A brand new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a sudden, brutal death. Starring Allison Williams. I hope you'll think of me. Erased, The Murder of Elma Sands. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl. Let go of me. Until she met that man right there. Written and created by me, Allison Flood. Is it possible, sir?

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Erased the murder of Elma Sands on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Join former 90210 star Brian Austin Green, along with dancing with the star's fan favorite, Sharna Burgess, and Hollywood air turned life coach Randy Spelling, as they navigate life, love, and the quest for happiness in the new podcast, Oldish.

After a few high-profile relationships in a very public divorce, have I finally found the secret to happiness and the key to a successful relationship?

Let's harps are because most of that is with me. Listen to Oldish on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerrys here, too. This is Stuff You Should Know, a little overlooked historical figure edition.

Yeah, boy, this guy. You could do a tin parter on his life.

Easily. I mean, it's nuts. We're talking about a man named Eugene Francois Wirok. He is known as the father of criminology.

Pretty.

Much on the nose. It's a really good title for him.

Yeah, for a good reason.

He's also an inspiration for plenty of detective, first, early detective stories.

He.

Was at one time as famous as Napoleon in France and in Europe in general. He was incredibly famous, incredibly wealthy. And it was because he dedicated himself as a public servant to the city of Paris to basically wipe out crime as best he could at a time when Paris was more overrun with crime than maybe it ever has been in its history.

Yeah, it was a time where the army was very busy, I guess is the best way to say it. And the army took up a lot of the men who might normally be cops and they were preoccupied more with warring than with just taking care of regular police work, and Vitoo stepped up in a big way. And like I said, I had to stop researching because I was like, We can't do a 12-hour podcast on this guy, can we?

No, but you can definitely go down a rabbit hole with him. And one of the reasons why is because depending on the source you consult, he was either a total scumbag scoundrel or genuinely unjustly slandered. I lean toward the second one or closer to the second one. Obviously, no one's perfect, but I do think that the stuff that is really questionable or makes him into a questionable person or character, I think, is remnants of his political rivals, smearing his name so well that it still is around today.

Here's what I think, is that he was, as you'll see, started off as a scoundrel and a criminal, later changed his tune because I think it was beneficial for him to not be in prison all the time.

I.

Think he tried to do the right thing, but also a little bit of that scoundrel lived within him, but he also had people that had it out for him. I think he's a complex guy. I don't think he did a 180 and was like, And now I am pure. I think he did what was best for him, usually, but also wanted to put criminals behind bars and make a few bucks while he did it.

I have a counterpoint to that, but I'll bring it up when we get to that part. But we should tell everybody one of the reasons Vodok is famous, if you have heard of him, is because not only was he the father of criminology, he started out as a genuine, bona fide criminal who was serving time in prison, would escape prison. Then one day, he basically switched sides from an outsider's standpoint and became the top cop in all of France while he was serving.

Yeah, a good way to stay out of jail.

For sure. Let's start with his early life, because he was unquestionably a troublemaker, a hothead, and just a handful. You could definitely say his parents actually let him get arrested when they stole from him once.

Yeah. I mean, you would classify him as a juvenile delinquent today. But it wasn't because he was some poor kid from the poor streets who had to steal to survive. His parents did pretty well. They had a successful bakery in, how do you pronounce that? Aaras?

I think so, yeah.

A-r-r-a-s, and seemed rather middle class. But like you said, he stole from his parents. He was a scoundrel. He pickpocketed. From very early on, seemed like he was a bit of a ladies man. This was his early life until he ran away literally to join the circus. Right. People actually did that. He did that for a few months until he didn't like the work. Then he would eventually work for a Punch and Judy Street show, which is if you guys don't know who Punch and Judy were, they were puppets, right?

Yes, they were. Punch was a wife-battering puppet, and Judy was the abused wife. They gotten- Hysterical, right? Yeah, really violent fights all the time, but it was puppets and kids thought it was hilarious. And he worked for that show, and he had to, I guess he got fired in a way.

I think so. I think as a 15-year-old, he had some attrist with the wife of the guy who was running the thing. Yes. Not very specific. It says that they were embracing, so who knows what that means.

Yeah, but it definitely goes to underscore a lot of things about him. He was very much into the ladies. He didn't mind if it was someone else's lady, if you were someone else's lady. And he was willing to put himself in great danger and at great personal risk to satisfy his own wants, needs, desires.

That's a very nice way to say it.

So he moved back home. He went back to Aras. And I don't know if we said his dad was a baker and his parents were just totally normal, fine parents. But again, basically, when he was caught stealing from them when he was 13, they said, Okay, you're going to jail. When he moved back home after the circus and the punch and Judy Show, he wasn't even 16 yet. They said, All right, you're going to join the army whether you like it or not. They shipped him off to the army while he was 15. That's how bad a kid he was.

Yeah, I think he was drinking, getting in fights and womanizing. He's just one of those kids. They probably just say today that he was, I don't know, what would you call it?

A hothead?

Yeah, teenage hothead.

Yeah.

He's like to steal things sometimes.

Right. And embrace other people's wives.

Exactly.

He did serve in the army. Apparently, he was in battle a few times because this was post-French Revolution. I think he may have been in the army when Napoleon first took power. At the very least, France was on all sorts of adventures. Like you said, it had drained them, their population of potential police people, policeman. He fought in a few battles. He definitely saw some action, and he was fine. But I think probably the biggest takeaway was that he learned how to fence. He became a very great fencer, and that served him well because he was also known to get into duels with people. He actually had to desert the army because he was coming up on charges because he challenged a sergeant to a duel. The sergeant refused him and he smack the sergeant around. That is not something you do in any army at any period of time. He took off and was now a deserty from the army. This is when his actual criminal life really began. Everything else was petty, intemporate, that thing. This is like, okay, I'm a deserter from the army. I need to support myself somehow. I guess I have to turn to a life of crime.

Yeah, he actually deserved it a few times, so I don't think he was super popular among his peers there. He had a habit for just not being there all of a sudden when they called roll call. But eventually, when he finally left for good, he joined up with what was called the Rolling Army. You want to do the French there? You're a French guy.

It was the Armée Roulante.

Okay, the Armée Julante, which was everything I saw about this was that it was a side army. I think it was a couple of thousand men. They just did what they wanted. They wore fake uniforms. They plundered the countryside. They gave themselves fake orders. I'm not exactly sure what real army work they did. I'm sure they did, right?

I don't think so.

I think- Or was it all just a thing to plunder and pillage?

Yes, that's my take. I don't think they were officially sanctioned at all.

Well, no, they weren't officially sanctioned, but I figured theywere... I thought that the real army might have used them at times.

I don't know. I don't know enough about it. It's possible. I mean, you got a couple of thousand people with guns ready to fight. Why not?

Yeah, well, I know they were fake uniforms, and he made up a rank for himself and took a alias. He was Lieutenant Rousseau and eventually even made himself captain. I don't know why he didn't start off as captain as long as he's making things up.

Yeah, he sold himself short there, didn't he?

Well, he became captain eventually.

So he ended up in Paris eventually after he left the Armeyoulant. This was around 1795. The French Revolution had been successful. But there's something to understand about it. One of the reasons Paris was so over him with crime was not just that there was a lack of potential candidates for the police. There was also, the threat of revolution and regime change was constant during these decades. It wasn't like the French Revolution happened and it was over. It was a mess. It was a mess. First, Napoleon comes along and is like, Hey, I'll take over from here. I'm now emperor. He ran France for a really long time, for a decade or something like that. Then he was deposed and a new king was installed. A new king was installed after that. That king was deposed and a new citizen king was put into place. Then around that time, finally, our protagonist dies. But throughout all this time, there's a lot of tension and conflict in the country. And because everybody was preoccupied with that stuff, crime was allowed to flourish. It was a really dangerous, lawless time, particularly in Paris, because a lot of people were also coming to Paris looking for opportunity and that thing.

Just put that in your pipe and hold it in your hat for later because this is the backdrop that he shows up in Paris against.

That's right. He ends up in Paris during this very tumultuous time. Great time to be a criminal in Paris. I don't know about easy to get away with stuff, but you could be a pretty successful criminal at the time. And that's what he did. It's through his 20s and into his 30s, he was in and out of prison, off and on because of various schemes. It was never like, I'm not going to say it was victimless, but it was never violent crimes. It seems like he was really good at forging documents and things like that. And all of his schemes seem to be on the more intelligent side.

Does that make sense? Yeah, he was definitely intelligent. Yes.

Yeah. So it's not like he was walking up and banking someone in the head and stealing their purse. He graduated to more elaborate forgeries and things like that.

Yeah, and he also was a criminal with a heart. He landed in this one prison. What is it called? Bagno, I believe?

Oh, was that where the bread guy was?

Yes. This is a really good example of that. He was finally caught and sentenced for, I think, just three months in prison. Just three months. But while there, he was so moved by a guy who had been given six years for stealing grain to feed his family, who were starving.

He's the bread guy, by the way.

The bread guy, right.

People are confused.

He was so moved by that and thought that it was so unjust that he'd been given six years. He forged documents that he signed as the head of, I think, the prison or the police saying this man is to be released. His sentence has been commuted, and the guy made it made off like he was released. I think it took a few months for the whole thing to finally be found out. But I think the dog was in jail at the time when they did find out, and they gave him eight years for that, for forging papers that released a man who had been given six years for stealing grain.

Yeah. This time he went to a hard labor prison. Like you said, it was called a... I don't know how it's pronounced. I think they started in Italy under a different name, but B-A-G-N-O?

The Bagno.

The Bagno? If you've ever seen the movie, I looked into these, the movie Papillon, the island prison they were on, that was one. I think it was just like a very tough... It was like the toughest of the tough prisons. Hard labor, usually in shackles, very hard to escape from. Yet he did manage to escape even from here. I think he escaped as a sailor and was caught and put back and then escaped again, posing as a nun. So as you will see later, he was, in fact, a master of disguise, was very good at it. And if he was able to pass himself off as a nun, clearly pretty good at it.

Yeah. And it's really something that he escaped not just once but twice from a galley prison because they were originally, before they moved them onto land, they were ships, giant ships with tons of oars sticking out of them. And you would be sentenced to hard labor rowing those oars day in and day out. It was a really rough place to spend eight years. It would also be a really difficult place to escape from, but he did twice. He started to get a reputation as someone who no prison could hold in addition to being a master of disguise. When you start doing stuff like that, your name gets around and you start to become a bit of a legend among not just the criminals, but also law enforcement as well. So his star is starting to rise. I think as we reach this point, Chuck, it's time for message break. What do you think?

As we reach this point, I agree. A brand new historical true crime podcast.

The year is 1800, City Hall, New York.

The first murder trial in the American judicial system.

A manstance trial for the charge.

Of murder. Even with defense lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the case, this is probably the most famous trial you've never heard of.

When you.

Lay suffering a sudden, violent, brutal death. I hope you'll think of me. Starring Allison Williams. I don't need anything simplified, Mr. Hamilton. Thank you. With Tony Golden as Alexander Hamilton. Don't be so sad, Katherine. It doesn't suit you. Written and created by me, Allison Flock.

What are you doing? Let go of me.

Listen to Erased, The Murder of Elma Sands. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl until she met that man right there. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. O. S. H. Murder. Osage County, Oklahoma is getting a lot of attention right now. It's the setting of Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the flower moon, the movie is based on a book about the 1920s Osage murders when white men poured into Osage County and killed Osage people for their oil wealth. I'm Rachel Adams-Heard.

The.

Host of Intrust, a podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartMedia. For over a year, I was reporting a different story about other ways white people got Osage land and wealth and how a prominent ranching family in Osage County became one of the biggest landowners here. Their ranching empire was built on land that at the turn of the century was all owned by the Osage nation. So how did they get it? Listen to the award-winning podcast, InTrust, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Moe Roca, and I'm excited to announce season four of my podcast, Mo'Bituaries. I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us. From famous figures who died on the very same day to the things I wish would die, like buffet. People actually take little tastes along the way with their fingers. They do? Oh, Moe, I'm so sorry. Do you need a minute? This is the only interview where I've needed a spit bucket. I'm so sorry. We'll tell you about the singer who helped define Cool and the sports world's very first superstar.

To call Jim.

Thorp the greatest athlete in American history is.

Not a stretch, because no athlete before.

Or since has done.

What he did. Listen to MoBituaries with MoRaka on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so where we left off, Vidal has escaped prison a couple of times. He was a juvenile delinquent. He was a delinquent into his 20s and into his 30s, through his 20s and into his 30s, and then finally ends up back in Paris. He was trying to get pulled into the criminal underworld again because he was well-known. And he was in a bad spot because if he said no, he would get blackmailed by these low lives and threatened to turn him in because he was a fugitive at this point still. So finally, he was like, All right, what am I doing with my life? All this on-the-run stuff, on the lamb in disguise as a nun. This is for the birds. In 1809, he said, I'm going to go to the cops and I'm going to say, I would like to turn myself in and make myself, well, turn myself in. What he really wanted to do was turn into a police informant and get out of jail. They said, Hey, great idea, but you're going to do that for at least a little while in jail.

Right. That is, Imean, that sounds like, oh, that's cool. That was an incredibly dangerous position to put himself in for two straight years. Still is. Sure. He was an informant, a volunteer informant for the police, and he would inform on anybody. I was saying earlier that I would bring up a counterpoint to the idea that it was just completely self-serving. From what I saw, another explanation is that he never actually thought of himself as a criminal. He thought of himself as an outlaw by circumstance. He had made a lot of bad decisions, he knew that. That had made him run afoul of the law. But he wasn't a criminal. That's not how he wanted to support himself. He didn't have the heart of a criminal. This was a way to basically say, I don't want to be a criminal anymore. I don't want to be associated with these people. I want to change sides and this is how I'm going to try to do it. Or another way to look at it is that he finally grew up, essentially, and realized, Okay, this is not okay. I need to change things. I've worked myself into such a deep hole.

This is the alternative to just going like, Okay, I'm going to become a criminal from now on. Those were his choices. That's how deep the holy duck was. The thing is, Chuck, no matter how you interpret it, whether it was a selfish act, whether it was his destiny, whatever, that shows a remarkable amount of initiative to do that. Like he said, I'm not going to be a criminal. I'm not going to turn a life crime. I'm going to basically put myself in the hands of cops who hate me and see if they will have me as one of their own.

Yeah, I think he probably grew up. I don't know that I buy that. If he had come from nothing, I could buy that. But he came from a pretty good... He wasn't forced into committing crimes to survive.

No, but I think that's why he didn't see himself as a criminal because he had made choices or whatever. He wasn't a criminal. He just didn't see himself like that from what I saw.

He made choices to commit crimes, but didn't see himself as a criminal?

Yes. Okay, yes. Good for him. He made choices that were criminal, but he wasn't making choices to do crime. That wasn't his aim was for crime. He was just making bad decisions that were criminal. That made him a criminal in the eyes of society. I'm not saying like it didn't make him a criminal. He just didn't think of himself as a criminal. To him, there was a differentiation between people who commit crimes and criminals. He did not think very highly of criminals, like career criminals, somebody who would slit your throat for your wallet or something like that.

That to him- Elvis was a drug addict, but Elvis was on pills, and he looked down on real drug addicts that were taking hard drugs like heroin.

It's funny you bring that up because I think of this same him turning over himself to the police to say, Hey, I want to inform for you, as very similar to Elvis showing up at the White House and volunteering to be an undercover NARC agent for Nixon.

Oh, totally. I think they're both pretty hypocritable. For sure.

For sure. That's the thing. I don't want to give the impression that I'm just like an apologist for Vodok. I just think that there is an alternative explanation. One of them is that he didn't see himself as a criminal, even though he was a criminal. I totally agree.

I totally believe that. They're nothing but innocent people in prison if you ask them.

Okay, sure.

That was, what's it called? Chawshank.

Oh, is that who that was?

Yeah, I remember that great scene at lunch or whatever when they were all saying like, Hey, none of us did it. No one in here did any of the crimes that were in here for. It's pretty funny. Anyway, so he, for two years, worked in that prison. Like you said, just what he would do was pass on information to his girlfriend who would get it to the police chief of Paris. And it was going really well, apparently, so well that at some point, he helped Napoleon's wife, Josephine, catch the person who stole her Emerald necklace. And so he was on Napoleon's radar, at least for a moment, I'm not sure how much Napoleon hung on to that, but it was a feather in his cap as an informant, for sure.

For sure. And that police chief was named Jean Henry or Enry, not with an I, but a Y. So I'm not sure how it's pronounced exactly. But he was finally smitten after two years with Vidalq. He was all in for this guy. So he said, Okay, we're going to let you out, but this is an unofficial release. You're actually not going to get pardoned or released on paper because we need you as a police informant, what they used to call thief takers. They were the predecessors to bounty hunters where anybody could go catch thieves and bring them in for money. He was an undercover version of that. That's new, brand new. They did not have undercover police at the time. Vadok has basically carved out a totally unique, peculiar place for himself in the Paris police. It's largely because John Henry believes in him and sees also the value in him going back into the underwater and informing on them, not just from jail, but from the actual outside crime world.

John Henry also said, Stay away from my wife.

Yeah, exactly. I better not find you embracing her.

As a CI, is what you would call it today, I guess. He was doing his thing. He knew the people very well. He knew his old haunts. He was not unwilling to just hand over his friends and former cohorts in the teavery world and the underground. He would do that at a moment's notice. Dave, Ruz, helped us out with this. He found one case where he was actually in on a robbery, helped plant it, helped execute the robbery. And then when the cops come, he pretended like he had been shot so he could get out of the whole thing.

Well, no. So that the robbers who were there wouldn't know that he was a police informant. They would think.

That he was-That's what.

I mean. Yeah. And by the way, that burglar, the robber, St. Germain, was a really wanted man. He was also a murderer. And it was actually a pretty interesting, I guess, project that he undertook and got the guy. We didn't say also, the reason he was able to go back into the Underworld again was because the police staged an escape. They allowed him to escape to make it look like he'd broken out of prison, not that they'd released him so that he would seem like it was Vidal who'd broken out of prison again, and now he was back in the Paris Underworld.

That's right. This Underworld at the time was a Paris where they were released in a way that wasn't tenable. They were confined to districts. And if you were in a district, you couldn't go to another district to investigate. You had to stick to your district. The criminals at the time knew this. They were savvy and so they would commit crimes not near where they lived, which made it a lot easier to get away with stuff. And so Veedok comes in and says, Hey, I was one of these guys. You guys are dumb in how you're doing things because all you have to do is go on the other side of Paris to commit a crime, and you're probably going to get away with it unless you're caught redhanded. And so what you guys should do is continue to allow me to work undercover. I know it's not something you've ever done because you like to wear these ridiculous uniforms that identify you from a mile away. And get rid of these districts and allow cops to investigate wherever they need in order to solve a crime. And they said, Okay, in 1812, they made VDoC chief of the security Brigade.

In French, it is the what?.

Fantastic. And they said, Go hire some men. And he said, All right, I'm going to go hire eight former criminals, ex-cons that I used to know. These are the best of the worst. And it's like the dirty dozen. He's like, Except that was the dirty eight. It was the dirty Ocho. And they said, Come with me, and we're all going to be this undercover agent security Brigade, and we're going to clean up Paris.

Yeah, and I think that definitely undermines the idea that he had no loyalty whatsoever to the people he'd met as a criminal in Paris. He just didn't have loyalty to actual real criminals. He distinguished the difference between people who commit crimes and actual criminals. And so.

He-was he accused of disloyalty?

Yeah. We said earlier that he had no loyalty whatsoever to the Paris criminal community.

Oh, I don't think so. I think he turned in people he thought should be turned in and.

Was loyal to his friends. These are the people that he picked. Yes, it's very unorthodox. I think if Paris hadn't been overrun with crime, he never would have been able to put together a Paris-wide undercover police force made up of ex-convicts. It even sounds nuts today in 2023. I can't imagine what it sounded like back in 1812. But his whole premise was, if you send somebody who's a cop, give me a great cop who could do undercover work, he'll get sniffed out immediately and they will murder him. He will die. You can't have people who don't come from this do this work. It was very dangerous, undercover work. And so that's the main reason why he chose these ex-cons. But I also get the impression, too, is that part of it was to just demonstrate his point that just because somebody had done time and been convicted of a crime doesn't mean they could never be trustworthy again.

I think you misspoke. I think you meant snipped off the case, right?

That's right. Man, how could I have missed that one?

Do we break now or do we go for a little bit longer?

I think we should talk a little bit more about the security Brigade.

Okay. So started in 1812, like you said, it turned out to be a really big success. Napoleon, just a year later, signed a decree that said the security Brigade is a state police force now, and you can have up to 28 men is what they grew to. And I think through four or five years into it, and of course, some of this stuff is we should say, Veduck would write a lot about his memoirs and stuff. He was not shy about tooting his own horn, let's say. And he's one of those guys where if you read his memoir, some of it could be boasting, some of it could be stretching the truth a little. But we do know that they were super successful. No one is doubting that. But he touted 15 murderers in just one year, 15 murderers, 341 thieves, 38 receivers of stolen goods, 14 escaped convicts, 43 parole violations, 46 foragers, swindlers, con men, 229 vagabons, and suspicious types. They're kicking butt and taking names.

In Paris. Yeah, make a note of this for later and put it in your pipe, in your hat that this is a group of criminals who are showing up the regular police. The regular police are not really fans of being shown up in the public. The public was reading all about this stuff.

Yeah, they were getting.

Famous for it. Very much so. They were pulling in the big whales while the police were chasing down pickpockets and stuff like that.

Yeah, Oliver Twist.

There was a definite rivalry. Sure, yeah, he was a pickpocket, right?

No, I don't think so.

Are you thinking of Annie? Annie was a pickpocket. No.

I've already misspoken on Oliver Twist and Annie before, so I'm not going to do it again. Forget everything I said, everybody. Don't write in.

Yeah, for sure.

We know how to make the division symbol on a keyboard.

Exactly. Now we do. What was I saying, Chuck?

You were saying that he was landing the Whales.

Yes. There was a lot of rivalry and disdain for the security Brigade from the regular police. Just remember that.

They didn't like him.

They did not.

All right, so a few things. Dave found some great anecdotes from the security Brigade. We already know that he knew a lot about the crime world and these criminals. Apparently, there was this one story where he would know their methods, like specific people in their methods. There was story about this robbery that they found where a thief had cut around a lock. He was like, I know who did that. I know that work. That is Fawzard. In the movie version, they said, That can't be Fawzard. Fawzard is in prison. Someone steps up and said, Fawzard escaped from prison one week ago. V-doc says, Then it is him.

It's awesome.

I.

Feel like the guy who stepped up to inform everybody that he escaped from prison was Agadore Sparticus from The Birdcage.

I never saw that movie.

Really? I'm excited for you, Chuck. It's one of my big holes. You need to fill that hole, and you'll do it over and over again. You'll keep filling that hole over and over again because it's such a great movie. Just get dirty. You can just watch it so many times.

Also don't email about and scene. We've already been over that before. It's just a joke. I meant and scene.

And scene.

What else? There was an envelope, a scrap of envelope with a half of an address. Supposedly, Vidak was able to make out the full address because he knew about all the criminal hangouts like, This is where it must be.

That thing? I mean, that's just like, Who else is going to be able to do that? Nobody. Vodok. He was not shy about going out guns blazing. They got a tip that a stage coach was going to get knocked over in the forest outside of Paris. So they got on the stagecoach undercover. And when the Bandits inevitably showed up and stopped the stagecoach, they got out and started just shooting, and it got root and tooting really fast.

Now, should we take a break? Yeah.

I think we've established that the security Brigade is pretty successful.

They were very successful. They're doing great work. And we'll be right back to talk about his pioneering work in criminology right after this. A brand new historical true crime podcast.

The year is 1800, City Hall, New York.

The first murder trial in the American judicial system.

A manstance trial for the charge.

Of murder. Even with defense lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the case, because this is probably the most famous trial you've never heard of.

When you.

Lay suffering a sudden, violent, brutal death. I hope you'll think of me. Starring Allison Williams. I don't need anything simplified, Mr. Hamilton. Thank you. With Tony Goldwin as Alexander Hamilton- Don't be so sad, Katherine. It doesn't suit you. -written and created by me, Allison Block.

What are you doing it? Let go of me.

Listen to Erased, the murder of Elma Sands. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl until she met that man right there. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Mo'Raka, and I'm excited to announce season four of my podcast, Mo'Bituaries. I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us. From famous figures who died on the very same day to the things I wish would die like buffet. People actually take little tastes along the way with their fingers. They do? Oh, Moe, I'm so sorry. Do you need a minute? This is the only interview where I've needed a spit bucket. I'm so sorry. We'll tell you about the singer who helped define Cool and the sports world's very first superstar.

To call Jim Thorp the greatest athlete in American history is.

Not a stretch because no athlete before.

Or since has done what he did.

Listen to MoBituaries with MoRaka on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, beautiful people. I'm Saeeda Garrett, Grammy winner and two-time Oscar-dominated singer-songwriter and passionate knitter. And now, host of my very own show, The Uppity Knitter Podcast, Celebrity Hobbies, Uncovered. Ever wonder how celebrities spend their spare time when they're not on stage or in the studio or in front of a camera? Well, I'm calling all my celebrity friends to come on my show and.

Spill the.

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Feel like in the movie version, that would have been a Montage that we just discussed.

I think Depardieu, it definitely was a montage. I think Depardieu played him in a movie called VeeDoc, but it wasn't his life story. It was a lot of mistakes I think movies make. They're just like, Hey, let's just talk about this one central crime and plot, and VeeDoc is the guy on the case.

Okay, that makes sense. It sounds like they were trying to grow a franchise successfully.

Yeah, I guess they did that with the Sherlock Holmes movies. I think I'd just like to see a movie about him, like his real life.

Yeah. I mean, it writes itself.

It does.

Even if you strip away the legend stuff, it writes itself. He's just that fascinating. We call them the father of modern criminology. Not just us guys, everybody calls him that. The reason why is because he was pioneering all sorts of techniques of criminology that are still used today.

It's.

Amazing. It is. On the one hand, you can be like, This is all low hanging fruit. He's the first guy doing it. But when you put it all together, he was a sharp dude. It also shows how zeroed in and focused he was on fighting crime. This is what he thought.

About it. I don't think it was low hanging fruit. No one else is doing this stuff. Right. I think that's a retrospective look. I don't know. I think if it was low hanging, people would have.

Been doing it. Okay, let's take ballistics, for example. He is credited with doing the first ballistics comparison in the history of law enforcement.

Yeah. 1822, the body of Comtessa, Isabel Darcy, was found shot to death. They arrested the husband. Even back then, it's likely that the husband did it. They took his dueling pistol and it's like, This is the murder weapon. He was like, It wasn't me. She had an Italian lover, and I guarantee it was that guy. Vee Doc, very simply was like, Hey, let's remove that bullet from the skull. They got the bullet out, and they were like, You can't put a bullet like that in a dueling pistol. They tracked down the Italian lover, he confessed. I see why he called low hanging fruit because it seems like it makes so much sense just to say, Well, hey, let's look at the bullet. But I don't know if no one else is suggesting it.

No, for sure. And even if that had been his only contribution, you would be like, Yeah, that's neat or whatever, but I wouldn't call it remarkable. It's the fact that he came up with so many different things. And the only reason I call it low hanging fruit is not to put him down, but because I think that over time, somebody would have had the same thought.

I agree.

No one just had. But he was basically standing under the tree, spinning, grabbing all the fruit. That was one of the things that makes him remarkable. He was a fruit grabber.

He was grabbing that falling fruit.

I got another one. Let's hear it. -footprint analysis.

This is a good one. Yeah.

We would have no idea that Bigfoot exists if Vidok hadn't come along and figured out that you can actually make a reverse, a negative of a footprint if you fill the footprint in with plaster. A plaster of Paris, appropriately.

Yeah. He's like, Can I get plaster? They're like, This is Paris. What are you, are you.

Kidding me? It's everywhere. This was a lead heist. Someone had stolen a bunch of lead, and it turned out to be a former police agent, but he made a cast of the footprint, compared it to the boot threads of other suspects, and found one that matched. The guy was like, Yes, it was me. Vodok, you found me out.

Amazing. He also early on in this one to me is really remarkable. He was like, All right, that footprint thing worked. And he was like, Figureprints? That's got to be a thing. Mike, look at these. Look at this. Look at your thumb, everybody. And everyone looked at their thumb. And they all had cream on it. And so they licked it off and then looked at their thumb. They're like, Oh, wow. And he said, We could probably use this, too, but they just couldn't find a way to do it. They didn't have the technology yet. They couldn't find an ink that would work and record the fingerprints properly. That didn't happen, but he had the idea.

Yeah. That ink and the forger proof paper, he came up with while he ran a paper mill during one of his down periods between fighting crime.

Yeah, I think that was later in life. Wouldn't that like a retirement job? Or am I wrong about that?

It was in between his reign as head of the security Brigade and his next act. What came next? We'll just leave it at that.

Okay, I got you.

So what else?

The other thing he did was he had a great memory, apparently, and was really good at remembering the people and the faces of the people of the Underworld, and their names. And the first thing he did was said, All of you cops should get good at that, too, because that really helps if you go to the prisons and observe the guys in prison and the exercise yard and remember their faces, remember their names. And maybe we should start writing this stuff down and keeping track of criminals, actually. And they went, Well, we have never done such a thing. And he said, We'll start doing it. And that was the beginning of... I mean, it was like a card catalog at the time, but that was the beginning of, what do you call it?

The Criminal Database?

Yeah, Criminal Database.

Yeah, profiling? Sure. But I mean, it was everything. If you were a forger, they would have a sample of your handwriting. It was really detailed. I saw that it had, I think, 30,000 Crooks information, but it covered millions of pages, essentially. That's awesome. Yeah, they were really into it. Then another thing he helped establish was essentially the criminal profiling from a psychological standpoint. He wrote a treatise called L'Avelure's Psychology de l'Heure, Mure's.

A d'Heure. Not psychology, physiology.

Okay, let me try that again. L'avelure's Cologne, Physiology de l'Heure, Mure, a d'Heure, L'Longue. I think that's how you say language. But anyway, it means thieves, and I added the colon, and he actually used a comma, An anatomy of and their language. It was a study of the mind of a thief, and it was evidence-based. It was a scientific paper that he wrote about the criminal mind. I think that actually undermines the idea that his memoirs were like him just being over the top. I saw that he had written a manuscript for his memoirs, handed it in. Then after he handed it in, the publisher hired a ghostwriter.

To punch it up. How did they guess it up.

And then he wasn't super happy about that when he found the final product when he read the book.

Oh, he was, in fact a humble man?

I don't know about that, but I don't- Somewhere in the middle? -think he was as boastful as he has a reputation for based on his memoirs.

Okay. We mentioned, he was a master of disguise, as were his men and his police force. And they could do it all. They were like Monty Python. They would dress up as, like we said, nuns and women and old people, young people, thieves, obviously. It was... And it was a time, and it sounds a little nonsensical that thieves would dress and speak in a certain way and wear their hair in a certain way. But there's been times in history when that was the case. If you look at some of the old gangster, British gangsters of a time did the same thing. You carry yourself. And I think today, even, and you would call it profiling, but there's certain ways of dress to be in the world where crimes are happening.

There always has been. Yeah, you wear tracksuits. Oh, no.

I'm wearing a tracksuit right now. Criminal?

I would turn you if I were the duck.

But they had their own style, so they would obviously were very good at mimicking that style. In the memoirs, and this could have been a ghostwriter because it is very flourishy, apparently, he had a habit very cinematically of pulling off his mask or his costume at the last moment and saying, It is I, Vedok. As the shackles are being put on the criminal. Yes. Or like Tom Cruise in any Mission Possible movie.

That's right. So Chuck, I said everybody should remember that he had lots of enemies in the real police, regular police. And they routinely accused him of illegal activity, like planning evidence, accepting bribes, and trapping people, kidnapping young women to take them off to convent, to become nuns at their parents' behest.

Yes, I.

Saw that. All of the stuff, these are accusations. None of these things were proven. He was never even taking a court for most of them. There were two cases that sullied his reputation that gave the police the chance to really drag him through the mud. One was that one of his agents was accused of helping a group of robbers that he actually busted, that he had taken some money from them for bringing a key so they could break into a place easier. He got two years. It's not clear that that actually did happen, but the guy got two years anyway. And had so laid his reputation on the line that not only he could be trusted, but his agents could be trusted too, that he resigned. He was like, That's fine, I'll resign. I'm clearly not meant for this any longer. My reputation has been tarnished and I'm just going to go off and start a paper mill. He was brought back and he was the head for another year or something like that. And then he said, You know what? Forget this. I'm going to go out and start my own detective agency, the world's first detective agency, I think almost 20 years before the Pinkertons even started.

Yeah, I think it was twofold for the cops. They definitely didn't like that he was outshining them. And I think they were always suspicious that he never left his criminal past behind because he lived beyond his means of his salary. I can't remember how much he made as a salary. I think it was like 5,000- Franks? Franks at the time. And he lived as a man who had much more money than that. So he had all kinds of side hustles. He was in real estate. I think he helped run a tavern. And so he made extra money doing other things. And I think they were always suspicious that he was still dabbling in criminality. One thing he did that was I thought fairly interesting, and I'm not sure how illegal it was. There was a thing at the time where you could pay somebody to take your place in the army, basically. If you didn't want to go to the army, you could offer up a substitute. You could pay that substitute, and they were glad to take the money to do that. And what he would do was he would catch a criminal and say, Hey, you want to go to prison?

Or you want to go to the army? And if they said, I'd rather go to the army, he would say, Here's your substitute. Now give me my money. So whether or not that's actually illegal, who knows? It's borderline. And I think stuff like that made the cops that added to their ire, I think, because he was making more money than they were.

That definitely happened. That was proven that he did that. That wasn't just an accusation that turned into fact over time?

I'm not sure. I read it in a book. It wasn't like some internet article. It was from an.

Actual book. It was not on YouTube.

No, it wasn't a book.

Okay, so regardless of this, he's founded this new detective agency, again, the first detective agency in the world. He started out basically collaring white-collar criminals for large corporate clients, people who swindled them, made off with money, embezzled, that stuff. There was one case in particular, and this was after years, years of this successful detective agency continuing to show up the security Brigade. His successor's brother ran a bank. When the bank got knocked over, the brother came to Vidalq, not the head of the security Brigade who he was related to. There was a case where he had caught a guy who had absconded with money. He brought him into the office for questioning and convinced the guy to give up 2,200 francs to just begin repayment. Put it in his account as he normally did to then hand over to the people who had hired him less than 45% they promised him for finding. That happened, and a week later, the cops show up and arrest him for false imprisonment, impersonating the police officer and taking bribes, essentially. This is where his reputation really got tarnished.

Yeah, by most accounts, it was a set-up, like a complete set-up. Right.

They looked all over to find people who would say in court that he was a crook. They couldn't find anybody. Even other criminals, they couldn't find anybody except for this one guy, Kampai, who was the one person who accused him. He, regardless, is convicted given, I think, five or six years. Within apparently weeks, he gets his case in front of the appellate court who took less than a day to throw the case out because he'd clearly been railroaded and exonerated him. But his reputation had been so solid, even at the time, his star really fell. He looked around for somebody to sell the detective agency to. Apparently, there were plenty of buyers, but they were fraudsters just looking to take advantage of people. He just closed the thing down instead. Amazing. Here's another example. You hear that he got 10 months. He spent 10 months in jail for that crime, impersonating a police officer and all that. He didn't. He spent 10 months in between the time he was accused and the time he was finally brought to trial. Then after that, he was acquitted within weeks of being convicted. Does that make sense? That detail, that matters hundreds of years on.

It does. The cherry on top of this story is that Vee Doc left behind a really interesting literary legacy. Not only just the books he wrote, he wrote memoirs like we said. He wrote that crime book, the science book that was so great. But Victor Hugo, he had friends like this. Victor Hugo and Balzac, one of my favorite names, they use him as inspiration. If you read the book, Le Miserab, or go see that Broadway show, if you see that awesome movie and you cry every time Anne Hathaway sings like I do, it's amazing.

Because she's good or bad at it.

Have you never seen it?

No, I saw the stage play.

It's great.

Or the musical, I guess.

Great. They did something different in that musical where they didn't lip sync. They actually recorded them singing in the moment on stage, on the scene, and they had never done that before. And so it's palpable and real, and boy, it's good. I loved it. So, Lay Miz, though, is the story about a man who gets put in jail for stealing bread. So that might sound familiar from V-Doc's real life. But apparently Hugo actually used both of the characters, Jean Valjan and... Who's the.

Other guy? Inspector Javer.

Javer as inspirations. He was the inspiration for both because he was both criminal and cop later on. Not only that, but I mentioned, Balzac, he cited VeeDoc specifically as inspiration for Valtren, his character. Then, of course, once you see who the character is, it makes a lot of sense. Escape convict and criminal mastermind who repents and becomes a police officer, a minister police in Italy.

Yeah. Not bad. So the what's widely believed to be the first modern detective novel was The Murders in the Room morgue by Eggrell and Poe. And there's an amateur French detective named Du Pin. Poe said that he definitely based DuPin on Vidalq. One that's a little less clear, a little less direct is Sherlock Holmes. There's some traits between Sherlock Holmes and Vidalch like Masters of Disguise and dealing with the criminal underworld for information and all that stuff. But Sherlock Holmes was based on a French detective that came before, Michel Lecoq. Emile Gabrieau, who wrote the books that Lecoq was the protagonist of, definitely modeled Lecoq on Vedoc. So LeCoc was based on Vodok, and Sherlock Holmes was based on LeCoc.

So I think by transited property?

Oh, nice. Is that it? I hope so, man.

Mass.

So that's it.

What a guy.

Yeah, he definitely deserves at least a decent movie, if not a franchise, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Can't you find someone besides Gérard Des Bardou? Surely. I feel like he was just the guy for so long. He's old now, and I think he didn't get Me Too'd.

I don't know. I know that France was like, You stink because he moved so we wouldn't have to pay high taxes.

Maybe.

That's the last thing I heard of. There's one other thing. There's a group called the VEDOC Society in Philadelphia that's made up of criminologists and people in law enforcement who take cold cases on pro bono during their monthly lunches and try to inject new life into the cases.

You know they love that name.

For sure.

The VEDOC Society. Pretty cool. They all come in in disguise and then rip.

Off their masks. They say, It is I.

At lunch. That's right. Every day.

Well, that's V-Doc for you. If you want to know more about them, there's a lot of interesting contradictory stuff out there to read. Since I said contradictory, that means, of course, it's time for Listen or Mail.

I'm going to call this My Way or The Skyway. That has nothing to do with it. It's just about the Skyway disaster. We heard from a doctor. This is a really good email. Hey, guys, just recently started listening to the show. Found the episode, Hyatt Regency, Skywalk disaster, very interesting. I'm a physician and was in residency at a hospital in Kansas City, not far from the Crown Center at that time. I was on call that Friday night and was watching TV with a number of other residents when I heard the news and we knew that we were in for a busy night. I'm writing in basically to mention two things I thought you might find interesting. Ironically, the Kansas City Metro area had planned for a mass disaster drill the next day. Of course, the drill was canceled and instead the response to the actual disaster was analyzed, resulting in significant changes for future plans for a response to a mass disaster. That's incredible. And this one, both of my sons graduated from college with engineering degrees. A few years ago, they were taught about the height disaster in their classes, and there are still lessons to be learned from what happened even decades later.

That is from Dr. Paul M. Jost of.

Kansas City. Thanks a lot, Dr. Jost. That was an amazing email. Jeez, that's some background right there.

Yeah. Hey, way to get on listener mail as a new listener. That's well done.

Yeah, just pat yourself on the back. Take off your lab coat so you have a little extra stretching room and pat yourself on the back.

That's right. Also, Doc, I got this shoulder thing going on. Sorry.

Well, if you want to be like Dr. Joste and send us some really arcane info about an episode that we did, we'd love to hear that stuff. You can send it to us via email. It's stuffpodcast@iheartradio. Com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A brand new historical true crime podcast.

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Lay suffering a sudden, brutal death. Starring Allison Williams. I hope you'll think of me. Erased the murder of Elna Sands. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl. Let go of me. Until she met that man right there. Written and created by me, Allison Flood. Is it possible, sir?

We're standing by for.

Your answer. Erased the murder of Elna Sands on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hello, beautiful people. I'm Saeeda Garrett, award-winning singer-songwriter and passionate kniter. Now, host of the Uppity Knitter Podcast, Celebrity Hobbies Uncovered. I'll be spilling the tea on the hidden talents of your favorite stars. Tune in to the Uppity Knitter Podcast, Celebrity Hobbies Uncovered. With me, Saeeda Garrett, for a stitch of inspiration and pearls of laughter. Subscribe now on the iHeart Radio app and Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Join former 90210 star Brian Austin Green, along with dancing with the star's fan favorite, Sharna Burgess, and Hollywood heir turned life coach Randy Spelling, as they navigate life, love, and the quest for happiness in the new podcast, Oldish.

After a few high-profile relationships in a very public divorce, have I finally found the secret to happiness and the key to a successful relationship.

That's Harpstar because most of that is with me. Listen to Oldish on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.