384 - This One's for Steven - My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hell, hello and welcome. So's my favorite murder.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's Georgia hart Stark. Hi, that's Karen Kilgariff.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, Hello, Yeah, we're just going to do this podcast
for you real quick and then just move on to
other stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
In and out, in and out right.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, just like have a chat, yeah, touch base, see
what's up.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah. In today's busy world, we know that you guys
don't want any bullshit.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
You barely have time for this one hour, forty five
minute podcast, so let's.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Get to it.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I want to know how many people listen to this
podcast at work on someone else's dime, Like that to
me is like the fucking rebellion of rebellions, you know,
like a fuck you to the man.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Also, I have a hard time listening to podcasts, which
that's kind of how I spend my morning, like wiping
down surfaces and whatever. And the idea that I would
do that and a job seems since sane. I would
never I would be saying what the people in my
ear were.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Saying out loud.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, as an ex receptionist, who who's would just sit
alone at a desk in front of a computer for
hours at a time, and the only thing I ever
had to say was hi or answer the phone? You
can get you can get away with it pretty okay.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, I would say, maybe not one of those law
firms where it's like thirty lines ringing at one time
and you're like Simon and Simon and Simon and Schuster
or whatever. Yeah, that's my law firm.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I don't know. I don't know which one yours is.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I once at that job watched like seven seasons of
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia at my desk. I told
them I need a privacy screen because like I was saying,
and it was really just so I could It's always
study in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Sweet.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
I got my friend Jeff Cosgrave, we used to work together.
I got him a T shirt one time that said
I'm It was a cartoon of a like a bear
sitting at a bar drinking, and underneath it said I'm
rocking on your dime, which made me laugh so hard.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I don't know why.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I just thought that was I don't know if that's
like from a band or something, but I don't either.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
But please let us know. If that's what your life
is like, kudos to you.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Because we love it.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh, can I give you an update that just came
through on borderline defunct website Twitter. But I still love
the fact that people still communicate with me through there,
even though the Nazis have infiltrated in the most insane way,
Like you see such crazy shit on there now, but
you also see things like this, a man named James

(02:51):
Barrera I believe at Civil Jim b is his handle.
He went into And I know I've told you this
story short stint at Sack State in college. There was
a girl who walked around. She was legit like punk,
and she had a T shirt that said frat boys

(03:11):
have no genitals on the front of it. I told
you that, right, No, I don't think I've heard that.
So it was nineteen eighty eight. Oh my god, the
danger level of having this shirt on and walking around
in the world.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
And Sacramento's conservative as fuck.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Right conservative and filled with frats and sororities, like that's
what everyone was doing, aside from this tiny handful of
us who were absolutely absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
And I just remember she was walking down the hall.
She kind of had a.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Molly Ringwald if Molly Ringwold had a really fucked up
childhood kind of vibe, and she was wearing like that
T shirt and then like a super cool pleated skirt
and huge like creepers, And as she walked by, I
was just like, no way, Like she's by herself, what
do you doing? Like you're the coolest person of all time.

(04:03):
And so I'm sure I told that story on some
podcast at some point.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, it could have been this one, and I don't remember.
It's been seven and a half years.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Basically, there have been anecdotes by the thousands on this
fucking thing, truly, all moderately interesting, So it's not like
it's gonna stick out in your mind that much. But
this guy, James Berrera tweets me and sends a picture
of the shirt and says the shirt was a product
of the network, like a title capital T, capital N

(04:33):
the network at U see Irvine CU Dad dorm in
nineteen eighty five artwork by me and Jim kahn Ka
n The rad Sack State Punk Girl was most likely
Annie j or Bonnie. I still have one. And then
there's the picture of the fucking shirt.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Oh my god, the original indie artist somehow found this.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Oh, because you know what it was.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Nico Case said, I'm scared of frat boys on Twitter,
and I wrote back basically saying there was a girl
who wore the shirt and it was amazing, and so he,
I guess found it three years later and was like
that was me.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
How fucking cool?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And then he knew like it was one of these
two girls because that's like, how few people own that?
And then it's full circle. The Internet brings people together.
That's wild and it's very like.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
The thing to me is it's so confrontational, and that's
that kind of thing, like, yeah, if you have ten
thousand like minded people behind you on social media and
you're going to be ballsy and say that this girl
was by herself in the middle of a state school,
just being like, yeah, you want to fight me, I'll
fight you.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Where's she now running the country? Why isn't she running
the country? She might be what if it was Nancy Pelosi? Anyway,
thanks James for sending that. You probably don't listen to
this podcast, but if you hear about it, thank you,
because how inspiring to be like in the middle of
Sacramento going oh, there's really these super badass, like real people, yeah,

(06:07):
like anarchists.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's awesome. Speaking of the opposite of real people.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Have you watched the Duggard family fucking documentary?

Speaker 1 (06:18):
No, I'm scared? Should I watch it?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
You?

Speaker 1 (06:20):
It's scary.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
It's called Shiny Happy People and it's on Amazon Prime.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
It's like four episodes.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Vince and I binge it and just like the amount
of times just said holy shit or what the fuck
is just like countless.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean it's dark.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's just fucked up and like, you know, fucking DLC
just like throws this up. But it's like it's not
it's propaganda. It's not fucking Shiny Happy People. It's like
this dark religious overlord and the religion that they're trying
to spread through America, like the religious rite. You know
what I mean. It's just yeah, I'm not being eloquent,

(06:56):
but you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
No, No, Well, because the presentation is like, this is
the American ideal of a family and an ethical family,
and this is how you live ethically and this is
how you live whatever. And it's like that would be
nice if we could do it that way.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Wouldn't it be nice to be like.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, if you go to this church, then you are good,
and if you go to this place, then you are
bad and it's like that's the kind of discovery with
all this stuff, which is if you're waving that flag
of like me and Christ in it together. Yeah, there's
a reason people want to be projecting that message, and
it's because they're covering something up.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
A lot of the time. Absolutely, like the homeschooling that
they did, they these poor children got no education. There
was like they tell you about the curriculum on this documentary.
They tell you about like you know, the like weird
things that the young girls had to, the weird places
they had to go with the like leader, and then
they tell you about like the kids are all very

(07:54):
like what's the word. The kids are all very subdued
and behave and behave themselves, and it's like, well, here's.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
How they did that.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
There's actually like it's like teaching from when they're little
babies to like how to behave. It's fucked up. It's
fucked up, abusive, horrible stuff. Yeah, I definitely recommend it watching.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Well, yeah, I kind of all those things are feel
very satisfying when they when they actually play out where
it's like, yeah, we all watched that, or we all
were kind of forced to know about it.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
And knew something was off about it.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yes, similar to Jared from Subway.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, oh that was a good documentary too. Did you
watch that one?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
No, we watched that one.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
And it turns out there's this like woman who's like
a like a journalist, like news presentation lady, you know,
radio DJ and stuff, and she kind of is the
one who took him down. Like I didn't know that
there was this one woman who started recording her fucking
conversations with him, and he just started telling her all
this stuff. And then the end I got involved in,
they're like, you have to keep talk to him and

(09:00):
made her basically all the evidence they had against him
is because of her.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
She's a badass.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
That's yeah, reason number eight million why we cannot lose journalism.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
We can't.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
This idea of disempowering journalists and getting rid of local newspapers,
all these things that we're seeing happening has to get
reversed because that's the only way this kind of stuff
gets broken and learned about is like people who are
doing that job and doing the hard stuff.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
It's so creepy.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
He's like she has young kids, and he starts like
talking about what he want like what he would do
to them, and she has to like play along like
she's into it. They have the recordings on the documentary.
It's fucking crazy now.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
And then in between these documentaries, you go find some
glimmer time. You go find some you go, you go
take a deep breath outside.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I have found one thing that I just bought. I
haven't you seen it yet, but I've found the thing
that's going to solve all my anxiety problems. Oh. I
got myself a powerwasher. Holy shit, for like outdoors, like
on your house and like your fucking walkway, and shit,
life's about to get better.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
You're about to you know you can.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
There's a guy that I follow on TikTok who volunteers
to clean up people's front yards.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I've seen one of those before.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
It's amazing when he powerwashes the driveway and you're like,
I didn't realize that was dirty. Yeah, and then he
goes and suddenly it's just everything looks beautiful.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
There's a Reddit thread of power washing porn and it's
just so satisfying, except when people are doing it in
sandals and their feet are just disgusting, and you're like
why don't you put some tennishoes on something You're just
like kicking up dirty water.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, although then they can powerwash their feet.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Oh hey, hey, let's look on the bright side of
the powerwashing problem.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Solution there should we do exactly right corner?

Speaker 3 (10:52):
I think we should okay, okay this week and I
said no gifts. Bridger's guest is one of our very
favorite comedians and friend of the network, Tig Nataro.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yay and Adulting with Michelle Buteau and Jordan Carlos is
off for a summer break. But don't miss Michelle's new
TV show. I'm so excited for this, Survival of the Thickest,
which is available July thirteenth on Netflix.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
It looks so freaking good.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
And Lisa Traeger is on the show as well, so
it's like a double fucking exactly right header. I love that.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah. If you haven't seen Michelle Buteau perform irl, you absolutely.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Should see it.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
This This TV show is based on her book that
she wrote, Survival of the Thickest, which is basically, you know,
about her life and she's one of the greatest. So yeah,
definitely support that TV show. Also, when you go to
shop in the MFM Merch store, which is something we
know you do all the time. You're going to be
getting free shipping on all orders that are over seventy
five dollars. We've got lots of new merch over there,

(11:51):
including we have a new toe bag with artwork from
brain Flower Designs. We launched it earlier this year as
a t shirt and now there's a tope bag also.
So there's a fun bananas hut, there's muscle tees for
that's messed up. And this podcast will kill you. It's
like all your summer merg is happening.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, what more do you want? Go to my favorite
murder dot com or all of it? Please?

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Whoo whew.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Okay who I'm first, I'm first, You're first. Okay, all right,
We're gonna go into some old timey early nineteen hundreds,
right at the end of World War One. This is
a story of a young British starlet. It's got English
drug laws being changed, it's got a racist fallout from
the trial of what happens. This is the overdose death

(12:42):
of actress Billy Carleton. The main source I used to
say story is an article from flashback dot com titled
disgraceful Orgies, Unholy Writes, and the Death of Billy Carlton
one hundred years Ago written by Rob Baker. Wow and
yeah and all the other sources are listed in the show.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Let's start from the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Billy Carlton is born Florence Leonora Stewart, which is such Florence.
It's such a good name that should happen more Florence
Welch Right. Florence in the Machine is.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Not her last name. It's a capital A.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
In the Machine Bill love her on September fourth, eighteen
ninety six. She's born in Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury, I'm sure it's
pronounced London, England. She's the daughter of a chorus singer
and her father is unknown, and her mom is is
in the picture along anyways, because she gets sent off
to live with her aunt, so she's raised by her.

(13:38):
At age fifteen, Billy drops out of school and takes
the stage name Billy Carlton. Acting work is hard to
come by it first, so Billy makes some extra cash
by modeling for a thirty seven year old costume designer
named Reggie de Vole. That you become fast friends and
Billy even moves in with Reggie and his wife Pauline,

(14:00):
another costume designer for some time, as well as a
fifteen year old I'm sure they were like, let's protect
this poor baby.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
I hope so, yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
In nineteen fourteen, at age eighteen, Billy lands a spot
on the chorus of Irving Berlin's Watch Your Step, and
musical production put on by theater manager and an impresario C. B.
Cochrane at the Empire Theater in Leicester Square.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Do you know that musical? You love musicals?

Speaker 3 (14:25):
I love musicals? Can you tell me the name of it?

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Again? Watch step?

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Watch to step? Tell me what you're looking for?

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Why everybody don't trip on that little that rug over there?

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Put a cone there?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Watch a stepne okay, you have to watch your step
and you have to put the cone down.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
That's a lot of responsibility.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
While you're dancing in a chorus line like great hard
it was.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Life was harder back then.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Everyone knows that, Yeah, it was very challenging. The role
is minor, but noting her charm and stage presence, Cochran
decides to promot now nineteen year old Billy to one
of his leads sella Sparks in November nineteen fifteen.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
So this is her like first big break.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
As Cochran puts it, quote, despite her inexperience and her
tiny voice, she pleased the audiences. A more beautiful creature
has never fluttered upon a stage. She seemed scarcely human.
So fragile was she? Oh oh wow, I've been described
that way. Scarcely delicate, my tiny voice, scarcely human.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
You know, huge burps, uge.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Belches'd shake the room with a burp, tiny voice, big belches.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
That's the key to showbiz.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
But there's just one problem, and that is, as so
many you know, nineteen year olds and any any time period, Billy.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Likes to use drugs.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Sure, specifically cocaine and opium, which I think we're pretty
rampant back then. It's nineteen fifteen, so opium's like pretty big.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
They were like, this is a vitamin. You should take
this for Yeah, if you're pregnant or planning.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
To become pregnant, you could buy it over the counter.
You should give it to your baby when he's CALLI key.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Her habit starts up as early as the spring of
summer of nineteen fifteen, when she befriends a nightclub manager
always a red flag by the name of Jack. May
excuse me, Jack, you should leave that one, I know,
just like for proof. Oh no, okay, only that one.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
No, no, you don't have to leave it. Leave it.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
So this dude Jack, he's an ex pat from America.
His given name is Gerald Walter. He's taken over management
of a family owned pub on Beak Street called Murray's
Cabaret Club, and the club, like many of the era skirts,
the new alcohol rules of wartime, and of course, becomes
a hotbed for illegal activity. You know. Yeah, those club managers,

(16:53):
night club managers.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
They want to give the people what they want, you know, yeah, drugs, free.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Drug So before World War One, pubs in London would
open as early as five thirty am and stay open
until twelve thirty am. But basically in nineteen fourteen, just
days into England's entering the war, the government starts to
put like this crackdown on what time they can be open.
Eventually they can be open from like like noon to

(17:20):
almost three and then like six thirty to nine thirty
in the night, so like barely enough time to get
fucked up. Yeah, this is this is later referred to
as the Beauty Sleep Order. So this new law forbids
customers from buying drinks for anyone but themselves, which is
called the no treating order.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Or the cheap Man's Order.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, exactly where the how do I meet someone then?

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Order?

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
What am I?

Speaker 2 (17:49):
How get out to make small talk order? Yeah? These
laws are pushed through under the name the Defense of
Realm Act, otherwise known.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
As Dora DRA. Of course, it's.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Intended to secure public safety and national morale, but of
course throughout the war it gets more controversial. More things
are added on to it, including strict censorship, and even
goes to outlaw things like starting bonfires and buying binoculars. Guys,
it's just like, guys, just just come on, let people

(18:18):
get drunk. Stop with the over the counter opium. These
laws don't actually stop anyone from drinking late into the night,
just pushes everything underground, so bars and restaurants skys are alcohol,
serving booze in coffee mugs and passing champagne off his
lemonade just like it was so charming. And at this time,
many of London's men are off to war, so women

(18:40):
are left to be more independent than what was previously
socially acceptable, and they start to frequent these night clubs
on their own. They're called the Dining Out Girls by
the Daily Mail, which would be a rad all female
punk band name, would hell ya.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
So there's these.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Young liberated women during wartime who go out and god forbid,
alone or with other girlfriends at night, as opposed to
when they were like strictly escorted out by men, which
was the norm.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
So they're having this taste of freedom.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, and they're also known as flappers, you know, we
all know that that. So these young women enjoy London's
night life between nineteen fifteen and nineteen eighteen, quickly finding
that the nightclubs are serving up more illegal.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Substances and just booze.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
The secret doesn't stand or raps long, and in January
nineteen sixteen, the local news outlets reports on the seed
nature of what they call West End Bohemia, including women
suffering from what they call a soul racking cocaine habit.
How pure was the cocaine back then?

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Like to pure it would rack your soul.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
I bet it's so pure and you would just be
wired out of your door. I mean it's such a
like thinking about it, it's like I like to think
it's such this pure time or this simple time, and
it's like, no, everyone was on tons of drugs.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, it just wasn't illegal.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah you got to get some baby aspiring cut in
there are just like hi is a kite, Take it easy,
don't do drugs. So eventually it leads to criminalizing the
possession or sale of opium or cocaine by anyone besides
a licensed chemist, a doctor, or a vet. Those fucking
cats on cocaine back then now screaming.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
All night, what are you treating when you give your
cat cocaine?

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Talking about opening a restaurant?

Speaker 1 (20:24):
The cats me out. I liked it.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
When this cat's left all day. Now it's real different.
This cat is trying to record an album constantly.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Just smoking so many cigarettes. But they're like catnip cigarettes.
Of course, it stops nobody from using it. Murray's Cabaret
Club in particular, becomes known as a place to easily
get cocaine, and Billy Carlton is a frequent customer. By
nineteen sixteen, her cocaine usage is common knowledge in her
work and social circles, so as word about her drug

(20:57):
habit spreads. Cochrane is the production and theater manager and
he basically fires her because he doesn't want her to
give him a bad reputation. So she's fired from the show,
and during this time, Billy is living with the couple
who were clothing designers, occasionally modeling for them, picking up

(21:19):
small theater gigs to get by that. In nineteen seventeen,
Cochran gives Billy another chance, having her fill in for
actress Gertie Miller as the leading lady in the musical
Hoopla Hooplah, Tell me what you're looking for?

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Hoopla one of my favorite but wait again a day,
what about it?

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hoopla?

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Don't make a big old hoopla. Watch your step. That's
the other song coming up. Don't make a hooplah. Way
your trip over that step.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Don't sue me, that's a hoopla. Watch your step.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
For Mormons is unremarkable, sadly, and the show is it
doesn't does lead to another job, though an appearance in
Andre Charlotte's show Some More.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's called Some More Samples.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I can't be right. That has to be a missie.
It's like a sick a salesman going door to door
with like carpeting samples.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
I don't want to keep making up dumb songs every
time you do a title.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
It's kind of hacky after a while.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
But you just said some more samples is the show,
and so because of that, I only have two samples.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
I need Sabo.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
How will I by cocaine with only.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
These two samples? Door to door? Door to door? Oh?

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Nice?

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Thank you?

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Who?

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (22:47):
August nineteen seventeen. She lands the parts at Flapper And
she'll even not tell you the names of these fucking
you can.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
I swear I won't. I won't say anymore. It's just
called the boy, the Boy. No, I want you to
which one?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That one that's a boy, who's the boy?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
He's the boy? Okay?

Speaker 2 (23:05):
And then another one, uh oh, called fair and Warmer.
I don't know what these are.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Your honor.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
I immediately set that one in a courtroom. There's a
courtroom setting where if somebody falls in love.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
You know, they're do in courtrooms all the time. They do.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
There's so much tension you're not supposed to. It's people
you work with, so sexy.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah. One of the oldest and most Revere Theater markets
the West End. She gets into a spot there and
she's the youngest leading lady in the West End at.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Just twenty two years old. Wow, yeah, that's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah. So she gets a little bit a bump in
her pay raise, but not enough to afford where she
ends up living, which is a new apartment at the
Savoy Court Mansions, a luxury full service complex in London.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
It's high fucking end. Yeah, but she does have.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Enough money to live there. But it turns out she
does have a rich, older playboy friend named John Darlington
Marsh from Bridgerton.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
You know him from Bridgerton.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
And it's kind of a common theme in her life,
maintaining relationships with older, wealthy men who give her large
sums of money.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
She's a sugar baby. Yeah, good for her.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
But even though she reached new heights in her young career,
Billy has not given up her drug habit. Her friend,
the clothing designer Reggie, also uses drugs, so he doesn't help.
They end up having this like crazy opium dinner party.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Oh the idea it's like, isn't don't you just basically
lay down and go to sleep or like seem like
you're asleep.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
I think it's like Heroin.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
I'm just basing it on like opium den style things
I've seen in Victorian British story.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
I think it's like that. But it's like in a
private house.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
So this woman, a Scottish woman by the name of
Ada ping Yu, comes over. She's basically like the one
who brings and preps the opium and like passes it around.
She's like the matriarch of the opium circle. Okay, they all,
including Billie, hang out and do opium and they're there

(25:14):
till like, you know, three in that afternoon the next day.
Like that's how fucking potent the shit is. Yeah, and
that's just kind of like what Billy's life was like
at the time.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
That's just the picture of it.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
I'm sure in some ways she thought it was like
very almost glamorous and whatever, but it's just a little
bit empty.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
You're basically inviting people over and then going to sleep
in front of them.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, just to make it like the fact that you're
addicted seem more glamorous.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
And okay, and yeah, you're not alone doing it at
least there's other people doing it.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
It's a party, that's drugs.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That's drugs. So then about a month later, on November eleventh,
nineteen eighteen, the last armistice is signed and yay, hooray,
World War One is officially over. Everyone's going to celebrate
what they call the Great Victory Ball in the Royal
Albert Hall, to be held on We're twenty seventh, nineteen eighteen.
And actually, in addition to celebrating the end of the war,
the ball is also intended to celebrate all the contributions

(26:07):
and achievements made by women to support the war at
country time, to support the country at wartime. We've got in.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
A country time. I'm like, uh huh, I can follow this.
That's actually very cool though, because as we all know,
I'm sure World War you never really hear about it
world War one, but World War two is like women
just had to start doing everything.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Totally, totally. Yeah, So that's pretty cool way to go
the English. Yeah, all the proceeds of the ball go
to the Nation's Fund for Nurses in honor of their
care for the wounded soldiers, So hooray for that. Yeah. Great.
But at its core, the Victory Ball is an opportunity
for everyone to finally set their cares aside and feel

(26:54):
some relief from the years of stress that they endured,
and a party very fucking hard of course. Right up
Billy Carlton's alley, she gets this dress and there's a
photo of it online. It's like a transparent, black, beautiful,
like you know, nineteen twenties looking dress, but it's it's
like see through, so it's super scandalous. She only like

(27:15):
you can see right through it. It's reported quote that
it revealed the flesh beneath to an extreme degree, to
the limit, in fact.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
To the limit to the wall.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Wait, she truly she was just kind of nude with
a little material over the time.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, like you see on the red carpet these days,
right where it's just like I have black underwear on
with like basically a sheath over me. Oh okay. But
it's like a beautiful dress, but it's just transparent. So
it's like super scandalous and exciting. Yeah. So Billy goes
leaves the theater where she had a play that night,
goes to dinner with another boyfriend, doctor Frederick Stewart, and

(27:52):
after dinner, along with her friends Faye Compton and her
friend's date, Lieutenant Barrod. They hop in a cab head
to the ball and there Billy is just like an
instant hit. Everyone's dazzled by her. She's like the bell
of the ball, you would say. And so she bumps
into Reggie, and even though the event is dry, he
snuck in some cocaine.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
He shares it with her. The ball ends at three.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Am, and Billy and her date and her friend and
her friend's date head home. Eventually she gets to her
apartment with this other friend, actor Lionel Belcher and his mistress,
all of Richardson, and they stay up all night.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
They eat. They ordered like.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Room service, because it's like a full service fucking apartment.
I didn't know the thing, but wouldn't that be great?
According to them. Later, all they did was just eat
and talk all night, you know. And they left it
around six am. And later Lionel says, he leaves Billy
quote in bed perfectly well and extremely bright, so nothing amiss, okay.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
According to him, it'd be interesting that this is the
first night where she's not doing major drugs, class A drugs.
But suddenly she decided, like in the middle of just
being on a five year cocaine binge. I'm just into
food tonight, right, I'm into food.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Going to bed tonight, Yeah, yeah, who knows that doesn't
check out. The next morning, at about eleven thirty, it's
November twenty eighth, nineteen eighteen, Billy's May that tries to
open her door, but she hears loud snoring, so she
allows Billy to sleep, and then around three thirty she
goes back, knocks on the door, tries to wake Billy up,
but Billy doesn't respond, and she finds Billy lying in

(29:34):
bed on her side, and there's clothes scattered everywhere. Billy's
face is pale, and there's a stain in the corner
of her mouth.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
It's some kind of.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Liquid, maybe bile or saliva, and she doesn't appear to
be breathing. So May tries to wake her, but she can't,
so she calls the doctor, and this doctor, Stewart, rushes
over tries to resuscitate Billy, but he's unable to do
so to try to get her to resuscitate, he gives
her a shot of Brandy and strict, hoping to jolt
her awake. That's I guess what they did back then.

(30:05):
But Billy has actually died in her sleep. Oh, so
the police and medical examiner arrived to inspect her body
and they find that her pupils are dilated and the
skin beneath her left hand fingernails is blue.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
And there's a sleeping drug called verurinal.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
It's a barbituate that's on Billy's nightstand and that doctor
Stewart admits having removed before the police got there. But
then a hotel manager was like, I'm pretty sure she
had a bottle of pills there, and so he's like, oh,
this one because he had prescribed it to her and
didn't want to know about it, you know, yeah, sure.
But the medical examiner does rule her cause of death

(30:42):
to be a cocaine overdose. So this is like becomes
a high profile case, you know, huge in the news,
and they want someone to blame for her death. And
London officials use this as a chance to expose the
underbelly of London's illicit drug scene and just be like, look,
how bad this is. This is why you should follow
our rules, you know, right, So they go overboard too,

(31:04):
So over the course of five sessions at the Westminster
Coroner Court on December nineteen eighteenth through January nineteen nineteen,
Coroner Samuel and Gulby Odie questions every single friend, coworker,
family member, and acquaintance of Billy's that she came into
contact with the months leading up to her ultimate death.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
And I think they're doing that to.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Like exploit each and every one of those and make them,
you know, embarrassed in the news.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
It generates so much buzz that spectators line up outside
the court house as early as seven am to sit
in on the sessions that don't begin until two thirty.
So when people are like, why are people into true
crime now, you know, and it's like, well, it's not new, No,
they were into it back then too. Always yeah, yeah,
there's all these questions about who gave who gave her

(31:50):
cocaine and eventually the people who had given it to her.
So Reggie tells the court that he got the cocaine
that he gave Billy from a man living in living
on the Limehouse causeway in Chinatown named Lou ping Yu,
who's the Chinese husband of Ada Pingyu, the one who
had done the opium party. And so the first charge

(32:14):
in the inquest comes on December twentieth nineteen eighteen, and
is levied against Ada Pingyu, the woman with the opium,
for possessing and supplying cocaine and opium to Billy, which
is a crime under the Dora Act, and prosecutors refer
to the party at the Davouls as a disgraceful orgy
and calls Aida the High Priestess at these unholy rites.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
So they're just like fucking shaming everyone.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
I mean, logistically, it probably couldn't be an orgy if
everybody's on opium, right.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Right, That doesn't sound very sexy.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
It sounds like maybe people could flop their arm over
across your body at some point. But that's probably as
sexy as it would get, I would.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Guess, definitely. She's found guilty and sentenced to five months
of hard labor, and she dies of tuberculosis shortly after
serving her sentence in nineteen twenty, so totally tragic. Her husband,
Low ping U is also charged with possession of opium,
but his only penalty is a ten pound fine, and
Reggie's charge with supplying cocaine to ability and manslaughter for

(33:16):
her death, but that gets dropped and he gets an
eight month prison sentence at the mention of this Chinese
man low paying you. During the inquest, the press fucking
goes crazy with it, you know, the racist press, unfairly
generating fear and animosity toward London's Chinese population and blaming
them for the influx of these illicit drugs. It's called

(33:38):
the Yellow Peril Scare, and it runs in full force
for the next several years, prompting racist stories, movies, and
books that target the Chinese people living on the Livehouse
Causeway in Chinatown. And they're painting this like harmless community
as savage predators, threading the safety of London's white women. Yeah,

(33:59):
you know, like they don't have any idea what opium's
and cocaine's going to do for them. Unfortunately, the influence
of these stories spreads internationally, and it's a lot of
what we see in America. You know. It serves as
fodder for racist movies, TV series and more all the
way through the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So it's like a big part of that is this trial.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah. Another unfortunate consequence of the inquest is that it
becomes more of a practice in digging up dirt on
the witnesses than it does about bringing any sort of
justice to Billy's death. Reggie gets the most criticism. Newspapers
describe him as quote a strange, sallow, very well dressed,
effeminate little man, and in court he's just like harassed

(34:43):
about his sexuality for some fucking reason and has nothing
to do with the trial. And it's revealed that he
had years ago been hired as a quote gentleman secretary,
which I think it was like the term that everyone
knew meant like you're intimate with this William Cronshaw who
was actually just paying Reggie to have sex with him.

(35:03):
So that comes out as well in the press, so
like it basically reflects up his career as well. In hindsight,
considering like the full context of the night of Billy's death,
it's more likely that she didn't die from a cocaine overdose,
which was cocaine's a stimulant, but from the barbituates on
her nightstand.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
So all along it had nothing to do with all
these people.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Author Marek Kohane argues in his book Dope Girls that
there's a chance after a night of taking a lot
of stimulants, she wanted a downer. It's like classic story
to help her fall asleep, and the combination of those
drugs in her system could have maken her fall into
a coma and then choked on her own vomit and
dying that way, which is so tragic. Yeah, no matter

(35:46):
the exact cause, Billy's death was a tragic one, cutting
her life way too short. And that is the controversial
overdose death of Billy Carlton. Wow.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Never heard anything about any of that, but it is
really interesting that idea when if you're taking up this
cause under quote unquote morality, then basically anything that you
present as being immoral gets to be included.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Right, it has nothing to do with the case at all,
And all these lives are ruined around.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
You, and then you're just kind of like, I did
you were you a gentleman secretary and it's like, are
we talking about this overdose death or what's happening? Totally
totally wow, good job, thank you. Please don't do drugs, kids, Yes,
don't do drugs. That's why Georgia told you that story. Okay,

(36:41):
So to follow up that story, I have my own
that was suggested by at a least underscore Pearson on
Twitter and they wrote to me and said, oh, my God,
please do the story of Leonardo Chenchuli if you get
a chance. I just heard the story in my mouth
is on the floor, and I'm not usually bothered by anything. Lol.

(37:03):
Oh no, hilarious. Yes, just to give you a tiny
bit of background. And this is interesting because it's something
I didn't know. This story takes place in Italy, my
new hobby. And there's somebody after the time I told
you about going on vacation to Italy and I was like,
it's just amazing.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Everything's great there.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Somebody literally tweeted at me and was like, actually, not
everything's great now, Oh dear.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
I normally when.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
What they don't have political they have political.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Problems like everyone else.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Sorry, are you saying that everything is not a completely
great in a country?

Speaker 1 (37:38):
It is your.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Political statement that everything is fine in Italy, Karen, because.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
I must be completely misunderstanding the situation in Italy because
I thought only good things happened there.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
I can't believe you lied to us, Karen.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
I'm going to change that now, and my apologies because
here's something absolutely hideous that happened in Italy.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Great your wrongs, Karen.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Aside from the fascist takeover in World War in the
era of World War Two eighteen hundreds, and prior to that,
it was a bunch of different kingdoms and states that
all had their own distinctive identity and culture, which is
very if you watch like Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy,
it's all like if you go to Tuscany, they have

(38:22):
a very specific kind of food and they're very proud
of it, where they're like, we're the steak and potatoes people.
We know will make you insanely delicious pasta, but first
you're going to eat our steak and you're going to
go insane, and like it's all different areas. That's how
that's identifying, because they were these individual kingdoms right back
in the day.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Like that, not that many generations ago. Really.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, they started first started unifying as the Kingdom of
Italy in the eighteen sixties, so yeah, kind of comparatively recently, yeah,
and then basically they became the Italian Republic that we
know today. So in southern there's a very long standing
tradition of folk magic. Basically, a town or a village
would have their own local seer or healer some people

(39:08):
call them witches, and these people would prescribe oils or herbs,
or tell people to say certain prayers or give them
specific hand gestures to ward off bad luck or promote
good health or protect against curses.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
And that's super common.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
That was just kind of like part of the culture
going along with the spread of Catholicism.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
That was of course everywhere.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
And then as Italy modernizes the visibility of folk magic lessons,
but it does not go anywhere and it basically becomes
intertwined with Catholicism. So a folk magic expert named doctor
Angela Puka notes, quote the old tradition of witches, they
would not even call themselves witches. They would just be Catholics,

(39:50):
good Catholics that happened to cast the evil eye ah
sha end quote. So that's just to kind of give
you that sense of how much kind of the occult yeah,
was practiced in Italy and especially I guess in southern Italy.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
That makes sense, Just.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Know that as we go into me telling you the
story of Italian serial killer Leonarda Cenchuli, or the soap
maker of Coreggio, Is he.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Like one of the worst ceric killers of all time? No,
it's a woman, It's okay. It is not what I
thought it was. Yeah, Leonarda, Oh my god, Leonarda. Oh Leonarda.
Uh yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
And the main source used in the story today is
a book called The Deadly Soap Maker of Coriggio, The
True Story of Leonarda Cenchuli, and that was written by
Genoviva Ortiz, and the rest of the sources are in
our show notes. So, in eighteen ninety three, when Leonardo
was born in the southern town of Montella, Italy, it's

(40:50):
not a good situation. She doesn't have a happy childhood.
Her mother, Amelia, basically got pregnant as the result of
a brutal rape, and when Amelia's parents find that out,
they force her to marry her rapists. Oh no, And
it's the idea of like, that's going to maintain your dignity.
It's like as if that's so this young, beautiful, well

(41:12):
educated woman who's from a great family and who was
expected to marry well now basically has to live with
a drunk, abusive man who terrifies her and who terrorizes her,
and so her promising future disappears before her eyes. So god, yeah,
horrible situation, and it's not a surprise that. When Amelia

(41:34):
gives birth to her daughter, Leonarda, she's openly resentful, if
not abusive, toward her own child. So a little later,
when Leonarda's father, that biological father, rapist monster, dies from alcoholism,
Amelia is able to remarry. But even though her domestic
life is finally improving at this point, it's too late

(41:56):
to save her relationship with Leonarda, and it gets that
relationship that's worse after Leonarda, who is now a young woman,
falls in love with an older man named Rafael Pansardi.
He is a clerk in a local registry office and
he's very poor. The problem is Amelia had already pre
selected a husband for Leonarda, so when she announces that

(42:21):
she's going to marry Raphael, Amelia considers it a slap
in her face, and basically, you know, this is the
time where your daughter marrying like a richer man is
your chance to approve your lot in life, like women
are just kind of used as chattel that way. Leonarda

(42:42):
doesn't care. She is in love with Rafael. She marries him,
and Amelia's anger turns to fury. So before their wedding,
Amelia goes to Leonarda and says that she has placed
a curse on the marriage quote for ruining her life
a second time end quote yikes, pretty rough. So basically,

(43:02):
and then after that, Leonarda never sees her mother again.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
So, like most of telling people at the time, Leonarda
believes in the power of curses and spells, and she
is incredibly shaken by her mother's threat. Aside from the
fact that it's your own mother basically blaming you for
her life, it's just so horrible. But then the mental
manipulation of saying I cursed you as a mother to

(43:27):
a child is horrifying. So it becomes an extreme and
immediate source of anxiety for Leonarda, and she constantly worries
about when and how this curse is going to play
out in her life. So by the early nineteen twenties,
just a few years into her marriage, Leonarda's mental health
begins to deteriorate rapidly because of this constant threat hanging

(43:48):
over her. So she comes up with a plan. She
goes to visit the Romani fortune tellers who are traveling
through her town at the time, so that she can
find out what this curse means. For her future, and
at this reading, the first thing that Leonarda asks is
if her mother's curse means that she's going to die,
and the fortune teller shakes her head and says no, quote,

(44:11):
You're not going to die for a long time.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
But before Leonarda can breathe a sigh of relief, the
fortune teller.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Ads, leave it at that. Leave it at that, but
there's more. No watch your step quote.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
You're going to live a long life full of sadness,
and you're going to outlive every one of your children.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Ool. Thanks, yeah so, and you're like, I paid how many.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Lira for that?

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
So this is horrible to hear because Leonarda, not getting
very much love as a child, had always dreamed of
having a big, happy family and a house full of children,
so hearing this news leaves her completely distraught. She runs
home to tell Raphael and he tries to reassure her
everything thing's going to be okay. But then when the
couple tries to start having kids, Leonarda believes that her

(45:05):
mother's curse is finally coming true because they're having trouble conceiving,
and this belief only gets stronger after, Leonarda finally becomes pregnant,
only to suffer a miscarriage a few months after she
finds out. But then in nineteen twenty two, Leonarda gets
pregnant again, and this time she delivers a healthy baby boy,
and the couple name him Giuseppe, and he brings them

(45:29):
endless joy, but she and Raphael want to have more kids. Tragically,
Leonarda's next pregnancy also ends in a miscarriage. Of course,
she believes it's the curse, but then the couple has
three healthy babies over the next few years, two girls
and a boy, so now they have four children. Leonarda's
over the moon about being a mother, she believes like

(45:49):
it's her destiny. But the happiness doesn't last long because
the three youngest children, all under the age of three
years old, gets sick and because Leonarda and Raphael are
so poor, they can't afford to take them to the doctor,
and they all end up dying.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Of their illness.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, And over the next several years, Leonarda and Raphael
have five more children, each of them die in infancy.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Oh may yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Leonardo would later look back on this horrible chapter of
her life and say quote, almost every night I dreamed
of small white coffins. So just tragic, like horrible. Of course,
this would be like the confirmation of her mother's curse.
She can't help but believe that. Meanwhile, she clings to
her son that is alive and healthy, Giuseppe, and she's

(46:41):
so worried that he's going to die next. So the
Pensardi family, they're not just dealing with the trauma and
grief of losing so many children, but they also are
so broke, like they can't keep food on the table.
So Leonardo, being worried about her son's health, making sure
that he is provided for us that he doesn't get sick,

(47:01):
just happy, she goes out and gets a job. That's
a tough thing to do as a woman in nineteen
twenties Italy, she doesn't have a ton of options, but
eventually she finds work cleaning a bank after hours. The
only problem is she's supposed to bring her own cleaning
supplies and those aren't cheap. But fortunately Leonarda knows how
to make soap, and so after some trial and error,

(47:24):
she figures out the perfect recipe for the soap to
get the job done and she starts cleaning this bank,
and so everything's smooth sailing for a little while. She's
earning up money she's adding to the household finances. In
nineteen twenty seven, she lets temptation get the best of her,
and during one of her overnight shifts at the bank,

(47:45):
she decides to rummage around in the bank books and
it gives her this idea, so she sets up in
the bank books, she writes up a fake account for
herself and adds in a bunch of cash, which maybe
seem like a good idea in the moment, but she's
caught the very next morning, arrested on fraud charges, brought

(48:05):
to trial, and sentenced to a year in a Catholic reformatory.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Oh man, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
It's reported that at the around the time of her conviction,
she also loses another child. The specifics on that death
aren't clear, but what we do know is this is
the tenth child that the pants Aarties have lost.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
My gosh, so just horrible.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
So about a year later, Leonardo's released from that reformatory
and now, of course, her reputation is in shambles. So
the family decides to move to a small town about
fifty miles away and get a fresh start. This is
where Leonardo gives birth to three more children who will
all survive. In addition to now Giuseppe, they have a
daughter named Norma and two younger sons named Bernardo and Biaggio.

(48:53):
So even in Leonardo's happiest moments with this family that
she does have, of course, her mother's curse is all
always clouding the back of her mind. She's been pregnant
seventeen times and only has four children.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yeah, it's easy to see why she would agonize over
her children's health and safety. So basically, Leonarda around this time,
decides to have her fortune read again because she wants
to know what the future will hold for her children
and how she might be able to basically get some
sort of control over her mother's curse. So this time
she goes to a palm reader. During their session, they

(49:27):
share horrible news, and this time it's about Leonarda herself.
The palm reader inspects Leonarda's hands and she says, quote
in one hand, I can see a prison, in the
other an insane asylum.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Cool, she's really positive fortune tellers, or just so you're
you'd just be sitting there with a weird smile.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Does anyone like me?

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Do you think that any fortune they read back then
was positive? I bet they were all doom and gloom
like this.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
I mean, the infant mortality rate was such that. I
I feel like doom and gloom would just be the
most realistic. Like if you were there being like everything's
going to be great, people would be like, you're so
full of shit, like you don't know what you're talking about.
Of course, this is a palm reading that totally rattles Leonarda.
She becomes even more terrified about her future. And then,

(50:17):
of course, in turn, she becomes more dependent on psychics
and palm readers, so she starts going to see them
anytime she can afford it. Basically it becomes every week.
And then she starts dabbling in folk magic herself, so she,
in addition to reading every book on the occult that
she can find, Leonarda takes lessons from romani fortune tellers.

(50:39):
For a while, it soothes her anxiety. But then in
nineteen thirty in Italy there was a six point six
magnitude earthquake. Oh shit, and it devastates the town that
they live in and it destroys everything that Leonarda and
their family own, including their house. Oh my god, horrifying.
Fortunately everyone in the family is safe and lives through it.

(51:02):
But Leonarda again is convinced this is the result of
her mother's curse. Yeah, that's really the power of a
mother's words to her children.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
It's a very good point where it's like, yeah, which
mom do you want to be today?

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Right, You're the primary person influence authority on like the
world and how it works. Okay, So now the Pansardi
family are refugees, and so they move to the northern
town of Corregio, and their luck turns around. It Courrigio
is filled with sympathetic townspeople. They know that this family

(51:39):
are refugees from this horrible earthquake. They welcome them with
open arms. Almost immediately, Raphael and Leonarda both get decent
paying jobs, and they're least a big home that's attached
to a shuttered storefront, and basically the Pansartes start making
more money than they've.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Ever had before.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
But whatever progress Leonarda has made with her mental health
becomes reversed by this trauma of losing her home. Because
of that, the occult now becomes like a passion and
very central in her life. She basically uses this folk
magic as a security blanket against this what seems like
constant harm in her life and vulnerability. And basically she

(52:21):
just now throws herself into her own occult studies and
decides to start putting her knowledge to use. So she
cleans up that storefront that's attached to the house that
they have, and out of that shop she starts giving
palm readings, selling charms and herbs, and even rare books
that are on magic, which I kill killed to be

(52:42):
able to look at those.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Can you imagine what those look like?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Smell like?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
In nineteen thirty a rare book on magic. Yeah, it's
a rare Italian book, Come on, okay. She also begins
to offer matchmaking and career service. She's going for it.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
That's positive.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
I mean that is it's kind of fun.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
And then she sells homemade soaps using that same recipe
that she perfected before she tried to rob the bank.
But this new business venture of hers winds up being
a huge success, and before long everyone in town wants
to meet with Leonarda. She is she is it her
calendar becomes booked up with appointments like things are going well.

(53:26):
Hell yeah, so the Pansartes are finally able to live
comfortably and safely. But of course, what Leonarda has been through,
she just is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She knows this is you get comfortable, that's when that's
when the six point six earthquake hits. So Convinced that
something horrible could happen to her children at any moment,

(53:48):
she tries to maintain control by being the world's first
helicopter parent, and especially when it comes to Giuseppi, who
is far and away and I think probably very publicly
her favorite child.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Right man, Leonarda needed a fucking pressure washer to get
some of that anxiety out, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yeah, and maybe like two therapists, like she could be
going to to at two different times, like you can
get your palm red, but then you have to go
talk to that lady who actually can help you walk
through what that really is about.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Right, Yeah, it.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Would be a dear pressure washer in nineteen thirties Italy.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
It's got a pump and you're just making your children
pump it.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
The whole time, so author Genevieva Ortiz writes the quote.
While other children were free to go out and play,
Leonardo kept Jusuppi at home as much as she could,
all but forbidding him to socialize with others. Yeah, so
not great for the child. Now it's the late thirties,
Jusuppi isn't a little boy anymore. He's grown into a

(54:47):
young man, and he's coming of age in fascist Italy.
He's been swept up in all the hypernationalists fervor that's
going on around him, and he decides he wants to
join Mussolini's army. Leonarda, of course, is horrified at the
thought of her golden child being shipped off to war.
She realizes she has no recourse because like her, Jessuppi

(55:09):
is going to do as he pleases. The more you
try to control your children, the more they give you
the double bird in Italian and walk away. She's kind
of like faced with that fact, but she cannot sit
idly by while her son is shipped off to war,
and so she turns to the occult. So Leonardo knows
that protecting her favorite son's life is going to take

(55:31):
much more than a spell or tonic. She needs magic
that's stronger, and basically she's trying to ensure the safety
of the person she loves more than life itself. And
so we just have to say this right now. The
path that Leonarda decides to take here is in no
way representative of normal Italian folk magic, romani folk magic witchcraft. Like, yeah,

(55:54):
she goes off the rails in a serious way. Leonarda
is convinced that to protect jus Heppy's life, she'll need
to take a life as a sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
When did she come to that conclusion? Man, here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
She seems to be the kind of person that would
get a quote unquote good idea and then go for
it without ever checking with one other person, like a
vision and then yeah that's fact. I'll write my name
into the bank book and then I'll have money.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Now you want.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
It takes one like one friend to go Leonardo know
that's your being insane.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Don't do that. Nothing is that easy.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
So basically part of why Leonarda gets this plan is
because remember she was offering matchmaking services. Well, she has
client and it is a woman named Festina Setti, who
is a seventy six year old, unmarried, childless spinster as
they used to call us back in the day, and
Leonarda basically pities her. She's like, well, she doesn't have anything.

(56:53):
She's the worst thing in the world, not married, the
worst thing in the world.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
But she's still like wanting to hook up and shit
and like matchmake.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
She's still looking for love at age seventy six.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
That's what's especially kind of cruel and ironic is that
Leonardo targets her because she knows that she knows how
vulnerable she is. Essentially, so the next time Faustina shows
up to her appointment, Leonarda excitedly tells her that a
man in Sardinia saw Faustina's picture and fell in love

(57:28):
with her at first sight. This is so dark. We
talk about horrible shit people do all the time, and
it's like, this is awful. Yeah, to tell someone someone
is in love with you.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Yeah, and you've been looking for it for probably fucking
decades and.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Yeah, your whole life and someone's like it's finally happening,
and you're like, no way, and you basically entirely put
yourself in their hands. Oh it's a nightmare. So basically,
Leonarda says, okay, so now you need to write him
a letter. Fastina happily him a letter. They exchange a
few messages, and the man in Sardinia finally proposes marriage,

(58:06):
and Fastina happily accepts the thing. I don't have to
tell you. There is no man in Sardinia and Leonarda
is the one writing all the letters.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Horrifying.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Yeah, Fastina trusts Leonarda. She has no idea what's going on.
She is overjoyed of finally finding love and absolutely wants
to move to Sardinia to meet this man. It makes
literally makes me stick to my stomach. It's so sad.
It also just reminds me of something like an evil
girl would do in junior high.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Oh so and so has a crush on you and
someone so likes you, and then you go humiliate yourself
in front of everyone because of it.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yes, God, it should totally be.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
It's like, yeah, there's all kinds of areas in the
world that are like off limits. This is the most
off limits thing in my opinion, that you could do
what exactly get someone's hopes up around love?

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Okay, horrifying, Yeah, yeah, it's a special fucked up inness.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, Yeah, because you're because that's you're just kind of
driving right down to the nerve inside of every human being,
which is to be seen and love right and accepted.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah, none of this is written on the page. I
hope not. I just hate this part so much that
I have to keep talking about it.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Okay, So before Fastina moves, Leonardo asks kind of an
odd request of her. She says, Look, people around town
are going to talk about you, because this happens so quickly.
So what you need to do, like to kind of
sidestep all that gossip, is you need to write some
letters to people explaining that you're in Sardinia. This guy's amazing,

(59:48):
You love him. Leave these letters with me. I'll send
them around town and then basically you can leave and
go have your time, and then I'll make sure no one.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Talks shit about you.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Essentially, sure want her to include in those letters that
she probably is not going to be coming back to
Corregio anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Jesus.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Yeah, So Festina's like, this is the best plan I've
ever heard.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yeah, no questions.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Plus, I'm in love. I'm in love with a picture
that held up in front of me, right, So now
it's the day of Festina's trip to meet her new
love in Sardinia, but before she leaves, she stops by
Leonardo's shop for a celebratory glass of wine. Before Festina
can even finish her drink, she feels her limbs start
to feel heavy, her speech is slurring. A few more

(01:00:33):
minutes past, and now Festina is unable to move. She's
suddenly paralyzed. Leonardo gets up, she walks out of the shop,
and she returns carrying an axe.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
An axe, an axe.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
No, She looks at Fastina and says, I'm sorry, and
then whax her with the axe. So she was so
conscious when that happened. Yep, still conscious and worse than this.
Festina doesn't die on the first hit. Leonardo, of course,
has never done this before. She ends up having to

(01:01:09):
hit her again and again. So violent, so horrible, But
murdering Festina is only step one of Leonarda's plan. She
believes it to be fully protected, Giuseppe will have to
consume some of Festina's body for this magic to work.
She thinks this can be accomplished in two ways. First

(01:01:30):
of all, by making tea cakes with Festina's blood, so
that Joseppe eats some and has protection internally, and then
by taking the fat from Festina's body and making soap
that Giuseppe then can wash with and be protected externally.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Girl, sit down for a minute, let us talk to you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
For real, Like this plan is the sign of an
unwell mind in obviously mean obviously but like double time
kind of do I have to tell you? Yeah, but
just beyond And the truth is this is all this
bizarre plan that she has no idea what she's doing.

(01:02:13):
She's never done any of this before. And what's terrible
about it is she botched the axe murder and that
caused most of Festina's blood to end up on the
floor of the shop, right, so she's able to collect some,
she's able to make a few tea cakes with it.
Then when she goes to find the fat on Festina's
body to make the soap, Festina is really skinny and

(01:02:36):
there is almost none to make it with.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
How would you even know where to find that? I
wouldn't even know where to start, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
I would have planned that part a little better, where
it's like that you have to pick somebody that has
some fat on their body, Like, what are you doing
all of this is the gory, horrible way of saying
that Leonarda realizes that she's going to have to kill
again to be able to make these things that she's
so convinced will protect her son. Okay, Basically, Leonardo quietly

(01:03:07):
resumes her quote unquote normal life. She menticulously cleans up
the shop, She disposes of all the evidence in the
neighborhood septic tank. She does feed the bloody tea cakes
to her unsuspecting son, which in and of itself is
so wild, because you love this person the most on
the planet and this is what you're doing to them.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
It's so unhinged.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
I can't believe.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Like does her husband ask her how your day was
at the end of the day, or like do they
have any conversations about.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Like maybe they'd been through so much at that point.
It was a lot of like you sit over there
and read your newspaper. I'm going to be here doing
all kinds of fucked up shit. So meanwhile, rumors start
swirling and Correggio that Faustina has run off to find
love in Sardinia, and even though Leonardo seems to be
in the clear, she continues to obsess that Giuseppi will

(01:03:58):
be sent off to war and that her her mother's
curse is going to come true. So she starts looking
for a new sacrifice. Months past, now it's nineteen forty,
Leonarda has her sight set on another one of her clients.
This woman's name is Francesca Suave and she's younger than
Fastina was. She has a much higher standing in the

(01:04:19):
community because apparently Leonarda has gotten the idea that sacrificing
a more quote unquote worthy person will somehow maximize the
protection that she's trying to invoke. So Leonarda knows Francesca
is in a very vulnerable place. She recently left her
job as a school teacher to care for her sick husband,

(01:04:40):
and then once her husband passed away, she became destitute.
So when Francesca asks Leonarda about job opportunities, which is
why she was there, Leonarda basically says there's an exciting
job opening at a girls' school up north, but she
says they need this teacher as soon as possible and
it has to be filled right away, so you have

(01:05:01):
to go pack your things right away and move immediately.
And Francesca is like, absolutely, I'll do whatever it takes.
So Leonarda gets Francesca to write a bunch of letters
to her friends and family and says, don't worry, I'll
drop them in the mail for you. So Francesca's packed
up her stuff, booked a train ticket. She stops by
Leonarda's to say goodbye. While she's there, Leonarda offers her

(01:05:24):
a celebratory glass of wine, and basically the exact same
horrible scene plays out. Francesca drinks the poison wine, loses
the ability to move or speak. She's slipping in and
out of consciousness as she sees Leonarda enter the room
holding an axe. This time, Leonarda is able to kill
Francesca with one blow to the neck. She grabs wash

(01:05:46):
basins to collect Francesca's blood and then dismembers her. It
is just the most horrible thing. Yeah again. Leonarda's attempt
at soap making using human fat doesn't work. She winds
up with a horrible, awful, smelling goop. She just ends
up dumping it in the septic tank along with the
rest of Francesca's remains. But she does manage to make

(01:06:09):
another batch of bloody tea cakes, and she feeds them
to Giusseppi the same night.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
Gross.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
But again, in Leonarda's mind, this is still not enough
to beat her mother's curse, so she starts to plan
round three, and this time Leonarda aims even higher. She
chooses a widow named Virginia Kechopo, and Virgina is a
very big deal in their town. She is a former

(01:06:36):
opera singer. She toured in big cities like Milan. She's talented,
she's beautiful, she's rich, and she's also one of Leonarda's
best friends. Oh no, oh no. But since they've been friends,
Leonarda has soured on Virginia because she recently announced that
she's ready to leave Corregio and move back to a

(01:06:58):
big city, and Leonarda feels very betrayed by this, and
so she's like, well this now it's you, and you
deserve it. She never lets Virginia know that she's pissed,
and Virgina ends up really asking her friend to help
her as she plans this big move. So it's September
of nineteen forty and Leonarda shares good news with Virginia.

(01:07:19):
She says she knows of an excellent job opportunity in Florence,
and the job comes with this beautiful apartment, and Leonarda
claims that it's overseen by an artist who organizes operas.
So Virginia of course is thrilled by this is like
it's the perfect situation. It almost sounds too perfect, but
she of course enthusiastically tells Leonarda, yes, I'm interested, and

(01:07:43):
at Leonarda's suggestion, Virginia starts writing letters to her friends
and family as if she's already moved and is thriving
in Florence. So before long, it's time for Virginia to
hit the road, so she stops by Leonarda's store to
say goodbye, and for a third time, Leonarda yep offers
a glass of wine. Virginia's poisoned, Leonarda murders her with

(01:08:05):
an axe, cuts up her best friend, and attempts to
turn her into soap and tea cakes. In this time,
she also rummages through her friend's things and pockets her jewelry, cash,
and clothing. So this time Leonarda is able to make
soap from Virginia's body, and once it's ready to use,

(01:08:25):
she brings it home and she instructs her now eighteen
year old son, Giuseppe, to take off his clothes and
allow her to give him a bath. Yea, And he's like, no,
thank you, but she basically is like, no, I have to,
and she washes him head to toe with this soap
and along with those teacakes that Giuseppe eats. Leonarda is

(01:08:48):
finally convinced that she has successfully insured her son's safety.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
And only took three innocent people.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Oh the madness of it. Yeah, so Maren makes a
great point. Even though Leonarda claims that she murdered these
women to protect her son, her actions overall seemed to
suggest full blown psychopathy, which yes, absolutely And in addition
to knowingly engaging in cannibalism herself, she also hands out

(01:09:16):
her tea cakes and bars of soap to many other
people in the community. Oh yes, and when she does
this she almost seems giddy about it. She would later say, quote,
I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
The teacakes too. That woman was really sweet. End quote
imagine yeah, imagine going to the farmer's market. True, there's
the soap stand. Oh so evil.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Just that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
My friend Danny told me a story of there's kids
in his neighborhood that would all play together all the time,
and one time some kid's older brother tricked him into
taking up He thought it was chocolate pie and it
was dogshit. Oh this kid, he compulsively spit for like
years afterwards. He just kept constantly turning his head. And
that's evil. It's that kind of thing where it's like,

(01:10:04):
I feel like nowadays we all are starting to understand
the profound psychological effect people can have on other people.
It's like, that's why we talk about triggers, that's why
we talk about all these things.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Is like it's not no big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Yeah, there's no get over it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
It's a huge deal. Yeah, no, no, there's no get
over it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
So for a while, Leonardo believes she's gotten away with
three murders, but then luckily, Virginia's sister in law, a
woman named Albertina, stops by Leonardo's shop. Albertina and Virginia
were very close. So something about this whole situation of
Virginia just kind of leaving town and like I'm in
Florence does not sit right with her. When she asks

(01:10:48):
Leonarda about it, Leonarda claims total ignorance, and that makes
Albertina even more worried. She is a feeling Leonardo does
know something and she's not saying it. So Albertina goes
to the police and beg them to investigate. And as
the Corregio investigators start building a case, they learn about
both Fastina and Francesca's disappearances, and they learn that both

(01:11:11):
women were last seen at Leonardo's shop before they supposedly
left town. So before long, the police have collected the
letters sent to the friends and families of the missing
women from.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
All around town.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
Oh wow, And that's when they start smelling a rat because,
according to the postmarks, each woman mailed their letters on
the exact same day, even though they left.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
Town at different times. Oops.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
Yeah, and more suspiciously, eyewitnesses report that the same person
always dropped off this bundle of letters at the post office.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Giuseppi Pensarti the Sun the Sun.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Yes. So now the police begin building their case against Giuseppe.
They are convinced he's murdered these women, so they bring
in his mother, leonardaquestioning basically to you know, find out
what he's been up to. But when Leonarda learns that
her son's being targeted for these murders. She's terrified. There
is no way she's going to let her precious, precious

(01:12:11):
boy go down through these crimes. So finally Leonarda confesses.
But these claims that she makes, that she's the murder,
she orchestrated the letters, and that basically her son was
just being sent to the post office on an errand
the police are not convinced. They basically think this very
well liked, doting mother and this woman who's like a

(01:12:33):
real fixture in this town, they just think she's protecting
her homicidal son, and so Leonarda basically has to convince
them by spilling the gory, gory details of these murders.
So Leonarda is swiftly arrested and sent to prison, and
the news of her murders shakes, of course the entire

(01:12:54):
community as well, and probably a thousand times more so
every member of the Pansardi family, arguably no one more
than her son Jiseppi, So of course he distances himself
from her for the rest of his life. Ironically, yeah,
in the early forties, when he is finally sent to

(01:13:15):
World War Two, he doesn't even tell his mother.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
He doesn't speak to her at all. She's just gone sure.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
Meanwhile, Leonarda is sitting in her prison cell, satisfied with
all of her life's decisions. According to writer Genevieva Ortiz quote,
she did what she needed to do. She had no regrets,
no remorse, Her mission in life was complete. What did
she care if Giuseppe did not love her so long
as he survived the war wow end quote. So as

(01:13:47):
World War II rages on, Leonarda waits six years for
her trial to take place. She basically just has to
sit in jail until a world war wraps up. And,
in an eerie call back to the Roman fortune teller's
words long ago, in one hand, I see a prison
and in another an insane asylum. Leonarda, when she finally

(01:14:07):
does go to trial, is sentenced to thirty years behind
bars and an additional three years in an asylum. She
dies in October nineteen seventy at the age of seventy seven,
and as far as we know, her children, including GIUSEPPI,
all outlive their mother. Phew, And that is the story

(01:14:27):
of Leonarda Chinchuli, the soap maker of Corregio.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Holy shit, I have never heard of that before in
my life. I know same.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
That is twisted, crazy, so crazy. Oh my god, great job,
thank you. See all is not well in Italy turned.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
Down Finally I'm convinced everything isn't great there, and also
everything isn't really great here.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
I know, I hate this. We're getting to this part.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
Stephen Ray Morris, as everyone knows, has been our engineer
since basically the beginning of this podcast. I think he
came in two months after we started. Before that, Georgia
was the sound man for a couple for a couple
of recordings.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
We were right at it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
I was I was an absentee co host working at
other jobs and being like I can't do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Is that going to be okay?

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
And George was like yeah, I guess, so, like what
are we going to do to show up? And here
comes Stephen, Thank the Lord, to record with us too,
and to slowly begin to take on every other thing
that we couldn't handle that pile. Yeah, at one point
Stephen booked airline.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Tickets for me.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
You know you did it back to like what you did, Steven,
and like now there's a team of like five people. Yes,
the work that do those jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
It's yes, it's insane and that yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
You just you were the moderator on the face page
for Fuss's sake, like you, you went to the front
lines for this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
Podcast and beyond, above and beyond.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
And so you're making this choice, which is so we're
so proud of you for taking care of yourself and
making this choice to uh, to take a break from stuff.
But when when I when I saw that email that
you sent that you were like, Hey, I'm I'm gonna
do some other stuff and take a break and do
what's what's best for me, I just didn't I was like,

(01:16:29):
I just didn't know what to say. I was just like,
I want to cry. I'm really proud of you. I
think it's great. It makes me go like, that's the
found that like it's foundational to this podcast and the
fact that you would be gone. I just don't know
what that's gonna be like. But I hope you understand
that we truly could never have done this without you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Definitely, Steven, this would not exist. We are just I
am heartbroke, and but I'm so excited for you and
your next chapter and what your beautiful life will look like.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
Yeah, you're such a you're such a talented, generous person,
and you were so over I always like back in
the day, I was always like, why.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Is he doing this for us?

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
Like I wouldn't I wouldn't be doing this for us,
and you did. You just like you were just committed
and you were with us, and it was help we
needed so badly and you gave you showed up every
week without question you just like you really you really
did give us, like give us your all, and we'll

(01:17:40):
never be able to thank you enough for that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:42):
I mean, well, I'm uh, I'm going to cut this
part out. No, I just you know, it's uh, it's
a lot to a company. I mean, seven years is
a long time. And yeah, I mean I honestly couldn't
imagine the stay coming. But at the same time, you
guys have taught me so much and there's so many things.
My life is so much better and you've given me

(01:18:05):
the tools that I think are so valuable. And I
think a thing that the thing we've done with the show,
which is like we can look after ourselves and each
other and that's really what's important in life. And you know,
a lot of times people go in life and they
don't ever think about how to you know, take care
of themselves in a way that's meaningful, that can not
only make their life better, but the people around them better.

(01:18:26):
And I'm so grateful for that. I just feel like
I'm such a better person, you know. And again it's
that the thing goes both ways. You know, I really
believe in you both, and you guys really believed in me,
you know, believe in me, and I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
That's yeah, thank.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
You, thank you, Oh, thank you. I can't wait to
see your next chapter. Steven.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
You're just but you you always have a home. You
always have a home here. I hope you know that
like whatever your adventure, wherever your adventures take you, you
know you can always come back. And you have more
than earned an open door policy for me and Georgia
and anything that we make because truly, like you're the glue.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (01:19:11):
Yeah, Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna be hanging out still.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
It's gonna be yes.

Speaker 4 (01:19:15):
Yeah, it's not goodbye, it's a it's a so so
good thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Let's yell at one time, Karen ready, Oh my god, cry.
I know. I love you, guys, love you, Stephen, We.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Love you, semen, thank you for everything.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Well, well you know that we're all crying.

Speaker 3 (01:19:39):
What if like then the sound just goes off and then.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Well, thanks you guys for listening and for being a
part of this too. We're just I feel like we're
just a family.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
And yeah, it's kind of weird. It's a true crime podcast.
Yeah it's very strange. But yeah, I feel very lucky.
And yeah we should title this one this one's for Stephen.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely. All right, stay sexy, Stephen.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
And don't get murdered. Stephen.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
We love you, We love you. Say it with us.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Good Bye, bye.

Speaker 5 (01:20:26):
Oh my god, right, Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah
Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
Our researcher is Maren mcclashen. Email your hometowns and fucking
horays to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor murder, give eight

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
H

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384 - This One's for Steven

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Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}384 - This One's for Steven