah she wasn't boring either none of this is boring it's not boring yeah i mean that's i i
01:06:44
don't think that part's true but i just don't and i don't even know if those two murders are
01:06:48
are even connected the first two. But it does make sense because there was that,
01:06:53
it was the pulp era where it wasn't enough to have a murder. You did have, it was that sensationalism.
01:06:59
Yes, exactly. You had to, you had to have a nickname and you had to term things and,
01:07:03
you know, lipstick on the wall is like, what's more upsetting and crazy. Also that's stolen straight out of Jack the Ripper.
01:07:09
Oh, right. Write it on the wall and some weird writing of like, I'm crazy. And also it's the Jews who did it and all that stuff and make people run in
01:07:18
every direction well it's just it reminds me of the case of the weepy voice killer remember him
01:07:23
who calls and is like make me stop doing this hate his fucking voice it's so annoying i was just
01:07:29
talking to my friend about that oh my god oh and i'm not your friend you're talking to me about it
01:07:33
right now no i'm telling you right now talking about it right now you just informed me when we
01:07:38
were talking about shit that's my new way of going crazy where i'm like we're talking now
01:07:42
anyway go ahead i'm talking to my brown-haired friend right now go go ahead and keep talking
01:07:48
about what we're talking about. Okay, I'm almost done. I swear this is long. No, no, it's good.
01:07:52
And I apologize. Oh, also, they're like, okay, the fingerprint that you guys found
01:07:57
on the doorknob, that's a rolled fingerprint, which I didn't know about this until later.
01:08:02
Yep. Explain the move you just did. I just basically, it's the thing you see in every movie
01:08:08
when someone gets booked at the police station and they roll, they put your thumb
01:08:12
in the black ink and then they roll across a piece of paper. Exactly, which a fingerprint expert's like,
01:08:16
That's not how you find fingerprints. Yeah, you don't touch the door by going like...
01:08:21
Do you know how many times I did this move and tried to... When I heard that and was trying to open a doorknob in the air to be like,
01:08:27
would I do that though? But I guess I could do that. But maybe I'd roll it. Whatever.
01:08:30
You can't do it, right? It's not a thing. It's just not normal. Yeah, because you have to grip it.
01:08:35
You have to grip it. Right, so it would just be the top of your fingerprint. Anyways, so William had been eligible for parole.
01:08:45
What's going on? I don't know. For nearly every year since the 1970s, he's been eligible for parole.
01:08:52
The Center for Wrongful Convictions mounted a clemency campaign on the grounds that he had served longer than required and that the evidence used to convict him was unreliable.
01:09:01
But nothing worked. He just like they wouldn't let him go. Wow. Constantly. These things kept happening.
01:09:09
Right. In 2012, when he died in 1980. Nope. Jesus. In 2012, he was 1983 years old.
01:09:19
He was 83 years old. He was the longest serving inmate in the Illinois Department of Corrections
01:09:25
in 2012. He's the first inmate in Illinois to receive a college degree and he learned
01:09:31
all this crazy shit. He helped all these fucking other inmates with, you know, he helped the fucking library
01:09:37
and the school system. We did a lot of good stuff inside. Is there a school system in the jail?
01:09:43
now there is but there wasn't there's a grammar school and there's well you have them like a g ed
01:09:49
you couldn't do that then so because he was the first one to get his college degree and he was in
01:09:54
there basically as a child and he was super genius so he's like at the very least i can do is help
01:10:00
other people right so that's a good sign yeah it is that's not what i don't i don't think most
01:10:04
psychopaths think that way right right so um all right so robert wrestler our fucking friend who's
01:10:11
the former FBI profiler. Our fucking friend. Yep. Meaning we're fans of him. That's what I always mean when I say that.
01:10:20
Yes, he's our fucking friend. Our fucking friend. 100%. He's one of us. Robert Ressler, former FBI profile,
01:10:26
credited with coining the term serial killer, Mindhunter dude. You guys remember him.
01:10:30
So he was a nine-year-old living in Chicago at the time of those murders. And he says, quote,
01:10:36
it changed the innocence of neighborhoods where people had taken for granted that they could have unlocked doors and walk alone at night. And it's those events that inspired him
01:10:47
to become a criminologist, the lipstick murders. Yeah, the Suzanne's murder itself became a key
01:10:52
element in his landmark theories about serial homicide. And they actually interviewed him.
01:10:58
He and FBI profiler, John Douglas, interviewed him in prison. And John Douglas remains convinced
01:11:06
that shoddy evidence, shoddy evidence management, prosecutorial overreach and media frenzy led
01:11:13
to false accusations with these horrible consequences. Wow. That's the lipstick killer.
01:11:19
That's also every time I think of that, too, there's obviously like the idea of going to
01:11:24
jail and staying there for the rest of your life is a nightmare and people live it constantly.
01:11:28
And that's horrible. But there's I also always think somebody fucking got away with it and is sitting out there.
01:11:35
They just went to a different town and did it again. That's what I was trying to look at is like, are there like it's so hard to find info on this, but it's like, are there any, you know, other murders that could be attributed?
01:11:45
What if he just went over to Boston and changed up his M.O.? That's what I was thinking, too.
01:11:48
Something like that, where that's what I mean, I do love that when things happen.
01:11:54
And, you know, luckily it's been happening lately, you know, where we get the satisfaction.
01:12:00
Action of like, they catch the Golden State Killer. And that means they have now solved Visalia Ransacker, the stereo rapist.
01:12:07
And then all those, you know, totally the original what they were calling it the original
01:12:11
Night Stalker that it's so satisfying that now I think about that all the time. What if they pull up this DNA thing?
01:12:17
And it's just like, because they don't stop. They don't just stop. No, I can't wait to hear more information about I mean, I'm going out of my mind, which is
01:12:26
why I had to stop fucking going on Twitter. Yes. Of like, give me more information now. Yes. About
01:12:32
the Golden State Killer. Like, they know this about him. They don't. And there's nothing coming
01:12:36
up yet. So I know, but I can't wait to know, like, why and what happened after 1986. You know,
01:12:44
it's just crazy. Yes. What were the jobs were? I mean, yeah, we just want to know everything. It's
01:12:49
so crazy. Well, one of the things that they said that made sense about, you know, when he was like,
01:12:53
you had to spend the rest of your life in prison. How awful would that be? But at the time,
01:12:58
in 1946, if he did get sent to the electric chair, it would have been a matter of months.
01:13:05
Yes. So now it's like 18 fucking years of appeals. It wasn't like that then. Right. So it's almost
01:13:12
better that, you know, at least he had this time to make something of his life, even if it was
01:13:18
and help other people pretty shitty. He had a chance of getting out. It just never worked out
01:13:22
that way you have to hope that nowadays something would have happened but to get him out but prison
01:13:28
reform it's important it is it's so crazy but then like what if he didn't do it yeah but i don't
01:13:36
think he would have helped people in prison if he did it that's not that's not a you can't figure
01:13:39
that that's like he was so nice i never would have already figured it and it's fact but it's
01:13:45
the same thing if you're like he was so nice i never would have assumed ted bundy would have
01:13:48
done those it's the same thing you're right you bundied me and you're right no way man people who
01:13:52
are fucking into books and reading and smart and helping other convicts aren't not aren't less
01:13:56
likely to murder children and women but but you want them to be nice smart people well i just
01:14:03
but it is that thing of psychopaths only do what's good for them well what looks good for him is
01:14:09
helping other people in prison except for yeah i guess that's true and look how smart he is how
01:14:15
didn't Ted Bundy get off on fucking guys coming and getting legal help from him in prison?
01:14:20
Yeah. That's how he fucking didn't get beat up and killed. You've convinced me. Yes.
01:14:25
I love convincing. Oh, hey, look, there's a spider on the ceiling. I just threw my head back and fucking happiness and there's a legit spider on the ceiling.
01:14:34
I left my glasses downstairs. Oh, my God. Karen, he's coming closer to you. Yeah.
01:14:38
This episode is brought to you in part by Vital Farms. Their hens have outdoor access year round with fresh air and sunshine.
01:14:44
and they forage on rotated pastures with local grasses. The eggs are tended by hand by farmers who care,
01:14:50
providing open pastures, fresh air, and sunshine. Every carton can be traced back to the farm it came from,
01:14:55
so you can see the pasture where the hens live by visiting vitalfarms.com slash farm.
01:15:00
Vital Farms is a certified bee corporation with a purpose to improve the lives of people,
01:15:05
animals, and the planet through food. Look for the black carton in the egg aisle
01:15:08
and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more. Vital Farms, good eggs, no shortcuts. Goodbye.
01:15:13
Bye. Summer is all about saying yes, going out and bringing the mess home in your car.
01:15:19
Sand, grass and melting snacks will inevitably hit your ride. But with WeatherTech, you can live life to the fullest.
01:15:25
WeatherTech floor liners, cargo liner and seat protectors allow you to keep up with your summer adventures without the worry.
01:15:31
WeatherTech is built for all of those summer things, allowing you the freedom to go all in.
01:15:35
WeatherTech is an American made premium product built to last and easy to clean.
01:15:40
If you're going all out this summer, you need WeatherTech. Visit weathertech.com today.
01:15:45
Goodbye. Sometimes the hardest part of therapy is just getting started. For real.
01:15:49
Which is why having help that's flexible, accessible, and easy to fit into your life matters.
01:15:54
And that's exactly what Talkspace is designed for. Talkspace therapy and psychiatry is covered by most insurers,
01:16:00
and most insured members pay a copay of $0. Part of the mission of Talkspace is to provide quality care that is accessible and affordable,
01:16:07
whether or not you're insured. Talkspace has really made it just a kind of no-brainer to try therapy.
01:16:14
If you're nervous about talking to someone, if you're nervous about the money, if you're nervous about leaving the house, you don't have to deal with any of that.
01:16:21
They have covered it. And for me, that is the best way to get into therapy. Take all the what-ifs out.
01:16:27
You know you got to do it. You know you do. As a listener of this podcast, you'll get $80 off of your first month with Talkspace
01:16:33
when you go to Talkspace.com slash MFM and enter promo code SPACE80. That's S-P-A-C-E-8-0.
01:16:40
To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com slash MFM and enter promo code SPACE80.
01:16:47
Goodbye. So somebody suggested this on Twitter and I was positive I was going to write her name down today when I was like, oh, I am going to do that one she suggested.
01:17:02
It's a theme. Yeah, exactly. And she suggested it in a terse way. so I imagine she's the kind of person that's going to be very pissed off that I took her idea
01:17:11
and didn't give her name well good she said have you guys ever done the blah blah blah case I think
01:17:18
you should it was something like that it was basically like come on get with it yeah and I
01:17:22
was like that's actually a great idea thought I could look her up while we were sitting here and
01:17:28
my twitter does a thing sometimes where it just won't go back very far so I couldn't look it up
01:17:33
so full apologies hopefully i'll hear from you message email twitter first tell them yeah fix
01:17:41
their shit at jack know yeah to stop letting nazis run free on his website and then that we need to
01:17:47
be able to go back a couple days right just for the podcast or like search a word and okay you
01:17:54
know what also editing it would just be nice to get one more pass before you send your ideas out Anyhow guys this I am going to do the crime of the century the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby
01:18:05
Girl, I'm applauding you, but I would scare Elvis who's sitting on me right now.
01:18:09
Yeah, don't worry about it. Also, it's not my applause. It's this girl's whose name I'm not saying.
01:18:13
This girl. You're amazing. Also, woman, we should be saying woman. We don't know.
01:18:19
I actually could be misremembering and I'm just attributing like a feminine aspect to like whatever picture.
01:18:26
Maybe she had long hair. Who knows? Humans. We're going to, that human is going to let us know just how pissed they are about not getting credit for, you know, a case.
01:18:37
I also can't believe that we haven't done yet. Yeah. And as I was doing it, part of me was like, what if George has done this?
01:18:44
And I was like, at this point, I just don't care. I just want to do what I want.
01:18:47
I think that, yeah, I think that's our new, our new theme is, did she do this? I mean, let's just start repeating stories and retelling them and just do better each time.
01:18:58
Oh my God. Less and less corrections corner. Love it. And then in like seven years, we're going to get to that journalistic level.
01:19:04
People have been wanting us to be at this whole time. No, we're not. Never. And then we'll give up on the podcast.
01:19:11
Yes. Then we'll quietly walk away in the night. Yeah. Because you know how quiet we are when we walk away.
01:19:17
Uh, so I got all this information from an episode of Nova. Oh, thank you. Fucking God for that.
01:19:24
PBS. Baby, it's like, and you can get an education for free on PBS. Um, and the funniest thing is this episode of Nova featured John Douglas, FBI profiler
01:19:36
John Douglas, who you just mentioned. He's the main, basically they pulled John Douglas all the way through of going the Lindbergh
01:19:43
baby case was, and murder was presented in this way. And they got to this conclusion.
01:19:47
John Douglas doesn't agree. John Dougie. That's what we call him. He's in there with his super reasonable face.
01:19:55
Our friend. And his glasses, holding his glasses and his teeth. A friend of the show, John Douglas, solving problems.
01:20:02
It's very, very cool. So that's a good, that episode of Nova you can get on iTunes.
01:20:05
Or you can hear it right now. Or you can hear me retell it word for word. Although it's not an exact I survived word for word steal as I usually do.
01:20:13
because there's another there's a Netflix series called Conspiracy that is good and I got and they
01:20:21
do the thing where they do it's compilation so it's like three stories in each episode and this
01:20:27
one what's that so you don't get bored yeah they keep it moving um and this one is the episode is
01:20:33
Disappearances it's also uh the other I can't remember what the third crime is but the other
01:20:38
first crime in that is the Lord Lucan. Oh, you did that guy. Disappearance. Yes, I did do that. I love it.
01:20:45
Loving it. So here we go. Here's a little backstory for you. Why anybody cared about Charles Lindbergh
01:20:51
in the first place. On May 21st, 1927, a 25-year-old U.S. airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh touched
01:20:58
down in an airfield outside of Paris, France, in his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis.
01:21:05
When I read that name, I'm like, oh, that's what that is. what you know the spirit of st louis oh yeah like if you had asked me that i would have confused it
01:21:13
with the spruce goose uh-huh i would have you know maybe an amelia airheart exactly but at least
01:21:18
you know it's a plane we know it maybe it's a plane or but now we know exactly that's charles
01:21:22
linbergh's wonderful plane that got him he was the first man to ever make the non-stop flight
01:21:29
from new york to paris it was 33 and a half hours it was 3600 miles is that like in one of those
01:21:36
planes it doesn't have a face either so it's just like it went in your no a biplane i'm pretty sure
01:21:44
it had a face on it although i why would i why would i say that if they were two years in
01:21:50
why would i fucking say that because you're not going to start now with not knowing shit i look
01:21:56
my brain shows me movies and that's reality to me and i just report to you yes or no shows me
01:22:02
movies and that's reality and that's my reality i love it um it was 33 hours and we complain about
01:22:09
four or five hours to new york city 33 hours and 33 hours alone oh and all all day all night all
01:22:16
you hear is me and he couldn't bring a bunch of extra shit steven's on the steven's got it the
01:22:23
plane and do you know thank god the spirit of st louis is uh closed in the front thank god
01:22:32
But I bet it's loud as fuck still. Oh, the whole thing. It looks like a big aluminum can.
01:22:36
No temperature control. No toilet. No, it was freezing. You know, he was peeing in an old Pepsi bottle.
01:22:42
I mean, throwing it over overboard, throwing it overboard for the first time in human history.
01:22:50
OK, so he when he sets down in Paris and he does this thing. So, uh, uh, just to give you a little, Ooh, did that fucking, huh?
01:23:03
God damn it. I cut and pasted it and then lost, lost this piece of information. But like six other people had tried to do this and three of them died.
01:23:13
So this wasn't a thing. This was not, um, this was something because it was, there was a prize.
01:23:18
It, it was, um, these people said, whoever does this first gets $25,000. Jesus. So lots of pilots and different people were trying for it.
01:23:29
And it's really hard. And some people had to ditch out and whatever. But people lost their lives trying to make this flight.
01:23:36
So when Lindbergh landed in this airfield outside of Paris, he was immediately an international superstar.
01:23:44
He was the most famous man in the world. He got carried around the people that were waiting at the airstrip.
01:23:50
He never had to walk again. He never walked again. his feet became curled and atrophied No they said they held him This is on the Wikipedia page They carried him on their shoulders for over a half an hour He like I only wanted to touch the ground for the
01:24:05
past 30 hours. The first three were great. Put me down. Yeah. He's like, this is the
01:24:12
exact position I've been stuck in for 33 hours. All right. So he gets the nickname Lucky Lindy,
01:24:18
gets that 25K. He also gets thousands and thousands more for all these promotional.
01:24:24
Oh, yeah, I bet. The Pepsi bottle. It's a Pepsi company. Pepsi is like, we want that bottle.
01:24:29
Yeah. But apparently, this really opened up aviation in general, but also for air mail.
01:24:40
So he was the guy that kicked it open over like FedEx and everything. Yeah. Where it's like, you want to get something to Europe?
01:24:46
We're doing it now. We're going to be able to do that. And that was kind of what the whole contest was about.
01:24:51
Okay. Was to kind of focus on aviation, but then like, you know, opening up so that suddenly people were thinking, you know, business in terms of aviation.
01:25:00
I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. He was given the Medal of Honor, which is the military's highest award.
01:25:08
And he was given, he was Time Magazine's first ever man of the year. Wow. And still the youngest to this day.
01:25:15
He was 25 years old. That's so young. Yeah. And he was kind of hot, too. Well, do you know who he looks like?
01:25:22
Who? Do you mind pulling up a picture of Mr. Charles Lindbergh at age 25 when he made this flight?
01:25:27
Don't tell me until I see it. Okay. Who is it? I'm going to show you a picture. Okay.
01:25:31
You're going to tell me who you think this man looks like. Now, please, take your time.
01:25:37
I'm just killing time while Stephen finds it. Was he tall? He looked tall in all his photos.
01:25:41
Yes. Okay. He was tall. He was blonde. He had a dent in his chin. Love it. he was his coloring was very like caramel but with blonde hair which you know those people
01:25:52
always win they always win let me pull up oh it's such an old man of the year um thing that
01:26:02
it's illustrated that's how long ago this story took place come on i'm sorry i did this no no it's
01:26:10
okay okay because why don't you look at this picture and tell me oh hello handsome who you
01:26:15
think this looks like well i'm gonna get this wrong no you're not he looks he definitely looks
01:26:19
like he's in a brit pop band from the 60s in this photo doesn't he yes does he look like god he's hot
01:26:27
uh tell me paul holes look at the face of it he does look like he does look like paul this is the
01:26:35
episode well let's just work all this paul holes stuff out now this is the holes upon holes upon
01:26:41
episode okay so he does look like ball holes so Lindbergh being the most famous man in the world
01:26:49
and like he's being he's being brought everywhere he's like he's being feted in this really intense
01:26:56
way and he's making a ton of money good for him they said that for everything that kind of he got
01:27:01
paid for around that flight he made like almost half a million dollars um in today's money okay
01:27:07
So, but still, a lot of money. I'll take today's money, half a million, for fuck's sake.
01:27:12
It's pretty nice. So he gets a financial planner, a financial consultant from J.P. Morgan,
01:27:18
a big company. And it's a big company, did you know? And the planner's name is Dwight Morrow, and he's also the ambassador to Mexico.
01:27:29
What the fuck? He was, you know, this was when they gave a ton of important jobs to one white guy.
01:27:37
It was the 20s. So when Morrow invites Charles Lindbergh to come on a Goodwill tour of Mexico, because he's famous and everyone loves him.
01:27:48
Well, just by chance, Morrow's daughter, Anne, is down there. And they meet and they fall in love.
01:27:54
Oh, rich people falling in love. Rich, good looking people who have their own planes fall in love all the time.
01:28:03
They deserve everything. They deserve to fly. okay he teaches her how to fly oh i bet he does yeah girl and then he teaches her how to
01:28:15
i don't know love um they get married immediately start a family charles lundberg uh was very
01:28:24
vocal and verbal insulting or criticizing i should say other uh pilots of the day there was lots of
01:28:32
You know, pilots like it's the Amelia Earhart era where it's like being dashing, being, you know, being a pilot was a big deal.
01:28:40
He was a trash talker. He was because he said that Air Force cadets and pilots of the day, they were all, they were, had facile attitudes about women.
01:28:53
Oh, how dare he. How dare. Whereas he believed the ideal romance was stable and long term with a woman with keen intellect.
01:29:01
Hey, good health. Whoops. And strong genes. Oops. Oh, so you're a Nazi. Uh-huh. Good one.
01:29:11
Good eye. His, quote, experience in breeding animals on our farm taught him the importance of good heredity.
01:29:19
Of good breeding. Oh, dear. Hey, Chuck. No. No, no. It don't work that way. Okay, so that's just a little, that's your foreshadowing.
01:29:29
Okay. So let's go to the crime. This is 1932. Anne and Charles Lindbergh have been married,
01:29:39
and they now have two kids, a newborn, and their baby Charlie, their first son, who is two years old.
01:29:48
On Tuesday, March 1st, 1932, the family staying at their as yet unfinished new house in Hopewell New Jersey or right outside of Hopewell New Jersey They only visited this house on the weekends They were living full time at Ann Morrow family estate called Inglewood
01:30:09
Inglewood. Rich people. Yeah, represent. So no one except for the family would have known that they would have been at this house
01:30:18
because they were full time living at the Inglewood estate, But they would come to the Hopewell house and live there just for the weekend, just for fun of like, this is going to be our new house.
01:30:30
There was, of course, full staff at both houses. So sometime between eight and 10 o'clock on March 1st, one or more, they're still not sure, kidnappers lean a homemade folding ladder.
01:30:47
So it's a ladder that has three pieces that like slide into each other, an extending ladder, I guess.
01:30:53
But it's homemade. Lean it up against the wall of the house underneath the baby's window.
01:30:59
The window is unlocked. The kidnapper breaks in, grabs the two year old. They say they theorize that they subdued the two year old somehow because no sound was made.
01:31:12
No one in the house heard anything. Everyone was still awake. So it's not like everyone was asleep and the baby was stolen.
01:31:18
Everyone's up and awake downstairs. The baby doesn't make a sound. They go back out down the ladder and off into the night with Charlie.
01:31:28
And they leave a letter on the windowsill. So there's another ransom demanding $50,000 to be dropped off at midnight at a local cemetery on April 2nd.
01:31:39
And they warn not to contact the police or they'll kill the baby. So basically, Charles Lindbergh takes over this case.
01:31:49
Now, it seemed to me that what they were kind of insinuating in both of these specials is that Charles Lindbergh really kind of believed he was the shit that the world was saying that he was for making that transcontinental flight.
01:32:04
He was cocky. The transatlantic flight. Yes, he some people believe he was a narcissist, you know, whatever.
01:32:12
But but essentially, once this started happening, he didn't trust anybody. He didn't trust the police.
01:32:17
And he basically told everybody how it was going to go. And in doing so, fucked up this investigation that then also some people afterwards kind of theorized maybe he was doing it on purpose.
01:32:28
So there's there's suspicion cast. But he basically told the police, like, we're going to make this ransom drop.
01:32:35
You will not tail anybody. You will not follow them to it. Yeah. But but we're going to do it.
01:32:40
And so the police said, okay, fine, just let us organize the money, the cash that you're going to drop.
01:32:46
Because what the police wanted to do was essentially they're using gold. It was like the gold standard.
01:32:55
There used to be bills that were like, it was gold standard money. And they were beginning to phase it out.
01:33:00
But they were like, if we just use only money with these serial numbers, it'll be easier to track if these people try to spend this money after the fact.
01:33:11
So they put together $50,000. They put it in this wooden box. Now, of course, when the kidnapping happens, it's everywhere.
01:33:19
It's the hugest story in the nation and remains so, of course, it got even worse after.
01:33:26
But it's the hugest story. So when they know that there's a kidnapping and there's a ransom note, a retired school teacher named Dr. John Condon, who idolized Charles Lindbergh, puts an ad in the paper saying that he volunteers to be the go-between and make the ransom drop at the cemetery.
01:33:44
No, don't trust him. Lindbergh and the kidnappers both say, sounds good. What is this world?
01:33:51
You have to see it in the Nova special. The Nova special is really good because it has so much footage.
01:33:57
It's so crazy. I love it. There's footage from there's footage from the trial. Like it's, it's intense.
01:34:03
Yeah. But this old guy, it's just another one of those things where like, it's a guy in a three
01:34:08
piece suit. So everyone went, yeah, do whatever you want. Come on into this thing.
01:34:11
And he is a blowhard and he, you know, they say he had good intentions, but he made himself,
01:34:17
he's one of those people. He was like looking for the spotlight. Opportunist. Yeah.
01:34:20
Yeah. So basically, he goes he goes to the cemetery to make that drop and he hands over a box full and it's a wooden box full of fifty thousand dollars in these special bills.
01:34:39
And he exchanges that for a note saying where baby Charlie can be found. The kidnappers take the box of money. They give the note. They disappear.
01:34:50
And the information in the note turns out to be incorrect. So it was all of that was for nothing.
01:34:56
Yeah. So they still don't have the baby and the kidnappers have gotten away scot-free.
01:35:01
So you saw it coming? Yeah. So six weeks later on May 12th, a truck driver driving from Princeton to Hopewell pulls over
01:35:13
because he has to use the bathroom. He walks into the woods a little bit. No. This is five miles away from Lindbergh's Hopewell estate or home.
01:35:23
And this truck driver finds the decomposing body of Charlie Lindbergh. And the police and the coroner and everybody eventually determine the baby was killed the night that he was taken.
01:35:37
So it turned out that his skull was fractured on one side. And then there was a hole in the other side of the skull,
01:35:48
the opposite side kind of back by the ear. And so the police report said that the officer that went and tried to get the
01:36:00
body uh you know like pull the remains out of the mud had used a stick and they the officer
01:36:07
thought he had poked a hole through the skull with the stick but in this episode of nova um
01:36:13
there's a man named dr john butts and he's the north carolina chief medical examiner john butts
01:36:19
he's retired medical examiner but he's also an expert on the death of suspicious death in children
01:36:24
oh my god i want to talk to him forever right and he's so i love when those guys come on and
01:36:29
they're just like nope and it's basically he's saying you could not the way especially children's
01:36:35
skulls are you couldn't poke there's no way to do that and so even if whether or not this person
01:36:42
was just simply mistaken and freaked out or they were trying to mislead he believes that the
01:36:49
original wound oh oh because the theory was from that the theory became that when the kidnappers
01:36:56
were coming back down that ladder. This story has stuck, this part, I know, and it fucking is horrifying.
01:37:03
Yeah. They thought at the time, the kidnappers were coming down the ladder with the baby and dropped the baby.
01:37:10
Or fell forward at the, because wasn't one of the ladder rungs broken? Yeah, this ladder is the rickety-est,
01:37:16
dumbest looking thing you've ever seen. It's truly like if we went and made our own ladder.
01:37:20
I mean, anything's possible with a homemade three-tiered ladder. Yeah. insane and when you see this thing and you can see it in the nova thing
01:37:28
it's like it doesn't even make sense but the problem is with that theory the fracture that
01:37:37
only accounts for the fracture on one side right and it doesn't include that just the baby had more
01:37:42
injuries than that and they i think probably maybe in the hopes of simplifying but basically they
01:37:48
weren't taking into account and so dr john butts was like that baby must have been laying down
01:37:53
and there is a blow to one side of the baby's head which caused the hole by the ear and the
01:37:59
pressure of that caused the fracture on the other side that's that's his theory personally yeah no
01:38:04
butts about it is that a tv show ah and then he just goes through and it's talking about horrible
01:38:10
child deaths everyone's like wait i thought this was he's like in this outlet and there's no butts
01:38:16
about it and everyone's crying i don't want to talk about this anymore two and a half years after
01:38:20
the body is discovered it's basically goes cold for a little while yeah a man in new york state
01:38:28
buys 98 cents worth of gas but he pays with a 10 gold certificate with this old money yeah
01:38:37
and the attendant cites it and writes down his license plate number not because he knows it has
01:38:43
anything to do with the lindberg kidnapping but he knows that money's that currency is going out of
01:38:48
use. And he wants to make sure he writes the license plate number down because he wants to
01:38:53
make sure he can get a hold of that guy if the bank doesn't take his money. What a crazy world to be living in that certain currency is going out and not going to exist
01:39:03
anymore. Can you imagine just living it? It's so old timey. It is, but it all looks exactly the same. It's the same design as modern money. It just had
01:39:13
yellow like gold things on it i don't i didn't look up what the gold standard was i didn't
01:39:18
but you know if you're interested in currency or the u.s mint i urge you to take a tour
01:39:26
and educate yourself i can't do it all um so the cool thing is then he immediately calls the bank
01:39:34
the bank recognizes that it's on this list of the lindberg um ransom money and they call the police
01:39:40
So why do I think I can hold a huge cup of coffee and do this at the same time? So that license plate is tracked back to a car that belongs to a man named Bruno Richard
01:39:52
Hopman. Hopman is a German immigrant carpenter who lives in the Bronx. And when the police search his home, they find a little less than $14,000, which is
01:40:04
exactly two thirds of the ransom money. No way. I'm sorry. One third of the ransom.
01:40:10
got it that's what i thought yes um 50 000 half is 25 yeah a third i wrote two thirds well the other
01:40:22
person has two thirds right it's the non that's what you meant it's the third that's not the two
01:40:28
thirds exactly and that's what i'm trying to say um he has he so basically he has the money with
01:40:35
these serial numbers in his house he also has a handgun they're like it's this guy um then they
01:40:42
look up that he has a criminal record where he's from in germany he had two arrests one for climbing
01:40:48
up a ladder into the second story window what to break into the mayor's house shut your fucking
01:40:52
face to break into the mayor's germany to the whole mayor of germany um and the other crime
01:41:00
was for holding up two women who were pushing a baby carriage. Dude, you're like, it's like a map.
01:41:08
It's a map and it's like, here's one thing I'm not afraid to do. Here's this other thing I'm interested in doing.
01:41:13
Also, I love ladders. Also, goddammit, I love to make a ladder. Now, on that very topic, if you picture,
01:41:21
so this ladder needs to be tall enough to reach a second story window. So it's like, he made a normal ladder,
01:41:27
Then he made a slightly smaller ladder that would slide up within that ladder. And then a third one.
01:41:34
Like that's how rickety and janky this ladder was. I wouldn't claim that thing. And they find that the third section of this ladder, there's a piece of it that's made from yellow pine.
01:41:48
And when they look up into Richard Hopman attic the floorboards of the attic are made of yellow pine Dude They pull that shit down they pull that piece of the ladder off and they match it exactly so it one more piece of like confirming evidence that this guy was there and had something
01:42:08
to do with it yeah oh sorry also the bottom legs of the bottom part of the ladder broke and that's
01:42:14
that's what led them to that um theory that the baby fell and and cracked its head okay because
01:42:20
that the part of the later ladder that he left there um the bottom legs were broken okay or had
01:42:27
cracked it's rickety as shit it's like why even yeah just get four people to and climb on their
01:42:33
backs it would be safer um okay so all of that all of that combined um gets uh richard hopman
01:42:42
arrested on September 19th, 1934. And talk about this, like, how it all went so fast back then, and there was
01:42:50
no, but also the world was watching this crime. I mean, when that baby was found dead,
01:42:56
they said the nation hadn't mourned like that since Lincoln was assassinated, and didn't mourn like that again until
01:43:04
JFK was assassinated. It was like, this was everybody's baby, and it was this hero,
01:43:11
this American hero's child. But we still have, it's almost why we have, you know, appeals and shit today is because
01:43:20
you didn't have that back then. Yeah. You just fucking killed Ethel and Julius Rosenberg off the fucking bat.
01:43:27
Yes. Their solution to everything was just, okay, great, kill them. We solved it.
01:43:32
Now we don't have to do the paperwork anymore. Quick, kill them before they ask any questions about what happened.
01:43:36
Yes. Quick, beat them for 10 hours and then kill them as quickly as possible. They confessed, kill them.
01:43:42
Quick, quick, quick. everything's quick okay so uh he stood trial january 2nd 1935 uh and he's found guilty
01:43:53
uh on february uh 13th of the same year and given the death sentence now at one point he maintained
01:44:02
his innocence throughout the whole time including when the cops were like if you give us the names
01:44:07
of your co-conspirators we will reduce your sentence we'll make sure that you don't get
01:44:11
the death penalty um and he he he just maintained his innocence and didn't give any names so on
01:44:19
april 3rd 1936 uh bruno richard hopman is put to death in the electric chair by the state of new
01:44:26
jersey yeah so now there's all kinds of theories of course about this uh murder that was it so the
01:44:34
case closed case closed they got the guy and and you can see in this nova special they have clips
01:44:41
of him on literally on the stand during court and the lawyer is yelling at him so loudly like
01:44:48
there's no microphones obviously it looks like he's just sitting in a chair raised up above
01:44:53
everybody and the lawyer's like and do you tell me and he's like yelling the place is packed it was
01:44:59
a total zoo like that it the the circus surrounding area was packed with like thousands of people
01:45:07
going just being at the courthouse every day is super crazy so yeah they just wanted it over they
01:45:13
were just like done and they were like oh he's he's doing the thing a guilty person would do
01:45:18
which is like no no no i didn't do it the whole time and yeah like even the the phrase the Lindbergh
01:45:23
baby like that was like it was a huge story it was it was a huge story and people wanted
01:45:30
someone to pay yeah this was a this was like this tragic thing that seemed unnecessary and
01:45:35
they wanted someone to pay it. So here's the theories. Of course, the first and strongest
01:45:39
is that he didn't act alone. Nobody thinks he acted alone. The lick, the, the liquor,
01:45:46
the ladder was too rickety. Somebody needs to hold that stupid thing from the bottom because it was
01:45:51
like the dumbest ladder of all time. Um, once he got inside, there's a baby that would make noise.
01:45:59
So you have to have, you know, they're going to have to subdue that baby somehow.
01:46:03
and then they have to get back out and back down the ladder holding it still nothing about it just couldn't they just don't see how it could be done by one person yeah um
01:46:14
and there's just so much organizing and and you know stuff to do also later they do handwriting
01:46:21
comparisons there were 15 overall um the police don't know officially because Lindbergh was like
01:46:28
you don't get to be a part of this but there were 15 different ransom letters that were written what
01:46:32
Yeah, they communicated a bunch. And, you know, with the old retired school teacher Lindbergh, they were masterminding all of it. And at the time and in court, they proved the handwriting expert at the time, proved that it was Richard Hopman's handwriting on all the letters.
01:46:50
but of course modern day and in this episode of nova they're just like yeah it is inconclusive and
01:46:55
it's that super cool modern handwriting analysis where they're taking the you know like two letters
01:47:01
that always get written together like a e and a t or whatever and then they're showing how
01:47:06
it's like all percentages it's very scientific of like this matches this doesn't because of course
01:47:13
in every letter a couple things match and then and then some things don't so it's all total like
01:47:19
percentages and it depends on what letters are written before and after them and and where they
01:47:25
place in the in the word right I love that shit yeah it's very cool and you can kind of see that
01:47:31
they it doesn't match yeah you know from a distance but they needed it they needed it to
01:47:36
be at the time so um so they believe that other people were involved also they because of how many
01:47:43
things had to go right with a kidnapping like that they believe that it was somebody that worked on
01:47:48
of staff in one of the houses. Oh, shit. It was an inside job. Oh, shit. And they believe that this is a man named Lloyd Gardner who a professor at Rutgers and he has this is his theory And it a very strong interesting theory Strong strongly interesting
01:48:06
So it's his theory that it's, there was somebody inside the house that was helping set it up.
01:48:11
And they're the only, also the only other people that would have known that the Lindbergh family would have gone to the Hopewell house.
01:48:20
Because they were full time at the other house. so that's like very few people would have known that would have known to go to the unfinished
01:48:27
house that they didn't live in yet right um the police interviewed a servant who worked at the
01:48:33
inglewood um estate named violet sharp and they interviewed her twice she gave contradictory
01:48:39
stories between the first and second one when they went back for the third interview um she
01:48:45
runs upstairs drinks silver polish and dies within minutes oh that sounds chill She just immediately commits suicide.
01:48:53
Oh my God. So then that's very suspicious, right? And it's like, well, something's going on in this household.
01:49:01
Okay. So Lloyd Gardner's theory and then maybe other people's too. And this pulls in as some dark shit in Charles Lindbergh's life.
01:49:10
He had, okay. So Charles Lindbergh had a sister who died of heart failure and he started, he was a
01:49:17
researcher. He was an inventor. He did a bunch of other shit, just besides being in the, he was in the Air Force and being a pilot and all that stuff.
01:49:28
He did a bunch of other stuff, too. He started working with a Nobel Prize winning scientist named Dr. Alexis Carroll.
01:49:37
And Dr. Carroll had won the Nobel Prize because he did all this work in vascular surgery.
01:49:42
And so Dr. Carroll, Lindbergh went and worked with him as a medical engineer because they were trying to figure out essentially how to build a heart pump to keep people alive if they had heart failure.
01:49:59
And that's the work they did. But the work that people didn't know so much about is that Dr. Alexis Carroll was a huge proponent of eugenics.
01:50:09
Oh, dear. And if you don't know, eugenics was this kind of pseudoscientific belief that got very popular in the 30s in America because of this doctor that we that human beings should be breeding to make that basically genetically superior people are the only people that should reproduce a master race.
01:50:33
Yes. And that we should sterilize anybody who's physically or mentally imperfect.
01:50:39
It was gaining tons of popularity. And Dr. Carroll told Lindbergh he was the perfect example of the ubermensch, Superman, that eugenics was aiming toward.
01:50:52
Which, of course, you know, our boy Charles Lindbergh was like, oh, really? Tell me more.
01:50:58
I love this idea that I'm the one everyone should want to be like. And I already was the international superstar.
01:51:04
And then you go near J.P. Morgan's fucking daughter. like Jesus Christ master race.
01:51:10
So he becomes this huge proponent of fucking eugenics, which, which basically becomes a very shrouded pro Nazi anti-Semitic movement.
01:51:22
But it just has this super creepy face of like, you know, the American dream is almost how they were trying to market it.
01:51:29
It's super gross. Okay. So, So the theory is that Charlie Lindberg, Charles Lindberg's first son, was not a healthy baby.
01:51:41
He had a mild form of rickets. Rickets is the disease in little kids. If they have it bad enough, it basically makes their legs, their knees touch and like their legs are bowed and they're really deformed.
01:51:55
Charlie's wasn't that bad. So that's some people argue that this are that this health argument isn't strong enough or like the case can't be made.
01:52:04
But the theory is that they wouldn't have that. The family was very secretive about what all these medical problems were.
01:52:11
He also didn't have a closed fontanel, which I love that word because that's what Holly Hunter says in Raising Arizona.
01:52:19
Something about, I swear that you mentioned that just now, because there's something about this case has always reminded me of raising Arizona and that they take a ladder and climb up to the fucking second floor and steal a fucking baby.
01:52:30
Yeah, it's kind of exactly that. It's like the comedy version of this horrible story.
01:52:34
Yeah. And his little fontanelle. Mind his fontanelle. I love him so much. Mind his fontanelle.
01:52:41
Mind his fontanelle. so okay so the fontanelle wasn't closed which is a soft spot on a baby's head and he was two years
01:52:50
old okay so it's that's very late for that to be happening okay also there's a doctor um i think on
01:52:56
the conspiracy show who was talking about that that when the um baby when the remains were found
01:53:05
there were deeper inner organs that were missing. And at the time, I think the medical examiner,
01:53:13
they wrote it off as, well, it's exposure and wild animals have gotten to it. And this woman in the conspiracy one goes,
01:53:24
yeah, but you wouldn't be missing your heart. You wouldn't be missing half of your lung, but not your heart.
01:53:32
Right. You wouldn't like that. They're not going to be like, I am a big fan of lungs.
01:53:36
Yeah. I'm going to take this piece. It's not a pick and choose situation. It doesn't make sense.
01:53:40
So they're saying they think this baby had a bunch of surgeries, that there was a lot
01:53:45
of things wrong and just nobody knew about it. It was like the secret. And that, that the plan was, because this was a thing that got done a lot back then,
01:53:54
that the plan was that it was Charles Lindbergh idea to kid quote unquote kidnap the baby Then the baby missing And then meanwhile they can anonymously check that two year old into an institution and basically
01:54:08
institutionalize the child so that he doesn't ever have, the world will never know that his genes are not perfect.
01:54:14
And he is not this super bench. Oh, I did not know this. Yeah. Well, this is a theory,
01:54:20
so this isn't obviously proven and this is, no, it's true. Take it up with Nova if you don't like it.
01:54:25
But I think it's fascinating because there's nothing about that story that makes sense.
01:54:33
The mystery of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping is why would you kill a baby if you got the money for it?
01:54:40
What monster would just immediately, same night before anyone gets a chance to pay off anything, just kill the child?
01:54:48
It doesn't make sense. And then keep going with it. Yeah. Yeah. And also then just that those behaviors are connected.
01:54:57
Like if you're into eugenics, there's something going on inside you that is really gross and really creepy.
01:55:04
And it continued on. So basically after the kidnapping and then the body being found, the public attention and pressure was so great on the Lindbergh family.
01:55:16
that they and apparently in one of these stories, they said that there was another kidnapping
01:55:22
threat against their baby, John, their new baby. So they they were given diplomatic passports and they traveled under assumed names and
01:55:31
they took a boat like they left in the middle of the night and took a boat to England and
01:55:35
ended up going to live with family that they had there in in Wales is where they ended
01:55:41
up going to Wales and then they went out to some island off the coast of France.
01:55:46
They were just like tried to get away from everybody. But so they lived in Europe for the next three years.
01:55:53
But the next three years was 35 to 38 in fucking Europe. Shit. And the Nazis were coming to power.
01:56:00
Yeah. And the Nazis had heard all about how much Charles Lindbergh was into eugenics.
01:56:06
And they were like, guess what? We're into eugenics, too. Why don't you come and take a tour of the fucking factory?
01:56:11
um so that basically he came out as a very huge anti-semite and a big pro-hitler like he was his
01:56:21
whole thing was like i don't know why hitler has to be so extreme about everything but they do have
01:56:25
great ideas he was that guy yeah and nobody like i'm not a nazi but yeah but i do love i love their
01:56:32
ideas and they're organized or all that bullshit okay so um so basically he gets at they he gets
01:56:40
asked to return to the United States to be a consultant for the U.S. Air Force. Because I think that the military was like, we're about to get into this thing.
01:56:50
At that point, when they come back, they have he and Ann had had five children. Jesus.
01:56:57
And they say over the years, his kids only saw him a couple months a year. Wow. That he was really detached, distant father.
01:57:05
um and then so none of that explains the kidnapping and none of that attributes anything
01:57:10
and there's lots of distant fathers that sure but then here's another weird twist in 2003
01:57:17
these people in germ these german citizens come forward and announce that they are secretly they
01:57:23
were secretly fathered by charles lindbergh in the 50s what seven adult people so what happened
01:57:32
was and this turns out to be fucking true no way that in the like late 50s he goes over to germany
01:57:38
and he starts having an affair uh he has an affair with a woman named brigitte heshamer um
01:57:46
she has uh he has three children with brigitte and then brigitte's sister mariette who's a painter
01:57:53
he has two kids with her sister oh my god and then with his private secretary in europe
01:58:00
he has a her name is uh valeska i just have the name valeska um that he has a son and daughter
01:58:10
with her oh my god yeah all seven kids they're born between 58 and 67 and in 1974 charles
01:58:21
lundberg died of lymphoma and 10 days before his death he wrote letters to all three women
01:58:25
begging them not to reveal the secret and so none of them did no and the only way they found out
01:58:33
was one of i believe it was burgheed's daughter i could be wrong about that but i believe it was
01:58:37
burgheed's daughter found they all had suspicions because he told them they were all they they met
01:58:44
him and like would see him once a year maybe twice a year over the years but he said his name uh
01:58:52
was shit I won't be able to remember it I don't have it written down it was something weird
01:58:58
like Carl Kent or something like that just a weird fake name that's the only way they knew
01:59:04
their father but then did you get it? yeah thank you oh Carew Kent C-A-R-E-U make that shit up man
01:59:15
Carew Kent would show up and be like it's me your dad Merry Christmas bye so So Brigitte's daughter finds love letters and photographs, puts it together.
01:59:27
They all get their DNA tested. And then they find out there it's seven children that he fathered.
01:59:33
Dude, it was busy. And it goes along with his eugenics thing of I am the one that needs to propagate and have tons of kids.
01:59:42
So I'm going to go and have all these affairs and just have kids all over the place.
01:59:45
Yeah, I have to. It's for the fucking greater good. It's for the greater good of fucking Germany.
01:59:51
Um, so, so, I mean, that's just kind of like an interesting, weird, creepy thing where just like,
02:00:00
Who is this person? Who is this mystery man that like the world held up as this great human being because he made a solo flight across the Atlantic?
02:00:10
The good part about this horrible story that basically rocked the nation and was the hugest story, like it's all anybody talked about for years and years, is that the day after this baby was kidnapped, Congress passed a law making kidnapping a capital offense.
02:00:28
So that's when they put it into effect that if you take a person over state lines.
02:00:33
Oh, right. Yeah. It's a capital offense. And basically, that's it. It was and it was called it then.
02:00:43
And, you know, although remains popular at the time, it was the crime of the century.
02:00:48
That's incredible. They never found any the other two thirds people that it could have been there.
02:00:55
If you watch this Nova special, there's a guy on there, and it reminds me of a lot of the Black Dahlia stuff, where there's a guy on there who's like, my father knew a person, and he overheard this conversation, and it could have been this guy, and it could have been this guy.
02:01:08
It feels like it would have been someone related to the dude, the one-third dude.
02:01:14
Yeah. Does he have a brother-in-law? It's always the brother-in-law. Well, because he was this German immigrant, there was other people on the city block that he lived on that were from the same city that he was from in Germany.
02:01:25
And so the landlord of this guy who says his father overheard a conversation that that man's landlord was from the same city as as Hotman.
02:01:36
So the theory, it's very strong theory, but it is just theory. And it kind of goes all over because it's basically this guy's father overheard a conversation where they all talked about Engel.
02:01:47
They use the word Englewood and they said the name Bruno and da da da da. And then there's pictures and whatever.
02:01:53
But it's it nothing is conclusive. So and I didn't include it. They never found the other money.
02:01:59
Right. Like no one ever spent it. Well, but there's the one guy that they suspected.
02:02:03
One of the two people that they really this guy knew and they suspected took a what at the time would have been a seventy thousand dollar world cruise.
02:02:15
Holy shit. With his wife. And there's pictures of him on the cruise. And they came.
02:02:20
He came back from Europe. after hopman was uh was um found guilty so basically they took cruise got the fuck out of
02:02:31
dodge went around the world on a boat and then when they heard that they got the guy and they
02:02:35
were sending him to the lecture chair they were like okay we can come back now that was him he's
02:02:38
i think it was him yeah wow yeah that's crazy it's but the it's very sinister and and definitely
02:02:47
unproven but the idea that he just wanted this not perfect baby out of the house yeah it's just so
02:02:55
or maybe what they were going to do is like take take the baby out put him in a facility
02:03:00
something accidentally happened and he died maybe they were going to replace him with like a
02:03:06
adopted perfect baby that they were going to say was him oh maybe you know could be i mean when you
02:03:14
see there's lots of vid they have lots of home video and these black and white videos of this
02:03:18
baby it's not like this baby looks like anything is wrong yeah but i feel like if he was under this
02:03:24
pressure to be the perfect um human being and that that's the whole theory of eugenics is like
02:03:31
perfection perfection then you can't have a baby that has turned in knees rickets you know like
02:03:38
that is even in any way developmentally slow yeah maybe the baby that they found that was dead wasn Charlie Maybe they put Charlie in a fucking institution
02:03:50
killed some other baby, to be like, nope, Charlie's dead, and then they could have this sick baby
02:03:56
that they visit whenever they want. Maybe. I think that's it. You've done it. I did it.
02:04:03
You know what I mean, though? You've added another twist. Yes, well, but basically they did it.
02:04:09
yeah that's even darker because then they're killing a baby right yeah yeah it's i mean the
02:04:16
whole thing is it would be nice to have some answers let's dna test that shit go on genealogy
02:04:23
dot net test that shit right get on there um well fuck that was great oh thanks i love it i mean it
02:04:31
was fun it was fun to watch a tv show and then just write down what they say i gotta give that
02:04:36
a shot sometime. I feel like I'm going to get better about not doing that. I remember my friend
02:04:42
who had never heard the podcast before. He listened to it. We were at the work. We worked together
02:04:46
and we went to work the next day. He goes, you just retold a TV show. And I was like, yeah,
02:04:53
I do that sometimes. I always hear I have his voice in my head when I sit down to do that. But
02:04:58
that's all I want to do. We've been quite busy. Listen, look and listen to us. Always. What's your
02:05:05
fucking hooray this week Georgia um I have two one of them is that I took Twitter off of my phone
02:05:11
well fucking hooray for you thank you it didn't even cross my mind that that was an option like
02:05:16
I was like I just can't stop looking and scrolling and seeing this news and bad news and then when
02:05:20
it's just like dumb news like shit about Kanye I get angry yeah like I just got and then it was
02:05:25
like someone wrote like I'm taking Twitter off my phone and I was like oh my god I didn't even
02:05:30
realize that that was an option so I did it and I'm having withdrawals but I think it's for the
02:05:34
best and then you're missing some quality content for me because i'm procrastinating so much all i
02:05:40
can all i can do is is tweet because i'm like sitting there supposed to be turning something
02:05:45
in yeah and i'm like but i have this good idea okay let me know if anything good comes up let
02:05:50
me know if there's any quality uh golden state killer updates i will for sure that's the only
02:05:57
place i was getting updates from okay but then i couldn't stop checking my other one is the tv
02:06:01
show Barry oh yeah I'm enjoying so much it's so good it's what's his name Barry Bill Hader
02:06:10
Barry Bill Hader it's it's so good yeah and charming and funny and dark I love it Bill Hader
02:06:20
plays a hitman who has to pretend he's not a hitman he pretends he's an actor in LA and I wanted to
02:06:26
say it earlier but it's basically every conversation we overhear it's like yes it's this tv show in
02:06:31
that it's so fucking funny yeah i liked i've only seen the first two but i loved it and there's so
02:06:37
many good henry winkler so great in that you know i went to camp with his daughter she was in a cat
02:06:42
we were in a cabin was she nice yeah yeah everyone wanted to be friends with her because she was
02:06:47
the fawns his daughter yeah that'd be tough she was nice i think she's like a preschool teacher
02:06:52
now or something lovely you're just like i'm sure i've already bragged to you but we we when we
02:06:58
worked on Hollywood Squares when we wrote for Ellen we were just like two writers that came with
02:07:03
her and he was the EP and we when you do stuff like that of like bring your own writers yeah
02:07:09
there are people who are hired to write for that show that do not like it yeah because like who the
02:07:13
fuck are you coming in um and but everyone was super nice to us but I was always just like so
02:07:18
uncomfortable and Henry Winkler came and was like are the Karens in here and he acted like he did the exact opposite of that Like he basically came and like pretended like we were special And I just remember looking at him like A did not have to do this B no one ever does this
02:07:35
And C, it's like he's the mayor of Hollywood. He knows how beloved he is. You know what's so funny is I remember as a fifth grader, when camp was over,
02:07:44
and we all got taken back to the meeting where the parents would pick everyone up,
02:07:48
after two weeks of being away, all crying. And then she was like, come meet my dad.
02:07:52
and I look up and I'm like Henry Winkler and he shook my hand and looked down and be nice to meet
02:07:59
like he was so nice yes and he's so fucking funny yeah he's so good in the show it's it the part's
02:08:07
written perfectly for him but like that intense acting to it's he's just so good he's ridiculous
02:08:12
yeah it's a really it's a really good show yeah okay what's yours um well I have to say mine it uh
02:08:19
Mine is, I tweeted about this, but I was watching, my friend Bridger told me to watch A Chef's Table Pastry, which is a new season.
02:08:30
Right. And I think it's slightly shorter than their normal ones. It seems like a little specialty one they put out.
02:08:36
And say there's five. The third or fourth one is this guy in Spain named Jordi Roca.
02:08:45
and he is basically has been named the top pastry chef in the world a bunch of times.
02:08:51
Does he make those beautiful, they look like apples or pears and they're like glistening
02:08:57
and gorgeous? And then they crack open and there's stuff inside? And there's like meringue and shit inside?
02:09:01
Yes. I follow him on Instagram. Oh, like he's super beautiful? Yeah, but his, I don't know.
02:09:07
I didn't see him, but his pastries are gorgeous. No, they're, it's art. It's not, it's, it doesn't seem like a dessert in any, it doesn't look like
02:09:15
you're supposed to eat it at all yeah and the first one so he's super hot he's well he's just
02:09:21
it's the thing i it's a thing i have yeah he's very um swarthy with a big patrician nose and he
02:09:29
but like but very soft eyes and he talks about so his older brothers own the restaurant his
02:09:37
his one older brother's a sommelier his older brother's the head chef it's this michelin it
02:09:43
It was a one-star Michelin rated restaurant already. And they tried to get him to work there.
02:09:47
He's 12 years younger than them. Oh, my God. So they were like, you have to come and be the waiter.
02:09:53
Well, he was like a party guy. And he was just like, whatever, I don't care. And he never really like caught on.
02:09:58
And then he finally asked to get moved into the kitchen because the waiters worked so late and worked so hard he didn't want to do it.
02:10:04
So he's like, I'll be in the kitchen. And he was just kind of like messing around the kitchen, kind of sucking.
02:10:08
and then he got moved into the pastry section because they had this oh shoot I'm not gonna
02:10:15
be able to remember his name but like really world famous pastry chef who was like here have
02:10:21
him be in my department then he's not being like hounded by his brothers all the time like he always
02:10:25
is and he can come and I'll teach him how to do pastry well then and they show this thing he makes
02:10:32
it's called the the city that they're that this restaurant in is like it's called I'll never
02:10:38
remember how to say it but it's like i thought it was i thought we were in italy the first two times
02:10:43
i watched it i assumed we were in italy because it all looked like italy and felt like italy but
02:10:48
it's spain and say it's like it's genoa or something like that and the first thing they
02:10:53
show that he made is called the flowers of genoa and he makes he takes this strip of what looks like
02:11:00
fruit roll up and he cuts it out it's the skyline of their city and then he makes it it's 3d so he's
02:11:08
having part of it stand up but then he paints the plate underneath so that when you look at it it looks like this 3d trick of the eye where there flowers there these little things you have to see it when i was
02:11:23
watching it they reveal they do the thing where they show him making it and then it just says
02:11:27
flowers of jenna or whatever the name of the city is and i on the couch went oh my god like it's that
02:11:34
incredible looking and then he's like he's talking in it about how his brother he had a really big
02:11:41
nose growing up and his brothers would always make the joke of like calling him and then he
02:11:44
would turn his head and everyone would duck and it's all the man is beautiful and you can tell he
02:11:50
doesn't know that or understand it and it's that thing you just go like it's that's how it is with
02:11:55
everybody everybody thinks yeah these horrible things about themselves because of their asshole
02:11:59
bullies and siblings or whatever. And he's like this magical artist. So he based his desserts basically made this restaurant go from like a one star Michelin,
02:12:10
which is a huge accomplishment anyway, to a three star Michelin rated restaurant where
02:12:16
it's just incredible. I'm telling you the whole episode and I don't need to. Yeah, I love it.
02:12:20
I'm going to have a ton of coffee. I just love him. I love like the idea that he he didn't even know that that's what he wanted to do or that
02:12:28
it wasn't like he was trained for it like all his life yeah he like discovered it and is so good at
02:12:35
it like i love it i love it i'm gonna watch it i love him also he whispers the whole time which
02:12:40
is kind of my jam anyway uh a chef's table is always it's just one of the best made television
02:12:47
shows there is okay we're gonna i'm gonna watch it okay yay that's it right fucking hooray uh go
02:12:51
to myfavoritemurder.com for whatever i don't know if you need something for your needs and if you
02:12:56
If you want to follow along with us as we go on our European tour, join the fan club cult.
02:13:01
Join that fan cult because we're going to start giving you that content that we promised of, you know, special shit that you only get in the fan cult.
02:13:11
That's right. Thanks for listening. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
02:13:17
Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Bye. Bye. Cheap Caribbean summer savings event is here.
02:13:26
Right now, get $100 instant savings on vacation packages to Cancun, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.
02:13:33
Whether you're chasing poolside drinks, white sand beaches, or endless all-inclusive fun,
02:13:37
Cheap Caribbean helps you get more beach for less money. Book your summer vacay today at CheapCaribbean.com.
02:13:43
Goodbye. Pandora Jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices.
02:13:48
Shop now for up to 50% off select jewelry featuring personalized pieces to must-have summer favorites.
02:13:54
Timeless jewelry made to move with you through every moment. Shop in-store or online now through July 5th.
02:14:00
Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Clothes shopping? Not as easy or fun as it sounds. You just want to feel confident in your clothes.
02:14:10
You can spend hours scrolling, zooming in, reading reviews, only to end up with a cart full of nothing that feels or fits right and a bunch of returns to do.
02:14:19
Stitch Fix makes it so much easier. A personal stylist sends pieces that match your size, style, and everything's in your budget.
02:14:25
No guesswork, no stress, and your guaranteed compliments. Here's how Stitch Fix works.
02:14:30
Take a quick style quiz, share your size, style, and budget, and get matched with a real human stylist who gets your vibe.
02:14:36
It's no risk, all style. Get a personalized fix box straight to your door. And try it all on in the comfort of your home.
02:14:43
Shipping and returns are always free and there's no subscription required. Plus, get a free try-on for your first fix.
02:14:49
Get started today at stitchfix.com slash murder to get $20 off your first order.
02:14:54
That's stitchfix.com slash murder. Goodbye.

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 90
    Most heartbreaking
  • 85
    Most shocking
  • 80
    Most dramatic
  • 80
    Most intense

Episode Highlights

  • Hot for Holes
    A humorous take on the hashtag that celebrates criminologist Paul Holes.
    “Hot for Holes is obviously our love of our lives.”
    @ 05m 06s
    May 03, 2018
  • High-Speed Chase in LA
    A Winnebago leads police on a chase, revealing a dark story behind the driver.
    “He was a registered sex offender grabbing sex with children under the age of 14.”
    @ 14m 05s
    May 03, 2018
  • The Lipstick Killer
    Introducing the chilling story of the Lipstick Killer in Chicago.
    “This is the lipstick killer, William Hirons.”
    @ 29m 13s
    May 03, 2018
  • The Horrific Discovery
    The shocking discovery of Suzanne Degnan's dismembered body parts.
    “Jesus Christ.”
    @ 38m 25s
    May 03, 2018
  • New Suspect Emerges
    A college student pulls a gun on police, shifting suspicion away from the previous suspect.
    “Authorities get a new suspect reported to the paper the same day that this Thomas dude is happening.”
    @ 49m 51s
    May 03, 2018
  • Interrogation Under Duress
    William Hirons is interrogated for six days under extreme conditions, leading to a bizarre confession.
    “He's subjected to interrogation for three hours under the influence of sodium pentothal.”
    @ 01h 01m 03s
    May 03, 2018
  • Robert Ressler's Insights
    FBI profiler Robert Ressler reflects on the impact of the lipstick murders on society.
    “It changed the innocence of neighborhoods where people had taken for granted that they could have unlocked doors and walk alone at night.”
    @ 01h 10m 36s
    May 03, 2018
  • Lindbergh Becomes a Superstar
    After his historic flight, Charles Lindbergh becomes an international sensation.
    “He was the most famous man in the world.”
    @ 01h 23m 44s
    May 03, 2018
  • The Lindbergh Kidnapping
    The shocking kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son sends the nation into a frenzy.
    “They leave a letter on the windowsill.”
    @ 01h 31m 32s
    May 03, 2018
  • Inside Job Theory
    A theory emerges suggesting the Lindbergh kidnapping was an inside job, implicating someone close to the family.
    “Oh, shit. It was an inside job.”
    @ 01h 47m 49s
    May 03, 2018
  • Lindbergh's Secret Children
    Revelations surface about Lindbergh fathering seven secret children in Germany.
    “Dude, it was busy.”
    @ 01h 59m 33s
    May 03, 2018
  • Jordi Roca: The Magical Pastry Chef
    Jordi Roca, named the top pastry chef in the world, transforms his restaurant from one star to three stars with his artistic desserts.
    “He's like this magical artist.”
    @ 02h 12m 02s
    May 03, 2018

Episode Quotes

  • Hot for Holes is obviously our love of our lives.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere
  • Jesus Christ.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere
  • He was stopped by officers Tom and Jerry.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere
  • He was immediately an international superstar.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere
  • This was everyone's baby.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere
  • It would be nice to have some answers.
    119 - Fingers Everywhere

Key Moments

  • High-Speed Chase14:05
  • Tour Gratitude22:37
  • Dismemberment Discovery38:25
  • Prison Life1:09:25
  • Lucky Lindy1:24:12
  • The Kidnapping1:29:35
  • Inside Job1:47:49
  • Artistic Transformation2:12:05

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown