509 - Let Me Corrupt You - My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome my favorite murder. That's Georgia hard Start,
that's Karen Kilgariff. I'm shit all over my hand.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
She's having a night, She's having a day, a night,
a year.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
This feels and it's very stolen valor for me to
make this comparison. But coming back from a Thanksgiving break
to wait to go to on Christmas break very much
feels like when I first heard that they used to
make soldiers in Vietnam go for two weeks to like
meet their wives in Hawaii, right, and then come back
to war, where I'm like, wait, that's a horrible thing

(00:49):
to do.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, I hear you. We have two more weeks until
we're on Christmas break. Yes, And this is hard to
go back, Like we went on tour, I was insane.
I still can't get over the back that it's over,
Like I'm still I believe that I know. And then
it's also like hard to go away from, like people
cheering from you for you forever. And then also now
it's like welcome back.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
For two weeks, no one was excited to see me.
When I went home for Thanksgiving, someone cheered in I
kept looking at people going you do realize that I'd
just been spent three months experiencing.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Do you know who I think I am?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
You better get on board with this.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I'm good? I because we've been on tour. I wanted
to bring the dogs home for Thanksgiving, so I drove
up north. As if I don't count in the big
Thanksgiving travel nightmare. It's different for you. It's like different me.
I've been doing this for so long, I know how
to do it or something. The way home, it took
me twelve hours to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Everyone needs to know it's six hour drive usually.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So it's as if I drove home to Los Angeles
and then back to San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Essentially that feeling when you get to the Grapevine and
you're like, I'm almost there, but you're fucking not almost there,
because that's when the worst of the traffic.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Starts, because the ninety nine and then this thing with
the trucks comes and it is like a big nightmare,
big why of traffic, and then you sit there for
three more hours.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yes, I'm sorry to deal with that. Listen, I'm at home.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
It was you were excellent? Were you fully rested?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Right? Now, I don't want to tell you. I don't
want to say I don't want to make you go bad,
but yeah, pretty fucking rest. I did a nice ketamine
session over the weekend.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Hey, what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Therapeutic ketamine?

Speaker 1 (02:26):
You and some horses.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I went to the stables and kenemine and yeah, I'm rested.
I'm very rested and like clear minded. And I gave
you drugs just now though too.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, George and I are doing drugs before the show.
It's a thing we're going to try out. See it
worked for Fleetwood Mac and we think it's going to
work for us.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's just nicotine pouches. That is my like new thing.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I discovered it that Georgia was doing nicotine pouches, not
patches while we were on tour, doing both but pouches. Oh,
you're shooting it all. But then right before we started,
I was like, I drove over at twelve hours. Georgie
was like, do you want to travel on a nickete pouse?

Speaker 2 (03:02):
It felt like such a I have definitely been when
I was younger, the girl who gave someone their first cigarette. Yeah,
and I was that, don't hang out with her. She's
a bad influenced person entirely. So I totally have flashbacks
to that with you. Yeah, just now, and it felt
kind of good.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, it's a great feeling.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
It is.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
It's the full rebel. It's like day drinking. We're like
not supposed to do it?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Do it? Do it? Do it? We corrupt you. Yeah,
it's fun for everyone, come over to our side. Yeah,
we shouldn't get We shouldn't drink, right, it's stay. We
shouldn't have a drink, right, No, do you want to
have we should get a bottle?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
And also it's like, are you super tired? This might work?
I mean, I don't know, but it's something.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, are you feeling it?

Speaker 1 (03:40):
I think I do. There's like a I feel like
things got a little more in focus.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (03:45):
It does. Yeah. I did it so hard the other
day that I was such in such a good mood
that I called my mom and I had a great
conversation with her, which only happens when I have at
least one drink and we have a great conversation about
cats and about you know, nice things flowers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, but this time you were just like, oh, what's up?

Speaker 2 (04:03):
I love you?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, I mean Look, as my therapist said, and I've
said a million times on the show, everybody needs a
little oblivion. They do, and even if it's nicotine oblivion
in a pouch like you're an old cowboy.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, I love the I do too much oblivion. I
do what my therapist calls I win by losing, where
it's like I get back at something i'm mad at
by drinking.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
And it's not hurting the thing I'm mad at. No,
it's fucking up the thing I am, which is you,
which is me? Yep. Always I know.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
But it's like then they shouldn't have invented it, and
they shouldn't have made it so effective, truly. I mean,
I have to say on par with drinking, though, what
we did a lot this holiday, I guess week weekend
was we played a lot of games. So it was
like Thanksgiving nine.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
You guys love that shit.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
We love games. The one that I really love is
the three. It's basically three rounds of charades where you
get to say full sentences. The first round one word,
the second round. Charade's the last round, but you have
to remember the clues people gave on the other teams
because it goes back in the same bowl, so.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
You just point at that person.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Be likely I did exactly like that, and then like
bowling or whatever, and then people know, Okay, yeah, it's
very fun. And it's fun because people think they're not
going to be good at it, and they're great at
it because they just want to win. And it's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
We just played Jenga.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Oh that's good on a cruise cruise game, I'm thinking
of those. Have you seen those? Hilarious? Yeah, that's you
know what it is, whether it's drinking nicotine pouches, are
just like agreed upon fun. I want that cruise in
the afternoon feel.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
I've never been on a cruise and I want that too.
I don't even know really what you mean, but I
bet I guess post snap yep, pre dinner. Yeah, like
cocktail hour.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Everyone's agreed that no one's gonna to talk about work
or no one's going to be worried. We're all just
gonna be weird versions of ourselves and have fun. No WiFi,
no Wi Fi, you don't need it. Everyone's in there
like socks and stuff. No one's in their shoes. I
get really like up titans, like are you about to leave.
Where are you going take those shoes? Yes, you have
to take your shoes off, and somebody has to spill

(06:19):
red wine on the carpet. So the consult up a
red wine stain.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
I got it a minding one.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
That's what Sophie did it to Anna. And it was
this big, huge thing and we couldn't stop laughing because
my aunt Jean who was there, and my mom every
single time we got together, someone would spill red wine
on the carpet. So it was like just the perfect
it's good luck.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, speaking of good luck, this is my favorite. No,
we don't do that anymore, but that's a live show thing,
I know. And that's that.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
It's over.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
We have some responses from you guys. We sent out
our newsletter asking you what what you're thankful.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
For Thanksgiving in general, if you have anything to tell
us about stuff that went down, or yes, what you're
thankful for anything?

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Okay, I write sweet one. Okay, here's mine. This one
is called thank you for more than just the tough times.
Dear Karen Georgia and the MFM team. I wanted to
take a moment to thank you for getting me through
not only the tough times, but also for teaching me
how to embrace the good ones. I may not be
your typical fan or listener. I'm a forty seven year

(07:18):
old Mexican father of two daughters twenty one and twenty four,
living up here in Edmunds, Washington. But I've been with
you since day one, a brother from another mother. As
they say, Yes, your insight and humor gave me the
tools to better communicate with my daughters.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Oh my god, I've passed.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Along the MFM protocols, encourage them to stand up for
what they believe in and remind them that caring for
their four legged friends is just as beneficial to their
own well being. Yes, those lessons have meant more to
me than you know. Although I have two sisters of
my own, you both have become the West Coast Sisters.
I never knew I needed.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
This guy's trying to make me cry. I'm not going
to do it.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
It says a bunch of really sweet things, and then
it says thank you for being exactly who you are
and for letting me be part of this community with
warmth and love. SSDGM Angel, this is such a delight
to know that you are here with us, Sweet baby,
Angel's here with us, sweet.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Baby Angel, we should send him a shirt.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Let's do it. Well.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
This goes very much along with that email, and it
just says, hello, ladies, and felicitous compliments of the holiday
season to you.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh wow, it's the.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Monopoly Man English major. Oh so I thought of something
that might help you. With Folks who frown upon the
idea of a true crime comedy podcast, tell them it's
just like how the TV show Mash is a comedy
about war. Oh how genius?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Is that? Brilliant? Like a dark comedy? Right?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
This ought to helps soothe people's feelings, well, at least
people over forty years ago. Seriously, And then it says,
saw you in Chicago? You were great, Jenny. Isn't that nice?

Speaker 2 (08:45):
It's so nice. I love that.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
It's like, if you're listening to this podcast and you
think of things like that, if you have tips or
tricks for us, right, hopefully you know, what do you.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Tell your friends when you're like, you should listen to
this podcast. It's I know it sounds, but it's like,
what is that? Right? We want to know?

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah, and Angel, if you have some suggestions, you've been
here since day one, get in here, get back in here.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Back in here, Angel recording from Angel.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
I'm so grateful for that tip from Jenny and for
Angel writing.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Thanks guys, exciting. Hey, we have a podcast network. It's
called Exactly Right Media. Here are some.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Highlights well this week. Over on The Knife, Hanna and
Pasha talked to Ashley and Crystal, who are the daughters
of Donna Nelson, who was arrested in Tokyo in January
of twenty twenty three on international drug smuggling charges. They
immediately suspected the man Donna had been dating online to
be responsible for this, and so they share their family's

(09:39):
heartbreaking story and their fight for justice and the warning
signs behind elder drug mule scams. Wow, I'd never even
heard of that.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
That is something else, okay. And then over on That's
Messed Up, Kara and Lisa breakdown the SPU episode they'd
already disappeared with actor Blake DeLong. Then they dive into
the shocking real life case of Anatol Moskvin and his
twenty nine mummified human dolls.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Then on Ghosted, Ros reunites with comedian Oh Just truly
one of my very favorites these days. Vinnie Thomas. He's
the one. I'm sure I told you he has an
amazing TikTok and he does that bit where he goes
it's his impression of a pigeon at Pride Parade and
he's throw out some bad It's the funniest I love him.
So he's on Ghosted with Roz for a freaky, deeky

(10:25):
cosmic Kiki they call it, and they get into psychic Swindlers, Aliens,
a silicon based life, and Snookie's soon to debut paranormal
ghost hunting show.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Kind of love fits for her somehow, for like perfectly,
even though it makes no sense, it's not connected at all,
but it's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yes, please. I also think that Snookie's personality, I think
she was wronged in the time where they got popular, yes,
and it was so easy to dump on Snooky right,
And I think she deserves to do whatever the fuck
she wants because people want to watch and listen.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
She's a star.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
She is a star, okay, And then tomorrow we'll be
featured said about Snooky justice for Snooky. God damn it,
why are you o pressing Snookie?

Speaker 2 (11:06):
And then tomorrow we'll be featuring episode one of Brief Recess,
our newest podcast here on the MFM channel. This episode
features Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking member and top Democrat
on the House Oversight Committee. Then be sure to go
over to the Brief Recess feed and check out their
first four episodes. Please please please binge the newest podcast

(11:27):
on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts
and rate review subscribe.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Also Brief Recesses on YouTube. They're just as much a
video podcast as they are at audio one, so go
watch them at YouTube dot com slash at brief Recess.
Also attention holiday shoppers. The Exactly Right Store has been
fully stocked with gorgeous trinkets and treasures for you and
your loved ones. We have added do you want to
go through this list together?

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Sure? Ooh, I own this one already. We have the
SSDGM necklace, the Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered pendant necklace,
and it's so beautiful, beautiful. I have the gold one
and I wear it all the time. It's fucking beauty.
It's like not shitty, it's not shitty.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
And also what a cute little bag it says my
favorite established twenty sixteen on the front.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Keep your nicotine pouches in it. It's worth it just
for that.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Let me see if I can pouch this up right now.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
And then what else do we have?

Speaker 1 (12:17):
We have a mothman plushy key chains hang your keys
up here. But then you got a mothman down here.
Cute details on.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
This catnip one of these, Nicole, that's a great idea, okay.
And then our red flag beanie. You have that the cutest,
that red flag.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And then our cozy MFM script zip up hoodie. So
it's just my favorite murder in script. It's pretty simple
and like straightforward. I love that. And then it says
Murderino on the sleeve.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
I mean, do you want to come out as a Murderino?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
That's pretty fucking cool if you're ready. It's like also
like really good material. Vince is always like really obsessed
with good material on merch and he would this would
pass his test.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
I know. Nicole really does not slouch. She gets good one.
She does, she's she cares.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
So go to the exactly right store dot com to
shop now.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
And there's more good news. We have extended this sale,
so now it's going to December seventh, so you can
get it all.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
You got to use code ERM twenty twenty five at
checkout for twenty percent off site wide. That's exactly right.
Store dot com dot com support your local podcasts, that's right,
all right. So before we get started real quick, we
want to do our December donation announcement. You guys know,
every December, every week, every episode we like to donate

(13:29):
to a great cause. This month is no different.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
No, that's right, And this is actually one of my
personal favorites. I used talked about this book, yeah, father
Greg's book. So we're going to kick off December donation
drive with ten thousand dollars being donated to Homeboy Industries.
And that's this nonprofit here in La dedicated to providing hope, training,
and support to formally gang involved in previously incarcerated people,

(13:53):
allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members
of our community.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
They offer a wide variety of services, ranging from tattoo
removal to anger management and parenting classes. So if you'd
like to join us in giving to this very important cause,
go to their website at Homeboy Industries dot org.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
They actually have a really great cafe and they are
making tiktoks where it's like a bunch of guys that
look like tough guys that go up and there they
order black coffee, but it's like the little we talked
about that, right.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, and they're actually like getting their like SOI latte.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then they're all like going over and sipping them
all cute. It's the funniest Yeah, so cute. Also, if
you're not in a place to give money right now,
they're looking for volunteers. So there's volunteer opportunities around tutoring.
They need experienced teachers and they would also like some
volunteers that are mental health professionals.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
So I love that. So let's find ways to look
out for each other in the coming year.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yay, yay the way Homeboy Industries does.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Thanks you guys for helping us donate. Yeah, all right,
I'm first I have been. I guess the word isn't
looking for to telling you this story, right because it's
mash it's a comedy about Vietnam.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
There's yeah, there's real war in these right, so.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
It's not looking forward to but the story is fascinating
and we're going to Australia for this one. So this
is a story of the mysterious death of a young
woman in Australia about fifteen years ago. It's a troubling
case that doesn't have a clear answer. It's not a
cold case necessarily, but the most troubling part is probably
how the initial investigation was handled. This is the story

(15:30):
of the mysterious death of Phoebe Handshick and I actually
heard about this from a twenty sixteen six part podcast
series called Phoebe's Fall, and it was an investigation by
Michael Bachelor and Richard Baker, who are both reporters for
the Melvin newspaper The Age. It's one of those classic
deep dive They interview the whole family and friends and

(15:51):
just really get into this case and ask great questions
that never were asked by their police. So it's a
really good podcast. Highly recommend it. And it all stuck
with me because the girl Phoebe reminds me of me
or us, or murderinos or people we would know. She
just seems very Oh, let's just get out of it, okay.
On Thursday December second, twenty ten, at about seven pm,

(16:14):
the concierge at a luxury high rise apartment complex in
Melbourne called the Valencia. Goes to the refuse room on
the ground floor where all the trash from the high
rises trash chute goes, so each floor has a trash chute.
Trash goes to this room. She is looking for a
room to sweep something up, but when she tries to
get into the refuse refuse, the door is stuck. When

(16:37):
she gets the door open, she sees blood and a
body and she panics. She first calls her boss, then
the police, and it's quickly determined that this is a
young building resident named Phoebe Handschick. Police very quickly come
up with an explanation that Phoebe had taken her own life.
And because of this, they make many mistakes over the
course that they're a very short investigation and it will

(16:59):
leave me any questions unanswered. The first thing they do
is they don't check for a pulse, they don't check
for signs of life. And it's homicide detectives, so like
you'd think that they know to establish that immediately, right, Like,
that's the first thing you do.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Is it assumed that if they're there, it's because it
already has been a stop.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
I don't think it's supposed to be okay, because the
whole thing is like signs of life is like important,
and so they don't even check. I mean, yeah, so
that's what's going on. But let's talk about Phoebe. Phoebe
had been twenty four and she had lived with her boyfriend,
who's forty five. They live in that luxury apartment on
the twelfth floor of this building. The apartment belongs to

(17:38):
Phoebe's boyfriend, and they've been together for about a year
and a half, and Phoebe had moved in fairly shortly
after meeting him. We do know that the relationship was
somewhat rocky, and Phoebe had talked about ending it on
multiple occasions, and maybe even tried to end it and
just kept going back to him. This man is I'm
just gonna call him Anthony, that's his name. But he

(18:01):
had been cleared of any involvement in or knowledge of
her death by the coroner. So I'm not going to
say his last name, but you can find it anywhere.
The journalists from the Age take pains to say that
they are not arguing with that finding that he's not involved,
but because his name comes up a lot in connection
with this case, and at the same time, he's not
been charged with any crime. I'm not going to use

(18:21):
his last name, but in any case, his name's Anthony,
and he's kind of a mover and shaker in Melbourne
as he's a very successful producer of major events, so
he kind of is like in the know. He goes
to all the cool parties. He throws all the cool parties.
You know, he's got money, that kind of thing. His
parents are both judges. His father is a retired Victoria

(18:43):
Supreme Court judge and his mother is a district judge,
so you know, well off and like also well respected
in the community. His sister is sort of a socialite
and is known to be a minor cocaine dealer, although
she won't be convicted of this several more years. And
when that does happen, when she does get convicted of

(19:03):
it and found with as selling cocaine, she gets a
very light sentence because of her parents' connections.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
I mean, so to have two parents as judges, yeah wow,
Like good luck going through yea the systems, Yeah you
are the system right.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah. So meanwhile, Phoebe, Yeah, come on, she still got it. Meanwhile,
let's talk about Phoebe. She's born on May ninth, nineteen
eighty six and grew up in a lovely part of
Melbourne with her parents and two brothers. Seems like she
had a really lovely childhood and she's known for being
creative and beautiful and like stops people in their tracks.
But she also seems like she's kind of she seems

(19:39):
like she'd be a murderer now she has. She seems
very artistic. She seems like the cool girl in high
school who like always took photos and was in like
art classes and photography classes, and you know, she had
a pierced lip and like short spiky hair.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
She was just cool. She was a cool girl.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, I'd like someone you'd want to be friends with.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, I just really quick on that. I saw TikTok.
That was all about having hobbies. Is not just like
a pastime or a distraction. Like hobbies, especially in women,
teaches you how to care about the things, like care
about yourself and invest in yourself and then develop. So
it's like you start it a hobby and you're like say,
playing the guitar, and if you just keep doing it,

(20:18):
eventually you'll get good and then you can actually do
something with it. And that idea where it's just like that.
I love the idea of like girls in high school
that are like, I want to be a photographer. I'm
into photography, and it's like, you don't have to do
that forever, right, just like chase that kind of instinct and.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Get into about those like temporary hobbies and just like
what's new, what's next?

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Try it out, see how you feel.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
And so she has a rebellious streak totally reminds me
of Be in the nineties as a precocious teenager. She
starts going out to clubs with fake id's when she's thirteen,
starts drinking and doing drugs. It's exactly what I did
at sixteen. If Phoebe gets her first job at McDonald's,
and this is just kind of like a way to
show you how she was and what she was like.
I love the story. She hates the job. She quits

(21:02):
after her second day. But when you quit your job
at McDonald you have to return your uniform, and Phoebe
had come to work wearing it, so she decides she's
had enough. She quits. She goes into the back room,
strips off the uniform and then runs home in her
underwear so she doesn't have to pay them for the uniform.
Like that, that's the kind of like like I want
that girl to be my friend. Yes, you know it's

(21:23):
a cool girl for sure. Yeah, she seems like someone
you'd be like following on Instagram now, who's like an
influencer who does really fun, cool stuff. And you know,
Phoebe's close with her family, but her parents get divorced
when she's in her teens, and she is estranged from
her father for a while, but they ultimately repair their relationship.
And she's really close with her grandmother, a woman named Phyllis,

(21:44):
and Phoebe trusts her completely. She really tells her grandma anything,
including about her teenage exploits and experimentation with drugs, which
my grandma would have had a fucking heart attack I
had told her what I was doing. But this grandma's
cool and totally non judge mental. But she's also honest
when she's worried about what Phoebe's telling her, Because the

(22:05):
grandma had done her fair amount of experimenting herself. Phyllis
is upfront with Phoebe about her own experiences with drugs,
including LSD, saying how she didn't tolerate psychedelics. Well, so
be very careful. It's like not for everyone. And Phoebe
respects her grandmother but ultimately pays a normal amount of
teenage attention to this advice, which is.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
None, thanks so much, thanks for your input.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's snare yea. And so she definitely struggled to some
extent with mental health and with drug and alcohol use,
as a lot of us do. It sort of blurrily
fits into what is considered the expectations for young people.
Her family isn't too phazed by her relationship with much
older men, which she's always had, including a relationship with

(22:50):
a teacher when she was in high school. He was
thirty and she was sixteen. But it seems like the
mother and the grandmother I both had always had relationships
with older men and didn't see it as problematic and
he like lived with them for a while. And it's
so hard to say nowadays, like you can't date your students.
There's a fucking children. Yes you're not supposed to. Yes,

(23:11):
no that's wrong, but they don't see it as problematic.
And yeah, so all it says to say, there's a
lot going on in Phoebe's life, much of it typical
for someone who's twenty four, but people can't seem to
agree if Phoebe's alcohol and drug use and relationships have
crossed over into a territory that's more worrying. In the
week leading up to her death, Phoebe was in close

(23:31):
contact with her psychologist and did seem to be in
some amount of distress about her relationship with her boyfriend
and as well as her drinking, which she thought was
getting out of control. And there might have been some
drug use as well, because you know, he was in
the night life scene. Yeah, and his sister, as we
now know, was selling cocaine. Which all is to say,

(23:52):
if you already have mental health issues, adding those things
are very detrimental.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
And proximity with stuff like that, it's like, if you
can get away from it, that's why people are like,
then I moved to the country or whatever, exactly, because
if you're right in it and that's where all your
friends are and that's what they're doing, and.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
You're trying to keep up with this older crowd. And
she wasn't the type of person who was like she
shouldn't have a ton of money. But this crowd that
he ran in, you know, they threw parties for like
famous people, and they had all this money and you know,
designer things, and so she was kind of twenty four
in trying to keep up.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, that's a world we've all been told we're supposed
to want to be.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
In, right, Yeah, So, her therapist says that during that week,
Phoebe was talking about taking her own life, but it
hadn't risen to the level that she thought she should
send a crisis assessment team to the apartment, like she
had mentioned it before, but not with any concrete plans,
which I think is the thing that they always look for.
But she later says that she regrets not sending someone

(24:50):
to help her. All that said, while people close to
Phoebe agree that she was experiencing mental health struggles, perhaps
even more severe ones, no one can understand how she
could have possibly taken her own life. And this is
how she died by stepping feet first into the garbage
chute of the twelfth floor. So problematic, and that's why

(25:12):
she was found down in the trash room, right, I
get it. Yeah, so many things are weird, there's no
fingerprints or handprints left behind in the garbage shoot. You
can imagine like remember when I had at my old apartment. Yeah,
it's tiny, it's like you open, it's the size of
a laptop. So if someone were to put her in,
or she were to go in herself, there would be

(25:33):
hand prints, clear handprints, yep. But there weren't any. And
it's unclear totally if it was like they just weren't
any usable prints or no prints at all, like fully
wiped down exactly, both of which are you know, don't
make a lot of sense. The other thing, too, is
that her family and friends say that, you know, she
did struggle with mental health. She did have a hard

(25:54):
time taking her medications all the time, so her being
suicidal wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility. But
they point out that she had a balcony and or
they point out that she was just this free spirit
who loved nature. She would have taken her own life
in a different way. You know, she was an artistic,

(26:14):
creative person. You don't put yourself in a fucking trash
shoot like that's not you don't do that.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
It sounds yeah, it sounds unrealistic. But it's also just
like it feels like if you're in a moment like that,
you're not also trying to torture yourself.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Right way, it's very very suspicious. Like you'd think that
the police first thing they would do when they got
there would be to assume immediately that that is suicide.
Is so far fetched, Yeah right, Yeah, like to conclude
it eventually maybe, but to assume it immediately and treat
the investigation at that way is super suspicious.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
So on Tuesday, November thirtieth, two days before her death,
Phoebe goes out partying and gets so drunk that she
spends pretty much the entire day Wednesday, December first, in
bed with a hangover. Phoebe's family says this happens sometimes,
And on the morning of December first, at about ten
thirty am, Phoebe sends out a group text to her mom,

(27:13):
brother's grandma, her boss, and her boyfriend, the one she
lives with. And it's concerning and so I'm gonna read
it to you. It's very odd. It says, quote, Hi, family,
I am in bed and about to sleep, and when
I wake, I will turn into the most incredible human
being you've ever seen not. I will go to the hospital.
It's safer there, and I hear the special tonight is

(27:35):
tomato soup. This is known as a tomato soup litter, delicious, nutritious.
I love you all very much, but not enough to
send an individual text. Sorry about that, but time is
sleep and I must be on my way merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream exo. So that is the
text she sends to everyone. Try to wrap my head

(27:56):
around it, having been hungover really bad myself and the
like shamis that you get and the guilt and you're awful,
and I need to fix this and I want to
tell my friends and family that, like I swear, I'm
going to fix this and I'm going to get better.
But it doesn't make sense. It's just a weird text.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
When she receives this text, Phoebe's mom is about to
get on a plane home from Western Australia and she's
so concerned that she asked her mom, Phoebe's grandma, to
contact Phoebe's boyfriend, so he picks up the call. He
says he's at work, but he'll check on Phoebe after
work and This story gets even more muddy and strange because,
by some accounts, and it's so convoluted, Phoebe's boyfriend had

(28:38):
her cell phone at the time that message was sent.
He said he had taken it to work that day
because it was broken, so it's going to drop it
off at the store. But why would that text then
come from it? It seems like someone else wrote the text, right,
And it's also like perfect punctuation, perfect you know, casing.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like if she was drunk or high or it was
something like that.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
But also it's like he receives the text, he's on
that thread, right, But then he also has the phone, right,
he says yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
And there's a huge amount of confusion about the timeline
and whereabouts of this iPhone. It sounds like Phoebe maybe
had two phones and still had the second one on Wednesday,
but it's just hard to tell. That evening, Phoebe does
talk on the phone with her father for about ten minutes,
but the call happens on her boyfriend's phone, not hers,
and they make a plan to have dinner together the

(29:33):
next night. So the next day, Thursday, the day Phoebe dies,
Phoebe's boyfriend leaves her work, and by some of his
later accounts, Phoebe had her iPhone up until this point,
and this is the day he takes it to be fixed.
He kind of changed his story a couple times, which
is suspish because it's all making sense to any questions.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
No, no, I'm right with you. It's just weird knowing
that you already kind of gave the caveat that he's
not involved and has been cleared, where it's like, but
all these things.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Like, yeah, we don't believe we've I think that the
reason he's cleared is because it was not properly investigated,
not because he actually had nothing to do with it. Okay,
So regardless, he leaves in the morning while Phoebe's still sleeping.
Later that morning, there's a fire alarm in the building,
and Phoebe's seen on the CCTV footage with her dog
filing out of the apartment. Some people point out that

(30:19):
she seems to stumble in the footage at one point,
saying like maybe she had been drinking, but she seems
surefooted walking back into the building, so it's hard to say.
Around noon, Phoebe's boyfriend's house cleaner comes to the apartment,
and she's the last person we know of to see
Phoebe alive and speak to her. She says Phoebe seems
sick and hungover, but not depressed otherwise normal. So at

(30:40):
six pm, Phoebe's boyfriend returns to the apartment. He says
it was empty when he got there, but he saw
a broken glass on the floor, as well as a
small amount of blood in some places, including on the
computer keyboard. He says, Phoebe's purse with her wallet in
it is on the counter, which is where she always
takes her purse with her, so he doesn't know where

(31:02):
she is. He has a cigarette, has a beer, and
then orders thy Food, which is a weird thing because
he and Phoebe were supposed to meet with her dad
that night for thy food at the same restaurant, but
he doesn't know where she is. They have plans, and
then he orders typhood. They have plans for dinner, right

(31:22):
doesn't add up. When the typhood comes just after seven pm,
the delivery guy mentions that there are police and the
building's foyer. Something's going on, and that's when Anthony, the boyfriend,
goes downstairs to discover that Phoebe's body had been.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Found, right, Yeah, I'm just thinking, like, you have these
plans and then your girlfriend is like you can't get
a hold of her. The idea that you're just going
to have some dinner, right feels odd?

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yes? Yeah, Like I wonder what Vince would think if
he came home and I wasn't there and my purse
was there, Like he'd be he'd know something was wrong.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Just be working on that probably.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, he ordered dinner. I better eat right. So this
is all pretty awful. Trigger warning. Phoebe had fallen twelve
stories through that shoot, more than one hundred feet feet first,
so the blade of the compactor machine at the bottom
of the chute had badly injured her ankle on the

(32:21):
way down. Once it gets to the bottom, there's a
blade for the trash, nearly severing her foot. Sorry, but
it's clear from the blood on the floor of the
refuse room that Phoebe had survived. That she had climbed
out of the bin and crawled across the room trying
to get out before ultimately dying of blood loss is
what she died wrong.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Oh that's horrible, I know, I mean, that's worst case scenarios.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
It's really awful. She's found with her jeans down around
her ankles, which is a weird mystery too. Did they
come down when she fell or a lot of people
are like a way to get her legs together to
fit her in the chute if someone else had put
her there would be to pull grip cheans down around
her ankle, you know what I mean. So that's really suspicious.

(33:05):
There's no signs of sexual assault, but she does have
some bruises on various parts of her body, like her wrist,
in her arm, places where someone would have had to
grab her to have those those bruises. But that's inconclusive.
And then so Phoebe's blood alcohol content is zero point sixteen,
which is twice the legal driving limit in the US

(33:25):
and triple the legal limit in Australia. So this part
is like what people point to when they're like, she
did it herself. And she's found to have what is
essentially ambient in her system, which is amount consistent with
a normal dose, but she'd also had a lot of alcohol.
The coroner writes in his report that he believes Phoebe
climbed into the chute in a sleepwalking state induced by

(33:47):
the alcohol and sleeping pills. But Phoebe's family points out
that they had seen her drunk on numerous occasions because
she didn't have a particularly high tolerance, and they did
say she was very quick to lose her sea legs.
But they are extremely skeptical that she could have climbed
into the shoot with that amount of alcohol in her system.
So it's almost like they're saying that the alcohol and

(34:08):
ambien made her do it. Everyone else who doesn't think
so are saying, how could she have done that if
she were on that much alcohol and ambien? Yeah, and
why you have to ask why she would do that?
I just don't.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
It doesn't make sense, especially knowing that she lived through it,
where it's like, why would you do a thing that
wouldn't if you're going to go through something like that
and make a decision.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Right, And it's the version if she put herself in there,
I don't think she would have known she was going
to die, So she actually was wanting to take her
own life. There's so many other ways to do it.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
But if she was like totally impaired, right alcohol and ambient,
maybe it wasn't a decision making process. That was like
normal or linear, And if she.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Was totally impaired on alcohol and ambient how could she
have climbed up into the chute fit her entire body,
you know, like yeah, and without leaving prints behind. Yeah, right,
it's just weird. Yeah, it's weird completely either way. So
the shoot is about three feet off the ground, and
it's one of those ones that doesn't stay open unless
you hold it open, and there's really nothing to hold
on to if you were going to climb in. It's

(35:08):
just in a wall, and it would be easy enough
to get one leg in, but you'd have to be
very small and very strong and very agile to get in.
And that said, Phoebe is actually incredibly fit. She is
learning karate and kickboxing. She spends hours at the gym.
She's also a great climber, and so it might be
physically possible for her to climb into the garbage chute.

(35:31):
But at the same time, the fact that there's no
usable fingerprints or handprints Phoebe's or anyone else's is very suspicious.
So this is the botched investigation. There are many many
missed opportunities. At the beginning of this investigation, where the
Melboyn homicide squad does not gather crucial evidence for starters.
As I said, no one checks her body for signs

(35:52):
of life. She clearly was alive for some amount of
time after her fall because of the crawling, so there
might have been a chance that she was hanging on
still when help first came. So the investigating officers are
part of Melbourne's homicide squad, as I said, So it's
not like the idea of this case involving foul play
would have immediately been dismissed out of hand, like that

(36:13):
is not the first thing I would think if I
saw the scene. Is she took her own mind?

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Not at all, right, No, I mean I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
When they investigate Phoebe and her boyfriend's apartment, they do
find the small bloodstains on the wood floor shattered dishes nearby,
but they don't take the shattered dishes to see where
it came from. There's two glasses that have been used
like cups on a bench, like to me, that says
two people had been there. They also don't take samples
of her blood, and they don't take her cell phone

(36:44):
that she has and her computer as evidence to just
see what's in there. There could be a you know,
a suicide note. Maybe they don't even check that, and
they don't take the laptop for that reason. There's also
blood on the laptop and they still don't take it, right.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, police also don't take the building's CCTV footage on
the day of Phoebe's death, they look at it. The
building manager, who is in this podcast says that like
he offered it to them. He told them that it's
on a two day loop and so it erases itself
every two days. He lets them know that he offers
it to them, and they don't take it, and they

(37:21):
don't even look to see like just like.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Who's in the building, Yeah, at entrances and exit like.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Even just to like rule it out that no one
was there.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, that's very strange.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Right. It's only after more than two days have elapsed
that the police contact the company that services the building
CCTV footage to try to recover it, and unsurprisingly, most
of it's gone. And this includes all the footage of
the garage under the building, which would have shown who
came and went around the time of Phoebe's death.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
It just that doesn't track at all.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
No, it's just basic police work, no matter what kind
of crime you're you're looking at. There also appears to
be no footage from Phoebe's hallway or the room where
the garbage shoot was. The police also don't lock down
any particular crime scene, so there's actually three crime scenes
if you really look at it. Here there's the apartment,
there's the room where the shoot is, and then there's

(38:10):
the refuse room. Those are three crime scenes that should
have been cordoned off, not one of them are. And
Phoebe's boyfriend and his family judges are in the apartment
the whole time this is going on. Allowed back in
the apartment. Oh no, allegedly allegedly. Allegedly. They don't take
any of Phoebe's electronics for months, and by this time

(38:30):
the SIM card from her iPhone is gone, and her
boyfriend admits to getting rid of it, thinking it wouldn't
be useful for anything. I have never gotten rid of
a SIM card. I don't even know how to do it.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
You know who does, like weird spies and stuff, exactly
like anyone that's like, oh, pop this out and throw
it into the river lake.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
That's the Karen Reid case. Remember the one cop who
like fuck threw away a SIM card that's so sketchy.
Jesus very yeah, very very rid of SIM cards. I
have my phones from like two thousand and six stuff.
If you can find out what's on there, I've tried.
It's really boring. Oh it's like just photos of it's
so dumb, it's so.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Don't look back, don't look back. But also I didn't
really put that. I mean sitting with this, and then
it's like you suddenly can see like and allegedly, allegedly
I'm making this up, but it's just like trying to
assemble some sort of idea of what was going on
that night where it's like two judges are in the
apartment basically dictating what is and is not going to happen.
Maybe maybe not, who knows, but that idea as one

(39:31):
theory suddenly is like, oh, right, don't look at that,
shut that down, don't go over there, like this is you.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Also think that they would want that to happen. Yeah,
they didn't think that he had anything to do with it.
They would be like, what are you doing? This isn't protocol?

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Right, yes, and let everybody in here and have everybody.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Talking people who think it's suicide and who think she
took her own life is him and his family? Yeah,
like that fucking it's not great. That's not great. They
immediately are telling, like their friends and people they now
that it's suicide, like putting on facebo to figure out
what happened. And they are the only ones who think

(40:07):
that it's not suspicious. That's to me is like the
biggest red flag.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
It's not great.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
No, Also, her sunglasses were found with her. Why would
you have her sunglasses on? I mean, you know what
else they didn't do is check the trash bins where
she was found. They didn't check.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Inside something that was in the room where.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Her body was. Right, so like, maybe, okay, maybe she
went to take trash out legitimately ran into some awful
monster and that happened. But then also like, why was
their glass broken in the apartment, Why was their blood?
Why did she have her sunglasses with her? It's just baffling.
At least also didn't take samples. I guess there were
mysterious large shoeprints leading away from the apartment, and they

(40:51):
didn't check that out at all. And then the other
phone she had had been lost, so it's just her laptop.
And it's months months later that they finally take it.
So Phoebe's grandfather, len is a retired police detective, so
he's like, fuck this shit. Yeah, And while he's devastated
to loose his granddaughter, people who have spoken to him

(41:11):
tend to agree that he's approached the question around her
death logically and rationally. He gets in contact with the
company that makes the garbage shoot, and the company allows
him basically they make him a reproduction of the shoot.
He's like, there's no way she would have put herself
in there, gets a reproduction of the shoot, and then
asks her friend a couple of her friends for the

(41:32):
same size to reenact like how she would have gotten
into the shoot, and films the whole thing, and with
tremendous effort and there's video of it, they're able to
get themselves into the shute, but not without bracing themselves
on the shute and the wall around it, which would
have left like I think clear finger and pom prints,
And they can't fit into the shoote without lifting their

(41:53):
arms above their heads. Like it's just it's very hard
to do. It's not impossible, but it's very hard to
do and this is not something the cops would have
tried to reenact, you know, yes.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
And it's just such a horribly unpleasant thing to do.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
I guess like maybe I'm just identifying with her way
too much, but like, I would never do that. I would.
That's it's gross, it's gross, it's awful, it's scary. Her
friend said she was claustrophobic too, so like doing that,
it doesn't make sense, It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
But that, on top of no print, right, is something is.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Wrong to have. There's so many things. Yeah. So meanwhile,
in Victoria, Australia, at this point, they still use the
antiquated coroner system, which you used to see in the
UK and United States as well. And so when we
talk about old murder cases, you hear us talking about
the coroner convening a jury to determine whether or not

(42:47):
a murder has taken place. It's like the coroner's inquest,
and then criminal charges stem from there. So the coroner
initially rules it an open finding. That's what he rules
the death as, meaning there's not enough information to determine
Phoebe's manner of death. So it's an open case. It
takes years of pressure from Phoebe's family to open an
official and full inquest into this, like you have to

(43:10):
petition the government. I've listened to other podcasts and better
the stories where it's just so hard for the family
to do it. In fact, they have to pay for
it themselves, the family of the victim that they're trying
to get an inquest for. Part of the reason it's
so hard is that Phoebe's boyfriend's parents are such prominent judges,
which means that they know every lawyer in town, so

(43:31):
no lawyer can actually take the case right because it's
a conflict of interest. They finally get a lawyer, and
the inquest finally happens in twenty fourteen, four years after
Phoebe's death, and not until her mother, Natalie, is able
to raise fifty thousand dollars from donations and her own
savings to cover the family's legal cost to have them

(43:52):
properly look into her daughter's death. Wow. Right. The other
reason it takes as long is that Phoebe's boyfriend tries
to petition again since there being an inquest at all,
but ultimately goes through and it's determined at the inquest
that it is very difficult to make any kind of
ruling because of the amount of evidence that was lost
or not gathered, how convenient at the time of her death. Ultimately,

(44:13):
the coroner rules that Phoebe died quote by misadventure, meaning
an accident. This is against the advice of his counsel,
the lawyer who is tasked with working with the coroner
to parse through the evidence. Oh Wow, she had written
that she believed the case should be left open. The
coroner writes that he believes Phoebe had gotten into the
shoot herself in an altered state brought on by alcohol

(44:34):
and ambien, despite several medical experts testifying well alcohol ambien
can make people deliriously do things they believe, it's highly
unlikely Phoebe would have been able to climb into the
chute on her own. So like everyone's telling you not
to rule it that way, and you just do it anyways.
Inside John In two thousand and eight, so four years

(44:55):
before Phoebe's death, a new law had made it harder
for people to appeal the coroner's find based on their
own interpretations of police evidence, and so this was part
of an effort to modernize the coroner system. So if
the coroner had left the case open, Phoebe's family wouldn't
have had to appeal because he ruled death by misadventure.
They would need to appeal in order to change that.

(45:17):
So under the two thousand and eight law, if the
appeal didn't go in their favor, they would be responsible
for all of the legal fees incurred by that appeal,
so pay for justice. This is speculation and allegedly Phoebe's
boyfriend has another girlfriend die by suicide in twenty eighteen,

(45:37):
which people do or don't think is suspicious depending on
the case, whether or not you know, and it's possibly
had nothing to do with either woman's death, but this
is always brought up when people talk about the case.
The widespread attention to Phoebe's case has led to calls
for change to the coronial court system, which makes it
extremely difficult for families to appeal the coroner's decision, and
so in twenty eighteen, partly because of this case, the

(46:00):
Victoria Attorney General announces that there will be some reform
to the two thousand and eight Coroners Act, and it's
tied directly to the issues raised in the podcast that
was used as my main source that I listened to,
called Phoebe's Fall, So they actually were able to enact
changes just with this podcast, which I think is so incredible.
Families are now able to challenge corners decisions based on

(46:21):
more factors than they had been originally able to do so,
and they are less financial risk to do so. So
we're recording the show right at the fifteenth anniversary of
Phoebe's death, and she'd be thirty nine if she were
alive today. And it's still one of those stories that
people are just always talking about because it just doesn't
make sense and.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
There's so much to discuss. I mean, like there's layers
and levels of like even if there was no boyfriend,
right right, but then it's like but then you lay
that on there, Yeah, all that additional information where it's
like it kind of reminds me of the staircase in
that way.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Oh, it totally reminds me that they discovered.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
The other wife. And then of course at that point,
yeah me the way I you know ingest things where
it's just like, well, there we go. It doesn't happen twice, No,
it doesn't happen twice. But but it does, it does,
it can and it does. But it makes something that
is already suspicious seem like, well, come on, yeah, it's
at least worth a second serious looking into totally.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
You think they'd want to do that to show that
they weren't being you know, vice, Yeah, but nope. And
it's just really sad. I just I think about her
and how she was twenty four and struggling and then
so were we, and we got the chance to straighten
things out and she didn't, and it's just so tragic
and I just don't. I just don't. It just doesn't

(47:42):
make any sense. She deserved better than that, yeah, than
what she got. Yeah, And that's the story of the
mysterious death of Phoebe Handschick.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Wow. That's that's a lot. That's a heavy, Yeah, that
needs to get solved. There's Phoebe's fault. Definitely listen to it.
It's from twenty sixteen and they've done other stories since then.
It's just a really great investigative podcast and interview. That's
a lot of people, a lot more details than I
was able to put out there, and it's making change,
Like it's actually affecting people who are wanting to look

(48:12):
at it. Wow, unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
So can you change direction now please?

Speaker 1 (48:19):
I would love to, And I'm going to great although
it's not you know, it's still over in the dark
place where we like to spend our time. Because today
my story is about a legendary maritime disaster. It's about
a massive ship that gets caught in a horrible storm
and then vanishes into thin air. Oh but it's not
on the open ocean. It takes place on one of

(48:41):
the vast, volatile Great Lakes. Fifty years ago. Many loved
ones of those who are lost in this maritime disaster
are still alive and still grieving. It inspired a legendary
Gordon Lightfoot song. This is the story of the sinking
of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Holy shit, Vince has been watching because he's from Mission again, right,
so like he knows all about it. Yeah, I've been watching,
like the documentaries and TV shows.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
I don't know anying about it though.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
I didn't really either, and I didn't think I knew
the song. And then I listened to the song. I
was like, oh, this has just been kind of playing
in the background because like I grew up in the
what do they call the am gold era of the seventies,
where you just turned on the radio and there was
like amazing music music, and Gordon Lightfoot was one of
those voices, a famous Canadian kind of traditional singer. But

(49:28):
then he had like some amazing hits and he just
very recently died.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
So the main source used in the story today is
Christopher Rowley's excellent nineteen ninety six Discovery Channel documentary called
Shipwreck The Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the rest
of the sources are in our show notes. So it
all begins on a beautiful sunny autumn morning on November ninth,
nineteen seventy five, in Superior, Wisconsin, on the shores of

(49:54):
Lake Superior. This part of the lake is lined with
enormous docs. I don't know if you've ever seen those
really gigant antic docks on the Great Lakes. They look
like several sets of train tracks that extend half a
mile out over the lake and eighty feet above the water.
And then basically big freighters come up and they wait
to be loaded with their cargo there. And in the

(50:15):
mid seventies that cargo would typically be pellets of processed
iron ore, which is an important industrial mineral that gets
converted into steel. So the ore arrives by rail from
mines in places like Minnesota, and then once it's loaded
onto the ships several tons at a time, it gets
hauled through the Great Lakes and out to steel mills

(50:36):
in Rust belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit. And this
is why the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is doc today is
named for the president of the insurance company that owns
the ship, Edmund Fitzchair.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Okay, you need a legacy, gotta have a legacy, Gotta
do it.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
But you're risking, but this could be your legacy. So
the ship has a twenty nine person crew that's currently
tasked with freighting iron or eastward towards Sue Saint Marie, Michigan,
and then down to the lower Great Lakes and then
ultimately landing in Detroit. So it's a massive freighter. It's
seven hundred and twenty nine feet long. It's the length
of two football fields. As a ship, it towers nearly

(51:16):
forty feet off the water. The height is a basically
about a four story building. Oh my god, it weighs
more than thirteen thousand tons when it's empty, and it
can carry around twenty six thousand tons of cargo, and
it is lovingly nicknamed Big Fits. So the Fitzgerald is
so gigantic that when it was first unveiled in the
late fifties, around ten thousand people showed up to the

(51:39):
christening ceremony just to see what it looked like. But
that ceremony devolved into chaos when the Fitzgerald gets launched
and it basically slides sideways into the harbor and creates
this huge wave that breaks onto nearby docks and drenches
the thousands of spectators, and then as it kind of

(51:59):
bobbles to right itself, it crashes into a nearby pier.
And in that documentary for the Discovery Channel, they say,
quote one man is so shaken by this site that
he suffers a heart attack and dies. And another swears
that the Edmund Fitzgerald is trying to climb right out
of the water.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Craepy.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
So just to be there and see all of that happening,
the idea that a guy had a heart attack, I'm like, wait,
is that my weird like fear of gigantic ships, am
I the reincarnated soul of that man must be. It's
all about us at the end of the day. So
this takes place twenty five years after that, and since
that time, the Big Fits has proven itself to be
a reliable workhorse of a freighter. Its next trip is

(52:40):
old hat. It's a two day run. They've done it
a lot of times over the seventeen years on the
Great Lakes. The captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald is sixty
three year old Ernest M McSorley, who, over his forty
four year career, has climbed the ranks. He starts as
a deckhand and gets all the way up to the captain.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
I mean, with a name like Sorely, what else are
you going to do with your life?

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Come on, and you better drink whiskey, and you better
tell a good story, and you better belly up to
that bar. So there are very few people who know
gigantic ships like the Edmund Fitzgerald or the Quirks of
the Great Lakes better than Captain McSorley. And of course,
like any great tragic story, he's about to retire. His
wife Nelly's recovering from a stroke and so he has

(53:24):
promised her that after this shipping season is over, he
will finally come home for good. Come on, this hall
will be the last one for Captain McSorley, son of
a fucking bit. But he thinks it's the last one
for a different reason then it will. It takes dozens
of deckhands about six hours to load all the iron
ore pellets into the Fitzgerald cargo holds just below deck.

(53:47):
Then it takes another half hour to close those holds,
and they have to manually seal the hatches, and those
hatches are above deck and once the hatch cover clamps
are shut. And I'm going like this, but I don't know,
I know nothing about what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
That way could go differently.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
I'm picturing it like those hermetic jars with the ball
jars with a little bit of rubber. It's probably nothing
like that, but anyway, that's a very important part of
it where they have to seal that and then they'll
be weather tight once those clamps are sealed. Around two o'clock,
the Edmund Fitzgerald is ready to set out. It's a warm,
beautiful autumn day and Superior Wisconsin. It makes it seem

(54:26):
like everything's going to be smooth sailing, but the Great
Lakes are known to throw a few curveballs weather wise,
especially at this time of year because it's autumn, so
the water's still a little bit warm from the summer.
But the cold fronts come in and that's how you
get all the action. Okay, again, I don't really know
this I am reading. So if you grow up in
this part of the United States or Canada, you know

(54:50):
kind of how all this works. But if you didn't
like us, The Great Lakes are very large. Collectively, they
span ninety five thousand square miles hold about twenty percent
of the entire planet's fresh water. Yeah, they're big deal.
And one of them, the one that the Edmund Fitzgerald
will be crossing in this run, is Lake Superior, and

(55:12):
it's by far the largest. Superior contains about half of
the Great Lake's total water. So of the twenty percent
on the planet, ten percent is Lakesperior. Not sure if
that math is right, but basically that would be somewhere
around three quadrillion gallons of water. Fuck, so we're up

(55:32):
above trillion into an area I don't like to go to.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
I'm not there.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Please, let's not that's enough to flood the entirety of
both North and South America one foot deep in water.
Holy shit, it's roughly the size of Maine Lake Superior
is and at its deepest point you could submerge the
Empire State Building and only its antenna would be sticking
out of the lake.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
So just what's down there?

Speaker 1 (55:57):
The fish with the light, Yeah, there's some fresh water
version of that and Merman. So what Captain mcsorely is
now sailing across? I don't think sailing is the right word.
Traversing has the ability to generate and amplify its own
weather systems, just like the ocean in autumn. I just
explained to you this part. Cold fronts move in and

(56:19):
it clashes with the warmer lake water, still not warm water,
but warmer than the cold fronts, and that causes these
violent storms that are called the Witches of November. So
Captain mcsrely isn't fooled by the beautiful afternoon weather. He
knows conditions on the lake's turn quickly. He's been doing
it for forty years. He's also been following the weather reports.

(56:43):
But it is the mid seventies, so they're slower and
of course more rudimentary than we're used to. Still, when
they start this journey, there's no weather warnings in effect.
But what Captain McSorley doesn't know is there is a
powerful weather system moving out of the Great Plains and
doing what's called a panhandle hook. You know this one.
It's a storm that originates in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.

(57:06):
It moves east before making a hook shape motion northeast
and straight toward the Great Lakes. And this type of
weather pattern is rare and it comes as a surprise
even to the forecasters. So several hours after the Edmund
Fitzgerald leaves Superior, Wisconsin, the lake suddenly becomes rough.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
That scares me so much because it's like you can
plan all you want, like that recent Tahoe storm.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Came out of nowhere, yes, and just killed people that
were out like on kayaks.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Because it was a beautiful day and no one expected that.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
No way hailing. I saw a video of people on
the shore where it was just like huge balls of hail.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
It's just not fair weather.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
It's a little crazy, okay. So nine o'clock that night,
it's seven hours into the Fitzgerald's trip, and the National
Weather Service issues a gale warning for Lake Superior, meaning
that they're anticipating sustained winds between thirty nine and fifty
five five miles an hour, And just for perspective, a
Category one hurricane falls between seventy five and ninety five

(58:07):
miles an hour, so it's approaching hurricane levels. Not there yet.
It's not an ideal situation. But Captain mcsorly, he's seen
it all, and also he's not alone out there. There's
another big iron ore freighter called the SS Arthur m Anderson.
These fucking men in their boat name a boat after me,
Name a boat after me. I demand it. So that

(58:30):
ship is also completing the same trip across Lake Superior,
and that ship is helmed by Captain Bernie Cooper, a
thirty year veteran of the field, and they're only about
ten miles behind the Fitzgerald. So those two captains see
each other on each other's ship's radar and they radio
to each other, they check in. Captain Cooper is charting
the weather himself and based on the latest forecast, so

(58:53):
he warns Captain McSorley the situation is going to get
much much worse. And Captain mcsorly heeds that warning. He
wants to ensure everything on the Fitzgerald is weather tight
and secured so the ship won't take on any water
as the weather deteriorates, so the crew is dispatched to
double check all the clamped hatch covers. Around midnight, the

(59:14):
National Weather Service upgrades its existing gale warning to a
storm warning. Now it's predicting the northeast winds of up
to fifty seven miles per hour or more. It's getting close.
But even before that issue is posted, the Fitzgerald is
already clocking winds out of the north northeast at sixty
miles an hour and waves that are ten feet tall

(59:37):
in a lake in a lake.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Weird, yeah, lakes, how do they work lakes?

Speaker 1 (59:42):
And suddenly it's just like a bank is sitting next
to you on your boat. So of course there's rainfall,
so there's very low visibility, but the Fitzgerald and the
Anderson can see each other on their radars. They remain
in radio contact, so they're not that worried about that part.
The buddy system, yes, exactly. These big boats have friends.

(01:00:02):
Not long after the upgraded warning is posted, the captains
decide they're going to re route north and charte a
new path that runs along the Canadian shoreline. So, even
though it makes the trips longer, being closer to land
will give them cover from these northeasterly winds. And of
course it's not an ideal situation, but because these captains
have eighty years of experience between them, they feel like

(01:00:24):
they have it under control. But by five am the
next morning, on November tenth, the situation becomes more volatile.
The skies above the two ships on Lake Superior darken,
the clouds swell, and the captains find themselves in the
thick of a brutal storm. The freighters are hit with
wind gusts at nearly one hundred miles an hour, so

(01:00:44):
we've gone double.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Hurricand one hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah, that's actually what you'd see in a Category two hurricane.
Huge waves dump water onto the decks as these ships
rise and fall on the Superior like little bath toys,
they have no other option than to keep moving. So
around noon that day, the two captains decide it's time
to turn back south towards Sue Saint Marie. But this

(01:01:08):
is a little tricky because it requires passing an area
called the six fathom shoal, which is a shallow, mile
long underwater reef. But it's not a coral reef. It's
made up of huge jagged rocks. Cool huh, And those
are rocks that could absolutely, of course rip up the
belly of a ship like this. Normally captains have to

(01:01:30):
avoid the shoal. In this storm, they can't maintain the
control to avoid the shoal. Large waves are knocking the
freighters around while making it hard to get a visual
on the shoals themselves, so they can't see and they
know they're going toward them. And then it starts to snow,
and it snows really hard, and before long they're in
wide out conditions on the lake and they can only

(01:01:51):
track each other by radar. Then around three pm, which
is a full twenty four hours into this trip, Captain
Cooper looks at his radar and he sees that the
Fitzgerald is dangerously close to six fathom shoal. So around
three ten he radios Captain McSorley. But McSorley brings up
an entirely different problem, which is he says the seas

(01:02:12):
are so high they're interfering with the Fitzgerald's radar system,
and so he's now blindly navigating on Lake Superior in
wide out conditions with waves the size of three story buildings.
They've gone to three no, thank you. Mcsorly tells Cooper.
The Fitzgerald is taking quote heavy seas over the deck

(01:02:32):
and listing to one side, which means the ship is
taking on water, but McSorley doesn't know if that's purely
because of the waves or because of their structural damage
below deck. He tells Cooper's crew is working to pump
out all the water to write the ship. So then
the captains come up with a plan. McSorley is going
to slow the Fitzgerald and give Cooper a chance to

(01:02:52):
catch up to him, because they were about ten miles apart,
and then McSorley is going to follow the Anderson to
the nearest safe harbor because they have radar, and that
will be several miles away in Whitefish Bay, which is
on the eastern end of Lake Superior between Ontario and Michigan.
But by four pm, hurricane force winds are still blowing.

(01:03:15):
More snow is dumping down and in these violent waves,
Captain Cooper struggles to keep a visual on the Fitzgerald,
so the Fitzgerald couldn't see them, and now he can
barely see the Fitzgerald. The navigation issues that McSorley mentioned
also mean that Anderson can only intermittently see the ship
on his radar, and it keeps basically dropping on and

(01:03:36):
off the map. So now it's five pm, Anderson's still
trying to catch up to the Edmund Fitzgerald, and of
course Captain McSorley is on edge. He's radioing to any
and all reachable ships to check his position since his
radar is down. He actually connects with a Swedish vessel
in Whitefish Bay. McSorley tells that ship's crew that waves

(01:03:56):
are still washing over his cargo deck and that in
his forty years he's never seen a storm this powerful.
At six forty pm, Captain Cooper reports a succession of
two thirty five foot rogue waves that knock into the Anderson.
The Discovery documentary describes these waves as quote as powerful
as those found in a mid ocean cyclone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
So it just goes, you've seen that video of the
fucking wave in the ocean on that tanker. Oh, my god,
it's the scariest.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Fucking When they used to do the North Sea things,
You're like, oh, whatever, Yeah, how do they do that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
I don't know?

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
And then they kind of just get used to it.
It's like that's what regular life is. Like. No, please, no, please,
don't make us do that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Stop making us become sailors.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Just start crying. At seven to ten pm, Captain McSorley
radios over to the Anderson again, and this time he
talks to first mate Morgan Clark, who can see the
Fitzgerald on the radar. He gives McSorley his position, and
when Clark asked the captain how he's faring, McSorley simply replies, quote,
we are holding our own. Those are his last words.

(01:05:08):
Minutes later, at seven fifteen, the Edmund Fitzgerald drops off
the radar and it never reappears. By seven point thirty,
the storm is still raging on Lake Superior, but the
snowfall lightens up a little bit, so visibility improves. Based
on the Fitzgerald's last position, Captain Cooper thinks he could
be getting closer to them, but when he looks out
to catch a glimpse of them, he can't see anything

(01:05:31):
like he can't see them at all. And at the
same time, the Anderson's first mate, Morgan Clark, is trying
to reach Captain McSorley again by radio, but there's no answer,
so a rattled Captain Cooper calls the US Coastguard tells
them he's worried that something terrible has happened. So the
Coastguard launches an immediate search for the Edmund Fitzgerald, but
there's a problem. All their big rescue ships are too

(01:05:52):
far away, and the smaller boats can't go through that storm.
They can't weather it. The Coastguard starts with an air search,
but they don't see any sign of the Fitzgerald at all.
From the air, a ship that's the size of two
football fields seems to have vanished. The immediate presumption, of course,
would be that the Fitzgerald sank, because basically what else

(01:06:14):
could it be. But the idea that it could go
under that quickly without Captain Cooper or one of the
Coastguard planes seeing it at all is pretty unbelievable, and
just for a very rough comparison the Titanic, which is
much much larger, but still it's comparable. It took two
and a half hours to sink, so the idea that

(01:06:35):
suddenly it's just gone is crazy. With a few other
options available, the Coastguard asks the captains of eight large
ships sheltering in Whitefish Bay to join this search. Basically,
they're asking all these captains who have just come in
from a storm to go back out. So nearly all
of them decline, but two do agree. One is Captain
Don Rickson of the William Clayford, which is another big

(01:06:57):
ore freighter, and the other is not other than Captain
Bernie Cooper of the Arthur Anderson. So those two ships
spend all nights searching for the Edmund Fitzgerald. They find nothing. Wow,
that is until eleven am the next morning, when they
see a battered lifeboat, which Captain Cooper says, quote looked
like a giant hand had just taken and torn it

(01:07:18):
in two.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
There's nobody in the lifeboat, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
The boat torn in half.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
They see an oil slick and more debris like an
inflatable raft and some life jackets, but by this point
any hope for survivors is gone. The lake water is
less than fifty degrees, which is only survivable for a
short window of time, even when the water's calm. But
this water is not calm, which makes it even more lethal.
A coastguardsman named James Hobbat will say, quote, we search

(01:07:47):
for three days in probably the roughest seas I've been
in in my life, including the North Atlantic and hurricanes
in the Gulf Yikes. On November fourteenth, four days after
the Edmund Fitzgerald disappears, a US Navy plane using magnetic
detecting gear hits on a large object at the bottom
of Lake Superior, right around where the Fitzgerald was last

(01:08:08):
seen on radar, and using the military's equipment, searchers are
soon able to determine that this is, in fact the
Edmund Fitzgerald, split in two on the bottom of the lake,
seventeen miles away from Whitefish Bay, where they were trying
to get to. That means Captain McSorley almost got his
crew to safety.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Yesh, seventeen miles is not a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
It's so close when it's two football fields yea on
its way. But even after the ship's located, no one
can agree on what actually caused it to go down.
Two federal investigations are conducted in the late seventies. Both
concede will never know exactly what happened, but they both
suggest the likeliest culprit were those hatch covers on the
cargo holds.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Oh, those bell jar things we were talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
The bell jars. A report suggests that they might not
have been clamped tightly enough, and in the storm, huge
waves pouring onto the deck, so much lake water spilled
into the cargo holds, and basically the ship became so
water logged that it went down. It made it go
down fast. But that's a very controversial theory for a

(01:09:11):
couple of reasons. One, it puts a blame on the crew,
on the Fitzgerald's crew. Many people object to that because
these people knew what they were doing, they did it
all the time. But many Great Lakes captains and engineers
reject that theory because even if the covers weren't perfectly sealed,
we know that they were as close to that as possible,
because the captain called for them to be rechecked. It's

(01:09:33):
hard to imagine enough water would have been able to
down a seven hundred and twenty nine foot or freighter
in seconds. It just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
You had to imagine that it's able to take on
some amount of water without fucking falling apart. Yes, you know, right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
So that brings us to the second theory, which is
people thinking that the Edmund Fitzgerald actually was physically damaged,
either by a stress fracture incurred while it was just
being slammed around in the water, or because it scraped
six fathom shoal. And that's what Captain Cooper thinks happened.
He theorizes that the fatal blow actually happened hours before

(01:10:08):
the sinking, when Captain McSorley first reported the fifth Gerald
was listing. Captain Cooper has said, quote, I don't care
what anybody says. At three ten in the afternoon, she
meaning that Fitzgerald had either bottomed out or had a
stress fracture in the hull. That's the only two possibilities.
She was sinking from that time on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
That makes much more sense. Cooper also points out it's
totally possible Captain mcsorly didn't even feel the fatal blow
or scrape because the lake was so turbulent that it
was like one of many things going on. But that
still doesn't explain why Captain McSorley, who was using his radio,
didn't call anyone as the ship was actually sinking. It

(01:10:49):
adds to the suspicion that it went down within seconds.
So whether you ascribe to the theory about the hatches
or the damage, many people also think that there was
a final catastrophic rogue wave that took the already compromise
ship and buried her before any of its crew could
escape or call for help.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Yeah, you'd think if it sunk, like at least some
people would have gotten off.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Of it, gotten away somehow or Yeah. And also the
fact that it's just cracked into so we'll never truly
know what happened, and that of course has been a
source of pain for the Creuse loved ones over the years,
many of whom first learned about the wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald by watching The Nightly news Man Horrible. So

(01:11:35):
very soon after that wreck, Canadian traditional singer Gordon Lightfoot,
who's beloved anyway, some great hits. If you I think
Sundown might be one of my favorite songs of all time.
He has that really good low voice, yeah, and the beard,
and he was like he was, you know, he's a
hot guy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Jinks Miller genuine draft or something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Yeah, he was like the vibe of the mid to
late sevens. So he reads about the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking
in Newsweek weeks after the tragedy, and he is really
upset that it wasn't more widely reported and more people
don't know about that tragedy. So he goes into the
studio and he records what would end up being his

(01:12:16):
legendary ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which he
will later say is his proudest achievement. Wow, what I
think is really interesting. And I did see this on
TikTok So Grain of Salt, but somebody said, what you hear?
It was a guy that knew so much. He was
like one of those music guys. I'm sorry I didn't
write down his name that you knew. He probably read

(01:12:37):
like four books on the wreck and on Gordon Lightfoot
and on Canada and the seventies a little pork Pie Hat.
And he said that basically Gordon Lightfoot got like an
Irish traditional ballad, like those are the chords he was using,
and they just wrote the actual words and they went
into the studio to record it, and he just everybody,

(01:13:00):
just like, play what you feel because it's a really
simple tune and they got the first take and then
when they tried to go do it again like the
real version, it just didn't feel right. So what you
hear when you hear it is their very first take
ever of the song. Wow, very cool and like people
were asking questions. He's like, I don't know, just do
what you think sounds good, and like that's what it

(01:13:22):
ended up being, which then ended up being number one
on the Canadian charts and all went to number two
on the American charts. So it was a huge hit. Again,
not as good as sund Out, Okay, I shouldn't be
arguing that in this story truly, it's like all of
Canada knocks on our door. So to this day, the
bodies of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald remain buried

(01:13:44):
in Lake Superior, five hundred and thirty feet underwater, and
over the years, the crew's friends and families have come
to see the reck site as a burial place that
should be respected as such. They've made it clear they
don't want dives to the wreckage, they don't want anybody
bothering it. They want everything to remain on board as

(01:14:04):
it was, and just for it to be like that
sacred place. But for most families, there's been one exception
to that rule. In the mid nineties, they agreed that
the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell, which is the heart of any ship,
should be excavated and brought up and used as a monument.
It's a huge endeavor, involving careful planning and a team

(01:14:26):
of expert divers, but ultimately it's a success, and in
nineteen ninety five the bell is removed and replaced with
a replica that lists the names of Captain McSorley and
his twenty crewmen, and the same year, during a dedication
ceremony for the bell, each man's name is read aloud,
one by one, and as they are their respective family

(01:14:48):
members ring the bell to honor their lost loved one.
Don Donarski, Junior of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society
is among the speakers at this event, and he says
in his speech that quote, as we remember the men
and hear the tolling of the bell, we should grieve,
but we should also celebrate their lives as well as
the bell is in their hearts, so they are in

(01:15:10):
the bell, and in the bell's tone are the voices
of the men, and we shall listen. So Captain Bernie
Cooper has already he passed in nineteen ninety three when
he was in his mid seventies, before that ceremony took place.
But his heroism is reflected in the US Coast Guard
Distinguished Public Service Award that he's given for his participation

(01:15:31):
in the search effort. And today Big Fits's bell is
on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society Museum,
which is fittingly located in Whitefish Point in Michigan, which
is the entry point for Whitefish Bay. Just a few
weeks ago, in November of twenty twenty five, events commemorating
the fiftieth anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

(01:15:53):
took place there and as many as three thousand people
showed up to pay tribute. Wow, so those in a
ten t would have heard the ship's bell ring thirty
one times. So since that very first ceremony back in
the nineties, two additional bell ringings have been added. It
rings twenty nine times for the Edmund Fitzgerald's lost crew.

(01:16:14):
It rings a thirtieth time for all sailors lost on
the Great Lakes, and since twenty twenty three there's an
additional ring commemorating Gordon Lightfoot himself, who passed away that year.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
No way.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
And what's interesting is that Gordon Lightfoot actually wrote the
song and then talked to surviving loved ones and tweaked
the original lyrics if there was anything that he got
wrong or that he changed. And basically this song is
undeniably preserved the history and kept the story of this
horrible disaster alive. And the week of November thirteenth, twenty

(01:16:50):
twenty five, when it was the anniversary, the rec of
the Edmund Fitzgerald topped the US Billboards Rock Digital song
Sales for the very first time because four million Americans
streamed it that week. Yep, and that's the story of
the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
Wow, this is going to be so pleased that I
now know what the fuck happened?

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
What all that's about? Yeah, I mean, it's such a
It's so funny because it's like, there's so many people
that really love that song and it like it it's
important to them. But also, if you want to absolutely
destroy a karaoke night, you sign up for that song
and a.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Good way or about destroy it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Like the worst way where everyone's like, oh, because it's
a bummer and there's probably ninety five verses like you're
just like and it's the same it's the same thing
the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Okay, that's good to know, because destroy could mean anything.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
If you're out to ruin someone's karaoke birthday party.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
That's my recommendation. Write in if you disagree with me
and you're super upset right now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Speaking of being super upset, this has been my favorite murder.
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
We hope we've helped you process some big feelings today.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
You've helped us so much.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Yeah, and is it twenty twenty six?

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Not yet.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
We're gonna make it to the.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
End real soon, so so soon, real soon.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Until we do, stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Your podcasts, or you can watch us on YouTube. Search
for My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Goodbye,

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509 - Let Me Corrupt You

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

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