All Episodes

September 24, 2020 11 mins

Coincidences and chance happenings always create curious situations. Today we're hear about two that are sure to leave you scratching your head.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. It's hard for some people to get interested
in politics. All the fighting and negativity doesn't exactly inspire
a love for democracy, especially when it seems like one
person's vote doesn't count for all that much. After all,

(00:48):
what difference can one person make? Just ask Henry Shoemaker.
Henry worked on a farm in DeKalb County, Indiana in
the mid eighteen forties. He did what guys like him
were supposed to do. He went to work every day,
he paid his taxes, and he voted on election day. Now,
back then, U S Senators were not elected by the people. Instead,

(01:09):
the voters elected state representatives who would then go on
to vote for the senators of their choice. That meant
electing the wrong representative might lead to electing the wrong
state senator down the line. Eighteen forty two was an
important year for Decalp County and its neighbors Steuben. Both
counties were to be counted as one, meaning their combined
elections would determine which single candidate would go on to

(01:31):
represent them in the state legislature. Decalb had put up
a Democrat named Madison Marsh, while Steuben had nominated enos
Biel from the Whig Party. The people came out and
voted for their chosen candidate, well, everyone except Henry Schumacher,
who had forgotten to cast his vote. He finally remembered
that afternoon, but he was already over twelve miles away

(01:53):
from his polling location. He mounted his horse and rode there,
making it to the polls just before they closed. When
he arrived, he asked for a ballot. It was printed
with the name enos Beal on it, so he asked
for a different one, one with Marsh's name instead. He
had met the candidate weeks earlier, while Marsh had been
campaigning in De Calp County. Henry had promised to vote

(02:14):
for him, but the officials didn't need to know that.
Not wanting to give up his right to cast his
vote in private, Henry borrowed a pen knife and several
other ballots from an official, he cut out the names
of the various local candidates he wanted to vote for,
including Marsh. He then folded the names he'd cut out
into a larger sheet of paper and handed the bundle

(02:35):
to the election inspector, who personally placed it into the
ballot box himself. And then Henry waited around outside for
another hour just in case there were issues with his
makeshift ballot. Nobody said a word, so Mr Shoemaker went home.
The following Sunday, the results came in and Madison Marsh
had earned three hundred sixty votes. Enos Bill had also

(02:57):
earned three hundred sixty votes. However, Henry's strange collection of
papers was not among them. Since his ballot hadn't looked
like the rest, the sheriffs had tossed it out and
ultimately declared Beal as the winner, but Marsh wouldn't accept defeat.
He filed an appeal and the election committee reassessed Henry's vote.
They found that Henry Schumacher of Decalp County had committed

(03:19):
no fraud. He had voted only one time, and the
knife he had used not only belonged to the inspector,
but the inspector himself had placed the ballot into the box. Therefore,
Henry's vote would be counted and Madison marsh would be
elected to the state Legislature of Indiana and a good
thing too. After William Henry Harrison's death in eighteen forty one,

(03:39):
John Tyler took over as president, leaving the vice president's
seat vacant. A new problem was facing the country. The
Republic of Texas had declared its independence from Mexico. It
was to be annexed into the rest of the United States.
The Senate, though, had failed to pass the annexation of
Texas via a treaty since it lacked a two thirds majority. Instead,

(04:00):
Tyler attempted to annex as a resolution. He would only
need a simple majority, not a two thirds. The resolution
passed twenty seven to twenty five, not exactly an easy win.
A single senator voting either way could have killed it
since there would have been no vice president to break
the tie. Among those who voted to approve the resolution

(04:22):
was Senator Edward Hannigan from Indiana. He had run for
election in eighteen forty two against two other candidates. At
the time, state legislatures voted for state Senators, and Hannigan
had only needed a single vote to win, and he
got it from another man who had won by a
single vote, Madison Marsh Sandra Rivet disappeared at nine pm

(04:57):
on the night of November seventh, nine seventy four. She
had worked as a nanny for the Lucan family in
one of the wealthiest parts of London. Before retiring to
bed for the evening, she asked Veronica Lucan, also known
as Lady Lucan, if she would like a cup of tea.
Sandra then went down to the basement kitchen to boil
the water. Lady Lucan, irritated at how long it was

(05:19):
taking the nanny to make her tea, descended into the
basement around ten pm that night, at which time she
let out a blood curdling scream. She then ran out
the door to a local pub. She was bleeding and
begging for help. Someone in her house had just murdered
the nanny and had tried to kill her too. It
had been her husband, John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan,

(05:41):
known to everyone as Lord Lucan. The two had met
eleven years ago at a golf club where Veronica's sister
and brother in law were members. Veronica and John were
married less than a year later. Lady Lucan's social status
grew due to her husband's standing among London's cultural elite.
Lord Lucan had sophisticated taste. He gambled, raced boats, and

(06:02):
drove an Aston Martin. This, combined with his friendship with
James Bond author Ian Fleming, led many to believe that
Lucan had even served as the inspiration behind the legendary spy.
Except where Bond felt right at home at the Baccarat table,
Lord Lucan's luck fared much worse. His gambling losses led
to credit problems and debts, which his father helped pay

(06:23):
off as a wedding present, a way to give the
newlyweds a fresh start. The couple went on to have
three children together and a happy marriage for those eleven years. Sadly,
the good times wouldn't last. Lady Lucan suffered from postpartum
depression after the birth of her second and third child,
and her husband's gambling debts returned and continued to grow.

(06:44):
The couple were being pulled further and further apart, and
by nineteen seventy two, they had separated. Lord Lucan didn't
handle the separation well. He stalked his family often and
spread rumors about his wife's depression to make her look
like an unfit other all in an effort to gain
full custody of his children. They went back and forth

(07:05):
for months, with the kids being pulled in and out
of the home on several occasions by social services. The
court required that Lady Lucan have a live in nanny,
but Lord Lucan made sure whoever was watching his children
was also drawn into his wild manipulations. He called the
house late at night and breathe into the phone to
frighten them, or asked to speak to people who didn't

(07:26):
live there. He even took one of his wife's nanny's
out for drinks one time, pulling information from her about
what was going on inside the house. Ultimately, every nanny
in Lady Lucan's employ would eventually leave until Sandra Rivet
joined the home in nineteen seventy four. Lord Lucan fell
deeper into debt and despair after the courts granted his

(07:47):
wife full custody of his children. He spiraled into alcoholism.
Things got so dark that he sometimes talked about killing
his wife, even describing how he would get rid of
the body. But it looked like things might have been
turning around for him. On the night of November seven,
Lucan had planned to go out on a date with
a young woman named Andrena, except he never showed up. Instead,

(08:09):
he traveled to his old home, where he waited in
the basement for his wife to appear. His fingers wrapped
around a lead pipe. At nine pm, footsteps clicked and
clacked down the staircase. Lord Lucan raised the pipe over
his head and swung The other person collapsed into a
heap on the floor. It hadn't been his wife, though,
but the nanny, Sandr Rivet. He stuffed her body into

(08:33):
an old canvas mail sack and retrieved his pipe. One
hour later, his wife came looking for miss Rivet. Lady
Lucan screamed as her husband hit her and then wrapped
his hands around her throat, but she fought back until
she broke free. They stood opposite each other, nursing their wounds.
Where was Rivet, she asked. Lucan told her that he

(08:53):
had killed her. She told him to lay low in
the house until she had healed enough. She didn't want
anyone asking questions. The two walked up to the bedroom,
but while he went to the bathroom to fetch towels
so that she could clean the blood from her face,
Lady Lucan dashed downstairs and out the door to the
Plumber's Arms, a nearby pub. The next day, detectives arrived

(09:14):
at her London apartment to begin their investigation. They found
Sandra Rivet's body in the bag, as well as blood
on several surfaces. Lord Lucan, however, was nowhere to be found.
He wasn't in his own apartments either. In fact, many
of his personal effects had been left behind, including his passport, wallet,
driver's license, and car keys. His car was still parked

(09:35):
outside too. The search was underway, though police dogs started
tracking his scent. Family and friends were interrogated as to
his possible whereabouts, but amazingly nothing was turned up. On
November and across the Atlantic Ocean, police found a pile
of clothes abandoned on a Miami beach. It was believed

(09:58):
that whoever they belonged to had gone swimming and had
either drowned or been killed by a shark. In reality,
their owner had been spotted in Denmark before traveling to Australia.
Authorities monitored his actions for almost a month. It appeared
as though they had found their man. They arrested him
on Christmas Eve of nineteen seventy four, and once he
was in custody, police asked him to pull down his

(10:20):
pants to verify that he had a six inch scar
running on the inside of his right thigh, a distinguishing
mark for Lord Lucan. To their surprise, the suspect didn't
have a scar. Apparently, the police had not captured alleged
murder John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan. Instead, they
had caught John Stonehouse, a British labor politician who had

(10:41):
faked his own death in Miami two weeks after Sandra
Rivett had been murdered. Stonehouse served five years in prison
for fraud before his release in nineteen seventy nine. Lord Lucan, however,
was never found. But that doesn't mean we don't know
the whole story. Something that sounds straight out of the
classic movie Clue, Lord Lucan in the kitchen with the

(11:03):
lead pipe. I hope you've enjoyed Today's guided tour of
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

(11:24):
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious. Yeah,

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Host

Aaron Mahnke

Aaron Mahnke

Show Links

StoreAboutRSS

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.