And one, two, three, I felt good, chunky, right?

Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, that Østergaard Jihad star, that's Karen Kilgariff. We are here with you on Thursday, November 5th. That's right. Twenty twenty. That's right.

What a week and what a week it's been.

Oh, my God. It's so much crazy stuff, guys. Yeah, it's currently right now as we're speaking Wednesday evening.

Yes. So things are still up in the air, right? Nothing has been announced officially. There's lots of reason to have good feelings. But God forbid we have good feeling.

Yeah, I'm not I don't have good feelings yet, but I'm there. Everyone I know and love is having good feelings. And so I'm going to trust you guys.

But, hey, you're right to fear good feelings because we haven't had them in a long time and we all have PTSD from twenty sixteen. That's right. So nothing this is also similar.

Yeah. That it can't feel good. No. Right at the moment. I know.

But it does feel good that the whole narrative that we're learning this week is that it is as bad as it seemed the last four years, that it's still a negative positive. Sure.

There's no there's no only positive after an experience like the one we've had with this leadership.

But the fact that at nine o'clock last night, looking at Twitter, it was a very different story and a story that's happening today. Oh, it was insanity.

So, yeah, I think I did it in a way that scared me into then this morning, waking up and going, oh, all is not lost. Oh, wait a second. Quite the opposite. Yeah. So we just need it to be official and we need responsible parties to come out and say stop trying to create violence, negativity.

Yeah, I was I had a therapy appointment today and I was I had a realization that I get along really well with my mom when there's a Democratic president.

And I realized like, oh yeah, the Obama years, I could just laugh her off, laugh all the shit she said to me off.

Yeah. Like, Oh, Mom, you know what I mean? But the last four years, I've every time she brings something up, it triggers something from my childhood. Sure. So when we go to this mediator slash therapist in two weeks, I feel like maybe I'll be in a better place to, like, be open to her. That's the dream. It is, yeah.

Because it's about the balance of power shifting or the reality, you know, where I spend time.

And the another reality, it takes away her some of her power over my emotions and feelings.

And that'll be nice and high time. And it's high time that happens. Yeah. Right. Yeah I am enough already. Enough already. That's right.

What are you doing to distract yourself this week from.

Oh you know, just a ton of podcasting. I don't, I don't understand how I'm still podcasting. I have, I don't. Steven is there with me every time I do it. I have nothing to say anymore. I can't. It's literally like, do you want me to describe how I made toast this morning? Because let's look. And it's just unbelievable that through all of this, we've just continued podcast this week.

It is weird, like, oh, we have to talk about it. And everyone's like, oh, we got to talk about our TV shows were watching to distract ourselves from the end of the fucking world.

Or like, I got to see someone face to face. Right. Here's the bingeing on right now.

For real. I actually had to go throw out a bag of the nerds ropes. Oh, these pants or whatever those nerds things were. There was a different version of them that people kept recommending some.

Yeah, they're like like this version much actually easier to eat as opposed to the rope that where the rats get everywhere.

I actually was like, oh, I could handle that, but I don't need it in my house. No, no. I had several handfuls and then stood up and walked to the garbage can through the movie and said, stop pretending you can just fucking eat candy like enough already with this fucking behavior. I'm doing that.

But with alcohol. Yeah. How's it going. It's going well actually this time. Totally feels, it feels a little different. Like I'm not doing it because I'm not doing it for like thirty days and I'm not doing it to like lose weight. I'm doing it because suddenly I realize I'm not having fun anymore and I'm not it's not actually giving me anything and I'm not enjoying it at all.

So it feels like a little shifty, a little different.

Sure.

Like suddenly I'm I'm ready to deal with the anxiety that I've been pouring alcohol on for twenty years, you know. Yeah. Maybe it's because I have a really great therapist right now and I. I've seeing her twice a week, but there's something it's something that feels a little different this time that's good. And you have security in your life and you have other things to worry about. You like you have bigger things and maybe not.

Maybe you can just update the story, which is I'm not I wish I could do the same for myself, but that whole idea, this is what my therapist always says is we had something happen to us, usually around like 12, 13, and then you're like limbic system or whatever, whichever one it's called, like you're reactive system kind of stops taking in information after that. And they're like, yeah, I've already seen this. I'm not fucking doing it again.

And she always says that to me. She's like, the worst thing already happened. This is all just kind of like reacting to the memory of what happened. And so, yeah, the more we think about that. Rafea Horrifying. I mean, horrifying.

You should get to skip it. It's such a terrible thing.

I was in rehab at 13, so everything was fine if you went for it. I was like, let's make this the worst possible.

Oh God. But I am. And I'm journaling about it now, which is actually really helpful and I'm doing that. So I want to recommend if anyone else is trying it, which we all are at some point. Right. So like aside from the stuff I was reading before when I tried this last year, beginning of this year, This Naked Mind by Annie Grace and listening to and then I found a new book. It's called Quit Lit. I didn't know that was a thing.

Quit Lit. I've never heard of that. I hadn't either. Like, you know, all the sobriety books I read that are like, here's how to do it. And here's what worked for me. And here I'm a woman and we can do it. It's called Quit Lit, which I would love.

Great. So here's my new quitely suggestion.

It's called Mrs D is going without. And it originally was an anonymous blog way back when blogs existed by this woman in New Zealand. And her name her name is Laura Dan. And she is identifying with her so much. And it's just a really light easy read about how fucking hard it is to become sober when you even though you know you need to. So I'm enjoying that, right. Yeah.

But I mean, other people's stories, that's kind of the key, knowing that that it isn't special to you. You're not the not only are you not the only one, it's very typical. Yeah. It's it tons of people deal with substance issues. Everybody does in some way or the other. Yeah.

We all deal with soothing our soothing our trauma in some way or another. Yeah. Ideally with therapy and learning, you know, really truly how to cope with it. But that doesn't usually happen and it takes a long time to get there.

Well, and also some will pick things up and put them back down and you get you go in and you go out of it and then there's a drama within doing that and that's all part of it. And if you can kind of pull back and see that, that's all part of it. And it's not like a failed again, but it's like everybody fails again and again and again and then tries again. And the whole point is building your resilience to keep trying and to kind of keep open.

I think that's just it. You just don't it's never the final chapter. You just get to keep trying. That's right. That's yeah.

It feels at forty suddenly like crazy that I'm just now ready to to not obsess about when I get a drink again or drinking or that I have a hangover or that I feel like shit and like this, this whole pattern that I've been doing, I'm suddenly ready to not to not distract myself with that anymore. Sure I can. Forty. It's like it just seems wild. But it took me, you know, that's how long it takes. I'm sure it'll happen again.

Whatever.

It's always something because literally it reminds me of when I was in my twenties and my great idea for my eating disorder was I was going to take I took Fanfan. Yeah. But without the Downer fan, it just was the it was the first version. So it was uppers only. And so I stopped eating almost entirely.

Didn't care about food, I never thought about it, lost a ton of weight very fast and started obsessively, compulsively shopping where I literally went to the Beverly Center every single day and had my closet looked like a little mini gap.

It just had stacks of color coded shirts. It was it was pure insanity. And that's when I saw that it was like, oh, it's not about the thing I'm doing. Right.

You couldn't you didn't have to eat your fucking stress away anymore. You needed something else. So shopping yet became something will replace it. And it's just about the because you have to dig down further. It's not just the thing. Yeah. It's what's underneath it and like sitting with it.

So my and my therapist told me this really great analogy, I think it is, where it's like, OK, there's a tiger in a cage and the tiger's pacing back and forth in this little cage. It's whole life, but it's a comfort. And then suddenly it gets put out into this big field and gets taken out of the cage. But it continues to paced back and forth in the same area.

The cage would have been weight because that's. What it knows, that's what's always worked, that's what's safe, and that's the only way it knows how to deal with life, and you can't realize you have this big open expanse of other possibilities. Yep, I think that's right. Yeah, it's it sounds right on.

I mean, it makes sense to me. It also makes me think of how when I stopped drinking after I was hospitalized for it. Hey, at least you didn't get fucking hospitalized at County Hospital for it.

Hey, hey.

Rehab at 13. Let me just say, hey, look, we've been champions in our own way.

That's right. This whole time. Right. But when I when all the alcohol was finally out of my system and I was home for a couple of days, I had that dream where I was standing like on the prairie with tall grass, like up to my hips, green grass. And this wind was blowing.

And I could see all the way up and all the way to either side, like I was crazy, like a fly with, like crazy vision, complete peripheral. And it was like three sixty vision or 180 that instead of this tunnel that you've been looking into for some it was so moving and so like I was just kind of in the dream going, oh, I get it.

Like thinks things are being so on the nose brain. But it is it reminds me of the Tiger story because it is that thing where it's like, yeah, you don't have to just go in circles anymore, which can be just as intimidating and just as fraught. And you know, there's freedom is scary too.

Yeah. Learning how to pace the cage as a young person worked for you. And so you've been you keep doing it even though the cage is gone because you haven't yet learned that you're free and how to.

And because if you have these coping mechanisms that go four feet by four feet by four feet, you're not going to be like, watch me while I fucking take off into the woods.

Like you never learned how to take off into the woods. So that's all new. It's like you got to give yourself, you know, let yourself adapt and adjust and fall down and get up.

I feel like that to go to therapy sessions a week is really is really helping me with that. Yeah. Finally, it's good after a decade of therapy, like it's just crazy how that works, you know.

Yeah.

But then it's good then like I love the one. When I suggested to my therapist I was like, should we go to three days a week.

And she's like, I don't see why not. You have the money. And I was like, you're right. Yeah. What else? I could if I could spend it on nerd groups, that's got to stop spending it on. Yeah. Please stop sending me suggestions of nerd things. Oh, I don't want to eat that shit anymore because also I realize like pacing the cage, eating a bunch of sugar and then laying on the couch and panicking is a vibe.

It is like a choice and a feeling that I don't have to be anymore.

And you are you are you are like triggering emotional reactions with sugar or sugar.

Does that to you and your hormones and your sugars. The good work it's bad for you has to get eventually someone has to figure out once we're going to do the covid vaccine first, then can we please have a sugar vaccine? Yeah. Because those people that are like, I'm not that into dessert.

I'm like, where what part of the world is your family from?

I need to get your genes. Really.

I have to unopened bags somehow a fucking mint milano's in my house because I just can't not have them like constantly mean I need it.

I know. I know. Oh.

Should we talk about the Queen's Gambit that we both found out that we switch on Netflix.

So good you find it because someone tagged me in it and I didn't know what it was.

Someone on Twitter was talking about it. I think it was James Urbaniak or somebody who I. I like their taste and they're smart. And they basically were like, wow, I'm surprised I didn't even know what this was. And all of a sudden I stumbled upon it. And it's such such a delight. So I kind of had bookmarked it.

And then. Yeah, and in the second it started, I was just like the visuals story line the fuck and everything. So good, so good.

So basically I wrote down that it's it's like Amelie meets what was that Toerag movie where he's super a movie.

But about Tausig wait Tausig the Volkswagen van again during the movie by the guy who trying to solve the puzzles in World War Two.

Alan Turing was that movie called Turing like Imitation Game imitation.

Thank you. Thank you. OK, so it's like Amelie meets The Imitation Game, don't you think? A little. Sure. Yes, totally.

Yes. Why not? And the word cocksucker gets bandied about a lot in the first episode by children. I really appreciate it.

And there's children pills, no spoilers, but it's yeah, it's it is. Absolutely. We're the only thing is it's it's just a fictionalized story. It's from a book, I believe. Yes, it is. I looked it up. It's from a book. I wanted that person, that character to be real badly.

But of course, because it's a perfectly written character with a perfect background and the storyline is just so compelling that. Yeah, also, how about the hotel in Russia? I was just like, I want to walk around that hotel so bad did but I haven't gotten there yet. I've only gotten through episode one was really long. I got through that and now I'm starting episode two.

But I, I'm excited about it.

It's got to delight the whole way through. Doesn't disappoint. All those actors are so goddamn so good.

The little baby boy from a from love actually.

Oh please. I haven't gotten. Yes. Oh I thought David Spade when I first saw him and he's David Spade's illegitimate. Yeah. He's cute. Yes. That's such a good actor. Yeah he is. The Queen's Gambit and Queen is like chess. It's not like the Queen. So. Right.

I had someone say, I don't want to watch you because I'm sick of British royalty stuff.

And it's like, no, no, no, it's fine. Yes, fine. But get out then and get out.

And competing with you, it makes me feel really stupid because I don't know how to play chess. Do you know how to play chess?

You know, what's funny is as I was watching it, I had a recovered memory in grammar school. I did play chess. Oh. And there was like a chess. We got to go to one of the mobile home buildings that was like the outbuilding on the grammar school property. Wilson School. What up? Wilson Wildcats. What up? But we got to go out there and this we had a really smart genius chess teacher and we would just all sit there and play chess all the time.

But it wasn't like how they were doing it. We knew it. We didn't know ways of play and whole systems.

And your names is not a legitimate fictional Surmont, but I was kind of I mean, we don't know whether or not it was you could have been in the right in the right situation. Even if I were no one was paying it to be even if I would be like, can I go to this chess tournament? My dad be like, I'm not driving you there. I'm not driving all the way to Nevado wants to watch.

Yes, but it was kind of funny because I was like, this is so interesting.

And then I was like, wait a second. I used to I used to love chess, but I didn't I don't have a memory of the of the concept of the game except for like it's one of them could move in like an upside down Elshamy. That's kind of all I can remember. It's hard. I never I never got past checkers. Checkers is very complex when you think about it.

Getting to double up on those. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

What else are you watching doing it. I escaped into it last night. I basically was like, stay off Twitter, stay off social media. You have to you have to give yourself over to the question mark of this situation. And, you know. Yeah.

So I turned on one of my BBC series. Oh, Martin Chuzzlewit, which is a Charles Dickens series.

Oh, that's a series. That's comforting. Tom Wilkinson is one of the leads who is just the most delightful British actor that's been in a million things and one in a million awards. And you know who he is. Yeah, but it was one of those things where I was just like, oh, I need something completely removed from modern life. Yeah. Right now.

And then I went to sleep angora sweater of people talking like this did.

And then some horses and animal carriages.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds nice. Yeah. Yeah it was good.

So for exactly right news we're really excited because at the end of this episode you're going to be able to hear the brand new trailer for our brand new exactly Right. Podcast called Ten Fold. More Wicked that we told you about.

It's hosted by crime journalist and author Kate Winkler Dawson, who she's she's written some of your favorite true crime books. My favorite recently is the book American Sherlock, which is an incredible if you haven't read it, it's unbelievable. It's basically, you know, it's about one of the first forensic science scientists in America. So Kate is the host of this podcast, and she basically takes all of her journalistic and author knowledge and intelligence, essentially. And she digs into the story of one of the first serial killers in America.

And it is and there's a whole kind of like side story about neuroscience. It's just a fascinating. Historical true crime series that she's hosting that we really think you're going to love, definitely it comes out on Monday, November twenty third. So be sure to like and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts and stay tuned at the end of this episode to listen to the trailer. It's really an awesome podcast. So good, so proud, so proud, so proud.

Little a little fledgling network is becoming this like, you know, it's growing into an adolescent.

It's you know, it's because it's becoming its own person and like learning and growing and like and making friends with really smart people who make their own podcasts really well and make really good stuff that they want to come to our party. It's it's the best. Yeah, it's it's really good. Yeah.

And thanks for supporting us to you guys. It's all because we have the best frickin listeners. Yes, absolutely. We think of you when we're trying to pick these podcasts and what you might like and what might serve you in your day to day lives. And there's many more to come that we're very excited.

Yeah, I can't believe it. So I wrote down today, like on a forum that like it was like, what do you do? And I'm like a podcast or writer and business owner.

I'm a fucking we're business owners. How cool is that?

I mean, it's all right. I don't know. Business owners who as of this weekend won't have an office anymore, which is sad.

I know we had to give up our or at least on our office. We had basically rented an empty office for the past six months or whatever.

But I know I know it's such a weird time, you know, and it's such a weird time. It's nice that we can all kind of go through it together and yeah. Distract ourselves with podcasts and television, things that we like and whatever, and and also, you know, feel connected to each other.

And one of those ways that we're doing that is by and maintaining our sanity is by putting up a quilt episode. This week, Karen and I both picked one of our favorite stories that we've ever done. And so we're going to post those. They've never they've never been in an episode together and they're not live there, you know, older episodes that we love, older stories that we love.

Right. And that we and that you've told us you love. So it's it's a yeah, we're doing this is kind of like the Eagles greatest hits just because this week was has been incredibly stressful, as is it has been for everybody. So we weren't going to be doing this usual homework.

We tried to take it easy a little bit and then be like, OK, well, we can at least we'll hang out, we'll check in and then we'll play some stories that people we know, people like so that we don't all go crazy because I am having a hard time unclenching my T oh much, much less sitting down and writing a six page book report. Six pages. I laugh in the face of six pages. There are never six pages.

No, if they're supposed to be, they're supposed to be. There was a time when they were for three to four and it was like K by peace, peace in the streets, but no longer nine at least minimum. All right, so should we mind going first? Yes, we are. So I'll introduce that. So I'm going to take you back, dear listener, all the way back to May. Twenty seventh of twenty sixteen. So the May of twenty sixteen when we were so young and innocent and believe it, but believed in.

Take me back.

I mean let's go back now. Let's just, let's just do it mentally. Have a fun mental exercise. Going back to George's old apartment with no air conditioning. That's right. If it was made twenty seventh it would have already started to get very hot. That's right. Twenty sixteen. I think I probably had minimum two jobs at the time and I had just gotten married.

That's sweet. That's a nice thing. Yeah. And you know, we were just, we are just slowly putting this thing together in Georgia. Everyone twelve would show me some good positive thing on her phone and then I go, that's don't get used to it. I tell you, the numbers are like where we are on the on the comedy chart. You'd be like, shut the fuck up. It's not right. Get it away from me.

I don't believe in anything. That's my beautiful journey from from show business cynic to a wide eyed believer in the in the possibility of magic. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, this is from episode eighteen. Oh my God. Oh my investigation eighteen Discovery.

What are we called investigation.

Investigating and investigating discovery. Who knows. Back when we would do that. Not only the extra work of trying to make one of those good pun titles, but I also had people I'll never forget. My friend Owen Ellickson, who I worked with. He was the showrunner on our show I was writing on and he wrote into me for one of them that was so good. And it was like we needed the help where I'm like, we can't keep doing this.

Yeah.

If we have to rely on outside source, yeah.

We start we drop that like naming naming podcast's after that number pretty quickly. Yeah. We had to. Yeah. Because that was like there was so much work anyway. Yeah. Investigative discovery. So this is actually a story that last summer we did some compilations of like your guys as favorites, favorite shows and this is a story of mine from your favorite show, and it's the unbelievable and amazing survival story of Mary Vincent. So here's twenty sixteen me telling twenty sixteen, Georgia in twenty sixteen Georgia apartment about this nightmare story.

Should we get into. Murder. Oh, sorry. I don't know how to sing, as I mentioned earlier. They didn't know that was.

Oh, here we go, guys. I'm going first this week. I think your first I think I am going to get called in. Yes, I'm going to have this half a glass of whiskey and drink some of your whiskey. I wish I could.

I drank all mine already, but for you it was up in nineteen ninety seven.

I had my lost shit. God, I was good at it. My therapist told me that we're doing an experiment where I'm drinking two glasses of booze a day just to see how it goes. So I'm allowed out to class is a busy day. Oh no more. No less. Yeah. We're just like seeing how this goes. So it's almost like you don't feel like it. Oh no. I still have to force it down. Yeah. And this is clearly like this was two glasses of whiskey and one big cup.

Oh that's fun.

Does that count as one. It does to me in. There you go. If I was your therapist. Hell yeah, girl.

I had this realization when I was trying to think of this week's there's so many good cases and there's so many people are very passionate about the cases that are their stories or just ones they like or think are fascinating. There was a guy that tweeted me a case his at his Twitter handle was at Arkan's Sawyer. So it was almost like Arkansas lawyer. And it was a case of a guy I think his name was Bobby Lee Foster or Bobby Joe Foster, who killed his own mother, Edna and Decapitator, and put the head in the local church and then took the eyes and mailed them to Eisenhower.

It was in the actual fuck. Yeah, it was crazy. But, uh, so I was kind of into that. Thank you for sending that. I love it.

I mean, you know, but I had a realization that when we were talking about our kickoff murders, the ones that got us kind of into it, I realized that factually and date wise, I had an earlier one than Diane Downs. And it because it happened in the Bay Area and and it's this Lawrence Singleton attack on Mary Vincent and later murder of.

So I'll just tell you about it. Let's unpack. Let's unpack this.

It happened in nineteen seventy eight. So I was eight years old and this was on the news. It was like in nineteen seventy nine is when he went to trial and all the stuff happened and it was on the news every night. My parents were livid. They talked about it all the time. You must have just been. You were there too. Yes. Because it was we watch the news together as a family every night before dinner.

I feel like there's nothing more harmful for a kid. Yeah, no one knew. I know it was back.

This was the late 70s where no one knew what was good or bad for children. Really. It was all just like, eat your cereal, go outside, try to survive, come home and then we'll watch the news together.

It was a generation away from children, both after children.

Being coalminers was like it was a weird time in between coal mining and children being carried their entire lives until they get to college.

Right, essentially. So I'm the last of the last of that generation I lived. So here's the story. On September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy eight, a man named Lawrence Singleton, who was a merchant seaman, always a bad job that Richard Speck was a merchant. Oh, really? Yeah. There it's bad news. I think it's what happens when you're, like, super fucked up and but you're so fucked up you don't want to join the army.

It's you're like, oh, I'll go out on a ship for a while with a bunch of do.

Yeah. So he picked up a fifteen year old hitchhiker named Mary Vincent in Berkeley, California.

Honey, Mary had run away from home. She lived in Las Vegas. Her parents are getting divorced. It was all fucked up. And she had friends in the Bay Area and relatives. So she made her way up to the Bay Area. But she was homesick and she'd been on her own for a while. She had a boyfriend that was bad to her. She she left him, ran away. She just wanted to get back home, sweetie.

So she is hitchhiking in Berkeley and a van pulls up and there are two people hitchhiking behind her. Now, just so you know, there's Mary Vincent herself tells this story on an episode of I Survived. It was Season four, episode one. And it is epic.

I know you don't like survivors. I fucking love survivors and things like this where you get the firsthand account of something. This story is also insanely fucked up.

I guess if they're if she's it's been that long, I could go with it. Right.

And she's it's when they can tell their own story, they're not you know, that they're able they're in charge of this narrative and they can tell you what happened then. Yeah.

And like when it's a grizzled fucking bartender, like cafe waitress and she's like this this is what fucking happened in me. I can deal with it.

But when it's like some, like, college girl whose life is ruined, now you will.

Because here's the thing, the saddest part about it, but the truest part about it is it happens to a lot of people. So when you have one woman sitting there going, baby, here's what happened to me, ABC, and you not only get the don't fuck and hitchhike, keep your eyes open, pick up on context clues. You have all that. But you also have survive and you can survive and you can't come out the other end and help other people.

And it's OK. It's OK to tell your story. Like, you don't have to keep this huge secret. There's other people who have been through similar or worse and you have to tell your story part. That's part of healing. Right. So so a lot of what I have here is basically her first hand account, Alisha. So the van pulls up and there's two hitchhikers behind her, Berkeley. Seventy eight. And the guy that's driving the van says he only has room for one person and says it's Mary.

Well, the two hitchhikers behind her go, don't get in that van because they can see into the back of the van. The whole thing's empty. There's plenty of room. But if a person saying he only has room for the young girl, they go, don't take that ride. But she was so tired, she just wanted to get home. So she was like and he looked like a grandfather. Oh, really? Yes. He's this big pot bellied kind of grizzly old guy.

He was like in his mid 60s at the time. So she's like, what's that guy going to do? So she gets in and she's really tired. She's been walking and hitchhiking for a long time. So she says, I'm I'm trying to go back home to Las Vegas. He says, I'll give you a ride. I'm going to Reno, but I'll give you a ride to Los Angeles, which is that that right there. What that does make any sense?

It doesn't make any sense. Why? So she settles in and she falls asleep.

Don't do it. Don't do it. She wakes up and they have gone east and not south. When she finally sees a sign there somewhere out in Patterson, there's somewhere out by Modesto. They're there on the other side of the five. There's a lot of for people not from here. There's a lot, especially in the 70s. There's a lot of no man's land. Yes, a lot of especially in the Central Valley, which is where he drove her out to.

It's just all empty rural farmland, roads, little hills with an oak tree on top. There's nothing. So she notices that they're going east. She freaks out, confronts him, says, what the hell are you doing? He says, I'm sorry. I'm an honest man. I made an honest mistake. Let me just turn around. He pulls around, he turns around, starts going down the road. He says, Sorry, I have to go.

I have to relieve myself. He pulls the van over. She's getting nervous. She realizes this is now a bad situation. It's it's nighttime. He's down relieving himself and she looks down and realizes one of her shoes untied and she thinks to herself, if I have to run for some reason and I could outrun this old fat guy, but if I have to do it to her, she's like, I got to tie my shoe. So she gets out of the too.

She bends over to tie her shoe and she blocks out. He hit her in the head with a sledgehammer. She wakes up, she's tied up in the back of the van after a sledgehammer hit. She wakes up, she wakes up. So he just cocks her out. Yeah. She doesn't like. Thank God. Yeah. She's when she wakes up, she's tied up and she's naked and he starts raping her, he rapes her all night and into the morning and the whole time she's, of course, Critch, 15 years old, crying, whatever, and saying, just set me free, please.

I won't tell anyone. Just set me free sometime in the morning when he's finally done. He pulls her out of the van, unties her and says, you want to be set free, I'll set you free. Picks up a hatchet now out of the back of the van. No cuts off her left arm. She's screaming below the elbow. She's screaming, freaking out, going crazy. She grabs him with her right arm going on, freaking out.

He takes the hatchet and he starts hacking off her right arm.

What the fuck is the craziest thing that means? As you're telling this, I'm reminding myself that she survived, but it doesn't fucking sound like. I know. I know. It's crazy. So she is holding on to him, but she falls backwards anyway. And that's when she realizes that her right hand has been a right arm has been chopped off.

My God. So she's all, of course, in total shock, confused, losing blood looking.

And this is the most fucked up part of her story.

There is more fucked up than that. This is it. It peaks and fucked upness right here. Holy shit. She sees him. She's looking like she can't understand what just happened and she's looking at him and he is flicking his arm like this. He's flicking his arm out. Yes. No she looks and her right hand is still holding on to his arm. Oh my fucking. I just got, I gave myself chills and I know this story because you had your hand and like I did, I did it.

So she passes out or she kind of goes limp. Sure, she's bleeding obviously profusely, losing blood, light-headed laying on the ground. So she just goes limp because she just doesn't know what to do. She's now in the presence of a monster. He thinks she's dying or dead. He drags her body over to the railing and throws her over a 30 foot cliff. On the way down, she breaks four ribs and he drives away. Now, later on, when the police catch him, which they all just let you off the hook, now the police catch him and they put together that the reason he did that is because he thought she'd be dead and they he didn't want them to be able to get any fingerprints, did they?

OK, who found her? How did she get found?

I tell you now, please. So she's down in this fucking ravine and she's laying there and she's losing blood like crazy and she wants to go to sleep. But she said that there is a voice in her head saying you cannot go to sleep, you have to get up so they can catch this guy. So she puts her bloody stumps in the dirt and and makes a mud pack. So she stops losing blood.

Oh, my God. On both on both arms. And then she starts crawling back up the ravine 30 feet. It takes her all night. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was the morning he dumped her over in the morning, so she crawls back up the ravine, it takes her all day. She finally gets up to the top of the ravine and back onto the road at night.

And then she starts walking naked, covered in blood with two stump arms, she walked for three miles. My God, the first car that came up was two dudes in a convertible. And they saw her a fucking sped away. No.

Yeah. Yes, and she said herself in this, I survived, she goes, I looked like something out of a horror movie.

She's like, I didn't blame them at all because she it was I mean, beyond something you'd see in a horror movie and on an on a far away, like a deserted road in the middle of the night where there's no this is out where there's no streetlights. There's your like she said she was walking by. The light of the moon is in my mind too.

It's like these two dudes are married men and they're gay lovers and they're they're like on a clandestine romance thing. And if they stop to help her, they have to call. The cops are going to get caught together. Yeah, that's just in my head. That's that's very plausible. Like, hopefully these aren't monsters. I mean, here's what I'm sure of.

They carry it with them this day. Yes.

They imagine leaving a person and then they read the newspaper the next day and they're like, look what we did. And she could have died. She could have saved her and then she could die. But here's who did save her.

Who she walks a little further. A couple who was on their honeymoon. Oh, no, no, no. Who took the wrong exit and is driving around trying to get back to the five. Oh, which is close enough so that Mary heard the noise of the fireball all day and was like, I just have to get back up because there will be someone if I walk toward that sound. So that's how she guided herself back toward civilization. These these people grab her, put her in the back of the truck and say, we're going to get you home.

And she said she heard them speeding so fast, you could hear the tires screeching. They get to a phone.

Can I say real quick what half the people listening that the murderer knows? Yeah. Dream honeymoon.

Exactly. Exactly. Like, what are you going to do if I can play canasta?

Well, because imagine you're like, oh, I'm married. I love him so much.

He's the man for me. Now, if the man for you was one of those guys in that convertible who does like, we have to get out of here, you'd be like, you get out of my life forever.

I bet they're still together. One hundred percent. Yeah, they get her. They get to that pay phone, they call and they airlift her to the hospital.

I wasn't even an ambulance situation. They were like straight in.

So. Oh, honey, the relief she must have felt. Oh, my God. Being to be saved.

So. She sorry, I'm on the next page already because you're by the way, I want everyone to know you're like fuck and telling this, you're not even looking at your notes because this because I remember this happening when I was little.

Holy shit.

I remember my mother being so livid and she would talk about Laurence Singleton, this disgusting piece of shit. She would talk about him all the time because I'll get into it. I was all this was all these were all these details on the news.

No, but it was it was a man who raped a girl, chopped her arms off and threw her into a ditch.

And that was plenty.

Yeah, because you can't that's when it was like, oh, my God, that could happen. Totally. That's real. Even the word rape, like, you don't even talk about like couples in fucking sitcoms didn't sleep in the same bed. Right, exactly. Well, I'm not from the fifties. Georgia. Oh, my God. I mean that the Brady Bunch was the. So I got so she lost over half the blood in her body now.

But from her hospital bed, she described a picture of him so accurately to the police sketch artist that Lawrence Singleton's next door neighbor saw it and immediately called the police, even though she was friends with him and like knew him for years.

She was like, that's Lawrence Singleton. That's my next door neighbor. She's one of us.

So, yes, exactly. So and I do have to say this in the article that I found that it a piece of information from for some reason in the line, it said housewife and bowling expert.

Wow, I want their life. They really described her to a T.. I really want I want that life. And that's a pretty good life. So they arrest Larison Lawrence Singleton nine days later. I like to call him Larry. Larry.

And when he was questioned, Singleton told the police that Mary was a ten dollar whore, that that he was passed out drunk in his van and that his other friend, Larry, is the one that attacked her and that there were two other hookers in the van at the time. What a fucking monster lunatic. So she testifies against him in court, get a girl with two prosthetic, her two prosthetic limbs on. She'd already been fitted for them.

She was still a teenager. I mean, that's an that is a hard thing to do on its own.

Nelsa, this as she walks out after testifying against him, he whispers to her, if it's the last thing I do, I'll finish the job.

I was hoping she'd say motherfucker like something at him. No, no. Poor girl, she ran out. So in March of nineteen seventy nine, a San Diego jury convicts him of kidnapping, mayhem, attempted murder, forcible rape, sodomy and forced oral copulation and gives him a maximum sentence at the time, I guess.

Now, go ahead. Sorry. Keep interrupting. No, no, no. Seven years, 14 years for all of that. For all of those crimes combined. Maximum legal sentence was 14 years. That's like almost how old she was.

Yes, that's exactly right. So the judge who had to pass that sentence said if I had the power, I would send him to prison for the rest of his natural life.

So along with the particularly gruesome and callous aspects of the crime, the case became totally notorious because he was paroled after serving eight years in prison. I just. Can't OK, so this is when shit went off, because that's when it started on the news every night this guy got paroled and it was like my parents talked about it. People talked about it in the grocery store. It was like, how is this happening? And, you know, what happened is in nineteen eighty three, they passed a work incentive law, kind of quietly passed it so that they could reduce prison overcrowding where a day was cut off your sentence for each day that the prisoners spent working at the jail or you could make pot legal and get a bunch of fucking prisoners out of jail.

That's exactly what make them murderers and rapists go there for fucking ever.

Why in God's name would you have a work incentive law applied to attempted murderer rapists? Well, this is back when they were like rape and it was probably her. She probably asked for it. She was probably a ten dollar whore, mother fuckers. So they announce that his release date. This is Ed Martin, who is the associate warden of the California men's colony in San Luis Obispo, where he was serving his time, his release date. Martin said if there is continued good behavior and work and no change in his programs will be approximately April 28th, which was eight years, four months of time.

And every one of the barria went bananas. So here's what happened. They try to parole him to Antioch, California, and the mayor protests the Department of Corrections. And so acknowledging the public outcry, the Department of Corrections agrees not to release Singleton in Antioch. So they try to place him with relatives in Tampa, Florida. People rise up in Tampa, Florida, and the Tampa chapter of the Guardian Angels, which was a big thing in the 80s.

Remember them? Yeah, they lead these protests and eventually a Florida officials reject the parolee so they can't go back to Tampa.

Now, if you're if fuckin. If the hells what does the Hells Angels know, the Guardian Angels? What are they? They were this. They were they were there. I thought you meant the hells. They were basically when the in the 80s when crime was crazy. It was basically at the end of the recession when things were kind of shady. It was like back when New York was a total dump.

The Guardian Angels were this group of basically what do you call them like like Mothers Against Drunk Driving type of thing?

No, no, no. These were a oh, I can't think of the term for it. It was time, by the way.

I was not in any hurry. It well, it's just long and I want to get by the whole thing. But nobody thinks cocktail's. Listen, take your time. Everything's fine.

No, but it was the they were like when you're like a citizen that's taking one in your own hands, what are those called.

Like a citizen taking over. So they basically were like we're taking back the streets. So they would go they wore red berets and shirts. That's a guardian angels.

They all knew karate. They all they were all like muscled up dudes.

And they would ride the subway at night to make sure that, like, vigilante, there it is. They were they were total vigilantes and they basically were like their own gang, but a positive gang. So they just made sure like that people didn't get attacked on the subway and every city started popping up with their own group of the guardian angels. Eventually, of course, they dispersed because I think they took things a little too far as it usually happens.

Yeah, but anyway, they they actually did some good stuff in the beginning where people there were there weren't enough cops and there was just a lot of crime. Yeah.

So, uh, so he has to come back from Tampa, Florida, which is where his family was. But they Tampa was like, go fuck yourself and you know, Florida's kicking out. You're probably a big, pretty big piece of shit. So then he, uh, where did he go?

So then they try to release him in Martinez, California, and and which is also in Contra Costa County. So the Contra Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and four city council members, when a temporary restraining order from a superior court judge barring the Department of Corrections for placing Singleton anywhere in Contra Costa County. So, like, quit bringing that motherfucker back here. He's not allowed and kind of happened. So so now they try to place him in San Francisco.

But Police Chief Police Chief Frank Jordan, at the time, he's told that that they're going to bring Singleton to San Francisco for a couple of weeks. And San Francisco wins a temporary restraining order barring him from San Francisco.

So then they take him to Redwood City secretly. But reporters find out that he's there in a hotel and protesters surround the hotel. And the Department of Corrections has to pull him out of this hotel and get him out before the protesters rip him apart.

What a bummer to be one of those cops and be like, I fucking hate this. Yeah, you don't want to protect that piece of shit.

So now a quarter of appeals overturned that restraining order saying that Contra Costa County and San Francisco couldn't have him there. So then they tried to place him in El Cerrito, but which is not in Contra Costa County. That's a little bit further north, I think. But the Contra Costa County officials find out that they're going to try to place him in El Cerrito and they tell the El Cerrito, they tell the press and else Serino.

So then protests begin there. So basically now everyone's telling everybody they're trying to place this piece of shit in the North Bay and everybody. So then they try to put him in Richmond. But the mayor finds out and the officials are all like, fuck no, get him out of here. Then they try to bring him to a city called Brogdale, which I've never even heard of before, doesn't even exist.

But people find out. And a mob of five hundred people gathers around this apartment and they actually have to take him out in a bulletproof vest and he's escorted out of town by the sheriff's department.

So it was this is kind of that thing where, yes, this is the kind of the worst story ever, but also the greatest story ever. We're like just the citizens were like, no, dude.

Like maybe that maybe legislature says, what, that you can get out of jail, but you say no. So they moved them to Concord. One hundred seventy five people gather at the hotel where they're keeping him there. Finally, the governor says put a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin and they can live there until his parole is over it.

Jerry Brown, George Deukmejian. All right.

So that's what he has to do, is to live on the grounds of San Quentin until his one year parole is up. Then he's free to go wherever you want.

And they don't they're not even a track. Well, then there's just kind of nothing they can do because nothing's in the system about him.

So he goes back to Florida. And. When he gets there, they find out that he's there, people protest a car dealer offered him five thousand dollars to leave the state and a homemade bomb was detonated near the house that he was staying in even. But no one was injured, unfortunately. Bomber in nineteen ninety seven. A neighbor calls the police after seeing Lawrence Singleton attacking a woman in his home. And when the police arrive, they find the body of 31 year old mother of three, Roxann Hines.

She's also a sex worker. But I wanted to say the mother of three part first so that people care.

Yeah.

So that they know that she was so hard up for money that financial problems made it so that she had to do this right. And then she got stabbed 12 times in the face and chest by this piece of shit. And when he answered the door, he answered the door to the cops with his shirt open and blood all over his chest.

So they how many cold cases can be attributed to him like. So there's no way that it was one in 78.

Well, they say that the reason that he got parole the way early like that was because he didn't have he didn't have priors. Yeah, he didn't have. Which is not to say he didn't do it, but they did. He didn't have a record.

Still, I think cutting off a girl's arms and leaving him that is like worse than your prior for, like, aggravated assault or whatever. And I think you're right.

It's not that's not a first crime. No. At all. Especially when you're 60, you know, like you're starting, you know. Yeah.

No way, OK. So Mary Vincent goes to Tampa to appear at his sentencing and tells her whole fucking story.

She describes her whole attack, the whole the the toll that the ordeal has taken on her whole life, because, of course, it's been a terror. And she's, you know, she's gotten her life together a little bit. But, of course, she just lives in constant fear. When she was when he was paroled, like she was doing fine and going to art school in the Pacific Northwest. Then he got paroled and she fell apart. He said to her as she left the courtroom, I'm going to finish this.

If it takes the rest of my life, I'll finish the job like, yeah, why isn't that considered when he's when they think he's going up for parole?

So the jury deliberated for one hour and he was sentenced to death because good old Florida good.

So unfortunately, he died of cancer in the prison hospital instead of being fried, you know, were very, very vicious.

And we really are.

And this one but, uh, his apparently what he said in when he was sentenced, he said he did. He denied mutilating Mary Vincent. He still denied it, not killing her, just mutilating. No, no, no. Mary Vincent is the girl whose arms you chopped off.

He denies doing that. But he said about the stabbing of Hayes, I'm sorry about the death in this case. I'll have to carry it on my conscience the rest of my life. The death that the death and the narcissistic move. This is sad for me and me, but Diane Downs.

So just to wrap it, Mary Vincent did win a two point five, six million dollar civil judgment against Singleton, but she couldn't collect because he was unemployed and poor health and only had two hundred dollars in savings. Of course not. So she did eventually get married. She moved to Orange County. She has two sons and she started the Mary Vincent Foundation to help victims of traumatic crime. Oh, sweetie. Yeah. Oh, that poor girl. Isn't it crazy that, like, she would have been better off stealing a car and getting a misdemeanor than men hitchhiking you can't trust?

Old men that look like grandfathers and here's another thing I was thinking about, like when he or she had a bad feeling, he stopped to pee and get out of the car.

The thing about that is, is like if you have a bad feeling, do what you need to do and apologize for it later. Like steal the car and drive the fuck off. Apologize later if it turns out he wasn't going to kill you. Right. Trust your gut. Yeah. If you have to blow some guy off at a bar because he's giving you the creeps, but you don't want to be rude, blow him off and apologize later if it turns out that he wasn't a creep.

Because if he's not a creep, it won't be a problem with Shackley.

Yeah. Yeah, that's intense, I know it's crazy, and if you want to see it, you can you can watch on I survived Mary Vincent tell that story yourself. I might have to start watching that. The thing is about true crime shows is that I really don't like reenactments. There's no reenactments. It's the people telling their story and they do. They start the segment with a picture of where it actually happened.

And it's all straight to camera storytelling.

It's pretty brilliantly produced. That's what I like it. I did that. I totally do that. Yeah. Who the. I know that was a big one. Yeah.

Oh, let's all take a collective breath. Yeah. Anyone needs to use the bathroom, go use it now. Oh, oh, Karen, I'm always one of my favorites that I remember hearing that and I had never heard that story before and I was just blown. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it.

It's yeah, it was an emotional ride hearing that story and that that the story is about the survivor, that the story, these stories. I think this is when I first started learning, being taught by our audience how these stories are actually about the survivors or about the victims, the victims families. Mine's a little different.

This is from Episode 105, which happened in January of twenty eighteen. So we were in the pod loft by then.

Right. And like, yeah, that was, that was fun.

And the episode and the episode was called Brooklyn City, which I still like classic. One of the best words I've ever made up in my life. Sure. I mean, you've made up some real doozies, but that one's pretty great. I stand by that one. And so this is the story of Typhoid Mary, which is just so bananas and so wild. And I just you know, you can't believe it happened.

And then you watch the drunk history that came out later, that Betsy Cedro playing Typhoid Mary saliently, that she is one of my favorite comic actors, was so funny, so funny.

Enjoy Typhoid Mary, everyone. And. Oh, my God. Turns out a global mandele who just happened two years later. Who knew?

All right, my murder. OK, so, you know, I'm obsessed with fuckin infectious diseases and plagues and flu epidemics.

You know, I love all this shit.

Right? Sure. That's my passion illness like end of days.

Shit, great level stuff. OK, and right now, the flu right now in mid January 2018, the flu is already an epidemic. Yet this year, which is fine. I just got a shot. Did you get a shot? Oh, good.

I think it's a irritated and I'm going to die. But anyways.

Well, at least you don't have the flu when you die. Exactly.

So on that note, because it's so fun, I thought I would. Do you know our good friend Typhoid Mary?

Nice.

Here we go in the summer of 1986 on Long Island's Oyster Bay. We've been there. I haven't I think they take one of those little trains, a jitney, a jitney to get there, right?

I don't know. I mean, do they have cars? It was made of straw. Don't know. Maybe a horse jitney.

So Long Island's Oyster Bay is the towny playground of New York's rich and famous Teddy fucking Roosevelt. None other than the his summer White House there. So fucking rich people. Sure. And everyone freaks the fuck out when in a span of just one week, six of the 11 people in the home of a wealthy banker, he's the banker to the Vanderbilt's. Even Charles Warnes household comes down with typhoid fever while they're out there on vacation. Typhoid is a bacterial infection, let me tell you about it.

Due to salmonella, typhoid. And it's viewed back then as a disease of the crowded slums and tenements, which we love to talk about. Yes.

In New York, it's associated with poverty, the lack of basic sanitation. Immigrants assumed to live in disease ridden, crowded housing are scapegoats of typhoid. So when a rich fucking family gets it, it's bananas. Typhoid is one of the 20th century's most terrifying killers because an infection could spread through a house before anyone knew what was going on. The first week, the infection seemed almost, you know, like just the regular flu. Then there's the fever, some abdominal cramping, but nothing really crazy to show that it's typhoid.

And then during the second week, fever goes crazy. The patient becomes delirious. Blood clots form under the skin. The entire abdomen becomes distended. The third week inflammation of the fucking brain and intestinal hemorrhaging, intestinal hemorrhaging and the death rate of those infected is anywhere between one in ten and three in ten. So it's really easily spread, spread by eating or drinking food or water contaminated with the feces of infected persons.

So think about that in the nineteen hundred or the nineteen hundreds, you know, when they didn't like wash their hands and stuff and like water wasn't cleaned and checked and they all lived in like houses and stuff that were all you know.

Yeah. What would that I mean that was back still when people get up and just pee in a bowl under the bed just like slosh it back under, probably throw it out the window. Where is that when they threw stuff out the window. Throw the baby out with the probably man. I bet. I bet they did. Let's say. Yes, but I like the idea that people would do it in rich houses.

They did it. So that's the thing. Like they didn't. So it was really weird that this typhoid was an outbreak in a rich house. So people were that's why on Oyster Bay, they were like, this is a fucking something's wrong.

Not here. Not in my family. Not in my backyard. Right. Not in the Tony playground of the rich and famous. Hell, no, no. But, uh, in nineteen hundred it killed thirty five thousand Americans. There's no cure. Antibiotics didn't exist and a vaccine was not yet available. Horrifying. So scary. So the Charles Warren's landlord was freaking out that the family outbreak would prevent him from leasing his summer house again. He thought they were born into the fucking ground because of typhoid.

So he's like, fuck this shit. He hires freelance sanitary engineer George Soaper, freelance sanitary engineer Dr George Sofer. OK, which is like you sound fun at parties. You sound like, ah, you have a made up job. Yeah, he called the janitor. No, no. He's like he investigates sources of typhoid fever outbreaks to determine the cause. Like he's the dude who a doctor house doctor. He's fucking house. He's like come over to my house, figure out what happened here.

OK, why is everyone sick? He's the dude who figures it out like what was his name again? George Soaper. Dr. George Soaper. So he's like he's like what's his name. The Detective Columbo.

Sherlock Holmes. Can you you can leave that vanhanen.

He's like the Columbo. Sherlock Holmes of Diseases. OK, ok. I was going to say diarrhea. What. We don't use that word. No, we do use that word. So everything. So super test everything. He's like super excited about gross stuff. Apparently he tests the house plumbing, local shellfish company. Everything comes up negative for typhoid. But then he looks into the cook who had worked for the Warrens weeks before the outbreak and discovered that a female Irish cook who fit the description of a cook who had worked in other households worked before it had broken out, you know, broke.

Pass that she had worked there right before everyone fell ill of typhoid and had also just cooked for the Warrens, so I don't know why you'd hire an Irish cook.

We can't fucking cook it's roast and like red potatoes. Yeah, but I think that back then they liked the simplicity of it all.

Man, such a bummer. I mean, I was fucking amazing to me.

That's all I want is pot roast and potatoes. Are you serious with some horseradish. Yeah. What about jello with fruit cocktail floating inside of it.

Fruit cocktail. Yes. Yeah. And then of course my grandma's special what she put on it. Thousand Island dressing.

Yeah. A hard stop. That's an iceberg lettuce. No, that's Irish cook, my friends. You know, I want I want iceberg lettuce without an island and I want jello with fruit cocktail. I don't want them to meet each other. Well, sorry, my grandma says you have to and that's my job to make it happen and you have to finish it. You do.

I mean, fair enough to you that's forced us to eat spinach as tiny babies and very few of us have ever broken a spinach.

But you fucking twist your ankle all the goddamn time. Roll it.

But it don't break, grandma. OK, Grandma. He was OK. So we can't find her because she left after the after every outbreak begins. She fucking later is out of there and doesn't give a forwarding address. Soaper learns of an active outbreak in a penthouse on Park Avenue where two of the household servants were hospitalized and the young daughter of the family had died of typhoid.

Oh, no.

And she dies and he discovers sober, discovers that the family cook was the same woman who had cooked for the other families. It's 40 year old Irish immigrant Mary Matalin.

Mary, wash your hands. Mary, I go. Oh, do it, Mary. And what did she say? And she says, I just need to start the soup with my hand real quick. I can't do it. No, you're going to do this whole like. I'm sorry. We need it. OK, so first start stocking Mary Ellen and tells her and he tells her she's transmitting disease and death by her job, but he sounds very bad at like telling people things and explaining in a calm, like, you know, self-possessed manner to an Irish immigrant, probably because he had some prejudices against Irish people.

So do you think he was, like, too nervous to tell her he was like screaming? I think he was screaming in her face this thing of transmitting disease and death. And she's this like Irish. Everyone's like, what are you talking about?

So he didn't explain to her how she, as a woman who was perfectly healthy, could be infecting others with typhoid. He attempted to get. And then and then he goes on to attempt to get samples of Mary's feces, urine and blood. I think just by yelling in her face that you need samples of her feces, urine and blood. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, man, get away from me. Yeah, not surprisingly, this just pissed me off.

And one time she chased him away with a large kitchen fork when he tried to come get her. That's my Irish. Get out of here. Get out. Get out of the kitchen.

Now, you always have to start WEHI and then go down really low. OK? Since Mary refused to give samples, he decided to compile a five year history of her employment. He found that of the eight families that had hired Mary Magdalene as a cook, members of seven of those families claimed to have contracted typhoid fever, even though Mary had never shown signs of the ailment. And with this, Soaper becomes the first author to describe a healthy carrier of salmonella hyphae in the United States.

So the person who can carry it never get ill, buy it, but pass it on to other people. So she's basically immune to this thing. She has, but she has. It is giving it to everybody. And she and part of her argument is like, well, I'm fucking fine. It can't be me giving it to anyone. Right.

So also and let me use my whole arm as a straw, and I just want to stir this fucking stew. I just want to touch the bottom of the pan with my fingernail.

Let me put this under my fingernails and put it into the stew. What's the big deal? The problem? My fingernail ladle.

Right, without washing my hands.

OK, let me tell you about Mary. Mary Magdalene is born in September of eighteen sixty nine in Cook County, Crookston. County Taichiro Cookson, let's call it a small village in the north of Ireland that was among one of Ireland's poorest areas, she immigrated to the United States in 1883 at the age of 15. Her aunt and uncle, who she had been living with, died. So she was living in squalor, a squalid housing in the Lower East Side.

Fending for herself, she found work as a domestic servant and apparently her density in the kitchen led her to be a cook.

So she was somehow the one in the kitchen. I don't know. I've copied and pasted over that. I never use proclaimed city propensity, clean city country. That's a word.

I don't think it is shit I review I got rid of.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. That sounded so good. And I was kind of like it did a combination of propensity and declension.

But I'm almost positive when you're search for quantity did not match in any search but her propensity. Is that right? Well, I'm never copying and pasting from Wikipedia again.

The grammar is. So it's not there's no yeah. There's no it's propensity or that's like the correction. The correct. Oh yeah.

They maybe they just the correct word is propensity. Fuck. All right. I'm not getting that out because this is who I am loving a fucking show. Sometimes we get words wrong. It's OK.

My pro clandestine in the kitchen it sounds like for instance sounds like a like for men who are losing their hair shampoo to take mint per cleansed in every night.

Right.

OK, in nineteen hundred she worked in moronic New York. Heard of it. Nowhere within two weeks of her employment residence develop typhoid fever in nineteen ninety one she moved to Manhattan where members of the family whom she worked for developed fevers and diarrhea.

That's a bummer to have that same time. Yeah, that's horrible. You don't know what's happening and you have diarrhea, right? She's a laundress.

Died their owner's name. They don't mention anywhere, which is like, listen, she's someone too. That's right.

And then Mary Mallon goes on to work for a lawyer.

She left after seven of the eight people in that household became ill. She fucking layers is shaky, leaving, though.

I don't know. She thinks she's so innocent. Well, it's so it's hard to tell because it's like, did she leave because everyone got sick? And so the house stood still and they didn't need anyone or what did she know?

You need help the most. It's true.

Chicken soup doesn't cook itself. Yeah, that's kind of superlobbyist those stairs to stir Jesus Christ. OK, chicken soup can't stir itself without an arm and it can't walk up stairs. Exactly.

So, OK, so then in 1986 she goes to Oyster Bay and within two weeks ten of the eleven family members are hospitalized with typhoid. Changed his job again. Same thing happens. Cooks for the Warren. Same thing happens, blah, blah, blah. OK, doctors theorize that Mary Mallon likely passed typhoid germs by failing to vigorously scrub her hands before handling food.

Usually the elevated temperature is cooking. Food would have killed all the germs and bacteria and shit.

But then they found out that Mary Mallon's like most popular dish specialty, her specialty was ice cream that she cut up raw peaches into and froze. So nothing had gotten cooked.

Oh, can you imagine those wet fucking peaches with her little like cutting knife under and all the nail under her nails as she's cutting peaches, she's also cutting a little bit of her finger along, like, oh, God, she had a real proclivity for cutting up her own flesh.

I can't believe I got that. OK, the New York health, the New York City Health Department finally may try to get her to chill the fuck out and she won't. Finally, they said she won't. She's like, fuck you.

And everyone must cook. She's like an angry, an angry woman.

She had to fight for her, like her life, livelihood, you know, nobody it reminds.

So I just started watching alias Grace, which you had talked about liking. And it reminds me of like she came over on a ship in that fucking in that nature of absolute bullshit. Yeah. She is like, fuck you. I'm working to, like, live my own life.

I mean, it's the ship journey alone. So upsetting for most people coming to this country. Traumatizing, just horrifying. And they show up and then it's like, I hope you have a job. Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah.

Also, you don't wash your hands. And I guess that's what we're talking about.

You know what that reminds me of real quick? Yeah. When I lived in Scotland, there was a commercial that was on like. TV, and it was are you a washer or a walker, and it was just a it was pretend camera like hidden camera in a bathroom to see if people walked up, check their face and walked away or washed their hands and went away. And since that commercial, I think before that, I was very like, who cares one way or the other?

I know if I need to wash my hands. Thought since that commercial, I wash my hands every single time. You can't trust doorknobs, you just can't trust door handles.

You just should wash your hands as much as possible. And I do.

And you don't go out of your fucking mind. I do. But like do your best.

Don't be a walker. I'm saying my dad every he won't sit down. It will go to lunch anywhere. He had just gone out of his car. He hasn't touched anything. He he's kind of has OCD though. But he'll go wash his hands before, like every time. You can't even start talking to him. Oh wow. Wash his hands. I wonder if that's like if his parents are really strict about that, like before eating. Yeah.

Maybe it's a good idea.

Every once in a while I'll look at my hands, especially soring cheap jeans. Oh, no, there's nothing worse than having dirty hands as an adult at like a meal and like putting a food thing into your mouth and being like, when was the last time I washed my hands?

That's my thing of like and then there's only so many times you can go while I'm strengthening my immune system. So most of the time you're not you're just putting someone else's fucking urine hands in your fucking mouth and I mean the doorknob.

OK, so New York City sends in physician Sarah Josephine Baker to talk to Mary. So the singer.

Yeah, Ray almost would be amazing night. She was just amazing dancer. Yeah. Hey, that's not good. Baker said that by the time she was she said, quote, by that time she was convinced that the law was only persecuting her when she had done nothing wrong. Maybe it was like hardcore. Fuck you. Yeah, we're like that. Yeah.

Baker's so this chick, Sarah Josephine Baker, her own father and brother, had died of typhoid when she was young. And so she had felt pressure to support her mother and sister financially. So at six years old, she decided on a career in medicine. Wow. And this and this is like the early nineteen hundreds late this Sheizaf that ass mother fucker. Right. And people should fucking study her etc. for feminist reasons. She's fucking awesome. But she goes to find Mary Matalin and with her help, the New York City Health Department takes Mary into custody in nineteen 07 and places her into forced confinement inside a bungalow on sixteen acre North Brother Island off the Bronx shore.

So if you live and had lived in Manhattan or been in Manhattan, you see this fucking island over there, like off the shore that you can like. See, it's almost like Alcatraz in San Francisco. Right.

So it's all the only thing only companion she has. And tell me if this doesn't sound amazing. She's in confinement.

All she has is a fox terrier, like living the life I please. So I think I'm in that confinement right now. You put yourself in Mary Ellen's fucking good environment.

We're all all Irishwoman are doomed to live the life of Mary Matalin. It just repeats itself. Damn. Okay, so it's at. So they are on this brother island was the Riverside Hospital, which is where she's at. It's founded in the fifties as a smallpox hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. So they just fucking put them on this tiny island outside of Manhattan. You can see Manhattan and you're like, oh my God, I want that.

And I know you're sick to bed eventually expands to other containable diseases like leprosy and venereal diseases. So they just like later people on that island. Did they really? Yeah.

So you get you get some of venereal disease and you have to get so like go stay here until you're in the same room with all the other people with venereal diseases. Yeah. And so it's like a party. I mean those are the people. The party. Yeah. A lot of great personalities in that room. I mean I'm sure OK with her forced confinement.

Mary Mallon, everyone, the media goes fucking nuts because this woman has been spreading this disease and killing people with it. So media goes nuts eventually. In nineteen eighty eight in the Journal of American Medical Association, she is nicknamed Typhoid Mary. That's where she gets her name. So the professionals, really, they came in to shit on it. Yeah, they were doing top notch journalism. Right, everybody.

So so it turns out Merrymount is immune to the disease herself. She's the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen, which is pretty fucking cool.

Well, custody. Mary Matalin, Typhoid Mary lets cholera admits to poor hygiene. She's like, yeah, what are the motherfuckers saying?

The same Irish. I think it is fair to say who cares? Oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, there's other things I worry about. Exactly. There's people starving in my country. She said she did not understand the purpose of handwashing because she did not pose a risk.

Girl, you're the cook. You're the cook. You pose a risk. It doesn't matter how healthy you are. They the authorities are like, let's get rid of your gallbladder, because that's where they believe the typhoid bacteria resided. And and she was like, fuck, now fuck you. I don't even have the disease. And she wasn't willing to cease working as a cook to say, like, we'll let you go. Just don't work as a cook.

And she's like, no, I won't wash my hands. Go back. There's a fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. We're so angry it doesn't make sense. Irishwoman, Irishwoman fight, fight, fight.

And then a herky jerky she is forced to give one hundred and sixty three samples of various bodily substances to the doctors there, a hundred and twenty of which tested positive for the bacteria.

She was teeming with this disease to the hilt, to the gills, to the gills. So Mary stays there for three years until test results from a private laboratory.

Yes, I said that came up negative for typhoid.

And with this information the next year nine Mary sues the health department for her freedom. But everyone's like where she get the money to sue the health department. And then and then it's like a secret thing that maybe William Randolph Hearst was like, we'll give you the money if you give me, like, an interview. So, like, he was like springing people. Seojin is so smart. But the New York Supreme Court, like, go fuck yourself.

No, but then in 1910, there's a new health commissioner. He lets her go if she promises never to work as a cook again. And she's like, OK, great.

She's like, fine. I didn't like that much anyway. Yeah.

So in February of 1910, Mary agreed that she was, quote, prepared to change her occupation and would give assurance by affidavit that she would, upon her release, take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact from infection, meaning wash your fucking hands. I wash my fucking hands.

No, I just I felt like I wanted to defend. But there's it's an indefensible go ahead.

And I said people don't think some people think what her being locked up is indefensible.

No, she killed a ton of people because she refused to what she wanted. It's like she wouldn't give in anything where it's like, OK, well, if you're the cook, you have to admit handwashing is kind of key. I realized it was that was kind of a new idea back then. But still. Well, the thing is, she thought they were all out to get her and all this shit. You're like decades later, they're like, well, if she had typhoid her whole life, maybe it fucked her brain up a little bit and she was paranoid and crazy.

Oh, yeah, but wait, it gets worse. OK, OK, so they let her out. They lose track of her. Goodbye. That idea cut to five years later in nineteen fifteen. A typhoid outbreak happens at Manhattan's Sloan Maternity Hospital, struck twenty five workers and killed two of those workers. When Soaper, our friend George sobers back, he looks into the outbreak and he's like, Oh, this looks fucking familiar. Oh, no. Traces it back to the cook, who's an Irish woman named Mary Brown.

This time she changed her name. She found a good man. Nope.

She changed her name so she could become a cook like she was doing it now. Now she's responsible for she's being a dick, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Now it's criminal. I think it's Merrymount. But it turns out she changed her name and during her years of release, she had cooked in hotels, restaurants and institutions. So she was like she'd gone. They'd given her a job as a laundress. You make no fucking money. It's really hard work, doesn't smell good, doesn't smell good. She was like, fuck the shit and went to cook wherever she worked. There were outbreaks of typhoid.

However, she changed jobs so frequently, so she had eluded the blame. She's captured and again can find North Brother Island, where she continued to refuse to acknowledge that she had any connection between herself and the typhoid cases.

Well, it's that point. It's so stacked up against her that she might as well just do that because she's so guilty that the second she breaks, it's over. Yeah, exactly. So after this, the second apprehension, she spends the next twenty three years of her life as a prisoner in forced isolation. Hundreds, if not thousands of asymptomatic carriers who had been identified were allowed to walk the streets of New York freely. But Typhoid Mary lived alone in exile, partly as you because the public were fucking pissed at her because she wouldn't stay out of the kitchen.

Like if she had just not gone back to cooking. Yes. That second time around. Exactly. She I mean, I didn't it's sad that she lived in isolation. But why are you being so stubborn? Yeah, calm down, Karen.

Oh, Karen, having you just my face just starts to fall apart and I don't want to do it.

It just comes out of me or typhoid. Tears just started running out inside me. So mad.

But the state of the kitchen on November 11, nineteen thirty eight, Mary Mallon dies of pneumonia at age sixty nine. Still in captivity. An autopsy found evidence of life, typhoid, typhoid bacteria and her gall bladder. So they were right. Yeah, they were right. Her bodies cremated and her ashes were buried at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx. So Mary Mallon thought that she infected 51 people and three of those illnesses resulted in death. And that's based on George shoppers, you know, looking into it.

But she she used so many aliases that it's thought that the true death toll could have been way fucking higher. Some estimate that she had may have caused 50 fatalities, which I just saw that in a random article. So I don't know if that's even true. Historians say she contaminated at least one hundred and twenty two people and killed five, which sounds a little more likely. So crazy that so throughout the 20th century, typhoid fever steadily declines due to the introduction of vaccinations and improvements in public sanitation and hygiene.

Wash your fucking hands. And today, typhoid fever is considered a rare condition among developed countries.

Rate is approximately five cases per million per year as your fucking brother Island and Riverside Hospital. Real quick, this fucking island of disease. Yeah, Manhattan sounds amazing. Sounds amazing. The island has been abandoned since nineteen sixty three after it was a detention. It was last a detention facility for juvenile drug offenders in nineteen sixty three. How badly do you wish you could go and just sit on the wall like people there.

You know, there's some black light posters in that building that, you know, there's some people out there who have stories of like they were like, yeah, because, you know, my mom working in the mental she worked in a hospital troublingly. Reporter in San Francisco. It's up on the Hill. Yeah. And and people in the 60s used to send their kids if they got caught smoking pot one time. No, they sent their kids to the mental hospital.

So she said there were in this in the like mid to late 60s, all these kids there was like an influx of kids are like they're incorrigible and they're drug addicts. They had only done like one joint or just like we're saying no to things exactly like they were housed with people who are legitimately in need of mental mental health issues. And I'm sure those kids were like, well, I'm never doing anything bad again. Yes.

The shit that they saw, like. Yeah, or they were like, I don't know. She just said it was really sad and bummed her out a lot.

It's clearly complicated. Yeah. So these kids got sent there in nineteen sixty three. Finally it closed. It's now uninhabited and designated as a bird sanctuary, but it's illegal for anyone to go on the island without permission from the city. All the buildings though still fucking stand. And these photographers sometimes go on there and take photos and you can see a bunch of the photos. We should put them up on Instagram of these gorgeous, like brick buildings that are falling into disrepair.

And you can see the rooms where Mary Matalin was fucking housed and you see the typhoid wing and you can see the fucking crematorium. And it's like it's insanely gorgeous. I am asking any Motorino who works for the city of Manhattan.

Please let me and Karen Comess, can I come and get a disease of our own for ourselves, since it's like under you know, under watching you, it's really hard to get on there.

Everything is still there. So, like, people haven't graffiti and people haven't stolen from the island. That's amazing. You need to see the photos. Everything is covered in wildlife. It's gorgeous. I want to see that.

It's amazing.

But it sounds like the island they threatened to send or that they promised to send Dr. Lecter to Inside of the Lambs. That ends up to be that. They're like Pixie's when she recites that thing. You are allowed to walk on the beach every day.

Whatever I want to read that is so good. Do it again.

You will be allowed you will be allowed one walk one day a year. Well, you can walk freely on the beach with armed guards or snipers. I don't know if she knows. Give her.

I know my friend, my friend Amy, who you met when we were in Wisconsin. She she has sounds lims memorized. I've watched it with her and she'll just say the line real quick before it's my favorite thing in the world.

I love it. You will be allowed to walk.

She be able to do that right off the. Right off the line, I love these domes, OK, it's illegal, blah, blah, blah, but you could still see the the building the room where Typhoid Mary spent the last twenty three years of her life. She doing there? Oh, man, she was bombed. But it's it's just like there's varying accounts for it's like some say she was like actually helping out there and like a maid and some say that she was just like in seclusion and they abandoned her and used her as like a look at Typhoid Mary, you know, when people would come to the island, that kind of thing.

So you don't really know. I hope there was a fox terrier. So, yeah.

And then I also want to mention there's a podcast. If you're into the shit the like I am there's a podcast that's kind of new. It's hosted by to these two young ladies who are grad students in disease ecology. Oh, it's called This Podcast Will Kill You. And it's just about infectious diseases from history. And every episode is that. And these these two girls are named they're both named Aaron are like it's just an awesome podcast. This is great.

Yeah. So it's about Gazettal, little girl.

You love it. I like to imagine that Typhoid Mary sat in seclusion in her room on that island and fantasize of all the different things. She'd like to put her hand in bed, like she'd be like corn chowder or whatever, and then like mashed potatoes and then blah. Anastasia's like both bear arms go all the way and like, she cleans her fingernails in the chowder. Yes.

I wonder if she, like, requested like cooking magazines and like read recipes and like, stick your arm completely and be like this looks good, but, you know, it needs my arm, my arm, my fingernail clippings.

And it's not funny people.

It's disgusting. It's terrible. But isn't that amazing?

It's it's incredible. Also, the idea this. Did you watch The Knick when it was on? Yeah. And they have a there's an episode involving her.

I watched the little the little scene where they they and where they confront her.

Yeah. Yeah. It's that was such a good show.

And they did that where she was great, but they did that where they would take those things out of history and be like, this is what we're you don't have any sense like things before modern medicine, modern stuff. It's just the weirdest idea. Would they be like somebody come in and they'd be like, well, we tried to stick a tube in their arm and then they died like the end or it's just it was so crazy.

Precarious by the neck is such a great show. I love that. Yeah. If you're into that kind of thing, you should definitely watch it.

It was great. Also, if you've ever taken cocaine to the point where it was a problem for you, I warn a trigger warning, huge cocaine trigger warning for the neck opium to get me a doctor, New Coke all the time. Yeah, no. Maybe you're in opium dens to trigger warning. So you love to lay back with a bunch of people dressed in traditional Chinese garb.

Yeah. Then this will be hard for you to get through. It's going to make you nuts. But if you love surgery without gloves or anesthesia, this is a show, not a show or Clive Owen.

Right. That was great. Thank you. That was fun. I love to learn. I love I love teaching. I love saying words wrong. I wrote. I love to learn. I love to fly. I love to make up new words.

I love to just have fun with this shit that, you know, don't have any Brooklyn City for caring.

I mean, I have a real density to just say what I want. And I think we all do. There's a freedom in that in these cities.

We all have in this poor Cleanseas time, there's a freedom. It's so the funniest thing about Typhoid Mary is she she had a real problem with cleanskins, wiliness.

You know, I love it. It was a fucking valiant effort. I tried. But you can see me you see me making that U-turn for miles away.

Would you have made that attempt two years ago before this podcast? Absolutely. No, not at all. So I real biased against puns, as you know. And so I applaud you. And no, I think it's the fact that we're that you have on my life, I'm I'm making you stupider.

You're breaking down those, Kanwal. I am stupid. Are you hard? You know, real hard. Yeah.

Well, great job. Twenty eighteen. Georgia. Thank you. Thank you. Twenty twenty. Karen. I remember hearing that in back then and being so like the details of that story are so much more ridiculous than you even think. Yeah. It's kind of insane, just the storyline of that of her and that it's just spread this wide void.

It's one person's fucking refusal to see reality and.

Yeah.

Useful to fucking take responsibility for themselves that kills people and like changes the course of history because they won't just simply.

Where am I? Oh, wait, what? What? Sorry, what are we talking about anymore? Jesus.

All right. Should we wrap it up with some fucking rice, do it, and then also make sure to stay tuned for the ten fold more wicked preview after the fucking race.

This first one is from Precious Gore grind. And it says, my fucking is that after I lost my job and insurance due to covid, I was not to quietly freaking out. I'm a type one diabetic and was very close to running out of the two insulin's. I take daily because it would have cost me literally thousands out of pocket. I decided to ask the world of Facebook and Instagram if anyone had any to spare a sweet baby. Angel came to the rescue and was able to provide me with enough insulin to last several months.

I can't say thank you enough to that kind stranger for helping me quite literally stay alive.

That's incredible. I was dutiful. Our world wasn't our country wasn't like that. But it's seems like we need health care.

Seems like everybody everyone deserves it. Yeah, I think everyone does deserve it.

And this is from Instagram. It's from Katy B.. Click My fucking right is that after Hurricane Zyda threw a tree on top of our house totaling our car and barely missing our little girl's bedroom window, our neighbors and friends fully restored our faith in humanity.

A neighbor we hardly know found us huddled in the basement and drove us out to grab breakfast. A murderer from across the country sent us a door Dasch gift card and another sent us groceries through insta cart. Neighbors have offered their cars and helping hands, and even though a tree falling on our home is totally on brand for 20 20, I am so damn thankful for the people holding hands metaphorically anyway and helping one another through it.

Beautiful fucking. I love it. I love it. I know it's it's really nice to hear those stories and to and to feel that kind of like when people are given an opportunity they will help other people out. I think it's an important it's an important storyline that doesn't make anybody any money to talk about these days.

But it should happen much more. Yeah, OK. This one's from Bethany.

Dot is dot killing. Dot it. My fucking era is actually a follow up.

Earlier this year, I sent in a fucking array of I don't know if we read the other one. I just love it. Like, don't worry about it. I'll do both. Now, earlier this year, I sent in a fucking hurry about how I had been selected to become a naval officer. Well, just last week, I graduated from Officer Candidate School. I am now the first officer ever in my family's long history of serving in the military.

I've also had many sailors from throughout my tenure, enlisted career reach out and express their excitement. I hope to use my influence to help my sailors.

And like I said months back, I did do this one. I think we did. OK, well, here's the update. Great. I hope I can continue to show all of my sailors that a woman can kill it in this career. Congratulations, Bethany. Way to go. Keep kicking ass. Way to go. And thank you for your service.

Yes, yes. OK, this one is from Lisa Horton. Seventy six. I have a bittersweet foster care. Fucking hooray for you. Mostly sweet. My husband, daughter and I got to be a foster family for the best baby ever. And during the 14 months we had him, his dad was able to make some huge life changes, including getting sober and get to a place where he was able to care for his son again. So we recently had to say goodbye to our boy, which was so hard, but also so sweet and inspiring to see this man who has had a very hard life completely turn his life around for his son.

We are still very close and he faced times us at bedtime every night so we can tell our boy we love him. It's a major success story. And even though we didn't get to keep our favorite boy forever, fucking hurray that we got to be part of such a beautiful process. If anyone out there has ever considered being a foster parent, now is the perfect time.

Oh, isn't that beautiful? Yes, that's lovely.

Yeah, I can't I what an amazing what an amazing thing to do. I guess I, I just have one.

I mean one thing to say and it's just on Halloween this year, my very good friend Patti Reilly died of cancer. And you guys might know her because she is my roommate from college, my friend from high school. I've told tons of stories about her on this show and she was battling cancer for a while and it seemed like she was going to be OK. And she just took a very sudden turn. And I guess I just want to say, first of all, I haven't really processed it in any real way because it happened really fast.

But I know a lot of stuff is going on in the world right now and everybody is stressed and freaked out and there's tons of anxiety and whatever. But you are alive.

And you're lucky, and Paddy was the kind of person who made sure every day that she impacted the people around her, whether it was her or her two boys, her family, her good friends, which she had tons of, she really, really cared about being a good person.

She's also one of the funniest people I've ever known. But she her whole goal in life was to just always really be caring toward other people.

So as much as her death feels like just a complete injustice and it's such an intense loss, the way she lived was such an amazing example of how you can be.

And it's it's something that always impressed me and has always inspired me. So I just wanted to say that I will miss you. Patty, it's your death is a huge, huge loss to so many people.

Thank you, Karen. That's beautiful. I'm I'm so sorry for her family and for you and the world and who doesn't get to know her. Thanks.

Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody's dealing with so much stuff right now. It just feels like then on top of that, when regular tragic life events happen, it's just like it's just it can be so overwhelming.

But I think it's important that everybody just kind of, you know, is grateful.

That's what I'm trying to do, I guess is what I should be saying is I'm trying to focus on the positive. I'm trying to be grateful for what I have, which is so, so much.

And I'm trying to, you know, I don't know, be a better person. I think we all are. Yeah. And it's it's noble in and of itself.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. To Patti. To Patti. Well, thanks for listening, you guys, thanks for being here. We hope, we hope and we hope you hope to.

Yeah, yeah. So much hope. Despite it all, there's just hope there is.

And with that, stay sexy and don't get murdered by Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

OK. Let me tell you this story in upstate New York. There's this little village called Driton, and for centuries, the people there have welcomed strangers into their churches and into their homes. It used to be one of those places where everyone in town was invited to a wedding. So it was a really close, really trusting community.

In 1842, a stranger arrived. He was a handsome, charming, brilliant scholar named Edward Rohloff. He found work with a local farming family, a very prominent family.

Their home was always open to anybody that needed a place to stay or PASSERS-BY. You know, they were just that kind of people.

But something about Edward Roloff was just troubling. He was arrogant. He was snide, and he was sometimes really cruel. And he was absolutely obsessed with his own academic research. He seems like what you would call an incredible narcissist. He's very hostile to people who don't appreciate his own genius. He seduced the family's teenage daughter. And from the very beginning, their relationship was unstable, their fights were vicious, and then they were deadly.

There's a story about him taking her away and her turning around and waving. And that's the last memory like her mother and some of them had of her.

It was a terrible tragedy. It's not that we hadn't had murders here. But not a murder like that, Edward Roloff killed at least five more people over the next 25 years.

Now, this is the beginning of a time when railroads make it possible to move around. It was not particularly uncommon for people to carry on double lives.

People fall for the snake oil salesmen. They actually enjoy the snake oil salesman.

He had everybody fooled for a long time, a sort of like a Ted Bundy. He's confusing to me. And he was the boogeyman in upstate New York.

He's not confusing to me. He's a psychopath.

When Rudolph was caught, it seems like he would finally be punished. But that's not what happened. Scholars and scientists jumped to his defense.

Rudolph claimed that he had made this groundbreaking discovery in the field of linguistics and a lot of people believed him. They argued that his mind was just too valuable to waste on the gallows.

Yeah, if there was a kind of magical key to understanding these languages and that would have made a lot of people's lives a lot easier, would his brain really save his life?

Are there some ideas so astounding, some minds so brilliant that they should allow a killer to get away with murder? People really think that the brain can justify behavior and this is totally mistaken.

Edward Rudolph's brutal crimes and his incredible brain would make history by marking the birth of modern neuroscience. This is just a world changing difference in how we think about brains. It's right up there with understanding evolution.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. And this is tenfold more Wicked, a podcast about the most intelligent killer in American history. Tenfold More Wicked premieres on Monday, November twenty third on exactly right, subscribe now on Stitcher, Apple podcasts or wherever you like to listen.