Silent Killer

Our Cabinet tour today will help you spend a bit of time enjoying some killer stories.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeart
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 of Curiosities.

(00:36):
An inventor doesn't know they're ahead of their time in
the moment when they create something new, they hope to
accomplish two goals. One is for their creation to catch
on with the public. After all, if it worked for them,
surely there are others out there who might benefit from
its existence. The other goal is to scratch a particular itch.
Maybe their invention was meant to lighten their load or

(00:56):
save them time. For watchmaker Charles Vermont, it was to
keep time. Vermaux had worked for the Martel Watch Company,
a Swiss chronograph supplier that was acquired in the nineteen
fifties by one of its biggest customers, the Swiss based
Zenith Watch Company, not to be confused with the American
Zenith Electronics Corporation. Back in nineteen sixty two, Zeneth Watches

(01:17):
started working on a new type of chronograph movement, one
that was self winding and highly accurate. A chronograph watch
was a time piece that combined a standard timetelling display
with a stop watch. Now, most chronographs today incorporate two
or three subdials to measure things like distance or moon phases,
but at its most basic level, a chronograph watch merely

(01:37):
implies the existence of an embedded stop watch in the
face of the watch. However, in order to bring an
automatic chronograph to its watches, Zenneth couldn't just use off
the shelf tools. The team behind the project had to
create all new equipment and processes. Vermeaux was part of
this team, having joined Zenith when they acquired Martel, and
he and his colleagues had spent seven years developed being

(02:00):
what came to be known as the El Primero movement.
Unveiled to the world in nineteen sixty nine, the El
Primero was the first automatic chronograph which was integrated directly
into the watches main movement. Many chronographs at the time
were simply added onto the existing watch as a separate component,
but what set the El Primero apart was that it
didn't need to be wound in order to work. It

(02:20):
relied on the motion of the wearer's arm to keep
the primary watch and the chronograph ticking onward. Unfortunately, the
mechanical watch market started to take a tumble during the
nineteen seventies. Automatic pieces such as the El Primero involved
a number of gears and springs which had to be
manually assembled. This made them costly to produce and expensive

(02:41):
for the general public to purchase. Meanwhile, the Japanese company
Saco was working on an automatic watch that ran on
a battery. Its new Courts movement was more accurate than
those coming out of Switzerland. It was also less expensive
to both produce and to buy. Sacho's watches were cheaper, sturdier,
and required less maintenance then their mechanical counterparts. Zennef had

(03:03):
a choice to make. It could continue to sink money
into the El Primiro, or it could get with the
times and switched to Courts. Well. With its bottom line
shrinking each year, the choice became clear. The l Primiro
was out and Courts was in. The company was sold
in n to Zenith Radio Corporation, the American company that
had previously been unrelated. The new owner put out the

(03:25):
word to the whole watched division that all resources were
to be moved away from mechanical movements and devoted only
to courts movements instead. Vermat, however, was beside himself with grief.
He and his team had toiled on the El Primiro
for almost a decade. At that point it deserved to
be saved. He wrote a letter to the head of
the company in Chicago begging him to keep the automatic

(03:46):
chronograph in production. Sadly, his pleas went unanswered. The old
Martel building he had developed the El Primiro in was
closed down. All the tools inside were broken down or
sold off. As the years passed, however, it is clear
that Zenith's migration to courts movements had been a mistake.
The existing tools and equipment hadn't been made for this

(04:07):
type of work, and neither had the employees in night
Zenith Radio Corporation sold its watch division back to the Swiss.
Four years later, another luxury watchmaker was looking to revamp
one of its signature brands, the Rolex Daytona. The Daytona
had been a chronograph meant for race car drivers. Actor
Paul Newman, who had raced in the nineteen seventies, was

(04:28):
often seen with a Daytona on his wrist, but Rolex
wanted an automatic movement that could fit within its thin
oyster style case. Zenith's El Primiro was the perfect fit,
and Rolex was willing to give them the contract if
they would resume production of their chronograph once again. But
all of the El Premiro tools had been destroyed or
sold back in nineteen seventy one. Well, not exactly luckily

(04:53):
for both Rolex and Zeneth. Charles Vermont hadn't listened to
his superiors. While his colleagues had been tearing down all
the tools inside the old Martel facility, Vermont had been
squirreling away the equipment and plans needed to manufacture the
El Premiro in the building's attic, and the rest is history.
Rolex signed a ten year contract with Zeneth for their movements,

(05:14):
which were so beloved by watch owners and collectors that
they were used in the Daytona from until two thousand
and in the process, they became highly collectible. That Rolex
Daytona model owned by Paul Newman that I mentioned a
moment ago. It went up for auction back in two
thousand seventeen and sold for nearly eighteen million dollars. Charles

(05:35):
Vermont knew a good thing. While he had it. All
he had to do was wait for the right moment.
His disregard for his boss's demands not only saved the
Zenith Company from financial collapse, but also preserved the modern
automatic chronograph from a horological tragedy being lost to time.

(06:06):
If someone had killed over three people without leaving behind
any evidence, they wouldn't just be feared. They would be
hunted by every crime busting agency in the world. The FBI,
the CIA, and Inner Poll would be coordinating their efforts.
There wouldn't be a bunker or shack anywhere in remote
enough locations for such an individual to escape too. And yet,

(06:26):
for over thirty years, one name has struck fear into
the men, women and children of Central Africa. It is
a name synonymous with death and the notion of not
realizing someone is in danger until it's too late. That
name is Gustav. In the eastern center of the continent,
between Rwanda and Tanzania sits the small, landlocked country of Burundi.

(06:48):
Burundi's population is made up mostly of farmers, and its
chief exports is coffee. The two primary people groups within
Burundi are the Hutu and the Tutsi, the ladder of
which controls the military and economy of the country. Despite
being the minority. Both sides have been fighting since the
early nineteen sixties, when Baroni fought for and won its
independence from Belgium. However, despite the Hutu and the Tutsi

(07:12):
never seen eye to eye, both groups understand the mutual
threat that they share. Gustav Au Gustav first started making
waves in the late nineteen eighties when he struck the
villages of Magara, Minago and Kanyosha. He was a patient killer, too,
lying in wait for his moment to strike. Those who
survived his attacks noticed that he was larger than average

(07:33):
and had a scar across the top of his head. Unfortunately,
no one was able to stop him. When Gustav attacked,
he would grab a victim and dragged them into the water,
the last time they would ever fill their lungs with oxygen.
Attempts to kill him proved fruitless. His body bore numerous
scars from all sorts of weapons. Nothing could break through
his tough skin, and few people ever got close enough

(07:55):
to try in the first place. But one man certainly
gave his best shot. His name was Patrese Faye, and
he had been living in Burundi for some time when
Gustav's murder spree piqued his curiosity. Fay was originally from
France and fancied himself something of a hunter. He believed
that he could find Gustaf and bring him down for good.
He was granted a hunting license for that purpose in

(08:18):
the late nineties. But don't worry, it wasn't a license
to hunt people. Gustaf wasn't even the killer's original name.
Faye was the person who had given him this moniker,
because crocodiles aren't born with names. That's right. Gustaf was
a twenty foot long, two thousand pound male nile crocodile
terrorizing villages along the Rusizi River and Lake Tanganika. Fay

(08:40):
soon found what he was looking for and met face
too toothy faced with Gustaf and tried to take him down.
All he did was add to the crocs menagerie of scars.
Though after that failure, the would be hunter approached his
prey from a new perspective. He wouldn't try to kill Gustaf.
He would try to track him, and as Fay continued
to study him, Gustav's reputation grew as high as his

(09:02):
body counts. He was as big as a great white
shark and twice as mean, despite the fact that crocodiles
weren't known to kill people or other animals for sports.
According to Alison Leslie, a crocodile expert who was featured
on a television program about Faye and Gustaf, crocodiles and
a quote take food opportunistically, they attack if they are hungry,

(09:24):
but not Gustav. He seemed to go after anyone and
everyone in his way. However, Faye had cataloged every death
attributed to the killer croc According to him, Gustaf had
only devoured about sixty people. We may never know the truth.
Even the existence of Gustav today is up for debate.
He was last spotted some time before two thousand nineteen,

(09:46):
but in an article published in Travel Africa magazine that year,
it was reported that Gustav had finally been killed. Of course,
no pictures were ever published, nor was the name of
the killer ever mentioned. Until we have definitive proof, Chances
are that Gustaf is still out there gliding just below
the river's surface, waiting to grab a quick bite. I

(10:12):
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 winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and

(10:35):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.