April 13, 2021 • 37 mins
We were curious if some historical stalking crimes would seem different today, and whether any of these stalkers would emerge as, perhaps, sympathetic characters. What we found was that yes, a modern look does often cast a different light.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
final episode of the second season of Criminalia, where we've
been exploring the lives and motivations of some of the
most notorious stalkers throughout history. I'm Maria Tremarquis and I'm
(00:27):
Holly Fry And when we started season two, we were
curious if some of these stalking crimes would seem different
through modern looks, and whether any of these stalkers would
emerge as perhaps sympathetic characters. There's obviously a lot of
variables here. There was the one common thing that did
seem pervasive across the season, and that was untreated mental illness.
(00:50):
There were at least five pretty clear instances throughout the season,
so let's touch on those for a moment. Let's start
with Adele Hugo. Adele was the daughter of the famous
poet and many other things that he did. Victor Hugo
and her unhappy story immediately comes to my mind here.
It seems pretty clear, I think, to both of us,
(01:11):
in the very beginning of our research, that there was
some kind of undiagnosed psychiatric illness calling the shots for Adele,
and as it turns out, that was true. Long after
following Albert Pinson around the world and believing truly that
she was his wife, she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
(01:31):
And then we have Leah on a Bee, who was
suffering from obsessive behaviors even long before she became convinced
that King George the fifth of England was in love
with her. She also became one of the most famous
examples of a condition that came to be known as eratamania.
That's a delusional disorder that, in her case, caused her
(01:52):
to truly believe that the king was for real in
love with and sending signals to her. Do you remember, Holly,
I can't, off the top of my head remember the
name of the doctor who became very famous for the
condition of erotomania and diagnosing people with it and actually
writing down the causes and symptoms. His name escapes me.
(02:14):
It was Clara Beau. Yes, that's right, very famous for
what he did. His actual career was amazing. He went
from that like trying law school to being a scientist.
He just did everything. I just thought he was very cool. Yeah,
he was interesting. So okay, back to these five stalkers.
So there's Lady Caroline Lamb who stalked Lord Byron the
(02:35):
poet Um. She was not only persistent in her desire
for Byron's love and attention, it often seemed like she
was confusing reality with her fantasies, which actually is a
key element to what makes a stalker. During the time
she lived in though, Caroline's behavior probably wouldn't have been called,
at least not specifically stalking, but it was because they
(02:57):
just didn't have the word for it. So even with
our modern term, she was engaged in it. Yeah, and
then we shifted gears to talk about some gentlemen who
similarly had some pretty clear problems going on. One was
Richard Lawrence, and at the time of his attempted assassination
of President Andrew Jackson, Lawrence suffered from delusions of persecution.
(03:20):
He had a history of mental instability and a history
of violence, and he was forever paranoid that people were
talking about him, and most modern day experts, based on
what we know about him, have concluded that he lived
with untreated schizophrenia. Our most reason stalker on the timeline
is Michael Abram, who stalked George Harrison. Like others on
(03:42):
this list, Michael was suffering from symptoms of untreated schizophrenia
and he was having delusions when he attacked this member
of the Fab four. The main difference with Abram's story
is that when he was modern he got treatment. After
his arrest, he was cognizant of his condition, the criminal
nature of his behavior, and he was able to speak
(04:03):
about it during his court hearings. Now, of course, there
is a big difference between someone's wounded vanity and someone
living with mental illness, right. I think any of us
who have been through a rough breakup, you may feel
like you are having a break with reality at times
because your broken heart is so overwhelming. But time heals
a broken heart generally. But most of our stories involving
(04:27):
untreated mental illness, like the ones we just highlighted, they
become stories that are very difficult and sad to tell.
This was for us both, I think, a much more
heartbreaking season than the first one, even though there was
also mental illness there. There were some hard episodes in
season one for sure. Yeah, this was like almost all
something along those lines, though, And we know that treatments
(04:50):
could have made a difference for the people that we
mentioned that never got it. But also we know that
those treatments just weren't developed or available during most of
these times in history that we've been talking about. Let's
talk specifics of what we learned about stalker profile and
today's stalking behaviors. There's no actual stalker profile that is reliable,
it turns out, but there are some really common traits
(05:13):
among stalkers. So stalking consists of pervasive, invasive, and intimidating
behavior towards someone else. A stalker's affections they're demanding, and
those affections are based on a belief that the person
who is stalking has some sort of entitlement to the
victims affections and in some instances, to their lives. And
(05:34):
it's not just affections. Sometimes they just want to ride
on the heels of a celebrity. But it's the same behavior,
maybe not the same motivation. So think for a moment,
and I ask you to do this with no judgment,
because I have certainly done it. Think about how often
you have used the word stalker in cavalier, casual ways
(05:56):
all the time. Think about how often you have said
or been thought to yourself that you have Facebook stalked someone.
But here's the thing, trust us. Spending a little bit
of time one night scrolling through your crushes or maybe
your x as photos on social media might not be
the most healthy thing you can do for yourself, but
it's also not considered stalking in the formal sense. We
(06:17):
really are talking about behavior that is more like Lady
Caroline Lamb sending hair from her nethers to Lord by
Rim because she thought that was a reasonable way to
show her love. So let's be clear. Also, any one
of us could become a stalker. It's not a symptom
of untreated mental illness. Although mental illness could be a trigger.
(06:40):
Any one of us also could become a victim. Stalking
behavior can take on many forms and can be driven
by a variety of motivations, not just love. For instance,
a stalker who targets a celebrity or any other public
figure may not want to be in love with that person,
but someone who stalks and X may want to rekindle
(07:00):
the relationship. The behaviors that they engage in, like sending
too many text messages or following someone from home to
work every day. It doesn't look different from the outside
between those two perpetrators. But when you take it too far,
many gestures that we even normally do every day romantic
in nature, or not do them a lot and do
(07:21):
them intimidatingly, and you could have criminal charges against you.
We're gonna talk more about that criminal aspect of stalking
and how it's developed over time after we first take
a quick break. Welcome back to Criminalia. Now, as promised,
(07:44):
we will talk about the criminal aspect of stalking. So
we didn't really get into this during the season, but
with the exception of George Harrison, all of the stalkers
and victims that we talked about lived during time periods
where there were no anti stalking laws actually, and in
the US it wasn't until that all fifties states, the
(08:07):
District of Columbia and the major territories enacted criminal laws
regarding stalking. That was a sobering date for me to
find in the research because I'm like, I was legal
to drink before it was illegal to stalk someone. During
my lifetime, people could have stalked me with no repercussion. Right.
It is not though clear cut to these laws. State
(08:27):
laws very quite a bit, mainly regarding the definition of
what fear and emotional distress are and how to discern
how deeply those things are felt by the victim. And
because of that, there is still no universally accepted definition
of what exactly constitutes stalking. That's scary. I know everything
(08:48):
is open to interpretation, which is always unsettling. It is
what is fear. That's a long conversation of poet uh
on a federal level Congress path the first anti stalking
well in that basically allows federal agents to step in
when a stalker crosses a state line with the intent
(09:09):
to engage in some of those stalking behaviors that we've
talked about earlier. So that that is our Stocking season
wrap up, and we hope this season has not only
brought to life some of the larger than life victims
like Fronts List and Charles Dickens, but was also at
least somewhat educational about stalking and stalkers. Spotting the difference
(09:30):
between a stalker and a romantic partner literally could save
your life. Now that we're wrapping up Stalker season, we're
going to do what we did with our first season,
and we're going to talk about how we each definitely
had some favorites in the mix of these very toxic
and sometimes difficult events. Favorite stories. We're each going to
talk about our top three and of course our favorite cocktails. Maria,
(09:53):
of our stalking stories, name one of your favorites. Okay, So,
I actually really enjoyed our very episode, which was about
Rufus Griswold stalking Edgar Allan Poe. And there are a
couple of reasons for this, And it's not because Edgar
Allan both story about playing with the children that I
loved or anything like. But I loved the fact that
these were two men. This was not the situation where
(10:17):
there was a woman who was having untreated mental illness
traveling the world to follow a man. These were two men.
One man thought that they were friendly sometimes and the
other man just hated him. It's always refreshing when two
males just hate each other instead of a woman chasing
a man. It goes against stereotype exactly. You read these
statistics about stalkers and I remember as we were putting
(10:39):
our season together that the majority of stalkers are male,
even though stalkers can be female, and the majority of
victims are female. We didn't really see that in our season.
We had a lot of female stalkers. Okay, there's another
reason actually that I also really liked Rufus and Edgar,
despite the fact that Rufus is just a Yeah. I
(11:00):
loved the fact that he had a portrait of Edgar
Allan Powe allegedly hanging in his hallway in his house
that they found after he died, and I just thought
that summed up their relationships so well. I just I
loved that episode. I thought we did a good job
on it. I thought the story was really good, and
I loved and hated the men that you were supposed
(11:22):
to love and hate. I also picked Rufus for all
of those reasons, also just because it's so petty that
it becomes entertaining, just the literary back and forth of like,
I hired you to write a review and you were
honest instead of nice to me, and like, maybe a
(11:44):
little too harsh, dude, you were supposed to say everything
I touched was magic? What did you do with it?
The other thing that I like about it that makes
it more of a fun story than a lot of
the ones we've talked about is that the victim of
the talking, at least to the best of our knowledge
and what historical evidence we have, was not really materially
(12:07):
affected in his lifetime. It's not like Poe was sitting
at his desk going, oh my god, Rufus has ruined
my life. What am I going to do next? He
was just living his life while Griswold was spinning on
his own, having his own entirely different relationship, completely different
with like in a different world, and like he's sitting
at his desk, He's like twirling his mustache. He's like,
(12:29):
if I can only get to the mother in law.
He was a flat out weasel. It's hard to paint
him in any kind of kind light. Absolutely. I think
that any like writer editor out there has seen this
type of relationship in the newsroom, but just not to
this level. Especially long after your rival is deceased. You
just still are so wounded by feeling like they didn't
(12:53):
like you back for whatever reason, that you want to
continue to smear their name forever as far as you're concerned.
It's like Real Housewives of New England literature was about
to call it level eleven, like Rufus to eleven. Um,
who else was on your list. So I also liked
(13:14):
the friends List episode because I just loved the idea
of a classical pianist, like I was a classical pianist
up until college, and I loved the idea that there
was one that was like breaking pianos and he had
groupies and I knew some of the think about him before,
(13:35):
but to be honest, I wasn't surprised that he was
sort of a magnet for stalkers out of his groupie circle.
I thought that Olga could have been a very interesting
woman if she hadn't had so many aggressive, in stalker
like behaviors. She seemed like when you just first looked
at her, she just seemed really cool. You know, she
smoked a cigar, she woked trousers and a jacket. She'd
(13:57):
been places. She was a pianist, but that's not really
what she was. I'm sure we have all encountered these
people in our lives where it's like you meet someone
and you're like, you are nine percent fabulous, but that
ten percent remainder is poison, Like I can't it ruins
all of the cool things about you. And I feel
(14:18):
like that's her. If she had just like been her cool,
interesting self, even if some of that was the fake
it till you make it facade situation, she would probably
be a person we would talk about in I don't
want to say reverential, but very admiring tones, but instead
it's like, oh, honey, you did it wrong. Why did
you cane the newspaper editor, Like, that's not what we
(14:42):
should be doing. List of Mania, and and the fact
that there's a movie from the seventies about it also
just warms my heart knowing that they put the list
character in like platform red pleather boots, like I just
feel like he would have laughed. I just think that
it would have been like our great, great I love it.
(15:03):
So who's your second? This is so predictable for anyone
that knows me. But it's the boy Jones. Yes, I
knew you would pick the boy John if he is
a great story. Like I loved that he was basically
haunting Buckingham Palace, but not the Queen. It's always tricky
to talk about him because he does seem to have
been harmless, but you still have to acknowledge that he
(15:24):
was infringing on people's personal space, which is inferiently wrong.
But as a figure, he's just what motivates someone to
be like, No, I just broke in and fell asleep
under a couch. I wasn't trying to get to anybody,
even though I'm sure it was scary for the inhabitants.
We know. Queen Victoria talked about how frightening it was
to know that this person had been bound sleeping outside
(15:46):
of a room, but the kind of blase relationship he
seemed to have with his own stocking was very like,
I know, yeah, no, dude, that's just the thing I do.
I'm not like obsessed with it. I just like to
break in his life as an adult. It was really
sad to me because he went to Australia, he became
(16:06):
an alcoholic, and he died because he was drunk and
he fell off of a bridge, all because he was
tired of being the boy Jones. He even changed his name,
so I felt like I actually couldn't pick him because
I he wasn't a show for me. That ended very nicely.
This is Victorians, this is Queen Victoria, and yes I
(16:27):
also do love. Although it is not happy, it's a
good reminder. I think we talked about it all the
time now that because of social media, everything you do
is out there forever and you can never overcome your mistakes.
That's not actually new though, right this kid did some
stupid stuff as a teenager, and as an adult man
continents away could not get away from that public image
(16:50):
so much so that it really tore him apart. So
I think it's just a good reminder. We always like
to think that in the modern era we're dealing with
new things and new ways, and so only obviously technology
has progressed in a way that like information is more
readily available, but these kinds of long term effects of
the decisions we make was always part of the human equation.
(17:12):
People are people. The difference is, right, we can more
easily find things out about people than we ever could,
But the real commonality there is that humans want to
define people as easily as they can, and sometimes it's
in a negative way that you never shake off. They're
just like, oh, that's the guy, that's the that's Queen
(17:33):
Victoria's stalker, and he will always be that no matter
what he did. Right, he could have been fantastic as
an adult. He could have invented everything you know that
we even used today, and it wouldn't matter. Still, the
stalker at Queen Victoria. Yeah, okay, who's your third choice?
I actually really wanted to put big Gelow and Dickens
on my list, but I didn't because what I realized
(17:55):
was that I wasn't choosing it because of the stalker
victim pairing. I was choosing it because I was picking
that episode for him, and I wanted to pick episodes
for the pairing. So I didn't put him on my list.
But that would have been my fourth my third actually,
and no one's going to be surprised by this one
is Lady Caroline and Lord Byron. You knew I was
(18:19):
going to pick that, right, I mean I suspected, but yeah,
Lord Byron, you know I picked because of Lord Byron.
But Lady Carol lamb Man. So she was an interesting woman.
What was her quote? Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,
and I always thought that was more her than Byron.
(18:41):
She really went after him after even after he left America,
and not just the consistency, but like the depth of
how she would follow him and write to him and
right as him was my god, Right, I think about
somebody writing a book but signing you know your name
to it rather than their own rights. A little terrifying,
(19:02):
but it was very interesting to see her go from
a lover of Lord Byron to that aspect where she
begins to confuse her reality with her fantasy life. That's
when she begins dressing like a page boy to to
sneak in and and try to get access to his room.
It's when she starts sending him hair um, and she
(19:23):
starts doing things, engaging in these stocker behaviors that just
keep escalating. No one specifically in our research talked about
her and mental illness, but I did some reading about how,
and obviously not everyone who stalks has a mental illness,
but everyone who stalks is engaged in some sort of
mental instability at the time that they are stalking. That
(19:45):
actually seems pretty clear. In her life, she became very
obsessed as her relationship or non relationship continued. But she
was an author herself, like she could have been very successful, Unfortunately,
just got caught up in this fantasy that she had.
So I thought she was very interesting. I find her
fascinating as well. I tend to continually think about her husband,
(20:10):
Lord Melbourne, and now he is caught in this unsavory
web of gossip and scandal. Can you even imagine being
in the position he was in and having your wife
sleeping with celebrity well, and then just openly talking about
it to anybody who would listen. She had also had
(20:30):
a previous affair too, so he had been through this,
but it was not quite as out there like this
one was among the social circles. Even if it's not
like necessarily your classic romantic marriage, if it is more
of a like a social construct, it's still a lot
to put somebody through. Okay, let's skip over to your
(20:52):
third it's George Elliott. That was a great pick. I
think about it unprompted random times. George Elliott's situation in
terms of her mental state. I don't want to ever
victim blame, but she did encourage these relationships to a
degree and then was like too far. But then sometimes
(21:16):
she would go back again and be like, oh, but
you can edit my book. That sounds great, especially with
Alexander main right. It's a fascinating thing to me that
someone would live in that simultaneity of being afraid of
or made uncomfortable by someone, but also would reach out
(21:36):
to them and collaborate with them. And still foster a friendship.
I really wish we could time travel back and interview
her about it. Did you think you could build a
relationship that was more palatable to you and that's why
you were doing this? Or were you just wishy washy
about how you felt about particularly Alexander Maine from time
to time, Like did your perception of who he was
(21:59):
and how he was approaching on your life shift? Was
that more of a malleable situation than we would probably
understand it today. Maybe there were spaces between those letters
and between maybe she started thinking it wasn't as bad
as I thought. We did come across a quote, and
I want to say it was from her husband, but
I don't think they were married. I think they were
just together for like a hundred years. In it it
was very short, but I got this expression from him
(22:21):
where he referenced that she had very little self confidence
in her writing. And that to me goes right along
with what you're saying, which is, because there are two
people who really love what she's doing, it's difficult for
her to step away from it, even though the boundaries
(22:42):
are way pushed. It's completely unhealthy in terms of friendship
or anything. Right, any sort of relationship, but yet somebody
likes her things. And I think if you if her
husband's quote is remotely true, I could see her going
back and forth on that. We are going to shift
gears now and talk about cocktails and our favorites of
the season, but before we do that, we will pause
(23:04):
and have another little break. Welcome back to Criminalia. Al Right,
it is time for the ultimately, where Maria and I
are going to discuss our top three picks of favorite
(23:26):
cocktails of the season. Maria, what do you got? I
picked Rufus and Edgar as a favorite show, but I
also picked the Bitter Rival, which was the chaser for
their show, as one of my drinks. And I love
that you made it to mirror. I think this is
what you were doing. The Bitterness of Rufus is cold
(23:48):
dead art to um and and this drink is surprisingly
not that it has cold coffee and it has lemon
in it. And when she first said those two things
to me, I was like, why would you put those
two things together? So I and it became a favorite
for me. So to remind listeners, it's four ounces of
(24:11):
cold coffee, two ounces of rum, two shakes of angister,
a bitters an ounce of simple syrup and three quarters
of an ounce of lemon juice. I mean, I even
was like, is this weird? But it makes it this
very bright flavor, not at all what you would expect
from a coffee cocktail because usually they have a heavier flavor,
and that takes that sharp edge off of it. Yeah,
(24:32):
there's other stuff going on in here where it's not
just cold coffee and lemon juice, which would be terrible.
I would not drink that. I would not drink that.
Um um, stay here first, my first, and I will
tell you I drink this all the time. I know
exactly which one you're gonna say, do you party drink?
(24:57):
I guess I. I I love that drink too, And any
time that that drink comes up, I can only think
of Victor's actual party drink, which, if you guys don't remember,
Victor used to put an orange in his mouth, sugarcubes
in his cheeks, and he would take what like two
(25:19):
ounces of cres swallow it all down. And that to me,
that sounds miserable. It's quite a party trick. When when
you first read it, I was like, what was it?
It like a mandarin, the clementine. Yeah, so our version
of that, which is supable and very kind to remind anybody,
(25:40):
it's two ounces of triple sec two ounces of whipped vodka.
You could also do just a regular plain vodka if
you want to take down the sweetness a little bit
an ounce of vanilla syrup and then three ounces of
hard seltzer and it is quite a sweet drink. It's
like a dessert drink. But like I said, you could
play with the vodka type and you could also drop
down the vendil the syrup if you had just an
(26:01):
orangey drink that still has that hint of creamsicle but
is also delightful. I am not, as you know, not
necessarily a citrus person, but a creamsicle I think if
it's so much more as a dessert thing that isn't
really very orangey flavored. As a citterus person, I don't
really think of a creamsicle as being very orangy. Right, Yeah,
(26:23):
I'm with you on that. Yeah. I have on several
occasions when I've had like zoom cocktail events or whatever
that I'm going to, I will just make a little
shaker full of these and just be pouring them as
I go. A shaker of the Victor, Yes, a shaker
of the party trick, although you do not shake it
because of that seltzer f y. I don't do that.
(26:43):
It will explode. But but yeah, it's just it's become
such a fun, easy to throw together drink, and I
particularly anticipate that as we head into summer here in Atlanta,
this is going to be like the drink I turned
to when I'm sitting out on the deck, probably and
that's next week. We're yeah, we're in the middle of
the weird weather where it's like seventy five one day
(27:05):
and thirty five the next, and it just bounces back
and forth. So we'll see. It might be next week.
What was your second cocktail, my love? So, my second
cocktail is my second cocktail for actually a couple of reasons. First,
it's because of the title of the cocktail, and I
think immediately you know exactly which one I'm going to there.
(27:26):
It is the Charles Dickens and Jane Bigelow Sloppy Bishop comtail. Now, okay,
so let me step back a second. Dickens used to
drink what was it called the Smoking Bishop, right, and
it was a warm punch, and it was like oranges
and cloves and red wine and you know, among other ingredients,
very seasonal. What I really liked one is that yours
(27:49):
is not made in large patches. But do your version.
I would normally really not want to try because I'm
not a gin person. But the combination of all of
these ingredients, ruby port, cranberry juice, triple sect gin, black
cherry puree, a little dash of bitters. The only thing
(28:12):
on this list for me that was no was the
one ounce of gin. And so I thought to myself, really, Maria,
come on, is one ounce of JM you can you
can try it. You'll be okay. There's more port in here,
there's more juice in here than there is gent. So
for anyone who actually dislikes gin, don't stay away from
(28:33):
this one. I hate Jim too, and it totally works.
If you'll recall when we did that episode I talked
about that I first made it with vodka in that
position you did, I did not like it as much
as with jin, which to me is a shocker. There's
something about Jim that just balances out the heaviness of
all those other flavors. I feel like something about that
whole Juni proof element to it does the magic trick
(28:57):
and it makes it a much more delightful cocktail than
I have even anticipated. All of it is a good drink.
Plus name Sloppy Bishop is a fun one. We're gonna
make it famous so you can like walk into a
bar in order the Sloppy Bedroom that poor Barty, Now
he's gonna be like, I'm sorry, I can't make that.
(29:18):
So I'll just hold up my phone and be like
these are ingras, and they'll be like, get out of
my bars. That's the next sentence. Please leave my barn, sleave,
Please leave what you got next. This probably won't surprise
you either. It's the it sneaks up on you. Which
was our Valentine Special? Was that our Valentine's Day in
(29:40):
Long islanded? Yes? Yes, I mean I I love a
Long Island anyway, right like and for this one, I mean,
I just wanted to make something that incorporated those tropes
of Valentine's Day. So it has a lot of rose
flavor to it. There's there's also strawberries muddled into it.
(30:03):
Three ounces each of vodka White Rum, Silver Tequi laed
Gin and triple sec and then an ounce of rose
syrup with some floral bitters if you have them, and
then it's topped with ginger real or lemon lime soda
and it's just, oh, it's such a quencher and it's
pretty in the glass, and I love rose flavored everything,
(30:24):
so it's like, that's a might be my favorite drink
of the entire season. That was one that was so
fun to put together. And often I have to make
a couple versions of things to tweak things and get
it really to like where I'm like, oh, okay, the ballot,
we found the balance here, but in this case, because
it is built on the long island base, which is
(30:45):
tried and true, and then I'm just adding like the
rose syrup and ginger ale instead of a cola on
top of it. It was pretty easy to put together,
and the first try it was like, great, got it cool?
I did not waste any alcohol making this, and it
turned out just fine. It was like the gods of
I guess that would be Bacchus, all of the booze gods.
(31:05):
I was smiled upon because it was came together perfectly
the first try, which does not always happened. So how
does this drink here compared to first season white Toad,
which is your favorite? I mean you can say neither
if that's the well, it's a tight race because they
feel different. Yeah, rolls right, Like a white Toad is
(31:25):
a smaller cocktail and term amount of alcohol. It's like
the kind of thing I can mix a couple of
while I'm talking to friends. I would not want to
mix a couple of these and have anything but super
slurry speech, like you can't write. This is like another
one of those that's great to have when you're just
going to have one drink, call it a night, and
hopefully not drive at all. Right out on your porch
(31:48):
or deck. Um, so my last one. So this is
another reason why I want Top four next season. I
want to board um. There were two other drinks that
I wrestled with for the third position. UM one was
Victor's Party Trick and also the one from the Presidential Assassinated.
I think it was from the Presidential Assassination Healthy Teeth
(32:10):
and Gums. I one love the name too. It's a
drink that that includes pair. No drink ever includes pair.
So it didn't make the list, but I was impressed
with your pear juice drink. So my third one actually
is from the George Harrison episode. But so here's here's
(32:31):
the real, like honest reason why I picked this drink,
and this is going to make you laugh. I picked
Peppery Sergeant because it has whiskey in it, and I
felt like you made that for me. I knew that
would be the reason you might pick it, and yeah,
of course I was like, oh, I haven't favored Maria
with a good whiskey pay this season, But once it
came out, I was like, I've never put Hallo peen
(32:52):
your Jam and whiskey together, and that to me actually
sounds like a really interesting combination. So um, regardless of
whether or not the wiskey drink was from me, I
would drink it and I would probably very much be
surprised at the club soda part. I guess it was.
But the Hallepeen your Jam and whiskey, I thought we
were good. Yeah, you could just drink it like that,
(33:12):
but it would be very syrupy. That's why the club
soda kind of makes it more of a sippable thing. Yeah,
I tried. I knew you would, but I was first like,
I love holly, and then the second I was like,
this is a good drink, Like my third one is
done done. Don do you have any guesses. I'm not
(33:34):
gonna guess. It's none of the ones we've mentioned so far.
It's the mixed feelings. Oh hey, really, I wouldn't have
guessed that. I would have been I would have guessed
like two others, and you'd be like, oh my god,
we can't be here this long when you're guessing. Yeah,
So to remind people, it's three ounces of brood chilled
(33:55):
butterfly pea flower tea, which is a beautiful sapphire blue,
an ounce of simple syrup or I used vanilla syrup
because that's my favorite to keep on hand. An ounce
of vodka and that's just over ice, and then you
add lemon juice at the very end and it turns
like a magenta purple e color. I remember talking about
this drink and how beautiful it was. Yeah. It mirrors
George Elliot's complicated relationship with Alexander Maine in particular, like
(34:19):
I like you, I don't like you. I'm comfortable with you.
I'm not comfortable with you. I need you to tell
any good things that I don't want to be near you.
I would also go away. Aside from the party trick
of changing colors, it's just a very bright, soft, easy
to sip drink. You can throw it over a bunch
of ice and have, you know, essentially like an iced
tea that's just got a little kick to it. You
can make it without the vodka and you still have
(34:40):
the same effects, which is nice. What other tea, if
there is any other tea do you suggest? If you
have a suggestion could be substituted in if you can't
find that tea. I mean, this is a very basic recipe, right,
You could use it with almost any tea, but I
would do it with an herbal tea, not like a
black tea. Well that's helpful, right, So you could also
(35:01):
do this with like a hybiscus tea. You could even
do it with a camra meal. It might be a
very strangely soft flavor, like where you feel like you're
drinking but not. You really could sub out almost anything
that you're really into. I somewhere I have a cucumber
and melon white tea that I think might be an
interesting on. This could be a very good drink, and
(35:24):
then you can add the lemon juice or not. At
that point, the lemon juice is really there primarily to
make that color change, and it shifts the flavor certainly
to have a little bit more of that slight citrus
edge when you sit. It's a very basic, simple drink,
and it's easy to make those subouts to really customize
it to whatever you want. And you can customize it
(35:45):
to be a non alcoholic drink, or you can. This
guy's the limit. It's just make it how it's most
palatable and delightful to you. Sub that stuff out, man,
there are no rules. The cocktail police will not come
for you, I promise, But mostly we actually want to
thank our listeners for hanging out with us this season.
(36:05):
Next time around, we have a whole other plan, Maria.
We're gonna step right into season three next week, and
where will that focus that will take us to the
epic tales of all the brazen impostors that we can
think of. I feel like this is fertile ground for cocktails.
(36:28):
I also feel like moving to an impostor season will
be a little bit more fun than a very serious
stalker season, So I think it'll be a good time. Yeah,
a lot of these stories have a little more rob
and craziness to them and a little a little less sadness, thankfully,
So get ready for that and we cannot wait to
see you right back here next week for those impostors
(36:48):
and more cocktails. Criminalia is a production of Shawanda land
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from Seawan land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
final episode of the second season of Criminalia, where we've
been exploring the lives and motivations of some of the
most notorious stalkers throughout history. I'm Maria Tremarquis and I'm
(00:27):
Holly Fry And when we started season two, we were
curious if some of these stalking crimes would seem different
through modern looks, and whether any of these stalkers would
emerge as perhaps sympathetic characters. There's obviously a lot of
variables here. There was the one common thing that did
seem pervasive across the season, and that was untreated mental illness.
(00:50):
There were at least five pretty clear instances throughout the season,
so let's touch on those for a moment. Let's start
with Adele Hugo. Adele was the daughter of the famous
poet and many other things that he did. Victor Hugo
and her unhappy story immediately comes to my mind here.
It seems pretty clear, I think, to both of us,
(01:11):
in the very beginning of our research, that there was
some kind of undiagnosed psychiatric illness calling the shots for Adele,
and as it turns out, that was true. Long after
following Albert Pinson around the world and believing truly that
she was his wife, she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
(01:31):
And then we have Leah on a Bee, who was
suffering from obsessive behaviors even long before she became convinced
that King George the fifth of England was in love
with her. She also became one of the most famous
examples of a condition that came to be known as eratamania.
That's a delusional disorder that, in her case, caused her
(01:52):
to truly believe that the king was for real in
love with and sending signals to her. Do you remember, Holly,
I can't, off the top of my head remember the
name of the doctor who became very famous for the
condition of erotomania and diagnosing people with it and actually
writing down the causes and symptoms. His name escapes me.
(02:14):
It was Clara Beau. Yes, that's right, very famous for
what he did. His actual career was amazing. He went
from that like trying law school to being a scientist.
He just did everything. I just thought he was very cool. Yeah,
he was interesting. So okay, back to these five stalkers.
So there's Lady Caroline Lamb who stalked Lord Byron the
(02:35):
poet Um. She was not only persistent in her desire
for Byron's love and attention, it often seemed like she
was confusing reality with her fantasies, which actually is a
key element to what makes a stalker. During the time
she lived in though, Caroline's behavior probably wouldn't have been called,
at least not specifically stalking, but it was because they
(02:57):
just didn't have the word for it. So even with
our modern term, she was engaged in it. Yeah, and
then we shifted gears to talk about some gentlemen who
similarly had some pretty clear problems going on. One was
Richard Lawrence, and at the time of his attempted assassination
of President Andrew Jackson, Lawrence suffered from delusions of persecution.
(03:20):
He had a history of mental instability and a history
of violence, and he was forever paranoid that people were
talking about him, and most modern day experts, based on
what we know about him, have concluded that he lived
with untreated schizophrenia. Our most reason stalker on the timeline
is Michael Abram, who stalked George Harrison. Like others on
(03:42):
this list, Michael was suffering from symptoms of untreated schizophrenia
and he was having delusions when he attacked this member
of the Fab four. The main difference with Abram's story
is that when he was modern he got treatment. After
his arrest, he was cognizant of his condition, the criminal
nature of his behavior, and he was able to speak
(04:03):
about it during his court hearings. Now, of course, there
is a big difference between someone's wounded vanity and someone
living with mental illness, right. I think any of us
who have been through a rough breakup, you may feel
like you are having a break with reality at times
because your broken heart is so overwhelming. But time heals
a broken heart generally. But most of our stories involving
(04:27):
untreated mental illness, like the ones we just highlighted, they
become stories that are very difficult and sad to tell.
This was for us both, I think, a much more
heartbreaking season than the first one, even though there was
also mental illness there. There were some hard episodes in
season one for sure. Yeah, this was like almost all
something along those lines, though, And we know that treatments
(04:50):
could have made a difference for the people that we
mentioned that never got it. But also we know that
those treatments just weren't developed or available during most of
these times in history that we've been talking about. Let's
talk specifics of what we learned about stalker profile and
today's stalking behaviors. There's no actual stalker profile that is reliable,
it turns out, but there are some really common traits
(05:13):
among stalkers. So stalking consists of pervasive, invasive, and intimidating
behavior towards someone else. A stalker's affections they're demanding, and
those affections are based on a belief that the person
who is stalking has some sort of entitlement to the
victims affections and in some instances, to their lives. And
(05:34):
it's not just affections. Sometimes they just want to ride
on the heels of a celebrity. But it's the same behavior,
maybe not the same motivation. So think for a moment,
and I ask you to do this with no judgment,
because I have certainly done it. Think about how often
you have used the word stalker in cavalier, casual ways
(05:56):
all the time. Think about how often you have said
or been thought to yourself that you have Facebook stalked someone.
But here's the thing, trust us. Spending a little bit
of time one night scrolling through your crushes or maybe
your x as photos on social media might not be
the most healthy thing you can do for yourself, but
it's also not considered stalking in the formal sense. We
(06:17):
really are talking about behavior that is more like Lady
Caroline Lamb sending hair from her nethers to Lord by
Rim because she thought that was a reasonable way to
show her love. So let's be clear. Also, any one
of us could become a stalker. It's not a symptom
of untreated mental illness. Although mental illness could be a trigger.
(06:40):
Any one of us also could become a victim. Stalking
behavior can take on many forms and can be driven
by a variety of motivations, not just love. For instance,
a stalker who targets a celebrity or any other public
figure may not want to be in love with that person,
but someone who stalks and X may want to rekindle
(07:00):
the relationship. The behaviors that they engage in, like sending
too many text messages or following someone from home to
work every day. It doesn't look different from the outside
between those two perpetrators. But when you take it too far,
many gestures that we even normally do every day romantic
in nature, or not do them a lot and do
(07:21):
them intimidatingly, and you could have criminal charges against you.
We're gonna talk more about that criminal aspect of stalking
and how it's developed over time after we first take
a quick break. Welcome back to Criminalia. Now, as promised,
(07:44):
we will talk about the criminal aspect of stalking. So
we didn't really get into this during the season, but
with the exception of George Harrison, all of the stalkers
and victims that we talked about lived during time periods
where there were no anti stalking laws actually, and in
the US it wasn't until that all fifties states, the
(08:07):
District of Columbia and the major territories enacted criminal laws
regarding stalking. That was a sobering date for me to
find in the research because I'm like, I was legal
to drink before it was illegal to stalk someone. During
my lifetime, people could have stalked me with no repercussion. Right.
It is not though clear cut to these laws. State
(08:27):
laws very quite a bit, mainly regarding the definition of
what fear and emotional distress are and how to discern
how deeply those things are felt by the victim. And
because of that, there is still no universally accepted definition
of what exactly constitutes stalking. That's scary. I know everything
(08:48):
is open to interpretation, which is always unsettling. It is
what is fear. That's a long conversation of poet uh
on a federal level Congress path the first anti stalking
well in that basically allows federal agents to step in
when a stalker crosses a state line with the intent
(09:09):
to engage in some of those stalking behaviors that we've
talked about earlier. So that that is our Stocking season
wrap up, and we hope this season has not only
brought to life some of the larger than life victims
like Fronts List and Charles Dickens, but was also at
least somewhat educational about stalking and stalkers. Spotting the difference
(09:30):
between a stalker and a romantic partner literally could save
your life. Now that we're wrapping up Stalker season, we're
going to do what we did with our first season,
and we're going to talk about how we each definitely
had some favorites in the mix of these very toxic
and sometimes difficult events. Favorite stories. We're each going to
talk about our top three and of course our favorite cocktails. Maria,
(09:53):
of our stalking stories, name one of your favorites. Okay, So,
I actually really enjoyed our very episode, which was about
Rufus Griswold stalking Edgar Allan Poe. And there are a
couple of reasons for this, And it's not because Edgar
Allan both story about playing with the children that I
loved or anything like. But I loved the fact that
these were two men. This was not the situation where
(10:17):
there was a woman who was having untreated mental illness
traveling the world to follow a man. These were two men.
One man thought that they were friendly sometimes and the
other man just hated him. It's always refreshing when two
males just hate each other instead of a woman chasing
a man. It goes against stereotype exactly. You read these
statistics about stalkers and I remember as we were putting
(10:39):
our season together that the majority of stalkers are male,
even though stalkers can be female, and the majority of
victims are female. We didn't really see that in our season.
We had a lot of female stalkers. Okay, there's another
reason actually that I also really liked Rufus and Edgar,
despite the fact that Rufus is just a Yeah. I
(11:00):
loved the fact that he had a portrait of Edgar
Allan Powe allegedly hanging in his hallway in his house
that they found after he died, and I just thought
that summed up their relationships so well. I just I
loved that episode. I thought we did a good job
on it. I thought the story was really good, and
I loved and hated the men that you were supposed
(11:22):
to love and hate. I also picked Rufus for all
of those reasons, also just because it's so petty that
it becomes entertaining, just the literary back and forth of like,
I hired you to write a review and you were
honest instead of nice to me, and like, maybe a
(11:44):
little too harsh, dude, you were supposed to say everything
I touched was magic? What did you do with it?
The other thing that I like about it that makes
it more of a fun story than a lot of
the ones we've talked about is that the victim of
the talking, at least to the best of our knowledge
and what historical evidence we have, was not really materially
(12:07):
affected in his lifetime. It's not like Poe was sitting
at his desk going, oh my god, Rufus has ruined
my life. What am I going to do next? He
was just living his life while Griswold was spinning on
his own, having his own entirely different relationship, completely different
with like in a different world, and like he's sitting
at his desk, He's like twirling his mustache. He's like,
(12:29):
if I can only get to the mother in law.
He was a flat out weasel. It's hard to paint
him in any kind of kind light. Absolutely. I think
that any like writer editor out there has seen this
type of relationship in the newsroom, but just not to
this level. Especially long after your rival is deceased. You
just still are so wounded by feeling like they didn't
(12:53):
like you back for whatever reason, that you want to
continue to smear their name forever as far as you're concerned.
It's like Real Housewives of New England literature was about
to call it level eleven, like Rufus to eleven. Um,
who else was on your list. So I also liked
(13:14):
the friends List episode because I just loved the idea
of a classical pianist, like I was a classical pianist
up until college, and I loved the idea that there
was one that was like breaking pianos and he had
groupies and I knew some of the think about him before,
(13:35):
but to be honest, I wasn't surprised that he was
sort of a magnet for stalkers out of his groupie circle.
I thought that Olga could have been a very interesting
woman if she hadn't had so many aggressive, in stalker
like behaviors. She seemed like when you just first looked
at her, she just seemed really cool. You know, she
smoked a cigar, she woked trousers and a jacket. She'd
(13:57):
been places. She was a pianist, but that's not really
what she was. I'm sure we have all encountered these
people in our lives where it's like you meet someone
and you're like, you are nine percent fabulous, but that
ten percent remainder is poison, Like I can't it ruins
all of the cool things about you. And I feel
(14:18):
like that's her. If she had just like been her cool,
interesting self, even if some of that was the fake
it till you make it facade situation, she would probably
be a person we would talk about in I don't
want to say reverential, but very admiring tones, but instead
it's like, oh, honey, you did it wrong. Why did
you cane the newspaper editor, Like, that's not what we
(14:42):
should be doing. List of Mania, and and the fact
that there's a movie from the seventies about it also
just warms my heart knowing that they put the list
character in like platform red pleather boots, like I just
feel like he would have laughed. I just think that
it would have been like our great, great I love it.
(15:03):
So who's your second? This is so predictable for anyone
that knows me. But it's the boy Jones. Yes, I
knew you would pick the boy John if he is
a great story. Like I loved that he was basically
haunting Buckingham Palace, but not the Queen. It's always tricky
to talk about him because he does seem to have
been harmless, but you still have to acknowledge that he
(15:24):
was infringing on people's personal space, which is inferiently wrong.
But as a figure, he's just what motivates someone to
be like, No, I just broke in and fell asleep
under a couch. I wasn't trying to get to anybody,
even though I'm sure it was scary for the inhabitants.
We know. Queen Victoria talked about how frightening it was
to know that this person had been bound sleeping outside
(15:46):
of a room, but the kind of blase relationship he
seemed to have with his own stocking was very like,
I know, yeah, no, dude, that's just the thing I do.
I'm not like obsessed with it. I just like to
break in his life as an adult. It was really
sad to me because he went to Australia, he became
(16:06):
an alcoholic, and he died because he was drunk and
he fell off of a bridge, all because he was
tired of being the boy Jones. He even changed his name,
so I felt like I actually couldn't pick him because
I he wasn't a show for me. That ended very nicely.
This is Victorians, this is Queen Victoria, and yes I
(16:27):
also do love. Although it is not happy, it's a
good reminder. I think we talked about it all the
time now that because of social media, everything you do
is out there forever and you can never overcome your mistakes.
That's not actually new though, right this kid did some
stupid stuff as a teenager, and as an adult man
continents away could not get away from that public image
(16:50):
so much so that it really tore him apart. So
I think it's just a good reminder. We always like
to think that in the modern era we're dealing with
new things and new ways, and so only obviously technology
has progressed in a way that like information is more
readily available, but these kinds of long term effects of
the decisions we make was always part of the human equation.
(17:12):
People are people. The difference is, right, we can more
easily find things out about people than we ever could,
But the real commonality there is that humans want to
define people as easily as they can, and sometimes it's
in a negative way that you never shake off. They're
just like, oh, that's the guy, that's the that's Queen
(17:33):
Victoria's stalker, and he will always be that no matter
what he did. Right, he could have been fantastic as
an adult. He could have invented everything you know that
we even used today, and it wouldn't matter. Still, the
stalker at Queen Victoria. Yeah, okay, who's your third choice?
I actually really wanted to put big Gelow and Dickens
on my list, but I didn't because what I realized
(17:55):
was that I wasn't choosing it because of the stalker
victim pairing. I was choosing it because I was picking
that episode for him, and I wanted to pick episodes
for the pairing. So I didn't put him on my list.
But that would have been my fourth my third actually,
and no one's going to be surprised by this one
is Lady Caroline and Lord Byron. You knew I was
(18:19):
going to pick that, right, I mean I suspected, but yeah,
Lord Byron, you know I picked because of Lord Byron.
But Lady Carol lamb Man. So she was an interesting woman.
What was her quote? Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,
and I always thought that was more her than Byron.
(18:41):
She really went after him after even after he left America,
and not just the consistency, but like the depth of
how she would follow him and write to him and
right as him was my god, Right, I think about
somebody writing a book but signing you know your name
to it rather than their own rights. A little terrifying,
(19:02):
but it was very interesting to see her go from
a lover of Lord Byron to that aspect where she
begins to confuse her reality with her fantasy life. That's
when she begins dressing like a page boy to to
sneak in and and try to get access to his room.
It's when she starts sending him hair um, and she
(19:23):
starts doing things, engaging in these stocker behaviors that just
keep escalating. No one specifically in our research talked about
her and mental illness, but I did some reading about how,
and obviously not everyone who stalks has a mental illness,
but everyone who stalks is engaged in some sort of
mental instability at the time that they are stalking. That
(19:45):
actually seems pretty clear. In her life, she became very
obsessed as her relationship or non relationship continued. But she
was an author herself, like she could have been very successful, Unfortunately,
just got caught up in this fantasy that she had.
So I thought she was very interesting. I find her
fascinating as well. I tend to continually think about her husband,
(20:10):
Lord Melbourne, and now he is caught in this unsavory
web of gossip and scandal. Can you even imagine being
in the position he was in and having your wife
sleeping with celebrity well, and then just openly talking about
it to anybody who would listen. She had also had
(20:30):
a previous affair too, so he had been through this,
but it was not quite as out there like this
one was among the social circles. Even if it's not
like necessarily your classic romantic marriage, if it is more
of a like a social construct, it's still a lot
to put somebody through. Okay, let's skip over to your
(20:52):
third it's George Elliott. That was a great pick. I
think about it unprompted random times. George Elliott's situation in
terms of her mental state. I don't want to ever
victim blame, but she did encourage these relationships to a
degree and then was like too far. But then sometimes
(21:16):
she would go back again and be like, oh, but
you can edit my book. That sounds great, especially with
Alexander main right. It's a fascinating thing to me that
someone would live in that simultaneity of being afraid of
or made uncomfortable by someone, but also would reach out
(21:36):
to them and collaborate with them. And still foster a friendship.
I really wish we could time travel back and interview
her about it. Did you think you could build a
relationship that was more palatable to you and that's why
you were doing this? Or were you just wishy washy
about how you felt about particularly Alexander Maine from time
to time, Like did your perception of who he was
(21:59):
and how he was approaching on your life shift? Was
that more of a malleable situation than we would probably
understand it today. Maybe there were spaces between those letters
and between maybe she started thinking it wasn't as bad
as I thought. We did come across a quote, and
I want to say it was from her husband, but
I don't think they were married. I think they were
just together for like a hundred years. In it it
was very short, but I got this expression from him
(22:21):
where he referenced that she had very little self confidence
in her writing. And that to me goes right along
with what you're saying, which is, because there are two
people who really love what she's doing, it's difficult for
her to step away from it, even though the boundaries
(22:42):
are way pushed. It's completely unhealthy in terms of friendship
or anything. Right, any sort of relationship, but yet somebody
likes her things. And I think if you if her
husband's quote is remotely true, I could see her going
back and forth on that. We are going to shift
gears now and talk about cocktails and our favorites of
the season, but before we do that, we will pause
(23:04):
and have another little break. Welcome back to Criminalia. Al Right,
it is time for the ultimately, where Maria and I
are going to discuss our top three picks of favorite
(23:26):
cocktails of the season. Maria, what do you got? I
picked Rufus and Edgar as a favorite show, but I
also picked the Bitter Rival, which was the chaser for
their show, as one of my drinks. And I love
that you made it to mirror. I think this is
what you were doing. The Bitterness of Rufus is cold
(23:48):
dead art to um and and this drink is surprisingly
not that it has cold coffee and it has lemon
in it. And when she first said those two things
to me, I was like, why would you put those
two things together? So I and it became a favorite
for me. So to remind listeners, it's four ounces of
(24:11):
cold coffee, two ounces of rum, two shakes of angister,
a bitters an ounce of simple syrup and three quarters
of an ounce of lemon juice. I mean, I even
was like, is this weird? But it makes it this
very bright flavor, not at all what you would expect
from a coffee cocktail because usually they have a heavier flavor,
and that takes that sharp edge off of it. Yeah,
(24:32):
there's other stuff going on in here where it's not
just cold coffee and lemon juice, which would be terrible.
I would not drink that. I would not drink that.
Um um, stay here first, my first, and I will
tell you I drink this all the time. I know
exactly which one you're gonna say, do you party drink?
(24:57):
I guess I. I I love that drink too, And any
time that that drink comes up, I can only think
of Victor's actual party drink, which, if you guys don't remember,
Victor used to put an orange in his mouth, sugarcubes
in his cheeks, and he would take what like two
(25:19):
ounces of cres swallow it all down. And that to me,
that sounds miserable. It's quite a party trick. When when
you first read it, I was like, what was it?
It like a mandarin, the clementine. Yeah, so our version
of that, which is supable and very kind to remind anybody,
(25:40):
it's two ounces of triple sec two ounces of whipped vodka.
You could also do just a regular plain vodka if
you want to take down the sweetness a little bit
an ounce of vanilla syrup and then three ounces of
hard seltzer and it is quite a sweet drink. It's
like a dessert drink. But like I said, you could
play with the vodka type and you could also drop
down the vendil the syrup if you had just an
(26:01):
orangey drink that still has that hint of creamsicle but
is also delightful. I am not, as you know, not
necessarily a citrus person, but a creamsicle I think if
it's so much more as a dessert thing that isn't
really very orangey flavored. As a citterus person, I don't
really think of a creamsicle as being very orangy. Right, Yeah,
(26:23):
I'm with you on that. Yeah. I have on several
occasions when I've had like zoom cocktail events or whatever
that I'm going to, I will just make a little
shaker full of these and just be pouring them as
I go. A shaker of the Victor, Yes, a shaker
of the party trick, although you do not shake it
because of that seltzer f y. I don't do that.
(26:43):
It will explode. But but yeah, it's just it's become
such a fun, easy to throw together drink, and I
particularly anticipate that as we head into summer here in Atlanta,
this is going to be like the drink I turned
to when I'm sitting out on the deck, probably and
that's next week. We're yeah, we're in the middle of
the weird weather where it's like seventy five one day
(27:05):
and thirty five the next, and it just bounces back
and forth. So we'll see. It might be next week.
What was your second cocktail, my love? So, my second
cocktail is my second cocktail for actually a couple of reasons. First,
it's because of the title of the cocktail, and I
think immediately you know exactly which one I'm going to there.
(27:26):
It is the Charles Dickens and Jane Bigelow Sloppy Bishop comtail. Now, okay,
so let me step back a second. Dickens used to
drink what was it called the Smoking Bishop, right, and
it was a warm punch, and it was like oranges
and cloves and red wine and you know, among other ingredients,
very seasonal. What I really liked one is that yours
(27:49):
is not made in large patches. But do your version.
I would normally really not want to try because I'm
not a gin person. But the combination of all of
these ingredients, ruby port, cranberry juice, triple sect gin, black
cherry puree, a little dash of bitters. The only thing
(28:12):
on this list for me that was no was the
one ounce of gin. And so I thought to myself, really, Maria,
come on, is one ounce of JM you can you
can try it. You'll be okay. There's more port in here,
there's more juice in here than there is gent. So
for anyone who actually dislikes gin, don't stay away from
(28:33):
this one. I hate Jim too, and it totally works.
If you'll recall when we did that episode I talked
about that I first made it with vodka in that
position you did, I did not like it as much
as with jin, which to me is a shocker. There's
something about Jim that just balances out the heaviness of
all those other flavors. I feel like something about that
whole Juni proof element to it does the magic trick
(28:57):
and it makes it a much more delightful cocktail than
I have even anticipated. All of it is a good drink.
Plus name Sloppy Bishop is a fun one. We're gonna
make it famous so you can like walk into a
bar in order the Sloppy Bedroom that poor Barty, Now
he's gonna be like, I'm sorry, I can't make that.
(29:18):
So I'll just hold up my phone and be like
these are ingras, and they'll be like, get out of
my bars. That's the next sentence. Please leave my barn, sleave,
Please leave what you got next. This probably won't surprise
you either. It's the it sneaks up on you. Which
was our Valentine Special? Was that our Valentine's Day in
(29:40):
Long islanded? Yes? Yes, I mean I I love a
Long Island anyway, right like and for this one, I mean,
I just wanted to make something that incorporated those tropes
of Valentine's Day. So it has a lot of rose
flavor to it. There's there's also strawberries muddled into it.
(30:03):
Three ounces each of vodka White Rum, Silver Tequi laed
Gin and triple sec and then an ounce of rose
syrup with some floral bitters if you have them, and
then it's topped with ginger real or lemon lime soda
and it's just, oh, it's such a quencher and it's
pretty in the glass, and I love rose flavored everything,
(30:24):
so it's like, that's a might be my favorite drink
of the entire season. That was one that was so
fun to put together. And often I have to make
a couple versions of things to tweak things and get
it really to like where I'm like, oh, okay, the ballot,
we found the balance here, but in this case, because
it is built on the long island base, which is
(30:45):
tried and true, and then I'm just adding like the
rose syrup and ginger ale instead of a cola on
top of it. It was pretty easy to put together,
and the first try it was like, great, got it cool?
I did not waste any alcohol making this, and it
turned out just fine. It was like the gods of
I guess that would be Bacchus, all of the booze gods.
(31:05):
I was smiled upon because it was came together perfectly
the first try, which does not always happened. So how
does this drink here compared to first season white Toad,
which is your favorite? I mean you can say neither
if that's the well, it's a tight race because they
feel different. Yeah, rolls right, Like a white Toad is
(31:25):
a smaller cocktail and term amount of alcohol. It's like
the kind of thing I can mix a couple of
while I'm talking to friends. I would not want to
mix a couple of these and have anything but super
slurry speech, like you can't write. This is like another
one of those that's great to have when you're just
going to have one drink, call it a night, and
hopefully not drive at all. Right out on your porch
(31:48):
or deck. Um, so my last one. So this is
another reason why I want Top four next season. I
want to board um. There were two other drinks that
I wrestled with for the third position. UM one was
Victor's Party Trick and also the one from the Presidential Assassinated.
I think it was from the Presidential Assassination Healthy Teeth
(32:10):
and Gums. I one love the name too. It's a
drink that that includes pair. No drink ever includes pair.
So it didn't make the list, but I was impressed
with your pear juice drink. So my third one actually
is from the George Harrison episode. But so here's here's
(32:31):
the real, like honest reason why I picked this drink,
and this is going to make you laugh. I picked
Peppery Sergeant because it has whiskey in it, and I
felt like you made that for me. I knew that
would be the reason you might pick it, and yeah,
of course I was like, oh, I haven't favored Maria
with a good whiskey pay this season, But once it
came out, I was like, I've never put Hallo peen
(32:52):
your Jam and whiskey together, and that to me actually
sounds like a really interesting combination. So um, regardless of
whether or not the wiskey drink was from me, I
would drink it and I would probably very much be
surprised at the club soda part. I guess it was.
But the Hallepeen your Jam and whiskey, I thought we
were good. Yeah, you could just drink it like that,
(33:12):
but it would be very syrupy. That's why the club
soda kind of makes it more of a sippable thing. Yeah,
I tried. I knew you would, but I was first like,
I love holly, and then the second I was like,
this is a good drink, Like my third one is
done done. Don do you have any guesses. I'm not
(33:34):
gonna guess. It's none of the ones we've mentioned so far.
It's the mixed feelings. Oh hey, really, I wouldn't have
guessed that. I would have been I would have guessed
like two others, and you'd be like, oh my god,
we can't be here this long when you're guessing. Yeah,
So to remind people, it's three ounces of brood chilled
(33:55):
butterfly pea flower tea, which is a beautiful sapphire blue,
an ounce of simple syrup or I used vanilla syrup
because that's my favorite to keep on hand. An ounce
of vodka and that's just over ice, and then you
add lemon juice at the very end and it turns
like a magenta purple e color. I remember talking about
this drink and how beautiful it was. Yeah. It mirrors
George Elliot's complicated relationship with Alexander Maine in particular, like
(34:19):
I like you, I don't like you. I'm comfortable with you.
I'm not comfortable with you. I need you to tell
any good things that I don't want to be near you.
I would also go away. Aside from the party trick
of changing colors, it's just a very bright, soft, easy
to sip drink. You can throw it over a bunch
of ice and have, you know, essentially like an iced
tea that's just got a little kick to it. You
can make it without the vodka and you still have
(34:40):
the same effects, which is nice. What other tea, if
there is any other tea do you suggest? If you
have a suggestion could be substituted in if you can't
find that tea. I mean, this is a very basic recipe, right,
You could use it with almost any tea, but I
would do it with an herbal tea, not like a
black tea. Well that's helpful, right, So you could also
(35:01):
do this with like a hybiscus tea. You could even
do it with a camra meal. It might be a
very strangely soft flavor, like where you feel like you're
drinking but not. You really could sub out almost anything
that you're really into. I somewhere I have a cucumber
and melon white tea that I think might be an
interesting on. This could be a very good drink, and
(35:24):
then you can add the lemon juice or not. At
that point, the lemon juice is really there primarily to
make that color change, and it shifts the flavor certainly
to have a little bit more of that slight citrus
edge when you sit. It's a very basic, simple drink,
and it's easy to make those subouts to really customize
it to whatever you want. And you can customize it
(35:45):
to be a non alcoholic drink, or you can. This
guy's the limit. It's just make it how it's most
palatable and delightful to you. Sub that stuff out, man,
there are no rules. The cocktail police will not come
for you, I promise, But mostly we actually want to
thank our listeners for hanging out with us this season.
(36:05):
Next time around, we have a whole other plan, Maria.
We're gonna step right into season three next week, and
where will that focus that will take us to the
epic tales of all the brazen impostors that we can
think of. I feel like this is fertile ground for cocktails.
(36:28):
I also feel like moving to an impostor season will
be a little bit more fun than a very serious
stalker season, So I think it'll be a good time. Yeah,
a lot of these stories have a little more rob
and craziness to them and a little a little less sadness, thankfully,
So get ready for that and we cannot wait to
see you right back here next week for those impostors
(36:48):
and more cocktails. Criminalia is a production of Shawanda land
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from Seawan land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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