478 - Briefcase Challenge

This week, Georgia covers the Teacup Poisoner and Karen tells the story of Maria Altmann’s fight to reclaim Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, Adele I.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar,
that's Karen Kilgariff.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is the podcast we've been doing for nine point
three years.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, that's so true.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Most people do seven year bail or podcast seven podcasts.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah. Do you think anything's changed you?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
How you changed it all in the past nine years?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
What has changed? It's a real business. It's a business
that we have to do in a business like man.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
It is a business setting. I'm wearing a business dress
from the seventies, Yes, want to do business, that's right,
or eighties probably.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
How do you feel to do business in a dress
like that?

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Powerful? Yeah? Yeah, there's like a power play to this dress.
Yea to dressing like a business lady. Yeah, and having
like a not a suitcase, briefcase, briefcase.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
I don't have one, but that would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Get when you get one.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
When I get to that level, lock it down items
like it's at the level of briefcase. I remember my
dad coming home from working as a kid and like
go in his briefcase and smell it and there'd be
all these like paperwork.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
It was just exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah's briefcase, Dad's briefcase. What was Marty doing when he
had a briefcase he.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Worked at Century twenty one. He was like, yeah, real
estate salesman guy. He was a salesman. So he'd come
home from these business trips and we'd open the briefcase
and there'd be candy bars for us in it.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh yes, And it was like, fuck, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Kind of funny, because that just made me realize that
there was a part of me that was disappointed that
my dad did not have a nine day. Like you know,
when you're a kid and you just think your life
is supposed to be exactly like the kids at school.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
You were disappointed that your father was a hero firefighter and
it was boring to you.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
It was like, why doesn't he come home with a Yeah,
why isn't he So at some point he was going
to get a business degree. He was going to finish
like his unfinished college. Yeah, so he was going to
get a business degree. And so I would go in
and look at his homework, and the example from his
homework was something about opening a shoe store. And I
was like, you're gonna open a shoe store downtown and

(02:18):
he was like, it's not a real Shoestorectice, and I
was like, what kind of shoes can we get? And
I was so excited to be like, that's what normal
people do.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, but then they don't work.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
My dad opened a hot dog franchise in Lake Arrawhead
in the eighties and guess what, it's not there anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I mean, it's just one of the many things you
can do, like restaurant business. You can be a realtor,
you can be all these things. You can also be
a civil servant and just leave the house for forty
eight to seventy two hours a couple times a week
and roll back in.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
And the point is you have a briefcase. And that's
the most important part.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
For some reason, that is what adulthood means.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
That's signal ability. It signals something.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, how about I make a challenge to you on
the next episode of my favorite murder and people that
watch the video of this will be able to see it.
You and I bring in our briefcases that we're going
to start using at work.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Okay, find a briefcase challenge.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Briefcaps challenge? Do it?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Do you out of the closet in atwater Village?

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Sure? Literally the first thing I thought of, Yeah, they'll
have a briefcase. You can't buy it online?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Can it be a purse that looks like a briefcase.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's whatever you would like to go along with your
empower it. And you know this is my work empowerment clothing,
which means you can't make me dress up.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I am so powerful at work that I literally wear
the same U boots because I can every single disgusting see.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
My power movement that in that vein is just don't
come in. I just feel so powerful that I just
don't come in. Wow, I don't want to. Yeah, yeah,
it's a choice, all right, brief for sure, briefcase next episode.
I think it would be fun.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I also have now an exact briefcase in my mind
that I'm going to try to find.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
I can see it. Is it a blood leathers?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I how did I know that that's what it's supposed
to be?

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Someone else's initials on it?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Great?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes, a little worn and kind of bent up at
the box. Are we both now trying to find an
ox blood briefcase? Or was yours different?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Just that's what comes to mind when one thinks of
eighties women's we've gotten so far off the deep end
on briefcases here, this is the deep end we should
have named.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
If we had named this podcast the Deep End, we
would have never gotten in as much trouble as we.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Used too or as much money.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Okay, guys, take the good, you take the bad, you
take them both, and there you have the facts of podcast.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Speaking of what a weird coincidence that last week I
mentioned to you Valerie the docks and who had gotten
lost on Kangaroo Island in Australia, not.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
The Roue Island.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
I don't think she was lost.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
She was fucking thriving, thriving and living her best life.
She escaped, yeah, the clutches of capitalism, you know what
I mean? Yes, I didn't like the clutches of like conformity.
And she was like absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Just running running free, running free and being taken care
of by animals on that island.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Totally, it's gonna be a movie.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
So she was on her own for five hundred and
twenty nine days and then I mentioned her, and then
like two days later she got found.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
She was on her own for two years.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, basically, you don't see a picture of her. She
looks really happy, she was really proud of herself. She's
a little fucking well, she should be very bad girl,
very bad girl.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
But tried telling her that.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
So much footage of her just running.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I know, and like night cam footage of her like
eating the food that's left for her, being like fuck you.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
But they say animals were grooming her because she looks
so good. She's not all fucked up looking, so they
were like animals on that island were definitely taking care
of Valerie.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Vallerie what a sweetheart. Well I'm happy for that, so
good job everyone.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
For good job everyone, Good job everyone, including and mostly Valerie. Yeah,
but now we have to go into one of the
most dramatic corrections corner ever.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Another Australian issue. Everyone in Australia, listeners, I want you
to know, and maybe I'm wrong about this too, but
here in the US we say EMU, right, yeah, emu.
It just sounds like a meme.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Australians, we understand it's the way you say it. We're
arguing that anybody just say it, say it the way
you grew up hearing it in your region, right because
to us, to me, I'll say too saying emu sounds
like you went to London for a semester and now
you're back with your beret and your different pronunciation.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Sorry, we kiss on both cheeks.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
I forgot that we're not. Oh my god, I've spent
the two weeks in Paris. Yeah, so I say emu.
We say emu here.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
But also completely understand. But you can't expect us to
say because that would be like if we were like,
oh the aluminium foil, right'.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Oh you know what my mum Janet said.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
She told me like blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
No, I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
We can't.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
It's because then you're yellow us for that.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
No, you won't. You don't yellow at us.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
But well, and also, the yelling is the show.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
This really is. We do the yelling we fuck.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Up so that you have something to engage with.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Something real to yell about that doesn't make you feel horrible.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Also, how many podcasts have you listened to where someone
is doing something weird and it drives you insane the
entire episode.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah that's podcasts. Yeah, that's true. There's so many of
them to choose from.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
No, let's go on to the next correction, which is
that I referred to Eben Moss Bacaracs rolling the Bear
as him being the brother and the bear.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
And I knew that he was called cousin, and yet
I just let it go right past my head because.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Because it's personal conversation. Also, I watched the first season,
have not yet watched the second season. Definitely planned to stressful,
so fucking stressful. The first season episode where they forgot
to turn the thing off and the orders just started
coming through.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I've watched all three seasons. I don't think I can
handle the cortisol levels that it brings for a season four.
For real, I just don't think I can do that.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Some of us already have that cortisol coursing through our veins.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, I have that still from when I worked in restaurants.
I don't need it again. You have the same thing
with Writer's rooms. It's like, why would I watch a
TV show about the most stressful time in my life? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Right, so no, it's a note thanks, But yeah, not
to say we don't love that show. Oh yeah, conversational details.
You'll get me on that every.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Time, And that's okay.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, that's why we're here, That's why we have briefcase.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
And also that's what that'll be. That'll go on our
notes in our briefcases, and we'll fix.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
It exactly what we'll go in our briefcase.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Because listen, there are certain parts of Ireland that I'm
scared to even discuss or talk about. When I hear
people talking about dairy and remember that I called it
legendary because I intentionally was like, I better look at
a map to get this right.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
And even maps.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Are wrong, so maps do not reflect I'm sorry, cultural requirements,
significance and requirements.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Speaking of cultural significance and requirements, we have a podcast network.
It's called Exactly Right Media. Here some highlights.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
And this week on the Knife Off Record, Hannah shares
the wild true story of Osama El Atari, a flashy
con man turned jail house informant who helped take down
a serial killer. I cannot wait to listen to that. Also,
she and Patia discuss the book There Is No Ethan
by Anna Akbari, which is part memoir, part explosive window
into the mind of a cat Fishery.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
Are doing the most fascinating stuff over there.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Great show, great podcasters, YEP.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
And speaking of our newer shows, On Deer Movies, I
Love You, Milli and Casey are talking about the magic
of mockumentaries and the iconic film Waiting for Guffman the Best.
They're also joined by the hilarious Art Mirran to talk
dirty dancing, and Millie almost kicks Casey.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Off the podcast.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
This week, things get so heated, so make sure you
tune into Deer Movies, I.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Love You on the most dramatic Dear Movies, I Love You,
Yet this podcast will kill you. We'll be doing a
two part series on raw milk starting this week, because
what is the deal with raw Milk? The Aaron's kick
off the series with the look at how dangerous milk
was before pasteurization, how Louis Pastor changed the game, the
rise of anti pasteurizers, and how today's raw milk movement

(09:55):
ties into a bigger anti science agenda. So definitely listen
to that.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
You'd be like, hey, are you and interested in milk?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
And I'd be like no, And then you read that
paragraph and like, yeah, I want to know everything.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Abou's what they do. They make milk interesting.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Also, with all of the deregulation that's happening under this administration,
we are going to need to know this stuff because
it's about to start getting seriously dangerous.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Absolutely speaking dangerous. I'm ghosted by Roz Hernandez. Roz smashes
a ghostly mirror and unleashes Monet Exchange. They talk past lives,
Bigfoot and Jone Crawford's extremely haunted house. Hell yeah, if
you love Monee Exchange, which we all do, you have
to go listen to this episode of Ghosted.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Also, Nick Terry has brought us a brand new episode
of MFM Animated. It's called Bumper Boats. It's based on
MFM Miniesode for twenty six and it is now available
on our YouTube channel, So please go over to our
YouTube channel. You will find full episodes of this podcast.
It's called My Favorite Murder, full episodes of Buried Bones
and much much more over on YouTube dot com slash

(10:57):
exactly right Media.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Please give it a follow it helps us. And closing
out with some beautiful and huge news from the merch world,
our SSDGM necklace has been restocked, so we put up
this gorgeous gold necklace. It's designed by a listener, which
is so exciting.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah. Nina Pelasio and her company is called Civil collective
c I V A L. It's a gorgeous gold necklace
with a beautiful shiny chain and it says stay sexy,
you don't get murdered on the little pendant. It has
MFM on the back.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So cute.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
This necklace sold out in hours when we first put
it up, So go ahead to exactly rightstore dot com
and get yours before it's gone.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Oh it's like heavy.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, it's very high quality and I really love Nina's
actual like font and design on that pendant is so pretty.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Oh I did it over my headphones?

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Oh? Perfect?

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Does that work?

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Did you give a little turn to the don No? No, no, no, Na,
Donna Na? Yeah, just hold your shirt up in this hole?

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Okay like that.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, now there's your power right there.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
We got the sex appeal for this episode.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Boom, boom, You're first.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
I'm first. Okay.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
So I got the idea for this story from a
post on the really awesome Instagram account at real history
Uncovered Nice and they're always just putting out fascinating stories
I had never heard before.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
It breaks my heart.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
I follow a lot of TikTok accounts like that.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Too, where I'm like, can someone please teach me what
has happened in the past that's of interest and like
in a way that will engage me. There's so many
that's what we do kind of. I mean, the people
that are like historians. Oh yeah, they're like, this is
why you will love learning about.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
This about milk totally I agree. Okay, So today's story,
Karen's gonna sound like it comes out of like.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
A Victorian England. Great, but it doesn't. It's actually more recent.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Oh that's bad, right.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
No, it's so I mean, it's just like so dated.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
If I didn't tell you what ear.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
This happened in, you'd think it was from like the
eighteen hundreds or seventeen hundreds.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
But it's not.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
It's from the nineteen seventies. It's about a serial poisoner
who is responsible for at least three deaths, but possibly
allegedly several more. It's a really frustrating case because many
people look the other way or even enabled this person,
ultimately costing several innocent lives. This is the story of
the teacup Poisoner. It sounds like an episode of Doctor Parrot,

(13:27):
not mister Parrot, Pero Praro.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Here we go, Yeah, doctor doctor Proro.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Oh that's my obig I n okay.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
The main source for this story are a documentary called
Murder in a Teacup Clever and reporting from the Daily Telegraph,
and the rest of the sources can be found in
the show notes. So it is May of nineteen seventy one.
Picture it. Yes, how old?

Speaker 2 (13:48):
I am zero one?

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Oh right?

Speaker 2 (13:50):
My first birthday?

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Oh yeah, right much? Happy word's birthday.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
It was great.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
I had a really good time.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
We're in the village of Bovingdon, Bubvingdon.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Boving Yeah, please say it the way that bo right.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Outside of London, Bovingdon. This small village is home to
a business called John Hadland. That's the name of the business,
which manufactures highly technical camera equipment. It's a smallish firm
with about eighty employees. That's a big company, right, John Haglan.
I bet had a really nice briefcase.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
I bet he did.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Many of those employees have worked there for decades.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
It's just like a small town with a nice little
fucking business in it. It's very close knit environment. That's
what I'm trying to say. I get you. An employee
named Bob Eagle comes down with a mysterious illness. Now
Bob oversees the company's storeroom, and he's sixty years old.
Up until now, Bob had been completely healthy, but now
he's having stomach cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting, the trifecta of

(14:47):
you've been poisoned.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
That's what we know.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Now, something terrible has happened, right.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
And it goes on for weeks.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Bob gets much better when he takes a week off
for vacation, which should have been a red flag for everyone,
but then the mysterious illness comes right back.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Again when he gets back. Yeah, I think that's what's
great about.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Being a murder And I was like, even if you're wrong,
at least you're looking into like a suspicious thing that
like the red flag, you know what I mean? Yes, like, yeah,
you're accusing someone of being a poisoner, but what if
they are well.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Just standing by for the people who are just like well,
I guess it's nothing. Go back to the place where
you start to get sick every time, Like.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's just the thing.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
There's some of us from trauma who have severe patterned
recognition abilities. Yeah, and so when other people kind of
don't or intentionally turn away. It's both frustrating and then
also ultimately very satisfied.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Totally well.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
It seems that other people around the company are also
getting sick. They initially dismissed it as a virus that's
been going around, nicknamed the Bobbingdon bug the Bobbingdon bug,
But in Bob's case, this illness becomes deadly. By July
of nineteen seventy one, Bob is admitted to the hospital
not just with stomach cramps, but with paralysis as well.

(15:56):
He dies in the hospital, and the cause of death
is ruled to be pneumonia. At Bob's funeral, one of
his newest and youngest coworkers represents the firm in giving
his condolences to Bob's grieving widow. This young man is
named Graham Young. He's only twenty three years old, and
he started work at the company right before Bob started
getting sick. His coworkers know that Graham had spent time

(16:19):
in treatment after a vague family tragedy, and that he's
gotten his job through a special training program after having
undergone treatment. But what they don't know is that Graham
has already been convicted of three separate poisoning deaths.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Oh no, yeah, no, what he told anyone?

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Okay, that is very victorian of the seventies, right, I mean,
how could you not at least have some kind of
messaging there?

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, like do you have a record the way you would?

Speaker 2 (16:46):
After We're just like, yeah, go get that job, good
faith and everything. And then the senior staff needs to
know if anybody starts getting bad stomach aches, please call
us immediate.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Exactly something something something, Okay, And that's kind of what
this story is all about. So let me tell you
about Graham Frederick Young. He's born on September seventh, nineteen
forty seven, in North London. His mother dies only twelve
weeks after he's born, and he's initially raised by his
aunt and uncle, and eventually his father remarries and he
reunites the family, which isn't great for Graham because his stepmother, Molly,

(17:18):
it says they don't get along. But I feel like,
if you're an adult and you don't get along with
a little kid, it's kind of like there's more to
it than that. Yes, for sure, you know, you just
like don't have differing opinions and political views.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
You're just like you're not that cool.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
You're stepping into a family to become like a mother figure. Right,
You're not allowed to not get along with anyone under fifteen.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Exactly like you don't ask questions to little kids in public,
and you don't not get along with little kids. You're
the asshole in this situation. Yeah, am I the asshole? Yes,
you're the asshole.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, you should have marked little box on the dating
applications said no kids.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, exactly. As he gets older, Molly starts to stry
his belongings and withholds food from him. So Graham goes
on to become a very isolated child, not surprisingly, who
makes no effort to make relationships with other children. This
being the nineteen fifties, no one really addresses these issues.
He's just considered an odd kid. And as soon as

(18:16):
Graham is able to read, he becomes obsessed with nonfiction
accounts of murder. This doesn't mean much on its own,
but then Graham becomes interested in the occult, and he
tries to recruit other kids in the neighborhood to join
him to ritually sacrifice a cat. I don't you know,
this is just the line I saw. But during this time,
several neighborhood cats go missing. Dark Triad. You might as

(18:37):
well just say exactly. As Graham gets older, he discovers
another fascination, and this one, I feel like is like
part of the dark tryad like outer bubbles. He's obsessed
with Hitler in the Nazis.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Oh you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
He takes to walking around in a black leather duster
and carrying a copy of Mind Count by Adolf Hiller.
This is always bad news, but this is also England,
only fourteen years after World War Two. But Graham's biggest
fascination appears to be chemistry. Graham's father buys him a
chemistry set, and Graham is obsessed with it. He spends
so much time reading about chemistry that at the age

(19:13):
of thirteen, he's able to walk into a chemist and
convince the chemists working there that he is seventeen because
he knows so much about chemistry that they assume he
can't be that young.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
So he's really smart.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yes, yes, And seventeen just happens to be the age
that you're allowed to buy large quantities of arsenic, antimony
and thallium. There's an age seventeen, Yeah, seventeen what.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's some like if you
were a rat catcher or something like that, there are
reasons you would need to do that, But why wouldn't
we bump that up to twenty one? Just like kind
of in an adult if you have a job and it's.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Because it's the seventies and they don't care.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
God, it truly was like, we're going to try to
kill you in every way.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Can you get away with it? Then you got away
with it.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
I did congratulation, thanks so much. I was really young
and I made it.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah. So all three of these chemical elements are usually
considered heavy metals, and they're all highly toxic at the time.
Arsenic and antimony, which by the way, I think is
pronounced differently in England, so just antimony, antimony, antimony. They
are well known poisons, but thallium poisoning is generally unheard of.
If you're interested in this, don't forget to read the

(20:27):
Poisono's Handbook by Deborah Blum that has so much information
of old school poisoning.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, it's so good.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
The people in the chemist shop believe that Graham must
be a high level chemistry student because they're like, why
would a child be interested in this?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah, it's an easy assumption to.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Me, Yes, definitely.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
And Graham tells him he's using these chemicals for.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Studying purposes, or they're like, oh, he you know, must
be in school. And it's true that he's going to
use these for studying purposes. But it would have quickly
become apparent to anyone paying attention that Graham is studying
the effects of these poisons on live subjects. Yeah, so
not great. Yes, again, he's about thirteen years old. He's
the best student in his secondary school's chemistry class. But

(21:09):
it's known around school that he has a little laboratory
in an outbuilding on the school grounds where he conducts
experiments on caterpillars, mice, and frogs. And he does this
while other kids are playing at recess. Yeah, so that's
his fascination, which is like, doesn't mean anything yet he
could go in a completely different direction and become like
a brilliant scientist. Very true.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
There's a lot of kids that went into an area
like this, and then you know, it's like abusive household.
You can assume you're looking to escape, right, super smart Yeah,
and pretty pissed off.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, And then maybe some like some communication skills are
lacking for various reasons, or right, yeah, it'd be.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Cool if this story turned to like, then he's sixteen
and he joins a band something like that, You know
what I mean, he becomes a really good guitar player.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Right, totally, No, No, that's not what happens. In nineteen
sixty one, when Graham is thirteen or fourteen, one of
his classmates named Christopher Williams becomes.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Very sick while he's at school.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
He's vomiting uncontrollably, and Graham tells his family about Christopher's illness, saying, quote,
they brought out a bucket for him. I sat and watched.
It's like observing the effects of your scientific experiment on another.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Child and telling people about it, knowing that they're not
going to be paying attention enough.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
He yeah, ask the right question. So basically, it looks like,
you know, Christopher fell ill because of something Graham had
given him, maybe a cookie. But Christopher recovers and survives,
and it seems like it's not likely the only time
that Graham poisoned someone at this period. Good but no
jun high yeah, secondary school, as they call it.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
I'm such a very school.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Right around the same time, Graham's whole family actually also
becomes sick. At first, it's intermittent, and Graham's father actually
suspects that his son is just being careless with this
chemistry set like we left the arsenicling around near the tee,
you know or something.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
It just like you silly boy, you crazy nut. Boys
will be boys with there are snip.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
And Graham denies this and his father, Fred doesn't really
press the issue. Then in November nineteen sixty one, Graham's
older sister, who is in her early twenties, also becomes ill,
and she's actually diagnosed by a doctor as having been
poisoned with belladonna.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
So he's this doctor at least is.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Like maybe the only one in Britain in the past
two hundred years who guessed that someone was getting poisoned
because like they were like, you have pneumonia.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
By right, just over and over. Yeah, they just had
one blood test in the seventies that was it, so
you got to really figure stuff out from it.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, and it didn't show up. They didn't take it
unless you were dead, that's right.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
But even though the doctor is like this girl has
been poisoned. Graham's father still doesn't report on his son, Like,
isn't like, you know what's funny about that is I
have someone living in my house who.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Is fascinated with poison.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah. No, doesn't either want to connect it or doesn't
want to get him in trouble, or doesn't believe it,
whatever it is. But then a few minutes later, in
April nineteen sixty two, Graham's father comes home to discover
the stepmom his wife, Mollie, on the ground in the backyard,
writing in pain. Graham is back there too, just standing
above her watching her. Molly's taken to the hospital, but

(24:16):
it's not able to recover, and she dies. The stepmother.
He kills a fucking stepmother, Oh my god. Doctors believe
that her cause of death is a prolapse of one
of her spinal bones because she had been in a
bus accident a few weeks earlier. So that's what the
cause of death is. But Graham's father still doesn't involve
the police. I think he probably just wants to believe otherwise,

(24:39):
right for sure? Yeah, Like yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Well, and it just sounds like the household was not
doing well.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, and they gave him a reason why she died
and has nothing to do with poison, So why would
he be like, you know, he should look at as
my son. Right, they're not related at.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
All, except for the part where he was standing over
her while she rides in pain.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Not a great look, just just a mark against in mind.
Ye just keep that in the mind. You're not going
to tell the cops, but just you're going to keep
it right here.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Your father is absolutely going to keep that right there.
And then you hold on to that being like, I
guess I am saying it.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
I'm not saying it. What do I do? And Graham's
father has Molly quickly cremated, and some people say this
was at Graham's suggestion, or maybe he was like, yeah,
you know, why.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Would he do that? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Very shortly after this, Fred the father becomes ill, having
frequent bouts of vomiting, and he's hospitalized and diagnosed with
antimony poisoning. So that's probably the same doctor that saw
the belladonna. He's like, I'm the only one here.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, maybe, I mean also because it is like it's
a village, I've never heard of it, not that I
know all of them.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Are sure. It can't be a bunch of hospitals in
the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
If it is a smaller place, maybe you have like
a handful of doctors too. If it's somebody that's seen.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Stuff already, they're like, maybe he's a witch.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
No one's going no, No, one's going to sit there
and be like, well, let's see the son is the
only one left.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
He's doing something. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
No.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
It's only then that the police get involved once this
happens because one of Graham's teachers hears about Molly's death
and Fred's hospitalization, and they finally go to the police
explaining about the other kid's illness at school and saying
that Graham had openly brought samples of various poisons to
school with him to analyze them, so he's not given

(26:23):
any of the secret. He's almost like daring people to
catch him, and they're like, no, thank you, Yeah, we
find our own business here. Finally, this teacher shows them
the inside of Graham's school desk, which I just had
like chewed up pencils and hello, kiddy crap, I.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Had a nice little packet of Spree, you know, the
candy free long roll. Yes, and it fit perfectly in
the pencil hole. So I just had them right there.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
And then they're so satisfying, slowly put them on my mouth.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Well not Graham.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
His desk is stocked with books about poisoning and various bials.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
You know, it's just all sitting right there, not even
trying to hide it. When they go through his bedroom
they find quantities of both antimony and thally, and it's
believed that Graham had primarily been using antimony to poison
the whole family, but that his stepmother Molly had developed
a tolerance while because he had given it to her
over months, like slowly poisoning them, and the antilony likely

(27:15):
weakened her bones so much that the prolapse of the
backbone after the bus accident did actually happen, but it
was because the poison was breaking down her bone.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Oh my god, so wow crazy.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, So she wasn't like mistiagnosed and like how do
they not see she was poisoned?

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Maybe that's true too.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
But the chain of connection whatever that I'm trying to
say is.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
But the little red string on the corkboard.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
In the TV show Home, Like it's all coming back
around to like, oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, yeah, Later, it's believed that he had administered a
large dose of thallium to her the night before she died.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Such an excruciating fucking death.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Also, it's just that idea of like sitting there and
unknowingly building up a tolerance to something that is kind
of lightly killing you the entire time.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, it's so the Princess Bride, it is.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
It's also very very symbolic of all of our lives, truly.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
So. Grandma's arrested in May of nineteen sixty two and
confesses to poisoning Christopher as well as his father and sister.
He's not charged with Molly's murder, a stepmom's murder, because
there's no physical evidence to charge him with because they
cremated her. A judge recommends that he'd be sent to
Broadmoor Hospital for at least fifteen years, So at age fourteen,

(28:32):
he becomes the youngest person sent there since eighteen eighty five.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Wow, that's a special place.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Just out of junior High. He gets sent to Broadmore for.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
The little more than the amount of time he's been
on this earth. He gets sent there, and Broadmore, as
we know, is like not messing around.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
It's not a pleasant place to be.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
No, so he goes to Broadmoor, and shortly after he arrives,
a fellow inmate dies of cyanide poisoning.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Oh what a coincidence.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Just right when he gets there. He's able to Yeah,
fourteen year olds.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
It's treated like a huge mystery, even though Graham boasts
about having committed the poisoning immediately after it happens, like,
no one takes this kid seriously.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
I mean he's there for God's sake. Yeah, I'm not
a visitor.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
No.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
He says that John had annoyed him and that he
had made the cyanide by distilling laurel leaves which grew
on the broadwar grounds. So he just made his own
yeah poison. Uh he's very smart. Yeah, he's very smart.
I mean that's an industrious But he's a murderer. Yeah, yes.
And the staff of broad mar totally believe that he
did this, but for some reason, no higher ups take

(29:36):
any action, and the patient's staff is ruled a suicide.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Moving on, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
And people keep getting sick at Broadmoor while Graham is there.
On one occasion, patients and staff start feeling ill while
they're drinking tea, which you know they do so much,
they really love it. Yeah, and then a patient discovers
an empty box of sugar soap near the communal tea
urn in the dining hall. Sugar soap is a a
brace of compound used for cleaning walls. I think it's

(30:02):
like the powder soap that you get maybe, oh yeah, yeah.
The incident's never directly linked to Graham. It's dismissed as
a prank, but it could have resulted in mass poisoning
if more people had drank large quantities of the tea.
And it's so interesting that he left the box behind,
almost like he's so smart. That couldn't have been an accident.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
You did it on purpose, absolutely, because I mean, and
I feel like we've seen this a little bit before,
where it's like the longer they don't get caught, the
more outrageous everything gets, the more they are. I mean,
it feels similar to that sociopathic kind of I'm the smarter,
psychopathic whatever the correct term would be, that I'm the
smartest person. Everybody is just a fool, and I can

(30:43):
manipulate all these things where it's like, now he is daring, Yeah,
he wants to know if he really is the smartest
person in the world.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Definitely, But it doesn't matter because Graham is released from
broadmar in February of nineteen seventy one, when he's twenty
three years old, after only serving nine years of his
fifteen year sentence. Graham had openly told hospital staff that
he plans on killing one person for every year of
his time at Broadmoor. It's noted in his file, But

(31:09):
I guess, like towards the end of his sentence, he
starts acting well and they're like, guess he was joking.
Everything's fine, now let him go. I mean, that's all
it took. Good behavior.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's like he's telling them yea, hear it and see it. Yeah,
And they say, no, he's.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Still just a kid, like you gotta teach your children
a while or something.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Also, there's a piece of it that is like he
was not seen or heard he was abused. Yeah, and
then it just is continuing like no matter what he does, Yeah,
he's kind of invisible. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
After his release, Graham has put into a drug training
program where he's trained to work as a storekeeper managing inventory.
And under this program, some of the administrators in the
training center are made aware he had been recently released
from Broadmore so they are letting those people know. But
it seems like no one knows why he was there.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Kind of the most important, definitely of that information.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
But hey, it's not flu season and everyone's getting sick. Yeah,
here's what she gotta do.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Check your sugar.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yeah. During this time, a fellow student at the training
center becomes sick. According to some articles, he had been
a sailor and had never been seriously ill in his
twenty one years of life.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Graham's roommate he.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Was connected to him being a sailor.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
No, just that he got sick, which has never happened.
Oh okay, no, no, yeah, yeah, got and that's why
he was there.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
You're like, he's a sailor, so he never got sick.
I'm like, what is it? Is it the wind that
big sales?

Speaker 3 (32:35):
They're not intertwined. They just happen to both be true.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I see. And then also Graham's roommate in the hostel
he lives and also falls ill. Both men ultimately recover,
and Graham finishes the program moves away.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Nobody gets sick again.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
There, at least no one died there.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Well, this brings us to April of nineteen seventy one,
when Graham gets a job through this training program at
the John Hadland company where we started the story. His
immediate supervisor, as I said, Bobby Eagle, dies within two
months of Graham starting at the company. Nobody gave anyone
a heads up there, and since no one at John
Hadland had any idea about Graham's past, and no one

(33:12):
seemed to be keeping any kind of tabs on him.
After his release, nothing is done. Graham is promoted to
Bob's position as head of the storeroom after Bob dies.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Huh, Yeah, he wasn't trying to get that.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah. No, I don't think he cared. I don't think
storeroom was his passion.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
No, he was killing through poisons, Yeah, was his passion.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
By September of nineteen seventy one, John Hadlind is having
major issues with staffing because so many people are getting
sick with various ailments. Most of them's stomach related, but
there are also complaints of hair loss and headaches. Remember
that one office like many years back when they had
to evacuate the building because they opened the fridge and
food had been in there so long that it was

(33:55):
like a toxic mold that got in the air and
everyone started getting sick and have a like has mat
the place?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
No way, I don't remember that because incredible office.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Bridges are so disgusting.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
There are definitely half burritos in our refrigerator that I
am responsible.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
For that probably could kill people.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
But Brian, our office manager, goes in and throws it.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Away because we don't need that liability.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
I actually caught Brian sniffing the milk when I ran
out of the meeting really quick to go get a spoon,
and he was just standing there like this, and I'm like,
thank you very much, Oh, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Oh no, you guys believe passed by dates. They're there
for a reason.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, and also have somebody with their eyes on it matters,
Thank god, Thank god for Brian.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
So other people.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Complain of hallucinations, which probably weren't fun, like on drugs. Yeah,
when you don't have a reason for hallucinations, they suck.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
You don't know what's coming and suddenly are just kind
of like the carpet is snakes.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
So they look like an orange piel.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Come on, yeah, you're not out on a hill somewhere,
enjoying yourself. You're in an office.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, it sucks when you're sober, let alone.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Fuck, let alone hallucinating against your will.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
So people wonder if there could be an issue with
water contamination or radiation, but no one has pinpointed the cause.
But at this point, another employee, a sixty year old
man named Fred Biggs, is admitted to the hospital with
similar symptoms to Bob Eagle who had passed away. So
stomach issues that devolve into paralysis, and Fred passes away
two months later in November. Wow, that's too dead of

(35:26):
the company and many sick. So after Fred's death, a
company doctor meets with all the employees to reassure them that, like,
everything's fine, even though we don't know what it is.
Are you okay?

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (35:37):
So I'm here having a job sucks so much anyway,
just thinking of any like office job I've ever had,
or it's always the gap, but that idea, we were
just kind of like, this isn't my dream. I'm trying
to make a buck. I just want to get home
die over it, and I'm just going to drink the
wrong cup of tea because no one can communicate.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
That's how I fell after nine to eleven, when it
was like, I'm going to go to my high rise
building that I hate and I might die in it.
Like for fucking minimum wage. Yeah it doesn't I should
just stay home for zero wage.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
For several years, I thought you were gonna say.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Okay. So Fred passes away.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Okay, So the doctor comes to me with everyone and
tell them that everything's fine, even though clearly everything is
not fine. And at the meeting, Graham can't help himself.
He stands up and starts asking lots of questions, which
everyone hates the guy who asks questions the meetings like
shut up, come heath us over with. Graham asked if
the doctors have considered the possibility that both Fred and
Bob were poisoned by thallium.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
So he's just like.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
He wants to or he wants credit, almost not like
he wants to stop.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
He wants to credit.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yes, the company did keep thallium on hand since it's
used in photography, but Graham was actually getting his thallium
from outside sources. So when pathologists examined Fred, they realized
that he has indeed been poisoned with thallium and the
doctor and the company president called the police great, like, Hey,
this guy who kept raising his hand in this meeting
is super suspicious. The police search Graham's room and find

(37:05):
not only large quantities of poisons, but also a detailed diary.
In it, Graham writes about poisoning Fred and Bob's cups
of tea and documents the men's responses to the poison
like he's doing a science experiment. Yeah, he writes about Fred, saying, quote,
November tenth, f must have a phenomenal tolerance to the compound,
for he is still obstinately alive. If he survives a

(37:27):
third week, he will live. This would be inconvenient end quote.
So just sociopath, could we agree?

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Sociopath or psychopathia?

Speaker 3 (37:36):
This is our unprofessional opinion.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Unprofessional opinion up to the Broad Moore doctors to actually.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Diagnose, and they didn't.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
It sounds like investigators believe that Graham would poison cups
of tea from the company tea trolley and then he'd
bring them to Bob.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
And Fred, so personally deliver them.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Got to keep an eye on your drink, you guys,
what a time, Yeah, I mean tea trolley's Can you.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Imagine, does someone bringing you a nice hot drink every
thirty minutes?

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Can we get that?

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yere?

Speaker 1 (38:04):
I think we could. Okay, So Graham's arrested and is
tried a year later in Jude of nineteen seventy two.
It's found guilty on two counts of murder, two counts
of attempted murder, and two counts of administering poison. Over
the year between the arrest and the trial, the details
of every single glaring red flag in Graham's life is
reported on and it's a big sensation. He's nicknamed the

(38:26):
teacup Killer, which he actually hates the nickname because he
thinks it lacks gravitas, which is like, you don't get
to pick your nickname.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
You are a murderer. You don't get to like it
or not like.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
It, whether you're murderer or whether you're in seventh grade,
you don't get to pick your on Every name in
this world's backs of life doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
In the wake of the trial, the UK's Home Secretary
calls for a complete review for the process of releasing
patients with violent histories. So thanks fucking God for that.
And the end result of this is an establishment called
the Advisory Board for Restricted Patients. So something does come
out of it, though, which isn't really much comfort to
the people whose family members were killed. Yeah, but something does.

(39:06):
Graham has found guilty and sentenced to life at Parkhurst
Prison on Isle of Wight. There, Graham's only friend is
another prisoner named Ian Brady of the Moors murderers.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right, so that's who your friend is.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
That's the kind of common and they probably both zapped
each other when they saw each other with that same
psychopathic Hey what's up?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Definitely. I actually covered that the Moore's murders in twenty
seventeen in episode sixty two.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Trust issues and skate issues. Who knows what that meant?

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Trust issues and skate issues.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
So Graham dies of heart failure in nineteen ninety at
the age of forty two, although some people believe that
he was actually poisoned or poisoned himself in the end,
because this forty.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Two is pretty young.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, and that's the story of the teacup murderer.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
And that's all there is.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
That is all you're going to say about it. That
was amazing, Yeah, I mean it's so old timey feeling,
but it's not just this kind of like somebody that's
just berserking with poisoning, nothing happening.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
No repercussions at all. I killed his stepmom.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, well, great job, thank you. Frustrating, yes, but amazing. Yes,
this is similar, but in a totally different area. Okay,
the story I'm going to tell you, I think when
I thought of it, it was over the holidays, because

(40:36):
you know my dad, he basically watches football and golf
and the news and the weather. And then like just
if you had to make me pick one of those,
I couldn't pick one right now.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
If I had to watch one of those.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Fourth football, golf, news, weather, weather, Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah,
because then you can like talk about their outfits.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
And I mean, I'm into weather if it's extreme weather, especially.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Nothing I love more than a person that's going like
this to a big map, but actually in their real world,
it's just a big green piece of paper. They just
have to pretend and look at the monitor. Professionals, they
know exactly which direction to move their hand.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Even though it's the opposite of fascinating.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Okay, So anyway, that was off topic, go.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Props with other people, and also then anything on PBS,
which we've already talked about, so he'll just watch any
old documentary. But when he calls me to say, hey,
did you ever see this movie The Woman in Gold?
And I was just like, no, tell me all about
what we're talking about, And then he's talks about it
like this is the greatest film that was ever made.
Because he will not like pay for any extra apps

(41:37):
or anything, so he's truly trying to catch real time
movies on regular TV. I forgot what that was like, right,
So it really is actually like when you do stumble
upon a good.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Movie you're about to start and you're like, I'm in here.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
We go and it's historical nonfiction, like bring it on, Okay,
I've never heard of it. So I'm pretty sure that's
how we got to this point of me telling you
this story right now, because it is a really good movie.
So it's late nineteen nineties in Vienna, Austria, and the
Austrian Gallery in the Belvidere Palace is where countless works

(42:10):
from the country's most celebrated artists are put on display,
and one of the visitors at that museum today is
a woman named Maria Altman. She's in our early eighties,
and she lives in Los Angeles. But she is originally
from Austria, but because she's Jewish, she and her family
had to flee Austria and Europe during World War Two.

(42:33):
So today's a bit of a homecoming for her, but
a complicated one. She's not here for a leisurely stroll
through this museum. She moves through the building the very
determined and focused gait until she comes to a very
specific painting and then she stops. And this painting is
the portrait of Adele Blockbauer one and one of the

(42:55):
most famous paintings by the painter Gustav Klimt. You might
know so Climped from his painting The Kiss, which is
really gold and then the guy over the girl. But
this portrait the Adele once is also very famous.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, looks like it's made out of mosaics like tiles.
It's just the gold and beautiful, so gorgeous. A woman
in a beautiful gown.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, an amazing piece of art.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Climped truly is one of my favorite artists. Like The Kiss,
the Adele one has ornate and dreamy look, portraying a
woman in a textured and vibrant sea of gold, her
face calm, her dark hair pinned up, and her hands
gently clasped at her chest. This is considered to be
an Art Nouveaux masterpiece, but for Maria Altman it is

(43:40):
much much more valuable. The beautiful woman in the painting
Adele is Maria's aunt, and this painting was commissioned by
her uncle Ferdinand. For years it was proudly displayed in
their family home in Vienna until it was stolen by
the Nazis in the thirties.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
WHOA.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
So when World War II ended, the painting somehow wound
up in this museum, and not only did it become
the Austrian government's property, but it was one of their
most prized pieces of art. And that's why Maria is
here today. This is the story of Maria Altman and
the hard fought battle to reclaim her aunt's portrait.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
So the main.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Sources are two thousand and six episode of PBS's Life
in Times, which there's no way my dad did not
see it aired on Kseet which is the La PBS station.
A twenty sixteen BBC article by Kimberly Bradley called the
Mysterious muse of Gustav Klimt and archival articles from the
New York Times, in the Los Angeles Times and the

(44:39):
West Did. The sources are in our show notes. So
first we'll talk about Maria Altman's family. So in the
early nineteen hundreds, the Bloch Bauer family is one of
the wealthiest and most culturally connected Jewish families in Austria.
Maria's uncle, Ferdinand Block, is a sugar baron and his
wife Adel Bauer, is the daughter of a banker and
a railway executive.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
So as a sign of how influential both families are,
when Ferdinand and Adel Mary, they hyphenate their last names,
which is very uncommon for the time. Yeah, okay, so
the block Bowers are like, it's the block Bowers, motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
I'll say that it was on thereation, so thank you.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Notes, just that it's not the Blowers. They're called their
family crest.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
When you write a letter and it's your their stationary, yeah,
their letter head, it's letters looking for it. So the
couple are enthusiastic patrons of the arts. They're known for
hosting salon nights in their gorgeous Vienna mansion. Just just once,
can I see it?

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Just the electric lighting, you know, making the place glow.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
It was so beautiful, And they have art pieces like
that just sitting around, gigantic, gorgeous, beautiful.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Modern canopies alone.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
So at these salon Knights, artists, musicians, intellectuals all come
together for basically a big dinner party and amazing conversation
and like to perform for each other to there's you know,
it's like artist intellectual night. The artist Gustav Klint is
one of the people in this group, so in nineteen
oh seven he is commissioned by Ferdinand to paint two

(46:19):
portraits of twenty two year old Adele. Both pieces are beautiful,
of course, but Adele One becomes the crown jewel of
this family's vast art collection, which is said to be
one of the most extensive in all of Europe. So
about nine years later, in nineteen sixteen, Maria Altman is born.
When she and her family visit her aunt Adele and

(46:40):
uncle Ferdinand, which is often the Adele One painting is
essentially like the backdrop of all of her family gathering memories.
In nineteen twenty five, Adele passes away at the age
of forty three, from meningitis. No, yeah, of course, Ferdinand's devastated,
and he moves her two portraits into his bedroom based
creating a shrine to her, very sad and the other portrait,

(47:04):
which I love just as much, is just a totally
different vibe. Is that one?

Speaker 3 (47:09):
So gorgeous rich tapestry, but it's like.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
The turn it little after the turn of the century
is so like advanced gorgeous cool. Anyway, So thirteen years later,
in nineteen thirty eight, Hitler moves into and takes over Austria,
and at this time Maria's in her early twenties. She
is newly married to a young opera singer named Fritz Altman.
So Fritz Altman is taken hostage by the Gestapo and

(47:35):
he's held until the family assets are transferred to the
Nazi Party. When he's released, the couple is placed under
house arrest. Luckily, Maria and her family are able to
get out of Austria at this time, including Maria's uncle Ferdinand.
So that was the thing, is like, of course, if
you had money and you had any kind of connections

(47:56):
and that started started up and you could see the
signs got out.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, for a short period there was a way to
get out if you had the means. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, But having the means also means they have to
leave everything behind. So all that art, that entire mansion,
everything that was in the mansion, jewelry, I mean, they
just had to leave with what they could carry. Yeah,
So all of it is plundered by the Nazis, including
invaluable sentimental items like a cello belonging to Maria's father,

(48:25):
Gustav that had been played by countless musician friends at
those salons. Maria says, quote, when the Nazis came and
picked up the cello, it was like the thread of
life was cut. My father died two weeks after that.
It was absolutely a broken heart. He died of a
broken heart.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
So also Adele is actually wearing in the painting Adele One,
she is wearing a diamond necklace an earring set that
they actually had at the house, and that's also stolen
along with everything else. Ferdinand gifted that set to Maria
as a wedding present, but during the war it winds
up in the hands of Hitler's second in command, Herman Goring,

(49:04):
who gives it to his wife. Ferdinand sugar refinery and
his home, the mansion, are also seized and all the
artwork inside it, and the Nazi known as the principal
architect of the Final Solution, Reinhard Heydrich, moves into their home.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Did you see Zone of Interest? I watched that with
my dad. It was just that when she gets the
bag full of fur coats, Yeah, and there's just stuff
in the pockets. It's just like so quietly haunting that movie.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
What about the scene where the mother in law is
up in her room because the fires from the concentration
camp ovens are lighting up her room and she's just
standing at the winter.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
That was gone the next day.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
Yes, it was like one of the scariest and it's
so like just there's no sound except for like the
distant It's Yeah. I think that movie also won for
sound design because of all of that.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
That was such a huge.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Part of the Zone of Interest, you guys, makes you
watch it to see it on.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
This well, yes today, especially in these days especially, but
also because that thing of like there's a wall and
we have we can pretend over here and nothing's happening
over there, right, good point, So essentially everyone knows that
this is what the Nazis did during World War Two,
then they lost important to remember that, and then of
course what happens after the war. The chronology is very unclear,

(50:26):
so it's hard to track what happened to the Blockbauer
family's art collection. The BBC describes it as a quote
ownership limbo. What we know is that a handful of
their paintings, including climps to portraits of Adele, are shuffled
between different Austrian institutions. They ultimately land at the Austrian
Gallery in Vienna. So meanwhile, the Blockbauer family has split up,

(50:47):
of course, because they all had to emigrate. So Ferdinand
winds up in Switzerland. He passes away just a few
years later in near poverty because of course they took
everything away from him. Maria and arrive in the United
States in nineteen forty. They actually had to escape and
kind of bounced around Europe a little bit. Finally got
to America in nineteen forty. They settle in Los Angeles

(51:11):
and basically rebuild their lives from scratch. In Los Angeles,
Fritz gets a manufacturing job with Lockheed, while Maria starts
selling luxury Kashmir goods made by her brother in law,
Bernard Altman. So Bernard Altman fled to Austria and relaunched
his small business selling Kashmir goods in New York City after,

(51:32):
of course, the one that he had in Austria was
taken over by the Nazis. So at this time, Kashmir
is like a novelty in the United States and the
average person doesn't know anything about it basically. But as
Maria shops the clothing around the department stores and boutiques
in southern California, the Kashmir business takes off.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Before long, Fritz gets to leave Lockheed and they're able
to open their own shop in Beverly Hills.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
My god.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
So Maren makes a personal note to me, which I
love because her personal notes are always as interesting as
anything else in the story. She said, you can still
buy Bernard Altman's vintage Kashmir pieces on places like Etsy
and eBay, so you can something to look up and
just see. But so interesting to me because kashmirw like
my mom was obsessed with Kashmir sweaters, and.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Like she would that was a big gift she would give.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
You in your certain birthdays. I love them. But it
was because Kashmir in the fifties meant you were like
you had money and it was very like your Kashmir
sweater is a beautiful look.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
It's weird to me.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
That that time period in like a maybe one mile
radius is where my family is living their lives. Yes,
at that very moment, absolutely in La Yeah, they probably
went to my grandfather's butcher shop and bought their meat
from him, right, absolutely, yes, so crazy.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
And the children of the future will be able to
like hear this conversation then be like you like press
your button in your head and be like, now you
can play the movie.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Of that happen, go back to that day.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Wouldn't that be amazing?

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yeah, if it's okay, it is not gonna be okay whatever, whatever,
it's all bad.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
Yeah, trying to put a nice spin on future VI.
And I'm like, m no, then you have to live
in that movie because you're actually in prison. Sorry to negative, take.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
It out, No, too negative. In the middle of a
Nazi story, I leave it.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
We've lost all perspectives. So for a couple that's been
through living hell and lost nearly everything in the war,
Rihan Fritz are now living the American dream and earning
the American dream, they become US citizens, They are successful
business owners, and over the next several years they welcome
four children together. Their lives are safe, they're stable and

(53:49):
even joyful, which is a beautiful thing after them having
to go through something that horrible. So over the years,
the Altman's as a family try to get the block
Bowers art collection back. They actually succeed with some pieces,
but they don't have much recourse when it comes to
the higher profile works, including five climped paintings, Adele's two

(54:10):
portraits and then three landscapes and then also some of
climpt drawings.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
And that's because the Austrian government is adamant that Adele
wanted those portraits and pieces to stay in Vienna. They
seem to have the documents that back this up, including
a note Adele wrote before the Nazis plundered everything in
her home that it essentially said, I asked my husband
to leave my two portraits and the four landscapes of
Gustav Klimpse to the Austrian Gallery in Vienna. So, believing

(54:39):
that they have no leverage, Maria and her family basically
give up on recovering those climped paintings, and that's that.
Maria says, quote, I'd never even thought of taking the
paintings away. I was under the impression that they were theirs.
So decades later, in nineteen ninety four, Maria's husband Fritz
passes away at the age of eighty, of course, devastating

(55:02):
for her and her family. And then in nineteen ninety
eight her world is upended again, but this time it's
thanks to the work of a prominent Austrian investigative journalist,
who Bert to Schernin. So Schernin is an internationally acclaimed reporter,
and some of his renown is because he revealed former
Secretary General of the UN and President of Austria, Kurt Vaaldheim,

(55:26):
was in fact involved in Nazi affiliated.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Groups during World War Two. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
So now Shernin is making headlines because he's investigating how
the Austrian government is handling artwork that was looted by
the Nazis. So up until this point, Austria has been
quietly returning some of the stolen artwork to its rightful owners,
but Shernin exposes it as a coercive process that leaves
the government with the exact art they want to keep,

(55:54):
so Austria might, for example, give back certain artwork on
the condition that a family signs away the rights to
a more high profile piece. Chernine's reporting helps lead to
the passage of an Austrian law called the nineteen ninety
eight Art Restitution Act, which tosses out any course of
agreements the government previously used to hold on too looted art.

(56:14):
This law also mandates that the government opens its archives
to the public for the first time. And who's the
first person in them archives once they open them? It's
chernine and he digs through and finds that Austrian officials
withheld the fact that Maria's uncle, Ferdinand, who outlived his
wife Adele, who wrote that note saying I would like

(56:35):
my husband to keep these things in Vienna. He outlived her,
and he left his own will, which explicitly stipulated that
his entire estate should be divided amongst his nieces and nephews. Wow, Maria,
at eighty two years old, is the only one of
those nieces and nephews still alive when that discovery is made,
So for her and her family, Ferdinand's will makes the

(56:58):
issue crystal clear. His entire estate is legally hers.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Damn my god.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
But Maria is willing to let the Austrian government keep
several pieces of art on one condition, and that's that
she wants them to admit that they were stolen from
her family. Hell yeah, they refuse. Hell no, So Maria
Altman lawyers up. Hell yeah, hell yeah, no, of course,
hell ya, I just wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
The third time.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
If you just keep doing it, she hires a young
attorney named Randall Schoenberg. He's a family friend with deep
ties to Austria's pre war art world. He's also the
grandson of two prominent Austrian composers, so from the start,
Maria's case feels very personal for Randall. He tells reporters, quote,
I remember the first time I went to Vienna when

(57:46):
I was eleven years old and saw Klempsed gold portrait
in the Austrian Gallery. My mom pointed it out and said,
you know, Maria Altman, your grandmother's friend, that's her aunt
adel Holy shit, And being able to do that in
a museum, No, that's just beyond someday.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
That Mona Lisa, that your best friend.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
That's Marty's cousin, Dan's son's boys. In nineteen ninety nine,
Randall files a claim on behalf of Maria, who is
now eighty three years old, in an Austrian court. That
same year, they successfully recover more than a dozen climped
drawings and nearly twenty sets of porcelain from the estate,
but they do not get the six climps the big paintings,

(58:27):
but they don't give up. The next year they file
a new claim, this time in California, which is a
strategic move because in Austria, legal fees are tied to
the value of the property that's being litigated, and these
paintings are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. So
taking the case to US courts avoids this huge financial roadblock,
and it also forces Austria to defend itself on foreign ground. Yeah,

(58:50):
where they're like not as lenient to themselves.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Expectedly, the Austrian government fights back. They try to get
the lawsuit tossed. They argue that American court have no
jurisdiction here and that these climped paintings, which are now
considered to be Austrian national treasures, should stay in Vienna.
But Randall counters that Under international law, US citizens like
Maria have the right to sue a foreign government for

(59:15):
property stolen during war. A US court agrees, and the
case is allowed to proceed in California, even as Austria
continues filing appeals.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Damn, and I love that.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Too, because it's like the reason she is now a
citizen of America is because why because what happened in your.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Country couldn't stay there. She would have been murdered.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
So along with all of the other Jews that had
to escape, this.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Area doesn't compute. Yes, but members aren't memory.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
You don't get to say sorry. That doesn't count over
here where it's like it has to count. So in
two thousand and one, eighty five year old Maria tells
the Los Angeles Times quote, they will delay, delay, delay,
hoping I will die, but I will do them the
pleasure of staying alive.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Because MI, who's like the same, they're like the same,
live to be one hundred and five, and that means
a one hundred and four. That means that she had
twenty more years to enjoy this painting of her aunt.
She fucking survived, which these Jewish women live for fucking ever. Yes,
they do so, you know why, because they have a
period of starvation when they're young. Although she didn't though,
but her hereditarily. It could be her great grandmother that

(01:00:22):
had a period of starvation and she'll still live longer.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
She's from a culture of people who have been hunted. Yeah,
they have to live. They have to be strong. There's
no crying in that kind of baseball. You don't get
to be soft. You're just forced to be strong, work hard,
make do, make do. That's the story of American immigrants.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
My grandma used to say, make do so much. Okay, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Was talking about my grandmother also. I mean, like that's
what we can all do. That's what everybody can talk
about in their grandparents and great grandparents.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
So some people, some people, I.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Will do them the pleasure of staying alive, the ultimate threat. Yeah.
So the case drags on until it finds its way
to the US Supreme Court. In two thousand and four,
It's justices rule in Maria's favor and they state that
she has the right to pursue her claim in American courts.
So by now Maria and Randall have spent five years
fighting the Austrian government. Randall has left a comfied law

(01:01:23):
firm job to focus everything on this case, which since
the get go many have considered to be a long shot.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
At best.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
It's a legacy case though it's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Like personal yeap. So because of that, the two stay focused,
Adele and Randall, and Randall ultimately builds his argument around
Adele's own words, because remember in her will she said,
quote I ask my husband leave my two portraits and
the landscapes of Gustav Klimpt to the Austrian Gallery in Vienna.
Randal Zero's in on the word ask. He argues that

(01:01:56):
this is simply a request, and since Adele didn't actually
own the paintings, Ferdinand did, because he's the man who
commissioned and paid for them, her statement has no legal
binding power.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
My god words they're important.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, well, and also it just Ferdinand's own will is
very clear everything goes to the nieces and nephews, So
this argument is successful. In two thousand and six, seven
years into the battle, a three judge panel rules in
Maria's favor, and just like that, she's granted legal ownership
of those six clemped paintings, including adell one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
So for the first time since the thirties, this artwork
is reunited with a member of the block Bauer family.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
When these clemped paintings finally make their way back to Maria,
she is so overjoyed that she wants to share them
with the city of Los Angeles, so they are put
on display at Lakma.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Do you think that when the Austrian people sent it
over they like kicked it a little and made like
a little hole in it with just to fuck with you?
I think that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
I bet you that they sat around like crying as
they wrapped it up in that paper and then in
a crate and then in a bunch of other stuff.
Because it's a masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
It's a masterpiece.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
So Lacma.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Wow, it's at Lachma, and it's in two thousand and six,
so probably went. I think that they said, she immediately
shared it with the city. Yeah, did you go?

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
I did?

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
We's not God, damn it. I could have seen it
in person.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
I was twenty six. I was fucking busy going to
bars and dude, trying to live my fucking life and
not work in a high rise.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
I was working in daily television, and I forgot what
actual art looked and felt like. Here's her quote from
when she talked to reporters about that taking them to LACMA.
She says, now, my hometown is Los Angeles, and these paintings,
thanks to the museum, followed me to my present hometown.
It's just wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
My god, I have chills.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
I think I'm gonna look up what that maybe was
like in two thousand and six, like people, what that
opening was like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
Oh my god, I'm sure it was epic.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
So owning these paintings is a huge job. Maria simply
can't afford the exorbitant costs of storing them and ensuring them.
So in two thousand and six, the same year she
gets them, she sells them at auction. The three climped
landscapes sell for tens of millions of dollars each.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
And then the second Adele commissioned portraits, this this one
that has less gold in it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
It's just as beautiful, though, it sells.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
For eighty seven point nine million dollars, which in today's money.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
So two thousand and six, he said that was two
thousand and six eighty seven million, one thirty three one
seventy seven. Shit. Yeah, And guess who bought it? Her
grandkids were stoked that day. Absolutely who bought it? Oprah Winfrey?

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
No way, Yeah, Wow, she's got climped money.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
She's the only person who has klell at the time,
she was the only clep money for that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
In twenty sixteen, Oprah sold it to an undisclosed buyer
for a reported one hundred fifty million dollars, which is
nearly two hundred million dollars in today's my mind. So
we're still talking about the other one. So the same year,
adel One, which is the most coveted artwork of the
collection and the masterpiece considered to be a masterpiece, It's

(01:05:16):
sold to Ronald Lotterer, one of the heirs to the
estate Lotter cosmetics fortune. He also happens to run the
Noia Gallery in New York City, which houses Austrian fine art.
He buys the painting for a whopping one hundred and
thirty five million dollars, which sets a record at the
time and is worth about how much today to fifty

(01:05:40):
to fifteen. Got it that you're going to do? I
think that would have been our first on the Noser totally.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
I wasn't that wasn't. I wasn't gonna it happens.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Listen, I understand it's all guessing, and mine are never
even closed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
It's impossible.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
So he and Maria make an agreement that this painting
will permanently be on display at the Noya Gallery, and
to this day you can go New York City to
Noya Gallery and see it there. Let's go, yeah, right,
I want to. Maria has said, quote, I am just
happy it has a home at the Noya Gallery. It
is very deserved. I couldn't have wished for a better place.

(01:06:18):
So before Robert Lauder purchased the adele One, the highest
amount ever paid for a piece of art was a
Picasso painting called Boy with a Pipe and that was
in two thousand and four, and someone bought that for
one hundred and four point one million dollars. Wow, so
very kind of telling and amazing that it's like. And

(01:06:39):
then this painting comes along and just kind of blows
Pocassa's doors.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Off totally because it's got this interesting and rich history too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
And it's also just so gorgeous and gold in gold.
So in twenty eleven, Maria passes away after a long
illness at the age of ninety four.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Yeah, But her story continues to inspire, and in twenty fifteen,
it's memorialized in the film Woman in Gold, starring Helen
Mirren as Maria and Ryan Reynolds's Randall No Way. It
is a great movie.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
I've never heard of it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
I watched it on a plane one time, and I
was like, it was as if I wasn't traveling perfect
like you're learning your love.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Like they go from past to present and all the
things are happening. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
I love that kind of movie.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
And also Helen Miran playing Maria, you get this sense
of Maria as this kind of no nonsense, like I
just want what's right to happen for once.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Yeah, it's great. It's like proving a point.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
So in total, for all five of the clemped paintings
that she was able to recover, she and her family
met three hundred and twenty seven million dollars at auction. Jesus,
that's worth more than five hundred and eighteen million dollars today.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
That family was obviously bankrupt during World War Two. Ferdinand
died with nothing. These were his yeah, just like stolen
out of his hands. By Nazis, and this is the
value where it's like, you wouldn't let something of value
like that just sit somewhere or.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
No, especially not by the people who persecuted me. Yes,
especially especially. I can't bully someone and then not expect
them to come for you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
That's right to come right back. But it really wasn't
about the money for Maria, as she told MPR, because
they had money. Yeah, they set themselves right back up
and were like, we made alive for ourselves. As she
told MPR quote, it was strictly a matter of justice.
And that's the story of Maria Altman's fight to reclaim
the painting of her aunt, the Adele Blockbauer. One.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Wow, that was so good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Good one, right, such.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
A good one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Go watch the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Okay, love Helen Mirren and all of her insane talent.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Amazing. Yeah, would you say Ryan Reynolds.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
Ryan Reynolds, he's great, Okay, he is. He's very like,
it's very real, and he's obviously like he wants to
get a Nazi done.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Oh he's the lawyer. Okay, Okay, that makes me sense. Okay, God,
I'm like, here's the play a Jew or a Nazi? Right,
because that doesn't because I can't and I won't.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
I think he's supposed to be Jewish. He might be
supposed to be Jewish.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Good job, do you should we do a couple of
fucking her rays so we don't end on Nazis.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Do you have one that you want to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Live your own?

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Is there a fucking hurry in your life right now?

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Yeah? There is, Well, there's plenty, but I think the
nicest one is I got to hang out with my
niece this past weekend. It's just such a delight the
idea that she turned out to be the kind of
person that I love hanging out with totally, which I
know not everybody gets to have that or say that, like,
it's just a joy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
I'm so proud of her.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
She's such a good person and she's so goddamn hilarious,
Like it's just great. It's such a nice feeling. I
guess everybody feels that way about there. She's very special.
Laura is very special.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
She really is. Yeah, there's no like, oh it's because
she's your niece.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
No, she's a gem.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
It's the kind of thing where we go to Sephora
and I'm like, you can have anything I have, whisper
it to her, like you can get anything you want
because my sister's like stop it or whatever. And then
she literally will come with like three things where I'm like,
are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah, like I would have been like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Every time, and she's just yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
She's the values. Yeah, she's a good person.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
She's like, job Laura, good job Laura.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Yeah. I guess mine has something to do with my
sister too. We got some tiling done in the backyard
and I just noticed, like a couple weeks ago that
one tile is upside down and it's been driving me
fucking crazy since then. And I pointed out to my
sister when she was over, and she goes, what if
it's a portal to another universe? And it made me
so happy. I was like, that's so true and that's

(01:10:40):
how we think. And I love that you pointed it
out to me. I will never change it. Like just
that way of thinking made me so happy, and it's
just yeah, yeah, I appreciate that she did that for me,
because now I'm I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
There's nothing like sister perspective, yeah, because they really older
sisters kind of set your world for you in an
irritating way when you're growing up, but they really do
have the power to kind of come in and just
be like, actually, that's not a problem and you're fine.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Right, And it's something that is weird and definitely like
comes from reading a lot of books and something I
would say myself, and to the fact that my sister
said it, I was like, oh, yeah, we're we're the same.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Yeah, she knew how to solve the problem for you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
For me specifically, because a lot of people would like,
what a fucking talking about? Yeah, like, yeah, that actually
could be a portal to another universe.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Yeah, just like a different way to look at things
that's more fun for you. Yeah, instead of everything has
to be a certain way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Right, something's wrong and bad. Okay, let's Seeah, you want
to read one. Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
The subject line of this is in an email says
fucking hooray for our own happiness, and then it says Aunties,
I've taken control of my mental health and decided to
take a solo trip to London this summer. I'll be
starting the trip off strong with a Jack the Ripper
walking tour and ending it with a visit to the
Tower of London, which is where Anne b was beheaded.
I'll be thinking about Karen the entire time because I

(01:11:55):
know she loves thse good European Victorian times. That's very true.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Shout out to my therapist Robin, who has taught me
to value myself and quote just fucking.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Yay. Yeah, so fucking hoorray for finding a small glimmer
of fun in the shitty world. SSDGM Ashley Yay, Ashley
Glimmers love it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
This one's from YouTube comment my fucking hoorray. I had
to write a strongly worded work email about a conflict.
I used the word tantamount to sound extra smart. My
bestie coworker collecked it and asked me where I heard
that word, and I proudly announced that my murder anties
taught it to me because it was in a murderer's
note to police see Freeway Phantom Rewind episode nineteen. Thanks

(01:12:38):
for keeping me sounding intelligent when telling someone off professionally,
stay bad, ask my ladies. And that's from Carly Princel
one eight oh one. Thanks Carly, Yeah, good job, tantamount.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Your report was tantamount to a pile of shit. What
if that's what the email was.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Let's I'll try to use that this week in a
sentence that where it fits. Just throw it on it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
In their tantamount, these mozzarella sticks are tantamount to a
block of a brick?

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
Did I use that right?

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
I was going to say, like an early Christmas you
were doing it in the in the nag.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
Yes, this is tantamount to them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
You don't like mozzarella sticks?

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
No, no, no, I'm just saying the ones you ordered are.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Bad because I have to do with this podcast now, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
Talking about a bad order of monzarella sticks.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
I see.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Usually that's impossible because it was like a complaint.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
I see, tantamount to it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think he used the
wrong So okay, you want to do one more? Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
This one is also an email, and it says my
fucking horays that after twelve years of living in the US,
last week I became a US citizen. Can't wait for
my first Jerry duty. Thanks for thanks for being awesome
love e E welcome. Yeah, good job, I bet you
right now he knows more about the government than.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
Both of us.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Come by Yeah, entirely.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
My last one is from Instagram. It's from Fire signed Sammy.
Fucking I just accepted a job fundraising to the library
as a lifelong bookworm, an English major turned English teacher
turned nonprofit person. This could not be a more perfect
space for me. Huzzah. And then that emoji Stay sexy
and save libraries, y'all. Sam ps. Thank you to Georgia

(01:14:17):
for many years of book recommendations.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
Keep them coming. Yes, I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Yeah, you haven't done one in a little while.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
Yeah, I mean just we've talked about other stuffs.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
I'm always reading multiple I don't know, I don't talk
about them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Okay, Yeah, thanks, great, appreciate.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
You, Sammy, amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Tell us your fucking horays in any way you think
might work.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Also, I was just going to say, real quick, if
you are worried about the library, then it's a good
idea to contact your library where you live and ask
them what they need in terms of donations, in terms
of support, in terms of anything, because our libraries are
under attack and it is completely insane, and that idea
that people are being cut off from what is a

(01:14:57):
community service that everybody should have and that many people
rely on, is insane.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Absolutely So Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Activism around libraries is big and important, and thank you.
If you're already doing it, good job. I think the
only thing left is it's a briefcase challenge.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Oh my god, I forgot already what that two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Shit, all I've been thinking about this entire time. All Right,
you guys are tantamount to the awesomest people in the world.
Thank you guys for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
Stay sexy, and don't get murdered.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):
Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want to cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Our editor is Aristotle Oscevedo.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Our researchers are Maaron McGlashan and Alie Elkin.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
Email your homecounts to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
And now you can watch us on a Exactly Writes
YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Goodbyebye,