421 - The Wonderful World Of Podcasting

On today’s episode, Karen covers the 1945 Empire State Building plane crash and Georgia tells the story of New York Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter.

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hey, lo, and welcome to my favorite murder. That is
Georgia Hartstark, and that is Karen Kilgaref.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
And this is podcasting.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hey, who are it's this? Yes, it's this interesting. Is
this the first time you ever listen to a podcast? Yes?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It doesn't get better.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
This is it. Welcome to the wonderful older podcasting. Hey, listen,
we're the pros, so take it from us.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Listen is the first word in that sentence and could
have been the last, because that's all you gotta do.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
It's all you gotta do. Yeah, pay attention to the road. Yeah,
you're driving on.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Keep your eyes open please, Yeah, which is a part
of paying attention, right, but not listening.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
So yeah, no, you can.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Listen to us, but keep your eyes on the road.
And then if you get the shadow of a large
like a big ram truck coming toward the side of
your car, gass it.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah, careful, gas it go and then keep listening, like
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
That is the thing that makes me the angriest. Top
two in a movie is surprise car accidents, which is like, oh,
it's so infuriating, where it's like that does not need
to be realistic car accidents or the worst thing to
happen to people.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yes, and then when they go in like slow motion
and you're watching the person turn upside down and the
shattering of yeah, oh my god, surprise car act. Yeah,
they're very jarring, to a point where whenever you see
someone driving in a movie now you're like, when's the surprise,
even if it's like, yes, a romance, like when's this
Hallmark movie surprise car accident?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I'm braced. Can I see somebody an actor going back
and forth real fast with the steering wheel unrealistically, I'm like,
something's going to happen. The first time, it was a
very strange Julianne Moore movie in the late nineties or
early two thousands. I think she was running after a
specter or there was a book that was haunted. I

(02:20):
can't remember, but it was the first time I had
experienced it, and it was so shocking I like kind
of couldn't breathe. I was like, don't you're not allowed
to put me in a car accident?

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah? Yeah, because you're witnessing it as if it's happening
to you.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, they're trying to make it happen to you. Can
you guess my number one above surprise car accidents.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
That you hate in a movie. Is it a surprise
thing also or just something you hate a surprise thing
you hate in movies? It's not tornadoes. I don't know
why suddenly I'm thinking about the movie Twister. Don't ask
me why.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Go inward instead of outward? Because the number two is outward.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
In something happens inside of you heart attack.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I was trying to give you a clue.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
I didn't get it. What is it?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Surprise throwing up when people just turn and throw up
and then all of a sudden you're like, well, that's
a can of Campbell's chunky soup, or like you immediately
start I immediately start thinking of the prop people having
to make fake puke.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
And clean it up time and time I get take,
next take, you have to clean it up and do
it again. You don't mind it, like when they're wretching
and it's clear they gonna throw up, but you don't
want like surprise throwing up.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Right there's for a little while. I guess this is
more on TV shows, people would just turn and barf
like surprise style, and it bummed me out every time
because I couldn't look away fast enough.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's so gross. It's so gross.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
What do you hate in movies? Besides the length and
being there.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't like the crazy camera shaky miss Like I
get carsick from a movie so quickly. It's like trying
to be like actual point of view, so they're like
of a person, so they're making it all like a
wobbly and shit cloverfield. Yes, like I'm watching this because
it's a movie, So please get the fucking camera on

(04:07):
a tripod and leave it there, you know. Yeah, if
you can't do that with the dialogue and the fucking
action and everything like that, quit it quit, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
I also don't like when they use a really like
a Dolby deep bass sound as a scare tactic in.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Like in the movie Theaters when you're yes.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
When like Will Smith was the in the Vampire World
and it was like just the zombie fast zombie vampire
type people and him left in the world and he
like turns a corner and there's just a pack of
them standing there and it.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Goes like that.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
But like it literally feels like a car crashed into
the building or something like it's the craziest anyway.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Like that doesn't happen in real life. Maybe that's like
the sound of him like shitting his pants or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yes, side keep inside, Yeah, but God forbid, something happens
to you where a Dolby at mess level base hits you.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
That's when you go yeah, And that's when you know
it's peak podcasting.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And when you know the best podcast is playing?

Speaker 3 (05:19):
What do you get? What's going on with you?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
That's why I just talked for twenty minutes. That's all
I got. It's all I got. I keep trying to
watch Showgun and being put asleep by the subtitles and
then going into a Showgun dream state that I don't
have a problem with at all, But it isn't I
have no idea where I am in the show.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
I'm not. I get that. I'm not ready to recommend
man Hunt yet because I need to give it a
little more time.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Though, one about you know, John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln.
Although I love it, they're showing John Wilkes Booth like
a little bitch, Like he's such a little like fuck
boy bitch, isn't it. He's so dislikeable. Congrats to the
actor like playing it's so like such a little bitch, like.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
A true actor, like he's like playing an actor, playing
an actor.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
He is, and it's it's going well. That time period
usually bores me. Civil War, but Vince wanted to watch it,
but I actually am interested in it. So that's a
good thing.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
They're bringing it to life. That's the one I know.
Patents in that.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Pattenthssol is in that. Yes, playing himself essentially in the
in the Civil War, which is a good thing because
he's so hilarious. But that's funny. Yeah, Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
I think a midpoint recommendation is kind of very reflective
of the times we live in.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Use we don't trust anything anymore.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, and because like it's so hard to only look
at one thing, so you have to be absolutely unbelievable
in a very perfectly for me way to keep my
eyes off of the phone. Why I'm watching TV. It's
that kind of thing, right.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
I heard something that is like they now dumbed down
TV shows so that for the people who are on
their phones while they're watching, so they can follow along,
Like it can't be that complicated now because it's like
it's for like people on multiple screens or something like
that at the same time.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
I get that theory, although do you think they did
that with like succession?

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Like. I think maybe some people are doing it, but
it's like people who are actually good at making TV
are like, that's okay, we'll lose those people.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, we don't want fine. I mean those are people
that can say to the executives, no notes please, no,
we're not taking notes today from you.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
No notes.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Or if you're in a relationship like me and you
see your spouse or your partner or whatever on their
phone while we're watching something, and you go, what's wrong
because you're like, get off your phone. We're supposed to
be watching this together. Like you're not allowed to be
on your phone when you're watching something together.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's like a forced shared experience. Is that you have
to stay in I.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Thought we were doing this otherwise I go up and
read by myself, you know, like I'm here with you,
We're fucking in this TV show together. I'm gonna need
you to like pay attention for both of us or
he'll be like, do you want me to posit so
you can text over your texting and then get back
in there. But that is codependency.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I don't know though, because I think that's I
think a lot of people go through that same thing
because the fun of like, there's not I think there's
nothing more fun then when you are watching something with
your significant other and you're both into it. I will
never forget when we binged Battlestar Galactica literally for a
weekend and like weren't sleeping and stuff because we're like,

(08:40):
just keep going, just keep watching anywhere us.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yes, I love that.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
So we're all trying.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
To get that Battlestar Galactica high back. I think, yeah,
I get me to the point in a relationship where
we're fucking watching series on a couch like that for me.
Fuck dating for me, that's like peak relationship.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Who is going to fun and the trick? Like it's
past dating, apps, dating anything. Bring in the AI where
you just get matched to share a couch with someone
like you get a spooning. It's a spooning match. It's
much harder. It's harder. I'm not saying this is going
to be easy. Yeah, but when it gets done, that
person that figures it out is going to make a

(09:19):
billion dollars.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
You have to enjoy spooning. You have to like have
this right temperature body temperature that matches, because if one
person's runs hot and it runs cold, then it's like
a mass you know that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Oh yep. And you have to like almost exactly the
same kind of entertainment because if someone goes a wall
and just is suddenly watching like whatever. I don't want
to name something that people love, but.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
You can watch that on your own. That's what happens.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
You're it's any sports channel and you're like, okay, that's
my You're asking me to leave silently.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
So I would Roadhouse Goodbye, the New Roadhouse. Not interested.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
I want to see it though, I want to see.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Watch apparently Jake jillen Hall it's cut, yeah, and I
don't know, it's not really Roadhouse in his mind something
like that.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Oh he's doing something else.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
I don't know. It's violet, it's violent. I said, I'm
going to go read enjoy that. Goodbye Goodbye.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
I feel like Jake Jillenhall has been very cut for
a while and not really getting the credit that I
think he maybe wants or deserves. But did you ever
watch the movie Night Crawler?

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yes, because he's all it's scary cut. You know what
I mean? Yes, it's like intensely it's aggressive. Why are
you so cut? It's scaring people. Yes, it's sharp. You're
too sharp?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Sharp faced sharp?

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, chested sharp?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yes, And he's going to do something bad.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
It's aggressive. I don't know why I like it. Something
about it is you do bring it on? Yes, not
into it? Not into it.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Here's the thing you can imagine. This is a person
that's going to get things taken care of, that's all.
Why is that so to want that all the time?

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Guess? I guess. But they're also gonna want a hike
on the weekend, you know, Yeah, and like hit the gym.
You can, I go read.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Let's you take what we call now a reading dip
and just leave. This is where we practice being independent.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Bye, No, I can't do it. I need to be
near you all the time. What if something happens? All right,
Well we did that, should we? We did it?

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Guys, If you're listening for the first time to any podcast,
we just did a thing roughly ten minutes longer than
anyone normally does it.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
They get upset.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
We don't care. That's part of the thing.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Welcome.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
If you didn't like how long that was. Most of
them are much shorter.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, and you can skip it. You can go skip,
skip skip. Yeah, we won't be offended, no big deal.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
We want you to have agency over your own podcasting
experience in whatever way and however that means to you.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
That's right, that's right. We're all about that agency over yourself.
Can you fucking imagine?

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Can you imagine in this country women having agency over
their own fucking body?

Speaker 3 (12:04):
The thought it's just too happy and exciting to even.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
It's it's two thousand and six.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah there, and we also make it a little political.
And then we're done. Here we go. Yeah, okay, Hey,
we have a podcast network. It's called exactly right. Here
are some highlights.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
That's right. We're gonna start this off with a quick
announcement for those of you who listen on Apple Podcasts.
They're now on Apple Podcasts releasing transcripts. So if you're
using the latest iOS, you can tap on the quotation
mark icon at the bottom of your player and you
can follow along with every word of your favorite podcast
in transcript form. How awesome is that?

Speaker 3 (12:40):
That's so cool? And in podcast news, musician Norah Jones
is Michelle and Jordan's guests on Adulting the live show.
It's not incredible, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Speaking of live shows, I recently joined Roz Hernandez on
her live show of Ghost Did by Raz Hernandez. I
was joined by the brilliant comedian Chris Fleming and also
Oscar Montoya, who's a hilarious comedian actor. He was on
the Minx. He plays the haunted doll the entire time,
and he was so funny that he deserves credit too

(13:13):
because he was like another guest on the show, but
on stage it was just a doll.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
So I love it. Pretty hilarious. Then on My Saw
What You Did Million, Danielle bring us a vintage Christian
Slater double feature of Heathers from nineteen eighty eight, a
classic and Untamed Heart from nineteen ninety three. Oh my god.
Christian Slater was so cute. He was a big deal.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
He was a very big deal. Also, the third episode
of The Butterfly King is now available, So if you
haven't started listening to our newest limited series, The Butterfly King,
a World War two murder mystery, please go start now
and you can listen all the way up to episode
three and don't forget to follow Butterfly King on all
of the social media and all and follow it of

(13:58):
course on your podcast app. Don't miss an episode. If
this is your first podcast, you have to follow the
shows you're listening to so that they come back in
your machine.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
And the Butterfly King is actually charting, which is so
freaking cool. So thank you guys for doing that subscribe
rate review that is like the coolest. Yes. And lastly,
in February, we told you the fuck you I married
joggers were back in stock, but you bought all of them,
so they were sold out. Oh I know, Hey, well
this time we restocked the store with plenty, so if
you missed out, had to exactly wrightstore dot com and

(14:29):
grab a pair now.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
And if you're single, or you're uh, if you don't
want to talk about your status or whatever, there's other
joggers for you too, where you can still say fuck
you to people, but then talk about other parts of
your life.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, you'd contain multitudes, Yeah you do.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
All right, I'm going to tell you a story now
are you ready for this part to begin?

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Let's do it?

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Okay, Well, this strangely enough, and this is how our
researchers have story ideas, usually from us, sometimes found by
our producers, but they're months in advance, so we have
a whole system. It's really beautiful, so much better than
the system we used to have, which is I would
write mine the day of or just not finish it.

(15:13):
So this research starts by saying that I found this
story over on Twitter, we'll call it Twitter, and it
was a tweet that was posted by at history in
memes on Twitter, and basically it told the story of
this event. And I had never heard of this event,

(15:33):
and I was like, is this real? Could this be real?
So I sent it to Maren and she's like, it is,
in fact real. I know about this, and so we
decided to do this story. So today I'm going to
tell you about a disaster that took place at the
end of World War Two in the heart of New
York City and the resilient woman who miraculously survived it.

(15:53):
So you may not know this, Georgia, but when they
finish the Empire State Building in nineteen thirty one, it
is the world's tallest building. It had one hundred and
two floors of Art Deco grandeur, standing in Midtown Manhattan
at a record breaking twelve hundred and fifty feet. That
doesn't sound high enough for me for how big that

(16:15):
building is.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
But yeah it is. Yeah, back then it was wow,
did you look at that?

Speaker 2 (16:20):
It was, Come on, that's more than three?

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Hey, say, what'd you look at that? That's more than three.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
So this architectural feat becomes New York City's newest source
of pride. Here's a little quote I pulled directly from
the Empire State Building Wikipedia page, which is a hoot
if you want to go over there while Vince is
watching something you don't want to watch. The building has
been named one of the seven Wonders of the Modern
World by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and it

(16:49):
was ranked first on the American Institute of Architects list
of America's Favorite architecture in two thousand and seven. So
Empire State Building has been a hit the day it
was built all the way through. But on the day
it was opened, a New York Fire Department captain at
the time named Patrick Walsh has his concerns.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Whoa named Patrick Walsh?

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, we know some Patrick Walsh's in our lives. So
the Empire State Building's offices can hold up to thirty
five thousand people, which is a logistical nightmare in the
event of an emergency situation. And because pilots at that
time and now are permitted to fly as low as
eleven hundred feet over New York City.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Oh, I see the math. The math doesn't add up?

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Are you bringing it all together? So the buildings on
precedent at height poses a new sort of threat to
air traffic in the area. Yet despite these concerns, the
building passes the Fire Department's inspection and it opens on
May first, nineteen thirty one. Thousands of New Yorkers file
into this building, make themselves at home in their new
spectacular workplace, and among them is twenty years elevator operator

(18:01):
Betty Lou Oliver. She has taken a job for some
extra cash, but by summertime her fiance has returned home
from the war, so just a few months on the job,
Betty Lou puts in her notice, but his fate would
have it. Betty Lou's last day at work is very
nearly her last day alive. This is the story of

(18:23):
the nineteen forty five Empire State Building plane crash. Damn
The main sources used in today's story, or an article
from History Collection entitled which pretty much lays this story
out for you kind of clearly.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
That's why I've stopped reading the titles of the articles
that we use in.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Our show notes, you know, I mean, yeah, maybe I
should leave that one out. Can we bleep that whole
thing out all handra Yeah, entitled bbe That mystery History
Collection article was written by a writer named Patrick Lynch. Also,
the Division seven Training and Safety Newsletter for July of

(19:04):
August twenty twenty talks about this from the website fdnwisebravest
dot com. They also there's a bunch of pictures that
they have on that website that are amazing. And the
person that I think put those pictures together, I don't
think he took them. I think he put them together
somebody named Michael Dick. Okay, the rest of the sources
are in our show notes if you want to know

(19:24):
more about this. So I take you now to Saturday,
July twenty eighth, nineteen forty five.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
It's Betty Oliver's last.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Day as an elevator operator at the Empire State Building.
World War two is inching toward its final moments overseas,
and there's a celebratory feeling in and around basically the
entire country. But I bet you kind of being in
and around Manhattan was pretty unbelievable totally, although on this
day you wouldn't actually be thinking about anything celebratory. It's

(19:54):
dreary and it's humid outside, and there's a heavy fog
that gives the city a quiet, kind of sleepy feeling.
But despite the weather and the fact that it's the weekend,
for many, it's business as usual that day. That's the
case for twenty seven year old Lieutenant Colonel William Smith, Junior.
He's an experienced pilot. He's flown many combat missions during
the war in both France and Germany. Today his assignment

(20:17):
is stateside. He will be flying a converted North American
B twenty five Mitchell Bomber, nicknamed Old John Feather Merchant.
The fucking longest worst nickname of all time is that
Old John Feather Merchant. That's elitism in our military. That's

(20:39):
the rich guy is getting to fly the planes, in
my opinion, or something else that I just don't know about.
So basically, the Old John Feather Merchant was used to
transfer military VIPs from an army airfield in Massachusetts down
to the Newark Airport in good old New Jersey, Dirty Jersey.
This is a medium sized bomber plane with two propeller engines.

(21:01):
It has all of its guns removed, obviously, and it
weighs around twelve tons.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
So it's like an old timeyplane like you'd see in
World War Two.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, I think it's like, you know those ones that
can turn on their back and they pivot around because
there's two things in the front.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
It's like it's one of those.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Okay, So on board his thirty one year old staff
Sergeant Christer Dmitrovitch. He's an experienced pilot in his own right.
He is actually the guy who converted this specific aircraft
from a warplane to one used in civilian airspace. And
although Sergeant Dmitrovitch is not the co pilot on today's flight,
he is sitting in the co pilot seat. Also on

(21:41):
the flight is nineteen year old Albert Pirna. He is
an aviation machinist's mate for the Navy. He recently lost
his brother Anthony in the war, so he is catching
this flight home to see his bereaved parents. Who live
in Brooklyn. Albert isn't actually supposed to be on this flight.
He asked to hop on just before two takeoff, and
Lieutenant Colonel Smith, who of course didn't want any more passengers,

(22:04):
felt sorry for Albert, understood that he needed to be
with his family and let him on board.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Damn it.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Then on the return trip to Massachusetts, they're planning to
pick up one Colonel Harris Rogner who will join them
from Newark. So at eight fifty two am with Lieutenant
Colonel Smith at the helm, Flight five seven seven takes
off from Bedford, Massachusetts, heading to Newark, New Jersey. So
up and down the East coast. Now there's heavy cloud coverage,

(22:32):
there's fog, and there's rain. But even though the weather's bad,
Smith is flying by what are called visual flight rules.
He's relying on his own eyesight and visual cues like buildings,
the placement of the sun specific terrain to navigate the plane.
Usually in that low of visibility, a pilot would fly

(22:52):
by instrument, which means they're relying on the equipment in
the flight deck like GPS or altimeters.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
But according to a write up.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
By the f D and why this is not an
option because Lieutenant Smith's superiors think that the instruments will
be bombarded with civilian air traffic correspondence once they get,
you know, close to Manhattan, so they're basically saying, don't
do any of that and keep it all clear and
just do it by sight, which is you know, strange

(23:20):
in a bunch.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Of fog and rain.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, So, as Lieutenant Colonel Smith flies over Long Island,
he starts losing visibility, but he presses on until he
reaches LaGuardia Airspace in Queens. But the scene at LaGuardia
is kind of chaotic. It's very crowded and Smith's flight
isn't actually scheduled to land there, and it so happens
that another radioplane is buzzing around in the airspace and

(23:44):
it's lost contact with the controllers. So understandably, the LaGuardia
flight controllers aren't happy about having to coordinate with this
unexpected flight oh five seven seven, So they assigned Lieutenant
Colonel Smith a holding pattern over the and after some
time passes, they give him the green light to head
into Newark, but he's given a warning because of all

(24:06):
the fog the top of the Empire State building is
not currently visible. Oh dear, So it is not totally
clear what happens next, but most onlookers think that Smith.
As he was flying from LaGuardia toward Newark, he gets
confused about where he is because the plan was to
cut across Manhattan then head south when he passes over

(24:28):
the Hudson River into New Jersey. But according to one
PBS correspondent, Smith isn't familiar with the geography of New
York City. He seems to mistake the East River, which
is east of Manhattan, for the Hudson River, which is
west of Manhattan. So basically he didn't realize there were
two bodies of water on either side of the island.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Oh dear, you think you know that? Yeah, you're flying.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
I mean, or that's just I think that's a theory though,
because no one really knows what happened. Yeah, So that
causes him to turn the plane south before he cuts across,
So then either to get underneath the fog or because
he thinks it's time to descend into Newark Airport's airspace.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith drops down to an elevation of around

(25:14):
six hundred and fifty feet, but then once they get
underneath the fog, he suddenly realizes his miscalculation. He can
see that he is flying a B twenty five bomber
at two hundred and fifty miles an hour, right down
the heart of Manhattan. So according to FDN wise Bravest

(25:35):
the website, they say, quote Lieutenant Colonel Smith narrowly missed
the Grand Central Office Building near Park Avenue at the
twenty second floor. Flight O five seven seven banked and
narrowly missed the building, and then narrowly missed five hundred
Fifth Avenue. The B twenty five Mitchell bomber was flying
so close to the buildings that occupants in the buildings

(25:55):
surrounding the plane could see the faces of the people
in the cockpit. The loud roar and the vibration shook
items off of shelves and tables and.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Shit, how terrifying. Yeah, so they were in it, suddenly
in it, suddenly in it. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Lieutenant Colonel Smith tries his best to retract the landing
gear and steer the aircraft upwards, but as Old John
feather Merchant sharply ascends back upwards toward the clouds, an
unmistakable sight appears ahead, rushing toward them fast the Empire
State Building. Lieutenant Colonel Smith tries to clear the building
as he steers Old John Feather Merchant sharply toward the sky,

(26:33):
but it is too late. At nine forty am, the
old warplane crashes into the seventy ninth floor of the
Empire State Building. Have you ever heard of this disaster?

Speaker 3 (26:44):
I've seen photos of it?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Have you?

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Okay? Sorry, yes, I never had. I was like, it's crazy.
I mean, it's not a story that's told very often.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
I just feel like if I lived in New York City,
I would tell everybody this second I saw or met them.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, like did you know this? Point up and be
like see that building?

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Okay, So, because the plane is loaded with around eight
hundred gallons of fuel, oh, a huge fireball erupts on impact,
reaching nearly one hundred feet high. Windows explode, including a
few all the way up on the observation deck, which
is thirty floors up. Smoke envelops the entire top of

(27:24):
the building as it rocks back and forth like it's
being hit with extreme winds. If there's one bright spot
in this story is that it is a Saturday, so
fewer people than normal are inside of the Empire State
Building on this day, but it is not a quiet morning.
There are office workers, there's a handful of elevator operators,

(27:45):
and even though it's foggy outside, there's multiple people on
the observation deck, including a US Army lieutenant named Alan
Aman who is there with his wife. He is one
of the first people to see the plane emerge from
the clouds. Can you imagine, Oh my god, the terror.
You're one hundred and two stories in the air and
all of a sudden, they're I'm sure they heard it first,

(28:06):
but then.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
You see, I thought he was having like a flashback
or something if he hasn't the fucking war. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
So he sees this plane, he immediately throws his wife
to the ground and like jumps on top of her,
trying to protect her. And from the ground they feel
the impact, of course, and then they feel the heat
from the explosion, and then they feel the building sway
beneath them, and they described it as like a tree
in a tropical storm, kind of feeling like crazy. But

(28:36):
somehow they are kept safe up on the observation deck,
so it doesn't like the explosion doesn't just go upward
and take off the top of the building or anything. Yeah,
Lieutenant Colonel William Smith, Junior Sergeant Dmitrovitch, and Albert Perna
die instantly on the seventy ninth floor. Eighteen people are

(28:56):
working at the offices of Catholic War Relief Services, and
ten of them are killed. Whoa. One man is actually
shot out of the building and lands on a sort
of overhang a few four floors below and dies on impact.
Oh my god, which must have been just shocking. But yeah,
those who aren't killed are of course absolutely panicked. The

(29:18):
scene is horrifying. There's people who are injured, who are burned.
They're desperately trying to find the safest route down to
the ground level. As they do, debris from the plane
blasts through the opposite extereerior wall of the floor. It
crashed into the seventy ninth floor, so basically it's obviously
big enough where it took a second it hit and

(29:39):
then it all had to push through and came out
the other side and crashes down onto thirty third Street
and onto the nearby buildings.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Okay, yeah, the people on the ground, I'm like, what's
happening to them.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh yeah, hopefully they're running.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Horrifically, the plane's nose an engine continue moving through the floor,
so pieces of the nose smashed through a nearby elevator
bank and a reception area, killing more people, throwing several
elevator operators out of their elevators. And there's Betty Lou
Oliver in her elevator. She is thrown from her post

(30:16):
on the eightieth floor, so she's above it, she's the
floor above and this violent action breaks her back, her neck,
and her pelvis and she's burnt in the flames. Oh
my god, but she actually survives. The blast is so
loud that several nearby fire stations dispatch to the Empire

(30:36):
State Building before alarms even come in for them to do.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
So they're like, yep, we gotta go.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
So at least two fires are raging simultaneously, one on
the seventy eighth and seventy ninth floors and then another,
so that's just one big fire, and then another in
the Astoria Building next door on the thirty third street
side where the plane blasted through, so the other so
the Astoria Building caught on fire, and inside the Empire
State Building. Firefighters use the few operational service elevators they

(31:06):
can to get up to the sixty seventh floor. That's
as high as they can go. So from there they
have to get off the elevator, take all their gear
and walk up eleven floors to get to where the
fire is on the seventy eighth floor. As they put
that out, dozens of doctors, nurses, and EMTs begin to
filter in and rescue as many people as they can.

(31:28):
So people just started going up there. Yeah, which is
so New York City, so beautiful New York City.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
I love that place.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
So people moving around and go like you get out
of the way, Are you okay? Are you okay? I
heard a lady say that on the street. One time
girl dropped her mirror. She clearly just bought this huge
mirror at home Goods. And it's a super busy words
seventh Avenue, walking up like a human highway, and she
drops this mirror and everybody is just like and like

(31:58):
backs up and freezes, and then she looks around at
everyone goes, oh my god, are you okay? And this
old lady busts through the crowd and then like throws
her arm forward pointing at the girl and goes, no,
are you okay?

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Oh my god, I want to see woman around in
an emergency.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Right, That's like she's actually going to get shit taken
care of. Okay, So let's pretend that she also went
up to the seventy eighth floor.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
So the first responders are able to find Betty Oliver
among the rubble. They put her on a stretcher. They're like,
if she's going to survive all of this, I mean,
she's horribly, horribly harmed. She has to get to the
hospital immediately. They take her down to the seventy fifth
floor and take her on the one elevator that they

(32:48):
can still use, Elevator six, and they load her up
onto it.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
What they don't.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Realize is that there's a third fire raging inside of
the building, in the sub cellar in the Empire State Building.
So one of the plane's engines went into an elevator
shaft and fell downward and spread flames as it went.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
What that's like a movie.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yes, So in the process, the cables connecting some of
the elevator cars to the shaft are frayed, and as
soon as EMTs slide Betty's stretcher onto the elevator, The
cable snap, and an already badly wounded Betty plummets a
staggering seventy five floors down to the bottom of the

(33:33):
Empire State Building. It is a one thousand foot drop.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Holy shit, horrifying.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
So meanwhile, down at street level there's a seventeen year
old pharmacist mate from the Coastguard named Donald Maloney, and
he is he runs into a Walgreens, which is like,
this is nineteen forty five and Walgreens were such a
part of my life when I lived in New York City,
and the idea that it's like, oh yeah, they've always

(33:59):
been that is like third star of the show is
Walgreens in Manhattan. Okay, So he's Donald is visiting New York.
He planned actually on going up to the Empire State
Building observation deck that morning. He's changing his plan. Now
he goes into triage mode. He runs into the pharmacy.
He has them give him morphine, syringes, needles, first aid kits, bandages,

(34:23):
rubbing alcohol, any other supplies that he can hold, and
he runs into the Empire State Building and just tries
to His plan is he's just going to go wherever
anybody needs him, and thinking that he's going to maybe
take an elevator and go up. But now none of
the elevators are operational. But then Donald notices a down elevator,
Elevator six, and he convinces a team of firefighters to

(34:47):
come with him and help him check it out. So
he was just kind of like a do gooder from
the street who it was like. Luckily, all of these
military men who had all this training and women I'm
sure were just like they're on hand, yeah, and not
scared of a horrifying thing because they've just been living
through horrifying things.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
I Mean, the idea of running into a disaster is
so heroic and like, it's how I'd hope I would
react in the situation. I know, I know, I know
I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Okay, So the impact from the seventy five floor drop
has jammed the elevator doors, so the fireman cut a
hole in the side of the elevator to try to
access the car, and when they do, they find Betty
trapped underfallen debris. And so now on top of all
of her other horrible injuries, she's got two broken legs,

(35:41):
but by some miracle, she is alive. So Maloney is
the only one small enough who can fit through the
opening that they cut, so he climbs inside the elevator.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
And helps get Betty out. WHOA.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
And because of her injuries, and because of how small
the opening was that they cut in the elevator, it
takes them an hour to get her out of this
elevator car. No, yeah, and then she's rushed in an
ambulance to the hospital. So twenty four people are hurt
in the crash of flight zero five seven seven, but
the injuries Betty sustains are by far the worst of anyone.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
But in just eight months time she makes a full recovery. WHOA,
of course, our whole flight crew that we set already.
And eleven other people die inside the Empire State Building
that day, bringing the death toll to fourteen, and along
with fourteen lives lost, about a million dollars in damage

(36:41):
is done to the building, which would be the equivalent of.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
A million dollars in nineteen forty five is six point eight.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Million, seventeen million.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
WHOA, I know, I thought I was going too high.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Damn, you have to go high high. But on Monday,
July thirtieth, nineteen forty five, less than forty eight hours
after the crash, most of the offices in the building
are open for business again.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
What no, thank you all work from home? Did they
have that back then? I'll work from home.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
They're like, nope, that was back when they were really
against work from home. It takes them three months for
all of the repairs to be completed, and all that
remains of the crash afterwards is a piece of charred
limestone which has been kept in memory of the lives
lost in the disaster. So, in very Manhattan business style,

(37:34):
they were like, okay, and now we fix it, and
now we keep going.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
One of the reasons most of us do not know
about this shocking disaster is because one week after it,
the US bombs Hiroshima, bringing World War two to an end.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
That makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
As for the miracle of Betty Lou Oliver's survival, inspection
of Elevator six's crash site needs experts to believe that
two things helped protect her from meeting an untimely end
in that elevator. First of all, I have had so
many dreams of a snapped elevator cable and just like
falling in an elevator. Have you ever had that dream?

Speaker 3 (38:15):
No, but i's a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah, it's such a horrible idea. It's such a scary,
scary thing. But here's the upside to think about it.
The snapped elevator cable fell and then coiled at the
bottom of the elevator shaft, so it actually ended up
providing a little bit of a cushion.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, Then the rapid drop of the elevator in a
space as tightly enclosed as the elevator shaft created a
pillar of compressed air that actually slowed the elevator's drop
just enough to prevent total devastation. So it wasn't the
freefall that you would think it would be.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, some kind of hydraulic thing happened.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Some sort of science happened that we don't need to
worry about.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Hey, engineers, let us know what that's called.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Hey, engineers, can you just make it so that when
that happens in the future, that pillar of air is
stronger than the force of gravity and it just gets
sent back up to the floor it needs.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
To go to.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
It's a big request we'll work on it later after
the fascists are gone. While it takes Betty eight months
to make a full recovery, she returns to the Empire
State Building just five months later on a pair of crutches.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Why, honey, no, because she.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Wants to ride the elevator to the top of the building.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
That's right, Betty.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Betty Oliver gets into an elevator and goes to the top.
That luck.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Betty is brave.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
She is like, I will make my own luck. Thank you.
I will take this full story back. Also, I remember
the elevator ride in the Empire State Building. It's a
pretty smallish elevator feels small, like many things do in
New York City. Yeah, and I started getting a little
panicky in that elevator. So the idea that that woman

(40:04):
went through what she went through and was like I'm
doing it anyway is so badass. Like, yeah, I love
her so much for that.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Like I can't. She's like, I can't be afraid of
this my whole life. I'm gonna do it again.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
She must have, right, because that would be so so scary.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
I know, I know, Okay, amazing, amazing.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
The good news is Betty Oliver she heals completely. She
moves to Fort Smith, Arizona, with her husband. She has
three kids, she has seven grandkids. She has a healthy,
fulfilling life for the next fifty four years, and she
passes away on November twenty fourth, nineteen ninety nine, at
the age of seventy four. And to this day, she

(40:47):
is still in the Guinness Book of World Records for
tallest elevator crash survival.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
And that is the story of the nineteen forty five
Empire State Building plane crash.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Damn, Betty, that's great. I didn't know the story. I'd
seen the photos, vague description, but that is terrifying, horrifying, terrifying.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
She broke her back, her hip hurt, both legs.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Tell this, hell, this man. Did anyone else survive in
the elevator?

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Do you know they put her stretcher on and the
elevator broke? She was alone.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
I didn't know that. I thought she was like with
other people.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Oh what a bummer, isn't that crazy?

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah? Oh man, fuck that fuck that, yes.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
For sure, for sure. Yeah. Her original horrible injuries were
from the explosion.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
So and then it's like, okay, we got you.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
We're going to get you to the hospital. She's like, finally,
I'm on a stretcher. We're going let's do this, let's
get this going, and bye fucking goodbye. Oh my.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Five months later, she's like, Hi, I'm a jazz bitch,
is for real?

Speaker 3 (41:58):
Herman? Walking? Oh falling alone?

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Your shitty job that she didn't even want to yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Anymore, last stay she was about to.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
That's like a from lethal Weapon where it's like, I'm
about to retire, but here's one more. Call my god. Also,
I was just saying to Alejandro, I was like, I'm
doing this story, but I'm like, what's coming up next?

Speaker 3 (42:26):
If that's the first story, right, well, what's interesting about
my story? So you don't have to use too much
brain power and imagination. We're staying in Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yes, I love it there.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
We're going to stay there. We're going to go to
when the Empire State Building was being built in the thirties.
So yes, don't even like, don't worry about.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
It, don't even get up from the couch right.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Now, close your eyes. Now I didn't let you close
your eyes and listen to this podcast. Yeah, this is great,
And you can just tell we had great producers and
everything on the podcast because these stories go together. Yes, nice, So,
today I'm covering a story about an attorney who led
a massive prostitution racketeering investigation, and I'm going to be

(43:11):
using the word prostitution as as it is in the
legal sense a few times in the story. All right,
to take down Mafio so kingpin everyone's favorite Charles Lucky
Luciano Oh in the nineteen thirties. By showing compassion to
the city's sex worker community, this attorney is able to
set herself, yes, herself apart from her colleagues as a

(43:32):
person these women could trust enough to talk to openly.
At the same time, she fended off corrupt lease to
build her case against the notorious mobster. And she did
it all as one of New York's first female African
American lawyers. Whoa Yeah. This is the story of New
York Assistant District Attorney Eunice carter U. Nice u nice,

(43:55):
great name. This is one of those stories where we're like,
why don't we have a a national holiday every year
for this woman? She's incredible. We should talk about her more.
What a badass? Oh, here we go. The main sources
used in today's story include an essay from the MOB
Museum website with no author listed, and an article on

(44:15):
medium provided by the National District Attorney's Association. All other
sources are listed in the show notes. And there's a
book I'm going to tell you to read at the end.
So get your pencils ready. Do people use pencils anymore?

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I mean, you know me and my number two Dixon
Dixon Ticonderoga.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
That's right. And I have a vintage pencil sharpener on
my wall, but I don't use it. It just looks cool.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Did you mount it nice? I'm gonna send you some
unsharpened pencils, okay.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
So the first want I tell you about unis Carter.
She's born in Atlanta, Georgia, on July sixteenth, eighteen ninety nine.
She comes from a prominent, accomplished black family. Before the
Civil War, her paternal grandfather, Stanton Hunton, convinced his plantation
owner to let him buy his own freedom. He managed
to purchase his brother Ben's freedom from a plantation in Mississippi,

(45:08):
and the two fled to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, where Stanton
helped abolitionist John Brown organize the eighteen fifty nine Slave
revolt on Harper's Ferry. So this is all Manhunt time. Yeah,
Stanton's son. Unice's father, William Alpheus Hunton, got a college
education while living in Canada and went on to found

(45:30):
the Black Division of the YMCA. Unice's mother, Addie Waite's
hunting is impressive in her own right, having been the
first black graduate at Spencerian College of Commerce in Philadelphia.
So like, I'm lazy, that's it.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
He look compare and despair. We can't be looking at
people that we are reading stories about and be like
I should be like them. It's not over for us yet.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's true. Her mother works as a teacher, a social worker,
and even sales to France to serve in World War
One in nineteen eighteen as one of just three black
women in an all black American unit.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Wow, I wonder if Bessie Coleman was over there with her.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Oh my god. Being the daughter of two prominent college
educated black parents in the early nineteen hundreds, of course,
puts Unice in a truly unique elite family. Even as
they thrive, the family still no stranger to racism and
are vocal against bigotry in both their work lives, and
their personal lives. But when the Atlanta race massacre up

(46:29):
September nineteen oh six leaves dozens of innocent black people
injured or dead, the Hutton family decides to leave Atlanta
and move up north to Brooklyn, New York. Unice is
a product of her tough ancestry, and so she never
lets the threat of hate get in her way. She
excels in school and earns two degrees from Smith College

(46:50):
in Northampton, Massachusetts. She earns the two degrees at the
same time, so she's just like, you know what, I'm here,
I might as well make the most of it. So
she earns a bachelor's and a master's of social work
in nineteen twenty one at the same time.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Wow, I literally couldn't go to class, and half of
my classes were theater classes, and I could have bothered.
Uh huh, don't compare.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Nope, compare in despair.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
We're not you know it, we're not.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Her husband, Lyle Carter, now the Unison, Lyle, can you
even like? That's the best the best grandparents name ever?
So she who she marries in nineteen twenty four. He's
no slouch either. He's one of the most prominent dentists
in New York working in Harlem. They have a son together,
named Lyle Carter Junior in November of nineteen twenty five. Okay,

(47:42):
so here we are. Unice follows in her mother's footsteps
and serves as a social worker in New York in
New Jersey for eleven years. She also serves alongside her
mother in the nineteen twenty seven Pan African Congress, one
of a series of eight meetings where black leaders and
thinkers joined together for the cause of peace and decolonization
in Africa and the West Indies. And as rewarding as

(48:06):
the Pan African Congress experience is for Unis, she doesn't
find social work that's stimulating. She thought it would be
a lot more interesting, so she starts taking night classes
at Fordham Law School. She's the first African American woman
to graduate from Fordham, and she does it in just
two years, graduating in nineteen thirty two.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Like, come on, graduating from law school in two years.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
While still working full time as a supervisor in the
Harlem division of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Wow, yeah, incredible.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
Yeah. She passes the New York Bar exam. Of course,
she does in nineteen thirty three and immediately starts making
a name for herself in both legal and political circles.
She's hand selected to join what's called the National Council
of Negro Women, which is a nonprofit that helps improve
the lives of African American women's, chosen by the organization's founder,

(49:02):
Mary McLeod Bethune. But it's the recognition she gets from
New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia what's uppa and the state
Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey that will come to define
her career, as she's named New York's first black female
Assistant District Attorney in nineteen thirty five. Wow, I know, great,

(49:26):
like fucking that's historic. That's historic.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
It's huge, And it's thirty years before people started fighting
for their civil rights right, just like an accomplishment in
an era and a time where the racism was just
like coming from every direction, a given, like oh God.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
So with organized crime on the rise, Special Prosecutor Dewey
has been instructed to build a team of lawyers to
try and dismantle these crime syndicates. So organized crime is
like a big fucking deal. At the time, Prohibition had
just ended in nineteen thirty three. But at that point,
I mean, the mobsters had taken over everything you know

(50:11):
in the city. Yeah, and so Dewey wants to dismantle
the crime syndicates. Twenty lawyers are picked for this job,
a team nicknamed the Twenty against the Underworld, and all
of them save for Unice, are white men.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Wow. Yeah, although I feel like if she was a lawyer,
that probably was how everything was anyway for her.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
She's like, yep, it's just another day.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Yeah, this is what I expected. So as impressive as
unis is, her brilliant talent and hard work are still
undervalued because she's a black woman, of course. So while
the rest of her colleagues are focused on dismantling organized
crime syndicates, Unice is left fielding general complaints from New
York residents about organized crime issues. So it's thankless work,

(50:58):
but Unice rolls up her sleeve and handily does her job.
Among the chief complaints she hears from citizens is about
the uptick and the number of sex workers around the city.
They seem to be present on almost every street corner.
There's tons of brothels, and because sex work carried even
more stigma this time than it does now. The outcry
on supposed quote moral grounds is too much for Units

(51:22):
to ignore, so she has to go after it. So
she unfortunately prosecutes many women for the crime and prostitution,
and for a while these trials make up the bulk
of her caseload. But in interviewing and cross examining dozens
of sex workers as well as other witnesses for her cases,
Units quickly realizes something no one else sees. These women

(51:43):
aren't working independently. They're being trafficked, and the man at
the top of the trafficking scheme is none other than
mob boss Charles Lucky Luciano. So she's like in it,
still in the fucking mob scene. Yeah, so, let's talk
about Charles Lucky Luchiano for a minute. After immigrating from

(52:03):
Sicily to the Lower East Side of Manhattan at eight
years old in nineteen oh six, Charles Lucky Luciano quickly
found gambling and learned that he could make more money
for his family on the streets than he could by
any legal means. At just fourteen years old, he drops
out of school and starts his own gang. Yeah, Hey,
you know what I'm gonna do. He's an entrepreneur and

(52:25):
his gang gets looped in with the infamous Five Points gang,
which is comprised mostly of Irish American immigrants, and so
Luciano and his gang make their money by charging local
Jewish kids ten cents per week for protection from the
other Irish and Italian things. She's like, it's like, it's
just mind boggling.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
It's always about oppressing the lesser, the people who have
less the people who are socially zeen is less. Making
a dime off of some oppression is the name of
the game in this country.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
That's right. By nineteen twenty, at the age of twenty two,
Luciano is recruited as a gunman and bootlegger by the
Genovesi family, which is of course one of the bigest
Italian mobs in New York. You know, Karen, you.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Love I love to talk about the Genevese crime family
mm hm.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
And he's recruited by their leader at the time, Joe Masaia.
So when another one of Masaia's recruits leaves to work
for another crime family, I'm going to say this name wrong.
The Casti La ma Race, Castela Maurice. There you go.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Castella Marise, you had to get your hand way up
in the air.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
I really did it. Castla La Marise Clan Masaia has
Luciano arrange the revenge kill. So this triggers a mafia
war that lasts from February nineteen thirty through April nineteen
thirty one, and the war leaves several mob bosses dead,
which gives the now thirty three year old Luciano the

(53:54):
opportunity he needs to take over as what's called the
boss of bosses in New York's Organized crime network.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Hey hey, it's me the buzz and Buzzes. That's from
my one woman show, Lucky Luciano.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
He's finally home, Mama, I'm coming home. Luciano uses his
newfound power to establish a central governing body that all
American crime families must answer to, which he calls the Commission.
In nineteen thirty one, so this really is like the
height of the mafia takeover. They take over every facet

(54:31):
of businesses you know that they can if essentially drug
running and prostitution and what are other ones I don't know.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Being rude on the street, spitting spitting, yes, spitting littering.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
As the head of the Commission, he sets up streamline
operations for crimes ranging from oh here it is drug
dealing to illegal gambling. Forgot about that one. Oh yeah,
gambling took loan sharking. There's another, good one. Extortion is
another one, and much more. Today, he's considered the father
of modern American organized crime. Yeah, so like he kind
of took it to the next level, you know.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah, well he was so organized.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
That lucky, he's lucky, and he was so.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Lucky, and he was just fun.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yeah, everyone loved everyone loved him.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
And was not scared of him at all.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
So, between nineteen sixty and nineteen thirty six, Luciano is
arrested a total of twenty five times for various charges
including insult, insult, Nope, not insult, No assault, that other one, yeah, blackmail, robbery,
But none of them ever stick. He always walks free.
But thanks to the diligent work and keen observations of
Assistant District Attorney Unice Carter, that's all about to change.

(55:46):
M okay. So, as Unice works the small time prostitution
cases that have been shoved onto her, you know, like
without a second thought, She's already thinking beyond you know,
and she notices some similarities between the defendants. First, their
defenses all seem to be the same, even if the
cases are unrelated. She thinks it's as if these women,

(56:08):
whether they know each other or not, have been coached
by the same person on what to say. M hm. Second,
many of the sex workers arrested in brothels, raids or
on street corners have the same lawyer, and whenever this
lawyer is involved, none of their charges seem to stick
and they're released quickly. So the pimps, or as they're called, bookers,
they use the same lawyer as well, and they too

(56:30):
seem to always evade serving any jail time, so she's
like putting it together. And Third, many of these sex
workers use the same bondsmen for their prompt releases, so
it's like kind of obvious to her. But the most
remarkable thing Unis does is something no one else was
willing to do or even thought about doing. She talks
to the sex workers like their people. Huh. Interesting, imagine

(56:54):
that Where everyone else looks down on these women as
discardible sinners, Unice listens intently to their stories about being
forced into sex work, and needing to pay their mobster
bosses fifty percent of their earnings if they want to
be quote protected. She sympathizes with their struggles and she
earns their trust, and as the women divulge more information

(57:15):
regarding who they work for, the easier it is for
UNIS to put together a clear picture of what has
really been going on. These orange justst women trying to
earn a book. This is a prostitution racket, run a book.
There's enough evidence to warrant a raid on dozens of
brothels across Manhattan Brooklyn thanks to UNIS, But before they

(57:37):
execute the warrant, UNUS is like, hold on a second,
here's one other problem that we face. That is that
many of the vice cops, who are the cops who
typically handle crime related to sex work, they've been corrupted
and paid off by the mobsters. Huh. So she's like,
you can't trust those guys, don't send those guys in.
But she fucking basically plans the whole outing, probably.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Because she always had to be is always ten steps ahead, right,
So it just benefits her because she's super smart. But
she's also a black woman in a white man's world
and being like, all right, well, I have to think
this through about sixteen different ways.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
So here we go. Watch this. It's not enough to
be good like everyone else's you have to be extraordinary. Yeah.
So Dewey heeds Unice's advice, which is read, and on
February second, nineteen thirty six, he has one hundred and
sixty police officers outside of the Vice Squad conduct raids
on somewhere between eighty to two hundred brothels. The numbers

(58:36):
are conflicting. That's still a lot of brothels. This leads
to the arrest of more than one hundred sex workers
and madams. Unfortunately, these women have all been coached so
well by their bookers and bosses that most of them
refuse to talk, like the point is to arrest them,
to get after the higher ups, you know. But Eunice,
having earned the trust of many of these women, already

(58:56):
manages to get three of them to talk more openly
on the record by mid March of nineteen thirty six.
And so these three women all point to the Italian
mafia as the ones being responsible for the prostitution racket,
and they all name Luciano as the head of operations.
But even more importantly, because of Unis, they all agree

(59:17):
to testify against Luciano in court.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
I mean that really is she must have been so good,
because how scary. It's like, would you like to testify
against essentially the devil, the head of the devil's Sicilian
devil that lives in the bronx or wherever you.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Said, Godeah, who knows who you are? My God? Seriously,
So all that Unis, Dewey and the prosecution team need
now is Luciano in custody. But essentially, in late March
of nineteen thirty six, just days after Unis secure as
her critical witness testimonies, Luciana gets tipped off about his
impending arrest. He flees to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Oh have

(59:54):
you been there?

Speaker 2 (59:56):
No? Is that the place where during the pandemic all
those people went and got into that point. There's like
a picture going around of like, yeah, I'm almost positive.
Oh my god, but I could be.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
I'm so sorry, Arkansas.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
I'm if I'm wrong, but I think that was like, no,
we're doing it, we don't care.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
We're hanging out in the pool, which is gross enough
when there's not a fucking pandemic going on. So he
stays successfully hidden for about a week. But then, and
this is where I think he needs to stop going
by the moniker lucky because it's like not true, okay,
Because a New York detective with no relation to the
case is in Hot Springs working a case of his

(01:00:35):
own and he sees Luciano and just like hanging out
just by chance, yeah, just by chance. So he notifies Dewey,
They issue a criminal warrant, and on April third, nineteen
thirty six, Arkansas police find and arrests Charles not so
Lucky Luciano, and he's extra Dina back to New York,
where he's a rain on ninety counts of compulsory prostitution

(01:00:59):
basically meaning forcing people into sex work. So his trial
begins in May nineteen thirty six, and even though Dewey
is wildly impressed with Unus's investigation work, he still passes
her over for the job of actually trying Luciano in court. Instead,
he selects three white men from his team to shake
the case. He does, however, appoint Unis as a handler

(01:01:19):
of sorts for the witnesses, since the women testifying only
trust her, while Luciano has skilled lawyers and an endless
swell of confidence. He's ultimately no match for the evidence
laid out against him. Dewey and his team grill the
mob boss about phone calls and other monetary ties between
him and the sex work operation he built, tripping him

(01:01:39):
up and catching him in lies on the stand. They
also expose him as a criminal by pointing out the
fact that he manages to wear expensive clothes, eat at
fancy restaurants, and have all the trappings of wealth while
only claiming twenty two thousand dollars of yearly income on
his taxes. Ah, he's spendthrift, he's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Been Yeah, he's saving.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
He's like fast fashion, you guys, It's just fast fashion.
All of this, coupled with the damning testimonies delivered by
the key witnesses units secured, leads to Luciano's conviction. So
on June seventh, nineteen thirty six, he's found guilty on
sixty two of the ninety counts of compulsory prostitution against him,
and he's sentenced to thirty to fifty years in prison. However,

(01:02:25):
when World War two breaks out in nineteen forty two,
Luciano does get a lucky break. The US Navy intelligence
team has a growing concern that Italian and or German
troops might try and attack America by entering New York's waterfront,
and that area is largely controlled by the Italian mob. So,

(01:02:47):
in exchange for providing information to the US Navy about
the inner workings of that waterfront, Luciano gets the sentence commuted.
For the good of America, I guess, and he's released
on January third, nineteen forty six, after serving about ten
years in prison. But they're like, you can get out,
you can help us, but you don't get to stay
in America. And so I judge rules for Luciana to

(01:03:08):
be deported, and so in nineteen forty six he boards
a ship back to Naples, Italy. That's that, back to Unice.
Luciana's conviction propels Dewey's popularity enough to win him the
governorship of New York from nineteen forty three to nineteen
fifty four. So, even though Eunice is the one who
with the conviction of reality, but despite never getting quite

(01:03:31):
the credit she deserves, she continues on to have an
illustrious career of her own. Dewey does thank her by
appointing her as the Chief of the Special Sessions Bureau
of the New York County Criminal Justice System in nineteen
thirty seven, a job that tasks her with overseeing more
than fourteen thousand misdemeanor cases a year and makes her

(01:03:51):
one of the highest paid black lawyers in the country
during this time. Good Yes. In nineteen forty five, UNUS
expands her talents to the global state age as she
participates in the founding meetings of the United Nations. Wow
I Know. She takes on even media roles as the
UN gains traction, serving as chair for several committees that

(01:04:13):
promoted advancements for women internationally through the nineteen fifties and sixties.
She's huge champion of Black women and women in general.
That's not enough. She also serves on the International Council
of Women, the National Association of Women Lawyers, the New
York Women's Bar Association, the YWCA, and the Harlem Lawyers Association.

(01:04:33):
She's busy, so busy, She's doing it. She spends the
rest of her life upholding her family's fierce tenacity for
black progress and success. Before passing away on January twenty fifth,
nineteen seventy in New York at just seventy years old. Today,
her legacy is kept alive by her grandson, Yale professor
Stephen L. Carter. He's written a book detailing UNI's triumphs

(01:04:57):
called Invisible, The Forgotten Story of the Black Black Woman
Lawyer who took down America's Most Powerful Mobster, which was
published in twenty eighteen. And that is the story of
New York Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Incredible. Okay, So I am now remembering someone sent me
that book, Stephen L. Carter's book Invisible, Huh, because I
have talked about I don't know if I talked about
Unice in relation to a different case right now, Yes,
from one of the cases that we did, maybe at
a live show in New York.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm remembering this now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
But it's truly like pre COVID. Please forgive me. Somebody
sent me this book with a letter in it talking
about they were related to Unice.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Yeah, I totally remember this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
I don't think it was Stephen Carter, though at first
I was like, I think the person.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
That wrote the book, yeah, or the relative or whatever, But.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I don't think it was. But and also I feel
like if I looked around my house, I could find
the book because I in my front room.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
I'm looking on my bookshelf right now. I bet I
have it too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yes, we've talked about Unis on this show before. I believe,
I'm sure, but yes, I love the focus being on
her entirely.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
How incredible is that? Like mobsters, like, no one fucks
with the mob that's like, you don't do that? And
she was like, hold my purse.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
She's like, I'm smarter than everybody. I'm going to do something,
and why not go up against the people because there's
part of it where it's like, well I better do
it because there's so many of these people on the
take that it won't work if like I'm on the outside,
I'm using being on the outside to make this happen, right,
wild amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
That felt like a short episode, but it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
It turns out it just went by so fast. Look,
great job. That was a great story.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Thank you, and thank you guys for listening and for
listening to your first podcast. You're so brave, We're Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
My god, how was it? Most of them are not
this long, no or this good for this, like swear
based mm hmmm, but you know there's a bunch of
other ones, so you should listen to those too.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Absolutely, get on, sure, yeah, do it, download, rate, review.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
Subscribe, and also, oh this is really important, stay sexy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
And don't get murdered. Good Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Creighton.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalachi.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Our researchers are Mareon mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Follow the show on Instagram, at Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor Murder. Byebye,