34 - Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

In this episode of Drawn to Darkness, we dive into Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a packed, fact-filled account of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the terrifying crimes of H. H. Holmes. Along the way, we unpack Daniel Burnham’s impossible project management nightmare, Frederick Law Olmsted’s dramatic hatred of flowerbeds, power boats, and mediocre gravel paths, the invention of the Ferris wheel, the rise of Kodak snapshots, Juicy Fruit, Cracker Jack, the dishwasher, spray paint, zippers, Shredded Wheat, and far too many things that apparently came from one fair.

But beneath the White City’s glowing spectacle is Holmes’ so-called murder castle: a labyrinth of rooms, corridors, chutes, gas lines, hidden spaces, and a basement that feels straight out of Silence of the Lambs. We discuss Holmes’ charm, aliases, fraud, manipulation, blue eyes, possible small ears of vice, and his horrifying ability to sense vulnerability “the way another man might capture the trace of a woman’s perfume.”

We also ask the important questions: would you rather go to an event at Harvard or Yale? Is Chicago deep dish actually pizza or a casserole? And how many red flags does a man need to wave before someone checks the basement?

Content & Spoiler Warning

Serial murder, fraud, gaslighting, grave robbing, gassing, botched or illegal abortions, the horrors of life without modern dentistry and vaccines, and the intense stress of impossible project management. We also spoil The Devil in the White City, including the crimes of H. H. Holmes.

Palate Cleanser

After all that murder and fraud, watch Maul on Disney+ for the Star Wars completists, and Daredevil in preparation for the next Spider-Man movie, and Stranger Things with the kids.

Recommendations:

Erik Larson’s other books, including Dead Wake and Isaac’s Storm.

The Wager for more novelistic nonfiction that will make you annoy everyone around you with historical facts.

The Alienist for an old-timey hunt for an 1890s serial killer.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll for a fictionalised challenge to the idea that Ted Bundy was some criminal genius.

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule.

The Five, about Jack the Ripper’s victims.

If you want to know more about H.H. Holmes, check out Last Podcast on the Left’s episode on H. H. Holmes and Lore's episode “The Castle.” And for more information about the era, try the Dollop episodes on the Pinkertons, Tesla and Edison, and “Cereal Men” with Patton Oswalt.

Titanic for Gilded Age vibes, plus the book’s Titanic connection.

Loving Frank for Frank Lloyd Wright-related drama.

Heretic, Barbarian and Black Phone for scary basements.

American Psycho and The Talented Mr Ripley for monsters with a facade.

Horns by Joe Hill, inspired by Holmes’ own claim that his head and face were becoming devil-like.

Instant Dream Home on Netflix for stressful, probably-not-real renovation timelines.

Weezer’s Pinkerton.

And always:

Arrested Development, because Buster Bluth was also a mama’s boy, as H.H. Holmes claims, and Olmsted has Lucille Bluth-level dramatic energy.

Parks and Recreation, because of the Harvest Fest, Leslie Knope-level organisation, and Ben Wyatt-style cost-cutting.

Homework

Horror double feature. Amontillado wine features twice on menus at the fair, so read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and watch Silence of the Lambs because the real Buffalo Bill performed at the fair.

And remember:

Beware of charm, aliases, suspicious life insurance requests, and men who need a shovel to bury “potatoes” in the cellar.

Special thanks to Nancy Azano for our cover art (Instagram: @nancyazano) and Harry Kidd for our music (Instagram: @harryjkidd, Spotify). 

Transcript

Anne 0:10

Welcome back to John to Darkness, a sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly podcast where we discuss our favorite horror and true crime. If you've ever stayed at a hotel and wondered if anyone was murdered there, we're here for you. My name is Annie and I'll be introducing Caroline to my favorite horror movies, podcast, TV shows and books.

Caroline 0:25

And my name is Caroline, and I'll be doing the same from the true crime side of things.

Anne 0:29

Before we get into our focus for today, we just have one correction to make that we've been shame spiraling over. Caroline, do you wanna talk about that?

Caroline 0:38

So it's my turn for a shame spiral. So, when we were discussing Jurassic Park we were discussing the T-Rex, I kept saying he, which as we know,

Anne 0:47

They're all girls.

Caroline 0:48

shes well until some of them

Anne 0:50

Life finds away.

Caroline 0:51

Yeah. I don't, know why I thought that the scary predator I assumed would be a man. I just, I,

Anne 0:58

Oh,

Caroline 0:58

don't know

Anne 0:59

that's so weird. Why would anyone think the scary predator is a man? Hmm.

Caroline 1:04

I don't know, but my apologies.

Anne 1:06

I forgive you. have a question for you. What's your favorite amusement park ride?

Caroline 1:09

well, so I recently went to Disney, as you know, and my favorite from, and Universal. And my favorite from all of that was Hagrid, whatever it's called.

Anne 1:18

Is it a rollercoaster?

Caroline 1:19

Yeah, it's a rollercoaster.

Anne 1:20

Okay.

Caroline 1:20

I guess rollercoasters, I would say. 'cause also Hulk.

Anne 1:23

like rollercoasters too. I really like the Guardians of the Galaxy One at Disney in California. That's really good because I like speed

Caroline 1:30

Yeah.

Anne 1:30

the loop.

Caroline 1:31

too.

Anne 1:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Caroline 1:32

the dark is so good.

Anne 1:33

I don't like spinning. Like my worst ride is the teacup ride. You know, the one like for toddlers,

Caroline 1:38

A thousand percent. I told my kids I won't do anything spinning.

Anne 1:41

nauseating. Absolutely nauseating. the reason I'm asking you about this is because today we are discussing Eric Larson's nonfiction book about the 1893 Colombian Exposition Devil in the White City, before we begin content. And spoiler warning, this is not just about a big state fair, it is also about America's first serial killer or one of them at least. So content warning, there are bodies in greased shoots, gassing. There's murder of children and, partners. psychopaths, grave robbing, gaslighting, disposal of bodies. the intense stress of managing a project with too many cooks and not enough time. That might be triggering for a lot of us. And also we will be spoiling the book Devil in the White City, and both the murderous exploits of HH homes and the drama of landscape architecture. So if you can't bear to have that spoiled, go read it. It's worth it. Okay, Carolyn, can you tell us what this is about?

Caroline 2:30

so Larson's, 2003 Devil in the White City uses chapter hopping perspectives to intertwine two major historical, historical events just so happened to take place in the same place, Chicago at the same time. 1893, Columbian Exposition, AKA World's Fair, Chicago, and America's first serial Killer. The World's Fair Chapters tell the story of the trials and tribulations of architect Daniel Burnham. Some that could be expected, such as intense time, pressure, budget overruns, labor disputes, and of course death by committee and others, not so much such as high winds, fires, quicksand like soil, the death of a partner and a political assassination peppered with an almost absurd number of things we still use today. Every other page, you're like, wait, What That came from the world's fair. but then of course, it's not all fun and games, and that's why I've read it. the other half of the book tells the story of Henry Mut, AKA Henry Howard Holmes, AJ Toms a charming, handsome, and completely remorseless, conman and serial killer sees the world's fair as the world's greatest hunting ground. Using a revolving door of tradespeople to avoid detection. He builds a hotel of horrors nearby the fairgrounds. The murder castle, as it becomes known, has airtight rooms he can flood with gas, a chute conveniently sized for a body and a basement kiln at exactly the right temperature to dispose of. One as too many women in his orbit disappear without a trace, and his creditors begin to circle Holmes kidnaps and disposes of the children of his assistant, and is ultimately caught for insurance fraud. his murders are discovered, he's put to death by hanging in 1896.

Anne 4:05

What adjective would you use to describe this?

Caroline 4:07

Packed,

Anne 4:07

What?

Caroline 4:08

packed,

Anne 4:09

Hack? Okay. I thought you said hack.

Caroline 4:11

Just like packed with like, oh, no way. Oh, no way. just a million references.

Anne 4:16

I agree. I think I have more notes for this than I've had for like anything else, and I'm gonna have to really censor myself because otherwise we'll just go on too long. I thought it was fascinating. That was my adjective, I read this back when it came out, which I guess would've been when we were in college, but I don't really remember reading it then. I just know my whole family read it and everyone was talking about it.

Caroline 4:33

I read it in my twenties, so I didn't read it in college, but I read it when I was dating my now husband, partly because I was like, look, I'm reading about architect stuff. Even though those chapters, I, was so not interested, I only, it's like super interested in the other chapters.

Anne 4:49

I like those chapters. I mean, I'm gonna say like, I came for the murder, but stayed for the fair, When in reality, the victims came for the fair and ended up murdered.

Caroline 4:57

Mm-hmm.

Anne 4:58

and I saw this person on Reddit. Who I wanna quote with the name Dr. Holga, who said, this book is not for the true crime murder girlies. It's for the bitter event planners, which really made me laugh. yeah. I found the, prepping, event planning, actually quite fascinating. By the end, in the beginning I'm like, okay, get back to the murder please. But towards the end, I really, I really enjoyed it.

Caroline 5:18

think it's pretty lopsided for me.

Anne 5:20

Okay. You do a lot of project management, right? Did that trigger you in any way?

Caroline 5:26

Not only am I a project manager, but I'm married to an architect, as I said, so like when. also renovated our own home with him as the architect. So like there was a quote, everything seemed to take longer than it should and nothing went smoothly. I was like, and this was a surprise to you, like, this is your first rodeo. I don't, I don't understand. And when the budget was going way over, I was like, yeah, I mean, of course I would've expected that.

Anne 5:49

Do you guys ever watch Grand Designs?

Caroline 5:51

No.

Anne 5:51

It's this English show about people who have grand designs the. Host keeps returning to their home, like throughout the years potentially of renovating, and they always go over budget and You know, like it's very predictable. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, give a little bit of background information on the writer Eric Larson. Have, have you read anything else by him?

Caroline 6:11

no.

Anne 6:11

He's great. I've read his one on the US Ambassador to Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime, the sinking of the Luan. He wrote one called Dead Wake. There's one on the Galveston hurricane called Isaac's Storm, and he's written a bunch of other ones that I haven't read, but they're all great. I'm in the middle of listening to his audio book, which is a a novella inspired by Shirley Jackson's haunting of Hill House, and it's about all these kind of people who converge on a. Haunted house known for disappearances on an island that's remote in like 1905, and I'm enjoying it so far.

Caroline 6:43

Hmm.

Anne 6:44

So I listened to an armchair expert interview with him, and I really like him. He's one of us. He's a high-functioning introvert. He had a murder encyclopedia when he was young, which is where he first encountered HH Holmes. He specifically said that he's drawn to darkness on this interview, and I was like, oh my God. when he was looking for a house at one point he told a real estate agent that he wouldn't mind something with a bit of a witchy element. He was a Nancy Drew fan, and his first book was Nancy Drew fan fiction as a kid. So I was like, oh, I feel like I have a lot in common with this guy.

Caroline 7:14

totally. We had this, uh, when the house we live in now, when we went to the walkthrough in the basement, there's like a shower in the unfinished basement. There's this like cement shower with this really creepy old pink shower curtain.

Anne 7:26

So that's where the murderer cleaned up

Caroline 7:28

Right. I

Anne 7:28

your house?

Caroline 7:29

the, oh, the murder shower, like where you

Anne 7:31

Yeah.

Caroline 7:31

up after? I was like, I'll take it. So,

Anne 7:35

Well, he got his start as a journalist on a crime beat, and he talks about like visiting a psychic at one point as part of an investigation and actually feeling like a supernatural presence. So for someone who is, it's interesting that someone who's so grounded in research and nonfiction would also be open to the paranormal. Kind of like me.

Caroline 7:54

mm-hmm.

Anne 7:55

his writing process is pretty interesting. He basically picks a subject that he's into that has sparked something in his head, and then he actually heads to like physical archives, like the Library of Congress and just starts reading, sees what story emerges, and then works on that. And he says he works for like four years. He specifically said, lucky him. I don't have a second job. I don't have to teach. Whew. Lucky him. All I do is read Dream job because I love researching stuff. I love the two weeks I spend researching whatever it is we're covering and just kind of diving into it. And to have four years to deep dive on a subject is just so, so lucky.

Caroline 8:27

I had a lot of jealousy too, while reading this. All these guys that were like, I just want $50,000, and they're like, fine, you know?

Anne 8:34

Yeah. Spared no expense.

Caroline 8:36

Yeah.

Anne 8:37

And then when he was researching the Chicago some really boring book, he talks about how boring this book was about the Chicago World's Fair. He saw footnote for the Juicy Fruit thing and that he's a big fan of Juicy Fruit. And that was like the spark for him. and he decided the connection 'cause he wanted to write about HH Holmes would be the contrast between the darkness and the light, which he explores in this

Caroline 8:56

juicy

Anne 8:56

and

Caroline 8:57

the inventions.

Anne 8:58

Right. There's so many other, more important things.

Caroline 9:00

Yeah.

Anne 9:01

I don't like Juicy Fruit. Do you?

Caroline 9:02

I don't think I have an opinion. I'm not I'm just not really like a gum person

Anne 9:07

I'm not a gum person anymore. I used to be, but I don't like Sugar Gum. And I'm pretty sure Juicy Fruit was not sugar free. And I always felt like if I chewed sugar gum, I was just literally rotting my teeth which is accurate. That's what you're doing. So he thought it was gonna be a failure. He thought he was going to get ripped apart by the critics because the narratives don't actually touch. It's not like Burnham has some interaction with Holmes where you know, he stares at him exiting the park with a woman and has a bad feeling. You know, he doesn't have a close encounter. He never stays at his hotel. But Larson was wrong because people loved it, even though they don't directly connect. So we should probably talk about the setting a little bit, peak gilded age, and all the snobbery that comes with that time. There was one quote from this guy, ward McAllister, that said Hospitality, which includes the whole human race is not desirable. Do you remember that quote? Definitely giving Ruth Dewitt.

Caroline 9:56

yeah.

Anne 9:57

On Titanic. Right. Will the lifeboats be seated according to class?

Caroline 10:00

Mm-hmm.

Anne 10:01

he didn't want this thing to be accessible to everyone. he wanted to gate keep that so skyscrapers are rising. Land is free to develop Chicago's dealing with an inferiority complex and wanting to prove its legitimacy. I kind of sympathize with that because I feel like every city I've ever lived in has had an inferiority complex. Like to DC. I'm from Providence, which is in Boston's shadow. I lived in Edinburgh instead of London, and now I'm in Brisbane, which is like... You know, uh, I'm not saying it is, but it's looked at as Sydney's kind of like backwards cousin. And I'm not saying anything bad about these c- these cities, like I actually love every single one of these places, but they're kind of viewed as the lesser of the local options.

Caroline 10:40

also Philly I think has a bit of that inferiority complex, by the way. But also, this, this reminds me actually because I can relate, being from Connecticut, and I was actually a little pissed. They claim that hamburgers were invented at this world's fair, and no, they were invented in Connecticut. I have been to the restaurant where they were invented. They do not offer ketchup there. Like, you cannot ask for ketchup here, there. They will get pissed.

Anne 11:04

Why? What's wrong with ketchup? I love ketchup.

Caroline 11:06

it's an insult to stuff.

Anne 11:07

I,

Caroline 11:07

I mean, I relate to you in that when my kids don't like a food, I just tell them, "Put ketchup on it until it tastes like ketchup." Like, you- you're

Anne 11:14

I guess

Caroline 11:14

eating this dinner.

Anne 11:16

if it's a food that shouldn't traditionally have ketchup. I think if somebody is putting like ketchup on my spaghetti marinara, I would be insulted.

Caroline 11:23

My kids have put ketchup on, like, soy sauce seasoned rice.

Anne 11:27

no, that's

Caroline 11:27

It's terrible.

Anne 11:29

so Connecticut though, if You think Connecticut has complex, to where? To New York? To New England? Like...

Caroline 11:36

Both, because, The part of Connecticut that I'm from is essentially New York. Everyone's, like, a New York commuter. Not everyone, but it's basically New York, and then the whole rest of Connecticut is New England. And New England, I mean, you know, we've talked about, like, the New England handles or whatever. Connecticut is definitely the least favorite New England state amongst New England states.

Anne 11:57

yeah. I

Caroline 11:57

Yeah.

Anne 11:58

always feel really, uh, superior to you when

Caroline 12:01

No,

Anne 12:01

jokes come up because the Rhode Island ones are usually like kinda complimentary, and the Connecticut ones are always like, "This place is lame."

Caroline 12:07

even though we're superior to you because you're literally smaller. I...

Anne 12:11

but that's what makes us so good. We can drive across the whole state in 45 minutes. That's great.

Caroline 12:16

Is it?

Anne 12:17

It's like anywhere you wanna go, it's right there. You wanna be in

Caroline 12:20

I don't

Anne 12:21

go to the beach, you're there.

Caroline 12:22

Or, or what?

Anne 12:23

at Wachusett Mountain, you're there.

Caroline 12:26

but you could, couldn't do both of those at the same time. It's not like California where you make that argument, like, legitimately.

Anne 12:32

you could do the Narragansett Polar Plunge, on January 1st, and then pop over to go skiing. You could. I've done that. Gone swimming on New Year's, day

Caroline 12:39

so freeze your ass off and then go break your neck on an ice-covered mountain.

Anne 12:44

It's a great place to live. Anyway, Chicago. Have you ever been to Chicago?

Caroline 12:50

Yes, and I loved it. even though I lived in New York for like a decade, I ate better than like my entire life That. time I went to Chicago for the weekend and we just, like every restaurant I went to, I was like, this is the best meal I've ever had. It was so good.

Anne 13:04

You have a Chicago versus New York preference on pizza. If you wanna, you know, alienate half of our audience one way or the other.

Caroline 13:10

as I referenced when Jillian was on

Anne 13:12

Our West Memphis episode.

Caroline 13:13

Chicago Pizza is not pizza in my opinion. It's a casserole. Like that's,

Anne 13:18

Okay.

Caroline 13:18

a different animal. And so like Jillian, I feel like there's room for both of them. It's just like, one is a pizza and one is not, not a pizza. It's, it's good, but it's it's just different. It's not the same thing. You're not gonna like walk down the street eating that.

Anne 13:32

No, too bready, dougy for me, I think.

Caroline 13:34

It's too thick it's too much. when I went to Chicago, there was this place, I think. it was Al's, where they dip your like hoagie gets like dipped with a bun with it in like gravy. the griest, sloppiest, whatever. That's so, so good.

Anne 13:51

So we're in the late 18 hundreds here about, you know, those narrative starts around 1891 time when it was easy to disappear, whether on purpose with a new identity or alias or because of murder. And if you did disappear, despite the emergence of things like the Pinkerton Detective Agency, there wasn't much hope of finding you, especially if you weren't wealthy. As someone commented in the book, only the disappearance of moneyed souls drew a forceful response, which is still true to some extent.

Caroline 14:17

Yeah. Still true.

Anne 14:18

I did listen to a doll up two part on the rise of the Pinkerton Detective Agency just because it gets brought up in here and I highly recommend that. Fascinating history, Long history of infiltrating and breaking up labor disputes,

Caroline 14:30

Mm-hmm.

Anne 14:30

I think it ties into the recruitment of ice agents today. but that's a topic for another day. Uh, life was fleeting. Larson writes that anonymous death came early and often there was diptheria, cholera, typhoid. And they talk about how in 1885, so less than a decade before the events of this book, typhoid killed 10% of Chicago's population. I just wanna point that out in relation to COVID, according to the briefest of research, like the AI summary, as of mid 2024, COVID had killed 0.09% of the global population. So. COVID killed a lot of people, but imagine the horror of 10% of your population dying. So many people True horror life without modern medicine vaccines. Yep. And also a time of rising crime. Chicago Tribune reported 5,906 murders in the country leading up to the fair, which was a 40% rise since the previous year, which included Lizzie Borden's parents. In terms of our understanding of serial murder. This was post Jack the Ripper who Gruesomely killed five women in white chapel in 1888. And some people think Holmes and the river are like the same, but there's. Like zero evidence to support it, other than they were both killing people at roughly the same time. But people were fascinated by the Jack the Ripper murders. And according to Eric Larson, everyone devoured these stories, including Holmes, which I don't know how he knows that, but that's something he said. Also, it was gross. We talked about this in our, Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol episode. things would've smelled really bad. Upton Sinclair calls the smell, an elemental order, raw and crude. It was rich, almost rancid, sensual and strong. So we've got the meat packing industry that we know Chicago is famous for. so basically all this kind of stuff reminded me there's a lot of things we can complain about in modern times, but we've got it pretty good in a lot of other ways. Right. Uh, the fair, some of the innovations,

Caroline 16:18

Mm-hmm.

Anne 16:19

it left us with Kodak snapshots and I always thought that was weird that there were fines for carrying a camera without a permit. because it's just hard to imagine a time when photos of the cool place you were visiting or experiencing wasn't part of the experience and like the reason for the experience. Like, often people go to take pictures, right?

Caroline 16:34

Do you wanna know how much that camera permit would be in today's money?

Anne 16:38

I knew you'd go nuts with the inflation calculator. Tell me,

Caroline 16:41

$73 to bring your camera in.

Anne 16:44

Yeah.

Caroline 16:44

That's a

Anne 16:45

that's not cheap.

Caroline 16:46

That's a

Anne 16:46

That would make you think twice. Imagine if you had to pay $73 for each phone you brought in two into, Disney per day or something.

Caroline 16:52

your canvas, like guy who wanted to paint it, like, I felt so bad

Anne 16:57

Which one? The Canvas.

Caroline 16:58

in with his canvas and they kept inspecting the canvas case thinking it was a camera inside. He just wanted

Anne 17:03

Oh, okay. Okay. Oh yeah, that's like the original Instagram, like just painting something.

Caroline 17:08

Yeah.

Anne 17:08

I guess this book reminded me that there's so many things that are just a part of our daily lives and our understanding of the world that weren't always there, like antibiotics, elevators, and Ferris wheels. What did you think about the whole Ferris wheel thing?

Caroline 17:20

so here's my claim to fame. My stepdad's family is related to Ferris I was trying to ask. If anyone remembered how, and nobody knew. my stepdad's now passed, so I can ask him,

Anne 17:32

Maybe you could join Ancestry sort it out that way.

Caroline 17:34

yeah, maybe we'll do that,

Anne 17:36

So they Penelope, France, right with Ferris Wheel. Larson was really getting off on being withholding by referring to Ferris as the young steel engineer for a couple chapters before eventually revealing his name was Ferris.

Caroline 17:49

Mm-hmm.

Anne 17:49

what the thing I'm most amazed about is that it worked, Like they say, the wheel was a complex assemblage of a hundred thousand parts that ranged in size from small bolts to the giant axle. Absolute precision was necessary. An error of the smallest fraction of an inch might be fatal. Would you have been the first to get on that, like his wife?

Caroline 18:06

absolutely not. No. And I also was just like, it was crazy. The testing process before you had humans on it was not really much of a testing process. I was

Anne 18:15

No.

Caroline 18:15

this is

Anne 18:16

It's a lot of faith in your husband to be the person on there. It reminded me of in Jaws when Larry's trying to get everyone to go into the water.

Caroline 18:23

Yeah. the weather in Chicago can get pretty crazy pretty quickly,

Anne 18:28

wind. Yeah. They'd already had storms collapsing buildings,

Caroline 18:31

thunderstorms, you know?

Anne 18:33

and it's really big. It's amazing that like the first one was so big, like the London Eye looked it up. Only has a capacity for 800 people. Brisbane has one that's 330. And the biggest Ferris wheel today, which is in Dubai, has capacity for about 1700 people. And this had like 2000.

Caroline 18:50

Crazy.

Anne 18:50

Do you like Ferris wheels?

Caroline 18:51

Uh, yeah, I mean, they're fine. we did the London Eye when we were in London. It was fun for the kid, especially because we were there so few days that we were able to be like, there's Buckingham Palace. We're not going there. Like, you know,

Anne 19:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Caroline 19:04

see it from, um, What about you?

Anne 19:06

I don't mind a standard Ferris wheel, but I went on a fair ride as a kid that was like a Ferris wheel, but also each individual compartment would spin. And so you would be going upside down and you had like a steering wheel where you could control it, but I wasn't strong or big enough to actually control it. I just remember like every time it would go down to the bottom, I'd be like, stop the ride. Stop the ride. And it just kept going. And I remember that I think it was one of my, my textbooks in middle school. It had a picture of a Ferris wheel and I always had to skip the page because I was so traumatized. So yeah, I'm not big on Ferris wheels, as long as it's not going fast and also spinning and making you go upside down. I'm okay with it. So many firsts. The first electric chair, spray paint, zipper. Dishwasher. We already talked about juicy fruit, cracker Jack, PBR,

Caroline 19:52

Mm-hmm.

Anne 19:53

and the dewy decimal system. Do you remember our learning about that?

Caroline 19:56

of course. Also, can I say the automatic dishwasher was invented by a woman who

Anne 20:00

Okay.

Caroline 20:01

a dish in her life.

Anne 20:02

that's interesting. You would think it would be the need base that would drive you to make something like that.

Caroline 20:07

I'm not doing that. I'm gonna make a machine that does it.

Anne 20:10

Good for her,

Caroline 20:11

Right.

Anne 20:12

yeah,

Caroline 20:12

Said Lucille Blues.

Anne 20:13

for her, yep. My favorite type of horror. Good for her horror. Um, the Snake Charmer song.

Caroline 20:20

Mm-hmm. But wait, by the way, have you ever heard they wear no pants in the southern part of France? 'cause I'd never heard that.

Anne 20:28

I think so. That sounds familiar. I did have to look up, I can't read music, so I had to look up what song they were talking about. Like I wasn't able to look at that and be like, oh, I know that. But, the Pledge of Allegiance, which is not something Australians do. so I wonder, will we be looking back at our time as a similar time of many, many, many firsts? It also touches on the Tesla Edison rivalry and the incandescent bulbs. Direct current versus alternating. I don't really get the difference, but I did listen to do the Doll up, episode 37 covers it, and both those people maniacs. So it was interesting.

Caroline 20:59

Yeah,

Anne 20:59

And then a lot of interesting people just like names that you're like, I know that name. Houdini, Helen Keller, Buffalo Bill, Walt Disney's dad, everyone who's, everyone was there right.

Caroline 21:08

Except Mark Twain got sick

Anne 21:10

Oh yeah. Didn't get to go. Right. Oh, the Princess of Spain and Frank Lloyd Wright was a junior architect working under Sullivan at the time. Didn't, isn't there a Frank Lloyd Wright book that you really like?

Caroline 21:20

Loving Frank.

Anne 21:21

Okay.

Caroline 21:22

it was impactful. I will say, I'm never gonna read it a second time.

Anne 21:26

I just remember you talking about it.

Caroline 21:28

very, very upsetting,

Anne 21:30

Okay.

Caroline 21:30

interesting. but

Anne 21:31

he a jerk?

Caroline 21:32

yeah, he's, he's a total asshole. yeah, he sucks.

Anne 21:35

associate it in my mind.

Caroline 21:36

occurs.

Anne 21:37

I associate it in my mind with the book Widom, which is about like George Orwell's wife, and I guess the takeaway is he's an asshole too.

Caroline 21:44

Yeah. Well, loving Frank is actually about his mistress, not his wife. cause

Anne 21:48

Oh, okay.

Caroline 21:48

just like up and bailed on his wife and four kids. a super good guy.

Anne 21:52

Lovely. So let's talk about characters. Did you have a favorite character who you found most interesting or people.

Caroline 21:59

It's hard to say favorite, but I think precast was the most interesting because I was like, where did this guy come from? Like, yeah. I had forgotten about him completely since the last time I read it, and his scenes were all very like, what's actually going on here?

Anne 22:14

It's interesting because he was the one I was like least that that whole storyline was the one I was least interested in,

Caroline 22:19

Hmm. I think I was just more like, where is this going and how is this connected? You know, like I feel like I just really wanted to understand why we were even following him.

Anne 22:27

well, that's I think why I object to it. I'm like, does, I guess it does impact the end of the fair because,

Caroline 22:32

Sure.

Anne 22:33

Harrison is murdered and assassinated at that point. But it did remind me of Andor because was so obsessed with

Caroline 22:40

Yeah.

Anne 22:41

This political figure who didn't know he existed. like that scene in Andor where it's like, who are you,

Caroline 22:45

Yeah.

Anne 22:46

right when he shows up at his house. but yeah, I was, I don't know, I just wasn't super interested in his storyline. I, my favorite Olmstead, I loved Olmsted and funny enough, Eric Larson said that says that Olmsted is his favorite person he's ever written about. I have an Olmsted claim to fame. I grew up as a faculty kid on an Olmsted designed boarding school.

Caroline 23:06

Hmm.

Anne 23:07

I don't think he did it right, but it would've been his firm. it would've been a very minor job. And it opened and I looked it up 'cause I looked up the history of where I grew up inspired by this. it opened in 1893, so he would've been a bit busy, I think, with the world fair and not feeling well. But, It is a very beautiful place with a long green, center lawn at the beginning of campus and lots of surrounding wild woods. So you can see his influence and his values. I really got a kick out of him because he, had such strong opinions,

Caroline 23:35

Mm-hmm.

Anne 23:36

so dramatic. for example about the boats, he said, put in the water unbecoming boats, and the effect would be utterly disgusting, destroying the value of what would otherwise be the most valuable original fixture of the exposition. I say destroyed deliberately a thousand times better to have no boats. Very petulant.

Caroline 23:53

yeah, in those, in those scenes, I felt like, okay, fine. because I'm also, I'm, I'm a very like logistically and operationally oriented person. I would've been like, guy is driving me nuts.

Anne 24:06

Oh, I wouldn't wanna work with him.

Caroline 24:08

yeah.

Anne 24:09

But I enjoyed how dramatic he was.

Caroline 24:11

Mm-hmm.

Anne 24:12

giving Lucille blues like flower beds, steamboats litter in the bushes just makes me wanna set myself on fire.

Caroline 24:19

Yeah I also sort of like could appreciate his, frustration trying to prove himself as like an artist, you know? And how that is hard to be in that way, even though I would consider him an artist

Anne 24:32

Hmm.

Caroline 24:32

know, in my mind, it's like, inferiority complex again,

Anne 24:36

Well, he talks about becomingness, and, uh, one of my favorite parts was that he wanted a 40 year timeline, right? Like that to create something you need 40 years. It's like, okay, that's, that's not reasonable.

Caroline 24:46

Mm-hmm.

Anne 24:46

but yeah, I think what you are saying about being treated like a true art form, I guess that ties into why he was so anti flower beds. what he's doing is more than just planting flowers. I've got another quote about flower beds that made me laugh, okay. most people like a garden with flowers, right? But he writes, it seemed to me that at the least, it must have been extremely disgusting, gaudy and childish, if not savage. an injury to the exposition So that's how he feels about flowerbeds,

Caroline 25:14

What a

Anne 25:15

made me laugh. Yeah, but my absolute favorite was his complaint about the gravel paths. Did you catch that one? He said, there is not a square rod of admirable gravel walk in all of the exposition ground. It appears probable to me that neither the contractor nor the inspector whose business it is to keep the contractor up to his duty can have ever seen a decently good gravel path or that they have any idea of what good gravel walks are. So he is like, have you even seen a gravel path? Do you even know what a gravel path is? It reminded me of Olaf, like, does she know how to knock? And, basil, faulty, and faulty towers being like, these guests have never even sat on chairs before.

Caroline 25:53

I love faulty towers.

Anne 25:55

Multi towers classic. but, and I also felt bad for him because. the pressure you were talking about, the pressure that these people were under, there was this great quote with all these ifs, like if everything went perfectly, if his health did not degrade any further, if the weather held, if Burnham completed the other buildings on time, if strikes did not destroy the fair, if the many committees and directors, learned to leave Burnham alone, Olmsted might be able to complete his task on time, so stressful.

Caroline 26:18

which is why I don't garden other than I'm also like highly allergic to, um, poison ivy. But aside from that, all of the ips about it, like when the last frost ends up actually being, or how much rain you get, or whether a deer comes along and eats it, or one of your pets, you know, like all that kind of stuff. I'm just like, there's so many things I can't control in gardening. all of my plants are Legos plants.

Anne 26:43

When we first bought a house, I was like, I'm gonna be one of those people who gardens. And I did it for like an hour and I was like, I hate this. Like,

Caroline 26:50

it's,

Anne 26:51

was hot. I was sweaty, you know, and I was just like, and I, I guess I was doing the worst part of Gardenings, like pulling out weeds to establish a garden. But I, that was it for me. And it's been like 15 years and I haven't done anything in our garden since. and, and just one more thing on Olmsted. He had so many ailments, like his teeth. At one point he became sick from arsenic and Turkey red wallpaper, which of course reminds me of the yellow wallpaper. And eventually he succumbed to dementia, which is really sad and makes me once again think we really need to put some research into that. Somebody sort that out. When will the shark experimentation start? Okay. Which character would you like to discuss next? I keep calling them characters. They're people. Which person?

Caroline 27:31

I only really even wrote down five of them to remember their names. Daniel Burnham, John Root Olmsted, Francis Millet, and Patrick pre August.

Anne 27:40

All those architects kind of. Aside from Burnham, blended together into my head as just like a bunch of Mustachio businessmen,

Caroline 27:46

them down to like, be like, which one did, which, you know, type of thing.

Anne 27:50

Francis Millet was the one who died on the Titanic

Caroline 27:52

Mm-hmm.

Anne 27:53

and Root was the one who died

Caroline 27:54

yeah, he came up with like the ways to boost attendance. It's like because of him that they actually met their,

Anne 27:59

financial goals.

Caroline 28:01

Yeah.

Anne 28:01

he's the guy who died in pneumonia and just because off and on we've talked about last words and his last words were, do you hear that? Isn't it wonderful? That's what I call music, not oh shit,

Caroline 28:12

Yeah, that's a good one and a, a kind of believable one,

Anne 28:16

like he was hearing music.

Caroline 28:17

As opposed to like, when people are like, supposedly their last words were like a sonnet or something.

Anne 28:22

Well, one of my favorite Burnham things is that he apparently had a rush sign over his door. Like, you know, Ted Lasso has the belief. Imagine having rushed over your door. It just kind of epitomized the pressure he was under.

Caroline 28:34

Uh, that reminds me, we had an art teacher in our high school who like. You know, when you're in high school, all of your assignments have like due dates and you're not used to like, everything's due at the end kind of stuff that can happen in college. And so every kid's like their first time having that situation and they, and so they all waited till the last minute to do all of their photography so on the day of the last final, he would just have cassette tape that just played two songs back to back over and over again playing. Billy Jules pressure Queen under. pressure.

Anne 29:05

I was.

Caroline 29:06

would just over and he would just be sitting there laughing at everyone.

Anne 29:13

Well, the pressure that Burnham was under, if you equal Paris, you have made a success. If you surpass it, you have made a triumph. But if you fall below it, you will be held responsible for the whole American people for having assumed what you are not equal to beware. And at one point he wrote to his wife, the exposition has become a hurricane to be done with this flurry is my strongest wish. So the guy suffered.

Caroline 29:34

I mean, pass hard, pass. I don't want that.

Anne 29:37

Yeah.

Caroline 29:37

I, I

Anne 29:38

This is why I'm not ambitious.

Caroline 29:39

well, I just don't understand the, like, obsession to like, have your name be known and have people, 'cause in a hundred something years, even most of those people will be free. You know, like, and who cares?

Anne 29:51

the Eric Larsons of the future write books about you,

Caroline 29:54

even then, I had to write his name down to remember who, you know, like he, he's not actually remembered,

Anne 29:59

no.

Caroline 30:00

unless Lin-Manuel Miranda writes a musical about you

Anne 30:04

you will be remembered then.

Caroline 30:05

and even then, like only one generation of people are gonna remember you. 'cause then the musical's gonna be old news, you know?

Anne 30:11

Yeah. How many people are talking about rent now? That was the musical of our high school days,

Caroline 30:14

Mm-hmm.

Anne 30:16

but he was dealing with labor unrest, failing banks, financial crisis, the death of his partner root, the committees fears of disease. So yeah, so stressed out. I got very stressed out when a storm caused the north end of the liberal arts building to collapse because the law was inadequately braced. And so I really got pulled in by the problems they were facing. all the putting out of literal fires and metaphorical fires, lots of deaths. It was more dangerous place than a coal mine to work. I one of the deeper horrors is that, Human life was not valued. Like it takes so long to build anything now, but at least people are hopefully paid and not killed because we have workplace health and safety and a lot of people died pulling this off.

Caroline 30:54

thank goodness for osha. but I think for me it was a little bit, because I know it all gets pulled together. I was sort of like, okay. Yeah,

Anne 31:03

You weren't feeling the tension? Mm, well, he did pull it off beat France so we can go us a, US a, um, and he went on to design a ton of other spaces including the Washington Mall, which is a space I love. and yeah, I definitely felt an empathetic sense of triumph when the admissions went over a hundred thousand. Having said that, we've talked about our dislike of crowds in the past, and being at a fair Disney like place with that many people also stresses me out.

Caroline 31:29

yeah, I think I, I just kept being like kind of frustrated with the classism aspect of it that you talked about, like the worker safety and the prioritization of you know, when things were going over budget, I was like, well, did you need to have 87 dishes that you're fancy dinner? like, about instead of micromanaging every single expense, you just don't give the 20-year-old, whatever. What was it? I know I wrote it down. It was like $50,000 or something. transferred

Anne 31:55

were throwing around cash at the beginning for sure.

Caroline 31:58

yeah, it's $1.8 million

Anne 32:00

So somebody got $1.8 million to like consult

Caroline 32:02

the kid, the kid who was like, you can't meet my number, $50,000 And he was like, sure. That's $1.8 million. This is like a first time job. Like maybe just don't do that and pay your workers.

Anne 32:14

he needed Ben Wyatt there to reign him in.

Caroline 32:16

Yeah. Seriously.

Anne 32:17

Well, I think, yeah, when you talk about like. Wealth distribution and this, you know, gilded age was similar to our time in terms of wealth distribution with a small number of robber barons holding, hoarding, everything. And you know, this touches on labor disputes. I've got a quote from Samuel Compers who I think was a labor organization leader. Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets? And the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots. I love finding an old quote, an observation when you're like, still true.

Caroline 32:52

Mm-hmm.

Anne 32:53

Oh and another on injustice is when you talk about who was getting paid is Candace Wheeler. no it wasn't Candace Wheeler. It's the woman who was designed to, what was her name?

Caroline 33:03

The woman who designed the women's building or whatever.

Anne 33:05

Yes,

Caroline 33:06

I love that She, was the only one on schedule. Also,

Anne 33:09

Sophia Hayden. That was her name. She was paid a thousand while the male architects were paid 10,000. And she did have a breakdown and I can see why, like you win the right to design this thing and then you are subjected to rich ladies with no taste, wanting your building to look like a patchwork quilt. at one point they talk about the planning meeting for this being the greatest meeting of artists since the 15th century, but there were no women involved. I've got another parks and rec references coming. Like imagine how much faster everything could have been done if Leslie Knope was there.

Caroline 33:37

you don't even need to be Leslie Oak. 'cause you know she was on schedule. You know, all this like need for grandiosity is what gets you behind.

Anne 33:47

well I think we've talked about all the boring people.

Caroline 33:51

Mm-hmm.

Anne 33:52

Shall we talk about Henry Holmes HH homes? You think he's hot?

Caroline 33:57

so the first thing I was like five foot eight, no shade to anyone who's five foot eight. But I was like, is that supposed to be impressive? And actually then I googled the average height this time period was five six or

Anne 34:08

Okay.

Caroline 34:09

So he was taller than, you know. So he was tall. And it sounds like he had some, uh, like Paul Walker style eyes.

Anne 34:17

Yeah, he was hypnotizing. The glances of young women fell around him, like wind blowing pedals. Uh, Leo would've been great, you know, he was in the running to play him back, you know, 20 years ago. Not now. Too old.

Caroline 34:27

Yeah, that's true. I saw that, There was a Hulu series in development with Scorsese and DiCaprio producing, and Keanu Reeves was gonna star in it, but it fell apart in 2023.

Anne 34:39

too old.

Caroline 34:40

in 2025, it's been resurrected as a movie with DiCaprio now in talks to Star and

Anne 34:46

No, Just because you date women in their twenties doesn't mean you look like you're in your thirties.

Caroline 34:51

Yeah.

Anne 34:52

Now, I mean, he's supposed to be like 30, right? So you can have a guy who's like 45 play him because people aged more back then. But like Leo's way too old for that

Caroline 35:00

Fells, right? You know

Anne 35:02

egregious old casting. Uh, the blue eyes thing. There was some quote, great murderers, like great men and other walks of activity have blue eyes. Okay,

Caroline 35:11

what like says who?

Anne 35:13

so some guy in the book, I'd like to see some data to back that up.

Caroline 35:15

I that's what I was thinking. 'cause I, I have blue eyes and

Anne 35:18

must be a murderer.

Caroline 35:19

I was a bit defensive. I was like, I'm

Anne 35:21

Yeah,

Caroline 35:21

What? I don't know that to be true

Anne 35:24

there are a lot of people with blue eyes and some of them are murderers, but I don't think there would be any correlation there.

Caroline 35:28

as a blonde, I'm very used to like the blonde girl's, the bad one. She's the mean one. She's the evil, the brunette the girl next door. That's what everyone wants. That's what everyone likes. So I, I am well adjusted to that stereotype. But not the blue, the blue eyes was a new insult.

Anne 35:45

Yeah, also small ears indicate vice. Apparently that was one of the other quotes from, I think around the same place,

Caroline 35:51

to what? Like to your own head? Like is it still proport? Does What's the rubric for small ears? I don't.

Anne 35:58

I don't know. They did not, develop that. Uh, but he was smooth as the guy who ran his jewelry counter said he was the smoothest man I ever saw. And murder's uncle said he was handsome and clean and dressed well in spoken fine sentences. His gaze was blue and forthright. And in conversation he listened with an intensity that was almost alarming as if Belknap, who's the guy who was speaking, was the most fascinating man in the world, not just an elderly uncle visiting. So I listened to a last podcast on the left about this, they point out that politicians are like that. They make you believe you matter. They make you think like you're the only person in the room. And that's that charm and charisma small years. Yeah, yeah. Watch for the small years of Oh, call leaders. I think you said small years.

Caroline 36:39

No. And cult leaders do that.

Anne 36:41

absolutely. And so they talk about like creditors who would come raging and yet they'd walk away friends for at least a while. That was a really satisfying moment when the creditors unite and you're like, ah, they got him, but he still managed to slip out. And Detective Geier. Says he has the appearance of candor becomes pathetic at times when pathos will serve him best, uttering his words with a quaver in his voice, often accompanied by a moist and eye, then turning quickly with a determined and forceful method of speech as if indignation or resolution had sprung out of tender memories that has touched his heart. So the guy can manipulate. I read a little bit of his, memoir. The one that, Larson used and he's really obsequious to himself. Like there's a lot of pretending to be sad, like when he finds P dead. the narcissism of it. It was really giving Bundy for me. And like it did bring up a lot of questions for me because he writes about being dragged in to see the skeleton at the doctor's office as a kid, as like this formative experience. And Larson recounts it, but like the only account we have of this is his. And we know he's unreliable because he was writing from prison with this clear goal of getting off and trying to cast himself in a favorable light. So who knows if that even happened.

Caroline 37:51

I don't wanna give anything away, but, in the jinx season two, there's a lot of things like that where you are, meant to feel sorry for this guy who had a traumatic childhood, but then things start coming out about how unreliable a narrator he is in like, such a good way. It's so good.

Anne 38:08

Now I still haven't seen season two. I've only seen season one.

Caroline 38:11

I don't wanna give anything white, but

Anne 38:12

Yeah.

Caroline 38:13

good.

Anne 38:13

So in this memoir, he like admits to the fraud and he admits to like paying for this or taking out that more user insurance policy, giving PIs of money he wasted on alcohol, the patents on his bullshit machines. But then he claimed that Minnie killed her sister and that Piel OD'ed on chloroform. And they, he has this long drawn out story about like discovering the body, wanting to do the right thing, but realizing it would be misinterpreted and that's why he did what he did.

Caroline 38:36

Ridiculous.

Anne 38:37

So definitely a psychopath narcissist. What do you think is not his most evil act, but as big as Dick move

Caroline 38:45

I think taking the children the assistance children like. as he's

Anne 38:49

Kids

Caroline 38:49

town. Yeah. he's going from city to city and putting them in these different hotels and keeping them

Anne 38:54

so bizarre.

Caroline 38:55

it's so Bizarre, long, torturous, and completely unnecessary,

Anne 39:00

That teenage girl Alice saw through him. she wrote a letter that he never delivered to her mother saying, I don't like him to call me ba baby and child and deer and all such trash. And like in a letter to Carrie, their mother, he claims they're off with in Europe and he says, I was as careful of the children as if they were my own. Knowing me as you do, can you imagine me killing little and innocent children, especially without any motive? And I'd be like, okay. Why did you send them to Europe? Without my permission.

Caroline 39:26

right.

Anne 39:26

Right. Like It's so weird what he did. Not to make light of this, but at times, he had them perhaps all on the same train, but then staying in different places and like how was he managing that? Like it reminded me of Mrs. Doubtfire trying to attend to dinners at the same restaurant. Like was he like popping back and forth between the hotels?

Caroline 39:43

because he also has different names that I think, I've said this before, like I don't think I would remember to respond to the other name. My husband goes by a few different names and I'm mess up what? I call him to different people all the time and they're like, who? You know, and that's not even my name.

Anne 40:00

It looks like he got rid of Howard first. The little boy probably. 'cause he was as the youngest, the most annoying. And you know, traveling with kids is annoying. I'll give him that. But why was he doing it? did he have insurance policies on them? I can't remember. It's in them home. There's no reason for it. That's why I don't get it. it doesn't seem like children were generally his intended victims. So is he getting off on killing them? I don't know, I think he was getting off on the narcissism of the game.

Caroline 40:23

Yeah. I do think he was getting off on it because he needed to still have people to control and a way to control them

Anne 40:30

Yeah.

Caroline 40:31

no longer in his, murder castle.

Anne 40:33

Yeah. cause he lost that. was it Minnie who had the land down in Texas that he was probably headed towards eventually to do it all again there. Perfect. It. So I think of him as a bit of a Tom Ripley, like an opportunist seeking status, but also kills. And he views people in his life as either assets or nuisances.

Caroline 40:50

Mm-hmm.

Anne 40:51

And Zel becomes a nuisance because of his drinking, which is why he takes him out. Somebody made a comparison. I think maybe it was Guyer, the detective to an amphibian because he had a machine-like registration of proximity, a calculation of worth and a decision to act or remain motionless. The sense his humanness was missing, and I loved that line, like just that he's looking at you with calculation. He's also a conman, like someone we know. starting with minor dishonesty. like stealing the book money as a door-to-door sale salesman. I did identify with one thing in his early life. He worked as a school principal for a bit and he said here, I stayed for one year doing good and conscientious work, for which I received plenty of gratitude, but little or no money. I think the only thing that's changed less is that teachers get still little or no money, but, you know, you can say goodbye to the gratitude as well. We were just talking about this the other day, like how students used to like, bring you apples and food and it's like now you get emails from parents saying you're not doing well enough. All right. Anyway, lots of aliases as you said, giving sweet Bobby Howard Hirum, s Campbell a s Yates, he got investors for his water to make gas machine, which he had actually just like illegally linked up to a gas line, which I thought was giving Elizabeth Holmes.

Caroline 42:03

Chemistry occurs.

Anne 42:05

Chemistry occurs. Magic guess. he'd hire workers for small jobs and then fire and not pay them. Does that remind you of anyone?

Caroline 42:13

Yes. I

Anne 42:14

Ooh,

Caroline 42:14

currently running our country.

Anne 42:17

that's what I thought. Yep. One thing I did disagree with in the last podcast on the left episode, one of the house Ben Kissel acknowledges his brilliance. Like, oh, he was brilliant. He got away with all this stuff. And I have to say I disagree. Like, good fellas, I'd say it's not brilliance, it's gall, it's charm. He, I, I'll give him charm, I'll give him charisma, but I think it's charm and gall combined with a time of limited detection skills and too much trust. Like, I don't think he's actually a genius. He just tried his luck and got away with it because he was charming for a while.

Caroline 42:45

totally, I totally agree. There's that great John Mullany bit who's like, you know, before they had DNA and stuff like that, a detective shows up at a crime scene and they're like, the person blood all over here. And he is like, gross. Clean it up,

Anne 42:58

Yeah.

Caroline 42:59

like

Anne 43:00

I love when John Malaney talks about crime. again, John Malaney, bill Hader or Conan O'Brien. If you're listening, please start a podcast where you guys talk about true crime together. It would be so funny. I think his biggest dick move was selling the pharmacy to a pharmacist and then starting a better one across the street,

Caroline 43:15

Yeah.

Anne 43:16

you know, besides the murder, right? Like that was the most, the moment that I was like, oh my God, you jerk.

Caroline 43:21

If anyone knows the safari dentist guy who killed his wife, he did that too with his dental firm.

Anne 43:27

Not nice. So I was thinking in terms of like, what killers would you compare him to, or what criminals, we've mentioned Elizabeth Holmes, who would you compare him to?

Caroline 43:36

I guess Bundy because of the charm thing, like, 'cause I, I just don't think there's that many other serial killers that areed so much as being charming and charismatic.

Anne 43:46

reading that confession, it's a very grandiose view of himself, and I haven't listened to Bundy's tapes, but I have heard that they are similar

Caroline 43:54

Yeah, I have no interest in listening to narcissistic garbage people, like boast about themselves,

Anne 44:01

the whole point is to manipulate when they do that. Right.

Caroline 44:03

they want you to listen. I don't wanna listen. I have my opinion of you. I don't really care what you have to say.

Anne 44:08

I guess he reminded me of John Wayne Gacy with his crawlspace,

Caroline 44:12

the, the house thing reminded me of that Austrian dad.

Anne 44:15

Ooh, fr fritz.

Caroline 44:17

Yeah,

Anne 44:18

Ugh. I hate that story

Caroline 44:19

me too.

Anne 44:19

when he was keeping his daughter in the basement. Is that right?

Caroline 44:22

And he

Anne 44:23

Ugh. Awful.

Caroline 44:23

kids with her or something like

Anne 44:25

Ugh. Yeah, awful. I mean, he reminded me of Belle Gunness. re-listened to the my favorite murder episode on her, because she's also Chicago area, turn of the century, and she was murdering for money, right? Like there's the famous quote, tri flows need not apply. So she was also killing romantic partners for insurance and also not afraid to knock off a kid. An unknown body count.

Caroline 44:45

Yeah. And there was a similar like, Hey, where did so and so go issue happening for her? Because there were like borders and stuff with her too, weren't there?

Anne 44:53

yeah, Well she would get people to come and, yeah.

Caroline 44:56

Yeah.

Anne 44:57

And also, do you know the bloody Benders?

Caroline 44:59

Sounds familiar.

Anne 45:00

similar rough timeframe, but they ran an inn and then they would have a curtain and then they would like knock you out and then a trap door would fall to the basement and it was for money.

Caroline 45:09

There's like a Fargo season based on them, I think.

Anne 45:11

Oh, maybe. I dunno. Uh, and then in our Good Fellows episode, I mentioned the book, the Man from the Train. Who was perhaps another serial killer operating around that same time. I've also seen him compared to Israel Keys because of the, I guess the logistical maneuvering, you know, that Israel Keys was going out and like doing some weird planning and going from place to place. Supposedly very meticulous, but again, an unreliable narrator read. We don't know what Israel Keys really did, right?

Caroline 45:35

maybe just at the end stage, he is similar to Israel Keys, but the whole rest of time he's like in his own building. Like Israel Keys had all those kill kits like planted everywhere.

Anne 45:44

Yeah. like Henry vii, because if you got romantically involved, you probably had about a 50 50 shot of surviving him. But let's talk about some of the, the women. you know, as someone who has shown up in foreign cities, not unlike these women seeking adventure and being very, very naive, I always feel kind of lucky that I'm alive, given the way I behaved and what I know now. So, like, I really feel for these women that he's promising travel, marriage a job to, and they don't see through him. He made them feel like they were the only girl in the world. Larson writes, he sensed vulnerability in the way another man might capture the trace of a woman's perfume. It's got a way with words. This Larson,

Caroline 46:20

that reminds me. So when we were in college, there was a guy who became friends with our friends, you know, and he really didn't like me he was always really mean to me. And I was trying to figure

Anne 46:30

I know who you're talking.

Caroline 46:31

Yeah. And then, his girlfriend, who was our friend, to me that when she was like, why don't you like Caroline? He was like, my mom always told me, never tell anyone where you're sheep are tied. And I was like, okay. So he doesn't like me because I am a vulnerable person.

Anne 46:46

Okay is, is it because you told people where your sheep are tied? What does that even mean?

Caroline 46:51

I think it means like I'm too transparent.

Anne 46:54

Okay. glad she got rid of him eventually.

Caroline 46:56

Mm-hmm.

Anne 46:57

Does she listen? Do we need to be careful about what we're,

Caroline 47:00

No, I don't think she listens. His ex, his ex-wife might listen.

Anne 47:04

Okay. Okay. Let's see. I like this line. He looked for and was adept at finding an alluring amalgam of isolation, weakness, and need. And he found it in fresh, clean young women free for the first time in history. so we know he killed Julian Pearl, Amalin Minnie and Anna and Zel and his three children, but a number of other women in his orbit apparently also left without saying a word, and he's admitted to 27. There were apparently female clerks who just left. There's the elderly Mrs. Holton that he bought the pharmacy off. A waitress disappeared from one of his restaurants. There was a stenographer, Jenny Thompson. There was a bank note from a woman named Lucy Burbank, but no trace of Lucy, and we know hundreds of people went missing during the time of the fair. So it really is one of those outstanding mysteries. It's interesting that Murda his first, no, his second wife, I think his first wife is Clara Murda, said he was a good guy. she said, there was never a better man than my husband. He liked and got on with babies and dogs and he would be like, go see if they won't lend you that baby a little while.

Caroline 48:03

Mm

Anne 48:04

I wonder, you know, when he's pretending to be this good guy, like, oh, let me just play with this baby. Did he actually wanna kill the babies?

Caroline 48:10

no, I think he was really motivated by control, so I think as long as he knew that he was in charge of a situation, that was enough for him. For him to be having people swoon over his love of babies, that satisfies that, It's

Anne 48:24

yeah.

Caroline 48:25

when the, well gets emptied, he's gotta do something to satisfy his need for power and control.

Anne 48:31

So Julia was the six foot tall woman with dark hair and a rapturous body. and it was, I think Chappelle Chapel who disposed of her skeleton. So that was the guy they described as skilled at skeleton articulation, which I guess is the kind of job, you don't ask too many questions if you wanna keep your business going.

Caroline 48:47

Sure.

Anne 48:47

And then there was Minnie, she was the one with the inheritance. And Larson described her as an acquisition to be warehoused until needed, like cocooned prey. And he pretended to marry her, but never actually filed the paperwork, which is like the opposite of Ross. I thought. I wanna give a shout out to Mrs. Lawrence. Do you remember that person? She was the one who was friends with Emmaline. She was like the older woman. She and her husband were both a little suss on Holmes, but they were like, oh, she's so in love. She's entranced, whatever. And this is when he, he told her He was an English lord, which again, shades of sweet Bobby.

Caroline 49:19

right.

Anne 49:20

and she disappeared. And then Holmes told Mrs. Lawrence that, oh, well she got married to some other guy and she only revealed the plans to me.

Caroline 49:27

I remember this now. Yeah.

Anne 49:28

And then she had that women's intuition that was like, this doesn't make sense, And she was like, I know he did it.

Caroline 49:34

Mm-hmm

Anne 49:35

And Well, the castle itself, when I was in my twenties, I went to this speakeasy in Melbourne and you went up the stairs and you came to a hall and it was like this bouncer was leading you up. And I had no doors. And I remember feeling like, this is, I was thinking about this like, or, and like the horror movie, hostile and the speakeasy was just like a trick to get people to show up. And then we were all gonna get murdered. But then the bouncer opened up like this bookshelf that was a hidden door and there was a bar and we were obviously fine, but it just reminded me of that so creepy the way it is described. 35 rooms on the second floor, six corridors, 51 doors, so a real labyrinth. And then the basement, which is very, very Buffalo bill and Silence of Lambs

Caroline 50:14

and then I'd probably be in a false sense of security because you know, it sounds like he was like turning away men that there was no room but letting women in. I would probably be like, oh, well I'm super, super safe here because there's no other men,

Anne 50:28

Yeah, I'm not gonna run into a man in the hallway.

Caroline 50:30

exactly.

Anne 50:31

It also reminded me of the Winchester Mystery house, which I think I've talked about before. Have I told you about that?

Caroline 50:36

I don't know.

Anne 50:36

The widow of the Winchester rifle fortune felt that she was haunted by the ghost of the people killed by her husband's business, and that if she kept building and constructing her house, she could keep the ghosts away. So it's this like massive rambling weird house with staircases that lead nowhere and things like that. And I really wanna go there. it's in California. I think it's within a few hours of LA 'cause I've talked to my sister about next time I'm there. Please bring me here.

Caroline 51:02

What a crazy idea.

Anne 51:05

Yeah. Yeah. Well, she was crazy. I think she, she had experienced a lot of grief. And it broke her. shout out also to Detective Geier.

Caroline 51:13

Mm-hmm.

Anne 51:14

remember Hot for Hus?

Caroline 51:16

Oh yeah.

Anne 51:16

I'm hot for Geier. And he was hot for Holmes, like literally hot because he was tracking him all summer in scorching weather from city to city. And he became a national fascination. America's Sherlock Holmes. As Larson Wrights, one man doing an awful duty against the odds and doing it well. So I liked him.

Caroline 51:33

Yeah.

Anne 51:33

He was the one who called, Holmes a chameleon. So, and I really appreciate the dogged detective work and how hard that must have been back then. Like, he's looking at handwriting, he's showing people photos, there's nothing digital,

Caroline 51:45

Mm-hmm.

Anne 51:46

retracing their travels and just doing the footwork, painstaking, brutal work. Have you ever, heard about how Daniel Moore's killer was caught? He's local to us. Uh, he was a young boy who was killed by a sexual predator, and I won't tell you what happened, but you gotta look into how the Queensland police caught him because they knew he did it. Like they knew he did it, but they couldn't pin it on him. And it is, it's awesome how they got him. So look up how they caught, I can't remember his name, but, um, how they caught Daniel Moore comes killer.

Caroline 52:14

let's honor the victim and not the killer anyway. I don't wanna know his name.

Anne 52:18

Yeah. Yeah. I think he got like shanked in prison recently. I'm not sure. Soul.

Caroline 52:22

the detective from like that early episode we did on Fox Hollow?

Anne 52:26

Oh yeah. Not that detective, but the medical examiner.

Caroline 52:30

Yeah.

Anne 52:31

Because we didn't like the detective who was working on it at the time. It was the retrospective

Caroline 52:35

Yeah.

Anne 52:35

investigation.

Caroline 52:37

something, Jeff,

Anne 52:38

It was Jeff something, you Right. Well, let's talk about what was the most upsetting or disturbing moment for you?

Caroline 52:45

Okay. So there was a guy who was staying in the hotel and like he was sleeping and they were trying to unlock the door, and he had woke up.

Anne 52:51

so the idea of being

Caroline 52:53

Yeah, just like that. Was that, and then also The foot on the door.

Anne 52:57

foot on the door for me.

Caroline 52:58

Yeah,

Anne 52:58

Yeah. The dying woman's foot etched into the smooth enamel finish with clearly outlined toes. That's very scary to imagine what she was experiencing when that she tried to kick that door down. It's awful.

Caroline 53:09

I know. And I have really weirdly shaped toes. I don't even like to wear open toes shoes. So if like the last thing that stayed after my whole body was gone was a fucking outline of my toes, I would be mortified.

Anne 53:22

Oh, oh, I'm watching the penguin right now. He's got some misshaped toes.

Caroline 53:28

Justice for those with misshaped toes.

Anne 53:31

Yeah, it makes me feel bug.

Caroline 53:32

Please

Anne 53:33

when the guy,

Caroline 53:33

toes.

Anne 53:37

when the guy went nuts and was like trying to break the glass on the Ferris wheel until a woman who was not the hysterical one put her skirt over his head to calm him down, that somebody going nuts on a ride makes me nervous. And I don't know, maybe it was Anna of the toes, but the description of Anna's death

Caroline 53:53

Mm-hmm.

Anne 53:53

she's stuck in the walk-in vault, whether it's true or not, Larson kind of describes it as if it was a novel, right? Like her pounding on the door in the darkness and the air growing stale and hot and the panic. And while Holmes is like getting off on it outside the door.

Caroline 54:05

I don't think that was the one with the footprint. That was someone else, but yeah,

Anne 54:09

Was it Julia? Maybe. Anna is Mini's sister. Yeah.

Caroline 54:12

yeah. Anna.

Anne 54:13

he claims

Caroline 54:14

was someone else,

Anne 54:16

Minnie killed Anna in his, because they were jealous over him. What a dick.

Caroline 54:20

But the the ne neighbor lady that you mentioned that

Anne 54:24

Emily then.

Caroline 54:25

yeah.

Anne 54:26

finding out that he kept the little girls, Anna and Nelly in a trunk and gased them. He says he left them there for a while before coming back to kill them at his leisure after having dinner with their mother. That's fucked they're kids and it's so claustrophobic to imagine them in there not having space to move and then dying that way when you gas them. why? And my last most disturbing moment is the description of the basement. Very signs of the lambs, the vat of acid. There's ribs, the kiln, a dissection table, stain with blood charred, high heeled shoes, torso of a child, a bone from a foot, a shoulder blade, a hip socket, a girl's dress, bloodstained overalls, and three fully articulated skeletons. House of Horrors, for sure. All right. What do you think of the horrors beneath the surface? My first true horror is museum feed because, Olmsted at one point bemoans the doing of sightseeing, like seeing it as a duty, as something to get through. And it just reminds me of Getting through a museum and having museum feet and you feel like you still have to see it all because you've paid for it

Caroline 55:27

Mm-hmm.

Anne 55:28

how much your feet hurt at the end of a day when you've like walked around something like this.

Caroline 55:32

you know, I feel like I spend a lot of time telling my kids like, hurt people, hurt people, and people don't wake up deciding to be dicks and like, you know, to have grace and stuff like that. But like there are just some evil people out there and, a lot of them are like in charge of a lot of shit.

Anne 55:49

cause sociopaths have the gall to move up in the world. is a ladder, that kind of thing. I guess it brings up that question. What makes a monster, as we discussed in our Eileen Warehouse episode, like she was abused, was HH Holmes. there's talk of punishment. Being locked up with that food, kind of Margaret White from Carrie. But like part of me was like, wasn't everyone punished like that back then?

Caroline 56:10

Right. And yeah, I guess he was a little bit bullied or whatever, but like,

Anne 56:14

So he says,

Caroline 56:15

yeah. So he says, and like, who wasn't? You know?

Anne 56:19

right, they say he collected weird shit and his friend Tom was killed playing in an abandoned house with him, which of course made me think of the good son. Like was this little friend his first, or was this friend's death, a traumatic experience that combined with other stuff led to him becoming the monster he was.

Caroline 56:34

Mm-hmm.

Anne 56:35

At least he ended by hanging and he didn't break his neck, which means he suffocated. So karma. other deeper horrors. We've already talked about the pressure and expectation of an unrealistic timeline, which many people have to deal with in our capitalist hellscape of a society where employees are trying to squeeze everything they can out of us. We've already talked about life without vaccines and modern understanding of hygiene and dentistry. Modern dentistry, we should be very grateful for that. At one point they listed, injuries at the fair and there were 169 teeth that hurt like hell.

Caroline 57:07

yeah, I mean, I guess to my insurance company, teeth are optional, so

Anne 57:12

talk about.

Caroline 57:13

so grateful for dentistry. Mm-hmm.

Anne 57:17

Yeah. obviously the deeper horror of charm and good looks without morality. Right. We gotta watch out for that. the Bundys and HH Holmes' of the world, one of the things we haven't talked about is the othering of so-called exotic people.

Caroline 57:31

Mm-hmm.

Anne 57:31

they were serving roast missionary ala dahomey. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but like, you know, that's implying that this, tribe were cannibals and there was a lot of ogling of people as exhibits. they, at one point they talk about sending someone to like, go find a tribe of pygmies and just like bring them back and put them on display.

Caroline 57:48

Mm-hmm.

Anne 57:49

that whole ball of the midway freaks. And, you know, we touch on this in our Tuskegee syphilis study episode, but like if you view people as objects that dehumanizes them and that can lead to a lot of other horrors.

Caroline 58:00

Yeah. I mean, I will say in the Olmsted quote you read earlier, like, the use of the word savage is like, makes, you know, I react,

Anne 58:10

absolutely.

Caroline 58:10

behind Savage,

Anne 58:12

Illegal abortions because maybe some of the people he was murdering were botched abortions, whether. On purpose or by mistake, which is why abortion must be legal because they will happen. And you don't want young women showing up at a place like HH Holmes' basement. that's what will happen if it's illegal. I guess the only other deeper horror I can think of is like Olympic Villages and you know, that all these buildings were temporary, or most of them

Caroline 58:34

Yes. totally. I mean, I was looking this up because my husband talks about this all the time, like the effect of the Olympics in a city and how like, I just don't understand why any city even applies it just seems like in every instance there is an economic penalty for the system. And there's also dis, I mean, I was reading, I think in when Atlanta did the Olympics, like 7,000 unhoused, people were displaced. just, I don't understand the benefit.

Anne 59:01

I mean, you look at like how much China threw into their Olympics, and they've got all these just abandoned, crumbling buildings. if you Google abandoned Olympic villages, you can find a lot of creepy pictures. and there's, this is what happened here. It says, the white city became the black city miles of empty stores, hotels, flats, buildings showing its shrunken state. Tens of thousands of human beings lured to the festive city by abnormal wages have been left stranded without food, or a right to shelter. What a human downfall after the magnificence of the world's fair. Yeah, Brisbane has the Olympics coming up, and I'm just like, Ooh, is this gonna work out well for us or not? Okay.

Caroline 59:34

no.

Anne 59:35

No. Yeah. All right. Do you have any questions?

Caroline 59:38

I mean, I wish that we could have heard from like people who knew HH Holmes as a child, family, have some other reference of his upbringing besides what he has mentioned. Then just that piels, wife, like how she went on with the rest of her life. I don't know. I thought about her a lot, as it was ending.

Anne 59:58

do we have any quotes from her? I don't think so. Maybe they don't exist. Right.

Caroline 1:00:01

no, she, she said something in the trial, I can't remember, but it was devastating.

Anne 1:00:06

poor woman. One thing I wonder is obviously like, well what's the answer? How many people did he kill? Right?

Caroline 1:00:11

Mm-hmm.

Anne 1:00:12

were the claims exaggerated? Why was he doing, you know, just all the stuff that we don't and probably can never know. you know, I wanna know, like, I guess this is kind of sick of me, but like, what, what are the details? What did he, did he just gas them? Did he do other things? 'cause we don't know.

Caroline 1:00:26

I don't wanna know that.

Anne 1:00:28

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I, my sick need to know. Exists. One thing I wanna know is like, did people not commit fraud before him? it was so easy to fake an identity, so difficult to track someone down. And there's so much like buying on credit happening. Like people seem so naive. Why would you trust somebody you don't know? I guess Yelp reviews would've put him outta business pretty quickly. Now, I guess we have other ways to scam people, but, and just like, why didn't people ask more questions? you've got the workman who connected gas to the airtight fault. I mean, come on. Right? Like, why does he need that? Why? Why wouldn't you say something? I guess, I guess the deeper horror is this, maybe I should just mind my own business. And there's the pharmacist who was selling him like industrial amounts of chloroform, which he did pay for. and when he went, when he rented that house to dispose of Howard, he asked for a shovel so he can bury some potatoes in the cellar and then arrives with a trunk and then leaves sure. Jan potatoes, you know, like, check out that potato stash landlord.

Caroline 1:01:28

Yeah.

Anne 1:01:29

And then there's the guy who serviced the kiln 'cause it wasn't working properly. And he's like, he asked me, there would be absolutely no order odor from the furnace. I dunno, follow up on that shit.

Caroline 1:01:39

that, guy was actually, 'cause that guy was like, he asked me to look at it and I asked him like, questions about it and he wouldn't answer them. So like, it's like, I can't help you if you give me

Anne 1:01:49

Yeah. Why is he concerned about odor?

Caroline 1:01:53

Mm.

Anne 1:01:53

And another question I have is, how did that castle burn down like he was in prison. By this point, did he get someone to do it or was it just a coincidence? It seems too coincidental to me.

Caroline 1:02:03

It does, but it also seems like fire happened a lot.

Anne 1:02:06

There was a lot of fire.

Caroline 1:02:07

Yeah,

Anne 1:02:07

Yeah. I wonder if now that we have DNA, could they go back and test skeletons lying around in like natural history museums and medical schools and see if they can be linked to living relatives? Like the way they caught the Golden State Killer. could we confirm that that six foot skeleton was in fact, Julia, do we know who her descendants are? And maybe, you know, just solving a mystery aside, it might be a nice thing to do to identify these people.

Caroline 1:02:30

totally. Let's get through the bones at Fox Hollow first.

Anne 1:02:34

so many, so many unidentified people.

Caroline 1:02:36

and all the rape kits too.

Anne 1:02:38

Yes. Which are you watching? The pit

Caroline 1:02:40

No,

Anne 1:02:40

that's touched on in the pit? Watch the pit. In Larson's narration of Julia's death, he mentions arousal, this is the quote, she gripped his hand more tightly, which he found singularly arousing. The chloroform and his own intense arousal made him feel lightheaded. And I was reading, again, I didn't finish the confession, but I was wondering, how do we know that? How do we know he was aroused? Does he say that? I didn't see it in the confession that I read because this was when he was trying to make himself look better. But that kind of brings me to my main criticism is that novelistic embellishment of certain scenes. I think it's both a positive and a negative for me because it makes it interesting and readable. But it also had me wondering like, well, how does he know that?

Caroline 1:03:21

I agree. I think of this book as historical fiction. And it's categorized as nonfiction, and I just don't agree because there's conversations there that nobody would, clearly, there's conjecture in here.

Anne 1:03:33

A lot of speculation.

Caroline 1:03:34

yeah. So I would categorize this as historical fiction, personally.

Anne 1:03:38

Well, yeah, I mean, there's times where it's like quotes from somebody's letter or their testimony and we're like, okay, I can trust that.

Caroline 1:03:44

fiction includes, can have room for that, but you can't say you're nonfiction if you're like, making assumptions like you just said, or having full conversations that like there, that aren't in letters,

Anne 1:03:54

Like another one was, Mrs. Holton, the old lady who owned the pharmacy originally. He talks about, she walks upstairs to talk to her husband about letting homes take over the pharmacy. Just thinking about the young doctor gave her a feeling of contentment. He's like well, she disappeared. So how do we know that? And maybe some of this comes from, he sources the book Depraved, which I tried to get outta the library to see if I could like confirm, because also in last podcast on the left, they talk about him getting off sexually. And I was like, how does anyone notice

Caroline 1:04:20

Mm.

Anne 1:04:20

it? It makes sense, but do we know? I don't know.

Caroline 1:04:23

Maybe it's like a John Douglas related assumption.

Anne 1:04:26

assuming. Yeah. Based on profiling. you have any other criticism besides thinking some of the Burnham Olmstead chapters are boring?

Caroline 1:04:32

no, I don't think so.

Anne 1:04:34

Survival. What do we learn?

Caroline 1:04:36

never meet a man as they say wine and crime. Uh,

Anne 1:04:39

I was gonna be a little more specific. Stay away from men with aliases, even if they have good excuses. Like if he tells you he's a Lord in England. Double check the story before you get married and sign over your property.

Caroline 1:04:50

understood this was a time and place. There's Google now, there's no reason why you shouldn't Google someone when you meet them if you're thinking of dating them.

Anne 1:04:59

Get a police report even,

Caroline 1:05:01

Mm-hmm.

Anne 1:05:01

we have done.

Caroline 1:05:03

We have done.

Anne 1:05:05

Pay a Pinkerton detective to do a little bit of, you know, research on them a little bit. That's all I'm saying.

Caroline 1:05:11

we don't love the pinkerton's,

Anne 1:05:12

Maybe not the pinkertons,

Caroline 1:05:13

but

Anne 1:05:13

they're bad news.

Caroline 1:05:14

else. Yeah.

Anne 1:05:15

If someone casually asks you to take out a life insurance policy and name them as the beneficiary, decline

Caroline 1:05:22

Mm-hmm.

Anne 1:05:22

and watch your back. And I guess in general, beware of charm. And I'm not saying charming people can't be good. I mean, you know, look at us, but proceed with caution. All right. do you have any other comments? Anything you wanna talk about that we missed?

Caroline 1:05:35

I was curious if you were invited to an event the same day by Harvard and Yale, which would you go to?

Anne 1:05:42

Harvard?

Caroline 1:05:42

Yeah, same.

Anne 1:05:43

Why?

Caroline 1:05:44

Well, that's who he picked. I was just curious.

Anne 1:05:46

I don't, uh, new haven's not great.

Caroline 1:05:48

No,

Anne 1:05:49

That's just like a city to visit, whereas Boston is Oh, one thing with Buffalo Bill. The list of stuff at Buffalo Bill's Wild, wild West Show was like the Prince Ali song from Aladdin. It's like a hundred former US Calvary soldiers, 97 Cheyenne Kiaa, Pawnee Sue Indians, another 50 Cass and hustlers, 180 horses, 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 10 elk, 10 mules, and a dozen other animals. That was what I was thinking when they were listening that

Caroline 1:06:14

it was Susan B. Anthony Right. Who arguing about Sundays.

Anne 1:06:18

I'm not sure I missed that part if I,

Caroline 1:06:20

There

Anne 1:06:20

oh, Annie Oakley. We missed her. We didn't talk about her

Caroline 1:06:23

um, they were talking about like whether they should have it on Sundays or whatever, and they were like shading on atheists and she was just like, I don't give a shit what you call me, your religion doesn't get to dictate when I get to do stuff,

Anne 1:06:35

I agree a hundred percent.

Caroline 1:06:36

Mm-hmm.

Anne 1:06:37

Alright, do you have a pal cleanser? What's made you happy or brought you a bit of joy this week?

Caroline 1:06:41

for, star Wars Completists. I guess, there is a new series called Mall. It's a cartoon series on Disney Plus, we started watching it and it's very good. And I've also been watching Daredevil to get prepared for the next Spider-Man movie, which I think are speculating that Daredevil's gonna be a part of. And I'm really, really loving that. So both of those

Anne 1:07:02

Is Tom Holland in this new one? Is it still Tom Holland?

Caroline 1:07:05

Oh yeah. It's still Tom

Anne 1:07:06

Good. Good, good. Okay, good, good. We're falling in love with Tom Holland in my house.

Caroline 1:07:09

Uh, yeah, I've been

Anne 1:07:11

Yeah. mine is, we've started watching Stranger Things with the kids and. It is so funny because my son, when he first saw Barb was like, is she a teacher? I was like, oh no, she's not a teacher. And he freaks out every time the episode finished he's like, one more, one more, please. One more. he said to me in the car the other day, he's like, you can have cliffhanger. They just can't be too good. And I was yeah, I know.

Caroline 1:07:33

Honey, imagine if you had to wait a whole summer.

Anne 1:07:37

That's what I said. I was like, we had waited a decade to finish this show. It's all there for you. All right. Homework. I had a lot of trouble choosing. I considered barbarian and black phone for scary basements, but ultimately I decided on the Edgar Allen pose story, the cask of ato, because ATO wine comes up or Sherry twice and it happens to be my favorite pose. Short story. it's on two menus in this, so I figured, how often does that word come up? Like never. Right? So, and at one point Larson writes, only Poe could have dreamed the rest. So it seemed fitting to go with a poe and, reor and the cask of ATO is a very unreliable narrator like, Holmes. But because that is super short, it'll take you like 15, 20 minutes to read. if you just look in your podcast app and type in Cask of ato, you'll find like a million people reading it. But Carolyn has been nice enough to grant me a horror double feature with Silence of the Lambs right after that because of Holmes's Basement. Because of Buffalo Bill. so yeah, I'm excited to talk about both. So go read the Cask of Ado and watch Sounds of the Lambs.

Caroline 1:08:40

I appreciate you calling me nice enough as if watching signs of the lambs is some gray burden.

Anne 1:08:45

Sure. Yeah. I started, I watched the first half last night and I was like, God, this is a good movie.

Caroline 1:08:50

So good.

Anne 1:08:50

All right. What recommendations do you have?

Caroline 1:08:52

So I don't have a ton. the dollop, obviously you've mentioned the dollop a couple times here. I'm a big fan of that. Shredded Wheat also came out of this fair and there's a great episode with Pat Oswalt called Serial Men

Anne 1:09:04

Oh, that sounds funny.

Caroline 1:09:04

Yeah, it's, so, it's one of my favorites. And Pinkerton, there's episodes on all of this stuff. So the dollop is always a good time and also a good reflection of like, the problems we have today have kind of always been there so you don't have to catastrophize

Anne 1:09:17

takeaway from their Pinkerton episode. I was like, oh my God.

Caroline 1:09:20

when the world's getting too upsetting For me, I think about the dollop and how like a lot of, this is history repeating. also speaking of Pinkerton's Weezer Al Weezer's album, Pinkerton is great. Highly

Anne 1:09:31

Okay.

Caroline 1:09:31

Go listen to it. Titanic.

Anne 1:09:34

Hygienic is mine too.

Caroline 1:09:35

Yeah. And then, for historical fiction, I really always appreciated the Philippa Gregory books. and then for a Mel meld of, I get, I don't know if the Stranger Beside me is historical fiction or nonfiction, but obviously

Anne 1:09:48

It's nonfiction.

Caroline 1:09:49

Yeah, I love that book too. So, related, serial killer, novel. I have a horror recommendation, related to houses with creepy elements built into it and being trapped. Heretic,

Anne 1:10:02

Yeah, I loved that. Okay. Alright, I recommend Larson's other books. As I said, I liked Dead Wake and Isaac Storm and if you like that kind of novelized nonfiction that makes you want to annoy the people in your life by sharing all the cool facts you've read. The Wager, which is about kind like the age of exploration and a shipwreck, and it was awesome. I also recommend Titanic for Gilded Age Vibes and because of the start and end of this book, the Aliens is a novel. It's like an old timey hunt for an 1890s serial killer. And Larson wanted to recreate the feel of that book in this, the novel Bright Young Women by Jessica Nall. like a fictional fictionalized version of. the sorority girls who were attacked by Ted Bundy. it's really challenging the narrative that Ted Bundy was a genius and posing that perhaps it was easier for law enforcement who didn't catch him to cast him that way, right? Because he got away with it and like, was vaguely attractive. If you wanna know more about Henry Holmes last podcast on the left has an episode on this, Henry does a fairly obnoxious impression of Minnie and Nanny, which I could have done without, but, as usual, equal parts humor with, oh my God, stop. Um. Henry also makes a comment about how all politicians are pedophiles and murderers. And this was back in 2015. Seems pretty,

Caroline 1:11:16

boy.

Anne 1:11:16

prescient with all the Epstein stuff. Look, I got Epstein in. Uh, Laura also has an episode on this called The Castle. Holmes wrote in one of his confessions, my head and face are gradually assuming in elongated shape, I believe fully that I'm growing to resemble the devil. So based on that comment, I want to recommend the Novel Horns by Joe Hill, which is about a guy who is believed to have murdered his girlfriend, actually growing devil horns. And so he's kind of becoming the monster. He's seen as, the description of hog butchering in Chicago reminded me of the very, very, very trigger warning, disturbing, dystopian, horror novel about cannibalism. Tender is the flesh. Caroline, don't read it. Anyone who can handle a lot of body horror, check it. for other meticulous psychos, the talented Mr. Ripley and American Psycho, instant Dream Home. Have you ever watched that on Netflix? It's like they do a renovation in like 12 hours. And so it's like people performing amazing renovations and decorating feats under stress in limited time. My children love it.

Caroline 1:12:13

Also known as a lie for tv.

Anne 1:12:16

Absolutely. I absolutely believe it's a lie too. Yeah. And for some fun ones, arrested Development because Buster Bluth was also a mama's boy, like Holmes and Olmsted is as dramatic as Lucille Bluth and Parks and Rec because of the Harvest Fest. And, the retrenchment committee to cut costs reminded me of Ben Wyatt. That's all from me.

Caroline 1:12:34

Actually, your mention of the Bundy, what is it? Something girls,

Anne 1:12:38

Bright young women.

Caroline 1:12:38

right? Young women reminded me of the five, which is the Jack the Rip book about his five victims.

Anne 1:12:44

Yeah, we should be centering the people who are targeted, not the narcissist who target them. well, if you have any recommendations for tv, podcast, books, movies that would go along with this or that you'd like us to cover, please contact us. We are available on Instagram, Facebook, and threads. You can follow us there. Otherwise, do all the things podcasters ask you to do, like and subscribe. review us on iTunes. You can email us at Drawn to Darkness pod@gmail.com. And most importantly, please tell a like-minded friend who's also drawn to darkness, and if like Shirley Jackson, you delight in what you fear. Join us in two weeks here at John to Darkness Special shout out to Nancy Ano who painted our cover art. You can find her on Instagram at Nancy ano and to Harry Kidd for our intro and outro music. You can find him on Instagram at Harry J. Kidd and on Spotify.