487 - As Will Mine Be

This week, Georgia covers Detroit’s drug kingpin White Boy Rick and Karen tells the story of “Queen of Sinking Ships” Violet Jessop.

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

Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite tomato. That's that's Karen Kilgara.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We're not going to do those voices this whole time.
We promised just half, just f This is called the
Havsie's episode.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Where we annoy the ever loving shit out of you.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
To some people, it's as m R. That's true. To
other people, it's please shut the fuck up bright and
my whisper and you scream.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm going to be the super like smash that like
button and then you're going to bring it in with what.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
I imagine you're chewing on glitter.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I don't know what's AMR like for chewing on glitter?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
That is it right there? Do you love the feeling
of chewing on glitter?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
So?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Do?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
I air on my homepage that's gone on. I like
when people on.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I've noticed on TikTok a lot of people and maybe
it's just because things are so stressful these days have
pretty bad dry mouth where like.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
You know what I mean the extra I was listening
to a podcast over the weekend. I'll not say what
it is, don't don't obviously, and he took the wettest
pauses that, oh my god, and I was like this
is the editor's fault, like this should happen, someone should.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Have this a development person's fault. I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Editors are the best people in the world not trying it, Yeah,
and they would have spent hours upon hours of editing
out someone going.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Like that, you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
And also there are some people to come back and say, hey,
you've taken all the humanity out right.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
But I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Someone who is not on so many medications as I
am and so fucking insane would has no one's notice it.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
But it is a wet pause.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
My sister Laurel Kilgarriff would notice it if she listened
to podcasts, but I think that's one of the reasons
she can't because she has miss aphonia.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Would ever version of that, Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Literally just recently referenced talking to Adrian, my sister's friend, Adrian,
and she goes and her chewing doesn't bother you about me,
And I was sitting right in fucking front of them,
and I was like, what, wait is agad?

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Why is no one told Yeah, someone like I'm sure
I do really annoying noises. We all tell me I
don't want to. I am not. Oh my god, I
can't even imagine.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's the kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
She has been complaining about it since I was young,
So I know there's part of me that I do
it on purpose. That's why chew two pieces of gum
at one time. It's what's your most pleasant the least
pleasant for this monster in my life.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, no one sounds good chewing gum, but talking like
a normal thing on an interview and on a podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
I used to always automatically eat it when I would
be doing stand up comedy. And if you would get
nervous and your mouth went dry, if that's the way
you get nervous, which was the way I was, then
you're like lipstick to your teeth.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
People just know you're freaking out.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
I mean that that happens, and that's totally like I
totally understand, and that I'll down some water while I'm
doing any kind of thing like that like this, Like
right now, I have two mugs.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
But we could get more. We could, but there could
always be more.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
There could always be more for that nervous Like your
mouth is very connected to your gut in that way,
right People know, Oh man, we're back on video.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh yeah, it's been so long.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, we took a little video hiatus, which was so lovely.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
I just looked like shit the entire time and enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, this whole thing of having to wash my hair
is a real pain in the ass.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now having to wash your hair is hard for me too.
It's a lot.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
But we're back on video. We're on YouTube. If you
want to watch us here we are.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
We are.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
And because we're on YouTube, I had just a little
fun thing for you because I realized, as you know,
I went up to visit my dad. I was up
in Pedaluma for a little bit, and every time I
go up there, I try to steal something from his
house that I want at my house.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
And if I brought it up directly, he would just
fight with me. I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Oh yeah, but nothing like a clock or something, Valley.
Is it a fuck with him or just because you
want it? No, because it's like something meaningful that I
want that's sitting in a corner with dust all.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Over, got it? Okay? Like yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's the healthiest version of shoplifting from your own parents.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
I've done that. I did that to my grandma. I
get it. Right, Yeah, you're kind of like, you don't
care about this.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
That's my grandfather's old trash can in his office and
you haven't been in that office in fucking decades. So like,
and I still have that trash can and I adore
it and love it.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
You don't outwardly steal because you kind of point to
it as you're walking out the door of like, you
don't care about this, right, say later?

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Right?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
So it was one of those okay, but it is
a thing that was hanging in my parents' kitchen for
literally fifty two years.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
So it a giant fork and spoon because those that's
so fucking seventies.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's very similar. It's a very seventies vibe, okay.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
But it also my discovery and the reason I stole
it is because we were talking, as we do endlessly,
about hot dogs and hot dog summer and hot dog
sisters and all those things, and I put my eyes
up on this thing and saw a new for the
first time, right, because it's a I think they used
to call it like a memory box or something from

(05:08):
the seventies that features my sister and I and it
cut out of an article that was on the front
page of the local newspaper. Laura and I at the
local fairs, being the original hot dog sisters.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Are you ready?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Oh my god, is there a way to move close?

Speaker 1 (05:30):
I see it? All that is glorious?

Speaker 2 (05:32):
She is?

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Do you see this?

Speaker 3 (05:34):
You saw? Those are corn dogs, which makes me love
it even fucking more.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
But look at Karen, Little Karen and an ad knitted.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Poncho chomping on a corn dog the size of her head.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Poncho diaper full focus on that corn dog. Nice barette
that I still wear Barett's in that spot they better.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
But the thing in general, like the piece in general,
I've never seen before anything like that, And it's like
so homie.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I think my mom's friend Priscilla made it for Yeah,
that's so homemade.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
So you stole it.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
I love it, so I stole it back. There's corns
of kernel for some reason. There's dried pasta for some reason.
What are those hazel nuts for some fucking reason. I
think they're like old chickpeas, old chickpeas or and a
piece of wheat tweet.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
And then I think that was a flower that's like
some lavender wildflower, but it's so old that like under
the wildflower. There's just little piles of dust. Yeah, so
that's skin cells. Those are skin cells.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, it's just kitchen shit. That's that's in there. Good,
that's amazing. Let's put it.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
We're gonna put it on the Instagram for sure, so
you can see it.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
And I think the challenge might be Yeah, you know
this was I was jokingly bragging, like I'm the og
hot dogs sister. Yeah, but do you have hot dogs
sister pictures? Whether that means your actual sister, a friend,
any kind of.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Someone eating a hot dog you want, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
So it's like.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
It's like, can you show your love of hot dogs
the way we've been talking about our love of hot.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Dogs, like, prove your love to hot dogs? Maybe I
love it. Okay, let's do it. Let's do hashtag hashtag
my favorite hot.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
And then you can send us a picture of any
hot dog. Did you fall asleep next to a hot dog?
Did you were you harassed by a man in a
hot dog suit? We want any in all stories, we.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Want hot dog content, yes, and then we can post them. Yeah,
we could post our favorites.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
That's right, and it can be as old as nineteen
seventy two if you want.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
If you can beat that, Actually, if you were in
the fucking newspaper, if you.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Were in the fucking Me and Laura and your mom
was eating a fucking hot dog while you were in.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
The womb Peblum affair of your mother's womb, it's all
the same thing, guys.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, and we'ren't my Favorite Murder, so ta I guess
then I love that.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, our podcast is called my Favorite Murder? Did you
know that?

Speaker 3 (07:40):
And that's what we're on on all the places.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
My favorite hot Dog? I love it? Pretty fun?

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Right, so fun because National hot Dog is coming up,
that's right. So yeah, we have been discussing, like what
should we do this.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
We want a piece of this, we want to get in. Yeah,
we want it to be by us.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
And then I'm like standing in front of it where
I'm like, I've been staring at this thing for literally
my whole life.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
And it's right, there's a hot dog. Corn dogs are
allowed as long as there's a hot dog involved. So
it could also be like do beans and franks count
I mean chopped up hot dogs.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Don't be crazy, let's not get crazy. Hot dog bowl?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Can we do hot dog bowl, like what some rice
underneath it?

Speaker 3 (08:14):
No, it's from Detroiter's or I think you should leave
where it's a hot dog bowl is just chopped up
hot dogs in a bowl. It shays it like that
hot dog chopped up hot dogs in a bowl with
like like a burata bowl, but a hot dog bowl.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Oh hot dog bull Yes whatever, I mean, I think
whatever however people want it, interact with it.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
How do you interpret hot dogs? Show us your content?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, great, And then also we'll have a separate file
for dick pics. It's something else completely, that's a different
part of the show.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
You're gonna say, like dogs in hot dog costumes.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
No sex cells, and we're trying to get a hashtag going.
We are. Oh, I have an email. It's an email.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
It's a fucking letter, a real life letter.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Oh, hard copy, hard.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Copy letter, because you know how I had that crow
was dead in my pool a couple of weeks ago,
and it was like so heartbreaking, and I was like,
I hope they'll crows don't blame me. I got like
the most beautiful package slash letter about that. Okay, so
they sent me two beautiful bags of bird feed. So
what it's called and then this letter, but I want
to read bird seed. Yeah, but it's not all seeds.

(09:16):
There's worms there too. Oh amazing, it's pretty exciting. Okay, okay, Hi,
Georgia and Karen, we just finished episode four eighty four
and felt we needed to formally acknowledge the fallen crow
in George's pool. Since crows hold funerals and more than
they're dead, we thought it only proper to send a
breath meal. And then it says I had to send
this because bird watching genuinely changed my life. During a

(09:37):
hard season when I was running a nonprofit that provided
free birth control for women in the South while managing
my own anxiety and stress, I sat on my front
porch doing a grounding exercise and noticed the birds. I
downloaded an idea just to see what was out there,
and I was hooked. Welcome to your forties.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
That is also Yeah, you're sitting on your porch trying
to calm the fuck down as the world melts down
around you, and this person who's like, i'll provide free
birth control right for women in the South.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Focus on the birds. Good I am.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
A few years later, I left that job and became
a entrepreneur. Now I run a nationally recognized bird seed company.
I created from birth control to bird seed.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Who knew? Yeah, living that American dream.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
At Happy Birdwatcher, we customize blends based on your location,
so they put your fucking zip code in and they're like,
here's what birds in your area are interested in, right, yeah,
because like Texas birds don't want to eat what fucking
California birds seed?

Speaker 1 (10:34):
No, totally different worms. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
We use eco friendly packaging and give a dollar to
mental health charities for every ten pounds we sell. Nice.
It's still about helping people, but now I get to
do it through something that brings joy and peace one
backyard at a time. Just wanted to say thanks for
being part of our work day and it's an all
women team as well. Just wanted to say thank you
for being part of our workdays and the rhythm that
keeps us going. We never imagine bird Seed and now

(10:58):
Crow Funerals would be part of our store, but here
we are, and listening to you reminds us that meaningful
work can take all kinds of unexpected forms.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
That's so true crime, true crime. Who the thunk? That's right,
Stay sexy and.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Don't get murdered and maybe go feed a crow with
bird seed and love.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Susan.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
She her founder Happy bird Watcher, Happy Birdwatch, And they
sent the most beautiful two bags of the most beautiful
bird seed I've.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Ever seen before. Incredible, is that right?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Really touching.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Also, there's so many people with their small businesses out there,
who Yeah, when you hear the story behind the small
business you're like, I want to support those people totally.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
It's passion projects. It's really nice. Yeah, yeah, what else?
So are you going to take pictures of all the crows?
You feet? What's going to happen?

Speaker 3 (11:42):
So over the weekend, I pop those bags open and
the crows were watching me as I put it down
and walked away. Cookie gets really jealous when when that happens,
but like I called her away, and I will tell
you right now, the squirrels loved it.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
The crows still don't trust me. Yeah, but I'm going
to keep putting it out there and see how goes.
You're gonna have to win them over.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
I'm going and I'm going to do like they watched
me put down two trays of.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Food and they're like, careful, she might sprinkle something in it.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Right, So I'm gonna just keep going and keep doing it.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
But crows are cynics. But you know what, I like
squirrels too. Yeah, what that's like.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
I put out a bird feeder in my old house
and I was so excited and it was like this
very large bird feeder. I think I got it as
a gift and I was like, I'm going to do it.
And the next day I went out to check what
kind of birds were using it, and there was like
twenty five pigeons in my backyard. They were just all
standing around like nses food coming like, and they had

(12:34):
gone it. A squirrel had gone in and spun it,
so the seeds went everywhere and everyone went and got it.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Like the least mindful bird that will help you ground yourself.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Fuck a pigeon.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, they're from the Vaughns parking lot and they're like
we heard their seed over in this backyard.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Oh no, that's not.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
That's actually worse than I had a mouse on the
video of the one I did once and I was like, well, great,
that's not.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Well they're like loitering. Yeah, they were like it felt dangerous.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
They're opportunists. Get them the fuck out in here.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Let's do exactly Right corner. We have a podcast network.
It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights this
week over on That's Messed Up. Karen Lisa covered the
SVU episode Manhunt and they dig into two truly horrifying cases,
some of the worst Leonard Lake and Charles Ang and
then the murdering pastor Gary Heidnick. We covered Gary Heidnick

(13:25):
in episode seventy seven live at the Keswick Theater, so
you can go listen to an old live show and
hear that story. If once you listen to That's Messed Up,
you're like, I need more of this horrible or you
can just wait six months and it'll be on a
rewind that's true and then on this podcast We'll kill you.
I was so excited to see this. The Aaron's are
talking about all things food dye, which is like, there's

(13:47):
so much to know that my dying of die. Should
I stop eating it? I don't know, from their accidental
discovery to their over use in snacks. And they do
address the purple ketchup that Hines released in two thousand
and one must be discussed.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And there's a brand new episode of MFM animated on YouTube.
It's called Snails and green Beans. Truly some of the
best work of Nickterarry. There's times where we get into
little patches where I go this is made for Nicktary
and this was one of those ones where as we
were doing it, I was like, I think we were
both like and if you has animated it, this would
be good.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
So go watch.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
They're all on our YouTube page at YouTube dot com
slash exactly right Media and all the other episodes of
MFM animated are on there too, and.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
MFM too, and then over in the merch store. Oh,
this is exciting. So we have a new design. It's
our SSDGM moth design and it's a Death's Head moth
that we absolutely love, designed by our beloved Sammy Rich.
It's available in a lady's tank top that I have
right here that I'm absolutely gonna wear to sweat in.

(14:50):
And then also a tote bag.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
You can have nice big toe bag.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Bring that to the farmer's market or to the library
and wow everyone and.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Fill it with birds e and let them follow you around.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Thank you Sammy Rich for designing yet another super cool
piece of merchant.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Show them the arms so they know that it's not. Yeah, yeah,
I was.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Holding it up a little bit. But this is like
a double toe bag size.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's a good toe bag. That's a good one.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I think it's the nicest, classy Go to exactly rightstore
dot com please to check it out.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, I'm first. Okay.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
So this is a wild one that I knew about
because Vince told me about it, because it's from Detroit
in the eighties, and it is a wild story. It's
an infamous case where they're war on drugs. Remember that
came head to head with political corruption and an unexpected
drug kingpin. A white teenager wound up caught in the crossfire.

(15:52):
This is the story of Detroit legend Richard Worshey Junior
aka white Boy Rick. Do you know why have you
ever heard white Boy Rick?

Speaker 1 (16:02):
I feel like I've heard the phrase white Boy Rick. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
I called de Vince did because we talked about a
long time ago, and I said, hey, if I said
white Boy Rick without meaning anything to you, and He's like,
hell yeah, and like it's legendary. Yeah, and it was
kind of when he was growing up, right, Vince, Yeah, Yeah,
perfect timing. So the main sources for the story are
a deep dive reporting from The Atavist and The New Yorker,
both articles by Evan Hughes, who did like the deep

(16:25):
dive on these and really really interesting, awesome pieces about
it that I am heavily using for this episode. And
then also there's a twenty eighteen movie and a twenty
seventeen documentary called White Boy Rick, which I watched, and
the rest of the sources can be found in the
show notes.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Who played him in the movie. Okay, we're going to
get into that. I'll tell you right now.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
His father, who's a main character, was played by Matthew McConaughey.
Oh yeah, okay, so it's a good one, all right.
So let's start in July of nineteen eighty seven. Detroit
was the homicide capital of the United States for the
third year running. And there's so much to be said
about Detroit in the eighties. I mean, this whole time

(17:04):
period Detroit, there's so much talk about, and the crack
cocaine epidemic had invaded Detroit. It's at this time that
Detroit's local news station airs a stunny dispatch from the
front lines of the War on Drugs, which is what
the Reagan administration called their racist plight to put black
people in prison because they were addicted to drugs.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Essentially, this is the beginning of privatized prisons and prison
as a money making venture in this country.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Right, So the war on drugs.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
So in this story about what's going on in Detroit,
a young Chris Hansen, of course as we know him
for hosting to Catch a Predator, he is like a
young journalist. He rides along with Detroit's Joint Task Force
of the city's police department and the DEEA who are
trying to crack down that group of cops. Their nickname

(17:54):
is the No Crack Crew because they always had to
have a fucking war on drugs.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
No Crack Crew there, you know, like they.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Just it was like civic branding essentially, where it's like,
don't think about it, you just know you're on our
side because we have this dog with the trench coat, right,
and then we have Nancy Reagan, So how can you
not be on our side?

Speaker 3 (18:14):
So just it's a note and I don't know if
you notice that crack and cocaine are essentially the same drug,
just done differently, but much harsher. Enforcement of crack is
one of the legacies of the War on Drugs that
led to much longer sentences because crack itself was used
by more poor people and black people. So you have
people on Wall Street using coke in the clubs. It's

(18:36):
the same fucking drug that people are buying who are
poor and people of color. That's why there's harsher sentences essentially. Yeah,
it's a trick and it goes all the.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Way to the top.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
The mandatory minimum sentence for five grams of crack is
the same as for five hundred grams of cocaine powder,
which is one of the reasons why no investment bankers
went to prison for possession.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Also, they their way back out truly.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
In that televised report, Chris Hansen goes with members of
the Task Force while they make one of the biggest
drug busts in Detroit history. The crew enters an abandoned,
once grand apartment building called the Broad Moor, not the
asylum that we've talked about so many times in England. Yeah,
so clearly so if you thought not that, No, it's
been turned into a sort of crack emporium where larger

(19:23):
amounts are sold on ascending floors.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
So like it's been taken over.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
The bus leads to the arrests of the area's highest
volume dealers of crack, four brothers named Larry, Billy, Joe,
Willie Lee, and Otis Chambers. The Chambers brothers being close
to the top of a vast drug network. They themselves
had hurt a lot of people and done a lot
of bad things, but the work of getting to them
had involved the No Crack Crew using very discriminatory policing

(19:51):
tactics and sweeping up much lower level offenders and users
addicts who were in turned imprisoned with very punitives s.
So they go after everybody to get to the top,
but nobody gets off on the lower levels. The No
Crack Crew would sometimes arrest neighborhoods of houses where crack
was supposedly sold, just the neighborhood, just to get information,

(20:13):
and then those people who had absolutely nothing to do
with the drug use or the drug trade were still
made to talk and they got in trouble as well.
Members and leadership of the No Crack Crew were almost
all white, and some of its leaders obviously were deeply
and openly racist. So while the net around the Chambers
brothers is closing in the question becomes who is supplying them,

(20:34):
because that's who the No Crack Crew says they want
to go after is the highest.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
But the answer.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Apparently is Ronald brig You can't say that, so sorry, yes, no,
the answer is totally true. However, at the end of
this series that Chris Hansen is at the helm of
they reveal that the answer to who was at the
top is apparently a seventeen year old white boy named

(21:03):
Rick Worshey. Junior history will know him as white boy Rick,
but it's not a nickname he has on the streets.
It's a nickname that, like the media gives him, but
it becomes a legend, like a cowboy legend, you know.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
So the question ultimately becomes who is this kid that
the No Crack Crew want to find out about? And
the answer is pretty easy to find.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Rick is not.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Exactly subtle about his involvement in the drug trade. He
doesn't have a driver's license, but he drives around Detroit
in a white Jeep with a decal on the back
that says the Snowman. This is actually one of eight
cars he owns seventeen. He's known for wearing. He's a
junior he's a junior. He's he's not a singer. He's

(21:44):
known for wearing fur coats and gold watches the whole
like I'm rich off drugs scene. He's seventeen years old
and he looks it. He's got a baby face, this
like pencil thin, you know, eighties little boy mustache. In
the movie, he's played by Richie Merritt, who I wasn't
familiar with, but Vince had thought that the actor was

(22:04):
Emil Hirsh, which totally fits y. So picture Emil Hirsch
from the I Will Go to Alaska and Slowly Die
in a Bus. That's the one into the.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Wild, Into the Wild, Thank you, Thank you, Molli.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
It's not called I Will Go to Alaska and Slowly
Die in a bus.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
I'm so close, so close.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
They really had an opportunity there, so this guy could
have totally been played by him.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Super eighties.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
So Rick had been in authority sites by the time
the Chris Hansen piece airs, and in fact had already
been arrested for being found near eight kilos of cocaine.
And what I mean by near is that they were
found and you're touching who's that.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Cocaine?

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Was?

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Siight dyeing.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
No, the cocaine was found hidden under the steps of
his grandmother's house, under the porch.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
I mean, really, it's near enough, near enough, right.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Rick's case about this goes to trial in nineteen eighty eight,
just as he turns eighteen, and it's a huge case,
attracting national attention. He's found guilty and again because of
those steep mandatory minimums for possessing large quantities of cocaine,
he who had been arrested at seventeen and found guilty
at eighteen, is sentenced to life in prison without the

(23:16):
possibility of parole. And at the time, murder got like
ten years, yes, like across the country.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
I mean also just at the time, I just remember
that it played down in the media that like we're
cracking down, we are getting tough on crime. It was
the tough on crime thing, yes, across the board, whether
it's this, that or the other. And there was a
lot of that, like this sheriff is going to make
all the prisoners wear pink and they're humiliated, and it
would be like in Time magazine. Then you'd be like,
that's great, because this is the way. And it was

(23:44):
such a shot into the monoculture of we like this,
don't worry about the people because it's the we're going
to handle it in this way, like in the infrastructure.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
And we don't understand it, and so we're celebrating how
it's being handled, even though how it's being handled has
nothing to do with justice any.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Of it, or anybody getting and all of those kinds
of like there's still people in jail now who got
arrested for like having a joint on them exactly in
nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Right, Yeah, it's very fucked. I'm not going to be
able to cover it all.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
But well, and also it's why when we first started
and we'd be like, yeah, put that serial killer away
for life, there'd be this counter of like, you guys
are into privatized prison. You don't know what you're advocating for,
which was really true in the beginning, But we were
basically saying, if somebody has raped and killed more than
three people, how about we don't talk about their parole

(24:36):
or whatever. But what people are saying is like we
have to be analytical about the entire system because that's
the cultural thing of yeah, throw them away.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
A rehabilitation and Yeah, it's a layered topic that we
know nothing about except for what we've done wrong.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
And except for yeah, what we're reading from journalists. So
there we go. We're off the hook. If you want
to listen to a podcast that's about that, listen to
Wrongful Conviction. It's a great podcast. So Life in Prison,
No Parole again. As a minor so, during the jury deliberation,
Rick's father, Rick Worshey Senior, Matthew McConaughey, picture It, he

(25:18):
confronted members of the No Crack crew. He's pissed off
about how his son's getting in trouble and he winds
up being separately arrested and charged with threatening a police
officer at the hearing. So after his son's guilty verdict,
Rix Senior gives an interview from his jail cell, making
a claim to all the media that no one has
heard before and at the time pretty much no one believes.

(25:39):
And that is that Rick Senior claims that his son,
white Boy Ricky, had acted as an informant for the
federal agents the whole time he was like on the streets,
he was an informant.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
So he's a basically kind of a plant drug dealer
that was there to collect information.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, and he's like a patsy now because they're sending
him away, you know what I mean. He says, quote,
they used me, and they used my son, and now
they turn around and fuck us over.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Rick Senior names the specific FBI agent who they had
been working with, saying his name was James Dixon. When
reporters go to Dixon asking him if what Rix Senior
is saying is true, he refuses to comment, and he
resigns from the FBI not long after. Oh wow, yeah,
I mean this article in the Atavist is incredible. He
interviews like everyone. But let's go back. I gave you

(26:28):
a lot of information just now. Yeah, it's a real influx. Yeah,
that was quick. This is not the end of it. Okay,
let's go back to the beginning. Richard Worshey Junior is
born in Detroit in nineteen sixty nine to Darlene and
Richard Worshey Senior. The family lives on the East Side
of Detroit, which is still at the time a functional
working class neighborhood, but by Rix teen years in the

(26:49):
early eighties, it goes into sort of a free fall.
Evan Hughes writes, quote the auto manufacturers, which had learned
so many to Detroit with union jobs that promised entry
into the class, we're now in rapid decline. From nineteen
seventy eight to nineteen eighty eight, the industry shed more
than a third of its Detroit area workforce. This period,

(27:10):
as you know, is often described as white flight, when
nearly every white family abandons the area for the suburbs.
But as Evan Hughes points out, it wasn't actually just
all the white people. He writes, quote, almost everyone who
had the means to leave was taking the opportunity. It
was very swiftly becoming a dangerous place to live. But
Rick's family stays. Then there's various reasons. Their grandparents lived

(27:31):
across the street. And Rick's father's businesses and schemes have
always been either in a legal gray area or sometimes
straight up illegal, so he was getting away with a
lot of stuff in lawless Detroit. Primarily he sells guns
and very often sells them illegally. When Rick is thirteen,

(27:51):
So like picture of the eighties, What's Up movie over
the Top we talk about all the time with Matt Damon,
Like that Matt Matt Dylan, Matt Dylan, thank you. So.
Rick is thirteen, his parents divorce, His mom joins the
exodus to the suburbs, and Rick lives with her for
a while and says it's paradise. He's shocked that a
high school can have a swimming pool and a perfectly

(28:11):
manicured baseball diamond. He says, quote it was culture shock, dude,
like moving from hell to heaven. But unfortunately he and
his stepfather don't get along. As is often the case
in the eighties, it feels like they did a lot
of It was like no fault divorce.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
All of a sudden, everyone got divorced, and then everybody
was like, oh, I can't do this, I have to
get remarried. And then people remarried the weirdest people that
were just like nearby and tried to do a Brady
Bunch family blending.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
I met him at the church social and I knew
him for two months, and now he's a monster totally.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
I watched so many of my friends kind of go
through that. I would come home and my parents had
one negative thing to say to the other.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
I'd go, are you getting divorced? I was like, I
just need to know. I need to get prepared. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
No, I met the men my mom dated. They were
they divorced for a reason. I'll tell you right, fuck
him now, you.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Know it was They weren't just getting kicked out for
a cracker. Now they were not.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
I said that really weird. Not crackers the white people. Oh,
I thought crackers is bad. That's what I meant. That's
what I'm like, that's what I got.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Let's keep it specific. They don't get along.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
So Rick ultimately moves back with his father in the
old neighborhood, and like, there is just a lot of
fun trouble to get into as a teen in the
fucking eighties.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Your dad sells guns. Your dad sells guns. There's no
rules at all.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
His older sister Dawn starts dating like a drug dealer,
and so he becomes friends with him and sees how
much fun, you know, essentially everyone's having, how much money
people are making, and how much like cool stuff they're
buying that he would never have been able to afford
as just a regular kid.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, it seems like he just falls in love with
what he sees.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I mean, if this part of the movie there would
be you know, like a montage with Bad to the
Bone playing at ethics. Oh my jes Like, that's all exciting,
party sex, everyone's in a good mood.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, lots of just like you follow what you see,
and that's all there was in Detroit, including his father,
who later admits, like, I fucked up bad.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I should have done better for him. I mean, it's
just it's sad. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
So Rick falls in with those local petty criminals and
with them he starts breaking into houses.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
That's what he first starts doing.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
He also starts learning about Detroit's bigger figures in crime,
particularly the major players in the drug business, who are
basically celebrities in Detroit where everyone is broke and the
houses are falling down and no one has money. People
are on crack. These sellers are kings that kids look
up to.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, you know, they have all the money, right, that's
where the money's going.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
And they fuck the system too because they're like black
and rich, which was not a thing in the eighties
that was like widely shown in the media. So at
the same time, Rick Senior is tangentially related to the
drug trade because he sells guns out of the house
that they live in. So in the spring of nineteen
eighty four, when Rick is fourteen years old, James Dixon,

(31:04):
the FBI agent, and a police officer from the Detroit
Narcotics Division visit Rick Worshey Senior. They're trying to get
the dad who's selling guns. They're like to get information
because he's tangentially involved with the drug scene by selling
them guns. But Rick Senior doesn't really know a lot
about it. But Rick Junior is in the room, fourteen

(31:25):
year old Rick Junior, and he's like looking at the
photos being like, oh.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's so and so I know that guy. I know
that guy.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
And suddenly they like hone in on this kid who
kind of knows everything about what's going on.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
So basically they get the kid to turn and become
an informant.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's the story of the dad and Rick tell.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Okay, but when he's like essentially a freshman, yeah, like
so young.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
So young, definitely worldly and like street wise in a
way that doesn't happen today, which is not an excuse
and it doesn't forgive anything, but you know, and very smart.
So he gives the men a lot of helpful information
and the FBI winds up making Rick Senior the dad
a registered informant, but Rick Junior stays off the books

(32:10):
that said. Law enforcement quickly begins meeting with Rick on
his own without his father's presence, which is at least
what they claim allegedly. Dixon says he never met with
Rick Junior without his father also being there, but it
seems hard to believe.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Also, it's like, what's he's sitting outside seven to eleven
on his BMX bikes?

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, like, hey, what's up.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah. It's like I'll meet you at your house every
time I need to talk to you. No, it's like, hey,
did you see blah blah blah, Yeah, see you later.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
If he's a nark, he's narken totally. They're not.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Everything's not going to be like typed up and put
into the right that BMX bike man. So Evan Hughes,
the writer first writes quote at first, where she just
gave up isolated scraps of intelligence, the identities of the
thieves who robbed a jewelry store, the name of a
health clinic that was selling the legal prescriptions, the location
of a cash of stolen guns. In time, he grew bolder, however,

(33:00):
and began informing on leading crime figures it's so dangerous.
I know, I know with that information. In February of
nineteen eighty five, the authorities raid a house that he
had told them about with a search warrant based all
on where she's information, and they find almost two hundred

(33:20):
thousand dollars in cash, which in today's money.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Oh it's eighty it's eighty five. Two hundred thousand dollars.
Are we like a one point five million?

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Half a million? I would think it'd be more than that.
Over half a million, that's just slightly overdouble. I know,
I want better numbers. I want more, I want more.
So Rick Junior says, at the beginning of all this,
it was just really exciting. He kind of you know,
it was like he was in his early teens. He
had no grasp of consequences.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
It's so crazy.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
I feel like if we were going to make the
movie now, we could cast the kid from Young Sheldon
to play this child right at this point, right that's
young with a little pencil musta. It would be a
great like turn of like, no one's seeing this from
you in your career yet.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
That's a good one. He says.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Quote what kid doesn't want to be an undercover cop
when he's fourteen fifteen years old.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
I didn't I know a lot, but I feel like
it almost feels like playing cowboys in a way.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yes, you know, fully, he's just not real to you.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
I would never want to be an informant for anyone
for anything, but especially Detroit drugs in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
That just sounds dangerous, so bad.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well, so I wonder if it is a little bit
of a compliment to Rick Senior where it's like, clearly
the bad side of this business and what can happen
was shielded from this child, Yeah, because you wouldn't be
doing that knowing that people just get taken out to the.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Woods and totally and like you know, Rick Senior is
always like I was just selling guns. I was not
involved with drugs. Like drugs, I was gunst them. When
I found out my son was, you know, making all
this money off of them, I kicked them out of
the house. So they were anti drug I know.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I know I'm morally superior because I'm only selling guns.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Always selling guns to the people who have drugs, not
drugs to the people who have drugs. Okay, I'm not
arguing for either, No, it's not good. And then Rick
is also getting paid for his work as an informant.
He says the FBI probably paid him a total of
around thirty thousand.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Dollars as a kid, which today you want to try again,
I do well, a quarter of a million.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
Dollars, thirty thirty to two hundred and fifty.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Thousand, ninety. Damn, it's like so much lesson, we think,
I refuse to learn. Do you know why? It's because
everyone was.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Thriving in the eighties, you know, like they didn't need
as much money. I don't know. I think that inflation
took a couple steps back after the eighties.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Okay, maybe I don't know. It could be don't listen,
or just I'm a bad guesser, and I refuse to
notice the pattern. I don't know, I refuse. Okay.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
So while this is happening, Rick Junior is having many
escalating run ins the law, but for some reason, which
we now understand to be because he was an informant,
most likely allegedly, charges never seem to stick. Rick Junior,
as a teenager, shoots a man who had stolen his
grandmother's car. The arresting officer never appears at trial, so
he never gets charged with anything. Rick is shot in

(36:17):
the stomach in a different altercation, and law enforcement officers
have him registered in the hospital as John Doe. Eventually,
Rick Senior gets a new FBI handler, a man named
Herman Gramman. But Rick Junior is showing up with his
father at every official meeting because he knows more than
his dad does. Every time the FBI agent asked the
father a question, the son answers. So that thirty thousand

(36:40):
that Rick makes as an informant basically sets him up
to be a drug dealer, like that's what the money's for.
So Rick starts dealing, though it's unclear if the FBI
officially knows that he's doing that. But why give a
child thirty thousand dollars in that situation unless they know
he's going to do.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
We thought he was going to start his own long
John Silver exactly. We wanted to go into Frank fast food.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
It's so true, fried fish fast food. Think about it,
get into it. It's a great idea. So the FBI agent, Grahman,
the handler, says that he believes Rick was making drug
buys with the specific knowledge and at the behest of
members of the Detroit Police Department, so like he's acknowledging
that that was the money was for. While this is happening,
Rick quickly becomes part of that drug selling crew essentially,

(37:24):
or that scene the person that the FBI is trying
to gather information about, this guy named Johnny Curry, and
he's got this big crew. So basically Rick is a mole,
but he's also legitimately a drug dealer. Again, he's only fifteen,
so he kind of infiltrates this drug dealing Detroit gang.
He's like the only white person and I'm fifteen, and

(37:46):
let's do this. So one retired FBI agent named Greg
Schwartz puts it, quote, we brought him into the drug world,
and what happened. He became a drug dealer, and we're
surprised by that. You know, in the spring of eighteen No,
that would be fun. Now good, Now, let's go Victorian England.

(38:07):
In the spring of nineteen eighty five, only a year
after the FBI has first approached Rick's father, Rick Junior,
goes to Las Vegas to watch a boxing match with
Johnny Curry and other high ranking numbers of this gang.
I cannot understate how powerful these men are that he
has somehow been able to become friends with this fifteen

(38:29):
year old white boy. Yeah, these are kingpins. He must
have a great sense of humor. I bet he's fun
to be around. Yeah, he must be. He's chill as fuck.
He's seen a lot. He's seen a lot for a
young teen. He's not a snitch, they think. Probably.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Also, he's going to places like Vegas where you can't cover.
It's not four children in any way totally or even
young adults.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
No, And yet there he is.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Yeah, and no one's gonna question it because of the
crew he's with.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
They're like, white boy Rick, wait at the buffet for us,
we're gonna go play right twenty one?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
No, what's not happening.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
So basically what happens is while they're there, Johnny Curry
becomes enraged with an associate back in Detroit because he
hadn't made the travel arrangements for the Vegas trip.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
You know how that is? Oh, like your travel agent
fucks up somehow.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Ah, your friend who you've made, the travel agent who
you've probably given a lot of fucking money to, like,
didn't do what he was supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Just had to make like four phone calls because this
was pre Yeah, not that big of a deal.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
So Curry orders some of his foot soldiers to shoot
up this man's house. Tragically, when they do that, they
end up killing this man's thirteen year old son.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
So this wasn't supposed to happen.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
And Curry tells his crew, including Rick, that if the
police offer money in exchange for information, he'll pay them
more to stay silent, which scares Rick, who of course
has already been feeding information to the cops. This is
like a oh shit moment. Rick does tell the FBI
what he knows about the homicide, though, and the FBI
has already tapped Curry's phones with a warrant from information
that Rick gave them. When they look at the call logs,

(40:04):
they realized that on the morning after the shooting of
this poor kid, the first two calls that Curry made
were two members of the Detroit Police Department called them
that morning. One is a sergeant named Jimmy Harris and
the other is his supervisor, a man named Commander Gilbert Hill.
And Hill will later become a Detroit City Council member

(40:24):
and will run for mayor in two thousand and one.
So this goes all the way to the top. Yeah,
it always does, of course it does. You can't get
away with that shit without like cover inside. Yeah, yeah,
inside hookups. So back in nineteen eighty five, after the shooting,
Rick basically confirms that Hill was collaborating with Curry Hill
the sergeant, and says that Hill told Curry he'd take

(40:45):
care of it so not to worry about it.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
So this is like, oh, no, this is not good.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
So now we're back to Rick being convicted to life
without parole at the age of eighteen in nineteen eighty eight,
and again Rick's father immediately says that he and his
son had been informants. He also is that Rick had
been feeding the FBI information about the involvement of members
of the Detroit Police Department in the drug trade, the
same one that they've been mercilessly cracking down on low

(41:10):
level offenders. They're part of it, and Rick's been telling
the FBI about that. At the time, the FEDS only
say that they can't comment either way, and that they
also can't really intervene on state charges or convictions, so
they just leave everyone hanging. They back out for they're
part one of the FBI agents who was involved at
the time, says that they did offer Rick the opportunity

(41:31):
to come forward as an informant before his case went
to trial, but like.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
So that he could be killed.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah, exactly, you'd have to testify against major players in
the Detroit drug world in open court, and then the
federal government can help him.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
And it's like, that's not an offer. But then get
his ged exactly and really get his life together. Open
that silver what's it called long John Silver?

Speaker 2 (41:54):
I mean, there's no future if that's what you choose
to do, absolutely not. There's nothing else happening for you.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
No, So Rick obviously knows that.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
Instead he tries his luck in court and he winds
up with the life sentence. So in nineteen ninety, James Harris,
the police sergeant who Rick implicated in being involved with
the Curries, is caught in an FBI sting operation in
which he agrees to help traffic a large volume of
cocaine into Detroit. The FBI asks Harris to assist them
in targeting his boss, that guy Hill, the higher up,

(42:24):
but he refuses, so he goes to prison until his
sentence is commuted by then President George W. Bush at
the end of his term in two thousand and eight.
And there's other cops from that era and that squad
who come under fire and get prison time as well.
And actually one of them ends up spending time with
Worshih in prison. In prison, he's like the guy who

(42:46):
testified against him, the cop who testified against him at
his trial, gets put in prison.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
He's in the same wood shop class as him. Yeah,
I mean that's intense. That's like by that point, Yeah,
everyone's at risk going to jail. Everyone is like, it's
a free for all totally. I need to read this
article and stop talking about it.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
So in nineteen ninety eight, Michigan does roll back the
mandatory life without parole sentence for people found guilty of
possessing more than six hundred and fifty grams of cocaine.
They're like, oh no, this wasn't great. In following decades,
most of the state's high level drug offenders from the
eighties are freed, including John Curry, who was the drug
kingpin over White Boy Rick, who was originally caught with

(43:26):
the help from Rick, who was a teenager at the time.
But Rick remains in prison. And this is where Evan
Hughes finds him and is like, this is fucked up.
Let's look into this, and does this amazing investigative reporting
on this. And he remains in prison in a large
part because of the Detroit law enforcement establishment and political

(43:46):
establishment fighting tooth and nail against any opportunity for parole.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Why would they do that. It's as if they don't
want him to be able to speak. That's right.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
This is, of course, the very same establishment that included
numbers who were found to be corrupt with information given
by Rick. So this finally changes after Rick's case gets
more publicity. Evan Hughes's first article comes out about him
in twenty fourteen, than a documentary called White Boy comes
out in twenty seventeen, and the feature called White Boy
Rick comes out in twenty eighteen with McConaughey playing Rick

(44:19):
Senior Big Hubbub. So Rick is finally parolled in twenty seventeen.
I think that this publicity that Evan Hughes's articles helped
a great deal. He's finally pulled in twenty seventeen after
almost thirty years, making him Michigan's longest serving nonviolent drug offender.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
He then serves a sentence in Florida for involvement in
a car theft ring while he was in prison. He's
released in twenty twenty with time credited for good behavior.
Rick sues the FBI, but the case is dismissed in
twenty twenty three. Nowadays, Rick sells White Boy Rick branded
cannabis and edibles, which are now fully legal, fully legal. Absolutely,

(45:00):
I get that, get that money. He uses proceeds from
his business to help people who have been incarcerated or
who have been saddled with excessive court fees and fines
to get back on their feet.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Nice. That's how you do it. Truly, that's the fucking story.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
And there's so much more that everyone needs to read
about FBI informant Richard Worshey Junior aka White Boy Rick.
There's a book called Land of Opportunity by William Adler
that discusses the rise and fall of the Chamber Brothers,
who I mentioned.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
That seems incredible.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
And also a book that I read that Vince had
told me to read called Devil's Knight and Other True
Tales of Detroit by za Eve Schofitz, which talks about
that time and that period in Detroit and it is.
It's just incredible. So I highly recommend that Devil's Knight
check it out.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Wow, yeah, incredible, Oh my god, I know, I'm genuinely fascinated.
I mean, first of all, how is this possible? Secondly,
we got McConaughey in a twenty seventeen venture sure that
no one saw.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Let's all watch it and like, what if we all
push it to number If you guys can get that
on the top ten of the Netflix. Well know that
you're listening, and that just means so much to.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Us, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Like whatever was Netflix are simultaneously emotionally manipulative.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
It was desperate, It was so desperate for attention.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
There was a kind of element of corruption, just like
the story you just told. Oh my god, no, you're right,
let's use our influence. Oh no, but it's to affect Netflix.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Oh god, we're all wow written Now I get it.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Now, I see how easy it is to fall into
that lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Amazing. Yeah, thank you, great job, congratulations, great work. Thank you.
Tell me a story that was quite involved, as will
mine be.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
We're gonna fly out of Detroit in the eighties, gonna
go back in time a little bit. We're going to
go to a place we've been to before that I've
actually forced you to come to twice before. But I
need to go back and you'll see why. Okay, So
it's two am on April fifteenth, nineteen twelve. Okay, get
a sense of what we're about to do. Nope, we're

(47:16):
in the middle of the North Atlantic where the Titanic
is sinking.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Motherfucker. Yeah, Titanic. We're going back to the Titanic. I
love that guy. Love the titan You love that vessel.
A lot of stuff happened on that vessel that I
want to tell you about.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
It's funny that you say twenty twelve and I in
the middle of the night, and I'm like, eh, I
don't know nineteen.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Twelve, But did I say twenty twelve. That was a
bad year too, So twenty.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Twelve was rough. I fully agree. I love your Titanic stories.
It's just so funny.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, here's the thing about me and the Titanic. I
love to talk about the people that made it off
of the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Yeah, it's pretty an amazing topic.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
I have no interest to go down and look at
the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
No, a lot of people want to.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
I think photos are cool, but they never they never
give it what you want.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
You know, they don't put you there. They don't put
you there.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Maybe like a dish is so exciting, but like that's
about it.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, and it's got all the weird algae on it
that dish. So much algae in a couple snails. Yeah, Okay,
here we're going to nineteen twelve. Everything it's snail free.
That Titanic is sinking, and when it finally disappears under
the water, it will take the lives of more than
fifteen hundred people with it. There will be around seven

(48:32):
hundred survivors. The survivors we've talked about on this show,
episode four to eleven, which was entitled eight Years One episode,
that's when I talked about the Unsingable Molly Brown. They
actually called her Margaret Brown, but everyone knows her as
the Unsinkable Molly Brown. She makes it onto lifeboat six,
and she spends her time on that lifeboat rallying the

(48:52):
terrified passengers and urging them to keep rowing. When the
officer in charge starts to spiral in the midst of
all the terror of what's going on around them, Molly
threatens to throw him overboard. It's great for morale. Everybody
keeps going. They survive, got it girl. At this same
moment that she's doing that. Over on Lifeboat six, the
Titanic's baker, Charles Jockin, you might remember he was the

(49:15):
drunk one.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Oh yes, we learned that drunk one. Everyone was shit face.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
I need that. You know that band was barely able
to like heat the bow to the strings.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Oh my god, so much good champagne.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
If you want to hear me talk about Charles Jockin,
it's episode three forty eight. It's called Old Biscuit, and
we learn on that one that basically the thing that
saved Charles Jowkins's life. They think is that he got
super shit faced as the ship sank, he jumped up
onto the railing and rowed it down as the ship

(49:47):
was going into the water. Then he tread water in
twenty eight degree waves for several hours and lived. And
it's like defy science. And they think it's because the
liquor that was in a system just kept his body warm,
almost like tricked him into being warm.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
That's why I drink it is just to stay warm.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Same don't tell anybody we got to stay warm guys
on this fucking Titanic that we're on.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
So when Charles Jackin is finally rescued, and we talked
about this on that episode, but I still love this.
He has two swollen feet and that's it. That's the
only thing wrong with that man who treadwater in twenty
eight degree ocean for hours until he got resk.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
I mean, I wake up in my bed and were
shape too?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Swollen feet? I wish that's why. Okay, so see what
character is that? So some of our favorites, But today
I'm going to tell you about your new favorite Titanic survivor.
She's a third Titanic survivor whose story is more unbelievable
than the first two put together. Throughout this woman's life,
she'll be involved in not one, not two, but three

(50:56):
historic maritime disasters. The sinking of the Titanic arguably is
not even the worst one for her. Some people call
her the Queen of the Sinking ships. This is the
story of Stewardess Violet Jessop.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
So main sources that Maren used for the story are
Violet's memoir entitled Titanic Survivor, The Memoirs of Violet Jessop
Comma Stewardess she Fucking worked on the Titanic Incredible, and
also a National geographic article by journalist David Kindy entitled
she Survived the Titanic, but it wasn't the only time

(51:31):
she faced death at sea And the rest of the
sources are in our show notes. Okay, we start the
story twenty five years before the Titanic sinks with an
Irish Catholic couple from Dublin named William and Kelly Jessop.
They have immigrated to South America and now they have
a sheep farm in Argentina, and in eighteen eighty seven

(51:52):
they welcome their first child, Violet. They will have eight
more children in the coming years, only six will survive childhood.
So this was the horrible infant mortality situation of the
turn of the nineteenth twentieth century. So Violet herself nearly
dies a tuberculosis when she's little she is six for weeks,

(52:15):
and later she'll describe this time as quote a dim
awareness of being plunged into a very hot bath, then
wrapped in cold, wet sheets, followed by long periods of
nothingness yikes, so scary and sad for a child, and
speaking of her coughing fits are so intense at this
time that quote, blood seem to be on everything, and

(52:38):
her eventual recovery from this is said to be miraculous.
So normally, Violet's day to day involves helping her family.
She's the oldest sister in a big family, which means
she's doing cooking, cleaning, taking care of her younger siblings,
the whole nine. Then in nineteen oh three, when Violet
is sixteen years old, her father William dies while undergoing

(52:59):
some kind of a surgery. It's sudden, it's shocking. The
loss hits Violet especially hard. She was her father's favorite child,
and she will later write quote in my grief, I
was tongue tied and stunned. Whenever I tried to speak,
I discovered I had lost my voice completely. So sad,
But of course the family has no time to mourn

(53:21):
because now Violet's mother, Kelly, is a widow with six
kids who has to find a way to support the family,
so she moves the family back to Europe, where they
settle in England, and Kelly gets to work on ocean liners.
Sailing between the UK and America. She's hired as a stewardess,
and that means she's doing things like cleaning cabins, serving meals,

(53:42):
and even some light nursing duties. And while she's at sea,
Violet is left to raise her siblings by herself.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Wait, her mom left to do that yep, okay.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
And she's home with the five other kids and the
youngest is an infant.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Oh no, so they were just make and do.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
For the next several years, Violet's basically a stay at
home mom, dreaming about the day her mother will come
home for good, and when she does, violent plans that
she will join the convent. But that dream never pans
out because instead, in nineteen oh eight, when Violet is
around twenty one years old, her mother gets very sick
and it's serious enough that she has to stop working

(54:24):
so to keep food on the family table. Violet again
steps up for the family, and even though she does
not like the ocean, she does not know how to
swim and she's kind of freaked out by the vast
openness of the sea, she starts looking for steward's work.
She knows it's a good job if she can get
paid well. Her mom can tell her how to do it,

(54:46):
and she not only has years of caregiving experience raising
her brothers and sisters, she's fluent in Spanish from having
been raised in Argentina. But at the time, she struggles
to get work as a stewardess, partly because she's so young,
much younger and most of the stewardesses who are working
at the time, but also Violet is very beautiful, which

(55:06):
works against her because in a job like that, you're
supposed to blend in and just be part of the
wallpaper rate, and whether she wants to or not, Violet
does not blend in.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
I get it nice, I've been through it.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
I feel that I've never been a stewardess for that
very reason on the Titanic. So after she gets interviewed
a couple times and gets rejected, she starts dressing down
for the interviews, she stops wearing makeup all together, and
it works. She ends up landing one job after another,
and by nineteen eleven, twenty four year old Violet is
hired by the White Star Line to work aboard the

(55:43):
RMS Olympic. So at the time, the RMS Olympic is
the largest passenger ship in the world. It's completely state
of the art. It has electric elevators, Turkish baths, a
swimming pool, and ornate features like crystal chandeliers and marble
statues and plush elvet furniture.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Amazing. They really went all out.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's like the Empire state building on the sea, not
that tall. But anyhow, Violet isn't all that impressed. She's
just there for the money, and that's what keeps her
going when she has the experience that she really doesn't like,
which is the passengers treating her like their servant, which
happens often, and rich male passengers leer at her, they

(56:26):
proposition her, some even propose like the second they meet her,
while the women passengers can be extremely cutting, very condescending.
Later on, Violet will write quote, I often reflected that
there must be some quality in a sea trip that
affects character, or maybe it's enforced. Propinquity emphasizes how awful

(56:47):
normal folk can become mean, paltry, and selfish to a
degree when they are in the position of indiscriminate power.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
It's like what happens on the Titanic stays on the Titanic.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, and also it's like, just because we're stuck on
this boat together doesn't mean I got to do everything
you say. Maren made a note to me propinquity means
physical closeness or nearness, and then she was like, I've never.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Heard this word before. Thank you again.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Pro pincreity, piquity. It's your continual propinquity that causes the problem.
Say if you have a tendency toward propinquity, tapping your
nails on stuff and its misused. Okay, So now it's
September nineteen eleven. Violet's been working as a crew member
on the Olympic for months, and then one night the

(57:36):
boat she's on the Olympic collides with a British warship
called the Hawk off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
So the Hawk is this little it's like a sixth
of the size of the Olympic, and it's actually specifically
built to ram and sink enemy vessels, so it's very strong.
The two boats collide and the Hawk nearly capsizes, but

(57:59):
it's still manages to leave a forty foot gash along
the side of the Olympic. Water rushes into the bottom
of the ship and it actually downs a propeller, and
of course from her room, Violet hears and feels this
horrible impact. Although no one's injured or killed from this crash,
and the ships aren't very far from land, and even

(58:21):
with that propeller down, the Olympic is able to just
hobble back to port, so no one has to evacuate
on lifeboats. So comparatively, this is probably the tamest of
all the horrible ship accidents that Violet is involved in.
She gets reassigned to another White Star Line ship, and
it is the company's brand new luxury ocean liner that's

(58:42):
gearing up for its maiden voyage. It is the Titanic.
So we're back on the North Atlantic just before midnight
on April fourteenth.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Violet is in her quarter.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
She is getting ready for bed after being a stewardess
all day on the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
The feet pain, just the feet, the work the over here.
Can you get me a roll? Yeah? Snap, snap, snap snap.
So Violet's back in her quarters.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
She's holding a piece of paper that has a handwritten
prayer on it, and it's one that's supposed to protect
her from fire and water, which is very Catholic. We
have saints. They do very specific things, very specific people.
I guess there's a fire and water, saying I'll look
up who it is later. And as all of that

(59:31):
is going on, Violet here is a huge crash followed
by a quote low rending, crunching, ripping sound. So of
course it's a scary thing for her to experience. But
like everyone else on board, they've been told time and
again that the Titanic is unsinkable, so no one's panicking.
She certainly is not. But eventually, a shell shocked Violet

(59:53):
is called up to the deck. This will be her
very last assignment on the Titanic. She's told to translate
evacuation instructions for the Spanish speaking passengers and then to
assist women and children getting on the lifeboats. So that's
what she does until she herself is loaded onto lifeboats.
Sixteen moments before her group is lowered into the ocean,

(01:00:16):
an officer rushes over and says to Violet, quote here
miss jessup look after this, and then basically hands her
a baby girl. The baby had been left alone on deck,
and so the officer just basically made the hasty decision
to grab this baby and throw it to Violet for
safe keeping. So as their boat is lowered some sixty

(01:00:38):
feet in the dark to the freezing cold ocean below,
with icy wind whipping at their faces like quote a
knife in its penetrating coldness, Violet is trying to soothe
this baby girl. But the lifeboat hits the water hard.
You don't think about that part of it where it's like, yes,
you're being saved in a way off of a sinking

(01:01:00):
ship right into in a hurry, the North Sea. Yeah
that we've all seen tiktoks about is the North Seat. Yeah,
well the North Atlantic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
So the baby starts crying when the lifeboat hits the
water again. Just quick reminder, Violet does not know how
to swim, and she's of course terrified herself, but she
focuses on the baby. She pulls the baby to her chest,
hoping to keep her warm, and she just watches us
the Titanic sinks into blackness. And here's how Violet will

(01:01:31):
later describe this moment. She says, quote, I watched the
Titanic give a lurch forward. One of the huge funnels
toppled off like a cardboard model falling into the sea
with a fearful roar. A few cries came to us
across the water, then silence as the ship seemed to
right itself, like a hurt animal with a broken back.

(01:01:52):
She settled for a few minutes, but one more deck
of lighted ports disappeared. Then she went down by the
head and a thunder roar of underwater explosions. Our proud ship,
our beautiful Titanic gone to her doom.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
God, what a sight.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
And you're like, however, many feet away you could get
away totally looking at that, I don't like it. It's too
big and it's too vast.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
I'm on violet side. I don't like it. That's why
I need to keep talking about Okay, I got it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
So for the next several hours, as traumatized Titanic survivors
wait to be rescued, Violet clings to this baby as
you would. At one point she worries that both she
and the infant are going to freeze to death in
lifeboat sixteen. And then the rescue ship, the SS Carpathia,
shows up around four am, So it's like about two hours.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Did we ever have the discussion about, like the magnets,
how do they work?

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
How do they work? How do they.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
Maybe affect the Titanic's scouting system?

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Do we talk about that in any of these I
don't think so. Okay, do you want to throw some
theories out, I'll do it another. Have you been listening
to rfk's podcast, What's Happening? It's all magnets, It's all
magnet You think something interfered and that's how it It
dove into the ice, But a natural phenomenon interfered and
that Yeah, that's why some like Bermuda triangles exactly. So

(01:03:17):
if you know what I'm talking about, send me the
article that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
I read about, please, because I don't remember. If you
know what we're talking about, and you're in the North
Atlantic right now.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Tell me, tell me what I'm talking Tell me was
this just an episode of Below Deck?

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
And I'm totally fucking wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
It could be I slept with him because of the magnets.
They drew me toward his cabin. His dick is the
Bermuda triangle. It's not my fault that the draw is
so strong. It's like two cartoon magnets pulling off.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Was the lifeboat? Okay, stop it, stop it serious podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
I was just talking about a baby. You're playing this
for your mom, and now she's horrified.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Okay, we're going to do a quote from Violet about
the moment that she and the baby are saved.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Okay, ready. Quote.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
I was still clutching the baby against my hardcore life
belt when a woman leaped at me and grabbed the
baby and rushed off with it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Hey, it appeared.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
That she put it down on the deck of the
Titanic while she went off to fetch something, and when
she came back, the baby had gone. I was too
frozen a numb to think it strange that this woman
had not stopped to say thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
End quote. Oh, so the mom came. The mom was like,
you have my baby. That's my baby.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Okay, Well everyone's panicking, so and nobody would blame.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
She thought she lost the baby totally entirely. And there's
a lady that has the baby.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
But also, like, babies all look the same to me, Like,
how do you not set her baby the same?

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Like such babies? See attitudes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Years later, Violet will receive a very short phone call
from a woman claiming to be that baby.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Oh the baby a baby call he fuck hell, it's
a baby call out. It's a baby.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
That that baby, your favorite baby, Titanic baby from the
North Atlantic. Some people say that that call was either
a hoax or wasn't really.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
Violet seemed to believe she really was the caller. Sure,
why not?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
So the Carpathia spends four hours pulling Titanic survivors from
their lifeboats. Ultimately, they deliver around seven hundred people to
safety in the New York Harbor.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
I thought they went to Canada. I think they took
the dead bodies to Canada. Oh that's where the big
mark was. Okay, but sorry, that's just what it said here,
so you could be right. That's probably below deck.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Okay, it's more below deck Newfoundland. From there, Violet catches
a ship back to England, and not two weeks later,
she signs back up to.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Go out to See to work as a stewardess once again,
because like, what are the chances, right, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
And she's kind of like, this is a real skill.
She probably can make good money comparatively.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
And she needs the money. She has to take time
off now she can't go find herself and do a
year abroad. I think there was a Titanic Survivor fund
or something. No, they didn't do that then.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
I mean you would think something. But anyway, she's kind
of like all business, which sorry, I do love that.
We're just like, hey, look Irish man. It really it's
Irish Catholic because it's like, I'll get my reward later.
I'll go back on to the thing that tried to
kill me last two times. Okay, She will say, quote,

(01:06:28):
I knew that if I meant to continue my sea life,
I would have to return at once, otherwise I would
lose my nerve, for I had no love for it,
but I needed the work.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Yeah, intense.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
So Violet will later write about how the sinking of
the Titanic changes her entire perspective on life and strengthens
her already very deep faith. What it does not do
is change how much she hates being at the beck
and call of rich travelers. There's no faith strong enough
to get you over rich people snapping their fingers at you.
Absolutely not, It writes on that topic, quote, I wanted

(01:07:02):
the quietness of happy contentment, not the hectic turmoil of riches,
which sapped simplicity and spontaneous kindness out of people. I
wanted desperately to shut out the encroachment of sea life
on my inner self to retain something I feared I
was losing a kind of action that's performed for the
love of pleasing and not for gain. I had gained

(01:07:23):
one thing. I learned how to look very deeply into
people and to value them for what I found. Famous
names and possessions no longer moved me. I was more
confident when confronted by some powerful woman whose cold eyes
as I served her breakfast might once have shattered me.
She's literally talking about my career. But each day it

(01:07:43):
was more. But each day it was more difficult to
be my simple self, to ignore the pettiness, artificiality, and
frothy gaiety that encompassed at Stewardess's life on board a ship.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
I fucking totally hear that. Yeah, as an ex waitress,
I fucking hear it. Come on, like, it's now titled
Motherfuckers on Vacation, being like, you make my vacation totally.
So it's the literal opposite of a vacation.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
You are here to serve, Serney, and that's your purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Snap snap, snap fuck you. So now it's nineteen fourteen
and World War One begins Violet is twenty seven, and
as we all do at age twenty seven, she decides
to pivot. So what she does is become a warner.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Definitely, that's what you did. Yeah, you got to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
So she's in the hospitals both on land and at sea.
Oh honey, she can't stop. In late nineteen sixteen, she's
assigned work on the Britannic, which is the third of
the White Star Line signature luxury vessels, this sister ship
to the Olympic and to the Titanic.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
I don't think knowing to quit or like change the
name of the company.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
With this assignment, Violet will have worked on all three
wow of the White Star Line.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
It's got an utter ships. It can't be a lot
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
No, I bet they gave her a nice pocket watch
for it. So during the war, the Britannic is repurposed
into a hospital ship, and on November twenty first, nineteen sixteen,
it's moving through the A, G, and C on the
way to the battlefields in Turkey to treat wounded soldiers there.
So they go pick up all the wounded soldiers and
take them back away from.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
All the war.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
So at a little after nine am, Violet has just
left mass Church and she's now quietly eating her breakfast.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
I mean temple. Yes, Oh do you have to translate
it for you? Thank you. She's eating breakfast post Mass.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Post Mass and not Massachusetts, and her breakfast is interrupted
by a loud boom. We're doing it again. For years,
the cause of the blast will be unclear. But today,
in twenty twenty five, it's believed that the Britannic hit
a mine. No way, so the ship shakes violently begins
to sink. Violet yawns, checks her wa She looks around.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Is there a baby? Does everyone give me? A baby's crying?

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
It's not that big of a deal. I've seen worse.
It's anyboddy of a baby and all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
And the baby's over here. Please. She's finishing her English muffin. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Officers immediately start moving people onto lifeboats, but Violet runs
back to her room to get a prayer book and
a toothbrush, which is something she sorely missed after surviving
the Titanic sinking. A friend had jokingly told Violet to quote,
never undertake another disaster without first making sure of your toothbrush.
That's how much she complained about not being able to

(01:10:39):
brush her teeth after surviving the sinking of it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
How much were.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
Toothbrushes back then? And then money? What what did the
toothbrush cost?

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
I think she was just like it was no one's
priority to get me a toothbrush after we got back
to land, and so she's like, never again.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Okay, all right, girl.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Seems like you could use your finger like we all
did when we crashed at the dude's house in our twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
So now Violet's loaded onto a crowded lifeboat. This is
if you are the kind of person that doesn't understand
why you listen to true crime podcasts because they are upsetting.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
This part might upset you. Oh okay, got it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
This is a very upsetting part, especially if you have
ocean issues.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Okay, or you're on a boat right now, or if
you're on a boat right now.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
So there are slowly being lowered into the water, which
is not a smooth journey. The ship starts tilting, the
lifeboat gets snagged on an open porthole. It almost flips
upside down, but the people on the lifeboat manage to
get it uncaught. Now it's scraping down the side of
the Britannic as it's lowered. At one point, the ship

(01:11:44):
takes another hard tilt and the lifeboat goes out and
swings into the ship's green hospital band, which is made
of glass, so it's a hospital ship. The green band
around it is actually made of glass, which I didn't
know that. So there's like a cross up here, red
cross back there. That's so you know, hey, don't bomb
this ship.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
Canvas, Yeah, a shortage of canvas.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
I don't know who pland that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
But they smash into it and glass shatters, and Violet
and the other people on the lifeboat are sprayed with
shards of glass. All the while, Violet is looking down
at the water. She can see two lifeboats are already
down there, and the people who are on those lifeboats
are doing everything they can to row away from the

(01:12:30):
ship itself. But the captain is still trying to move
the Britannic towards shallower waters, and he has not turned
off the ship's propeller. Oh no, yes, no, The propeller
is now sucking the evacuees in their lifeboats toward the ship.
Violet watches as the worst case scenario plays out in

(01:12:51):
front of her, one of the lifeboats gets sucked into
the ship's blades, and the boat and all of the
people on it are hacked to pieces, and the water
then turns red with blood as she as they are
dangling over the same water they're supposed to go down into.
Oh no, Violet will later say, quote, I gave that foolish,

(01:13:12):
nervous laugh, as people sometimes do when faced with an
unpleasant discovery and a doubtful alternative.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
That's a beautiful way of putting Oh fuck o, fuck o,
holy fuck, fuck holy fu, just sitting there looking down.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Oh my god, Violet's lifeboat is finally dropped into the
same water. Almost on cue, Everyone except for Violet and
one other man jump out of the boat and into
the sea. Violet will later write about this quote, not
a word, not a shout was heard, just hundreds of
men fleeing into the sea, as if from an enemy
in pursuit. It was extraordinary to find myself, in the

(01:13:50):
space of a few minutes, almost the only occupant of
the boat. I turned around to see the reason for
this exodus, and to my horror saw the Britannica huge
propellers churning and mincing up everything near them, men, boats
and everything were just one ghastly whirl.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Oh shut it off.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
So she turns around to see why everyone's jumping off
the boat, and then when she turns back, the one
guy that was left also jumps off the boat. So horrible,
she can't swit right, not an option, And yet she
knows if she stays on this boat, she's going into
that propeller. So she flings herself into the water, kicking
and paddling for her life, and it is the very

(01:14:33):
first time her whole body and her head are underwater
like that. I mean, I'm sure she took baths before,
but like never she has never. She's immediately jerked around
by the power of these propellers.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
They just suck you right in.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Yes, you're gonna go where that water it takes you.
Her head is hit onto the ship's keel, which is
the bottom spine twice. She's pulled down and her head
is knocked into the keel twice. She will later write, quote,
my the rain shook like a solid body in.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
A bottle of liquid. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
At the same time, the keel is also blocking Violet
from being able to come back up and surface, so
she is under there, about to drown, She says, quote, suddenly,
some twist of fancy made me see even then underwater,
the humor of my situation, Oh my god, and I chuckled.
That was very nearly my undoing, for I swallowed what

(01:15:25):
seemed like gallons of water and everything that was in it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
I love her, I love her like how much fun
was she to have a drink with?

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Because she's like, you gotta be fasking. Someone hand me
a baby down here? Can you believe it? Miraculously, this
is when the captain finally cuts the ship's engines.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Thanks guy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
The propellers stop, and now Violet's adrenaline kicks in. Yes,
she's injured. It is a head injury. But somehow she
forces her way to the surface and finds a life
vest floating nearby. She holds onto that life vest. She
keeps her head above water, and she swims past dismembered
corpses and dangerous debris from the chopped up lifeboats.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Dude, horror show, Yeah, this is the worst one.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
While the Britannic continues sinking behind her, Violet is far
enough away, She gets far enough away, and when she does,
she turns around and she watches it go down. Quote
she says, all the deck machinery fell into the sea
like child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern,
rearing hundreds of feet into the air, until with a

(01:16:31):
final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of
her going resounding through the water with an undreamt of violence. Wow,
you just don't want to be that close to these
gigantic ships when they sing, truly.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Like, really, you want to be at home, far far away.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
At home with your eight brothers and sisters. So violets
out there bobbing in the water, clinging to the life
vest until a motor boat approaches and pulls her up
to safety. She then realizes for the first time that
her leg has been slashed and her head is quote
battered almost to a pulp. Doctors are amazed by how
mobile and alert Violet is. When she sees a Britannic

(01:17:12):
doctor that she'd sat beside it mass earlier that morning,
he tells her, quote, I know what saved you today.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Young lady English muffin.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Did you hear the way I choked on the finishing
that sentence where I'm like oh wait, he means, God,
on a second, Hold on a second.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
What does she think about this? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
I wasn't really thinking it was like this is a
highly Catholic church sponsored episode.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
It truly is.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
The Britannic will sink in just under fifty five minutes.
It took the Titanic two hours and forty minutes to sink.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
This thing went down fast.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
Twenty eight people are killed when the Britannic sinks. It
could have been much worse if the ship had picked
up wounded soldiers, but it was on the way.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Oh thank god. Yeah. Violet is patched up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
She's sent home to England, where she lives with her mom, Kelly.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
She ends up getting a job at.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
A bank, and that sounds way better, I mean, but
she's having problems with her basically with her cognition because
of the head injury. Years after the sinking, a doctor
will be doing a routine exam on her when he
tells Violet that she had actually fractured her skull when
her head hit the Britannic's keel, and she somehow not

(01:18:27):
only survived but was never treated for it and basically
got through it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
So a few years after that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
In nineteen twenty, when Violet is around thirty three years old,
she gets a niche to go back to see. Violet
will go back to the White Star line on the
restored Olympic, which is the ocean liner she worked on
that collided.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
With the Hawk number one. Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Violet immediately notices how different the Olympic's passengers are from
the last time she was on it. Instead of the stuffy,
ultra rich box sea assholes that she had worked for
before the war, Victorian Richie riches, now she's dealing with Americans,
many middle class. They're just there to have fun. Great,
because on land it's prohibition rice. So that's a new

(01:19:16):
responsibility as a steward and stewardess is on this ship,
it's part of your job to basically help these VIPs
to booze it up while they are.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
On this ship.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Sounds great, And basically part of the job is you
have to hide the booze from customs agents. Got it.
Violet will write about that quote. It was all so fantastic.
There were pillars of Wall Street senators, lawyers, debutantes, all
with their minds on the same problem. As we approach
the shores of the United States, how do we keep drinking?

(01:19:47):
So from here, Violet bounces around to other ships. She
even completes two cruises around the world on the Red
Star Line, and that experience means a lot to Violet.
She's surrounded by diverse people, She's exposed to different world cultures,
and this is when she really begins embracing her life
as a stewardess, which she then comes to appreciate for

(01:20:07):
its excitement and its unpredictability and the ways it's tested
her spirit and resolve. Fair enough, I mean, that's quite
a line, Maren, having written that, of like testing her
spirit and resolve, It's like.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
You almost died on A three. The ocean wants to
kill you so bad violently. This is fucking final destination Victorian.
She's like, guess what, Yeah, I was at church this morning.
It's not happened right today. That's right, Mass will keep
you from dying. Violet spends the next several years at sea.
She marries and quickly divorces a fellow steward. In nineteen fifty,

(01:20:43):
she retires at the age of sixty three and moves
into a cottage in Suffolk, England, in a village called
Great Ashfield, where she raises chickens, makes an adjacent field
available for her neighbors horses who she loves like her own,
and she even grows flowers that remind her of the
ones that she loved as a little girl in Argentina.

(01:21:03):
Violet Jessip dies of congestive heart failure in nineteen seventy
one when she is eighty three years old.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
What a fucking life. What a life.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
And despite her long career at sea, she ends her
life very grounded, close with her family, doting on her neighbors, horses,
tending to her garden, and every so often delighting and
telling one of her unbelievable stories of survival. And that
is the story and the legend of the so called

(01:21:34):
Queen of the Sinking Ships.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
Violet Jessup. Wow, yeah, I'd take that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
I'll take that life.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Okay, I'll take it all the way up until hubbering
over red water while people.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Oka, yeah, I know what that one. I don't what
that one. That's fucking wild. It is not cool. How
great job, Thank you did it again.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
Great job.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
My researcher Maaron mcglash, who took that basically was like
I think I found one that's crazier than all of
the Titanic stories combined.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
I'm like, how is that possible? One? Yeah, she did.
I believe you, guys. We believe in you, guys. We
believe you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:12):
Good job to everyone listening. Don't forget hashtag my favorite
hot Dog.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
A hashtag it up proved to us that you like
hot dogs the most.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
We'll show you ours of your show as yours right.
That's right, and also stay sex and don't get murdered.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
Cook Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Speaker 4 (01:22:40):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 4 (01:22:44):
Our editor is Aristotle Oscevedo.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 4 (01:22:49):
Our researchers are Maaron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Email your homecounts to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:22:55):
Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your.

Speaker 4 (01:23:01):
Podcasts and now. You can watch us on Exactly Wright's
YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe. Goodbyebye,