Episode 2 - The Second Episode

Charlie dives deep on the history of Shady Grove, and its beloved pudding foundry, which has supported and shaped the community for over a century, and is far more interesting than it sounds. More murders and corruption of the past begin to haunt the present. Prostitutes are briefly discussed. Members of the town offer their help, and the local police department struggles to find a solid lead.

Thanks for listening. Check out the TMK merch at:

https://the-murderer-killings-a-true-crime-podcast-shop.fourthwall.com/

Transcript

Charlie Incarica: 0:02

Okay, so I've just gotten into Shady Grove. It's pretty quiet. Just waiting for my car. Not really sure. Oh hold on. This might be. I think this is it. Hey, it's Steve, right? Okay. Here we go. Mind if I I'm just gonna move a couple of these things over. So you yeah, you know you know the way? Have you lived here a long time? Oh wow. Not a lot out there. Is it usually this quiet out here? Almost as soon as I arrive in Shady Grove, it becomes clear that to truly know who might be behind this heinous crime, I need to understand the dynamics of the community. I need to learn about Shady Grove's unique and troubling history. It's my best shot at understanding the possible motives for these horrific and hopefully commercially compelling murders. Shady Grove was founded in 1840, and then again in 1841, two miles to the west, when the settlers, exhausted after an extended buffalo hunt, decided it would be easier to just start over where they were resting. The land was beautiful, especially if you find flatness attractive, but harsh, and the settlers led hard scrabble lives. However, by the mid-1850s, through grit and diligence, most citizens were living at least a medium scrabble existence. When the Civil War began, Shady Grove recruited both a Confederate and Union company. But when they converged on Main Street to march to their respective armies, they realized that if they each agreed to stay home, it would be a wash, and so returned to their farms. Shady Grove kept pace with the rapidly growing nation in the years that followed, as its citizens engaged in the typical pastimes of the era, such as attending square dances, racism, and staring somberly into cameras. In fact, Shady Grove was a lot like any other small middle American community until the early 1900s, when a young Edward Putnam began pursuing his lifelong ambition: the puttifying of America.

Estelle Hayes: 2:46

Every school child here knows Edward Putnam was born on April 19, 1889. Other boys his age were obsessed with going fishing and playing baseball, but Edward was all about the pudding.

Charlie Incarica: 2:59

Estelle Hayes is the town's librarian and local historian. She also owns the Airbnb I'm staying in, and comes into my room at all hours to chat. So I try to steer the conversation to the murders.

Estelle Hayes: 3:11

Day and night pudding, pudding, pudding. Pretty fucking weird when you think about it.

Charlie Incarica: 3:17

Pretty weird indeed. The third child of seven, Edward was solitary and single-minded as a boy. And while his classmates idolized baseball players such as Cy Young, Edward looked up to Andrew Carnegie.

Estelle Hayes: 3:31

When he was nine years old, he told his teacher he wanted to do for pudding what Andrew Carnegie did for steel. Nobody knew what the fuck he was talking about.

Charlie Incarica: 3:40

By the time he was 13, the industrious Edward had saved up enough money to start his burgeoning pudding enterprise in earnest. A former classmate recalls this momentous occasion in Edward's life in the 1950 documentary Putting Things Right, the Edward Putnam story.

Classmate: 3:56

His father acted as a signatory, and Edward leased a tiny little building, more of a shack than anything else, nestled between the town's church and brothel. His first day there, he placed a sign on its door. It simply read E. Putnam Pudding Monger. And every day after he'd finished his chores in school, he'd experiment with various pudding flavors and consistencies. Sometimes the teachers let him out early on account of how he made everyone around him uncomfortable.

Estelle Hayes: 4:27

People laughed at him. And also felt creeped out by him. But it was mostly laughing, I think. Bit of both. I mean, there's not like data on this. What, you seem pissed.

Charlie Incarica: 4:38

Oh, I'm not.

Estelle Hayes: 4:39

Well then lighten the fuck up, podcast boy. Let's do some shots.

Charlie Incarica: 4:42

Oh no.

Estelle Hayes: 4:43

Don't be such a pussy!

Charlie Incarica: 4:45

At fifteen, Edward arrived at the pudding recipe that would make the Putnam family fortune. Even later, when he was forced to remove the cocaine from the recipe, it still retained its popularity as the most popular dessert in the Midwest.

Estelle Hayes: 4:58

People still laughed at him, but they also ate shitloads of his pudding.

Horatio Alvarez: 5:03

It's hard for us to fully appreciate the mania this pudding created.

Charlie Incarica: 5:07

Horatio Alvarez holds the Little Debbie Chair of Sociology and Snack Food at the Putnam Online Institute for the Advancement of Pudding Studies in Chicago.

Horatio Alvarez: 5:16

You have to understand that to rural and working class Americans, enjoying things was a brand new craze sweeping the nation. So yes, timing was a factor, but the man made a damn good pudding.

Charlie Incarica: 5:28

By 1916, the demand for Shady Grove pudding was so great that Putnam built his first pudding foundry just outside of town. It was soon operating 24 hours a day.

Estelle Hayes: 5:38

They couldn't make that shit fast enough.

Charlie Incarica: 5:41

Still, all was not well in Shady Grove.

Estelle Hayes: 5:44

Edward Putnam ran this town like a king. Sure, he and his cronies were getting rich, but the common man was suffering. And then the first murders happened.

Charlie Incarica: 5:55

First murders.

Estelle Hayes: 5:57

Yeah. I mean, Jesus, what the Did you even bother to Google this place?

Charlie Incarica: 6:02

I had. Or I did, when I got back to my room. In the summer of 1936, an automobile belonging to Edward's elder son, Walter, was found on the outskirts of town, with the bodies of two murdered women in the back seat.

Estelle Hayes: 6:17

They tried to hush it up, but hey, you want to refill?

Charlie Incarica: 6:20

Oh no.

Estelle Hayes: 6:21

I'm just gonna top myself off.

unknown: 6:22

Okay.

Estelle Hayes: 6:23

Yeah, anyway, it's a small town. You can't cover up something like that. But it didn't matter. Walter never even got charged with anything. Or the second and third times.

Charlie Incarica: 6:33

How many times did that Listen?

Estelle Hayes: 6:35

Crazy runs hard in that family. Walter was like his old man. With Edward, it was making pudding. With Walter, it was killing prostitutes.

Charlie Incarica: 6:43

It's hard to find much in the way of official records on these murders. Some of it survives only as lore. But many believe Walter killed up to eight sex workers between 1936 and 1938. Yet the only evidence of Walter having a run-in with the law at that time was a traffic ticket issued in September of 1938 for speeding in a pudding manufacturing zone. With the town growing restless due to the perception the Putnams were literally getting away with murder, as well as the growing prostitute shortage, the Putnam family sent Walter to scout new pudding markets in South America. But before he reached his final destination, he reached his final final destination. Which means I'm saying he was killed. Walter Putnam's death was ruled as a result of a car accident by the county coroner, but some felt it was a case of another Putnam murder, pointing out that car accident victims usually don't have multiple stab wounds, as Walter's body did. Also, he was found in his kitchen. He was survived by his wife, Tess, and his two young daughters, Mary, three, and Catherine, 18 months. They soon left for parts unknown, and there they seem to fade from the picture. At least for the time being. But remember them going forward. As for Walter, Eddie often. Edward Putnam Jr., known to all as Eddie, was playing a larger role in the day-to-day operations of the company, and was widely known as ruthless in business. And he had come to view his older brother as bad for business.

Estelle Hayes: 8:18

Walter had become an embarrassment to the family. Think about how fucked up you had to be to claim that title.

Charlie Incarica: 8:25

Very is the answer. The year before, Edward Sr. testified before a Senate subcommittee, urging Congress to subsidize his plans to design low-cost housing built with what he claimed to be a revolutionary new material, which he repeatedly promised the press and Congress was not related to pudding. But when he arrived to give testimony, he ceded his time to his imaginary friend, Professor Pudding. And when Putnam was questioned by visibly uncomfortable senators, Edward answered every question with the word pudding. He was seldom seen in public again. The company and the town briefly became a laughing stock. Pudding sales slowed to a crawl.

Estelle Hayes: 9:05

But thank God World War II happened. The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

Charlie Incarica: 9:15

This gave the Putnam family the second chance it needed.

Estelle Hayes: 9:18

Somehow Eddie got the government to declare pudding an essential wartime industry. Everyone knew the whole thing was corrupt, but everybody was getting rich, so who's going to complain? And the few people who did, well, they tended to go missing.

Charlie Incarica: 9:31

Shady Grove received a massive contract from the government, and by the war's end, virtually all of America was making Shady Grove Pudding its dessert of choice. By 1948, the Shady Grove Pudding Empire was at its apex. Under Eddie's cutthroat business tactics, the company had extended its reach into significant holdings in textiles, owned a string of newspapers and radio stations throughout the Midwest, and sponsored one of the most popular radio programs in the country. This ad, which aired regularly in 1948, is typical of the Shady Grove pudding marketing campaigns.

Commercial Voice 2: 10:08

You're so right, Marty. Foreigners are funny.

Commercial Voice 1: 10:18

Don't be silly, Tom. They only probably steal your case of delicious shady pudding. Shady Grove really attends to my everything.

Estelle Hayes: 11:06

Paddling around with movie stars and mobsters, sleeping with starlets, and expanding his financial empire off and all at once. He hadn't been back there in almost three years when the strike broke out in 49. Pass me that bottle, we just killed this one. Oh, I haven't been drinking. Well, you've been in the room. It's trying to be inclusive. Anyway, 49, big strike.

Charlie Incarica: 11:29

This is a crucial moment in the town's history, and I believe it might have a direct bearing on the case. Apparently, the Putnams Company had been unionized since the 20s. The chief negotiating victory the union could boast of was a 1932 agreement from management that when a worker died on the job, something that happened with surprising frequency for a pudding factory, his family would be entitled to 30% off Shady Grove pudding for six months. But in 1949, a young radical lawyer named Alexander Hart came to town with the express purpose of giving the company's workers a fair shake. Before long, Eddie had borrowed dozens of union busting goons from the Ford Motor Company in a pilot program for goon sharing among the top corporations in America. Still, the workers didn't give in, and so many thugs were eventually brought in that in the 1950 census, union busting was Shady Grove's second most popular occupation, running almost in a tie with pudding workers.

Estelle Hayes: 12:28

The rest of the country was enjoying real prosperity, assuming you were a white man, and in those days everyone assumed you were. But here it was a pretty dark time. A lot of good men were killed, also a fair amount of pricks.

Charlie Incarica: 12:40

But then, Alexander Hart devised a brilliant plan. Luckily, newsreel footage announcing the breakthrough still exists.

Anthony Giofreddo: 12:48

Today, the negotiations between myself and Mr. Anthony the Razor Giafredo have successfully concluded in an agreement to unionize the union busting goons who were previously terrorizing many of the strikers at Mr. Putnam's factory. Mr. Geoffredo and his union members have further agreed to commence a strike in sympathy with the pudding mongoers of America. Mr. Giafredo.

Speaker: 13:22

However, to honor the terms of our previous contract, we will continue to beat factory workers until the 15th of next month.

Anthony Giofreddo: 13:31

But as a show of good faith and solidarity, several goons will themselves be beaten up each day. And factory workers will form a rotation in which they will also brutalize their fellow employees.

Charlie Incarica: 13:44

It proved to be a stroke of genius. Ford and the other companies abandoned the Putnams. For Eddie, it was a crushing and humiliating blow, one from which many say he never fully recovered. He was forced to negotiate a contract that allowed for paid vacation, shorter hours, and insulin for the vast diabetic population of the town. Hart eventually settled in Shady Grove, as did many of the newly unionized goons, whom Hart would frequently represent when negotiating terms with other companies who needed their services. And so, the bitter rivalry between the Putnam and Hart families began. The next years were uneventful, although in 1961, Edward Sr., though no longer active in day-to-day operations, donated $15 million to NASA to study the effects of weightlessness on pudding. Infuriated, Eddie stripped his father's right to control his own money.

Estelle Hayes: 14:43

I mean, given the way Ed Sr. was pissing it away, it made sense. But the way he did it not only alienated him from his father, but from his 21-year-old son Robert. Eddie Jr. was grooming him to take over the plants upon his retirement, but Robert never forgave him. Also, Robert was a fucking idiot.

Horatio Alvarez: 15:00

Robbie. Well, Robbie was always a free spirit. A true iconoclast.

Estelle Hayes: 15:05

He was a true fuck up.

Horatio Alvarez: 15:07

He was always thinking outside of the box.

Estelle Hayes: 15:10

If Robert Putnam ever thought outside of the box, it was because he was too dumb to figure out how to open it.

Charlie Incarica: 15:16

By 1967, Eddie only saw Robert when he'd begun some ill-fated business venture or another. In 1970, less than a year after Woodstock, Robert sank nearly $3 million into his ill-fated PUD Stock. And despite offering luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Janice Joplin, and John Lennon well-compensated slots, the only two performers he was able to secure were Academy Award winner Mickey Rooney and Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson. And despite their groundbreaking duet rendition of the Who's Rock Opera Tommy, it was a disaster, with Robert somehow losing $7 million, despite only investing $1 million. And then, the town was hit particularly hard by the rough economy of the 70s.

Estelle Hayes: 16:02

You can't base your economy on one product, especially if it's fucking pudding.

Charlie Incarica: 16:07

But if the Putnams and Shady Grove itself were going through hard times, Alexander Hart's family was on the ascent. His only daughter, Alice, had graduated from law school and was duly sworn in before the bar as the state's first lawyerette. Women weren't called lawyers in Shady Grove until the early 1980s. In 1983, she became the county's youngest and first unpenised district attorney. And her first target was Shady Grove Pudding's grip on the town. She immediately pressed Shady Grove's city council to rename the town's streets, which had all been named Pudding Street since 1930, making the most basic navigation in town excruciating and dangerous. While that move was widely applauded, in 1997 she indicted Edward Putnam Jr., then 86 on 14 counts of witness tampering, murder, and transporting pudding across state lines for the purposes of voter intimidation. Quickly the town turned on her.

Estelle Hayes: 17:06

Alice underestimated the love the community had for the Putnams. Not Eddie, per se. But you see, for Shady Grove, that company had become synonymous with their identity. Our high school sports teams are called the snack packs, for fuck's sake. But she humiliated that man, and that was going too far. She lost the next election.

Charlie Incarica: 17:26

Eddie pleaded guilty, but shot himself before sentencing. Two weeks later, Edward Sr. died at the age of 108. It was a shock to the community. People referred to the time as Double Fudge December.

Estelle Hayes: 17:40

By then, Robbie had long left the company trying to break into the burgeoning cult industry. So the board, looking to show continuity, chose Robert's son Teddy to become CEO. An unfortunate choice. Anyway, the town. It was never the same. It just wasn't the place that I'd always know.

Charlie Incarica: 18:04

You need to take a minute. Then, with Shady Grove in a seemingly irreversible decline through the nineties and the first decade of the 2000s, Teddy's twin sister, Amanda, took the reins of her family's moribund company, and through her discipline and grit, brought Shady Grove Pudding and Shady Grove itself, roaring back to life. By 2015, she was hailed as the town's savior. So, who would possibly want to kill her? More than a few people, it turns out. The prime suspects in episode three of the murderer killings. Oh, hi. I uh I I I ordered my food like two hours ago. It it's Charlie Incarica. I ordered a burger and a milkshake. What's that? No, I I