Shrunken Head

Plots to do dastardly things is on the tour today, complete with all sorts of curious characters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. Salvador Dolly had a bit of an unconventional
streak about him. He enjoyed surprising people, He liked thinking
and painting outside the box. And if his mustache is
any testament to his temperament, you can assume just by

(00:49):
looking at him that he was quite the interesting character
to have a conversation with. Counted among his lack of
convention was his undying quest to upset the status quo,
to do something a little different, and he received just
such an opportunity when U S Department of Corrections Commissioner
Anna moscowits Cross approached Dolly's manager and invited the artist

(01:10):
to give an art lesson to inmates at Rikers Island
Prison in New York. The manager must have pinched himself,
of course his client would want to take the commissioner
up on this. He was, after all, Salvador Dolly, and
true to form, he did intend to give the lesson,
but unfortunately became sick before his visit and had to cancel.
A shame too, as he had planned on bringing Baboo

(01:32):
his pet acelot. But Dolly wasn't just going to call
it quits. No, he decided to paint an original work,
especially for the prison, to be displayed proudly. Inside it
was a black blot representing Christ's head with the crown
of thorns from which red and black splatter fell. Dolly
even signed it for the dining room of the prisoners

(01:54):
Rikers Island, s d and from nineteen sixty five to one.
That was where it was, right in the middle of
the prison dining room. It didn't take long though, before
food fights became a problem. The painting got caught in
the crossfire or perhaps became the target of all manner
of flying entrees and tableware. One such projectile even cracked

(02:16):
the glass and left coffee splotches on the paper itself.
Seeing no other option, the prison decided to invest in
better protection, and while they were doing that, they had
it appraised, stunned by a valuation of two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. They soon locked it safely inside a
perspect's box, where no food fights could further tarnish it.

(02:38):
It remained there for another two decades, the subject of
many conversations, I'm sure. But then things changed on March
one of two thousand three. That was when a fire
alarm went off inside the prison. Now, according to standard
operating procedure, all officers gathered at a predetermined location. However,
four officers didn't show up. You see, they were too

(02:59):
busy with a more artistic endeavor. As the all clear
was given and the prisoners and guards went back about
their business, folks noticed that something had changed between the
time the fire alarm had gone off and the return
of the inmates and guards. The painting had shrunk by
about twelve inches in height and width. Worse, it was
now oil on canvas instead of water color and charcoal

(03:21):
on paper. It had also found itself a new frame,
which had been stapled directly to the wall rather than hung.
This new painting obviously was a fake, and not a
very good one either, And yet through it all, the
perspective box had remained locked. While there have been many
art heists that defy investigators. This one was easy enough

(03:42):
to solve, almost right from first glance. It took just
a few days for one of the guilty guards to
confess everything. A short time later, the other three had
been brought in as well. There was a trial, of course,
but despite the evidence of the new fake painting and
the four guards absence from the place of meeting during
the fire alarm, that trial was complicated and frustrating. In

(04:03):
the end, they walked free. Which leads to the biggest
mystery of all, and the one that's still not been
solved to this day. The painting, that original valuable work
by Salvador Dolly is still missing, and no one, not
even the man accused of stealing it, knows where it is.

(04:35):
The job of a United States president is one fraught
with difficult tasks and hard choices. They must be aware
of the threats to their country and way, the consequences
of their actions on the rest of the world, and
on top of all of that, they have to be
careful whenever they interact with the public. Even with twenty
four hour secret service, a president's life is in constant jeopardy.

(04:56):
The most famous incident of this was, of course, the
assassination of A. Braham Lincoln On April fourteenth of eighteen
sixty five, John Wilkes Booth shot the sixteenth President while
he was watching a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington,
d c. But Lincoln's life was actually in grave danger
before that, and his savior was someone no one saw coming.

(05:16):
It started five years earlier. In Springfield, Illinois. Word of
Lincoln's victory was received around two am the day after
election day, on November six of eighteen sixty It was
a joyous occasion, at least to the newly elected president
and his supporters. Meanwhile, in the South, what had started
as idle rumblings quickly snowballed into a full blown movement.

(05:39):
Pretty soon, Lincoln was receiving hateful letters on his desk
from people who saw his opposition to slavery's expansion as
a threat. Lincoln, however, didn't believe that he was in
much danger. He didn't think that anyone would go so
far as to come after a president of the United States,
despite the warnings he'd received from friends, and so he
began to prepare for his in our curation in March

(06:00):
of eighteen sixty one, without the protection of a military escort.
Little did he know, secessionists were also making plans to
greet him. Lincoln's journey by rail would take him from Springfield, Illinois,
to Washington, d C. By way of Maryland, one of
the more dangerous states at the time as the secessionist
movement gained steam. Maryland was a border state caught between

(06:22):
the North and the South. It was a hotbed of
pro slavery activity and was liable to join the South
at any moment. There were talks of plans to damage
the rail line in Maryland in advance of Lincoln's arrival
in order to prevent his swearing in, plans that quickly
turned to something more sinister assassination. Meanwhile, Lincoln released a

(06:44):
list of the stops he would make on his way
to Washington, where he would meet and shake hands with
his constituents along the way. At one of those stops,
on February three, which was a Saturday, his train would
stop at Calvert Street Station in Baltimore around twelve thirty
in the afternoon. Lincoln would then leave at three pm
from nearby Camden Street Station for the last leg of

(07:05):
his trip. Members of the movement gossiped and strategized on
how to get someone close enough to the president to
kill him. The man behind it all was one Captain
Cipriano Ferandini. He was a barber from Corsica, Italy, who
had organized a group of extremists to assassinate the president
elect once he had reached Baltimore. And the plan was simple,

(07:25):
create a disturbance that distracted the police at the station.
While they were attending to the commotion, One of Ferandini's
men would step forward and stab Mr. Lincoln to death.
But word got back to Lincoln's team and they thought
of ways to avoid the murderous plot. One idea was
to have his train passed through Baltimore earlier than expected
and catch the secessionists off guard. Through a combination of

(07:48):
ruses and slight of hand, Lincoln was whisked from one
train to the next late in the nights. He was
forced to ride on passenger rails as news of his
private train showing up in Baltimore might read to Ferandini
and his crew. He arrived in Philadelphia on February just
before eleven pm, where a Baltimore bound train was waiting

(08:08):
for him. But how was he supposed to make it
on board safely among all the other travelers, with help
from his sister, of course, who helped usher him into
the sleeping car through a rear door. Lincoln wore a
hat and a shawl to disguise himself during the transfer.
From there, it was smooth sailing to Baltimore, where the
President elect arrived at three thirty a m. Nine hours

(08:31):
before he was scheduled to appear. He was hurried to
another train and whisked off to Washington to be sworn
in as the sixteenth President of the United States. And
that sister who had helped him she was a woman
named Kate Warren, the first female detective in the United States.
She worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which had been
contracted by the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore

(08:55):
Railroad to aid in Lincoln's safe passage. Along the way,
Warren had to bribe the conductors to secure the sleeping
car for him, while Alan Pinkerton himself orchestrated the cutting
of telegraph lines, hoping to stop communication between Ferrandini and
his followers. Warren went on to serve as a spy
for the Union during the Civil War, gathering intelligence for

(09:16):
the North by going undercover in the South. After the war,
she helped solve numerous high profile cases involving grand larceny, poisoning,
and even murder, and she wasn't ever afraid to get
her hands dirty or use a disguise when necessary. Her
involvement in Lincoln's inauguration was key to saving the life
of a man who, unbeknownst to anyone at the time,

(09:37):
would go on to change the future of the country.
And they couldn't have done it all without help from
Kate Warren, detective spy an American hero. 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

(09:57):
show by visiting Curiosities podcast asked dot com. The show
was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Stuff Works. I make another award 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,